Atmospheric
Monday, May. 23, 2005 - 22:28

This is the weirdest day, I have no idea what's going on. The sun was shining brightly at me when I woke up - I woke up to my alarm and had forgotten I'd been awake an hour earlier, long enough to look at the clock on the wall. But I'd forgotten that, and I was having a very detailed fairly believable dream that I'd flooded someone's house by taking a bath with my eyes closed. But I woke up and forgot that too -- that moment when you wake up and you don't know anything awake yet but you've lost all you knew asleep.

I managed to get up, get dressed, and get off for the bus - and there was a strange bus driver, it wasn't our regular, and he was driving a strange bus that was already very full of strange people. At each stop more strange people got on, more and more, until the aisle was packed full of standers.

Somehow we got into the city - I left my book about the woman and her waist in my bedroom, so I wasn't reading, but what did I do? Sit there? Did I write? Oh, I remember now, I wrote a little about the whirlwind of a girl.

We stopped at strange stops. More people got on - couldn't they see we were a crowded bus of strangers? Why did they want on?

I got off at my new stop. There were people everywhere, hordes, throngs filling the sidewalks. The population of Seattle has doubled since Friday morning.

Was I late or were they early? Was I early or were they late? My watch said I was normal - they were the out-of-place ones.

After a silent elevator ride up to the 25th floor that masquerades as 26, pretending floor 13 does exist when really it doesn't, into the ghost town I went, empty desks, friends off to Europe - Greece or Finland - or Bainbridge Island.

Work to do, work to finish or avoid, and my head is tired and I'm losing blood, my ovaries are dying into my underwear.

That woman who just doesn't sit well with me tromps by. Is it her hair color? Her monkey ears? The way she made Mendy hold her puking little daughter while she kept on working and wouldn't take the poor kid home? I look her up - she's just a paralegal! Not a lawyer! And she acts so important.

Mr. Complaining Paralegal walks up. Are you busy? - Yes, I have no time for your inane tasks and even less time for your incessant whining. After so much complaining, do you think I believe you anymore? Because I don't, and there comes a time when you have to take some responsibility and stop blaming other people.

I waste time, I print out a job posting, I write stories, I drink someone's yerba mate, I do my timesheet, I check my email, I organize my desk, I go pee, I think and get lost in that cloudy head of mine again, and I wake up and say, what was I doing again? Oh yeah, work.

Then it's my writing class. Once again the science fiction guy has written thinly-veiled pseudo-religious/scientific porn. They read mine aloud and I'm all nervous for some reason, even though I've spent very little time on this one-page story about an annoying girl, and they laugh! They're laughing, but I didn't laugh when I was writing it, I didn't think it was funny. But whatever, if they're entertained that's okay.

And people don't think the way I do! I expect them to interpret things the exact way I do and they don't! They're so weird!

I tell James, I love your storytelling. He's so good, I wish you could read it.

Then I go home and it's so lovely out! The sky - it's 10:00 and the sky still has some light in it. Did you see the moon? It's huge, it's huge and orange and rising over the city.

The bus ride back to Ballard was weird like the bus ride out of Ballard in the morning. More people, and the grunting old woman didn't get on outside the QFC. Good.

I think how pleased I am with myself and how annoying I am, and I tell myself not to write about how pleasing and annoying I am. Don't write about it! It's so annoying!

I get off at my stop - THERE IS THE OLYMPIC MOUNTAIN RANGE SILHOUETTED BY THE LIGHT OF THE BLUE SKY - and start thinking about how rad Daylight Savings is. If Daylight Savings and Standard Time had a boxing match, Daylight Savings would totally win. Daylight Savings would kick Standard Time's ass!

But the Republicans would get behind Standard Time, good old Standard Time, Standard Time is family time spent together reading the bible on long winter nights. Big money would get into it, oil and electric. Enron, Exxon, they'd back Standard Time. Standard Time would cheat!

But Daylight Savings was conceived by our great forefather Benjamin Franklin, the liberabls would say.

Benjamin who? the Republicans would say. He wasn't a forefather, more like a fore-gay-uncle, ha ha!

Benjamin Franklin wasn't gay, the liberals would say, he was a womanizer.

JUST LIKE BILL CLINTON, the Republicans would say. Old scandals would be raised, everyone would forget about the topic at hand - the cheating of Standard Time - and people would pretend that Traditional Family Values had prevailed, when really all it is is the artificial measurement of time. TIME DOESN'T EVEN EXIST.

WHY DON'T WE HAVE DAYLIGHT SAVINGS ALL YEAR, IT IS SO NICE.

Then I got home, where I was inundated with mail that I still haven't opened.

Then I bought a plane ticket to see my grandmas. I talked on the phone to my mom and she might have become hysterical, I'm not sure. She hung up to call my sister.

It's now 11:05 and I should be in bed.

Tomorrow won't be so weird, but it will suck. Tuesday is the worst day of the week.