What the doctor should have meant: dishery.diaryland.com

It occurs to me that I know of at least a handful of people who are reading who don�t know that Vanessa is Vanessa. And now they do. And, Vanessa, last night I cleaned out the dresser � I�m officially down from three to two � so you and Popeye can come get it anytime this weekend. I was going to take off the drawer pulls and clean them with turpentine, since they still have streaks of that icky latexy stuff on them from when I refinished it, but I didn�t have time; as it turned out, the act and its concomitant purge were more stressful and scary and somber-making than I had suspected they might be, and I had to take breaks from time to time to go flip through a magazine until my hands stopped shaking. The first thing I ate as a person with two dressers instead of three was a slice of bread with some melted cheese and yellow tomatoes on it, and a big glass of cranberry juice � I came out of my bedroom around quarter to ten and realized I hadn�t had dinner or actually much of lunch, and I was spacey and had to take care cutting the bread and cheese because you know I am not an ace with knives and then watching the cheese melt and bubble and not burn under the broiler, and the spaciness and care and this-then-this of the preparations was a combination that felt like the performance of a ritual.

A diary is a place where you can ask yourself, What does it feel like to feel like this.

Food: lunchtime now and big pharma is in the house with a spread of catered dainties across the conf room table � Word doesn�t like "spaciness" but "conf" is fine?! � but I got waylaid on the way there by someone who needed photocopies and by the time I was done the door was closed. This is something else I don�t care to discuss, in either the specific or the general sense, and I will thank you for your understanding. Latest on the (epic) office-politics front is that I seem to have managed to ostracize my favorite person here, Melissa. I was griping about a grant Dr. Blahblah is working on and how, surprise, my promised monkey-plus participation in same is not panning out, shafted again, and it turns out that the responsibilities he said I could take over are small but significant counties in the petty fiefdom that constitutes Melissa�s job, so now she thinks I�m gunning for her. Which is mind-crushingly ironic of course because this job, this office, these people aren�t worth the energy it takes to lift a flyswatter. I am eating broccoli out of a Baggie and thinking dark thoughts about all of them. And I have the broccoli in the first place, by the way, because Nurse Teresa left me off the invitation to pharma lunch and I didn�t know it was happening � it�s a well-known fact and kind of a joke around here that she placidly hates me � and then when she mentioned it this morning and I said it wasn�t in my calendar, she puffed herself up and said in an aggrieved tone of voice as if dealing with a bratty child, loud enough that doctors could hear, "But I always include you!" Fortunately it is a well-known fact even to the doctors that this is horseshit. One thing the nursing shortage means, I have learned in my months here, is that as a nurse you can be the biggest, meanest, lyingest, back-stabbingest bitch you want and you will never lose your job, you will never suffer any repercussions at all. Bitter, passive-aggressive shrews with anger-management problems, I got your pension right here.

Bad mood today. BUT bad mood today partly because of lack of sleep, which is in effect because I was sitting out on the porch at Steve�s last night talking to his neighbors Rob and Sarah and drinking wine until almost one in the morning, and there is nothing wrong with that. Sarah, who is applying to Ph.D. programs in philosophy, had a book in her backpack that had been translated by a leading light in the field whom, coincidentally, many years ago I knew, in whose kitchen I once oh never mind, whose guest-bedroom d�cor I was maybe a little loose-red-wine-lipped telling her about or maybe I wanted to impress her and make her think I�m hangable-with: when Rob and Sarah showed up, they were arriving home late and tipsy from having been at Barca with friends for several hours, and that, my friends, is promising, so, yeah, I have a new secret plan to make Sarah my pal and see if I can�t glom onto these semi-academic boozers in her social sphere. And to make her switch from Barca to the Bad Juju � what�s that girl thinking? Also, the cats don�t get along so it�s hard to get a good night�s sleep in any case. Shoot me if I become one of those people who habitually recounts in her diary the adorable adventures of her cute silly kitty: suffice it to say that there�s a lot of hissing, Chloe has apparently banished Marcus to the bedroom except when he has to use the litterbox, and Marcus keeps trying to escape from the hell that is his new life. Marcus, my man, at least you didn�t have to lose a dresser on the way. Oh, and also, while I was cleaning out my closet last night I found a pair of Suzanne-era shoes I�d forgotten I had, nice black sandals with chunky heels. So that�s OK too. Maybe I will wear them to the Long Winters show.

I just read some of that over, and NB: I never got it on with the cult-of-personality philosophy professor in question. I saw the bedroom from a vertical position just inside the door, and then I left.

All right, and this goes on the OK list also: a little while ago when I was talking on the phone to a doctor, I used the word "imperious" � as in sorry if I sound, my mouth had broccoli in it and I was trying to be as succinct as possible in my request � and he just called back to thank me for the "excellent" word. He has added it to what he calls his vocabulary builder program and asks if he can phone again for another one next week. You bet you can, you cute silly doctor you. (Go classicists!) And someone saved me some lunch.

I think I�m tapped for today. My haircut is good and David and I are agreed that I seem on my way back to Victoria and I got a compliment on it before I was out of the building. I am wearing a bracelet, I have been for the past few days, that I got when I was in the sixth grade, blue plastic hearts with gold beads in between. (I have skinny wrists.) I used to wear it with a white short-sleeved shirt that had the same color blue stripes, and blue dangly earrings in the shape of airplanes. Cute silly self. Shutup, I was eleven.

I have a meeting at two. Must choke down lunch and meet.