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New SheetsOctober 21, 2006 I've been funked out lately. Job was a few days late coming in. Too much time to thunk funk sunk, or at least start sliding down the well-greased ramp. It didn't help that my checking account was in the mid double digits and there were only 30 bucks in my wallet (28, 25, 23, 20 . . .). Or that moving, aka "involuntary relocation," is on my mind. The moving and the (lack of) money both point with pulsating Day-Glo fingers to the implacable insanity of my life:
I picked up a year-old copy of The Atlantic, which has been hanging around the last 12 months because I was drawn to the cover story, "Lincoln's Great Depression," an excerpt from Joshua Wolf Shenk's book Lincoln's Melancholy: How Depression Challenged a President and Fueled His Greatness, but hadn't got around to reading it. Smart move. Not only was the story excellent, it contained a message just for me, a quote from the psychologist and scholar Kay Redfield Jamison:
Whew. That's my own face in the looking-glass; I haven't fallen through it yet. Thanks to Kay Redfield Jamison, and the quote marks she put around "normal" and "sicker," I will manage to get through the fall believing that I am self-confident, not stupid. Friday I went to the post office, expecting a check for a job completed exactly one month ago. A modest check, true -- about $900 -- but it would give me nerve to write checks of my own. There it was. I opened it (tear off the side strips and the top strip, separate three sheets of paper, and voilà, the loot), and it included not only the $900 but -- Ring the merry bells on board ship! Rend the air with warbling wild! -- the nearly $2,300 I'd billed for barely 10 days ago. Foul funk began to dissipate. This morning I finished a proposal for Mud of the Place -- I'd been dillying and dallying because this particular publisher would be a too, too perfect match for Mud and if I actually completed the proposal and sent it off, it would only be a matter of time before it turned me down, leaving me with one less option and even more reason to believe I'm nuts. This morning it was "Here's my proposal. Let's elope. If you say no, you're an idiot." Self-confidence and ego strength: you go, girl! Rhodry and I hiked into town. I mailed the proposal. Promise on the wing, money in the bank, a perfectly bright, brisk, and breezy fall day . . . We headed up to Main Street. Two things, I'd decided; there were two things I could buy that would significantly improve my life. My ego-gratification needs may be out of control, but my material wants are modest. One was a CD rack big enough to hold all my CDs. Most of them are heaped in paper bags or leaning piles, several degrees from any semblance of order. The other thing was new sheets. My new bed requires deep pockets; deep pockets I do not have. So I've been using sheets with shallow pockets and shot elastic, sheets I've had for at least 13 years; sheets at least one corner of which slips off the mattress every night and wrinkles up underneath me. With money in the bank, there's no more excuse. Into LeRoux at Home went I, leaving Rhodry outside to schmooze the pedestrians. Not only did I find sheets -- a damask pattern in a pleasing dark dusty purple that I think is called eggplant, or maybe aubergine -- I bought a new mattress cover. As soon as I got home I put them on my bed. All afternoon and evening I've been resisting the temptation to climb in and try them out. Self-confidence, ego strength, money in the bank -- and new sheets on the bed. How could that publisher not want my book? P.S. next day: Waking up this morning with my linens intact was so exhilarating that I went online and ordered four modular CD racks to organize my collection.
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