Friday, December 29, 2000

 

12:49 p.m. It's time to do a dayside entry, just to balance out all the gloomy night laments I've been posting lately. Fatigue! Plus -- something else (I don't know what) grabs me at the end of the day and really drags me down with it. It could be all that white food.

2:42 p.m. Nonetheless, I will try to write in the daytime, and thus my entries will return to the truer, finer version of who I really am. And who am I? Well, for starters, I am a person who likes to hang things on the wall. Mostly brown things, actually.

The appraiser is back again today, re-doing the appraisal because the first one was mis-filed. So, I once again had to run through the house with a jaundiced eye, looking for critical flaws and trying to amend them. I made the bed. Fluffed the sofa cushions. Scrubbed up parts of the floor. Does any of this matter?

If you ask me, the single biggest feature of our unusual house is the sun-capturing facilities, which are peerless. The photo you see here was taken on that strange December day only a few weeks ago when the Supreme Court of Florida was rendering its decision and letting the count for president go forward. This was exactly the framed moment of what I was looking at as I listened to the TV.

Suddenly, all seemed right and beautiful with the world. Good had prevailed and the Sunshine Laws had shone through the gloom.

Sun splashing in, painting swaths on the white walls and putting a white pitcher in the momentary spotlight. Why was I taking this particular photo? Only to show my interior world ... I'd literally not been out of the house for many days ... still haven't been. No other reason. Now, in retrospect, it was a more innocent time.

It's easy to be thrifty if you stay close to home. That's one of my surest money-saving tips. That, and my mother's oldest advice: Don't ask yourself if you really *need* something ... ask yourself if you can live without it. Can I live without it? Usually, the answer is an unqualified, if reluctant, "yes".

Can I live without a newer, more powerful electric blanket? Yes. Can I live without new bedsheets and new towels? Yup and yuppers. Can I live without a whole new computer system? Most certainly. And so on. So -- things are pretty good around here, and pretty pretty.

As the sun goes down, every last driblet of it flows into the house from one window or another, efficiently. When it's time to turn on the lights, all I have to do is to touch the pseudo clay pot of the rubbery-frond cactus (at the left) and it lights up. Pretty.

Do I need to know who actually won in Florida? Yes. Can I live without knowing?

See? Everything's better in the daytime, in the sunlight.