2:26 PM M 5-3-99
I'm at school.  It's almost time to go.  I have to stop in at the office and sign up for a class this weekend so I can get some salary points.  Ugh.  I still have a lot of unpacking to do.  I also have to call the cable company, and I have to get some nails.  I have to finish my third-person page of "photographic" writing.  Then I should try to do something for Jim.  I haven't read any Nin for a few days.  It's gloomy today.  I have to run-off my field trips slips.  I have to put Compound W on my wart.  I had a bagel for breakfast and a grilled sourdough burger and fries for lunch, and there's all that pizza at home in the refrigerator.  Everyone keeps asking about Cinco de Mayo.  I have to work that night.  Carlin's having some kind of cocktail party Sunday.  Maybe I'll go to that.  Mardi called and asked me to keep the twenty-second open so I can see her off to her last prom.  She graduates the eighteenth of June.      Next week, I'll be going to the Museum of Natural History with my class. I would like to go and scout it out in advance.  Maybe Sunday.  Too bad I'm going to be locked in class all day Saturday.  What else?  I have to clean out the backyard.  The land-baron Marquez family.  Fuck 'em.  I'll figure this shit out.  I'll sub my ass off this summer and get my book to a hundred pages.  Writing is worthless.  Oh, well.  4:24 PM  Talked to Idaho.  My dad says he thinks Shirelle is not the right woman for my success and happiness.  He said he thinks she plays to my weaknesses instead of my strengths.  I have to leave for work in about forty-five minutes.  I called Media One.  They'll come to hook up the cable Saturday between one and five.  I'd like to buy a couple more TVs.  I should hook up the mobile phone.  What else?  I'll read the Nin diary next.  When's my Bahamas stuff going to get here?

5-1-99 Sa 2:24 PM

I'd rather fake my own death than go through with the rest of this move.  Whatever.  We're at The Bounty to watch the Kentucky Derby before we move Thing's crap up to his place in the Gaylord.
5-2-99 10:05 PM Sun.
I'm in "the office." It's more like a cubby hole.  I better write small in here.  It's a room at the back of the new house that can only be reached by passing through the only bedroom.  Six eight-paned windows looking upon the fig tree in the backyard can swing open all along one wall and around the corner of another.  They're all covered with bars.  The one I'm looking through now is covered with an iron mesh.  It doesn't exactly send your spirit soaring.  I say new house, but this place was built at least fifty years ago.  The CD/ROM drive on my new computer has gone on the blink since the move.  My desk got thrashed.  Ugh.  I haven't found my Bible yet.  I've got to get cable.  This place is jumbled with boxes. I have to call Idaho.  A sharp pain nags at my left ear.  When am I going to be straightened out?  The water pressure in the shower sucks. I couldn't get the HOT and COLD balanced into any kind of decent temperature.  We've got to get nails.  I haven't read the newspaper nor any Nin today.  This room seems to have been added onto the original floorplan.  It used to have windows on three sides, but those on the north side were boarded up and painted over when the place was converted into a duplex, it would seem.  10:33  I'm lying in bed now.  Thomas Hart Benton's depiction of Vivian Leigh's erect nipples stare at me from the wall facing the foot of my bed.  I'm lying on my back.  The wall to my left is blank, as is the one above my head.  Just to the left of the head of the bed is the closet.  It's about six feet deep.  I put six nails in the wall in there to hang my ties.  We put the beat-up old dresser I've had since Cerritos in there.  The face of one of the drawers is missing off it.  Shirelle neatly arranged my shoes in a row on the floor and in a foot locker in there.  I need to throw some of those old shoes away and get some new ones.  And maybe a new tv.  And a coffee table.  How's it work when you sell a house?  Did Marinez get $285,000?  Did he own it outright, free and clear of the bank?  Or did he still have mortgage payments?  I have to figure out how that shit works.

11:19 AM F 4-30-99
Another gloomy, dreary, cold day.  I gave the kids free time while I read the newspaper.  Then I gave Pedro his special needs evaluation.  Pedro is a boy who never says or does anything.  I rode my wheezy bike to school.  A guy scavenged the junk pile in front of the house as I left.  I got a croissant at the donut shop.  My diet's been crappy lately, and I'm wondering what to have for lunch.  I was up 'til after midnight and woke up at five thirty when I heard the scavengers going through the junk pile. I need more boxes.  Ms. Mulroney is looking find today, boxes.  Shirelle's already sparring with me about how to furnish the new pad.  She wants to put the Streetcar Named Desire print over the mantle in the living room.  It's an important spot.  It dominates the house.  It's the first thing you see when you walk in.  It's the focal point of the biggest room.  Blanche dominates the painting as the brooding Stanley/Brando and naïve Karl Malden look on.  That painting has too much specific backstory, most of which is negative, though don't Stan and what's her name always reconcile after violence in a way that's emblematic of Shirelle's and my relationship?  I want to blow up a photo I took of clouds and mountains after a storm in Death Valley on the first day of spring.  We were there together that day.  It's a product of us.  As in "Til Death Valley do you part."  I see God in the picture, and being of sky and outdoors, it's like a window to a holier place.  I would put Blanche in the hall leading to the bedroom. It can be seen there from the other room, but it's in the shadows leading to the back.