So far, a discouraging day. First off, I got up. That was after I went to bed (several times) and couldn't get to sleep 'til after 04:00. I don't understand it. I can't stand it. I don't want things to be this way, but things are this way anyway! Ah, well, life goes on, sleepless or not.

Karen and I had our first fall hot tub last night. Very, very nice. The leaves are still on the trees, of course, but they'll be gone in a month. The weather was perfect (and it still is!) and the water was nice and clean and warm and wonderful. Just right for relaxing before going to sleep, right? Well, for Karen, it certainly happened that way. But for the chronic insomniac? No it didn't. Nothing else worked, either.

Anyway, we got up at 10:00, after a series of annoying calls starting at about 08:00. I got up with a headache (a very infrequent occurrence) which has abated somewhat. Karen is taking the grandkids to the BC/BS picnic (held indoors because they thought it might rain)(on this very beautiful day) and then to Packy's school carnival. Meanwhile, I paid some bills and filled the truck up with gas and started working on the lawn mower. It quit working about a month ago when Andy was using it, he worked on it four or five hours and gave up on it. Anyway, I was fiddling around with it, I can get it to start, but it only runs momentarily and then quits, like there is a problem with the gas supply, but there isn't. I got really fatigued pulling on the goddamned rope, so I decided to take a break, and here I am.

Karen and I decided last night in the hot tub (She'd had at least a couple of glasses of wine) that I need to start writing the Great American Novel, or maybe the Great American Love Story. I'm sure that I could do it, if I only had the Great American Idea and I knew how to write... But seriously, I'm going to start working on some writing ideas. I used to spend a lot of time writing stories and poetry, but I gave up on the stories after I quit drinking, just never got started again. My preferred genre is SF but I think that I won't try to do that any more. More mainstream stuff, most of the stuff that I've written was really mainstream with some science thrown in, because I wanted to write science fiction. But that didn't really work. So I'll start off anew with it.

So now I'm going to work on the lawn mower some more and then watch some college football. KU is playing, I haven't seen them yet this year...

KU doesn't play until 20:00, so I took a nap instead of watching football. I watched part of the Notre Dame game, though, but I don't know how it ended. Karen came home from her activities and laid down with me and went right to sleep, she never takes naps, so she must have something ailing her, too.

My aunt Bea called, she had a feeling that something was the matter with Mom, so I need to call Mom and then call Aunt Bea back if anything is wrong. I need to call Aunt bea back anyway, 'cause she woke me up and I'm sure that I wasn't very lucid and probably not even very friendly.

Well, Mom is just fine, she's looking forward to Dan and me being there next week. She's doing just fine, according to her, which is absolutely meaningless, 'cause she would lie to me in a minute if she wasn't. I realize that that's not a nice thing to say about your mother, but I have the memory of getting a call from her after she had her colon resection for cancer. This was after the surgery, after she was recuperating for a day, that she decided to call. Didn't want to worry me. The nerve of some people! This was about fifteen years ago, she's had no recurrence from that, good check-ups all along. But she ruined the lifetime of trust that I had for her. Actually, for anything except for her health, I still trust her.

Well, I'm gonna FTP this and get on with my life, which is going to be fixing supper and watching football tonight. Tomorrow I'll maybe actually get some work done...