Fragile I am not. Affection is a pressure I can bear.

This morning, I got up very early and took Audrey for a walk in some welcome sunshine. When we got back inside, I plopped her back on the bed and went to my computer for a while. Maybe an hour or so. When I got up to return to the living room, I noticed it was unusually bright. Not just for a sunny morning, but for any morning. Upon closer inspection, I realized the front door was wide open. When the weather is wet like this, the wood in the door swells and makes it hard to close properly. Even harder to open with a key. But I thought I had been careful about closing it. Apparently I hadn't been. So I went through a flash of panic. What if Audrey had left me alone for all this time because she trotted out the front door an hour ago? What if she was long gone? I walked into the bedroom to find her perched, sphinx-like, on top of the comforter, just looking at me. And I loved her so much and was so grateful that she wasn't gone again. The other night, I was walking her late and talking on the phone with a pal, and I accidentally lost hold of her leash. And the more I tried to catch up to her, the further ahead of me she got. But finally, when I knelt down and called to her, she pranced back to me, and I picked up the leash, and nothing more was said on the topic. She loves me. At last.

Don't misunderstand. She's still a complete pain in the ass whenever people come over. But when it's just the two of us, she's an angel. And she never tires of my company. Even when I wish she would.

I'm working on a couple of new spec scripts. One with my friend Zach. We got together again tonight to sift through our brainstorm notes and get down to brass tacks, brass tacks being what outlines are chiefly made of. I'm tempted to sign up for a workshop again. The deadlines really forced me along last year, when I was writing my first. But I'm wary of creating too many obligations for myself. I've so much to do right now. So many things I want to follow through with. So many expectations to fulfill. And also bills to pay. Many, many bills. A friend gave me a generous and hefty tuition to a course I will eventually take, but -- even that -- not now.

I've been having a series of involved and thoughtful discussions with a captivatingly and dauntingly brainy friend, and it has been responsible for the composition of a number of paragraphs I'm tempted to cut and paste onto these pages. I'm slightly discouraged by how opportunistic that will seem to my friend, but I know he reads this, and I also know he is fully aware of how limited my actual inspiration is. So, perhaps he will understand. Mostly, we've been talking about human nature and the dread of mortality and occasionally movies. So, if I suddenly tip into wordy assessments of the desire to live forever or the plague of the fear of failure or a story about my mother and Mount Fuji, you'll know you're getting the afterbirth of another discourse. Apologies in advance.

If you stay up late enough, you can watch The Kids in the Hall on Comedy Central like me. And if you stay up even later than that, you can find yourself -- like me -- angrily turning off the television because a Tempur-Pedic infomercial came on. I had intended to go to sleep hours ago. I'm disappointed that I failed to.