And once this month is over, wham! School begins again. Which will involve studying and teaching, planning my lectures and writing poetry. (And lots of drinking at the neighborhood bar.) Don't get me wrong, this is all tremendously exciting. And my commitments in August? Parties, seeing friends, planning my class, putting together my chapbook, writing my syllabus, giving a reading. All fun, cool stuff.

But man, I'm busy all of a sudden. 11:59 p.m. on July 31: Monique is not all that busy. 12:01 a.m. on August 1: Monique is hella busy.

The Gregorian calendar is a harsh mistress.

I went to the dentist yesterday and had my teeth cleaned. What an adult thing to do! They confirmed that I have no cavities, which is a huge relief. I had a toothache for a couple of days last week, and was concerned, but it was just pain in my gums. So I need to floss more, but other than that, my dental health is good.

(Oh my god. WHO THE HELL CARES? This is BORING. It's as boring as the Sims Peace Cult. It's the journal entry equivalent of the Peace Cult Non-Poison Turkey Dinner. No wonder I avoid adult responsibilities. Adult responsibilities are boring. )

I like my new dentist, too. He did his job very quickly, with an electric vibrating thingie rather than a scraping pointy thingie. (This is highly technical dental jargon.) But in layman's terms, it was all over quickly, and my teeth are now clean, and I don't have to go back there ever, ever again.

What else can I talk about? Phoebe sat on my finger today for ten whole seconds. Sure, I had to trick her into it, but she did it. My poetry school pal Laurie is back in town, which is exciting. Our Monday workshop and gossip fest is going to be so much fun. My room is still not clean at all, and I don't understand why I have this mental block in regards to cleaning my room when my sparkly bathroom brings me such joy. Oh well.

I worked on my poetry manuscript today: I picked out the poems that will go in it. It's going to be a 60 page manuscript, and now I need to put all the poems in one Word file, print them out, and figure out an order for them. Then I have to do a title page, which is hell, because it's so hard for me to come up with titles. Moetry is the default, but I doubt anyone would be bowled over by that megalomaniacal title. Once all this is done, I can enter the MS into contests. So that's cool. What else?

Oh, I know. Sex. It's that time of the month where I am just jumping out of my skin with sexual energy. It's killing me, because there's nobody around to have sex with. But there are plenty of people I want to have sex with, however improbable or unethical. And all I can think about is sex, sex, sex.

Sure, I could write a really interesting entry about my fixation on sex-- who I want to have sex with and what our imaginary sex is like-- but that would just be embarrassing. Not only for me, but for those of you out there reading this with whom I am having imaginary sex.

And before I get myself in trouble, I am going to stop writing.

"When someone is dying, part of the process is to feel guilty. And when you are raised Catholic, you're expected to feel guilty for everything anyway. So why, oh why, do two already guilt-ridden kids need more guilt? Ask my parents. They insist on providing us with it."