12:30 a.m. I used to think that when I grew up I would automatically act mature. That there was going to be a sea change in my brain and one fine day I would wake up and realize that I was ... there. I'd become an adult.

Adults dress sensibly. Adults behave themselves. Adults take their time and never, ever get too excited about anything.

I've actually had ants in my pants. It's an odd sensation, but you know exactly what's going on. After a heavy rain or a series of wet, drenched days, the ants come inside. I'd assume that their little nests are flooded and they are hungry.

The climb along the window ledge and make their long long limbo line across the window seat where I usually put the duds that I'll be wearing tomorrow. Most times my pants are black -- I still have the touching belief that dark colors make me look thinner -- and so it's very easy to just grab them in the morning and not notice much until I'm standing in front of the coffee maker.

Sometimes, there's only one. That's bad enough -- it's almost just your imagination -- almost. But sometimes there's a squadron of them up and down the legs and in the tender places and in general, there's quite a lot to do between mopping up the scalding coffee and shaking and brushing and hopping and not acting the way I pictured I'd be acting when I'd reached my adulthood.

Oh where, oh where is that elusive maturity? Is it a combination of kindness, patience, forbearing? I have some of those qualities some of the time. But these qualities don't transform. In fact, I usually only get to these states of being after walking over the broken glass of pettiness, impatience, and endless fussing. The child is merely wearing larger clothes.

I always thought that when I grew up I'd throw away my toys, but that hasn't happened, either. Far from it -- in fact, I've actually accumulated many more than I ever remember having as a kid. I find them very comforting and relaxing. I don't actually *play* with them ...

... but then, again, it depends on what you call play. I sometimes dress them up or rearrange their little feet and hands. I don't actually talk to them or ask them to respond. That would be wrong. But I like having them around. In fact, a quick count of the faces facing me here at my desk has yielded exactly 98 sets of eyeballs looking at me right this minute. I must like their company as I sit here through the night.

Little beady close-set eyes, except for the big alien, and he's got little beady close-set nostrils.

Ok -- here's something I can point to as a clear indication that there's been some growth and maturity in this particular toykeeper. I'm in the process of solving the three-quarter problem. I won't swear that it's completely banished and that I never fall back into old habits, but I'm working on it.

I'm very good with beginning things. Pretty good with plugging along with things. But then, suddenly, I fall apart. It's precisely at the three-quarter mark in any project, I have noted, that I tend to get sleepy, or antsy, or disillusioned. And once I was able to identify this, I was also able to think about why it is so.

Beginnings come with no failure attached. You plow right in. And you keep on plowing, plowing -- a sort of comfortable, dependable routine is formed when you're in the middle. And when I hit that three-quarters-mark, I realize in the back of my head that the project will, in fact, soon be done. I will be bereft. Swinging around loose, a vine without a branch. So I get sleepy, or disgruntled.

I solved the problem very simply: when I hit the three-quarters point, I stop and plan my next project, and sometimes I actually begin it. Thus, I have an incentive to finish the first so that I can get on with the second. There you have it. A mature solution to an immature problem. Genius? I think so.

Grown up?

Not just yet. I still have too much to do, too many false teeth clackers to wind up.