Lots of pain this morning. Bottoms of my feet, both sets of toes, left top of my foot (separate, somehow), knees aching, lower back disagreeable. This is ridiculous. I’m 42, I can’t be broken. Chalk the weight gain up to fatigue and pain (the eating beast self-perpetuates craftily) plus a liberal summer of milkshakes. Good thing I’m on my way to the gym, where sweat and pain are required. Then it will all be worth something.

I’m waiting on job news, both exciting and exhausting. Four phone chats. Five? Just give me entry-level work, for chrissakes. Foot in the door, turn the corner on my hole-ridden resume. I’ll work my way up. Delays in finding an afternoon nanny threaten to send me back to square one. I don’t like square one. I want responsibilities, adult interaction, a W-2. Kinda sick of hearing about the nobility and value in putting the kids (needs and schedules) first. Why can’t I put them tied for first while I work through a healthy hopper?

The house Wi-Fi took an inexplicable siesta yesterday. A little thing, first-world inconvenience, but the timing was excellent. Job research, Luanne’s paperwork, kids griping without reason to gripe. I need to get out of this house.

On Tuesday, I saw a heartbreaking moment. I’ll share that soon.

In the dark this morning, I revisited the sadness of ET. Would Elliott ever be okay? In real life, he’d be around 46, trying to explain loss to his own kids. I’m sure there’s a ton of manuals on the subject, and I’m sure most of them suck.

Tempest Road comes out in a few weeks. I want to celebrate it, share it with people, and then move on. I don’t want to entertain the fantasy of robust sales, this time. Hope can be a killer. The cover seems awesome to me–my idea, Greg Simanson’s work. I have about seven seconds to entice people with it. Seven seconds to pique a reader’s interest, because two thousand hours of sweat equity just looks like black type on white paper. And any fool can do that.

Sip the coffee, fill the water, get out to the gym. An essay on Sherman Alexie popped into mind, scrawled on the kitchen white board with my carbs-count and ‘gf’ for gluten-free days (wheat may not be hurting, but it certainly wasn’t helping!) and note to work on a friend’s website. At the bottom is a command, the way I imagine Mr. Alexie (ever the funny man) would put it: “Get a job, you bum.”

Swell.