I started writing just after Avadore got on the bus this morning. LD seemed more interested in doing his own thing with the occasional, "Mommy! See? Mommy!" than playing with me, so there you go.

Actually, I have a lot of mornings like this lately.

Usually Winter is online (logged on to the old IM) by 7:30 or 7:45. If I log in at this time of day he always messages me with something like, "You're up early today," and I always comment that I'm always up at 6:45 on these sorts of days, just logged in early.

So when I got online this morning to check email, say good morning to Rice, and work on my story, Winter wasn't online. Which is very, very, very odd.

I spent the next 2 hours and 45 minutes worrying of and on. Because, you know, that's what I evidently do with Winter. I occasionally have dreams about him where he's hurt or dead or some other awful thing. And, in my experience, so often when people aren't where they should be something bad has happened.

Part of me knew he was okay, so I didn't get that worried, but the other non-rational, non-intuitive part of me got nervous.

I could call, I could always call, but I've never called Winter. We always go through the IM. (We're introverts -- we communicate more efficiently that way.) I mean, if I was actually on the phone with him, what would I say? And he'd probably mostly grunt...

I had to ask Rice for his phone number. And then I went and took a shower. Put LD down for his nap. And then wrote a little more. I would call at 11. He would be up by 11, right? And he has to get up sometime because he and I are going out today to run errands.

And then finally he logged on. He had slept in a bit (which is unusual because of his meds).

I feel like I'm his mother. Usually I don't keep tabs on my friends like this. I don't even keep tabs like this on Rice. Maybe on the kids :). But what's that saying about when you save someone's life you become responsible for them?

And I think that's part of it, too. A little piece of me knows he's been suicidal before, and I'm always afraid he'll hit that point again. It was a scary time. I don't miss it.