8:30pm: sensed something in my peripheral vision watch me walk up and down the aisles at target. Then I was closer to the ‘something,’ a pudgy little girl. She twisted her ankle shyly and smiled. I smiled back. She said ‘I like you dress.’ I smiled bigger, said ‘thank y-oouuu. It’s from target’ sort of unconsciously and walked away, feeling like a commercial.

8:32pm: the idea of decorating dad’s apartment as a birthday surprise: is it sad? Sadder than if there’d be nothing, he’d come home to nothing? Something vs. nothing. No win on this one. This one is what you’d call a ‘draw.’

8:35pm: something would be better

8:47pm: waiting in long line w/small basket. Have been thinking of a rap:

yeah I wear a target dress when I go to target

and you know it’s my dress cause I got it at target

my shoes an my dress got em both at target

and if you tryna mess we goin outside target

all target eythang all target eythang (4X)

a birthday dad is a birthday occasion

step in line to the checkout least ragin

scanner shut down but dads stay agin

barcode price check hurts when they page em

red shirt uniforms all upstagin

Fred Durst rearrange em

all target eythang paid freemason

8:52pm: the beat for that is so real in my head. When it goes ‘all target eythang’ people make background noises like ‘tawget’ and ‘oh pawty’ and ‘guhhh’ and there’s this…sneaker skid? A whistle. There is a whistle. Sounds like the beastie boys.

8:58pm: driving back to dad’s. Listened to a YouTube video called ‘how to pronounce ‘Julian Assange” (like it rhymes with ‘carte blanche,’ yes that’s really the first thing I thought, no I don’t know what it means, I also don’t know what Julian Assange did or why people are mad at him).

9:25–11:00PM: taped crepe and shiny paper decorations to ceiling. ate 20mg adderall. i liked thinking about where the next strip of paper should be taped. i preferred doing that to taping. if this was a job i’d start out as a taper and work my way up to ‘telling tapers where to tape.’

11:01–11:45PM: dad didn’t notice the ceiling when he walked in, which was both surprising and not. hugged him, said ‘happy birthday’ and ‘seventy-one, look out, whoa, big time.’ he said ‘oh, thanks’ absently. he seemed very tired, stressed about the construction of a new office. thought he’d go to bed right away but we sat and talked for a long time. he said something about how scientists think the observable universe is only fifteen percent of the universe. i said ‘what happens…so if there’s a fifteen percent that means there’s a one-hundred percent, so what happens after the one-hundred percent?’ he shifted a little in the chair and said ‘you know? i don’t know.’