Only 3 p.m. and I've already gotten a lot of decluttering around the house accomplished today. I haven't had the time or energy to do ANYTHING in that regard (well, a little bit of organizing in my head) for the past two months — I've been in a bureaucratic marathon of crossing imperative time-sensitive things off lists...the usual annual bumf as well as the 5-year renewals, which all seem to come at the same time. And this year, it seems, that everything takes two or three times longer than they should. My eyeglass saga has been going on since April, what with postponements, reschedulings, and do-overs. There's no incentive like an electrician who will be needing space to fix a problem...

I guess I need to fill you in on the backstory if you haven't been reading about it at Facebook.

Haven't had the time to be here much in the past two months as I was kept at a gallop while juggling many things — some annual, some bureaucratic, some related to a friend giving me a 2010 Subaru Forester in May (so I now have transportation insurance of two older used cars with high mileage), some just the usual birthday month car registrations and inspections.

My eyeglass saga (I haven't worn contacts for over a year) has been going on since April. Got a call yesterday that the replacement left lens is in where I ordered the second pair of glasses, so when that's installed sometime in the next week (they're so short staffed at JCPenney Optical — where I worked over a decade ago — that I'll have to call first to verify that the shop's not closed for the day) the saga will at last be over for the time being.

I thought the light at the end of the tunnel was near at hand, but, fix me for being optimistic. I discovered early Wednesday evening that I have a problem with an important electrical circuit in my house — the one with my modem, which is not easily moved. The breaker snapped off twice. The modem isn't just my computer and wi-fi, it's my landline phone (my primary phone — my cell phones are for emergencies, travel, or power outages) through Comcast. As of late yesterday morning I've accomplished a workaround by plugging the UPS into a heavy duty extension cord running from another outlet, so I'm more or less okay for the time being. But there are lights out at the door and on the stairs and I can't use my laser printer (which had been running off that extension cord because having it on the same circuit as the computer and modem kept tripping the breaker).

Since I really didn't have time to enjoy my birthday month much (traditionally I celebrate for at least a month), I decided while talking to a friend this morning that the festivities (one of which will be a B.D. lunch at Krista's in Cornish, Maine) will be extended for another month. Not much on my July calendar yet. Just the early morning Fourth of July celebrations that we provide music for up at Nottingham Square (for the hour preceding the reading of the Declaration of Independence) and taking a friend to see "Crazy For You" at the Ogunquit Playhouse. (I trade putting up a bunch of posters in a town 30 minutes away for the tickets — otherwise I couldn't afford even one, let alone two tickets.) Of course, I don't know what will be required for my electrician to attend to my circuit problem.

It's never-ending, isn't it?

Linn