So there’s soccer tonight, and results from callbacks on the play, and soccer again tomorrow.  And a school carnival and dinner, I think, and a mess all over my house, I mean, “office.”  Everywhere.  Sinks, dishes, newspapers, clothes.  It’s a focus-killer, it is.  Which is why I’m fleeing tomorrow for three days.  I’m leaving A. with hungry children and apples on the ground.   (The apples, A. if you find the extra time, really must be picked up.)   

I am scattered today, miserably scattered.  There were too many lights on, I’ve had to shut them off.  There are too many things out of place.  When I am like this – my brain jogging backwards, crookedly, on circular tracks — I pick a random book from the study, turn to the middle and read.  Here’s page 201:

“There’s a greater chance of you getting killed by an American civilian than an enemy combatant from another country.  Let’s work on solving whatever the underlying causes are before we work on something that is by comparison a much smaller threat.  If this is too much logic for you, then perhaps I can draw a picture.”

– Anthony DiFalco, Office Politics: Blue and Red America Collide

Unrelated (or maybe not) the bourgeoisie ruin everything. 

Here’s a fun list.  Read it, read it.  A. won’t, he doesn’t click, but that’s okay it’s more for the rest of you.  I think A. would be bored by it anyway. 

If you didn’t want to read that, here’s what Deepak Chopra thinks about this Palin thing. 

And if you don’t want to read that, well then read about Jimmy Slyde, the legendary tap-man who died this past May.

And now I’ve got to go, I have things to do.  I’ll meet you for dinner, though, if you buy.

So A. and I have come along way since those shaky early days of Facebook.  Last night, for instance, we got in a fight, about Mad Men.  A. won’t watch it and this says to me that he doesn’t value our marriage or the children it produced or even human life, really. 

So today, rather than refold all of his socks in the way he doesn’t like (what I normally do after a fight) I sent him an invitation to the Mad Men group on Facebook!

Do you know what A. did back?

He sent me a Facebook message!  It was this: 

“Ha ha, cute honey.  Go rent the first few episodes, let’s go from there.”

Are you thinking what I’m thinking?  No, no, not Arby’s, a book: 

How Facebook Saved My Marriage and Helped Me Watch Mad Men Again! 

Right? 

I’m seriously brilliant. 

Today will be less eventful.  It’s a little cold and I write better in the cold.  The only niggling thing now is my finger, I’ve sprained the top joint of my finger, the left index one.  As you can see, I’m still able to type, it’s the Beethoven I’m concerned about.  I dusted off my Beethoven Sonaten I, the Op. 1 No. 2 dedicated to Haydn with Joanne Price’s penciled fingerings and notes. 

I performed it once.  Was it a recital?  There were recitals, they took place in small rooms for mothers and aunts and there were cookies after and it didn’t matter if you screwed up, no one knew.  Except Joanne who assigned extra Czerny the next week.  But there were also contests on big black stages with gleaming Steinways, and crabby little judges sitting at tables below marking you down.  There was also something called Syllabus.  It was a test we had to take each year to move up.  I don’t know what we got for moving up, what was in it for us, but it didn’t matter we had to do it.  I had to know four pieces, answer theory questions, play some scales.  I may have played this piece for Syllabus.

All of these events were deathly quiet, by the way, no joking around, no smiles.  Oh, I miss them.  And now my freshly revived career at a sudden halt; curse you damned finger!

Ellen plays Beethoven, too; she plays him lousy.  She also fumbles through junior versions of Mozart with grand vision, but I’m not Ellen, I’m drinking pomegranate tea.  And that’s all you need to know about me.  For today.

C. mocked my fly until I sent her this picture. 

Hmm.  Well, it came out better when I sent it to her.  Anyway, I think she’s come around.  This is what flew onto my shirt. 

I do not make this up, people, none of it.  Every single thing you read on this page, on these pages, in these horrifying little terror-filled posts, it all happens.  It is all TRUE. 

And here is what just happened right now and I thought I would tell you before I drive to the hospital and ask the doctor to reattach the frayed endings of my permanently shattered nerves and extract what little threads he might find remaining of my poor fractured sanity.

A HUGE BIG FAT UGLY CREEPY SCARY HORRIBLY ICKY CRANE FLY …

SWOOPED DOWN AT ME  … and …

FLEW ON MY SHIRT!!!!!

And now I can’t get my font size to go back down! 

Oh there, I just did.  Whatever.

[To contribute to the future debilitating mental medical needs of teresa difalco, please click here.]

Everything’s stupid. 

My laptop is stupid, the stupid little removeable drive backup thing is too small and, thus, stupid.  My wireless router is really stupid and the stupid articles on the internet about which wireless router to buy are stupid.  Stupid.

No, you’re not stupid, I’m sure you’re very smart, good for you.  And obviously I’m not stupid either, so “everything” is just a rough estimate.  Still, it’s very close. 

Will you please write me (M.!) and tell me what wireless router to buy?  I have a Linksys, I think it’s the very first router anyone ever made ever and if I sit six inches away from it and turn the lights out except for the one in the upstairs bathroom, I get “Very Good” signal.  To get “Excellent” signal I have to slip it a twenty, or do other things that I don’t want to talk about here.

It’s a “b” — 802.11b – and I think the entire rest of the civilized world is onto “g”s and “n”s by now.  Should I get an Apple product since we’ll all be big happy Macs one day?  And also since, because I hated my stupid Dell and now my even stupider Dell knockoff, I could maybe be a big happy Mac tomorrow because everything’s so stupid? 

I just want peace, that’s all.  I don’t want to only sit in the room where the router is because the windows are dirty and there’s too much light and it’s full of bad energy for writing books.  I want to sit wherever I want and still be able to waste time on the internet.  I’m not asking for a federal bailout for pete’s sake. 

I need love.  I need Paul and John.  I need yoga and nehru jackets and incense and herbal tea.  I need, maybe, more coffee.  I NEED THAT GIRAFFE!  Okay.  There.  Cool.  I’m good, everything’s good, I’m fine. 

Seriously, though.  I need a double-vodka tonic with lime twist.  Forget the router.

Stupid technology. 

.. How he got into my pajamas I’ll never know.  Ha ha.

A.’s back, kiddies.  Well, not back back, but in the state.  I still had to make the coffee this morning, but maybe not tomorrow.  I’m cutting words like mad, I may end up with a short story after all this.  About crane flies. 

I see the Fed is pumping money into the system, I want money in my system.  Could you look into a money pump, A., and get some billions pumped into our system.  

I’ve got so little to say.  Yes, I plagiarized C.’s email yesterday, it’s out, the jig’s up.  What little reputation I had is now soiled.  So is this shirt I just spilled coffee on.    You knew it anyway, I have little political passion of my own.  I can only summon it in short spurts, 1.7 seconds once.

It’s the fall, almost, and as soon as it rains I’m having dinner parties, I mean it.  Want to come?  And a film club.  But A., you need to finish the back room in the other tiny house.  I saw you put up a wall, I know what you can do now, you’re on the hook.  You have to work with no shirt on, too, and call me “ma’am.”

See?  Seriously, I have nothing.  I’ll never be a Press Secretary at this rate.  I hate writing books, they’re too hard, I’ll give you $23 to write mine.  I had blueberries at breakfast, I thought they’d help.  I want to buy Eli Halpin’s giraffe, I think that might help, too, but it’s $950 and A. lost at poker. 

I’ll write again when I can think of a poem.  Or if you have a poem send it here and I’ll make you almost famous, but not quite. 

I keep accidentally reading the news.

It sucks.

David Foster Wallace. Economic depression.  John McCain.

McCain is the devil, there I said it.  He’s really bad.  If we elect him president we’ll go to war with Iran, I bet you a trillion dollars. Plus he has recurrent melanoma which is a death sentence and if he doesn’t die in office he’ll at least be impaired with chemotherapy and / or surgery and Sarah Palin will be running the show while he’s in treatment. I don’t know … have you listened to her? Even if you don’t know a thing about her (not much, really, to know) did you see her talking to Charlie? Is it really so important that the leaders of our country be as ignorant as us, can’t we try to pick someone smart?

Lehman Brothers is bankrupt, AIG is requesting federal funds (what they do right before bankruptcy), Merrill Lynch is being bought by another bank. And speaking of a trillion dollars, that’s about what we have in debt. John McCain, I don’t know if you’re following, knows basically nothing about the economy, it’s embarrassing to hear him try. But he knows about war. Yay, war! Whee, war!  Whoopee, war, war, war! Maybe there’s a two for one sale.

We’ve all lost our minds. Obama should have sucked it up and begged Hillary to run with him, he needs her. Even Biden thinks so.

C.’s in South Philly today, registering voters.  How cool is she.  Maybe I’ll go to South Mac.  Wait, I think I’m in South Mac.  Maybe I’ll go next door.  Tell them to vote. 

A. lost at poker last night and won’t tell me how much, and I had to make the coffee again this morning all by myself.

If you’re happy and you know it, send it here.  I’m glum.

Nice, M.  Thanks to your prescient nomination we now have media coverage, looks like I may have to read that damn doctrine after all.  ML / RSG, I’m calling Jon Stewart!

[Exclusive mention of my Press Secretarial Campaign -- and, of course, RSG's historical run -- here:  http://blogout.justout.com/?p=2016]