my friend brian and i used to do this lumbering, dopey, innocent-sounding voiceover for lady, my family’s potato-shaped food-loving dog. it started when lady was watching the fridge. brian said ‘oh, fiddlesticks. why won’t they ever let me go in the big white box?’ that’s what my brain sounds like right now.

8:18AM: thought ‘give us this day, our daily [michael kimball’s smiling head engulfing entire computer screen, gradually windchimes can be heard]’ as a flash intro to some kind of website, a marketing thing…a union thing…presidential campaign…

9:14AM: not going to make it to NYC. i shouldn’t have talked about my high stakes consequences trick, that invalidated it. i would not rent an apartment to me. i would be able to tell i’m a nasty slumlord good-for-nothing. i would google the shit out of anyone who applied to live in my building. i want to own a parking garage. i need mafia credit cards to get credit to get loans to buy a parking garage. when have you ever heard of a parking garage going out of business? nasty slumlord. keep picturing the michael kimball head thing and laughing in forceful bursts. wish i could make that the cover of my huge ass binder of everything there is to know about me, that i’m giving to apartment building/company/committee/i don’t know who or what i’m giving it to, exactly. maybe i am being scammed. would feel relieved, i think, if this turns out to be a scam. i could just do something else then.

9:22AM: for the past week i’ve semi-frequently been thinking about how i said something like ‘i feel like a richard yates character all the time lately, when i am older this will not be ‘cute” in my book. now feel like i am the ‘older’ age where it is no longer ‘cute.’ most people i hang out with are under 24. wonder if they think of me as ‘older person’ now. the only people i’ve thought seemed older than me have also been substantially larger than me in size. it would make sense if as people got older, they never stopped accumulating height and mass. people would measure death in height instead of age, like you’d die at 46’9” tall instead of 80 years old. age is harder to see than height.

9:32AM: sat on floor to continue organizing apartment-garnering portfolio. heard loud plangent basketball-like banging coming from the area behind my closet. the noise went away. it started again. irritated by this noise. the starting and stopping of it. it’s the same every time. mom walked to my room and when she saw me sitting beside computer i knew she’d know i’d been up all night again. she started expressing mom-like concerns, abruptly stopped talking, tilted head and looked alert. i said ‘yeah, the noise, it’s extremely irritating.’ she asked when it started. i said ‘just before you walked in’ and irrationally blamed her for the noise. she said something about pipes or leaks, then ‘i’m supposed to call someone if it’s…if there’s a leak, if the noises are coming from the roof. this has happened, the banging,’ sounding like she was struggling to access her network’s default ‘emergency broadcast’ message. i said ‘it’s not coming from the roof, it’s coming from where i hear the baby crying,’ and pointed to the closet. mom seamlessly transitioned back into worrying about me.