only one thing I couldn't start

I don't really like to post two days in a row, but here I am.

My dad got home tonight, full of tales from the country roads of West-by-God-Virginia. We’ve been telephonically arguing for days about whether or not my cat is “the plain Jane of cats” as he insists, or is in fact adorable, if horrifically ruthless. “What you’ll realize when you see a pretty kitty one day,” claimed my dad earnestly, “is that your cat is just doing an impression of a cute cat.”

I was telling Dan about how Lance Armstrong gets twice as much oxygen from every breath as we do—more than that, given that we’re actually weaklings. “Twice the oxygen, half the testicles, that’s his motto,” I said. “Well, testicles, he’s got the national average,” Dan said.

I thought about it.

The other day, Lindsay suggested that “Commandments are made to be broken.” The reason this is great is because it makes you realize, No!, but then… well, really, neither are rules. Just the opposite, in fact.

Dave and I were discussing his complicated relationship with truth, and eventually, when I suggested that what he really loved was accuracy in general and being right in particular, and that that was a kind of love of truth, Dave’s monologue on truth was as follows: “I don’t know. Truth? Maybe. Who cares? Fuck that shit.”

Dad also told me tonight that I’m his “scariest” child, the one most likely to “symbolically rip out someone’s heart and show it to ‘em.” Mom said that one thing you can count on me for, is that when I do something bitchy or self-centered, I’ll never just step over the dead embers and move on, that “you always, always apologize.” I hope that’s true, because I’m one of those terribly annoying college graduates who moves back in and lectures her mother all the time about media distortion and the benefits of soy milk, and I do try to apologize for being such an asshole.

And hey, Leon’s back! I’m driving to Evanston and Chicago tomorrow, seeing Sara, and then my open house, after which there are no more little markers in the future of any kind past which I can push getting a job (oh, wait! save the visit of Dave & Co.), and getting a job is The Only Thing On My To Do List, which is beginning to make not doing it look suspiciously like not doing anything at all. And anyway, I’m getting pumped again, excited like I was when I found out that the lyrics of “Hey Jealousy” (our Spell Bowl theme song, upon a time) were not “the batter’s on” but rather “the past is gone but something might be found to take its place.”