IT'S ALIIIIIVE!!!!!!!

oh, my muffins, my lovely little moppets, how i have missed you. i could tell you the loooong, tortuous tale of my extended absence, but here's what i'm thinking: all that's happened is done and gone, and i can't change it or fix it or maybe even understand it, so what the hell? let me tell you a few brief and sensible things instead.

1. my laptop done gone belly up on me, so i sent her away for a good talking to, and she came home without a thought in her head. the "repair shop" wiped the slate blanker than the presidiot's gaze at lecture on braneworlds being the key to additional dimensions, and i was so damn sad that i couldn't even stand to look at her for a while. but today i finished a murakami collection and ate a lot of tortilla chips and said, Suck it up, you sally, she's the amnesiac; give her a hand, for christ's sake. and so i did, and you know what? i think i love her even more than i did before. maybe a fresh start was the best thing for everyone. you can lose everything that you thought was worth saving and still be happy, as long as you have someone to talk to. and a little black cat gazing adoringly into your eyes doesn't sully the deal any.

2. i'm working part time for a medical publisher outside of boston, usually two days a week, whenever i'm not at the hospital. i've only been there for a super-short while, but they adore me, from what i hear, and are already giving me loads of stuff to do that i'd never have thought i knew how to do—but i do. what do you know? old bitches can learn all kinds of crap when they decide they want to. my advice to all of you college students out there, now that i know what i know, is take classes that are fun, not goal-oriented, because if you love yourself enough to let yourself be happy, you're going to wind up doing whatever you liked the most anyhow. when enough of those classes you liked add up to a major, then that's where you should be. don't live for the money, kids, and please, please, don't live for your mom's thwarted ambitions. she worked hard for you, yeah, but she did it 'cause she loved you, and that means she'll forgive you sooner than you think if you decide you want to whittle driftwood for a living. or whatever.

3. you can not live for one more day without the new silver jews album. you just can't. seriously, don't even try; you'll just seize up and gag on your own frothy tongue, and that's no way to go out.

4. maybe that person really isn't going to say anything. if it's so important, then you speak up. people have done far more dreadful things, and see that sky up there? it's the same one that's been busy not falling for billions and billions of years. (i am mostly giving myself very good advice right here, and i think we both know that i very seldom follow it . . . but maybe this time i'll find a way to turn it around without anyone getting punched or stranded at a train stop.)

5. last weekend when it was so warm i didn't even need a jacket, i drove an hour away and bought five new kinds of soap, and when i got home i opened them all up and sat on the front porch smelling them until i got sleepy. it was better than believing in faeries, and faeries are pretty sweet.

kisses, bunnies. it's good to be home.