Varmint does this all the time. Wile E. will simply wait until she’s gone before attempting to take back the bone.

Trying to capture a shot of Sage before he goes to Boy Scout camp. He and Wile E. couldn’t stop playing.

I am beyond annoyed as I sit here attempting to write. Two children and a large dog are literally running circles around me. This same thing happened yesterday, with one child and one dog. My working conditions are abysmal. There is one distraction after another. Shutting myself in another room won’t work because the kids need to be supervised. I’ve applied for some title editing work that I hope will be more amenable to constant disruption since the work is in such small chunks. Seriously, my concentration is shot to hell.

I don’t know what I’m doing with the art. I looked at it last week and thought, “This stuff looks like shit.” There is one drawing I’ve done that I like and that’s it. Perhaps it doesn’t matter. Maybe it does.

I’m annoyed with exercise. I found out long ago that exercise and sunshine make me feel sane. I dislike not being able to push myself. Doing so results in a daylong adrenalin rush that gives me palpitations. I attribute this to the Ativan taper. I’d like to get in better shape than I am.

Speaking of the Ativan taper, while it is not always easy, I can feel myself getting smarter. We went to Galveston last week, and I took what used to be my old dose because I was getting sick with anxiety in the car (thank you agor). I was relaxed and out of it the rest of the trip and hung over the next day. I think this is a good thing, because that is the amount I was taking every morning. If it makes me feel that out of it now, that means my brain has healed and eliminated some of those drug receptors or whatever it does.

I want to be independently wealthy. I am sick of writing articles every day. I want to write other things on spec, but it won’t pay fast enough and of course, isn’t guaranteed money. I could write it anyway, but I am so burnt on writing at the end of the day after writing those articles. It sounds like an excuse, which it is, but seriously. Anytime I need to get it in perspective though, I think about being trapped in a classroom all day. Although, I think my attitude is a little stinky this summer because after all, it is nice kicking back and still getting paid by a school district. Some of my web content earns passive income to the tune of $200 a month. I need to kick that up a notch.

We did have a good time in Galveston. We found some awesome restaurants–a Pho place, the best barbecue I’ve ever had and a Central American restaurant that had stupendous catfish. All of these places were very inexpensive compared to what is available on in the tourist areas. The Central American restaurant was one of those ones that was either going to be really good or memorably bad. It had a colorful display of Santa Claus and all of his reindeer on one side of the building and an eight-foot-tall Easter bunny holding a burrito on the other. Greg tried to talk me out of it, but I won, and we were both glad. Even with the cheap eats, we spent way too much money. I am broke, broke, broke, which is why I am stressing more about the writing than usual.

We spent hours and hours by the water. There was an unusual amount of sea life in the Gulf–you could pick up a piece of seaweed, shake it and watch the crabs and shrimp fall out. There were also many, many schools of fish visible and I saw a school of dolphins one morning. I suspect that there may be so much sea life there because it has migrated away from the oil spill. Who knows.

Here are the pics. I’ve never seen so many seagulls in my life, by the way. They were going to town eating the creatures embedded in the seaweed.