Well, living in a Dickensian novel as I do, you won’t be surprised to learn a family friend who was about my father’s age committed suicide since we last talked.   Guess why.  Guuuuuuuessssssss.

Did you say Degenerative Incurable Brain Disease?  Well then, ten points to Gryffindor.

It’s ghastly, ghastly business to watch the fallout.  My mom is taking it particularly hard, which I guess is no surprise.  (If you’ve been gone a while, my dad has some sort of progressive dementia that’s begun in the past few years.  Maybe I’m the only one in my family who considered he might end his life before it took over.  Having someone close to us do it is like a  terrifying dry-run at what it might be like.)  The grief of this person’s family is so convoluted as to be incomprehensible.

Since it happened, my Dad’s been emailing me regularly, all these profoundly kind emails.  He also confessed he hadn’t looked at The Cool Thing because he was afraid he wouldn’t like it, and wouldn’t know what to say.  I’d known he hadn’t looked at it because he’s never looked at any of my important stuff.  It hurt to hear the reasons, like his  fear what I’d done would be ‘too girly’ or ‘uninteresting’.  Anyway, he wrote to say he’d taken the risk and looked at TCT, and it made him cry, he was so proud.

And BOOM I was back in high school, full of rage that my father has such a low opinion of who I am, brought to my knees tearful from the unexpected praise, and furious with myself that I care.  I was baffled as to how to respond, only thinking how probably he wouldn’t think I’m such a girly idiot if I didn’t cry.  every. time. he said something nice to me.  Great job, there, Anne.  And sheeeit…  I am thirty eight years old.  When  do I grow out of this?

**

(This should probably be another post, but writing here has become the wild shore leave of my button down, non-creative existence. Plus, it seems like every time I get up the nerve to post, I end up crying. That appears to be slowly but surely freaking the fuck out my husband.  Wheee.)

In other news, I think I’m finally coping OK with The Cool Thing.  For a while, I was swimming in nebulous goo of not knowing which end was up.  With (finally) some distance on it, the best description I can come up with is that it feels like being the first girl in junior high who gets boobs.   Now there is this inordinate eyeballing of my existence, and various weird reactions.  Part of me is now up for public consumption, for talking at instead of talking to, for objectifying.  It’s not so much that it is good or bad (although there have been moments of both) only that it’s exhausting and unnerving in its oddness.  Here’s an artistic recreation, in the event you didn’t have big boobs in junior high.

Although, in a perfect world, all those birds would be staring at the same thing, and at least one of them would snicker obliquely.

Although TCT has nowhere near made me famous, even this amount of attention is making me understand why there are so few famous people.  It must take a certain personality type to enjoy this.  Since I want to keep doing TCT, I’m trying to learn to love it, but it isn’t coming naturally.  So far, I am unable to be this me for that thing.   Over there, in that other existence, I am wooden and unfunny and waiting for everyone to tell me how bad I suck.  It’s highly aggravating.  As is bitching about it/seeking advice to fix it, since invariably, everyone else says, “What are you complaining about?  At least you have boobs!”

When I bring you only complaining, I feel the slightest bit guilty.  As such, please enjoy this song.  It’s a little old, but (like everything else downer about me right now) I haven’t gotten sucked into any great music lately.  PLZ HALP, if you have some good new tunes.

* Cursing in all my titles now.  I’m hoping one can use SEO ranking to hide like a ninja muthafucka on the very bottom of inter webs, right?