You're Smart, You Know That? 5:33 p.m.

It's happened to me, more than once, to have someone turn to me, look rather honest and say, "you're really smart, you know that?" Not in some many words. More awkwardly, or quickly or something. But more or less that. It happened to me today.

Does it happen to everybody? Not because I'm interseted in knowing whether I'm smarter than other people (I am, but I'm also stupider than a GRRREAT many others), but because I'm interested in the kind of people who make these confessions, accusations of intelligence. Is it about complicity? "We're smart, but not everbody is. We've got something in common."

I think it's about complicity. I think it's the secret handshake of my intelligence bracket (it's a spectrum, I know, but the purpose of conversation...): not smart enough to exist exclusively in subtlety (booze doesn't help), but smart enough to know when they've got company. Bonjour.

Touch Yourself, Thank Me Later 11:28 a.m.

I'm obsessed with medical blogs. This is mostly because I've started fantasizing about becoming a doctor, unlikely as that may sound to those who know me. I know, I know. I don't get it either. Relax, they don't let people like me into med school.

Anyway, while reading my favourite medical blog, Vitum Medicinus, I stumbled across a new one, coincidentally (or ironically? I give up) named Incidental findings. So I poked around a little and ended up reading a post called Why I didn't do oncology.

It was a very interesting post (I had no idea there were such dirtbag oncologists out there), but the bit that really got me was about the 46-year-old woman with two young daughters and a really bad kind of breast cancer. The kind that doesn't respond to treatment. The kind that metastasizes to parts of your body you didn't even know you had while the people who love you are helpless to do anything except wear pink ribbons and cry a lot. Which got me thinking about the last time I conducted a breast self-exam.

I realized that I couldn't remember the last time I had given myself a breast exam.

The Canadian Cancer Society states plainly that 1 in 9 women is expected to develop breast cancer during her lifetime and that 1 in 28 women will die of it. Bloody hell.

So this is me, telling you (and me), that we need to conduct monthly breast self-exams. STARTING NOW. Like tonight. Go home and touch yourself, thank me later.

i really hope it's pms 1:12 p.m.

because i'm crying a lot these days, not sure why. not even a combination of bobby darin and pasta salad is fixing me. apples with peanut butter either. i guess there's always wine and cigarettes but that doesn't really fix, it just blinds. maybe blind is better.

medicate me, someone 5:28 p.m.

my mother recommends bathing with gershwin, light
some smelly thing and soak, she says. breathe. my eyes
dart about the room without permission. they like
the crown molding, the piles of dust cowering at the feet
of objects, the stain on the side of my antique refridgerator.
it's intricate. ice cream, i think. i haven't the attention span

for this.

aa, my twenty-first century child 2:57 p.m.

i've got the aids anxiety and it doesn't suit me much
lung cancer concern or a liver disease distraction
would be much more appropriate, i think but i've got
the aids anxiety nonetheless have had it since i was six
dreaming of world churches and an aunt i hadn't seen
in years, damp bed beneath me, doctor peering down
with t-minus two minutes wet on his lips and what
a deep-seated dysfunction i must have to worry
this way about my partners and the embarassment
i've got the aids anxiety, child, and don't i feel ever so
twenty-first century? tired, scared, spending, waiting...