No thanks, that doesn't sound particularly interesting and I don't like you enough to take time away from reading people's Facebook status updates

In my songs I was completely direct about feelings and experience, but no one understood what I was saying, or even if they saw it in writing, I don't think it ever made much sense to them. So I felt like I was getting it out there, but, unintentionally in a kind of veiled way, so I could always talk myself out of anything I wanted to. I love Hein's comment about that's putting it out there is what fiction is for. (If I used that phrase one more time I'm going to punch myself and I'm sure you will too.) In fact just today reading Haruki Murakami that my friend Miss Charming Melodee (stole this identifier from my friend Greg who used it on his blog) lent me, there was a good part about transmuting feelings into novels. "I quietly absorb the things I'm able to, releasing them later, and in as changed a form as possible, as part of the story line in a novel."

It's late for Wally so I have to try to get him into bed, always a bit of an ordeal when we're all hanging out in one room and he can just see us right next to him, trying to fake him out, pretending to sleep.

The main reunion event was tonight. I was kind of amazed at how easy it all was, how it all flowed along because we'd gotten past all the initial hellos and stupefyingly dull where do you live and how are you related questions in the past couple days. There was this great slip and slide for the kids and they mostly just threw themselves down it multiple times with abandon. They chased each other, invented games, hid in trees, ate dessert, threw balls, jumped and overall played. Wally did too. He joined in and reminded everyone of my dad at that age, also the youngest of the family. It still felt strange to me, to have three generations and to be the middle one, to have no one left from my grandmother's generation now at all. Jumping off computer now, Alex getting back from Safeway with milk for Wally. Sorry for abrupt and awkward posts. It was a great day -- lots more to say about it (which I'll likely never get around to).