Not much time today (is there ever?) Got to work at noon.

I am going to try a new format for these pages using JavaScript, a so-called 'zero waiting time/layers' method.  And since it is JS (which is universally problematic), and I am obsessive/compulsive, then I will probably have both versions available.  

However, (isn't there always a 'however'?) two versions of a single inspiration is hard to maintain, or at least hard to keep identical.  Maybe the JS page will just be a fling (they're fun, too), and maybe I'll just stick with the current version using that old despised and misunderstood method, frames.  At least it works with AOL (sort of...)

This morning, I'm in an L-tryptophan daze.  Either that, or I'm in withdrawal from that chemical (that's the stuff found in turkey meat that makes you sleepy, and it has an antidepressant effect also).  So I guess coming off it should leave me depressed, but awake.  

I wonder if we eat turkey around the holidays for that reason? It's the solution to every family gathering; makes everybody happy and unconscious.  

Family, as you may have gathered, is a difficult topic for me since they are conspicously absent from these pages.  I don't have one iota of resentment or anger or disdain or anything like those emotions toward any one of my siblings.  In fact, I really kinda like them.  Maybe it's just absence making my heart grow fonder; in the last ten years, I've seen them all maybe once, or twice.  

It has never made any sense to me, but I was always uncomfortable in my role as a member of my own family.  I have theories galore explaining that, but nothing makes sense.  And none of those theories have cured my aversion for my own flesh and blood.

Kate is the most honest among them.  When my mother was dying, and I saw Kate--for the first time in about ten years--there was that glance she shot me.  People with Gay-dar (which is an intuitive sensibility regarding other people's gayness) know that the signal-strength is greatest at the very first moment.  It is that way with Emote-dar, too.  Her real feelings, I believe--I could be wrong--were betrayed in that glance.  My emote-dar echo from Kate contained all those superficial, petty I-don't-like-him, he's-a-jerk and how-dare-he(fill in the presumption) kinds of sentiments.  But I also sensed the deeper feelings, which always show up a little fuzzy on emote-dar, and they looked a lot like anger.

I say Kate is the most honest, because she would have the least difficulty being angry at me for having discarded my family, like I did, as if I had never owned them.  I don't mean 'owned' as one owns a car by holding title to it.  I owned my family because--whether I like to admit it or not--I once held them all very tenderly in my heart.  

And I threw them out.  Out, and for no reason at all.  At first I just didn't show up for Christmas.  Eventually, I didn't show up for anything; had to work was the most common excuse, often I offered only silence for explanation.  Such an eviction may well be unforgiveable.  If I ever grow-up, and I offer them their old home in my heart again, one or two may accept without really forgiving me, and just to be cordial, might move some unimportant belongings back in.  But Kate will be honest, whichever way she goes, and I will have no question where she stands, because unlike the other deep emotions, the echo of forgiveness is crystal clear.