Monday, July 27, 1998

        I'm exhausted. I got up this morning at 6:00, after having smacked the snooze button three times since 5:33. I've got it down to the minute--the alarm goes off at 5:33, snooze, 5:42, snooze, 5:51, snooze, 6:00, get up. Those 27 minutes mean a lot to me. I could just set the alarm for 6:00 and jump out of bed, but it's not going to happen, so why kid myself? This is my system, and it works.

        Pyewacket woke us up at 3:30 this morning, playing with one of her little wads of paper that she'd carried upstairs from the living room. She bats it around in a frenzy, making it bounce off the bathroom wall and then chasing it and scrambling on the floor. Bob and I both woke up and just groaned, and told her to knock it off, and she either did or we eventually went back to sleep anyway. She stayed in bed with Bob when I got up, then just as I was getting out of the shower she pushed open the door and came in, gave me an accusing look, and flopped down on the bathmat as if she was exhausted.

        I didn't want to be late, and I didn't know how long it would take me to get there this morning, so I left at 7:00. That was way too early. There's just no real way of telling, I guess. I stopped at Bagel & Bagel and had some juice and wrote in my journal for awhile until it was closer to 8:00, and that was actually pretty nice, although if I was going to do that every morning, I might as well sleep another half hour. It'll be trial and error, I guess. Tomorrow I'll start out a little later and see if that works. Bob had been planning on getting up early and taking a picture of me on my "first day of school," but when I left I told him not to get up. He was still sleeping, for one thing, and for another, it was still dark.

Jaime, Misty, Kathy and me

        They were all expecting me, and glad to see me, and sort of seemed to know me, but it didn't occur to me until later that they'd been reading my web site. As it turns out, some of them have been reading it every day. They were all great, all friendly and nice, and I don't say that just because they read this journal. I'd say that anyway. Really. ;)

        I walked down to the Plaza for lunch with the three women in the picture--Jaime, the corporate communications person, Misty, the graphic designer, and Kathy, the senior project manager. We went down to a little deli/grocery store where I got a great salad bar salad, and we ate outside at a table on the sidewalk. The cool weather has been a nice break from the 100+ days, but I think I'd really like it to get warm again. It feels like fall, and I'm not quite ready for that yet. It was a nice walk. I'm hoping to do a lot of that. The rubber stamp store is just down the street, too. And Bath and Body Works and the Body Shop. And Barnes & Noble. Well, maybe I'd better just stick to eating lunch.

My spot

        This is my corner. I share a room with two other people. I spent most of the morning installing software on my computer, and in the afternoon creating pages for a website. The day went by really quickly, but I was worn out at the end of it. I've had six weeks off, but even before that, the work I was doing wasn't really engaging my brain at all. All I was doing was trying to get through the days. I think I've finally found something that I can grow in, something that I want to learn and that I'm good at. It feels very good. It feels like I've been working a long time to get to this point.

        I didn't get home until after 6:00, and when I did I just collapsed on the sofa. Bob hadn't done anything about dinner since he didn't know when I would be home, and after talking about it for awhile, he went out and got barbeque to bring home and I heated up a can of soup for myself. I think we're going to have to start doing some meal planning. When I got off at 4:45 and was 15 minutes away from home, it was fairly easy to stop at the grocery store on the way. But I'm going to be having a much longer day now and I don't think I'm going to feel much like shopping in the evenings if I can help it. All it takes is sitting down on the weekends and deciding what we're going to eat throughout the week, but we seldom do it. We may have to start.