It's been raining for most of the afternoon, and as night fell it brought with it thicker droplets to heave upon the parched, yet not thirsty, city. Tonight's is the first real rain we've had since I've returned from Europe.

Know how the physical subtext of certain events in life burden those physical conditions with a subtle, yet not ignorable, meaning? This rain makes me feel the way watching the flustered reporters on CNN did, as they hid behind post boxes during Hurricane Katrina's wrath: scared. Scared without something to blame. How can you fault the wind for blowing or the water for rising or the rain for falling?

I was Scared of the unknowable. Scared of the certainty of horrible things to come. Scared of not being scared enough to make a difference in my preparations the next time.

The streets were still driveable, with only the slightest gullies surprising my wheels here and there. And even though the weather forecasters have told me the rain will stop cascading by the sun's rise, I see my neighbors' FEMA trailers standing at attention along my path home like bright-eyed soldiers happy to be given an achievable mission, and I'm still scared inside.
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My absence of late is the responsibility of my upstairs neighbor, who suddenly realized last week, after 3 months, that he should secure his unsecured wireless network. I didn't want to break my golden rule -- accessing blogger from work -- so imagine my happy surprise to see that I can connect tonight. I think I might suck it up in the next month and just get my own internet :(

Now I'm going to relieve my overworked muscles and clear my stuffed brain - it's amazing how not writing for a week can make your mind swirl and feel fuller than a turkey at Thanksgiving - by joining Mr. Bubbles, some water, Catch-22, and Beethoven.

I put new pictures on Flickr: foiling my coworker's desk, the HoeDown in Ponchy two weeks ago, some from Cabining this past weekend in Cypremort State Park, and some random ones, too.

Tom has even more (especially cabining).

Dear Perfect Man,

I want to know how often you think about me. (Is it often?) Do you wonder what I'm doing? Do you picture the next time you'll be able to look in my eyes and feel that little pinch of guarded excitement in your heart? Do you wonder if I think about you as much, at such random times throughout the day, as you think of me?

I wish I were brave enough to tell you that I wonder what you're doing and I feel that pinch of guarded, fearful excitement in my heart when I think about the next time I'll be able to look in your eyes. I think about you, at the most random times throughout the day. I wish I were brave enough to find you. I wish I were [*see Biff's comment] brave enough to be honest, to take the gamble, to recognize that the benefits outweigh the risks, and tell you everything.

PM, you'd know how to make me feel better about being achingly honest and tell me that it doesn't make me psycho, right? Because I don't think I should have to play the "game" if you really are Perfect, and that's all the game's about, right? It's all testing each other's emotional boundaries to see if there's a line beyond which you'll stop appreciating my quirks. But then you wouldn't be Perfect, right?

PM, this would all be so much easier if you'd just find me and convince me that you're you. Because I'm having a hard time trusting myself to not get hurt by being more carefree and giving with my emotions; I'm finding it difficult to not care. Which means fear has been shopping around my conscience, looking for where best to set up residence.

PM, can't you just explain yourself to me? Can't you give me a brief list of things I should know about you like I did? You shroud yourself in perfect sunrises, in tree boughs that bend just so in the wind, in the magic of the lake's alternately glassy and tumultuous attitudes; you remind me of you in the glory of everything that's around me in nature, of what perfection would feel like, of what your beauty and intrigue and challenge should evoke within my soul. So that meeting you should feel like a brush with an old, comfortable, favorite book who's suddenly revealed a hidden chapter that completes the story in ways I never knew complete could be.

I'm so hopelessly idealistic and scared (untrusting?), and I'm beginning to realize how that makes me the biggest block to me ever accepting you, PM, or believing that you could possibly be you. But you'll fight for me, right, PM? Please fight for me. I need you to fight for me when it's easier to not look you in the eyes.

One last thing, PM, before I end tonight's plea into the great human abyss that is the world wide web (always hoping that some word, some word, will resonate somewhere and mean something, anything, some word; it's like when you search haplessly for something when you don't know what you're searching for and you feel somehow closer to finding the unknown by at least putting the wiggling worm on the hook before casting out your line with no clue of what you're hoping will clamp on), why is the latest DVD release of new seasons of The West Wing always available in the UK before here?

Love,
Jen

PS I worry I'm the dead weight on the end of a pendulum, swinging back and forth between remembering my dreams and consciously taking action to pursue them and wondering how to know when my dreams have changed and how (or if) my actions should follow suit.

I'm a stereotypical girl in my affinity for clothes; I can very easily convince myself to spend irrational amounts of money on unnecessary purchases because they're just so cute and I would be so sad if I didn't just buy that one sweater with the really cute scoop neck and delicate color. My mind feels relieved to make the purchase as a preventative measure to feeling sad and it just feels logical in its illogic.

But I've never been equally swooned by other materialistic Stuff. Until the past year or so, anyway, when I discovered an appreciation for pretty cars that are also capable of going vroooooom. Especially after drooling over the impressive racecars at the Nurburg Ring in Germany during EP00, I have been figuring out how much I want to put aside for the next year so that I can buy or lease an awesome amazing drool-worthy car. And today, aside from completely covering a coworker's desk in aluminum foil (a great prank I highly recommend; but that's a story I'll save for once we've seen the coworker's reaction next week and I have pictures to share. Our boss thought it was awesome though and laughed a lot this afternoon), I designed the Audi TT Roadster of my dreams (with the Bose premium package of course, KAB) . She's beautiful. It's hard to resist wanting to pick the most of everything - horsepower, interior features, blah blah, but for the upcharges how often am I really going to take advantage of the incremental advantages of those features? Exactly. Hardly ever.

For me to get much more serious about this purchase/lease, though, I'm going to have to overcome the fact that my 1999 Suzuki Grand Vitara is working absolutely fine. Nothing wrong. Not even a hint that anything's wrong (all good things I realize). Although this could be seen as a positive, since I will get the most for my car as a trade in if it is actually operable. So I feel a little wasteful and indulgent thinking about getting a sweet sweet car. And it'd also mean less money going into the long term savings for when I'm old and feeble.

But let's be honest here, bloggy, who cares about old and feeble when you can be young and cool in a silver (or ocean blue pearl or gunmetal gray) convertible with the top down screamin' out 'money ain't a thang'?

Another issue I have is that I feel like when I do decide to make a purchase, whatever it may be, I'm destined to get hosed by the dealership. Isn't that how car purchases just work? You just have to accept the lying and cheating as part of your dues to take the gleaming hunk of high technology materials and purring engine off the lot.

Oh! And another thing - I feel like I have to take a MAN with me because that's just how it works. Those nighttime news magazine TV shows have shown the same story repeatedly, about how the man always gets a better deal when trying to buy a car. This idea insults me, and not necessarily because of the fact that I'm a verified, real, true-to-life mechanical engineer (and, shhhh, don't tell the dealer that that doesn't really mean that I know that much about cars on a practical level -- sure, I could Carnot cycle all day, but when it comes to understanding the nuances of WHY I'd want the extra piston - or whatever it's called - I'd have no clue) and so I should be given just as much respect. This idea insults me because I'm a person who wants to buy a car so I should be given just as much respect and just as much of a good deal! Ugh!

I never knew it was possible to day dream about a car as much as clothes, home decor, and guys (and not necessarily in that order :))!

Today's been a great, great day - and not just because of car dreaming and office pranks - also today: Tommers braked hard and reversed, saying, 'you've got to see this! oh my gosh!' It was jolly Santa Claus! In Robert, LA! We went to the local Dollar General right after lunch so Tom could get some plastic guns for the hoe down tomorrow night (I'm so excited to wear my Target-bought cowboy boots and big ol' belt buckle!), and we asked our boss if he wanted to play kickball with us next week when we organize a lunch time game on the walking trail (don't ask. ok, so we have a "walking trail" around the trailers and pond at our wonderful camp).

Now I'm going to fall asleep with an Audi zipping around my mind and the wind tousling my hair and the windshield preventing the bugs from flying into my ecsatically opened smiling mouth.