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I know, it's been a long time. Life is just going along these days, my life is very different without Ken. I have reflex reactions to things like, I can't wait to talk to Ken about the new polling place, and calling him when it's raining to say "It's raining at my house, is it raining at yours?" that was a standing joke between us, since our homes are only a mile apart.

Work is different, one of the clerks in our department retired. I won't go into the joy we're all experiencing, but she's not being replaced, so I have to figure out which of her tasks I'll do and which the other (nice, funny, charming, personable) clerk will do. So far I'm making some progress but I don't want to overload the clerk with too much. Can it be that I'll have to do interlibrary loan again? After all these years of not doing it? When I came here (25 years ago) I hoped I'd never catalog another book or work with MARC records again. That didn't work out. I feel the same way about ILL, but there's no one else to do it. At least I'll use better judgment than She Finally Retired did.

I accomplished a major task recently, cleaned 3 whole rooms in my house. Kitchen, bathroom, living room. Wow do they look great. I'm making a huge effort to keep the look, avoiding cluttering things up, cleaning all the time. One of the most amazing feats is taking everything off of the kitchen counter. Wow! does it look great. Bill came the other day and said the counter would be the litmus test of how well I can do keeping the house organized. I can't imagine having as little room on the counter as I used to, so this might just work out.

It was suggested that I'm so interested in organizing/cleaning because of Ken's death--this is a new phase of my life. That may be true. Or else I've finally taken a good look at my house and realize how awful it looks.

I've been enjoying autumn more, I think, than any other year. I walk the bog on weekends and the colors have been great. Once I took pictures of individual leaves, making up stories and situations for each one. It would have made a great children's book, except that there are already hundreds of books about colored leaves and autumn already. Plus, of course, there's always the getting it published part ...

I'm reading a lot more these days, too. The new John Irving book just came in, hopefully great to read. Well, maybe great, or maybe my expectations are too high. He's always been one of my favorite authors, so let's see how he's doing.

I had a chimney man come to take a look at my stove last week. I have Stage 3 creosote. This is very bad, I think there are only 3 stages. My stovepipe is glazed with creosote. I said to Duane (very cute, very knowledgeable), "You've seen worse, haven't you?" No answer. I take it this means I will be the "worse" that he'll refer to when other customers ask this question. swell. Anyway he's coming back to fix everything and I'm soooo looking forward to that. It's cold at night (20's, 30's) and I can't get my living room very warm without the stove. I'm acclimated though, 60 feels comfortable, especially when the room is 54 when I get up or get home. I have electric baseboard heat as a back up, and have been a loyal and lucrative customer of the electric company for years. I did order shades for my huge windows, though, with great regret. I'm getting honeycomb shades, hoping that what people have told me is true and they'll make a big difference. I'll miss looking out the windows at night, but I can always leave them up and lower them when I go to bed. Boy this all seems very mundane and not very stimulating, but this is my life these days.

Flat tire on the way to work this morning, just as I pulled into my coffee stop. Swell. A flat tire is a great man magnet, though--at one point there were 4 men standing around watching an acquaintance change the tire. Lots of offers of tools, help, etc. I just found out that the tire can't be fixed, so swell, my new tire will now be replaced by a newer one. Although I like having new things, a tire offers little anticipation or interest.

I started feeding the birds recently. The first to appear were the blue jays (not my favorites, but they are a beautiful color). I always associate the squawk of jays with my grandmother's house in New Jersey. It was the first time I got acquainted with the bird and it's noise. Did we not have them in Ill.? We didn't like going to NJ as children--there was nothing to do. When we were young, my sister and I played with the best dollhouse ever --light bulbs in the rooms, a porcelain bathroom sink, a neat telephone cubby under the stairs. We'd spend hours in the basement with that. When we got older, there was nothing to do, except for the year my sister read Gone With The Wind. She sat on the window seat on the 3rd floor (which was a really cool bedroom, you could almost see the NYC skyline from there) and read for hours, no, days, no, years. I remember asking her over and over when she'd be done & play with me. Later, in high school when I was home sick I read GWTW and finally understood what that summer was all about. I read it all day. The book is much more engrossing than the film, although the film was full of beautiful people.

I brought guppies to work, their tank is next to the goldfish's. I'd finally culled the herd of guppies and had just 4 males left, but it turns out that there's a Guppy Gang thing, and they intimidated the other fish. I don't like to see anyone/thing suffer like that, so I broke up the gang. I brought 3 here. One died and the others feasted on his remains. How to keep a clean tank--

The neighborhood is quiet now, only about 4 houses are occupied. I'm spending time with Pat & Jim, Ken's neighbors. Pat is Ken's niece. They're my surrogate Ken, but we all seem to be all right with that, they miss him terribly too.

And so we've been dumped into the days of darkness. I usually have trouble adjusting to the time changes, but so far I've been OK. Except for yesterday, when I didn't realize I hadn't set my bedside clock back. There I was, dressed & ready for work an hour early. duh.