Perhaps my expectations were skewed, but I felt there was a disappointing lack of helicopters, time travel, and ninjas at my ten year high school reunion.

As a shield against the chaos, confusion, consternation, and uproar of my house being dismantled and put into boxes around me, I started Otters In Space 2 last week. I needed to withdraw to a world where the animals talked, and I've been outlining it in the back of my mind for a while. So, I figured it was about ready.

I'm not usually much of a sit-down-and-write-every-day type of writer. Generally, I can go distressingly long periods of time before the guilt fully kicks in, forcing me to sit down and pound through a story in a week. This strategy has worked just well enough for me in the past that I haven't had much success replacing it with a strategy involving less guilt. Thus, I was very pleasantly surprised last week to find that the good habits I developed while writing Otters In Space 1 actually stuck.

About six months before Elaine was born, I decided that I didn't want to have a baby before writing a complete novel. So, I became very disciplined; I wrote every day; and I finished my first novel. Then I lapsed back into my old ways. So, I was taken completely by surprise last week to find that, while the habits I learned for Otters In Space 1 don't seem to apply to short stories or the other novel I'm working on, they do apply to further works of Otters In Space. As soon as I set those characters free again, the old training took over.

So, now, before I can go to bed, I need to make some progress on Otters In Space...

Moving is a strange and confusing process. Returning to Seattle after my weeks of house hunting was like stepping into a mirage. I know I won't be here much longer -- not relative to the time I expect to spend in the house we're buying in Eugene. And, yet, this is the place I've lived for years. That house, I've been inside three times. So, the permanent feels impermanent. The transitory... solid.

And then there's Elaine's perspective. She spent the last two weeks asking to "go home." Of course, I've been explaining everything to her -- buying a new house, staying with Grandma, coming back to Seattle to pack... but it's all lost on a not-quite-two-year-old. Given how much she's asked to "go home," I thought she'd be really excited when we got back here. But, no. After an hour or so of enjoying all the toys we'd left up here, she went to the front door and declared, "Go home, see June." I had to show her videos of other greyhounds on youtube to calm her down enough to go to bed.

She's right though. Grandma's house (despite having June) isn't home. This isn't home (especially since the cats have already moved to Oregon). But Elaine won't recognize our new house as home either. That will take time. For me, though, I'm not so sure it will. To a certain extent, I've been living in that house for years... I just didn't know quite where it was or exactly what it looked like. Now I do, and I find that very peaceful.

My child is afraid of fireworks. I did not see this coming. I've always loved fire and fireworks. For as long as I can remember. And Elaine gave every indication of being like me on this front. When we used the last of our wood up in our fireplace this winter, Elaine found the fire so thrilling that she kept begging for us to do it again for days afterward. But, apparently, fireworks are different. They not only terrify her, they make her fearful for my safety. Like Patrick was afraid of the ocean, Elaine is afraid of fireworks. Patrick not only wouldn't go near the water himself, he would try, frantically, to herd Daniel away from the water. And Elaine will not tolerate me being anywhere near fireworks -- even unlit ones that are still shrink-wrapped in a box. In fact, she'd prefer it if I didn't even go outside if there's a box of fireworks out there.

Sigh. I guess I'll just have to wait and have my fiery fun after she goes to bed tomorrow night. Hopefully she'll be over this by next year.

In one week, I drove by 37 houses in Eugene; walked through 11; showed the best 3 to Daniel; and agreed to make an offer on 1. We accepted the counter offer this afternoon.

Daniel's graduation is in the morning, and I've assembled an amuse-Elaine-kit to help survive the hour and a half long ceremony. I'm reasonably certain that it won't actually be enough to keep Elaine in the auditorium for the whole time. (Elaine's a very active child.) And my mom and sister have promised that between the two of them, they'll see to it that Elaine is watched and I can stay. However, I figure I should make it as easy for them as possible.

So, I've packed my blue backpack from elementary school with all kinds of treats and toys, including...

*Three kinds of snacks: the standard cheerio/raisin mix, a quartered tortilla (they travel really well because they're flat), and some special fruit and nut medley from Costco
*Plastic dogs and dinosaurs
*Finger puppets
*Assorted foam letters
*Two alphabet books
*Some scrunchies that Elaine thinks are bracelets
*A brand-new deck of playing cards (I think she'll like looking at the numbers)
*Felt pens and a pad of paper
*Extra pacifiers on beads
*And Bert

Lots of things that can be doled out slowly and played with quietly. Even so, I think we'll be lucky if she makes it twenty minutes.

When I first watched Farscape, I was still living in the basement apartment by Green Lake. So, I didn't think a whole lot about the plot lines where Moya would lose control of life support and everyone would have to scurry around trying to fix the situation before it got too hot and Aeryn Sun's brain would melt. See, Peacekeeper's can't get too hot. Or their brain's melt. Like I said, I didn't think too much about it at the time. It was a cute but silly plot device.

Since then, however, we've moved into a house with giant, west-facing windows. None of which open. In fact, in the entire house, only one window opens. So, it's a heat trap. The afternoon sun shines in, and then it stays in. The house lopsidedly follows the heat patterns outside: the temperature rises when it's hot outside, but holds steady when it gets cool at night. So it stays hot until we finally get enough cool days in a row to slowly pump the heat back out through the one open window.

The practical upshot? Between six pm and midnight, it's 83 degrees in here. And I get Aeryn Sun. With that kind of dead heat, I can feel my thoughts disassembling, breaking down like complex proteins fracturing into their constituent molecules. Pieces of thoughts float around incoherently in my mind, and it feels like my brain is melting, just like a Peacekeeper's.