It's Crucial That This Day End

It's just one of those days. I knew it was going to be one of those when I got up. I could feel it. It's been drizzling all last night and today, which is keeping me in the house. There are a few small inside projects I could do but don't feel any enthusiasm for doing them. The broken drawer pull on the bedroom dresser can wait, as can the leaky gasket on the garden hose. It's 3:06 in the afternoon and besides finishing off some left-over chicken for lunch and washing the solitary dish, I haven't done shit. Well, that's not true. I did brew coffee and read the news. Since then I've done a lot of aimless wandering from room to room. I tried reading on the porch but my mind won't focus on the words and keeps drifting. 

I could write down my next medical appointment on the calendar, but to do that I'd have to take the calendar down, flip the pages to September, write "Dr Hood - 8:10", flip back to June and hang it back up. Not worth the effort. They'll call to remind me anyway. I have thought about my options for dinner, which largely amounts to a left over bratwurst, or a Red Baron frozen pizza. The bratwurst is easier. All I have to do is nuke it for 30 seconds and then fold a slice of bread over it with catsup and onion. The pizza is much more complicated...take it out of the box, read the instructions, preheat the oven, wait for the preheat beep, put it in, set the timer, wait for the timer beep, take it out, figure out the slice size, etc. I don't want complicated. Or the washing of the cutting board, pizza knife and a plate.

Part of my unsettled feeling (I don't know what else to call it) is music, or the lack of. The CD player quit working a week ago Friday when Maribel left for Peru. So I'm limited to the offerings of SUNNY 92.3. I would think that Chattanooga would be large enough to support an easy listening or light jazz station but no, it's either SUNNY 92.3 or the off button. Of the two evils my preference is the off button. I could use one of the Direct TV music channels but it don't seem right to use a TV for a radio. I could listen to music on this computer but if I'm surfing the net at the same time I get both the music and advertisements, which is the equivalent of trying to have a quiet conversation in a sports bar. 

What I am really chomping at the bit to do is get outside and cut up the limbs I cut off of my neighbor's chestnut tree last week. At least 75% of his tree is leaning over the fence above my property. It's an old tree and when it comes down it will wipe out a large section of fence and my shed. I figured that I could delay its falling by removing some large limbs. I have a pruning saw with a 15' extension and was able to cut down five limbs ranging from 6 to 8 inches in diameter and 20' long. One of them snapped off quickly and landed a lot closer to me than expected. That should take some weight off the tree and will give me about a year's supply of cooking wood. All I need is for the rain to stop. I don't like working in the rain. Do you ever watch those Alaskan reality shows, like Port Protection? Did you notice that it's usually raining? I wouldn't live there for that reason alone. By the way, did you ever notice that the narrator always uses the word crucial? Every action, every task is "crucial". It's "crucial" that they lace their boot strings properly because they could trip and fall and sustain a serious injury and there is no doctor right around the corner like there is in the "lower 48". Anyway, they always use chainsaws when cutting up trees. I do it with a saw and manpower. 

For me a chainsaw is not crucial, and it wasn't crucial for the real lumberjacks of the 1920s and 30s. In those days a couple of Wisconsin 'jacks' could cut down half a dozen towering white pines using just axes and a two man cross-cut saw. The guys in Port Protection cut down one tree with a chain saw and think that they're Paul Bunyan (look him up). 

What I would really like to have right now is a funny book. All the books I have are unfunny. That includes 'The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'. I may be the only person who found that book to be unfunny. The funniest book I have ever read is 'Sheila Levine is Dead and Living in New York'. I lost my copy years ago. Hey!...that's something I could do right now! I could Google it and if it's available buy it, all without leaving this chair. And it delays my having to decide what to have for dinner. I think we have a winner.