Haiku 31+19=50 in These titles mean nothing.

Oatmeal is formal
Cheddar and apples less so
Day starts anyway

*

Damn house cleaning.

I must have burned it. It was the envelope with my fake paycheck that I wrote on the back of.... It was a bookmark in my current book - T.C. Boyle’s The Women which I am liking a lot. I had the book and assorted pilled up junk in my cloth sack that I use to take my lunch to work. When I got home I dumped the sack out on the kitchen table so I could wash it and my coat - both were in dire need of laundry. Later I worked on cleaning off the table and starting a fire in the basement furnace and I must have burned the fake paycheck with its important notes. (It’s a fake paycheck because I have automatic deposit.) Not that I can’t reconstruct what it said but I would have liked to have had it to work from/immortalize/whatever.

What it was was a list of things I can do when I don’t work anymore. This list was different because it was things that would not cost any more money than I’m already spending. I realize I am too into money. Money is a game I play. Everyone plays it but I talk about it. I guess that’s bad taste.

Anyway my idea was that almost everything we do costs money. Even if it’s only money for cheap gas. So I wanted to think of things that would not cost any more than what I’m paying for stuff right now.

Here goes -

1. I could do all the puzzles in the daily paper. I currently do the sudoku but the crossword is too easy and boring. But if I kept track of the time it took to do it, that would add to its appeal. There is a Crypto-Quote too that is sorta fun and I’d do it too. Now I just look to see what yesterday’s quote was.
2. I could actually read the daily paper too.
   The daily paper itself is a given. Jim thinks we should get it though I pretty much never see him read it. It costs twenty bucks a month and comes out of my checking account. It’s the Cedar Rapids Gazette and gives us Iowa government news and we have sentimental attachments to Cedar Rapids - my first ten years of married life were spent there - and to the paper because it’s locally owned and is a good paper. Plus I used to string for them, going to city council and school board meetings. I had a fairly common by-line in it in the late 1980s.
3. I could go back to attending public meetings. Supervisors meet Monday mornings. They are theater and I like to keep my hand in.
4. Gracie and I could walk up to see Joana every day. Good for all three of us.
5. I could cross the creek a lot more often and see more sunsets from the sidehill.
6. I could go to the library more. Read the articles in The New Yorker if they still get it.
7. I could do a better job of writing here.
8. I could start and keep a spiral bound notebook/scrapbook again.

The friendly guy at work asked to see my list. He said I should visit friends - all over, and a lot. He also said he’d work on other things for me to do.

Last updated February 20, 2016