last night while waiting for my sister to show up, i fell asleep face down on this cordouroy pillow i have named tim. when kristi buzzed me, i stumbled to the door and flung it open and she said "what the hell happened to your face? looks like you and tim got into a fight." i had scarface sweeping across my cheeks and forehead in a stripy pattern. it took 20 minutes with the aid of hot water and vigorous rubbing to erase the marks. that happens to me alot. i sleep like i am heavily drugged. i am scarface.

reading this poorly written vampire novel, on page thirty with no believable plot is sight. i know i know, believable schlemievable. all vampire books are a stretch, right? even though this one sucks, it is way better than that romance series of vampire books that i guiltily read, called something like, "his immortal embrace." bleck!

chris is out of town for a few days to see his dying grandfather. drove him to the airport at 4:30am and the only thing i could think of as i was driving back was "i need a chocolate croissant." cold-hearted to be sure. i caught the early bus to work to be sure to get one and the coffee shop was out. brutal.

obsessively sniffing. can feel sort of a scabbed up bit of booger inside my left nostril and it sort of pulls at the inside of my nose when i sniff. i don't want to pick at it because then it might bleed and take even longer to heal. but my nature is, of course, to dig in and root out the truffle like a pig. agh!

riding the bus to work one morning, i was delighted to find i was the only passenger. i sat in my favorite seat, halfway back, and put my foot up on the tire hump. i dug out my book and sunk deeply into a mass transit induced hypnotic state. the bus pulled up to a stop with a large woman and her many bags, and she boarded, huffing and puffing. she moved very slowly, appraising all of her many choices of seats. i figured, what with all her crap, she'd sit up front and sort of spread out. but instead, she walked directly up to my row, gave me the once over, and nestled herself in right beside me, pushing me over with her girth, and trying to squeeze all of her bags into the seats with us. i am normally a pretty claustrophobic person and i also happen to generally not like people, especially if they are in my immediate space. basically, if i can feel, or in any way smell, their breath, i freak out. this lady didn't know this, but why had she chosen to sit right next to the only other person on the bus besides her? why? i didn't feel like i could move without deeply offending her, although looking back, i don't know why i cared. i was so uncomfortable that not only was my skin crawling, but i was almost losing control of my bladder. her bags were plastic and damp, smelling of the mystery food probably stashed deep and rotting within them. she was still panting heavily, and an oily smell was emmenating from her...well...from HER. i flipped out. i let out a small "aaaaa..." which involuntarily rose in pitch and volume until it was way louder than polite conversation would allow an offended noise to be. i sort of jumped straight up and clambored over the seat in front of me. her massive thigh sort of oozed into the space that i had just occupied. she grunted. i kicked my backpack up the aisle and clutched my books as i breathlessly told the driver to stop asap. i had to get off this bus and start my decontamination process. i felt like an ass, but obsessive-compulsive disorder waits for no social niceties. i just do what i have to do.

i grew up on a farm in rural minnesota. there was more than one "chicken incident" when i was a kid. i want to like chickens, but because i was chased around my own yard by a murderous hen who wanted nothing more than to peck out my eyes, i have a slight phobia about them up close and personal. one of my secret pleasures was to hang out when my grandfather was butchering them and sort of...play with the heads. sometimes the beaks would open and close on the disembodied heads and i thought that was the greatest. there were also a few times, although i don't remember each specific incident, where the chicken would fall off the block and run around for a while with no head, which was also pretty gruesome but cool to a farm kid. those chickens that my grandfather cooked every sunday were the best chickens i have ever tasted. the only time i ever really like them was when we got the chicks in the spring. there were boxes and boxes of tiny yellow cheeping puffballs all begging to be held. my mom would always bring a bunch of them to my classroom at school and i was the most popular girl for the day. some little pansy city girl would always want to hold one of the baby chickens and then completely flip out when she realized it had sharp claws or crapped on her hand or something. that made me feel tough.

last night i dreamt that my tattoo artist gave me an infectious vampire hickey on the back of my neck. in order to hide it, i put a flesh colored bandage over it. i went home and began to get ready for bed. chris yelled, "what is that on your back?" and i thought "oh crap, he knows i'm a vampire now." but he was really talking about the enormous pen drawing that had been done in tattoo style on my back. it said "FIFTIES STRIPPERS BREAK MY HEART" and underneath the letters was a picture of a stripper from the 50's. we worked hard to wash it off, but it had been drawn with so much force that it sort of scarred onto my back...unfortunately, when i woke up this morning, i hadn't been made into a vampire by my tattoo guy. but luckily, no pen version of a stocky cupcake was carved into my back either.

i love my dog jake and here's why:

when we first brought him home from the humane society, we were so excited. here was a Constant Companion, a creature to love us unconditionally, caring not about whether we put the milk container back in the fridge when it was empty, or forgot to pay the water bill for three months. to be loyal, and come when we called his name. it was all so very american dreamy that in retrospect it sort of makes me gag. but that is neither here nor there. we loved him, robert and i, and we found it difficult to leave the house at all, for fear we would miss something cute that jake might do. in one extreme instance of this overprotective maternal manifestation, i actually left my little sister at the emergency room all by herself, in pain, holding a soggy washcloth on the edge of her eye, where she had developed an unfortunate wind blister, causing her so much distress that she ended up having me take her to the er, as i've said, and then after almost an hour, i lept up when i realized that the puppy had been by himself for all that time, and was probably dying of loneliness right then and there, and i left kristi and rushed home and bundled jake into my arms, all squirmy and not the least bit upset at all, really.

am i the only person who thinks that 'alien' should be retitled 'that darn cat?'

okay, story time:
when i was seven, i found a squirrel frozen solid in a snowbank in the woods. my little sister and i took it into my dad's workshop, which was heated by a wood burning stove, with the brilliant plan to heat up the rodent (reanimating it), and then have it be our best friend. i was dr. frankenstein and my sister was igor. "find me a piece of cardboard!" i roared, and she hustled around, snowpants soggily weighing her down, slowly becoming covered with gobs of the sawdust she was rooting around in. i wrapped the squirrel in a shop rag with just its head sticking out, and placed it reverently on the edge of the stove, thinking that it was hot enough there to fry an egg, but if i just stayed vigilant and kept turning it over often enough, it would soon awaken from it's frozen slumber. my sister dripped silently next to me as we watched the squirrel melt into a rancid puddle of fur and putrefication. this was not going at all the way i had planned. we were pretty grossed out. my dad finally stomped in, covered with the snow he had been plowing, took one look at the freaky little experiment going on in his workspace, picked up the rag-wrapped rodent, or what was left of it, pitched it back out into the snowbank, and then stood at the door, holding it open, pointing outside. alas, we were to make no squirrel zombie friends that day.

god i almost forgot to mention that this random person sent me a fan-flipping-tastic two-page email about my meatloaf comment.

man, i love it when people show their work.

i got up quickly and vaulted over adam and a pile of coats and bags as i watched aysha walk towards the restroom. thinking i would follow her into the stall and pretend she wasn't there or just try to startle her and make her laugh, i boogied as fast as my clunky heels would take me. i heard the clicking of the beaded curtain near one of the restrooms, so i followed suit and raced into the alcove. a hand was just shutting the door from the inside. i placed my own hand on the outside of the door and pushed. hard. the door went flying open backwards into the stall and a surprised looking girl who was not aysha staggered backwards, her mouth open. i still had a mischievous grin on my face, and was about to do something lewd, like grab my breasts and stick out my tongue, when i realized that this girl was not anyone i knew, and she had a look that equaled 'restraining order.' i gushed that i was sorry and mumbled something about how i hadn't seen her go in there, and she just looked at me and said, "That's okay, it happens... i guess."

i had my first krispy kreme donut right out of the vat of oil the other day. the lady working behind the counter was just handing them out, it was really great. the long line of people in front of us were literally fighting with each other over who got the most recently created gut bombs. arms outstretched, money clutched in plump sweaty fingers, the whole lot of them were impatient, short, and rolly polly. watching them clambering up the effectively designed glass display case, which kept anyone from actually vaulting over the counter and into the deep fry area, but in a tasteful way, i thought. chris and i ate our complimentary glazed donuts and then, satiated, decided to leave the wrestling to those who were clearly more motivated to do so...

what else...some lady, unhappy with her life, put her feet up on the chair in front of her at the movie theater on halloween and refused to let three of us by her. i don't know for sure that she is unhappy with her life, as she never said a word, just stared obstinately at the rolling credits, oblivious to our at first polite and increasingly louder and more harsh inquiries for her to move her legs, her husband sitting silently on her other side, the two of them complicit in a grandiose display of text-book passive-aggressive behavior. i eventually, being the first person in line, and not hip to her little game, just climbed over the seats in front of them and escaped to the aisle. eddy made it past her eventually with a resounding 'jesus christ!' which made me realize that their antisocial behavior was directed at us personally. kate just stared at her and said 'hey, i didn't get up during the movie. you don't have to do this to me.' or something along those lines. we laughed and laughed. they had obviously planned this and had been thinking about it ever since i got up(only once because my bladder was about to explode) to use the restroom. beware, you social heathens! do not enter the city or any public place, for that matter, if you do not wish to have any human contact which may inconvenience you. you will be mocked mercilessly if you do not heed this warning!!

ha ha ha!!(swoosh of black cape, fold into misty night, cue the baying hound)

"what's ostensibly mean again?" kristi asked me as i stuffed a huge fork full of ceasar salad into my mouth.

"what do you think it means?" i said, chewing.

"why don't you just tell me?"

"well, i-"

"excuse me, i couldn't help but overhear your conversation and i just wanted to let you know that the meaning of the word 'ostensibly' means 'to pretend.'" some hey guy('hey guy' here means anyone you'd probably only address as 'hey guy.' like say someone cut in front of you in line at the grocery store. you might be inclined, as i would be, to exclaim, 'hey guy! back of the line!' you see?) had materialized in front of us, clutching his copy of 'best true business crime writing 2000.' we stared, hamster-cheeked and wide-eyed. my sister squinted at him.

"excuse me?" she said through a bite of pepperoni pizza.

he looked at her, studying, quite rudely, really, when you think about it, i mean, who likes to be stared at by a complete stranger while they're eating? unless they're on a date, but that's different. i digress.

"are you stoned?" he asked her.

"are you?" she lobbed back.

"i'll leave you alone now." he scampered off to the front counter, leaving us in a state of 'what the hell just happened here?'

"thanks for the vocabulary lesson." i whispered, sending my sister into a fit of giggles.

"how did he hear us? he was all the way over there." she pointed and waved to the other side of the room.

"well, your voice does carry."

"oh god."

the thing of course was that he didn't even really know what the word meant, obviously. he was ostensibly pulling it out of his ass, is what was happening. even kristi, who had initiated the conversation, knew that whatever he was saying was of dubious credibility.

and then he was back, holding a pizza box with his book on top. "another good word is 'nefarious.'"

my sister cringed, thinking he meant it as an adjective about her disposition, but then he continued as he spun out the front door, pizza box wobbling: "as in, 'our nefarious president has only made the worst...'" and that was it. the door closed as he walked briskly away, still talking to himself. kristi stared after him, and thought to shout only after the door had closed, "thank you mr. dictionary!"

chris and i went car camping over the weekend. we got together a bunch of blankets, sleeping bags, and my body pillow named tim, and i vacuumed the dog hair out of the back of the station wagon, and bought a box full of snacks and we were ready for an outdoor adventure. we ended up staying in two hotels when we were unable to find a suitable campground or even a place to park. chris really wanted to cook fish in tin foil in a campfire, so that made just parking in a parking lot unacceptable. but all the campgrounds that were open were rv places populated by scary looking people. i did get to take a nap in the nest i had fashioned in the back of the car at a rest stop, while chris read and listened to the waves slosh on the shore. it was the best nap ever! i awoke as scarface, with tim's corduroy print smashed into my face. chris reiterated how much he'd like to cook some fish in some tin foil. "where are we going to get the fish?" i asked him. "safeway," he answered. i groaned. "you know, it's not going to be very fresh if we get it from safeway. don't you think we could find fresher fish? i mean, we're on the goddamnmotherfucking coast." chris laughed and said it was time to go, as i was cursing like a sailor.

at the same rest area, i was sort of coerced into driving the two hours to mount saint helens. i walked into the little info booth to get a map of the area, and the little old lady working in there was chatting away and foisting brochures at someone else. as the person turned to leave, chris' ears pricked up and he caught the info lady's chat vibe and hightailed it back out to the car. so i turned around with a map of some dopey tourist thing to show him, and instead, the chatty lady was standing in front of me, and although she only came up to my boob level, she was still rather intimidating. she asked where we were headed and i said i didn't know and she ran out to her truck to get her binoculars so i could catch a glimpse of the volcano. then she opened some maps and cursed her arthritis and strongly suggested that if we had the time we should drive up there since it was such a beautiful day and all. i wriggled away and found chris in the car, and informed him of the lady's plans for us. so we drove up there. it was chilly and almost the end of the season, and the interpretation center was pretty deserted. we walked up the path to a splendid view of the inside of the crater and listened to the wind do it's slow erosion work. it was pretty silent, and panoramic, and a little scary. i was thinking about the big picture, how little we were and how grand the earth is and mother nature and existentialism and all that crap. i turned to chris and saw a thoughtful expression on his face. then he turned to me and said, "this would be a great place to hide a dead body."

we went hot tubbing in the outdoor area of our second hotel. there was a cover, but it didn't keep out all the leaves and insects. when chris turned on the bubble jets, it was like sitting in a bug frappe.

our last hour or so in astoria, we hit an antique shop for the second time that day. earlier, i had bought a few old circa 1960s photos of a large lady in a nurses uniform standing with a german shepard outfitted with a head bandage. they were expensive, but they are the best pictures ever. chris had seen this patch made "in country" during the vietnam war. pretty vague description of who it belonged to or who made it or what for, but that is neither here nor there. the patch itself is what i want to talk about. it is bad ass. in fact, it is the baddest ass ever. it is bright yellow. it has a skull on it. with wings. black wings. the skull has fangs dripping with blood. the eyes are tilted way upward, to give it an evil glare. there is a dagger jabbed into the top of the bleeding, flying, fanged skull. it looks exactly like what someone in 7th or 8th grade would draw on their book cover or on their algebra notebook. so our second trip to the antique store was for chris to buy the skull patch. the next day we took turns sewing it onto his shoulder bag with thimbles made out of masking tape. his bag looks tough. and bad ass. man, i love that skull patch.

"i think i'm over the whole bedbug thing," i tell my friend eddy while we are shelving. "i don't get all itchy when i get in bed anymore. my obsession is over."

he doesn't look at me but says: "don't worry, something else will be along shortly to take their place." the implication of course being that i must be obsessed with something at all times.

"are you saying that i'm damaged?" i pull a bunch of world war two books that are crowded together to the point of combustion.

"no, i'm merely saying that...well..."

it's okay eddy. i'm a nut.

last night i finished a book that was really well written and intelligent and funny, and the last four pages were totally devastating and brutal, and i cried. for real. actual tears over a book. okay, i'll tell you what the book was, but not the devastating part. population:485. it's about a small town emt/firefighter guy in wisconsin. i know you are dying to know what happened, so i'll tell you now that if you want to read the book, skip the next couple of lines. his little brother had gotten married seven weeks before the day of the incident. the day in question, he got a call to come to a car accident. his little brother came with. the victim was his new wife, who died on the scene. i can't imagine anything more horrifying than answering an emergency call and having the dead person be one of your immediate family members. so i held mr. fuzzy, my stuffed koala, and stared at the ceiling and felt sadness for all these people that i would never know. and i cried.

then i told chris stories at his request as i was falling asleep and he was working on a friend's computer. this is what i came up with:

my mom used to help me put together model dinosaurs. i loved them so much,and would try really hard to put them together correctly, and would get really upset when the parts didn't match up. i probably threw fits. which is probably why she helped me. to avoid the compulsive freak out that was only a deep breath away. so anyway, i was building the biggest dinosaur ever. it was a brontosaurus: pointy, brown, plastic parts slowly resembling a big pile of sharp, sticky crap. mom had to hold the final leg in place with superglue to help keep the wobbly guy from collapsing. when it had dried, she relaxed her grip, but the stumpy bronto-leg held fast to her thumb. the superglue had oozed over the edge of my dinosaur's knobby knee and grafted itself onto my mom's hand. xenotransplantation has always fascinated me, i always kind of wanted a monkey tail. but my mom didn't like any of this at all. she panicked, ran to the bathroom to run hot water over her hand, which of course, didn't do anything except maybe give her first degree burns. man, superglue truly is great. it really is the glue of the future. with the model hanging off of her hand, mom decided to use brute force. she grabbed a hammer, and started tapping on the leg. it didn't do anything, so she started hitting it harder. eventually, the leg cracked and and the brontosaurus came flying off, but the lower leg was still stuck fast to my mom's hand. she kept pounding away at it, amazingly never hitting herself very hard with the hammer, but i don't really remember how she got the remainder of the toy unstuck from her thumb. i think a steel nail file was eventually employed and there was much cursing under her breath and laughter from my father. i wonder what happened to that model dinosaur...

feel dumb about calling in sick yesterday, but the pain was real! i wore the wrong shoes for eight hours of shelving, and then also twisted my foot or possibly missed a step somewhere and landed hard on it and could barely stand up by the end of the day. then, like a moron, i went to help my sister collate a 96 page birthing booklet with out changing my footwear. whoa! a whopping total of 12 hours on cement floors wearing shoes with no cushion or support! so when i woke up the next day, i sort of hobbled around my apartment and realized i probably couldn't even stand long enough to take a shower and thusly, called in with sore feet. it sounds so lame. it is so lame. i am the biggest wussie.

waiting at the dmv the other day, a guy rolls in on his motorized wheelchair and parks himself in the middle of the room. he is severely crinkled and looks like he can barely move. he also has a stack of empty coffee cups on his little tray. i'm thinking that maybe he needs help, but doesn't seem to be trying to get anyone's attention and so i just go back to reading my book like the jerk i am. five minutes go by and then a guy working behind the counter comes over to the wheelchair man and puts his hand on his shoulder and addresses the rest of the room: "Hey everybody. This is Melvin. He sells coffee for Seattle's Best on the fly. If you would like to buy some from him, you just put the money in the box and help yourself to the coffee on the back of his chair here. He's also got some muffins here he'd be happy to sell you." a lady gets up and says she'd like some and has an awkward little interaction with melvin, as she is trying to talk to him and he can't really speak so just sort of grunts and moans and she responds as if he is making all the sense in the world and i am staring at the saran-wrapped little muffins in the plexiglass tray in front of melvin and i'm thinking that not only does it display his pastries well, but it also keeps him from falling out of his chair, he is really that impaired. the lady is still very valiantly trying to hold a conversation with melvin, and all of this is starting to get to me and my heart is feeling a little crackly and so i am relieved when my name is called and i get to have my picture taken and when i get my license back you can't tell that i've just been tearing up.

how many times can you eat meatloaf in a month before you probably shouldn't eat any more?

if anyone wants to email me, my address is ohthedrama2003@yahoo.com

"yesterday i did a load of clothes and someones stuff was in the dryer so i left my basket there. when i came home my stuff was dry. weird. should i check for missing panties? i mean i just don't know who these guys are. "

emails like this are why i love my sister...

i had totally forgotten about this: a few weeks ago i was at my friend brendan's house and he was making us dinner and the rest of us were horsing around in the living room, acting like 6 year olds, well, okay, maybe it was only me. i was acting like a 6 year old. so i grabbed brendan and sort of mock-tangoed him across the dining room and when we got to the vast carpety expanse of the living room with an audience(!), i dramatically, but without warning him, dipped myself. i leaned way back and felt him shake with the unexpected weight of my limp body, and then i felt him lose his grip and drop me. on my head. and then he lost his balance and squashed me. full contact, right on the lungs. my breath left me and my head throbbed and brendan flushed red and went back into the kitchen to check the spaghetti. but no concussion, thank god. there is shag carpeting in the living room, which i am sure broke my fall, and allowed me to keep the integrity of my head shape intact, but that's about all...

so i went to see my dog the other day and as i walked up to the house, i noticed that the front door frame was lying in the garden and the door itself, sans the glass that made up the top half of it, was leaning against the front porch. jake is a 70 pound dog, and he usually works himself up into a frenzy whenever someone comes to the door, especially the mailman. he'll throw himself against the thing barking and drooling until the person is let in or runs away. robert told me that the other day he got a running start at the front door and shot like a bullet through the glass at someone's approach. i can't think of too many things scarier than seeing a cujo sized crazed dog come flying through someone's front door. these are the things that lawsuits are made of. i guess jake didn't get hurt, he just shook it off. and i'm not sure who was coming up to the house, but i'm sure they shit their pants and probably won't be coming back. robert replaced the door with one that doesn't have any glass. jake still tosses himself against it, but that's okay.

have you ever taken a huge goat cheese like crap, and then, knowing you're going to have a messy clean up session with your ass, very carefully start to deal with the delicate procedure, and find, to your utter horror and sense of civilized refinement and decorum, that there is a chunk of human poop stuck to your backside, and, feeling it there, like a bug in your mouth where it shouldn't belong, you freak out and somehow fling the offending piece of turd to the floor, where it stares up at you from between your shoes with a knowing look? no? me either.

stale cookies for breakfast. not exactly the life i had envisioned for myself when i was fresh out of school. i imagined, of course, like who doesn't, that i would have a personal chef and a marble countertop in the enormous kitchen and a jumbo sized meat thermometer for the pot roasts that my personal chef would make. but alas, i have only a tiny meat thermometer that i use to check the internal temperature of my sad little meatloaves myself, trying to hide the fact that i have used wonderbread or the 53 cent white bread from winco or whatever as the filler. i guess it's a good thing that i don't have a personal chef, because there is no way that two people could ever really be in that kitchen at the same time. it's a micro kitchen, really. i also envisioned huge windows overlooking central park or fifth avenue, but then i realized that i'd actually have to move to new york, just for starters, and i'd probably have to get a degree in something useful or start humping people in powerful positions in order to make that dream happen. so instead, i keep my dignity, sort of, and sit in my little apartment with nice normal sized windows that overlook the dumpster behind my building. there is a tree in our courtyard that touches my window with it's ephemeral leafy fingers, small miracle. it kind of makes it all worth it.

you must all check out tardblog.com.

twice now i have seen a miniature version of me on the bus. both times she was wearing my standard green cargo pants and a black shirt. she has my haircut, my eyebrows, my slightly irritated stare. but she only comes up to about my sternum. she's tiny. and i'm pretty small to begin with. i wonder if i should talk to her. does she notice the sameness of our appearances? or am i seeing a pattern that isn't there because i still so desperately want to fit in, just like back when we were all teenagers? she gets off at fifth avenue. i wonder where she goes...

maybe i've got intestinal parasites. wouldn't that be gross?

well, the tension has hit a breaking point in my rumbly tumbly. i was shelving in popular library and chris came up behind me and said, "just give up on the socks, angela," referring to my outburst this morning when i couldn't find a specific pair of socks that i wanted and made myself late for work emptying out my dresser drawer and piling all the socks on the floor. he laughed and i jumped up and yelped like a damn dog, startled and strung out. "was that really necessary?" i snarled. "you're lucky i didn't punch you in the face." "you're pretty tense." "it's true." as i was warming up to that idea, i attempted a muppet face, and it only brought the smallest of smiles. oh well.

a toast: to red meat!

...la la la...

where is chris? oh where is he?

again with the trouble in tummy land. what is up with that? it's gotta be the cheetos. i was thinking about my chronic stomach problems from a few years back, and hoping that the medication i take is still enough to fight off the constant churning. maybe it's a sign from my subconscious that something is terribly terribly amis. did i spell that right? does it matter? ahh...feel like a 6 year old today, probably going to throw a massive tantrum later, i've been feeling the anger build up in me for the last few days, all i need is an excuse to freak out. i wonder who will bear the unfortunate weight of my spaz attack...duck and cover my friends, duck and cover. stop drop and roll. oooh. wow. it's really time to go.

trying to write about my mom's adventures at the drag show we took her to, but here in periodical land, there is great demand for my microfilm machine expertise. so, i tutor grown women in how to thread film into the machine and run down the controls and behold! it really is as simple as that! and yet they are amazed.

winning title from today: "how to catch crabs" i love that.

trying not to touch my face with my gross hands. don't believe how icky materials get here. my fingers were black after only one hour of shelving. that never fails to repulse me.

i think my pug dog enthusiasm is waning. need help.

stomach producing many ounces of acid, eating my gut from inside...when your body turns on you...why? the thought of ingesting any coffee makes me queasy. like i'm about to board a plane. yes, that's what this is. flying day apprehension. but since i don't have a plane ticket to anywhere, it must be about something else. i wonder what. maybe it's because i've been forgetting to take my pills at the right times and in the right order. and also my hysterical womb shrieking at me for more cheetos and rootbeer and to get my ass back in bed. ugh. i've gotta tell you, i don't feel very funny at all. chris didn't sleep last night, stayed up in the bathroom reading flatland so as to not wake me. poor snooter. weekend looking bleak, if i don't feel any better. want to keel over. oh bleck!

winning title from yesterday: "compendium of pea diseases"

saw puppies in the park surrounded by street kids. lots of black rubber bracelets and swearing. i wonder if the puppies would have that new puppy smell? they should bottle that.

actually, now that i think about it, i've really got nothing to say.

saturday, in chronological order:
1. helping my sister at a photo shoot where the hypertrophic sunflower she was hunched over spilled it's earwig stowaways onto her legs, causing interesting but horrifying noises from both of us.
2. copying down another 100 addresses for my friend david, who hasn't updated his address book in at least five years and has collected multiple piles of cocktail napkins with scrawled names and numbers. i have catalogged maybe 300 or so names thus far.
3. coffee with my boyfriend's ex-girlfriend, to dispell some of the mythic proportions that we had built each other up to, and subsequently showing her a house occupied by my sister's extremely recent ex-boyfriend, in the hopes that they can find a roommate situation between them that would be mutually and financially beneficial, while he wasn't at home.
4. having the ex-girlfriend then call me "sweetie" when she called me later that afternoon.
5. having beer with my sister and her high school boyfriend, who recently married, bought a house, and got a dog, who made a cameo, the dog, and is named "jet" and is only six months old and so still retains that "new dog" smell that you get from inhaling deeply with your nose buried in a puppy's fur.
6. letting my sister, albiet unknowingly, operate heavy, expensive machinery after having four beers in the sun dappled afternoon, and spiriting away many many copies from an ancient copy machine that gets so hot it almost smokes but, well, i have to be able to publish somehow.
7. reading a comic book based on not only the jack the ripper murders, but also on a hit television series called "CSI" while taking a bath in my boyfriend's enormous luxury tub, and sort of liking it.

things that kept me awake last night, in alphabetical order:
1. ceiling fan motor
2. neighbors in the courtyard
3. rain
4. tossing and turning

okay, cheeseball vampire novel in hand, i finish out a night at the humanities north desk. uneventful in a security guard sense of the word. finished my zine. guess i'll distribute next week. remember to take some to reading frenzy and send one to punk planet.

boring minutia aside, vampires are the coolest, n'est ce pas? all that girly lace over bare white chests and whatnot...sculpted cheekbones and a knowledge of wine...kind of makes up for the neck sucking...maybe...why is it that all women who write vampire books do so with an erotic edge and all men go for the 'alternative history' thing?

i woke up this morning with a huge sheet crease on my face, traveling right over my mouth and onto my neck. chris woke up and said, "i love you, scarface." it was the best first sentence of the day ever. i felt like a real pirate.

communication weirdness is always the weirdest kind of weirdness.

brushed my teeth really well this morning, and yet i still tasted that tooth-grinding taste from having my jaw clenched shut tightly all nightly. will bleach really cause internal burns? wish i didn't have to work so much/shelve so many books. if i didn't, would i wallow in bed eating kettle chips and watching nothing but x-files reruns? woe to me, for the answer is yes. almost done with the zine about my trip home. it's much much longer than i had anticipated, yet chris is being so great helping me with the editing, and i know that's hard to do, help cut corners on something made by your girlfriend. kudos to you!

second day of rain. wonder if winter is officially already here to stay. i like squirrels, but not in my bedroom.

i'm wearing a goddamned PINK sweater. what's up with that?

feeling smeared with mucous still. eating rough things like croutons to try to scrape the objectionable build up out of my throat. chris gave me a backrub so good last night that i almost lost bladder control. woo! found another(!) douglas preston novel. embarassing hobby of mine; monsters in tunnels and the women who love them. ack! told my supervisor i went through a black lipstick phase when i was younger. he said it didn't surprise him.

patron just asked me for a good biography recommendation. i told him we had a lot of good books about einstein. he asked if there were any about the "crazier stuff he did." i said i wasn't sure what he meant and he said, "like, didn't he have sex with his cousin every week or something?"

had a great vampire dream.

my cold is receeding into memory, although the snuffly sounds of a mucoidal dog remain. wonder constantly if i'm drooling.

i have this body pillow named tim, and sometimes i have a hard time unclutching him in the middle of the night when i flip over. i end up with the pillow on top of me, erasing me from a perspective, and no matter how uncomfortable it is, i will not release him.

faux pas: i'm wearing brown shoes with a black skirt. somehow i don't think any one will notice.

observation: i'm only reading books about crazy people.

i guess if i were to reverse the roles, i would expect my partner to be uncomfortable. maybe i am uncomfortable.

super sick, snuffling here at the hum south ret desk. wonder why i don't go home. going to have to flake on a party tonight. don't want to sleep anymore but i don't know what else to do. vitamin c tablets cut up and snorted, maybe some IV saline or hot tea. feel fine in my head, but it is not externalized. i don't even feel like reading for god's sake. does that ever happen?

okay, i don't actually feel fine in my head. my visit home was fraught with drama and peril and my family is Nuts. makes me feel small and stupid, their want of a life for me that isn't my life. this then, spills over into my regular life, my work, my relationships. i'm sure this is making my boyfriend Nuts as well, my inability to let the water from my family's slip and slide emotional antics evaporate in the August air.

i have never been a jealous person.

do i get weirded out about this? feel pretty weird right now. stop obsessing stop obsessing. things seemed so fine this morning, but what does that mean?

my friend brendan just said this: the little ship that is angela has cast her anchor into my heart.

difficult person insists he can do my job better than i can...grrr

just looked at a "how to" website for dolphin mating. so strange.

feel full of sausage. want to nap. my hands still smell like pickles from lunch. i hate that. my friend brendan just told me that pickles and rubber bands are the two smells that you can't wash off, you just have to wait for them to fade.

going home tomorrow early am stupid flight...grumbling about having to get on a plane, which i despise, three hour layover in MPLS, not quite long enough to have my friends meet me there or anything. mom picking me up in Fargo where we will wait for my sister, her plane doesn't come in until evening...should be good times.

this typing process is unbelievably slow as the spacebar at this desk is *sticky* and will only actually register a space every third time i press it. and even then, not so much. i take no responsiblilty for the run on words in this post. it feels good to heave off that responsibility.

as the time draws near when i will have to resubmerge myself in the somewhat turbulent waters of home, my headache becomes increasingly intense. coincidence? i think not. do you ever have trouble embracing a trip to see your parents and do you notice yourself becoming more of a parent to your parents than your parents are parents to you?

i am also in a mental place where i need to start letting some things (that i can't control) go. as i was shifting the 790's this morning and becoming upset about little things, i had to say to myself "fuck, angela, let it go."

chris and i had a discussion about samsara the other night. prompted me to analyze just how much control i really have over anything in my life. kind of made me want to curl up under my blankets and rot. however, i don't have the will to kill myself by holding my breath, so i decided to have a snack instead. i wanted to make a pesto pizza, but alas! no pizza crust! so i made a bisquick formation that approximated a pizza and made it that way. it was very biscuit-y!

okay, so i didn't know about the christian children's show thing, but if you saw this drawing, you'd have said "my what a dapper young cucumber! i'll bet he's firm and would taste delicious with a bit of balsamic vinegar!" which is, incidentally, what i had for lunch.

i don't know if this will be dissapointing for you but larry the cucumber is a charachter in Veggie Tales which is a computer animated christian kids show staring vegetables

9am, watching the people pile in...sort of frantic about which internet station they get...seems to me like it doesn't matter, but what do i know? there is one man who always speed walks over to the newspapers and grabs today's edition, then speed walks over to the corner most internet terminal, sets down the paper, puts his hat on top of it, and logs on. not that it's a funny ritual, except for the speedwalking part. but he does it every day. i don't even have anything that i do every day in the same order at the same time, except maybe going directly to the bathroom when i first wake up. i wonder what he does on sunday when we don't open until 1pm. that must really mess him up.

i had another weirdo dream about a coworker last night. dreamt i was watching robert's house while he was out of town and my collegue came over and kept trying to twist my nipples, and i just wanted to eat some coconut caramel pie that was on the counter. then he asked me why i wouldn't sleep with him and i told him it was because he didn't ask before he just made himself three eggs and then didn't even bother washing his dishes. then he started in with the nipple thing again. why oh why do i have dreams starring people i have to work with grabbing my breasts? it makes for a few uncomfortable days where i can only look at them with a frown, a serious look or sometimes i'll tell them and laugh about it, but jesus!

do any of you have dreams like that?

the weeks here at good old mcl seem alot longer than they did when we were closed on mondays. it was nice, being one of only a handful of people roaming the empty rooms full of books, surrounded by too much information, not even really succeeding in the daunting task of keeping it all in order...so quiet...serene...whipped through alot of books on tape in those days. almost not like being at work at all. i loved walking into a reading room with all the lights turned off and listening for the electric hum as i switched a bank of light switches on, all the dark corners suddenly owned by only me...sounds pretty corny...

something i never noticed until last week: the walls in the periodicals room are pink! sort of lox colored. who made that decision?

just found a great picture in the book return...a magic markered green oval shape with a green mouth and eyes and the label "larry the cucumber" underneath it...sort of makes my job worthwhile...