A Certain Point of View

I never picked up the oranges on the counter. I just ate them all. I'm not sure what to do with the hanging baskets or the hole in the ceiling.

I finally told my mother I failed my third year orals. She doesn't understand English or art conservation, but she understands a bad grade. She took it rather well. She said I sounded funny for weeks. She took me in her arms (which she hadn't done since January 17, 1994) saying that I was very her own product, her poor caste, her mistakes and faults, her temperament. Me. It wasn't my fault, but hers and papa's.

Her acceptance is both comforting and painful. She tells me she was surprised when I said I wanted to go to college. She didn't think I'd finish. She had not wanted me to go to grad school. She had wanted grandchildren. She has no expectations of me. She still doesn't understand me, her weirdly mannish, bookish child.

My mother is a good Buddhist. She has always accepted that nothing is permanent, and has no attachment to material objects. Favorite toys were given away when I wasn't looking. Favorite dishes were chipped, broken and thrown away. Growing up in wartime Japan, she is afraid of nothing except things that fall from the sky: bird doo, pine cones, bombs. Perhaps art conservation is my way of rebelling? Fighting against the inevitable destruction of anything, anything at all. I am not a good Buddhist.

I am not a conservator, either.

There are so many rules I keep with me:

Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without.
Deal with it, or get over it.
Don't apologize for stuff noone told you.
When all else fails, lower your expectations.
Life's not fair.

But I can't follow my own rules today.

I wish I were a cat. Cats live in the moment and don't worry about the future or the past. Doc, still insisting on his dominance in the house, is curled in the living room on the good sofa, sigh. Jessie is in a sunny square in the tv room, stretched out flat. The fuzzy gray carpet is orangey there and vacuuming does no good. Wyatt and Little Black Kitty are downstairs in the basement room; they get along so long as both are napping. Curly is in the garage, ready and always waiting for company but probably dozing. I can't recall when he's to have his stitches out. I've taken to watching the portable in the garage with him.

Todd informs me that if I don't find a job soon, like five months, we'll have to sell the house. Let's see, since 1997, I've moved from Northridge to WLA, WLA to Las Vegas, Vegas to Delaware, back to Vegas and back to Delaware and back to Vegas, sold the Vegas house and back to WLA and then the house in Rosemead. 1,2,4,6..8 moves in 6 years. If this is supposed to motivate me to get out of bed, it didn't work. Right now I'm mad as hell and ... I really need a nap.

If he's known this all along, why did he blow $300 on a spare cat? Todd lost his cell phone somewhere in the house and bought a new one, which came today Fedex. How much was that?

Why is this my fault? If this was meningitis, would he be saying the same thing?

I don't think I can do museum work right now. I feel I need to stay away from my 'career' and get a GOOD (Get Out Of Debt) job. Temping? Substitute teaching, Todd says.

Two important weddings are coming up. (Hey, I went to a shower yesterday and passed as normal for almost five hours!) He won't begrudge a gift, but I guess I'm wearing the shapeless eggplant dress I bought in college. I married Mr. Generous. Generous but Slightly Stupid. I guess I'm mostly lucky Generous but Stupid married ole Dreary Gloom and Doom. I didn't wanna go shopping, anyway.

My little Wyatt, my good Secret Keeper. Todd and the vet think that you're on Prozac because we've got so many more kitties, but I think it's because I've told you every little thing. I'm sorry, little Wyatt, I've stressed you out. I'm sorry, too, for catching you every morning and evening and cramming that stuff down your throat. Veterinary medication is often scavenged from pediatric medication, Wyatt, and unfortunately your medication is formulated to taste like bananas. Wyatt, I will take my self-absorbed rambling elsewhere and maybe you will return to my armpit at night. I so miss your nose in my ear.

One of my classmates was always late, always. One was bulimic (or at least smelled funny when she came back from the bathroom). One was obsessive-compulsive. Five arranged their clothes in chromatic order. Another was a recovering addict. Three still got spending money from parents. One still lived at home. Another was all light and sunshine to the faculty, even my beloved Director, and said hateful things behind their backs, (oh, I hate a two-face) even my beloved Director. One was a Republican who could never shut up and once told a 'funny' story about yelling at her maid. Still another was so poor, I'd occasionally buy her lunch on fieldtrips when the class went somewhere that was too expensive for her. But I was the one that failed the portfolio and presentation portion of my third year orals. I'm not an art conservator. I failed. I failed the portfolio and presentation portion of my third year orals. They call it a 'conditional pass' but the four-letter word came up anyway: fail. I failed.

Well, I guess it's not really a fail, it really is a 'conditional pass' because I can return and do it again. And I will...soon, in a minute. When I can keep a straight face.

The great thing about America is once I get my degree, I don't hafta admit nuttin' to nobody. But I'm not really that American. I'm still Japanese enough to feel shame. Shame is a recurring theme in Japanese American literature, shame of internment, shame of not getting straight A's, shame of not upholding the family honor. I wrote about shame and JA lit as a senior thesis in college; it was immature, clinical, stupid, and I can write about it with much more clarity now.

Americans don't have a lot of shame, which is probably a strength; our current President brags about getting bad grades in school, women disrobe on 'reality TV' that really shouldn't, my niece would have been called a bastard-child 50, 100 years ago. Shame, for the most part, is a useless and outdated feeling; the US can't be destroyed by one man (despite some real good tries), people should do whatever they damn well want to and I should change the channel, and Aurelia is a bright, funny little girl. There are some who think that shame should be brought back, that shame alone would cut the number of welfare recipients, teen pregnancies, and poor fashion decisions such as the peekaboo thong. Snort.

Anyway, I have lots of shame. Shame about my mental health. Shame about the status of my so-called career. Shame about the state of my affairs, or the lack thereof. Sometimes, I have feelings that I'm not sure are real. Am I really happy? Or is this the meds? Am I really angry? Or is it the meds? But the shame is unmistakably my own emotion. (There are meds for depression, there are meds for broken hearts, but there's not a lot you can do for shame.)

Shame is a weakness, and it is always hard to discuss weaknesses.

My Stupid Mouth by John Mayer

My stupid mouth
Has got me in trouble
I said too much again
To a date over dinner yesterday
And I could see
She was offended
She said "well anyway..."
Just dying for a subject change

Oh, another social casualty
Score one more for me
How could I forget?
Mama said "think before speaking"
No filter in my head
Oh, what's a boy to do
I guess he better find one soon

We bit our lips
She looked out the window
Rolling tiny balls of napkin paper
I played a quick game of chess with the salt and pepper shaker
And I could see clearly
An indelible line was drawn
Between what was good, what just slipped out and what went wrong

Oh, the way she feels about me has changed
Thanks for playing, try again.
How could I forget?
Mama said "think before speaking"
No filter in my head
Oh, what's a boy to do
I guess he better find one

I'm never speaking up again
It only hurts me
I'd rather be a mystery
Than she desert me

Oh I'm never speaking up again
Starting now

One more thing
Why is it my fault?
So maybe I try too hard
But it's all because of this desire
I just wanna be liked
I just wanna be funny
Looks like the jokes on me
So call me captain backfire

Oh, the way she feels about me has changed
Thanks for playing, try again.
How could I forget?
Mama said "think before speaking"
No filter in my head
Oh, what's a boy to do
I guess he better find one

I'm never speaking up again
It only hurts me
I'd rather be a mystery
Than she desert me

Oh I'm never speaking up again
Starting now

Everything seems huge today.

When we moved into the house, there was a hook in the ceiling, and I thought it would be a great place to have a stacked hanging basket for fruit. After almost a year, I finally found a silver stacked-hanging-basket (At a WalMart in Tucson, in all places) and almost two months after I got back from Tucson, hung it. Two weeks after that, I finally tossed some grapefruit and oranges in the hanging basket. So pretty, if a little 1950s. The hook in the ceiling lasted about an hour until it pulled out. The crash was terrific; I'm amazed I didn't lose any dishes that were sitting on the counter. I'm too tired to think about where to put the oranges away now, I just left them in the nice pile they made by themselves, there on the counter, amid the ruined baskets.

The therapist says I should let myself be proud of the things I've still managed to do. Let's see: Curly and Wyatt got their medications every 12 hours (well, more or less) without fail. I've gotten out of bed every day this week. I managed to get my parents to their appointments this week. I managed a couple of dinners waiting for Todd this week. The crowning achievement for the week must have been Wednesday, when Todd locked me into the garage by accident. I was feeding and medicating Curly when Todd came down to visit and say goodbye before he left for work. He locked the garage door by force of habit, which I didn't discover until I was finished tending Curly. (Thank Gawd I wasn't in pajamas. Still, no shoes, no cell phone, no keys, no morning ablutions, and perishable medication rapidly warming in my hands.) After searching his car for his cell phone (no, not there) I found a garage door opener and a knife in my sculpture conservation kit, which I could use to lock Curly into the garage and break the basement window. I even found a glass company that would replace the window cheap that day. Ok, not bad, considering the purple splotches and the headache that hasn't left since Strattera. I promised myself I would establish a work area for myself this week to finish up big projects, though, and that was a top priority that I haven't managed to do yet.

Everything seems huge today.

I have been on Lexapro for a week. We have had five cats for almost a week. What if the purple splotches on my face isn't a side effect...?

Does anybody want a cat?

At the L.A. County Fair, they sell a doormat that reads: Ring the Bell//Win a Cat
I don't think that would deter salesmen, but I may have to pay Fair admission just to find and buy that doormat. Never make threats you can't carry out, I say.

Someone has recently registered their dissatisfaction with me by using my beanbag chair as a toilet. Doc? Jessie? Wyatt, the known offender, now that you're on Prozac, could you have switched from liquid to solid demonstrations? Surely not Little Black Kitty, who never leaves the basement, and definitely not Curly, who is convalescing in the garage.

My affection for Curly grows daily; he has taken to administering 'love-bites.' Todd startles and hollers, but not me. And they are love-bites, we never bleed. Todd maintains that Little Black Kitty gives 'love-bites' too, but when she grips my hand with her claws and bites me, I bleed. I think the difference between 'love-bites' and actual biting must be gauged by the amount of hemorrhaging involved. I am convinced that if Little Black Kitty were bigger, she'd eat me.

I love cats. (They taste like chicken.)

Sometimes it is very very good to be very very angry.

I whacked the shower wall and shook the stopper lever up and down with some violence. The stopper lever dislodged and the Drano dribbled down the drain. That is, the drain was never clogged, and somebody (NOT ME) deployed the drain stopper.

My hand hurt but I took a shower.

The bathtub with the slow drain finally clogged today. Todd was so mad, he told me to take care of it and I hadn't, and now I feel I should clean the whole house before the plumber comes. The plumber is going to be mad because the superstrength Drano has been sitting in the drain, and it hasn't done anything. (The instructions read to leave the stuff there for 15 minutes, 30 minutes "if it is a complete obstruction." (I've left it there for over an hour. )) I'm scared of what the plumber says when I tell him he has to deal with all that caustic material sitting on top of the clog. Can I just tell him to charge me extra?

Reader's Digest won't pay for an anecdote like this, will they?

Psychiatrist advised me to go to the pharmacist and ask for docusate sodium or, um, stool softener. So I went to the pharmacy, where a man and his wife stood behind me, behind the 'privacy line'. The gentleman clearly needed cold medication, poor guy, and his wife was holding Kleenex and a large bag of cough drops.

"Hi, my doctor says I can get docusate sodium without a prescription, cheaper than OTC, may I have a bottle of 100?" I murmur.

And the clerk, a recent immigrant from Asia, calls to the pharmacist "BILL DO WE STOCK STOO' SOF'NER? Or is dat on aisle 5?" (OH, Gawd, I love Alhambra! My husband grew up here and it says so much about my inlaws) The couple behind me chuckles. And I holler back there "Hey, buddy, CAN YA YELL A LITTLE LOUDER? THE CASHIERS IN THE ALHAMBRA STORE DIDN'T HEAR YOU!" The couple is laughing outright now because I'm obviously playing for laughs.

And the clerk looks at me funny and says "I can' tell nobody anything about your medication, missus, dat would biolate you privacy rights and dat unetical."

And then the gentleman behind me shot his coughdrop out his nose. Twing!

This anecdote wouldn't be as funny if I wasn't Asian, too, I know. Todd says I'm a snob because I grew up on the westside of LA. Maybe; I just know this wouldn't happen in Brentwood.

I took my dad to the pharmacy today. When you get older, do you HAVE to take medication? Is it like a rite of passage? Like getting yer driver's license, getting to Third Base, or your first tax audit?

I can't believe that Jack LaLanne just drinks juice. My dad is/was as healthy as a horse and now he's on five different little pills.

I am looking back at my medication notes this evening. Depression may be common, and it may be routinely treatable, but it's all new and exciting to me.

I miss Celexa. Pity it stopped working altogether, I had no side effects, no mood swings, I passed for normal.

Welbutrin was great, but I was covered in raised itchy white spots (Eveywhere! And I mean everywhere!) and pink patches that made me look like a Star Trek alien.

Celexor with speed to wake up and ambien to sleep was ok, but only when I was concious -- I needed a Rube Goldberg device to make sure the wake-up pill actually got into my throat -- too bad. Once, I came home early from school on a Friday, turned on the lights, stuck a dinner in the microwave, turned on the tv, booted up the computer...and woke up Sunday morning!! With everything still running, and keyboard patterns on my face, ouch.

Effexor did nothing except give me constipation and ideas about suicide. (Gee, the constipation wasn't THAT bad.) It is startling when your brain starts telling you about ideas you didn't think you were considering! I was trying to figure out how to paint the downstairs when the idea on the simplest method of offing myself came to the fore. Where did THAT come from?! Ew.

Strattera was the most entertaining, by far. Scary mood swings, (great, now I know what bipolar looks like), constipation (the kind that might actually make you suicidal), headaches in the morning, vomiting by the afternoon, and cystic acne. And all I wanted to do was sleep, no matter how insistent a cat was. And Doc can be pretty insistent... So can Todd. Poor Todd.

I have been on Lexapro for a week. I have big purple blotches like acne, but they're not quite acne... Is this the Strattera still in the system? It's a pretty color. Doctor likes me to stay on something for a month at a time, hooray. Sigh. Where DID I put that magic bullet?

We suddenly have five cats.

I used to worry that I would become the crazy fat cat-lady. By definition, those ladies live in scary messy houses alone; Todd, then, is the one thing that stands between me and becoming the Thing I Fear Most. I must remember to tell him to be extra careful coming home.

This may be Todd's way of getting me out of bed, and it works, but the referreeing is unbearable. The screaming catfights in the living room, rather than the alley, make the ears ring at 2AM. Doc (silver and white) and Wyatt (black and white) are not happy. They've had our undivided attention since their eighth week, but no more. Wyatt began missing the catbox and is on kitten-Prozac. Yup, Wyatt is my own boy. (Why do people spend so much $ on infertility? Because if it's because you want your child to look like you, you're wasting money. Hell, if you adopt a cat, it starts to look like you after a while.) (#1 and #2) At least they still love each other. (I've never seen such devotion in [two cats] before. - Luke Skywalker)

I brought home Jessie (#3) from Tucson. Her girl got into a conservation program in Britain and couldn't take her. (Another small sacrifice for conservation!) Jessie is a marmalade 9 year old, loved all her life, and wouldn't do well in a no-kill shelter. (Oooh, orange females are rare.) Jessie won't hurt anybody, but Doc and Wyatt (mostly Doc) keep picking on her. And Jessie must defend herself, she can't help that. Good girl, Jessie. Thanks for keeping their big ears intact. I must try to be more like Jessie.

And then there's Little Black Kitty, who hung around our yard. Last week, Todd just had her spayed and she's living in the downstairs room until she heals. Turns out that LBK isn't a wee kitten, she's two years old. I think Todd thinks LBK isn't really ours, so long as we don't give her a name. LBK shows love by purring while you pet her and then biting you. Hard. Lovely little cat, no tartar on those teeth, that's fer sure. I wonder what the symptoms for catscratch fever are. (#4) Love sucks when it makes you bleed.

And now there is Big Orange Cat, who hung around Todd's dad's house. Skinny, starved for attention, beaten up a lot and totally bewildered. Poor boy. Todd's dad took him in to get neutered and found out he's four years old, already neutered. And declawed! BOC got a big chunk bitten out of his leg and Todd took him and his oozing wound to the vet. $300 later, BOC came back with a shunt for draining the wound, an Elizabethan collar and lots of medicine. (Did they not hear him when he said that he's a stray?!) Since I've got to call BOC something while I pill him and wash his wound, he's Curly (#5). Big Orange Cat is a medium-hair marmalade, and I say he's Curly. Curly Bill was another enemy of Doc Holliday and Wyatt Earp. It works. Curly answers to his name, already, too. But Curly is so hungry and lonely that he'd answer to "Here, T-bone." (T-Bone was another name - I could see bone and tendon in the wound, yuk - but I hate Seinfeld.)

Five cats is a lot of fur. I should be madder at Todd, but I guess I brought home Doc, Wyatt and Jessie.

Best Friend Mickie says that the thing you love most about a man in the beginning is the thing that repulses you in the end. I knew I really loved Todd five years ago, when I asked him which kitten I could have, the black one or the silver one, and Todd responded "There's only two left? How sad! Get 'em both." And that's the same man who was willing to take Jessie (kicking and screaming) three months ago. And then LBK and Curly too (two in one week, last week, with less kicking and screaming).

It makes me crazy that he loves LBK, the ungrateful little biter. More so than Curly, the desperate but dignified beggar. Curly is more adoptable. LBK is sweet but feral, jumpy; Todd won't give up on her. He loves lost causes: planting fruit trees in sandy soil, recall elections, and stray cats.

Maybe that means he won't give up on me, either. I must tell Mickie that sometimes the thing that you loathe about a man ends up being the thing that saves your life.

Does anybody want a cat?

I have big red/purple spots this morning. Painful ones. The headache I've been nursing since I started Lexapro is still here, too. I think I wished for little purple spots a while ago. I take it all back. Note to self: Depression can, in fact, give you little purple spots.

Pimples suck. Gray hair and pimples really suck.

One thing about gaining weight as you get older, the wrinkles get stretched out. Otherwise I would have pimples, gray hair, and wrinkles.

Gee, and some people have the nerve to wonder why I'm in therapy.

What if lettuce is actually fattening, and that's why models are bulimic? What if black is actually white? There was good in Darth Vader after all, after all. But I don't wanna be redeemed by someone else like a coupon.

What if I'm not actually depressed, but everyone else is just waaaaay too happy? Is it rational to be happy? There was a song on NPR I heard only twice, but the chorus was "There's a hole in the ozone the size of Brazil, why am I painting my living room?"

At Disneyland, if you have a cast or you're in a wheelchair, you can get moved to the head of the line. If you have tonsillitis, you get ice cream.

You don't get anything if you're depressed. Except maybe little purple spots.

No fair.

I couldn't remember when my therapy appointment was. I remembered when I pulled laundry out of the dryer. Remarkable what happens when blood from your ass rushes to your brain.

Took a blood test (boy, was that expensive) and found out my glands are working fine and I've got no difficientcies. For all that money, I would have been spiffed if they'd found something. Oh, wait, science says that a negative finding is just as significant as a positive. Great.

Diabetics have little test kits to see if they're ok. Everybody believes them when they tell people it's medical. Depressives should have one, too. A lot of people don't believe depression is medical, but rather just weird or (worse) lazy. Someetimes, I don't realize I'm slow and stupid until after I get my grades back. Sometimes, I don't know if I'm feeling bad because I'm tired (damn that David Lettterman) or because I'm actually malfunctioning. I sort of envision a sort of dipstick to be kept in the ear canal, and you can just pull it out by the handle and check your serotonin levels, etc.

Depression is just not a cool mental illness because you look about the same most of the time. No thrashing, fainting, little red spots; just lots of drama that gets old quick. And then "Oh, s/he seemed nice, very quiet. Kept to him/herself. Who knew they were capable of something like that?"

By the way, commercials for antidepressants should be flashier. It is hard to identify with an unhappy bouncing cartoon ball hiding under a rock (Zoloft).

I have been told I am obsessive.

So what?! Obsession is just passion without the commercial breaks. Does progress happen because of a passing fancy? Did the Wright Brothers obsess, or run around flapping their arms for a hobby? ("Is THAT all you do? Bird impressions?")

Saw two good bumper stickers today: "Well behaved women rarely make history." Gee, if that's true, I should see stigmata any day now.

"It's not how good you are, but how bad you want it. 'No Fear' " This would be reassuring, if I didn't need a nap so badly right now.

A Japanese exchange student was on flight 93. He's an American hero, whether he wanted to be or not. Being dead, he probably doesn't know or care. His mother was quoted as saying she would have chosen that he live long, be stupid and ordinary and die in happy anonymity.

As I live my "verdictless life" (John Mayer) I envy those who have made their mark, even the ones who died messily in the process. It must be nice to have part of your epitaph written, a major accomplishment under yer belt. I can't eat fame, I don't wanna die, but I would prefer to live loudly and die quickly. If I was planning a suicide (I'm not, but thanks for wondering) I'd blow myself up, so that people could see/hear/feel me leaving, a real multi sensory experience. (I could easily kill myself by using Todd's belt off the second story stair landing, but no one would notice I had gone (bad) the thrashing would scare the cats (very bad), and someone would have to cut me down (Meiwaku, very very bad)) Since I haven't made much of a contribution to society yet, I guess I still hafta pay attention and keep worrying about whether I'm doing this right.

Conversely, I suppose if I was on flight 93, or another wrong place, wrong time, I would be more concerned about dying on my own $%^&*#$ terms rather than making a stand for America or whether I'd be remembered and how I'd be remembered. And I'd be really mad about missing Star Wars Episode III and Harry Potter books 6-7. Yup, I still gotta pay attention.

Somehow, this is all related to how I feel about pollock. Pollock fish are used to make imitation crab, and I have always felt sorry for pollock because they die for us so we can eat them but we don't even call them pollock, or crab, but 'imitation crab' or 'Krabb.' And their deaths don't prevent the killling of actual crabs, either, but just save some Japanese buffet-restaurant owner some money.

They say that girls often fantasize about rape because it's sex-without-guilt; maybe I fantasize about suicide-without-guilt, or life/death-with-purpose.

"It's not my fault!" -Han Solo

I hope I die well. Hell, I hope I live well.

"I felt a disturbance in the Force, as if millions of people cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. I fear something terrible has happened." Obi-Wan Kenobi

September 11, 2001 was started out as a horrible day. I was in Wilmington Delaware and I woke up late. I was supposed to help teach Preventive Conservation to undergrads and I was late. I listened to the TV as I got dressed, and it was a slow news day, because I learned that Miss America contestants were arriving in Atlantic City. Yawn. I will always associate Miss America with terrorists; an interesting juxtaposition. I drove to UD too fast with the radio too loud and found out I was not expected quite so early. (Graduate school will be remembered by me as a time when extra efforts often go unnoticed but the trivial errors get heavy scrutiny) I was helping prepare for the class when Debbie Hess Norris told us about the first plane. She would interrupt class later and tell us about the second. And the third. And the fourth. Bruno Pouliot pressed on, teaching, (valiant AND annoying, who knew such a combination was possible) but I don't think anybody listened. Debbie kept running in and out with updates, for which I was both grateful and angry. It wasn't a slow news day any more. And the day got weirder and weirder.

I got weirder and weirder. I didn't know it then, but I had clinical depression. It wasn't really my fault I was always late. It wasn't my imagination that everything I did and thought was taking longer, like running through water. iThe day the Challenger exploded, I cried. Images of the two pronged cloud still make me teary. But September 11, I did not cry. I was appalled, I was shocked, I was maybe even scared, but not moved to tears, glued to the TV set. Maybe I couldn't quite wrap my brain around such loss. Maybe I'm a lucky jerk because no one I knew personally died that day. Maybe it wasn't real enough, having driven past the WTC once or twice, but never visited.

A lot of people died that day. A lot of people die every day. A lot of people worked at the WTC. A lot of people fly a lot. But a lot of people were there for meetings, or were on school field trips and were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Is it worse if lots of peole die in a terrorist attack versus a natural disaster /accident? Both are pointless and senseless. At least survivors can rage at terrorists and sort of feel better in their hate?

Princess Diana and JFK Jr., money, power and looks notwithstanding, died early and messily, so what's preventing us from doing the same?!

"Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering." Yoda

I can't recall if I cried January 17, 1994. That was real. I remember I didn't talk for a whole week and my parents got worried. I remember I had nothing very important to say. The Northridge earthquake taught me that life is short. No body gets remembered for having a clean house, or having a high GPA. Somebody gets to be remembered for being Miss America, but what about the rest of us?

I find myself looking forward to September 11. For three years running, every 9/11, someone I've lost touch with gets a hold of me. Because they were wondering how I was doing. Because they missed me. Because life is short and you might get hit by a bus tomorrow. I drove extra politely today. I called two people I haven't talked to in a while today. Random people were extra nice to me today. I was extra nice today, too. A lot of blood was donated today. Money was donated to places today. Life is short.

September 11 will probably become like December 6. The self righteous bible-thumping will ease, maybe. No banks will close, but flags will wave and a lot of middle eastern kids will get beaten up in school annually, the way i got picked on every December 6. Only a finite number of people will remember the dead, but everybody will remember the disaster. Hooray, let's never forget the actions of terrorists. God Bless America (Isn't that the sentiment that started all this?) and all that rot. Me, I'm gonna try and remember that life is short.

A good quote, and not even related to Star Wars.

"Those who wander are not always lost." J.R.R. Tolkien.

Star Wars can be found everywhere in my life, if you look hard enough.

For example, about my car:
"You came in that thing? You're braver than I thought." - Princess Leia

"Not Myself" by John Mayer

Suppose I said
I am on my best behavior
And there are times
I lose my worried mind
Would you want me when I'm not myself?
Wait it out while I am someone else?
Suppose I said
Colors change for no good reason
And words will go
From poetry to prose
Would you want me when I'm not myself?
Wait it out while I am someone else?
And I, in time, will come around
I always do for you
Suppose I said
You're my saving grace?


John Mayer won a Grammy, darn. I am suffering again from that desire to listen to/follow/admire a recording artist who is fashionably obscure. It's wrong of me to wish for him to stay obscure. At least I can admire his most obscure songs. Or the ones that nail my experience like a moth on a specimen pin.

Anyway, Jason Mraz is an idiot, and he's obscure.

You know, on the bright side, there are significant advantages to electing a governor who is actually known to be a lousy actor.