i'm sitting here stressed out, in my chair, with the afternoon sun streaming in facing me. i somehow find this easier than being in it, with it right on back, heating me up, so i move away from it, and face it, and now it only bugs my eyes. it will be this way all summer, with it streaming in, afternoons, from the west over broad street. the little dust bunnies that i need to clean up kind of glow in it.

puppy is stressed out because now he's gone maybe seven months without a haircut, and his fur is too long. time for a cut. he has this condition where this iron-colored something comes down and marks up his face; it's natural, but when his hair is too long it's worse. poor puppy.

sometimes i think it's just because i have too many kids, and i worry about them all. the two right smack in our lives, nine- and ten-year-old foster girls, had a huge fight at after-school, and the guy came right up to me when i picked them up. i guess you could say in his own way he was pleading to me to discipline them. i'm too tired. if they screamed at him from the minute they got there, which i believe, it was likely, then most likely they had a reason, and of course when we get home it's always all his fault. because he's a jerk. well yes but i'm a teacher, so kind of secretly, i'm on his side. i took away their screens but that was just a reward, for me, to be outside, watch them play in the mud and sticks in the breezy spring afternoon. a puppy was out there too. i had nothing special for them to do; i'm not thinking that far ahead - but i thought i'd better do something. when their mom got home maybe she gave them screens back. i think mom thinks maybe this guy is just a jerk.

then another son quit a job in california and is moving to chicago. i should be excited. instead i'm full of trepidation. the (truck driving) job in chicago pays better, and will allow him to support his new famiy. but he's had trouble with chicago before. and chicago has a winter, unlike l.a....having him drive on those frozen roads, well, trepidation city. but that one is not for five or six months. by that time maybe he'll have time to get used to backing, and will be able to talk to people about how to handle it. of all the truckers up here in illinois, the survivors have all learned how to duck out during the worst of it, and not let the icy roads throw their trucks into a ditch.

one turned twenty-one and is still dependent. i had to throw his friend out this morning, take him to school. his mom was threatening to call the police. i don't want the police going out to that son, and asking why he's harboring a fugitive minor. he somehow feels he's just a victim. the guy walked in while he was asleep. he didn't kick him out, no, but he can't do that i guess. it's a friend, an old friend. i'm not sure the kid actually went to the school after i dropped him off, but i at least took him there. if he wants to go out to my son's trailer, he'll have to walk three more miles. maybe he'll get tired of walking.

that's actually enough to be stressed out about, but there's more. sometimes i take the time between rides and just hide out in my room working on family hiatory. it's really interesting to me how they got through the world war, the. roaring twenties, the crash, the depression, another world war, well that's where it ends pretty much. smack in the forties, and i'll be done, because i'm already writing about people i know, and that actually makes it harder, not easier. makes it more stressful.

i'm invariably interrupted and asked to drive somewhere, like to pick up the girls at after-school, or to take the dependent kid something to eat or drink. more later...