kerouac says

my parents, who just moved to arizona for the winters, in the company of many many older people, have gotten in the habit of reading obituaries out loud to each other over the breakfast table. apparently it's quite diverting. mom's current favorite involves Kenneth H., who died at 109 and liked "nurses and dessert."

i always think these are going to be unbearably navelly, but i also like getting picked. la ketch, please finish telling about sleep training because i am living vicariously through other people's babies while i slowly go through another year's worth of viable eggs.

i can't believe i've never: slept with a girl. published a short story. been on law and order. these are all things i once believed were in store for me, but somehow, eh. not so much.

every time i think about [ ], i still cringe: this one time in AP english, the teacher--who i idolized, and who came to my wedding this summer, and is definitely more than an acquaintence--was telling some story about some author, and out of nowhere, for no reason i can determine other than i wanted to be some kind of proto-literary hotshot, i said, oh, i just saw a picture of him. i think i meant in the paper or something. really, i don't know why i told this lie.

because, of course, the author was J.D. Salinger. motherfucker. suffice it to say, there was no picture of him in the paper, or in any paper, like, ever, and everyone knew it. and instead of shrugging and rolling my eyes, which would have been par for my age, i weakly added: i mean, a picture about him. i think i meant a movie. and of course there are even fewer movies about J.D. Salinger than there are published photos of him. the worst was that i heard some voice say snidely, a picture about him? like, what does that even mean? yeah, i know, guy.

i think about this roughly once a week.

i wish i'd [ ] when i had the chance: slept with a girl. also, i wish i 'd taken my fourth year in college. i graduated a year early, even though i could have stayed on for a fourth year at half-time and paid virtually nothing. i did this because i thought i was going to get into an MFA, and when i didn't, staying on as an undergraduate seemed lame. it would not have been lame. it would have been wonderful. college is such a short, privileged time, or at least it was for me. i wish i'd given myself a little more of it instead of rushing off to san francisco to live with an asshole boyfriend.

i've never felt so out of place as when i: wow, lots of competitors. the time i had to go to catholic day care and the other kids were really fast and told dirty jokes. the time the drill team had a sleep over in the gym but my two friends who were on it too couldn't come, and i had to go hang out in the locker room. the time i was a page in the Senate and every other single adolescent in the program looked like a model. it was a village of barbies and ken. i was like, unfair. i cannot hold my own, here.

[ ] is my guiltiest pleasure: The Hills (i watch it for school!), and making cookies and then eating most of them before anyone comes home and finds me out. i fucking love cookies and have no self control. so far metabolism is handling this, but god only knows how long it will last.

i hope [ ] knows how grateful i am for [ ]: my husband. he does lots of good things, and fills in the blanks where i'm deficient, but i've been critical lately. i hope he knows what he does that i can't live without just as well as he knows what i'm frustrated about. i think i tell him both. i hope i do.

in my darkest hour, i secretly blame [ ] for my dysfunction: bad, irrecoverable gaps in my core. things that are fundamentally wrong in there. a brain that eats itself. bad juju stamped on my spine. rotting places. termites of the soul. moral aneurysms.

[ ] changed my life forever: learning to read. and then, twenty years later, meeting the monkey and knowing immediately that the jig was up, forever.

and because it's if customary: if you're reading? benlau, boo. you're it.

i am going to write this paper.

i'm writing this thing about reality television and actresses and authenticity, and every time i think about it, i imagine professorials rolling their eyes about it, because it's about reality television and i don't exactly have the argument nailed down and i seem to prefer internet solitaire to my chosen profession by an alarming degree. perhaps i could have gotten a ph.d. in hoyle for less than fifty thousand dollars. also the theory in this paper is kind of coming directly from my butt.

i don't care! i am going to write this paper! the paper writing music is on. the coke zero is at hand. i am wearing my fetchingest glasses. they are only words. aaaaa.

ready, go.

i may have already said this, but i think the big bummer is that not only can't you make someone love you, you can't make them do anything about it.

i locked myself out of the apartment yesterday. without my phone (cunningly also left inside the apartment; i am nothing if not consistent). and because our apartment is opened with an ID card, like some weird residential motel, if i have left my cardkey inside the locked abode it also means the wallet in which i keep it is similarly unavailable. on campus at six pee em with no keys, no phone, no wallet, no dinner.

i couldn't take the bus home; i couldn't go get a coffee. i was hungry and chilly and wearing mary janes. i couldn't call anyone except the monkey, because in this age of speed-dialed cell phones, his is the only number i have memorized. and i only made that call courtesy of the credit card number i memorized during the wedding when i was buying so much shit on the internet all the time.

i walked three miles to a shopping mall, and sat in the food court with a book. once i got there, it was actually fine--i realized i even had some baby carrots to stave off starvation--but it was a long, teary tramp. not because i had no socks on and the way was blistery, but because that's one of the really alone times, when you suddenly realize there is no one local and practical to call. i do not know anyone except the monkey who will drive to the west side and buy me a slice of pizza.

and then i thought it would go away, but i woke up this morning all melodrama but partly sincere, thinking where did my life go? i think that i used to be a more magical commodity than i now feel myself to be. and it isn't just going back to school and letting down my inner artiste. i think it's more about community, and lack of it, and star trek on the couch, and sending emails to far away friends that try not to sound needy but really are and nonetheless get three sentence replies. it's about feeling like i might have gotten married in front of a bunch of strangers, or worse, acquaintences. it's proposing a visit or a joint vacation and realizing from the noncommittal replay that we are not that kind of friends.

the scary is that my life over the last five or so years has gotten much less full, even as it's become so beautifully enriched by one singular, magnificent thing. maybe whiny, but i'm trying to look at this dilemma functionally. i had this going on, this connectedness, for a while, even though i was bummed about plenty of other stuff at the time. there must be a way to encourage it again. what i miss isn't being single, it's walking into a party where everyone knows my name. actually, it's walking into a party at all. my twenty-sixth birthday party overflowed the rented room. every one since then has been a two-person affair.

there's also something in here about how i'm ready to have a baby and we can't right now, or at least shouldn't, because grad school hates babies and my advisor is Pol Pot and we are in a fair amount of debt and the wages of the people who live in my apartment are ridiculous. mine are not going to ameliorate any time soon, for obvious reasons, and the monkey cannot be made to see that things are not working. money is not working. a solution is required.

and friends are not working. if you are one, please don't think this is about you; i'm sure i love you like a brother. pay no heed to the sniveler behind the curtain. or, maybe, a very small heed. a heedlet. to be clear, thought: i realize i'm the one who drove me here. i just need to find a gas station. or . . . whatever, god. bad metaphor. the end.

i passed my big test. was momentarily greatly relieved, and then just started grinding my teeth at night about something else. (it wakes the monkey up. he says it's like there's gravel in there. cronch cronch.)

he got a job. the acting kind. there was a momentary episode of the evil envies, but not too bad. the worser part was that this job doesn't pay so well--i mean, more than i've ever made as an actron, but not as much as four nights at the restaurant. not that four nights at the restaurant is really cutting it. sigh. i like being someone who can survive on less, but every once in while i wonder what is wrong with us that combined, our annual income is less than most of my friends' individual incomes. we makes our choices, we takes our lumps. soon i will be an obscure and stable professorial, and the monkey can spend his daytimes taking care of the child we are currently too poor to responsibly produce. i will say, however, that the waiting is getting precarious. i am about to fall off of it.

in other news, there is no other news. this is what i do: read books, ruminate on the future, refrain from buying things. one day last week i actually had to do a sort of art-like project for a class, and i thought, this is what some people do in grad school. not only do they read stuff, they make stuff.

i'm gonna make more stuff. we'll see if that helps.