September 30. Friday night.

Hi Journey.

Rough Day!

I'm lost. Deep under my outer shell I imagine a part of me is dealing with this, but my conscious mind keeps trying to con my gut into believing tonight's phone call from San Francisco was a bad dream. Not much luck.

Best part of today was watching the clouds after I made it home. Handsprang me back to days when Carm and I would lazeabout summer mornings out in the way-back corner of our yard behind our house. I'd cut up old scrap carpet to size for each of the three rooms in the clapboard playhouse dad had built for us, see-sawing back and forth inside my mind between berber or old remnant shag while Carm strolled about with baby doll in one arm, bottle in other and lectured to her imaginary family. During lemonade break we'd migrate from the playhouse to the redwood deck dad was perpetually adding to and imagine the lazy, high-plains clouds walking slowly overhead were future boyfriends or circus elephants or just warm fuzzies we could snuggle up against if we could superman-jump that high.

Could've used a warm fuzzy today. Two, even. Picked up a self-study guide today: Ace the MBA Exam: A Guided Tour to Testing Success. If store doesn't pick up by this spring I'm going to plunge in and take the test. Go MBA-Corporate and forget about slogging it out on my own in the interior decorating world.

Probably better for the crew at CD, anyway.

And Mattie has cancer. Again.