Would it be either (a) a total waste of my time or (b) a no-confidence vote to make an emergency escape plan for once I�m living at the bacon shack? I mean, essentially the plan would be amount to my taking a sleeping bag to Vanessa�s and then coming back the next day with a rented truck for my stuff, but should I keep a list of that stuff? Should I get Steve�s periodic sign-off on it in advance of the possibility of things between us suddenly getting ugly and recriminatious? Should I keep a couple hundred dollars in cash in a locked drawer? I have no sense of the line between protecting my interests and full-on defeatism, and in my more recent entanglements I�ve always been the person whom quarrelling fazes less � there�s a line in Henry Miller�s "Under the Roofs of Paris" that cuts a little close to the bone, something like She was so accustomed to fierce Dostoyevskian dramas at home that to her this was a mere difference of opinion � so I can logically imagine a scenario in which for Steve everything has turned to shit once and for all and I�m sitting there oblivious, assuming it�s chocolate ice cream. Longtime readers may in fact remember another such scenario with a different costar. Also my preference for what I call actually having a relationship rather than all the time talking about having one, not gravely flogging it to death or superfluity, works against me a very small percentage of the time but when it doesn�t it�s always a doozy � the gents I�ve known seem to have been so hard-wired in their thinking that if there�s a problem it�s the girl�s job to bring it up that even as part of them is problematically stewing there�s another part that is incapable of acknowledging the problem, because not having been brought up � by the girl � it must not exist.

Long tricky sentence, sorry. But do you know what I mean? Note too that I�ve gone from specificity to generalization, and if you�re inferring some connection between "Steve" and "problem" you are off the mark. He�s just having a lousy day and should be left alone to have it, is all. Also, and this is a funny one, as regards the generalized relationships I almost wrote "the experience and not the documentation." Then I stopped myself, because, ha ha, when did I start making arguments against the documentative lifestyle? What�s next, voting LaRouche? But I was typing fast � it was the *word* "documentation" that caught me up, not so much the concept I was getting at � and I think what I meant was more like play-by-play commentary, if I may author-drop again then like the protagonist�s ex-girlfriend in Wendy Brenner�s "The Anomalist," the one he calls PA Girl, not for Pennsylvania but for public address. OK.

Anyway, blagh. Crappy day. And things at Gastro would be getting worse even for a placid double-digit-IQ careerist � Deb�s being forced out because HR wants to reduce the number of people it gives benefits for 32 hours a week, and she has fambly commitments and can�t work 40. So there were many months of meetings and appeals filed and Dr. Blahblah utterly failing to go to bat for her � dumb of him, since she�s got three digits if anyone does and no one pays more attention to the paperwork � and all the while HR insisted that her job could not be done in 32 hours, it was 40 or bust. Meanwhile of course Deb was quietly proving that nope, 32 was just fine. So now that HR has successfully driven her out, there is a new plan afoot to phase out her position entirely and spread its responsibilities among the other women in her group, and I know that Melissa, for one, has no time to spare because ever since the semi-dispute over the intersection of her job and mine she�s been on a stealth mission to siphon as much non-monkey work as possible away from me. (Like I care. And I understand why she feels like she has to do it, so I don�t resent her. But still.) The villainous cud-chewer Nurse Teresa remains unchecked and Dr. Blahblah now takes me so much for granted that he�s basically stopped replying to correspondence and reading e-mail, I guess he figures that sooner or later I will take care of things because I have to. (Update: with respect to the licensing mess, all I could do turned out not to be enough, and although I horrify myself I have not yet mustered the motivation to kick the issue upstairs to a mucky-muck. Your thoughts?) The Wife of Bath�s response time to e-mail has ballooned to two or three days, and the expedience of what she tells me in these replies has shrunk by half. Dr. Carpool is increasingly relying on me for both idiot work and that which should fall to a professional editor or graphic designer and not much in the middle. Dr. Whipped has joined the party and brought his Jekyll-and-Hyde wife, who seems to believe that having married a doctor entitles her to treat people like her staff. The visa application of a new Gastro doctor may be held up because, according to an administrator, this clinic failed to anticipate the possibility that some of the respondents to our advertisement of the position might be non-citizens � WTF, like whiteys are the default? � and I am placing a grim wager as to who�s going to get called out on that count. So that, in sum, is why I am toying with the idea of not waiting until I get back from vacation to quit, to give a week�s notice and scram, thereby letting my Fuck You resound. It occurs to me as I type that maybe I shouldn�t be kicking my ass for being such a slowpoke about packing in the evenings, maybe I should pat myself on the back instead for having inadvertently discovered something that could eat up a week or so of daytimes, and I am remembering that file room temp-agency assignment at St*rbucks with something that feels dangerously like fondness. I am operating with a very fucking short fuse.

Your thoughts?

Speaking of fuses, I was on fire yesterday in terms of getting things done. May I brag? I got the oil changed in my car at C.L. and at the Honda dealership bought a new knob to replace one that was broken on the dash. I bought the tickets to Germany (leaving August 23, returning September 13). I washed and dried and folded and put away two loads of clothes, which was especially cheering since I needed shorts to go camping in and I was worried I�d have to ruin my perfect record of never having done laundry at a boyfriend�s house. I arranged with Vanessa and Popeye to have use of his Bronco two weekends hence to move some furniture to Steve�s and for Popeye to take away my sofa and Steve�s TV set. On the camping-shopping tip I hit the Red Apple so that�s one less store to go to tonight. I went to the Market for fish and to the fruit stand for everything else and I did a test pass on the ceviche I�ll be taking to Book Club tomorrow. (More jalapenos, more coconut milk, higher tomatillo-to-tomato ratio, more finely diced cilantro, add more lime juice just before serving, maybe some mint?) I went to Ballard to pick up an unlovely book from Mrs. Roboto and after a 130-page sprint last night and insomnia again this morning, I�ve already polished it off.

And I have arranged for the well of DSL and phone service to run dry at the Beacon Hill house on July 16, which is when the DSL gets switched over to Steve�s line. Don�t remind me how many months ago I should have done this � it�s done now.