Kim is absolutely beautiful. And she is one severe task master. It has been so very long since I've had any direction in my life, it feels positively orgasmic to have someone in my life who guides so well.

The house is coming along wonderfully, though slow. We spend our days from sun-up to sundown emptying boxes, moving furniture, organizing closets and having so much sex sweating so profusely, I'm surprised one of us hasn't ended up in the ER getting fluids.

The days are melting one into the other and I am so happy. Spencer is thriving, the cats (oh, did I mention that Kim brought her cat, P-Diddy?) are loving all the hiding and running room, and the only thing about the song Solla Sollew that isn't true for us here is that the breezes, they ain't so warm, folks. Chooch, of course, is oblivious to all of it and just lugs around the place eating sticks and rocks. The noodge.

Sometimes it is unreal for me, being so happy. I have always believed that if I ever got too happy, something would have to be sacrificed. Something big, like a person. I always felt that I had to pay for my happiness, that the only way I could ever achieve any balance at all is to sacrifice myself. Whenever I got too happy, got too much of anything, I would have to knock myself down to achieve a balance. And then one day Kim said to me, "Honey, you've been miserable most of your life trying to achieve this balance. Maybe your happiness now is achieving that balance. Maybe this is how it all evens out." Half my life being afraid of the dreaded cost. I think I've paid it off. I think now comes the time I get to experience joy.

A patient and I were discussing the philosophy of imprisonment a week or so ago. I was in the medroom pouring his morning meds and he said, "Lucky you...safe and warm in your little medroom."

"Am I? Safe?"
"Yes," he said. "At least you're not out here in this nuthouse."
"Do bars a prison make?"
He looked at me sideways and smiled. "No, I guess they don't. You're no safer in there...safe from your own mind."
"No," I agreed. "I'm not."
"Well," he said and swallowed the medication, "you're not suspended in the wind, either...lost between the world and the moon."

No, I'm not. I'm right here in Solla Sollew.