Monday, June 11, 2001 

10:50 p.m. I'm still working in BB Edit instead of my old see-it/type-it page layout program, so please bear with me. I feel like an alien in my own pages, but the urge to write has overcome the fear of working in a new element, and -- it's not so bad, really. Once I get used to it.

Meanwhile, there are a lot of compromises I've been having to make because of my recent machine crash. Spell-checking is gone for the moment. Photoshop, too. I keep losing ground and I haven't had too much time to sit at the machine and putter because, as I might have mentioned, I started painting a room a few weeks ago, and you know what that means. You know where that leads.

Already, the realtors are at the door. Already, we've created (and then held back) a for-rent ad. Already we've looked at new and different places to live. I never should have picked up that butter knife and started to poke at the loose plaster around the window frame.

One thing always, inevitably, leads to another. Whether I mean it to, or not.

However. Something had to be done, and now I'm on an entirely different path. We will either move or stay. Money will either flow in or it won't. In a month everything might be changed, or it might not.

I can live with uncertainty. I've done it before. I stared at the ceiling a little bit last night, but not too much. A few knots. A few. Nothing I can't handle, because -- frankly -- there's no choice. Handle it or let it roll over you.

Should I put doilies on the ceiling?

Oh, I don't know. It would look very nice. It would cover up the unfortunate nubs in my spackle. On the other hand, I might have to remove them in a hurry. Oh, oh. What to do? What to do?

And I fully realize that I'm being vague and discursive. I don't plan on talking in circles forever, but for the next few days (weeks?), I'll just have to light on a knot, flutter away, settle down, move aside, keep it bouncy, keep it sane. Otherwise -- lament.

Nobody likes a lament.

Meanwhile. We could live on a boat; we could live in a shoebox. We could live in a hovel, or tucked away, neon-flecked, behind a store. We can live anywhere. That's not the problem.

The problem is: where?

More tomorrow ... that's a promise.