Of course there's more. I'm so unsettled this morning. I stopped running. I've got nowhere to put all this endless energy and yet to look at me you'd tell me to go lie down, that I look worn out.
I did finish replying to all the emails here. And I'm sorry, I couldn't write a decent email to save my soul. They're just awkward and cold somehow. Kind of like Bridget.
What pisses me off is to watch the kids with the boys. They gravitate to them for odd things, like bedtime stories, help with piano practice or sledding. Help opening boxes or building Lego. Talk over cookies. Not even deep talks, just random stream of consciousness-type conversations about harmonicas and marshmallows, or about school and the weather. They crave male influence almost as much as I do. Part of me wants to be everything for them now and the other part smartly knows I never will be, that I can't be.
Every night they ask me if whoever is here can put them to bed, tuck them in and start their music boxes and leave their doors cracked open just so the nightlight in the hall spills in enough to keep them from fearing the dark. Every night I say yes and Joel or Chris or Ben or John or August or whoever is here takes the most important and solemn of honorable tasks and sends them off in comfort to their dreams, playing dad with no recourse or responsibility.
I don't know why it makes me angry but it does. It's one thing for me to deal with all of this, some that I caused, some that I didn't, but for the kids to have to manage life in a quiet uproar, missing people they loved so much, well, it just isn't fair.
