I didn't have to think today. I found that relaxing and refreshing.

The Boss is getting ready to be out of the office all next week. He's known about this for a couple of weeks. I've been privileged to know for a couple of days.

Suddenly, everything's a crisis. Letters and billings and proposals and estimates have to be prepared and sent out. All of these have to be done at the same time, even though any of them could have been done earlier, before the pressure of a deadline was this intense.

So I didn't have to think, just do. Take the list he gave me and do. One at a time, start to finish. Type, revise, print, mail (or fax). Mindless work that has me ill prepared to write anything coherent or interesting about my day, because my day was one that I could have slept through.

What to some would be mind-numbingly dull to me was a chance to get through a day on cruise control. I needed a day like that, intense with activity but devoid of real engagement. It's when I have to think that I start thinking too much, or about the wrong things, and I haven't had enough sleep, that I'm prone to a meltdown.

So I'm relaxed and refreshed tonight. I'm just not thinking about much.

I stood crouched outside for fifteen minutes while this hummingbird darted in and out of the shower created by a broken sprinkler head in my yard.

At one point the water level went down, and the bird (I swear) did a double take. "What the —?" it seemed to say. It darted off, but came back when the fountain started spraying again.

Lest anyone think my house is really haunted, I'm here to say that I'm under the protection of a pair of mourning doves. Sometimes two of them sit on the peak of my roof.

At other times, one is on the roof of the house, the other on top of the garage. Late this afternoon, I sat out in the yard reading, and this bird oversaw it all, calmly cooing in its sad, plaintive voice.