Crossing Boundaries

Gets this cold, you cross over into a different zone. You just focus on getting through another day. Concentrate on not making a stupid mistake. I don't mind the mild discomfort, it's no worse than I expect. Watch where you step, be careful with sharp objects, it's a short list. I need a couple of things, softer shocks and extremely aggressive tires for starters. I never intended to live a life like this. I never imagined what kind of life I might live. I just read books and stayed out of trouble. What was I thinking, how silly we could be, that that would somehow keep us safe, which is, of course, not true. Each of us is a monad of the magnificent, but we lack the ability to tie our shoes. Consider the Marsh Mallows in the field. Frogs in their embryonic form. Four young squirrels running rampant. Just pointing out. God, I love a list. This goes all the way back to Hesiod. Dipping down toward zero, but I don't know what zero means. It's getting very cold, I'd better go. I've lost the timeline. Stayed in town because it was supposed to snow, then it did snow and I had to stay because everyone else went home and there were workmen at the museum. The week was a comedy of errors, started Tuesday, a long meeting with board members, seems an electrician needed to work in the vault to drill a hole to install an anchor to carry the weight of the three-phase power lines, which would allow us to get rid of the power pole in the alley, and run the service underground from there. Which meant that I had to move half of the permanent collection out of the vault. Then a team of guys came in to attempt moving the safe deposit boxes out of the way. This is a double stack, each four feet high and five feet long, two feet deep, and they're made of quarter inch thick steel. They certainly weighed a thousand pounds each. Four hours later they had moved them a single foot. I argued that a foot was enough, because they could drill the hole from the outside and easily attach the flat steel plate on the inside. They argued that they couldn't exactly determine where to drill from the outside, and I argued that they could get close enough. Finally, after several more hours of trying to move the boxes, they didn't just agree with my argument, but tried to make it seem like their idea. They wall they were drilling through was 26 inches thick: the vault (80 years old, so the concrete was fully matured) and two layers of brick. I'd never actually seen a three foot drill bit. The hole is drilled, god save the hole, and now, starting Tuesday, I can restore the vault. What pissed me off most about this whole ordeal, was that no one else considered the artwork. It was a job-site to them. I had to watch them all the time. So I spent a couple of nights in town, I couldn't leave until everyone was gone and then it was too late to leave. Both the power and phone were out at the house, so I'd run home, build a fire, bank it down, so the house wouldn't freeze, then go back to the museum, where there's at least heat and hot running water. Spent a great hour at the pub one evening, with the most beautiful woman in Portsmouth. She was having a glass of wine, on her way to a meeting (she's a Labor Organization person) and we know each other, to speak to. But I'd never engaged her in serious conversation. We talked about living alone. She asked penetrating questions. She's a year into a divorce she didn't see coming, and she's anxious about the loneliness.