Journal Entry for March 27, 2022

Well, I’m tired.  I should be exhausted.  I sang two Masses in church this morning, after which I attended a meeting in another church building, then walked home.  I fed Harmony the Cat, changed into something comfortable, ate some lunch, and had a phone conversation with my friend Joan, who wanted to know about the meeting.  Then I collapsed on my bed and fell asleep while watching “Gone With the Wind” on TV.  Now I am awake and writing this.  Under normal circumstances, my Sundays are not so busy, but today was an exception.

Watching “Gone With the Wind” for the umpteenth time, I can’t help but wonder what would possess that silly bitch Scarlett O’Hara to moon and long over Ashley Wilkes when she had Rhett Butler to lust after.  If I were her, I would have considered Ashley’s marriage to Melanie a sign I should ditch him, especially with Rhett Butler hanging around just waiting to be grabbed.  Someone should have taken Scarlett and shaken some sense into her.  But then there wouldn’t have been such a good story.  Oh well.  You take the bad with the good.  Thank you, Margaret Mitchell.

The April edition of The Corlear Gardens Newsletter, of which I am the editor and head of the newsletter committee, is ready to be printed and distributed.  This is after I pestered two of my contributors to get their work in on time.  Then, when I emailed the “final” version to all contributors, some of them wanted corrections.  I had to go into the original several times, make the corrections, turn the document into a PDF so that everyone could open and read it, and send it out to everyone once again.  By now, it seems that everyone is happy.  I will send the final version tomorrow to be printed and distributed to the people in this building.  After that, my work will be done until the time for the May edition.

Now that I have written this, I can officially collapse.

Journal Entry for February 25, 2022

 

February 25, 2022

Here I am again, sitting, trying to write anything to get the words flowing.  So far, so good, although I could find myself stopped anytime.

My birthday was three days ago.  I didn’t get any presents or phone calls or anything, but I got loads of good wishes on Facebook, which means something.  My actual celebration will take part on Sunday late afternoon.  I will go out to eat with Andrey and Joan.  Andrey couldn’t make it on an earlier day because he and his wife went out of town on a well-deserved mini vacation for a few days this week.  I hope they had a good time and good weather.

Speaking of weather, we have miserable weather today, with snow and sleet.  I put in an Instacart order for some groceries and felt guilty about bringing my “shopper” out on a day like this.  I gave her an extra $10 in cash to add to her tip.  I also gave her a good rating and compliments and tried to make her look good to the Instacart people.  A shopper has to do something pretty wrong to get me to give less than five stars because I don’t want to make trouble for anyone on their job.  I guess I’m an old softy at heart, or I feel responsible for the world.  I’ll have to figure that one out.

I feel responsible for the world, and I think that is my old-fashioned Catholic school upbringing.  Catholic guilt has more than one facet to it, and I think this is one of them.  In addition to being guilty of sin and, therefore, guilty of causing Jesus to be crucified, we are responsible for the world.  It’s a lot to put on a person’s shoulders.

I have now gone over 300 words.  Three hundred words is not a magic sum, but I seem to have made it into a self-imposed limit because of the Corlear Gardens Newsletter, for which I try to write something every month.  To avoid making the newsletter too long, I limit my contributions to 300 words.  Besides that, I’m not sure the attention span of my building’s readers could stand more than 300 words, along with all the other stuff that goes into the newsletter.  I have no way of knowing how well or not well the newsletter is being received by the people of the building.  Nobody tells me.  I have to hear second-hand from Valerie or Jimmy, the people who work with me on the newsletter, when anyone says anything to them about it, which isn’t often.  Maybe I should conduct a survey and offer a prize, or something.  Nobody wants my George Forman grill when I offer to give it away, but perhaps if I make it an award, it will seem more attractive!

Again, I am not writing a masterpiece here.  I leave that to when I write something that I want to bother editing.

Until tomorrow.