The Last Thing I Blew Was My Cover

Since moving here in August I have receded my smoking to only one a day before going to bed, after the children are asleep, more if I�m on the phone, but never during the day, and on the weekends I smoke a couple packs or three. This is still much better than ten packs a week, right? Absolutely.

The children I keep have very strong feelings about smoking, because their father has smoked since early adolescence and someone told them he would be dead soon. So obviously the kids think smokers are stupid, worthless, assholes. They abhor the habit.

For this reason my smoking has been a secret.

I�m not as conciliatory as I would like to think (story of my life) and last night the man I work for asked me for a cigarette after dinner. The children were away, and I was quite certain that he must have known I too smoke, but the secret had never been vocalized.

I laughed nervously.

There was a since of bonding as we stood on the patio and smoked, and I felt a little better about my ongoing lie knowing that it was brought to light.

The children still do not know.

But that�s different: they don�t know a lot of things!

Last night Maggie called me drunk off her ass, from her bathroom, to tell me an excessively un-funny story about a guy we know.

The whole story was that Bo called someone �stupid.�

And that we in turn think Bo himself is stupid.

So this is what it has come to. I sit quietly sober on a Tuesday night pondering whether to read an academic book or a novel, tired after shopping, cooking, cleaning, and looking after the twins, just to be interrupted by my best friend - who is enjoying the random gift of a handle of rum with five other people - because I may be the only person who shares her fleeting opinion that Bo is stupid.

I laughed, and called her back with my free-minutes.

The phone got passed around from her to Tylere, who immediately �introduced� me to two of his friends that went to England with him.

First he put me on the phone with George � a pre-med fag from Delaware who was chatty as hell � and next with his roommate from the trip: Justin.

Apparently I�d met him before. Twice.

I don�t remember him.

This happens often where people are like, �yeah, we met my freshman year�� and I just don�t remember. As if I was some stuck-up upper-classman who didn�t notice the younger people, but that�s not true, because the majority of my friends are younger than I am.

Like emofaerie and fulograc.

But the meeting of new people was very flattering. Here I am a thousand miles away, being called in the middle of a get-together and introduced to new people.

It�s so soothing to know that I am as near to their hearts as they are to mine.

I was warmed.

Then, this morning I got an email from Carrie Beth in Germany, and in response to my email voicing the frustration of us living worlds away from each other she said we can begin to write once a day and tell each other what we�ve eaten�

It made me misty-eyed.

So much time.

So much distance.

But no less caring.

After that I was greeted on IM by my friend who moved out to Montana. He was on his way to work, and just wanted to say hi.

Thank you for not letting me disappear!

Thank you for not putting me out of mind once I became out of sight!

Thank you for making my memories worth while.

Any one want to see Bright Eyes with me on the 30th? I've got an extra ticket!!!!