It is a braless, serene Sunday, with all the men in my life dozing in different corners of the house. Tenzing has found a comfortable, shady spot in the reading room; Jeff is belly-down, snores-up in the master bedroom; and Edmund, having despaired of actually being helpful to me, has bathed himself to sleep on top of the guest bed, cheerfully dousing the dark green comforter with loose bits of off-white belly fur.

Edmund may not have been the brightest kitty in his litter, but he knows, with the intrinsic absolutism of feline knowledge, that my setting up the ironing board and scattering sewing implements on the bed means that I will, without a doubt, return.All he has to do is lie on top of the fabric and wait.

As soon as the dryer finishes drying the rest of the fabric I bought, I'll begin.

Sometimes, try as you might, what you want to write doesn't quite coalesce on the page in the way that you'd like, and you find yourself grasping at straws. Sometimes you find yourself trying desperately to stay on-topic, when the lure of an off-topic, but appealing, conversation, keeps drawing your metaphorical eyes back in its direction.

"Stones taught me to fly
Love taught me to lie
Life taught me to die
So it's not hard to fall
When you float like a cannonball"
- Damien Rice, "cannonball"

"Just a little nap in the sun," I said, sneaking off to the deck to crank up the sunshade and recline on a deck chair. No nap yet, but it's a few hours later, and I think the miles of this week are rolling off of me like beads of sweat.

Could be worse. At least it's not hot out here.

If I've got any sense, I'll remember to reset the trip odometer tonight before I head out. It's going to be one of those [insert the word here for a three-day span in which you roadtrip to three different cities to see three different concerts and beg some of your west coast friends to stay up an hour later than usual so that you can use your obnoxious amount of free night and weekend cell phone minutes to talk to them so that you won't fall asleep on the way home from each show, which you wouldn't dream of missing].

Yeah. One of those.

I can finally give you the answer to the question which I'm sure was bothering none of you: "What was Amy's super-secret dragon*con graphic design project that she worked on for all of August?" I held off making these photos available until after dragon*con was in full swing, hoping that no one who was meant to be surprised would be unduly surprised by visiting cat.net.