i'm reading engleby and not writing, you?

Ouch - I can't do Wednesday, I have an author dinner (anyone read anything by Sebastian Faulks?) But of course, if everyone else can only do the 19th, go right ahead.

As far as start times go - I think y'all should start when you're there and ready, and I will try hard to get there as early as I can, but I'll just pick-up mid-critique. And no, I don't want to answer your question, Jen, about potty training, and how it's impacted by Elizabeth starting school, and how we had to yank her from the early-age preschool and put her into the older-age preschool with 12 hours notice - all because of autistic kids and ornery, short-sighted parents. And how the evening hours are alas still precious and how it's really hard to write and have a job, like all of you, and how it's really hard to write and have kids, and how it's really hard to put food on the table if you're a single mom with no job prospects, and how it's really hard if you're a prostitute to accuse a man of rape, because hey - you asked for it, right? And how it's really hard to run a country when most people think you're an idiot, and jesus, what if you're not? And how it's really hard if you lived life as a gay-liberal-new-yorker but had an epiphany that the life you were leading was bad - very bad - and so now, 10 years later, you're straight, more conservative than Dick Cheney, and just spent the morning of September 11th, 2007, waving a flag for three hours from an overpass above Interstate 880. Or how it's really hard to be part of a wedding when the bride, your friend, fired everyone just before the nuptials - the food guys, the flower guys, the cake guys - hell, she even fired you, and when she's pathetically bemoaning the fact that forevermore the only penis she's going to know is her husband's, and that's just wrong, isn't it? you're left thinking, um, no. And how it's really hard that you didn't get yesterday off, because it was, after all, Admissions Day, and both your daughters got the day off because they work for the State of California and so of course they received Admissions Day off, and by the way they can both retire in 8 years, when they're in their 40's, and receive a pension of about 80% of their pay - a pension that will be given to them until they die, 40 years down the road, and that makes perfect sense, doesn't it? Well doesn't it? And how it's really hard when your Bookstore Boss scheduled you to work on a Friday night, and doesn't he know that it's your girlfriend's birthday, shouldn't he have intuited that? And how, okay, it might not be hard to take the preteen to the Met, because you are being paid $50/hour to do it, because you tutor, and this is kind of a tutoring gig, just different, just that the dad wants the preteen to get culture, even if he has to pay for it, because of course he doesn't have time to take the kid to the Met, so yeah - that part of tutoring might not be hard, but how about your latest kid, the dwarf, who's in excrutiating pain because of the surgery he's undergone to lengthen his legs, that part is hard, ok? And oh, how it's really hard because you know the bus driver cares about you - all your friends tell you it's true - but how he won't give you the time of day, and how now he's not on his usual route, and you'd know cause you're kind of stalking him, and I realize that I don't know you, that you're just a guy who sells books, but can't you look past the fact for just a second that yes, I smell, and yes, my dress is dirty, and yes, I'm sill friends with my ex, is that such a big deal? Can't you see past any of that? Can't you give me some advice, even if I don't know you? Because even though the dress is dirty, the flower in my hair is fresh, cut from the garden this morning, and that should count for something. Shouldn't it?

Isn't it hard when people can't look past themselves to the trials of others? Isn't it hard when we can't admit we've made a mistake? Isn't it hard to just say, I'm sorry. To just say, I love you. To just say, I don't know how we got here. Isn't it just hard?