miscellaneous future

12-28-99

Ho ho ho, Christmas comes twice in Georgia. Mom and Dad showed up yesterday, bearing gifts: a 3D millenium falcon jigsaw puzzle, an address book containing all the addresses I am constantly calling my parents to get, a garnet-and-moonstone necklace with earrings (now I'll have to get a hole in my unpierced ear, so I can wear both the earrings,) and a magnetic poetry calendar. They brought some Star Wars items for John, as well., and a sweet book of poetry arrived for both of us from my brother Matt.

Today we went out shopping in Warner Robins and Macon. We mostly drove around in my parents' Grand Prix and made fun of the South, but we did come home with a new computer desk and lots of plastic storage boxes.

Later we met in my parents' hotel room and played Scrabble. I felt horrible—I trounced my father at Scrabble. We're actually pretty evenly matched, but my first word of the game was "manners," using all seven letters for the 50-point bonus. That pushed me ahead, and I used John's word, zeal, to spell "zealot" and get a double word on that, too. I suck.

I mentioned the other day about John and his weird watch-killing condition. Here's the e-mail I got from his mother:

Betsy,
The chemical imbalance that John has, the one that causes any wristwatch he owns to stop, comes from his Grandpa C--, he couldn't wear any watch unless a leather band was over the back of the watch. So he always had one of those wide leather bands that has snaps on it to hold the watch. Also, according to John 1, it's not chemical, it's electrical, their metabolism is polar in some way that stops a watch.
Tidbit of informative data re: your husband

I had no idea such a thing existed. I once read a story by Rachel Ingalls called "The Pearlkillers" in which a whole family of people worshipped pearls, but if they wore them the pearls would shrivel up and turn brown and gnarly. They had a huge pearl that was the family treasure, but it was a big turdy lump of yuck. Anyway, John's wrist affliction reminds me of that story. We have a drawer full of broken watches. And, no, the batteries have not run down.

I wonder what else that fucked-up metabolism is fucking up? Is my husband magnetic? Maybe I could stick my magnetic poetry on him.

I have tomorrow off work, two days in a row! It's the first time I've had two days off in one week since I started there. I'm working out a system with Jennifer so we can switch off Sundays. That would be so cool, not working Sunday, then working on Monday and having Tuesday off again.

I've been thinking about my future, short-termish, for the next year or so. Assuming we stay in Georgia the whole time, which is almost positive. I was thinking about taking the summer off, and going away. To where? Huh, good question. I could always spend part of it in Michigan, or something. Or even stay here most of the time. I think we might go to Oregon in July, when John has his leave, but that would just be for a couple of weeks. I just have this burning desire to not be working, to practice my horn and write my journal and...and...stuff.

I don't like my job. I keep telling myself that I like it, but really it's just that I dislike it less than my other temporary jobs. This one is working out the best in terms of teaching and music et cetera, but eventually that music et cetera is supposed to be my job, not just be the stuff that gets in the way of my job. I like working with the dogs and cats, and I like my coworkers well enough, but the noise, god, the noise is too much for me. And the smell. I can only come home smelling like dog for so long.

I need to figure out what I'm doing. John wants me to look into, or at least think about, writing as a career. Writing? I'm a musician. That's my hair-trigger reaction to every suggestion, from writing to dog-grooming to file clerking. I started thinking, the other day: when did that become my answer? Plenty of people are not musicians. Plenty of people get degrees and then do other things, and are perfectly successful and happy.

I probably wouldn't be happy, anyway, let's just face it. If I were perfectly happy, this journal would be really boring, if it even existed. Happy people suck.

It's too soon for me to give up. I can't give up. So then I started thinking about applying for teaching jobs elsewhere. Far away. Then I run up against the whole John issue, the reason I never wanted to get involved with a euphonium player in the first place: no two euphonium gigs within daily-basis driving distance of each other. The two of us are going to be shifting for years and years, until we finally get tolerable jobs in one place. We lived apart for four months last winter, and I'm starting to think it won't be the last time.

Wow, I started out talking about going away for vacation, and now I'm relocating. I need to get to bed.

Fleck: (in living room: CRASH, BOOM, SCRATCH, SCRATCH, SCRATCH)
Fleck: (in bedroom: leaps on the bed, from there to Betsy's leg and onto the keyboard)

Betsy: "Fuck, what the fuck, mother fucker!"

John: "...."

Betsy: "What the hell is wrong with you, cat?" (throws Fleck on the bed)

John: "Fuck, what the fuck, mother fucker???"

Betsy: "What? Shut up."