My chair reclines

What a day!! Some woman was screaming at her kids in the parking lot at 6 a.m. One thing she said was so close, I woke up, alert, thinking that she was in our bedroom. There was nothing but the blue light of morning, the awareness of every second left on the alarm clock, the sound of some kids slamming a car door. I made the best of the forty minutes that remained, and then got up.

Kara was asleep when I stumbled into her room. I sat on her bed, and she rolled over and groaned. "I'll give you a few more minutes," I said, mostly to give myself a moment. Couch time. Time to wake up, have some cereal, catch a few minutes of news. I go through periods of watching the news obsessively and not caring. When I watch it obsessively, it is because of the future. I'm trying to assemble some kind of now which will suggest then. And that future is usually about money: the housing market, the DOW, the Fed. I think a lot about money these days.

Caleb gets up happy. I hear him thumping around in his room, and so I open the door. If he gets up early, he will sit against his door and talk himself awake, usually ending with a variation on "Daddy." (One of the best sounds on earth.) Today I caught him early enough so that he was just sliding out of bed. He stumbled around like a cold boy scout and then picked up a toy car. I open his shade and morning light fills up the space.

The rest of any morning is just getting things done. Changing a diaper--sometimes the first thing I do in the morning--or fixing some breakfast. L. and I have the system worked out. I get the beds made. She dresses Kara and does her hair. Everything was going okay, though slow, this morning until we discovered that the holes in Kara's earlobes had grown together a bit during the night. It took fifteen minutes of screaming, crying, cooing, ice cubes, rubbing alcohol, and pain to get new earrings in there. I felt terrible for Kara, and so did L.

Dropping Kara off at school everyday feels like an apology. I'm sorry I can't go with you. I'm sorry we can't play at a park today or go and have breakfast together and make faces over pancakes. I'm sorry that I drive off and if you need to call me or miss me you can't just open your mouth and call me. I'm twenty miles away most of the day, and, trust me, there are times in the day I'd like to pick up the phone and call you. "Say, how's music going for you today? How's that spelling? When are you taking your test. Gotta go? Okay, I'll see you later. Hugs and kisses."

My chair at work has gotten progressively lazy. When I first snatched it after a co-worker left, it was habitually vertical. Sitting in it was a reminder that one slip and some horrible error, like an egregious typo or a bleeding running head, could occur, permanently scarring the work and effort of half a dozen people and more than that number of months. Now, however, it has relaxed, tilting back and back until it comfortably reclines like an off school adolescent working the kinks out of Halo 3.

Well, 11:44 p.m. I posted. Goodnight.