Mailing the Compass and other trivialities - Poem: Cold, Colder, Coldest

Earlier today I got a phone call from Blanche Lipshutz. I had sent her a card saying what a great person she is and also her daughter Judy. She said she would never forget when I drove to her place in the pouring rain to borrow some Cogentin, a side-effect pill for my trembling hands from lithium. Who would ever believe lithium would eventually kill my kidneys and I'd need a transplant from Sarah Lynn.

Wrote an op-ed column for Montgomery Media. Ada is checking it right now. I think it's pretty good. Remember when you were a kid and learned about the order of paragrafs? That was a problem for me in the essay.

Earlier today I plopped onto the carpet to address envelopes to mail out the Compass.

I still have free envelopes someone gave me. Dozens.

I used different color Magic Markers and tried to write as neatly as I could. Mailed to cover photographer David Robertson - wrote Many Thanks on the outside of the envelope - Nancy Wolen had the back cover - she wanted 7 copies - Freda Rose Samuels wanted 2, which I sent her.

Went to the Willow Grove post office where Robin helped me. Never met her before or the other posteristas. I have such an affinity for mail carriers. Possibly it dates from when I lived with Curtis in San Francisco, left him for cheating on me, and when I got home, would always watch for the mail truck to see if he'd written me.

He was a great cook. Shrimp and spaghetti. As a teenager he went to a juvenile forestry camp for robbing cab drivers. He'd sit in the back and then put his hand around their throats and threaten him.

Just watched Amanpour. Walter Isaacson interviewed Jill Abramson about her new book Merchants of Dreams. She was fired from the NY Times and accused of plagiarism for this book. Of not giving proper citations.

Her voice is like a southern drawl that draws out the longer she talks. Passing strange.

So in my new Op-Ed piece, which is 186 words too long, I do not give proper citations and I do plagiarize.

Am I too tired now - it's past midnight - and it's March 1 - to work on it now?

COLD, COLDER, COLDEST

I had a ridiculous fantasy

earlier today. Having just made

a gorgeous egg with associates

sizzling in the copper pan

I thought What fun it would be

to eat it on the back porch.

Unlocking the porch door

the wind blew me like a

piece of toilet paper

back into the house.