Here�s the good part, before I forget: Last Saturday I got carded buying *cigarettes*! It�s totally true, we had just started painting the new apartment and realized that the brush was jack so Steve drove me to the Broadway Fred Meyer and asked me to get him a pack of Camel Lights while I was in there, and, the rest is history. And I say that because, yes, I am going to remember it for the rest of my life. The cashier was suspicious, holding my ID for a long time and glancing sourly from it to me, and then she punched my license number into the register as though she was that unsure that I was as advertised. I had my hair in a ponytail and no lipstick and an old shirt of Steve�s over my designated painting pants, but it is not biologically beyond the pale that I could be the mother of someone old enough to buy cigarettes [pauses, makes calculation; confirms that this is the case], so you must understand that the moment was singularly thrilling. In related news � note: this is no longer The Good Part � last night while I was on my way home a teenage tweaker boy copped a feel. Seriously. He admired the pin on my jacket and I said thank you, and then he asked Do you mind if I look at it? and I said No go ahead so I slowed down and he reached out for the pin, circumscribing it at first with his finger, and then his whole hand was on my whole hooter and he was grinning at me lewdly but also in childish triumph, like he�d gotten away with something. Which I suppose he had, although in between him and anything there was pin, jacket, sweater, shirt, and B-cup, so I can�t imagine that this was a high point in hotness. I might be old enough to be that guy�s mother too.

I am suspicious of the chick behind me, the load-balancing one. I think she can see my monitor and in my heart of female hearts I think she seems like a potential tattletale. Every so often I lean to my left, where I�ve got some note-dotted and highlighted reports upon which I could plausibly be drawing to do my work, and I give them my concerted attention.

The bad part is that I have a kidney infection again and I let it go so long (Last Wednesday was when I consciously felt the first twinges of denial) that only the big mean and not incidentally 75-dollar antibiotics can touch it and I�ve been so knocked out and whimpering all week that I am horrifically behind on packing and the ambitious program I�d set out of pre-van moving a carload or so of stuff into the new place every night this week. It�s looking like Saturday and Sunday are going to be absolute though understaffed clusterfucks and then I�m going to have to jump into next week horrifically behind on both work and classes while still in the throes of what will be a ten-day antibiotic haze. Also the bad part is that to get my meds I had to go to the local clinic, since my own doctor�s office won�t see me until I address the matter of being way way overdue for pap smear blood test checkup which I am not going to do without insurance because if they find anything at all then I�m hosed for years on the pre-existing-condition tip plus who only knows how much money that would cost that I do not currently have; it�s horrible but I feel like I have to play the odds here, I�ll write a will and then nothing will be as bad as I�ve prepared for, right? And for all I�ve rent my flesh in here, for instance, about how anxious and scared it makes me not to have insurance nor any discrete hope of getting it in the foreseeable future, how if I sit perfectly still I swear I can feel my epithelial cells forming a drunken conga line, there is a sense in which this was not yet clear to me until I sat in the crowded, dusty, people-smelling waiting room and realized it: I�m in the underclass now. I don�t want to say a whole lot more because I don�t want to seem like I�m making fun of my fellow clinic patients, being all Eeew, I have to sit in the same waiting room as *them*? Because I�m not. The waiting room at the doctor�s office where I�m not persona non grata is about as large, square-footage-wise, as the entire clinic, waiting room and exam rooms and pharmacy and all. It�s air conditioned and tastefully decorated in rose and taupe, and, well, even if I could get in the exam and lab work would have cost almost four times as much as I paid yesterday. So believe me, I have no business giving attitude about having had to go to the clinic, I have no business giving the clinic anything but gratitude. Still, it is sobering. It�s a comedown. Oh, and also on Sunday I have to take time off from the clusterfuckery to go to H&R Block and deal with my taxes. Rock and roll.

The new neighbors seem OK. The paint job looks outstanding � three walls of the living room are a dark blue we got matched to a section of the label of a Progresso bread crumbs canister and that looks mysteriously perfect with the amberish floorboards, and the bedroom is the yellow-orange of the cover of my German-English dictionary. Compared to what I�m used to, the counter space is like the Pampas. The cross-ventilation is lush.

It hurts to walk and I�m freezing cold no matter how many layers are between me and my pin. OK, so I don�t even want to read over the last entry I posed because I am sure I will cringe at its premenstrually (sorry but it�s true) shrill tone and it�s a short trip from cringing to self-censorship so especially while I�m feeling this fragile I�ll give myself a pass. But in the interest of the record and assuming you�re interested, I got some updates to lay on you. In summary, Steve has agreed to bank his houselust until I get a real job with a real paycheck and health insurance � even if this takes longer than six months, which is the lease term of the new apartment � and I have agreed to shut up about Lincoln (or, sigh, Pittsburgh) and the six-months-and-we�re-out ultimatum, I�ve agreed to stick it out here for the time being. Which on the one hand sucks, the conga line and all, the later the party the drunker the guests � I saw a listing a few days ago for an executive assistant position where the bottom of the salary range was $24K, and they wanted a master�s degree � but on the other hand I suppose it�s one less the thing to worry about, and you will recall what they say about the devil you know. Even if I only get temp work three weeks out of four around the middle of the per-hour, as long as I don�t go out much or buy new things I can afford to pay my share of the rent on the new apartment, which anyway is of such loveliness and potential comfort that I suspect I�ll want to stay in a lot more than I do now. And, also, there has to be an end date on the situation somewhere down the line, I am not going to be a temp for the rest of my life. One year and still no job? Maybe not quite at that point. Two years? I would certainly fucking hope so. I don�t know, something like that. And if at that point Steve did not concede that it might be time for me to concede defeat to Seattle and move somewhere else cool, like Pittsburgh, where houses cost less than half as much, well then he would be a mean person and maybe I�d go to Pittsburgh by myself. Not that that�s what I�m focusing on � I�m just a proponent of a Plan B, is all.

Also I�m not focusing on some other things. Foofless orange, a m. of the c., a Catharine (!) of the c., a possible compromise-a-thon that would make everything, everything that�s come before look like a duel with water pistols. And all of this is p-to-p c. of the first and coldest water, sorry again, but just for the record. Brain hurt. Brain want easy answers but easy answers not forthcome. I was feeling so emotionally laid bare this morning, for various reasons, for instance, that the book I reached for to read on the bus was Pam Houston�s "Waltzing the Cat," which as you may remember is to me the literary equivalent of a pint of Ben and Jerry�s and "Imitation of Life" on AMC. I took it with me to lunch today, the caf� in the basement of Elliott Bay Books because I wanted dark and quiet and in the getting there an excuse to practice walking like a normal person, and, I hate myself, when I read the following passage I actually teared up.

"What are you thinking?" Marcus asked.

"That I don�t know how to be happy," I said. "Strong, and excited, spontaneous, even brilliant, but this happiness thing is like another girl�s clothes."

Want to know who I was leaning towards, in the tournament, and would have picked if I�d filled out that bracket? U Conn, of course � I like Jim Calhoun and as a former goody-goody myself, I can�t help loving that Okafor. When we were in Astoria, we caught the last part of the DePaul game and I as much as said to Steve, Wow, I really think they can win this thing. The funny part is that he doesn�t remember this. He does remember the first time I said, "Remember that, remember what I said in Astoria?" and he truly believes I was sincere, but nope, no cigar.

Somebody wants to come uninstall Visio from my PC and give the license to someone else. WTF? I have to go take care of this.