The Final Frontier

This is a photograph of The Red Planet descending a staircase. No, it's not. It's a closeup of LED lights on the baby monitor, which flare up whenever Eleanor stirs. It's a very helpful tool for finding a way to micro-manage and obsess about your child even when she's fast asleep. This thing's gonna be the death of me. But once you get hooked on the baby monitor, it's very hard to let go of it...like long johns in the wintertime, if you wanna think about it that way.

I just put an important envelope in the mailbox. A signed contract, wherein I agree to teach two sections of Rhetoric this Fall (and one in the Spring). So there you have it. Two big things have fallen into place. We have a place to stay in Iowa. I now have a job in Iowa. Now we just need to find some work for The Missus that will either allow us to keep Eleanor out of daycare, or else place her in the world's awesomest, safest daycare. We're not sure how that's going to work out. At this point, we can only hope for the best.

I'm still trying to finish the last story in Styron's A Tidewater Morning. I think I'm averaging about a page per day now. Oh, yeah, I'm also filling out financial aid paperwork, in the hopefully-unlikely event we'll need to borrow more money from Uncle Sam to get through the Fall or Spring. I'd really like to avoid that. My student loans are already, well, shall we say sizeable?

It's weird that The Red Planet is named after the God of War. I mean, I get it - wars are bloody. Blood is red. Mars is red. It's a little obvious. I'd rather call Mars something like "Steve" or "Elroy." It has that kind of loyal, quirky buoyancy. When Ella stirs in her sleep, the baby monitor lights up like Steve descending a staircase. Like Elroy on an escalator.

There's a literal connection between baby monitors and outer space, too, you know. Yeah, A few months back, this lady in Chicago started picking up a live, transmitted satellite video image ('cause, in case you don't know, the really upscale baby monitors are actually video monitors that allow you to watch your infant dozing, which is retarded, but whatever, anyway) of a space station being constructed...you know, in space.

I wonder if Eleanor will become an astronaut...