I dropped my mother off at the airport. It was great spending time with her, and she was super helpful over the last few days, providing us with an opportunity to get out of the house without children yesterday. Tiger is in bed and Doolies is at Naginata. Dinosaur is asleep in our room and I’m quietly typing on the bed. Okay, it’s not that quiet but he doesn’t seem to mind. Or hasn’t seemed to mind yet. Hopefully he gives me my 30 minutes.

Our date at Rover’s last night was a success. We had a late reservation at 8pm and were the last to be seated. The restaurant was packed, which goes to show that the economic recovery is underway. We ordered the 5-course prix fix vegetarian meal, substituting two different fish dishes for the main course. Everything was yummy, including my two glasses of red wine. I feel like I’ve said this already.

As I was writing that wine sentence I realized I wrote about it last night. I guess in my quasi-drunken state I didn’t remember writing it. I went beyond buzzed yesterday as evidenced by the low-level hangover I had all day. It made it difficult to enjoy work. I can always tell a hangover headache because Advil does nothing to help (and, trust me, I tried). Even a greasy veggie burger and fries at lunch didn’t take the edge off. By early evening it was gone. It was nice to head home recovered and ready for a nice evening of cooking and driving to the airport.

I’m starting to park my car lower in the parking garage at work so I have more stairs to climb up in the morning. This gives me a higher count on Fitbit. I’m not sure why I care but I do. I want to make my Fitbit happy, and if it helps keep me in a better, less pear shape, all the better. My evening stats, since I know you’re all waiting breathlessly for them: 8,863 steps, 25 flights of stairs, 4.36 miles, and 2,195 calories burned. There was a bit of augmentation on those numbers as I joined a few colleagues on about a mile of walking around the soccer field. It didn’t help my stair count and it was cold, but any exercise is better than none, I’ve heard. I would prefer to be hitting people over the head now. That’ll have to wait until Saturday.

Dinosaur is making small dinosaur noises but appears to be asleep. We’ll hopefully move him to his crib this weekend. I’m not sure Doolies is fully bought off on the plan. My plan is to skip over moving him to the small room near our bedroom, and instead move him to his bedroom across the house. This will involve sleep training him for at least six hours of sleep a night. We’ll see if Doolies is willing to do that now or wait a bit longer. We waited until 14 months to sleep train Tiger, and I now firmly believe we waited way too long to get our evenings back. Sleep training at night also has the upshot of better setting up his two naps during the day. He’s now sleeping on and off during the day for short periods. My plan will hopefully make those periods longer and more regular.

The cholent is being abandoned. It will make its way to the trash bag next time I empty the trash. I’m officially a failure in the kitchen. I slightly redeemed myself by frying up the leftover rotisserie chicken with rice, Chinese broccoli, and mushrooms and onions. Very yummy. And if not up to the quality of yesterday’s dinner, just a few notches below it.

I finally finished that philosophy book I’ve been reading. Again, I don’t remember if I mentioned it. Sitting in bed next to my Kindle reminded me of it. The book went downhill after he spent the chapter explaining his poorly thought out philosophy. It became personal, describing his experiences with the death of his mother, and ended where with a meta-story that described where he was when he came up with the idea of writing the book. It was a worthwhile read even if it would have been better if it had ended before the eager college student original philosophy chapter.

I have a new fantasy novel sitting on my Kindle. I’m holding off reading it until I get through the George Saunders book. I’m hoping he applies his talents to more joyous topics. The current story is about the death of a beloved aunt in a poor, white-trash family, who returns as a zombie to improve the lives of her distraught family members. Or at least that’s her plan until she starts falling apart, being a zombie and everything. You see how much opportunity there is for humor in that story? And he does have some incredibly funny and gnarly scenes and dialogue. The problem is its underlying darkness and pathetic an sad family. There’s little redeeming in the characters except for the narrator (or is he the third-person main character?), who seems to do his best to help his family in a good natured if not terribly intelligent way. Oh, and he works as a male stripper.

Does it count to be creative by recounting another person’s creativity? Yeah, I didn’t think so either. My webpage is becoming filled with text and not enough doodles. I hope to rectify that in the coming days. It’s almost time for another week of photographs as well. Lots to do this weekend with just the four of us.

I also want to return to drawing comics again instead of Horribles. My Inner Tirade strip, of which there are a few I’m really proud, takes longer and requires more planning and actual writing—as opposed to a few scribbles at the end for my Cast of Horribles. It’s the telling a story that’s difficult for me. Whether that story is a three-panel joke, or a longer philosophical point. I have to push myself or I’m never going to get better. I gave up when I had a long list of failed ideas and couldn’t find the inspiration to throw them away and come up with a new idea. I should plan to do one a week. Not sure that plan will work but it’s at least a goal, and I usually surprised myself by keeping with goals in a sickening, rule following way. One of these days I won’t follow a rule. Of course when I do choose not to follow the rule, it’ll be a rule that’s probably worth following and my life will be worse because of it. Ah, the joys of NEQID.