"What do you do in your spare time?" I would say. And he would probably answer, but that would be irrelevant. "Uh-huh. That's cool." (It would sound interested.) "So, uh, you and I get out at the same time on wenesday." (We would...he's on overnights for while, so it won't happen, but we would in this scenario, which would be convenient.) "I don't mean like a date or anything, because, ya know, I'm engaged and all, but we should, I don't know, do something together after work. A movie, or, a store or something. We could go to Bull Moose on disagree on so much music that we both regret agreeing to go, or stick around here and play a fifty by fifty game of dots. Something."

Maybe the list would be longer. "We could go to bookland and brood over some really deep cliffnotes. Read all of 'War and Peace' in an hour." Or "You play air hockey? Wal*Mart's always fun." Or "We could both pick a group of three-syllable or higher words secretly and see who gets the other to use them all first."

Wouldn't matter what. He'd say yes-- he'd marvel at my casualty, and my great ideas, and be all too eager. This would all be going on in his head, of course, but I'd know, and I'd know further that he'd wonder why someone so confident and resourceful as me would ever want to hang out with someone like him, so I'd explain myself. "Most of my friends-- the ones I like hanging out with, anyway-- are gone for the summer, or, ya know, forever. And Zack and I are trying to arrange it so I got time for myself and other people, which keeps ending up being time for Spider Solitaire. Anyways, I thought we could have fun, or some reasonable facimile."

And, despite the fact that he works at burger king, he wouldn't be confused by the word "facimile." In the ideal scenario, he'd say "Ha! Facimile! That was the first word on my list!"

And we'd both be smiling, and laughing, and no one around would get any of it. Because they all work at Burger King.



That's how it plays out in my mind. But my mind has a lot of things playing, on and on and on, and so few of them are ever close to being accurate.

I wrote that because I kinda left everyone hanging on that second-to-last post, the one about work Ben. Being drawn to work Ben. Being drawn to the idea of being drawn to someone. Maybe that wasn't in the post, actually. Maybe it was just implied.

I'm growing to enjoy a friend of work Ben's, as well-- work Joe. Maybe it would seem less like I was hitting on either of them if I were to invite both. The one thing I don't want-- definitely DO NOT want-- is any confusion anymore about what kind of relationship I'm getting into with someone.

But it defintily would be nice to connect with someone again. Learn about someone, instead of just know everything about them. It's always nice when it starts happening, I can generally deal with it when it ends. As it always does, despite my endless optimism. I need to come to terms with that shit.

So, as a first step: My name is Linda, and I'm a chronic optimist. (Hi, Linda!) On with it.

That last post is a prime example of the reason I'm trying not to force myself to post anymore. It's useless to do it that way. It comes out so badly.

Zack and I, on our way home from Massachussetts this weekend, stopped in Best Buy. I heard Best Buy Radio say the name of one of Casey's favorite artists-- he had never heard pronounced by anyone with any real authority on how to say it, so I called him to tell him. Ler-che.

While we were there, we bought a CD buy someone neither of us had ever heard of so we could listen to it fairly-- rather than something one of us liked and the other did it. The album we ended up with is "O" by Damien Rice. I judged it by it's cover, knowing instantly when I saw it what kind of music it would be. Slow and lyrical and kind of Indie. Accoustic. It was obvious. I felt bad because it's not really what Zack's into, but when I tried to explain to him that he wouldn't like the kind of music I knew it was, he said something about not judging a CD by it's cover.

It occured to me then that that phrase really isn't as meaningful as it once was- don't judge a book by it's cover. Oh, it made sense in the say-- you've seen older book covers, they're very rarely revealing at all. But nowadays, while I'm sure it still applies that you shouldn't really judge anything by it's outside...you really can glean certain things by a book's cover. Some of them, anyway.

The rest of the weekend was all more pleasant than that day, and all probably more deserving of mention. But, as I've just told Emily, I'm trying to work on obeying my creative impulses more. I've just now written poetry-- a quick little thing with no painstaking concentration, just the flight of urges and words, and it came out exactly how I might have wanted it to, had I known that that's exactly what I wanted.

The urge was fueled by the music, my CD player. Damien Rice turns out to be inspiring, the way Ani is. Not all that much like Ani...slower, for the most part, but inspiring as well. Fueling, if you will. I should really make it a point to listen to this kind of stuff more often. I'd have so much more to write.

When Zack left for work, and even before that, I was bored bored bored bored. Stayed like that for a while, determining that there's little to nothing I hate more than bored-bored-bored-boredom. Then I got off the damn computer, away from the bor-bor-bor-boring conversations that always rope me in when I'm like that, and changed out of my work clothes. That, in itself, seemed to do a world of good. Went to Movieland. Rent whatever I had an urge to rent-- Days of Wine and Roses, which I've seen, and Angels with Dirty Faces, which I haven't, but I vaguely remember seeing one of the characters mentioned on this Heroes and Villains documentary my mom was watching a while ago. I think, unless I've mixed it up with something else, that it appealed to me. I don't know that I'll have time to watch these movies in the near future, but it was the walking down to get them that was really important.

There's these two maple trees in a yard on main street that are very tall. I love the time of day when the sun's just starting to set, or maybe mid-set, I don' tknow, but the sun is touching the tops of things but not the bottoms. And it set so perfectly on these trees today...I was underneath them, and their branches and leaves were cascading into each other, and the sun was cascading into them. I stopped and looked up. I was thinking of how I must have looked to the passing cars, and thinking whether or not I would write about those trees on this. I figured I wouldn't, but since I was writing anyway, it seemed worth a mention.

I wonder if I'm still interesting anybody.

Mr. Ladd called today to check up on me. I was worried that he'd be insulted, somewhat-- once I started work, I just sort of phased him out of my life, with no intentions of it being permanent, but having no real drive to call him right away. It turned out that he took my not showing up for a while as an indication that my life is going well, and he seemed so happy about it. I didn't correct him. No real reason to-- life, in some aspects, is going swimmingly. In many, it's falling apart at the seams. But I don't, as of right now, see how my interaction with him can continue to help me with it until I've given it some thought on my own for a while. To be honest-- and I open with that warning because I believe he still reads-- I've been considering another therapist. Not because he doesn't help me, as everyone seems to know he does me a world of good, but...well, a feeling I have no real definition of. Firstly, I think I love him to the point where he can't have the effect on my he really should in what's coming up. He's the one who's gotten me this far in my current issue-- dangerously, defeaningly, horribly low self-esteem. (Except to call it that seems to take away from the hollow of it all.) But, having had him to help me realize it...for some reason I think I want to talk to a woman about it. I guess I really don't know why. But it's him. I don't have to worry too much about his feelings...he's always telling me not to, and, anyway, I've done far worse.

So I've decided that all of you should go out of your way to ask me about the poem I wrote today-- "Ascension", it's called. I don't feel like pushing it on anyone individually, knowing how little time I put into it, and something else; embarrassment, I suppose. But I do want people to read it. So ask me. Go on.

Go on and on and on with it.