I'm sitting on my bed with the laptop, with the fan blowing on me, reading Sara's Gatsby-ish archives, voting for Jones labels, emptying out my long-neglected Yahoo mailbox of months of daily comic strips, listening to downloaded songs by Dar Williams and Fountains of Wayne and Al Jolson, checking my email, ignoring any answers to my personal ad while being pleased that I'm getting them, waiting for it to be late enough for Omar to call me.

We talked twice on Sunday, the calls adding up to an hour and forty minutes, and then an hour and twenty minutes yesterday. I don't expect him to call me again, what else is there to say? But maybe he will. It's 2.15p, if he calls, it won't be for another eight hours or so, but maybe he will. He's in Lancaster with his parents, and clearly by the end of the day he needs to talk to somebody other than them. I'd better not get used to it, though, that's a bad road to head down.

The day feels different, being on my bed rather than at my desk. When I sit at my desk all day my butt hurts, when I'm on my bed, it's my arms and back that end up hurting. And the whole thing with not having the TV on is just plain bizarre. There's something about the heat that makes things shift and be slightly off-kilter.

I'm vaguely considering napping, which feels wildly decadent. When I nap during the day, which isn't often, I always do it fully dressed, with all of the lights on as well as the TV or music or whatever noisy thing I'm listening to.

If I undress and turn off the lights and so on, as if I am going to bed, I cannot sleep at all, my mind yells at me that it is daytime, what am I thinking, but if I just put my head down and don't even take off my glasses, I can drift off. Maybe I'll do that. Maybe not.

There are piles of things I needs to do, entries to write and clothes to put away, and I still haven't found my ring, which is seriously making me crazy, but I am not doing any of those things. Maybe I'll paint my nails. Maybe I'll eat. Is there ice cream in the fridge?

This is what life is like for an unemployed girl during a heat wave. It ain't a bad life, really.

Last night he called about the new one-act he's writing, sort of an offshoot/companion piece to Tchochkes. It was originally just going to be a quick anecdote that my character tells in Tchochkes, about her favourite TV show back when she lived in Soviet Georgia, Le Monsieur le Chat Show, but now that has turned into a play all on it's own, a curtain-raiser to the other show.

It's very surrealistic and funny, and it may end up being one of those things that nobody thinks is funny but us, but I adore the idea of this cheesy Georgian TV show starring two French people about a cat who never shows up.

The fun part is something that he didn't even realize, that our roles are such a huge contrast to our roles in Tchochkes. In the latter, he plays a flighty gay man who is married to me, a stolid (though attractive) Soviet lesbian who is firmly in charge--Omar describes our characters as Rocky and Natasha, while in Monsieur le Chat we are both aggressively hetero, he as a Charles Boyer in Gaslight-like man and I as a sexy, easily confused French maid.

It's like we are trying to play the extreme reaches of our ranges in one evening, and he had no idea that that was what he did.

He's turned into my father, you know. It's a sudden and peculiar switch.

Last night we were talking about my mosquito bites, and I said that it was all due to my being extremely low-maintenance. Friends of mine will laugh their asses off at that remark, but though I am extremely high maintenance emotionally, and I am extremely high maintenance in terms of what I like and what I don't like and things I can and cannot eat and so on, I am the lowest of low maintenance in terms of myself physically. I don't comb my hair or use a blow dryer or product, I don't wear makeup, I don't take medicine, I don't put on bug spray, and I don't take vitamins.

When I said that, he said that I should take vitamins, and I repeated that I could not be bothered. I have all of these vitamins that my mother gets me from QVC or Home Shopping, these Andrew somebody supplements that she takes, but I just can't remember to and frankly, I don't care enough to. And Omar said that I should.

And this morning, I got up and took my vitamins. It's just like when I was a kid and my Mom would nag at me and nag at me and tell me to do things and I never would (like anything's changed there), but my father would say to me, quietly, "You know, you really should do that," and I would do it immediately because he asked me.

So I took my vitamins this morning because Omar told me to, in the way that my father used to get me to do things, just by asking me to. I don't know if I'll do it tomorrow, but today I did.

Today's horoscope:
Ask what no one is telling. Analysis is a vibrant, organic process. Tour the landscape for clues that mean something. A good physical workout stimulates new brain paths.

One year ago today:
It's nice to feel appreciated, but honestly, can I never attract someone just a little bit edible? Just once?

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Last Updated Tues 8 July 15:55:09 2003