It's never too late.

And I mean flushed in the non-bathroom sort of way

Weighing my pockets with stones of longing

Especially when those days are Saturday and Sunday.

They always come crawling back

I went to work this afternoon. Pretty normal beginning, really... taking all the candy bars off the racks, cleaning the racks (which reminded me all too well of cleaning the milking pit at the sheep dairy... yikes), moving the racks, and putting all the candy bars back on the racks. Then the mall caught on fire.

Four fire trucks. Five police cars. Two ambulances. I'd never seen a slower production, thank goodness it wasn't really an emergency and nobody got hurt. They're remodeling much of the building, and some welding sparks hit a tarp that then burst into flames. Phil, my boss, wouldn't evacuate until the mall management kicked us out. He muttered something about being reimbursed for the loss of customers. We were outside for 45 minutes while eight firemen tried to work the big electric ladder (not too successfully, I might add) and unconvincingly paraded their expertise. Bobby Radcliffe flew over in News Copter Nine, and some guy from the Press-Citizen tried to milk dramatic lines from interviewees. Some old guy tried to sneak into the China Star restaurant while everyone was evacuated, but the cops chased him down. It really was a prime window for committing a crime anywhere else in the city because all of the squads were on this one block... Phil called Cinde (his wife) and made me back him up by talking to her because he claimed she didn't believe him that the mall was on fire. I only heard her shouting, "I believe you! Where are you?" I looked over at the pet store across the street and the animals were all hiding, looking a little frazzled. The only action in the front window was a Weasel and Ball toy that was rolling around at hyper speed. The only lot of the mall that got damaged was the future TV 9 News room.

I got home late-ish, and Mom and I went to Yen Ching for dinner as soon as I told Tara I had to get off the phone. That poor girl is about as confused as I am. Dinner was phenomenal, and I finally got sizzling rice soup again after years of cravings. I love celery in chicken broth, by the way. And I proved yet again that my mom's intolerance for spicy foods is imaginary. Do everyone else's parents play up their "elderliness"? It's frustrating, because my parents are babes and they won't live it up like they can.

Speaking of living it up... I signed on AIM tonight just to read people's away messages, really, since I have a tendency to do that when I'm lazy (and I know you do it too!). What I got was some scarily persistent propositioning from a boy I went to high school with. He kept saying he would stop talking about it and then go on with, okay, maybe you don't want to have sex with me, but can I at least see you naked? and then go back to how I secretly really want him to come over and "rock my body." I tolerated it well for a while, but it started getting less flattering and more tiresome pretty fast. Has this happened to anyone else? Because I'm beginning to think that I'm stuck in some weird astrological vortex and it's really creeping me out. I pasted our conversation into a word document so I could save it for later analysis and out of curiosity--it was ten pages long. And I didn't say much. Now I'm not so sure I want anybody touching me for a while.

On another boy front, I ran into Evan at the mall yesterday, and he looks almost exactly the same. Still scruffy and poet-like. He didn't recognize me till I was about two feet from his face, so it must've been creepy that I was grinning and bee-lining for him. Maybe it was the haircut. He asked how Mali was, and I found out he's finishing his student teaching. I was in a hurry to drop off a prescription and get home, otherwise I probably would've followed him around for an hour. I said I hoped we'd run into each other again, and I meant it, but I'm afraid it's not too likely. We had a few good times, he and I. I remember when he made me wear his scarf on the way to pizza on dubuque because I wouldn't take his jacket. He introduced me to Judd, and took me to hang out and play chess at the tobacco bowl. It was fun working together; too bad he's no longer at S&T. He gave it spicy character. Nobody wears Bad Religion shirts and goes on smoke breaks anymore. Plus, we're all girls.

I also got two great e-mails this week: one from my young uncle Alassane in Mali--the one who finally told me that my host father had two wives and took me to the Musee National de Mali-- (he didn't get his Visa, damn the United States government, even though I tried to help him fill out the forms, so now he can't come to school in Houston and he's stuck with the rest of the people in Bamako drinking tea until a job comes along, but it was great to finally get an update), and one from TAL! It's been four years since I dropped him off at his uncle David's house and he kissed me on the cheek to say goodbye. He's been in the Israeli army since then, and now he's working in New York as a bartender at a fashion studio. Go figure. I think beautiful people have some kind of clumping/gravitational mechanism whereby they draw eachother in like oil in water. Well, the news is he'll be in Iowa for the holidays and wants to see me. He says he remembers "very vividly" our time together back in high school. I had a mad crush on this kid in junior high, and my mom always refers to his dad as "the one that got away." Assuming I don't go nuts and swear off boys for the rest of my life by the time Christmas rolls around, it could be a good time.

I think I need to sleep and let the dust settle a little. And think about spending my humongo gift certificate at Prairie Lights. And think about not letting any boys look at me anymore.

Fire and Brimstone at 11:46 p.m.