So I think the best fightin' words ever uttered in the history of time might be:

"I made you CUPCAKES! You didn't make ME any cupcakes. Bitch!"

I said those words out loud, although I didn't actually say them to anyone. I said them in the street as I walked alone, except I was accompanied by a Pooh-sized raincloud that dropped its hot reproachful water on my head and dress with measured patience. I was on my way to hear a friend give a literary reading at a bar and after the reading I came out of the bar and the cloud(s) had cleared and instead there was a slowly drying world and a watery blue-and-gold light and I felt better.

But in general this has been a really anguished, embattled, angry summer. Here I am: seething with anger under the bedsheets, on the subway, deadheading petunias on the terrace. I think it's righteous indignation, but I could be wrong. The cupcakes enemy: someone from work who has decided not to speak to me, and who is leaving work soon for a while and who would not even speak to me after I made incredible cupcakes for her going-away party. They were fluffy white cupcakes with pink and blue and yellow icing, trimmed with coconut flakes and edible pearls, filled with lemon curd. Once she knew I had made them, she didn't even look at them, and when people complimented me on them she kept silent, cast down her eyes; meanwhile she raved about someone else's cupcakes. That's crazy!

The other stuff: can I even get into it now? Suffice it to say that everyone is super mean. My current strategy is to ignore them and to try to ignore my own righteous indig.; I throw myself into video games, curl up into little balls and sleep. It's hard to tell which is the more mature reaction: doing that, or engaging in hours of agonizing confidences and outpourings of the heart. I feel, you feel. A friend recently told me that lesbians call it "processing." If anyone can confirm that this is actually exclusively a lesbian term and not just a new-age term, I would be interested.

Oisin V. will be 3 very soon!! the best kid age! I love it.