It's just after midnight, and I'm sitting here wishing I could cry but too sad to.  I feel stony and kind of indifferent, having sunk into that numbness that was my escape throughout junior high from the deep, intense pain with which I was dealing. 

I've been thinking about my dad, about how close he and I used to be.  How I used to be Daddy's little girl and we'd stay up late talking or working on school projects that I'd, of course, left until the last minute.  I remember the way he smelled, like aftershave and mint, when I'd hug him upon his arrival home each evening.  I could get lost in that scent.  I remember the time I arrived home after curfew and, for the only time I can remember, my father was the one waiting up rather than my mother.  A string of excuses on the tip of my tongue, my father failed to even notice the time and we instead stayed up two hours more laughing and talking about my future and God and whatnot, back when I still believed in that kind of thing.  I remember the mad scientist drawing I gave my father one year, which was promptly tacked up just above his computer at work.  That picture now lies, forgotten, either deep in a desk drawer or in some landfill somewhere.  There was the picture of my father and me together on a John Deere tractor that I surrounded with careful cutouts of my dad's other favorite things, which he left behind and which I tore to pieces last summer when the pain became too great to keep it on the shelf any longer.

I miss the time when I knew who my dad was.  I knew when to avoid him because he'd had a bad day or a migraine and was likely to lecture me about how selfish I was.  I knew when going for a drive would be the best thing for both of us, and I knew just on which days he was likely to take me out for ice cream or teach me to do a brake job on my car.  (Incidentally, he taught me to replace the brakes, but not to replace a light bulb or change the oil.  I learned those things without his help.)

Although I'd been vaguely aware of the affair for nearly a year, following an episode when my dad left the house at ten o'clock one night to take care of her, leaving my mother at home in tears, the day my dad sat me down and told me he and my mom were calling it quits hit me like the proverbial ton of bricks.  Somehow, I'd missed the signs:  the increase in days spent lying on the couch suffering from a migraine; the five cars my father bought his last year here, each one less practical than the last; the unhappiness and irritability that led me to spend most of my time at home huddled in my room or in front of the television in order to avoid confrontation, which of course only sparked more.  Any child whose parents have split remembers this day vividly.  Ironically, it was April Fool's Day, and my father decided that his news would be a good way to spoil the excitement following his presentation to my brother of a new Nintendo Wii.  Boy, did I feel like a fool.  I realized that I didn't even recognize this man in whom I'd placed so much trust and respect as a girl.  The deep, naive reverence I'd held for my father dissolved into a realization that he had continually let me down.  Barely a year after we sat out on the front porch as the sun set over the Smoky Mountains and my father promised me that we would never move (he went to nine different schools from K to 12 when he was a child), I found myself in Cincinnati.  Nine months before he moved out, my father told my brother that he believed my parents had one of the strongest marriages of anyone he knew.  He told me, six months before he left, that he thought she was a crazy, liberal psycho.  So what does that mean when he tells me he loves me?

I miss him.  I miss the Daddy I remember.  I miss the days before my trust in and devotion to him were shattered.  Trust takes a lot time to build back, Daddy.  I'm dead serious about the twenty-two years.  I'll be forty.  You'll be seventy.  I look forward to having you explain to me then where I went wrong in not accepting your choices.  Adultery, lies, psychological abuse, and corruption of childhood don't seem like the kinds of values you would have wanted me to enter adulthood embracing.

It seems to me that most people spend their childhoods dreaming of all the things they'll be allowed to do when they're finally "grown up."  (For me, that one privilege I could not wait to enjoy was driving a car.)  Yet, adults seem to spend a lot of time reminiscing about and wishing for the simple life they enjoyed as children.  We're never happy, not that that's a great revelation or anything.

Recently, my nostalgia has been directed toward the friendships and relationships I fostered in my earliest years of elementary school, back when I still lived in South Carolina.  Although the vast majority of my friends were girls, I was abnormal among my peers in that my very best friend in second grade was a boy.  His name was Zachary, and even at the tender age of eight or so he had already picked up his father's habit of cracking a joke at every opportunity.  I remember him dancing around our classroom nearly every day, singing "Shake, Shake, Shake" or the theme from "Happy Days."  And believe me, you haven't heard anything until you've heard a second grade boy screaming "Shake your booty!" at the top of his lungs, complete with dance moves to match.  Even at the time I remember thinking how absurd such a scenario was.

Even in my very conservative Southern town, the science classes laid the foundation for a study of evolution in later grades by firmly insisting that humans were animals, related most closely to monkeys such as chimpanzees.  One day, a very confused but ever smirking Zach confided in me, "The teacher says we are animals.  I asked my mother, and she said we aren't.  And then I asked my dad, and he said, 'Sometimes!'"  My blank stare prompted him to continue, "You know, like sometimes we're pigs or monkeys or something..."  I'm sure I retorted with a smart comment such as, "Well, you look like a monkey all the time," but his ability to inject humor into our studies, all the while reconciling his beliefs with the material he had to know for the test, stays with me to this day.

Although I'm sure there were days Zach wasn't his usual chipper self, the only time I can remember him ever seeming sad was my last day of second grade.  By that time, we knew that I would not be returning in the fall; my father, in fact, was already working in Ohio at that point.  As we waited for our rides after school, Zachary, apparently very uncomfortable, came up to me, handed me a plain brown paper lunch bag, and walked away.  Inside I found a small stuffed moose, labeled "Mikey" on the tag.  Mikey sits to this day on my bookshelf, right next to all my CDs; I can see him, in fact, from where I sit now.  I don't know if this goodbye token was Zach's idea or his mother's, but I like to think he wanted me to have an animal to remember him by, although where the whole moose thing fits in with his personality I'm not sure.  I think a monkey would have been much more appropriate.

I'm sure I saw Zachary later that summer before I left, but that's the goodbye I remember.  And it makes me wish I could have that friendship back, even if just for a day.  For nine months, Zach and I were practically inseparable.  And, as quickly as it started, that friendship was gone, lost to 500 miles of interstate and an Internet too young to facilitate keeping in touch on a daily basis.  I kind of regret that I can never have that again, a perfectly platonic relationship with the opposite sex, no strings attached.

I learned a lot in the second grade:  the proper pronunciation of the word "thoroughly," that Robinson Crusoe isn't exactly light reading for an eight-year-old, and every word of "That's the Way (I Like It)."  Uh-huh, uh-huh.

I surprised a group of boys I was talking with about the upcoming presidential election today.  Every one of them is as conservative (or more so) as I am, but when they started in with their, "I'm cool with a woman in the White House, just not Hillary" drivel, I shocked them with my, "I'm not sure I want a woman in the White House at all."

I'm usually at my most liberal when it comes to women's rights; in fact, I'm far more of a feminist than I often like to admit.  However, the fact remains that there are differences between men and women, and I happen to think that, at least at this point in time, a man is better suited to hold the highest position in American politics than a woman.

Rationale?  I'd like anyone who wishes to be President, basically leader of the free world, to have military experience or, at the very least, have a great deal of foreign policy experience.  A woman is less likely to fulfill that requirement, and (although the trend is changing) a woman is also less likely to have run a business or served as mayor or governor of a city or state.  Having run or governed such an entity is another asset I'd like in a presidential contender.  Also, and I'm making a generalization here, so forgive me, a woman is less likely to respond with force when American lives are in danger.  And, especially given the current times, I think that such action is sometimes necessary.

But perhaps most importantly, in this time of Muslim extremism, having a woman in a position of such power is probably unwise from a foreign policy standpoint.  In many parts of the world, women enjoy nowhere near the freedoms and equality afforded the 51% minority here in the United States.  What nation that has legal policies in place specifically designed to ensure that women are the lesser sex is going to negotiate with a female world leader?  The ability to negotiate and come to peaceful agreements with such nations is going to prove crucial in the highly turbulent next few years, and, forgive me, but I think a female president might prove detrimental to achieving that end.

Or maybe I just hate women and their liberal, motherly ways.  Perhaps I am that backward.  You be the judge.

All I wanna do is believe I've got you.

Say anything, but say what you mean.

Truer words were never spoken.  Just come right out and say it.

I've always had trouble following that advice myself, but maybe my parents' marriage will teach me a lesson or two.

Dr. James Wilson also had something pithy and poignant to say last night:

"Dying isn't hard!  Living is!"

I'm not really going anywhere with all of these bits of wisdom, if you can call such tidbits gleaned from pop culture "wisdom."  These are just things that have been on my mind.

Look forward to my "Best Albums of 2007" coming in the next couple of weeks.  I know all three of my readers are dying to know which albums made the cut.

It's starting to dawn on me that I'm only here in Ohio for eight more months.  And after that, things will never, ever be the same.

So how do I want to spend my remaining time here?  And how is that different from the way I'm spending it now?

After nine years, eight months feels like nothing.

If there's one thing I learned from Disney this time around, it's that the word "never" should be eliminated from my vocabulary.  Because I never would have expected this.

Pictures eventually.  Maybe.

Why is the final cut on an album often the longest, most mellow track on the disc?

Don't get me wrong.   I love these songs.  In fact, I have an iTunes playlist devoted to these very special tracks with 69 songs on it, and it's the one I most often find myself clicking to on my iPod.  However, it seems kind of silly to just let the statement you're making fade away.  Most albums start with an upbeat, rocking first track, and then the album progresses from there.  But why not finish as strong as you started?  Of course, there's a time and place for mellow, chill songs.  But when you're listening to an entire album, it makes more sense to me to end with a bang.

If I were to cut a rock album, it would end with a face-melting guitar solo, crazy effects, the whole bit.  And then suddenly it'd be silent.  It's like when you're at a live concert, and a band has just ended its set with something rip-roaring and just sweet and then suddenly the entire arena, thousands of people, is just silent.  And those few seconds of silence, while the final chords and the last line are still ringing in your ears, just before someone breaks the spell and the "one more song" chants begin... it's magic.

And that's exactly the feeling I'd like to evoke at the end of my rock album.  A crescendoing climax of clashing cymbals and screaming guitars, then silence.  I don't wanna fade away.

But maybe that's just me.

I hate Christmas parties.

I miss you.

The next person who asks me whether I'm looking forward to Disney is getting punched.  Because it's not going to be what I hoped it would be.  And that sucks.

It's amazing how much things can change in a matter of weeks.

But I miss you.  Please, know how much I miss you.

On the bright side, just 200 days.

It's already the eighth.

...my book's not going to get finished.

Goshen High School was on The O'Reilly Factor tonight.  Bill Cunningham says what's happening "out there in Forrest Gump country" is outrageous.

Thanks.

Here are the national newsmakers.  Splendid examples of today's youth.