The Intruder

There's a man in my neighborhood who used to like to break into my apartment. Actually, that's not fair: it was probably not a man, it was probably a woman. I knew this because none of the electronics were ever missing. My laptop, my roommate's laptop, the DVD players, the digital cameras - all remained after the break-ins. The only things that ever appeared to have been touched were the contents of my medicine cabinet - creams, lotions, pills, etc. - which I found congregating in the sink, on the floor, or even in the toilet when I came home. It always upset me, the floating facewash. I'm sure you understand.

It took me a while to figure out what was going on. Oh no, I'd think, rounding the corner that leads to my bathroom, as I caught sight of the doors of my medicine cabinet. Wide open at odd angles - I could tell they weren't how I left them. I'm a messy person, but I have an excellent memory. I know when I've closed a door and when I haven't. Slowly, suspiciously, as if the perp might be hiding in the shower, I'd walk into the bathroom and survey the scene. Yep. Always just as it had been the last time: everything out of the medicine cabinet, nothing left in. And then I started to notice that while everything may have been out, everything was there. SAY, WHAT KIND OF A BURGLAR ARE YOU? I'd shout into mid-air. No response. Sheesh. If I had bothered to break in to someone's apartment, I'd at least take a bottle of Ibuprofen, for the road.

Eventually, it occurred to me that a theftless intrusion was a whole different game. My stuff is worth stealing, like anyone's stuff. A couple of minutes on e-bay can teach you all you need to know about stuff: people like it. Even when it's crap. Especially, they like the crap they don't currently have. Therefore, if they have an opportunity to seize such crap, and no one is around to stop them, whether it's right or wrong, they may well take it. So, clearly, what I had here was not a physical case of stuff at all, or even crap.

My neighbor owns a hammer, which causes pounding, which causes shaking, which causes mess. My neighbor's hammering of her wall is an act that I believe to be independent of me. Perhaps she redecorates frequently. Likes to put up pictures. Is a carpenter. I've got no reason to think she's been hammering her wall in the middle of the day specifically to antagonize me; I am probably at work, I produce almost no noise with which to anger her, and, in fact, we've never met. Besides that, in case it matters - and I think it usually does - she has an angelic singing voice and is most likely a lovely person.

But the hammering, which isn't about me, is still an intrusion on my life. The wall shakes and the facewash falls right out of the cabinet. Every so often, I have to clean up my bathroom. I didn't say it was a bad thing - the bathroom has to be tidied up occasionally anyway, and otherwise I might never do it. My neighbor knows neither what she does to me, nor what she does for me. And this, dear readers, is something we must always remember.

Furthermore

The lamentation will continue, at least for one more post, and then I swear I'll get happy, or funny, or something good will - well, whatever. I think I probably shouldn't write anything about what happened this week, but there are two reasons why I can't leave it alone and maybe they'll fade a bit if I share them:

1. I know exactly what I was doing at 7:15 and 9:45 on Monday morning, the times of the shootings. In the first instance, I was eating Fiber One with granola, skim milk, and strawberries, sitting cross-legged on my bed, watching the Today Show and thinking that I should probably have left the house by now if I wanted to get to work on time. In the second, I had just thrown away the bag of green tea that had been steeping in hot water for the last five minutes. I was annoyed because I hate green tea - I think it tastes like somebody poured water over a clump of rotting leaves, I only drink it because it's so ridiculously healthy - and now that it was ready, I had to force it down. Man, this sucks. That was what I was thinking.

2. I have indirect but important connections to two of the students who died. I've taken to repeating their names out loud for no particular reason and with no particular idea of what I intend to accomplish. The speaking of the names is never a scheduled tribute or an emotional outburst. Simply, I will park the car and say a name. Open the refrigerator and say a name. I never met either of these students.

Now, as a very wise man once said, that's all I have to say about that.

No-Spring Year

Where is our lightness and light? I can't come up with a current event that isn't bringing us down these days. All the politicians are angry - except one - and everyone wants to see a change in some direction, and although it's been promised, we don't yet have our spring.

Then a guy calls a group of us hos on the open air, and none of us will leave it alone as we should have done (the worst thing to do with bad behavior intended to get a "laugh" is to pay heaping amounts of attention to it), but we can't, obviously, because it was just that stupid, so we're playing catch with blame and bad words, tiring ourselves out to make change, but we still don't have our spring.

And then Kurt Vonnegut dies, a man who wrote highly unlikely stories that are playing out, in fact, right under our stuffed noses, a man who wrote books we could talk back to, or take issue with, or believe. I quoted him at dinner once, to an accusation that I did not support our troops. Our troops are being treated like toys a rich kid got for Christmas, I said, and people looked up, because that was interesting and it made sense. I don't know who will feed me my next good line. It's scary to have to come up with one myself, so in that way maybe I'm not even ready for my spring.

April Rant

"Are you serious? You HAVEN'T DONE YOUR TAXES YET?" She's clearly horrified and probably surprised. I'm a responsible, punctual person - a dork. Everybody knows this. I like charts, graphs, and office supplies. I continue to be wildly impressed with the design of the paper clip. It's just the teeniest bit of metal twisted brilliantly!!! I'm also a mess.

Have I done my taxes? Ha! I don't even know where my taxes are. Where my W-2s are, that is. I hate that: W-2s. You'd think they'd have named them something that made a bit more sense, like "Yearly Totals" or "Wow, You Need a Better Job". I absolutely cannot stand things that don't make sense to me, and taxes make no sense to me. I don't mean the part where we have to pay them - that's fine, I get it, I even favor it. It's just the methodology and the terminology. Why do we have to "do" taxes at all? I refuse to believe there isn't some frightening piece of federal technology that could record all our earnings and expenses, that knows how many dependents we have, that can tell whether or not we've actually donated money to our church, etc., and could use that information to set factors and formulas to remove automatically from our paychecks the correct amount in the first place, thus leaving us happily ignorant of the whole process. Or maybe I'm just annoyed because tax forms bring up math in the springtime. April could be such a lovely month, otherwise.

Many of my peers insist that they enjoy tax time, since it means they get lots of money back. These are mostly the peers who have managed, through some kind of government-encouraged existential crisis, to claim "0" instead of "1" on their W-4s. This is another thing that makes no sense to me. It's like wearing size zero, it's completely ridiculous. Zero is zero. Nothing, not there. You may think your existence is debatable, but if you're pacing around on April 14th clutching W-forms and sweating profusely, then financially, it is not.

That'll be me, most likely. I am a responsible person, but much more so at the eleventh hour. And I've nothing much to look forward to, as I always declare myself, myself. I doubt I'll have to pay, but my refund will be small. Sandwich-sized. Good for an afternoon at the mall, where it'll *poof* into lattes and going-out tops that will turn out to be embarrassing, and no good will come of it and nothing will change. Speaking of horrified. Maybe the feds should just keep it.