City Views, Country Dreams

Good Monday evening from New York.

Do you all think that a week begins on Sunday or on Monday? I can take either view, but since I always seem to work on Sundays, I tend to look forward to Monday for my fresh start on the week.

My work schedule, prepared by me, gave me a day off today. Last night I watched a bit of the Tony awards on television. These are our major theatre awards, and are a blend of artistic and commercial recognition. During the past year, I regret that I have not been to the theatre.

In general, my best remembered visits to dramas have occured in London, since for most of my adult life the ticket prices were much more reasonable in the West End, and also the plays and performances were superior. (Seen Olivier, various Redgraves, Holm, Massey, Smith, Richardson, Jackson, Rigg, Pinter, Finney, Dench, Guilgud (spelling ??,) Courtney, O'Toole, Price, Rickman, Ashcroft, and so many other fine actors.) With the dollar in the basement, I cannot travel, but also find that our Broadway ticket prices are just outrageous.

Makes me so angry to realize that I have quite lost the connection to superb artistry. Simultaneously, I do wonder if commercial interests have taken over more artistic and intellectual goals on the stage.

So...watched the Tony awards program without even knowing what the plays might have been like. I do not like musicals, even though my first New York play was the original "Oliver" and I did see Angela Lansbury in "Mame." Give me a dark, engaging drama any night.

Woke us this morning, determined to relax. How revealing is that use of the word determined. How optomistic.

I knew that it would be necessary to go out to the neighborhood bank to get quarters (25 cent coins) to do my laundry, and planned to join that jaunt with a grocery run. But before any of that could occur, my phone rang, and I heard one of my staff members angrily complain that I had scheduled her to work on an upcoming Saturday.

Let me skip past my dark thoughts about why this person should be very glad not to work on more Saturdays. What followed during that call, and many others I made trying to revise the troubling week's schedule, was a reduction of my day off, to an almost half-day off, intermingled with settling troubled waters.

Sometimes I do get quite tired. I had an hour-long nap. I went out in pursuit of my digital camera purchase, only to discover that the model I had picked was out of stock in my neighborhood discount store. More may arrive on Friday, my next day off. I will get there eventually.

It is this repeated putting off of goals that tend to make me impatient. And to wonder why I do work so hard.

Finally got the schedule re-arranged with the whiner. Think she may, or actually may not, realize that the shop is short handed with the absence of our assistant manager. Still no news of the baby, and I am getting more concerned at no news.

In late afternoon, I had a warming phone call to my younger brother, and it was so good to get caught up with him. He is off to the beach next week with his girl friend, and will soon be celebrating his birthday. Since he is the youngest, it is so difficult to realize that he is no longer young. On the other hand, it is lovely to realize that he is a pretty mature man, with a good view on life.

Today's mail brought the annual report that our U.S. government sends us about the status of our "Social Security" benefit. This is what we are to receive when we officially retire from employment, or reach an age that will entitle us to receive the benefit and still keep working.

This September, I will be eligible to receive the benefit, but delaying my filing for that benefit for a few years will definitely increase the monthly payment. I plan to delay my filing, but all the same, on a day like this, it was fun to see that another option was soon to be available. That I would not have to spend another bunch of years of days off on the phone sorting off shop responsibilities.

I have gotten the Margaret Forster "Diary of an Ordinary Woman," checked out from the library and have read about 50 pages while traveling on the subway. When I am waiting around as a prospective juror next week (for what will most likely be two days of jury duty) I very much look forward to taking the Diary along with me. Also may take the sketchbook.

Right now my days and weeks seem to pass way too quickly. I do not feel that I am achieving anything of real value, and that my dreams just drift away. I do not mean to complain, but since this is my diary of sorts, do want to lay down a marker of sorts. I wanted to draw today, but did not.

Again, the expected thunder storm has passed us by. The air has changed while I have been writing these words.

Pleasant dreams to all.