New things to see

 Bits of the landscape are so familiar

Not mountains, but coulee's. Just tall enough to make me feel at ease.

A childhood in Vermont, a young adult hood in New Hampshire. Both rural states.

 The rock here is what throws me. I am accustomed to granite. Marble. Speckled and resolute. Stone of the ice ages.

That is not this rock. This rock is sandstone, crumbly. Full of fossils and older than time memories of riverbeds long gone.

 The smell is familiar.

Hay, not yet cut, at its high summer sweetness.

The cicadas sing constantly.

Swallows dart and weave.

I feel like I am ten years old and sent out to gather cucumbers. Lifting up cool spikey leaves, I find garter snakes staring back at me.

That smell is this smell.

And then I see the absurd.

Two adults, dressed as Thing 1 and Thing 2, biking down the sidewalk.

I giggle and snap a picture.

Renewal

First I would like to address an unusual search question which brought some unknown person to my blog:

"Why can't women wear stirrup pants?"

Well internet stranger, because no woman has ever looked attractive in stirrup pants, ever, since the beginning of time. Even women who are 5ft10in and weigh 100 pounds do not look good in stirrup pants. That is why women do not do this. We have enough body image shit to deal with, let us not add naturally unflattering pants to the mix, shall we?

So now that I am a PhD and all, what have I been up to? Well..revisions. And more revisions. The damn thing became a fetus that was refusing to vacate. It finally was deposited on August 15th and I was able to breathe a small sigh of relief.

As part of my practice for going back into the workforce, I have taken to attempting to apply makeup every day. In particular, I aim to master the liquid eyeliner.

Yes. I plan to make liquid eyeliner my bitch. 

Here I am after an attempt with green eye shadow which caused Terrance to ask me if I was soliciting for customers. Since I know that he is 1.old and 2. immune to any charm I may possess, I ignore him.

Frankly, we can all agree that I am pretty hot for a lady doctor of 42.

Although I have found myself feeling a bit vain, fretting over the fact that my eyelids don't seem to be as taut as I recall. It isn't that I want to be young....I do not.

I have no need or desire to return to those places. It is simply reacquainting myself with me. 

It is written that we renew ourselves every seven years. Seven years ago, I started this blog.

I lived in New Hampshire next to a lake and was terrified to leave, although I knew it was for the best.

Seven  years later, I return to the United States to move to a part of the country in which I never imagined myself living...let along as a Professor.

I am becoming. Still.

Suspiration

It must have been around 2:30 last night.

I lay in my bed, my body stretched diagonal across the mattress. The fan spun above me.

I waited for sleep.

My eyes closed.

The yearning hit me so hard I almost began to sob. A vision of my beloved city rose up behind my eyes. I was driving over the Champlain bridge and knowing I was home. The far off landmarks rising up from the St Lawrence.

I did not live there any more. It was no longer my home.




I have a new home now. Or at least a new place to build a home. A nest to feather.

I weave the bittersweet.

Rabidity

Emily went to camp on Sunday. Six days of horseback riding and walking around in 90 degree humidity. Woo Hoo!

Six days in which I can attempt edit, and think of syllabi and start to figure out the classes I will be teaching as of September 2nd.

Six days to re-litter train two obstinate rabbits who have gone all "Attica! Attica!" on me - parsing their protests in urine and the throwing of hay.

On Monday, the phone call came at noon. The message on the answering machine was vague.

"Great", thought I, "the kid has melted down and is sobbing in the office of the camp director, demanding to be sent home."

***************************************************************

Emily and I have been taking the Cousera course on Vaccines.

The format is hardly intensive. Listen to a lecture of about 20 minutes, answer some questions at the end. She and I watch the lecture videos together and answer the quiz questions.

She has been interested and attentive in the history of vaccines; how they were made and the diseases they were developed to combat.

******************************************************

When we finally got to speak with the camp director, it was not an issue of homesickness.

"The girls in your daughters cabin opened up the side vent and they think a bat flew out. Since no one can tell if the bat was in the cabin all night, and bat bites are very small.... the Health Department recommends that the girls all receive the vaccine for rabies as a preventative measure."

Come again? 

I might have started to giggle before the death ray glare from Terrance snapped me back to the present.

"Oh my. What a way to start camp...", my voice is sympathetic to this young woman calling us; one of 4 parental groups to whom she has to break this bizarre news.

Terrance glares at me.

The rest of the day is a blur as we talk with public health officials, local doctors, and the camp director. We learn about the "new "rabies vaccine which is only 5 shots over 2 weeks in the shoulder instead of the "old" series of 23-30 shots in the stomach.

I know that Emily knows what I know about rabies. We watched the lecture together, after all. Louis Pasteur worked first on the attenuated version to fight rabies in Paris. It was later that the vaccine available today - the killed virus version - was created. The attenuated version occasionally killed the human subject, but given that rabies without vaccine is 100% fatal? It was a risk worth taking. Even today, rabies is fatal once the vaccination window closes.

I know she knows all this.....

We finally speak with her on the phone. "What do you think,sweetie?", I ask. "Do you see any new red bumps? Do you think you have been bitten?"

She is oddly calm. "Well, I would rather be safe than sorry", she says. "If I have to get the five shots, it's no big deal", she trails off.

Huh? This child flips the frak out with dry heaves at having a blood draw and now she is cool and collected about having 5 shots to prevent rabies?

"Well", she reasoned, "I don't really want to die..."

In the end, we decided to not have her vaccinated and she was all right with that decision.

She never ceases to amaze me.

I think the kid is all right.

Anthill of Madness

It isn't enough to move across a country, and international border.  No. I have to work on revisions as well.

Yes. The madness. It is upon me.



But I will stop and gorge myself on these treasures for  little while. Emily would tell you that I squealed with delight when I found them yesterday at the library. (You know we found the library within our first week in    residence and presented our selves for cards, right? I mean we have priorities here, people). I had read the first one ages ago, but assumed it hadn't been picked up for more issues. Templesmith, sigh.

I am such an easy date. Truly.

new soil

We are here in a new home.

Five days of driving, five days of no A/C in brutal heat. Five days of packing the rabbits around bags of ice to help keep them alive as we drove and drove.

One day of unpacking in brutal heat, sweat rolling off of us as we carried things and boxes.

Four days of trying to find things in boxes.

Two days of looking for Loki who escaped on the first night we arrived. He returned after the fireworks on July 4th to a much relieved family.

The landscape here is strange to us. We wander stores and I am overwhelmed by choice and colour and LOUDNESS. There is far too much to choose from and it makes me irritable. I don't want a four page menu. I want a menu like I grew accustomed to in Montreal. One page. It is what it is.

People apologize too much. They are all sorry for making us wait. At one restaurant, we three broke into giggles at the waitress. Wait? Oh honey, you don't know from waiting. We had barely sat down when she arrived. ....Wait? Snort. Hardly.

Next week I will go to the University and complete more paperwork, but not yet.

Right now I work on getting my bearings and writing the final edits to the dissertation, dipping my toes into this soil. 

Exuviate

The defence is scheduled for Thursday morning at 9:30. Provided that I do not burst into flames or begin throwing my own feces like an angry monkey, I should be a doctor by about 11 a.m. or so.

The house is a maze of boxes and bags, half packed and overflowing.

 I continue to fill bags for the local goodwill, carting off bits and bobs of my life. I took my Gamecube and N64 systems( with games) to my local Second Cup, where the systems were re-homed. I must face that the odds of my hooking up the N64 to play Conkers Bad Fur Day ( one of the most spectacular games of all time, complete with a squirrel who swears and a Poo monster that throws corn at you) is so remote that I can't justify the movement of the crate across the border.

I wept a bit as I watched my beloved Zelda games depart.

No matter.

Onward, intrepid traveller.

foundations

I saw my massage therapist on Sunday.

I went because I needed comfort, my body felt adrift. I wondered if my medication was lagging, as the sensation felt a little like a depression spike.

I wasn't entirely shocked. I expected that the laser beam focus that got me through the dissertation would crumble and the exhaustion and fear would sweep over me; a tidal wave that had been straining to breach my levies. I was prepared for that.

Yet, it stretched on past week two, into week three. I was snarling and snappish needing no excuse to open my jaws and clamp down on the nearest throat.

I felt lost. Alone on a sea on which I was repeatedly throwing my tow rope into the vast dark water, hoping for it to catch on anything. Exhausting my arms with pulling the rope back, only to futilely cast it out again.

As Sandra put her hands on me, she found the spot deep in my lower back. There was another at the bottom of my shoulder blade, equally sore.

"So tight, my god Dawn. What is this?"

I knew what it was. I always know what it is.

"I don't want to move. Which isn't really true. These years have not been happy ones. I don't Love the place, but I set down roots and then resist pulling them up, even when the roots are in toxic soil. I resist so fiercely that I hurt myself, even as I logically know that it is for the best, that moving is better..."

I trail off, the pain is brutal as my body refuses to release.

"I guard the castle even as it falls down. Even after everyone else leaves, I still remain."

I don't love this personality trait. It has never served me well and I end up brutalized at the end of any transition, even good transitions....long overdue transitions.

Two weeks later, I was back on her table...working through the anger that I had locked in my lower back after another brutal argument with Terrance.

The routine is the same; her hands find the sore and tender spots and I tell her what it is that resides in that part of my body. Anger. Powerlessness. Fear.  She pushes and kneads until my muscles give up the energy of those emotions.



I need to build a new home. I need a home where I am safe. I need a place in which I do not fear constant anger and disappointment radiating from a partner. This house is toxic and it is killing me.

Slowly but surely.

Go Ahead, Judge Me

These are only the ones in boxes...prepared for transport.

The ones in bags are not shown.

My joy at figuring out the clever way to make parcels of 4 using packing twine did not impress the spouse.

Yet, I care not.














Here is a garter snake who has taken up residence in my side garden. I am delighted to see him and have spent an inordinate amount of time watching him sun himself.

Shoes and snakes. I am so easily amused. 

Lattice

Weave yourself around me

In and Out

Ramble your brambles along my length

Decorate me with your foliage

Peek out of my hidden spaces under cool leaves of green

Breathe me in

I wait. Constant in my changeability.

Red riding

So I have been working on Red Riding Hood, and despite having some worries, I am intrigued with the progress.

There are many things about this rug which are still unknown to me.

The wolf, for example. I have the roughest of ideas as to the stance, the intimacy of nose to cheek.  I have left space on the side of the cloak for the tail of the wolf to wrap up, curling into the the fabric.

I know the way the cloak should be moving. The swing of the fabric as she turns to the side to listen to what the wolf wants to whisper in her ear.

He is desire. He is lust. He is longing.

I started at the bottom of the cape, building it upward. I was sure that it could be constructed no other way, for the motion moves from the ground..the last edge of the cape swings furthest away.

The ripples of black had to be thick pieces of wool, much thicker than what I normally use to outline my figures.

The reds are lush. I collected these for nearly a year before I started, looking for mottled deep scarlets and burgandy. Pinks, purples and orange tones speckle the wools. A cacophany of Red.  For me.

This cape is my desire. My lust, my longing.  All the things I want, all the things I suspect that lay somewhere just past where I can see.


If I go further into the woods, I might find them.

Maybe, like the fairy tales, I will find only ruin. Another woman fallen.

I build it all into this living palate.



Waiting for the day when my wolf whispers into my ear.

Schmoopa

Cooking at the children's museum

If it looks scary, make a scarier face

Gah, Mom.

A very windy day

York Beach Maine

The ghetto binky...before I found one she would really use

Sometimes they don't make proper rain gear small enough

Sleeping Baby, exhausted mommy

I keep trying to write this post, but nothing seems to be flowing. So I will keep it simple.

Happy 14th Birthday my love. You are, by far, the most amazing thing I have ever created.

Also, thank you universe for giving her my sense of humour. If we can laugh, we can make it.

I love you Emily Damali.

*Schmoopa - the pet name that I have called her since birth. She hates when other people hear me call her this, but I don't care. She remains my schmoopa.

Good For her(s)

So, what do two bestest friends do when they take a road trip to a large city?

I wish I could say that we rocked the hizz-ouse, went bar hopping and stayed up until the breaka-breaka Me.

But I would be lyin.

Instead, this is what they did:

1. They lay in the gi-normous king sized bed - laughing at penis pictures while having room service deliver lunch.

2. They lay in the gi-normous king sized bed - laughing at the weather reporters, as a blizzard engulfed the city in which they were staying. P.S. City of Toronto, you need to calm the fuck down about snow. And get some plows for christ sake.

3. They eventually took a cab to a Moroccan restaurant, where they drank a bottle of wine, ate a HUGE meal, and one of them got up and belly danced (badly) with the professionals. While I will not reveal exactly Who danced, I will share that the non-dancer told the dancer that she looked as if she was trying to do the "chicken" - which was clearly NOT the sensuous writhing the dancer was going for. Ok, I am the dancer.

4. They woke up many hours after falling asleep with no child or husband to poke them.

5. They decided to walk to a feminist sex shop and peruse the goods. There were purchases made. Wink, Wink.

6. They found a shoe museum and walked in, only to be repelled by the Polish Folk music festival occurring inside.

7. After eating a late lunch ( which served the best French onion soup either had ever tasted), they bought copious decedent desserts from a lovely high end bakery. This was to serve as their dinner, in it's entirety.

8. They thought about going for a drink at a bar - until the hostess told them it was a 5 dollar charge to get into the bar, at which point they both laughed at this waifish girl, for there can be no bar awesome enough to pay to enter. Do we look like women who PAY to hang out in bars?

9. They took naps in the middle of the day!

10. They both went out the night before leaving to find gifts for their respective children....because all of the fun Non-mommy time was coming to a close and their progeny expected some kind of tribute to be paid for the alone time granted to them.

A draft post from February 2009. 

Happy Returns of the Day

There is an uncommon stillness in my life at present. An in between time of waiting, and preparing for something which is both known and hidden. 

I turned 42 a couple of weeks ago. I am never sure how to feel about my birthday's...not because I have any ill feeling about getting older, but simply because it often seems overdone to me. All the fuss about the one day.

I don't mourn any loss of youth, since I never felt young. I am curious about the next part of my life to come, though. I suspect that it will be nothing like I imagine since that is always the case. I do not know if Terrance will continue to be a part of it, at least as my partner. He is always Emily's father and his steadfastness is a wonder to behold, particularly to a girl whose biological father ran at the first chance he got.

The dissertation gift rug is given away. I love it more than I realized, partly for the absolute way that it emerged from my hands. I look at the rug and it pretty well sums up my path to Ph.D., insomuch that there is a pattern, it just isn't linear.  It swirls, it dances, it moves back and forth, it is light and dark.  An apt metaphor, I think. There is a pattern, when you step away from the individual pieces. I am an all but defence doctor. That makes me giggle subversively. 

I've learned that I can really take the hits, emotionally, and survive. The year between 40 and 41? I was't sure I was going to survive it. Not that I actively planned anything, but I spent most of the year wishing that my existence would just...stop. The year between 41 and 42? A rebuilding year. This one upcoming too. Rebuilding everything, to different specifications. Maybe the wall around my heart will be built a little less thickly. Hard to say as of yet as I am not naturally careless when it comes to that particular fortification. 

I've started the next rug. I was hesitant with this one, wanted to get it "right" in a different way. Finally I just threw caution to the wind and started sketching. When I fuss over details, I can get mired in inaction. Fear of non-perfection becomes inability to move. The bottom of the cape needs to be fixed, but I think it is going to be frakking amazing.  The wolf still needs to be fine-tuned in my brain, but it will come.

bottom edge of cape

I continue to practice letting go of the things over which I have no control, be they people or events.  All I can do is continue being myself and trying to be transparent and honest in all things. I can only hope that those qualities are enough to bring the people and things I need into my life.

Where my wild things are

I was six years old when I first saw the book.

My surroundings are what I imprint upon. I was on the floor which had your standard issue industrial school carpeting. The cubbies were to my left and formed the wall that ran the length of the room. The bathrooms were behind me.

The teacher whose name could have been Mrs Walker (?) was sitting on a blue chair in front of us.

Now, books and I have always been friends. There are pictures of a sleeping three year old Dawn, hiding in her closet with the lamp, surrounded by books. I remember being in those closets - small, dark, tight spaces of safety. Me and My Books. Later on in life when I felt stress or anxiety, diving into a book was my first reaction. My college room mate would laugh as I would bring home a massive stack of fiction to read in between studying for other exams. "They relax me", I would explain.

This book, however, was different. From the moment Mrs Walker held the book up I knew that this was special - something I maybe shouldn't be seeing - and so I held my breath throughout the reading and when she had finished, I stood up and asked if I could hold this book. I needed to absorb this book. I needed to possess this book.

In fact, the next library day found me at the librarians desk asking about where I could find this book to borrow and my first memory of ordering from a book club was my amazement seeing that this prized book was one of the ones offered and begging for the 50 cents to order it.

The book was, of course, Where the Wild Things Are.

Now, psychologically, the adult Dawn could deconstruct why the book was so important to First Grade Me. A tale of the Wild Things who were both menacing and loving - terrible and fierce and Max - the boy who tamed them with a magic trick - this tale was not so far off from my life in the world of Adults. I navigated some pretty Wild Things in my day to day life, and while this was perhaps the most stable time in my remembrance of my family life, it was still business as usual.

It was in 1976 that my father threatened to kill Santa if he came into the house on Christmas Eve. I locked the door behind him as he ran out on the porch with his loaded shotgun, looking for Santa to shoot.  I had the sense to hide before my mother got the door unlocked and my father began to search the house for me.

Now, I had seen my father shoot things. Our Pet Dogs when they wouldn't stop barking. Rabbits. At the car as my mother pulled out of the driveway...with his child(ren)in the car. His unpredictable behavior made him the undisputed King of the Wild Things.

My mother, while a bit more stable in her overall demeanor, had her own role in the kingdom of my Wild Things. A role which would take center stage  once my parents divorced. As long as I did as she wanted, she was a benevolent ruler in the Kingdom. Benign neglect, I have called it - feral childhood. Yes, we were fed and clothed. But there were conditions - always conditions.

My mother was not Max's mother. There would be no hot dinner waiting for me when I woke. No, more likely I would be told that I was ungrateful and didn't deserve to have dinner - but if I insisted than I could make it myself since she was not my slave and furthermore since I had the audacity to complain, I should really start saving up to buy my own food.

First Grade Dawn didn't know all of this. She only knew that there was a book that whispered to her in a way she had never experienced. It was a book that told her that it Knew Adults were not what they seemed, and revealed them for what they were. Odd monsters with feathers and fur, feet and beaks, human noses on animal faces.

The book knew that the Wild Things Roared and Gnashed and Stomped as they pleased. However, when Max saw the Wild Things he was not afraid. No. Max was in charge of the Wild Things. He was the Adult in the world of Wild Things, the voice of reason.

And Like Max, First Grade Dawn wanted to be in control, to tame her Wild Things with her magic tricks. And also like Max, First Grade Dawn wanted to go home and be someones child, somewhere where he was loved best of all. Loved Unconditionally.

It was the first time I heard a book speak to me in the secret language of the best stories. Maurice Sendak winked at me from behind the pages of the book - He knew what adults were and had hidden the truth in those pages, right in front of them. They read the pages to us, and I felt delightfully subversive as his critique of the Big People in charge of our lives was laid out in front of them.

A door was opened for me as Mrs Walker read Where the Wild Things Are to me - and 18 other children - in 1976. I sailed over and across weeks and years and a day - and have never looked back.


Thank you, Maurice. You were an adult who "got" it.

Three in a Bed

For those of you new to my family, we have some "issues" around bed.

Yeah, I know she is eight. Spare me any piece of advice you may have about how to get her to sleep in her own bed. I assure you ,we've tried it. We've tried EVERYTHING.

Now, here is where my first dilemia came in. I have very specific professional ideas about children and sleep. The philosophy to which I subscribe, RIE , teaches that children should be assisted to sleep when they indicate they are tired. Believe it or not, this worked with nearly ALL the babies I cared for in my years of teaching. I would have babies crawl to the edge of the nap room and sign to me that they were ready to sleep.


I SWEAR TO YOU THIS IS TRUE.

Nearly all of my babies in care over age 3 months would be put in their cribs when awake and allowed to fall asleep. Did I mention that this worked on nearly every baby I cared for from 1992 to 1998?  I thought I was the shit when it came to babies and sleeping. It is a well known and documented fact that I can get any kid to settle and sleep, newborn to kindergarten.

Until my child was born.

Emily was very alert. Hyper alert. Nursing perked her up. The midwife would say "She nurses and then falls asleep?"

Nope. Not my kid. It only seems to invigorate her.

"Do you try driving her around in the car?"

Of course we do. She hates the car. She screams the entire time she is in the car. I have been known to fling myself in the back seat and wrestle a breast out in a valiant effort to get her to stop. I once was let go by a cop who, after stopping me because a tail light was out, took pity on me due to the fact that my child was WAILING in the back seat. I also may have been in a full body sweat with crazy eyes.

Warm bath?

Every night.

Music?

Of course.

Stories and routine?

Yeah. I may have some depression issues, but the professional Dawn? She has the mother-trucking routine down pat.

The pediatrician whispers: "Did you try a little benedryl?"

Uh, Yeah - You know I did. Also seems to perk her up. She doesn't get sleepy at all.

When Emily was 6 months old, I bite my pride bullet and thought - OK, I'll try to Ferber her. This went against every fiber of my being, but I was desperate to get some sleep. The child had been awake and nursing for six straight months. She was also crawling at six months. Full on crawling. She was starving mobile zombie baby.

I expected the first night to be bad. I expected the second night to be a little better. I didn't expect a WEEK long marathon of screaming that would go on for the entire night. You know how you go in the room in five minute increments? 5 minutes, then 10 minutes, then 15 minutes?  We got up to HOURS. HOURS, PEOPLE! With no break in the screaming. She could go to child care with me in the morning and sleep. I, sadly, did not have this option.

And her scream? Makes me sweat. Actually makes me sweat. I get these prickles in my arm pits and then it starts. I get frantic, the oxytoxin in my brain kicks into high gear and I-must-stop-the-screaming.

We tried a gate. She kicked it down. We made a sticker chart and took away things. She laughed in the face of that. She lost her birthday party this year, and her ipod. She's lost her American Girls at various times, her telescope....and the list goes on and on. She has nightlights, she has body pillows, she has everything we can think of to make her nest as comfy as possible.

And where was she this morning? Asleep. On my back. More specifically, in the middle of my back. My left arm was completely dead from lack of circulation. And my husband? On the living room couch. Also asleep. A typical morning in my house.


Update: 2012

She no longer sleeps in my bed, thankfully. She did until she was 10, though. At some point, she got too big and floppy. She now nests, just like her mom, in the middle of her bed, surrounded by huge nests of pillows and comforters.

Terrance and I never ended up sharing a bed again. Something about 10 years of not being in the same bed makes it difficult to go back. Which is fine. I really like my own bed. Which is where I am right now, snuggling in to go to sleep. Night.

dragon hoard

The dissertation went in on Monday.

I had a good cry later on, from exhaustion and relief and overwhulmption.

Today, I signed my contracts for New University and mailed them back.

I am going to have to think about what blogging means for me now that I am a grownup and expected to be an example. Will I be well served to have this kind of transparency going forward?

All of which makes me want to scratch at my dragon skin, as I have surely fallen asleep on the hoard with dragonish thoughts in my heart.

Just like Eustace..

I wonder what that new skin will feel like.

Peepers

You know you are tired when you lay in a hotel room in Washington DC and swear you can hear spring peepers.

Lessons Learned While Packing 2006 version

As I begin to wrap my mind on the next move, I give you this post - From June of 2006. We moved from our lovely cottage on Bow Lake to the Big City. Fourteen years worth of Stuff had to be sorted and discarded. I hope this move isn't nearly as painful.

*cough* I can say with certainty that I have far more shoes than pictured in 2006. And I kind of miss those cassettes. Especially the hand made mix tapes with the groovy art.

*************************************************************

I can stop buying floss for awhile. You can see by this that both Terrance and I are chronic flossers. We stash it all over the house, and car and in the pockets of coats. (This is So for you E.)



Um. I'm a little "anal" about the shoes. These are just the ones in the boxes.



And here are the J Crew boots, and strappy wedges...



If you no longer own a cassette player, then it is time to give up your collection of cassettes. Yes, I know that these represent the 80's and 90's for you, but let it go, baby, let it go.





Now I must go untangle my bizarre love for saving National Geographics.

Bitter End

I am down to the dregs.

The editing the writing,  the re-editing. The trying - in vain - to find how APA dictates I block off text boxes of transcription (um, they don't) and figuring out the asinine heading systems.

The table of contents has yet to be written, although the abstract is complete and sent off for French translation.

The figures are mostly numbered and labelled correctly - and referred to in the proper places in the text.

I am tired. So incredibly tired of looking at this document. The urge to send it off half-finished and just say: "Come on. It's good enough" rises up in me, only to be squashed back down by my perfectionistic streak.

I decide I hate my data and that frankly I am full of shit. Maybe none of this is there at all. I am just weaving a good story out of gossamer and fairy lights.

The rabbits are fighting, the cat is meowing piteously. The child sulks. The spouse mopes.

"How is it coming?" he asked tonight.

I glare. Balefully.

Almost done.