In case it's confusing you, I've started putting these multi-entry pages with the most recent entries on top...less scrolling if you've already read the previous.

Mimi smartypants is very cool.She plays violin. She likes penguins. Like the Lyle Lovett song.

I was appointed to buy cake Thursday for a co-worker's birthday. The cake was a hit, but it looked like not enough at first. I was afraid I would I be blamed for underestimating the cake consumption quotient of my co workers. But no. It was plenty.

Moral: cake gains in mass when it is cut. That’s the only explanation. The uncut cake was pathetically small, obviously inadequate. The cut cake was more than enough. It’s the same principle behind the loaves and fishes--at first it’s not enough, but broil the fish and cut it in pieces and slice the bread just right—presto! More than enough for everyone.

This does not work for pizza though. I don’t know why. but there always seems to be a little too little pizza for everyone.

A bad rainy-day poem
Rain coming down in thin silver lines, wetting you like
a lo-flo showerhead.
Rainsplash and city grit in my sandals, wet feet.
I am not cool enough
to ride a vespa.

I had a wonderful time at my reading group meeting this week. Despite the fact that the book (Fall on Your Knees) was crap. Turns out there's one other purist among the writers there--someone who thinks you should only write for yourself, at least with fiction. That's the only way I can write, actually, is things I would want to read. I'm too much of a person who lives in their own heads to picture an audience and cater to it. I said as much--I may never have an audience for what I write, but that's not really the point of doing it.

My apologies for the lack of updates since the 13th. Instead of update, I've 1. worked 2. slept. That's really about it. I have letters to write, cards to send, a new library card to get. I've got books to read. I need to work on two different writing projects. I needed to update this site. I need to email my friend Nina and get her another friend's phone number. At some point, I should probably go outside before the gloriously drizzly fall gives way to a bleak cold winter. All of that gets in the way.

I'm also distracted by trying to decide: should I grow my hair down to my tuckus? Or cut it? Cutting involves 1. Money, 2. Time to find a place and do it, 3. risk that I'll get a craptastic do that takes forever to grow out. I kinda like it long right now, so I probably won't . It's got an unintentional shag thing going, and so far, no gray hair. Though that wouldn't be a big deal to me yet.I think on my 40th birthday I'm going to dye a white streak through it and look like a witch. But also, cool. Should I have children, it will embarrass them. that's a good thing.

Last weekend Matt and I took some pictures for Matt's CD/website. I like the clothes and the settings, but to be honest, I'm an indifferent photographer. My little camera is crappy and has a cranky way of refusing to go off the first time you click the shutter...so you often get the shot a second later than you should. Back in his band days, I was the principal gig photographer, and I could never afford a good enough camera to completely avoid red-eye and crappily framed photos. But I did learn that if I took *enough* pictures, one or two would probably be worth keeping. And I am a little better at setting up shots and trying different lighting than I used to be.

So, more new stuff. Deanpence and Occasional Muse are new on my links page, both courtesy of Diaryland, which kicks all kind of free-journaling butt.

I also have new essay in Crab Apples. It's religion-related, so skip it if that bothers you.

September 13

Did you know, that when you eat lunch in a crowded McDonald's, and you're lifting up your tray as you weave through the crowd towards an empty table, and the tray is full of McNuggets and a large size plastic cup o' Diet Coke, and you stumble a little, when that cup full of Diet Coke falls five feet and hits the ground, that the plastic will actually shatter and explode, spewing Diet Coke across the shoes of the Mickey D's patrons in a physics experiment gone horribly, horribly, embarrassingly wrong?

No?

Well, you do now.

***

When I was in third through sixth grade, my elementary school was an easy walk from home. I barely had to cross a street, and there wasn't much traffic in our neighborhood.

I loved those walks...across the school's playground, through the yard of the unlucky guy who lived right across from the school and had a path worn through his grass whether he wanted to or not, past the canal, across the one busy street, past the fenced yard that contained an enormous poodle and a tiny one, down the street where most of my friends lived, and home. I could walk it easily right now, 23 years later.

In fact, after a while, I found I could read a book while walking home, except for the street-crossing part. It suited my desire to never not be reading. I was an extremely fast reader and rapidly working my way through the school's small library collection. This actually got me in trouble in school, because I'd read ahead in the textbook, mark the place I was supposed to read aloud from, and tuck my latest novel inside the textbook. And because school is not about learning, but learning the way you're told to learn, my extra reading didn't impress so much as enrage my teachers. Stupid teachers.

So anyway, I would walk home with my backpack and my latest book, letting my feet find their accustomed path. Never fell once.

Then I got really bold. I tried walking home...backward. Easier than you'd think. For a while I even walked home backward and reading. But that didn't last as long....it made me dizzy. And if I had to carry my viola case home, well that just made things entirely too complicated.

(A note: viola players are the least-respected members of the orchestra. If your kid wants to play viola, they have to have thick skins, because cellos, bass, and violins will make fun of them. And they get to play the melody, just a,a,a,a,a, c,c,c,c, a,a,a,a, c,c,c,c, ....infinity all the time .Just so you know.)

But up here in NY, I find that my walking skills only apply if there are no other people around. I'm constantly stepping on people's feet, bumping them with my bag. Engaging in a hilarious mutual hesitation dance if we're directly in each other's path...we feint right, we feint left, smile politely as we restrain our rage, finally pick opposite directions. I can never gauge when opening a door will hit somebody as I walk out of a shop. I stop too suddenly and people bump into me. I'm constantly mumuring "sorry, excuse me, sorry," as I bump someone's head with my elbow or pull off their sandal with my foot.

Is this a normal thing for natives, or am I the clueless rube here? I can't tell. If you're one-a them thar city slickers and have some clues for me, hey, let me know.

September 10

Until a few years ago, I was entirely unaware that the WTC towers existed. I had never been to New York, and what glimpses of the skyline I had seen were mostly the Empire State, the Chrysler (and I could never remember which was which) and a bunch of other big boxy skyscrapers. I knew vaguely that there were some former tallest-building-in-the-world title holders in Manhattan, but I was completely disinterested in the concept, even found it tiresome, an overpriced tourist trap guaranteed to give you a letdown when you finally got to the top.

And when I started considering moving here in 2000 and saw pictures of them, I found them pretty ugly, with nothing going for them but their size. I hated the narrow lattices on the outside, which screamed 1975, when architecture's highest goal was to make every building look like an air conditioning unit. I knew that going to see them when I got here wasn't going to be at the top of my priority list.

The morning of the 11th, I was working at a small university in Texas. I went to work early to finish a magazine that had to go to the printer that day. I always listened to NPR on my way in, and there was nothing unusual on the news when I stepped out of the car at 7:45 (central time); by the time I walked into the office, our distraught secretary, Donna, told me a plane had crashed into one of the towers. I assumed it was a bizarre accident, and was surprised she was so upset. We had a TV in the office, but I went straight to my computer and finished burning the magazine onto a CD. I'd only been working there a month, and was still trying to impress my boss. I felt a little guilty, but plane crashes happen all the time, and this was just another one.

More people came in, some as unconcerned as me, some going to the office with the TV in it, sipping their first cups of coffee. Just as I slid the CD and proofs into an envelope for the courier, Donna ran out into the main room.

"Another plane's hit the World Trade Center!"

I was completely confused. Two accidents? If not, why....an attack? With a plane? It made no sense to me. I ran into the TV room and saw the burning towers. I saw people jump, too, before the cameraman turned elsewhere. I knew the towers were going to come down; I knew a lot of people were already dead; but that's all I knew. When they did come down, I felt as though I were falling too, a sickening drop in my stomach--how many people on the ground were going to be smashed and cut to pieces? Even then I didn't think anyone would survive. I hoped in a way, they wouldn't, because their suffering would be too much to consider. A quick death was easier.

I called my husband, somewhere in all this, before they came down, and he told me they were letting people in his downtown Dallas office go home. I was glad, and worried. The Pentagon plane and the Pennsylvania plane made me more glad. I wanted to go home and be with him. My boss hadn't said anything though, and I was still too new to just leave.

After the towers fell, when the newspeople started repeating themselves because they didn't know anything more, I walked back to my desk. And I couldn't work. A numbness had fallen on me that I recognized, the feeling I had when my dad died. When your mind has something too large to digest and it just--shuts down your ability to care about about anything small, like work or eating. After listlessly flipping through a few files, I went back into the TV room, because I couldn't think of anything else I could do.

"Go back to work, people. We shouldn't be standing around, we still have a lot to do."

I didn't believe it.

Didn't she have a soul? What was wrong with this woman? We were a college fundraising office! Nobody was going to be thinking about giving money to their alma mater today! We had just seen our country attacked, thousands of innocent people die, and she wanted us to go back to our desks like nothing had happened?? What was wrong with her??!

She had walked off by this time, but I was speechless anyway. And I needed my job, because Matt and I were incredibly broke right then, so I didn't say anything.

My immediate boss repeated what her boss had just said, and when I started walking back, looked at my tears with concern. "Did you know somebody there?" she asked.