Wednesday, June 30

It Looks Like It's Just You And Me Kiddo

OK, Charo was right; I have been slacking. It’s been seven days since I posted anything new. I was doing well last week, but lately my attentions have been drawn away from Ruby Dawn. Ani went back to work today, so we’ve been trying to spend some time outdoors and with friends. We went to Pyramid with Leah yesterday. The wind was high on the backside of the lake, and it felt like the ocean; complete with five-foot swells and a warm mist.

Also, two groups from out of town happened to be visiting Reno at the same time: Jim, Jen, and Quinn from Portland, and Mark, April, Autumn, Storm, and Athena from Huntington Beach. This blog is a way for me to catch up with old (and new) friends, but I had to put it on hold so I could do exactly that, only in the non-virtual world. It was great to see both groups, and I hope to visit them both on their turf soon.

Now, all is quiet. Friends have gone home, Ani is at work, and I am alone with Ruby. I don’t know exactly what led to it, but I have made what I feel to be a very important decision. I will not be returning to school next semester. I probably won’t even go this summer. I just got through writing about how much I want to be done with it and out of the service industry, but I am a patient man. I will get there soon enough. I’m close to being finished; the work that I’ve done in school isn’t going to vanish, and I think Ruby needs me to be with her now almost as much as I need her to be with me. I was talking to Jim, who is doing exactly what I intend to: working a few evenings a week in order to be home with his daughter, and I knew as soon as the idea crept into my mind that I’d completely changed my plans for the next year or so. Some ideas take a lot of thought and deliberation. This made sense immediately. Any subsequent discussions or weighing of pros and cons were just pretenses in order to avoid seeming like I had been frivolous and flighty in changing my seemingly iron-clad plans.

It’s a little after noon, and Ruby is napping. I fed her successfully with the bottle an hour ago, and when she wakes up, I’ll take her to have lunch with her mom. I’ll probably call my mom and see if she wants to hang out with her granddaughter sometime this afternoon. This is what my days will be like for a while. Maybe I’ll take an internet class or two to keep my mind busy, or possibly I’ll try to finish a couple of writing projects that I have started and then left by the wayside. Or, I might just spend the next six months talking to a little girl. Whatever happens, I’ll be right next to her… exactly where know that I should be.