Like walkin' in the rain and the snow when there's nowhere to go . . .

So I never went to bed last night. Did Designated Driving with Dane until about 0240, and then went back up to my room, called a friend (I knew she was up because we'd been texting all night . . . my phone bill's going to be unspeakably huge . . . ), talking for awhile, then hung up and starting playing a game on my computer. (Yes, Tasia, I know . . . I don't want to date you, though, so you don't have to care . . . ) It's a silly game . . . very similar to the Settlers series, but much . . . cheaper. Called Pharaoh or something like that. I got two games that are virtually the same (Pharaoh and Rome III, I think) from the $1 section at Target . . . I heart Target (bleah, I can't believe I just said that . . . the "heart" part, I mean . . . I really do have feelings for Target . . . )

Anyway, I "got up" (and by that I mean out of the chair in the dayroom) at like . . . 0900 . . . I think . . . the sun was up . . . and I was going to . . . I don't know . . . I don't EVER know what to do lately, because I have no car anymore . . . My sweetass triple-white 1978 VW Convertible Beetle has been reduced to a statue of a cute car . . . it left a trail of gas and oil (well, I think the gas evaporated, but the oil is still there) for a couple miles. A full tank of gas, pissed out a faulty part in the bottom of my car. I made it back to the parking lot in front of my dorm with about a quarter gallon left in the tank . . . very lucky . . . and for some inexplicable reason, there's also a nasty brown SOMETHING seeping out from the hood and staining the white paint . . . my car looks like it bled to death, shitting itself as it crawled to its parking spot. Damn car.

So yeah, I got up, so to speak, and saw that it was raining, so I decided to go for a walk. I started walking . . . walked down the hill into town . . . wandered around . . . stopped into a bookstore and started reading the first part of the first book of the Harry Potter series . . . in Korean . . . (I understood enough . . . I couldn't translate it, but I could "make gist," as they say.) I've been on an adrenalin rush for the past two days now, I think. That's what it feels like. That's why I can't settle on a subject and didn't go to sleep. I can't say why, although I think I know . . . (more of those "things-that-can't-be-said" . . . hate those, hey?) I do believe it's making me slightly sick to my stomach. I haven't felt like this since Junior High. It's only fun for the first hour or so, and then you just want to stop. To feel normal. To not care. Not feel nervous without knowing exactly why. I mean, I know the cause, I just don't know why it would make me feel nervous and hopped up and . . . slightly diarrhetic, to be honest. (That might've been TMI; please excuse.)

Then I started walking in the direction of the Coffee Shops. Yes, Shops. They are Legion. And I walked right past them. It was still raining . . . still raining . . . I turned a corner (I decided I shouldn't have coffee if my stomach was upset . . . that's not cool . . . ) and I saw a father and son, son maybe about nine. The kid was opening an umbrella, and I watched it expand, and then they both stepped under it and started walking away from the car. I almost smiled; they were sort of cute together under the umbrella, and then the father said, "Got your list?" and the son tried not to look mortified, but to be cool and under control as he admitted that he didn't. I was walking past them at that moment, and the father took the umbrella as the kid darted the eight and a half feet back to the car. "You're killing me, Tommy!" groaned the dad, and I didn't look to see if he was joking. Do fathers realize the effect they have on their children? If my dad had not given me a lecture on certain un-bloggable subjects, certain un-bloggable events in my life might have had very different outcomes. I would probably not be where I am now, both physically and mentally and every other way.

I can remember him telling me once, after I complained about something rather personal, that "God doesn't make mistakes. He made you this way for a reason, and you have to trust that and not want to change." Think about the implications of that. I mean, sure, ok, the Big Man doesn't make mistakes. But people do.

The rain . . . oh, the rain . . . it makes me feel clean and dirty all at once. Used to be just clean . . . when I was young and innocent and didn't have friends trying to tell me that rain is filthy because the air is polluted. I still say that one's bullshit; water is purified as it evaporates, and then it goes up into the sky, and air is polluted, sure, but see, the only reason water pipes don't have nasties in them is that the water constantly rushing through them constantly washes it out. And where does it wash to? Duh. The drinking end. So I think that raindrops can't possibly be any dirtier than most tap water and they're more fun to play with. But it still makes me feel dirty.

Clean because I feel like rain is clean, pollutant-laden atmosphere notwithstanding. But dirty, too, because the rain seems to draw out, osmosis-style, all of the bad things I've ever thought and said and done and wanted to do, and I could've sworn today that I could smell all the filth inside me being pulled to the outside. How strange . . .