Today, we saw a weird thing.

In the middle of Bumfuck, Indiana, about halfway between Georgetown and the middle of nowhere, there was a dude. Walking fairly quickly along the side of the road. Dragging a mattress.

It was one of those air-filled mattresses. I don't know if that makes it more or less weird.

I wish we'd thought to stop and take pictures and ask the dude WTF.

I bet it was a really fascinating story.

Now we'll never know.

I dreamed about being in Las Vegas again. Every night I dream about being in Las Vegas. I can't remember the last time I dreamed about anything else. If this keeps up, by the time I actually go there in a month, I'll be sick of the place.

It hasn't helped that most of these dreams have been really frustrating.

In one, I won a $100 "jackpot" and then I had to spend the entire week doing publicity stuff before they'd pay me.

In another, I was there with some coworkers - they made us all share a room - and all those guys wanted to do was have meetings to talk about work stuff all the time.

In another, I was there for some kind of high school reunion and most of those people were annoying weirdoes who kept wanting me to drive them around.

In tonight's dream, I was there with my cousin Jeff and he'd never been there so I had to play tour guide all the time.

Not once, in any of these dreams, have I been able to see StupidGirl at all. She keeps calling me, but we can never find a time when I'm not busy.

What I'd like to do, see, is write at least one blog entry every day. This has proven to be extremely hard (that's what she said) because (a) I don't feel like it, and (b) I don't want to, and (c) I don't care.

I've always wondered what I'd write, when I didn't care what I wrote. I guess there have been a few examples of such indifference in the past. Mostly, those entries suck, but every now and then they turn out to be at least halfway decent.

This will not be a halfway-decent entry. Not even close.

That's what she said.

I scratch at the surface of my mind, and I try to uncover something, anything, that's not related to you-know-what. This effort is usually futile, and it's proving to be futile this evening.

Fuck. Stage one sucks.

But I still know that there's something worthwhile down there, hidden. A little diamond in the rough that will make it look like I know what I'm doing.

But I can't find it. I don't even know where to look.

That's what she said.

The problem with letting my fingers type, like I'm doing right now, isn't that they're incapable of stringing sentences together. Quite the opposite, in fact. Many times they do much better than my brain would do facing the same challenge.

The problem is that, by taking my brain out of the mix, the problem is that I'm also taking my thoughts out of the mix, and leaving my emotions to, um, anchor the entire recipe.

Okay, so maybe that metaphor was a bit of a stretch. So sue me.

Now, in the past I've often given one guess as to what my emotions might revolve around, but you people don't even need one guess. You already know, those of you who've been reading me for any length of time at all. The rest of you, you newcomers, well quite frankly I don't care about any of you. Not yet, anyway.

Speaking of anyway...

Anyway, it constantly amazes me that I'm not pissed off 7x24x365. Equally amazing is that I'm not constantly depressed. But, waaaay beyond those two amazing things, I sometimes manage to be happy.

Me, of all people.

I somehow manage to fluctuate, and I don't know how I manage to do that. And it hurts by brain when I try to figure it out.

I mean, seriously. Everyone On Earth knows that I've been used and abused and taken advantage of. I know these things myself.

But, do I care?

Fuck yes, I care. A lot more than I've been letting on but, it seems, not enough. Never quite enough.

Okay, so what am I going to do about it?

Not much, it seems. Just muddle through, like I always do. Wait for it to finally be enough. Meanwhile, after all, the good times are pretty fucking wonderful. Still fantastically surreal even after all this time. So I enjoy things when I can, and I endure the rest when I must. It doesn't even out, and it's become harder and harder to enjoy those good times, but oh well.

For a while there, I thought that maybe I'd survive this. At first, calluses formed, and it looked like they might protect me. But, after months and months and years and years of constant grinding, the calluses went away. Now there are only open sores oozing nasty smelly fluid which, while vile and disgusting, I'm still pretty sure I need because they're part of me.

I know, that was gross. Sue me again.

I really don't know if I'm going to survive this, or ever get over this. This wasn't just a huge blow to what self-esteem I might have had, it's something that's still going on. Every single second of every single day of every single week of every single month, it goes on.

The wounds ooze.

How can they ever heal? How can I ever heal?

I know, or at least I think I know, the answer to those questions. But I don't like those answers, so I feign ignorance. I lie to myself and to her and I perform in this stupid little play.

I hang onto this thread. I walk this thin ice. I endure blow after blow. And I pretend that everything is fine. I pretend that I'm fine, or at least that I will be fine.

But the truth is there, buried deep enough that usually I'm the only one who really sees it. The truth that I'm waiting and expecting to die at any minute. For the thread to snap, or for the ice to break, or for the killing blow to mercifully land and end this nonsense once and for all.

And the other truth, the one that keeps me awake at night, is that I don't know if I'll go quietly when the end finally comes. I fear the things I might choose to say as my last words.

So there.

Back in January, I found myself at this bar called The Green Frog in Bellingham, Washington. I'd gone there because some dude at another bar had told me, in a conspiratorial whisper, that they had a better beer selection there. For the record, he wasn't lying. Because (a), they had Ommegang Chocolate Indulgence on tap. And (b), who cares what else they might have had?

Anyway, I was sitting at the bar, minding my own business, trying not to listen to the jug band "jamming" in front, and this chick got up from a booth and sat next to me. She startled me, not only because she reeked of Patchouli, but because she looked almost exactly like SassyGirl. Seriously, for a second there I actually thought it was her.

But no, it was just another damn hippie. In that part of Western Washington, I'd found, it was hard to even take a piss without getting some splatter on a hippie. I'd learned to ignore them, for the most part. Except when they sat next to me and announced, "Your aura is broken."

Great. One of those hippies. One for whom the years of marijuana smoke and patchouli fumes had caused irreparable brain damage. Next, I expected her to offer to "fix" my aura for a nominal fee. Or maybe she'd do it for free, as long as I didn't mind sacrificing a chicken or something.

"I know," I replied. "But I can't do anything about it. The warranty's expired."

"You don't belong here," she said.

"And just where do you think I belong?" I asked, already tired of the conversation.

"Far away," she replied.

"You got that right," I said.

We talked for a few more minutes, mostly about how much she looked like SassyGirl. I even managed to find a picture on my phone to show her. She admitted the resemblance, so she wasn't completely crazy.

But, she was crazy enough, so I was relieved when she went back to join her friends. I haven't really though about her since, until tonight.

Tonight, or this evening to be more accurate, I was at Rich O's. I'd gone before dinner, and then again after dinner. The first time was to see LaptopGirl, and the second time was to glare at my phone.

During that second visit, I realized that I'd eaten way too much food, and that I needed to go home to sleep. So that's what I decided to do. Except I was on my way out the door and this chick looked up at me and then said to her friend, "That guy's aura is broken."

Whoa, right?

So I sat down at their table and said, "Hi, I'm Dave." Brief introductions ensued, and then I continued. "I couldn't help but overhear," I said. "That's the second time in my life that I've heard someone say that my aura is broken. The first time, I dismissed it as craziness brought on by years of marijuana smoke and patchouli fumes. But you don't look the type. So what's your excuse?"

"No excuse," the possible hippie-in-disguise said. "Sometimes I just see things about people."

"Fair enough," I said, because I'm trying to be more open-minded about shit. "What do you see that makes you say my aura is broken?"

"It is broken," she said. "Like it's been ripped apart. And a lot of it is missing. You're here, but you're not all here. Does that make sense?"

"It makes perfect sense," I replied. "A big part of me is missing." I paused. "My heart, to be precise."

"Where did it go?" she asked, with a look of genuine concern on her face. A look that I really appreciated, because I'm really sick and tired of pity and disbelief.

"I think somewhere in Louisville," I replied.

And that was pretty much the end of that conversation, as her husband and/or boyfriend came back from the restroom or wherever and glared at me. I made a graceful exit and went home for a much needed nap.

I dreamed that I was looking for the missing parts of my aura, but they were in Minneapolis, and I got totally lost because the roads up there are totally nonsensical. And the hippie chick from Bellingham was in the car with me, trying to help but only making things worse.

According to a friend of mine, my problems aren't important. Her reasoning for this opinion isn't, as with most people, that they don't exist or that they're unwarranted. Nope, it's simply because other people have worse problems, therefore my own don't exist.

Note that this is not a simple matter of comparing the severity of problems and assigning importance accordingly. It's a total dismissal of any problem as long as someone, somewhere, has a problem that is worse.

A nice example might be, You have no right to be sad about your love-life, Dave, because my other friend has cancer.

That was an actual real-life example, by the way.

Taking this logic to its, um, logical conclusion, I realized something.

Nobody is allowed to be sad or complain. Ever.

Take any person with any problem. There's almost definitely someone out there with a worse problem, so our hypothetical first person isn't allowed to lament at all. He's a dick if he gripes about his kid dying because there's somebody else who had two kids die. And then there's somebody else who had two kids die and he has a hangnail. It goes on and on, until you get to the person with the worst problems in the world.

You might think that the poor sap with the worst problems would be the only one on Earth with free reign to feel sorry for himself. But nope, because there are other people who are dead. Even the poor sap has it better than dead people, so he can't be sad or complain either.

I, of course, disagree with this entire line of reasoning. Maybe that's because complaining and feeling sad are some of my favorite things to do, and they're what I'm best at.

I guess what I'm saying is, just because something else has a bigger problem, that doesn't mean that our own problems aren't important. They're important to us, after all.

Feel better now?