Recently in Les Affaires de Coeur Category

A friend of mine with whom I work told me she was describing me to friends of hers, and that their reaction was, "Wow, she doesn't sound at all like what she does."

I thought, "Thank god." And then I thought, "It's time to change that."

I don't know what anyone would guess that I'd do, looking at me, but it reminds me of that game bloggers play whereby they tell you a list of things you don't know about them.

I don't like the word meme (I have an allergy to popular lingo, and anyway I'd rather keep that word as its French self in my head - pronounced "memm" and meaning "same"). But I do like lists. I like lists for the same reason that I like Twitter - little nibbles of information have a tendency to be charming and quirky, more so than the same information imparted in paragraph form.

They operate like poetry - sometimes you need a little air around something to see its shape and appreciate it properly.

Or because it lets me out of having to lay down grand ideas for you, when I need to let my grand ideas jell on the back burner.

Thing One: I was a caffeine-free zone for five years. Expected I'd stay that way indefinitely, but one day I was planning to have a boy over, and I knew he was a coffee-drinker, so I went out and bought a little French press. You know what happened next, right? He did that freaked-out-boy thing whereby he skedaddled immediately upon waking up and never called me again. A few days later, I looked at the French press and thought, "I might as well make some coffee so it's not a total waste of money." Been hooked ever since. As my friend K says, "Coffee is a harsh mistress."

(Apparently this list may take the form of paragraphs when it's necessary to tell a story. I make no apologies for inconsistency.)

Thing Two: When boys dump me or force me, by their bad behavior, to dump them, I give them epithets to assist in the getting over them process. The French press boy, who was so tall and skinny he reminded me of a crane, became Bird Boy. Another one (whom I had trouble giving up) went from being referred to as Blonde Heroin on a Bike (BHOB) to simply the Junk, which led to the following hilarious conversation:

I'd planned to meet my friend J for brunch one Sunday. In the meantime I'd booty-called BHOB. I called J to see if we could meet for dinner instead.

J: Sure, sweetie, we can meet for dinner. Hey...are you off the Junk yet?
Me: Oh yeah, I'm off the Junk.
J: (pause) You are so totally ON the Junk. I bet you're at his apartment right now.
Me: (sheepish) Yeah.

Thing Three: As much as I think and talk about boys, I don't get involved with that many of them. I don't think, to look at me, you'd be able to tell I have such bad luck with dating. Although I have wondered whether being pretty is actually a handicap. Maybe if I'd grown up with an awareness of being pretty, it'd be different. But I grew up as a nerd, so I'm a weird hybrid. My brain knows I'm pretty, but my heart still looks out at the world and expects to be treated like Elephant Man.

I'm not sure what the solution to that is.

It sure would be easier if I weren't the sort of person who is haunted by things.

It occurred to me last night that the last time I had to get over somebody, I didn't have to be in the same state, much less the same small section of town. We never ran into each other accidentally, we didn't have to put on a show of niceness, and, oh, come to think of it, he didn't deliberately say something cruel to me in public.

There are various problems with the current situation, some to do with the laws of physics, many to do with the equally perilous laws of Murphy, not a few to do with the fact that this guy spent so much time in my apartment.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but there's no place in this apartment we didn't have sex. Except maybe the ceiling - though I'm sure we would have managed that eventually.

It's not so easy to put someone out of your mind when the ghost of their sexy naked presence is haunting your house.

And it becomes a whole lot less easy when you can't even think of them fondly anymore. I'm not used to that. With a few notable exceptions, I like my ex-lovers, and after the adjustment period I tend to be glad I knew them (in the biblical sense).

In this case, the whole thing's been poisoned, and I'm not sure how to deal with that, internally or externally. Well, I guess externally I'm hoping to simply avoid ever seeing him again (good luck with that; we live all of 3 miles apart). Internally it's a disaster. It's like a failed piece of origami - every way I turn it, it just looks wrong. I can't see a way through it, and - perhaps because I am no longer 14 - I am not used to this sort of petty behavior. I just don't know how to cope with it.

I'm dumbfounded, in much the same way that I get dumbfounded by the behavior of drivers in this city. "What? You really want to kill me? Just because I'm on a bicycle, on the same road as you? I don't get it."

Yeah, I haven't been writing. I haven't been cleaning house. I haven't been playing with the kitten. I haven't been sending people things they're waiting for. I haven't followed up on six important things. I haven't followed up on six unimportant things.

I haven't been answering my phone.

I haven't been saying yes to anyone.

What I have been doing is riding my bike to lonely destinations and standing there, ill at ease, watching the sky change.

I've put hats on my head when it got cold, I've taken layers off when it got too warm. I've been to the grocery store (which was quite pleasant - the people who work there are often magically nice to me).

I bought ingredients for this soup I keep seeing (or smelling) in my head. It's the intersection of sweet and fiery. (Yes, I tweeted that already, but it bears repeating, because I think it's the ultimate personal ad for me. If I really had guts, in fact, I'd delete every word of my stupid Internet dating profile and replace it with that one phrase.)

Anyway. I will post a picture of the soup (maybe), and if it's good maybe I'll even tell you how to make it. Though if it's really good, it'll almost certainly be because I've made it half-consciously and it'll therefore be unrepeatable.

Anyway. Again.

I'm hurt and I'm angry and I want to build myself a marshmallow igloo to live in.

Instead, I gotta live here. I got invited to three parties yesterday, and I went to the one I'd been invited to first, and it was not as much fun as I'd hoped. I couldn't help but wonder if the other two were better. One of them, at least, might've held the possibility of getting fresh with a young boy (that was who invited me).

On the other hand, marshmallow, ya know?

I'm probably not ready to make myself vulnerable in any way, not even enough to have some well-deserved and really quite needed boy-type-fun.

"Jean-Luc, blow up the damned ship!" - this I hear from the other room. (Not actually a whole other room, but it's essential to small-apartment living to think of your various subspaces as rooms.)

Yeah, Jean-Luc, blow up the ship.

I was talking to a friend tonight, and he was in the middle of writing a blog post about why he continues to blog. And he was finding it tough going. Which, I pointed out, was ironic.

I know that here I ebb and flow, as do most bloggers who've been at it for a while.

Side note: If you're new here, you may not know that I started this here thing in about 2003, and that there was a technical glitch that resulted in several years' worth of posts being - not quite lost, but only recoverable by hand (and if you don't think that's ironic, for an online medium, well, I can't teach you anything about irony).

Anyway. Ebb, flow, etc. Yes.

The thing about a blog that's about nothing but whatever is on my mind at the moment, is that there's a certain amount of room for ebb and flow. I haven't promised you a rose garden, so when I start growing cherry trees or bugger off to Firenze for six weeks without telling anyone except the gelato salesmen (warning! stock up on stracciatella!), well, it's basically okay.

Nobody's terribly disappointed; they just figure I'm off having a nap or something. And eventually I come back and write a little list of things that hangs together pretty much like a homemade Halloween costume. It resembles an idea, but not the original one I had.

My friend's blog, on the other hand, has a specific purpose, and as such, he ain't always in the mood to write about that purpose, so sometimes it's hard to keep going. If it were a person, it'd be that little sweaty kid on the couch who's suffering from ennui and pretending it's a fever so he can get out of school.

My blog is more of a delinquent who knows damn well he's too smart for school and thus feels no compunction about cutting class anytime he damn well pleases.

Anyway. Stracciatella notwithstanding, here we are. I never promised you a rose garden, and you ain't getting one.

What I can give you is: yes, of course, a list. Well, no maybe not. Maybe just some random impressions in a freeform fashion.

It is cold out - 54F/12C.
The cars passing by sound like rushing water.
I'm riding over a lot of acorns these days.
I painted my toenails a couple of days ago when I was bored and not especially sober. I hadn't picked out the color (it was bought for me by a friend) and didn't think I'd like it (dark-blood red), but I'm starting to think it looks kind of good on me. My feet are very pale, and it looks if a messy vampire had been licking my toes.
I don't have a date, and I don't have a date, and I don't have a date. I had two last week, and I suddenly get this feeling there's going to be a lull. As much as I dislike that, on one level, on another I wonder if I might want it that way. I am feeling like one of those creatures who curls up when touched, an isopod.
I'm not sure I want anybody touching my soft underbelly again for a while.
Have you noticed that this is in fact a list of sorts? Maybe I should go back and number them.
Nah.
It gets so late so quickly, do you ever notice that?
I'm knitting. But what I really want to be doing is climbing trees.

I've tried to post a few times, about what's going on, and I keep getting sidetracked, by what's going on. It's a bit of a shame - some of these drafts are funny, or wry, or poignant. Of course, I could be lying to you. They could be a bunch of dead, floppy fish. Or they could be nonexistent.

You'll just have to: a) take my word for it, or b) write your own version of the truth.

In short, then:

I am adjusting.

I am alternately kind of happy and kind of sad. I am wistful. I have fantasies. My ankle is better. I ride my bike. I overcommit myself both in work and in personal life. I wonder how it will be, when some of my friends move away. I might move away. I might stay.

Things are not the same. I suppose they are never really the same, not even from moment to moment, and that it's an illusion that we ever stay in one place at all. Even the planet spins. Even the moon, which was so huge and red last night as I rode over a giant bridge in the giant dark, that I had to pull over and look at it, after which I remembered that I'm afraid of heights and have to keep moving on bridges.

My friend Shannon is going through a great loss, and wrote something exquisitely beautiful about it. Read it, but make sure you have an adequate supply of hankies.

Another friend has had a baby, and I am, for a baby-averse person, quite smitten with him. I think it's him, not his babyness. He sits on my lap and we read Dr. Seuss.

I think, really, that I would like to write Dr. Seuss, but for adults. I wonder if that can be done. I have some ideas.

I find beginnings and endings to be difficult. This baby-friend of mine is the same way. He cries when he has to wake up, and when he has to fall asleep. I so understand. We like each other, and I am pleased that it's mutual. I can tell my friend is pleased, too. She gets a particular look on her face when she's watching us hang out, as if she's about to cry but doesn't.

I suppose I am rambling, but there is something about it that feels like I'm rambling in concentric rings, building a tree trunk from the outside in. I'm not at the center of it yet, not nearly, but I'm getting somewhere, I really am.

Hey there. It's me. I'm drinking hot chocolate. It's almost gone now. I guess that's alright, but I wish it wouldn't run out so soon.

I could say that about a lot of things.

It's a great mistake to think you're impervious, to think that no one can touch you, there in your cave. It's especially a mistake to think that because you're not ready to be in a serious relationship, you can't fall for someone anyway. Ouch. Fall is the word. I always have a lot of unexplained bruises.

I begin to wonder if they aren't outward manifestations of what goes on inside, especially the stuff I don't know about or won't admit to.

It's probably just that I bumped myself carrying a bike upstairs, and that it's such an ordinary, daily occurrence that the bump didn't even register in my consciousness, though it did in my blood and skin. There's something in that. Blood and skin.

I think maybe I fell in love that way. Not in the big, burning mind, but in my blood and skin. Ouch.

It's alright. I can get over practically anything, and this doesn't register as an especially huge bump on the radar. But it hurts anyway. It's just like a sprain. Nothing's broken, but nothing's exactly right, either.

I smelled burning leaves tonight, and made a second hot chocolate when I got home. Last night it was windy, and there were crinkled leaves swirling in tight curves around my head. A bat flew formation with me for a while. It's the first stirrings of fall, and I find that I'm delighted to see/hear/smell/feel it. I want apples. I want new perfumes. I want more of those tall socks I buy at American Apparel, even though they're so expensive for what they are.

I want to make an excursion, soon, when my ankle's ready for the traffic, to Chinatown, to pump up my stores of tea. I'm thinking Jasmine.

I want to buy this movie, and this one.

I want to find a way to get out of town for a while, to be in a forest, to look up at the leaves and listen.

I want to find a man who makes me feel the way my spring-summer lover does, but who wants more of me, and of whom I can handle wanting more, myself. I think it's time, or nearly.

I want this yarn. Isn't it the loveliest color? I'm knitting a simple little rolled-edge hat, to get in the mood. And it only just occurred to me that my new hairstyle is the perfect thing for hats. I tried one on yesterday and nearly fell into the proverbial pool looking at my reflection.

Hello fall.

Everybody dies alone. - Malcolm Reynolds
Someone's carrying a bullet for you right now, and doesn't even know it. - the same

Alone, together. These are the two states of being between which we bounce back and forth. I guess that's not an accident, since whether we can ever truly be other than alone is one of those great questions that toss us around like a relentless wash cycle.

It's the reason that love is so compelling, I think. And by love I mean the idea of it, not the actuality, which (while also compelling) tends to be more three-dimensional, more like a plate of macaroni and cheese.

I'm not knocking macaroni and cheese. It's delicious. It's just that it's got more to do with satisfying ordinary needs than with feeding the yawning depths of the soul.

Maybe that's unfair. Maybe your soul really yearns for the blue box, and I should keep my weird analogies to myself. But mine, since we are talking about mine, has this feeling that nothing we do or say to one another can get beyond a certain barrier.

I'm a fan of barriers, actually - or at least of personal space. I don't like anyone to get too close, and I really don't want to see too very much of most people's insides. That's where the guts live - the icky bits.

But there's also this perennial urge to connect, to feel that we are understood and that we understand each other. To feel seen.

I don't know if that's really possible. I sometimes think, listening to music, that the artist - or maybe the song itself - sees, understands, is saying what I would say. But perhaps it's only that I've happened on the right music to match a moment. And is there much of a difference between those two things? I know that the role of art is to express something particular, a time, a place, an experience.

And that theoretically, some things are universal enough - or at least similar enough - that other people will go, "Oh yes, that's exactly it."

But I'm not sure that means we can reach each other. I've been in love before and still felt terribly alone, so I suppose feeling alone while being unattached isn't much of a shock.

Maybe it's like needing an interpreter - we can connect only by standing together on the same planet. The ground beneath us touches my feet and yours, and we are linked through it, but we can't ever quite touch each other directly.

So if art is our interpreter, what is sex?

A very dangerous place indeed. In art we may be reaching out, but in sex we're so close to begin with that sometimes we are hiding as much as possible. Ever have sex with someone but were afraid to meet their eyes? Yeah. The room can seem awfully full with two big souls swirling around above you. Sometimes it seems like the closer you are physically, the more careful you have to be not to let those two things meet.

In her 43rd year, she took a lover seventeen years her junior, learned to play the field, became adept at smoking joints, and got in trouble with the IRS.

Would you like that character, if you were reading her in a novel?

I was just reading a post by another blogger, and realized it isn't just me who's being introduced to herself in her 40s. I had a flash the other day where I looked at myself, where I was and whom I was with, and marveled that this is my life now. You don't think, when you're twenty, that your life in middle age will be anything to write home about. You also don't think, I expect, that you'll still be very much discovering yourself.

I think now that I may be discovering myself forever. In that last moment of breath, I may have a little flash of insight where something unfolds and I want to jump off and explore it. Why not, after all? It happens all the time now.

I only hope I'll still be riding my bike.

Yeah, um, right.

I can't even begin to tell you about my week, so I won't try. Let's just say that several of my ideas have been confirmed, and a few others shaken up.

a) Do not, repeat, do NOT sleep with anyone on the first date. Confirmed.
b) Do not alter one's mental state by chemical means. Shaken up, busted, then slightly confirmed again. Which means the jury is somewhat out and further (but more moderate) testing is required.
c) The one you want is the one you want. Confirmed.
d) You cannot have the one you want, at least not in the quantity that you want. So, then what? No fracking idea.
e) Lots of playing with boys and partying with -um- other boys = not getting enough (or even any) work done. Confirmed.
f) I hate saddle sores. Confirmed, goddamnitalltohell.
g) Am I really that pretty, holy crap, why am I having so much trouble with boys? Oh, right. Because the one who's giving me the most trouble is just as pretty as I am. Sigh.

I guess that about covers it.

Here we are, at the intersection of weird and sad. Getting over it (it being everything) is visible in the distance, but they're uphill miles.

I'm hungry and I just ate, which is true both physically and metaphorically.

I'm sitting next to the window with the herb plants and today someone offered me a kitten with my haircut. I had to decline, citing Kitwich's continued sanity. I doubt she'd maul it or anything, but I also doubt she'd forgive me for taking away her only-child status. And I have some sympathy with that position.

I just looked over at her, stretched out on the rug looking both quizzical (What do you want? Are you asking me if I want the a/c back on? Because the answer is yes) and content. Cats usually look content. They're either very bored, or not very smart, or far wiser than we are, and it's impossible to tell which.

She's a rather brilliant cross-species communicator, but even so I have trouble telling what she's thinking when she looks at me like that. Inscrutable and imperturbable.

There was a thing - a terrible thing - that happened a few days ago, and I'm having some repercussions from it. The boy who refuses to get the hell out of my head was there, and was spectacularly unhelpful, and I went home and couldn't sleep. And then the next day I ran away and did something that might have been foolhardy (the jury is still out; I keep hoping no harm was done, but it didn't feel right either). And now I have a date with a third.

I am guardedly a little excited about the date with the third, though I really oughtn't to be, since the odds are slim with these things. It would be nice if it worked out well. It would, in fact, go a long way toward solving a few of my current difficulties. Shannon's going to tell me I'm being tantalizing again, but I expect you can all read between the lines.

Sitting here waiting for the thunder to come. Well, we'd settle for the rain.

The cat has been lying on the floor looking like a wrung-out dishtowel. Or a flat noodle. She seems to be under the impression that striving for two-dimensionality will cool her off.

I gave her ice cubes. Not interested. I tried to introduce her to the wonders of the icepack. She was vaguely frightened.

Myself I'm so dehydrated that my brain isn't working well enough to remember to buy the Gatorade that sent me to the grocery store in the first place. I'd get it at the bodega, but I spent my very last cash pennies on ice cream in town. I meant to go look for a new bikini (Old Navy's having a sale, and the bottoms of my old one are too big for me even before they get wet), but I forgot.

I have no money; it's all credit cards. Sigh. Let's not even go there.

I ran into my sometimes-playmate randomly on the street yesterday, and nearly got run over because I wasn't paying attention to traffic. I was distracted by the proximity of the handsomeness. He smells so good. Cardinal rule #1: Don't look at the boys. It will get you smushed by large objects with four wheels.

Today I found myself staring at a skateboarder who was gliding by in the opposite direction and had to remind myself, verbally. DON'T LOOK AT THE BOYS! You are on a big street with rush-hour traffic and four firetrucks blocking the entire right lane, and there's a little black Accord with out-of-state plates diving out in front of you and nearly ramming itself into the bus that is also in front of you, and now you have to maneuver around four lanes of mess with oncoming traffic coming at you and the bus and the out-of-stater, plus firetrucks. DO NOT LOOK AT THE BOYS.

Yeah, right. I think I need to move apts soon. Maybe I can find one where there's a third tap in the kitchen, marked "Gatorade."

I tried to write a post yesterday, but my server was down. Then I tried to tweet tonight, but the World Cup had apparently broken the living daylights out of Twitter (it's still limping a bit).

All I was gonna do was write you a little list of stray thoughts as they occurred to me. I suppose I could still do that.

My mileage has increased, and with it my appetite. I can no longer manage on 5 meals a day. Think I'm kidding? Spend a day with me. And bring your wallet.

I have: a) a tan that ends mid-thigh, and b) little callouses on my palm below my second and third fingers.

The cat has a new trick whereby she climbs into my lap, flops herself onto my torso (about 60% of which real estate she takes up), and lolls her head into my chest, while gazing soulfully into my eyes. What is she, a frickin' Harlequin romance novel?

I have taken to riding to a beach nearly every weekend, just to get away from the human populace. It is soothing. And then I ride to a honky tonk beach, to be amused by the human populace. I'd tell you part of a conversation my friends and I overheard at the latter last weekend, but it is unprintable. So was her outfit.

My baby sister turned 40 this year, and a couple of days ago a young man from the Internet asked me if I'd consider dating a guy in his mid-20s. Given that a man of that exact age had just left my bed, I had to answer in the affirmative. I suppose that sounds like bragging.

It's occurred to me recently that - until now - I'd never actually let myself consider what I want from men. So I gave that some thought. I don't have an exact answer, but I have some ideas about what I don't want, and that is a start.

I've started to think of myself as a bachelor. I've started to think that being single by choice is not the same as being celibate. It's been an interesting week.

PS. The birds are singing and that was my last lightbulb.

I sometimes wonder about the impressions we make on each other. I realize the impact of a human life is about as lasting as a footprint in the sand.

Maybe it lasts long enough for the birds to notice, maybe not, but it seems to me that most of what goes on between two people happens below the surface, at the level that isn't talked about - or can't be.

I remember that scene in Moonstruck, where Cher is telling Nicholas Cage that the big part of him has no words, that it's a wolf, and that it does what it has to do between him and him.

I sometimes think it would be better if we simply interacted with each other that way. No words, no interpretations, just action and responding action.

I took a lot of photos this weekend, with one thing and another. They'll likely be popping up in bits over the next few days. I haven't been posting much because I just don't have that much that I feel like sharing. I'm busy with work. I'm adjusting to the probable end of an affair with someone I rather liked. I was very angry for a few weeks.

I'm feeling a little better. I'm trying to see being asked out by online people as a good thing, with mixed results.

I don't think any of them are cute enough. I never do, with online people. Maybe I just think the Internet is an ugly place.

I've never been a fan of computer art. I prefer the feel and smell and texture of real-world things.

I like the smell of linseed oil. I like the smell of male sweat (on the right guys). I like getting my legs dirty. I picked up a shell on the beach and it had a hole in it, and I am looking for the right string to wear it.

My cat makes a triangle shape when she sleeps in this pillow, and it's funny because she has so many triangles in her face and head to begin with. I wonder if she likes Euclid. She does seem to enjoy watching astronomy on TV. We were learning about neutrinos and gamma rays. "Gamma rays, Kitwich! Gamma rays." She looked interested.

He: It's clear that you like men. But you never keep any of them for very long.
She: Men make women messy.
He: Here's to the fear of being trapped.
(from The Thomas Crown Affair)

She: It's too bad you couldn't have avoided this.
Me: What? Not get involved after he warned me?
She: Yes.
Me: He was just what I wanted.

Sensing a pattern?

Yeah, sure. That don't make it resistible or even something I much want to change at the moment. It serves its purpose. That being to keep me at arms' length. I have my reasons.

But it hurts, you say?

Well, you are talking to a woman whose legs are permanently bruised, scraped, skinned, and sometimes even rug-burned (yes, for that reason).

I have a certain tolerance. Make that resilience. I may not like pain all that much, but I sure do bounce back from it like a Weeble on steroids.

So I'm in that state where I'm drinking espresso at 8:41 pm and stopping in the midst of my 40-mile jaunt to visit a handsome fellow of my previous acquaintance (yes, like that) for a little free-form flirting, just to juice me up again, and then I get back on the bike and ride the rest of the way home dartin' and a swoopin'.

Finish up some work, have a brief bossy little meeting (I was the one being bossy, which is odd for me, but I was still in traffic mode), eat a clementine, blah blah blah. This is how we get on with life, folks, we just get on.

We move, we fly, we get pissed off and decide we deserve better; we recognize that we don't actually want to get too much closer than that and so we scan the horizon for another (un)suitable boy, and there aren't any, so we learn to play bocce ball and win our first-ever game, because, well, we are really quite deft at certain things. Rolling balls in uncertain directions over chalk apparently being one of them.

Jumpy, restless, antsy, unsettled.

It's shocking the degree to which I can pretend to myself that I don't care about someone, that it makes no difference to me how a particular situation (job, boyfriend, whatever) works out. I am such a fricking liar sometimes.

The fact that I rarely lie to anyone but me doesn't really seem to mitigate matters.

The other day I was having a dandy time flirting my proverbial arse off with a group of men, and remembering that hey, I used to have a bit of a crush on that one, and I'd completely forgotten about his existence since the last time I randomly ran into him. And I thought, oh it's fine if the current guy is no longer into me (it's unclear); I'm halfway over it already.

Which is, apparently, bullshit. Know why?

'Cause I like him. He's too young, I'm too old, whatever, but there's something about him that I just jell with. He feels good to me, and I am not (only) talking about the sex bit (which definitely feels good). I like being with him. I like riding bikes with him. I like sitting on a park bench smooching him like crazy.

He's like an animal, or a tree, or a stream - I feel calmer when he's around, and more like I like my life here. He's sweet, and funny, and delightfully dirtily playful.

And while I'm admitting to being a human being, with feelings and all, I miss him. I miss all those aspects of being with him. He was the first person I told when an exciting thing happened in my professional life a few weeks ago, and maybe that was not an accident. I knew he'd appreciate it, I knew he'd really be happy for me.

So there it is, the truth. I care what happens. I'd rather he kept being interested in me. I'd rather not have to get over this one just yet.

I know I'm not the only one who has trouble taking in good things, believing and accepting them without looking for the hidden catch.

Somehow that doesn't make it any easier to grow out of that bad habit.

I've gotten so much better at imagining good things for myself instead of disasters. I've even gotten good at believing I deserve them - some days.

But when I get such a cluster as has happened lately, I start wringing my hands a little. What's next, what's next, I say, in my White Rabbit voice.

It's especially hard when there's another person on the other end. When there's clearly a connection that's unusual, and we keep looking at each other funny but nobody wants to say anything about it, other than "Hi," with a rather dreamy look.

He did something really nice for me yesterday, and it was wonderful, and I did my best to just take it in and enjoy it, and not get nervous. But there were those moments, later, where I just didn't know what to do.

What do you do when somebody does something really nice, just because he wants to? I said thank you, of course. I smiled and let him know how much I appreciated it. But there it was, a long juicy stalk of something, with an invisible bud on the end that nobody can talk about, and I can barely look at in my own mind.

Some days you don't even have time for a quickie, and this whole week has been like that. But I thought I ought to catch you up on a few items.

a) The hitch is unhitched.
b) I believe I have never had quite so much fun in my life.
c) That goes for work, too.
d) It rained and rained last night. Sounded like a giant was peeing in the street all night long.
e) My new favorite object is my 4gb flashdrive, which cost me all of $14 and is cherry red, to boot.
f) Miz Fury calls flashdrive file transfer the "sneakernet." Isn't that a great term?
g) Have I mentioned that I really, really like having a beautiful boy in my bed as often as possible? Oh lordy lordy lordy.