October 14, 2024

Birthday celebration for M, organized with my sister’s apparently effortless aplomb and enthusiasm. With two infants in the room, discussion turned inevitably to baby things, which was informative but in which I could not participate the least bit. Everyone was tired and giddy with baby-attending. Everyone was fascinated by the babies’ doing nothing at all but allowing themselves to be served. This is their lives for a while, as mine is watching it unfold.

During the night my laptop was blasted by something, and in the morning I had to recover Word Perfect and e-mail and Google Chrome and Facebook, and wait for everything to upload and unfold two hundred miles from the book in which I note my passwords. I was not calm. I was not patient. I pictured a situation in which I was even more isolated and impotent than I was before. It did turn out well, but it is not yet time to feel more grateful for that than infuriated by the supplemental tribulation.

Domicile temporarily to myself while everyone checks out the vacation house the family is buying in Dahlonega. I think they’re meeting the inspector. The boys’ lives speed ahead. They each have two houses and a piece of land at a time when, I think, I was still in grad school.