december 19, 2001. And then there's the other sweet words: Teddy sniffing glue, he was 12 years old; fell from the roof on East 2-9 Kathy was 11 when she pulled the plug, 26 reds and a bottle of wine Bobby got leukemia 14 years old, he looked like 65 when he died. He was a friend of mine. It's nice to walk in the door and be greeted with the happy sounds of Jim Carrol wailing out "People Who Died." I used to wonder if I would ever submerge my personality in the mainstream otherness; it wasn't until I realized that music could always fish me out of the mainstream that I truly relaxed. In other news, I love this town. We've had 2 snow days in a row, and I used this one to finish up the Christmas Shopping and read the clever books I bought for other people. Since this is my second day off, my sense of time has loosed itself from reality, just like those fabled summer vacations of yore. The difference is that back then I had a family to take care of me and friends to remind me of the normal time to do things; now I have neither. So I've been eating at really weird times - 10:30 a.m., 2 p.m., right before bed, etc. - and by now I've lost any sense I once had of the proper time to sit down and eat. It's been affecting my diet because I tend to wait until I absolutely need to eat, and urgency doesn't leave a lot of room for creativity. All of which is to say that I've been making an awful lot of white rice lately, and chasing it with boxed meat. I would say that it's not that bad, except that it is. Getting back to my initial point (loving this town)...this evening I started cleaning up the bedroom when I realized that I needed to visit a fellow parishioner's house. And I also realized that since it was already full dark, it wasn't going to get any better if I put it off. So I bundled up & swished out the door, intent on doing this quickly & cooking up something quick when I got home. Once there, I realized (duh!) that I had arrived during the time that normal people ate dinner, and that I had interrupted them. They were nice about it though, and let me sit down while they finished up their pizza. After a couple of minutes, they offered me a slice. A nice, homemade slice of pizza on whole-wheat crust, just crawling with veggies & other wholesome goodies. Of course I said yes and thanked them profusely (also thanking my lucky stars for timing my visit so rudely). They had been so nice to offer the slice, even putting cheese on it for me (it was intended for their absent vegan daughter). Then I realized - the pizza was covered in pepper. Okay. I'm a fussy eater. I know it, you know it, the Boy knows it, dogs know it. I don't like pepper in any context, and I won't even pick it off pizza because it leaves a sick peppery taste that I cannot fucking stand. I'd rather eat nothing than eat pepper. I also knew that I was going to eat this slice of pizza without a grimace, even if it goddamned killed me. I learned a lot during this practicum: I learned that I can fake a good attitude until it becomes real, I learned that 12-year-olds are exhausting hellspawn with minds more curious than any sophisticated 17-year-old, I learned that there are only so many times you can ask a class to be quiet before you snap. Tonight I learned that if I need to, I can eat pepper on a pizza and not grimace. Why is it that this latest insight seems the most significant of all? Maybe because I needed to be fed, and was fed despite my own fussiness. "I'm trying to clear my throat and think at the same time." - dad on the phone last night. this time 2 years ago: He's already warned me that I'm not getting a piece of the Dav official merchandise, now that I've made him into a celebrity both in my grade 6 class and beyond.