6.

Today at work during the course of doing something incredibly important and pressing I came upon a picture of Hong Kong at night and now it is my desktop background and now I want to go to Hong Kong. I became hopelessly distracted by the picture and half an hour later tried to refocus on work - the thing I was doing was incredibly important and pressing and still is incredibly important and pressing and I need to do it, either now or later, but now would be better.

This will be my third four-day week in a row at work - I've missed the last two Fridays because I went home two weekends in a row, and this week is short because of the holiday. I am behind on my work. I am also behind at home. No one's paid my bills, no one's cleaned my house, no one's balanced my checkbook, no one's pulled weeds, no one's done anything at all. My house has been driving me crazy. For weeks I've been wanting to pick up every single thing I own and put it out in my yard, then sweep, then put everything back in a different place. Am I really going to live in that tin can another winter?

So I've been busy and have "lost" the last two weekends. Here's what I did instead of housework: saw one of the most incredible concerts ever, drove through torrential downpours, saw a perfect rainbow, ate at Dick's in the middle of the night, ran across the Long Bridge, went to the Bonner County Fair, took Fair Queen photos, washed my car, read, went swimming, took a nap, watched a movie, ate a lot of food, dried some hops, went to the Farmer's Market, went to an antique show, went shopping, went to coffee hour after church (but didn't go to church), played the piano, caught up with my oldest friends, saw my exbestfriend get married (a happier person I've never seen in all my days), made friends pose for couples portraits for my new soft-porn wall calendar business, hiked through ancient forests, drank coffee and ate bread. I can't complain about anything at all.

A couple years ago I came to the conclusion that things will never slow down - this is my life - but I'd forgotten that so I've had to come to that conclusion again. This weekend I have two races, a 10K and a 15K, and I thought after that things would slow down but they won't. The real conclusion is this: I don't want things to slow down - if I did, I'd stop doing what I do. Everything I do I do because I want to.

p.s. The picture of Hong Kong is so incredible - I'm such a sucker for light and water.