spent some time with Rachel this evening. She sometimes feels a bit lonely when I have to work or study a lot. we painted some pictures, with the lovely watercolors the poster child for financial mismanagement sent home with M for her, bright pictures of flowers and mountains. Then we read her new Winnie the Pooh book, 101 uses for a honeypot, which she enjoyed. After some supper, we had a bubble bath, which I think is a bit strange but she really likes, and while we were sitting in the bath she said, "Have you ever noticed something that you've seen before and all of a sudden it's beautiful?" And I said, "Yes." She went on, "Sometimes when I come up here and the incense is burning, the windows in here and the walls are so nice..."

She wants to read me a bedtime story now. Sometimes, yes, things that you've seen before can suddenly be beautiful.

A full day of writing about observational definitions of crime and the resulting statistics. I'm sure it'll be fascinating reading. Kids went swimming and then they and all their friends came back here, at which point I was pacing up and down trying to figure out how to end the paper. I still haven't figured it out, but it's not due for another ten days so I have time to play with it. (read, obsess over it.)

One statistic to think about... in 1994 in British Columbia, 33 pedophiles were known to have abused 2,055 children, between them. That's an average of 62 each, in a year... and they were boy scout leaders and daycare workers, not strangers hiding in the bushes at playgrounds.

Sometimes all the reading I do catches up with me. Last night I woke in a panic from a dream of being trapped in a lighthouse by a madman who was planning to extract my brain through my nose as I watched. I got up and wandered around the house for a while, not wanting to go back to sleep and re-encounter the madman.

One of my little old lady customers came today to play Keno. It's funny, but for the longest time I thought she was a bit senile, because I'd say things to her and she'd just be unresponsive. But if I smiled at her, (which I did a lot, getting no other reactions) she would always give me a big grin in return. So I figured, ok, she just doesn't talk. Today she came and suddenly started talking to me, telling me that she was having a much easier time of it now that she'd had her HEARING AID fixed.... And we had a good long chat, she used to be an income tax auditor, back when she worked, and she was telling me that she never thought of the numbers as being enormous sums of money, they were just numbers she was working with.