The Second Elizabethan Age? O-VAH!

There’s a lot to be said for separating out the functions of Head of Government from Head of State. Business dinners are pretty boring. So are bridge openings.

And as I said to poliphilo yesterday, while I don't think much of the job itself, I think she performed that job conscientiously and well, and that earns my respect.

But I think the most mindboggling thing is that she was coronated in the same year that I was born.

Five-cent candy bars, and three-cent stamps, and pay phone booths, and Crisco, and Mr. Potato Head, and Doris Day, and subway tokens, and Howard Johnsons have all gone the way of the wind.

But she prevailed.

Until she didn’t.

Anyway, I think we will now see a rash of people approximately my age dropping dead for no apparent reason.

Just from the weirdness of the Second Elizabethan Age being o-vah.

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What else?

I toiled all day on the Remunerative Project.

My fantasy is that if I could somehow work for 72 hours straight, doing nothing else—no sleeping! No eating! No peeing!—I could finish the damn thing and turn my mind over to something else.

But the fact is the thing will be approximately 30,000 words when it’s complete, and that is a lot of processing and writing. Processing and writing take time.

It’s not that I am slogging on the schedule I set up for myself.

It’s that the schedule I set up for myself is impossible.

Really, my dream method of completing Remunerative Projects would be to leave a little saucer of milk and a post-it with my computer password on it for the brownies and let the brownies finish it.

But that’s not gonna happen, so realistically, I have to accept that I need to continue living my life i.e. exercising, gardening, cooking etc, even if I am Remunerating.

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In the afternoon, I dropped off a care package for Lois Lane: 10 lbs. or so of produce (tomatoes, lettuce, bell peppers, Swiss chard, an acorn squash) and some cheap staples (olive oil, spaghetti, coffee) I scored from Ocean Lots.

I was very steely and unemotive when I dropped them off: Do not drown me with tremulous gratitude! It’s humiliating to us both.

She took the hint.

Really, she seems so much more mentally healthy than she did when things were going relatively well for her—itself a puzzlement except who has time to puzzle? I think she’s gonna be just fine. She just needs some help getting over the current rough patch.