$37.84

$37.84. This is how much Bank One will pay Exxon from my account for the tank of gasoline I purchased this evening. At $2.79 a gallon this is an enormous expense that I didn’t count on. If we can get our asses out of the Middle East, then perhaps I could save my money for my daughter’s education or a new house for my family or even a new vehicle that doesn’t pitter or patter down the highway to work daily while I press down on the rubberized pedal, hoping that it makes it another year until I get that large check.

Tomorrow I finish learning how to support kids from families who cannot speak the language of our country. Three more hours of this, and I am free to spend the day with my family and best friend.

Today was the first day of the rest of my life is a weak cliché that expresses much of nothing beyond the banality of expression so often heard in today’s American culture. But in actuality it is. My damn foot’s been bothering me for two weeks, and I swear that eventually I will learn to retain some semblance of flesh and nail down the side of my big toe when clipping my nails wholeheartedly once every couple of weeks. It’s didn’t even bleed, but occasionally after ear splitting mute screams I can express puss beading from the side of my red toe.

I picked up a book today called The Lovely Bones. I realize that this book was a New York Times Bestseller a few years ago about a young rape, murder victim. I had an idea to write a novel about a dead girl who was suicidal, then came out of her depression, and then was murdered in a school shooting. I don’t think this subject would be wise to write and work and I don’t want to be dooced. Especially from this job, at this time, or ever. I will read this book, and I will read Wicked. My colleague said that book was a bit too sexually graphic for her. I, for one, read Naked Lunch, so Wicked is like reading my daughter Mother Goose.