"There you could look at a thing monstrous and free..."

Originally uploaded by Citizen Rob.

In a moment of seemingly random generosity, two different readers sent Schuyler items off her Amazon list, and all but one of the items were related to her love of monsters.

One of them blew her mind. I wish I'd had a camera ready when I walked into the living room with a purple dragon puppet (with unseen controls) on my shoulder. I wish you could see her expression when she said hello to it and it answered her.

I had a rough week. I needed that.

For the first time, Schuyler is going to write her own thank you notes.

And life goes on. Perfect moments on a spectacularly imperfect canvas.

I know it's easy to think that because things are going well for Schuyler and for me professionally, there would be nothing but happy times. I can't imagine for a moment why that isn't the case. The world is supposed to make sense, it's supposed to be ruled by logic and a sequence of events and behaviors that are connected and rational, and yet it so rarely works out that way.

When things get confusing like they are now, I run to the only person in the world who has never disappointed me and who never sees me as weak or stupid or ugly. Or broken.

Schuyler and I are broken, but we never see each other that way. We play with toy monsters and leave the real ones outside the door for just a little while. I suppose everyone's broken, really. And like that line in Schuyler's favorite movie, the thing we come to learn about ourselves is our undying ability to destroy the things we love.

One day, Schuyler and I will damage each other, too. But for now, I'm taking her to the zoo. The hurt and the chaos of this grand rough world will just have to fucking wait.