Seattle.

In case you were wondering, my "what-the-fuck" post was in reference to a decision to break my self-imposed exile long enough to head up to Seattle and drop by retcon and treebyleaf's Sunday open house. It took a lot of soul-searching to come to that decision; I wasn't sure if I'd be doing right by myself, if I was breaking my commitment to see this through, to spend some time away from my life and see what's left of me away from my normal external factors. Realizing how stir-crazy and lonely I was feeling made me decide to go ahead and do it; there's no real use making myself miserable to prove a point. There's a difference between healthy fasting and starving yourself, and I was starting to cross that line.

I'm glad I went.

Week.

Wow. I haven't posted anything about my life here in Olympia for about a week.

When I came down here, my plan was to:

• Help with yardwork/landscaping
• Spend time with Cheryl and Bill
• See Olympia
• Get lots of reading done
• Get lots of writing done
• Get plenty of exercise
• Write detailed accounts of my time here in my journal

.... So, basically, I set out to overextend myself. I had a feeling there wasn't going to be enough hours in a day for all of these things to take equal priority.

The housepainting is -- well, not done, exactly, but as done as I think it's going to get. Touching up the parts where the color of the wood was bleeding through took several days of wasted effort; I finally broke down and put my primer over the dark areas, and then yet more paint over that, and it looks fine, and I should have just done that in the first place even if it did feel like going backward. I'm too stubborn for my own good.

Cheryl and Bill added the second color to the house; they wanted a lighter yellow for the upper part of the house. Uhhh. Well, it is, uhh, bright. Cheryl's pretty disappointed with how it turned out, I'm afraid, and is already talking about re-doing it next year.

Oh, yes, and I actually conquered my fear of heights and got up on an extension ladder, for some of the last bits of painting. Quite pleased with myself on that one.

I have been getting a lot of reading done. I've finished Through the Looking Glass, Ancestor Cell, The Free Lunch, and You Come When I Call You. More pure reading-for-pleasure than I've done in such a short period for years. I've started on Hardwired. I may well run out of books.

Haven't done any more writing this whole past week. I want to do some tonight, but I don't know if I will.

Cheryl and Bill have been making sure I partake in Olympia's fine cultural offerings: Music in the Park, Sand in the City, Harbor Days. I've been mildly put out by the fact that all the civic offerings bear the garish stamp of corporate sponsorship. I haven't gone into full Naomi-Klein-style ranting about it, since Cheryl is firmly and reasonably insistent that events like these wouldn't happen without corporations, and perhaps I am simply getting curmudgeonly in my old age, but still: I can remember sand-sculpture competitions from my youth where the sand sculptures didn't have their sponsor's logos on them. That just seems kind of, well, tacky, to me.

On the home front: Finishing moving all the dirt and rocks. Finished the path, more or less. It still needs a little more gravel, but all the paving stones are laid, and it looks great. My little brick stairs that I was so proud of at the end of the path didn't last, but they've been replaced by a new step that looks like a waterfall of rocks with a leftover paving stone riding the crest of it; it looks improbable and ethereal, but feels solid. Cheryl and I designed and built it together, and I'm especially happy with it.

I built a little retaining wall today for the edge of the path out of bamboo rods and, of all things, a bamboo curtain; Cheryl and I had discussed it, but she doesn't know I went ahead and did it. She'll be pleasantly surprised, I hope. It looks pretty damn good, I think. Needs some finishing touches, still.

I have the house to myself. Cheryl and Bill are gone until Friday evening. That wasn't the original plan, mind you, but that's how it worked out; Bill realized that the best time for him to take his vacation time was going to be during my stay. That's a little weird, but, sure. They're at McMenamins Grand Lodge in Forest Grove, Oregon. The cats are, to put it mildly, a little freaked to realize that they're gone and I'm still here.