how do little girls learn to sit that way?

today i feel: okay
today i'm hearing: don reeder -- beautiful
today i'm thinking: sleep saves souls

Today has lasted seven years. But that's a good thing, I think.

I hauled my ass out of bed this morning before it was even light out. I did end up going to that party last night, but Randy was wasted by 12.30 and I took him home and went to bed myself. It was really fun, though. I'm glad I went. I needed to have that sort of unadulterated fun. And I wasn't even drunk! Imagine that. I really have been running myself dry recently. But this morning I got up and I went and gave a bus tour for open house. And I was peppy and awake and they had a good time. Then I came home and slept for an hour before setting up for rehearsal. After rehearsal, I went to Panera to wait for Chelsea to call and ask for her wheels back. Then I got my hair cut. Gone. I was trying to look like Louise Brooks, but I forgot that I have a helluva lot more hair than she did. So, instead, I look like the Dutch Boy. The attempt was made, however, and I see no harm in that.

It does look pretty cute peeking out from under a hat, though. I will give myself that.

I saw The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford tonight. It was absolutely fantastic. I highly recommend it to anyone who has any interest in post-Civil War ass kickers. Jesse James was so cool. I remember going to Maramac Caverns with my folks when I was a kid. We stopped a couple times on our way to or from Oklahoma. I've always kind of wished that I'd been born a hundred or so years before I was. I'd love to be an outlaw: gunslinging and stealing from railroads and things like that. I think it would've been a blast. I feel really sorry for the guy who killed him now, though. I never knew that part of the story before. It's really very sad.

Things are still on the up, slowly but steadily. This whole situation is kind of fascinating to me. Love is funny. It does funny shit to people. And it's even funnier when it's half unadmitted like it is in my situation right now. I'm slowly growing to hate that word, though: love. I think people use it in all the wrong ways. It shouldn't be something you throw around. I try not to; really I do. But it comes out sometimes when I don't mean for it to and I feel kind of empty inside when that happens. But I try to take solace in the fact that the people I love know that I love them, and that's not from me spouting it all the time.

I was mean to Matt today. Randy told me off a little, even though he agreed I was probably in the right.

There's this great line in Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close that I really love. I remember reading it when I read that book and having one of those moments that really define why it is that I read. You know in To Kill A Mockingbird after Atticus has just lost Tom Robinson's trial and everyone in the balconies stand up for him, and Reverend Sykes turns to Scout and says, 'Stand up, Jean Louise. Your father's passing'? Every time I read that, I get chills. And I realise that that is the single line that explains why I read. Well, it was a moment kind of like that.

The big difference, though, is that this line was experienced with someone else, too.

I was curled up in bed with Randy one night and he was reading it. And he kind of gasped a little, so I asked him what it was he had just read. And he read one of my favourite lines: 'How do you say 'I love you' to someone you love?'

And it's moments like that that remind me of why I'm alive. I will never commit suicide. Just think of all the great books I would never get to read.