Ennui

July seems to have been an awfully long month - and there are still three days to go. I know it isn't any longer than any previous Julys, saving of course the possibility that the Atomic Clock Commission in Colorado has added a second somewhere, something they do now and then since the earth is slowing down, but usually they do that between 11:59:59 pm on December 31 and 12:00:00 am on January 1.

For whatever reason a sense of ennui has set in both here on the blog and at home. I've been slowing down doing things like making entries and cleaning the house. Neither seems to be a priority. The disinterest is such that I've decided to forego by usual travel to the west this weekend, missing out on a bean soup dinner on Friday, evening parties along Kentucky Lake Friday night, a great breakfast at Mayfield High School on Saturday morning, and the best sit-down country dinner in the Commonwealth Saturday afternoon at the K of C in Fancy Farm, Kentucky.

Other than the summer of 2005 when I was seriously ill, I've been going to the Saint Jerome Picnic at Fancy Farm in Graves County for a long time. This year, alas, I won't find my way into the annals of Kentucky's largest outdoor political event, nor will I overindulge after the K of C dinner on mutton snadwiches, cokes, and ice cream. And I'll miss out on buying a Capital Prize chance as well as playing bingo for one of the prizes under the big central pavilion behind the old school building.

I'll just be glad when July ends and August commences.

My goal, starting let's say on August 4th, is to reverse the hazy and lazy days of July with a burst of activity once August actually arrives on the scene, notwithstanding that the Fancy Farm Picnic is in fact on August 1. Since I've not been a part of either of the Senate candidacies for next year - for the record I'm for Jack Conway - next year's mayoral race will begin its long ascendancy in August and that I will be a part of. One of the refrains I've heard over and over this summer has been "You can't not participate in a mayor's race." After all, we haven't had a mayoral primary since 1998 and the last real one before that was 1985. I participated in both of those. This one will soon get started.

Another plan I have during August is to begin fixing the house up to the point that I can "have people over" sometime later during the Christmas holidays. Of course, given that I do not cook, I'll have to acquire some prepared food from somewhere if in fact I do that. The house is an old foot-thick-brick walled New Orleans-style one-story shotgun built in the late 1880s. It needs lots of work. I'd like to paint the entire interior which will be a great task in itself. Some of the rooms have 13 feet tall walls while others are 14 feet tall. I'm not quite 5'8". And all of them are full of stuff - books, furniture, boxes, more books, and boxes of books. Books predominate. I'd also like to comparmentalize the remnants of other peoples' stuff that I manage to have - leftovers from friends and relatives coming to stay a night, a week, or, as in the case of my brother on more than one occasion, over a year. For once in my life I seem to have the room not only for my stuff but everyone else's - but there needs to be a thinning. I have the room not only in the house, but also in the cellar, and if not there in the oversized two-car garage in the back. So that is my project for the next few months - personal organization and reor, something I've put off for forty-eight years or so.

That's another issue. In September I will be 49, twelve short months from a half-century. I want to be prepared to start that second half-century with as much of a clean and manageable plate as possible. Since I tend to be a procratinator, starting now - thirteen months early - is probably a good thing. Ok, admittedly, I'm not starting til next week, three or four days into August.

Happy End of July.