Later That Same Day . . .

Today turned out to be something of a disappointment in terms of personal accomplishments. I awoke this morning with high hopes (probably a form of early-morning delirium brought about by too few hours of sleep). All week long I had been planning to get out early and knock out a bunch of yard work before the temperature rose past the danger level. Imagine my disappointment when I awoke to the sound of a steady rain outside. Well, perhaps disappointment is the wrong word. Happiness is probably the word I meant. I love rain and I hate yard work, so I'll pause a moment to give you time to connect the dots.

Instead I spent the early morning hours between about 6:30 and 8:30 drinking coffee and tapping inanities into my laptop computer while listening to it rain outside. I can't think of a more idyllic way to spend a Saturday morning than that. It was one of those times that makes you glad to be alive and thankful.

But once the household was awake and it became apparent that it was time to stop drinking coffee and time to start getting busy, I formulated a plan in which I would make up for my inability to do yard work by overachieving in the area of house work. As I baked the cinnamon rolls (the kind that come in a tube) I formulated plans for vacuuming, cleaning up the kitchen, doing laundry, and just generally restoring order to a household that had fallen victim to the chaos of an ordinary week. So, after showering and getting dressed, I set about to put my plan in action. I did the clean-up-the-kitchen item. But then the boilers lost pressure and the train slowed down considerably.

I'll just cut to the chase and say that I ended up laying on the couch upstairs and taking a nap. This was not entirely my fault. I merely laid down a second just to rest my eyes, but then the cat walked up onto my back and made herself comfortable. Well, I couldn't very well disturb the cat, could I? So, between the sound of the rain outside, and the feel of a warm cat sleeping on my back, and the general comfort of my favorite ten-year-old couch, consciousness did not stand a chance.

When I came to an hour and a half later, the cat was still on my back, the couch was still comfortable, and the rain was still whispering outside. But a sense of guilt made me stand up (much to the consternation of the cat, who had finally found a use for me) and get busy again.

At some point during the day we decided to go to Target to shop for our upcoming trip to the beach. There was much impulse-buying and flimsy justifications for things only remotely related to a trip to the beach. But, it is part of the whole beach experience, so who am I to reign in spending at a time like that? By the time we got to the checkout line (about an hour after we got there), our shopping cart was groaning under the weight of the mound of consumer goods piled in it and on it. I believe that the hard rubber/plastic wheels of the cart were in danger of going flat. I had to walk away while the checkout girl rang up our purchases. It pained me greatly to think about the amount of money we were spending. I'm certainly no cheapskate, but neither do I like to watch many hours of my hard labor being converted into plastic doo-dads and other consumables that would just be a faint memory in two weeks' time.

So that was about it for the activities of the day that could in any way be considered to be productive (and even that requires a willing suspension of disbelief if not out-and-out self-delusion).

My excuse for the slothful wasting of an entire day is (a) it was raining and (b) I was exhausted from working so hard lately, and (c) it is the first day of being off of work for 9 days and so I think my mind and body just sort of collapsed like a sprinter crossing the finish line. Those are my excuses and I'm clinging to them tightly.

And now the day is at an end and I am once again in my pajamas and drinking a cup of coffee and tapping into this infernal laptop computer of mine. The day has been neatly book-ended by this coffee/pajama/laptop trifecta. Life is good. Thank you, God.

Saturday 6 a.m. --- The Minutia Continues

It is another glorious Saturday morning and I am up with the lark (or, at least, the dogs). I've made coffee (instant) and fired up the boilers on the ol' laptop. I now sit at the kitchen table tapping away at the keyboard to write another letter to the world (which, for the most part, is singularly uninterested in reading it). I can see through the bay window beside me, by the faint light of a still-yawning sun, that the world outside is drenched to the bone from two days of heavy, steady rain. There will be no yard work on this day. Grass will not be mowed. Bushes will not be trimmed. And canine leavings will have to remain, um, left.

No, today I will have to turn my attentions to indoor activities. These include (but are not limited to): laundry, vacuuming, dusting, picking-up-and-putting-away, etc. (Frankly, it is the “etc” part that I am worried about.)

One (and by “one”, I mean “me” … in case you didn't pick up on that) never knows quite what to put into these letters to the world, especially since the world tends to view them as something from the same species as junk mail or jury duty summonses. In days gone by I would fill them up with the minutia of the recent past. So, even now I can go back and read an old journal and find out that on the second Tuesday in August in 1988 I had bologna and macaroni-and-cheese for lunch and that I went to Radio Shack to buy a package of 5.25” floppy disks for my Tandy 1000 computer. Historically accurate? You betcha! Interesting? Not on your life!

In retrospect, I wish I'd been more honest in my journals about what I was thinking and/or feeling. However, for most of my life I was seized with the fear that my journal would be read by prying eyes and so I was always cautious about the sort of incendiary content that I put in them. Therefore, I tended not to speak of women that I may have had a crush on at the time, or make keen (and hopefully humorously biting) observations about the people I knew. If I spoke of someone, I tended to speak in code and riddles so that now even I don't know what the heck I was talking about. All's the pity, for that sort of stuff would be much more interesting to read than the collection of mind-numbingly trivial itineraries of excruciating trips through banality. And while it is true that I have proof positive that I paid two dollars and ten cents for a cheeseburger and small fries on the third Monday of September 1986 at the McDonald's at the intersection of Sandy Lake Drive and I-35 in Carrollton, Texas (should the question ever arise), I am beginning to doubt the historical significance of the event. Will future generations care? Will I ever be called upon to produce this tidbit of information in a famous murder trial or for a university study of the eating habits of young yuppies in the 1980s? I am doubtful.

However, about what I was feeling or thinking on that particular day my journal remains frustratingly silent. Today's entry (the one you are reading right now) is not much better in that regard. Even while complaining about the frustrating lack of personal commentary in my old journal entries, I am even now holding the cards of my thoughts and feelings close to my chest and revealing nothing about what is truly going through my mind.

I guess some things never change.


Somewhere In TexasJuly 3, 2010v