Blog Mode ON!

Father forgive me, it has been almost two weeks since I have posted.

During that period, 1800 people have looked at the blog, and my total readership has exceeded 50,000 hits.

That's a slow day for one of the internationally famous Pajama Bloggers, but it took me almost two years to accumulate that kind of traffic. (The first 14 months, there were only 20,000 hits.)

So yes, I'm feeling a little guilty here. I always use to have something to say, but when Blogger software was in a temporary tailspin I got all huffy and said "Huh! I got better things to do than fight a slow server" and I went out and did them.

I have to tell you, for a while it was a liberating feeling. I could spend my evenings writing other things such as an article for the Front Sight which I had been dithering about since July, and catch up on a backlog of books that I had bought. (I generally go to the used bookstore and fill a bag every week or so. The last time, last week, I spent forty bucks there and the clerk finished by saying "That oughta hold you for a week!" It didn't.)

A couple of days ago, I got an email from the Hobo Brasser. It said: "Are you into withdrawal yet? It has been ten days since you wrote anything."

Huh.

Then this weekend, SWMBO was out of town and there were no IPSC matches. I got into trouble with too much free time.

I started cleaning house.

Sunday Morning, 3am, I was scouring the stove and kitchen counters. I thought to myself "What's Wrong With This Picture?" And then I knew.

Let me give you some background.

I use to be a compulsive house cleaner. It was NOTHING to me to find myself cleaning the bathtub at midnight in the middle of the week.

This was a period when I was not a happy guy ... coming off a divorce, living in a small apartment, generally depressed. I went through a couple other periods like that in the next few years and always reacted the same way. I became a compulsive cleaner.

If you've ever read "Looking For Mr. Goodbar", you know that this can come to A Bad End.

After I met SWMBO, I started to stray from this compulsion. First I left clutter on my dining room table. Then I left dishes in the sink overnight. Then ... well, I leave the details to your imagination, but essentially I found more interesting things to do than clean.

My house was cluttered, I didn't mop or vacuum as often as I should, and I was HAPPY!

Today I am entirely un-compulsive, and I owe it all to SWMBO. I spent my evenings writing, which I love to do, and as long as I could walk through my house without having to actually step OVER things, I was content.

That's why, when found myself cleaning the stove in my bathrobe, I remembered the Mr. Goodbar downside. And it frightened me.

Tonite, instead of completing the job of installing shelves in my new bookcase, or swamping out the master bathroom, I'm going to go through all those old articles that I downloaded from the Internet and go back to speaking my piece.

Gee, I feel better already.

(I sure wish I had finished the bathroom before I came to my senses, though. That floor is a mess.)