5/3

I should have been nicer to E's B tonight. I got mad at a basically innocent remark he made and told him that he's a perpetuator of the great American obsession with ugly and unnatural thinness, and therefore somehow everything in the world is his fault including poverty, SARS, Hawaii's ice problem, and global terrorism. Poor guy, he never sees any of this coming.

I feel so yuck. So irritable. I think it started wth the penguin. For art this morning we made clay creatures, which I was excited about from last week when I looked at the syllabus because I haven't touched clay since the third grade or so. Class started out OK, art history from the amazing Greeks to the copycat Romans, and then we moved to the ceramics lab in the basement, where I couldn't find any inspiration to create, period. There were flying sea turtles, serpents, a banana split (she decided last minute that "pop art" was OK, too), a dolphin. After about 45 minutes of squashing my clay from square to ball to snake to pancake, I decided I better hurry the hell up and decided to make a penguin. To make a long story short the end product looked nothing like a penguin, maybe an old Chinese penguin disco dancing with a beret on his head. This would be the first project so far that I'm not happy with at all. Even my coffee table goose drawing I liked. I hate the penguin.

Since we got out early Caryn suggested going to the mall so we went to Ala Moana. I was pleasantly surprised to find two Macys gift cards in my purse with which I bought a pair of long cargo shorts which sort of made me feel better about the penguin.

Then I went home and went to sleep but got woken up by Kevin who was at Starbucks with Allen asking "When are you going to get here?" ... bc we were supposed to meet to write at 3. Which I had completely forgotten about. So I had to get up, shower, get dressed and meet them at starbucks where Allen gave me a $1 off coupon he got from volunteering at a March of Dimes event, so I got a chai which made me feel a little better about missing my nap. We started writing -- the three themes for the afternoon were "the first time," "last week" and shoot, can't remember Kevin's. I sketched more of the story of the ginger cat named Franklin P. Roosevelt, and I was happy with that. Then a weird thing happened: K and A, out of the very bluest blue, started conversing with each other about surfing. I don't mean we were discussing the ocean and then they started talking about waves, I mean we were talking about what it means that Kevin's latest love interest is a psychotic user and suddenly K turns to A and says "Surf's up, I think." And A replies something like "Oh, heh, are you gonna, uh, go tomorrow?" and K goes "Yeah ... maybe, uh ... Ala Moana?" Which was very irritating. Because I know that little exchange was not about surfing. Either some hot girl walked by outside and that was their little code for "babe in red tank top, twelve o clock" or they were talking about me, which is more likely because it's not like they normally behave delicately around me, I mean we were just discussing Allen's definition of a fuck buddy a minute ago. I have not ruled out paranoia on my part, but I'm still convinced they were guy-talking something like "Man is she PMSing." Or worse.

Met mom and Mart at church after that. the homily was something like "think about the person on this earth that you love the absolutely least. The way you love that person is the way you love Jesus." Which irritated me because the person on this earth that I love the absolute least I'm sure either was created by Satan or is one of his very best agents. Okay that was a very sacriligious thought, btu I was in a sacriligious mood. Until nearly the end. I walked up for Communion (although I'm sure I'm thousands of major sins overdue for confession) ... and Father M, as he does to all who receive the sacrament from him, put one of his hands under mine, very briefly, as with his other hand he placed the host in my palm. The simple, momentary support of his hand beneath mine made my eyes fill with tears, it felt like a week's worth of guilt and sadness lifted until he released my hand. And when it resettled, it was manageable again, so I could think about it, not have to try to forget it.