(To “Looks Like Rain,” from The Dead’s 12/29/77 show at Winterland)
On my desk rests a helicopter, broken in two places where my wife stepped on it yesterday afternoon. It rests, on its side, with one half of its landing gear nearby; next to the black piece of plastic is the wooden shank once holding the back propeller. All three pieces rest in the shadow of a bottle of Elmer’s Wood Glue and a thin tube of Instant Krazy Glue, still in its original package, waiting to be put into service. In a few hours, I’ll apply the glues, turn three pieces of toy into one once again, and let it rest for another 24 hours before letting it fly once again. It seems all too simple, really, to fix what is broken.

Wouldn’t life be just a little different if that’s all it took to mend the broken parts? I a little dab of Elmer’s and a drop or two of Krazy Glue?

I’ve been up most of the night with my five year old. She is trying her best to fight off the cold her younger brother gave her, but her defenses are not strong enough. At around 3 this morning, she and her immune system succumbed to the bug, and she spent the remaining hourse of pre-dawn light throwing up, pleading for sleep to find her once again, and wanting nothing more than the burning pain in her throat to go away.

Nothing to do but hold her through it while my wife did her best to keep little Braeden asleep. If he would have awakened, it would have done us in completely.

So, I’m back. To be honest, I didn’t really want to write this morning, but I can feel myself slipping into a lazy, self-piteous way, and I know I’ve got to do a better job at disciplining myself to stay focused this week. The one side of me tells me to take it easy, finish reading that better-than-ok book by Stephen King (Lisey’s Story); the other side tells me that I’m being a lazy bum and I need to stay focused if I’m ever going to do something substantial with my writing.

What motivates me most, of course, is my children. I want them to have the security that I have not yet provided them, and I want them to have some pretty good experiences while they are still in their younger years. There’s a house that I’m pining after in one of the local historic districts, and I keep thinking about how right it would be for us to live there. It’s modest in many ways, but it’s got the yard we’ve been wanting for them, and it certainly has more space for us to spread out (and definitely at least 4 bedrooms, which is an absolute necessity now that we’re a family of five).

So, I need to discipline myself to get there. To make it happen. To kick it up another notch with my writing and get to that historic house with the bigger yard and the 4+ bedrooms (oh, please let there be just one more room for my writing room).

That’s why I’m just back, I think. The blog’s probably going to be of a different tone as I try a few things out, so please be patient with me as I work through this.

I’m glad i wrote this morning. . . .(“Minglewood Blues” closes me out for this entry…)