Another thousand for nano book.  Still want another thousand to bring me over 3k, but we’ll see.  Reasoned I’ll let students go early.  Get something to eat, soon.  Finally going for a run tomorrow, at lunch.  Tech event in the city tomorrow…. Will do what I can in terms of connections and “networking”, whatever.

6:03.  Head to campus in a bit.  Need a wine to pair with dinner, but I have no idea what I want. Smell garlic, or garlic fries.  No, garlic bread.  That has to be bread.  Thinking Chinese food tonight.  Or Mexican.  Ugh… 

Need new dimension to novel…. Be more wild when writing it. It’s fiction, I have to remind self.  Make the character uncomfortable…. Or, make him, hmmmm…. What do I do.  Not going to overthink it.  That’s best way to get me to do what I always do and that’s abandon the project before it’s really or at all left ground.

Tomorrow’s run needs to be at least 7 miles. Haven’t run in a bit, doing those fucking HIIT classes, but I think I can.  If I can hit 8, I’ll see self as back in shape. MY measure, my standard, wrong as it might be.

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Trying NaNo, again.  Approaching 2500 words, so I’m absolutely behind schedule. May let class out horribly, delightfully early tonight.  Have them stay in touch with me via blog and email. Give them an assignment, and hit 3000+ words for day.  Would love 3500, but I have to not write so much for this blog and more for book.  Joe, my character.  Named after….. me?  My middle name? I don’t know.  Either way, I’m writing myself through and out of this stall and slowness with a novel.

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No nap, today, fought against pull and push to do so. Thanksgiving over, wife out shopping at one of those shopping special eve whatever’s. Me, home. Wine. Just finished glass of Claret. The night passed with such cruel progression. Indifference. Babies asleep upstairs. What movie do I watch, my dilemma. My life’s trouble. Think of how fortunate I am with my family and to have such family, to be sitting where I am, here on this we seek to shed, new one one the way… Day of giving thanks, I need to show more giving of thanks, being thankful.

Tonight, I do intend exploring more wine. No aim to wake at 4am or 4:10 like this day. No. I may actually just sleep in. I will. What do I mean, “may”? May have to punch out. Take the night as it approaches me, describe and translate it, or in such order reversed… then wake tomorrow with more thought. More story. More ME. Tired now, forgetting I’ve been up since 4-something. Think 4:10. Has it been that long? Yes. It has. Me, that writer. Now. Time to Self and I sip wine and be here, writing. A writer.

Does the writer want apple pie or Chardonnay? Both sound like they sound, their own precise appeal and connection. I’m not torn between both but urge to be curved by both, somehow. 9:08. Feel like bed but I won’t. I can’t. But more, I refuse. Why can’t I be a human, just have dessert or drink wine. Is it that complicated? Are my thoughts the hinderance, the block and or impediment? I think it may be just that. Not in any kind of a writing swoop, and I can’t figure anything of it out. How does pine figure. What type a figure be me, I, this writer.

I feel like I’m not doing a thing, while doing too much. A mess. Should have taken a nap.

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4:13— late lunch at winery, so I’m in the office of the club manager, one I occasionally share with when having copywriting to do.  Had a snack earlier, so no need for the writer to eat.  I mean, I would have a snack if I had one, but since I don’t I’m fine with just doing some work for bottledaux, writing a bit, going through the pictures I took earlier.  It’s clear to me, after pouring what I did today for whom I did, people from out-of-state, that I will always be here in CA, in Sonoma, and my ultimate of ultimate apexing aims is to own a vineyard, a winery, possibly even with a farm element to it (goats, sheep, horses, whatever).  Think I have till 4:20-something for lunch, but I can’t remember, and it doesn’t matter as I came in earlier for writing-purposed proposed purposes.

Huh…  Now I am starting to feel a form of famine, catching myself yawning, or rubbing my eyes, or my attention wandering, or too easily getting distracted by the conversation in the next room…  I rub my eyes again, yawn… shit, I need something to eat.  Think there’s some crackers left in the kitchen.  Having pizza tonight to celebrate the end of Alice’s school year, and for the Warrior’s game tonight, not sure I can wait till then.  Yes, the hunger is definitely influencing my concentration.  Maybe I should have a sip of something to “numb the pain” as my an old friend said once, years ago when I worked with him at another winery, telling each other repeatedly how disgustingly hungry we both were.  Think that was in ’09, or ’10.  So, so, SO long ago.  That too happens when I get hungry, dwelling and tangents, memories that lead to tangents that dwell on some random memory or conversation— think I see someone in the kitchen, eating something or having a snack.  I may be saved!  Hem said hunger’s great inspiration or motivation— NO, it was discipline.  And it is, but it fucking hurts.  And now I am definitely feeling that pain, or discomfort.  Wine would only make it worse.  What about water?  Grandma once told me water numbs hunger, or makes you feel like you’re full, something like that.  Maybe that’s what I should do— have a couple of those crackers and a shitload of water.

Need to market my freewriting course obnoxiously.  Keep my pitches short, and lessons loose and not too constrictive.  In other words, if lecture 8 is about dialogue, let the students know that we don’t only have to talk about dialogue.  Yes, that will be the nucleus of the lecture, its epicenter, but the ONLY aspect of prose we discuss.

4:23…  Yes, they have food.  I need food.  The wind outside distracts me, how it pushes the vines one way then another.  Have so much to do tonight.  Need to put myself to bed early, make coffee like I did last night, pour it into tumbler, be ready for early morrow.

More ideas about freewriting course.  The hunger fades—  Huh.

(6/2/16)

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Only Set

I should be working on an application to something, for something, but I’m not going to.  NOPE NOPE NOPE—  Not with all this free time, freeing time where I can be further freed.  Set my clock again, counting down 24 hours, right when I arrived at sbux this morning.  Cancelling run today so I can work in the home office, consolidate and brainstorm, and ACT.  When the 24 is up, I want something significant to material.  Away from what I don’t need and more toward what my Story requires.  Acquired ‘nother coffee from the cafeteria, so I have more than enough fuel.  Woke this morning to 4AM alarm, and what a shock I went right the fuck back to sleep.  Other adjunct in the shared office, and my laptop dwindles in power.. INVENTORY CURRENT:  Comp Book, laptop, wallet, phone, bag (inside of which is some straying papers, not many, pens and other life-pieces).  Relatively light today.  Key is to travel light as a writer, I’m finding.

Course:  MORE DECIDED WRITER, YOU

Eight lectures; each lecture two pages, double spaced.

Planning and planning, now I switch mode from acting to always-acting.. and again, consolidate…

Other adjunct leaves room, I should go in, charge the laptop and plot rest of day.  Writing, finishing the awks letter.  Again, run cancelled.  Have to change my writing and professional life, and I will, watch, and in a drastic way, overnight, or 24 hours—

Keep sipping the coffee, I tell myself.  Don’t stop with the words, in any respect!  Told the students this morning that “You don’t always have time for a full sentence.   Sometimes a singular word will have to do.” I’m in that position, altogether.  Feel like if I take the time to fill out some app for a distant CC, I’be shedding writing time carelessly.  Stop deliberating!  Quiet in the conference room— written that before….  My photog’ buddy, Dav, on a travel for journalism’s purpose, for his studies.  Just what this writer targets.. should walk around the campus and just take pictures, then go for a drive, go through all the material and write from there.  He’s in Italy, my friend, and records with his lenses and writes.  I should be on the Road with him, or on my own, just gathering, gathering…  In this conference room I feel like a professor and writer but with contingencies, I fucking hate that!  I’ve always said my ultimate of ultimate aims with writing and artistry has been freedom, and freedom isn’t found in an application, nor playing by expectation’s planned maze and stressful trapeze.  I’ll go for a walk, go into the library, walk around campus, then back to the cell.  On way home, drive down Guerneville Road, stop at a vineyard, take pictures, shoot a video maybe, anything.  Zen.. Wellness.. Meditation.  I’ll be on the Road soon, I will be, and when I am I’ll only write by hand, no laptops.  Of course, if there’ a nearby library I may post to blog— no, I will, but the fixating practice will be with ink.

One of the lectures in the ‘Decided Writer’ piece will be on location, finding one that connects with you, that teaches you something about yourself and how you measure your surroundings.

Having trouble waking up.

“Have some coffee then, Mike,” the coffee chants from inside that tumbler.

But it’s biased, right?

Why should I listen to it?  Well.. because for the writer coffee is holy.  I’ve always said that alcohol, even or actually especially wine, slows and stumps, sectionalizes the writer.  I take a deep chug of that sumatra, wait for something to happen—  That’s just my problem, has been one of my biggest problems, my whole goddamn life.  Waiting for something to happen.  So I very much need this detour home with the pictures of vineyards and new sounds, sights that are close to the Autumn Walk Studio that I never knew about.  My whole life on display, so I can understand it better, so readers can maybe understand themselves more usefully, and so I can understand with more grace and introspective geography why I’m so needed by, in need of, words; WHY I WRITE.  Why am I writing right now?  Why don’t I go home early, take a nap, or go to the gym and do some speed work, or drive up to the Healdsburg Square and take myself out to lunch with all this extra money I have before bills and other obligatory shit swallows it?  Because the paragraphs call.  I’m with my vision, loving where my thinking takes me.  Meditation…  Understanding (not just awareness, or “self-awareness”).  Knowing your character, heightened tenacity in self-connection.

Wrote a spoken-word piece in class today, when I prompted the matriculants write a self-portrait, in any form they saw warranted, prose, poem, hybrid, whatever.  Like what I wrote, surprisingly, but I think it’s drained me for the day.  Think I do need that nap— shit, laptop lower on power, down to 16%.  Precisely why when I’m on the Road it’ll be a pen-to-paper mission.

After short break I arrive in the adjunct cell, pull up the newsletter doc, and get to work.  Just need enough readers, what I tell myself.  And I’m quite sure that’s the key.  AND… sleeplessness.  One commonality with all these successful entrepreneurs is long, sleepless, crEATive nights.  Mine, my first, tonight.  Buy 7UP on the way home, and sparkling water (remind remind remind) —

Talk with full-timer friend.  Her views on the profession are bitter, embittered, exhausted and defeated.  Then I think of this blog, a lifestyle blog, me looking at my reflection and wanting to not just be better but more, more for my kids and always coming home happy.  I do now for the most part, but there could be more a beam from me when I pull up to the Autumn Walk Studio.

Back to working on the letter.  The coffee again fails me, just making it so I have to pee every ten minutes it seems.  Annoying.

(5/16/16)

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me:  tired adjunct, 5/11/16

img_3062Just finished working on ‘the awks’, which is already late, me missing my own deadline.  No worry, I’ll send it out on Sunday night.  In the office this morning, Alice back in her classroom after a lovely maternity leave, time with Ms. Emma—  the other side of the door, the theatre classroom, playing some Lady Gaga song, “Applause”.  Like the song, but was enjoying my quiet.  Supposed to go for a run after this, but not sure I have the energy.  The coffee isn’t much helping the exhausted adjunct, after a wonderfully inspiring meeting with my English 5 crew.  That student, ’S’, again propelling me to be stronger and more fluid in what I do as an educator hearing her talk about her transfer to UC, the last classes she’s taking here at the JC, and how she’s walking away with TWO A.A.’s.

I’m a fucking student, I remind myself.  OF myself, my teaching, life, what I can do with this life, and I don’t have to settle or tolerate simplicity and excess order, patter, orders from any flabby-thinking title-hugging slug.  I’m independent.  I work for ME.  And I l know Mom’s reading this, so I assure I’m in no mood— or yes I am, one CONFIDENT, strong, sure what I’m doing is the right thing, as a writer, listening to this jazz in my head, turning on actual jazz here in the office— shit, have to go to bank, get checks till the ones I ordered arrive.  Yes, my thoughts are everywhere but it indicates no scatter or lack of focus but more so the drive in this writer to use and taste every minute of his written day.

A run.. ugh, feel more tired just thinking about that treadmill.  Maybe I shouldn’t.  Maybe I should hold off.  But that’s just rationalizing procrastination.  And look what happened to my newsletter…  I procrastinated, and already with letter 2.  So no, one way or a-bloody-nother, I’m getting to the gym for speedwork on that fucking treadmill.

But a nap sounds SO GOOD!

No, don’t do it.

Be tireless with everything, show the world that nothing wears on you—

I know, talking to myself.  But this is the motivation I need and the only place I can get it is in this adjunct cell, this office I share, writing to myself.  But I’m really writing for all of you, showing you that I’m learning as I go, that I’m not above anyone or anything.  We all struggle together.

Stretching in this chair, leaning as far back as I can then returning to the keys.  On the way home: bank, then ready for gym.  Or maybe I should just run around the house.  Or maybe I should stop overthinking it, just see what the story orders of me.  I’m still learning, remember.  I’m a student.  One who never wants to “graduate”.  Just keep learning, discovering, transcending realities and understandings.  Grow with more understanding.  And there I am.  A real student, finally.  I’ve learned something.

Thank you, Me.

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NaNoWriMo, drop drop drop…..

I refuse to speak their language, communicate in orthodox institution talk.  When I’m there I’m not there, from here on.  After being up most of the night with a staccato-ing airy granulated bark of a cough, I’m in moods of indignation, but focus, clearer and just removing that world from mine, starting over, and deciding that next semester I’m taking no classes.  Anywhere.  I’m done.

…wine’s and how it’s for everyone and you can only read further into the Sonoma Country scroll.  And yes, what I wrote is mostly Sonoma-centric.  Not to omit Napa, but I do.

My new language, un langage plus beuatiful.  Week 16 in their world will be Week 1 in my new character’s life, a writer– of wine, travel, Literature, life, work, entrepreneurship, running (have to get back to..), French…

…just what they don’t want us thinking, and that’s all I’ll say.  I see so many of us complaining about the driving and the waiting and the sections we get not being what we want.  And why?  And there, no more on that.  I’m speaking my new language.  Consider this my divorce from them, from it, those huts and cells where they stick us. 

And when I get to campus I decided to redefine the terms of the divorce with academia but on my terms.  Not ever using the ‘a’ word that they have as part of my job title.  No more.  I walk around campus going to the library for a coffee and I can tell the oncampus population is thin today, many having already left.  And while climbing the odd SRJC library stairs to the little shop where my Sumatra awaits I think I may be writing more a memoir than a novel..

…but I listen to some Bobby Hutcherson here in the shared office and reveled in forgetting where I was, am.  Oh yeah I’m on campus, I thought, but I’m a writer not an ‘a’ and living like I intended to this morning with that article I posted to a social media site.

Writing more ideas in the new journal Mom and Dad bought me, poems and poetry and poems to sell on the side in addition to the articles.. reminding myself that next semester there will be no semester and this is all I have and will always have.  But I won’t be the broke writer, never, not, no.. blogging and taking pictures, even putting together photojournals with some added creative copy– 

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from NaNoWriMo project (no edits)

…And Monday will see the most enveloping and impassioned talks ever from me.  The students won’t know what hit them.  I’ll even get into some rubric discussion, how I’m evaluating their work and general presence in the class.  Just honestly, I’ll do so, not to bring negative attention to any one student although I’m sure some will feel that way, and what they’ll feel is only sharp and harsh self-awareness.

I’m quite proud of my progress, I must say with today, this morning, how I felt waking up and only writing all those sketches on a couple humble cups of coffee and this microscopic mocha.  I come across some older writing, just roaming around this laptop, some writings I did in the parking lot of the Kenwood Market, before going to work at the winery.  Seems like forever ago, and when I read how visibly unhappy, I’d say miserable really, I was there I feel shame, and a very presented form of shame, like a fault or flaw in my character.  Life is far too short to ever feel like that, I now meditate and wildly realize.

ITEM – No fear. Just live.

Yes.  From all days and onward.  This morning, I’ve been more alive and more accepting of a challenge, something I didn’t want to do, than I ever have, or that I can remember.  I’m a writer, a “professional” writer as they’ve been introducing me at the office, which I’m not sure I like.  I just write.  That’s it.  When you call me a “professional” writer that insinuates a job title, some clinical coat that isn’t anywhere needed or instrumental in producing more convincing writing.

I look around the shop, people with their coffees on laptops, studying and talking when they should be studying.. I become infatuated with the role of a student, their priorities and deadlines, their studies and growth and notebooks out on their tables when they sit, their raised hands.. am I becoming more a “professor”?  Did this writing assignment do this?  Should I get a PhD?  “Not that thought again!” I say to myself.  Maybe later, maybe.. I don’t need one now.  All I need is time to read and write, react to what I ready.  Study my focus authors like Plath and Kerouac, Hemingway and Faulkner, Thompson…  To be frank, I can’t remember the last time I sat for this long and wrote. I know that’s pitiful, being a “professional” writer, but I now see this, and the benefits unexpected of the growers assignment.  Making severe headway with my writing life, my teaching life, with prose and poem and narrative and my wined story.  Feel like I should dart to downtown and find the first sparkling producer I can to celebrate, taste and toast with somebody, but je ne peux pas.  I haven’t even risen to use the restroom.. I apologize for going on about this but this is truly remarkable to me.  In this same chair, writing, for close to FIVE hours.  And I could push it to six if I wanted to, but I should be going. 

To the next song.

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NaNoWriMo excerpt (no edits)

…12 & Mission, I run into a guy who used to work at the Starbucks closer to the condo, he now studying engineering, “It’s been almost a year,” he tells me since he’d worked there.  I concede I hadn’t noticed, he saying “oh, that’s okay,” I release him back to his studies.

Later, around 3:30, a tasting schedule in Kenwood, a producer I haven’t visited in some time.  And I can’t look forward to it, still stressed and tired from the growers writings.  Producing content for others, while much much better than some square job putting on an apron or nametag, it is writing, using my day’s word count or taking from it for someone else.  And my mood returns, that one with the fangs, the same nearly that flies from me when addressing the adjunct thing.  I won’t let that happen to my writing, ever.  So.. I make myself look forward to the tasting.. bringing a camera, sure to taste Chards and Pinots which appears to me much of me, lately with wine, but who nows what else’ll happen.  The day is free and not scheduled, and I think of the outside conditions, a blend of Spring and Fall, shunning and very much pushing to side Summer, any Winter hint.  Temperament and poetic movements in the what I can’t see.  But in here, the people sipping their coffee, the coffee kid to my right, either packing to leave or getting something from his bag.. latter.  An older man next to him, either interviewing two people or talking to a parent of a student with the child there.. don’t know.  My hearing’s occupied by jazz, and I don’t want to hear, to be frank.  A girl in front of me, with earphones in smiling at her phone, more intent than I am it seems with this entry.  I try to think of something to write, take this writing and sitting in some new direction as I have free time that so many others today don’t, like the waitress that took my table, earlier at a brunch for self in Windsor, where I read and noted in my Composition Book everything I saw, the young family with a little boy that reminded me of Mr. Joyce, I then thought of me as a father, and where I’d take my son on a day off like this, maybe to the beach or the forest as Dad used to.  My coffee, the small I ordered, getting cold.. still have to finish the poem I began earlier, and write that 500 word piece on poetics, aesthetics in poems (especially those penned for performance).

My mind goes in several places as it always does but I stop it, I don’t let it, I stop it, forcefully.  And focus on a river of reaction, just thoughts that accost me, no order and no reason, I just write to write and maybe that’s the truest form of writing.  Maybe that’s poetic.  I don’t know.  Not today–  Look at clock, like I’m in one of my adjunct sprints, 1:13.  Habit, I know.  Have to leave at 2 to get car washes, tires checked, then home to shower quick before tasting, driving across Santa Rosa two times, just like an adjunct.  Always in the car.  I’m tired before I start and feel a creeping competitive compulsion in me that I’ve never felt before– wanting to be the best or at least hardest working writer in the world, as well as lecturer.  Not professor, or instructor, or teacher.  Not even sure I like the tag “lecturer”.  Maybe I am just a writer, after all.  I post again to my wild wine blog, and get a couple responses, that some don’t think my approach to wine is serious enough.  Well… not sure I should care.  Not sure I should respond.  Should I just let it go?  What do I want?  WHAT does this “writer” want?

I blame my mood and lack of attention on the semester, the “Them”, all of it that traps us and wants us to chase sections.  I’m staying in my current page, effort, not fleeing to poetry but remaining in my meditative wine walk.  Through vineyards as I did the other day.  Only thinking of my wine, the wine I’d make, and how I’d write about everything from the cleaning of barrels to letting them dry, to filling them with a small lot of SB, or Merlot.  Just everything wine, and the odd voices I’d give them, or rather translate them into.  Everything in my yearning is wine-woven, that’s obvious.  And it’s a shame, the teaching at community college, how it–  Well, I’ll keep a class or two.  More than likely just one, I’m thinking.  Even the paperload with two classes is dumbing, stunning.  With the winery today I’ll note everything, probably even stay for a glass, of Pinot or Chard I don’t know but this day off will see no me-with-papers, grading.  OR, writing any “copy” for clients.  Today is me and my exploration–

“Hey, so you still writing?” the coffee kid, Carl he reminds me, asks.

“Yeah, yeah I am,” I say, taking my earphones out, wishing he’d go back to his book, and Engineering text I saw looking over once.

“Oh that’s cool, which classes are you teaching?”

“Two sections of 1A.” I don’t even want to bother getting into the whole Mendo and Solano topics, not today, not on my day off.  Not when I’m in my own song with these paragraphs that I love as they have no direction, they just let me enjoy a freedom that people like my neighbor don’t wade in, ever.

“Cool.. yeah I transferred to Sonoma State and am almost done.  It’s crazy, you know, went so fast.”

“Yeah.. no, I understand.”

“Well sorry to bug you, I just wanted to say hey one more time, I gotta leave, have to meet my buddies for a strategy thing,” he looks back at his bags.

I find this interesting for some reason, ‘a strategy thing’, for some one his age, early twenties.  Strategy for what?  “Strategy for what?”

“We started an IT business, well kind of, we see what’s wrong with peoples’ computers and other equipment and try to fix it.  We might get an office in Rohnert Park, we’re growing hella fast.”

I feel a large jawset of envy dig into my skin and brain and dreams and everything on my liste.  “Really?” I say.  He goes on to elaborating on the growth of his venture when I don’t want him to and don’t want to anymore hear how I haven’t done any of this at my age, fucking 36, how he in his early or early mid-20s is well on his entrepreneurial way.  “Why not me?!” I think, but then listen to see how he did it, or some clue from this rushing studying optimistic darting kid. 

But he says nothing helpful, before I can find exactly where he is in his speech he continues “…and that’s about it…So anyway, man, I’ll let you go.” And he leaves.  But I’m motivated.  No more of this adjunct shit…

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NaNoWriMo excerpt (no edits)

Looking through the papers from students this past week I realize as well I’m allotting any energy toward them, the papers, nor them, the students.  And I love the students you should know, but today is me, solely me–

I  begin writing odd and random poems in the composition book, some that make sense and others that make no sense.  That’s just the mood I’m in.

I start with tangential haikus then work into odd sonnets, the spoken word verses that rhyme unexpected and at times overwhelmingly, showing I hope yes a playful relationship with language but as well some handle on it.  I don’t know what I’m doing this morning to be honest but I know I quite enjoy it and I continue with it for another hour or so, till I have to get in shower and be, I guess, responsible.

My nephew said something yesterday that hasn’t quite yet released me, “You’re a, you’re a.. special friend to me..”.  Not sure how to interpret him in that moment or his words, of if it’s even to be interpreted, but it sticks with me.  That my character and place in his story has value, some gravity or impact.  I forget about everything ‘adjunct’ when with him, when listening to his speech and seeing the ease of his amusement in things I otherwise pass, have already devalued in my sight.  Joyce makes me forget about the work and the having to work, the papers and the driving.  I could write a novel just on him, maybe… and if I had a son, or daughter, imagine what I could and would write, have a family business, a vineyard and winery, my true end game.  But an empress, and empyrean opposite to further me in such a story, of course missing.  I go everywhere in my thoughts and get lost, don’t mind and think of Hemingway and all the traveling he did, Kerouac to and how it aided in everything.  I then with punctuate purpose realize my problem.  Me.  My attitude.  The moods that invade every so.  So they stop.  I make them stop.  Or, I will. 

Time for day.

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