Today was OK. I woke up and stayed up for about 3 hours and didn’t need to.

I watched too much television. I realized I have to fix both toilets. Trivial issues and cheap repairs. Still, if I was a plumber, I would be a lot richer than I am today.

J worked while I slept. I woke up, did something, I can’t recall. J came home. We went out for burgers. I went to AA., then swimming, 2500 meters. Happy with my first week in October, 5 times @2500 meters/workout 12500 meters total 7.76 miles.

I am watching the Yankees vs Twins game. At this point I can’t give up on this game. But then again I am not watching football.

That’s all folks.

I love the feeling of being between sleep and wakefulness. In a few minutes after the Northbound Silver Meteor, #98, passes through Ashland, I will go back to bed. I’m looking forward to doing nothing to very little today. It’s the best part of retirement.

A good day today. I finally fell back to sleep after reliving that massage comedy. I did get up. I did go to 9:00 Mass at Our Lady of Bad Acoustics, (Mary Mother of The Church Abbey). I like the priest. He is Ugandan, with an East African accent, that is easily understandable up close, but is a challenge to follow in the cavernous abbey chapel.

After Mass, I returned home, went back to sleep. I slept about two hours. I awoke did some bathroom cleaning, then went swimming, 2500 meters again. Did 10 Kilometers (6+miles) so far this week, with another day to swim.

The weather changed, cool and cloudy, high of 70° F, very pleasant, for a change. I even wore a flannel shirt.

Back to thinking impure thoughts, and getting sleepy. Very impure.

That’s all folks.

I wrote that last entry. Now I feel awkward, not quite ashamed, a little embarrassed that I would even consider doing stuff like that. Threesomes were a topic in a couple of Seinfeld episodes, a source of humour. My unrealised desire seems so childish now.

How did that scene affect my marriage? Were both women too stoned to care, one way or the other? I think women remember everything, as far as sex goes. Maybe I’m wrong about that.

Well an odd day, I guess. I’m doing chores and housework at night. I slept during the day in three two-hour stretches, but I did sleep. I wrote some blog posts. I skipped swimming. I did two loads of laundry, fixed some more iced tea for J, cut some fresh pineapple for her break snack.

I wrote very satisfying blog entries, at least I liked what I wrote, about Catholic tradition, small towns and baseball.

And now, one more entry. There is a Daffy Duck cartoon on YT, Daffy And The Dinosaur, made in 1939, that’s pretty funny, with a dinosaur and a caveman who talks like Jack Benny, (could be Mel Blanc, I’m not sure, no voice credit given). Now comes a wartime cartoon with Germans as bumbling incompetents, humour for the home front.

All this is filler, so I don’t have to express how lonely I feel. J is perpetually exhausted.

Bedtime.

I was a boy once, watching men named Mickey, Moose, Rocky, Willie, Yogi, Boog, Pee Wee. They earned extra money by endorsing Gillette Razors, Lifebuoy Soap, Wonder Bread, and Camel Cigarettes, unfiltered. (I kid you not). The players were all about winning the World Series because it meant more money. If you lived in Brooklyn, some of the players lived in your neighborhood.

Now it is reversed. I watch these boys, younger than my own sons. Their names are Giancarlo, Masahiro, Aaron, Justin, Didi, Yandy. Now they endorse shoes. They get royalties from the sale of replica jerseys. They make more money in a season than what some players earned in a career,

It seems that nothing has changed, except there are computers everywhere and radar. If you go to the ballpark, you have to take out a mortgage to buy a hot dog.

The World Series was like Christmas, so important the principal would announce the score on the Public Address system. They played the World Series games in the afternoon. The fans would talk about the game, not the commercials.

Now, we are games away from the World Series with three rounds of playoffs before the Big Event. Baseball is little more than an intrusion, a houseguest who has stayed too long.

But the game still has some unvarnished brilliance by the great grandchildren of giants.

Ashland is a college town, Randolph-Macon College, affiliated with the Methodist Church. It is Division III in NCAA football, so it’s small. But the students give the town a certain energy.

Right now, I am watching some young women in dresses, nice dresses, like cocktail dresses, having fun near the train depot. The clock at the depot isn’t accurate. A couple walk by. I guess they are 60ish. She is wearing a flannel shirt and white jeans. She has long blond hair and is a little heavy, zaftig, to put it in Yiddish. Attractive. He is tall, heavy, with white hair. My imagination has them married since the time of the Carter Administration. I fancy their children are grown. They might have gone to school here. They’re spending the weekend at the bed & breakfast, the Henry Clay Inn, to re-kindle the romance. (I should write scripts for Hallmark Channel movies.)

Meanwhile, voices are heard off camera view. Sounds like the young cocktail dress women. Probably a party. Do college women ever wear dresses today? More people walk by, men, in jackets, but no ties. It’s like a wedding happened somewhere.

The last train through town was #53, Southbound Autotrain, the one where you stow your vehicle in a covered freight car, while you ride the train in a nice bedroom accommodation from Lorton, VA to Sanford, Florida.

So it’s time for another train to pass through, as the dusk settles in. We have to remind ourselves it’s 2019, not 1959.

Every month, when I have Holy Hour at Four AM, I simultaneously dread and welcome the disruption to my schedule. The time with Our Lord, metaphysically present in the consecrated Host, always affords me new insights. Today, I learned that I need to step up my empathy and compassion “game”, if you will. I’m far too quick to rage at my enemies. I have to remember that the anger I’m feeling is probably not at them, but somebody else, somebody that I feel like I can’t feel anger towards, like my wife. Or maybe the anger isn’t specifically directed toward anyone. It’s just there and it must be directed to someone. Could be just some chemical, like adrenaline, that’s simply there. And if I feel this way, maybe other people feel the same way in their anger. It is misplaced, misdirected or just excess adrenaline.

So I get home, sleep, wake up and am desperate to sleep again. I have that groggy semieuphoric feeling that comes with sleep deprivation, just before I throw in the towel and doze off.

Night y’all. More accurately Day, y’all. 😪