there's a man in my house. as a general rule, men inhabit my house, but this one is a man i know only slightly: a friend of my mother's from work who fixes the plumbing. right now he's tackling the faucet in the kitchen downstairs, which i didn't know was broken until he called. my mother is racing for the cure, my father is shlepping my little brother to a chess tournament, so i'm upstairs alone resisting the urge to the lock the door. when did i get so paranoid?

lana came over yesterday and we got to catch up on bonding. feigning normalcy, as we wandered around bethesda, i managed a can of diet coke and half a chai. we returned to my house for fucking amal, and lana patiently endured my comparing/contrasting daneland and swedeland. actually i never got to visit sweden; that's on my to-do list for when i return.