Once in a while I find myself in a rut where all of my interaction with other humans seems dull and ineffectual. I've been in one for a while now. At other times, every person, idea, conversation -- they're new pennies, the thrill of remembering something before you forgot, summer thunderstorms.

Perhaps my novel freakiness is losing its novel-ness. You don't have to tell me it's novel-ty. I OWN words, motherfucker. Maybe that's the problem. See there was no need for me to overreact just then. I haven't a thing to prove.

Maybe I have something to prove. I miss New York. I miss the physical. I miss the people. I miss most of all the new pennies and thrill of remembering and summer storms and law school and sketchy nights and the little Jamaican man downstairs and my shitty apartment and cockroaches that could FLY around inside my shitty apartment and sitting on the fire escape watching dice games on the street below my shitty apartment and my Uzbekistani psychiatrist -- she was cute -- and parking tickets and too much laundry for a fourth floor walkup and the subway and the half-Chinese half-roti place around the corner from my shitty apartment and being this impressive midwestern anamoly instead of a mixed up girl who fell apart (again) and now has to try really hard to hold her head above water.

Yes I have something to prove. It's that I'm not so wonderful but I'm good stuff and where is everyone? And why is it so hard to surround myself with people who make my synapses fire -- not sparkle I'm realistic -- but fire god damn it?

I should have qualified this entire diatribe by saying that my interactions with Scotty and Grace still do inspire me. How could they not? Scotty just walked in here humming, in nothing but a pair of Madagascar underpants, clutching a packet of fruit snacks with his left hand, holding up his marker-saturated right hand to say "Mawm ... this, like, won't come off ... f'real." That makes me happier than knowing the car keys are in the front zipper pocket on my purse.