Tuesday, 1 a.m. I can't sleep; I woke up after dreaming over and over again about a house, and a trip to inspect something in Iraq, I think. It's escaping me now. Iraq haunts me these days, though I've never been there. I read the press about it, the alternative press, where one gleans hopefully something of the truth. I spent my spare moments over the weekend reading the Chris Hedges book, War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning. It stays with me, this book, explaining that war is addictive, like a drug to those who fight or report it. It tells of how war unites us, the citizens behind the military machine, in ways peacetime never does, connecting our lives and giving us meaning, although the meaning is based upon death and the evil being done to our enemies. I wonder at it.

Much of my time these days is spent worrying about the future. What will I do? When I'm at school, all I want to do is remain a part of the school culture. When I'm at home, I think about how lovely it would be to work part time, and actually live a life where my house and family are in order. There is so much to be done around here. One child leaves in five years; we have only five years left before college. I need to read reams of books about parenting a teenager because it is new ground to me and I don't quite get it. Apparently someone does, though, someone cool, because Chinaberry sells soulful books about parenting teens. When my kids were little, and I had time to be a parent, I invested so much time into learning about it. Now I don't take the time and I miss it. Lucky me--I still have weeks of paid time to figure this out. But summer is here now, and the end of the paychecks, weeks away looms ahead. Discernment time.