At the Pride Parade on Sunday the woman next to us was smoking all over me. Normally I would just move away from her, but suddenly twenty-four years of speaking quietly and smiling politely and squeezing myself into a tiny space on MUNI so that the guy next to me can sprawl out came bubbling up and I said No! Not today! Today I will fight for my right to breathe the clean, sewer-scented air of this glorious city! Now are you going to move or am I going to have to move you?

Except what I actually did was tap her on the shoulder and ask politely if she would move. Which it turned out she would not. So I sighed and graciously accepted her gift of lung cancer and bad-smelling hair.

A lot of my friends smoke, and I myself have been a smoker from time to time, or anyway I’ve smoked from time to time, so up until now I have always subscribed to the idea that people have a right to pollute their immediate environment even as people have a right to not pollute it. But why is that true? We don’t walk around shitting on the sidewalk (except in this city) so why are we allowed to blow noxious fumes into the air? I’m going to take a stand and say that I’m against it. But due to the magical power of hypocrisy, none of that will stop me from smoking cloves until I’m sick the next time I am drinking.

Watching Clinton on 60 Minutes last night was a lot like seeing an old boyfriend years after you’ve broken up. Seeing his face glisten with intelligence and honest Arkansas sweat I was overwhelmed by nostalgia, and suddenly I didn’t care that he’d been bombing Iraq behind my back for our entire relationship. I just wanted him back.

Like many meetings with exes, the conversation was sort of disappointing. I wanted to hear him talk about the good times we’d had together, like the time he facilitated peace talks between Israel and Palestine, but he just kept on bringing up those tired old sex issues. Monica, Paula, Jennifer, Hilary — where was America’s name on that list, Bill? Don’t you care anymore? Don’t you miss me like I miss you? You eat barbecue with Dan Rather as if you’re just another guy, but I know better. You were the first president I ever had a crush on, even though I knew from the start that our relationship was doomed to end, and you are anything but average.

At the end of the hour, I was a little bit older and a little bit wiser. I know there will be other presidents, but never again will I let myself fall as hard as I did for that squashed-nose, just-folks charmer known as Bill Clinton*.

*and sometimes Bubba.

The Lad came back as planned on Sunday, so now I can shut up about that problem. He is very beardy and I have decided to like it because what are my options, really. And he was so nice about it that time I shaved my head so I feel I owe him a weird hair experiment of his very own.

My professor boss asked me this morning when I am getting married. Up until now I wasn’t sure he was aware I had a personal life, or a last name, so this was mildly alarming, but I rallied pretty quickly and said as soon as he cuts himself free of this Jane character I’m ready to go.

NOTE: I have no plans for marriage at this time. In case that was unclear.

Who can take the sunshine two hundred sixty-five thousand dollar debt

Sprinkle it with dew

Cover it in chocolate and a miracle or two turn it into a positive balance of twenty-two thousand dollars?

The Grants Administrator can.

“I have to go to Munich on Saturday to meet with the guys from that lab,” said my professor boss.

“Are you taking Jane?” I asked politely.

“No,” he said.

“You guys are all alike!” I said. “You go haring off to Munich and leave your girlfriends waiting in the wings! Well we won’t wait forever, you know!”

Pause and raised eyebrows.

“Sorry,” I said. “My stuff.”

The Lad comes home in four days — almost three days now — and while from the ankles up I am calm as a toad, my feet cannot be controlled and are flapping excitedly every chance they get. My feet are the untrained puppies of my body.

I’m worried about the readjustment process when he comes back. I know he’s been out picking up all kinds of trivia; I’m a little nervous about the geyser of facts heading my way. And I sleep diagonal now; will he want a whole side of the bed to himself? Also, this sex thing — what is it? Will I like it? I hear it’s fun but sticky, like a sushi party at Michele’s. Does it involve wasabi? I just don’t know.

We killed a village in Iraq.

When did I stop caring about what we’re doing in other countries? I cared last year. I think it was when I realized there was nothing I can do…if we smash the state there will just be another state. History is built on slaughtered villagers. They were celebrating a wedding and we decapitated their children. It’s nothing new.

Maria at work says we’re living in the last days. She says it’s all there in the Bible. I wonder if we are the Apocalypse horsemen and it’s only the rest of the world that has to worry?