I admit, I spend a lot of time in front of my computer. Now I'm starting to wonder what the long term effects of this are, besides the tendonitis and the frozen eyeballs, besides my butt shifting ever slowly into a seat-shaped dropping thing rather than my former perky shelf. Am I, perhaps, cutting off my connection with God? Oh don't worry, I haven't gone religious on you. I'm just getting comfortable calling that direct link to IT-ON-HIGH that created this universe, or IS this universe, or is the overlord of the matrix or whatever God, 'cuz it's aptly shorthand, . God. Three letters. Handy. Or maybe all this computer sitting is doing something to my peripheral vision. Or to my antioxidants or my white blood cells. I don't know, but even though I have a laptop and so my screen isn't one of those honking tv tube type radiation-makers, I still feel tired the longer I'm at it.

Actually, it's exacerbated by the fact that my WHOLE LIVING ROOM smells like cat pee. We indulged our love of the neighborhood felines by letting a couple of the especially cute ones (Pumpkin, and Cakemix) into our house. And somewhere, somehow, Figaro schooled us in the fine art of "oh no you didn't!" He surreptitiously marked, I think, every square inch of our living room. It smells as though he set off a cat-piss bomb, dusting all surfaces with a fine mist of piss, because you cant' find one single location that is the source, yet everything has begun to take on the piss-smell and it's driving me crazy. It's a smell so foul it goes deep to the sinuses, a smell beyond the nostrils. You can taste it. Do you grok me?

But I digress. Back to the computer activity. What the hell else would I be doing? Ballet? Rock climbing? Water sports? Don't worry, I read. I garden. I do fun things with my husband. But my life has gotten so damn simple. That sounds like a complaint, but it's not. I like it this way. I've finally gotten the chance to give in to my reclusive side, the introvert who was always tugging at the shirttails of my previously simulated extrovert, whining, "can we gooooo now?" Yes. Now we can go, and never come out again if we don't want to. Maybe my thirties is the decade of going inward, far deeper than ever before. Now I don't have to deal with other people casting judgments on my squareness, my lack of interest in staying out late and partying. I was born old, and I accept it.

Wow. I've gotten way off topic. The topic being what is my computer secretly doing to me? Perhaps the government really does spy on people, send people in black around to follow them and transmit messages about celebrities love-lives using gamma rays that come through our computers. Wouldn't that be a laugh!

Do you want to know a sad truth about me? I am waiting, like I used to wait for summer vacation that last month of school, for the fourth Harry Potter movie to open. I can hardly stand it.

I need help, don't I?

JPR