Lately I've been thinking about how I spent my Saturday nights in the early 90's. I was 15 in 1990 and I babysat a regular job for a Jewish couple with two kids, whom my grandmother knew from cleaning her parent's house years before. I was completely impressionable. I didn't smoke yet. Hadn't tried pot, didn't like the taste of coffee. No boyfriend, no sex, no first kiss yet. Too scared to watch the Mr.'s Playboy channel (didn't necessarily stop me), too scared when my friend (who also babysat here on occasion) stole $20 from the Mrs., too scared I'd have a pantry full of fruit snacks and teddy grahams someday. And, by luck and most importantly, I found Twin Peaks--hadn't ever seen anything like the show before and not since. Sure, my mom let me stay up on Thurday nights to watch Knots Landing with her, Beverly Hills 90210 was amusing, and Degrassi Junior High was cool, but Twin Peaks was intriguing in every way.

Its characters were interesting to watch because of their individual styles and quirks, the mystery was gripping--who killed Laura Palmer?--and the story twisted and turned fantastic each week. You could never see what was coming with that David Lynch.

The show ran for two years, and I lapped up every minute of it until the final episode, which scared the hell out of me for a long time. The reason Twin Peaks has come to mind is that the show's detective, Special Agent Dale Cooper (Kyle Machlachlan), took notes into a tape recorder.

Writing anything lengthy, for me, has to be done on the computer. The computer in question sits on my kitchen table, right in the middle of the Teletubbies on acid--two baby/toddler boys sweet on cookies, wrestling, howling, gabbing, and destroying my house. They're extremely smiley and huggable too, offset by the occasional black eye and almost permanent stink of poop. Then there's the six year-old princess. She likes to talk. And on a bad day, the Cheerios stuck to the floor consume me. Anybody seen my muse? It was just here a minute ago ....

I think best in bed. No, I mean alone. Dark is good too. And I think best when driving, which is not the appropriate time to jot story ideas because they're hard to read, not to mention the road and the 4000 pounds of minivan under my control.

What I'm getting at is I need to use a tape recorder like Special Agent Dale Cooper did. I have one, unopened tapes for it, and the lame excuse that I'm scared of my voice. He and I turned out to have a lot in common. We're both after the truth, perfectionist, brunette (are guys brunettte?), trying to find order in chaos, amusingly quirky, seriously humorous, rather straight-faced, pin neat, we both like a good cup of coffee, and are without a life beyond our work.