exhale

i am now watching some girl's backpack, so i will be here for a while. it is always so warm in here. they play satellite radio; usually it is decent, but tonight it's a melange of disco horror. the Man Who is Always Here is. i wonder what his story is. he's probably in his 40s, middle-eastern descent, perpetually inert by the window. i wonder if he has a family, if he;s new in town, if he's a putz like me without wifi siphoning at the homefront. i feel self-conscious when i see him here now, because he may very well think the same of me: 'there's that frizzy girl again. doesn't she have a life?' there is something deeply pleasant about this place, though. i am sitting on a couch surrounded by humans, drinking tea, nowhere to be. this is a fucking novelty. i feel very lucky when i realize that this is my life now.
i visited my mother on monday before i went to work. it was the first time in years that we'd had time together without my father around, bitching at her every five minutes. she seemed somewhat depressed about the move. still hasn't found a job. my father is embracing the role of the bullying martyr. he keeps carping on her to find something, implying that she's idle, as though she didn;t spend the last several years being his unpaid slave for his photography business as well as working full-time. this is the first time my mother's had time off, time to herself, in far too long. i deflected the guilt she attempted to foist upon me: "we moved to olympia to be closer to you, not so you'd move to seattle". i reminded her that seattle is only an hour away; yelm was 40 minutes. alaska was 2400 miles. i worry about them. i hope my mother stands up for herself more. i hope my father learns to mellow the fuck out. i have this horrible feeling that, of all the shit they've been through together, this may be what would break them. it was poignant to see the furnishings i'd grown up with in their rented house. their cat ignored me. they live on 3 acres. the stump by their front door has delicate mushrooms growing out of it. mushrooms fascinate me. "i hadn't even noticed those" my mother said.
i was on a bus today that was stopped mid-route because the fucked-up guy wouldn't disembark after the driver ordered him to. i believe the police were en route. i was about 10 blocks from my eventual stop and it was absolutely pouring. i got off and walked. got home sopping wet. it was actually rather fun. the ceiling hasn't leaked today.
'sexual healing' is playing, and i can feel the surliness returning. some songs shouldn't exist.