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!