Routine

Hang a show in the tiny Mehser gallery, light it, make labels, done in an hour. Need all the supplies for painting and Sara left (gone for a week) the color choice for the signage and entry walls, I'm out the door and off to get them while D continues to work on the first ever museum calendar. I finish touch-up painting everything upstairs, clean, get the tools put away, the job-box loaded and down to the main gallery, painting supplies and drop-cloths out, but first need to sand all the filled holes, don't remember when I filled them, past actions beginning to blur, 50 or so pieces hanging for the last show have left 100 holes, now filled, I don't remember when, filled but not sanded, I remember I sanded them today, now they're filled and sanded, painting supplies and drop cloths out, but something came up, I proofed copy for The Secret Garden, then something else, what was it? in the kitchen, right, I did the dishes, which is only marginally my job when you think about what a janitor does, but I don't like dirty dishes (and people that leave them), so I usually get pissed when I'm doing someone else's dishes, unless they've fed me dinner, not that I mind doing dishes, I actually like doing them, even at my house, without running water, so washing dishes somewhere where there is running water especially cold and hot running water, such times are actually a treat. I don't feel like a marathon runner, it's true that I got out the drop-cloths and the painting supplies, but kindly Bev, at the desk, said -Tom, it's already four-thirty- which I take to mean that it is too late to start painting a wall. I've painted walls later than this, but this isn't an emergency. A print to put away in the vault, I love the vault, the door, alone, is a thing of great beauty, but to have such a door, that works, and a vault, is really almost too much. Such a vault. Looking at the lock mechanism from the back side, when the door is open (door is an inadequate word). An aside: my tenses seem to be running amuck. Where was I? Great article in the new NJP, "Monitoring For Gaseous Pollutants In Museum Environments", I read an awful lot, but I've got to say that Trade Organ magazines are great. Talk about specific. And the shop talk, the lingo, is wonderful. Oh, the door I left hanging, grown men, looking at the mechanism for the first time, have been known to cry. The door, that inadequate word, and I, always show the door when I'm docenting, which is recently more often, because college has started back up and there are young ladies about, and as D says, I'm an old pervert (he talks terrible about me) but I'm smart and funny, and some people actually request me (-we were told to ask for the janitor-) which pisses D off and that's usually when he talks bad about me. He has a foul mouth, but he's my boss and he's also fairly smart and funny, which is bad, in a way, because we have way too much fun working and it kind of bothers other people who seem to think that work should be a kind of drudgery or it wasn't work, which is quite different from the 'if it isn't fun I'm going to get another job' attitude that D and I share, also we share the 'don't start painting a wall at four-thirty' thing and he doesn't yell at me when I go upstairs and flip through the latest art mags and read again through what the Deputy was writing. Fucking sleigh ride down the driveway this morning and drizzle all day, going back up I remember Liza sliding off the edge. I remember that because Sara is going to see Liza this week-end, so I had thought about her, hi Liza, and it was a bit slippy going up, as it was when she slipped off the edge. She didn't roll, thank god, but it was a close thing. It was a close thing that I didn't start painting a wall. I probably would have remembered in time. Not to. But I don't wear a watch and sometimes don't pay attention, an awkward combination. I've found myself in the damnest places, never drunk in the Phoenix airport, but you know what I mean, under the sink with a magnifying glass, or wearing rubber gloves and feeling for emerging feet, right hand 18 inches up a goat's butt, trying to turn a breech around. I was thinking about a list here, but that last kind of topped out. Not that a list is ever out of place. I like lists, I depend on then, for more than you can imagine, ever since I lost my mind or started living alone, I'm not sure which came first. That I got out the drop-cloths and the painting supplies implies intent. I wasn't doing it for effect. I see why I didn't do a list, too late in the story, but I was probably wrong. Lists are always good. There are thirteen books, two New York Reviews, and a pile of print-outs ON the sofa, there isn't room to lay, lie, there's always room for that, but what I mean is that I pull out Umberto Eco's "Kant And The Platypus" and read a few pages. I'm a fast reader, usually, I've actually been fined at the library for charring pages, but this rereading of Eco I'm taking very slowly, like taking 120 days to reread "Zettle" which I also have done. I've tried all the finishes, nothing approaches epoxy, if we're talking normal wear-and-tear, remember, don't serve grapes if your floor is grouted.