So. This list is called, "Things are unsettling, but hopeful."
Or, "Maybe I'm too full of springtime for my own good."
1. K. says my name a lot. It makes me think of cults, and how they're supposed to say your name a lot to draw you in, and gosh, it's effective. I really like it that he says my name a lot.
2. I also really like his name. It might be my favorite that I've ever met. It makes me think of those books that I used to read all the time when I was little. I told him that and he didn't believe me, but it's okay, because I'm right and he's wrong.
3. Everytime I looked up he was looking at me, sometimes smiling, sometimes not. It made me look up more often, to check, and I think he knew I was checking, and it turned into a game. It was a good game.
4. Earlier, Michael was teaching me how to play other games with the newspaper and a pen, drawing dominoes and explaining points. He told me what chess pieces are worth, and I never knew before. Later, I asked him, "Do you know the values of chess pieces?" and he said, "Sure," and he got some of them wrong, but that just seemed to make it better.
5. There was a clumsy moment, but what he said about my reaction to it was so unexpectedly flattering that I couldn't be embarrassed at all. I just smiled and smiled. When he teased me about it later it was like a secret, not because no one else knew, but because no one else cared.

And this list is called, "Sometimes I think about other things, though I'm not sure it's any better."

1. It turns out that I can identify oak trees. I know this because someone said, "Is that an oak tree?" and I said, "No," and I was certain of it. What happened was that I remembered that I know what an oak leaf looks like. Then I remembered that a know a couple of other leaves, so I guess there are at least a few trees I can identify. Just not the ones on my block. Especially my tree, because it has yet to develop any leaves large enough for identification. It's just permanently budding, it seems. This morning when the sun was getting bright, that tree, through the curtains, with birds darting all over, was the best thing I'd ever seen.

2. Sometimes when I open the trash chute, music comes out of it.

3. He said he was addicted to not sleeping, and that is exactly how it is.
-Last night I went to bed around one, and dreamt about Byron, military airplanes, irresponsibility, and bottled water. I woke up just before four, drank some bottled water and watched some news, and then went back to sleep at four-thirty. Half an hour later it was all over and I was up for good, drinking more bottled water and watching more news. There were overnight explosions, it turns out, probably around the time that I was reading Byron in my sleep.

4. All those boys ever want to do is go to the metal bar. I don't much care for the metal bar.

5. I am not playing hard to get. I am trying to politely make it clear that he is not the right one. The right one is the other one, the one who is somehow both rumpled and dashing, all the time.

6. I hate the sound of her tension. I don't want her to ever feel anything that she doesn't like feeling. She seems to always be feeling things that she doesn't like feeling, and sometimes it's all I can think about. I am the crazy person in an episode of The Twilight Zone, or The Outer Limits, or one of those kinds of shows. I am the person who locks the people they love away in some sort of human zoo, so that they can be kept safe from harm.

7. The elevator smelled vaguely like a motel room. It's a smell like somebody smoked a few cigarettes and then somebody else sprayed some air freshener, and then the room was sealed tight like a time capsule for many years.
-The elevator made me think of Sam, because it also smelled vaguely like the inside of his car.
-Just now I'm remembering my grandfather, because that smell might be the smell of the old armchair he always sat in, watching baseball in the afternoons.

8. Watching a movie with headphones on feels like watching a movie on an airplane, except it's a little bit sad because everything gets a little bit sad when flying is subtracted.

I don't know. I'm thinking things like, "What are they talking about when I'm not there?" and, "Don't start me sighing, I will sigh you right under the table." I have things to do. I have worries to worry, and the internet can't help me.