Please no opossums.

As a special bonus treat today, I get to go up into my attic to see whether I am right that the raccoons have moved in above my bedroom. You are so jealous.

I made merciless fun of Chris when he had two separate beehives in the walls of his house. But his bees never woke him with scrabbly feet and the sounds of eating above his head. And dropping loud things. What the fuck were they doing for two hours last night? Redecorating? I am afraid the raccoons are past the catfood stage. I'm scared the next time the raccoons wake me at 2:00am, they will be whipping up a stirfry and drinking the beer I keep for guests. God knows they're smart enough to open the fridge.

I can't think which I want more. A frenzied, frantic mother raccoon trapped in a Havaheart, desperate kits clinging to the outside, or a desperate kit trapped in a Havaheart, with a furious mother raccoon sitting on top, screeching, telling me to come get a piece of her. I'm the luckiest girl alive.

Fries and ice cream for dinner, y'all.

I was so excited for secret plans and they got even better when I guessed where we were going! Thanks, Chris! The secret plans were awfully fun all the way through half-time, when the Kings were up by 17. I was feeling kindof ambivalent about secret plans when we were tied at the end of the third. By the end of the game, I was strongly in favor of advance planning, planning for things like finding the open man and more agility on D. We sat there for a long time when the game ended, but the score didn't change. (Kings 110, Suns 123)

I was very impressed with Ron Artest. I hope he stays happy and level-headed here.

It could be anything.

Chris has been completely overwhelmed by moving and setting up his new house. For the past couple weeks, he’s been a crappy friend. He’s put off our plans if he didn’t stand me up entirely. He’ll stop by for dinner but take phone calls the entire time. He forgets to ask how I am or return my calls. I thought about yelling at him, but he will be his usual great self when he isn’t slammed by chores and logistics. He doesn’t need one more hassle. Still, I was on the verge of telling him that I wasn’t mad, but I also wasn’t gonna make plans with him until he could show up and be present. He could call me in three weeks when he is more settled.

But then, last week, he called me up. He started with, ‘I’ve been a crappy friend recently. What are you doing next Tuesday?’ I didn’t have anything, so he said ‘Do you want to know what you are doing next Tuesday, or do you want secret plans?’ SECRET PLANS?! Oh yeah I want secret plans!

I’ve been excited for secret plans for days. He says it isn’t a big deal but it will be fun. There is some possibility he will take me on the best date ever. The best date ever, for those of you who don’t know, is to go play catch at McKinley Park, then go out to the Vietnamese restaurant with the strange wood paneling and diner décor, and then end the evening at the good used-CD store. I waited a long time for a boy to magically know that he should take me on the best date ever, but when that didn’t happen, I started taking my friends on the best date ever.

So Chris knows about the best date ever, but I don’t think he would call me in advance to arrange that. Calling me in advance makes me think that it is specific to the day or date. I’ll find out this evening. Fun.

Found lots of intelligence, though.

When I told Chris that people are talking about me on the Internets, he laughed really hard and said, "It's just like that screensaver that Dennis showed us, the one where you help find extraterrestrials from home." I can't believe that finding a love life for me is so difficult that it requires distributed processing.

Rest in peace, Grandma Jeanette.

It is a measure of my deep love for Chris that I hauled my recently broken, recently sick self out to help him move for four hours in the rain tonight. It was especially hard to have to box and move his crap, since I just spent four days in Connecticut with my dad and aunt working ten-hour days to clear out my grandmother’s final apartment. Still, if there is anyone who can call on my time and effort, it is Chris. Chris has done some heavy lifting for me this last year.

I call on Chris first when things go wrong, and I’ve had some losses in the past months. When I heard my grandmother died, I had no hesitation about calling him out of his meeting to come over and take care of me. She wasn’t a nice person; honestly, we dreaded seeing her. It was no coincidence that her daughter put an ocean between them to the east and her son moved west until an ocean stopped him. She hadn’t been in her right mind for four or five years now, which took some of the guilt out of avoiding her.

Chris came over right away so we could talk about my grandma’s death. I can’t say that I felt grief. She could be horrible to be around and I hadn’t wanted to know her. Her death certainly didn’t open a wound in my heart. But that night I felt terribly sad for her life. The heartbreaking part of my grandmother’s nastiness is that she never meant to drive anyone away. She liked being around people and she loved her family very much. She never connected her poisonous comments and relentless nagging with her desperate loneliness; it was a mystery and great sadness to her that we didn’t visit or write. As we cleared out her apartment this week, I found hundreds of envelopes and stacks of stationary and cards. She would have loved to have a correspondence with me.

My decision to not be like my grandmother is one of the most powerful choices I have ever made. But the night of her death, I wanted to sort through her characteristics, to see if there was anything I could claim and keep. I found a couple – her strong will and determination has served me well. In an odd gift, she bequeathed to all of her grandchildren an unusually high pain tolerance. Chris sat with me as I cried for her loneliness and looked more closely at her than I had for years.

I wasn’t purely sad, so we were also joking. At one point I wondered aloud what would happen to all her spite. Now that it wasn’t contained in her body, was the world big enough to hold it? Chris corrected me instantly. No, he said. That’s not how it works. When someone dies, all the love they contain is released back to the world. The spite dies with them. “Look at you,” he said. “You haven’t showed this much compassion for your grandma since I’ve known you.”

I thought about that idea for several days and I am sure it is true. It isn’t the love each person generates; that is given away during their lifetimes. But the love people felt for them gets carried in their selves their entire lives. When their selves are gone, that love is freed for the living to feel again.

Mi casa es su casa, guapo.

If you have been to my house a few times, it is very likely that you know where I keep the emergency key. As I show people where I keep the key, I explain to them what constitutes an emergency. It is an emergency if you are in Midtown and would like a beer. It is an emergency if you are in Midtown and have time to kill before your next destination. It is an emergency if you are driving to Tahoe and feel hungry. If you are Chris, it is an emergency if you need another CD player for your Space Party.

Jean-Michel is the only person who has really internalized the purpose of the emergency key. He lives in Davis with his girlfriend, and last summer it was easier for him to come here after work and before practice. I completely loved walking up to my house and seeing him on the porch couch, reading one of my books. On one occasion he surprised me, coming out of my bathroom freshly showered and dressed, when I hadn't known he was here. What a great precedent! I love the idea that beautiful men break into my house to shower. I can't think of a better use for the emergency key.