What is Valerie Bertinelli doing on the cover of AARP?

Barbara Cooper, her character on “One Day at a Time,” is sixteen. Forever. There is a picture of her inside the magazine, three-quarters profile viewed from the back, in a cerise (hot cherry pink) gown that has to be silk from the way it flows. Breathtaking.

My new white skirt (part of my temple clothing) arrived in yesterday’s mail and is nowhere near that impressive, but it fits. Barely. Which is why I am heading out to the health club in a few minutes. Well, that and the fact that it’s Texas in August, which as I posted on Facebook, is as close to Hades as I ever hope to get. The idea of being neck deep in cool, chlorinated water is even more appealing usual.

I had a shoe emergency yesterday. Driving in, I was nearly there when I realized that I had forgotten to grab work-appropriate shoes. Dashed into Wally World and picked up a pair of sandals, guessing at the size. And spent the day in foot misery. I have always hated the kind of sandals where there is a thingie between the big toe and its neighbor. And that was the only style they had, where I had a hope of it fitting over my crazy-high arches. By the end of the day, both feet were swollen up around the various straps, but I had been obedient, dadgummit!

I very happily peeled them off my feet and put them in a drawer, just in case I have another brainf@rt. I can still see faint impressions on the top of each foot. Yes, I have my clogs right on top of my bag.

How do women walk in that sort of sandal? I find it harder than navigating in high heels or platforms, not that I’ve done either since graduating from the interpreting program and its Sign Song performing group.

So, it’s Texas in August, and I am under-slept, and a little dehydrated in spite of my best efforts, and my ankles have cankled, and I just want to stay home in my jammies and sleep today, or spend the day on the couch, reading, with my feet running up the wall until my ankles calm down.

Plus, I was sneezing a lot yesterday. I need to check the pollen count. Could it possibly be ragweed season already? I don’t normally react like this, not since we moved out of the little house in Irving with its attic fan that concentrated the pollens as they flowed over our bed by a factor of at least 100 to 1. (Because later, when we were living in air-conditioned comfort in an apartment in Arlington, and the pollen count was 400, which used to send me over the edge, I would not even notice it.)

I probably need to go to the Chinese herbal shop and get a bottle of Ba Nguyen, which looks like rabbit berries but does a great job of strengthening my immune system. Which has taken a hit lately, what with a double dose of family drama plus the heat plus my workload plus the staying up too late on FB to write back and forth to the new guy. Oh, and plus church stuff, which is a pleasure and a privilege and most emphatically not a stressor but is the retaining wall into which all the stressors crash so spectacularly.

I want my mommy. I’m happy and safe and grateful and reasonably productive and I want my mommy.

I did not meet my friend Robi at the temple last night. I came home by way of Panda Express, visited briefly with Trainman at the station (I drove, he rode the train, I caught him as he was getting into his car), came home and went to bed at 8:00. Up again at 3:00. Not going to the service project tonight but will come straight home, unless I go to Vicki’s yarn shop again, and make it another early night.

Pool. Want pool. Chlorine, here I come!