rattlesnakes and phone books

i finally figured out how to keep my laptop from randomly crashing while i'm trying to get stuff done. the answer, you ask? i prop the computer up on the edges of tall books (preferably phone books) so that the delicate little fans on the bottom of the laptop get their much needed cool airflow. it's comforting to know that one must use third-grade logic to make one's thousand-dollar piece of equipment work correctly. (thank you, gilmore, for the precious prop technique information).

this just in: i've been babysitting for a family for about six years. i adore the kids, and they love me, so it works out well. the mother called me when i was in new york, asking if i could, and i quote, "babysit this saturday," which was fine with me, so i said yes. that saturday came and went and i didn't get a call from them, so i assumed they'd forgotten about me, because it's happened before. i didn't check my voicemail this week until just now, when i discovered that i'd missed two messages from her telling me that the kids are really excited about my coming over tomorrow and would i mind making more money and watching three more kids? unfortunately, i'm going to my aunt's house tomorrow night for rosh hashanah and can't cancel seeing my entire family so that i can babysit on a day when i was totally not told i was supposed to. so, for one of the few times in my entire life, i actually had to confront someone and tell them that they were wrong and i couldn't do anything about it.

in between stacking books and balancing laptops and disappointing children, i've been thinking a lot about trust. i've been particularly curious as to how you can actually ever trust anyone. that sounds really jaded and cynical, but i feel it's still a valid question. for instance: someone in my family was cheated on for eight years before she found out, and she'd been with her husband since she was seventeen. if you can't trust someone after thirty years, when can you really trust anyone? also, her husband was the most meek, soft-spoken, least-likely-to-cause-a-scene guy i've ever known. to hear that he was a big liar for almost half my life was a little disconcerting.

i had a very timely dream last night (which is proof that this trust thing has been on my mind for a while) about how a few people in my life handed me a rattlesnake and proceeded to spend the rest of the dream laughing about how i was getting bitten by it. ok, so it sounds way less powerful and symbolic when it's written down like that, but i guess it shows that i'm just trying to avoid rattlesnake bites. the only multiple puncture wounds i need are the ones i'm likely to get when i go back in a month to the "drawing station" and they decide again to play minesweep and "where's the vein?" with my arms.

in short, no one likes to get owned. and so how do you ever know who is going to screw you over? like, for example, sam, who was supposed to come home straight home from school forty minutes ago so i could go to my doctor's appointment. he's not here, because sometimes, he can be an ass.