Well, I DId Nothing Today

I did absolutely nothing today. I woke up at 5 am again, partly because of the neighbors dogs and partly because 4 beers is now too much beer for me (woe! How the mighty have fallen! Middle age is no fun!) and I picked up Last Call. That was a terrible mistake, because then I couldn't put it down again. I stayed in bed all morning reading it (it's brilliant, it's great, it's just been reissued, go & get yourself a copy) and then I did something even dumber: I discovered a new word game that's even more addictive than the other word game I've been playing compulsively, and better in that it doesn't make my mouse hand clench up in pain.

Then the heavens opened up and thunder and lightning came down from the sky and I had to unplug the computer and Theo had a panic attack. I realized dimly at this point that I was wasting my life, and also that it is in fact my daughter's 23rd birthday tomorrow, and I hadn't gotten her any presents yet. So I had to venture out into the torrential rain, and I went shopping, which exhausted me so that I had to come home and watch Six Feet Under and knit. That would have been great, except that 1) apparently the two episodes we missed, the last two episodes of season two, are the only episodes in all of Six Feet Under in which anything at all happens, and 2) it turns out I can't purl. Nope. Can't do it. I have two knitting books open on the couch and I tried umpteen times and every time I had to unravel the whole damn thing because it became an insanely tight tangled mess. After that, clearly, there was nothing to be done but sulk and play some more word games and find out via the internet what happened to Nate's annoying girlfriend Brenda who has been summarily replaced by an even more annoying wife Lisa.

I can't believe A is this old and that by extension I too, obviously, am so very, very old. My New Years Resolution by the way is to stop lying about my age and fudging her age, or, sometimes, okay, I confess: just sort of omitting to mention her existence. It's hard to pretend you're 32 when you have a 23 year old daughter, which is a bummer, because I still think I'm 32, or, to be more accurate, 23, or possibly 15 and occasionally 11 or, on really bad days, 5. 42 doesn't seem possible at all, but I had better come to grips with it, because it's half over already.

She came with me to Drinking Liberally last night; we had quite a crowd, about half of whom were A's peer group. That was pretty cool: they're not cynical and burnt out yet like me and she seemed to get into it, my semi radical child. I actually felt hopeful, which is rare, and we talked about Peak Oil and the evils of capitalism and Marx and suchlike apocalyptic fare and I found myself believing that the world maybe could be changed. Also, I got to use the word lumpenproletariat, which I hardly ever get to say, and you know that any evening you say lumpenproletariat is just not a wasted evening.