20140611 DSS Graham bill Wednesday, June 11, 2014, 4:31 PM I jogged all the way over to Rolandale and now I ma jogging back. We have DS tonight and I was on the phone today for hours about ML's mving to assited living. But I was already running late watering the plants and I wanted to get some work done at R'dale (which unfortunately, by the time I did the basics, there was no time left for the extras.) Today also is the day Graham's credit card bill is due.
I need 5to get home, cut veggies, pay the bill if I can, And prepare to leave for DSS and pay the bill later if I can't pay it first.
One of the delays in leaving was typing up a report on what I leanered today for Keith and for myself. All my notes were scrawled all over an envelope that also had other writing on it and I was afarid that I would not be able to decipher it later. Plus I had a very late lunch as a result of being on the phone for hours.
I want to beat Keith home and get a start cutting veggies, but it will be very close and will depend on constrution nad crossing delays. And also on how Keith's drive home is going.
It was sunny and hot when I was jogging the other way, but now it is cloudy and breezy, which at this point, feels good, but I could do without rain.
I mean until after I get home, at least.
This morning, after eating out last night and the party (Biology Club picnic) on Sunday, I was at my highest weight since my anal fissure low, very dispappointing. KT's poetry party contirbuted as wel, and tonight I'll be tempted at DSS and probably succumb because I have established no abstinace and I'm somewhat stressed by all the goings on (Moving ML to assited living, Graham's credit card bill, etc.)
G4raham never gives us the info we need to pay his bill until it is overdue and then we have to pay late charges, same with rent. I wonder who's paying for his smokes.
I mean, obviously, since he has no income, we are.
I was overdue watering the plants at R'dale and the little squashes were dried out and wilter. I think I got them in time, but one of the tomatoes is dying (Big Mama).
I saw some Blue eyed grass (an iris) back there across from Balduck.
4:52 I am back on Moran. The Psion says 4:52 and my watch says 5:01. I wonder what time it really is.
A pair of cardinals, first the female and then the male, light on the grass in front of me, give me the hairy eyeball, and fly away.
I succeeded in getting back before K and now to cut veggies. Phew! Sweatified!
6:24 PM, we had dinner. It took all the available time to cook and eat and try to pay GRaham's bill, but Bank America wouldn't take the password he gave me, I couldn't pay it yet again.
Now we are on our way to DSS, the last meeting until Septmeber.
I woud like to use the driving time to work on a novel, any of my novels, but I don't have the information I need to do that. I could write a poem or a letter. There are novel related tasks I could do, like an outline for Taming Uncle Beast.
Thursday, June 12, 2014, 5:26 PM I am walking toward Sam and Joan's where we're going for dinner.
Friday the 13th of June, 2014, 4:35 PM I am walking on McKinnon. I was hoping to 45 minutes, but first got delayed at home and then the traffic was truly terrible, so now I will be lucky if I even get to walk 15 minutes. I will walk 15 and go back and maybe walk back and forth watching for Keith's car.
We had dinner last night at Sam and Joans and the food was good and the conversation was good. But I ate too much and too many things I shouldn't have had and was awake all night, terribly itchy. Then I laid in bed until Noon, too tired to do anything and I am still too tired.
It is cool and very windy.
Saturday, June 14, 2014, 12:37 PM I am walking to the store ((Village). Today is sunny and cool and breezy.
I am excited about the new story I started. I have decided that rather than being a new story, it will in fact be Tiny Lee latham's story within a story, if I can manage it. Of course, I don't know that I can manage the original story, as I have no plotline for it.
We did get ML signed up for assisted living yesterday, which took a long time, but is only the beginning of the process, or the second step, the first step being the search.
I am weaing one of the blouses that Ellen got for me. It is good for a cool day, hopefully. It is the white one with the flowers.
* * * * end of regular Journal EJ 1 ££
* * * * Taming Uncle Beast inner story
I am excited about the new story I started. I have decided that rather than being a new story, it will in fact be Tiny Lee latham's story within a story, if I can manage it. Of course, I don't know that I can manage the original story, as I have no plotline for it.
* *
"Prissy, I know you think I'm guilty, because I'm leaving, but it's not like that. It's not like that at all. There are degrees of monstrosity. I admit, I've done some things some people (like you) consider bad. But I did not do what you think I did. I swear it.
I'm going where no one can find me, not even the hounds of hell. When I come back, I'll be someone new, and I want you to come with me. Promise me you will."
*
Lily lies on her belly under the Norway spruce at the back fence. The little sharp twigs poke her elbows and the cones are lumpy under her belly. She is watching the cops sifting through piles of dirt, literally sifting shovelfuls through finer and finer screen looking for eveidence. For what exactly, Lily isn't sure. Rings? Tiny bones. She tries to think what they might find that would be usedful. A coin? A shard, or, she wonders sherd? Of what?
Lily herself found a spearpoint once. She was at the nature center walking right beside the naturalist, Glen Locust. she saw the edge of something dark and smooth and sharp looking and bent to pry it from the soil beside the trail. It looked to Lily like a giant arrowhead.
Glen, the naturalist, snathced from her, exclaiming enthusiastically about the spear point and Haiwatha hunting there.
Then, she spots a wadded peice of paper, caught in a cluster of black peppermints that somehow evaded the lawnmower. It's on the wrong side of the fence. She inches her fingers through and pulls the wad of paper closer to the fence. Carefully, she tugs it through and uncrumples it. Part of the paper is soggy, probably from the hose Lily hauled over the fence to soften the dirt in her attempt to get a dog skeleton for her science project.
The writing is difficult to decipher. It's messy and even the clearest parts are somewhat blurred. "Dear Prissy," it says, and and Lily starts. She knows a Prissy, could it be the same one? How many Prissys are there?
"I want to come with me," the note says, "Promise me that you will." At this point, the sloppy handwriting dissolves into illegible stains. Lily holds the paper in her hand. She was crouched under a bush listening to two police officers sifting talking about the bones. The paper is disintegrating. She can still catch a word here and there. She studies it in the dim light. Later, she will bring it inside, carry it to her room. Try harder to decipher the spoiled words.
Prissy. Her Prissy, Priscilla Dunlevy (look up to be sure this isn't someone famous). A senior at Lily's school. A smart girl who hung with the "bikers." Lily always sits front row center so she won't miss anything or be distracted; Prissy, who Lily shares a few classes with because Lily is in the advanced placement group, always sits in the back by the door, probably to leave quickly and maybe catch a smoke between classes.
Lily knows where Prissy goes to smoke.
Lily, when she came to King as a ninth grader, had gotten terribly lost on her first day of school and when she heard the bell ring and then saw her arch nemesis, Elly Weinwater, running down the hall toward her, she'd panicked, opened a door beside where she stood and ducked inside. It was a plain door with no small window like the classroom doors and no larger window like the teacher's lounge.
Lily closed the door and stood in the darkness. It was crazy, because she was going to be late for class. But better late to class than dealing with Elly Weinwater. She waited a little while, then opened the door a crack and peered out. Light came into the room, and she saw that it seemed to be a janitor's closet. It was full of brooms, mops, pails, spray bottles. A pair of limp yellow rubber gloves hung over the side of a galvanized pail that had a swirl of gritty-looking sludge in the bottom and smelled of vomit and disinfectant.
Lily ducked out and ran to class, blushing and explaining to the teacher that she'd gotten lost, which was true. Not the whole truth, but a good enought part of it.
A few days later, she spotted Elly's teased red hair, piled high on her head, kind of an ornage red, coming down the hall at a distance, and she ducked into the same door. This time, however, there was a light inside the janitor closet and Elly spotted a door at the back of what she had assumed was a closet. Tentatively, and with trepidation, she eased open the inner door and gasped. A flood of light filled the tiny poorly lit janitor space. It was a bathroom, a lovley old marble-floored, marble stalled unused bathroom with wide marble windowsills and large windows and 5 roomy stalls. There no urinals, so Lily assumed, tentatively, that it was a girl's room.
The hidden girl room became Lily's hideout. She occasionally worried about running into a janitor, so she began keeping tabs on the the janitors. There was a janitor's lounge in the basement, and during the changing of classes, the janitrs all hid out down there to keep from being trampled or harrassed by obnoxious teenagers.
Lily became almost casual about enetering the restroom between classes, using it for its primary purpose, sitting there with a bathroom pass during study halls, lying on the wide window sills on her belly doing homework, sketchin or daysreaming.
One day, Prissy popped into the secret bathroom right after Lily.
"Aha," Prissy said, "so this is where you've been disappearing to. More than once, I noticed you in the hall ahead of me and then you were gone. This is tres cool. I like it. I can see some possibilties here. Thanks for tuning me on to it."
Lily frowned.
"It's not yours," Prissy said, "you don't own it."
*It was mine for a while," Lily said.
"It's ours now," Prissy said. "Don't worry, I won't tell. But you need to be a little more discreet, or other people will notice.
Lily disn't believe that Prissy would tell everyone, but she didn't. What she did do is duck into Lily's secret hideout to cop a smoke. And not only cigarettes. Soemtimes, she smoked grass in there and left the roaches lying on the marble windowsills. Lily didn't like the smell of smoke, and worse than that she was afraid she'd get in trouble for soemthing she wasn't doing. So she stopped going to that secret bathroom.
Prissy had been friendlier to Lily after having followed her into the bathroom, not that she'd been unfriendly before. She just hadn't paid much attention to her, since Lily was behind her in school and somewhat shy.
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