pantoum's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ALL QUIET ON THE VACATION FRONT Washing my linen overalls and black bikini undies (yes, together in cold water, assholes) at the end of my I-didn't-get-to-see-Filmgrrl-at-all-this-week vacation. She was at Dulles today for a two-hour layover but I didn't know till 11:30 and had no way to get there on time. I really wanted to see her goddammit and instead gave up my vacation plans for what turned out to be no good reason. And I hoped against hope that we'd at least get to see each other for a day, but that really wasn't fair of me to expect in the first place after I promised that I could take this vacation with her and then my boss told me that there was no way the organization could let me go that far away with so many staff members out. (I understand, but it still sucks]. She, along with many of our friends, did enjoy the Adirondacks trip apparently and Max—who grew up in a fishing village in Japan—packed "all of Brooklyn," according to Filmgrrl, including a Weber smoker, and smoked their fish via traditional Japanese methods. They ate like gourmands while I sat on my ass waiting for a call from work saying that I had to come in to do an interview or put out a fire or ... and yes, I did get a call. ONE. One.Fucking.Call. From a desktop publisher who called to report that she was not qualified to do the work I left for her to do and was not getting paid to do the oh-so-complicated task of placing figures in a layout file—even though I begged, borrowed, and pleaded training money in order to train her in how to do this very thing not very long ago. We had a follow-up conversation this morning, during which I reminded her that this task is well within the parameters of her job and I do expect her to do the work. So yes, I did receive ONE, count them one, phone call this week and not the calls that purportedly required me to stay in town and so could have gone to the Adirondacks after all and camped with my friends and pissed on logs and gotten poison ivy all over my body and caught lake trout and scaled them—gross—and floated naked on the cold water and grown hair on my legs and chin and probably a mustache now that I've turned forty and all my baby hair is becoming coarse and played Lucinda and Gillian and silly seventies songs on my guitar around a campfire with my best grrl. Not to say that I did not enjoy my vacation, mind you. I did. A potter friend convinced me to vacation in her studio, where we could at least make cool things. Her studio is in her basement—a potter's wheel and kiln and bags of clay and a creek behind her house where we waded and a tree in her backyard that I climbed in and a henhouse filled with scrumptious eggs behind her large, happy house that was, incidentally, filled with people she referred to as The Germans, who turned out to be two nieces and a nephew—18, 21, and 29ish, on an eight-week tour of the US). They were sweet people with great insight into culture. For example: "I would like the orange cheese, no, make that the white cheese. Oh, either one. They both taste the same." We ate good food, laughed, did touristy things, and enjoyed each other's company. And I spent a good portion of the three days working on one cool-ass sculpture while Pottergrrl threw pots. Meanwhile, we decided to undertake a poetry pots project together. I'm going to supply poetry lines and she s going to make pots based on these lines—and then I'm going to carve the line into them. So not a bad vacation, all in all, but I still wish I'd gotten to see Filmgrrl. (Monday) Believe it or not, this is the first chance I've had to even log on and post my entry! Will probably be at work till late tonight too because there are so many more fires to put out. Sigh. Guess it'll get done though. The good news is that my little art weekend was obviously relaxing because, even though I went home and smoked last night and even though I had a stressful morning, my BP was only 113 / 73 when I went to the dentist today. Of course, that was when I was only there for a cleaning and before the dental technician got her little cleaning weapon stuck under my new $5,000+ dental implant and PULLED IT OFF and then said, "O, well you have a follow-up appt. next Monday, so they can fix it then." I told her right fast that they would be fixing my tooth before I got up out of the chair. 5:01 p.m. - 2005-07-11 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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