Friday night, in the quiet.

I came home & saw my cats & opened more windows. I did my catsitting duty & saw Bert & Susan & their dog & their cat. I spread a little more mulch & cleaned the trip stuff outta the car & put an old (older than this one) computer in it. There's a free computer-type-stuff recycling event tomorrow, lasting until 2, and I'm hoping to get a few other obsolete items of an electronic nature out of the basement and rounded up from around and ready to be torn apart & scavenged from by folks from the U.

Friend's kid is at the ER tonight, having threatened to kill himself at school today.

I was just thinking of the struggle to figure out how okay it is, when, to let on about the darkness.

Wasn't thinking of it as related, but it could be said to be--- it seems certain of my officemates have been more communicatively annoyed with certain of our stupid office banter habits than I am usually so well informed about. I could feel that verification about to blossom this morning. Funny thing: today I couldn't manage to give a rat's ass about it; tonight, here at home, in my solitude, I am stuck with doing so. Or maybe not doing so, exactly, the rat's ass giving. Something else similar.

It feels shitty.

Which reminds me, for some reason, of the sticker on the packaging for an old flashlight of mine. FEEL ME, it said. I'M RUBBER. I peeled it off and wore it on my shirt for a day.

FEEL ME. I'M HATRED.

This just in: they've checked kid friend's blood for anything that could be making him behave irrationally. Then if that's cleared (and it almost certainly will be) he'll be in line for the one shrink on duty at the place. Could be a long night.

I would have been horrified, as a kid, to be being asked about my mental health, or anything going on with me emotionally, by some official adult stranger. Not that I was asked about it by anybody else.

I've been listening to this book on tape---got started with it on the road---about a detective who can't remember this kind of important chunk of his childhood. There's child murder in it. He has this rather idealized platonic (so far) friendship with his partner, a (rather idealized) tough grown-up tomboy who has nonetheless been cowed by having been maniacally manipulated by a psychopath, who did it just for fun. I'm on something like disc 12 of 16, and it's mainly a plot thing, so I really oughta finish it, oughtn't I? By now I should want to find out what happened to him in the woods almost as much as he does.

Being as how I'm not likely about to get drunk, I think I may have a hard night ahead of me.

Friday night, in the quiet.

I came home & saw my cats & opened more windows. I did my catsitting duty & saw Bert & Susan & their dog & their cat. I spread a little more mulch & cleaned the trip stuff outta the car & put an old (older than this one) computer in it. There's a free computer-type-stuff recycling event tomorrow, lasting until 2, and I'm hoping to get a few other obsolete items of an electronic nature out of the basement and rounded up from around and ready to be torn apart & scavenged from by folks from the U.

Friend's kid is at the ER tonight, having threatened to kill himself at school today.

I was just thinking of the struggle to figure out how okay it is, when, to let on about the darkness.

Wasn't thinking of it as related, but it could be said to be--- it seems certain of my officemates have been more communicatively annoyed with certain of our stupid office banter habits than I am usually so well informed about. I could feel that verification about to blossom this morning. Funny thing: today I couldn't manage to give a rat's ass about it; tonight, here at home, in my solitude, I am stuck with doing so. Or maybe not doing so, exactly, the rat's ass giving. Something else similar.

It feels shitty.

Which reminds me, for some reason, of the sticker on the packaging for an old flashlight of mine. FEEL ME, it said. I'M RUBBER. I peeled it off and wore it on my shirt for a day.

FEEL ME. I'M HATRED.

This just in: they've checked kid friend's blood for anything that could be making him behave irrationally. Then if that's cleared (and it almost certainly will be) he'll be in line for the one shrink on duty at the place. Could be a long night.

I would have been horrified, as a kid, to be being asked about my mental health, or anything going on with me emotionally, by some official adult stranger. Not that I was asked about it by anybody else.

I've been listening to this book on tape---got started with it on the road---about a detective who can't remember this kind of important chunk of his childhood. There's child murder in it. He has this rather idealized platonic (so far) friendship with his partner, a (rather idealized) tough grown-up tomboy who has nonetheless been cowed by having been maniacally manipulated by a psychopath, who did it just for fun. I'm on something like disc 12 of 16, and it's mainly a plot thing, so I really oughta finish it, oughtn't I? By now I should want to find out what happened to him in the woods almost as much as he does.

Being as how I'm not likely about to get drunk, I think I may have a hard night ahead of me.