I like autumn, but the darkness can be a bit much. It starts getting dark at 4:30 p.m. lately, and here it is 6:30 a.m., and the sky is almost totally dark; just a hint of uncoming dawn.

Last night was a great night. I grabbed a long nap in the evening, and then Heather woke me around midnight so she could get a few hours of sleep. The kid had just eaten, and he was totally conked out. I wound up snoozing on the couch and didn't get up for three more hours, when he was hungry again, and I bottle fed him so Heather could get a little more shuteye. All told I think got about seven hours of sleep! After his feeding the kid went right to sleep again, and I tried to go back to bed, but I wasn't tired at all, so I thought about my novel and figured out the next scene and, poof, I just wrote 1500 more words on Grift Sense. Chapter 1 is almost finished (I need to do a little bit of backfilling to set up the scene I just wrote). I'm trying to write 500 words a day, so I'm ahead of the game.

I made chili yesterday. I've been eating pie for breakfast every day since Thanksgiving, and yet I've still lost eight pounds since the baby was born (I'm nearly down to my pre-Heather's-pregnancy weight! I gained ten pounds while she was pregnant, probably because I ate ice cream whenever she did). River is an amazingly cheerful and easy baby. We've got friends visiting next weekend, and my family's coming a week and a half after that, and another friend's visiting in January, and I'm done with my Xmas shopping, and our rent's not getting raised for at least another six months, and life is pretty great. It's amazing how rosy things look after a full night of sleep.