A confession: I don't know how to date. In part, I have to blame this on being a lesbian. Lesbians don't really date. We meet someone at a club, dancing, bodies sweaty, pheromones raging, bass pounding in our ears and chests and fingers. We go home with her, and if the sex is at all reasonable and she has enough of the right books and CDs on her shelves, we quietly arrange for enough of our stuff to be brought over that we don't really need to return to our own apartments, except maybe to feed the cat, at least until the lease is up.

Okay, that's both inaccurate and unfair.

Except that it's still true on some fundamental level.

And it's equally true that I don't know how to date.

"So I was in the elevator, and you were right," Noodlebowl told me. "It smells terrible."

"I told you," I said.  "It smells like a diaper pail."

"It's gross," she agreed, "but anyway. I got in the elevator, and this creepy old guy was already in there. And, of course, it's stopping at every floor." That's the way our elevators are these days, during the Great Elevator Construction Project of '09-infinity: It smells and it's slow. "So it stopped on the 7th floor and the old guy just looked out and said really loud, 'Oh fuuuck!' And I thought, oh my God, that's what you're going to grow up to be."

First, what's your favorite scar?

In Season 1 of Mad Men, there's this incident where Betty Draper wrecks the family car, with the children playing in the floor of the back seat. After the accident, Betty tells her husband Don that her daughter Sally might have died -- or worse, gotten an ugly scar. I don't know if it's the time that's passed since 1960 or if it's me, but I've always been proud of my scars: The ones I don't remember, like the one that looks like a tiny bird's foot on my wrist; the ones my cat Simon left; the ones from playing softball that look like my leg was attacked by a cheese grater.

I'm proud of all of them, but most of them don't make good stories. I mean, I slid into second base and lost a layer of skin doesn't make a good story. Nor does the tale of my cat getting freaked out and sinking his teeth into my calf. Two of my scars, though. Two of the worst ones in some ways reveal more about me than the marks I've chosen to put on my body.

Thursday was an ordinary day, if a somewhat difficult one. I see my therapist on Thursday afternoons, and it was one of those sessions that left me a bit teary and wrung out. The obvious solution was, of course, Ethiopian food. We had a delicious dinner at my favorite Ethiopian restaurant, I had a couple of beers, I came home, I curled up on the couch with my laptop and chatted with S for a couple of hours. It was a good end to a pretty rough day, I thought.

Until just after 10, just as I was saying goodnight to S, and I said to ana, "I'm not feeling so good." I spent the next 5 or so hours losing every bit of my dinner and anything else in my digestive tract. I was running a fever, so I knew what this was -- it was the Plague that had already hit one of my co-workers. Since we have only bathroom, and it's about as far away from the upstairs bedroom as is possible, I spent the night on the couch. And the next night. I had my pillows and ana's fuzzy fleece blanket, and my laptop playing tv shows on hulu and netflix streaming.

I'd forgotten how much I love sleeping on a couch. It's so cozy. One side of my body is supported, and there's no room to move much. It's like a little nest.

(First, see poll. Then, read story).

It was one of those games I always knew I'd win. It inevitably came up in those late-night college apartment drinking sessions that were a little too spontaneous and low-key to actually call "parties." The CD player would be cycling through the same five albums -- Tori (Little Earthquakes), the Indigo Girls (self-titled), Melissa Etheridge (Yes I Am), Nirvana (Nevermind), and Janis Joplin (Greatest Hits) -- for the hundredth time.

Someone would start talking about concerts they'd been to, or concerts they want to attend, the missed opportunity. The last time someone saw a Dead concert. The time someone tried to sneak in to see the Lemonheads and ended up getting a free meal from the Hare Krishnas. What it was like seeing Hootie & the Blowfish before they were famous.

Then -- it was just the way these things went -- someone would ask the question:

What was your first concert?

"Ice fishers," said ana, gesturing at the shapes gathered around distant holes on Horn Pond as we drove past on the way to the grocery store.

"Yeah," I said. "Also knows as 'idiots,' as far as I can tell. I just don't get it."

And I don't, seriously. I mean, you go out onto this frozen pond, and how the hell do you know whether it's frozen all the way through? We have enough above-freezing temperatures, and enough thaws and freezes that I'd be skeptical first of all. Second, while I love ocean fish, I'm skeptical of freshwater fish, especially lake fish. These fish swim around in their own excrement all the time! And it's muddy! And third, you're fishing on the fucking ice! It's cold out there, and even this winter when I've decided not to feel the cold, I bet I'd think the wind whipping across the icy pond would be a little brisk.

But let's get this straight. While I'm certainly anti-ice-fishing, I'm not anti-fishing in general. I liked surf-fishing on the coast of North Carolina, even when all I caught were spots (which many people throw back, but which I always found to be delicious when battered and fried crisp). And, for a brief period of time, I tried very hard to learn to enjoy fly fishing.

Until I broke a rib.

There are two things you should know about me.

One: While I make my living spinning words to persuade agencies to give my university and its researchers money, when I'm faced with a threat to myself, I am utterly unable to bullshit my way out. I'm much more likely to simply own up to whatever I'm accused of, or at least to whatever part I could rationally take responsibility for. In most cases, this works to my advantage. Nothing defuses a boss's anger or a parent's disappointment or a partner's displeasure than saying, "You're absolutely right. I screwed up. Here's my plan for making this right."

I haven't written about work in a long time, mostly because what can I say about it? Somehow, I've managed, in the past 18 months or so, to create a job I really like. I have very few complaints, and it feels wrong to write about how much I love my job on HuSi of all places. Hulver himself would probably ban me.

But I am feeling some anxiety recently. Apparently.

Yesterday, I posted about my brother P's son, who is due to be born in June. The doctors detected a large mass in his chest during a routine and follow-up ultrasound, and today, they went to Duke Medical Center for MR imaging and to learn more about what is affecting their unborn child.

I openly admit that I'm superstitious. That's just the way my mind works -- I see patterns in random events, all over the place. Even when I know it's irrational, I see the pattern. Life-changing events cluster around the same dates.

My brother P is expecting his second child, due June 12. My grandmother, who died on October 20, 1993, was born on June 12. My parents' divorce was final on October 20, 1992. My cat Simon died on November 23, 2007. My Evil Ex dumped me on November 23, 1999. On November 23, 2009, I found S again. April 17, 2006, my dog Sadie died. April 17, 2003, an incredibly personal tragedy occurred. April 16, 2007, my grandfather died.