Just got a call from Lizzie, who just came in from playing on the beach with Drew. So unfair! She said he's been treating her as his personal monkeybars, climbing all over her now that he's figured out how to do that. My son the monkey! Only a day and a half left.

Last night I was trying to find my paper journal from way back at Clarion in '96, and I got caught up reading one of my two dozen other journals, all narrow-ruled pages, front and page, filled with scribbling.

The one I read was from late '94, a few months after I'd moved out here, and man, was I in a state back in those days (and I don't mean the state of North carolina). I'd just moved here from Nebraska, and I'd even gone so far as to apply to grad school back at the University of Nebraska (and got accepted!). I was close to packing up and moving back from NC to NE. Crazy.

Less than a month later I'd moved into an apartment in Chapel Hill with my brother, got a new job (waiting tables at Applebee's!), and two months after that, I met Elizabeth. Moving back to the midwest and missing all that would've been bad. Very bad.

I also found an old, old journal from when I was 19, and all hung up on a girl I knew. I'd written one entry when I was drunk, and as the words became more and more illegible and big, I just started laughing at the angst of it all. Good lord, who WAS this person??? Apparently this girl and I had just had a pretty big fight, and I was all "I'm going to drink until I pass out, and I'm so drunk, and I'm about to open my FOURTH BEER!"

Needless to say, I stayed up until about 12:30 reading those old journals. I really need to get back into the habit of writing in a paper journal as well as here. I like to share my writing stuff here, but I don't go into the personal stuff here so much, other than to sing the praises of my wife and kiddo. Writing longhand in a journal is really therapeutic. I should get back to it.

Though I'm pretty sure my journal entries in a paper journal now would be WAY less full of that angst. Man. I have stress nowadays, but I feel like a completely different person from that 19-year-old. I have Lizzie, first of all, and now Drew to thank for that relative mellowness...

And, speaking of the little guy, here's today's photo, taken the last time we were at the beach; check out those blue, blue eyes in THIS one:


Not much longer until I get to be Drew's personal monkeybars! Later!