I click on the time

I click on the time at the top right corner of my screen to see what the date is. I never know the date on days I don't work. Today was Saturday, July, 21, 2007. As tonight is. Up at 8 a.m. Stagger downstairs. Into morning routine. But Vaughn's excited about yesterday, so filled with joy at telling me what she did while I was at work last night, and I have no idea what she's saying. Half-closed eyes are half-closed ears. I'll catch up later, I think, but never do. Is this the birth of tragedy? But there's no music this a.m. Into routine, a bowl of Heart-to-Heart with Silk. Grab a spoon, sit at the computer, read the news. Maybe the president's problem is in his ass, since that's where his thoughts seem to originate. Into routine, fill the kettle, boil water for black tea. KC tending to Vaughn and Dash. Getting Vaughn ready for big day out with Auntie Joss in East Chester, NY. Dash not just hanging out wherever we put him down anymore, but crawling all over the floor, drawn to cords and cabinet doors. KC will drop Vaughn off at Nana and Papa's who will drive her to New York. Then KC and Dash will head to Borders and pickup her reserved copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. What do I do during this time? Try to write, go back to a poem from last year, revise it, try to get it right. Turn it inside out. Discard and rewrite. Sever ties with a darling or two. Creep back into the poem. Make it new. Ha. Will it feel like wasted hours when I'm through? Yeah, probably. That's the gamble. KC returns with Harry Potter and yesrerday's mail. I have a new book, too, Black Stone by Dale Smith. We won't argue who gets the reading time today, it's her day, that's okay. We take turns with Dash t/o the day. We have tuna for lunch, eat in shifts, and when Dash finally naps we both lie down to read. We eat supper in shifts, we have egg salad, I have a garden salad and she stir-fries or steams or somehow cooks up some veggies for herself. When she leaves to pickup Vaughn I play with Dash the entire time. We bang the xylophone, we spin Duplo blocks and the Duplo people on their heads, I toss the football in the air and he claps when I catch it, he tries to throw the soccer ball, sometimes he does, he climbs all fourteen stairs, in his room we play with monkeys, and his stuffed pony I call Pinto. When he gets fussy I change him out of his little person clothes, draw him a bath where he can play with his smiley cup, and a little red boat, and a red lobster. He loves the water. For a while. Time to get out. Wrap him in Vaughn's old yellow ducky towel. He likes the way I muss his wet hair dry. Gaping six-toothed smile. When KC and Vaughn come home, Dash and I are listening to the Yeah Yeah Yeahs trying to sway him asleep, which usually works, but tonight, he misses his mom. Vaughn tells me about the pools in East Chester, and playing with Daniel, and how Mr. Nobody was there, too. He left clues. Footprints and matching colors. Matching colors of what I never get told. And for the first time she mentions a Mrs. Nobody. And we brush her teeth, and we read about Maisy, and Arthur, and two boys who experience a hurricane which knocks down an old elm which they get to play in for a few days until it's chainsawed apart and carried away and they're bummed, but they learn to appreciate the elm that remains. And before Vaughn falls asleep she tells me I need to call the Rosie's in New Milford because Auntie Joss gave her a new pink watch but she left it there at the restaurant and she's about to cry, and I tell her I will. We live in New Milford. There's no Rosie's in New Milford. Vaughn puts one hand on my chest. She drifts into sleep. By the time I get downstairs her mother has called Rosie's in Danbury. They have the pink watch. We will drive there tomorrow—some of us or all of us—pick it up and bring it home.

P.S. Results of our reading: KC, halfway through her 800-page book; me, halfway through my 80-page book.

P.P.S. Those results are tainted though. I also read today the new issue of E•ratio, issue 14 of Alba, some of issue 6/7 of The Germ, various poetry related blogs, some pages of Time, a handful of poems from Hoa Nguyen's Red Juice, and not a small number of web pages researching some details for my writing this morning. So I can't complain.