The project continues. This time I'm the writer—the rewriter, anyhow. A major plagiarism crisis for the publisher. The editor asked me to scrutinize the text for plagiarized material and rewrite. Twelve hours from the deadline, I found a Web site from which four major sections were taken, nearly word for word. I was spot checking sections in which I'd made no marks and, bingo.

I felt wretched for a day. For missing the deadline. As if I'd get in trouble for it.

I knew that wouldn't happen, but I let myself get caught by failure.

oof.

Sunday Pam and I drove to Vancouver to see the O'Keeffe—Carr—Kahlo exhbit at the Vancouver Art Gallery. It was good to see the art—It's always good to see art. The descriptions were pitiful, though. Very Canada-centric and outdated. I am surprised that I didn't know about Emily Carr. She's from these parts—Victoria—and painted our incredible forests in these wild abstractions that made them look like the oceans and palimpsests they are, how they look to me. Pam thinks either Seattle won't have anything to do with local art it doesn't own, or Canada won't give the stuff up.

Whatever the case, the best part for me was being away from here and the manuscript, and up there, with her, walking and shopping and talking like women do which I'm not doing enough of, apparently.

I spent about $95 (Canadian) at the MAC store. Replaced a favorite lipstick color that's not made anymore (of course) and bought eyeliner and eyeshadow. A MAC guy named Lyle was the man with color. I don't know if it's because he's a guy and he's unfettered by that weird judgmental crap women get into, or what, but he was totally helpful, paying close attention to skin tones and picking colors that looked incredible against my skin. I told him I wanted to get red eyeliner but I was afraid I'd pick the wrong red, and he was all over that. He was like, "I'm so glad you're thinking out of the box."

And then when he was outfitting Pam's eyes with silver liner and she was fretting about liner on the bottom lid. I was like, "Hey Pam, you grew up in the eighties. Don't you remember only wearing eyeliner on the bottom lid?

Ohhhhohohhoho!

Lyle says, "Really?"

And then, "Hey, stop making her laugh."

He was too young to know about that. Unbelievable. So we told him about the turqoise and purple eyeliners, and how in our later teens we had to learn how to apply the eyeliner to our top lids—how we couldn't do it and we thought it looked all weird.

Yeah man.

Lyle.

So now I'm wearing red eyeliner and gold eyeshadow.

On the top lids.

It all goes nicely with the red skirt I managed to pick up on the way back to the car.

On the way out of town, we ate at Vij's, which is this funny little Nouveau Indian restaurant Beanie found when we were up there earlier this month. It's stylish Indian food. It's a hoot. I knew Pam would dig it.

With the project unabated and other tasks now exigent, the rest of the week was work, in a tight, self-imposed structure. And one long overdue trip to see Gma, whose body seems like it is simply evaporating. She is leaving us slowly like that.

Yoga ended this week. I thought I would record here that boat pose eluded me, but it didn't! The last day of class and, to my complete surprise, it just happened. Very good. Every part feels stronger.