12:06 a.m. This picture is what my whole entire month of May has been like -- a dark little enclosed place sitting in the shadows in the middle of a bright, shiny day. I know that May is happening all around me but I just haven't been able to take that one little step out of the shade and into the light. No time. No time to play.

But tomorrow, I will! Tomorrow I will go to the post office, and maybe the box store. I need a stack of big manuscript boxes. Maybe I'll go to a lot of stores. I need plants. I do know that I'll probably have the first five boxes full of Secret Project ready for the mail -- it's just a matter of the printing now. All the hardest work is done.

My radio silence via the email should end tomorrow, as well. To everyone I owe an email, a letter, or a phone call to -- get ready. I'm coming. Hold on -- I'm coming. I'm getting my act in gear and I'm taking it on the road. I'm driving out of the shadows and I'm going to stay on the sunny side of the street. Direct your feet.

2:11 a.m. Spoke a little too soon. Still finding typos and still printing this sucker out. Perfection is so illusive, but it's worth pursuing.

And working for yourself -- you would think you could screw around because after all, who's going to tell the boss on you if you are, in fact, the boss of you? I really should get a real job and work for somebody nicer than myself.

I saw on the news tonight that the local police precinct house in Bethlehem, Pa. has actually been merged with the donut shop. The two are now one. Cops and donuts, together forever at last in Pennsylvania. Now that's a good workplace idea.

Our workplace around here really needs work. It's true we did buy an actual water cooler because I got tired of lying to people and refilling a Sparkletts bottle from the tap every time their back was turned and hiding it in the refrigerator and pretending that it was bottled.

Now we have an actual big humongeous jug 'o water on a stand, with a handy spout, and a hefty water guy who comes around once a week with more more more bottles of water. More water than anybody can consume, and I don't really like the taste of it, having become, over all these years, accustomed to the taste of water from the tap. So now I pretend that I'm drinking the bottled water, when actually I'm sneaking water out of the tap.

I don't know how I ended up being such an outlaw in my own life.

Oh, and the refill cartridges aren't exactly working out too well, so far. I'm very sorry to report this, and I hope I can do some extra tweaking and get some better results, but for now -- it's sort of substandard and spotty. Maybe I waited too long to refill them and the little points or contacts or pinholes dried out. Maybe I'll have better luck with the color cartridge -- so far, I've only tried the black replacement.

Since it's so cheap to squirt your own ink into the ultra-expensive cartridges, maybe I'll just use the refilled ones for my daily journal printout, and for various other draft projects. I just can't give up the ghost so easily -- not when we're talking about the difference between $30 and pennies.

Why, with all the money I save, I could buy donuts and water and go sit in the sun and eat and drink with a clear conscience. For now, I need sleep. It's free, thank the Lord. Actually, I'm amazed no one has found a way to make us pay ... although if you count up all the things it takes to make a good night of sleep, I suppose we're already paying plenty. And I'm babbling. For that, I'm going to pay.