long day's journey into night

Been off work a solid week for the first time in perhaps ten years. Not sure I know how to do this. Unless I serve something I wake up restless and unfocused. I am going to have to learn how to serve myself.

Work on the house is rewarding enough but at the end of the day it is still just me, an old old country place, and a passel of fleabag cats. Boris is of an age he looks now only for a warm place in the sun to sleep, and the small can of premium wet catfood at precisely 5:30pm. I stategically placed cardboard boxes near ledges and the bed he likes so he can get up without having to try to leap. Please don't tell him I told you that. I watch him stagger and stumble and stutter enough now to feel how it is for him. Seventeen is an awfully advanced age for a cat.

Here is the backside of the bathroom wall, where it faces the breakfast nook. (Bonus: zombie red-eyed kitten supervisors.) I plan to cut the power circuits tomorrow and rip out the medicine cabinet to open the wall between the studs. Enough to rough-in a four high by three long 8x8 glass block opening for light. The bathroom is such a hole. Then I will have to offset the waste line and hot/cold supply valves since I never liked the fact you could rest your chin on the bathroom sink while sitting on the can.

Funny how things have changed the last hundred years. No ... not broadband internet, cellphones replacing Western Electric, flat screen HDTV, Department of Homeland Security changes ... the fact stair bannisters in this place are a full six inches lower than you expect from a modern townhouse, and this bathroom is smaller than closets you find in homes built today. At least I can move the sink away from the pot. Humans a hundred years ago were different than you and I. They predominantly spent their days outdoors. And they were shorter.

I haven't shaved this whole time - Hell, I haven't bathed. I drove to 7/11 this morning to crap. I have to use a bucket from the kitchen to fill the tank to use the crapper at home. While there washing my hands I observed in the restroom mirror silver whiskers are hanging from wattles I never used to have. It occurred to me when I got home my selfwinding Rolexstopped right where I left it when it got too hot and sweaty to bother with anymore. A few days ago, don't ask me which. Then I remembered how pleased I was my old schoolhouse clock is re-energized and penduluming nicely again with just one swing after a few years' rest. The cretins I let use my house in my absence even broke the glass out of the dial face. How on earth does that happen? Obviously they had no need for such a quaint antique. No doubt they wore digital Casio LCDs.

I considered briefly being perturbed over the noise the clock makes, a background, gutteral "tock-TOCK!-tock" marking constant time here. You can hear it from anywhere in the house. I really don't like external drumbeats driving my internal clock anymore. Not at all. Not after living my whole adult working life with the precise moment I eat, sleep, shower, work, shit, quit, move, relax, talk, walk, wake, make, breathe, leave, love, live dictated by the military. They assign people twenty-four by seven by three sixty five to enforce such rules. I used to be one of them. And, I was very good at it.

Nope. By nature, I like getting up near sunrise every morning to spend two hours doing no thing. Nothing but listening to NPR Morning Edition sitting on the porch glider drinking my coffee. Doing the Sudoku and the crossword next in fresh gel inkpen only after I ensure the hanging birdfeeder in the purple crepe myrtle tree out front is freshly charged with safflower seed. The cardinals and goldfinches count on me.

Then I realized if not for the daily newspaper I wouldn't know what day it is.

Gotta serve something.