Hello September

You may recall my last posts, where I waxed poetic about our woes in August and looked forward to a calmer, sunnier September.

Hmmm ... well ... it didn't quite turn out that way.

The weather cooperated, I must say: lovely sunny days with just a little more nippiness at night. I was returning to the newsroom full-time six weeks early. Everything was bubbling cheerily until a 32-story freelance project came along and smashed my schedule flat. Ron's been taking Benny to and from school every day so I can show up to the office bleary-eyed at 7:30-8:00 a.m.

Even that wasn't enough, so I'm here at the office on a Sunday morning, churning out 500-word profiles at an alarming rate. They're all due tomorrow, which of course means I'll finish them Tuesday. I also have to rewrite a 1,400-word article on a certain program that teaches economics to kids because it simply wasn't fawning enough for the publication's sponsors. This is the LAST time I write an advertorial.

Benny is settling nicely into his preschool routine, I'm told. I wouldn't know, since the Dinosaur School hasn't seen me in over a week. Ron had to quit wearing his wedding ring for a while due to an irritated spot in his finger, so the teachers probably think we divorced. But I remain a behind-the-scene presence, setting out Benny's clothes, making his lunch, writing the tuition check and finally, baking 20 pumpkin muffins with mini-chocolate chips for Afternoon Snack.

But this should all change tomorrow, when I begin to emerge from my profile-writing haze and rejoin my life. My next big project is getting Ron and myself California driver's license, which will necessitate a trip to the dreaded DMV. It's a frightening place, last time I went in 2001 I wrote a column about it. Let's hope things go better this time.