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2002-01-06 | 3:35 p.m.

1. dream with snakes

Don't have to be Freud to figure this one out. I'm having lunch with Oddy's mother, Barb, and two other people. We are sitting at a diner-style booth, except it is outside in a field, and the grass under our feet is long and lush and tangled. I realize that there is a snake under the table, maybe more than one, and I try not to move. I tell the others and Barb scoffs at my fear, says she can take care of it, drawing upon some obscure country wisdom. She reaches down and grabs the snake by its head and talks to it. Coos to it, and I am lulled into reassurance because she is talking to the snake. Then I feel another snake's head banging into my foot and I look down under the table and see that there are at least four separate snakes and they are all very large and differently marked. If one of them isn't poisonous, perhaps another is. I am trying to draw my foot out from under the table as slowly as I can but I feel the snakes butting into me. The other people at the table are nonplussed. Am I being bit, I wonder? I feel discomfort, pain, something is happening down there, the snakes are getting riled up, but surely I would know it if I were being bit. There, that definitely felt like a bite. Now I pull my leg out as fast as I can, not caring who notices. I look at my foot, inexplicably bare, and count four bite marks. I rush to the hospital and the focus of the dream now switches to my antagonistic relationship toward the medical establishment. I ask for somebody by name, a friend apparently, whom I feel certain will not let me languish and die. But she isn't there. She's out to lunch or maybe gone for the day, nobody knows for sure, but I am told I can sit and wait for her. I sit down and worry that I will die soon.

2. on thrift

We are nearly broke because of the new mini-van purchase. Duff gets paid on Wednesday but until then, all we have available to us is about a hundred dollars.

This is the new way of being broke. I like it a lot better than the old way, when I would bottom out my savings account and scour the house for pennies and nickels. Since we moved into this house, I've only been change-broke like that maybe twice or three times. And what's also new is that now, there is money in the bank if we're willing to pay the substantial penalty for early withdrawal. Not as much as there should be, but Duff says it is more important to pay off debts first.

I was sitting up last night reading The Millionaire Next Door. I got it at the thrift-store yesterday (that's right, when we are almost broke I often have an overwhelming desire to shop, to shop in the face of brokeness, so I went to the thrift store). I also found a spanking-new copy of The Corrections for $4.98, which made me deliriously happy for a good five minutes. Anyway, was reading this Millionaire book which reveals the secrets of America's millionaires. It did not escape my attention that I have almost none of the secret qualities of American millionaires. The secret is that they live cheaply: wear cheap suits from Penney's, take few vacations, and clip coupons. That is, their wives are the coupon-clippers, hardcore variety. The millionaires are men by and large and they overwhelmingly describe their wives as "more frugal than I am." I do know how to live cheaply, because I have done it, but I also tend to be of the mind that I scrimp here to splurge there. I'm not sure if I can teach myself to scrimp for scrimping's sake. Also, call me a hedonist, but what on earth is so great about having a net worth of $5 million if you're eating fried-baloney sandwiches? If I were a millionaire I wouldn't necessarily go in for caviar and champagne. I could even see myself staying in this house for the rest of my life. But I'd damn sure want to eat in restaurants and remodel this place. Add a couple of French doors on the back end and a nice big terrace for entertaining (probably another gaffe from the rich man's point of view). A new gourmet kitchen would be nice, too, especially if it had a stove big enough to use all the burners at once. See, here's the thing: I've clawed my way up to the middle class and I like it here.

3. guess you had to be there

Stephen just called to urge me to read The Code of the Woosters, which he sent me for Christmas, and I mistakenly called the author Podehouse (pronouncing it "Poadhouse"), and he informed me that it should be pronounced Poodhouse. Then we talked about something else. Then he made reference again to the Podehouse ("Poadhouse"), and I said, "I believe it's Poodhouse," and we got a good laugh out of that.

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