April 30, 1999.

Once again, this entry comes to you from a virtually empty room. Once again, my computer has been set up on a 1/2 foot high dolly. This room is even emptier than the Hippie Hell Grotto, as I have less clothes, no books and 3 CDs. However, I do have a futon mattress (pure luxury!) and fetchingly sizable collection of empty Diet Coke cans. I never figured out the recycling method in this place (it took me 5 1/2 months to inquire at the old place), and they've been accumulating.

Sometimes I'd rather have them as a roommate than the flesh one. Even though they're stickier.

Yesterday was a pretty full day. My mom came up to make her one wandering around town/visiting the daughter's pad trip. She doesn't like visiting my independent living arrangements, for whatever reason. I think she's in denial about me moving out soon, but she probably just can't stand the squalor of my coffee table.

My mom comes off pretty harshly in these pages, I guess. This is mainly because I only tend to write about conflict and anger. She's a very wonderful woman, very strong and funny and kind. And smart as hell. But I'm highly irritable, and she's my mom. Enough said.

So we went out for lunch & chatted about her job. She announced that she was at a new professional low - one of the patients on her floor left the hospital because she thought my mom was laughing at her nosebleed (!) Turns out that during a previous nosebleed, another nurse asked this woman if she'd been picking her nose. I guess the woman thought that it had become a hot anecdote among the staff. I reminded her of what Agamemnon once said to me, when I complained that Beowulf didn't like me: "you can't like everybody, and everybody can't like you."

Then we went to my hair appointment.

Wow. It was one of those salon experiences that you can never have too frequently - a nice hairdresser in a cool place listened to what I had to saw about my hair, and then took responsibility for finding a style to suit my face. You wouldn't believe which celebrity's haircut I ended up with, especially if you know me IRL.

Winona Ryder.

Yeah, you heard me.

Not that I look like her, of course, no more than I would look like Farah Fawcett if it was feathered & full of blonde highlights, or like Betty Page if it was blunt cut & jet black. (I've been told that I look kind of like Dana Delany, but that's neither here nor there.) But...I have a short, feral boy's cut. A Peter Pan cut. I suppose that it won't help my ongoing "no really, I'm not a lesbian" argument at the upcoming shower, but damn. Short hair rocks. I love this.

Tonight is Margarita night. Seems every spring, Seth picks a Friday, puts the word out, and a bunch of us gather to drink ass-sized margaritas. I'm quite looking forward to it, as I've never had a better margarita, and I like patio time in general.

Seth, however...Seth is a bit dicier. Every time I talk to him, I'm reminded of the fact that he saw me drunker than I've ever been on That Tuesday. Everybody else has granted me a modicum of respect since then...Seth is the only hold out. Pisses me off. And it doesn't help that he's an acid-tongued bastard.

Last year's patio time was during the week when we were portaging Ophelia's yellow inflatable couch through the streets. I miss it. I miss that Ophelia, too. I still don't know what went wrong. There are 3 generations of people who won't talk to me because of her, and I have no idea what my offence was.

Kind of like Kafka's the Trial. Or junior high.

After reading today's Pamie, I found myself wishing that she was old friends with the Boy, instead of...well, let's call her Salome. I was going to write about the Salome situation, how it got aggravated and remarkably improved at the end of January, and my current feelings about her. But there are some things I'm not allowed to discuss in an online forum.

I'm sorry for the teaser, but before you start writing me about absolute rights of authorship, reconsider and desist. This page is very very important to me, but if it comes down to a choice between keeping the Boy happy and writing the whole truth as I know (and distort) it...well, I have a lot of unfilled paper journals.