I read Casey's Livejournal, and more and more, am enviously impressed with his writing abilities. Truth be told, when we first met him, I thought he had little talent as compaired to potential, and I guess that's what kept things in check for me. I guess I never expected that he'd cash in that potential and become the writer I never could be, but that's what happens when people go to college, and when other people go to trailer parks.

"One brother wore blue, one brother wore gray..."

It's funny how I see people from my high school class and the classes surrounding me and look down on them when I can tell they're in crap jobs and going nowhere. Me, I tell myself, I have a plan. Zack will find a job just high-paying enough to manage our bills for a while, and I will re-educate myself on massage, pass the certification test, then fly out to Cali to re-take the two-week course. When I come back, I'll do it part time until I can build up my practice enough to leave Petland, and Zack can start training as a bartender, and pretty soon we'll be well on our way. We'll keep the trailer for a good long time just to save up, and I'll take some college classes, and still have enough free time to work on that book, whatever book that is. And he, maybe, could take some classes, too, and he can be successful, but not so much to threaten me. He'll be happy in my shadow and when I make my speech after being the first person to win a Tony, an Oscar, and a Pullitzer all in one year, I'll give him all the credit, I'll say it was him all along. No one will believe it, but it'll be enough for him. And we'll be happy.

I tell myself.

There's a phenomena I've been thinking about and think I have explained: the trashier certain women are, the more youthful they dress, regardless of age. Think of the 20-something check-out girl in your neighborhood grocery store, wearing that neon-green scrunchy. The fat, toothless forty-year-old mother of five in her stained Garfield T-Shirt. That thirty-something diner waitress in the spandex that were popular back when she'd hang out at that same diner after gym class let out. Why is this? To my mind, it's because they haven't grown into the lives they were expecting to-- they never went to college, never married a prince, never acted on broadway or recorded a pop album or wrote their memoirs-- so they deny that they've grown up at all. The youthful attire, while obvious to the rest of us as being a poor excuse to burn a hole in that Goodwill discount card, to them is a disguise, a clever costume that makes their life a masquerade ball of denial. The next time you see one of these ladies in their work place, stop and think for a moment if you think what they're wearing might be a desperate grasp at a youth that's passed them buy.

Me, I go to work dressed as Safari Stan, so I'm clearly above this. I tell myself.


On with it.