I haven�t written here in many days and that sucks. But I have been alternately busy and settling myself down with chamomile tea and silence and the balm and wisdom of Pam H., and with respect to the stupefaction zone, I am glad I didn�t post daily updates and instead have given myself time to get my head around certain aspects of it. "Things," "it": yes. As soon as I can get my mouth to form the word, I will be admitting that I, um, have a boyfriend. You�re saying, perhaps with a raised eyebrow, Well, that was fast. And, I mean, I know, and that�s why I�m not saying it out loud, but the fact is that yes, it was. And now it *is*, and why should I fake like it�s not? I told Vanessa yesterday that I am not into decorum for its own sake. I met a fella, we hit it off, we get along easily and are comfortable with each other� all right, here it is. When guys would say to me How is it that someone like you, so pretty so funny so blah blah blah, has not been snapped up and carried away by the greatest guy in Seattle? I assumed that was a line. Because how can it not be a line, right? But � and this is the part where I wish in vain that I could do this without verbs like I tried to last time, this is the part where my self-consciousness threatens to become a tsunami � now I know that it is possible to for such a statement not necessarily to be a line, because, um, that is, like, approximately the way I feel about Steve. (And just so you know, I am blushing as I type this.) In my interactions (shut up) with him, there is this constant undercurrent of You�re kidding, right? that feels like HAPPY excited giggling like the way I do when at an amusement park, the roller coaster first lurches into motion, and, no, sorry, I thought I could finish this sentence or one like it but it turns out I can�t, so can I backslide and make with the nouns again after all? Thank you. Spinach with pine nuts and raisins. Hospitality. A skiing trip, maybe. Ozzy Osbourne, and more kissing in a different bar this time. The thighs, I swear, of a superhero. The brown eyes, the mouth. A pet name, for a person who is generally like Kevlar where they are concerned. Name-checking the Baader-Meinhof gang. And one that Catharine already knows about: a brief and well-informed pillow-talky disquisition, in context, on agape vs. eros. (Why does Word spell check recognize the first of these and not the second?) And, duh, the e-mail. He said we should get into the habit of hanging out with each other�s friends as soon as possible. On Saturday we went to the Red Apple � isn�t this interesting, that second "we" crossed a line that the first one didn�t, made me hyperaware for a half-wave-crashing, self-reckoning moment of having written it and of what it means � and I got stuff for the pasta sauce and then went back to my house, where Steve set his laptop up at the kitchen table and wrote code while I chopped and simmered and in between was reading a book. In the supermarket, he pushed the cart. It was so much domesticity I felt like I needed a drink, and that is the joke I made, but my real heart was scraped clean of jokeyness and I also felt like, My god, can it be this easy? Am I missing the part that will gradually make me more and more heartsick? Is this guy for real? and what if the answers are yes, no, yes. Could something like this actually be a constitutive element of my very own life? And I think I could want it to be.

OK, my knee is still not in tip-top working condition. It is all very well to look terrific, but I have mixed feelings, to say the least, about fitting into a size 5. And I am going to have to be a busy bee indeed tonight to get enough stuff done so I�m not struggling to keep up for the rest of the week. And my laptop was supposed to be here on Saturday, and I have not written a lick of film-crit shit in such a long time that I am ashamed. And even in the land of bacon there are bobbles, like I was a silly little don�t-want-to-talk-about-my-feelings chicken on Saturday morning and then Steve was expressing another kind of his last night and I missed the part where it wasn�t directed at me and it was weird for a minute, but this is minor and really I only report it in the spirit of showing you that I am not completely sunblinded. I am, however, revising my belief in the good old balance of 85 and 15. I think that given half a chance, 90 would be a piece of cake.

There are things I am not telling here. You know that, I assume. Hell, there are things I'm trying to keep secret from myself. It�s all still so heady, sometimes I can�t breathe. I did, however, tell Steve about (a) the diary, I mean the fact of it; and (b) the therapist ditto. I know all about the can-of-worms potential of the one of these that you�re looking at right now but I couldn�t not tell it so I did. I don�t know, we�ll see.

Number Two is all cool with recent developments, by the way. When I walked in last Wednesday, she said I looked dazzled. I am relieved that she doesn�t think I�m doing anything really fucking idiotic or self-destructive, not that I thought I was either but you know what I mean, I now pay her good money to keep an eye on me and I expect her to step up. Number Two, a smart lady, is down with the vagaries of timing that by the blessedly unambiguous law of averages every so often are the exact opposite of shitty. Even for me. Latest therapy revelation-which-on-second-thought-is-not-much-of-a-revelation: I take care of myself by taking care of other people. So when they will not accept what I want to give or when I get so drained I feel like those reserves are tapped, I lose my purpose and therefore my sense of myself. Heavy, no?

I was flipping through the Seattle Weekly Sunday morning and on their new kinked-up personals page (dear, dear Seattle Weekly) there was one placed by a bisexual female seeking either a man or a woman, and first on her list of interests was "menstrual activism." Can anyone tell me what in Goddess�s name this can possibly mean? I snicker, yet I cringe, yet I�m dying to know. In the same department � how is this for a cramp-free segue � I am reading "The Red Tent" for book club on Thursday. Blurb-wise I think that "a great read" may be the literary equivalent of the film critic�s "heartwarming journey," but I�m slogging through. Am I a bad feminist because I find narrative descriptions of childbirthing distasteful? Also, am I a bad feminist because I really, really � *really* � like the sound of a man�s voice speaking German?

Um. That segue was not so smooth, I will admit. My diary is large, it contains multitudes. Busy day with the colons � I will try to write more fluently tomorrow.