Ah...well, another day of peace and serenity for the unemployed.

I joke about this now, but check back with me in two months and I'm sure to be in a mild panic. Tonight I sit before my computer screen, sipping my Yerba Mate and reflecting on my day...

I awoke rested and happy, having felt the stress of five years slowly leaving my body over the past twelve days. My first disappointment today was learning that I missed YET ANOTHER Leonid meteor shower! THEY say this one was the biggest and best (how do they know that?) for at least the next one hundred years. Oh joy.

I began the task of working on my middle room today. Boring you say? Ah, but you've never seen my middle room! Rarely, if ever, has anyone seen the middle room (please refer to the July 22nd posting of "A single man's rules for cleaning house.... " rule number nine) in it's "true" form. I know my limits and I have a very real capability of biting off more than I can chew, so I paced myself.

I worked on one corner of the middle room, spreading items about the house in "piles" separating said items categorically. This made for a more spread out mess akin to spreading a pat of butter over the expanse of a submarine roll. The pat of butter in-and-of-itself appears substantial until it is spread over the expanse of the larger roll. Results: Items were categorized, corner was revealed, walking room was created and now the whole house looks messy instead of that one little corner of my middle room. *sigh*

Two of the three kittens are now placed. One went to a woman in the next town, another to Charlie Brown's little red headed girl up the road. I have decided (on a daily basis) to keep the little tiger as a companion for Zippy. This decision is subject to change at any moment. I need to get these guys - Zippy and "Zooey" - on my time schedule though and I'm not exactly sure how to accomplish that, except to constantly WAKE THEM UP during the daytime. This evening I'm making a trip into the living room at least every hour to investigate a CRASHING noise.

Well, as of Monday I began an exercise routine of walking. I set out Monday and walked up to the main road and across the street. This distant neighborhood was like a history lesson. The adjoining side roads and names on the mailboxes matched. Three main characters abounded, some whose housing dating back into the seventeen hundreds. The descendants are all still in the same area and I slowly began to put together names of locals in town that I know personally with the names of the roads and mailboxes I passed during my stroll. One thing I learned quickly here in New England....be careful what you say about someone because you are probably talking to a relative of theirs.

It was a peaceful walk, not a person in sight and very little traffic at 12:30 p.m. I felt just a tad guilty (only a tad) for being out and about, enjoying myself and the outdoors while others were working. I picked up some roadside trash, a good habit my ex-wife taught me when we first moved here nineteen years ago. A broken Budweiser bottle, a Skoal chewing tobacco container, a flattened grape soda can, an empty cigarette pack.....suddenly dawning on me that every item of trash represented something that Americans stuff into their mouth and not one of them with any real nutritional value. What a healthy race of people we are breeding.

Well, the nightly news is over and I'm developing the bad habit of staying up later and later. Zippy has that worn-out look about her tonight as if to say, "Why didn't you give this kitten away?" as Zooey hangs from her neck in playful banter. I'm off to bed. Tomorrow is a new day with some light snow on the horizon...a nifty thing to awaken to, wrapped in my flannel sheets.

-Jeeem-