For someone in the health field, I have always had a large antipathy toward healthy habits. I am fully aware that eating right, exercising, and refraining from smoking are far more effective ways of handling nearly all health problems than drugs, but I have never enjoyed doing those things. But lately my favorite ex-wife has bullied me into walking with her and though I hate to admit it, it feels GOOD. I have more energy. I am losing weight. My arthritis doesn't hurt as bad and I have less urge to smoke. I feel so *conventional*. But it is rather like starting a retirement account; conventional though it may be, it will serve to enhance my future. Hell, exercise is even enhancing my PRESENT.

So, I gripe and grumble, and I do it.

Charlotte and I take our dogs with us on these walks. They become ecstatic over "walkies.". I wish sometimes I could be more like a dog in my overall attitude toward life. Simple things like walks and rides in the car are sheer joy. Hurt feelings are forgotten immediately when something pleasant, like head patting or ear scratching, takes place. Finding the exact right spot to poop is cause for total contentment.

Dogs have what I think of as the Gomer Pyle philosophy of life. I used to love that show when I was a kid. Gomer always assumed the best of everyone, felt like life was good, and took everyone's intentions toward him to be good. And things worked out that way. As a natural-born moody, broody, depressive sort of person, it doesn't come naturally to me to behave like Gomer. But carefully titrated doses of anti-depressants, meditation, and years-long contemplation of Buddhist readings have convinced me that Gomer had the right idea. Being simple is the route to happiness.

I am moving in less than three weeks. I wish it were sooner. I am moving from a deeply rural area to a very small country town. It will be almost as different as moving to a real city in some ways. Water, for instance. For about the last 40 years the water I have consumed at home has come from a well on the land I lived on. Not that I had to draw it up in a bucket or anything, but I have never had to PAY for water. I will be living in a house that has "city" water. This wondrous new home will also have city sewage. Cable TV (and MODEM!) Modern amenities.... And I will not mind never needing to have a septic tank pumped again. That is a most unpleasant experience. People who drive those honey-bucket trucks tend to be inebriated much of the time. They come to your house, dig around to find the edges of the top of the septic tank, then they dig the dirt, grass, and flowers off the top, pry it up, and expose weeks worth of your family's offal to your amazed and deeply offended nostrils. A large bore bit of tubing is placed into the mess and a pump turned on. The honey-dipper (or, more accurately, pumper) then leans on his shovel and waxes loquacious. The alcohol fumes on his breath are pleasant compared to those emanating from the malfunctioning septic tank. Do not get me wrong here; I do not begrudge a few drinks to a person doing this sort of work. I have more than once topped off such a one with whatever spirits I happened to have on hand. It costs $150 to have your septic tank pumped where I live. Worth every penny too.

City water should be interesting. Living with a well and a pump means if your electricity goes out, so does your water. And the power goes off with distressing frequency out here. Like every time it rains or the wind blows. I can do without power, but I MUST have my shower! So methinks I will like living with city water.

I have lived in my present home for 10 years. I was married when I moved here, and have divorced that husband and been through two wives since then. It is time to live in a house without the ghosts of relationships past in it. And it will be the first time I ever selected and bought a house ALL BY MYSELF! I feel so empowered.

It is a small house. It has everything I need. Room for my sons and pets, a yard small enough to manage with a push mower and not a tractor, and best off all, it has a pool. Pisces that I am, I feel I need a pool. I have at times claimed that having a pool was for my kids, but it is really for me. I sincerely wanted to grow up to be a mermaid so I could stay in water all the time, but it didn't happen. So I just spend as much time in the shower, tub, and pool as I can.

and it is late, I am going to pack one more box and then lie in my bed and daydream about my new home.