i was young once, and it was embarrassing

So this weekend, I slept in my childhood bedroom. It's been totally redesigned since I last lived there. I redid some of it my first year of college-- I came home during the summer and repainted. Instead of pink with red trim, I left it pale blue with ultramarine trim. It looks, if I say so myself, quite lovely.
It also now has a giant filing cabinet in it, and my parents keep all their paper records there. All kinds of stuff.
Anyway.

I got thinking, being in that old place, and on the train ride back to Buffalo I went through the folder of things I'd written, transferred from about six computers ago and enshrined in an archive of possibly-unreadable files.
Many of them still open.

I started writing a novel at 12 or 13. I forget when, exactly. My friend Abbie was collaborating. We wrote endlessly, and drew pictures. She went on to major in illustration, while i majored in creative writing. She now works in a pet store. I work for an air purifier manufacturer. Eh.

Anyway. This novel.
( It's pretty embarrassing. )

Other than that, I wound up sleeping 12 hours last night, with Chita either attacking my feet, purring on my chest, or purring on my face most of that time. I rolled over on her twice. She really doesn't care at this point. She gave me lots of face-kissies this morning.

Z ordered me a birthday present and is thoroughly pleased, and won't tell me what it is. It's shipping by ground from Illinois because it's a hazmat. ?!?!?!

I have no idea. I don't know where I found this guy. But I'm totally keeping him.

I mentioned to him, by the way, that I might get a gun. He was unenthused. Just wait until the government collapses and I have to defend us! Then he won't be so unimpressed!

Uh, I mean, you know, um, stuff? I'm so not paranoid or delusional. Shut up.

people are so strange. it's just a strange world, we live in.

To start off with, the shipping coordinator just shouted, "Oh, my God."
"What?" I asked.
"This customer... his last name is Cox... OK, maybe it's a woman... but the first name..."
"What? What is it?"
"Gay!"
"Gay..."
"Cox. Who would do that to their child?"

Not the weirdest thing of the day, though.

Weirdest call:
"How many horsepower does your junior machine draw to power the motor?"
"Um..." I look it up. "120 volts... 80 watts... 1 amp... I don't know horsepower. May I ask why?"
"I don't have electricity. I was gonna hook it up to a deep-cycle marine battery."
"Oh. Uh..."
"My daughter's really sick, see, chemically sensitive, and she's just doing so poorly. I thought maybe we don't have to run the machine on full power, we could just put the machine right by her head and just clean the air there, while she's sleeping, and that might give her some relief. The batteries run for 24 hours or so. We know because we use them to power our electric drills."
"Wow, ok. Um, I don't know. Could I get your phone number and have our engineer call you back?"
"Well... We don't use telephones either. I'm calling from the phone of a kind neighbor. Could you write us a letter?"
"Sure thing."

They're Amish. They live in Ohio.

Apparently Amish houses use the same building materials as regular ones, which offgass formaldehyde when they're new, and his adult daughter, who's been suffering from chronic fatigue syndrome for 14 years, got married and moved into a new house, and is so sick she "can't perform her work." In an agricultural society, I imagine that's devastating.

I think the marine battery would work. I'm just waiting for the engineer to email me back so I can write them a letter.