Act natural

( Monday, Oct. 14, 2002 12:13 am )

>Everybody's got their something

Tonight I sat down at the kitchen table with a beer and a notebook and wasn't gonna get up or do nothin but write for two or three hours. I did write, but I also got up, got up and got a screwdriver and started chipping the old yellow paint off of the kitchen walls. There used to be wallpaper, under the yellow, and it was getting damp and bubbly on the wall, so the paint and soggy wallpaper alike came off the wall in big, deeply, deeply, satisfying sheets. I did that for an hour, and then I sat down and finished my beer and looked for places I'd missed. Then I sat still for about twenty minutes just listening to the sound of the baby wailing downstairs, because somehow that sound that did not let up for a second precluded thinking or doing anything else.

I forgot to write in here about two things that were troubling me yesterday. One was that June told me that she'd heard Tom (laddie from the party) had a girlfriend. I don't know why this should depress me, but it just made me feel sick, as if it somehow counteracted the obvious chatting/liking I had perceived at the party. It's not like I wanted to marry him, I just wanted to be desireable. Blegh. The second thing was that I began to be certain that my right leg is longer than my left leg.

Speaking of desireability, it seems that Juney's own fake-boyfriend may be coming to visit us. Hmmm. I haven't met him before, so that will be worthwhile, although I'm too much of a bitter and jealous girl to be able to tolerate Juney looking smugly rosy and contented around the house.

Obvious point to be gleaned from this entry, and one more Thing About Me:

3. I am obsessed with picking at peeling paint, and once I begin can only restrain myself with great difficulty. Similar obsessive activies I enjoy are: picking at the brown dead parts of plant leaves, clipping my nails, braiding and rebraiding my hair all night long while I read or watch TV, and plucking my eyebrows a couple times a day. When I was a kid, my greatest joy was peeling dried glue off the caps of the school bottles of Elmer's.

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