Computer still down. Also, old computer is now downstairs, which is what I've intended for some time. It's odd to have this thing downstairs, as now all those things that haunt my head when I sit at my desk are merging with everything that rings in my head when I'm downstairs. Things like, you know, Disney Playhouse theme tunes, crying babies, the water running in the sink. Lord help me if I ever get a laptop and the whole world is let in. Must compartmentalize. The trick is not looking perpetually distracted.

Though Mrs. Ditchman tried to rouse me at one point, I slept on the the couch last night, immobile. I was determined to see the end of Lost, which was last season's finale. I didn't make it. I got up twenty minutes before the final shot and had a bar of chocolate to keep me awake. It didn't work, and I woke at 2AM with the rank, brown flavor of unabsorbed chocolate in my mouth. I didn't brush, and just pulled a throw pillow over me and went back to sleep. Then I had a dream that I arrived to run a marathon at 6AM but the race was going to begin at 6PM, in the dark. Also, they had changed the course so that it went up a mountainside on a dirt path. I was really bummed, as I had to sit there at the cold start line for twelve hours and fret about it.

The upstairs is just so far away now, and my time off in December has left me soft, so that this week's work has given me soreness from neck to ankle. And evidently there's more work to be done, as I was reminded at 7:00 this morning when the Ditchman Family came downstairs to have life. How I could be so busy and behind schedule so early in the year with no money coming in is beyond me. Maybe the paychecks are upstairs? I wouldn't know, as I only go there to shower, but I'm pretty sure that's where the bills are piled up, too.

But the weather is still great, so we've got something to brag about. And the neighbor finally got his foundation poured (yesterday, at the crack of dawn, of course) for the mansionization of his property that got held up last month by the City and the weather and the holidays and whatever. His contractor seems raring to go, as the lumber arrived first thing this morning. I'm not sure they knew where to put it all. And the street cleaner came by and ticketed everyone, including the contractor, bright and early. (Not me though. I had the car up on the lawn, and I was asleep on the couch, in yesterday's clothes, with the lights still on, and surrounded by empty, crumpled beer cans -white trash that I am.) (Okay, just kidding about the beer cans.)

So that's life in these suburbs. Off to work, like everyone. The problem with spending the night on the couch is that it's like a nap in the middle of the longest work day ever.


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