Self Ish
2005-03-11, 8:49 a.m.

I had the most fantastic talk with Lil Guy�s science teacher yesterday. The teacher in whose class he received the �one more� detention. To sum it up, he�s not bad, he�s just drawn that way, she has WAY worse-behaved kids, and she loves him. He�s popular, he�s social, he�s immature. I�m not mad at him anymore, and I apologized for all the yelling I did on Wednesday. Zippy is still taking a long trip away from us, though.

Since today is Friday, I am tired. I didn�t work out this morning, and since DW got home late last night from football, his morning workout entailed getting dressed in gym clothes and then napping on the couch. I did 30 pushups in a row, and twelvedy-teen (120) crunches. I have that weird old lady flab on my belly. It wasn�t there 5 years ago. Yipes.

When I got home early on Tuesday with a faux-sick child, I caught the last 15 minutes or so of Oprah. Her guest was Amy Fisher, you know, THE Amy Fisher. I can only say that our little Long Island Lolita is all growed up. I was super-impressed. The focus of her conversation was the fact that at the age of 15 when all the shit went down, she didn�t have a self. She was so easily manipulated and led around to do things nobody should do because she didn�t have a self.

We hear folks talk about finding themselves, or having a sense of self. I�ve never quite caught onto that concept. I didn�t know what people meant by that, as I am the least abstract thinker you will ever find. But when Little Amy Fisher, who is now 30, and married, and a mom, and writing for a newspaper, talked about having a self, I got it. Not having a self is what got me married to Mr. Surly. I hadn�t gelled yet, so it was so easy for him to infuse his strong personality into me, the blank canvas, and just take over. My first step to getting a self was when I finally divorced him, and I finally got my real self during my post-divorce dating years.

Now if I could just pick a political stance and stick with it. Swine fence-sitters!

This sinus headache is killing me. It feels like someone shoved a pencil up my right nostril, broke the point off, and left it up there in the corner of my eye. Yeah, kinda like that.