meta witch

01-14-00

Lay on the couch with the cats all day, watching chick movies ("matinees") and dozing in and out. No excuse, except for the heartburn and a few stray hiccups left from yesterday.

I also reserved a flight to Michigan for the first week of April. It's something of a late birthday present to my mom, from my dad. I don't know what the story will be for updating the journal from there; my parents are online now (stop the world!) but their connection is probably slower than even I can stand. That, and they don't know about the journal yet. No, I haven't told them. My dad would be unimpressed, my mom would be shocked, but proud. I'm sure the look they'd give me would be about the same as the one I got five years ago when I told them John and I wanted to move in together.

Once they got used to it, my dad would still be unimpressed. My mom would start reading me avidly, telling my brother all about it, showing it off, and probably using it for assignments for her 11th and 12th grade lit/writing students. Wait, I guess she can't use anything with profanity. At least, not with continuing profanity. Sure, writers swore when they wrote old shit like Gatsby and Huck Finn, but that was a long time ago. I'm sure if Salinger had written Catcher in the Rye as shareware, English teachers all over the country would have instant-messaged asking him to please, please leave out that bit about the prostitute.

Lots of people I know are reading this now. In fact, pretty much everyone I know, except Mom and Dad, know it exists. My brother doesn't have the Internet bug yet, and a few friends from school never got the url. John's family reads me all the time. A few friends in Michigan read now and then. I wasn't sure whether to share it with my friends down here, but, before I decided, John got drunk and spilled the address at a sausage party a few months ago. Keeps me honest, I suppose.

When I started out, only John and a few online friends knew about me. Has my writing changed, since everyone I know has been checking in? Well, duh. Uh, yeah. My writing has changed, anyway. My first entries were sparse, often free of pronouns, and very cold. And short. Most of my current entries aren't long, either, but some of the ones from october-december of 1998 were only a paragraph. And boy, was I defensive. "If you don't like it, write your own journal." Sheesh, my target audience must have been people with no self-esteem.