My recent attempts to assert my own preferences have been going pretty well. I'd prefer not to eat pork, thanks; I'd prefer not to sign your silly contract for the work I'm doing for you for free; I'd prefer not to leave the house. Thanks, but no thanks. It turns out that if you're not emotionally invested in telling people no, you can get a pretty fun anthropological kick out of watching how they take it. 

I feel bad about saying no because I've spent a lot of time trying so hard to be accommodating of the inexplicable preferences of others, and I still feel like it's rude to inconvenience people when your preference is equal to theirs, but I have picked olives out of enough dishes after having them sneered at, and dammit, I get to say I don't care for brussels sprouts. Because I don't, I never have, and I have eaten enough of them to be sure. I'd prefer not to have more, thanks. Imma leave that right here on the side of my plate in a tidy pile, okay, thanks. 

**

I'm still wondering why so many of the foods frequently served at parties give one bad breath. Any ideas? Hey, I'm about to talk to you really close for a while, how's my stinky cheese breath? Do you like these cocktail onions exhaled upon you? Mmm, spicy sausage with garlic on a little toothpick breath. 

Here's a fun exercise: tell people that you have heard of a super [scary thing — virus, bacteria, crocodile, whatever] and ask them where it came from. I have been researching SUPER LICE and the sources are, variously, Asian immigrants, people from the Middle East, the over-prescription of antibiotics, and the fact that people don't follow directions so the lice just come back because it's their nature. I was persuaded by the third, because I think that's the cause of most health-related problems, until I read the fourth one because — well, when in doubt, bet on stupid. But it is interesting how many sites seemed to slant blame toward minorities in general and immigrants in particular. I know that other living things migrate just like people do, and often hitch rides with humans, but it's not necessarily on immigrants unless they're bringing in smallpox on a blanket. I mean, it could be wealthy people traveling, or food or other goods, not necessarily immigrants. And yet that is a narrative that people believe. If you have reasons beyond the obvious, I'd be interested in hearing them.

Maintaining a tilt that is hard alee with the forms of my vanity, I got my eyelids tattooed with permanent eyeliner. I may be a periodic weepy emotional mess but that doesn't mean I want eyeliner streaked all over my face. I am no Tammy Faye. I realize that the logical solution would be to stop wearing make up but as you may know I like the pain, and besides it was on sale, so it was basically a double score. It hurt like crazy. On a pain scale of things I have experienced it is really up there, and I just ripped a toenail out of my foot this morning by dragging a cabinet over it, and I barely cursed. So eyelid tattoos hurt, and if I had it to do over I'd be too scared to. On the plus side, I now roll out of bed looking ridiculously awake and ready to start the day, so there's that. 

A few nights ago, I woke up to the sound of the floor creaking, and I thought there was someone in my room — someone large, by the sound of the creaking. I was absolutely paralyzed with fright. I rolled over as if I was shifting in my sleep and tried to get a look, but I couldn't see anybody – although the door was open and I always keep it closed. I was trying to think of what would make an effective weapon, good enough for me to get past this hulking mass and to my son's room. Heart pounding, mind racing, not good for thinking. All I had within reach was a glass of water, but I thought maybe that would be a good element of surprise at least. I could hear the dresser drawer being slowly opened, and I thought: GO! So I got up and moved towards the door, and there was nobody at the dresser, or in fact in the room at all. I snapped on the light all HA and there was the cat, who has apparently learned how to open the door AND the dresser, and was all nestled in amongst my sweaters. I did not pour the water on her.

The moral of this story is: my cat may be a little on the hefty side.

Today I went and rehearsed the SINGLE LINE that I am dubbing for a video game for twenty minutes. I'm sorry: TWENTY MINUTES. Please understand that I did an entire movie without a rehearsal and it was fine, so this seems like excessive preparation. Apparently my delivery of "How many slices do you want?" required an entire backstory for my character, which I got, and also several different tries in order to achieve the maximum quality pizza seller voice. I am baffled. But the people are nice and it was good for me to be out in the fresh air; it was a beautiful fall day today. 

I keep thinking about the US election. I have already voted, so I really do not need to inform myself further, but I cannot stop. It is dumb. I have managed this year to stop clicking on celebrity gossip types of things, because they are stupid and I never feel better knowing them. I have managed also to stop reading comments on news sites and I've mostly stopped reading comments altogether. This is huge for me, to consciously decide NOT to read something and stick to it, because I will read your cereal box if you'll leave it out for me. So I have got some self restraint. However, with the politics, it is just … I cannot stop. I want to know, to acquire more knowledge. To what purpose? No idea. I mean: to be informed about politics IN GENERAL is certainly a good thing, but why I needed to read the text of a debate between two candidates when I have already chosen seems rather a time suck.

In politics where I actually live, there is a Czech artist, a lawyer by degree and a painter/opera composer/teacher by profession, who is running for president. I am so irritated by the current president, who is just a giant bag of air. The artist is witty and quick and tattooed all over. I wish he had a chance; at this point, he's still collecting signatures to try and get on the ballot.

I just finished season 5 of Mad Men. Gracious, but I do love television. It's almost ridiculous how much. I love watching people that I do not know go through their lives, some of which I recognize as similar to mine and some of which I get to understand for the first time seeing someone else experience them. I read a quote from Erma Bombeck: I should have laughed and cried less watching television and more watching life. And there is some truth to that, okay. But I laugh and cry PLENTY watching life, I assure you, and it is nice to get really angry at Don Draper and not feel like I'm being a bad friend for feeling that way.

"Well, I have 15 years of experience as a medical editor, I'm trained in AMA style, and I've never had a paper that I edited rejected for style or grammar, but… I'm not a doctor. So ultimately it's your decision what editorial changes you want to accept in your paper." 

2010 was the year of much sadness, 2011 was the year of "hey, at least 2010 is over", and 2012 is "whoa, when did everybody get so irritating?" Like suddenly I'm not weeping and I've moved straight into gnashing of teeth. Also rending of garments, but that's more to do with the Hulk thing I've got going on than anything Shakespearian. ANYWAYS, what I wanted to say was that I've been super irritable in my head, and it sort of makes me not feel like writing, because what I want to write is this horrible Andy Rooney drivel that really should be more shut down than vented, even if venting would mean getting it off of me. My normal human irritations are to do with people who are oblivious to others: drivers that don't look before changing lanes, riders who stand in the doors of public transportation; the accidental shovers, nudgers, bumpers, etc that are the result of being self-absorbed in a world occupied by other humans. Now I've got those irritations with the volume up extra loud; I feel like, Oh, WOW people bug me. Even people I might normally like, it's like I'm just saturated with humanity and I can't take any more. Even when the actions themselves don't individually bother me I seem to have become equipped with an emotional subtext decoder; reading the purpose of actions (intended or not) sets me off like even if your fingernails didn't mean to drag on my chalkboard they totally did.

Anyway that's why I haven't been able to write much lately. Fear of spilling stupid.

HOWEVER I did have a great summer, for the most part, and as soon as I figure out how to tune my ukulele I'm sure I'll be singing nothing but happy tunes. Because one of the things that irritates me the very most is irritable people.

I am in a beautiful house in Oakland, looking up at clouds that seem heavy with rain, across rooftop patios with barbecue pits and lawn chairs, down into a garden with various vegetables growing (can't tell what from here). It is quiet but for upstairs feet moving around with the anonymity of neighbors you haven't met yet and may not meet. This is the most I have been alone in three weeks and the most space I have had to be alone in, and it is strange and nice and reflective. 

Today I went for hypnotherapy because I was curious what it would be like. What it is like is how it has been described to me, basically. I cried continuously through it because I tend to cry when I let other people close to my emotions; it's not a sad thing, it's just how my tear ducts respond to things crossing my emotional barbed wire. So I was in a room, or rather I was to find myself in a room where I felt safe and warm and comfortable etc., but as much as I wanted a room with velvet pillows and the three-inch thick rug I'd recently sunk my grateful toes into at my friend's apartment, These Things Are Not Practical. If I had the things that make me feel cozy I'd be fidgeting and cleaning them all the time; it would not be a soft warm space because I am not a soft warm person. I am maybe more functionalist than cozy or something. I tried but I kept winding up at what appeared to be my sister's opium den, I mean it was a lovely place to visit but it wasn't mine, and eventually I had to tell the poor hypnotherapist, who looked a lot like Julianne Moore, that I couldn't do it. She told me I could have a magical self-cleaning room and that was very nice of her, but those things are not REAL and what I wound up thinking mainly was that this is my problem, that I can't even IMAGINE pretty things without going all irritated and practical on myself. I even find it irritating in others, when their fantasies just won't work in reality, like why are they wasting so much time on this foolishness. 

Still, I thought that the therapy in general was good, at least as relaxing as a very good massage (and about the same price, so). The take-away message, as I understand it right now, was that it is okay to take some pride in the things about me that I didn't consciously make, which is a hard thing for me because it seems too much like vanity, frankly, but apparently somebody down inside me wants me to have a bit more vanity than we currently do, so maybe I'll try that out for a bit and see. 

What else? I keep getting lost, I mean like really entirely lost, which is ridiculous because I used to live here. I can't even be scared about it; it's more like amusing and awkward. 

Last time things hurt a lot more. Maybe next time I'll be entirely numb, I think, and that sounds pretty good, and then I think: but then what's the point? If there's no potential for pleasure, even if there is no potential for pain, then what is the purpose of opening oneself at all? If not this, if not that, then what. But then there are moments of pleasure in amongst the sharpness and the numbness, so it is not like shutting down entirely. I think it is better to think of it like a museum, where time is short and so what is lovely is lingered at and what is unlovely is passed and in this way we go through, looking and skipping and looking. I'm working on it. 

It could happen, after a night of tea and cakes and ices (in which tea is wine and cakes are cigarettes and ices are salty potato chips) that the moment might be not exactly forced to its crisis but perhaps there could be rain, too much to stand in but not too much to walk in, and so the story that needs to be told could unfold between raindrops, sheltered weakly with arms around waists and I feel the hip bone I knew once before still familiar under my fingers, walking past dooryards and the sprinkled streets, and when standing in front of the door to dare to disturb the universe with one hug, and another, and the kiss that is a bite which is consumed and is consuming, and a voice says you were always fun to kiss, and another voice laughs in the dark rain, and two heads cluster together in a secret and wish each other a good summer and are gone.