Poor Deion Sanders. For some reason, he wants to play baseball again, even though he's not very good at it. (He's not all that great at football any more, either.) Somehow he conned the Reds into signing him to a contract, but it was voided by the league on a technicality. But he showed up at the Reds' spring training camp anyway.

Poor Deion. He's painted himself into a corner. He talks so big that if he isn't great, he's a failure. When you pump yourself up as much as he does, you'd better be as good as you say you are. If you're just ordinary, you're a loser.

Deion is the Eminem of the sports world. Totally self-referential. Everything's about me. I'm great. I don't get no respect. It's so hard to be me. And I didn't mean all those things I said. I'm really a nice guy. I just can't afford to show it.

This kind of attitude must appeal to somebody. Teams keep paying Deion to play. Eminem sells a lot of CDs.

The bill for my Chronicle subscription showed up in the mail today. This is the subscription I agreed to when the telemarketer promised that the paper would show up at my door every morning, and I wouldn't have to walk to the end of the driveway to pick it out of the mud. That was two weeks ago, and I never received a paper at either the doorway or the mud hole.

So I called the customer service number and waited through interminable menus and announcements and please-stay-on-the-lines (because my call is important to them). I told Marilyn (if that is indeed her real name) what had happened and that I thought the bill should be canceled.

"Sorry you feel that way," was all she said, but I know I can expect their hired guns to start calling me again with special offers. Probably next Sunday night during The Simpsons. This time I have no reason to believe their promises, though.

It's so easy to get down when I'm trying to get over a bad night. For some reason I was awake two hours too early this morning. Usually, I'm good to sleep an hour or so past the clock radio's coming on, so this was really three hours of missed sleep.

Most of the time, a bad night is my own fault. I've had too much wine, or I've stayed up too late flipping mindlessly through all 200 channels, including the ones I don't even get. But I don't think I did anything wrong this time, unless it was forgetting to smell the mayonnaise before I smeared it on a sandwich last night. (EXP JAN 28 01 - does that mean anything?)

I'll admit that I was sluggish most of the day. I didn't move fast, I couldn't keep focused, and I kept misplacing my pencil (although that happens every day). I'm working on my general attitude, though, so I ignored the headache, and the pain in my gut, and my sore legs... That doesn't sound as if I ignored much of anything, does it?

Then I thought of Mom, soldiering blindly on through all the troubles she's had. I don't mean just this last operation, but the eleven or twelve that preceded it, plus all the eye problems she's had that surgery wouldn't correct. And now she's kept her head down for two weeks (try it!), and she has another month to go before she sees clearly again (or before she knows how clearly she'll be able to see).

And yet she's always telling me that things will work out. Her philosophy is that everything happens for the best. Sometimes she almost has me believing it. When I feel down, I try to cultivate some of her sunny attitude. When she gets down, I feed it back to her.

The doctor gave her a good report yesterday. All healing is coming along as hoped. That picked up her spirits enough that she went to lunch with a friend today. This should be all the inspiration I need. My problems are pretty small, after all.