Hi everbuddies. It's Monday, so if you feel like SBDing, blahblahblah. Alternately, just tell us what's up. It's boring round here.

If I had the energy, I'd get up and charge my camera, so I could take a picture of my new festive lights to show you. They're strung over my window, and across the formerly-too-bare corner to the right of the television. They're blue-striped and conical, and I feel like buying several more strings and decking out the whole apartment. Even if I had enough electrical outlets - which I emphatically do not - it'd look awfully silly. Childish, even. But I wouldn't care at all. I like them. They make me happy, even when I'm a little sad. And that's no small thing.

Simultaneously better and worse than the atrocious acting on the I Found Out He's A Serial Killer On Our Wedding Day teevee program: my new neighbor. I hear her blabbing often these last couple of week, but have tuned it out. Until now, as I am treated to a one-sided phone convo where she talks about "I dunno he was... like... Like he made it seem like it was because I was too into him? Or something? And then he was trying to say I was too -- oh what's that called -- yeah, controlling, and I'm like how can I be controlling when I like never see you? And I just realized I was always thinking about him? Like, worried about what he was thinking or doing? But then I realized he wasn't, like? Ever thinking of me? And then like everything he said didn't make sense, like he was saying the same thing but opposite, like he was - what's that word... yeah, contradicting himself, that's it? So it didn't make sense."

Oh darn, she just finished and went off to some place where the sound doesn't carry. She has this drawling nasal up-speak. Very annoying, but it carries down the alley and up three floors, so yay for the annoying voice. As long as I don't have to hear it at 3am or anything.

She wrapped it all up with "My whole life, I'm always the one who, like? like who people want to like hang out with me? And laugh? But when it comes tim to cry? It's like never me. My whole life, no seriously!"

Poor thing. If only she knew how heartbreakingly hilarious it is in her voice and cadence. It's fucking brilliant, man.

Huh. I have exactly no patience anymore. Stupid Walgreen's website won't show any prescription older than like 6 months or so, and it's all like "Just click UNHIDE to see your 4 hidden prescriptions" and I'm all like "There IS no unhide button." So I email customer service and I'm all "There IS no unhide, what gives? I Am So Annoyed because to even get to this point, I had to deal with your site being down for the day, so please: resolve." And customer service is all like "Sorry for the inconvenience, all you have to do is click UNHIDE" and I'm all like "There IS no Unhide, DID YOU EVEN FUCKING READ MY MESSAGE ARRRRRRGH." And then they're all like "Clean your cache and clear your cookies and say a prayer to St. Anthony and spit on the ground under the light of a full moon." So I did, and - there IS no unhide button.

Three days after trying to get my prescription filled, I provided them with a screen cap, my ISP, browser, OS, proof of citizenship and a phial of purest baby's blood, along with a note that I hope this helps them fix the problem for the next customer that comes along, but I've decided to end this relationship. It's not me, I explained - it's you.

And that is today's major Annoyance About Which I Must Blog.

Additionally, this weekend is Dawnweekend (yay!) and my other major annoyance is the forecast. Stupid fucking humidity and thunderstorms. Rar. But I did finagle the afternoon off (though I'm not quite eligible for off-time yet) and we will stop at Nordstrom's for shoe-shopping, so hooray. I also have to swiffer the floors and do some dishes, so I just turned on the TV as background distraction noise and whoa - wtf with the crap on teevee? Some amateur comic thing followed by atrocious acting dressed in wedding garb that is so intriguingly bad, I can't stop watching.

Things I need to keep an eye out for whilst shopping with Dawn: cheese slicer, toiletries bag, little bitty floating toys to put in the pet fountain to amuse the cat and me. Also the aforementioned shoes.

tap at ya's later

Oh Chicago. You're so cute. Allowing patrons to reserve and renew a library book online is not cutting-edge high-tech wowza. Libraries outside of the city - and even in Indiana!! - have had that for years. More importantly, they had computers IN the libraries that allowed this snazzy reserve-request-renew feature BACK WHEN I WAS IN HIGH SCHOOL TWENTY YEARS AGO. Meanwhile, up until now, if I wanted to reserve a book at a Chicago library, I had go to the library, up to the Reference desk and have a conversation with the librarian and fill out a form and wait for a phone call. It was like 1940 in there, for fucksakes.

There's all this internet noise recently, about how John McCain has never used a computer (but her understands The Google, he says) and his campaign insisting that this is no big deal. Let me tell you - the mayor of Chicago? Not so big on the technology. Bless his soul, he seems to love it after it's in place, but his mind certainly never goes in a technology direction naturally. He never gets there without some kicking and screaming, or at least lots of studies that show how much money it'll save/generate. This is the result of that mindset: a library system that only now in 2008 has a useful website.

And I use that Skyway, I'll have you know. Glad my dollars are actually going to something tangible and good. Now if only they'll get a better range of books in those libraries, we'll be cooking with gas.

Good morning!

I just took the Kingston off my mailbox. I'd thought of doing it a year or more ago, but I didn't bother. I still got mail from some people who only know me as Kingston. But I don't get anything like that anymore. This blog is the only Kingston that's left in me. And that's not much, as you've no doubt noticed. I still use my Kingston email address, true, but only with people who met/know me online.

I'm not saying I'm shutting down the blog or anything. That'd take to much, like, thought or something. Strange how complicated a human's relationship to an online journal can be.

I have this really decent job. Filled with really decent people. I do plenty, but add it all together and I'm entirely pointless, as a person. That's okay, really, it's not like I'm putting myself down. I just mean that I don't really matter all that much. Without my contribution, the world would go right on ticking without even the tiniest pause. Lots of people can do what I do. It makes me happy, because I can leave it all there. I don't bring any of it home with me. I just breeze right on through. Through work and through life.

For as long as I can remember, I've always wanted something, always been working to get to somewhere or be something else. These all-consuming passions, one right after another. Every time you burn through one, you sift through the ashes of that piece of yourself, pick up the bits of learning, and wonder how concerned you should be about that little pile of gray. How can such a big part of yourself be reduced to so small a bit of dust. And eventually it blows away. Life for me has been this series of bonfires. Until now.

I know, you know? I know I'm not good enough or smart enough or interesting enough or a thousand other things enough. I just don't care anymore. I'm tired of trying and tired of fixing and tired of throwing myself in to one thing or another. So as I pulled the Kingston off my mailbox I wondered - what's left of me? I'm all out of fire and all out of kindling. And there are all these years left, stretching out in front of me. You shouldn't feel like this, this contented emptiness, until you're old and decaying. And of course I could be hugely wrong, don't speak too soon, because life is long and that's the lesson to be found in dusty old history books: you never know what'll happen, which day will live in infamy.

But anyway, here I am - not a Kingston. Not harboring any career ambitions. Not hoping to find the right guy, not longing to settle down, not afraid of not having children, no creative impulse, no consuming hobby, not even many friends to hang with/see/talk to all that often. Not much of anything. Which I think actually works for me, considering how I'm like 98% in a good mood lately.

But still. I always had a secret me, in one form or another. Every minute of my life, always. A secret me wanting some secret thing, walking a secret walk or singing a secret song or dreaming a secret dream. Some part of me that wasn't older and wiser, that wanted to try some new thing.

Not so much any more. Trying to figure out how to think about that.

Oh hey hi, I forgot. Sorry. Anybody SBD and wanna tell us? Or did we all take the night off?

Stupid fucking city sticker and I just couldn't renew online two weeks ago, oh no, i had to use the notice as a bookmark and completely tune it out and now I have a week left to renew and sure I can buy it at the Jewel where I'm headed right now but of course, OF COURSE you have to take a copy of last year's renewal receipt like I just have that shit lying around are you kidding me I mean who the fucking hell keeps that shit and I KNOW there are some people who do but none of them are related to me, I can tell you, because I am genetically incapable of holding on to any piece of paper on the basis that it MIGHT be important one day and if you're in the habit of keeping that kind of receipt for a year then I truly don't want to know about it and honest to fucking christ on a stick, people, can't I just take my $75 and the tattered battered notice card and have it OVER with already? Can't I? CAN'T I?????

No. No I can't. Because I am destined to be Really Fucking Annoyed By The Process. The end.

PS: This blog is now a place only for rejoicing over trivialities and bitching over same. If you hadn't noticed.

Oh for fucksakes. I got the stupid converter for my stupid teevee because even though I'm not a huge teevee-watcher, I still watch and I'd like to be able to get reception when the dread February 2009 arrives. So I have the goddamn box and okay so I'll set it up today. And then I open the box and there's a fucking controller in there. Because GOD FORBID I live a life with less than 200 remote controls. And of course there's a plug because why not add yet another cord to the giant tangled clump back there.

I am so tempted to say fuck it, and just go get a new TV. One of those modern newfangled types, with the flat screen, and everything built right in. But I can't get over the whole guilt of putting a perfectly good TV in a landfill somewhere, plus the antenna, plus the never-used converter box. Okay, I guess I could return the box. But still. The TV is totally not even close to dying.

Arrrrrrrrrrrrrgh electronics I hate you. HATE!

Except the pet fountain because the cat is totally drinking from it and she actually let me seep in past 5am this morning for once, so I love that electronic. But no others. Rar.

OH MY GOD SHE IS DRINKING!!!

This is fucking exciting, If this keeps up, I may have a chance of30% less meowing and 50% more sleep. This is a brilliant invention. Ony in America, people. I LOVE AMERICA, YOU INVENTIVE BASTARDS YOU.

A little background: I bought my cat a pet water fountain drinking thingie - one of these, but the one I got is blue - despite my inherent dislike of pet gadgets. I mean my cat has a food bowl, a litter box, and something to scratch on (namely my battered futon). Oh and like two little toys on strings. That's it. No Fancy Feast. No climbing jungle gym. No pet bed. I believe in low maintenance, and I try not to be a crazy cat lady. But since forever, Thunderpussy has refused to drink from a bowl of water. Never. Ever. Not even when she was horribly sick and desperately needed to be hydrated.

No - it's always gotta be flowing fresh from the tap. And she's not as good at jumping up on the sink as she used to be, which has led to a slightly hilarious and mostly kind of touching scene: she looks at me with big eyes and a teeny mew, and I lift her up to the toilet tank, where she can make the final, smallest leap to the sink edge. (I find it touching because she's getting older and of course is not as agile as her kitten-self, and she'd rather die to admit it to anyone but me.) It's really inconvenient, and she's constantly waking me so I can turn on the sink. She'll settle for the bathtub faucet drip-drip when I'm not around, which means her furry little head is soaked with water 80% of the time.

Anyway, so Igot a drinking fountain thing and just hooked it up and voila! She sniffed, she looked suspicious - but she licked at it. Then, a few minutes later, she came back and drank drank drank. This could work!

You may be thinking "Of course it'd work, duh", which would mean you've never owned a cat and have never experienced the way they will shun a perfectly logical set-up based on nothing but the principle of the thing. It could still turn out that she'll take a sink-or-nothing attitude, but I am hopeful this will work. Only time will tell. I'll report back.

And yes, the most noteworthy thing in my life right now is a pet fountain drinking thingie.

I am really, really sleepy. Really. And I totally slept enough last night. And glugged coffee this morning. And yet: sleepy. I gotta get dressed now and get to work. My hair's wet and everything, but I don't have the will to blow-dry. Just wanna sleeeeeeeeeeep.

Hate mornings like this. Rar.

Nothing new to report except the weather is amazing beautiful, work is busybusy, my apartment's a mess no matter what I do to un-messify it, Thunder has resumed her 3-times-a-year obsesion with the front door, and I am sooooo sleepy. But I think I mentioned that.

Hey anybody gonna SBD? If so, let us know.

Everyone, it's okay. I said: it's OKAY. Snookie called. And, as if we needed any further proof that she's my bestest friend, she said straight off: "I've been meaning to call you after your message, but I was sick and then there was this work thing and then I'm like I have to call her today or else she'll think I'm mad at her and don't want to be friends. So here I am, what's new with you?"

Me: "I've been wondering if you're mad at me and don't want to be friends anymore."
Snookie: "Ha ha."
Me: "Seriously, I lost sleep over it and everything, it was high-larious."
Snooks: "But!"
Me "It's okay! I knew I was being dumb even when it was happening, see, we know this is a normal thing. Not your fault at all, it's my own insanity. I think maybe my subconscious needs drama or something but thanks for calling now instead of waiting a week."
Snooks: "A week would be cruel. Sorry, but I'm all pregnant and I have the dreaded pregnancy memory loss. So really, you're lucky that I remembered to call, that I remembered the number, AND I remembered your name. You're a big winner!"
Me: "I win!"

End scene.

Furthermore, I am unexpectedly very upset about Tim Russert. As you'll recall from last week, I watch Meet The Press with great regularity. I'm nearly as flailing as his colleagues on the teevee are, because all I can think is: how can we hold an election - any election, but ESPECIALLY this one - without Tim Russert? It's just unfair and wrong and creepy and wrong. So there.

In other news, I got this Cuervo margarita stuff, in a bottle? Just pour over ice. It's all pre-made. Recommended by a friend. It's not fantastic until after about oh say 6 ounces. It's acceptable, and then eventually (the more your drink) it becomes the most brilliant beverage ever. Thumbs up.

Also? I have emails to answer. I know.

In other news, I have no other news. Except I stepped on my cat (she's fine, the flesh of my right leg is emphatically not) and I have decided not to patronize my lil independent coffee shop around the corner except in cases of dire need/emergency (jihad!) and my aunt had wonderful stories about my grandparents snipping at each other (rare of them, and frikken hilarious when it ever happens, once every decade or so) and today was gorgeous but tomorrow will be stormy and hot (eeeevil weather) and somehow I managed to get through today without dealing with this pile of mail still (sigh).

So that's about it. Here, go read this terrific history of vibrators and boy is that one doctor's appointment I wouldn't want to make unless my doctor was George Clooney or Taye Diggs or... I dunno any other hot fictional doctors. I just wouldn't want it to be Jack Klugman, ya know? Just sayin.

PS: My mother loved Quincy.

I am so stupid sometimes.

See what happened is this: Snookie and I talk about once a week, on that newfangled telephone contraption. Sometimes we talk a few times per week, sometimes we can go a couple weeks sans le blah-blah because there's either nothing to report or because life in general is too hectic. Rarely do we ever go more than a couple of weeks between calls. It's pretty much a weekly thing.

So last week, I think on Monday or so, she called. I was like "wow we haven't talked in a while" and she was all "yeah it's been like two weeks and I thought of calling but just didn't feel like whining, which is all I would've done, believe me." This was due to various non-Beth issues in her life, you understand. Sometimes you just don't want to hear yourself bitch, so you don't call a friend to whom you know you will bitch. I get this. I understand it completely. That is not what this is about.

So we chatted last week, minimal whining and bitching on both our parts (kudos to us) and then night before last, I decided to call her. Because it'd been a whole week and a day. And I want to tell her that Atonement is really good, and see when she'll come visit next, etc. So I called. She wasn't there.

She wasn't there.

I was (am) flummoxed by this. Did she develop a Tuesday night non-holiday post-8pm social life? How could this happen? How could the phone ring, and she's in the country, but she's not there to pick it up? Flummoxed, I tell you. So I left a stuttering and slightly incoherent message, all about "How can you not be there? Call me. Why aren't you there, stop freaking me out!"

She totally hasn't called me back. This is entirely acceptable - she could be busy or tired or maybe she's sick or one of the snookettes is sick or maybe she's got visitors or actually IS on vacation and forgot to tell me (or told me and I forgot, which is also possible) or just maybe thinking she'll wait til the weekend to call me back, who knows. This is so totally not a big deal.

But, as often happens in my little pea brain (which occasionally dwarfs my shriveled little heart), this full-blown fantasy of Snookie Is Mad At Beth And Doesn't Want To Be Friends Anymore has sprung into being and is now tormenting me.

This is stupid. It's STUPID IN CAPITAL LETTERS AND I KNOW IT. Yet it has taken root and I am chewing at my lower lip and having imaginary conversations (mostly on email, which is weird because we don't email so much, but I trust my twisted brain to choose the correct setting for this fantasy friend break-up) about how much she doesn't want to be my friend anymore and all the reasons why.

Look: I need to sleep. I do not need to be indulging paranoid fantasies founded on precisely nothing. Nothing, that is, but a single unreturned (for a mere 48 hours!) phone call.

GOD why am I LIKE this?

And because this absurdity is so central to my thoughts this evening, I naturally try to combat it with a cocktail of common sense and disdain. Which goes something like "It's been two days, she's got a lot of shit going on in her life and she'll call soon and if she doesn't, it's because she has more pressing matters to attend to and what on earth makes you think that this has to be about YOU, huh? Not everything is about you." The unfortunate side effect of that line of thinking is a new branch of ridiculous reasoning - that is, I have now spun multiple tales of the horrible things happening in her life, the tragic tales that must be keeping her from calling me, and I should have some sympathy that [her parent(s) died, her child has been diagnosed with a hideous disease, her husband committed suicide, her house burned down, etc etc on and on and on].

Because the only thing that could possibly keep her from calling me back is some huge giant Life Drama of Epic Proportions, you see. So tosum this puppy up: either she can't call me because only tragedy could keep her from it, or because she's arbitrarily decided to hate me forevermore without explanation and with a deep and abiding passion because I just spontaneously inspire this intense loathing, see. No matter which way my neurotic little brain works it, it all comes down to me, me, me, oh the enduring importance of Me.

See, I actually KNOW it, how self-obsessed all this really is and how it's therefore nothing but a pile of crap. I know it. I just can't convince my lizard brain and my ungenerous heart to yield to reason. They're both too busy coming up with noises to drown out the deep-down waaaaaaaaaah why didn't she call me doesn't she love me no more waaaaaah!

And that, my friends, is why I am still awake. Because it's loud in here. Because I am stupid. The end.

Eh. Kate did an SBD, so we'll call it SBD. Celebrate, if you feel like it.

Here's my SBD-ish thought for the day, which I am really really sure is not even remotely original, but I'd never really thought of it before: How come, back in Regency/Victorian times, it was just beyond scandalous to catch a glimpse of a woman's ankle, and yet it was completely acceptable and even expected that she show off her bazoombas in a cleavage-revealing dress? Always in the evening,of course. The boobs come out at night (sing it!), but ankles are never, never, ever okay.

I can understand why pants weren't okay, especially with how they show off a butt. Even a fully clothed butt has more erotic curvature per square inch than a low neckline. At least that's my opinion, anyway, and I'm going off a conversation I had with an ass man some years ago that's rather influenced my thoughts on the matter. When you think of it objectively and especially in an historical context, you may agree.

But ANYWAY. What's so wrong with ankles? Does anyone get a sexual charge out of a woman's ankles? Aside from the stray fetishist, of course. I mean I can see it if they stay hidden all the time and the mystery builds and then oooooh look an ankle in the wild, hubba hubba. Artificially induced, that is. Only by purposely forbidding them do you make them terrifically attractive. Legs, okay. I can understand a leg attraction, and that modesty would require covering up your calves.*** But not ankles. Ankles are, at most, cute. Not sexy.

And if ankles are covered up and made a mystery - and I suppose the stocking has something to do with it, but boy hey stockings back then were not exactly sexy, what with being like really long socks - then why wouldn't they cover up the boobs with just as much zeal? I don't get it. There is no way that cleavage is less sexually provocative than ankles. Ever. I am reminded of this pretty much any time I wear anything with even a hint of cleavage. Men love looking at boobs. They have always loved looking at boobs. They always WILL love looking at boobs. Sun rises in east, men love boobs. Not exactly headline news.

I think we have to conclude that the men of the time somehow tricked the women into thinking that it was entirely possible to remain gentlemanly in the face of cleavage because the real danger was the mere suggestion of ... an ankle. Skirts and petticoats and more skirts, pile em on, hurry cover those ankles from our rapacious eyes! Typical diversionary tactics. Rather brilliant, really.

The end.

***And hey a side note here in defense of pantsuits, which the whole world has decided to make synonymous with Hillary Clinton and then give pantsuits this negative connotation because she wears them. Here is my side note, made to the side because lord I gotta stop witht he political commentary, but here it is: lay off, you wankers. First, all you sexist fucks can do is bitch about the mortal sin of having cankles (which aside from the fact that cankles have nothing to do with, oh say, running the fucking country, let me just say that my hideous cankles make Hillary's legs look like Tina Turner's, not EVEN kidding, so I have nothing but metric tonnage of sympathy for her in this, on a purely aesthetic level), and then when she gets wise to the fact that skirts are not her friend, she gets shit for wearing pantsuits. Which you think all the cankle-lovers would applaud. Which bazillions of women wear pantsuits, and maybe you media morons never noticed it, but it's JUST A SUIT OF CLOTHES and there is absolutely nothing noteworthy about it. Nothing, except for how you want to draw attention to the fact that she's a woman (as though we didn't already know that) and to make fun of it, which you would have done if she was wearing skirt suits or sweater sets or ball gowns or potato sacks. Well I say fuck off, all of you. Barack Obama has an ass that's far too skinny for my liking, but I'm not gonna wedge in commentary on said skinny ass and/or how he chooses to clothe it at every opportunity, ergo I repeat: FUCK OFF. End of side note, you sexist shits, and I HATE you for ever making me defend her. Gah.

Hello and welcome to my somewhat frustrating Sunday, where I woke up all hot and sweaty and feeling like my head was stuffed with wet gauze - which is how I generally feel when the whole night is humid and heavy air and gross.

Then Meet The Press was just going off when I turned on the teevee. Now, it's not like I'm some giant Meet The Press fan, okay, but I have certain Sunday rituals. One of them used to be flipping between Tim Russert and George Stephanafalupagus, to get a general idea of What's Going On In The World That I Might've Missed - and I've naturally become more attentive lately, what with the election season and all. Then after that horrible debate co-hosted by George The Inexcusable, I really couldn't bring myself to watch any kind of ABC news, much less his show itself. (How so many of these blatant offenses to journalism are still allowed on air is a mystery to me. I mean Charlie "Don't Raise My Capital Gains Tax" Gibson actually said - recently! last week!!! - that he doesn't see how he or anyone in the media could/should have handled the build-up to the Iraq war any differently. For fucksakes, people. And he's still allowed to call himself a journalist! I mean what the fucking

Sorry. I am in a rant now. Not what I intended. I must breathe.

Let me get some lemonade.

Okay. There. So as I was saying, I pretty much just flip on Meet The Press every Sunday to see who's on and what the discussion is about, and I usually stay to watch these days, even when I am conflicted like last week when Weasel McClelland was on and I do have some sympathy but there is just a line that was crossed and gaaaaah I will shut up now. Mmph. Promise. But so today? the show was going off when it should've been coming on. Why? Because they wanted to show tennis. What the fuck, I ask you? Way to throw off my morning. I can't watch tennis with my coffee. I just CAN'T.

Then I began to gather things for the laundromat, after straightening up a bit because it is sloppy around here. But by the time I had it all gathered up and deemed it the best time to go (so as to have dryers available because oy, the dryers are full on a Sunday), the clouds rolled in. Severe thunderstorms.

So I have been trapped, waiting for them to finish their windy wet course of destruction. The birds began singing like 45 minutes ago, so I think it's probably safe now. Until I check weather.com and see that no - they'll be back in another hour or two.

I say fuck it. I can manage another week without a laundromat trip. Besides, by this time I am a little sleepy and think that maybe I can catch a little afternoon nap. Good idea, no? No. It's not. Because in this brief interstorm period, suddenly all this hammering begins downstairs. And a very loud weed-whacker and a buzz saw next door and very loud people moving stuff from a truck to a house and they're parked right under my window. So clearly: bad time for a nap.

What I should do before the heavens open up is go to the grocery store. But I'd have to get dressed. Which would mean overcoming the incredibly hot, sticky, sweaty mass that is my entire bod. Because it's like 17 million degrees and I need a shower and I live in this ridiculous climate where, occasionally, the deathly humid heat is not alleviated by a giant thunderstorm. No, it just hangs in the air, waiting for the next thunderstorm. BECAUSE THAT MAKES SO MUCH SENSE.

And yes I should still shower and get dressed and haul myself to the store and get home before le deluge, but I am really busy right now being a total crabby old lady and bitching on the internet about how annoying my today is, okay? I have priorities.

Bad things: my cheese shop shut down and my dvd player died.


Good things: an ice cold vodka gimlet on a humid Friday night, a cieling fan overhead and a breexe through the window, a whole weekend ahead of me.

So here: Back when I was oh like 10 or 12 years old, we went to visit my aunt and uncles and cousins in Georgia, the ones who live in this evangelical christian community which was awful because we couldn't cuss or say "God!" except in a non-pissed, prayerful way. But we drove there, over the mountains and through Pigeon Forge and it was a beautiful, beautiful drive. The mountains were green, covered in trees and we'd stop and look at the tiny houses in the sweet little valleys below. We pulled over and walked into the trees to the mountain stream, and the water was so cold it made my ankles ache, and so clear I could see the tiny specks on the smooth rocks on the bottom.

But this is the part I remember most: the peaches. There was a handwritten sign on the side of a parked truck, and we made a quick pit stop. I barely noticed because my nose was in a book. I don't know which book, I just remember my mother complaining all through the trip (and for years after) about how Beth never even saw the mountains, her nose stuck in a book the whole trip. But she was wrong. I saw. Every hollow and every peak, I saw. And I remember.

I remember my mother brought back probably 5 small paper sacks of peaches. They could barely fit 3 peaches in each bag because they were so big. Bigger than my father's meaty fist. Big enough for me to use two hands to hold one. I had to put down my book. I ate it as I sat on the shag-carpeted floor, looking out the window of the van. We had this big van, a real pimpmobile. I was wearing these cut-off brown jeans shorts and a faded red T-shirt, and my hair was cropped short and there was the smell of dried sweat on my skin, and scabs on my brown brown legs.

Never in my life have I ever put anything in my mouth that meant more than those peaches. It was like the world came alive in a bite. Like the sun was rising right on my tongue. Like all the sweetest juices of life were filling my mouth, my lips pulled tight to hold it in, my cheeks tight as a drum. Toes dug into the carpet and the asphalt speeding beneath us and looking out over the misty green mountains, with sticky juice running down both arms and dripping from my elbows and between my toes.

I ate three before my mother caught me and told me to stop being a pig. It was more than my share - and besides, she said, you'll make yourself sick. You'll get a stomach ache and give yourself the runs and you'll regret it.

Later at the hotel I did have a stomach ache. I tried, but couldn't eat anything else at supper. My stomach was bloated and my mouth was full of the overwhelming taste of perfect peaches. Nothing stood a chance against it. It was too much, but it was so good. So good, and I knew there would never be peaches like that for me ever again. Even if I drove back through the mountains one day (I thought to myself as I lay in a cheap hotel bed with a bellyache and drifted off to an exhausted summer sleep), even if the peaches were ripe and I could find another little place to buy them, they'd always have this memory to compete with. The first time, the first experience of anything is always there to be measured against. There's no forgetting it, like so many things. No escaping it. It's always there and it changes the taste and feel of everything after, for better or worse.

But oh. Those peaches. That taste bursting into my mouth. A sepia-toned world gone Technicolor, with just one bite. And how it felt to be filled up with it, dazed and sick and drunk on it.

My life right now. Every day. Just for now - maybe not always, but for weeks now.
Listen: Nearly every day is like a single peach.
In the morning, my teeth break the soft fuzzy skin.
All day the juice is dripping off my elbows.
In moments when I pause, I find myself smiling around a mouthful of sweet sunshine.
At night I savor the last bites.
As I lay in bed and drift to sleep, I suck the last bits of flesh off the pit.

Sometimes on the train, my mind will wander and I'll start to think - what do I really want? What's next? What's the purpose, the point? Eventually, I'll need one. This satisfied but meaningless limbo place can't last forever. I will need to want something. That's not a bad thing, unless I can't figure out what to want. So what's it going to be about, I ask myself? And I answer: I don't know. This is confusing to consider. I can feel my mortality every day. More and more, all the time. I miss my mother, but know she's already lost to me. I wonder if I want kids, but that seems too obvious a destination. I am ripe to fall in love again, if only I were in the mood for it. There's nothing pulling me in any direction at all, or pushing me away.

It all makes me feel like a kid again, in the summertime. Except without the boredom that always drove those days. I just drift along happily, coated in sunshine, inside and out. My skin fascinates me with its softness and my hair is a miraculous silk under my fingers. My toes ask only to wiggle in the grass at the park when there's a chance for it, and the air is so sweet that it seems like a crime not to walk for blocks and blocks breathing it in. No decisions to make, no problems to solve, no responsibilities aside from showing up at work and the occasional tedious household chore, no homework. Just one lovely day after another.

I don't know if it'll be like the real peaches, if I'll remember this wonderful happy time like I remember that afternoon of gorging myself on fruit. It's not the first time in my life that things have been so good, after all. But it's the first time that I think I know it as it's happening, and the first time it feels as vivid and devastatingly beautiful as those peaches were. I think maybe that could be a measure of a good life - like the peaches in reverse. Each truly good thing gets better , the pleasure in it intensifying as time goes by, learning to identify and appreciate the moments that were lost on a younger version of yourself. Maybe.

And maybe it's better to just drift along and savor it leisurely, instead of looking for more. Because of bellyaches, you know. One is enough, every day. A sweet and perfect serving of a rare luxury. Enjoy it now, in case I never drive through this part of the world again at harvest time. That sounds about right.

Well thank goodness Doug is still a Bitch. Thanks, Doug!

I'm thinking I might just say forget it, on the SBD. No one's interested anymore, s there's really no point. If you're really busted up over it, let me know. Somehow I suspect no one's weeping and rending robes.

I don't have anything to bitch about either, except I tried - really, I did - to read Anna Karenina. After much brow-furrowing and concerned contemplation over the book, I come to the following conclusion: I probably would've really liked it if there were about 300-400 pages less of it. I know how cheeky it is of me to be all "Hey Tolstoy, get an editor!" but I can't help it. I couldn't finish it, I just got so thoroughly tired of it. I got at least to page 450(which is just barely over HALF, okay), so it's certainly not like I didn't give it the old college try. Although to be honest, most of my college tries were more like: never reading the book, but paying attention in lecture, then artfully regurgitating/expanding on one of the more esoteric mental meanderings of the professor in an essay and later in the blue book, and then getting an A. But anyway.

So now I'm reading Atonement and so far, so great. Really, his style of writing suits me. It feels like what the inside of my head sounds like most times, if that makes any sense. Which it probably doesn't, but oh well. But it feels very right. I'll let you knowif it winds up totally sucking, or anything like that.

I am also reading this, which is very entertaining.

And if you haven't seen this giggle-worthy moment from the spelling bee, I highly recommend it. Made me smile.

I totally want a beer, but have none in the house. O cruel fates.

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SBD!

Go!
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