I don’t really feel like I’m living. I know that right now is the most special time in my life, and I know exactly what I should be doing – staying with L and taking in every moment, every one of his baby hugs, every pure laugh – the 6am walks in the park – but this time is slipping away – just now he was just a newborn laying there, but he is already toddling, unsteadily – still helpless but increasingly sure of himself, he already has 3 teeth and invents some words in his language that sounds like English or maybe Russian, but instead of taking it all in every morning I’m giving him away to sweet Georgian ladies at the daycare, and he delights at seeing them, and I am spending this precious irretrievable time on stupid things – commuting, waiting inside a train that never moves because another train up ahead is “being removed from service due to human waste”, or so the announcement says, making sure I take off the backpack to make space, because it’s crowded and more people are pushing in, then work that is thoroughly meaningless, even if it’s for a different company, and I’ve proven incapable of not working for this industry, and trying to keep the cramped home clutter, and succeeding, for maybe an hour because of overflow of stuff that keeps multiplying even though I am not really buying anything, having bills paid, laundry done and folded and put away, and food on the table, reading the small print and disputing suspicious charges, shopping for life insurance and 401k plans, everything is ever accelerating and slipping away: I was just delighted at summer starting and days getting longer and those new leaves and ecstatic birds but it’s already over, and I’ve only been to the beach once, and the water will soon be too cold again, and monarchs are migrating, more friends are getting married, having babies and birthdays and anniversaries, moving away from the increasingly unaffordable city and no one ever moves back, even though new glass towers seem to be popping up overnight – do they stand empty, are they inhabited by Sims, I do mine or R’s monthly coop shift yesterday, and then I have to do another one tomorrow even though there were supposed to be four weeks in between and where did the four weeks just go; I get a haircut, and then it’s already six weeks later and my hair is unmanageable again and I wish I could tell her to just buzz it all off and not deal, a shirt that I just bought is already fraying after too many washes, we were just laughing at Trump and birthers and now the election is less than ten weeks away and then we might just have him for president, 2015 was the hottest year on record, but this one is hotter yet, and the ocean is already flooding the east coast and nothing can be done about that, and iPhone 7 has just been released and my still-unblemished iPhone 5s is already obsolete and won’t run the latest OS well or hold the charge – the time is getting away from me and I am sleep deprived and it is all like a dream, I cannot stop and look around, and I just know at any moment I’m going to wake up and maybe, just maybe I will be 8 again, and Mom will smile and call me for breakfast, and I will remember that there is no school today or tomorrow and it is the first day of an unimaginably long summer break.