090518 bright side: - neck doesn’t hurt; finally got the exact right height and consistency of pillows under my rickety bones - not as groggy as i thought i’d be didn’t just give up and go back to sleep on the other hand: don’t know if this is going to consistently work to do this in the mornings during school, because - millie gets down here and starts making noises and lights and shit at EXACTLY the same time as I have to start this. If I wanted to be alone and do it in the morning, i would have to get up at like 4:30, and I just don’t know if I can or even want to do that - i mean, mornings are special, but are they really that special if it’s just another common, bustling, busy time in the middle of everything and everyone? - but then when else would i do it? afternoon, when my brain is fried and walked all over by the footprints of students and teachers and administrators and my own desperate urges and so-called “ideas”? evenings, when i never want to do anything and there’s always creaking from upstairs and the whole leaf-rot and detritus of worrying about all the things i’ve got to worry about falling down like so much leaves and rotten apples all around me all day long? there’s nothing quite like a morning, sure, but at the same time, i just don’t know. i mean, there’s no universal law. Remember Audre. I know her name’s not Audre; I’m talking about that girl that referred to Audre. The Audre proviso: there’s no one right way. I’m sure if you dug far enough and did your homework, you could cherry pick some authors who didn’t religiously write in the morning. Some of them may very well have written in the evening. As long as you find SOME WAY TO DO IT, it’ll be a thing you do, and that truly is all that matters. Right? We’re playing this back on the assumption that that’s all that matters, anyway, so given that given circumstance, then yes, what I’m saying is valid. Whether it’s true or not, well.... But yeah, I do know that I need consistency. I can’t go as far into the Audre Proviso as that girl went and just do it randomly whenever. But I don’t know if I can handle Millie swooping my curtain aside and thrusting a thermos in my face and saying, “Is this the one you don’t want people to use?” when I’m in the middle of a god damned sentence. Look, I love her, and more about that in a minute, but the noises of her getting ready and making breakfast and cracking ice and sipping coffee is just as ennervating as listening to a wife or a roommate for some reason. I don’t know, it’s my own weakness, my own fault, and I can pretty much guarantee you there will come a day when my house is too too quiet and I’ll feel a great roaring wind of emptiness swirling up out of my hollow core like a vortex of regret and I’ll think I’d give anything just to have that warm mammalian noise back around me, to cloak me and comfort me, and my kids will be grown up and gone, and maybe they’ll come visit but it won’t be quite like when I went home because I’m not going to be rich and comfortable like my mom was, I’m going to be some quirky old guy in an apartment somewhere and my kids’ coming home will be an act of geometry and compassion, rather than an act of just actually wanting to everyone hey let’s meet at the ski lodge and then sit in front of the fire and we’re all here drinking cocoa in our wraparound shades, hurrah! - See, I wouldn’t have gone there if it weren’t in the morning right now. I would have gone somewhere else. Not saying that “there” isn’t half nonsense, but Dream fragment: middle aged woman at the bar/restaurant that I sometimes went to, a place pedestrian enough to be the source of occasional wisdom, said, “I finally realized I didn’t have to always just go home after dance class. I need out!” And her friend behind the bar said “Hahaah, let the dog out!” And she said “Yes!” and the day went on, and I realized, huh. Yeah. But of course in the dream I still had a wife to not be just going home to, but still. I’m worried about Millie. She went to the bathroom twice while we were at pizza shuttle. The second time she explicitly said she was going to “wash her hands.” It took her a while. But then again Megan had been in there before she got in so I don’t know exactly how long it took. But still. Something about the *way* that she went to the bathroom both times—I swear, I can’t explain it, but I just got a spidey sense of something. It’s so weird, and if this was me seven or fourteen or however many years ago, I would almost certainly either not have even noticed or else noticed but brushed it off, but you know, I’ve learned some shit, and sometimes I have these little intuitions, and sometimes they’re fucking right. Like Anne used to say, “I hate being right.” Shit, while I was married I had the little intuitions basically every day and managed to ignore them for a decade, sometimes by brute force and alcohol, snacks, pot and the occasional bout of pain pills. But now, now.... I don’t know. I’m just saying. Some quiet invisible ghost of a thing just rushed through me right quick while we were there at pizza shuttle and I’m not going to ignore it. I’m going to kind of be watching her, and I’m going to act on her request to start seeing a therapist again. We’ll start with that. She said it was because she is full of resentment about Megan so much that it’s interfering with her daily life. (She sat with her fingers in her ears all the way home from milwaukee, after megan started singing to Lady Gaga. I said you can listen to something else you know, and she said *it’s not Lady Gaga that I don’t want to listen to!* I think she’s a little spectrumy if you know what I mean. Partly it’s Megan, hell, maybe she’s jealous that Megan can sing in tune, but partly I think she just gets way overstimulated and then kind of drops off a cliff. Especially cuz today was the first day of school, and she made it through but I’m sure it took an energetic toll. Anyway that’s my theory, I could be way off.) And then when she said that about Megan and the therapist, I asked her if there was anything *else* going on, and she said, *I guess, but I don’t have to talk to _you_ about that.* And then walked away. Dumbly, I just said “O-kaaaaay....!” Oh well. Can’t be perfect every time. But yeah. Have to find someone for her to work with. That’s a start. Four minutes until I wake up Lib and the rest of this dragon of a day uncoils. I guess we’ll keep trying this for a while. It’s not misty quiet like I like my mornings to be, but if I don’t snooze at all I might still be able to catch a few tendrils. Or, shit, I guess I could get up at 4:30 and then go back to bed for a half hour. Yeah I don’t know about that. We’ll see. As long as it’s something, consistently, even more consistent than not drinking, then we’ll be fine, somehow.