Depression is only mildly amusing. Had another nervous breakdown today. Well, maybe it wasn't quite a nervous breakdown, just a mildly trepidatious breakdown. Scream scream scream scream. I apologize that my blogs haven't been very entertaining lately (or, indeed, existent for the last couple days). As Anna would say, "I seem to have misplaced my funny."

Tired. I know, if you're tired you should include details so at least your exhaustion is entertaining. Well, sorry, the most trenchant adjective I can come up with at this level of sleep-deprivation is "ybliewwgbugwa." And that won't get me very far in the self-publishing community.

Zzzzzzzzzz....

So much to do...

What is the threshold of betrayal beyond which forgiveness and reconciliation is impossible?

Just wondering.

Make an outline!

I don't know if it's just lack of sleep. I don't know if it's stress. I don't know a lot of things, including the proof to Fermat's Last Theorem, but that's not here nor there.

I do know that this afternoon I wanted to just put E in her crib and leave her there to cry.

I didn't, of course; I held her and soothed her and fed her. And she did stop crying at long last.

I had such great expectations for D's time at his pre-schools, and she comes along with her "I'm a seven week old but I don't take naps" attitude... Well, she does take naps, but only if someone is holding her.

At least I got a shower in today. Didn't get one of those last Friday. And I got lunch, too, which I didn't get yesterday.

I was probably too tired to write about it last night, but Mondays are the days that D goes to two schools--one in the morning and one in the afternoon, with only a forty-five minute break in between. If he refuses to eat what I've given him, he just doesn't eat. There isn't any time for second chances. He has generous snacks at both schools, at least, or so I assume, since he also refused to eat dinner.

The rest of the week, it's only one school per day--afternoons on Tuesdays and Thursdays, mornings on Wednesdays and Fridays.

I am very ambivalent about this. He loves the morning school (and I like it 'cause it's walking distance), but he has to go to the afternoon school (they're supposed to help his developmental delays). Is it too much, especially Mondays? We're paying for the morning school, and the county pays for the afternoon. So we could end the morning and save a bunch of dough. But is he better served by a developmental school where he's among the highest-functioning individuals, or a normal school where he can look up to kids who are at normal developmental rates?

And, while I agree that he's delayed, I really don't think he's as bad as he tests. He takes a while to get warmed up to situations, but is energetic and happy once he does so. And there's always the question: would he have been delayed at all if his eyesight wasn't so bad, and does that mean that, now that he has glasses, he shouldn't really be in a special school anymore?

I love the kid so much. I hope I don't screw him up. That's what fathers tend to do, don't they?

E, I think, will not be a problem. She's already gurgling and cooing in a way D wasn't doing at this age. If anything, she'll probably grow up too fast and start seeing men who are even worse than me. That's what daughters tend to do, don't they?

Irrational Exuberance.

E is growing by leaps and bounds (though her sleep schedule is erratic, as evidenced by the timestamp on this entry). You want proof? Damn you, just take it on faith, it's good enough for organized religion! There is no Baby but E and K is her Feeder!

Ahem. Okay, proof number one: She's already moved on to size 3 diapers. Proof number two: She's all snug in pajamas that are sized 3-6 months.

Big deal, you say. Oh, but did I mention she's only seven weeks old?

Even D didn't get this big this fast. I don't know what sort of steroids K has in her milk, but I want some.

There are ENTIRE WORLDS hidden in the clutter on my desk.

Oh, would anyone like to shoot me a copy of Final Cut Pro? My dumb-ass editing suite doesn't work under Mac OS X (and even for OS 9, you have to stretch the definition of "works").

Fix It In Post. A long, long time ago, Rex and I started a film called "The Biggest" based on a short story of his. Today was the final shooting day.

It had been over a year since the most recent shooting day. We're not doing this for our day jobs, obviously.

One of the characters drives a BMW, and one drives an 80s-era Honda Civic. The shots we needed were of each car driving (separately) into a parking garage, dramatizing therefore each character's arrival at work. For something so simple, it sure took a long long time to get around to.

I already have a rough cut, mind you, but without those two shots, the film wasn't done. Now it is, except for post-production details like the music.

About the Honda, which belonged to Rex's ex-fiance back in the day and was affectionately christed "Blue Rhonda": the last time it was run was during the last filming session, i.e. over a year ago. So there was some worry that she wouldn't start. Well, she did (with a little jumper cable help). I'm told the clouds of blue smoke were visible from the Space Shuttle.

But she made it to the parking garage and back to Rex's, though we were prepared to abandon her if need be. "That was her last hurrah," said Rex.

Wouldn't it just be poetic justice that the BMW was the one that broke down?

(It would be a better story if that actually had happened...)

If you can't think, link. I am now addicted to Ms. Pac-Man all over again. Ah, the days in Norwalk's Lums restaurant, popping quarters into a cocktail-table version of the game!

I could of course go down the street to Beltway Plaza, where in the hallways are some of the most ancient video games known to man, including the Ms. and her husband.

And another thing in the world of video games: that old classic Mac game Crystal Quest is now available for the Palm OS. It's pretty good, too, according to K.

My wife has now had red hair for a week and a day.

It's looking better all the time.

(She told me to write the first sentence. I added the second.)

I really should blog at 6 in the morning when my mind is fresh. Fresh? Well, actually jumbled--jumbled with ideas, questions, etc. etc. If I wrote them down, maybe I wouldn't lose them so easily.

Alas! I spend all that time on silly things like, oh, breakfast.

Speaks Volumes. From the colophon to David Pogue's Mac OS X: The Missing Manual:

Due to an annoying and permanent wrist ailment, the author wrote this book by voice, using Dragon Naturally Speaking on a generic Windows PC.

Dweeb Marries Swede.

On this date in 1994, I got married. To my wife. K! Haven't you been listening? My beautiful, tall, formerly light-brown but now red-haired Swede of a wife. And after eight years and two kids, she's sexier than ever.

She's especially sexy when she empties the dishwasher before I wake up, as she did this morning. Ah, bliss!

If you're reading this, K (and shouldn't you really be working?), I love you with all my heart, and my heart keeps growing to make room.

I just can't believe you found your way to a dweeb like me...

D-Day. (K-Day?)

Today was K's first day at work and my first day alone with the kids. (Non-sequitur: D has fallen asleep on top of a pink flamingo. We now return you to your regularly scheduled blog.) It went surprisingly well. First of all, E slept seven hours last night (WAAAHOOO!!!) and woke up just in time for K to feed her before she had to catch the bus (K, not E). D woke up, naturally, around six-thirty when E was crying, but after I changed her diaper, she fell asleep 'til 9:15. So for nearly three hours it was just me and D, territory I know well.

Oh, did I mention that I'm coming down with the fever and cold that K and D both had a few days ago? That did make things interesting, I admit, but on the whole, it wasn't too bad. Fortunately, K's taking it easy for the next couple weeks and only working part-time, so we picked her up at 12:30 from work. But even by then, I expected to be a nervous wreck. I was happy when my expectations weren't met.

My goodness, he's actually writing about a good day! Am I reading the right blog?

Now, we've just put E to bed, and I've got that weird, floating, dizzy feeling I always get when I have a slight fever. I hope I'll be able to sleep and wake up RESTED and REFRESHED and READY TO CONQUER IRAQ--I mean, THE NEW DAY!

On a wholly unrelated note (and I'm sorry to harp about my statistics again, but it's been a while), I've been getting over a hundred hits per week on average, which I'm quite psyched about. And what I'm even more psyched about is most of those hits are listed as "unknown" referrals--that is, someone didn't follow a link, they actually typed my name in their browser, so they're probably a regular reader. Well, if you're a regular, welcome to you! I'm happy to have you here. And the rest of you (except possibly the guy searching--twice--for Topless Boylan Studio ) are welcome to stick around as well.

Phew. We just got the phone bill from when E was born. I didn't expect to have to dip into her college fund quite so early.

Self-esteem is an important quality. If anyone has some that they're not using, could I borrow it?

School shootings. My first play was a skit I wrote for the eighth grade play... the call went out for students to write comedy sketches, and I was the only one to respond. I wrote an adaptation of a friend's story as well as my own sketch and the teacher/director liked mine and used it alongside such greats as A. A. Milne, Eric Bentley, and Abbot and Costello.

My point is not to point out how wunderful my first play was, but to consider whether it would have been produced at all today. I can't remember what it was called--maybe "The Pearly Gates Association"?--but it was set in heaven, where a recently-killed individual confronts the Secretary of Heaven, who comes from New Yawk and has an attitude. It got a reasonable number of laughs, I think. Anyway, the lead-in showed the actual Death scene--the conceit was that the two guys who did "Who's on First" at the beginning were feuding throughout the show, and one of them shoots the other (offstage, but we did see the gun and hear the shots), which segued nicely into my skit. Now, in today's America, I doubt showing one eighth grader shooting another would fly.

But should it have, even then? I don't pretend to know the answer to that, or to even have an opinion. It's just something to wonder about.

Incidentally, I seem to have been fascinated with death in those days. Also in eighth grade, I wrote a short story called "Established A.D. 1" which dealt with the death of the main character. (This time he took a train to the afterlife.) What was going on back then, and how did I get past it?

Why I'm a failure.

My first job out of college was at Syracuse Stage as an apprentice electrician. A theatrical electrician requires a bit less skill than a household electrician. Basically, I played with lights. I hung them from the ceiling ("grid"), pointed them at the actors ("focused"), and during shows I ran the light board ("light board").

I did not fit in well. This was less because I considered myself an actor and playwright, not a technician (I had got along in the tech world before, and would do so again), than because I didn't really like most of the people at this particular theater. It was the first Large Regional Theater I ever worked at, and it was also the year that the National Endowment for the Arts was under attack. The theater had budgeted in anticipation of an NEA grant that never materialized. So Money was on everyone's mind, not Art.

I took the job because I felt that I needed to a) make money and b) make contacts. I succeeded reasonably well on a), at least for someone used to salaries from theaters in central Maine. As for contacts, well... I was a beginning playwright trying to make contacts at a Big Regional Theater that was an island, basically... there was no theatrical "world" outside Syracuse Stage, and no like-minded peers that I could find. I didn't know, at the time, that I would have been better served going to a city and plunging into the fringe theater scene, building a reputation, and staging my own productions. Instead, I sucked up to half-rate professors at Syracuse U. and the occasional playwright who had a show on our main stage.

I took two people to lunch: one was Vittorio Rossi, who was a Canadian playwright whose play The Last Adam was on in January. It was, basically, an Arthur Miller show. At least we had something to talk about (I'm a huge Miller fan) but he didn't write the kind of plays that I wanted to. We had a good lunch and conversation. I gave him a copy of my full-length play I had written in college and never heard from him again.

Here I was doing exactly what I was supposed to do... getting in people's faces, picking their brains, then showing my stuff. And it was getting nowhere.

The second person was the director of All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten, a sentimental, tuneless musical based on Robert Fulghum's writings that the audience inexplicably loved. Again, lunch was great, and again he was happy to read my work--"Give it to me at opening, when I'll have time to relax." So, I did. And you could tell by the look on his face that it was just a brush-off, that he had hoped I forgot. I never heard from him, either.

I learned several lessons from that year. First, don't bother sharing your best work with people in power, because they will ignore you even if you write Hamlet. Second, don't try to do tech and be creative at the same time (unless you're a designer). People look at you and see a techie--only a techie. Third, contacts do no good if the people you've contacted are immediately going to another city while you have to stick around to run their show.

Aw, who am I kidding? There's only one lesson I took away from that year: I have no talent so I may as well give up. Sad, but true. So, the answer to the boldfaced question above: Why am I a failure? Me. I made the choice to go to Syracuse. I inferred the lessons learned there. And I sat on my hands for the next four years, getting more and more bitter about theater, and I'm the one who hunt-and-pecks to write this blog instead of a play, or novel, or screenplay.

What I should have done? Gone to a city. Before Syracuse, K and I were living near Boston--that would have done nicely. Maybe then I could have accumulated what I'm only starting to get now--a group of peers who respect me and appreciate what I'm good at, and who I could see commandeering a corner of the park to put on a show or grabbing a videocamera and making a film. Now I've got that, but it's too late. My creativity has been squeezed out of me, and I'm another failed playwright, like the rest of 'em.

Hey, Clarence: if E doesn't go to sleep soon, I'll be opening that card. So stay tuned...

That's why he's a Beatle, and I'm just a f--ing blogger. John Lennon once sang:

I'm so tired, I haven't slept a wink
I'm so tired, my mind is on the blink
I wonder, should I get up and fix myself a drink?
No, no, no.

If I had written that song, here's how it would have been:

I'm so tired
AAAAAARRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH!

The one that got away. I wrote a really witty blog entry last night, and then the browser crashed. Here's a facsimile of what I wrote.

Molly linked to me again. I'm starting to get a little anxious about all this attention. Maybe it's just that back and forth about affairs that got me thinking this way: Are we stealing furtive glances over the blog-o-sphere? Will her husband find out and punch me in the Blog of Nose? Will my wife get suspicious and hire a private inblogstivator?

Still, I'm grateful that I made "The REAL Blogs of Note," even if it's just a fling. Once I roll off 'em, I'll lose half my traffic.

Still (to address the actual CONTENT), A Kitchen in Brabant is indeed an excellent read.

I still haven't found what I'm looking for (to quote U2 quoting a cliche), though, which is a blog by another stay-at-home Dad. After all, I need someone to commiserate with about diapers, kids, and my imminent heart attack.

It was better last night.

PTSD? The tears started--where else?--reading the comics. Just the stupid tributes were enough to set me off. And then I did what I swore I wouldn't do--turned on the television. ABC, at least, was somewhat tasteful and laid off the mournful, manipulative music and human-interest stories.

To hell with the rest of the world's opinion. I'm an individual, and it still hurts.

My friend Mike sent me this response to my entry about the 11th:

"All of my friends are radical pacifists who say that we didn't respond
appropriately afterward."

Not quite all. ;)

True enough, and he's one of the few folks who has a right--well, not a right, everyone has a right, but let's say a perspective--to comment on those events.

And at this moment one year ago, I was probably remarking "What a gorgeous day! Really should get D outside..."

Still thinking about it. I guess at some point every blogger has to do a commemorative post about September 11, so this is mine. I just don't feel honest enough to do it justice, though I suppose I'm more morally clean than all the television producers who are making a buck on 3,000 deaths.

All of my friends are radical pacifists who say that we didn't respond appropriately afterward. Well, they're entitled to their opinion. But I think that attitude is as stupid as saying "Well, we should continue negotiating with the Japanese" on December 8, 1941.

I can't stand George Bush and most of his policymakers, and I think the concept of a war with Iraq is fundamentally flawed. But I still, a year later, want our military to hunt down the organization that did the attack and kill them. If that makes me a warmonger, so be it. It's good enough for al-Quaeda.

I still believe the attacks weren't just an act of terror, but an act of war. I'm too tired to be articulate and, as I said, I didn't lose anyone in the attacks, nor was I near the Trade Center or the Pentagon, so I don't even have a right to an opinion in some sense. But every time I hear some radical leftist (and I used to be one myself!) say that WE'RE to blame for the attack, or get worked up over innocent deaths in Afganistan...

Why the fuck didn't you get worked up over the innocent deaths in New York, Virginia, and Pennsylvania? Is it only bad to kill innocents outside the U.S.? Or is it only bad for Westerners to kill innocent people--everyone else gets a pass? And maybe, just maybe, 9/11 wasn't the fault of shortsighted policy, but the fault of the 19 (or more) twisted people out to kill us for no other reason than our nationality?

Thanks.

GO TO BED. I will say that my mood seems to clearly depend on sleep. Yesterday (at least until the walk) I was a wreck, and this evening (until my snack of MAC N CHEESE!) I was in despair over a visit from the ***deleted-in-case-they-read-this***. So perhaps, it's more accurate to say my mood depends on food and exercise...

I'm gonna write about the Gonnas' performance on Friday. I just can't do it right now.

Tell me I'm a good man.

I haven't been getting to sleep early enough lately. So I apologize that I have little bloggage to provide today.

I will say, though, that I have recently enjoyed reading blogs from other stay-at-home parents:

Inane Comments
Froggie's This and That

And that's all the rolling I'm doing today, except for the joints of course. (Joke.)

I'm not making this up. Took a hike through Greenbelt Park t'day, with both kids and the dog. D was running along the trail with great abandon.

Squelch: It must be nice for him to hike, now that he can see.

K: Yeah, I can't imagine how it would be without his glasses.

Squelch: Yeah.

K: He'd be tripping over every tree trunk in sight.

(Cue D, who trips over a tree trunk as K says "sight.")

It's open mic night tonight at the New Deal Cafe, and three of the four Gonnas are gonna be there. How a rock-n-roll band will go over at a folky restaurant remains to be seen.

I wrote this in a text editor at 10 A.M. today, but my DSL connection has been nostalgic for the days of 300 baud modems, so I haven't posted it until now. (Even now it's creeping along at a few hundred bytes per second.)

Oh, my gosh, what happened to our beautiful little boy?

Right now, after throwing toys (that's one) and hitting our dog twice (that's two and three) he's in his room screaming at the top of his lungs.

He was the perfect kid (well, mostly) until he got a sister.

Please, is there anyone out there who's lived through this and can tell me that it will end?

Things got better after I wrote that... but not much.

There, that's much better.

Hm. I found a problem. The date header shows only one date--today's. Wonder how that happened?

Whew! Always keep a backup of your template, kids. While changing my Seal of Approval blogs, I somehow deleted my template entirely. (I still don't know HOW or WHY that happened.) I rebuilt it and it appears to work, but if there are any problems, do let me know.

Next week: in the style of Jerry Springer.

Golly, I've never been involved in a blog back-and-forth before. It's actually quite invigorating, if difficult to keep civil.

"Issue One!" says John McLaughlin, "The One About Affairs. Mor-ton, is Squelch A) judgemental, or B) completely misunderstood, when he takes Molly to task for her handling of her failed marriage?"

"Completely misunderstood, John. Squelch wasn't talking about her situation, but that of his best friend, where the spouse left after meeting an old flame she hadn't seen in twenty-five years, and when, by her own admission, she had been happy in the marriage until this 'gentleman' who she knew at fifteen called her out of the blue."

"Eleanor! Judgemental ass, or misunderstood poet?"

"Judgemental ass, John. Of course he has every right to leap to his friend's defense, but he has no idea what was going through the spouse's mind, and that, I think, is the point Molly is trying to make. The spouse may have said she was happy, but how can Squelch enter into her mind and know the truth--or even enter into their relationship and know the truth?"

"Answer," says McLaughlin, "Squelch is a misunderstood judgemental ass. He was talking about an individual case, but by unfairly comparing that case with Molly's story, he gave the impression that All Vows Are Created Equal, a ridiculous assertion for which he deserves to be censured. Issue Two! Has Squelch gone too long without being self-piteous? After our break."

----

In English, for those of you who aren't familiar with The McLaughlin Group. Molly said:

[Squelch's] argument will of course be that I made the vows, and I should have been prepared to live up to them. My excuse that I was young and stupid when I made the vows holds no water.

Ouch. Well, I guess I deserve that. But no, that wasn't my argument. After all, I don't know Molly from a hole in the wall (though she's a far better writer than your average hole in the wall). But I do know my friend, and I can't think of any justification for what he's been through. (They weren't young and stupid when they got married, after all.) But I apologize for the comparison; it was unfair, as John said. And I acknowledge that there's no way I can peek into anyone's relationship and know the Whole Truth.

K and I were young and stupid when we made our vows (though I think K would disagree). Fortunately for us, we both got smart at the same rate and in complementary ways. We still have our troubles, but we're doing the happily ever after thing. Nonetheless, I'm the first to recognize how lucky we are, and how that isn't the case for many folks. So, sorry, Molly; I didn't intend to judge you.

Astute readers will note that I've removed Fauxhemian from my Seal of Approval list and replaced it with The Umbrella Stand. I love people who aren't afraid to tell me when they think I'm full of it.

As fun as that was, there's an even better example of action-adventure parenting: Snapshots.

Run, Huggies, Run.

Sometimes I wonder what my life would be like as an action-adventure film.

The bag fell open in Squelch's hands. Fell open, and left only one diaper.

"That's the problem in a nutshell, S," she said. She licked her lips in a way that, at any other time, would have driven him wild, but now, she was all business. No longer his lover, this woman he only knew as "K"; now simply his boss.

"What about our regular distributor?" Squelch said, his brow a thick furrow of thought.

She shook her head, her brown locks teasing her forehead. "The Co-op Supermarket closes at nine."

He checked his watch. Latitude 76 degrees 55 minutes, longitude 39 degrees one minute. Inside at least ten cellular zones. No heat sources on the scanner but himself and K. He swore--stupid spy mode--and pressed a button. There it was. 9:39 PM. "Damn," he said softly.

He looked at her. "There's only one option."

She nodded. "Safeway."

"That's right. I'll need authorization."

"Screw authorization. Go. I'll watch our assets." She motioned to the assets, both asleep in their respective beds. He kissed her passionately--a final mixing of business with pleasure--and strode out the door, his heart pounding in his ears.

He pulled on his wraparound sunglasses and activated the night vision. A swamp of green--people, cars, untrimmed hedges. Only one thing mattered. To the Aston-Martin minivan. A screech of tires on pavement. A honk, an oath--"Hey, asshole, where's your damn headlights?" Heedless, Squelch gunned the engine and headed to the concrete jungle, the axis of evil, the suburban fiefdom--the mall.

The man who waved him down was dressed in black leather, and had black hair and dark sunglasses. "Squelch," he hissed.

"Just looking for a parking spot, Delaney," Squelch said. "You wouldn't have any handy?"

"Anything for you, Mr. S." He took a drag on his cigarette. "Why don't you park by the Sports Authority?"

Squelch shook his head, his eyes steel, his breathing steady. "I was hoping for something a little... closer."

Delaney nodded thoughtfully as he ground his cigarette into the pristine white exterior of the minivan. "I think," he said, "they're all taken."

Squelch saw the knife before he had a chance to remove his seatbelt, but it didn't matter. He pressed "play" on the CD player. "Toddler Favorites" wafted over the speakers, and with every beat of "The Wheels on the Bus," the AK-47s below the wheelbase fired ten shots. Delaney was on the ground, blood oozing from his knees, screaming. Squelch jumped from the car, his pistol at the ready. There were more goons coming out of the woodwork (literally--they all had those new PT Cruisers, and Squelch felt a pang of jealousy), but with a forward roll, a jump, and two cartwheels (while firing his gun, of course), they were all dead.

"Good thing I remembered change for the meter," he said as he flicked pennies onto Delaney's eyes.

Then it was inside the Safeway.

"Diapers," he said to the clerk, a woman who was ugly in every way except for her strong resemblance to Angelina Jolie in "Tomb Raider."

"Size?" she said, a glint of mischief in her eyes.

"Six."

She smiled and raised an eyebrow. "Big boy."

"More than you know," said Squelch. "And I'd like the special." He placed a card on the counter. She picked it up. The words glistened in the fluorescent light: Safeway Club.

She leaned forward and whispered in his left ear. "Sold out." Her breath was hot and moist. "Would you like a raincheck?"

He grabbed her hair and slammed her down on the counter. She gasped. "Dammit, I want size six Huggies and I want them now!" he yelled.

"You'll have to pay!" she screamed back. "You'll have to get Mega! Not Jumbo size, just Mega!"

Squelch let go. She staggered away. His voice was a block of ice as he said, "You know that Target sells Huggies at a better price. You know that."

She smiled in triumph. "Then you can go to Target--when they open tomorrow at eleven."

She had him. Disgusted, he said, "The things I do for England," and handed over a twenty dollar bill.

The clerk scanned the diapers and Squelch's retina for good measure. "Have a nice day, sir," she said, handing over the receipt and lingering over his eyes.

He walked to the parking lot. Her breath still stung in his ear. He pressed a button on his watch. A voice crackled. "S, report."

"The package is secure." K would want to know... but not all of it, not now. "Returning to base."

"S, we have another problem," K replied.

His breath cut short. "What?"

"Did you walk the dog yet?"

"Damn, but I forgot how much I love the theatre."

I wonder--will I ever agree with this statement again?

And now I really am going to bed.

What we say to the dog. Buddy! Go to bed!

I'm not eight years old anymore.

Here's another perspective on someone having an affair and ending their marriage. Though it sounds like somewhat of a different situation than my friend, it's very difficult to read something like this and not think about the other side of the story (the one who's being cuckolded).

Granted, the author is describing a completely different marriage, one that did not last thirteen years, and was entered when the parties were much younger. And I, of course, don't know the whole situation and have no right to judge her. But it's very hard, lately, to have ANY sympathy for folks who walk out on their spouses, knowing that my friend has been a nervous wreck, not to mention nearly suicidal at times. So, you'll excuse me, if I have no sympathy for his ex. I know where my loyalty lies, and I'm not going to shed any tears for the cheater. No matter how painful it was to leave, it's got to be more painful to be left.

K's and my anniversary is coming up. 8 years. My parents were married ten. Here's hoping we last past that mark. I'm just a little terrified. But I can always look to my mom and my stepfather, I suppose, who have been together over twenty years now.

E cries and I hear Harry Dean Stanton dying in Alien.

Today was a bad day. K and I are both at the end of our tether. I can't think of any specific incidents that made it bad... we're just tired and stir crazy and missing each other.

The one point of my day when I felt at peace, calm, and in control was when I fed E her first bottle of milk. She looked up at me with her big blue eyes (and then her big pink eyelids as she fell asleep) and I relaxed; probably about as close to the "let-down" reflex that breastfeeding mothers get as I'll ever come.

There is, of course, a prerequisite to my being able to feed her; K has to spend some time with the pump to get the milk. I'm not sure how comforting that is. Though, perhaps, it's worth it to know that she can now, in the middle of the night, say "To hell with this. YOU get a bottle and feed her. I'm sleeping." Not that she would say that.

Right? She wouldn't, would she?

Well, on the whole, life is good.

I don't know why I'm saying that. Not that I'm lying, understand; I just don't know what prompted me to write that.

Today is my mother's birthday. Happy B-Day, Mom.

Clutter. I have a lot of clutter.

Stories returning soon.

Biza.