penny's crying and crying and jumping on the table and knocking off w.g.sebold's vertigo, the rings of saturn, and the emigrants, and i cannot ignore her any more than i can ignore my own plagued skin. i'll pause and feed the orange cat. my despair can wait a minute. s. says children are more stoic and they get used to living with their childhood diseases about a third of the time. i think as a kid i would have been in the two thirds who despair.