When I heard a knock at the door, I did not answer...

Tonight, I was at home, just after work.

I was really, really tired.

I was really, really hot.

I was really, really crabby.

Jordie and I had a disagreement about money, and I was just thinking about how yucky I felt.

And I had only a few minutes before I had to leave for the Beth Shalom board meeting.

So, when I heard a knock at the door, I did not answer.

I just wanted to be alone.

Thank God, Jordie answered the door.

Because it was our little neighbor. He's just 6 or 7, I think. A beautiful boy. The son of our friends down the street. He somehow missed seeing his dad around the house, and so, when he didn't see his dad (who was, really, around there, making dinner, but somehow they missed each other). Anyway, when he didn't see his dad, he walked down the street to our house and knocked on the door.

Jordie gave him a big hug and then took him home.

What if I had been by myself and had not answered the door? It just gives me chills to think of a child being worried and me too busy to comfort.

What a lesson to not be so lost in myself.

One happy memory

I just had Abby email this photo to me from our home computer, because a friend at work is doing a page about pet owners and their pets. Kudos to Abby for knowing how to email a picture as an attachment! Our smart girl.

Anyway, this is Abby and a bunch of friends, getting ready to take our dog Gilbert on a walk down the road (that was her "job" back then).

Gilbert was a great dog who was part of our family for 14 years.

I love technology...

...because here I am, sitting in a Starbucks on Meridian Street, just north of Monument Circle, playing around on the laptop. While I've been sitting here, I've talked to Amalia on the cell phone (her "showcase" in front of theatrical agents this morning went fine -- they said she seemed really "real" in her conversations and that she is really pretty!) and I'm checking in periodically with Abby on her cell phone, as she wanders around with her friends Katie, Kimmie and Amy, in Circle Center Mall a couple of blocks away, blissfully trying on clothes! And here I am blogging...

For the past three or four days, I've been kind of sunk in a black depression. I could still work and function, and even had a very good time at my friend Deb's book release party for girlfriends...but when alone, I would feel hopeless, exhausted, weepy, overwhelmed. I wonder if that was a hormonal thing?

Luckily, I woke up this morning and felt much more like myself. I started doing some laundry, went to Esther Gaber's to pick up some blouses she is giving me (because they are moving to Meadowood), putting stuff aside for the neighborhood yard sale in a couple of weeks (a great opportunity, in my humble opinion, for us to get rid of much stuff that we brought from the old house and now have discovered...we didn't really need.

I want to get rid of the two-seater blue fold-out couch in my office. It's fine to sleep on, but as a couch, not so comfortable. I want to get a chair with a footstool from IKEA sometime this summer instead. And the yardsale will be a perfect opportunity.

A woman wrote me such a nice email, responding to my post on the neighborhood listserv. (I explained that our house is the one with the blue windmill in the yard, and that I had kept it after Dad died, because he loved it -- it reminded him of the windmill on the farm when he was growing up, which pumped water for the cows). Anyway, this woman told me that her kids love to walk by the windmill now! That made me feel so good!

Jordie and I are a little sad about the three hanging plants which were stolen out of our front yard the other day -- between 3 and 5 in the afternoon! All three were close to the street. We felt kind of really betrayed by fate to have someone do that! In our nice new neighborhood, too!

I have some concrete stuff that I want to accomplish during this quiet time, so I'll sign off now and get to work!