-- Sunday, March 12, 2000 --

10:02 a.m. I'm having a total pre-company pre-panic melt-down now. I really should have taken some time to clean the place up. I really should have taken my life more seriously. I really should have lost 20 pounds. I really should have fixed my hair.

But noooooooo.

I deluded myself that since Joan has been my friend since forever, that she would just ... overlook ... a few messy places and step around them and nod and clap appreciatively at what a wonderful person I am ... anyway.

But why did I leave everything until the last possible moment? Why did I think my ordinary way of life was good enough? Why why why?

(Plus, I'm writing this entry early so that, after all the panic and after everything is ok again and I've managed to explain the various messes and uncork some wine, well ... I know I'll be experiencing the one type of situation that keeps me from writing. Laughing and having Too Much Fun.)

I never did figure out which type of person to hang out with in high school -- the earnest ones or the mockers. I believe that I am basically decent and earnest most of the time. However, no matter how sincerely and carefully I've worked on the science project or the historical diorama, I still find myself at the end of the day in the girls' bathroom with the cynical ones.

Joan is a born mocker. She's coming from a convention in which I'm sure she's tried to be good and serious and demure and respectful. She's going to have a lot of steam to blow off by the time she gets out of the rental car.

Was this the way we expected our lives to turn out? Stay tuned.

I've been living the life, lately, of a true computer nerd. There's hardly an hour of the day that I don't tend to computer tasks, add rubber bands to my growing ball, or pages to my loose-leaf book of entries.

I talk to my invisible friends, I check the statistics for my amatuer page, and I love getting little musical pings from my email program. (Yay! It's all fixed!)

I'm going to have some serious 'splaining to do.

Thus, my nervousness, my attempt to tuck away this entry before I mock my own life out of existence, and of course ... before I'm having too much fun to care about anything else.

(I'll post some more if I can sneak away -- otherwise, consider this my message in a bottle. I'm being held captive by a scoff.)