Yesterday and Today in Shorthand

Woke up. Fell out of bed. Dragged a comb across my head. Lee irked at my slowness in leaving house. Chas asleep most of way drive down. Traffic superfast, perfect driving weather. Good Sirius tunes. IKEA Baltimore. Children's section ecstasy. Quilt disappointment. Strange ague in furnishings. Fear of impending illness. Hypochondriacal fit and faux-sensation of near-ague. Ran into green bathroom and had mirror conversation. Psyched self back to sanity. Passed into Kitchen IKEA in Dantean state. No Virgil greeted me by the ramekins but Kitchen IKEA ecstasy beginning. Filled cart. Textiles demesne of continuing recuperation. Lighting plunge back into slough of despond. Mylonit lamp discontinuation = near total-collapse. Gardening section slight resurfacing. Tropical plants overcompensation. Same tendency as everywhere. Items shrinking in size yet same price or hiked. Clearance area ecstasy with 26 x 26 pillow to restuff large beloved IKEA satiny retro pillow at home. Clearance tent in lot. Great values, decent items. Lost wallet panic. Wallet located by clerk seven point five inches in front of my body, eight inches to left and five inches below eye level. Clerk terrified by my panic level and infected by panic level. Hazelnut choco bars melting panic in car. As with a baby, holding increases the drama and panic. Put them down near A.C. Arrived in Balto proper and seafood restaurant finally right temperature (IKEA twenty degrees too warm). Very good seafood meal relaxation laughter. Mystery illness which began near the IKEA children's POANG definitively a hoax. Possibly Christly calamari, saintly scallops and stuffed fish work thaumaturgy. Left near-content but distrustful of human fatedness. Rotated ice on several IKEA crab pates in car and said prayer. Chugged cold lingonberry drinks. Realized IKEA is watering down lingonberry drinks in store when chugging prepackaged ones from Sweden which tasted like lingonberry drinks of 2008. Passing Lake Redman and all joked about fatties from THE BIGGEST LOSER canoeing on this lake. Felt desire to compete on fatty show to increase motivation. Felt desire for nasty drill sergeant of weight loss and exercise. Crab pate began warming to car temp. Raced home. Realized debit/credit card was missing. Left at restaurant. Called and canceled card. Drove CSR crazy with my panic and worry about sequelae of canceling card. Card was canceled. Passed several motels that looked like excellent subject for documentary of horror and mystery. Noticed what appeared to be nomads living on lawns of motels. At home began redecorating several rooms. IKEA items required complete rethinking of several rooms. Bathroom filled with tropical plants. Retro forties looking kitchen items must all be in touchy-feely proximity and in line of sight. Searched Mylonit availability online. Only blue & white. No red and green. Despair. Searched Craig's list and everywhere else. No. Realized Mylonit has probably gone out of my reach forever. Issued by the tens of millions and suddenly don't exist on planet. Angry at IKEA for discontinuing many other very successful designs. Realized IKEA has no clue what to keep and what to jettison. Watched dvr'ed shows (down to only 8 hours left due to overrecording of series). Watched several shows including one in which people leap at and bounce off giant red rubber balls and run obstacles courses like hamsters in a water park. Felt show was awesome. Wanted to be on show. Felt extreme jealousy of people who defeated giant swinging crane arm which tried to knock them off columns where they sat like stylites. Felt this was the best programming of the last quarter century. Beckett with an easier sense of humor. Fat people bounced the best off giant red hippity-hop like balls planted in lake. People were launched from human catapult in one episode and flew twenty feet through air. This is the reason for evolution. This and nothing more. Did a bunch of other shit. Exercised. I can't remember about eight hours but there was human intimacy and wonderment and sleep. Then grocery shopping in the middle of the night. Read a lot. Wrote some. Made a salmon dinner with a nice demiglace, sugar snaps, and some other stuff and served it while it was still dark outside. Birdsong had begun so technically day. Exercised. Watched a bunch of Malcolms and some other stupid reality shows. Predicted Brandon would be the next supermodel because clearly every week they have been getting rid of the people you'd never expect. Hence Brandon was stupidly logical and true to the pattern and I felt vindicated and pissed at once. Went to bank. Got new card at bank. Noticed bank had changed hands and name but card has old name. Had long discussion with employee about work involved in changing name everywhere, even in bathrooms. Pointed out coin changer still had old name and crushed her world. Had seven minute anxious conversation about what this meant to my life, this change, while getting new card. Made employee laugh severally. Employee liked me. Wearing retarded Greek sailor's cap cuz hair impossible today so look like Captian Pa'tarded. People like retarded looking people who know they look retarded and joke about looking retarded. I am okay with joking about looking retarded. Who wears a greek sailor's cap but somebody pa-tarded? Went away consoled. Felt bank loved me and would protect me from itself. Just like my country. Thrift store. Found an interesting weird bio of Poe. Kept reading it between looking at items. Found some great potpourri (weird homophonic resonance in universe?) Found other things. I forget. I forget a lot lately. Went to WAFFLE HOUSE where I ate free since we used coupon from our big coupon book. Lee has prejudice against restaurants like WAFFLE HOUSE. Rude comment about appearance of restaurant chain and aspersion involving "cinder blocks" by Lee. Everyone working in the WAFFLE HOUSE black. No privacy whatsoever. None between workers and none between diners. Anything you say everybody hears. So you must have a pure soul at the WAFFLE HOUSE. I had a very pure soul today. I felt full of love. People were giving me love today. A cashier gave me love. The bank employee gave me love. My waitress gave me love. I felt very loved. I felt I could be in a lifeboat in the middle of the sea with any of these people and we would not kill each other. Probably misled. Had a chicken salad with the best grilled chicken I have tasted in weeks. They make them by hand so saw waitress chop up radishes and lettuce and rest. Felt very antebellum. Waitress liked me. Waitress treated me like royalty and was tolerant of Lee. Lee studied menu like Euclid's geometry for about twenty minutes so think that might have been it. Probably she thought he was pa'tarded. I looked like a healthy derelict and I think she likes healthy derelicts. So we bonded. I imagined being married to her and her having my babies. It was a scary thought because I realized I would sit on my ass even more than I do now and she would think that was normal. Menu is two sides of a plastic sheet, all large pictures, clearly designed for illiterates and those drunk-to-the-point-of-aphasia people who come in at 2:28 a.m. (24 hour restaurant). Total cost for both lunches was 5.31 as she took 7 dollars off bill when it was supposed to be cheaper lunch off only. So tipped exorbitantly. Bought water plants for water garden at LOWES. Bought equisetum (ancient. i love its weird jointedness.) water cannas (ca-ca-ca-cannna lilllies) and water irises. Stopped at mom's on way home. Stole some cattails from HER water garden at side of house. Visited with mom and met her caregiver who visits biweekly. Caregiver a hoot. Most nurses = party girls. She's a 50 year old party girl. She's a great friend to my mom. Does totally supererogatory type stuff. Came home. Cleaned upstairs while Lee cleaned downstairs. Made water garden. Repaired large Chinese garden urn with Gorilla Glue. Tended Gorilla Glue like baby (it expands for some time, must be wiped repeatedly). Set up water garden. Did wash. Vacuumed. Fell into reading. Felt shame. Washed large Buddha. Set Buddha out to dry in sun. Fought with one of Lee's ebay buyers who tried to chisel him. Came to loggerheads. Got mail. Lovely old Gorey arrived. Called post office about mystery damage to Lee's packages. Got along famously with supervisor there. Supervisor commiserated with me on horrible crusty old man who hassles Lee repeatedly there. ("If it's any consolation, tell him not to take it personally..." "You know the guy I'm describing?" "Oh yeah...he hates everyone, including us") Felt desire to see this creature of malice and misanthropy. Was supposed to go out for tomato plants but mutually threw in the towel. Showered and imagined placing an ad in the classifieds looking for a "BALL WASHER" and the fun phone calls you could have with job applicants ("Is this a job in an athletic department or a gym? "No, I just need somebody to wash my testicles. Minimum wage.") and ready to die into chaise (oh found new giant pillow with excellent back support for back of chaise). Gave in and turned on a.c. Felt like nothing changed by mirror but scale said two more pounds off in past few days. Slow process. But feel no desire to change diet as I feel so much healthier. Have found I need meats I can do though (fish of all stripes, shrimp, scallops, turkey, chicken sensibly). Have to be creative to keep it interesting. But fat food looks gross to me now. Hope I can keep that disgust. Was shocked to learn chocolate mousse minis I have in freezer are only 100 calories each, as good as my yogurts! Thought they were untouchable. That key lime one Yoplait makes is delish. I'm forgetting about one thousand other things. but this is enough muttering.I just did this to practice my typing.