7-19-00 W 2:59 PM

We picked up the puppy this morning. She seems to be a black field spaniel/ retriever mix. She whimpered all the way home. I think she must have been carsick. She retched up some slimy kibble. When we brought her into the house, she didn’t seem to know which way to go at first. She sniffed one corner before catching the scent of the kitchen, but then something else caught her attention and she turned another way, loping along clumsily, walking sideways, falling down. I lay down on the couch to read the paper. She struggled to pull herself up, succeeded, stomped over my paper, and lay on my shoulder. Soon we were both asleep.

The phone rang and woke me. I was supposed to go for a bike ride, but I didn’t feel like it. I’m lazy and tired today. I don’t know why. I got up before eight this morning. Put five lines to Jim. Then I walked down Hudson and got the papers. I ate cereal for breakfast and peanut butter for lunch [color photo of Wrigley Field from behind home plate, looking across the diamond to centerfield, the ivy, the bleachers, the scoreboard, and the high-rises beyond]

I have to go to night school in ninety minutes. I don’t feel like lifting weights today. I should take a shower. I guess I’ll read some Miller when I’m done here. My fingers smell like puppy. What else? The puppy was spayed yesterday. She has been sleepy all day. We’re thinking of calling her Louisiana, Lulu for short. I have to do that third-person page. We’re still in the traffic-stop flashback. That’s Sammy Sosa to the left in that picture. He would later homer in that game which was July second. Lance Armstrong is winning the Tour de France. Now that I teach evenings around the corner at LA High, I’ll be losing twenty miles of bike riding each week. [sad face]

7-18-00 Woman's Nature

 7-18-00 Tu 3:30 PM

This journal wasn't in my backpack today. I subbed at Pio Pico. A first-grade class. They called at ten to eight this morning. I showered, dressed, and typed for fifteen minutes before Rochelle dropped me off at eight thirty. I taught a few lessons and read the day's news. It was all ho-hum, except that when I finished the paper, I wanted to write in here, but when I unzipped my backpack, this notebook wasn't there. It pissed me off to have forgotten it--a visceral sense of loss that common sense told me to get over--so I read Miller's pornographic ravings amid the innocence of the first-grade children. Mailer's commentary is like locker room intellectualism. You'd think I might appreciate that, but it comes across as not thought through to any depth. It's almost as bad as my writing. He writes about Henry and June as mutually parasitic narcissists, but it's hard to buy Mailer as an authority on the subject except as a narcissist himself. He seems guilty of the same problems he identifies in Miller: the subject matter is too big, to nebulous, to nail down coherently. I did, however, find noteworthy Mailer's assertion that Miller saw women as incapable of having characters as large as men's, which he footnotes with the idea that women's nature is nature itself. Chauvinistic maybe, but with a ring of truth to it, perhaps.    Hmm?   Once I'd finished Mailer's chapter alleging Miller's narcissism, I took out Farewell, My Lovely, and read a few chapters of "The Finger Man." After class, Principal Armstrong, the guy I want to talk to about Pitch, was at the school, but I knew they were having a staff meeting after school, so I decided I'd just introduce myself. I told him my name, and then I backed away and stumbled over a kid because I wasn't looking where I was going. That couldn't have helped my cause. I walked home. Now I'm sitting on the couch in my undershorts. The Angels are on. So are the Dodgers. After I'm done here, I guess we've got to go to the pet store to get more stuff for the puppy we're adopting. She thinks I have money coming out of my ass. Then I have to type a third-person page. Then I have to go teach at LA High.

 

7-17-00 M 10:30 AM

I slept at Rochelle’s mom’s last night. Saturday morning, we went shopping for some maternity dresses at the Orange Mall. Then we went to Islands and had a shitty, overpriced lunch. Then, I went to my mom’s and helped set up for the party. We laid some sod, and I washed the cars and set up tables. I was reading the paper and watching the Dodger/Angel game when I feel asleep. The party was a blur. We came home after two. My game was at nine the next morning. I managed to bust open my head on the louvered window over the sink in the bathroom while I was gargling. I have a nice cut on my forehead. Then at the game, I got spiked in the shin tagging out a guy trying to steal third. It’s bruised purple and swollen with a gash in the middle. Later, I made a diving catch of a shot popup and scraped about a six-inch strip of skin off my left arm. I singled and ran from first to home on a blooper down the line, sliding into home and tearing an old scab off my knee. I was in the dugout drinking water when the moron ump decided the ball had rolled out of play. He ruled it a ground-rule double and sent me back to third. The best thing was Einstein telling our hitter he had to stay at first on his ground-rule DOUBLE. Dumbfuck. It didn’t matter, because Rodney got a basehit, and I scored easy. My next time up, I got beaned on the arm. I stole second, sliding again. Went to third on a passed ball and scored on a base hit. We won nine to six. I took a three-hour nap after the game. The Angels blew a squeaker to the Padres. I read the paper. Around nine thirty, I rode up to Borders. They were having a forty percent off sale for employees, so Rochelle let me pick out some stuff. I got some bedtime stories and a Richard Scarry book for Ava. For myself I bought some Ray Chandler and Jim Thompson, and a volume of Rimbaud poems and a couple of CDs. We’re supposed to go to the animal shelter and get a puppy today. I start work at LA High tonight. Ugh. What should I do about Pitch? Got a steak in the broiler. Lift weights. Read Koran.