Somehow I seem to have lost the last three or four days of my life. Amnesia, early onset senility (okay, not that early), inhaling something from the clean country air, whatever. Something has been eating up my time and attention, and as a result I've managed to take a bad situation and let it get totally out of control.

When I woke up Monday morning, I knew exactly what I had to do during the week. As the days went by, though, I did only what was absolutely necessary at any given moment. If a bill was due tomorrow, I paid it today. If it was due the day after, I let it go.

Now my desk is piled higher than usual, and there are subsidiary piles all over the house. Mostly work, but also mail I haven't opened and newspapers I haven't read. I mean, this is the way it was two weeks ago, and then I cleaned it all up, and now here I am again. Whatever monster sucked all the minutes out of my hours did a fairly thorough job of it.

Apparently the Boss's girlfriend Julie has painted herself into a corner that only a lawyer can help her out of. She asked me, as a favor, to take some of the time I'd be doing the Boss's bidding and type a couple of letters to an attorney for her. Starting at 3:00 on Friday afternoon.

Soon I was off the Boss's clock and doing this all on my own time. Not that I had plans to party tonight, but I like to use the last couple of daylight hours to soak up what little sunshine is allotted to us these crisp autumn days. To be honest, when I can I crawl up into the loft about three in the afternoon with my book and read by the light coming through the window. This usually ends with either darkness or sleep, sometimes both at once.

The other way it can end is if the phone keeps ringing, asking for further revisions on a letter I'm typing as a favor to someone who doesn't sign my paychecks. I sprint downstairs, make the latest corrections, stick it back in the fax, and then go back up and try to get back into the book. It's not in the least relaxing, when things shake out this way.

Tonight we were finished by seven. The lights in the loft are on some kind of a timer, I think, because they only work during the day. After dark, I have to use the dim light of my flashlight to find my way around. I retrieve my book and can of flat, lukewarm Diet Pepsi, and resign myself to the cold, dark evening.

And it is indeed cold these days, even in California. This barn I live in takes a lot of effort to heat. I use the forced-air furnace, but I also need the space heater, which I drag around with me all evening and place at my side, like a faithful puppy.

This will be my first winter here at the Fortress, and I'm a bit anxious about just how cold it's going to be. And I'm more than a little concerned about the size of the utility bills in the coming months. I might turn out to be sorry I moved from the cozy nest next door, where at least there was a fireplace.

Oh, that sounds good. Even though I lived at Green Acres only during the summer months, and the fireplace was never used, and it couldn't have been used anyway because the landlord told me it needed some cleaning that he promised to do, and we know how credible the landlord's promises are, I still miss it.

Oh, were you expecting me to talk about something else here today? Maybe a southern state that we now know has a panhandle that's in a different time zone from the rest? Maybe how two people, who happen to sit on different sides of a mythic aisle, can look at the same pile of steaming manure, and one wants to eat it but the other wants to puree it first, to see if that improves the taste? Or possibly how the big, bad schoolyard bully suddenly doesn't seem so tough, when the other kids catch him with his pants down around his ankles? Or how two guys in a canoe should decide how to paddle in the same direction before they end up crashing into the rocks?

Nah, I have nothing to say about any of those things. I'm a uniter, not a divider.