It’s tempting, on the day before the holiday, to take it a little easy. If I didn’t know what I was up against this month, I probably would. After all, nothing I do today will get into the mail until Thursday anyway, and that gives me all day tomorrow to do it, if by some chance I should find something better to do today. Like take an extra nap, for example, or read a few extra chapters.

Besides, it’s too hot. I don’t know how hot it is, but the sweat index is at about 98 percent. I don’t mind the heat, as long as I don’t have to do anything in it. The trouble is, it might be hotter tomorrow. And besides, tomorrow really is the holiday, and it’s going to take more motivation than I’m likely to muster to get any work done, deadlines or no deadlines.

On the other hand (and isn’t there always another hand?), I’m kind of looking forward to getting some work done without the phone ringing all day tomorrow. With luck, even the telemarketers will take the day off, and I won’t even have to ignore phone calls, much less answer them. I had a little of that today, and it was nice. Oh, the telemarketers were out in force, and forcefully ignored, but the Boss was on the road, driven by his ex-wife to his latest doctor appointment. Ah, the sweet silence.

So what did I end up doing today? Well, I worked, but I went about it so very slowly that I might as well have taken the day off. Or half the day, at least, because I didn’t get more than half a day’s work done, even though I worked all day. Sometimes my first instinct is the one to rely on, I guess. Should have napped, should have read, because now I’ll have to work tomorrow anyway.

While I was standing in front of Wal-Mart yesterday waiting for the Boss’s ex-wife to get there, I was approached by a well-dressed young woman asking for money. She had come up from Marin and left her money at home, and she wanted to know if she could borrow ten dollars. She thrust a pen and paper at me and told me that if I gave her my address, she’d send me the money as soon as she got home.

Well, I know people from Marin, so her story was totally believable to me. And even though I knew that she could easily afford to repay me, I whisked out a ten and told her not to bother paying me back. I said if she needed it enough to come up to a total stranger and ask, she deserved it. But she insisted, and today I got a nice note from her, wrapped around a ten and two ones. She called me an angel, which I’m not, and she wished for me to have caring people in my life. Which I could use more than the extra two bucks.