Overly Verbal

First off, when I reread the first entry I wrote Thursday night, I realize just exactly how distressed I’ve been about people I like moving overseas. I started out talking about change, and then began listing things that change, and then threw in two totally random things completely unrelated to change that just don’t make me happy. I should be a little more organized in my brain.

So, change is back to being good. You know how sometimes you meet a new person, and you’re really excited about that person because they’re smart and funny and blah, blah, blah, but what’s really great is that they recommend books you haven’t read, or new bands you’ve never heard of, or some restaurant that has great food? That’s cool, but what’s even cooler is when you meet a new person, use their bathroom, and find that they have toilet paper that has instructions. I’m not sure why I’m so delighted by this - I really think toilet paper should not have things printed on it, because there’s no sense in wasting ink on something you’re going to dispose of, and besides that, is it a good idea to put ink on your small child’s private parts? (I think not.) Anyway, check this out:

Cottonelle for Kids

I am profoundly amused. There are a couple of things in my bathroom that make me happy - a rotating collection of rubber duckies, my Scrubbing Bubbles nightlight, a photograph of two kittens looking into a toilet, with a quote beneath: “Let’s explore. If we do not find anything pleasant, we will at least find something new.”* But I had never before considered novelty toilet paper as a means to amuse visitors to my bathroom. Frankly, until just now, I hadn’t really thought about novelty toilet paper much at all, but now that I’ve learned that there is more than one company engaged in custom printing toilet paper, I’m sort of intrigued by the whole thing. You can buy toilet paper printed with crossword puzzles, jokes about golf, or pictures of the president. It just goes to show that exactly when you least expect it you’ll find yet another prominent reminder that the world is a vast and interesting place.**

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* The quote is attributed to Voltaire - I’m just not sure which Voltaire they were referring to. One of my more literary readers is likely to know the source, but I have never been able to find that particular quote except on this particular photograph. It makes me giggle, though, even if it may very well be a quote from Hank Voltaire of Des Plaines, Illinois.

** And here’s something - I used to keep my taxidermied frog on my desk, as a reminder that as absurd as my life might actually be at any given moment, at least I do not earn a living by stuffing dead frogs with cotton and then posing them in human-like positions. But then my taxidermied frog sprung a leak, so he’s now carefully wrapped in tissue paper in a box (patiently awaiting the day that my life becomes so absurd that I wake up in the morning and think, “Today is the day I will learn the art of taxidermy, so I can repair my frog!” or “And now I will drive my frog to the taxidermied animal hospital, and pay good money so he can be made whole again!” Careful readers will note that he will likely not be in his box for long now, if my travels down the path to absurdity proceed apace). Anyway, having learned about novelty toilet paper, now I can think, “Well, at least I don’t have to proofread toilet paper.” And that’s not nothing.

No wonder I’m sad.

There is in fact no comma in the song title, “Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover.”

I would be a happier person if everyone would just use commas properly.

Damn.

You know, sometimes things change. Maybe someone you really like turns out to be not all that likeable, or someone you like remains likeable and then moves overseas (twice!), or you just can’t get around the fact that your love of cheese doesn’t in any way change your ability to actually tolerate cheese, or you read something that doesn’t make any sense and realize that some things just don’t make any sense no matter how hard you try to make sense out of them. Or your parking lot, which was to reopen at 6:30, remains closed at 8:00. Or maybe all of those things happen in the very same week.

And these things are hard. But they’re surmountable. Sure, things change. Change is good. I think I actually thrive on change. For every thing that changes about which one might think, “Damn, that would have been nicer if it had just stayed exactly the way it was,”* there are probably four things that change and wind up better.

But sometimes things that change really suck. And I feel sad today, and will tomorrow too, but then something else will change that will rock, and I’ll feel all better again.

In the meantime, could someone make me Jello? My mom always used to make me Jello when I didn’t feel good, and making yourself Jello when you don’t feel good is totally different than having someone else make you Jello when you don’t feel good.

Cherry, please.

Thank you in advance for your cooperation in this matter.

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* Okay, so is “Damn, I Wish I Was Your Lover” stuck in my head now? Why do I even bother writing here, when everyone can figure out precisely what is going to happen without my even saying it?

So I’m thinking that I would be a little better off in a universe where people always did the right thing, apologized for doing the wrong thing, when they did, and besides that, had really fabulous shoes. I’m one-for-three as it stands, because I just got a truly fabulous pair of shoes. And they were $16, so I win on that front, but for the rest of my issues, I think I need to just go live in SecondLife or something, and have a virtual cat, and maybe I could just date Data, because he’s smart, but in addition to that programmable, and that would work out just fine. (That’s exactly what I need: a programmable boyfriend. Why didn’t I think of that earlier?)

Unfortunately, SecondLife is experiencing a power outage at one of their data centers at the moment, so I’ll have to put that whole idea off until later. And Goethe just told me that Netflix went down for undisclosed reasons earlier, but they’re back up now, so I think I’ll just go make a list of movies that I probably won’t like.

Wait, no. I can’t do that, because I brought a pile of work home with me. So I have to go do what I normally do when I bring a pile of work home with me. Eat. But I can’t just eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, because that’s not procrastinating at all. In order to truly procrastinate I have to make something that requires yeast, or a crockpot, or seventeen pans that will have to be washed when I’m finished eating. But Sunday when I was procrastinating I made turkey stroganoff,* so I don’t have anything to make, and I can’t go to the store because it looks like it might rain. Maybe if I just keep typing this paragraph long enough it will be bedtime and I can just try again tomorrow. No, that won’t work either, because I’m hungry.

Let’s make a list of happy things:

• My new shoes.
• Frozen lasagna, assuming there is some in my freezer.
• My cat. (I think. They’re repaving the parking lot in my ghetto this week, which first requires removing some of the old pavement. They were done with that part by the time I returned home this evening, but when I did return home, Mouse was staring out the window, looking a little anxious. I can’t imagine that procedure was quiet. (Nor can I imagine that everyone involved in the removal of pavement from my parking lot was wearing a shirt. I hope Mouse did not have to think, as I have numerous times now, “Wouldn’t this all be a little nicer if everyone was wearing wife-beaters?” Poor cat. He’s sleeping now, and I am close on his heels.))**

Okay, so that’s it. Three happy things. Is that enough?

Damn it. Some days it is really entirely too hard to be me.
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* Truly delicious, because I left out the mushrooms. You know what’s gross? Mushrooms.

** Hey, didn’t I just declare Tuesday Nested Parentheses Day? Why, yes I did. I’m like a stinking prophet or something.

So yesterday I said “I’m only guessing, but I bet none of the ‘more than 54,000 members across the country who share [my] love of knowledge’ live in my complex.” So Mensa has a membership directory, and I can access it online (and you can’t!), and you can choose to share a variety of information with the other members. If I search on my ZIP code, I do not appear, as the minimum amount of information you can include is name, city, and state, and I am sometimes all about the minimal sharing.

Five other people appear when searching on my ZIP code, however, and I am 100 percent serious when I say that I learned that someone in my complex is in Mensa. In fact, he lives right across the courtyard from me, and I’m tempted to send him an e-mail right this very minute, but I’m not going to.* He is obviously not all about the minimal sharing, and includes his e-mail address in the directory, which I do not. (Although now that I’ve viewed his profile, and found that he uses his alumni e-mail address (he went to an institute of technology in Massachusetts, as it happens), I’ve realized that I could use my Columbia address, because it will forward to my personal e-mail address for the rest of my natural life. His alumni e-mail address has the letters “alum” in it, however, and mine does not, because I am way cooler than my neighbors.)

Anyway, I’m not saying that you can necessarily pick a Mensa member out of a crowd, but I will say that I’m pretty sure the shirtless guy standing outside the building in question the other day smoking a cigarette while watching a toddler is not the Mensa member who lives in that building. I think I actually know who it is, and next time I see him outside I might just introduce myself to him, on the off-chance that the older white man who seems somewhat eccentric and can often be found exiting that building also happens to be the Mensa member who lives in that building.

And so I got interested to know if anyone else I know has Mensa members in their complex. I don’t suppose HC will be surprised to learn that no one in his complex appears in the membership directory, but that could be because they, like me, are less willing to share their home addresses with people who might be psychopaths. Goethe has a number of Mensa members living in his ZIP code, but none that I can definitely attribute to his complex, but that’s no big surprise, first because I myself used to live in Goethe’s complex, and secondly because his complex is literally gigantic. Next time I’ve got a chance to look at a map of his place, though, we can totally peg the Mensa members. (Sara will likely be pleased to know that there are 14 Mensa members in Cheyenne, Wyoming, and I do hope she’ll join so she can tell me what those people are like, because I’m sure they are, to a person, interesting. Heck, she probably knows them all already.) (And Odious Ghettolord? There are four where you live. Looks like you work for the same institution that one of them does. Call me.)

Anyway, this seriously counts among the top-ten most amusing things that have ever happened to me. I don’t know how many people live in America, and I can’t be bothered to look it up, but I do know that out of somewhat more than 54,000 Mensa members, it is highly unlikely that one of them lives in the very same ghetto that I do. I really do wonder what he thinks about the shopping carts.

And so this is yet another case where I should really think before I write, and not make bold statements that will later be proven false, but I think I’ll carry on as I always have, and simply be delighted when I am proven to be wrong, because it is at least twice as much fun that way.

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* Did you read “Poison Mind”? I did, and actually own it if you’d like to borrow it. It’s “the chilling true story of the evil psychopath with a genius IQ who poisoned an entire family”. Needless to say, this particular psychopath was a Mensa member. Even if I hadn’t read it, I have long held the belief that the smarter you are the more likely you are to be an evil psychopath,** and so I’m not willing to engage with other Mensa members outside of a clean, well-lighted public place, where I’m fully aware of the nearest emergency exits, let alone tell them I live across the courtyard from them.

** And there but for the grace of reasonably stable brain chemistry go I.

I have beautiful legs. Or so I’m told. This evening as I was walking home at about 9:15, I encountered three men sitting on the grass in front of a car in my parking lot from which they were broadcasting some music from their homeland so that everyone could share in their pride. And we had a little conversation, which went like this:

Them: Hey.
Me: Hello!
Them: How you doing, baby?
Me: [walking faster]
Them: Beautiful legs!
Me: [trying to walk even faster, but pretty much walking as fast as humanly possible]
Them: [more muttered nonsense which probably included expletives]

So that’s nice. People think I’m pretty. Or “linda”. Maybe “caliente”.

You know what’s even nicer? Each and every one of the men was wearing a shirt. The other day when it was really hot, there was a man standing on his stoop, watching his toddler riding her tricycle near (but not in) the parking lot. And I thought, “Wait, something’s missing from this picture. What is it?”

Sure, he’s got no shoes on. No big deal. Even I have been known to go outside without shoes on. (Like when the building is on fire and I don’t have time to find my shoes. Interestingly, that is exactly the same circumstance under which I would possibly throw a small dog out a window.)

(And he’s smoking a cigarette, which is, you know, maybe not what I would be doing if I were in charge of a toddler, but still, that’s not it.)

No shirt? I actually thought to myself, “I realize it’s hot, but geez, at least he could put on a wife-beater or something.”**

Then I figured it out. What was missing was his beer. He must have left it inside to make sure it stayed cool.

My neighbors pretty much rock, don’t they?

So every day at work I take a break and walk around the block, which means that every day I walk past some condos by my office. You can buy a one-bedroom place around the corner from my job starting at only $500,000.

Does anyone have half a million dollars I can borrow?

Thank you in advance for your cooperation in this matter.

In other news, one other thing happened today that underlined the ways in which I am not like my neighbors: my new Mensa membership card arrived in the mail. I’m only guessing, but I bet none of the “more than 54,000 members across the country who share [my] love of knowledge” live in my complex. The other day, after having been on a particularly boring date with a man who was employed as a writer***, and having recently had a conversation with one of my favorite people bemoaning the whole dating thing, during which we discussed volunteer opportunities I might take advantage of in order to meet men, I decided I might as well just bite the bullet, pay the $52, and renew my Mensa membership. I’m not sure whether any real benefits will be accrued, but membership does have its privileges. For example, I now get a 10% discount at Office Depot, and I like office supplies. There are also car rental discounts, which are handy insofar as I don’t own a car, and car insurance discounts, which would be handy if I ever purchased a car. And get this - a five percent discount on pet insurance! Mouse doesn’t have health insurance, because he’s already 16, and if he’s made it this long, I think we can afford whatever medical emergencies he might encounter, but when I get a new kitten, either before or after Mouse has gone to kitty cat heaven, I think that kitten will need health insurance, and because smart people are kind to their pets, it will be cheaper, because I’m smart.

Okay, I think that’s enough. You can disown me now. I would understand.

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* But maybe it wasn’t his. I mean, why would I even think it necessarily belonged to him? Maybe no one even knows who the babydaddy is. What do I know? I just live here.

** And yes, then my head exploded, because I was imagining that it would be nicer if my neighbors were actually wearing their wife-beaters, and I should never, ever have had to do that.

*** Because before I die (alone, in a trailer of yet-to-be-determined proportions, etc.) I apparently have to go on one and only one date with every single man in the greater metropolitan DC area who is no more than ten years younger or ten years older than I am and is employed as a writer - maybe I’ll eventually find the one who has both a way with words and a personality, but I’m not holding my breath.

So Mouse likes to sit in windowsills, right? And in my ground-floor bedroom I have two windows. One has a big prickly bush planted in front of it, and looks out on the far Dumpster, which is in a wooden enclosure sort of thing, so you could look out the window and pretend you were looking at a fence, but that my neighbors are pretty much constantly putting their trash on the ground near the Dumpster, even when the Dumpster is nearly empty. I should be more tolerant of that, because I understand that we all come from different cultures, and in some cultures, leaving your trash on the ground kinda near the Dumpster is the height of all elegance, and not piggish and disgusting, or so it seems. But I am not tolerant of that, because trash on the ground means bugs and rats and ugliness in my culture (which is not necessarily superior to your culture, it’s just different), and it is hard for me to understand your way of life even though I try really, really hard.

So I fail as a person who is tolerant of other cultures. No one ever said I was perfect.

Anyway, the blinds on that window stay about halfway up all the time, because Mouse likes to watch the neighbors, and the baby bunnies, and the squirrels, and the birds, and no one can actually get close enough to see into that window, because there’s the big prickly bush. Plus, I don’t worry too much about people looking in my bedroom windows, because there’s nothing to see in there (unless there is, at which point I close the blinds entirely. I’m nice and all, but not that nice.).

And there’s another window in my bedroom. That one looks out on a parking lot that is on a hill, so that if I leave the blinds halfway open, all you can see out the window is grass and an air conditioning unit. But Mouse’s favorite chair is near that window, and if he sits on the top of his favorite chair, as he is wont to do, he can only see out the window if the blinds are almost entirely up. So at night I pull the blinds halfway down, and in the morning I pull them up. And yesterday when I went to pull the blinds down, I saw something alarming, so I went outside and took a picture of my windowsill. Observe:

So yeah, that’s a part of a tortilla. On my ground-floor bedroom outside windowsill. Under what circumstances was someone standing so close to my bedroom window that it became possible to leave part of his or her tortilla there? Under what circumstances is it necessary to leave part of a tortilla anywhere? Either you eat it, or you leave it on a plate (paper or otherwise), or maybe in a paper wrapper if your lunch doesn’t include plates, but a windowsill? My bedroom windowsill? I do know that when the very many men who came to fix my air conditioning were here they had to spend a lot of time outside by my bedroom, because that’s where the outside part is, but they didn’t leave anything out there, let alone on the windowsill. If they had left anything outside, it would have been a Dr. Pepper can, and I suspect they would have left it on the ground. But they didn’t. But also if they had, I would have gone outside and checked to make sure that they cleaned up after themselves, because I am a kind and courteous neighbor.

Anyway, I’m convinced that yesterday someone was standing around outside my bedroom window eating his or her lunch, and it’s not that far of a leap to imagine that person looking into my bedroom window while I was at work, and probably antagonizing my cat while they were at it. I tried to imagine other scenarios: maybe someone left a tortilla near the Dumpster, and a squirrel or a bird picked up a piece of that tortilla and left it on my windowsill.

That could have happened, right? That must be it.

No, that’s not it. An adult human being was looking into my bedroom window while I was at work and he was eating his lunch, part of which he left on my bedroom window.

That just creeps me out. The first thing I did when I got home today was to check on the status of the tortilla piece on my bedroom windowsill, and it was gone. I think. I’m not really sure what happened, and I already went around back yesterday to photograph the tortilla on my windowsill, and I don’t want to go back out there now to see whether it just fell to the ground, or whether it’s really gone. I already know that sometimes people who are not supposed to be sleeping in the laundry room across the courtyard can be found sleeping in the laundry room across the courtyard, because people prop the door open with the stick, because in some cultures leaving a stick in a door in order to disable security measures such as locks is de rigeur. I don’t want to think about creepy guys looking into my bedroom windows while I’m at work. But I can’t help but think about that, because it’s reality, and denial mechanisms don’t always work.

So I’ve been thinking about moving for a while now. But I try to be nice, and I also try to limit the inconvenience I subject myself to when I am nice, so when my landlord wanted to replace the bathtub, I thought it would be easier to have the bathtub replaced if I actually lived here, so that I wouldn’t have to travel all the way to his place to meet the bathtub repairman. The bathtub saga, which began in, oh, December, when we were first having conversations about repairing the bathtub, lasted until the middle of June, when my bathtub was restored to a proper state.

And when my landlord wanted to get rid of the car that he left in my care, I thought it would be easier to do that if I actually lived here, so that I wouldn’t have to take the car with me to wherever I live next and try to find a place to park it (by which I mean abandon it in a legal parking place on the street) near where I moved to. And the car saga, which began in May, when the car was put up for auction, and then continued until June, when a strange and possibly dangerous man was to come fetch the car (but didn’t), has proceeded until July, and may end at the beginning of August, if someone decides to bid on the car during the current auction, and actually picks it up in the timeframe specified, assuming that someone decides to actually buy the car, which seems kind of unlikely.

So I want to move at the end of August. (I would want to move in the middle of August, but it’s too fucking hot to move in August, so I’m not going to.) So I renew my plea about your assistance in finding me an affordable place to live because you’re all hooked up in local real estate markets. I’ve been going through a lot of crap at work that has distracted me somewhat from the need to move to a place that is safe, but that’s all settling down now, so I’m throwing my energy into the whole looking for a new place to live thing. You should also throw a lot of your energy into this whole looking for a new place for me to live thing.

Thx.

Earlier today, when I was outside in DC at lunchtime, I started to really appreciate the vision of our Founding Fathers, and their commitment to ideals. (More so than I did already, I mean. That Benjamin Franklin, inventing lightning and bifocals and all? You gotta appreciate that.) Our nation’s capital has really crappy weather. It’s hot, and humid beyond all reason, and if I had been around in the 18th century, when no one had yet invented air conditioning, I would have surely given up and let the English have their way with us. It’s too hot to walk all the way to Au Bon Pain, let alone stand up for yourself. So hooray for the Founding Fathers. (I think. I mean, I haven’t done the research to find out whether it was really pleasant outside in DC in the 1700s. Maybe our ancestors single-handedly wrecked the weather with their steam-powered engines and whatnot, and it was totally lovely in DC back then because there was no global warming. I’d read a book and find out, but it’s too hot to read.)

Yesterday, I took a bus route that I normally don’t take. And there was an accident, said accident having taken place on a bridge, so there was nowhere to move the disabled car to, and it took an extra 20 minutes to get to my destination. But before we encountered a traffic nightmare, I met a man at the bus stop, and it was his first time on this particular bus route too, so we chatted about the Washington Metropolitan Area Transportation Authority, as people are wont to do. I love my SmarTrip card: More than a smart card. It’s pure genius. I don’t necessarily love how they jammed those two words together - it would be okay to call it a SmartTrip card, if you ask me. But I love how it can be registered online so that if you lose it you can get the balance transferred to a new card, and I love how it totally keeps track of your bus transfers, so you don’t have to waste paper. So I told him all about it, and convinced him he should get one, and then I thought “I ought to work in marketing for the WMATA”. (And then I said that out loud, because I like to state the obvious.)

And then I got to thinking about the time I was rear-ended, and how the force of the collision shut off my fuel pump, because my car was designed all safe-like, and how a cop, a tow-truck driver, and myself were reduced to babbling idiots in an attempt to make my fuel pump operable again, and how that was pretty funny except that I really did want to make my car work so we could move it out of the middle of the street. So we pushed the car into a parking lot, and then we got out the operator’s manual and still couldn’t figure it out, because my car was also designed so that an obvious fuel pump switch wouldn’t disrupt the sleek beauty of the inside of my trunk. (It was behind a panel that had no readily apparent removal mechanism, because god forbid you put some lettering on the outside of the panel that said, “Fuel Pump Switch Behind This Panel - Pull Here”.) And then we found it, and we laughed and laughed, because it is (sometimes) terribly funny when three adult human beings can’t solve a simple problem, and then I drove home, but my car was all broke-like. And then some three months later I replaced my taillight lenses, because eventually my luck with getting cops who pulled me over to believe that I really just got rear-ended yesterday and was going to take the car to the shop tomorrow was going to run out. And that cost 200 some-odd dollars for parts alone, and I performed the labor myself, so you should really go look at your car insurance policy and consider paying more for a lower deductible, or else ask me to fix your car, or else just give up your car. It’s nicer that way, both to prevent global warming and so that you don’t crash into another car on a bridge and screw up my commute home. I’ve got stuff to do.

Like what, Jennifer?

Oh, you know, like write 800 words about stupid stuff I thought in the past couple of days. That’s important. Keeps my fingers nimble, and the content fresh!

(And watch Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which I have never seen. (Do you have Netflix? Let me know if you don’t, and I’ll totally hook you up with a free month.))*

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* You know how some blogs have features tied to days - Fridays you post pretty pictures, Wednesdays you reveal a random fact about yourself that you think your readers don’t already know, Mondays are for Bible quotes or some such rot? I think I’m going to declare Tuesday “Nested Parentheses Day”. That would make it all worthwhile, no?

I’m not sure I really want to understand this, but I feel like I should. So I have two cars at my disposal. One of them has a 50 horsepower engine (that’s the rattling shitcan of death, hereafter RSoD), and HC’s car has a 227 horsepower engine.* I’m not sure how much the RSoD weighs, but I’m sure it’s somewhat less than HC’s car, which weighs 3,085 pounds. So I think the RSoD is hard to drive, but I never stall it, and I think HC’s car is awesome, but it’s harder to drive, or at least I feel like I’m more jerky when I’m driving it, at least at slow speeds. When I shift from second to third it’s smooth as something really smooth, but I can’t get it moving from a dead stop very elegantly.**

So I spent some time trying to figure out what’s going on. I’ve driven some fancy cars - the day I got my drivers license I showed up at school behind the wheel of a brand-new Merkur Scorpio. The fastest I have ever driven an automobile was 121 miles per hour, because I was scared to go any faster than that, and it was in that car (good thing my mom doesn’t read my blog, eh?), but that’s only a 140 horsepower engine, and it was an automatic, so that’s not relevant. I learned how to drive a stick on a 5.0 Mustang, and best I can figure that had somewhere around 200 horsepower, and I definitely remember feeling jerky when I drove that, but I also didn’t get to keep it very long, and I was just learning. When I actually owned a car it was a Mustang, but it was an automatic with a little-bitty engine, with maybe 100 horsepower. The only other car I’ve driven a lot is Goethe’s car, which is an SUV that weighs about as much as HC’s car, but is an automatic and seems to have about 160 horsepower. (That car always impressed me as not being very good at accelerating, and it certainly didn’t like to go up hills with the air conditioning on.)

So what gives? I didn’t stall HC’s car once today, even though I drove it some 24 miles, but I did feel jerky. How do horsepower and the weight-to-power ratio actually work? Is it not intuitive to me just because I’m a girl? Can anyone explain this to me in an understandable fashion? Anyone?

In other news, Sara, I cannot explain why I have not been asked to appear on either of the two television shows requiring participants to know a lot of song lyrics in order to win a lot of money. Having only watched the first episode of “The Singing Bee”, and not having seen any episodes of Fox’s “Don’t Forget the Lyrics!”, all I can say at this point is that I would have handily won the first episode of The Singing Bee even with my complete lack of interest in the ‘N Sync repertoire. You would think I would have picked up all of their lyrics by osmosis, but I’m pretty sure that because I lived in New York City in the year 2000 I missed their heyday completely. (The radio situation in New York City was never exactly to my liking. There were a lot of stations that played interesting music, but not a one that would tell you what everyone else was listening to. Damn East Coast Liberals, with their highfalutin NPR.) At any rate, I have programmed my DVR to record all forthcoming episodes of both shows, so I can yell at the people on the TV for being stupid, or at least not knowing each and every word to “Sweet Home Alabama”, “I Wanna Know What Love Is”, and “I Hope You Dance”. (Speaking of lyrics, today in the car I heard TLC’s “Waterfalls” on the radio. In a word? Awesome! Particularly because I was driving through my ghetto when it came on.)

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* Manuelo, before you freak out and write a comment that says, “Hey, my car has 227 horsepower! What a coincidence!” let me remind you that you and HC have the same car. In the same color. It is some kind of coincidence, and it’s weird that I know two people that own precisely the same car, but there’s nothing we can do about that now, is there?

** The RSoD is much cuter than HC’s car, though. It’s boxy, and European-looking, and altogether more fetching. HC’s car sort of looks like a bug, plus it’s a goofy color, but I’m still more interested in driving HC’s car than the RSoD, and not only because if HC’s car broke someone would come and get me and take me to a place where the people wouldn’t have to make shims out of Pepsi cans and then say a chant in Sanskrit to actually fix the car, but would instead use modern technology and tools, but also because it’s got a little more power. 177 more horses under the hood, if you will. That’s not nothing.

Well, okay, no I don’t, but I feel less bitchy than I did when last I wrote. I tell you, everyone should have a blog, because it’s all cathartic-like.

So is laughter. I just received an e-mail that made me actually laugh out loud. Most of the time when people are clever in e-mail you might giggle, or quietly appreciate the author’s cleverness, but very infrequently does someone set out to make you laugh using only words and pictures and actually make you laugh laugh. Some people are really funny.

The conclusion? Everyone doesn’t suck. That’s just most people.

In other news, my life is like a Dr. Seuss book: One Car, Two Cars, Green Car, Blue Car. I find myself cat-sitting for HC, a gig that comes with the use of his car. When I agreed to this cat-sitting gig, I expected that the car that my landlord left here for me to use (which I never do actually use because it’s a rattling shitcan of death that is possessed by demons) would have long since been picked up by the charming man who moved the other car that belongs to my landlord, so I wrangled my way into borrowing HC’s car for two weeks, so I can feed his cat. Not only is the rattling shitcan of death still in my care, but it will be for, oh, the foreseeable future, which means that I, a girl who deliberately does not own a car, now have responsibility for two cars at the same time (without the benefit of even one parking place, although that situation might be resolved next week, in which case I will have two cars and one parking place, which is only slightly annoying, and not actually vexing). The cool thing about HC’s car is that it was manufactured not only in the last decade, but in this actual century. And besides that, it handles well and it doesn’t rattle or loudly give me false information about the oil pressure. (Oh, and I trust that the brakes will make the car stop each and every time I apply them. That’s, you know, sort of an important feature in a car.) Problem is, I keep stalling it at stop signs - although I never stall the rattling shitcan of death, a 25-year-old diesel Volkswagen drives quite differently than does a modern performance vehicle - I’ll get the hang of it soon, but in the meantime, I sort of look like a girl driving a boy’s car, which is just a little embarrassing. Ah well.

And today I accomplished a feat that I thought couldn’t be done. There is not one single unread New Yorker in my home. All of the issues I was keeping so I could give them to someone else to read have been dispatched to those people, and very many short stories were read this afternoon when I should have been doing something slightly more productive. So now I sort of think I should add “read all the old New Yorkers” to my to do list just so I can cross it off. Is that cheating?