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Sometimes I feel badly about being absent, here. Then I sit down to write something and I remember why it’s been so long: life, right now, is boring.

I know, I know. I’ve written about boredom. But when I say “life is boring” I don’t mean that I’m bored. As a first-time Mom, only just feeling like herself again, two years later, I am exhausted and frazzled and months behind and forever scrambling in a messy house, surrounded by dishes and laundry and all these books, to read or write or that have been written, except what’s the point, even? And none of it seems to matter, compared to my little girl, a toddler now, learning new words, reaching higher shelves, growing out of old shoes, and watching – always watching – how I do everything: quick to try it herself, especially if she oughtn’t.

I am never bored. But I am often spent, by the time I get to this blank page.

I mean, what am I going to say, at the end of yet another day of life-as-usual? I’m home. I read. I work on the stories. I chase, chase, chase after my daughter. She has my book, has my pens – nope, now she’s thrown them. She’s rummaging through the dining room cabinets, then the kitchen drawers. She wants to help me pick up: she stuffs her juice cup into the diaper pail, pulls clean pots and pans out of my cupboards to shove into the sink. She’s dragged the mop out of the closet and is furiously scrubbing the linoleum. She’s riding the rocking chair like it’s a bronco, climbing onto the table to reach the scissors, on the floor with her crayons, coloring – ah, yes, of course – the floor.

I am fortunate to read even one chapter, blessed to write more than a few sentences. I make more coffee. I am still so tired. Maybe I fold clothes, or sort through the toy chest, or take inventory before a shopping trip. Maybe we go to the grocery store, or the park, or the library. Maybe I work at the restaurant that night. Maybe I go to bed early, because it all starts again in the morning.

So it goes, day in, day out, and it’s just . . . not much to write about.

Unless it is. I don’t know.

I do like it, very much. And somehow, all the wizard and dragon story-nonsense comes from this quiet life, so . . . I may not write about it, all the time. But I will keep at it.