mallorys_camera | See what you can negotiate

The placeholder I designed for JDK looks very spiffy indeed. It was a great distraction. Only now it's done, so now I have to sit down and sort through the mountain of bills. My To Do list contains the words, See what you can negotiate over and over and over again. See what you can negotiate. Maybe nothing. But maybe something. You never know unless you try.

All day yesterday I lurched about like Frankenstein on a bad hair day. I was so stressed out, I'd turned clumsy, like one of those remote controlled toy cars designed to self-destruct precisely at Christmas plus 48 hours. My mind kept buzzing frantic signals – turn left, advance, go backward – but the refractory period just kept growing longer and longer.

As a research experiment into the physiology of stress, it was actually kind of interesting in a creepy sort of way. I wonder if I can make it across that street before a car hits me, I thought, standing on a street corner. As it turned out, I couldn't – but the car stopped.

Today I'm better but I don't know why.

Just got off the phone with one of the bagmen. Yes, yes, yes, they're willing to negotiate. "And we appreciate that you initiate these conversations. Communication is so very, very important."

Plucky little me!

Survival is not necessarily a more attractive option than no survival. I keep searching around for reasons to think my life is important, has some meaning in a larger context. I have a really, really difficult astrological chart that describes me to a T. Yeah, yeah, yeah, the sun does not go round the earth – but surely that must mean something! Mustn't it? On February 23, 1987 – two days before Max was born – a bright new star appeared in the sky, an exploding supernova. Obviously that means I'm a 21st century Virgin Mary! There's the ghost I saw in the Ely cathedral, and my grandmother's St. Christopher's medal I found on a snow-covered street in Las Vegas, New Mexico.

Signs, right? Vectors pointing straight at me.

Probably not.