A day

I’ve been so busy that I haven’t written much in the last few months. I miss it. I also, however, ponder the things I want to write about, things I would rather Ben and Lady K. not see. I used to write completely frankly, which was good for me but which leaves me with umpteen diaries that I now have to go through with a razor, or toss out entirely, before I die (hopefully a long time from now).

Today was a peaceful day in a peaceful week. I go back to working at a variety of jobs on Jan 22, but I won’t be as busy as I was in the fall. I am reading mysteries, knitting, working my way through a stack of New Yorkers and New York Review of Books in order to give them to my daughter or to soldiers I come across on booksforsoldiers.com. My local Borders is closing, to the shock and dismay of everyone here (Ben, who works for Barnes&Noble, says he heard that the store had a series of lousy managers; a cashier said that the store was in a dispute with the landlord). Whatever the cause, I am very sorry indeed, but have appreciated the 40% discounts. Ben, his new girlfriend, A. and I have dropped lotsa $$ there. Between Ben’s girlfriend and me, the knitting section is kaput. Today I bought bunches of DVD (buy 2, get one free) to send to soldiers in Iraq–all comedies. Some I plan to watch myself before I ship them out.

Yesterday I picked up toiletries for a bunch of soldiers in Afghanastan who don’t have a PX. That box, filled with that stuff plus magazines, candy, and a copy of the book High Fidelity, goes out tomorrow. Another soldier requested A Nation of Sheep–an odd request for a soldier, I thought. I bought that too and it too will go out.

Then I must stop buying things. Particularly as we are about to have 1500 dollars worth of plumbing done (lotsa frozen valves).

Ben has agreed to call a career counselor I found for him–tomorrow. He did not have the usual wild horse roll of his eyes so I am hopeful. I have been thinking and stewing and pondering about all this for a while. He had a good talk with my cousin, who is a big cheese in International Relations, and Ben seemed eager to pursue graduate studies, but he wants to get a “real” job first in order to save up. Getting a “real” job, however, has been hard.

Lady K has a boyfriend who is very nice but also deeply flawed. I was glad to spend time with him at Christmas at my sister’s. After Lady K. left for Calcutta on the 26th, we drove him to a bus to Saratoga, where he will stay in the back of a store where he works till she returns. He is soulful, gentle, troubled, marches to a different drum, very uneducated, very ADD and more. She, meanwhile, is “very tired” and pulled most of her eyebrows out during finals. I freaked until my sister said reminiscently “yeah, I used to do that.”

Ben’s girlfriend is very nice, 3 years older than him (which I think is a good thing at this time of his life), a non driver, and in the same career situation as he is. I am delighted for him–I am glad for him to finally have this kind of experience.

I hope that boy/girlfriends don’t keep Ben and Lady K. from moving on with their lives, but who on earth would want to have ones life go according to some plan without any of the messiness of ordinary life and experience?

And I do remember how my peers and I handled our own entries into the real adult world. Very lamely, except for H.