Struggling

I don't seem to be alone in noticing that I'm having problems these days. I've had a couple of offers of "If you want to talk, give me a call." I had another problem yesterday with the visitors from Balto while we were at Ken's for dinner. Is it Sunday's? This is like my childhood, when my parents would celebrate Sunday afternoons by having big, nasty and (I thought) complicated arguments. I take my meds, but still I feel the need to pick a fight. My behavior was really embarrassing yesterday, one of those things I wish I could take back, and in front of witnesses so now of course other people are afraid to disagree with me because they don't want to be treated that way. I've been working so hard at controlling that, trying to make sure that part of me doesn't surface, or is under control. I wonder if I'll ever be able to control it. It's really discouraging--more than people could ever know. Maybe it's the season, Feb. is a hard month. Maybe I'm fed up with myself. Maybe my meds aren't right. Maybe I really am disgusted with some things people do. Maybe I like to argue and there's not much I can argue about so I find things. It wasn't a totally stupid argument but I was unkind and unrelenting. Not a nice girl. I'll keep track of these things. This is the second Sunday this has happened. And once again I have to apologize for my behavior. At least with Mr. Rabbit Hunter Asshole I couldn't apologize because he hopped right on out of the neighborhood. I certainly am a self-righteous jackoff, but at least I know this about myself. Anyway, I'll see "The Girls" tonight and will throw myself at their mercy. Too bad I'm past menopause and don't have migraines or didn't just have a terrible tragedy happen. The Patriots hadn't lost yet.

Other than disappointing myself yesterday was nice. Temps are in the 20's, which is really great. T-shirt weather this time of year. It's magnificent if the sun is out, which wasn't the case, but it was still great. I can tell I'm not great because I slept for more than 4 hours on Sat., but yesterday I was up at 6 and had plenty of good energy all day. I didn't sleep at all well Sat. night, woke every hour. I had a funny dream--briefly, it took place in the last house we lived in in Rockford, and my whole family was there. My mother was very young. The plumbing was broken and you couldn't flush the toilet. Newly arrived, I asked Liza how long it had been like that and she said 25 days. I was horrified. My father was fixing it, my brother and sister told me. He was in the basement, came up and was Ed Asner, shorter than I am. I felt it important to tell him the list of reasons I knew he should call a plumber. At first I couldn't speak, but finally I was able to talk. First on the list: It's DANGEROUS to handle feces. Well, I woke myself up because I said this out loud. I woke up the dogs, too. In true Spaulding Rogers style, I told the dogs (and my book group) repeatedly all day that it's DANGEROUS to handle feces. My father liked to say "fecal boli," among other charming things. So now everyone knows something important and I'm happy to educate the world.

At work today I have accomplished very little so far. Examined the NYTimes bestseller lists to find out if I'm any good at selecting books. Good at fiction, but why are Americans reading such awful non-fiction? #3 is the unauthorized Andrew Morton biography of Tom Cruise. Morton is the one who wrote the first tell-all biography of Princess Diana. Mostly the rest of the books are inspirational or what's wrong with America or how much I've suffered and overcome, but also Steve Martin and Stephen Colbert. I need to decide how many of these things I have to buy, doling out the taxpayers' dollars carefully. The book budget was increased a little bit this year, but with the caveat that, if we don't get as much money from the state as we're hoping, it will be the first place to be raided. So, like, how do I plan my purchasing? Encumber $25,000 right now so I'll be sure to have at least that much? Not to mention that the director is always "bringing to my attention" things she finds on Amazon, which of course I have to purchase whether our Barbara Delinsky and James Patterson readers want to read or not. I encumbered $4000 for audiobooks because I thought I had that much leftover from last year, but was then told that NO, I did not have that money because I wasn't told about it before the 2007 books were closed and the money went back into the general fund. Games, games, games. So I underspent my budget for 2007, which makes it look as if I don't need such a big book budget. And whine, whine, whine. What do the bookmobile patrons want? Large print romance novels. Westerns. Bestselling fiction. Some Christian fiction. Audiobooks. Not much non-fiction. What do the inmates want? They want to make $2 million dollars in 30 days with no money down. Apparently there are a lot of ways to do that, and they find every book that tells how to do it. They also want all the newspaper articles about the crimes they committed, especially the guy who shot & killed a lawyer in the Bronx a few years ago. And books about women and sex and how to please a woman. And James Patterson. And wicca. And now that they know I use the Internet they want all sorts of addresses of politicians and companies and Chambers of Commerce. And of course none of them committed the crime they were convicted of, or if they may have done it, they didn't get a fair trial. No. Really.

Oh, it's all so appealing, I think I'd better get going. I have a brochure for ordering some yummy westerns. The outlaw sherriff. Ghost town belles. Bad moon over Devil's Ridge. My favorite author is Orlando Rigoni. I think he died, though. But so did Max Brand, and he keeps writing.