It's 4:13 and I have just finished a post menstrual-cycle-induced mental breakdown regarding my inability to drive, and I am wishing, as the 10 McDonald's chicken nuggets settle heavily into my system, I am wishing very strongly to be back in last night, to be back, naked and handcuffed in Zack's bed again. It's in the moments just before he has to leave and I know I won't see him for the rest of the day, until tomorrow morning or- god forbid- tomorrow afternoon that I know why I'm marrying him, because I do love him so much more profoundly than I've ever loved anyway...I know that when I look at him and I'm suddenly shocked by the beauty of the way he's standing, the way he's looking at me, how good his hair looks short, how nice it was to pull on long, and all of the sudden he is my one-and-only all over again. If I had my wish, in those moments, he'd never be gone, but then I'd never get my little reminder of how incredible it is that I- Linda H.- am in love, and that every single day that changes me a little more, and lately it all seems to be good.

"You can doubt anything if you think about it long enough
What happens always adjusts to fit
What happened after that."

Reckoning, by Ani diFranco, is playing, and I love her slow stuff her hurt stuff her sad stuff as much as her fast her angry her vengeful stuff, more than her powerful her political her pro-active stuff, more than any of my stuff, my amateur my alien my unpublishable stuff- but at least you're reading right now- Hi. I put reckoning in an e-mail to Elorza once, a quote from it, and how I do love the way I write e-mails to people that I really love- I put so much damn attention into them, try to make them so meaningful and so often they fall on deaf, unresponsive ears, but as much as I'd like to think I'm doing it for them, I'm doing it at least equally for me.

"I don't care how fast you run
Just tell me, baby, when you're done
With your little marathon
You still got cab fare home.
'Cause the finish line's a shifty thing
And what is life but reckoning?
You are still the song I sing
To myself when I'm alone."

That part was Elorza the day I wrote him the e-mail, and the next day it was Jeremey- who had cab fare home, who I can talk to now, who I love so goddamned much, and who I am not just "accomplishing"- he is not someone I just can't stand to be rejected by, maybe that's part of it, but you'd all know differently if you saw how happy he makes me, when he does.

Fucking McDonald's. My doctor's visit the other day- for a physical- was hazardous to my mental health, what with making me stand on that auction block of a scale. Bleeding now, I can assure myself that I am just bloated, that must be where the ten merry-little-surprise pounds came from, but the fact remains- I hate my body, most of the time, when I'm not looking at myself in the mirror the way I was last night, with Zack next to me- do you know how GOOD we look together? Fucking AY we're perfect, fuck what traditional mental health institutions might have to say about that. I feel like going for a bike ride- ooo! A transportation-oriented machine I can actually operate!- and it was warm earlier, but I don't know if it will still be by the time I get out everything that's in me, all sticky and the like. My mother lost my straw and I am drinking my calorie-filled coke through a long, thin, orange straw that actually lead me somehow to the thought process, earlier, that if one always drank through a straw like that, the extra suckage required would burn off enough calories to offset the unhealthiness of the beverage. Linda H.: Fitness guru.

And Jesus, why doesn't everybody read this crap? I'm at least as interesting as the blaséd characters in "Four Blondes" and about fifty (thousand) times more than all the characters in "About Schmidt" put together- don't go see it. Under any circumstances. Zack, the miniature devil on my shoulder, keeps telling me to tell everyone to go see it so they have to suffer the way we did, and while my cynical side loves him for it, I just couldn't do that to another human being....I should suggest it to Tony. Nobody's away messages are interesting right now, and Mark is coming over in probably an hour in a half. I really should try to get some riding in.

I wonder if I can find the CD player. That would be nice. Especially if I hadn't left "More Than You Think You Are" in California- I bike rode in January in California. I do miss the weather....

"I learned how to laugh and I learned how to cry
Well, I learned how to love and learned how to lie
So you'd think I could learn how to tell you goodbye-
You don't say you need me
You don't sing me lovesongs
You don't bring me flowers
Anymore."

All hail Neil and Barbara for performing the single most depressing lost love song that I currently know. It's too good, too bad, too true to be true.

And on and on and on with it.