You know, I haven't seen much of you, lately. What's up?

o god. what hasn't been up. well, first thing right now is this deadline, which I'm currently waiting for the green light on some files before I hand it off and wash my hands of the stupid thing. 12-hour days for the past week. no fun. no sleep, either.

and then there was that whole secret thing. though it's still going on. sort of.

whoa, you lost me. secret?

K has a secret. had a secret. it's still sort of a secret. she was developing something on her Web site that she'd told only me and her other sweetheart about, and word got out...

how?

We don't know, though we have our suspicions. anyway, whoever got ahold of the information spread it among a whole group of people who don't like her very much. someone used it to try to blackmail her, as a matter of fact. And then I started noticing a few things in my own life that made me a bit paranoid. A couple of people from this group joined my notify list.

Normally, this would have been totally cool by me. the timing, however, made me suspicious. normally, I wouldn't have thought anything but how odd it was that they were taking an interest in me. Now...I didn't know. I mistrusted their motives.

Maybe I was wrong in that. I don't know. What would you have thought if someone who, from all evidence, doesn't like your girlfriend much signed up for your notify list?

Don't know, really. She shrugs, eloquently. She never worries about these things.

Yeah, well. It was pretty stressful, not only because K was upset about everything else that was going on but because I dislike knowing that there are people out there who I've never interacted with who seem to bear some sort of off-handed ill will towards me.

It bothers me. I'm not angry, just puzzled. I was paranoid, and I think I've managed to adjust my reactions back to normal, now. I do not live in a spy novel, thank goodness.

so, what else?

oh, giving a tea in honor of LL and her husband (they got married a little while ago. the real wedding isn't till the end of June. I am the best woman) on Sunday. Loba coming into town this weekend. A friend moving. Maybe going to Folklife. all good things, but they're coming so close together!

didn't you say something about your mom?

oh, yeah. I'm totally earning good daughter points here--I'm taking my mom for a weekend in Victoria, a vacation she's wanted to do for fifteen years. We're doing it up right, too--going to tea at the Empress, the Butchart Gardens, nice hotel, the whole nine yards. I'm taking a day off of work and we're making a long weekend of it. I hope to pick up a teapot and some more stuff from Lush.

I have to say that Chris has been being really unexpectedly nice to me for the past little bit. He brought me dinner when I was working late this week. I mean, really. How nice is that? Totally unsolicited--okay, at least the first time. *heh*

so that's why I haven't been seeing you? You're just so busy?

Well, yeah. That and I feel like things in me are shifting. Like I'm making decisions that are affecting me to the bottom of my soul. I keep coming up against trouble spots I didn't know I had, which worries me. I feel caught by those trouble spots, those burls, and at the same time I'm suddenly feeling free. I actually hadn't noticed that spring had arrived until a few weeks after it did, and it's such an amazing feeling to spread out my arms in the sun.

It's difficult to explain, which is why I haven't been by much. Things are too unstable for me to want to stake them down with words, yet. I don't want to interrupt whatever is happening in the process of becoming real, because what I think it is and what it might actually want to be are probably two very different things.

The one thing I can say for sure is that I'm not done with post-integration strangeness yet. There are a thousand contradictory beliefs in my head that I have to either reconcile or make room for at opposite ends of my heart. There are unexpected things I find myself wanting, plans that seem to have made themselves while I wasn't looking. I think I may find myself soon with my worldview knocked on its ear.

But not yet. At the moment I'm waiting in silence, listening for the sound of the footsteps of an idea in the hallway, waiting for things to coalesce, waiting for conclusions to present themselves.

I'm a bit apprehensive, to tell you the truth. I have a feeling that I just don't want to know some of these things that are slowly working their way towards me. (Or maybe I'm working my way towards them.)

Ah...so you haven't been consulting me because you don't want to pin things down while they're still developing?

Yep. I'll come back to you for the words, when I'm done thinking about it. Right now, words would ruin it.

She's running her tongue along her incisors meditatively. All right, I suppose. I expect to see you back soon, all right? Don't abandon me.

You know I won't. We've been together for seventeen years now. I always come back.

You love me because of my insecurities. You know that.

Among other reasons, dear. Go back to sleep. You'll know when I'm ready, I'll call.

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