password: sharkly

I don't mind the grey weather at all. I have always liked grey weather the best anyway, a little cold. I don't do well in warm weather, probably because my heart is made of ice.

When I woke up this morning, on the heels of a particularly unpleasant dream during which I hacked into a friend's e-mail account (password: sharkly) and was subsequently stabbed through the head with a machete as punishment for broadcasting what I'd learned in there -- namely, that he was covertly courting a tall poet -- I discovered that my freezer was mysteriously working again. That's right, my freezer has suddenly decided to begin freezing things again. I don't trust it. A freezerman named Flavio is still scheduled to come to The Fort on Tuesday to fix the freezer, and I'm not canceling the visit. (Maybe partially because I want to see what kind of person is connected to the name Flavio.) Still, I had to throw away everything that had been in there except for the liter of vodka. Now my freezer has been bleached to a tightass clean and contains two trays of ice cubes and a liter of vodka that I, the Abscessed Wonder, can't drink. Metaphor for life? I could probably go there, but I'm working on cutting back on metaphors.

Meanwhile, I just want to let you know that babysitting, which is probably the world's second oldest profession, is an honorable and prestigious pastime of tactical strategery. I am really enjoying babysitting. I like babies and for some reason get along with them very well. Some of the babies are really noteworthily crafty, sneaky, calculating babies for which one can develop some real professional respect. Last night one of the babies managed to clobber me over the head with a mechanical horse (not the kind in bars; this is not a Herculean baby) and then, money-shotlike, announce, "Neigh."
"Neigh in-freaking-deed," I replied, my eyes filling with tears.
With babies, if you cry, even accidentally, they become panicked. They're like, Power dynamics reversed! You human, me Tron! Shit, how do you steer this vessel!
So you can't cry.
I put the baby to bed and took the mechanical horse out to the living room, where I was working on my story. I opened its furry stomach flap and looked inside -- the horse colonoscopy, if you will. Neigh! The thing was totally solid metal grille inside. No wonder it weighed like a thousand pounds.
"I'm sorry," I told the mechanical horse. "We've determined what's wrong with you. You have metal intestines. There's no cure for your condition."