"Fracture my spine / And swear that you're mine / As we dance to the masochism tango"

I thought I'd jump on the song-lyrics-as-title bandwagon. Heehee I love Tom Lehr, brilliant composer of such classics as "Poisoning Pigeons in the Park." He does a parody on the Harvard Fight Song, incidentally.

Right now it's just me and my house, beautiful but soulless (the house, not me). Grace had a concert in Rhode Island tonight, and she and my parents are probably on the road back here by now. I went to see a play at the A.R.T. and then Alex said he didn't feel like hanging out, so here I am. It's very quiet, save the compulsive tapping of my fingers on this keyboard.

My outside reading project for the next month or so is to learn everything I can about baseball through books, TV, the internet, and the like. My reasoning goes like this: Alex really loves baseball and knows way more about it than "the casual fan" (a status I am not even close to attaining yet). Also, I don't like it when people I care about go on and on about things I don't know or care about - I mean, I suppose it's ok once in a while, but extreme immersion can be frustrating. However, once I reach a critical mass of knowledge about a topic, I start caring more about it. And while I do not have a natural inclination towards sports, I do have a natural inclination towards in-depth learning. Therefore, if I approach baseball as a topic of knowledge rather than something athletic or something associated with uncouth, beer-drinking males, I'll become interested in it given a sufficient body of information consumed at a sufficient rate. I don't know if I'll ever have the emotional attachment to or compulsivity about baseball that Alex seems to have been born with, but at least I won't feel ignorant.

This means I'll have to make myself read the sports pages. Trials and tribulations.

Sometimes I wish I had a boyfriend who couldn't bear to go a minute without me and who focused on me all the time and would race to my side at the drop of a hat to go shopping or see a show. Someone who would tell me over and over again how wonderful and important I am and how he didn't know how he ever got on without me. The pull's even stronger now that I am faced daily with the reality that I am not the important one in my family anymore. I'm not even a supporting actress - I'm kind of an extra by now, or maybe lighting technician #4. And then I think ... well, having that kind of a boyfriend would be a drag and too easy to abuse. Challenges make me smarter, nicer, and a more loving person.