I found my birthday card from this year on my desk as I was packing. 

Love You Always, Mom
And FOREVER, Dad

I don't know how this happened, but I became convinced sometime last year that Adam Yauch was dead from cancer.  The news yesterday was like reliving a past day over again.  Not that I was a huge fan of the Beastie Boys.  But I had to check the articles I read to make sure that the surviving members were indeed two and not just one.  Maybe I just misread some headline about him getting cancer and thought he was dead.  But I even remember thinking that their last video was in questionable taste, one of the members being dead and all.  Even though all three were, probably, in the video.  Did I encounter a time vortex?

As I sit here stroking a nameless cat that may not have long to live, I reflect upon a cat I used to own, who died, named Callie.  Now I say this cat I'm stroking may not have long to live because I'm moving, and I have my doubts as to whether this cat and another cat living here will be kept after I leave.  It seems harsh and is just another reason to be depressed.  And I am thoroughly depressed and probably have been for some time.  The way we chase our lives around.  The fighting and turmoil that never stops.  It really does kind of make you want to go throw up behind a tree.

But I mention Callie because, at her death, she brought me hope.  She came into my room the night before, and she knew she was going to die.  I know this because she just sat at the foot of my bed, staring at me wisely, lovingly, for the longest time.  And I just started laughing.  I wish it had occurred to me that I was losing a friend.  In retrospect, her gaze only seemed appropriate in light of her impending death.  In the wee hours of the morning she fell asleep, and I saw her happily running in her dreams.  When I woke up she was deceased, her arms and legs still in that running position.  She ran off into...somewhere...

I just want to say thanks to Callie for making it all seem peaceful instead of some god-forsaken flesh nightmare where random meat robots run around trying to pleasure themselves. 

At work I spray off silkscreens.  I set them on a rack in this booth I stand in front of, kind of like a big open closet, and spray them off.  When to my left, inside the booth, for a moment I thought I saw a white cat licking its paw and heard a distinct meow.  It was only for the briefest moment.  I think maybe something made a "meow" sound and I just happened to imagine a cat at the same time. 

I woke up yesterday feeling better than I've felt in ages.  For a couple of nights I was having the strangest and most pleasant night terrors before falling asleep.  I heard a rushing sound and it felt as though something jumped off my body.  I get sleep paralysis quite often, too.  I love a good nightmare. 

I've been thinking about dreams and wondering what time frame we experience them in.  They're difficult to remember, but that doesn't mean that they actually exist as the clipshow they're so often portrayed as.  I just wonder how long they take, really, and if that syncs up with the amount of time we're supposed to be in deep sleep. 

Went to Marty's last night.  We played the worst video game I've ever seen, Rex Ronan: Experimental Surgeon.  It's an anti-smoking campaign.  You are a surgeon who is shrunken down to fight cancer and the smoking company sends evil tiny robots to kill you.  Inside a human mouth.  At the same time, you have to clean off rows of teeth that seem to be covered in plaque.  But I guess that's the cancer.  On the teeth.  And there are so many teeth.  It's almost like a day job.  Like my day job, come to think of it.

We also played Spanky's Quest, which is a great game if you've never played it.  Both of these are for the SNES.  You're a monkey who bounces orbs off its head which transform into baseballs, soccer balls, volley balls, and basketballs and which kill nefarious fruit.  I hope we play it again tonight.

So I've been thinking about the afterlife lately, naturally.  Been listening to Skeptiko, which primarily deals with the NDE or near death experience.  A common aspect of the experience is the ability to telepathically communicate thoughts to entities encountered on the other side.  For some reason my mind compulsively thinks the worst thoughts, so all I can think is how disenchanted my loved ones will be when it turns out that all I'm thinking about is having sex with them.  Not that I have any desire to, just that I know I wouldn't be able to help but think it.  They'd say "That's ok, we understand"...at first.  But after a while they'd be like "You have a problem."

I've had the same thought about alien abduction.  I hear they can communicate telepathically, too.  I'm sure I would compulsively think about a baby alien on my nude lap, and they would shield all their infants from me.

I had to go over to my parents' house today to look for the car keys.  'Twasn't long 'fore I was in tears.  But that's been pretty much the story.  I didn't find the keys.  I did find their James Taylor CD with the song "Sweet Baby James" my mom used to sing to me all the time. 

That's the last time I'll probably ever set foot in the old gal (meaning the house.)  I spent over ten difficult years there.  She smells and she's a mess.  I brought the house key to the bank, so I guess that means its theirs now.  I hope whoever they sell it to fixes it up and has happy times there.  I sometimes imagined fixing it up myself. 

I finally stopped feeling sick.  Drove through a huge thunderstorm on my way home from work.

Just got home from work.  Working overtime.  I'm pretty good at zoning out, so ten hours isn't so bad.  I just hope nobody comes down on me for using my .mp3 player.  If they do, I'm not promising anything.  I'm totally paranoid that they google employees and read what they write online.  There's nothing to suggest they would be like that.

I used to be paranoid all the time that my dad would do that.  But there's also that, I'm afraid, I'm a totally transparent person.  I can't hide anything, so I am cautious not to say certain things about people.  I think my dad sort of trained me to be that way.  As one person remembered him, "He wasn't the kind of guy who you could get anything past."  Which was quite a good summation, to a ludicrous degree.  He was hypersensitive without the usual perks of being around a "sensitive soul."  Kind of like a bear trap.  Anyway, now I compulsively think everyone is looking through me, and I think it's easier just not to do things that are going to make me paranoid later.  Only later to find I've turned into a stiff old bore, hopefully not. 

It was a rough day as far as my mom is concerned.  Just really, really sad.  But also I'm still feeling the tiniest bit ill.  I know I need to take better care of myself.  I have a hankering for fruits, which I know is good, but they elude me.  I don't want to get off this late at night and go to Wal-Mart to buy fruit, and my only other fruit source is in the form of Hostess fruit pies from the gas station.  For dinner tonight I went to Taco John's and ate a bean burrito.  It seemed like the burrito had been sitting around a while, but I know nobody else orders bean burritos.  It was my healthy, vegetarian alternative.  Even though I know they use lard in the bean. 

Maybe I should eat more nuts.

I think right now is the loneliest I've ever been (and I spent a summer of my youth playing Vietnam by spitting on ants in my backyard because I had no friends.)  My sisters are the only ones who can really understand me right now.  Especially my youngest sister since we're so close in age.  I really hope it is sooner rather than later that I can be with her. 

Last night I had a dream that someone was cooking meat, and amongst his/her meats there was a live baby pig that accidentally got wrapped up in plastic like a ham at a deli.  I was told we had to wait to eat our meat before we could free the baby, but was happy when the baby pig managed to find its own way out.  AND IT WAS THE MOST ADORABLE BABY PIG.  Covered in fluffy white fur and smiling, so happy to see me.  I think this is my body's way of assuring me that I am a vegetarian.  I wish I knew how to pack a vegetarian lunch that was more than a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.  (Please don't tell me that peanut butter and jelly contain pig lard.)

I think I may have come down with something.  My stomach has been really queasy the past two days.  Yesterday I projectile vomited all over my steering wheel on the way to work.  I can't write anymore.  Too sick.

It's been raining this evening.  And lightening.  (I know I spelled that incorrectly.)  It's pretty cozy to be under your electric blanket set to 8 while listening to the cars drive through the rain drenched streets. 

Only five hours of work tomorrow.  Then a night to myself, perhaps, or mayhaps Clinton and I will go bar hopping.  There are quite a number of bars for a city this size.  I'm generally not a fan of bars, but I haven't been much of a fan of anything.  Too much soul searching going on...  It's not fun to listen to Buckcherry when you're trying to perceive the underlying meaning of existence.  It's not fun to listen to Buckcherry anyway.  They're the ones who sing that "You're crazy bitch" song.  Maybe people only listen to that crap in little backwater towns like this.  I wish.  I wish this weren't an international phenomena.  Sloppy, drunk girls suffering from a deficit of any genuine affection, vying for the vacuous attention of self-obsessed men.  The sexes bore me so. 

OR maybe tomorrow night I'll sit in bed and read The Goldbug and Other Stories, or watch some interesting videos.  Or, if I'm really lucky, hang out with Marty (who has no tolerance for stupidity.)  I totally tolerate it.  People are all wonderful, I think, if you can manage to cut through all the delusions.  Which I attempt to do by sitting in catatonic testimony to the lost fool that I am.  If it's working, it's working very slowly and I'm not satisfied with the results.

Now it's really coming down, thundering and lightening -- woo!  Oh!  Oh my...  Oh my GOODNESS!

I think I'll open my window and maybe Lonnie the Leprechaun will stop by for a visit.

I am in shock.  I am in utter disbelief that I get to enjoy this world.