"Fuck, I think I just killed a frog," Ben says. We are going eighty on back roads near his house. He sees another frog and swerves to dodge it. In the headlights I see a brown grey blob leap off the road.

"Fuck," I say, "maybe don't swerve like that. I think you hit another one when you swerved."

"Huh?" Ben says. I am baked, Ben less so.

"This reminds me of the frogs in my grandma's backyard," I say. "I don't see them anymore. I don't know why."

We get to Ben's and smoke a bong. I take a modest hoot and fall onto the couch. It's been awhile for me. Ben didn't really smoke weed until I started, back in high school. I watch him hit a big popper. He exhales intensely and doesn't move for a few moments.

"I think I'm good," he says. I have another small toke.

My grandmother's backyard is a smallish rectangle and I still mow her lawn. When I was young, I'd mow in rectangles from the perimeter until I hit the center. After a few rounds, I'd sometimes see little frogs hopping away towards the fence. I always wondered if I had killed any, but I never saw frogs before I started mowing. I never felt or saw any blood or guts.

The next day Ben and I drive to a theme park with my two younger sisters and my other friend, Dan. In high school, Dan would drive like a nut on the back roads near Ben's house. He'd take his truck and go over a hundred, getting air off big hilly roads. He did that once with me, my cousin, and Ben. Dan and Ben haven't really hung out since then.

I haven't driven to the theme park before. I'm supposed to meet Ben at a carpool lot, but I miss the exit. We make Ben meet us at the next exit. My oldest-younger sister does not want to call him and ask him to do this, but my youngest sister makes her. After I miss that exit, everyone is a bit more attentive to my driving. A couple of times I change lanes on the highway and a car merges behind me at the same time. I don't see them until we're in the next lane and they're right behind us. Every time I switch into the left lane, I look back and see my youngest sister checking too. Sometimes they clap when I make a quick, aggressive but necessary lane change. Ben says "yesss" as soon as he sees me signal. It's funny.

Dan doesn't like roller coasters. He doesn't mind going on wimpy rides with my youngest sister. Ben, my oldest-younger sister and I go on the big rides. Ben and Dan are good. I feel like I could get Ben to do anything. In line, we see a music video for a song on the radio. Ben talks about how much that song sucks. I sing the chorus to him throughout the day and he says he's going to punch me. For a few rides, we're all in line together. Ben and Dan talk about their relationships. They're both single. On the biggest coaster in the park, Ben makes us sit at the very front. My sister freaks out but somehow I don't care. The best part is when I feel like I'm falling.

Ben, Dan and I split up from my sisters for a bit. Dan wants to go to the waterpark. Ben wants to smoke a joint first. I am paranoid and Dan is too. Security aren't far away and there are lots of kids and parents. But Ben assures Dan it's fine in the designated smoking area. I watch from a few metres away. I have to drive in three hours. They finish smoking and it's fine.

I pay sixteen dollars for a small locker. Ben and I stuff almost all of our things in it. I tell Ben we won't be able to fit everything in, and he says, "just stuff it," so I do. We were going to bring our towels with us but Ben convinces me to just stuff them. We are laughing. Then Dan wants to put away his hat and shoes. So we go back to the locker and somehow stuff those too. Dan says, "I guess I don't mind a flat hat." We all find it very funny. I have never stuffed something that hard. 

We go in the wavepool and joke about pushing kids around when they splash us. On the lazy river, we push each other under the waterfalls. A few times I say, "somewhere down that crazy river," or, "somewhere down that lazy river." After that, we meet up with my sisters and go on only one more ride all together, because Ben needs to leave. On this ride, all five of us sit in a single row of harnesses and are spun and dropped and shot up in all directions. I feel very much like I am falling.

On the way back, Ben and I listen to music until I drop him off at the carpool. Dan takes shotgun. My oldest-younger sister does not want to call him and ask him to do this, but my youngest sister makes her. Before today, Dan hasn't driven on the highway with me. He asks,

"Have you ever been in a car accident? Is that why you drive so careful?"

That night, I watch part of a documentary on Seaworld and orca whales with sisters and my parents. I pet my dog and she brings me a toy but she doesn't really know what to do with it. There's no space to run and throw, so every attempt at play is half assed. Before the show is over, I go upstairs to my room.

The next day, I'm at my grandma's. In the last couple years I've mowed her lawn in sections, starting in the middle. Sometimes the grass gets on her garden, but she no longer tends to it. I don't see the frogs anymore, I don't know why. Maybe they just appeared during a strong summer. Maybe everything dried up. My grandma used to have a problem with mosquitoes behind her yard, so I started mowing the grass behind the fence. That seemed to do the trick. Rainwater from her eaves trough stands in a big barrel, and still no mosquitoes.

As I fill the tank, a grasshopper jumps right onto the valve. I notice them all over the lawn. I start the mower. It sends a grasshopper flying into the wall of the house. I try mowing in sections. I go over some of the backyard a second time, so the cut grass doesn't pile up. I try to say hi to the neighbors. The front lawn is much trickier than the back. There are all sorts of shapes out there. By the end of it, I'm mowing in circles.

How I am my Father
When I am angry
When I don't listen
When I think I am right
When I smoke pot
When I am selfish

How I am my Mother
When I am afraid
When I don't act
When I think I'm wrong
When I can't help myself
When I am depressed

How I became myself
. . . (2 b ct'd)

baby when you look at me you know that I'll be here forever
baby when I look at you I know that we'll be here together

lol true

"The art is in the ability that I can take something that should make you want to kill yourself, and produce a low-grade lol when you read it."

-Brent Kim

what i ve started reading in the last ~6 months and may or may not have finished probably not gotten past the first few pages let alone finished

"Unfinished work attracts company and is bad for morale" 

• Dostoevsky brothers k (finished, discussed w other people, started reading 3-4 essays on it which I did not finish :'( ) 
• Kierkegaard fear and trembling / repetition (read one page, made a poster and started a book club that had a botched marketing campaign and didn't start, lol) 
• Mind over Mood (re-read first chapter for the Nth time, lol)
• Reinventing your life (read chapters 1-3, started skimming ch5)
• The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People (I've read couple times before but this time I just put my thumb along the length of the pages and flipped through them; no actually I read several chapters of this on a PDF and highlighted important things and wrote them out)
• Cszizentmihalyi, The flow of everyday life, or finding flow or whatever: I actually read most of this - do things that make you focus, it's more rewarding in the long term, goddamn what a hypothesis??? TV and other lounge activities make you feel unhappy and unrewarded over time??????
• Mark Rippetoe, Practical Programming for Strength Training (only read what my little meathead could absorb, ie..e skipped about half of it)
• Alexander Galloway, Gaming: Essays on Algorithmic Culture (got into the first chapter, got lazy to invest in his careful framing of terms and argument before it could get rewarding, lol, read mostly on greyhound) 
• Carver, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love (started last week, currently reading for book club, this one will actually get finished, lol) 
• The Art of Chess (more or less just opened the introduction)
• Nietzsche, genealogy of morality (reading introduction now, lol, will it gather dust??????)
• Online Self Help Book (actually using this RN, holy moly)
  
• shouts out to everyone i forgot to mention, I know you're lurking out there in .pdfs on my other PC or hidden somewhere on my bookshelf, and a big shoutouts to the unread internet articles taking up 1-30 tabs a day, you know who you are