Today I was loaded with anxiety, but my soul was too weary, so what happened was that I stood there in the middle of the house while my head ran around the living room without me. It was really weird. I remember going to the refrigerator several times to meet a wasted, irritable odor. But I didn’t have the discipline to clean it, desperate as my fridge was for a good cleaning. Instead, I concerned myself with keeping Chas out of the kitchen and hoping that Ford wouldn’t look back into his childhood, later on, to discover that his first memory was peeking into a rancid icebox. I thought of solutions to the problem, and none of them were to clean the fridge. The best idea I had was to ignore it another day.

Chas likes Harry Potter, not snuggling up in bed to read a copy of the book but sitting on the edge of the bed watching the movie on Ford’s laptop. If I deny his first request, he will continue bobbing up and down uttering “Pottah?” Pottah? Pottah?” until either I give in or he breaks down in a holy shitfit. I blame Ford, who is entirely too influential. Chas will sit, transfixed before the screen, for ten minutes at a time. It’s creepy. I know it’s not porn, but this bothers me fundamentally. Books have a lot of competition for his attention. At the same time, I can’t help chuckle; “BOMBAZAH!” is a very interesting first phrase.

Where I lack the inspiration to wipe diluted bleach solution onto refrigerator shelves, I certainly haven’t lacked it in the creative department. And I have Ford as my witness; I found myself telling him earlier this week that 2006 was the year I would be rejected by a lot of publishing companies, but that I’d have dummy (picture) books flying in all different directions, nonetheless. Experience has shown that nothing is final until I’ve confessed it to Ford. Of course, I had to explain the definition of a “dummy book” to Ford, a rather simple process made difficult and I don’t think he ever got over the derogatory connotation.