I'm really puzzled about why I felt so tired and out of sorts all day. I didn't feel that I had any worse night's sleep last night than usual. And yet, I had the hardest time coping with the smallest annoyances today. Static on the radio, for example. It made me slam the door too hard, causing minor damage.

After thinking about it all evening (and that probably wasn't the best idea), I still can't figure it out. Nothing major went wrong. I should be able to let the little things go, but they ganged up on me today.

Of all recent days, this is the one when I shouldn't have had a problem. All the tasks I had to accomplish were linear and simple. I didn't even have to think, just do the kind of mindless grunt work that I'm so good at. It was like taking a multiple-choice open-book test, but you have the book memorized anyway. There was so little chance for anything to go wrong that I didn't even worry about it.

That's so unusual for me. Ordinarily I obsess about all the possible bumps in the road, and the only relief is getting to the end of it. Once in a while I have a day like this, when it's all smooth, all downhill, with a soft landing. So why did I feel as if the walls were closing in? Why did I let little nothings drag me down into the muck?

It could have been the cumulative effect of a lack of sound, solid sleep. Last night wasn't so bad, no worse than any other night, but I haven't had a really good night in the longest time. It also might have been the heat, which felt like an actual physical presence, a heavy wool blanket that I couldn't get out from under.

The only part of my recent stomach troubles that I still have to deal with is the burning sensation, and it's bad only once in a while now. I'm taking the Zantac and eating carefully and drinking a lot of water. Most of all, I'm not really worried about it any more (although I'll admit I'm anxious to hear what the lab says about the latest tests).

If I'm tired, I'm tired of having such a hard time figuring out why I keep feeling this way. I'm tired of everything seeming to be just out of my reach. I'm tired of not being able to do whatever it takes to keep myself from losing control.

It didn't seem like the best day to get down on my knees and pull little clumps of wild grass out from between the paving stones. So instead of micro-gardening, I did some macro-gardening. I just waded into the yard and started yanking up anything I didn't like the looks of. If there's no one to tell me what's right and wrong, I'll just Do Something.

If I pull up something rare and beautiful by mistake, so what? There's no one here to judge me, or even to give me advice. There's hardly anyone else who ever sees it, so what does it matter if I plow up the whole yard? Especially when I need to work myself to exhaustion just to keep from exploding.

Anyway, the local gopher is helping me dig up the ground in the walkway, and doing a better job of it that I am.

Oh, and the radio static that had me so uptight? I found the cause. Somehow the overhead light hadn't been turned all the way off. It's on a dimmer switch, and every so often it would flicker. I didn't notice until it started to get dark and I could finally see what was going on. All I had to do was shut the switch all the way off.

It was too late to save the door frame, though (although I was able to put all the pieces back together in the typical half-assed manner that characterizes so much of my efforts at any of the kinds of work that ordinary competent folks take for granted).