Difficult Evening

I've had an awfully dismal day, and it looks like tonight will be worse. I just can't get anything accomplished. My mind won't leave me alone. I want to be somewhere else, doing something else. I need a mini-vacation, a shot of happiness. I feel like I have a nagging splinter, or a paper cut or something. I'm more than a little stir crazy, and more than a little upset. I need some clarity and some laughter. It's so bad I even made a list. Some of it involves another person, but I can at least do the non-partner stuff. It's enough to remind me why I'm alive, right?

• Find a grassy hill and roll down it. Repeat until breathless.


• Do the whole Shakespeare in the Park thing


• Get a new hair style, a new dress, new heels, new nails, and go see anything Steven Sondheim.


• Play with someone who knows how to make a simple board game into an experience. Someone who knows how to carry a grudge while laughing, how to cheat and when to 'fess up, and how to drink a bottle of wine without spilling it all over the Monopoly money.


• Visit the large half-price books and buy too many books, and read them in a park while lunching on Subway sandwiches. At least one book has to be silly-season stuff -- palm reading, or 101 uses for a salad shooter, or maybe that Manual of Bombshell Style I've been eyeing.


• Do something silly with food. Maybe buy graham crackers and cream cheese frosting to make mini gingerbread houses complete with decorations, or make mini homemade pizzas, or at the very least find a use for that bottle of chocolate sauce in my fridge.


• Go shopping and pretend to be either an alien or a spy tailing a foreign national. Eat while pretending everyone at nearby tables is trying to kill me. Whisper to the waiter.


• Take my niece and nephew to Chuck E Cheese and play video games until my head explodes from LEDs and caffeine. With any luck they'll have a Centipede.


• Take my niece and nephew to play miniature golf.


• Leave Thursday night for the casinos in Oklahoma and gamble all night. Drive back to Dallas in the early morning hours, and barely make it to school for my 8:00 AM Friday class. Teach for two hours, eat a huge breakfast at Denny's, then sleep all weekend.


• Go downtown and visit the dollhouse museum.


• Find someone who realizes kissing does not always lead to sex, and make out all afternoon while listening to Gipsy Kings, Barry White, and Chris Whitley.


• Visit the Ft. Worth museums again, or maybe the DMA. I could say 'hi' to my favorite painting, and to my favorite furniture.


• Go to San Antonio and visit the Circus Museum again, and maybe fit in the folk art museum this time


• Find an outdoor festival and get my face painted, my fortune told, eat turkey legs and caramel apples, and dance


• Find a good band and go out dancing. An especially scary suggestion since I can't dance.

I can at least do Sondheim, if I can work up enough nerve to drive over to Richland by myself. They're performing Into the Woods this weekend. I'd prefer Sweeny Todd but I'll take what I can get.

(10:30 PM)

Decided if I'm resorting to list-making then things are worse than I thought. Took matters into my own hands and painted my face using watercolor crayons. I'm missing the fortune telling, caramel apples, and dancing, but this isn't bad. I painted it three times before I decided to take a few photos. I can't believe I'm even posting the stupid things, but it's not like anyone reads this nonsense anyway. I don't know why I even keep an on-paper journal anymore -- I could blab my aching heart out right here and no one would be the wiser.