Gloss Over

Reading Basho. I'd gone into town and bought groceries, three meals at least. I had no list, so, of course, in forgot some things, the pub doesn't open until four on Saturday and TR wasn't at the museum, so I was in and out pretty quickly. Stopped for my large vanilla shake, and Jesse, from the liquor store was there, we talked about his building project; stopped by B's to tell him Glenn would be here, unloaded and put stuff away, turned on the radio and got a drink. 70 years old today and damned if I don't feel it, parts wearing thin. A particular poem I was looking for, after the trip to town, looking at the flooded lowlands:

in summer rains
the crane's legs
become short

That's from the summer of 1681. I do a rearrangement of books, so that the books on the floor ALL have their spines facing out. This would seem common sense, but I seem to have formerly, I would never do it now, just thrown books in a pile. Doesn't past muster with my new sense of quasi-organization but I'm dowff (dispirited, weary) and I'd managed to put off building another bookshelf, so there are four piles of books, not more than a hundred, that needed to find a place. I moved the boxes of recycling into the back of the Jeep, I cleaned up around the stove. I'll spend an hour vacuuming tomorrow morning, and sling-blade the path to the outhouse, then I figure I'll be ready for people at the house. I need to clean the junk mail out of the passenger side of the Jeep. I'd thought if I used nothing but junk mail to start fires, I'd be able to keep up with it, but I mostly start fires anymore with butter wrappers (I save them all year, in the freezer) and Kroger check-out receipts that I just wad-up and toss in the kindling bucket. My kindling is so dry, from it's final time on the plate-warming rack above the cookstove, that one receipt or butter wrapper will start a fire. Also I need to organize the area where I'm storing the plastic coffee cans. Frogers "Black Silk", which is great in my espresso maker. I didn't think I drank much coffee, two cups a day usually, but I drink it very strong, and it adds up. These are quite cool plastic cans and I want to reuse them somehow, as a form for cast concrete, or as a roof for the sauna I've been thinking about. Idle curiosity, but it is interesting to save some aspect of your trash, just to see what there is. Starbucks coffee cups, or snuff cans, or candy wrappers, soda cans, used condom wrappers, those small white bags that once held a footer and an order of onion rings; it's an intimate look at yourself. For myself, I realize I eat quite a bit of butter and I drink more coffee than I thought.