Sunday, July 12, 1998

        I spent some time out at my parents's house this afternoon. One of my aunts is in town for the weekend and I hadn't seen her for a couple of years, so I went out for a couple of hours. While I was out there I mentioned that I had been having some pain in my hip and lower back; the pain in my hip feels either muscular or nerve-related. I started noticing it after we had gone down in the cave in Branson, but that was probably a coincidence.

        My best guess is that it's from sitting in front of a computer for too many hours in a less-than-perfect chair. I sat in front of a computer all day while I was working, of course, but I had a pretty good chair. The chair we have at the computer upstairs is a good one, too, I think, although not as good as the one I had at work. But since both Bob and I use it, it has to be constantly adjusted. And I think I need something to rest my feet on.

        Anyway, whatever the cause, the pain in my hip has been excrutiating at times. I've been taking a lot of ibuprofen. I was thinking that maybe what I needed was one of those weird little chairs that were popular a few years ago--they don't have a back, and you rest most of your weight on your knees. I don't know how else to describe them. I didn't even know if they still made them, but I planned to go to the "Relax Your Back" store on Monday and see if they had them.

        While I was discussing this this afternoon, my sister piped up and said that she had one, and that I could have it. She said that she had tried to use it but that it made her lower legs go numb. That's possible with me, too, I guess, but I was delighted and said I'd love to have it. So I followed her to her apartment and brought it home in the car. I find it really comfortable, at least so far. And Pyewacket likes it, too.

        Last month when I was thinking that I was going to have to drum up some freelance business to keep afloat, I placed a small ad in a local alternative newspaper, "The Edge." It's just my name and phone number under the classification Website Development. Right after Bob left for work this morning I got a call, and someone said, "Yeah, I was calling about your ad in The Edge?" I had actually totally forgotten about it, and the guy was really hard to understand, but I finally understood what he was saying. I said, "Yes?" and he said, "Well, what is it?" "I'm sorry?" "What is it? What do you do?"

        I said, "Well, I design web pages for the internet." He said, "Oh, computer stuff, right?" I said, yes, it was, and he said, "Oh. Okay. I thought it was something else."

        I don't know. I'm pretty much at a loss as to what else he might have thought it was, but I didn't ask. I just said okay, and hung up. I suppose I should have asked.

Tomorrow:

• Take books back to the library
• Take slacks to the cleaners
• Go to the post office and mail package and Bob's letters
• Make bank deposit for Bob
• Go to drug store for ibuprofen
• Call Day-Timer

        I went to Office Max yesterday to get some things for Bob, and while I was there I was just idly looking at the Day-Timer planner stuff. I thought that I had successfully weaned myself from that stuff; my "planner" at the moment is a checkbook-sized calendar with one page per month, and I've been surviving very nicely with that bare minimum. But, Day-Timer has a new scheme--daily pages with pictures of the beach printed on them. It's called "Coastlines." Bob's Franklin Planner pages are printed with golf courses, and they are nice to look at. So I picked up a filler package and carried it around for awhile, trying to decide whether or not to buy it.

        I just, frankly, love all the "stuff" that goes along with the planner system. I love the little dividers and business card pockets and various forms and printed pages, and I love the leather books with pockets and zippers. I have a beautiful binder that I bought several years ago when I was really into the whole thing. It's a small size zipper binder in woven leather the color of warm oak. It's really beautiful. Very expensive, but worth it if you're interested in that kind of thing. So I could sort of justify buying the pages by saying that it justifies the purchase of the binder . . .

        Anyway, I went ahead and bought them. But they don't start until January. I had a Day-Timer catalog, and looked in it, and some of their fillers start in July, so I thought I'd call them tomorrow and see if they offer this one starting in July, and if they do I'll order it and take the other set back to Office Max.

        Katy, who writes Event Horizon, an online journal, wrote to me this weekend, and she gave me her URL and I visited it, and I loved her journal, but I especially loved the buttons that she had made from scans of her handwritten journals.

        Seeing them made me remember the time I scanned in a page from my own journal, and I went to look at the image again. When I found it, I first noticed the i-Ching reading, which says:

"Thunder Spirit" - The shock of the new - stir things up. Shake up your old beliefs and begin something new. What at first seems frightening will soon be a cause to rejoice. *Reimagine your situation.*

        That would be interesting enough, but what's really interesting is when you read the reading in conjunction with the date on the page: 6/13/97--exactly one year to the day before my first day of freedom from my old job. Amazing. That was about the time that I started thinking about quitting, started thinking that maybe I should be doing something else with my life. I thought at the time that the i-Ching reading was wonderfully appropriate, but I had forgotten all about it. I love the fact that I found it now, after I have reimagined my situation. Wonderful how things like this happen when we least expect them, but when we most need them.