Entropy, fiddle-de-dee.

My thermometer lied.

I woke at my usual 6:30ish (when it was light out only two weeks ago, but now that the Oh So Wise Ones have laid the curse of the Saved Daylight upon us, it is once again like the bottom of the proverbial well.) Went downstairs, navigating the cat-icade that keeps the downstairs cats down and the upstairs cats up, made coffee, fed the four-leggers, and checked the thermometer that tells what the temperature is outside. It's made to be in a car or truck, so the little sensing pad is on the end of a long string, with the digital readout bar at the other end. I glanced at it - it was foggy out, but when there's snow on the ground that can be good or bad - then did a double take - 61 degrees!!

I did a little springtime jig and put on some Crocs to go get the newspaper - no coat needed when it's 61 degrees! Danced out the door, thought, "Boy, it's nippy for 61", and promptly went butt over teakettle when I stepped on the ice-covered flagstone.

I limped down the drive and back, came in and checked the temperature on the NOAA - 31! Limped out to the kitchen (had to get the coffee anyway) and checked the thermometer again: yep, 61. The little lying bastard.

So I was already feeling sorry for myself, allowing me to segue into today's topic: Accomplishing Nothing. Meeting No Goals. Perhaps we should just refer to it as Entropy.

Yeah, yeah. I know about dS = δQ / T, where δQ is the amount of heat absorbed in an isothermal and reversible process in which the system goes from one state to another, and T is the absolute temperature at which the process is yakkity yakkity (thanks, Annie) ho hum. I'm talking about personal entropy here, and you know it, so shelve the thermodynamics crap.

Let's just define Personal Entropy to mean progression from a more ordered to a less ordered state. (There's something about the Heat Death of the Universe here...it's right on the tip of my brain...) Hell, I can see it everywhere in my immediate environment - cat boxes need cleaning, as do human bathrooms, no clean clothing really, no clean dishes - hey, there's always paper! - but the dishes don't matter since no one has food shopped in a while. Have I started that diet and/or exercise program I was talking about a few days ago? Um, that would be no. Not so much as a toe-touch. Paint a room? Pfft.

I did get some diet- and exercise-related stuff from the library. I dug out the faux finish books and tentatively chose a couple color schemes - and I want to paint a trompe l'oeil mural on the big staircase. I made a shopping list, even, before I discovered I was Without Merit or Hope due to my lack of doing.

Oddly, though, I don't feel like all is lost. I feel more, maybe, like the green shoots outside under the snow. It's all there, just waiting for the time to be right, for the waiting to be filled, and when it is, boy, I'll just leap into action. Just leap...yeah...right there...leaping.

In the meantime, though, there's still frozen stuff falling from the sky, and besides, who am I to argue with thermodynamic laws? I'll rinse out a mug, make some tea, and watch the fifth replaying of Mean Girls.

Fiddle-de-dee (say it with me, Scarlett.) I'll think about it tomorrow, for tomorrow is another day.

Interesting couple of days.

Because of a casual remark concerning long-lost friends, I've spent quite a bit of time ferreting out a couple of folks I haven't seen or heard from in 25 or 30 years. As it turns out, they've turned out rather well. Both have PhDs in their chosen (and beloved) fields, both now have professorships, both have published, toured, etc. Granted, I have no idea about more subtle achievements such as family or that vague marker, happiness. Also granted, neither were exactly the Wild Child that I probably was, but they did manage to make something of their lives, something special, noteworthy; something to make a person proud of his accomplishments.

So now the logical next question: what exactly have I made of my life? Despite the "...gotta wear shades" early promise, I have no doctorate, no book, no professorship - no achievements of any kind, really. Yes, I do have two daughters of whom I am immensely proud, a marriage of twenty years and counting, a 200 year old house in the middle of a couple hundred acres of beautiful country, and countless other blessings, but that's not the issue here.

Maybe it's part apples and oranges, part rationalization, but while it may look like I've got bupkis to show for my half century here, I don't really feel like that's the story. I'd at least like to believe that if money and professional accomplishment had meant that much to me, I would have achieved a fair portion of each. (Hell, I'd at least have married money, even if I didn't make my own.) I took the road that led in, into places that were messy and dark and frightening, and I've managed to clean it up quite a bit. I've thought through some things that most folks aren't about to bother with, and arrived at conclusions that are pretty much my own. I'm comfortable with myself and my place and my life, and look forward to the second half of it.

I received a pair of books for my birthday: Is Tiny Dancer Really Elton's Little John? Music's Most Enduring Mysteries, Myths and Rumors Revealed, by Gavin Edwards, and What the Bleep Do We Know?, by William Arntz et al. Both are wonderful ways to spend a few hours, and it pleased me to realize that I was equally at home in either world - sex drugs and rock n roll vs cosmology and quantum theory. Twenty five years ago I was cocktail party conversant in either world; now I'm truly at home there and, more to the point, can be myself in either place and crowd. That's gotta be worth a graduate degree in something or other.


Today is the equinox and I feel big changes on the horizon. Balances shifting in more ways than one.

Starting tomorrow, I will be fierce.

My apologies, Gentle Reader.

"Silly." What an incredibly poor choice of words! Mea culpa. Mea maxima culpa.

I have to learn that this blog thing is different than sitting on the three-legged stool in the studio mumbling to myself - I always know what I mean, but here I have to be more clear, explain myself, even to myself, more carefully, more precisely. ( Thus, I suspect, my dear friend's comment that, " it really is a nice clarifier for me and I get great input from others." I need all the clarification I can get. I suppose the input-from-others part largely remains to be seen, but we're off to a good start.)

I probably should have said something more along the lines of "dangerous", "reckless", "frightening"; tossing one's innermost thoughts, fears and plans out there for the entire cyber-world to see and conceivably criticize, virtually (hah!) begging for blows. Private, shy, even cowardly is normally my first response, so this is a completely new venture for me. Yes, I've written lots of stuff that's gotten more air time than I'm sure it deserves, but this is different. I've always held either the instructor's or the critic's pen, but not this time.

I've said that I wanted to be a "real" writer, to learn to put myself out there. I wanted, I said, to learn. So it seems I've had my first lesson.

My New Year only started yesterday - I had no idea we'd be off and running so soon!

Now if it would Just. Stop. Snowing.

New Year

It's my birthday! I'm making lots of changes this year, and anyone who is interested is invited to follow along. I'll be posting when it occurs to me, and I can't make promises about content. You're welcome to make comments, but please don't be too harsh - I'm perfectly capable of self-criticism, and if your remark is too unprintable it'll just get, well, unprinted. This is mostly just for fun, although if we learn something along the way, that'll be okay, too.

I live on Jackass Hill (hence the blog's name) and am a professional gardener. We also do organic farming - mostly field crops at the moment, but I want to expand into medicinals and magickals, flowers and food crops, selling the excess at the Farmer's Market or at a stand in front of the house. The house next door, which we bought at tax auction, is falling down, but if I can, I'd like to save and repair it and call it The Hermitage (we called the previous tenant The Hermit.) I'm not sure what comes after that- maybe a store of some kind.

I'm surprised that I'm starting a blog - I always thought it was silly, putting oneself out there for the world to see (and take pot shots.) I have this new Mac, though, you see....

So, for this, my *clears throat self-consciously* 52nd year, some ideas:

• getting the house clean and organized and ridding ourselves of The Excess Stuff
• getting control of the up-again, down-again weight thing
• learning astrology, cards and runes well enough that I can read without having books at hand
• a regular meditation practice
• and last, or perhaps it should be first, asking more of myself - being firm enough with myself that I get up and do what I have to do rather than staying seated and fussing because not enough is tackled, let alone completed.

On that note, it begins! Welcome aboard!