in all fairness to myself, i will say that this week was a particularly interesting one, if you are to take interesting in the chinese curse "may you live in interesting times" sense. obviously, if you have seen some of the entries from this week, it was not all bad. i did Big Thinking and that has given me great motivation to make changes in my life and all that. but Big Thinking does not leave much room for weekend planning. so the first few days of the work week was wasted in that sense.

and then my car had a shit attack and i had to deal with that, bringing it to the mechanic, getting a rental car, etc etc etc.

and then last night a spat of obscene phonecalls completely unnerved me not so much for their content but for the simple reason that the guy called over and over.

so far tonight, and we have reached one am, there have not been any calls, but each time the phone rings i have had a mini panic-attack type thing. however: i have answered it each time. this is progress towards new life stuff, as before i would have screened all phone calls and went into full on panic attacks each time the phone rang.

so, new thinking score one, old thinking zero.

but.

this left very little mind for making plans for today.

so, today i went to the rental place early and dropped off the crappy little prism. good news? for one day with insurance and all that crap it was only $28. not bad, i think.

then, i came home and listened to 3 episodes of this american life. i can say without hesitation or shame that this is my newest obsession and if i could i would give big wet lickery kisses to every single person involved, especially that spicy jew ira glass. huzzah!

then i took a fantastically restful nap, that lasted until about 3, when my sister in a small voice said "are you ever gonna wake up?" my sister who ran 25k today, by the way. half of which was up hill. that's right folks, over 8 miles up a mountain and the same down the mountain.

she's a wonder of human form, people.

so we got up (she had rolled into my room fresh from a post run nap) and talked a bit, then we picked up my car, came back, ate some lunch, she worked on the phone bill (she may be the only one with the patience to do it before it's horribly overdue) and we bitched about my brother.

he is the non-romantic love of my life, but he is the worst roommate. i mean, i am sure that there are much more horrible roommates, he's not violent, he treats me fantastically where household business is not concerned, and i am sure plenty of you have stories of much worse living situations.

but he's young, 21 on the 9th, and not yet the most responsible kid in the world where things like dishes and bills and such.

i forget this many times, and suddenly the idea of moving to europe with him seems horribly unattractive.

so yet again, iowa whizzes to the head of the race, spain falling back like a limping glue-to-be horse.

so my sister takes off to be with boyfriend and i am left here to my own devices.

which means i spent tonight, for the most part, at my computer listening to this american life and playing tri-peaks.

to give you an idea of how much listening and tri-peaking i am capable of, i will tell you this: i am slowly but surely going through any episode with david sedaris in it (i hadn't realized what all the hubbub was about him, but he's hilarious and now i am thankful for the little acerbic expat) and i have played, today, 234 games of tri-peaks, earning $1107.

i went on a huge downloading spree, frank sinatra, peggy lee and robyn hitchcock being my main targets. i do not know why tonight was the night, perhaps because of this, but tonight was the night i fell in love with frank sinatra. i think it was a mix of that page and a this american life i listened to, in which there was a story about a man in nyc who performed sinatra tunes on his front stoop, accompanied by a woman tap dancing on cardboard.

how amazing is that? that people will just bust out like that, as if this life were a musical or an episode of ally mcbeal or something.

i hate that show, but that is beside the point.

amazing!

in that time i also talked to many people on-line, some of which i talked to before they went out for the night, and am now (as i write this) talking to again about how their nights went.

i talked to a buddhist named michael who was so open with me about his faith and his life that i was taken a bit aback, and completely disarmed. i ended up talking a bit about my own confused feelings about god, how they leave me feeling lonely and sad. longing.

that, though, is more than i am prepared to talk openly about here. at least, not yet.

i, too, talked to a boy from iowa and he was so kind and refreshingly without pretense that, again, i was disarmed in a sense. the purity of people if you come at them the right way cannot be underestimated.

i don't know that i or anyone else can stress this enough.

what prompted me to write now, though, was something utterly unrelated to this. in fact, it was such a non-sequitor, it brought to mind another surreal experience that i planned on sharing here.

what happened?

a raccoon came in my house and, looked at me in great fear and surprise and then disappeared around the corner. it actually brought it's little creepy clawed hand to its nasty little fanged mouth in an expression that almost said "whoah! my bad! hehe..oh goodness...nono...don't get up...i know how to show myself out" as if we both didn't know it was well outside territory. much like the mad max fellows in weird science did once gary brandished that huge gun and threatened to blow their stinking asses out of their party.

i had to get up, with no such weapon, and inspect the little mud room through which it came, ready to do i don't know what to get it out if it was, in fact, still in the room. i creeped around my sister's computer desk, grabbing her enormous biology book instinctively, i guess to hurtle at the raccoon should it attack, as i was convinced that if i found it cornered in there the sheepish little bitch would turn into a rabid hells angel raccoon, one that kicked ass and took names later, all hopped up on meth and from listening to tequila and watching pee-wee herman clog dance.

once i found the coast clear i slammed the door shut and muttered like a crazy person, wondering what the fuck else could possibly happen this weekend.

and then, as i was doing the cursory lock check on the front door, leaving the porch light on, but turning the living room light off, i remembered this little story (which i can't recall if i have told here at this point, since i have so many fucking entries. if i have, feel free to x out the browser.), which i affectionately call:

Lauren's Second Favorite True Story From My Life

when i lived at home, somewhere around the time i left continuation to take my GED and started community college, i used to have the front bedroom. it had a large window with dark thick black curtains. this was a hold over from my gothic days. though i had by that time long ago decided that rather than apply the requisite make-up before school i would rather sleep the extra hour, the curtains remained and proved fantastic in cultivating my predilection to sleep all day since they completely blocked out the sun. they were horrible to look at, and collected dust like a bible in a brothel, and when i go home now and look in my room i simply shake my head at the lengths to which my parents allowed me to act out as a kid.

i suppose if i had the industriousness to try to paint the room black, as had been my plan, they probably would have drawn the line. but i suppose they figured curtains can be replaced and rather than fight yet another battle with the sulky swirling dervish of dark clothes, black hair dye, white face powder, red and black lined eyes and a permanent Sad English People soundtrack they would concede to me the small things.

but further details of retarded teenhood will have to hold for the moment, as i was going somewhere with this.

in front of my window were huge full beautiful rose bushes. when they bloomed my entire room smelled of them and i would cut them each season, pinning the fresh roses upside down on my walls, so that they would keep their shape. the rose bushes were very tall, and this served as a kind of shield between myself and the rest of the world. i imagined myself safe from any and all harm because of the tall stems covered in thorns, much like the little prince's rose on that planet far far away, whose star can be seen in the african sky.

i used to sleep with my window open wide, my bed right next to the window, on level with the window sill. i listened to late night radio shows on pacifica radio and watched the constellations turn in the sky, the moon creeping along slowly, my companion each night, as comforting as the radio man's voice.

as i mentioned before, my other companion in these times was my cat toulouse. he would, as i mentioned, ignore all humans during the day, looking at us when we called to him under the bushes as if we were bothersome children and he was an old man far too busy with old man business to bother with those little whippersnappers. or something.

he couldn't be bothered, is what i am saying.

but at night, he was a cuddle maniac, his soft purring regularly the music to which i fell asleep. or i would wake up to him snuggling next to my face and pushing himself under my comforter, a midnight lothario with nothing but sweetness and loving on his feline mind. the window had a flower box with one of the panels busted out of the bottom and toulouse would regularly use this as his way of coming into my room.

well, i remember, it was summer, and instead of the usual rather temperate so cal summer night, this night was sweltering. i fell asleep with the window wide open and not a single sheet or cover on me.

'round about two am i felt toulouse snuggling against my legs rather insistently. i pushed at him sleepily, dreaming still. he pushed. i pushed back. his tail slapped against my leg and i slapped back, it got caught in my hand.

and then, in my sleep, i remembered:

toulouse was a manx. he had no tail.

more than that, he did not have what felt like a large rat's tail.

my eyes opened like they do in cartoons, like a window screen pulled too tight and then flapping up at the top too fast.

i looked down and at my leg was not toulouse, but a baby possum.

a baby possum.

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i froze, scared witless and it looked at me, its nose twitching. then it lumbered up to my face, licked it once and scurried out my window.

i sat straight up in bed, and turned on the light, my heart pounding . my eyes did a quick once over of my room, making sure i had no other woodland creatures hanging out, ready to wet willy my cheek before scampering on into the night.

i sat like this, stock still, for the better part of thirty minutes.

after my wits were back about me, i turned the light off, cranked up my fan and slid my window shut.

the next morning i woke up and saw toulouse sitting on the window box, staring into my room, a look of disgust and annoyance on his face. clearly, he was pissed off that he had not been able to come in and share my bed as always.