What the doctor should have meant: dishery.diaryland.com

(Ha ha, I kill me.) So it turns out that w/r/t the work stuff, it is possible (0.65 probability) that the worst is over and that I won�t have to spend another weekend night or even weekend day here, that the part that will have been the ugliest to write was my March 29 deliverables. I may be done with the April 5 batch tomorrow, I will for sure by Thursday, and in any case I won�t again have the experience of being required (a) to distill so much material from so many external sources or (b) to complete my work with so little recourse to numbers, processes, evidence, in other words to spout jive and hope it�s OK. Like, how am I supposed to know how the vision statement translates into real-life action around here � I�m a contractor, remember? But really, on Sat nite I did as good a job as I could have with what I had and what I knew, and regardless of how exactly on point it is � editorial confab at 4, wish me luck � I think that, at least, shows. My lack of being managed is manifesting as I�d feared it would, which is in a lack of specs and in demand for a series of back-to-the-drawing-board iterations for each subsequent one of which I have a slightly better sense of what not to do. At least I know how that game is played, and over the years of getting drafted into it at various jobs, I�ve built up a speedy turnaround time and I�ve thickened my skin. So it�s annoying but all right, and I finished that extra project, and I�m going to try not even to stress myself out thinking about the existence of the contractor heaven I referred to in my last entry. So with my anxieties thus somewhat assuaged I signed up for my classes yesterday, and the first one starts at 6pm tonight. I bought a brand-new notebook at lunchtime and I am ready to use it.

Also it turns out that despite what I wrote last time I do, in fact, mind Steve hanging out at certain docks and engaging in the arcane drinking rituals of the seaman�s union he and not I belong to, especially when it keeps him out until 3:30 in the morning but in fact as soon as whatever other anger object begins to recede from the foreground of my consciousness. Sunday, multiple fights would ensue. As I lay awake in bed around five the same morning, still unable to sleep due to a combination of the v.2 anger and an adrenaline hangover from the worry and self-bracing that had preceded it before his arrival home, it occurred to me that the only way to get myself out of the range of the Somerset once and for all would be to move away. You may recall that I still have no job, and for a moment I was pleased and I thought, Hey, this is the perfect excuse to move to New York, it is the final push I need. Then: Oh my god, is this how large a shadow this broad whom I have never met has cast over my life, that to guard against the inevitability of her disdain ridicule etc. I am willing to move across the whole country to a place where my rent would be, like, two grand a month? Then: Fuck it, if Steve went with me she�d only follow him anyway. I don�t want to say a whole lot here, in part because I am educated about the basic personality characteristics of people who will go out and try to find someone�s online diary if they ever get word that such a diary is somewhere to be found and in other part because ditto loyalty and how unless you force yourself to squint every once in a while its fumes will get in your eyes and burn them and your vision may be impaired indefinitely � everything I need to know in life I learned at Diaryland � but I am thinking it; this situation isn�t getting any easier for me, sometimes I feel like I�m living the worst aspects of both� I don�t know. I just tried to finish that sentence about three different ways and nothing was quite right. But the sense of bifurcation is significant: I feel mixed up, fragmented, divided against myself, closely held and banished at the same time. In this respect, I am dissatisfied.

Mostly though I wish the record to show that I am not not not. Steve�s picking up some custom-mixed paint I think on Thursday, and this weekend we�re going to put it all over the walls of the huge! new! apartment! in the nicer neighborhood into which we will be officially U-Haul moving a week from Saturday. I haven�t started packing yet, but I�ll get around to it. I hope I don�t have too much homework.

I trend-jumped and bought the Nellie McKay album. Nellie, thank you so much for the shout out to Snowshoe, PA. Snowshoe is very close to Gum Stump, which is about half an hour outside my old stomping grounds and is among my favorite Pennsylvania place names. As for Nellie, I don�t know, there are a lot of people within whose earshot I would not put in the cd because I know � I know � they would instantly shoot me a look that conveyed both immediate-level disgust and a sudden crisis of faith about the, no brag, generally held tenet that I have pretty good taste in music and do not truck with crap (for the record, I got that way in Pennsylvania). And I am vain and some days boo-hoo I feel like I have so little to cling to, and I don�t want anyone looking at me like that, and, to be fair, the album is host to at least a handful of cringeworthy moments. But damn, the song that starts out with her cat dying is so good, and obviously the kid�s off the scales for talent moxie etc., and if I end up having to keep the cd in the car and listen to it only when I�m driving around alone and keep skipping over one or two tracks, so what, big deal, it will be my secret vice. Every time I see the sticker on the case quoting someone or other on N�s evocation of both Eminem and Doris Day, though, I get a little livid; lazy music criticism makes me want to throw rocks. What, because they�re all blond? De La Soul and Petula Clark, *maybe*, and that�s my final offer. No offense to Nellie, but Doris Day is nigh unto godhead (yes I�m willing to take this outside), and dues must be paid.

Steve rented and we watched "Das Boot" last night. It was long and full of wet Germans. I liked it.

Yesterday I helped the guy in the next cubicle with a formatting problem he was having in Word and in gratitude he gave me a water bottle that says on it TEAM � Together Everyone Achieves More. I kind of love it. I think the bottle�s going in my car too.