11/11/03 3:45 AM: Mood swings are weird.

I woke up late today, and ran out to run my Monday errands. Mondays and Thursdays are turning into my "go out of the house" days while the sun is shining. So I'm out, driving around, depositing a check or dropping off some paperwork, and I noticed how good my mood was. The sun was shining, my iPod was churning out good song after good song with little fast forwarding. I have friends and good times and I am loved. Pleasant moods are less rare than they used to be, so I try to savor them as they come.

Driving along, I saw a simply amazing looking sister on a bicycle, riding west on Jefferson. I saw her as my head turned, looking for the walk/don't walk signal to change to blinking red, signaling my turn to cross the intersection. My only response was "wow," when I saw her -- dark hair, short dreadlocks, tan canvas cargo pants. My brain's normal sensors that filter out teenagers didn't go off, as she had some of the look of a person who's dealt with real life on an everyday basis, a kind of world weariness that the young don't have, especially around the eyes and in the hands. She didn't see me at all, and traffic was heavy. I had no real interest in stopping her or talking to her, and even if I did I'm not really good at speaking to strangers. Besides, I'm really pretty happy with my personal life, so I'm not really interested in talking to "new people" romantically, just as I normally avoid "new people" in regular life. Still, she was remarkably beautiful, and being able to appreciate that brought a smile to my face.

A few minutes later, I was heading west on Washington and looked up. It was late afternoon, with the throes of rush hour slowing my forward progress in a way that I didn't find appealing. I like driving, but don't like doing it slowly, or stopping a lot. Still, I took a second to glance up, and saw a kind of fan formation of clouds, with orange sunlight illuminating the westward edges of the clouds. It was visually stunning, and I again exclaimed aloud, "wow." My mood was warm and I literally could not complain. I had a night of random writing and singing ahead of me, as Monday nights are normally pretty relaxed for me, so all around I was pretty pleased. Traffic notwithstanding.

One song my iPod bumped, one I hit repeat on, was "If I Could Go" by Angie Martinez, featuring Lil' Mo and a guy named Sacario. The song basically involves two people who love one another, who just say, "you know what, screw it, we're outta here" and run off together. It's kind of a less nihilistic hip hop version of "The Way" by Fastball (another all time favorite). She had some lines that really leapt out to me -- when talking about her dude, she said, "Hold you the right way while watchin the night fade/ Make you feel like you right back in the ninth grade." That really caught me, remembering my pubescent excitement at holding a girl's hand or having someone smile at me through a crowded hallway of lockers and students. The guy's verse made me laugh, with lines like "Oh boy we 'bout to make a lot of people annoyed," and "I send Dutch and three other goons to go get you." For some reason those lines seemed hilarious as I drove north on Motor. Like he was as amused at the chaos their sudden absence would cause as he was pleased at having this private time with his lady. The song's chorus sang to me, "I'll pack my things, soon as you say, 'baby vamos,' we'll fly away, like there is no, no tomorrow, if I can go." I suddenly wondered, "shoot, what's stopping you?"

Still, things happen. All the driving was aimed at getting to the dry cleaners. I made an agreement with a singer some months ago, that she would give me dry cleaning virtually in perpetuity (I realistically figured it would be nine months or so) and help produce a few songs of material next year. I had a jersey and some jeans in my car, ready to be dry cleaned. When I got there, however, she was interested in some cosmetic changes to the website I'd built for her. Before doing a photo shoot that, truthfully, would have been a fair chunk of change by itself, I had her approve the color palette before I started, expressing that it would be an irritant to "switch" things. I also asked her to be meticulous in the copy, but still somehow she expected me to "look over" things. To be honest, the writing is atrocious, but I can't babysit everybody, so I never mentioned it to her. Anyhoo, when I got to the cleaners, she was suddenly huffy about the site. Saying we needed a "clear contract" to say what was gonna be done and when, and that she took responsibility if my cleaning was wrong. That she didn't want to take any more clothes until we straightened this out.

To be honest, I was appalled. The 285th Rule of Acquisition says, "No good deed ever goes unpunished." The more I go along, the more relevant that seems to me. This sister -- who drove to LA after having "a bad experience" in North Carolina that left her uniniterested in dating and with a seven inch scar on her right arm -- was not somebody I wanted to "get paid" off of, somebody that I was willing to do a site for her in the interests of getting her singing career off the ground. Idiot mistake. She's a Gemini -- mercurial, tricky to get a read on. I should never do business with people unless I have to.

So that made me angry, and I drove home planning to take her site down. The anger, however, made me chipper. I really enjoyed it. I wasn't even angry when I found the password to her site changed -- she played the whole game quite well, and got a fairly expensive site for virtually nothing (since I'd have to believe she intends on stiffing me for the rest of our agreement). True, I could take her to court, as verbal agreements (which I have tons of emails to back up) are binding for two years ... but eh. It's a lot of work, going after a woman who has next to no assets. People who like to change the rules on their agreements at late points of the game are a sad reality of my life, it seems.

I still went out later that night, I talked to my dawg Mikey, who's having some mood swings himself (although he had an experience with a woman that was so fresh, it should be in a John Hughes movie), sang a song and kept moving. I kept missing my usual crew of layabouts, and came on home, a little more maudlin. The night held precious little amusement or joy for me, as I prowled the dark freeways and wide thoroughfares of the city, my brow furrowed for no reason I could discern.

The later it gets, I've often found my moods turning dour. Lonely nights, and all that.

I guess that's all I have to say about that.