Quiet night

Shhh! Quiet! Jacob's asleep. He went down without a peep. This is his first time to spend the night with me, and his mother was more worried, I suspect, about my sleep than his. But so far, knock on wood, we're off to a good start. It's been a babysitting weekend. Yesterday I went to Frisco, got a brief glimpse of Maddie and Mel before they left on a Girl Scout camping trip, and then spent the evening with Jamie and Edie. This morning, Jamie had a sprint triathlon (he took second in his age group and sixth overall--pretty darn good!), and I stayed with Edie. At one point, she fixed me with her direct look and said, "Are you babysitting me?" I told her yes, and she asked where she would be if I hadn't come. I told her that her daddy wouldn't have done the race, and that seemed to staisfy her. Together we watched a lot of the food channel, though she insisted on turning it off because two programs in a row featured shrimp and she doesn't like shrimp.
It's been a good two days for me. Disgruntled authors and pesky business reports and all the things I worry about all the time are in the way far background. I slept heavily last night, albeit with weird dreams of which the only one I remember is that I was at the Democratic National Convention as part of Hilary's team. Is that a message? But this morning I woke feeling really good about the world, me, everything. I counted my vacation days, and I have more than I thought stockpiled, so I may take them to get that "being away from it" feeling. But I'll have to leave town! Wish I could find someone who wanted to go to Santa Fe for a week!
Weighty matters on my mind? Not many. I'm afraid I've also been escaping into mysteries. I read two more Cleo Cloyce coffeehouse mysterires, and enjoyed them, and now I'm reading--on my Kindle--an Aurora Teagarden mystery called Real Murders. I'd been saving the books on the Kindle for the Scotland trip, but now I feel I should be reading them. I find it easy to read on, though I know I'm under-utilizing all the marvelous things it will do. And I have to watch, because I occasionally hit the wrong button and it bounces from book to book. Sort of like Jamie's laptop when I tried to answer an email and it kept bouncing from line to line. I gave up.
Jamie talked to me again about his conviction that you have to believe in your goals, believe they'll come true, or they never will. That bounces me back to my mystery--I am convinced it's as good as many on the market (though the last two I've read are really erudite in references and solid in constrauction) and yet I'm not sure I believe I'll ever get it published. In a way, to me, it's like religion--a part of me would like to have a "born again" experience so that I could believe without a doubt, but I remain a liberal Christian who questions and doubts and always wonders if I've found true faith. It seems to me, in both cases, the burden is on me. And so I struggle with my mind, trying to convince it to believe.
I may start tomorrow very early, depending on Mr. Jacob. But his mom will come to get him about 9:30, and I'll go to Central Market to get stuff for dinner that night and for supper all week. I have gained some weight, and I'm going to start watching it much more carefully--all that butter I use to cook, the chocolate sauce I pile on ice cream at night. It's salads and veggies for me for a while. But tomorrow I'm cooking lamb burgers for Jordan and Christian--maybe Jacob will eat a bite. There's always an excuse for putting that diet off. But I really am going to watch. But after that Central Market trip--a good nap!