Another pro for homeschooling: Now, the running argument is that the child will not learn to �play well with others� if he or she is home schooled. So I�m thinking, ultimately, yes, we all complain about other people and having to deal with them but isn�t the most important thing to learn to be ok with oneself? Because people are always going to talk smack about you, especially in high school, and I know I had enough smack talked about me that I actually expect it now, forgetting that people don�t give as much of a shit now what I�m wearing, where I bought it and whether I deserve to listen to Fugazi or whatever and when it comes down to it, if they did, they�d be out of my life fast. And if you don�t learn to be ok with yourself then you�re never going to be ok with others no matter what. And often even when you�re ok with yourself and someone decides to systematically (or on the fly) try to destroy you, it still sucks. Just having higher self-esteem and all that beedleeebeedleeedee does work as a certain armor. Because it�s really the ones who are the most insecure who dictate what everyone else does. It�s the whole �worst behavior gets the most attention� thing.

Okay, enough of that. Weird dream last night. I dreamt I was out to lunch with my family for some event and I was searching for a bathroom (I often have dreams like this) and could not for the life of me, find a suitable one. Apparently the restaurant where we were was attached to a mall and next to a movie theater. So the bathroom I was going to was somehow attached to one of the theaters and said, �Women�s Wonder Woman II.�* Weird. So I go in there and every stall is either occupied or absolutely disgusting. Like beyond gross. All kinds of looking like ground up stuff or all bodily colors on every toilet. And so eventually I just give up and say, �I can�t do this. This is gross.� So I go back to the table but still really have to pee so I tell my family I have to go still and will be back when I can. Somehow I end up in the car with two people I went to high school with and I�ve got all this baggage with me (hehe) and my feet are up in this guy�s face I went to school with. I can�t remember his name. And I�m apologizing. Then we end up back at the mall and it turns into some kind of college campus student union thing and I�m looking for bathrooms and I find one I think says �Women� so I call to the girl from the car and tell her but the sign actually says, �Hetero� on it and turns out to be a coed bathroom so I�m like, �What the hell. I have to go.� But it�s not like the germless surgical steel of Ally McBeal�s coed bathroom. But before we even get in there, there are all of these platters of food laid out with plastic wrap over them and I realize this is the food I�m going to be eating with my family for lunch and I start to get worried and I�m like, �Please no one pee on this food! Please!� Because it feels like a nightclub, where it�s likely someone will be peeing on something they shouldn�t be, and I�m just as hungry as pee-full and I don�t want to eat the food thinking it will have pee on it. But I�m already disappointed because I know even if no one does pee on it, I will think they did while I�m eating it. So I get in the red-lit bathroom and this guy with a bald head and dressed in vinyl and chains is coming out and I�m looking for a suitable stall but behind the doors covered in chipping white paint there are no toilets. And so I finally find one, but it looks more like a litter box with a drippy shower head, but I have to go so bad I�m like, �ok I�ll just deal with it,� and this girl with an eyebrow ring and lip ring and big red dreads asks if she can come in with me and I�m like, �I really have to pee, but maybe after, ok?� So she�s like, �Ok. Just don�t get too close to that thing,� gesturing to the litter box. But she comes in anyway and wants to see my underwear and I�m like, �Ok� and then it ends. HAHAHAHA, Suckahzzzzz! It was a dream, not a fantasy� so I if you�re looking for that kind of thing �. I don�t write about sex so much anyway. As much as I enjoy a good Ana�s Nin story once in awhile, all of the sex scenes are so mechanical anyway. And cheezy. And the words are dated. �White honey�??? Come on. There is no good universal literature-worthy language for sex. Maybe it�s because �decent� people have spent so many years not talking about it that any possibility for a decent language for it have been dashed against the rocks of pornography and frat boys. I�m not totally complaining, mind you. I think it would be too chaotic to have all of our sexy business aired at every street corner and in every window. It�s just a shame that so many of those who are talking about it are either setting up unrealistic and hurtful standards and employing the ever-popular �let�s see what we can stick up there� scenario or they�re saying �no no no,� �bad bad bad.� And that the language for it is in the hands of the aforementioned porn industry peeps and the frat boys who love them. (Sorry, I know they�re not all frat boys. Many of my close friends love pornography and I love those friends). I guess the best thing is just have your own little journey and learn that way. It�s just sad that people don�t find out for themselves and just believe whatever they read or see and that it�s ok to treat women as something only made for sticking objects into. I mean, guys, I know it�s difficult having a penis and having shrinkage and to-be-snipped or not-to-be-snipped and the consequences thereof and �does size matter� and all the shit it seems women impose on it but is it really necessary to feel better about yourselves by seeing women as something to defile? Yes, there are a lot of women who threat men like shit and there are a lot of insecure brats who put men down but not all women are like that. And I know not all guys see women this way, believe me. I don�t know. It just seems like if we were more open with our kids about sex and consequences and that it�s not something to �use� against each other the world might be a little better. Instead of little boys finding Daddy�s Penthouse and thinking that some big-lipped big-titted, dopey-eyed twat is going to someday come and screw his brains out of his little world and take him away from pre-calculus. It�s dangerous. But this is America, land of the quick fix, and it�s easier to pop a pill, or ein Tunnel der Liebe for that matter, in order to feel better about oneself, instead of figuring out how to make yourself happy. I sound like a broken record. People talk so much about not needing religion and faith but instead of finding a way to have faith in themselves they put faith in something that may work for a little while but isn�t real. And then blame the thing that didn�t work. �God, why hast thou forsaken me?� �Bitch, why hast thou forsaken me?� �Coke, why hast thou forsaken me?� You get the picture.

And then there are those who do not. Do these things, I mean. And we�re all just trying to get along anyway, aren�t we? Not necessarily with each other, of course.

Somehow I�ve ended up with strange black beetles and ants marching around my home. I just flicked a beetle off my crazy velvet bedspread with the creepy birds and cherubs on it. Francesca Lia Block meets Salvador Dal�. Interesting� I just read that many interpret the ants in Dal�s work to represent overwhelming sexual desire as well as death and decay.

I just got back from Wil�s. Susan and I went to the market and picket up some food items so that Wil could make pasta carbonara. Yum. I don�t believe he threw raw eggs in there, but actually, I�m not sure. And also I like to think the red wine I drank counteracts the bacon. But truly, I don�t care. It was good. And then I walked gimpishly home because my foot still isn�t 100% and worried someone would see me as someone they could separate from the already nonexistent herd and have at me. Yeah, in Harvard Yard. The foot it much better but a few days ago I couldn�t even get it in my shoe! It was stating to hurt a little so I�m icing it so that when Brent gets out of work I can jam it in a shoe and we can go somewhere. Most likely Shay�s. You know you�re a regular when one of the bartenders holds and keeps for you, then gives your boyfriend, your half pack of cigarettes and fish lighter that you left there the other night stopping by to pick up Julie to go to Das Otto Cats practice and you didn�t even have a drink.

*This Women�s Wonder Woman II bathroom thing reminds me of a dream I had where there were all these rugs and there were two called �Love Bite I� and �Love Bite II� where there were little cartoon guys that looked like the Nerds on the front of the Nerds candy box that were biting each other front to back, all along the border of the rug.