I don�t know. I'm sorry if I am sensitive and overreact when people question my integrity, but waah and goddamn, I *am* sensitive. And � this is me talking to me here � if I can�t make all this clear to you, if I haven�t by now, then I�m not going to, and I need not to take that personally and let go of the panic and the desperate evangelism that will get me nowhere but away from what I want this diary to be. We now return to our regularly scheduled programming.

Here is some news today from my home state, where on the eve of war they really know what matters. Also, can you believe that Kevin Kline turned down the part in "Chicago" that went to Richard Gere? Kevin, what were you thinking? You would have been so much better! And my haircut, I decided, makes me look like Iris Murdoch as a PowerPuff Girl � no, this is a good thing.

Earlier this week I sent for info on the postbac program at the UW. I am not allowed to speak in person to an academic advisor until I have read their packet. They are the UW and can afford to be a bit Stalinist about this, so I won�t whine. On the web site they caution that only a few people per semester are admitted as postbacs, boo, and also that screening is done largely on the basis of college GPA, hooray. So we�ll see. Also in this department, I worked up my nerve and told Steve, this morning (in the context of a state-of-the-union conversation, HOLY CATS, about which all I will say is what I told Catharine, which is that it�s not often I�m craving a cocktail before ten in the morning), about what has replaced MFA school in my distant sights. He did not laugh at me and, on the whole, is in my sister�s camp. He had good advice, which I would not otherwise have got, about where the money is and isn�t. He does not think I am ridiculous. He is dreamy. Also he points out that the SCCC evening program has surprisingly good basic science classes that are cheaper than the UW and can eventually be transferred there. I am going to look up their spring schedule tonight or tomorrow and, who knows, if there�s anything available for next semester, maybe I will jump all over it.

After the initial cycle of anomie-epiphany-terror-inertia, this all turns out to be easier than I�d thought. Not the doing, of course, about which I don�t have any illusions � Steve said, "Oh man, is your life going to be hard for a while" � but another kind of letting go, the one where I say that with my degree and this economy I am in danger of living out my working life as a master of administrivia, doomed and damned by my superior abilities in all the office fundamentals, and that if I want things to be drastically different I am going to have to make some drastic changes. I use the word "drastic," but there�s nothing to be afraid of, it�s just an adjective, just a qualitative descriptor: be cool, baby. It will be all right. Things worth having cost time and money to get (and I also console myself with the contrapositive of this statement, which is that the free money I had was never really mine anyway). There�s a woman I know here at the hosp who is smart and funny and a fantastic cook. She works as a scheduler, sort of fell into it years ago when she needed work, and to her it�s a job, it�s what they pay her for, fine, she has no affinity for it but she has a family and a mortgage she presumably contributes to and big-time job security and she can�t afford to make a change. Recently she tried to switch to a different schedule that would only have required her to come in three days a week, and the hospital turned her down. Ever since then she�s seemed a little bit sad and a little bit bitter, not as talkative as she used to be except more resignedly vocal about the aspects of her station that are pure drudgery. Maybe I�m projecting � then again, maybe whatever works � but I do not want that to happen to me.

I have more to say but want to get at least a token amount of work done today before I leave at 4:45. Any minute now Matt P. is going to call me about the bracket I faxed him earlier, and I expect that some degree of vigorous discussion is in the offing.

Drinking beer with Steve at the Nite Lite last night, I watched the Sonics and talked a little basketball. I went running last weekend and have plans soon to meet up with Art and, in return for Indian food, have him take a professional look at my creaky knee. I've been reading more and, every day for a few weeks now, showing the crossword who's boss. I�m feeling like myself is coming back to me, piece by piece as each new bit has settled back into place, showing me the nexus of "reward" and "earn" because now I have what I need to understand that intersection and to understand how it works in me. For the first time in many moons I�m feeling good and optimistic about my life, even hopeful, and what Epictetus says, The only thing we have control over is our own actions feels simultaneously like Bactine and jet fuel. I�m thinking about the bugs and the fruit � like, what does it quantifiably feel like to make and maintain an active commitment to putting oneself in the latter category? When my brain reflexively resists the effort at some random moment, what is it that it�s resisting? How is dating a fruit-eater different from dating a bug-eater, both when you�re sitting at his dining room table talking, say, and also at every second when you are apart from him but he is still there? How are state-of-the-union conversations inherently different with one than they are with the other, no matter how scary is their subject matter? What is the cumulative impact of having a fruit-eater boyfriend in one�s life? What are the implied responsibilities? And also, how much more one is gratified and thankful � how much more one feels inexpressibly lucky, and saved, and rescued back from something bad � to have fruit-eaters as readers and as friends. Catharine, I am talking about you.