Did I mention this, I picked up a freelance gig editing a lesbian murder mystery written by the neighbor of a friend of mine? It�s the real deal though, she has an agent and everything.

The stereo theft was the hard crash back to Earth and the gut-wringer monster cramps that intruded on yesterday morning were static in my bliss (*finally* intruded, if you get my drift) but damn if the weekend wasn�t just amazing, in ways I both did and didn�t expect, and in some that are so personal to me that I am not going to write about them here. I don�t know, I guess it�s because I�m so out of practice or because in the past the situations in which I have thought I had this turned out to be jokes on me, I forget that it is in my power � it is in me � to be a participant in the kind of situation where it�s just a bunch of females sitting around talking, with neither agenda nor goals. That I can belong there. I get so self conscious, I wait for someone to get threatened by the hovering lack of irony and to say something callous or catty or powermongering or antagonistic that not only shuts down the conversation but negates the integrity of everything that has come before, it is hard for me at first to be authentic like that because based on especially my recent experience, I am reflexively guarding my poor little authenticity against that which would deny it and eat it up with big sharp teeth. The teeth too are a manifestation of hardassery, of a kind that has nothing to do with boys in general or Todd in particular. And the thing about the Book Club broads that I didn�t realize how much I was starving for and that I�m still kind of fumbling my way into (or: fumbling my way into believing in) is that I�m not that kind of hardass with them. I can�t be. Or, if I tried to be, I think they would just look at me half-quizzically and half-sympathetically, wondering why I was wearing a wetsuit when the forecast was for sun all week and the meteorologist had never been wrong. This is hard to write about, I�m having trouble being analytical partly because it�s a phenomenon I don�t know whether one can analyze: good people who want to be happy, and who like having me around not because of my smartness or coolness or pop-cult stylin� � and definitely not because of my cynical way with a phrase � because they believe me also to be a good person who wants to be happy; it�s that simple. Being liked to be around! It smells like lemons and it tastes like the best, purest water in the world, and it is warm like your bed on a clear cold night with an extra comforter and freshly washed flannel sheets. It is not how I have been living. Also another reason it�s hard to write about is that I�m self-conscious too about how Hallmarked I sound. This is one of those circumstances in which experience, in the telling, seems to transmute into anecdote. Stockard Channing: How do we hold onto the experience? Well, that is very simple � I will keep it to myself.

Questions: Does keeping it to myself constitute unfairness to those with whom I spent the weekend, does it look like I�m being too lazy to give them credit? Does it constitute not being sufficiently critical; if I start spending more time around the Book Club ladies � and I hope I do � am I at risk of having my broken edges = critical identity = sense of self buffed beyond recognition or utility? Or is my math wrong? To what extent was my not having the weekend kind of situation in my life a contributing factor to the bollixing-up of things with Todd, or is it instead the case that in my mission for accurate distribution of culpability I am too eager to implicate myself? (Note: this inquiry is merely academic.)

I don�t know � there was hiking and skiing, eating, sitting around and talking. Issues and [issues] were discussed. It meant something to me, and fuck you if you�d try to take that down. It�s easy to rage and bite and thus set yourself apart by means of the raging and biting. I think the more difficult thing is to preserve one�s critical identity but not use it as a bulwark. I mean, not to see the encroachment of others even as a threat � wait, is that what I mean? To be unguarded as the default? Maybe to make yourself a part of something first and then figure out later what your particular part is, to trust that it will be possible, rather than to guess that it will not. To be protean and not have that be a compromise. Um, not to roll my eyes so much. There�s not a lot of eye-rolling at Book Club, and you know what? I love that, I love that about it. And fuck you again if it makes you roll your eyes when I say so.

(That�s all the fuck-yous for this entry.)

While I was in the middle of the last paragraph, a guy came in with a posh new office chair for me, much nicer than the one that�s now against the wall behind me, and although I didn�t order it, mine was the name after Ship To on the invoice. No word yet from HR, but I keep getting random clues like this that indicate my getting hired is a foregone conclusion, that at the bureacratic level my un-tempization has already been set in motion. I�m not fretting about it anymore � I will wait for them to come to me. Also, this week I�m supposed to start working on a web site for one of HD�s future projects, and when they do come to me I am sure he will back me up that web development is not typically expected of people working in a position like this at a pay scale like that.

(I can�t find my copy of "Lucky Jim," which last week it occurred to me that Steve would like, and since he loaned me the Tom Wolfe I thought I might return the favor. That book contains one of my Top Ten sentences in literature, He couldn�t believe he was talking to a girl like that like that.)

Thursday night I was feeling flu-ish � and feeling very anxious about feeling flu-ish, if you get my drift � and I took a bath and watched part of another lousy Netflix documentary and went to bed early. Friday at Gastro I was, like, doing work all day and had no time to type, a state of affairs which I am protesting by making today�s typing a priority. Friday night went out to see a band with some of my burgeoning social circle and had a marvelous, raucous and silly, un-eye-rollingly good time, and, yeah, you're right, it did give me a thrill to use the word "my" there. I feel like Sally Field: People like me, they really do! It is unbelievable but it is true. Fie on thee, hardassery � get that shit away from me.

OK, I go work now. More tomorrow.

Later: Want to get angry? Read this. (Steve just sent me the link.)