Dear Diary,

There's definitely some part of me that cannot, no matter how I try, really understand why my ladies put up with me.

Seriously, I probably spend more time gallivanting around than I do at home, even if I do manage to keep a warm body version of me at home for most of the less intense gallivanting. Once or twice a week since the start of Spring, since the New Year, I'm heading off to one of my Temples, deliberately not leaving one of me at home, in fact focusing entirely on getting my groove on with one Worshipper at a time. I can't seem to get through a single three month Season without wrecking myself to one degree or another. That's all on top of my dubious sense of humor and homemaking skills.

Okay, I guess that those have been improving. Back in the day, my cooking was best described as 'technically edible' and the rest of my homemaking skills weren't just nonexistent, but clearly somewhere in the negatives. Any time I tried to clean up my house it wound up nastier than when I started. I guess not every single Worshipper wants to simulate genetic material exchange with me; some of them just want, y'know, to be held, to be seen. Shit, there's been a bunch where any sexy time antics were entirely secondary to their whole 'heart's desire'; more test driving new equipment than anything else. Also, I do tend to keep one of me with each of my loved ones.

Loved ones. There's a phrase I really didn't take seriously back in the day. Maybe that's why they can tolerate me, because I really do love them. Some super snarky rational part of me tells me that their continued existence as part of my life might be because they do, in fact, love me back, but that's just not possible. Utter crazy talk.

Yeah, I know. But talking to my Diary isn't always about what's logical, rational, or factually correct. It's about what I feel, and there's still a big part of me that feels worthless.

Objectively I'm sure that's incorrect. I kill monsters and clean sheets and make food. But all of those are things that other people could do.

But at the end of the day, I'm the one who's doing them. Which has to count for something.

On the one hand, if Dad's right, and I'm the one doing the judging at the end of everything, I need to get my shit together before then. On the other hand, the End of Time isn't happening any time soon, so I've got time.

See what I did there?

So yesterday, after spending the night getting my world rocked by my faithful, which really ought not make me feel bad at all, what with Saffron not only calling and taking dibs on first, but sitting there leading the cheering for the remainder of the night, I carried her home. "You want I should tell the Grand Council you're down for the day?"

She shook her head. "Stabilize?" As I brought my hand up, she grabbed at it and stepped us to the Bedroom. "Like Luna did to you."

"She didn't Stabilize me, though." She just stared at me, affectionately bemused, until my brain caught up. "Oh."

"Yes. Oh." She said 'oh' a lot during the process too. Repeated it at lunch, because she was wrangling a bunch of different shit. Directing excess manpower to updating and improving Muscogee. Getting supplies to Grandmother's Village. Finalizing the Compton treaty. Just a shit ton of stuff, really.

Meanwhile I did all my normal daily stuff. Academy Maid stuff, playing with the kids, watching the Infirmary, and sitting with Siobhan. Didn't get to play seat cushion, though, because Saffron was too busy with the Grand Council to bend the world to her will.

Not just busy, either. Tired, too, although I'm not sure most of the Grand Council noticed. Then again, maybe they did, but either were too decent to call her on it so long as the job got done, or too conniving to give up the opportunity. Even odds my cunning Kitten knew they knew, and had plans laid to trap them if they went rogue.

Got home, got dinner into everyone, including a nice coating of bisque inside Siobhan, none of which came out, even when she did a little retching mid-Bath. With everybody, including Tallulah, who'd come to visit Ria and wound up mobbed by the whole horde, clean and warm, I put everyone to bed, still kinda jazzed from the night before. I realized in short order that neither Saffron nor I had gotten anywhere near sleep.

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I spirited her away to the Bedroom, kissed her eyelids, and whispered, "can't sleep?"

"Locked down. Had to. Needed to keep working on the Council."

"Why?"

She smirked up at me without opening her eyes. "Your plan." When I made confused Tabitha noises, she explained, "getting things orderly enough I can take a week off without worrying, to focus on reviewing my new Inspect."

"Oh! It's ready then?"

She just smiled, sighing, shaking her head. "I don't know, love. That's why I need a week without distractions to review it."

I felt some kinda way about that. "So... you won't want me being your booster seat?"

She pulled me down for a kiss, then whispered, "missing you would definitely be a distraction."

"Oh, but me being right there for canoodling isn't?"

She smiled, her cheeks maybe warming a little as she said, "I really liked what you did at lunch a few times running. Like... what's that term you used? Like a pit stop, run by my very own Divine pit crew."

I frowned at her, utterly fake, not that she could see it anyway. "So you want me to hold you in my lap all day, selflessly servicing you at lunch, so I wind up all pent up?"

"Oh, I'm sure you'll have a night or two at the Temple. And, after all, I expect you to vent any and all 'pent up' desire upon me when we celebrate the new Inspect going into place."

I smiled at her, brushing my lips across her eyelids again. "You didn't need to bribe me with that. I'd absolutely be your pit crew. No reward required."

"Or desired?"

"I didn't say that now, did I?"

She laughed, gradually trailing off into a sigh. "Love, I really do need sleep, and I really am locked down."

I lay down next to her, running one hand down her body. "So. What can I do to help?"

"What you did earlier? Only without the Stabilize?"

I nuzzled her ear. "Somebody really likes that, huh?"

"You seemed to." I tensed a little, and she whispered, "I adored watching you lose yourself to that. Mayhap we can take turns when we're celebrating my new Inspect?"

I thought about that for half a second, my hand sliding down. Then I snerked a little. "Yeah, you've got itty bitty hands."

"I've got two of... oh!"

Took a couple tries, but I got her snoozing in under an hour.

Left her in bed, stepped back to the Bath, slipped on my jeans and a plain tee shirt, and called out, "Jack? Adrienne? I'm headed your way now."

A moment later I stepped down to Johnny's place. Adrienne stood next to where Jack sat stirring the cauldron. "Welcome, Mimic."

I shrugged. "You can call me Tabitha. Or Diaz if you like."

He stopped stirring for a moment, then nodded. "Diaz, I think. Tabitha's a bit... intimate?"

"How about informal. But I'm okay with being a little formal. Might help if we could be a little less so though."

He looked at me. "Help how?"

I shrugged. "You've got some very justified intimacy issues. Those are maybe not helping some other issues you seem to have."

"Like?"

"Like the ones you're having a problem telling me about. The ones Adrienne knows about, but doesn't feel right telling me anything more than maybe fleshing out the bare bones of stuff you've let slip." He looked at her, and I shook my head. "No, she didn't spill the beans on anything. Just answered some really simple questions when you stormed out."

"I didn't storm out." I just stared at him until he looked away. "Not really. Just... yeah, I'm not comfortable around you."

"Are you comfortable around Adrienne?"

He thought about that. Looked at her. "No," he whisperred.

"Why not?" I asked the question I knew she wanted to ask as she stood there, tension in every line of her body.

"I... she'll get hurt."

"Yeah. She's a big girl. That's her decision to make."

"And mine."

He looked kinda mulish about that, and really I kind of understood. "Okay, yeah, true, but I don't think you want to let her go. To send her away. Do you?"

He just sat there, his mouth working, until Adrienne laid a hand on his. "It's okay, Jack. You don't have to answer."

"But..." He trailed off into whispered muttering nothings.

"He wants to," I filled in. His gaze snapped to me, but then he sighed and nodded. "But there's something holding him back, something he's not comfortable telling me yet." He nodded again. "So... Jack?"

"Yeah?"

"How about you share something else with me?"

Adrienne gave me all the side eye in Jackville. "I watched you on the Altar. No."

I laughed. "Not your decision to make, but I think he agrees with you." I shook my head as he nodded. "No. I meant... you mind teaching me how to make that gumbo?"

He sat there with his mouth open, arguing with himself for a minute, before looking at me. "Really?"

"Yep. I got all night, and I can mostly stay all day tomorrow. Everything else I'm doing is kinda stuff I can do on automatic."

He sat there stirring his stew, staring at it for a long time, with Adrienne standing behind him, hands on his arms. Eventually he nodded and waved me over.

It took a bit of trial and error, mostly his trial and my error, but by the end of the day today, I had a cauldron of gumbo to take home for dinner.

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