As I bounced around the living room on the giant inflated ball Lauren bought - I believe its technical name is "abdominal-exercise doohickey" - I thought gleefully to myself, "My first week of unemployment? ROCKS."

Then I fell off the ball and it knocked me back into reality. This isn't my first week; it's my fifth.

My vacation, the self-indulgent month I spent on the East Coast with my family and a guy and a city that fascinates me, is finally over. I'm back in Los Angeles, having closed my ears to the growing chorus of real-life concerns (Job! Money!) for as long as I could. It was marvelous. Usually, I spend all my hiatus time in Sarasota with my parents; this is the first time in ages that I've taken a vacation purely for me, and it was therapeutic.

Being back isn't too easy, though, mostly because it's a tad lonely waking up in the morning without him next to me. Before I left, he sent me a note that said, "Looking forward to you being the first thing I see in the morning and the last thing I see at night," and truly I got addicted to that sensation.

Through all the traveling and talking, I feel so close to him now, almost to the point that I don't want to write about him. Or any of it. The temptation is to keep it purely for me, in my mind -- a collection of events and sights and inside jokes that I'll relive in my head and my heart, untainted by the constraints of language that probably won't capture any of it in its true spirit.

We're still an undefined thing - although, maybe the sheer fact of our lack of definition is a definition in itself. In a way I feel odd calling us a "we," yet at the same time, it sounds utterly natural and right. This guy's incredibly special. I absolutely love being with him, and I miss it. We're very good together. He's easy, enthralling company for me. I love sitting over empty dinner plates languidly sipping wine and talking, confiding in each other things we somehow have a hard time saying to other people. I love that he believes in me, and that he makes it so easy to believe in him. I wish he believed a little more strongly in himself; in many ways, I'm not sure he trusts his own strength of character. It's a shame, because he has it in spades, but I can totally understand where he's coming from: Sometimes, it's easier for me to hide behind what I feel are my weaknesses, so that if I succumb to them, I can at least say to myself, "Well, I warned everyone this would happen - I never pretended to be anything else." The trick is daring yourself to become that something else, realizing that passions adapt and change and blossom into things more beautiful and pure than you previously thought. The trick, often, is just to trick yourself out of psychological traps.

What does all this mean? Great question.

I try not to give a name to any of it. It's hard not to build an attachment to somebody like him, someone who clicks with me as well as he does and genuinely seems to care. He makes me smile like no one has in a really long time. We'll keep talking, hopefully keep missing each other, and with luck we'll get a chance to see each other again soon. Maybe he'll meet someone in New York. Maybe I'll meet someone in Los Angeles. Maybe he's sick of me. Maybe we won't be able to forget the simple joys of each other, and we'll muster the guts and the faith to take bigger chances on each other. Maybe our undeniable, irresistible chemistry will fizzle into something calmer, and we'll distill from the morass a lasting friendship. Who knows.

But the definitions, the heavy stuff, can wait, as far as I'm concerned. I'd rather live it than label it.

Seriously, though. The aforementioned doohickey is fantastic.

And so now I'm sending out resumes. In the next couple days, or even later today, I'll post some more stuff about London and New York, and possibly a treatise on how I can't understand what the hell is wrong with Beth-from-Passions's face. She looks like the offspring of David Schwimmer and a duck.

Ah, the marvelous mysteries of DNA.

I also got the wonderful news that I'm nominated for another Diarist Award, this time for Outstanding Comedic Entry (for "Las Vegas, M.D."). I'm so insanely, unbelievably blessed to have good friends and supportive readers, and I'm utterly surprised and humbled that I'm a finalist. Just once, though, could I get nominated against people who aren't brilliant? Hee.

Seriously, though, thanks so much for the support! I'm a finalist! Whee!

Someone got here by searching for: war friend left hand music Reading: Mrs. Dalloway, which I started in a bar while I was sucking back pint after pint of cider; consequently, I can't remember any of the 50 pages I read. Grateful to: Jessica, Carrie, Lauren, Amy, and Julie, for being fabulous women and for helping me turn my resume from crap into a nicely formatted document that might actually make me look marginally employable. You ladies rock.