Eric's not happy with my journal right now. After reading my last entry, he went about his routine in a semi-huff for a while, upset but - according to him - not sure why. Finally, when we realized we were out of garbage bags right as we were about to clean out the guinea pig hutch, he erupted at me, yelling at me for not remembering to buy more. He stormed to the closet and yanked on his coat to go out to the store.

As he was leaving, I asked him why this was angering him so much. He stopped; he didn't know. He finally agreed that he was probably looking all night for something over which he could get legitimately upset, because he didn't feel comfortable being angry over the journal. Trash bags were safe. Once we had that out in the open, his anger was diffused, but we still didn't really get to the root of the problem. The discussion just died on the table.

Eric thinks I don't give an accurate portrayal of him. According to him, my recounts of our dialogues give the impression that he's "oafish" (his words, not mine). Do they really? I'm not able to distance myself far enough from my recent writings to see with any clarity. What we say, I put down. I don't invent the things he's said. I'm not carrying around a steno pad, marking down verbatim all of our witty repartée throughout the day. When I give a recount of a conversation, I give the gist of the conversation. Lines that stand out in my memory are obviously central to my interpretation of the talk; if Eric doesn't remember using those exact phrases, should that be an issue? I remember him using them.

And therein lies the key. I'm not a camera, a tape recorder, or a stenographer. I'm a human, and an artist, and everything I see, hear, taste, touch, and smell gets filtered through my living experiences. No event happens to me in a vacuum, so to speak, and if I recount an argument, I by necessity recount only my experience of that argument. It's my journal, my impressions, and my life. Eric understands that at the core, and that's why he felt like he couldn't get angry with me over it. Hence, the garbage bag fight.

Of course, my concern now is that I'm not accurately portraying things the way I see them. To my thoughts, Eric is one of the most intelligent men I've ever met. He's a musical genius, a computer guru, and an all-around sponge for information. Is my respect for him not coming through? This may be something I'll need to work on; I'd hate to not be honest here. That was the whole point of the journal, from day one.

Spent the whole morning down here in my office in the dungeon of the library, trying to cook up something for the library web site. Talk about feeling like a fraud; I feel like, by implying that I could do this site, I'm passing myself off as something that I so am not. I learned HTML in September. A few measly months ago. Since then, I've only done what you see before you and what's linked from this site. Personal pages, not professional. What made me think I was capable of putting together a site for a large organization, one that needs to be professional in every way?

True, the library selected me for this task based solely on that family page. (I, of course, did not give them the URL to the journal. I'm not insane.) But so few of them know anything at all about web design to begin with that I'm not inclined to rely on their assessment of my skills. I feel that an honest person probably would have warned the library somehow against asking them to do more than was feasible or practical.

Are honest people prone to shooting themselves in the foot? Is that just a hazard of that way of life?

Who suffers more, the honest person, or the person who was counting on the honest person?

I want to go back to being three again, when everybody knew, or thought they knew, of exactly what I was capable. Nobody asks the small child to do advanced maths and is disappointed when the child scarcely knows how to hold the pen. Nobody is crushed when the small girl doesn't represent her family at their most polished. At some point in her development, she'll reach the point at where her skillset becomes more hidden, but for now, she is what she is.

I want a tee shirt that says, "Don't assume you know anything about me." The back would say, "And don't assume I'll give you the whole truth, either."

I have to go out tonight and buy a bunch of comic books for the library. I know I'm getting some Pokémon, though I haven't decided whether to get "red" or "blue." Does it matter? I'll also get a selection of Spiderman, Batman, and Superman; if anybody has any other suggestions, please let me know. Getting suggestions from the kids around here is like pulling teeth.

Oh, and if anybody knows anything about "Battle Angel Alita," that would help, too. It came in my suggestion box, and I need to know about its level of violence, sex, etc. before I spend library funds on it.