I was awakened around 3:45am by my own bladder. Simon started purring, he somehow knows I am awake. I went to the bathroom and came back to bed, then lay there for about an hour, unable to fall back to sleep. Little movies played in my mind to occupy the time. Replays of things I have seen on tv recently, or thinking about my super weekend with Brian; our picnic in Yerba Buena park with hummus and tangerines and blueberry yogurt; the patience he has while teaching me all the movements of the martial arts we study together. For some reason it’s easier for my eyelids to become leaden when the first light starts to dilute in the sky.

Today my neck is very sore from all the grappling we did yesterday afternoon in class. I am working to become more brave; that seems to be a huge mental part of learning this stuff. Sometimes it’s hard to be paired up with the instructor. He’s so much bigger than me, and while he is an excellent teacher, he doesn’t dumb anything down for me. Which is good! Anyway, I can’t really touch my chin to my chest today.

Also I think two and a half hours of working out is proving to be a setback to getting over my persistent cough. Alas. If I am not 100% by next Sunday, I am going to skip class, for my own health.

War on tv is very frightening. I know, war has been filmed since they invented the camera (in fact some of the very first photographs taken were of Civil War battlefields), but it’s so eerie to see it live. Or you know, live with a five-minute delay I am sure. Just in case someone gets shot in the face on camera. Ugh.

It’s so damn depressing. Why has this happened to our country? Because we let it happen, of course.