Things have changed, apparently. It really is a step forward because I'm not talking about Ms. Piggy on the Internet anymore. But that step forward is followed by a giant leap backwards because now I can't find a god damned thing to write about. Maybe I'm trying too hard, because there are things I want to write about. I want desperately to write about this homeless man who spoke to me about growing up, or the conversation SML and I had about my cake diet; but every time I sit down to write my mind turns to mush and I start looking around my apartment for something to eat.

SML and I were discussing this the other day when I was explaining how I couldn't concentrate on more than one thing at a time. I turn my interests or projects into slight obsessions that won't resolve themselves until I have finished the project or until I have eaten every last crumb of whatever it is I'm eating. That last chair purchase, for example, turned my life upside down because nothing could continue its course until that chair was in its place. I put off many things because I was busy thinking about the chair, wondering if it would be too big or how I'd look sitting in it. When I thought it came without legs? I considered calling in sick for as long as it took until I had the whole thing sorted out.

It sort of reminds me of those people you hear about with obsessive compulsive disorders, the ones who check locked doors three of four times, or the crazies who line up their kitchen canisters every day into exactly the right spot in-between the blender and the coffee machine. It's hard to imagine myself as someone like that, someone so neurotic that their head will rotate three hundred and sixty degrees if they have to sleep on wrong side of the bed.

When SML started comparing my behavior to a student he used to work with, the one who bounced down the hallway chirping, “Vista! Vista! Vista!” the week of the Windows release I told him, “SML, I DO NOT HAVE ASPERGERS.”

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