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?"

Tenzing, it appears, has no appreciation whatsoever for the beauty of sleeping in on a quiet Sunday morning. At seven this morning, I was awakened by the unmistakable *thud* of four dainty paws landing squarely on my rib cage.

Normally, he stops for a second, quivering with excitement, and then starts wheezepurring (there is no other word to describe it) when I open my eyes. He's genuinely excited that I'm awake.

Sigh. I'm guessing no one's going to see this entry for a day or two—or until Gareth can take a look at the DNS entry for domesticat to figure out what in the world is wrong.

I think I did everything right on my end, but things are just horked. Not much I can do about it in the meantime.

I got the new Wall of Shame put up. It actually looks really nice…and, at last, there's something on that enormously long wall behind the couch. This is a good thing.

Today, I made myself work.
It felt good.

I decorated the foyer. I created a new entry for the "wall of shame." (Otherwise known as the place where I put pictures of my friends.) I set up the grow light on the catnip plant, and dug out lots of packed knickknacks to use in decorating the living room.

I hung a print in the computer room, and re-hung the Rita Loyd print that had been hanging (in limbo, I guess) in the guest bedroom until I had a better place for it. I also hung the other lighthouse print in the reading room.

My thoughts this week have been dark ones. My frustration with suddenly losing my job has been compounded with my frustration about my poor health since late November / early December.

It's pointless to rehash things that cannot be undone or changed. But I have spent a lot of time, especially in this past week, mulling over some things. We have a euphemism here in the States that we call "a moment of clarity."

Mine, I think, came in the midst of a 101-degree fever while lying in a hospital room. It consisted of a very simple thought that has stayed in my waking hours and my dreams ever since that moment:"If you do not find the courage to change your life, you will die before your thirty-fifth birthday."

I've only mentioned this to one person so far. It troubled me enough that I held it to myself for a while, trying to understand, trying not to let on to other people that something had happened that both confused and frightened me.

I am heartily sick of my site.

To the casual reader it will seem that I haven't been working on my site much this week. The lack of posts have had more to do with frustration and fraying tolerances than anything else. My attempt to port greymatter (the software that manages the journaling portion of this site) to the new machine was a clunky, dismal failure.

That was the first time. The second time was also a clunky, dismal failure.