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This has been my darkest day in quite some time. Bits of bad news or lack of feedback has added up steadily to push my anxiety to a degree that's left me slack and lethargic. That we won't be getting any more unemployment benefits; that there really was an e-mail miscommunication with one of my employment contacts, which may have set back my job search; that I'm still waiting to hear from my other prospects, going on one full week now; that I'm still waiting to hear back from my potential buyer for the dock: add all these up and my panic has been at moments overpowering.

Family can be a blessing at times like these, not only by offering help, but also by offering a love-filled distraction, even if for a few hours, or only a few minutes. Katie's mother and Dave drove down to visit last night (all the way from Maine!), treated us to dinner, and hung out for a few hours afterward. Kate's mom took her out to go baby shopping today (and it was good for her to get away from me for a spell), and Dave took our truck back with him to Maine--he's buying it from us, saving us from the monthly payments and insurance. Timely help indeed. Dave is understated in almost everything he does, but Katie's mom is so effusive and encouraging I always look forward to hearing from her. I need it at times like this, especially knowing that my own mother's loving support would have been more likely to come out in the form of blaming me for the mistakes I made to wind up unemployed and in this situation. (And that was my mother's style: she had nearly endless energy to actually do things and offer help, but that came at the cost of at times extremely harsh criticism. All the harsher for being given with love.)

So when Katie came home this afternoon, burdened with all the nursery decorations she'd bought with her mother, I wasted no time in trashing her mood and dragging her down to my level. Quietly, of course, I wasn't trying to be vicious or deliberately to spoil her day, but there was just no way my concentrated panic could fail to puncture Kate's good feelings. It took about an hour, after we'd gone to Home Depot looking for curtain rods, and I'd explained how badly things were going in my head, for the bottom to drop out of her day too.

I can hardly say I was satisfied. It's not like I need to take out all my frustrations on my wife. It's that we've been together for eight months--as she pointed out after dinner tonight, today is our eight-month-iversary--and as well as things have gone, we're still figuring each other out. Deeper traits now, subtler back-and-forths, but we still are in the getting-to-know-each-other phase of things. So stresses like this become our less amusing lessons about each other. She sees me shut down. And I see how fragile she can be.

A quick conversation with her mother this evening, calling from the road as she neared home, was a reminder of the mindset I'd be better off with--enjoy even this time, make use of it. And I've tried--delving back into history, or thinking wishfully, into electronics (which I might need at a job or two)--or back into my dissertation. But it's hard to stay focused on any one thing when my mind continually slides, like down the walls of a sandpit, back to my lack of a job, and my steadily mounting unpaid bills. Perhaps it's evidence of my lack of mental discipline, but I'm having trouble focusing on much of anything else these days. At least I am getting plenty of rest and relaxation.

So far Katie and I have always managed to reconnect after a breakdown. Tonight, it happened leading up to and during dinner (I had to take a few breaks during our conversation to tend the pizza). I won't detail our whole talk but I will say that this pregnancy thing is quite an emotional magnifier.

So we had dinner--I cut the pepperoni slices into quarters, so they're much more evenly distributed across the pizza--and then went to the North Kingstown beach. I instinctively avoided it for years, because I assume all beaches are overcrowded in the summertime. But it's not summer yet, and it's only a short walk away, quarter-mile strip of sand tucked between rocky headlands south of Wickford. That place is going to become a sanctuary for her...in fact, it already is. We shivered in the cool, slightly rainy breeze, sitting atop the lifeguard's chair in the afterglow of sunset. Gray clouds were spread over the sky, and a faint glow of sunlight, pink in places, shone through cracks in the cover. The breeze dropped and it seemed to grow warmer as we sat there, talking about mother earth and us parasites. As I kept going more and more scientific, Katie remarked, "I'm glad this kid is going to have the two of us, one for storytelling and the other for facts."

This has been a rambling, somewhat whiny post. I'm still feeling much of the fear which has kept me so wrapped up for the past day. We're not close to getting through this trouble yet. But a day like today is a good reminder of how we can rely on each other while we do.