Ahab had his whale.
Quixote had his windmills.
I have a content management system.
But I will finish mine. 

A year ago, this was a quixotic task; something to be talked about in the realm of what-if with Jeff on a trip to Birmingham.  A movie—one or another—after all, we see many.

"What if," he said, after listening to me go on for quite some time, "you wrote something yourself?  Have you given that any thought?"

"Isolated showers around the area will die a slow death overnight as lows fall to the lower 70s with patchy dense fog developing in areas that recieved rainfall. Expect more isolated showers and thunderstorms on Monday again with highs in the low 90 s. Hope for some rain it will cool temperatures off and create a nice breeze. About midweek it looks a tad drier with temperatures slipping into the upper 80s and low 90s."

Few things are more difficult or more tiresome than trying to come up with something halfway interesting to say on a Friday night when you're tired, quite possibly coming down with a bit of a cold, have nursed the beginning twinges of a headache for several hours, and can't think of anything else better to say than "Hey, I made chicken stock tonight."

Yes. That's it. That's the full extent of it: another two figures accomplished on Kat's scarf (each figure is approximately four inches long) and a nagging, throbbing pain centered square in my forehead, like a third eye. The good news is that the chicken stock, given time to cool and solidify, will be strong enough to stand up under its own power and … well … do whatever chicken stock does whenever it's strong enough to stand up under its own power.

In the past two weeks I've migrated from "having a cup of tea in the evening when Gareth makes it" to "time for my evening cup of tea."

"The house is quiet," I said when Jeff called this afternoon."Well, it wasn't as if it wasn't quiet before. Gareth probably wasn't making a lot of noise while he was here. But I know what you mean." Over the line, I could hear the smile. Stay married long enough and you start to automatically translate what your partner said into what they actually meant to say.

By my watch, Gareth is probably home now, or close to it. The typical mammalian brain, even when saddled with a working understanding of the vagaries of air travel, sometimes has trouble grasping that the damp towel left in the bathroom this morning was left by someone who went halfway across the world today.

We all have holes in our psyche to fill, you see. Holes that sometimes we talk about, and holes that sometimes announce their presence because we can't (or won't) bear to mention them. Sometimes, given the fortuitous combination of personality and circumstance, another person comes along. Another person with holes in their life. Given the right time of day and phase of the moon (or kindly guiding force, depending on how your world works) their emptiness lines up with yours.Sometimes the holes of one cancel out the holes of another, forming a stronger fabric.

10:13 a.m., Eastern time. If anyone else is awake in the house, this would be the first I'd know about it.

As I grow older, I find myself generally incapable of sleeping late in my own house and completely incapable of sleeping in at other people's houses. At least last night I had the presence of mind to grab one of Suzan's books to take with me, so that I could stay in this room after waking up, entertain myself, and not have to tiptoe into the living room to find something to read.