It would appear that my sleeping schedule is directly opposite to that of all of my loved ones.
I've been up since five this morning, and I waited for the sunrise for the first time in too long.
I've been so busy, and I haven't slept alone in so long, and while it's been wonderful, maniacal, exciting and filled with many glorious moments, I've been missing many others.
I've been missing the quiet moments of serenity between me and my rooftops, stretching out past the still naked trees lining the streets about me on my fourth floor walk-up.
The rooftops were shimmering.
I had time to think.
I haven't signed up for martial arts yet, I may not, either. I may take ballroom dancing lessons instead with a rapidly expanding group of compatriots, but I'm going to do something, I have the aching urge to learn a new skill.
It's almost time to finish up my motorcycle lessons and take the test.
It's definitely time to write more, I haven't played word puzzles with what passes for meaning in my head in many weeks.
I started learning to sing yesterday, though. The plan was for David to teach me to play an instrument, but I'm so far from understanding the slightest thing about how to make music move (although I can appreciate it with the best of them) that I've been afraid to try, I've been putting it off and putting things off is terrible.
So yesterday he pulled out his guitar and did solfege with me, which apparently means that he plays a note and I have to recreate it.
I did.
The look on his face when he stammered that he loved my voice nearly terrified me into stopping, but I didn't, and I sang the scales up and down and up and down until his friend arrived from Ottawa bearing his children.
Last night was supposed to be different, but it turned out just nicely, minus the missing cf188.
(I've been enjoying my surplus time with cf188 too.)
My grandmother's not doing well again, and it's strange how the worse she gets the more I love her, like Dana said when she spent time with her grandmother in czech -- it's the first time that we've really talked.
I didn't even know her maiden name, or anything about her life, her family, what she's done or where she's been or what she would think of the things that are important to me.
It's funny how much I'm realizing that we have in common, it's funny how I've always believed in the wisdom of some of my elders, but I never even considered it in my grandmother.
I don't think much of my family.
So yesterday, we talked some more, and when it was too late to go rollerblading with cf and Jay and Stefuss, my shiny new cell phone rang and it was David telling me that his friend was driving his kids in from Ottawa so he had a few hours to kill and would I like to come over for a quickie...
...well it was less of a quickie than we'd planned but we still had time for a few rollercoaster scales and then the door buzzed and I went out to meet the little tykes and Emily's shout of glee at seeing me didn't terrify me like I had thought it would.
We spun around and did acrobatics and Olivia wrapped herself around my shoulders and we spun around and around and around and then we had dinner, David and Mike and I, and the girls crawled about my lap with books and photographs and stories and giggles and when it was bedtime they wanted me to put them to bed...
...so I did, crawling in between their beds and we did math puzzles in our heads and we sang lullabyes and they went to sleep quite happily and when I wandered out David thanked me sheepishly for doing the hard part and looked rather confused that they had fallen asleep so willingly.
I played wordgames with Mike for a bit, looking for ways to discuss pornography in front of children, big words like phallus and pedophilia and we laughed raucous laughs and I went home to crawl into a cold bed.
I was not afraid of the girls' attachment.
And I was comfortable with David introducing me as his girlfriend, he asked me later in a quiet moment if that had bothered me and it had never crossed my mind.
And we had looked at high school pictures, and David is so different now but I saw in him the floppy haired boy that I always had crushes on when I was littler.
No wonder I take to him now, I had never been able to figure out what I saw in this thirty-five-year old balding man, aside from the kind grin and kinder touch.
Everything makes a little more sense now.
The sunrise made it all so much clearer, and I'm sitting here, near upon ten o'clock, and I'm ready to race off to work to pick up papers that I'd left there, do laundry, meet up with people, go to Robin's birthday party, and eight million other things, because the sunrise made it all make sense.
I've been up since five this morning, and I feel as calm and collected as I ever have.
And I feel loved.