I think this craigslist chick may be gonna stand me up.

She was supposedly maybe gonna buy this old bar stool I put on there. She's late.

So it's Friday evening, and it's gorgeous out. Cloudy & ---what, let's look... 57 degrees F. Nice. I have the sliding glass door open, but still have storms on all the windows. The light's waning quick. Rumor is rain all weekend. Internet seems to have heard the rumor.

This was a weird week for me. Hard. Can't say as I liked it much, overall. One surreal element I did kind of like is that my brother, of all things, put me in touch with the girl who used to live across the street from us when we were kids in Kansas. She was definitely my best buddy, if I had one. Jenny. (It was the two crew-cut boys next door, from Texas, that I played doctor with, but that wasn't much of a bond.) (They called their parents "ma'am" and "sir," which seemed pretty weird to me at the time.)

Jenny's mom seemed like some way-cool hippie type---wonder if she was. I had my first sleepover at Jenny's. Just me and her. I remember that only cuz I woke up in the middle of the night, got up, and went home, and they couldn't find me in the morning until somebody thought to look in my bed, and then the story got told, as those stories do. I guess that was one in which I didn't hate my characterization, even if it turned on my being assumed to have been scared.

I'm happy to find out that Jenny ("Jen" now) (and probably for 30 years) isn't some arch right-winger. She's a Doctor of Pharmacy, working on multiple sclerosis, and living on a farm outside KCMO with a husband and a whole buncha animals. She has 2 grown-up kids. Is Unitarian. And a Democrat. Both of those are pretty lefty things to be when you grow up in the Little Apple.

Robbie found her while doing the social networking version of something he did in person some years ago: checking up on the people who would have been in his class (and mine) if we had stayed in Manhattan. When he was out there a while ago he went to the library & got the high school yearbooks out & looked up people. His message to me about it then gave me the impression that he has an idea things would have been very different, and very much better, if we'd not moved to Maryland.

Hey, there's a duck in the road. Hi, duck.

I don't know what I think about Robbie's maybe idea. Mostly I've thought what it might mean for him if that's how he thinks about it. Seems like a strange thing to carry around from age 12, but I guess we've pretty much all got our things like that, or have had 'em. And maybe he hasn't carried it around the whole time, but took it up later.

He generally talks about how very little he remembers of our childhoods. I thought I barely remembered anything, especially from Kansas, but I seem to be able to call up more than he.

The funny thing about Jenny is that I just the other day came across a school picture of hers; it's sitting on a speaker in the living room right now. It was her picture from 8th grade, 4 years after I left her. I had no recollection that we'd kept in any kind of touch that long. On the back she apologizes for being ugly. Was she ugly? No. Not by any stretch of the imagination. And she's got loads of cutie energy in her pictures now.

I remember her only fondly.

Duck's gone. No craigslist woman. Dark out. Guess it's time to get on the horn and try to play a little credit card roulette, maybe rustle up some supper.

I'd say I'm glad the week's over, but it doesn't feel like it is. I'm just not going to work tomorrow. And there's something about changing the clocks. Did ya'll know that? It's that time.

I'll be needing a new default icon.

I think this craigslist chick may be gonna stand me up.

She was supposedly maybe gonna buy this old bar stool I put on there. She's late.

So it's Friday evening, and it's gorgeous out. Cloudy & ---what, let's look... 57 degrees F. Nice. I have the sliding glass door open, but still have storms on all the windows. The light's waning quick. Rumor is rain all weekend. Internet seems to have heard the rumor.

This was a weird week for me. Hard. Can't say as I liked it much, overall. One surreal element I did kind of like is that my brother, of all things, put me in touch with the girl who used to live across the street from us when we were kids in Kansas. She was definitely my best buddy, if I had one. Jenny. (It was the two crew-cut boys next door, from Texas, that I played doctor with, but that wasn't much of a bond.) (They called their parents "ma'am" and "sir," which seemed pretty weird to me at the time.)

Jenny's mom seemed like some way-cool hippie type---wonder if she was. I had my first sleepover at Jenny's. Just me and her. I remember that only cuz I woke up in the middle of the night, got up, and went home, and they couldn't find me in the morning until somebody thought to look in my bed, and then the story got told, as those stories do. I guess that was one in which I didn't hate my characterization, even if it turned on my being assumed to have been scared.

I'm happy to find out that Jenny ("Jen" now) (and probably for 30 years) isn't some arch right-winger. She's a Doctor of Pharmacy, working on multiple sclerosis, and living on a farm outside KCMO with a husband and a whole buncha animals. She has 2 grown-up kids. Is Unitarian. And a Democrat. Both of those are pretty lefty things to be when you grow up in the Little Apple.

Robbie found her while doing the social networking version of something he did in person some years ago: checking up on the people who would have been in his class (and mine) if we had stayed in Manhattan. When he was out there a while ago he went to the library & got the high school yearbooks out & looked up people. His message to me about it then gave me the impression that he has an idea things would have been very different, and very much better, if we'd not moved to Maryland.

Hey, there's a duck in the road. Hi, duck.

I don't know what I think about Robbie's maybe idea. Mostly I've thought what it might mean for him if that's how he thinks about it. Seems like a strange thing to carry around from age 12, but I guess we've pretty much all got our things like that, or have had 'em. And maybe he hasn't carried it around the whole time, but took it up later.

He generally talks about how very little he remembers of our childhoods. I thought I barely remembered anything, especially from Kansas, but I seem to be able to call up more than he.

The funny thing about Jenny is that I just the other day came across a school picture of hers; it's sitting on a speaker in the living room right now. It was her picture from 8th grade, 4 years after I left her. I had no recollection that we'd kept in any kind of touch that long. On the back she apologizes for being ugly. Was she ugly? No. Not by any stretch of the imagination. And she's got loads of cutie energy in her pictures now.

I remember her only fondly.

Duck's gone. No craigslist woman. Dark out. Guess it's time to get on the horn and try to play a little credit card roulette, maybe rustle up some supper.

I'd say I'm glad the week's over, but it doesn't feel like it is. I'm just not going to work tomorrow. And there's something about changing the clocks. Did ya'll know that? It's that time.

I'll be needing a new default icon.