This happens every month.

Once a month I have a bout of insomnia. One night where I can't fall asleep, and then the next day I'm completely useless. Guess what. That's tonight, and that will be tomorrow. Lucky Doug and his mother and father. We're visiting the Siskos tomorrow and I'll be in fine form for them.

But, the good thing about insomnia is that I get a lot of Internetting done. I spent, oh, I don't know, three hours redesigning a blog from the past and thinking what its new theme could be (the old theme, complaining about work and how I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life, seems somehow tiresome. I feel like I've been there and done that. Please remind me not to do it anymore.) I also have URLs at two new blog sites, Wordpress and Tumblr, in case I ever want to develop blogs there, too. One can never have too many blogs, I guess.

Except for me, who can't even keep up with one. I haven't posted in about ten days. Guess that means I'm having a really great time, right? Well, actually, yes. If I have time to blog that means I'm not spending my time doing other things. If I don't have time to blog, that means I'm spending my time doing other (hopefully more productive things). So let's recount how I've been spending my time.

Reading
As usual, I am reading. Reading lots of things. My magazines and a book. I have a book club to go to on June 3rd, and our book club read is The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. All 613 pages of it. I'm on page 249. It's not a quick read, and there are parts that I am having trouble getting through (anything to do with war), but overall it's been a very productive and valuable use of my time.

As has Brimfield.
Doug, my mother, my brother, and I met up at Brimfield this past Saturday. Doug and I were in the market for some replacement dining room chairs. We figured that it was time to get rid of the IKEA ones. My mother and brother joined us for advice and also for the use of their mini-van so that we could transport anything we purchased back to our house. After we loaded the van with all of our finds we put the chairs around the table and moved the old IKEA ones up to the attic. All except the one that you see in the above photo. That's the last of the IKEA chairs. We looked at so many chairs at Brimfield, but we didn't find a 6th for the table. And that's fine, because this gives us an excuse to go back in September. We'll look for at least one more chair and whatever else strikes us. There's always something to find there. We are quickly becoming Brimfield addicts.

Exterior Work
Doug and I have decided on a company to paint our house. They will do the job in August. Now we have to figure out if we want to keep the same color scheme or change things up a bit. Maybe more of a greenish gray with off-white trim and red accents? Or maybe we do something warmer, like a soft green, with a gray trim and natural wood accents. I'm voting for changing things up a bit, but I'm also not good at making these kinds of decisions. How many times did I repaint my bedroom before I landed on the current color? I've painted the kitchen twice since living here (that's twice in three years) and have paint swatches all over the dining room walls because we're thinking about getting rid of the purple. If we don't like the color of the house after it's painted, we can't just change it. It will be like that for (I hope) eight years. I can't think in eight-year increments. This is too much pressure. I wish our house were sided and I didn't have to think about it.

Meg has joined me at the table here. She's purring. She's needing me. And, of course, it's right when this happens that I'm ready to go to bed. Poor Meg. I'll post this photo of her, taken from Doug's most recent cat photo essay, so that everyone can see what a lovable kitty she is. She's especially lovable at 3am when she's clawing at my head, so needy for attention. She can't ask for love at any other time of day, it seems. I guess that's her special charm, just like mine is neglecting my blog.