Odds and ends. Mostly odds.

Have you seen that movie, How to Get a Head in Advertising? Left unchecked, my anger is like a tumor that grows off me and takes on a life of its own. I stop having a say in any matters. It speaks first and loudly. Eventually, it's all people see.

That's where I was on Monday. Then I went to a meeting and the topic was coping with anger. Sometimes you  have to be in a room full of women and hear their same struggles to have the wherewithal to grab hold of your own head and pull it out of your ass.

Just read an essay of Anne Lamott's about her dog dying and cried like a baby. I will never get over the death of my beloved cat, Julian, the great orange lion.

It's my friend D's 70th birthday--Happy Birthday D!--and I feel like a shitty friend having sent no card and not been present in the last three months. (Work is so great for me, like a drug, really. The weeks fly by, nobody asks how I'm feeling, it's an enormous repository for me to place my blame--everything is his/her/the building's fault--then I get a paycheck. Like any drug, it ends and guess what? My life didn't transform into a princess fantasy while I was working. I didn't wake up Monday morning to handmaids and foot soldiers. The same old--dirty guinea pig cages, bills, clogged gutters--was here the whole time waiting for my return.)

I chatted with ex's gf on Thanksgiving. (I stopped by after dinner to say hello to my boys.) In my head, I'd written her to be some combination of Mother Theresa, Tina Fey, and Grace Kelly. In reality, she's just a person. Slightly boring, not very funny, a bit intense--perfect for ex.

Speaking of boring and not very funny, I've been working on my novel. I'm not sure how much more I can look at it. I'm thinking it's time to face the abject terror of the blank page and start something new. Onward.