Forty Years Old and Cornered. Working on the Next Chapter: Too Old to be Young, Too Young to be Old.

This is the former title graphic and the old description for this blog. What the hell's a blog? I said, when a friend mentioned I might be interested in checking it out last summer. We had been talking about ways to be more creative in our lives, and he suggested blogging. What a great idea! A bit of clicking around, and within minutes I had my first site up and running! It was that easy.

Throughout the late summer and fall, I blogged and blogged some more. It helped to set out my thoughts (uhm, vent). Man, what a Chapter to work on!

But in the last six weeks, I've turned another year older (sheesh, 41), and I've moved. The next chapter has begun, and whether I am ready for it or not.

And with all the midnight oil spent attempting webpage design, it was time to apply it to the ole blogsite. This is the result...

Doing this wasn't as easy as I thought it might be. More than a few hours were spent on figuring out how why elements weren't settling properly on the page. (I think I've taken care of that.) It would have been definitely easier to download a "skin" or a copy some code from another site. Considered it, but then I'd miss the opportunity to teach myself. So... if I can say I learned anything from blogging...

This site is hopefully completed -- oops, rendered -- in transitional XHTML using a style sheet template. It means trying to create a "tables" look without tables.

This is only the beginning (muhahahaha). Now that I'm 41, I can't pull all-nighters the way I once could, so that puts a (temporary) end to tonight's project.

Besides, I need to shift and obsess about something else, like Warning Lights on my dashboard or something. But I'll be back, and stay tuned: More changes afoot...

Comments welcomed: There's a "contact me" link to the right -- hey, you can even contact Grace now if you want! -- and I KNOW from my handy-dandy site reader that I have some regular visitors (and not the two friends I've told)... I'd like to hear from visitors. Who *are* you?

Sidebar: I go back and forth whether I should blogroll and link and comment like crazy. It's stupid: Popularity isn't the goal of this blog, but I do like hearing comments and getting e-mails. *sigh* Note to self: Add 'petty' to list of descriptives.

You know, I can be wound a bit tight. About some things.

That's why I like this blog. Tap it out feverishly here until calm returns. Or fatigue.

As I was listening to the blah blah on the Iowa caucus results (Kerry!) and working on a New! Improved! blog template (!) for you and yours truly, I heard the diesel engine of a vehicle halt and idle loudly in the street, followed by the rushed thudding of folks climbing the front steps and stairs inside next door.

Looking out the door, the Fire Department/Ambulance was here. I caught glimpses of my tenant's boyfriend and of the uniformed emergency crew. I fought the urge to see if everything was alright -- too many cooks in the kitchen -- and they've now left. They weren't here for long.

My tenant is older, divorced, maybe in her late 40s, with three adult kids and one granddaughter. She's neurotic -- clean clean clean. And she's really into that Country Living lifestyle -- ornaments for every holiday on her side of the house: Pumpkins and scarecrows at halloween; pilgrims and turkeys at thanksgiving; snowmen flags and lights at Christmas. Welcome Friends wreaths and other paraphanalia just generally. (At least there's no dressed ducks or "bloomers" -- yet. Maybe they'll land with better weather, ugh.)

When she looked at the place with her boyfriend, they had been living together and "that wasn't working out." Up to then, all the applicants had felony arrests and domestic violence records. I thought "what is in the Dayton water supply?" With only a personal bankruptcy and federal and state tax liens in her past, she was angelic by comparison.

I hope everything is OK.

My other tenant sent me a cheery new years' greeting. She's getting married this spring. I was happy, since she's had a pretty rough time of it. In the first year she rented, her son was shot in a fracas over a cell phone, then her father overdosed on his medications in grief a few weeks later. She had a buddhist-like shrine to them both in the Dining Room. She hasn't paid her rent. (Not that that's anything new.) Still, I start to worry. I've got a few bills of my own to pay.

And on a completely unrelated note...
Yeah yeah, my blogentries are boring lately. No sex. Well, that's not completely true. I had a 26 year old fick biddy for a couple of weeks. Yup.

Is drug use at an all-time high? This guy was into 'tina' -- which you probably already know is crystal meth. "Let's just say it was a white christmas," said K420 when I asked him what that stuff in the little baggie was. It looks like confectioners' sugar (and wouldn't it be a good joke if it really was) and he snorted it using a pen-cap: "Where's my pen cap. Have you seen my pen cap?"

"It's tough being as good-looking as me," he said, head thrown back to get the full effect of each scoop. Keep up with the white christmas, I thought, and your looks will be gone before you're thirty. He was muy club-kid: tattoos, piercings, baggy 70s plaid flared pants and Billy Idol hair.

"So you think you're better than me?" he mumbled when I refused his offer of a snootful.
No, I don't think I'm better than you, I mumbled back. He's called a couple of times. Why call back?

So, no sex. Don't feel like it. It's like a switch I turned off. Maybe it's the cold... Maybe it's the excitement of the democratic caucuses. Maybe I'm just wound too tight.