In the Poetic Justice department, one of the nurses who�s never made much of an effort to be nice to me has this thing she�s working on that she doesn�t want to type up herself so she fobbed it off on me. She said that it was urgent and that it really needed to be done first thing the next morning, and gosh she�d been so busy all day � I doubted this but kept my mouth administratively shut on that count � and now she really needed to go pick up her kids, and she knew I wasn�t supposed to be taking work home because I didn�t get overtime but she knew I had a laptop so maybe just this once and just for her could I take the pages home and transcribe them? Mouth shut, I took the pages and did the work and saved the files to a floppy. Do you see where this is going? The nurse�s handwritten pages and the floppies were in the briefcase that was stolen out of my car. Ha ha! In the Holy Shit Am I Glad I Only Have Twelve-point-whatever More Days Here department, here is an excerpt from the latest issue of the hospital newsletter: Current efforts underway throughout the hospital use "lean processing" approaches to tackle process improvement work. Lean processing emphasizes looking at our work from the "customer" (in our case, patient and family) perspective to identify opportunities for improvement in five critical aspects of our service: Quality, Cost, Delivery (or "cycle time"), Service levels and Morale.

It is very hot. I went to get my car�s emissions checked this morning and had to sit waiting in the car with the air conditioning off for more than half an hour and I thought I was going to pass out. In the evenings I�m basically useless � I figured out that I can either sit and talk or do anything else, so until the mercury goes down, tonight�s packing date with Mrs. Roboto is postponed because I�d be a zombie; my plan is to have at it for a few hours by myself, then maybe take a shower and take myself out for sushi as a reward (sushi place is air-conditioned). Am slightly zombied out anyway due to the lingering effects of wine + big talk, as in the opposite of small talk, at Vanessa�s last night. She invited me over for a movie and cheeseburgers on the grill, and the patio and the company were so pleasant and comfortable that we stayed out there chatting until it was later than I�d realized and time for me to hit the road. We beat that deader-than-dead horse a bit, we did. The thing is, I just wish I could find some way to make it make sense � some context, some framework. The thing is, I never will. And in the boomeranging of all the pent-up faux-resolute whatever that�s going on inside my head right now � remember, logic not lust � that is very hard for me to accept, I mean accept with my whole brain and all right the rest of me too. I did not do the things I was accused of, I did not think the things I was accused of thinking � any of them. What was cited as evidence of my perfidy in fact backs up my claims. I almost don�t like to talk about this because the way it comes out is I was right and he was wrong but, but, but� well, I was right and he was wrong. And in the same way that part of me is still suffering from the lack of logic, when I am thinking about it I imagine it as a severe dehydration, I feel as though there should be consequences in the universe for a person who accused me of such hateful things, such behaviors as are antithetical to everything I have fought myself to stand for. Please understand, I�m not vengeful and I�m not pining and I�m not angry � although neither would I accept an apology, if one were ever extended � instead I am, like, scared, because I have seen how every affectionate and admiring impulse I had and every hopefulness, every letting myself wish for things I had never dared believe in could fairly easily be perverted into a weapon, one designed for maximum damage so that its sharpest knives corresponded exactly to the coordinates of my vulnerabilities. What if the prince, after waking Sleeping Beauty with that kiss, had allowed her to regard him for a long moment, she is looking at her rescuer gratefully and somewhat dazed by the sudden manifestation of amorphous but glorious visions of what she knows to be her future, and then he spits into her mouth and cuffs her hard before walking away whistling? Sometimes I honestly think it�s a wonder I didn�t give up on men and decide to be a lesbian. Sometimes I wonder whether deep down, part of me in fact did give up on men and quietly consign myself back to the not wishing and the not believing, because to do otherwise is quite possibly not worth it. I read what I�ve just typed and I do an internal check as to whether they�re true, whether � good god � I actually mean that, and I do. And, dammit, like I said, where are the consequences for the person who did that to me? The spit, once it�s in my mouth, is in me � I can stick my finger down my throat and puke for days, but some of it will already have been assimilated. The prince walks around surveying his bounteous domain, unscathed by the memory of what he did, maybe training himself to unremember it and get on with whatever it is princes do: playing bass, drinking beer, counting money. And as I was telling Vanessa last night, it�s the winners and the princes who get to write history, so how ruined I felt and how hollow I still feel might as well be the fairy tales. There are people in this town whom I met, talked to, liked, looked forward to seeing again and getting to know better, people like Rich, who think that I�m a coldhearted serial cheater who kept someone around as my so-called boyfriend for many months because I have a pathological need to vent contempt and he made a pleasing target. Every time I see one of them, I�m so acutely aware of the difference between what I am and how they perceive me that the world is characterized only by hopelessness and futility, and there�s a moment when, hating who they see as if that person is an actual entity, I truly want to die from shame. When are the moments when Todd wants to die? As I told Vanessa last night, I would have done anything for him. Where are the consequences?

There are things going on where the way I feel about them, I have realized during the past few weeks that is coincidentally-or-not the same time as the boomeranging is going on, is the way a person would feel who had made it not only her priority but her vocation never to get her mouth spit into again, like everything else in life would take place on a completely different and bush-league scale of mattering. And I don�t know if I�m feeling that way because I really do or because I�ve given up. Do you see? I didn�t used to feel like that � I mean, I did for a long time, and then I didn�t and I was so happy, I was rescued, and now I do again. There should be consequences for this too.

A joke I just remembered from when I was a tyke: Why is six afraid of seven? And also, someone linked to my page from her page and I can�t tell from her comment on my excerpt whether she agrees with me or is making fun of me. Would it be arrogant of me to assume the former? Would it be pathetic of me to ask?

Also another boffo epiphany, over the course of the cheeseburgers and the chianti and the setting sun, that amid my bomb-dropping to Vanessa I hoarded for myself, this one is going to take at least a few weeks before I can take it out and let myself look at it, to consider its massive firepower with the gravity it deserves.

Blagh. I�ll be back less heavy hearted tomorrow.