My daughter said to me…

My daughter said to me last night,
"You aren't doing a very good job
of bringing me up." I said I knew,
but it was hard, harder than
it looked, and I was trying.
She said, "Okay, fair enough."
We took a bath, and then went
for a walk, in a not so great
part of town. Bullets were
whizzing past; cars kept crashing
into telephone poles. She held
my hand, and I shielded her
with my body, and we almost
died, several times. Finally
we found the park, where the sun
shone down on roses and jonquils
and bright daffodils. I told her
that some people called them
daffydowndillies, but she wasn't
listening. She was rolling down
a hill in the tall grass, laughing.
I laughed too, and my chest hurt.
It was a strange dream.

I haven't been sleeping well. Part of that is undoubtedly sharing a bed regularly again. It takes time to get used to another body in the sheets, to not being free to roll all the way to the other edge. And he has a harder time than I do with it, sometimes getting up in the middle of the night to go sleep on the couch, so I feel like I shouldn't complain, but I have been having such strange dreams. I had a horrible one about Mills last night as well as the one about my daughter (who was variously one year old, and a rather precocious four or so). I am not looking forward to going home yet -- 4 days is too short -- but it will be nice sleeping well again. He needs a bigger bed.

I finally caved and put up a list of other journals that I read. I had been resisting this for a long time, but I realized I didn't know why, and also that I found other people's lists helpful -- when I use up my journals, I go and see what Shmuel or Heather or Columbine is reading. So there's mine. It'll probably grow, since I imagine I'll list anything I read even semi-regularly, though the only ones I read compulsively are the three just mentioned.

I was very disgruntled last night. I think it was because I got very little work done yesterday -- some eHow in the morning, and then in the afternoon I read Maureen McHugh's _Mission Child_ (fascinating sf novel, transgender protagonist, though I didn't know that going in, and I'm a little sorry I told you it now). Both of those are good -- I may attend a discussion group on the McHugh at Wiscon, so it's good to get it read. But I have a whole bunch of writing to do too, and while I felt like I deserved a break last night after a few days of reasonably intense working, watching Xena and Hercules and MadTV and Saturday Night Live turned out to be not very satisfying. I was cranky all evening. It's a good thing he's patient with me. By bedtime I had cheered up a little, but I still felt dissatisfied with the day. When did I become such a workaholic? That's what I want to know.

So today, I'm going to get at least a little writing done, dangit. We're planning on being at the Borders cafe by 2. (At 2 on Sundays chess club starts there, and the tables fill up, so you need to grab one before then). I should at the very least revise the vampire story for Cecelia, and ideally do some more of "The Fall" for Jeff. It would be good to do some serious revisions too, like getting "Bodies in Motion" in shape to send to my writing group, but if I'm being realistic, that probably won't happen today. Guess we'll just have to wait and see how the day goes.

I had hoped that writing all this stuff out would make me feel a little better, but y'know what? I'm still cranky. Maybe I'd best go make some breakfast. And then eat and shower, and maybe by that point Kev will be awake and I'll have someone to talk to. I am not going to wake him up. I'm not. I have at least a little willpower, right? He was undoubtedly up hours later than I was, so I am going to let the poor boy sleep. Maybe I'll go scrub the sink.

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