Someone With a Pen: Richard Grayson’s Diary

Monday, October 19, 1998

10 PM. I just got home from the first session of the Coral Springs class, and I’m really tired. My forearms ache, which is always a sign that I’m sleep-deprived and overtired.

The Coral Springs City Hall complex was hard to find, but only because I was looking on the wrong side of Sample Road. It’s just west of University Drive.

Although I usually don’t lecture much and mostly just let the students write their diagnostic essays, the first class is always a little stressful. This one is by far the largest cluster in the Bachelor of Professional Management program that I’ve seen.

There are about 32 students in the class, with a number of them from the Coral Springs Fire Department, including the fire chief and fire marshal. Other students are Miami-Dade County police officers, Pembroke Pines Fire Rescue squad members, people who work at Bell South, the Broward County School Board and other governmental agencies.

Apparently Nova has now started clusters that meet two nights a week rather than one night and on Saturdays, and the order of the modules and classes is all different.

This group could be a rowdy bunch, but I’ll be easy and let them out in time to catch most of Monday Night Football. I’ll do the best I can, and seven weeks from now, it will all be over.

Tomorrow I have to get up to teach at 8:30 AM and then go to Boca in the evening. But after that, the rest of the week will seem a lot lighter.

Although I relaxed last night, I also got a really bad case of the dizzies. I hadn’t had such bad positional vertigo in a very long time.

When I tried to lie down, everything started spinning. But I took my meclizine and sinus medicine, and eventually the dizziness receded.

Still, I didn’t get enough sleep although I tried to sleep as late as I could. Unfortunately that turned out to be 6:30 AM. Well, this coming weekend I get an extra hour when daylight savings time ends.

My noon class at Nova was fine even if I’m going over something as boring as MLA documentation. With the fall semester half-over, I feel comfortable with my day students. Really, it’s only grading the papers that’s a problem.

This morning I did much of the work to prepare for all this week’s classes and made up the photocopied assignment sheets I’ll need for the entire week.

I have a dozen papers to get back to my students by Friday, and over the weekend I’ll have the 32 from tonight and 18 Tuesday/Thursday final drafts.

Today was a rainy day: “the kind of day to stay in bed,” as one of my students called it.

On email, Sat Darshan wrote that she’s exhausted and can understand how some working mothers forget their babies when they go places.

Nirankar is still criticizing and harassing her about how she’s mothering Kiran. She went so far as to call Child Protective Services to tell them that Sat Darshan didn’t recognize it when the baby had a fever.

Becky keeps going back and forth on surrendering her parental rights. Nirankar probably keeps telling her stuff about Sat Darshan’s parenting, and that makes Becky even more skittish.

Sat Darshan wrote that sometimes she thinks she’s crazy to take on an infant at 44, “but then, what would I do with the next 20 years? Watch TV?”

Alice emailed that she was surprised when taking one of her self-guided tours of the city to discover the building where Teresa and I lived in her guidebook. Yes, 350 West 8th Street, Red House, is a great old building.

On Saturday night Dad pointed it out to Mom and Jonathan when he spotted it an exterior shot during Seinfeld, where it’s supposedly Elaine’s building.

Alice is going to Grenada on a press trip for travel writers that she called “slightly sleazy.” Typically, she’s worried about violence although Grenada has been quiet for at least a decade.

Her brother is scheduled to come to New York and she hopes to give him a small belated 50th birthday party.

Marc sent me his pager in the mail; now I can get it activated at a local service and get messages somewhere other than my parents’ phone number.

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Wednesday, October 21, 1998

8 PM. I left at 4:30 PM yesterday, taking the turnpike to Boca.

At the public library, I found my column, “Policy Toward Gays Would Make Draft impossible,” in Sunday’s Boca Raton News.

I then went through heavy rush hour traffic to get to Rexall Sundown. Because of my cold, I was a bit off in my presentation to the class, and I let them go at 8:15 PM. Still, I felt better for gotten out for the evening.

At home, I was again unable to sleep because of my painful sore throat and postnasal drip. It was 2 AM or so when I finally dozed off, and this morning I felt a little worse.

Yet I managed to exercise lightly, to grade all the papers for today’s class, and because I never heard from the Sun-Sentinel, to revise my article on putting unopposed candidates’ names on the ballot as a letter to the editor for the Jupiter Courier.

Before going to school, I went to Wendy’s for a baked potato and hot tea. Although I was a little distracted by feeling sick and my voice was very raspy, I managed to teach my noon class fairly effectively.

Afterwards, I drove to State Road 84 and SW Sixth Avenue in Fort Lauderdale to the Public Health Unit, where I got my flu shot.

Having a cold won’t affect the vaccine, and I figure that if resistance is so low that I’ve gotten two colds in seven weeks, I’d better make certain I don’t catch the flu this winter.

After getting home around 2 PM, I ate lunch and then fell into bed. I was very tired, so I got something out of resting for ninety minutes. I’ve been using zinc lozenges all day, as many as I can tolerate, because they seemed to help with reducing the severity and duration of my last cold.

Except for going out to buy some more lozenges and  some groceries, I lay in bed and read the newspapers most of the afternoon.

What I said yesterday about hating my family isn’t really true, of course, but I do feel anger at my parents and Jonathan. More importantly, I feel a great deal of anger toward myself for taking the easy, comfortable way out this fall. I’m not challenging myself.

Certainly, I can’t blame Mom, Dad and Jonathan for being the way they are when I have the capacity to change and choose not to. Basically my anger toward them is displaced self-hatred. At this point in my life I really feel I could use a therapist.

I never did call that guy Scott back. So didn’t I do to him exactly what Jason did to me – or worse? Jason just said we’d “talk soon,” but I told Scott I’d definitely call him “in the next few days.”

Well, I know that Scott and I are not compatible, and besides, I’m not ready for a relationship right now because I’m confused and need to work on myself. When I’m ready, a relationship will appear – as it did last year when I met Gianni.

Sat Darshan said that the caseworker from Child Protective Services told her that the judge wants Kiran’s adoption speeded up.

It looks like they are going to give Becky 25 days to surrender parental rights, and if she doesn’t do that, the court may terminate her rights.

The problem is still Nirankar; Sat Darshan says that as a blood relative and the parent or guardian (I’m not sure which) of Kiran’s half-brother, “she could get custody in a New York minute.”

Teresa writes that the lack of catering work is getting her down, that it will be very slow from now until the Christmas parties. She’s still upset that she and Camille still aren’t speaking.

Alice reported that she went to an Authors Guild panel that I would have enjoyed: about how far one can go in writing about celebrities. She has a possible client, a former lover of Bob Dylan’s who wants to do a book but who has already shown Alice a letter from Dylan’s lawyer saying he’ll sue her if she does publish the manuscript.

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Monday, October 26, 1998

6 PM. In ninety minutes I’m going to Coral Springs to teach tonight’s class. I thought the change to Standard Time might make it easier, but I’m probably just going to become tired an hour earlier. After all, I woke up before 5 AM.

I guess I’ll catch up on rest later in the week. Presumably I won’t have to worry about being ill this week, as I feel pretty much back to normal, though I am a little tired right now.

Last evening I called Marc. He said that none of the other people in the fast-track management program are still employed at AirTouch; Marc and another woman are running the store without a manager.

AirTouch’s CEO has retired, and the company appears to be cutting back their retail plans. They’ve cut his store’s hours: it’s now open from 9 AM to 6 PM, so he’s getting home earlier.

I told him I’d send him the information he wanted on I-Link, another telecommunications startup that has these vague but utopian-sounding plans to merge pagers, fax, voicemail and Internet email. A guy from the company came into the store and said they’re looking to hire people, and Marc would like to leave the poorly managed AirTouch.

We chatted about the weather – yesterday it rained in Phoenix, a rare occurrence – and Sat Darshan’s baby and other stuff.

After I listened to the news and exercised this morning, I went to Nova at 8 AM to xerox the assignments and chapter outlines. At the computer, I checked my email.

Christy has decided not to apply for the Flagler College composition job after all, but she couldn’t understand why I said they wouldn’t hire her without previous experience teaching composition. I didn’t reply; sometimes Christy is so naïve and unworldly that it’s infuriating.

Teresa had Paul’s friends and family over this weekend – except his mother, whom Teresa still resents for not calling when her grandmother died.

But Paul’s mother is simply thoughtless, and she comes from a reserved British family that isn’t warm and close-knit like Teresa’s. Besides, I doubt that she cares one whit if her daughter-in-law excludes her from family gatherings.

Meanwhile, they’ve made their peace with Jade. She plans to take off the spring semester and then go back to Purchase in the summer. Teresa said Jade seems much happier now, so she’s not going to push her.

When I mentioned Sat Darshan’s remark about why she was adopting a baby – “What am I going to do for the next 20 years, watch TV?” – Teresa replied, “Sometimes I think about that, too.”

Pam will be teaching first grade at P.S. 163 on Webster Avenue in the Bronx as soon as the Board of Ed finishes processing her paperwork. I’m really glad for Pam, as this is what she’s wanted to do for years.

Although I was well-prepared to teach today’s lesson in my noon class, the material in the text – the same stuff I’m doing tonight in Coral Springs – is pretty boring.

Back home, I got the mail, which included a postcard of Carolyn’s latest show, in Chicago. “Hi, Richard!” she wrote on it.

I feel awful about not getting back to Carolyn after I returned from Philadelphia. But then we had Teresa’s grandmother’s funeral, and I had only a few days left after that. I’ll have to write Carolyn a long letter apologizing – but at least I know she doesn’t hate me.

Roger Buckwalter said the Jupiter Courier will print my letter – so at least some version of my op-ed column about unopposed candidates not being on the ballot will appear in a newspaper. I think the paper’s next issue comes out on Wednesday, so I’ll drive up to Jupiter later this week to see if I can find a copy.

One of Jonathan’s rabbits has been sick, and today he he took her to the vet and came home with the diagnosis of a blockage caused by a hairball that he and Mom have to treat with this elaborate, time-consuming regimen of food and drugs.

I’m not that much of a fan of the rabbits, but I rarely see them since they are mostly in their cage in Jonathan’s room or occasionally on the patio. But I know he and Mom adore them, and I suppose Gwendolyn and Cecily are kind of cute if you like bunnies.

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Thursday, October 29, 1998

7 PM. I feel sleepy now even though I had plenty of caffeine at the Barnes & Noble in Plantation in late morning and the one near Flamingo Road in the Pines in the afternoon.

I didn’t want to hang around the house because everyone was here till mid-afternoon, when Dad and Jonathan left to work in their respective stores.

I hate it when my parents try to get involved in my work life. Larry Brandt called while I was out this morning, and Mom and Dad kept asking me if I’d returned his call and what he’d said.

Dad and Jonathan talk endlessly about their jobs – nearly all of it complaints – and I try very hard not to pay attention. I don’t want my family to know anything about my professional or personal life, or at least as little as possible.

(All Larry wanted was for me to recommend a teacher for a Business Communications class whose professor left abruptly. It’s on Tuesday evening, so I couldn’t teach it, of course, but I suggested Patrick again.)

This morning I had to wait ten minutes in the hallway until Professor Lindley showed up to open the Liberal Arts office. Today my class was held in the computer lab, where I had them write out progress reports on their research paper, to be handed in along with their latest essay.

Meanwhile, I had conferences with students, handed them back the last papers, and made up a day-to-day syllabus for the last six weeks of the term.

Not unexpectedly, most students seem to have procrastinated a lot – and the first draft of the research paper is due in three weeks.

Kevin emailed me his new address. He and his friend Phil are renting a two-bedroom condo on Topanga Canyon Boulevard for $500 a month.

It’s temporary until Phil gets a job, but it’s got to be an improvement for Kevin over Panorama City even if it’s further out in the Valley. (It’s too bad that the next time I visit Libby and Grant, Kevin won’t still be living there because his building is so close to Woodland Hills.)

Mark Savage responded to my email, saying he’s been very tired from teaching, but that this year’s class is the best one he’s ever had. However, the two graduate education classes he’s taking are a strain.

At least he finally moved from Jersey into his new Brooklyn co-op on Ocean Avenue, which is pretty close to Brooklyn College. Mark has already been asked if he wants to be on the co-op’s board of directors. (A lot of the apartment owners in the building are Russian speakers not proficient in English.)

I replied to Teresa’s message from yesterday although I didn’t have that much to say.

Rick’s manuscript arrived in the mail, along with a professional-looking slick brochure on himself that he made up to get creative writing gigs.

(Right now I hear Mom’s voice. She’s talking to the dog: “I love you, I love you, I love you.”)

In the afternoon I went to Walmart and Albertsons in Cooper City to buy vitamins, sundries and groceries.

Later, when I got on the scale at Publix, I weighed 148 pounds – which means I’ve gained five pounds. The creatine I bought last month finally ran out, and I’m not going to take that supplement anymore because it might be responsible for the weight gain.

Yes, I know: muscle weighs more than fat, and I’ve definitely gotten more muscular, but I didn’t want to gain weight. All day my left triceps has been twitching since I worked out at 6:30 AM.

After dinner, I took a walk, leaving the house at 5:30 PM, but I came back after only 45 minutes because it already had gotten dark outside.

When I first began my walk, the clouds were a beautiful rosy-pink in the blue sky. As the sun began to set and the skies darkened, it began to get delightfully cool.

I have to admit that at this time of year I love living in South Florida.