Real Life is Over-rated

Bored Border Collie.  Watch out!

My three-year-old son is always making-up games to play with found objects. I don't know why we even buy him toys. He's explaining "skip-the-rock" to me right now, which involves tossing water bottle caps and the larger rocks from gravel near the playground.

He is so beautiful. So far the beauty of my children has been my greatest contribution to humanity and the one over which I've had the least control. He's still explaining, and so serious.

Saw my shrink today.  Told her about the fiction obsession, crush, and suicidal shower experience.  "More exercise, more sleep, and more real life," she prescribed, and a blood test to check my TSH. She thinks I'm bored and that, like a border collie locked in a small apartment, my mind is just getting into all sorts of trouble. She's probably right. 



Last night I had a dream about some no-faced but of course handsome and charming man that I'd go out with a few times a week for romantic (but actionless) dates. It turned out he was some world famous designer (interior? clothes? graphic? Not sure. Maybe graphic.) and I'd never known this and so I had been interesting to him because I wasn't gold-digging. We had fun. Then it turned out his entourage showed up and he dismissed all my illustrations as amateur crap, which might well be true, but he was  rude and dismissive so I told him to go to hell and that was that. Ha ha. This afternoon I caught a nap (my kids had me up last night, I'm hoping by the time they're teens they'll stop crawling in bed with us) and I think dreamed of the same guy or idea of a guy or whatever.  Turns out we're both married.  And... I forget.  I think I was waiting to see whether he'd decide my telling him off was interesting in its novelty or if he'd written me off.  Dunno.  It didn't get resolved.   If he shows up tonight I'll update you.

The moon is shining titanium white in the evening stretch of cornflower sky, cold, like an LED. A minute passes and the next time I look up a layer of grey has been cast over the blue. Clouds. The moon shines through, unobscured, then is smudged out of prominence. Dusk has fallen at the playground. The lights for the playing fields outshine the moon. It is time to go. Time for another installment of the "real life" I'm supposed to have more of.   I'd rather keep writing, sticking to the life in my head instead of that of dinner and car seats, clutter and mac and cheese.

There are these guys in the baseball diamond, hitting balls and catching them in the outfield, using their bodies, laughing, being physical. They are having fun. I envy them. One just had a colossal miss and spun-out onto the sand, laughing. A car alarm is silenced and the trees have become silhouettes. A spring night's chill is leaking through my open window into my car. Reluctantly, I grit my teeth and start the reality machine.