I�m moved, mostly. Godless heathens that we are, Steve and I forgot to plan for the storage facility being closed on Easter, so we didn�t get to unload our locker there and transport its contents to the new place, and now we�ll have to do that this coming weekend. Which is no sweat off my aching back because I think if we had managed to pull off the trifecta of move-clean-unlocker we would be absolutely dead today. Last night at dinner we were both almost incoherent with exhaustion. How did I get so much stuff? And what is it all? Ye gods. What am I, some kind of yuppie scum? Maybe you�d better not answer that. The price of a third-floor walkup with a great view, I learned, is having to carry one�s multitudinous shit up two flights of stairs one box at a time; also, having to make new friends because I will bet that after what we put Saturday�s heavy-lifting posse through, when we move out of the new place they will all be unavailable. And I am not sure I blame them, because also what I learned is that Steve�s sofa can only be got through doorways from which the door has been unhinged, and even then only with a lot of twisting and forcing and physics.

I must say, it is so nice to be able to talk about all of this in the past tense. I feel the opposite of hung over today. Another reason for this is that I figured out on Sunday afternoon that I�ve been double-dosing myself on antibiotics since last Wednesday afternoon. When I went to the clinic, the ARNP took special care to warn me that she was prescribing a drug that would require me to take two pills four times a day, so if I had trouble swallowing (shut up) or was too scatterbrained to be on the ball every six hours or so I had better tell her. No, that�s fine, I said. Are you absolutely positive? she asked sternly� so when I picked up the bottle from the pharmacy, I didn�t bother reading the label since I already knew what I was getting. But then on Sunday, as I was conscientiously taking daily dose no. 2 in the parking lot of the Queen Anne Bartell�s, it occurred to me that the bottle seemed empty considering that I was around the middle of a ten-day cycle, so I read the label and saw that the pharmacy had given me the same drug in a different strength. No wonder I�d felt like there were jackhammers in my eyes and putty in my joints! Now I am medicating properly and I feel worlds better.

Also news: I got an income tax refund. One dot-com year I had a loss in the mid-five figures and nope, no refund; I take a few continuing-ed classes and, giddyup, here comes the money. The tax guy confirmed that this is often the case, so if anyone has been considering some education, take heed. And my sister found out that not only does the state of Washington want to give me some additional cash � residents, spin the wheel here � but so does Pennsylvania, as the proxy for the movie theater where I apparently got stiffed on a 1992 paycheck. My sister is a valuable research tool. The one bad thing so far about the new apartment is that due to a neighbor�s tall tree there is no clear line of sight between 131 and 150 degrees so no more TiVo � this after I waited four hours there on Saturday morning for the installers to show up � and the cable provider is Millennium, which is overpriced and underchanneled and from what I can tell run and staffed exclusively by drooling morons; when I first moved into Casa Rebecca in September of 2002 and had to set up service there, one of the operators was stymied by my use of the term "Web site." And even if I do get connected to one of the Millennium super-race who are competent to set up an install appointment (this was another issue at CR, now that I recall, the inability of operators to get requests into the service queue), it will be another week and a half before someone can actually be there. But on the other hand � and can you tell I�m trying to look at the bright side? � there�s this article that Stephen sent around this morning, and, yeah, there�s probably something to it. For the past few months I�ve been down to one pill a day, as it were, with respect to my online reading � my attention span had dwindled, and every moment I was panicky that I was not managing, not good enough to, keep up. (Keep up with what? Damned if I know.) I held off reading my diary e-mail for so long that Hotmail razed the Inbox. All this is and is not related to my albeit ambivalent contractorship. Again, I�m not going to go all Simple Abundance on you, but I have to find a way to modulate myself and my life because the current model is no good, do you hear me, no good. So often I feel as if there�s a pinball game going on inside my head at the same time as I myself am in another sense the pinball. It makes me bite my nails and it makes me wake up wide-eyed and gasping for air at five in the morning. To an extent I�m afraid that this is just the gradient of existence for the indefinite future while everything is so unsettled for me, but I also know that in another sense it is not and that if I could throw myself hard enough in the other direction I might right the balance and put things on an even keel.

The self-editor at work: "Cause things to be put on an even keel?" While on the wishy-washy side, I must confess that it comes closer to the meaning I want to convey; even I�m not masochist enough to say that everything harrowing me, in this case I mean, is all my fault and therefore what I deserve. Then again, the construction is awkward, especially after "I might right," so trust that no one is reading too closely. Except Catharine, since who she can read my mind already knows what I meant. "Put back on an even keel?" Uh, if only for the completeness of the record, when were they last there? Were they ever? Trying to put a date on it makes me anxious too, so I will let that slide and go on to the next paragraph. "Matters" instead of "things"? Ugly with "put." And how�s this, while I am on the subject: the possibility that being uninsured for so long has made me, put me, caused me to be made timid not just with respect to injury-courting activities like downhill skiing and mountain biking but gradually and increasingly towards life in general. And maybe it�s not even the same thing, in the first case it is logical self-protectiveness and in the second it is reflexive and often unconscious self-abnegation, a gruesome metastasization of the pre-existing condition of having been denied. Yesterday afternoon I was riding in the moving van with Steve and maybe forty percent of my whole brain was given over to being grateful that he was there and willing to drive, because no way in the world could I do it � I wouldn�t be able to get through the narrow residential streets without shearing all the side mirrors off, I would not be able to park it, I�d be scared to drive fast because of the way the van creaked and shook. But a few years ago I drove exactly such a van, with a trailer attached, across the country � twice! It�s true that this was mostly highway driving, but I got off the highway to see the sights or look for restaurants, and the highway driving included, for instance, barrelling down a South Dakota two-lane near midnight and near eighty. After the first few hours, I was not afraid at all. I was up to the job. I didn�t question myself. I drove.

I like the "cow" in "coward." Moo.

I vex myself the way I can completely fail to acknowledge conversational topics that make me feel vulnerable or that otherwise catch me off guard. It�s like I can�t help myself, I sit there with an indulgent kindergarten-teacher smile on my face and don�t respond at all. Must work on this.