Thanks for your help, Scott Miller. My mouth is frozen shut.

Today we (the royal we, at that) are listening to Jay Farrar/Sepastapol, Bennett & Burch/The Palace at 4am (Part I), The V-Roys/Just Add Ice, Old 97s/Fight Songs, Rhett Miller/The Instigator, Neko Case/Furnace Room Lullaby, The Get Up Kids/On a Wire, and Badly Drawn Boy/The Hour of Bewilderbeast. In that order. The office is mine alone.

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I find sounding confused and overworked on the telephone only works with business contacts within the U.S. If, say, an Italian fellow calls, he is not impressed. He is condescending and his voice seems to say �don�t worry your pretty little head, lady, just get me the man in charge and go make him some coffee,� and he doesn�t believe you when you finally find what he�s talking about and are then forced to admit that you have no actual authority, but must get the approval of the boss, who�s jetting about on important business. And then he says �You just let me know when HE gets back.� And he�s right.

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I feel bad about what I said yesterday. The thing is, I spend most of my time feeling guilty that I can�t make them feel better. I can�t make them younger, and they�re in pain and they�re tired and they�re depressed, so of course they snap and say horrible things. The other younger ones, we wind up more interested in deflecting attention from our own shortcomings, hoping to pass the barbs onto a cousin. The lone unattached kid left in the group of cousins, I�m the easy target. At the last family gathering, the belief came forth that I drove that boy away, though they never met him and have no idea what he was really like, simply because I�m a cold, cruel mistress. I guess I have to think of it more as a reflection of how they feel and what they want for me than as a judgment. That smacks of a glass-half-full mentality. Ugh.

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Jeremy said something to me last Friday night about my anger that I�m still stewing about. I guess maybe that says it all.