hi again

Heisenburg and I were looking at my living room. I haven't seen much of Heisenburg lately; I suspect that the living room is part of the problem. We were having an argument about it. The entire place was full of boxes, disassembled furniture, and great, pregnant black garbage bags full of clothes.

"Nature abhors a vacuum," I pointed out.

Heisenburg sniffed. "Nature is a slob."

It seems worth mentioning that this last month, both my sister and my friend Flamingo had birthdays. Happy birthday, Sister and Flamingo!

I didn't call either of them on their birthdays, being plunged into a dateless, timeless pocket of neverending time, by which you can tell that I was once more in V---- for the week. One week turned into one week-and-one day; I was on the weekend, and then back there for Sunday night to Monday evening. Or maybe Sunday night to Tuesday evening. Or maybe Wednesday evening. Or maybe....

This time, there being no Agricultural Fair, I was placed in a non-smoking room. When I opened the door for the first time, I got a peculiar whiff of tobacco smoke up the nose. The next day, I came back to the room to find that tobacco had disappeared, pounded into submission by the determined smell of Winter Blossom air freshener. The day after that, it smelled like men's cologne.

I don't know what the cleaning crew was doing in my room, but it seems pretty plain they were messing with me. I didn't mind the cigarette smoke as much, it being the previous tenant's fault rather than theirs. The Brut! For the Real Man! however, was over the top.

We won't even talk about my dreams, which featured a gay, smoking Frenchman carrying flowers for my Parisian cabdriver.

Every phone call from my friends and my sister this past half month has started with, "Have you told her yet?"

To which I usually say something along the lines of "mumble mumble mumble."

"You're not ever going to tell her, are you?" my sister said accusingly, the other night.

"I keep forgetting," I explained carefully. Heisenburg, busily washing his privates on the dining room table, eyed me skeptically from beneath his hind leg. In Seattle, my sister was doing much the same thing.

"Suuuuuuuure you are," she said, drawling the phrase as only an Asian Tact Deficiency Syndrome sufferer can when attempting to wield sarcasm as a club of subtlety. The tail end of the 'suuure' finished in the same time zone with Ohio.

"Is she around? Do you want me to tell her now?"

There was a small pause on the telephone while my sister grappled with that thought. "Better not," she said, prudently. "I don't want to deal with the fallout."

No, I am not pregnant.

And I'm not engaged, either.

But boy, Mom's not going to be happy with me.