Yeah, I'm still awake. Troubled of mind and spirit, weary of pencil.

I worked on the Soviet School for Grammatical Dogma and Obedience text until I caught myself skimming and took a break. This course relies heavily on repetition, and I have to read lots of identical paragraphs. I can't imagine how agonizing this is to teach, let alone to learn.

It's very politically correct. The names used in examples range from Chang to Asim to Manuela. I think they're trying too hard and their audience is probably comprised of Brittanys and Ashleys. No, wait, second grade would be Annas and Emmas, I think. In either case, the names have become the only remotely interesting part of the text.

There was a concert in Copley Square yesterday afternoon, part of the WBOS summer concert series. The weather was postcard-gorgeous and the square was full. One of the bands was Deep Blue Something, who did the formerly and regrettably ubiquitous "Breakfast at Tiffany's" (last year? the year before?). Whoever. The sound was dopplering off the Public Library, which created a surreal effect that naturally I thought was cool. I hung out until the magic hour started to fade. Thank you, WBOS.

And I came home and I cleaned and I worked and I didn't sleep.

But I haven't been sleeping much or eating much or talking much. I don't want to talk about it. It's just there, tinting everything blue. Those of you trying to contact me via AIM or e-mail: sorry. Even when I'm around, I'm not around.

Back to work. Another fifty pages should put me to sleep.

These are mold spores. I'm allergic to them. The current spore count is 13,000 and change, which puts the official outlook at POOR, as in you POOR sniffling dingbat, you look like shit.

I keep trying not to rub my eyes. I know I shouldn't, but the itch makes me want to rip my eyelashes out.

"She's whining about her allergies again." I think the scanning electron microscope photography is really cool, though. Spores look like broccoli. Pollen looks much less innocuous. Pollen grains look like tennis balls covered with spikes.

So this is my reality right now: itchy eyes and 532 pages of second-grade grammar. Oh yes, I'm still working on the grammar text. It's like jogging through molasses.

Generally speaking, I'm a very fast reader. I can devour a novel in a night if I'm into it. I got through school and work reading fairly quickly. I've read some dry stuff, but I've never read anything as insanely fucking dull as this teaching manual.

I'm serious. It goes on for hundreds of pages: two columns per page, boldface alternating with plain text. Tonight, in desperation, I took the manuscript apart into sections and added them up: 306 pages of aforementioned text, 142 workbook pages, 74 homework pages and a 10-page dictionary = 532 pages (which is 232 over what they told me) and no chance the client gets this on time.

Rule one: verify contents of manuscript package before giving time estimate to publisher and, by extension, author. Corollary: 300 pages on the phone means 532 in the FedEx.

I wonder if this agonizing monotony is a kind of karmic dues-paying.

"You're in prison until this thing is done," my father said, laughing, when I explained the situation with the manuscript. My mother, in the background: "She needs an ankle band."

My father is in his own kind of prison, having just had arthroscopic knee surgery. Pain meds make him queasy, but he's taking them anyway, so it must really hurt. He's been using crutches, but he's hoping to graduate to a cane soon. He's planning to go back to work on Monday. I don't know how he'll handle it; he does so much walking in an average day and his shoulder bag weighs more than Secret Service gear (they compared).

The mental image of my father with a cane is weird. I told him that and he agreed. Watch it on the marble, Dad. I love you.