I'm a chatty person. Just ask toxicfur or ana, or the Austin contingent. There are few candid shots of me from parties where I don't have my mouth open, saying something. I'd like to be like ana, who I described 30 years ago as being the kind of person who, when they did say something, was going to be right on point or really, really funny. It's still true, only more so.

But, I'm not. And I've learned that I'm an instantial thinker, rather than an algorithmic one. I live by the illustrative story. It's part of why I see across lines so easily, not being the linear type. The act of linearizing things through language, spoken or written, is a key way that I figure out what it is I actually think. I am lucky in having a few RL and imaginary internet friends that I can talk or write with, because left to myself, my brain is a card deck full of bits stories that can be dealt out to make true rememberances, or shuffled to create new stories.

But there are stories I cannot and should not tell. My work life reached the point where I had to treat everything interesting as being under an NDA, and everything political as potentially career-killing to discuss. My creative life sits in another box. I don't write here any more because I can't talk about it in a public venue.

So do I tell kid stories? K and MJ have been making a book called Adventures of CJ Two Pegs, a pirate captain with two peg legs. My favorite part is the character called the Bandanna Bandit, who wears two eye patches with holes in them so he can see out. K made me dye her hair last night before school picture day today, so she has a red streak running across and down, purple behind it, and blue on the other side. They are wonderful kids, funny and smart, and with K, it's like I'm raising Punky Brewster, at least for her fashion sense. I'm good with that.

So, that's all there is to tell you. Everything else is someone else's story, and not mine to tell.

9:21