Full Moon

My phone sang its beach tune this afternoon as I was driving home from returning the PD to her OP. When I saw who it was, I thought it must surely have been a mistake, a mis-dial, but no-- she rang me up after two years and talked for at least two hours. The usual loud and rambling complaints, punctuated with a belch and the sound of a diet coke being popped open in the background; her distorted impressions of the world as she always has seen it. I finally figured out that she was just covering her bets, just in case I actually did return. She told me when he asked her what she would do if I came back, she said she would "Just shut up and do her work." He fell out laughing, she said. I knew it was the truth. The idea that she would ever actually just shut up let alone the part about doing her work is about the most bizarre of all the bizarre things anyone has said to me this week.

For awhile, I felt a twinge of wow, am I special or what ? until it occurred to me as I was driving home Friday night after taking a junket around Megalopolis and adding at least an extra hundred miles in process of dropping the Prodigal off at her best friend's house because I was too stubborn to either a) get a more detailed map or b) call (again) and ask for directions.

But.... I digress. Ah, yes...

It occurred to me as I was driving home Friday night at midnight, after having driven from M to G to NPM to meet WTM, and catch up on the last five years of her life and watch her eat buffet Chinese food in the food court (because both she and I are too old and too cheap to waste money on a restaurant) and then to head off in the cold wind to pick up the PD and drive her to the other damn entirely opposite side of Megalopolis all on nothing but caffein and a strong desire for a cigarette and no sleep, having made the mistake of going back, just out of curiosity--- not actually expecting anything, only to find that it was really worse than I could have imagined. One of them asked if I was ready to come back. I asked if he spoke for all seven of them, he said no, just himself, and I laughed and said well call me when you do. Another said they'd decided to give her some help. He never lied or played, so I knew that was what they were really going to do. She will figure out that they are on to her eventually and then she'll slither off to make a mess somewhere else, but since no one can tell me that she's actually doing anything, her leaving won't make any difference.

But I digress.

What I realized driving home, mulling it all over, not Friday night, actually, but tonight, thinking back on Friday night and the call this afternoon is it's just a full moon, and their brains are suffering from the effects of its gravitational pull.

Me too, certainly. Me too.

I've escaped from the lion's den at least three times and yet, a bit of time passes and I hear the lions saying softly, "Ah, come back, we didn't mean it! We'll be good this time! We won't suck the marrow out of your bones this time--promise!" And I think to myself, gees, maybe it wasn't really that bad; maybe I could make it work. I even called the Dadperson -- he suggested that it would behoove me to take the present value of my future projected potential earnings and then add 15 or 25% to it. They like to horse trade, so I would have to start about eight large over what I would settle for, plus four positions, one of which would have to be my AA and then there would have to be a little variation in the reporting structure.

Just like paying a buck for a lottery ticket-- until they pull those ping pong balls out of the tank and end it, the fantasy millions can be spent so many different ways.

I will of course call W up. He deserves to get a good chuckle out of it all. .