9:55 a.m., Monday

Damn, I’m tired of waking up with the Neck Thing so often. A buzzing fly woke me just after nine, or I’d probably still be down there in the bedroom, trying to ignore my neck.

I was up past one o’clock last night because I screwed up a batch of bread. I didn’t start it till evening, so that I could bake it when the house would cool off through the night. Apparently I badly miscounted the 20 cups of flour I always put in my standard recipe, so when it came time to shape the loaves, the dough was globulous in a way that couldn’t be handled at all. I had to add more flour, let the machine knead the dough again, and let it rise for an extra 45 minutes. It was obvious when the loaves were cooked that the dough had been overkneaded, as the crusts have ugly tears in them. Oh well. Not every batch is beautiful.

I was pretty beat by the time it was out of the oven, and probably would have slept longer this morning if it weren’t for that persistent, loud fly.

Yesterday was a strange day. I felt *down* and couldn’t shake myself out of it. Finally I just crawled into bed for an afternoon snooze. It helped. After that I got ambitious and vaccumed and washed the floors before my baking rampage. Farmbeau had been working all day in the heat and as I cleaned I thought I’d like to have some supper ready for him when he came in. But my timing was all off, and he ended up preparing a late supper by barbecuing pork chops and boiling potatoes while I was mixing bread dough and granola. We ate deep-green leaf lettuce and hot radishes from our garden, too.

With Barney gone, I must remember to feed the dog every day. It was after dark last night when I strolled over to the other yard with a pail of table scraps for him. But what a lovely stroll that was. The night was warm and there was the lightest of showers falling gently through the air. I could have walked all night, but I wanted to spend some time with Farmbeau, whom I hadn’t seen much of all day, and all he was interested in doing was laying on the couch in his gauch in front of the TV. I could understand it — he was tired, and it was comfy and cool down in our living room.

So I came in and made a pot of spearmint tea and put apple pie on plates and took it and teacups downstairs on a silver tray.

This morning there is water dripping from the rainspout outside my window here. We got almost an inch of heaven’s elixir during the night. What wealth!

Before I got into the tub yesterday afternoon, I opened the bathroom window so I could lay there and listen to the flying creatures. What a variety of spiritlifting birdsong surrounds our home. Later I saw two unfamiliar birds in a tree outside our kitchen window. They looked like woodpeckers, but were hopping around on a branch, unlike woodpeckers, who tend to attach themselves to vertical tree trunks. Farmbeau was here when I saw them, and he didn’t think they were woodpeckers either, although they had long beaks like the woodpeckers do. Yet there is cedar siding on part of the house, and this pair didn’t bother it as woodpeckers usually do. We don’t know what they are.

Later I saw a large flash of orange as something flew into the bush outside my office window here. It went too far into the trees for me to follow it by eye, but I see now as I look out that there is a bright orange bird hopping from branch to branch — a welcome change from the plain grey and brown sparrows and the little wrens that populate the yard, along with the crows and magpies. I put out a birdfeeder full of sunflower seed, and that has brought the yellow finches in close.

I need to buy a book on birds of Saskatchewan.

My day, if I can get past this Neck Thing, will consist of cleaning up the kitchen after last night’s debacle and preparing some hard copy of a couple articles to submit to the editor-in-chief. I should also get my 2002 income taxes done and start on the papers I need to start divorce action. It’s been three years since Dave and I split up and we don’t even have a signed separation agreement.

I rarely think about it; when I do, it’s with that sense of having one more thing that should have been done long ago. Then I forget about it again.

The pictures in today's entry are of a house sitting abandoned in a farmer's field a few miles from here. These are everywhere, but this one I could drive right up to. I love it when I can peer inside and see the cupboards and everything, but that day I was wearing a dress and sandals so didn't risk going in -- long grass, snakes, mice, whatever -- I don't have as much confidence when dressed that way as I would if I had on bluejeans and my steeltoed workboots. There could be skunks living there, or the floorboards could be rotten and I could fall through and leave my children roasting in the hot sun of the day in the middle of a field where no one would ever think to look for us. So I contented myself with a snapshot from the outside.

But I always wonder about the people who lived there, the life that was sheltered by now-empty old houses, and where its inhabitants have gotten to. Most of them are probably dead and gone, and I still have to struggle to wrap my brain around that fact -- that we are not on the planet forever; none of us are. Yet that is so difficult to accept on an emotional level when one is so rooted in a living, breathing body.