Slow

And not very sure.

Step.
Step.
Step.

Where is
Who is
Can I?

Sophie is sad. A little. She and me, big ups and downs, exhilarations and despairs. But I am more used to them.
Alex is on a a little roll.

The PPTA (the Teachers' Union) wants to give Gerald a posthumous award for services above and beyond.
And we've been invited to "Harbouring Ghosts" at Otahuhu College. With Gerald's music.

But I've / we've just started to move past ... I don't want to take the knock right now.
This degree ... sparked by Gerald's illness and need for care combined with inability to find work back in the small NZ market - it really is that small! ... is scary, some of the time.
And now the first semester with a chance to focus - I'm not sure I could manage being knocked over by another series of speeding waves of emotions and recover quickly enough.

Is there a part of me that manufactures the ability to keep going, to not give up, not give in - and to revel in that tense, peaked energy and pitch of effort, some of the time?
I need a new one. Or maybe it needs cleaning. Or plugging in.
It's still sort of working, but without the revelling.

I'm hoping they'll be able to postpone a little - the Teachers' Union, that is.
I am moved that they would wish to go to trouble and time to honour someone for no obvious reward - dead people don't contribute.

The drains are growing stuff.
I need to ask for help.
I have paid someone a lot of money to haircut and shave the grounds.
That was a good thing.

Validation.
One could look for it forever -
Unconventional must equal unsafe and therefore disliked, misunderstood, unencouraged, considered foolish and left alone - at least some of the time by some of the people, by definition. I think.

And that's a good thing. I think.