recent developments

i don't know how the
APA 5th cites corporate
memos. but i'll learn.


• i have had to confront and kill two centipedes in the past week and a half. one of them was on the wall right next to my head while i was lying in bed at three in the morning, and the other, today's, was actually IN my bed. in it. my bed. it slitherscurried all horrible with its legs and its antennae and its crawly rippling bristling electric underworld evil right up beneath my mail and under the blanket, and i left my body, and from the adjacent room toadie heard me scream

"GET OUT OF MY BED, YOU LITTLE BASTARD FREAK!!!! DIE!!! DIE!!! DIE!!!"

and i found myself staring at the newly gooey underside of a sneaker. you can't crush the legs or the antennae, which, of course, are the truly terrible bits. they remain intact and reach out at you from their bug-gutty puddle, smug and unflinching and enough to paralyze my diaphragm, even in death.

i'll tell you a secret: i always feel awful about killing them, because most of me would rather not. it's only a very small part of my brain that absolutely must destroy them, but that part is incredibly strong. she's incredibly strong, and she forced me to change the sheets, move all the furniture and vacuum every millimeter of the bedroom. but i bet she still won't sleep tonight. and neither will i.

• i realized suddenly that malcolm gladwell's the tipping point is the book that inspired my ex-boyfriend to use the word "maven" incessantly and inappropriately while and after taking a class called "the madness of crowds." he never mentioned the title of the book or malcolm, referring to them only as "this book" and "this guy," respectively, but, man, did he like that idea that he never fully got his mind around. i'd been addicted to the new yorker for ages by then and loved malcolm's articles, but i'm terrible with names, and in general, and never associated him with the writing. i've opted to make the assumption that he would be fine with that, since i've had no difficulty hanging on to the ideas contained in those articles. yes? no? irrelevant? so, ex sold the book back to the campus store without lending it to me like he'd promised, and we broke up, and i deleted the word "maven" from my vocabulary and pressed on, and a year later i fell in love with malcolm anyway while he was talking about a different book, blink, on cspan's book-tv, and now i know why i had to endure that ridiculous relationship: ex was supposed to introduce me to malcolm--but he couldn't get his mind off himself long enough to do it. no worries, of course. fate offered up added intervention, because she's so lovely and always has my back, and now everything is as it should be. circle, circular, like a merry-go-round. when i'm patient all the perfect things make their way quietly to me. and so do the centipedes, but a balance must be maintained. this i accept. and now that i understand how publishing royalties work, i'm fairly certain that some portion of said ex's largely wasted tuition went straight into malcolm's pocket. excellent.

• i have a new armchair. it's orange and corduroy, and the cats can't scratch it enough.

• the one confusing portion of last night's dream, which i won't bore you with because it would require an endless amount of ultimately irrelevant back-story, just resolved itself and now makes perfect sense to me. what do you know.