To Do List Speedily Dispatched

One corner of my apartment.

Last Friday there was no acupuncture because my adored acupuncturist had injured some of his needle-inserting fingers while surfing.

On Saturday morning, I dealt efficiently with several of the items on my to do list by crossing them off my to do list without doing them. David Sedaris has a piece in which he writes about his father criticizing his life as “one continuous round of pleasure.” That’s what we’re aiming for here.

I went to Rainbow for groceries, and as is now my custom, didn’t bother to buy much fruit, because I’ve been buying it at Whole Foods. Why is it that Rainbow’s Gala apples (from Oregon) are small and yellow and defeated-looking while the ones at Whole Foods are large and crisp and delicious, and, on top of that, come from even closer at hand? Maybe Whole Foods has contracted to buy every single good Gala apple grown in California.

If Rainbow ends up having to close its doors, not that I have heard any inkling of such a thing, it will be because everyone is shopping at Whole Foods instead. I guiltily recalled filling out a survey at Rainbow not long ago which was not titled “Why Do You Shop at Whole Foods Sometimes Instead of Here?” but I suspect that’s what they were trying to get at. One heartless fellow I saw there on Saturday was actually carrying a Whole Foods bag.

When I got home, I did my cooking, and in the evening Tom and I watched Paradise Now, about suicide bombers in Palestine, which was very good, and Loverboy, which is about a woman with a pathological, almost romantic, attachment to her child, and which was so-so, despite being directed by Kevin Bacon and featuring him in a smallish part. On the other hand, the mother’s dread of a future she can’t control and her tragic solution have come back to me a few times since, so maybe it was better than so-so.

Who has not felt that “I’m not going to be able to stand it” feeling?

On Sunday I went with a friend to the Berkeley Shambhala Center to meditate in the very beautiful meditation room there, followed by talking and eating and walking, which is exactly my kind of outing. It was delightful.

Yesterday I had to report for jury duty, a savage inconvenience in that the courthouse is not located anywhere near a Whole Foods, which I had forgotten about when I was buying only one banana at Rainbow and also when I was cooking a bunch of food I may not get to eat, as I’ll probably be eating more sandwiches than usual.

Jury duty was pretty much like being on an airplane, complete with a crying baby, people kicking the back of one’s seat, electronic gizmos making the same beeping noise over and over, clattering laptop keys, and one fellow agonizing at top volume to his new friends about what he will do if he’s called upon to impose the death penalty—this was civil court, by the way.

We had to fill out questionnaires and then we could leave for the day. I wrote that I don’t believe in monetary damages but rather in reconciliation and forgiveness (true, although I had just realized it while filling out the questionnaire). If I were really crafty (and didn’t mind being jailed for perjury) I could have covered all the bases by saying I also think purveyors of asbestos should get the death penalty. That would have made me unfit for a spectrum of cases.

To be on the safe side, I also filled out the hardship form. I hate to sound like one of those whiners who will do anything to get out of jury duty (though I am totally one of those whiners), but this case is going to be six weeks long and my back actually is sort of killing me lately, though I don’t have a doctor’s note to that effect—my doctor happens to be an AIDS specialist, and since I do not have AIDS, I don’t like to bother her with more than 10 or 15 trifling complaints per year.

Also, it is my custom to rise from my seat 95 times per hour to go wash my water cup and/or tea cup, to put something in the recycling bin, to fill my water bottle, to go to the bathroom, to visit my neighbors, to wash my tea filter, to brush my teeth, to put something in the microwave, to say hello to my boss, to get fresh water for my flowers, to wash silverware, or to show the two coworkers I’ve had for years the gang signal I’ve developed for us in case we fail to recognize each other in the hallway.

The signal is a C formed by the thumb and forefinger, dangled casually at thigh level, which stands for the application we administer; let’s call it Coursware. One coworker rejected it out of hand: “No.” The other said, “Be careful with that outside,” and mimicked me pleading for my life, squealing to an assailant, “It stands for Courseware!”