No 4 rise.. Well, I did, but went right back to the pillow.  But I’m still proclamative, that this day will change everything.  No matter what time the babies wake, and the fact I’m home with both for half the day– everything expressed, everything recorded.  I’ll run later– do push-ups throughout the day.  Not making coffee yet, want to be creativity, creating from energy and momentums natural.  May do a couple push-ups in a sec to wake me up…  Goddamnit why are mornings becoming rough for the writer?  Is it my age?  How did Dad do it?  How does Mr. ‘A’ do it as a truck driver?  It’s his job, you might reply.  Okay… This needs to be my truck’s roving, my base that I have to be at, 4AM en punto.  And it may be foolish, or mad.  But madness is the only exploration upon which I can embark at the moment– putting all my words into the world and hope for a reaction.

5:56–  think I heard someone moving upstairs.  May be Alice as she said she has to be on campus at… Was it 730?  Typical husband not listening.  The fridge hums, and yes I just heard someone up there– okay, the day is off, and I have to code my composure in total composure, calmness.  That’s what’ll make me more coherent a writer, relating to myself and urges and thoughts logically.  Ugh, sound like I’m lecturing on Coherence to students.. So forget that sentence and I think the last one.  What I’m urging myself to do is basically stay calm, write through the day.  People talk about these “rock star” dads and maybe today’s where I show and write myself one.  Not sure why I’m nervous, Alice does it every weekend, and for the whole day.  I will just be at the wheel with the two mini-beats till about 2-something, at the latest.

A bit irked with self about 4AM.  But you know what, loss cut.  Onward.  With the thoughts I have, what I want from the day.  Just have to keep little Emma happy, and Kerouac not so crazy.  Part of me feels exhausted just thinking about the hours ahead, the other slaps it starkly across and into its face–  “Stop your grieving.. Just write!  Enjoy the time with your kids!  You do like your kids.  Right?!”  I slap back, “Of course I do!  First-time tremors, I guess…” Gonna need coffee, and tsunamis of it.  Walking over to machine–  Guess a benefit to writing on phone, walk while pushing keys and then leaning against the kitchen’s island counter Waiting for the machine to be ready.  Feel like it’s taking forever, and I have to use the restroom quickly… Trying to plan everything and get everything done before they’re awake.. Stay five steps ahead, I tell myself.  Any dads reading that can relate?  Machine ready.. Cup 1, approaching…

Smoldering black behind me, house quiet to the point I’m just waiting, and am a bit uncomfortable with how quiet it is.  But I keep typing or thumbing, thinking, how far will I run later?  Will it be too hot?  Should I not cancel my 24 membership?  Goddamn this is too much to think about so early.  Sip…  Yes, without coffee I and I’m sure other dads would be dead.
Hear more upstairs.  Think Jack is awake.  Now the morning is truly off, about to intensify, and not in a negative way (realize this may sound negative, like I’m dreading the day, I’m not!  It’s just going to be a challenge and I’m disclosing my strategies for staying balanced), just need to be ahead of him, Emma, Time and my self.  I’ll battle any moods, either mine or Jack’s, or even little Emma, Time’s, with words–  Alice’s alarm goes… Now I’m up.  At the plate.  Ready for what screwballs and curves, sliders and sinkers the day throws–  you know Monday, you bitch, give me your best shot!  I dare you!  I’m going to record everything…  Not just “content” as these middle-headed and muddle-minded bloggers say, but life.  REAL real-life.  Story.  A father.  Writer.  Runner.  Teacher.  Teaching himself and learning from everyone and everything around him.  Today’s a class, a session I find more of myself in what’s around me and getting closer to my ‘There’, where I see myself.  Yes I have a blog, blogs, and I put writing there, yeah I get it, but I’m not like them, the flappy brains that can’t write with any truth or true conviction and depend on images and things to sell for their paragraphs, just reducing themselves and everything they do to living as true bloggers only putting up “content”, not life.  They blog, they don’t write.  I write.

Dada….  Jackie just called with a tired voice, a bit with rasp, I go upstairs to find him tucking all the extremities of the comfortor into the space between the frame and mattress the best he can.  “I want to sleep,” he said.  I told him he was staying home with daddy and that’s fine, “Get some rest, buddy,” I comforted.  There’s one victory, or easy transaction.  What’s next?

Shit, almost erased what I’ve written, or thumbed/texted to self essentially.  Copied to paste in word counting app–  why the fuck do I care about count?  Well, ’cause I’m at-bat, and it matters.  I need to know what the count is…  A thousand words before they wake is a flag-planting of sorts.  It is.  And not only to me, but to any writing father who barely had time to run so he writes whenever there are liberated seconds.  And it’s literally that which we go by, and live from, singular seconds.  Not minutes.

Seconds.