Oh Mary go and put the garbage out

[flemmings]

Was leaving work and halfway up the street when I realized that my light and gladsome feeling came from having left my backpack there. So turned round and peddled back and met Neighbour Ike and his dad just leaving. 'Don't take your backpack with you, you won't need it,' I said, that being my convoluted way of explaining why I was returning when I'd just left. Dad looks startled, registers non-existence of pack on my back, and turns back up the stairs himself, having realized he'd forgotten his own backpack. It was that kind of day.

Yesterday I succeeded only in buying new Birkenstocks. Today I managed the task I'd been putting off for weeks, getting my quarterly blood draw. Anti-inflammatories damage the kidneys so my doctor keeps tabs on what mine are doing. Which is fine, but I hate sitting in the lab waiting my turn. Yesterday the place was so full there were people waiting in the corridor, the board said at least a 25 minute wait, and someone was wearing a cheap perfume. Today there was just me and another woman, and the cheap perfume wearer arrived only as I was leaving.

There has been no progress at all on the reading front, but with the arrival of hot weather I think I'll send The Autumn of the Middle Ages back to the library and devote my brainfried self to fantasy novels.

Comments

[heliopausa.livejournal.com]

Extraordinary how potent cheap perfume is, as Noel Coward nearly said.
If you keep The Autumn of the Middle Ages until Autumn, you could embark on a whole new project of only reading seasonally-appropriate works. Helliconia Summer, maybe? Caveat lector: I've never read it.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

Oh isn't it just. And increasingly, all perfume smells cheap. No doubt the changes in perfume making are for the humanitarian best, but the scents of my youth- Chanel no. 5, Bellodgia- no longer smell like themselves. And egad, but the prices have spiralled.

(amused) I do read seasonally appropriate, to an extent. The Kalevala from snowy Finland belongs to winter and can't be parsed in summer. The middle ages have always been autumn to me, so that's the best time to read Huizinga. Spring is for Renaissance works. But summer is a dead loss and should be devoted to cozy mysteries or urban fantasy or something equally fluffy and forgettable.