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Recent News... Just for Pope Gregory... |
2002-05-29 - 8:33 a.m. Three-kite day Off-kilter. Lovely weekend. I hid myself in my sewing room, except for brief forays to dinner, and sewed. And sewed. And sewed. I love sewing. The sewing room overlooks the heavily forested backyard, giving me a view into the treetops. A reddish squirrel sat on the branch outside the sewing room window most of the weekend chittering at me. They make a lot of noise opening those nuts. Solitude. Just the sound of a sewing machine and the tape reading me Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. Never read it before. Anti-communist, intriguing, heroic, mundane, romantic, poignant - very, very cool book. Eight tapes later I'd made a houppelande, a couple boxstons, some hoods, an Elizabethan shirt, an underdress� But Tuesday comes, bringing the virtual Monday of the work week. TC stops me with the news my coworker Budney, had a heart-attack over the weekend. Collapsed at his niece's wedding reception. My division chief goes to work tracking down information on the hospital and family. I am so distracted I am late for my 9:30 meeting. I'm never late for meetings just because I forget. At 10:30, Lam calls Mary out of the room. Out of the corner of my eye, I see her collapse in the hallway. We all sit frozen for a moment until I get up and ask Lam. But we all already knew. I walk back in and say Budney passed away this morning. Long silence. Long frozen silence. I think we're done here. We drift out of the room like shadows. Most of the people in that room knew Budney for 20+ years. He attended their weddings and held their children and mentored them in their craft. I'd only known him well for a few years, but it was still odd. And jarring. I go about my lunch errands with that slightly disconnected feeling. Standing in line at the post-office behind the requistive screaming baby, hurrying to put together information for another afternoon telecom. Spreading the news to various co-workers about Budney. More not-yelling at Canada. After work bring more errands, shopping for nephew [very frustrating size hunt] and banking [long wait, clueless teller] and going to acquire my Mom's retirement gift which they didn't have so [long tedious conversation with stubborn salespeople] I have to drive somewhere else today to acquire it. It was a three-kite day. You know, the kind of aimlessly tired and depressed feeling you get after crashing three kites in one day. If you called me last night and I was spacey, I apologize. I stopped this morning and got a hot chai, just to have something warm to fill out the empty spots. I think it's working. Work. Best antidote for being off-kilter. Work. � � � 
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