Children spend years of their lives wondering, planning, dreaming of this moment. Adults ask the question before children are barely out of diapers: So, sonny, what do you want to be when you grow up? The adults find the answers cute, charming, and endlessly entertaining.My classmates and I were asked this question, once; our answers are printed in a sixth-grade yearbook that NONE OF YOU WILL EVER SEE.

Just checked with a friend. It's apparently Friday. I've been sick since last Saturday.

I appear to be on the downhill side, but this illness is not going gentle into that good night. Temps are currently not at the 102°F level that worried spouseling and me both, but they're refusing to drop to normal levels.

Lots of coughing.
Lots of sleeping.

Have the suspicion that I have been kicked in the head in the past week.

By most people's standards, I don't think you'd call today a day of rest. There's nothing quite like realizing for the seven-millionth time that making dinner for fewer than eight people really isn't that big of a deal, but, really, it isn't. Dinner for five (like tonight) - a cakewalk. I could practically do it in my sleep at this point.

Someone got brave today and asked the question that I think has been on the minds of most of my friends lately: "How are you, Amy? Not how you say you are, but how you really are."

Asking such a question to someone who has recently lost a family member is an inherently risky action. There's no way of determining in advance which person you're talking to: the friend who is bravely wandering through her days, or the friend who has decided that this whole bravery and wandering thing is for the birds (and who is looking for an excuse to cry).If you reach the former, you'll get a cautiously-optimistic answer: "I'm fine."
If you reach the latter, you'll get a cautious answer: "I'm fine."

The difference is in the tone of voice.

A creation of something,
out of nothing,
into a self-imposed belief
of importance—
or existence.I. Reverse Sift

Between hand and fist, breath and wish,
everything shifts. Edge aligns with edge.
Points notch points. Trickles of deepest
blue slide from my palms and evaporate
in the eddying currents of the air.

Your fabrications come from lips and eyes,
dichotomies of faith and belief uttered
in glance and conversation. You define me,
wrongly, as a 'conjurer.' My fabrications
begin where yours meet their end.

This afternoon's headache dictated a short rest. Or, at least, the attempt to rest. Since the cats had done their daily duty of thoroughly monopolizing the guest bed, I chose to curl up with a blanket on the couch.

Last night I dreamed of a child; a very young child. I knew it was a dream, even as I went through the motions of action in the dream. Knowing this while in the dream made it all no less discomfiting as I proceeded through it.

In the dream, I awakened with the child in my arms. She—I knew it was a she even without looking—was a newborn, eyes tightly shut. In my dream-sleep I had been mulling over names, repeating combinations and trying to find one that fit.The child never moved. She slept soundly, unaware of the fuss being made over her, only her clenched fist and face showing above the white blanket she was draped in.

"Victoria Alexandra," I said to the woman sitting beside my bed. "Call her Alexa until she grows into the name."

The woman beside me—whom I believe was intended to serve as my mother in the dream—snorted. "Are you trying to name a queen, with a name like that?"

Currently reading: Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury.

"How do you measure—measure a year?
In daylights—in sunsets / in midnights—in cups of coffee
in inches—in miles / in laughter—in strife—
in 525,600 minutes / how do you measure a year in the life?"