It is warm, warm, warm here today, very springlike with rolling purple clouds and occasional showers. The trees are budding, the flowering shrubs are blooming and it looks like an early spring is in store for Dixie. I love it all, except for the pollen that aggravates my allergies. Already my skin feels itchy, and my eyes burn, water...but I suppose I shouldn't complain.

I haven't been able to tame any of the kittens, although I did sit outside on the porch one night and enticed one to come to the food dish. It was within reach, but I knew if I made a move, it would scamper away. I haven't seen the gray-and-white one again, just the calico and white kitten since they turn up each night about dark to eat from my food dish on the porch. I'd like to take in one of them, since I DO have a vacancy now -- I have five cats, but room for six. However, these kittens are now about 12 weeks old, and with every day that passes without human contact become more feral. And it's is hard to tame a feral kitten; plus, they seem to be fat and healthy and doing well wherever they are staying. Oh well, all I can do is make sure they have plentiful food/water.

I've been going on my bike ride each day, and now have over 200 miles on my bike since I put the speedometer on it. Great! The warmer it gets though, the harder it will be to ride in the morning and I'll have to switch to late afternoons. And the park baseball diamond has been readied for the spring season, so I don't know how much longer I can ride in the park. If I have to though, I can always ride on the streets.

The 12th was my wedding anniversary -- 31 years! Amazing really, considering NO ONE thought DH and I would stay together at all! There's not much to say about it, we didn't celebrate except to eat out.

We decided against the house/acre we looked at last weekend. We had a friend who does carpentry/remodeling to look at the place, and he said it had some serious structural damage which would cost a great deal more than we wanted to put into the place. But we'll keep looking, might run across a place we'd like to have.

I am feeling somewhat depressed. I think the main reason for this is that I haven't been able to read much fiction. I DID finish the sci-fi story I was writing, but still not reading fiction. I believe that fiction was always my drug of choice -- either reading or writing it. In general, I don't like REAL LIFE, no matter how good it is. I have known this since I was in my 20s, and depressed the whole time until I started writing fiction. The escapism is like a drug to me, even though it is a positive drug, not negative. Nevertheless, it has always been my way of dealing with reality -- which I always find less than satisfactory. And this would be true no matter HOW GREAT my life was/is...so I really suffer when not in a fictional world. The net is also escapism, but not as powerful as fiction. Still, it helps somewhat. I went to the library earlier, got some novels and hope to get back to reading. I found the latest Anne Rice, and she's one of my favorite authors so perhaps I'll find it mesmerizing.

I've always known that I have an addictive personality, in that if not writing/reading, I could seriously be tempted by liquor and/or drugs. I have no idea WHY I'm this way, or why there's so many like myself... However, I think that the majority of people like myself are unaware they hate reality, and don't have a clue why they do drugs or need escapism in some form. In some ways, religions serve the same purpose, but you'd never get the devout to admit this. Just the same, life as a biological human is shitty, there's so much to HATE, so much that is flawed and disgusting -- not just in the natural world, but in human behavior -- that it's a wonder there's not more suicides.

And speaking of suicide, I feel that someday I will kill myself. It's sort of been a lifelong love-affair -- a necessary vision of final escape, oblivion. Not now, of course, but someday when I can no longer tolerate life as it is. I don't think this is in any way an insane idea; rather, it is a rational response to flawed human existence.

Enough for today.