Well, our wandering child seemed to be glad to be back home last night; she spent the entire evening on Bob's lap, mostly on her back so he could rub her tummy and play with her feet. She spent the night in bed between us, and after I got up, she crawled under the covers with Bob.

I still can't believe she was out without him knowing it; he said she was awfully glad to see him coming up the sidewalk. Maybe it'll make her a little less quick to try to run out the door, although I imagine not.

I had an interesting dream this morning. In the dream, I noticed that a ten-or-so gallon fish tank that I had had in the dining room for years was full of fish, when I knew that the last fish had died a long time ago. There were several small fish with long sweeping fins, and one HUGE koi, orange and gold and white.

I imagined that they must have grown from spawn that had been left in the tank when I thought all the fish were dead, and I panicked, thinking I hadn't noticed them for so long, and while they had obviously been eating something, suddenly worried that I didn't have any fish food in the house, and started running around trying to find some.

This one is interesting. Most of my dreams either aren't very interesting, or they don't really need interpretation, (like the other one I had this morning in which Eric Clapton enlisted my services as a webmaster), but I think this one might have something to do with some thoughts I've been having lately about the creative direction of my life and career, and the fact that there may be things that I've failed to nurture, but they've been growing nevertheless, and I need to wake up and start taking care of them before it's too late.

My dream book says that according to Jung, "fish were symbols of some content from the unconscious, emotions, or life energy that's been stirring around in the unconscious from the beginning of our life. Therefore, fishing represents the search for, or process of becoming aware of, material from the unconscious. In this way, fish can also symbolize the Self, or the inner Christ." (This is the same dictionary that is used at this online dream dictionary.)

So, I don't know. The conundrum I'm in at the moment is about which direction I want to set off in. The role that I fulfill at work--somewhere in between the graphic artists and the programmers--is becoming less of a requirement as more of our work becomes completely Flash-based. The designers do the Flash sites and the programmers do the backend, and the middle part--the part that I do--becomes less and less necessary since there is no real requirement for "sticking things back together and making them work."

I'm much more interested in the creative side of things than the programming side, but in either event I think I'm going to need more training or at least a really intensive plunge into it, so I'm starting to think about that. I need to start working more in Flash and getting more familiar with it; last night I did the first Flash piece I've ever done for someone other than myself. This weekend I need to work on it a little more and be sure it works like it's supposed to before it goes live.

I've also been giving more thought to writing seriously. I really love writing here--I go through periods where I don't, but I'm in a period now where I do--but I have to wonder what the purpose of it really is. If I'm just doing it for myself, for enjoyment, as a hobby, that's fine, but I do feel that if I'm ever going to take it any further, I need to do it. It's hard to get started, though.