Good evening.

I love to be up late. I love to sit up in the middle of the night, especially by myself, and listen to the quiet house. Thank goodness the wind stopped. It howled so much last night I couldn't hear myself think.

This isn't tonight's moon, but it's a good night shot, and I like to put a picture up. If I could put any picture up right now, it would be that picture that I can never take. The picture of being in the woods with the trees lit up from stars and sparks from a campfire, and plenty of light to see, but never enough light for the photo that I try to take and never comes out.

I haven't been writing much lately, I know. I'm not sure why. I have a lot to think about but not a lot that I want to share with the world. I've been doing a lot of stuff. Fun stuff, painting, making doll clothes, cooking interesting food, visiting people and places. I've got my garden planned out. I have ideas swimming through my head of things I want to do and accomplish. Maybe it's because I've been keeping myself so busy that I haven't written.

On the days I'm busy with all of my projects and people, I find I don't have the time to write. On the days that I'm not busy I find that I'm blah and I don't want to write then either.

I'm balancing on a teeter totter, back and forth, between optimism and pessimism. One moment in time and I'm optimistic that everything is great, we're getting by fine, the world is good, and I'll find a job - if I really want one - maybe I don't even need one. The next moment in time I'm worried that things could change in a moment, the economy is certainly going to get worse - this I do believe is true - and I need to prepare for the difficulties that haven't hit yet but I can feel coming our way. The song in my head? REM's "It's the end of the world, as we know it... and I feel fine..." I can see things coming in the distance that I don't even know HOW to prepare for!

I think about the story of the grasshopper and the ants. We are all grasshoppers. How come no one notices this? I know I'm a grasshopper. But the thing about that story... in the version I always heard, the grasshopper convinces the ants to help him out for the winter. I always imagine the illustration on the last page of the book that I had, of the Grasshopper playing his fiddle, while the ants dance in their cozy house, as the winds howled outside. The ants worked hard, and their hard work paid off. They had food and shelter. But what would their life have been like without the Grasshopper? Much more dreary, no sparkle, the only sound the wind howling at the door.