ZZZZZzzzzzzzz

Monday night's middle-of-the-night hours felt like bonus time, so rather than work on paying jobs, I put the time to use on an adjunct to the-project-for-which-I-STILL-have-such-hope. When daylight broke, I sent off a bright and breezy note to The Man, asking whether he'd like to see the new material.

Now, considering that I haven't heard a single word from The Man for more than two weeks and that it's been five weeks since we last met, I felt pretty brave. Also, pretty vulnerable.

When a response arrived from him an hour later, I couldn't open the message for several minutes. Instead, I stared at his name in my inbox and tried to gather mental strength to accept bad news.

The news was not bad. It was not good, either. In fact, it wasn't even news, just more of the "I'm very busy but I like this and want to work on it as soon as I can." Trying to be realistic and objective, I'm actually happy with that response. It would be easy to tell me to go away, that he isn't interested or can't take time to deal with this. A few keystrokes and I'm out of his hair forever. Instead, he keeps the door open and I keep knocking and flying paper airplanes in over the transom from time to time.

Made it through the day just fine yesterday, but about 6:30pm, I felt my brain shut down. My eyes were open and I was functioning, but I could literally feel my brain powering down non-essential activity to conserve energy. It was weird: I didn't feel sleepy at all, just like everything dropped into slow-mo. We were gathering at Mom and Dad's for corned beef and cabbage when it happened, and my sister told me my eye lids suddenly fell half way. Hard as I tried, I couldn't get them fully open.

The human body is an ongoing miracle, and I've got to be kinder to mine. Gonna need plenty of energy when The Man finally says Yes.