Today was a little edgy. More than a little. It's unbearable. There's a fine line between "normal" and dizzy, feeling faint, confused, and weak. That fine line happens to be a state of euphoria, for me. If I can just hang out there, it's amazing.

But almost anything can make it too strong (driving through a certain neighborhood, the way the sun glints off the street, someone walking down the sidewalk who glances up at me) and it becomes overwhelming, and once it gets started it just gets worse. That is when it's REALLY hard not to do heroin. Just because I know that heroin makes the feeling go away. I don't know how euphoria, when it gets really strong, turns into torture, but it does. Euphoria is like the breaking point between normal and horror. I wish I could stay on that cliff all the time.

On days like this I know it's going to be bad so I leave all my money with Donna, except for $5 or so. Then I have the illusion of freedom -- I can go out and stuff -- and when the feeling knocks me over there's nothing I can do. It's an elegant system, really.

This morning I woke up early and got out of the house by 9:30 to meet Pete for breakfast at the Paradox. We ended up talking until 12:30; it was good. Then I went to Hawthorne... I was feeling manic and high, but ok. It was when I went to Goodwill to look for some furniture, and then I was driving north to check out this bakery that might hire me -- the late afternoon sun, the streets, it all came down on me and it was WAY too much.

I was way too dizzy to do much of anything so I came home. I've been waiting for Donna to go out for quite a while and I kind of gave up on whatever I was trying to do today. So I decided to listen to music really loud and drink some wine. It hasn't really helped. I still feel like I'm going to faint. But whatever.

Oh, Donna finally came down. She is dancing with Foo the cat.

We went for dinner at the Montage, the lovely raucous place under the Morrison Bridge, which has not changed in eight years. They still make foil sculptures with your to-go food; there are still quasi-religious paintings on the walls; the seating is still communal at long tables with white linens; the punk/posh waiters still scream things like "OYSTERS!!!" on cue with your order.

We split some pasta so we'd have more money to drink cocktails, ginger and lime and whisky. Donna has a long-standing crush on the man who happened to be our waiter today. We were giddy and a little drunk, we had our sunglasses on and I had my hat and she had her hood up. The waiter came by and asked, "Is there someone here you're trying to hide from?" I said, "Yeah -- you!" Then Donna and I had an ice-cube fight, throwing cubes at each other across the table. No one seemed to notice; nor did they care.

With our first drink, Donna toasted, "To junkies!" I was like, "What?!?" "To tweakers!" she answered. "Fuck that!" "To ex-junkies and ex-tweakers." Ok, that's fine.

There was this other waiter with a hat like mine who I thought was hot. We silently watched him clean the table next to ours, while sending him sidelong glances through our sunglasses. I couldn't work up the courage to do anything more direct, but with Donna's help I wrote a little note: "I like you. 503 757 0062. -Becky" She said that sounded cute. I really don't know. After we ate our dinner and had two more drinks, he was nowhere to be found so I went up to the bartender: "You know your coworker with the hat?" "Yeah, should I go find him?" "NO!! But could you give him this?" She smiled and took the note.

Then we drove up to Freddie's to get supplies, and light bulbs. You can see pictures from some of our adventures on my flickr page. Now we're sitting here with wine and crackers, singing, and Donna is putting on more eyeliner.