I�ve placed a rush order at Boise for the cartridge � it will be here tomorrow.

This afternoon I will place a non-rush order for a backup cartridge. Perhaps whoever monitors that fax machine can affix a note to the second cartridge�s box to the effect that as soon as it goes into the machine it�s time to reorder? That way we can avoid another round of recriminatory panic next time.

[Smithers], thanks for jumping in so quickly to get this resolved.

You don�t want to know. Number of times today I have said, referring to Nurse Teresa, "I hate her so much, you have no idea": 3. Number of people who have replied Oh I know honey and believe me we all do: 3.

I found a listing for an editorial job for which I�m about six years overqualified. I think I�ll apply anyway, maybe send along as an attachment that sweet two-column before-and-after excerpt of the lesbian murder mystery. This afternoon or tomorrow I will apply anyway, I mean � I worked and got worked the whole goddamn morning, Dr. Blahblah is attempting to position me as the reservation coordinator of a monthlong trip he and his wife are taking around Europe all September, and Dr. Carpool screwed up one of her bibliography files so that I had to spend most of this morning piecing it back together. I don�t feel like doing anything right now except whining in my diary.

Two interesting dreams lately. One I forgot to record a few weeks ago had Susan Midriff W. as somehow being in a position to evaluate and criticize my writing, an authority. (Note: I have read some of Susan Midriff W.�s writing, and if in real life she ventured anything along those lines, I wouldn�t care if she were the editor of the Times Arts and Leisure section, I could not possibly take it seriously. Last night in another context I was telling Steve about my college boyfriend�s housemate�s pronouncement upon the abilities of a medievalist colleague of theirs whom I knew from Latin class: "His writing smells like turds," Randy said succinctly.) We were sitting there in a coffee shop or something, SMW and I, and there were papers on the table between us that were presumably My Writing, and she was leaning backward, pleased with herself, and telling me that it was sweet how I tried so hard but really, really now, wasn�t it time I gave up on the belief that how I wrote was anything out of the ordinary and that anyone would want to read it? She smilingly offered that she could barely get past the first two sentences of anything I wrote before she got too bored to go on. I resented SMW�s gall that she would play career counselor and also I knew, but in a way that I could not apprehend so could not cite as the linchpin of a hypothetical counterargument, that she was wrong. I knew but I could not say *how* I knew, it was as if I�d forgotten it, and it was like a logic puzzle that the situation had descended upon me so I was aware that without facts around which to construct the proof that would rescue me, so I kept my mouth shut, feeling hopeless, and let SMW continue to talk shit. The strange part is that in the dream, the part of SMW was played by Deirdre McCloskey. Then a few nights ago, while I was still getting over the cold I�ve had since Hood River, I dreamed that when I�d cough up phlegm (sorry) into a Kleenex, the wads of phlegm were in fact slime molds and that the slime molds, once coughed up, were in fact organisms that were a cross between snails and insects; I could hold the Kleenex in my hand and watch them take symmetrical shape, sprouting slimy moldy antennae and legs and things that wanted to be wings.

When I sent mail to Vanessa and Popeye a few days ago inviting them to join me for "Cremaster 3" � and can someone confirm whether that girl�s pronunciation was the correct one? � Vanessa replied with a polite no-thanks, adding something like "My job makes me feel dumb and I�d rather just spend the evening relaxing, sitting on the patio and watching Popeye grill me stuff." (Vanessa, sorry if I�m misquoting, but I think I got the sense of it, right?) Since then, I�ve been thinking about, and letting myself realize, how much a lousy job really does take out of a person. More and more my own life presents itself as a binary system in which I�m either here sucking it up at Gastro or somehow steeling myself for my next scheduled desk shift (typo: "shit") of sucking: making lists of things to do and think about to break up the day and distract myself from it; being kind to myself so that every minute I�m here contains a far-off echo of that kindness that also bleeds into the sense of something to look forward to; trying to find ways to make myself imagine that Gastro is only a game or to make it all about, I don�t know, the outfits. On paper it looks grand � I have this cushy desk job where on most days hours and empty hours stretch luxuriantly before me and the Internet is my oyster. But on paper is not how my life is lived, and I�m so demoralized all the time, especially after the letdown of getting dissed for the government job I would have been perfect for, that getting through the day is all I can fix on. I don�t have the mental energy to study German or to mount a more strategic attack on the job market or to do anagrams or to write movie reviews. I basically hate myself almost all the time I�m here, I hate myself because I�m here, and in hating myself I become small and powerless and undeserving � the subject-object equation is probably tricky there, and we can go into it some other time � I deserve what I get and I deserve what I�ve got. I deserve it until I am free of it and then I am myself again, the myself who is capable of building a nest that will protect her from the next day, who recognizes the urgency of this assignment and musters the can-do kindness necessary to its completion. It is a lot of work. It�s a full-time job on top of Gastro.

Susan Midriff W. is called that, by the way, because of one time years ago when she came to one of my dinner parties, years ago, and had her eye on another of the guests. There were maybe five or six stragglers left when she made a play for him, which she did by announcing that she had a terrible stomachache, she must have eaten something bad (ooh that pissed me off) and she simply had to undo her pants and pull them down slightly for this was the only way she could get relief, and could someone please sit next to her and massage her abdomen for a while? She pulled her shirt up, too, and in the nanosecond plasmapause during which we would become wary coffee-date pals, she confided in me that she thought her midriff was her best feature and that she often sought to have it noticed by means of ploys like that one. Her writing, as I mentioned, I feel qualified to pass judgment on, but honestly I don�t recall her abs one way or the other. Who knows, they could have been awesome � I want to be fair here. Later SMW and I had a falling-out that had to do with her violating a confidence and misrepresenting me, that is the most diplomatic way I can put it, and I have not spoken to her since I found out about that. At the time I made clear to her my disappointment in her and my more visceral desire to relieve her of her aorta, and I gave her the good old With-friends-like-you and said that I didn�t want anything to do with her as a friend or an enemy or anything, period, ever again. I remember this vividly because it was the first time in my life I�d executed a speech like that while maintaining something like composure. So it was a big surprise to me, some time later, when I got e-mail from her: Hi! I haven�t talked to you in ages and wondered how you were, and the phone number I have for you doesn�t work anymore. Let�s go get dinner or see a movie and catch up � send the new one and we�ll make plans!. Which of course I deleted. But every so often she�ll send another one. What, like I�ll relent? Like I�ll realize I made a mistake cutting her off just because she told some silly little lies about me and my mental state to some of my good friends? It is bizarre. And the last time I got my hair cut, as David and I were chatting during the comb-out, he said, "Your friend was in here the other day. She asked about you, she wanted to know how you were doing and she told me to say she says hi." What friend? I asked. (I recommend David to everyone.) Susan, he said. And for a moment I was racking my brain, trying to associate the name with anyone I knew even vaguely, was this a friend of Steve�s I�d met at a party or one of the engagement-ringers from the hospital shuttle van? Then it hit me. "That bitch is not my friend!" I wailed. "You don�t say," said David, leaning in for the dish.

Would I have told that story if there were a ghost of an iota of a chance that SMW is reading this diary? No, I say � not least because that bitch is not wrapped too tight and who knows what she�d do. But there is, a ghost of an iota of a chance I mean. So why do I tell it? I am not doing so well with my resolve, almost a year old now, to start the diary project over again and to do it fearlessly as if without the protective armor of anonymity, which anyway I learned last time I could have mostly done without; there�s that Lorrie Moore story in which a character compares love to the bathrooms at the Ziegfeld Theater: Sinks in the stalls, big deal. I try and then I get caught up in something � caught up in the act of telling, in this case � and then I have broken my rules. But what is more important, the rules, or the accidental record of what makes me break them? I will stand behind every word in my diary since I started it, note singular, in May of 2001, and if some of them I�m not proud of and others I selected hastily and others were written based on bad information, I will cop to this, I will annotate and explain all. I�ve also learned that if someday I did have to pull up stakes here and raze the landscape, well, fine, there are plenty of other homesteads out there. The URL is not the point.

(In the Full Disclosure department, the URL may not be the point but, hell, I do like it here. So if SMW were reading this diary, if someone else were who had been somehow caught up in my getting caught up, probably what I�d be more likely to do is spend a night going through all the entries to date and editing for attitude. In the Self-Criticism department, I read over the previous sentence and immediately thought No you would not. All right then, I don�t know what I�d do. I guess I�ll have to wait and see.)

Hello and thank you to my new pal Julia, who was such a doll to compliment my new swimsuit, to Catharine a/k/a the mighty Q, without whom to share it with Magic Spinach just isn�t the same anymore, and to Mrs. Roboto, a friend who is loyal and true and benevolently unflappable about this packing-and-wine-and-pizza date that I keep having to postpone. Thanks also to the other member of a certain mutual admiration club I have going � this morning the very laws of physics were overturned when, miraculously, my Gastro shift was infiltrated by kindness. I had to scramble for purchase, but, holy cats, it made me feel the opposite of small and powerless and undeserving. It made me feel like I could hold out for something good, it made me feel alive. So yeah, thanks. Don�t stop believin�, kids.

Tonight I hook up DSL at Steve�s (I hope), and Saturday it�s hiking on Hurricane Ridge and then the Clem Snide show at the Crocodile where Vanessa and Mrs. Roboto may after all these months finally get to meet. My sister could be going to the Hamptons with Matt P. this weekend � I vote yes. The job I did on Dr. Carpool's bibliography was so thorough it was unholy. New plan for the vacation is to fly into and out of Athens, take ferries all around with a plane flight from Istanbul to Izmir somewhere in there. Counting last night�s guacamole, I have had approximately two servings of fruits and vegetables so far this week. I need to go shopping so badly that it feels like a discrete state of consciousness. I want a cocktail. I�m going to post this and go get some Ding Dongs now.