On Saturday, when we were in the old folks' home, I turned a corner and saw this little girl in a shiny purple dress standing in a corner. At first I thought she had been bad and was sent there for a time out, but as she turned around and peeked at me with a pouty face, I realized that she was probably scared. I used to be very scared of nursing homes when I was a kid. From my point of view, they were fully of zombies that had once been somebody else's grandparents. These zombies always wanted a piece of me (a pinched cheek or squeezed arm), and they seemed to cloud around me as if attracted to my young blood (I suppose I was a pretty darn cute kid). This nightmarish view of The Nursing Home was only reinforced (or perhaps created?) on one particular occasion when my mom left me alone in a lounge while she went to the washroom. One of the zombies beckoned and I was foolish enough to comply. Once I got close enough, the leering zombie grabbed my arm and would not let go. Really. By the time my mom got out of the bathroom to pry me loose, I was crying up a storm. It has taken many years for me to get over my dislike of nursing homes, and to this day I still don't feel quite at home in them. So, I think I might have understood the little girl in the purple dress who had run away and hid from her family viewing--excuse me--visit of great-grandpa.

So, I realize that was material from a few days ago, but it wouldn't leave me alone until I posted it.

In other news, yesterday I felt crazy. Crazy in a scary way. Sometimes it happens to me that my insides get all tight and my brain clouds over with old emotions that I haven't banished yet. I have this mental image that I'm sure my brain copied from some movie I've seen where I'm in a car and suddenly a yellow post-it note flutters up and sticks to the windshield. Then another one appears, then another. Soon, yellow post-its are rushing at the windshield with a noise like something from The Birds, and the windshield is covered and I can't see a thing. All these post-its are old feelings that I never got out, like "I'm mad at so-and-so for something," or "I'm stressed out about that stupid thing I did," and so on. It's as if every time I fail to express the emotion I'm feeling, my brain files another post-it note to bring out on a crazy day. And on the crazy day when all I can see is post-its of old emotions, it seems like the only way to get rid of them is to feel each one and therefore eliminate them from my emotional backlog. But there are too many, and I don't know where to start, and all I want is a proper set of windshield wipers to just eliminate them all and start over, but I'm terrified that if I do that, they'll just all be re-filed for a future assault of my mind's windshield and I'll be worse off than before. Anyway, it's scary and it makes me feel crazy.

Today, on the other hand, was okay. Perhaps I managed to successfully banish my emotional post-its...we'll see if they reappear in a few days/weeks or not.

Today I saw an absolutely perfect pink cherry blossom in the gutter of the street, unmarred in any way. It must have blown a long ways, because there weren't any pink-blooming trees for a few blocks around, and it must have landed precisely in that spot and not moved, otherwise it would have bruised already.

Neat-o.