Hours of Daylight – 10:46

I don’t know how to describe how sad i feel. I think this is what people mean by “clinical depression.” Maybe it’s only clinical if you bring the condition before a clinician and he/she agrees you’re depressed and require medication.

Couple of weeks back i returned to Minnesota to attend a party to congratulate a former coworker on the occasion of her marriage. On balance it was a fine time and i’m totally glad i was able to be there. But i am profoundly depressed over waking up the morning of Tuesday, October 11th, and departing Scott’s farm for the last time.

For whatever reason i can’t help but focus on loss and negative emotions. I find i’m catching myself when Annette fails to put a hammer back in the junk drawer… and i point out “the hammer goes in the junk drawer” and she says “oh, i didn’t know that.” Only been there for six months since the day we moved in here. But i don’t say that. Her attention is elsewhere engaged. I need to honor that engagement since it’s the reason we’re here and living in this house. But i still find episodes such as that catching in my brain on their transit. Let go. Let go.

So, let’s move on and discuss, if not happy at least neutral things. First, we’re slowing beginning to experiment with color in our house. Don’t get me wrong, i am a huge fan of color. But i’m not someone who likes to surround himself with riotous colors in the form of paint on walls. I actually like the color virtually every interior surface of our house wears. It’s called “tequila” and it changes depending on what light is reaching it. The north side of the house gets little sun so the rooms are bathed with indirect light. In such light the tequila walls seem more yellow-green (a hint of cyan/gray evident as well). The big livingroom gets lots of direct sunligh. In direct light the tequila walls glow yellow-gold.

We painted two alcoves a fairly rich mossy green called “caraway.” It goes very well with the other walls. But we both wanted to add more color to the room, color that would add, but wouldn’t scream for attention. We tried a deep red called “current” but that was a total mistake on two levels. After covering th red with Kilz2 (that stuff rocks!) i set about finding a suitable accent color. The color i picked is called “arizona” and i think it works just fine. The photo at left shows three of our accent windows in the living room. Some might look at this and say “you took the time to paint that small an area and you call it an accent?” Well, yeah. This is what i feel accents are all about. I feel no need to cover the huge walls of tequila (which might also be called “beige”). I like being able to look up from my computer screen at a plain blank wall. It helps my mind to roam. I suppose i support the meditative technique of staring at a blank wall for hours on end trying to escape “small mind” and move closer to “big mind.”

Oh, and here’s a happy thing: last night we attended a halloween party thown by our former neighbors Summer and Brad. Their house sits empty thirty feet from where i’m typing this. They moved several weeks ago about two miles distant to a larger home on a massive piece of real estate. While Annette and i failed to dress up (i just suck at costumes) we had a great time. Of course everybody at the party have known each other for decades, but annette and i had immediate cred since Brad and Summer had mentioned us (or their relationship to our house)… and there we were… so it was all good. I drank too much. Just about everybody there drank too much. It was determined one person was too drunk to drive his pickup truck home… so i’m not sure how he departed the party… all i know is a buddy of his parked his truck, in an orientation i’m sure the owner will find disturbing, in the now dry irrigation ditch bisecting the back-nine as Brad calls it. Uh, after doing a doughnut or two. It was quite the sight. I had not been to a party like that in some time. Felt good. I should mention the invite was sort of odd. I happened to see Summer drive up to their old place right as i was driving out. I went over to say hello… and got the invite in the form of a “what are you doing tonight?”. It wasn’t like she’d come over to deliver the invite personally. But like Charlie Brown around the holidays Annette and I will take just about any invite we can get.