i realize several of you are way ahead of me on this.
10.6 miles yesterday.
Nothing today. I'm feeling a mite ill, actually.
Ever start to wonder if now you're losing it? When you start behaving severely out of character for yourself. When you start doing things you would never, ever think possible.
Last week, I missed an appointment with a doctor.
Saturday night, I tipped the valet ten bucks instead of one buck.
Today, I overslept and missed getting together with my college roommate Donna.
On the best of days I wonder if I'm insane. After all, what do writers do? They think up things that never happened to people who've never existed, and then they try to convince others that these fictional occurrences are real.
Yesterday morning Darin and I were at breakfast. I took my wallet out to get the tip and got the wad of "small money" I keep up front (I keep the twenties--what my brother-in-law Mitch calls "Yuppie Fun Coupons"--at the back) out. I unfolded it to discover a five and five ones. Instead of the ten, five, and four ones there should have been.
I got very, very upset about this.
Darin remained quite reasonable and pointed out that nine dollars did not make that much difference to us one way or the other, and given the valet's probably income for the year, nine dollars would probably be a welcome bonus.
When I was not mollified, he asked me if I was really getting upset about doing a nice thing.
Well, okay. I don't mind doing nice things; I'd just like to be in control when I do so.
Then getting together with Donna today--I thought about it yesterday, more than once. I slept for three and a half hours in the afternoon (I always seem to crash after the big runs), but I'm pretty sure I remembered even after waking up that I had this date today.
This morning: nothing. Didn't even cross my mind. Donna called at 10 to find out where the hell I was. She was not pleased, I could tell. I felt terrible.
This behavior is not like me. I don't know what's causing this. Or even if there is a cause--maybe I've always been a careless bitch. But being a ditz and forgetting things or not being aware of what I'm doing certainly goes against the mental image I have of myself, to the point where I'm very, very unhappy.
No, I'm not easy on myself.
I forgot to mention in Saturday's entry about something unusual Darin, Fernando, and I ran across during our sojourn after breakfast. We went to the Gordon Biersch Brewery in Burbank for breakfast (no, I didn't know they offered breakfast either) and then went to the Interact CD store in Pasadena to buy some games. Then we decided to hit a few comic book shops to find a present for Fernando to buy for a friend of his, since the friend's birthday dinner was that night.
We went to a comic book shop in Glendale and noticed something very, very unusual: most of the shops were closed. The comic book shop was open, but it was the only shop in the strip mall that was. We finally figured out why when we got up close to one of the store doors: the shops were closed on April 24 in remembrance of the Armenian Genocide in Turkey.
I hadn't realized that there was such a large Armenian population in the area, particularly around Glendale. But there is. It's huge, and it owns everything.
I don't know anything about the Armenian Genocide. I think it happened at the beginning of this century. And memories, it seems, don't fade.
Something to look forward to in Kosovo.
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Copyright 1999 Diane Patterson
Send comments and questions to diane@spies.com