I slept straight through til 6:00. That was the one unspoken concern from yesterday: The mouth feels better, there is more of it alive and recovering and it doesn't hurt so much, but each night I've awakened at 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning and then had trouble getting back to sleep.

What did that mean? Well, a lot of things that could be explained by the aching mouth and teeth, but it could also be explained by the fact that I was still experienceing the sleep apnea that all this was supposed to fix. I once had a major operation to remove a section of my small intestine. Bottom line: 30 days flat on my back, some 10 in the hospital. The operation didn't work. The doctors shrugged. Any chance this jaw thing hasn't worked? Not one of those questions you really want to ask. Sleeping til 6:00 this morning means for the first time maybe it did. Work.

Fall asleep again, up by 10:00, take a bath, go to work and complete my resume for tomorrow morning. Disaster. Changed my journal description on Open Pages and the Journal Ring. Backed up my data files and burned them onto a CD. Found an old resume and looked it over, tucked it in my pocket, came home. I can wait. Washed some dishes. Had a late lunch/dinner around 4:00. Watched This Week in Washington. They talked about Kosovo and Clinton. Mind turns to mush. Warm mush much like the day. What have I accomplished?

Worked a bit on the links page. Have managed to list all the usual suspects. Who needs another page of familiar journal names? Each, of course, has a brief description and I have allowed myself to be creative, which means I've managed to insult half the people I read every day, not necessarily by intent. Maybe I won't post it. Still needs more work.

I need a stack of stock subjects I can pull down and prattle on about when nothing else seems to come. The problem isn't the writing itself, the problem is reaching deep down and finding the spark to start. When you're hot, you're hot.... A little spark, a little flame, Sunday evening and I think I'd just as soon sit somewhere with a coffee or a beer and watch the traffic move down the street. Sensory input without any thought. Is this what you do during your declining years sitting in your rocker out on the back porch watching the back 40 germinate? The kids and the grandkids wondering if it's time to have your will checked for typos, just in case?

Maybe.

Then again maybe old grandpa is sitting up there communing with the universe, feeling the rivers of white noise and they erode the channels of time and space. Old grandpa doing his mojo magic with the rest of the old farts, doing their bit to keep the universe safe for back yard barbeques and SUVs.

But I doubt it. I just think he needs a nap or maybe more exercise. Like me.

Later. Went outside and talked with my neighbors who were sitting on their stairs drinking beer and talking. I poured a shot of the Glenmorangie Scotch Whiskey that Rien Post had recommended and brought the bottle out with an empty glass so they could try the stuff. We discussed the upcoming need to move to a new place. They have to be out by the end of this month and they haven't found anything yet. Stress. They too have been taking naps. Perhaps that is my condition. Although I seem to have found a place, it still means I'm in the middle of a move, a stressful condition that makes you want to go to bed and pull the covers up.

I'm sitting here now with two or three shots of the Glenmoragie in me (the first that I've had in over two months) and thinking that's probably what all this taking of naps is about. What all this not wanting to focus on the needs of the day. Maybe even my lack of photographs.