9.16.99

    Every morning it seems to stay darker longer and longer. I don't know how I'm going to pry myself out of bed in the upcoming pitch blackness. I made the mistake of telling T. that when he got up in the morning that he had to wake me up. I'm still trying to get downtown in time to make it to the gym (twice this week!) and yesterday morning I awoke at 6:20 to see him getting dressed. He has the annoying ability to get up out of bed and get completely ready for work in five minutes without waking me up at all. This would be great if I was trying to sleep through it but lately I'm not. So, of course this morning he become this annoying little bug:

Get up, get up, getup, getup! Time to get out of bed. No, don't roll over, don't go back to sleep. Get your hand away from that snooze button. C'mon, loser -- outta bed! Now! GET UP!

    I did eventually get out of bed but as I was riding the MAX downtown I realized that I forgot to pack my sports bra. So, all was for naught. Which stinks because we went to Target (tar·gét) last night and bought stuff for gym showering. I bought a bath puff for scrubbing, Dove body soap, q-tips in a little case, shampoo, a little trial-size thing of toothpaste and a case for my toothbrush. I may or may not actually bring a toothbrush with me. I brush before I leave the house in the morning but I kind of would like to brush after I finish my coffee for the day. And all this stinks even more because I really would have liked a shower this morning. My coworkers may have appreciated it, too.

    I've been on something of a book-buying binge. I made a pretty big order to Amazon recently and got all sorts of cool stuff. One book I've been drooling over for at least a year is The Architecture Pack which is this amazing pop-up book which packs all sorts of information and facts about architecture through the ages onto every page. The pop-ups themselves are especially detailed with a differing front and back view as well as an internal scene when you look through windows and doors. There's viewing glasses which look a little like 3-D glasses with two horizontal strips of red and blue acetate. You look through the colors alternately to see internal and external drawings of the same structure. It's very cool. Originally it was $50 which is why I wasn't able to justify it but it's since dropped to $35.

    I also bought The Complete Book of Origami with folding paper and Harmonica 101. The origami is something I decided I wanted to learn a few months back. So far, it's been pretty fun. I've made a mouse, duck, crane and hat. The shark that I tried to make ended up without a dorsal fin or side fins so it looks more like an underwater torpedo. I worked on a kangaroo for three hours and haven't yet finished the head. The book is lacking in some areas in that it doesn't shade a side of the paper in the diagrams to indicate the colored side even though the author clearly states that one side is colored. And, the author seems abandons you at various points to figure out the fold yourself. The harmonica book hasn't arrived yet and is for T. since I found a harmonica among the boxes my parent's brought and he seems to like it. Maybe this winter I can pick up the banjo and we can perform duets.

    Last but not least, I bought Taking Charge of your Fertility not because I want to get pregnant but because I want to avoid it. This is probably Too Much Information^TM but I went off of the pill. When I left L.A. I lost my health insurance since it was tied to T's job. There was a gap between when I would and wouldn't have insurance and since my HMO allowed me to only pick up one pack of pills per month then of course I ran out. I tried to go to Planned Parenthood but there were so many hurdles to getting back on the pill that I just said to hell with it. Planned Parenthood wouldn't give me the pill without doing a pap (they call it an annual exam because there's no way you'd want to do it more than once) and I couldn't get my record saying that I had already had a pap without going to PP and filling out a form and blah, blah, blah. It's ridiculous. Maybe the nation could cut welfare if they made it easier for women to get birth control. Sheesh.

    So, I bought the book because I wanted to learn more about what's going on in my body. I thought that I was pretty aware but after reading a few chapters it's patently obvious that I had no idea what was going on. The author spends some quality time ranting about the state of female health care in America which is still fairly atrocious. She talks a bit about the medical profession's (still largely male-dominated) eagerness to hand out mastectomies and hysterectomies and all sorts of other measures as the cure-all to any female problem. Nevermind the fact that these procedures drastically alter the female body irreversibly. Anyway, so far it's a pretty good book. I recommend it to any woman of any age and even men, though some of the color photos are a little — how shall I say? — graphic.