I managed to drag myself out of couch a bit ago and shower. Now Pants and I are listening to Handsome Family. He�s crying great rolling tears, which I keep wiping off whenever he passes close enough and slow enough that I can get a hold on his great round belly. He�s just wolfed down his evening installment of triangular adult kitty nuggets. I can�t decide whether he likes the music or not. I want to sway and clutch my beer and sometimes glance meaningfully at you when the lyrics are particularly poignant or inspired. The music is making me weak and watery, too. Maybe the moisture will dissolve the snot and lotion remnants all over the lower portion of my glasses. Maybe this is a beautiful thing.

I�ve seen no one today. I�ve spoken on the phone twice. In order to avert a visit from the mother, I was forced to promise to visit tomorrow. With Pants.

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I know you�re probably all with me here, but I feel obliged to say that holiday shopping is a slow and painful death. Any sort of shopping around the holidays, for that matter, because sometimes all you need are two more giant boxes of Kleenex with lotion and Target brand large kitchen trash bags. And by the time you make it through the elbow-to-elbow crowd around the holiday candy to reach the health and beauty aids, you realize you simply must buy yourself something fun in order to not go straight to housewares and test out the largest bread knife on your weak, pale wrists.

I brought a lovely martini set to the host and hostess of the party. I daresay they�ll approve. We find it best around here to keep martini fixings in every room. I think they�ll find that the perfect bedroom set.

I covet their apartment. It�s in an old schoolhouse, which was remodeled not too many years ago. It�s gorgeous. High tin ceilings, brick exteriors walls, wooden floors, spacious rooms and even a gas fireplace. I could live there. Not with them, though, which is why Jeremy is going to have to break his lease and move to town with me to be my roommate once more. There are two open apartments. If we can�t find jobs in the city right now, we must do something to entertain ourselves. We will move there, and I will make sushi every night, provided he greets me at the door with slippers and a martini each evening. Together we will have martini fixings for every room.

Anything to escape this place, where even when she knows I�m sick and have been out late, she calls and wakes me up early in the morning, telling me, with laughter in her voice, that she�s coming over to dig through my storeroom for something stupid of hers, and that I don�t have to get up to help her. She never showed up.