Tonight it's the Crimestoppers Mexican night. I was down there at 8:30 this morning to help decorate the auditorium at Beban Park, and I even got to put up crime scene tape... Somebody, and this is something I had actually wondered about, had neglected to see to getting a cash float for the cash bar, so I volunteered to sell them the change out of my safe at work. I love having a safe. Makes me feel like a tycoon.

So anyway, all the tables have been sold, and the thing is tonight, which is good, because there have been too many meetings, and I have to study for my midterms. Tomorrow.

At 3 am the small person climbing into my bed says, "I had nightmares, Mum", and I don't even really wake up, just lift the blankets and let her snuggle up. I wake again an hour later, she is nestled in my arms, like she used to when she was a baby, and it's a bit too hot because she is, after all, seven now, but I stick my feet out of the blankets to cool off rather than wake her up. In the morning, she seems fine, and I know that the nightmares are really about Pop-tart being dead, rather than the tornadoes and earthquakes her mind has conjured up for her

The smallest member of the household, Pop-tart the three year old mouse, died today. He was pretty old, as mice go, and his fur had started to fall out, despite the remedy (for a suspected case of mites) that they gave me at the pet store. I'm thinking that in the wild, when they get old and lazy, they get eaten by something young and quick, and I pointed out to Rachel that if she hadn't bought him he probably would have been fed to someone's snake. You know, when they're selling the mice 3 for $5 that they're not intended to be pets.

my dentist, as perhaps you will remember from my previous visits, is insane. In a nice way, but he's definitely insane. He flits around between patients, and talks non-stop while he's working on me, explaining exactly what he's doing and insisting that I watch in the little mirror. "You see that orange spot there, that's decay. That's what the bacteria do to you... I'm using the white filling material on this one, it's got little bits of silicone in it, but it doesn't last as long as the silver stuff..."

Sometimes I think I'd be better off without knowing.

What I like best about working on essays is the bit where they're mostly written and the rest of the work is just playing about with the words. I notice I use the word "people" a lot. Still, hard to write about the justice system without referring to human beings.

I'm going to the dentist tomorrow, with my broken tooth. I think they should just pull the whole lot out and I'll get a nice set of dentures. Stupid teeth keep exploding.

On Thursday, as if I didn't have enough to do, I have to go work a bingo for the school. It's so smoky, it makes me just want to buy a pack and join in. Then the next day I actually get nic fits, even though I haven't had a cigarette since 5:45 am Dec 7, 1999. 1,145 days, 16 hours, a few minutes... nope, not counting, really, why do you ask?