A ride downtown to have a sandwich at Ratto's just before noon. A single photograph of a small haphazard arrangement of leaves on fenced grass beside a building. Hit the Versateller for money. Watching the people on the street and thinking. I'm doing too much thinking. Nice day, no complaints, but I'm watching myself run my usual routines and wondering (idly wondering, but still wondering) how this is going to turn out. I know how it's going to turn out.

How down does this journal sound, I wonder? Now and then I catch a glimpse of something, a flash of insight, a different look at my life and I ask, "have you gotten yourself so far into a rut you can't even recognize the signs? Eh? Boy-o?" and I'm never sure of the answer. In most things, comparing my life to my peers, I don't see common patterns. I've read (more than once) most people who live lives like mine - no wife, family, kids and now (wow), not even a cat - end badly. Heart failure at 45. I dodged heart failure at 45. A cranky attitude standing in supermarket lines. I have a cranky attitude standing in a supermarket line. Suffering fools badly. I suffer fools badly. I have the grace to recognize the fool who's face I shave in the mirror each morning and yet I suffer fools badly.

So, as I said, a flash of insight on an old subject. Life has its little passing flashes and it's best not to dwell. Back here now to take a nap. Tired. I've been getting plenty of sleep, I think, although I've been waking up once, often twice in a night to take a pee. After learning about sleep apnea I understand it's not to take a pee, but something else. With apnea, it's the apnea. With prostate problems it's the prostate. You can have an apnea relapse, of course. The doctors didn't stress it, but they always ask, how am I sleeping even though I've had the operation, but I don't think it's that. I've lost a lot of weight and that by itself should help. The prostate? Well, of course, but the next doctor's appointment is next month and for now that's enough, deal with it when it's time. For now, I'm tired, probably stress.

I wonder if they have little stress primers on the web. Danger signs, lists of symptoms. "You'll feel tired, my son, and get up to pee at night. This will be annoying, but bearable. More unsettling will be the noises, the scratching sounds, the weasels plotting in the walls, the muffled sound of teeny weasel drums framing the vague faces that form above the bed in the dark, the eyes, well, the eyes. We don't want to talk about the eyes. Not here. Not now.