Journal of a Sabbatical

December 14, 1998

busy world

I feel like I've fallen into a Richard Scarry children's book. Busy busy busy. I've been running around doing errands busily and then topped it off with getting a busy signal every time I tried to dial my ISP to upload the entries for the weekend.

It's not just me. CVS is busy. I dropped off a roll of film for the one hour service at 10:00 this morning and they told me it wouldn't be ready until 2:30 because they're busy. The laundry is too busy to do my laundry today so I decided to go to a different laundromat and do it myself. Well, partly I did that to break out of my rut. I'm using new laundromats, eating in new restaurants, taking new routes to familiar places... I think I learned once in a stress reduction class that this is supposed to help work related stress. I don't recall anything about its helping with writer's block but you never know. So I did two loads of laundry at Park and Wash and ate an eggplant sub from J &M subs for lunch while reading the last section of Song for the Blue Ocean. OK, so I'm still in a rut with Song for the Blue Ocean but I think I should get credit for reading three books: tuna, salmon, and coral reefs. Yup, each one of those should be a separate book.

Even the Star Market was busy. I waited in line for 12 minutes to pay for a bottle of laundry detergent. And that was the express lane. The lines at the regular registers were spilling over into the aisles. And this is Monday. The big shopping day around here is Wednesday. As far as I know tomorrow is not some holiday that requires lots of elaborate food, is it?

I'm still trying to figure out how I can be lonely and misanthropic at the same time. Doesn't feeling lonely mean I want to be with people? And yet I feel like a complete and utter misanthrope. Who are all these people in my space and why don't' they get away from me?

Meanwhile, Bobby of Bosnia is making an appearance at La Madre's house tomorrow night and my personal botanists are returning from the field tomorrow and want to talk about reapplying for NSF funding. They just found out we didn't get the grant we applied for. I've known for weeks. Don't know how much longer I can work on this dendrology project without money, but I ain't broke yet.

Way more to say, but better wrap this up and get on about the busyness...