July 14, 1999.

10:34

Great party last night. My isolation has been augmented by my fatigue: the less sleep I get, the less I want to talk to other counselors. But yesterday's nap changed all of that. There was lots of good cheer & everyone seemed inordinately pleased with their gifts & I left the house smiling to myself. Suzanna (the counselor with a cabin full of Magic-playing 12 year old boys) was my name, and I got her a deck of common cards (whatever that means) to tease her a bit. Before she got her present, she declared loudly that she wanted tattoos and glitter and bubbles and a pen necklace...and I groaned. But either she's too polite to tell me I suck or she honestly appreciated the joke.

Mercer's sore throat is getting worse. She sits quietly now, only speaking when spoken to. I'm worried. I can't tell if she's being stoic so as not to miss the last few days of camp...and I've grown quite attached to her, besides. I don't want her to run herself ragged for the sake of summer camp.

We're on the downward slope now. Movies tonight, parent night tomorrow and then on Friday there's an all-day party after which they go home. Of course, then I'm rushing to S-ville to see the Boy's mother get married (I'm an usher!). But that party won't go on all night.

I'll be glad to get this session behind me. Rumors are flying through camp about the taunting thing, with incidents magnified & altered to suit the speaker. I find it horribly humiliating, and I don't want to think about it anymore. I wish my brain had a delete key sometimes.

Reading All Quiet On the Western Front. It's a bit heavy going after all the Robertson Davies and Tom Robbins I've been gobbling up lately. Plus, some kind critic has scribbled "bs!" next to any statement she disagrees with. Unfortunately, that's a lot of statements. I suppose it was a school assignment. It's awfully distracting & I want a fresh copy. But I guess I don't get to complain about marginal notes in a book about the horror of World War I.

Hey, has anybody else in the Austin Powers audience actually been to www.zipit.com? It's high-larious.