A couple pictures...I needed a break from the paperwork and had my camera...aren't the bathrooms at work clean?

I'm in the office, I mean office at work, 1:49PM, Sunday. I love the office on weekends. I'm cranking Taylor Swift (shut up) and finished more in the last few hours than I could do in a week of eight hour days others in the offices around me. I answered a slew of emails, both work and otherwise related, and planned way ahead. I'm ready for the week. The shades are down because the sun is so bright. Don't worry, cacti, I'll open them before I leave.

When did I write last Wednesday? Thursday was fine, teaching went well, actually, esp. with the afternoon group. I was concerned about them at first. They've got their rough edges put they're pushing hard. Friday morning I stayed home, I was busy, I don't remember doing what, then bought a Steelers hat at Bayshore and attended a meeting that felt like a baby shower all afternoon. Friday night M and I watched Castle. My pajamas were on by 7 and I was asleep by eight. Saturday was unexpectedly busy. That morning I hit the library (cute librarians and pages upstairs, score) with M and the oldest and youngest boys. S was off at a chess tournament. At 12 M and T left for a basketball tournament. N and I visited Sendik's for baking supplies and 100 calorie tortillas. We ran into the neighbor who dropped me from facebook (not sure why, mildly curious, but not entirely...she was weird at Sendik's, too) and almost ran into two other colleagues but we hid behind stacks of wine crates until the coast was clear. Then we stopped at Target so Nat could buy these...I don't know how to describe them...spinning lego guys. You're supposed to spin them at each other and see who gets knocked over first, kind of like rock 'em sock 'em robots but with spinning legos. You with me? Then we drove home, assembled the lego spinning guys, and competed on the wood bedroom floor until N was satisfied with his winning streak. Then he played video games and I watched another Castle. Later he and I read upstairs until S returned from chess. We had Apple Jacks for dinner (Saturday night, I'm not making a big deal out of dinner) and watched Wipeout, too. M and T didn't get back until close to eight, so the other boys and I read upstairs until they arrived home. I read a solid hundred pages from the Siberia book and fell asleep, believe it or not, without lunesta, but I woke at eleven and downed a little blue pill anyway. This morning I woke by seven, later than usual, and discovered that half the neighborhood was coming up over at eleven. That's why I'm here, listening to Taylor Swift. In a few minutes I'll change into workout gear in the bathroom and drive to the Y.

I'm doing pretty well. The sun helps. My dad always said the worst of winter were the last two weeks of January and first two of February. So far, so good. Within a month the coldest stretch will definitively pass. I'm feeling good. Yay solitude. More later.

I thought I'd do a quick entry since I've started a few but haven't managed to finish. How are you on this fine, endlessly gray Wednesday afternoon? I can't remember when the sun last appeared. Sunday, I think. I will spend some high-quality time underneath the full-spectrum light later.

Insomnia is back, the first time insomnia has won the “insomnia vs. lunesta” cage match in a while. I woke (nightmares) at one and didn't return to sleep. At four I ran 4.32 miles, up to to the middle school, across to Wisconsin St., and back through downtown. The temps were in the mid-20s but I was heavily layered and pretty warm, actually, except for my face. Since winter started I've usually hit the gym at 5AM but I didn't want to wait for the Y's opening and I like running early. The streets are mine; I run straight down the center except for the stray car's interference. After breakfast, etc., I reached the office by 6:30. For all the lack of sleep I got a shitload done. Yay empty offices.

The last couple weeks have been decent. The semester started without too much of a hassle and my students are strong. This is my fourth semester with ASL1 and each session gets smoother. The new office space is perfect, really, more quiet than not.

What else? Last night I saw S score a goal and his soccer (indoor) team won 7 to 2. I'm reading a way cool on Siberia. M, T and I are catching up on Castle's second season.

When I'm tired I get that insomniac social paranoia. At least I can go meta with it and know what's happening. Tonight I'll be asleep early. More later.

Good day after a rough weekend. I accomplished more today than I expected...laundry, cleaning, reframed an Assisi print, wrote a couple letters, burned some CDs, watched some of the suprisingly boring Inception and made cupcakes for the first day of the semester. I also worked out. I sound busier on paper.

At the moment, by the way, M is helping T with math homework. S is...somewhere, probably working on his homework, he rarely needs help, and N is reading one of the Bone graphic novels. I'm finishing the frosting in a couple minutes, doing some crunches, and hitting the showers before crashing early with a book. Last night nightmares kept me from sleeping much. I woke maybe four or five times and finally rose at four. Tonight I'm doing some high quality sleeping medication and sleeping hard, I hope.

Ok, back to the weekend. A neighbor invited us to watch the Pack game Saturday night, but he didn't invite us until the last minute. I don't handle last minute plans well, and ninety percent of the time I'd rather watch football at home, anyway, so I can channel surf when I get bored. M wanted to get out of the house. She needs that more than me. So she was mad that I didn't want to go, I was mad because I didn't feel like she understood that last minute social activity throws me, esp. when I'm flatlining. I focused on the “what do both of us need?” question. She took the boys to the neighbors' and I drove to the office and finished prepping for the semester's start. Everyone wins, eventually, I guess, although I should start actually, you know, interacting socially in safe environments.

I also saw Black Swan this weekend. Natalie Portman was amazing, although, uh, when you're struggling to stay anchored after fighting with your wife you might want to see, I don't know, True Grit or something. I'm also reading more the last couple days, True Deceiver and Rework.

Today's snow is beautiful but I'm sick of shitty roads. This afternoon I had to gun the Subaru up the hill behind the police station and nearly fishtailed onto the sidewalk. Yay. Ok, that's it for now. I'm exhausted. Maybe I'll finish the frosting, drop T off at hoops, and crash. Winter is magic on evenings like tonight, even if the roads are shitty. Good night.

Ooh, I need to stay in the journal groove. I thought I had written Wednesday. I hallucinated.

Saturday afternoon, approaching 1PM, sun and clouds alternating through the bedroom window. I'm grinding my teeth, but when I realize I am, I can breathe and relax. My legs are pleasantly tired after the first workout since Wednesday, I think, because I was off work and exhausted through the last few days of the week. The two quiet days at home worked wonders...I watched the excellent Social Network and the very good The Town. I made cupcakes using King Arthur flour. I read a lot. No complaints. This morning after working out we dropped the two older boys off at hoops, hit the library, and read with N at the Java Dock.

Last night I read a little more about PTSD and the associated guilt. That's true, very interesting, the fact that so many with PTSD feel guilty for not being strong enough, for not getting past the flashbacks, etc. That's true for me. I need to read more on the topic. I also need to reframe PTSD as an illness, and when I have flashbacks and break down, like I did mid-week, I can take a day off of work and not feel guilty.

Other notes...

The cacti are doing well. I'm not sure why I'm so attracted to them. Their resilience, their self-sufficiency, attracts me.
Classes start Tuesday. I'm ready. I'll need a few hours in the office first...either Monday or tomorrow morning. Probably Monday. I'd go tonight but the Packers are playing, I'd go tomorrow afternoon but the Bears are playing. Maybe tomorrow night.
I'm mildly obsessed with this track from The Social Network:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SBNCYkSceU

I'm putting down The Melancholy of Resistance for a bit, since I lost the thread about mid-week, and reading The True Deceivers and Reworked instead. Both are short and pretty easy. I wouldn't be surprised if I finish both by early in the week and can return to The Melancholy of Resistance with a clear head.

Ok...more later. Suddenly tired. Have a good Saturday.

I'm at the dining room table, listening to Andrew Bird's Useless Creatures, the humidifer pumping out wet air and the house blissfully free of noise. M, who gets bored inside easily, took the boys to the coffee shop for books and board games. Knock yourself out. I take them to the coffee shop often, too. My kids are growing up in coffee shops.

I'm tired after seven straight cardio days, all high-intensity Y days, along with three upper body weight sessions and the usual bike crunches. I timed the last few days around tomorrow. In the morning I'll rise, decide whether or not to do weights, and either way be out the door by 6:30 at the latest, possibly earlier. I hope to get much done before a 9AM meeting. Then I can maybe stay all day, hit Trader Joe's on the way home, and feel set for the week.

What else is going on? Let's see...I'm reading...what the hell is it called...Melancholy of Resistance. Thank you, medication, for knocking relatively unimportant facts out of my short-term memory. The novel's good but slow-going. I'm maybe ninety pages into the text and sometimes fall asleep after reading just a few more. The insomnia and exhaustion play a role, I think. The intense dreams don't stop. They're not always nightmares, but they're intense. Last night I fell asleep around 8 and slept until 6:30. I don't think I even rose to pee. Whatever you need, physical form. I'm with you. Yesterday the sun was bright, too, and I took off my shirt and basked in the bright rays upstairs. The sun has never been my thing but I'm learning to appreciate the power of light.

Ok, let's put some order to this post. I worked both Thursday and Friday, got a lot done, the office is all set up except for wall hangings, and took the evenings easy. N and I read next to each other at night. He's becoming a voracious reader. Lately he's way into tall tales, e.g. Paul Bunyan, because of a series of graphic novels from the library. Yesterday morning I hit Stein's for cacti. I'm fascinated by cacti. The self-control associated with leaving them waterless attracts me. I just ordered a couple cacti care books from the library. I wonder if they're short books. How much can you say? “Don't water them! Leave them alone!” We'll see. Cacti pics to follow. Then S and I worked out in the afternoon while watching the Seahawks trounce the Saints. The Saints bug me, and although Pete Carroll bugs me too, I was ok with the Seahawks win. Last night I read and fell asleep early while the kids watched Despicable Me. You know, this post is making me sound like I'm never with the kids, totally not true. We're together a lot. Just to make that clear.

What else? I saw the crazyass Executive Koala on Thursday:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09SAiBiD0ak

The movie was fun, much more fun than I expected, even if a little gory. Tonight I'm making cookies since all the basement people are moving into their offices in the morning. 2:23PM. Feels later. Have a good rest of the weekend.

Up, 3:19AM, listening to the coffee maker percolate in the kitchen while I sit at the dining room table with the laptop. I want to describe a dream before I lose the memory. I dreamed that Tristan and I were driving around in a large old car, like the LeSabre I drove in college, on a warm late spring/early summer day. He was traveling in a city like Chicago with me to observe two student teachers but the city wasn't Chicago because on our left was a sandy, sleepy lake with a few old tourist hotels and lots of fishing net/fake lobster decorations. We were searching for a school at which I was supposed to observe the first student teacher but I couldn't find it and, after some consultation with the student teacher (who didn't believe I was lost) on the phone, realized the school was across town and we were never going to reach the site on time. The dream then morphed into a job interview scenario in which three aggressively optimistic but dangerous teachers interviewed me for a position and I was trying to figure out what they wanted me to say. One, a younger male, asked me if I thought student council supervision should be a paid position and I said that depended on the nature of student council supervision as that's different across schools but there would have to be equity in that if you paid someone to supervise student council you'd have to make sure other similar positions were paid, too. I could tell he just wanted me to say “yes” and I wasn't sure how to continue.

These are my nightmares. And they're coming fast and furious lately. Insomnia is back, kind of out of nowhere, and I don't want to fall into that “fall asleep at 7PM, wake at 3” pattern again. I miss the kids and ditch M too much then. Yesterday was a Dr. L. session day, which usually leads to nightmares, so maybe they'll pass.

Otherwise, really, life is pretty good, although N's having a difficult transition back into school after Christmas break. He's reading like crazy, which is wonderful, but I don't think he has many close friends and would rather stay home. At recess he'd rather stay in the classroom. During the fall he played soccer a lot but I don't think the kids play as much in the winter. I wonder if I should email his teacher. She says he gets along fine with everyone in class and the other kids like him, etc. So I think (and we always knew this, really) that he's going to be N, really, in the same way that T (who went through a lot of these issues when he was N's age, too) is going to be T and S will be S. I will love them however they turn out. Last night N and I read on the bed until I fell asleep. I told him a few times that he was safe here, and he could be whoever he wanted, and I think he felt better.

Did I mention I moved into the new office? The facilities guys won't have time to put pictures on the wall for a while but the space is beautiful and I don't feel worthy. I have a window for the first time since office #2 (the new office is #5). To be fair I gave up the window voluntarily after #2, to get away from the busy hallway (now I sound like N, eh?), but the southern sunlight yesterday was awesome and eventually so bright I had to close the blinds. I can grow plants in my office again! Yay!

Were the temps a bit warmer I might run outside this morning, but they're hovering around fifteen, according to my phone, and fuck it, the Y opens in ninety minutes. I'll answer email and catch up online until then. Good morning. Breathe.

Happy New Year, everyone. I'm not sure if there is a weaker or more embarrassing common holiday greeting then “happy new year”, but I'll say the phrase anyway. No, maybe I'm wrong. The start of the year carries a sense of possibility, of rebirth, although the date seems misplaced in winter Wisconsin. Spring feels more like new year to me. But we're off of work and school, the boys are playing Xbox, and the Badgers play in the Rose Bowl later, so we're in holiday-mode.

I'm upstairs on the bedroom floor. A fan is running but I wonder if I should turn off the device because I was cold when reading on the bed. Yesterday the temps were curiously high, near fifty, unheard of for late Decembers of recent memory. Two years back I remember, when Shadow was fading, the heavy cold. But since the weather was walkable, and the fog kind of pretty, S and I drove down to Bayshore and walked around the mall. He found a Tom Brady calendar for 50% off. We weaved through the crowds but didn't see anything else worth purchasing so after an Italian soda (cherry/strawberry, for S) and double shot skim latte (me) at a busy Alterra's we stopped at Little Caesar's and returned home.

(Oops, sorry, a couple hours later, got interrupted by T so we could watch Mentos/Diet Coke videos.)

Last night I had every intention of staying up until midnight but I haven't slept well lately and the coffee I drank in an attempt to stay up late fucked with my sleep. So lose-lose, I guess, on NY Eve, including N kicking me about 100 times while sleeping next to me. This morning I made donuts. The donut making...contraption...is easy but I'm not convinced the donuts are that great. After that M and I worked out. The gym was lousy with resoluters. They'll give up soon. Later I read further into Ubik and opened the blinds to let the sun pour into the room. I should probably close the blinds soon. We're just past 3:30 and the lazy, taunting sunset signals another cold, windy winter evening. I'm ok. We'll watch the Rose Bowl and I'll read before, hopefully, turning in early. Tomorrow I might run outside, covered in cold weather gear, so I can hit mass at 8AM. Or maybe I'll sleep later and skip everything. We'll see. I could use a couple hours in a coffee shop, too. Stay warm. Winter's halfway over.