Focus hard to come by lately. Strategizing around the ADD - using guarana to simulate Ritalin, for example. It works but then my heart beats too fast. So I switched to the 5-Hour Energy stuff. Gave me energy but scattered my brain absolutely everywhere. Guess I'll stick to coffee and meditation.

The house trim paint chose this year to peel mostly off, and the painter I found to remedy that turned out to be (as so many solvent-workers seem to be) a binge-drunk who ultimately disappeared with my paint and my money, having covered most of the trim while not having sanded or filled anything, and leaving the back door area paint-free. All I have for him is a cell number and the local bank manager he gave as a reference. But the painter won't return calls, and the manager isn't comfortable telling me where the painter lives. This weekend I'll buy a quart of exterior paint matched as close as I can to the gray he used and finish the job on my own. My own fault for giving cash to an alcoholic - before he'd finished the work. I'll keep a card with local AA meeting info on it to give him if he ever turns up again. These guys are fairly helpless behind the solvent damage their livers take.

Smoke persists, but today seems better than yesterday. Firefighters will contain the Barry Point fire to the north of us by the weekend, I have read. It's surpassed 150 square miles. I don't know how the fires south and east of us are doing; surely they are contained by now. One was approaching 100,000 acres, last I heard, and the other 70,000 or so. Saturday last came the blessed rain, all morning the soft even downpour that helped workers get a handle on this mess. Breathing has not been easy for anyone, and the line for asthma meds at the pharmacy last Friday was lengthy and loud.

I cooked my first green curry last night. Used every pan, bowl, and cooking appliance in the house before I was through, but it was delicious, and now that I've done it I'll know how to streamline the process next time. Matters are complicated somewhat by the fact that I have no stove, and must use three hotplates that function with varying degrees of cooperativeness - one doesn't get hot enough, one always gets too hot, and the third stays at middle heat. Lots of pan swapping and shifting. Burning and boilover. Undercook, overcook. Alas.

I've finally reached the final third of the Charles Olson biography. I didn't like him to start with and now that I've learned so much about him I really don't like him. But I am curious to know how the story ends, what becomes of the peripheral persons - wife mistresses babies rivals chums. I wish I had more respect for his thought process, but it was so ego-entwined that all his ideas seem tainted and suspect.

I'm returning to The Awakened Self: Encounters with Zen by Lucien Stryk. By the time the Olson is finished the Stryk will be underway. This one's a reread, maybe even a third go. I find myself drawn to zen from time to time and because I retain so little of what I study I find myself having to read the same basics again and again. Maybe some understanding will stick this time.

And I've begun rereading Jung's Man and His Symbols, as well. I first read it when I was in school 30 years ago, and I can use a refresher. Husband and I have been working with dream symbols, myths, and fixed-star astrology.

Have you ever experienced a niacin flush? I never had. I thought I was immune to it. But I took a handful of vitamin supplements an hour ago and suddenly I'm all over maroon and itching like fire. I can't type one more word! Agh!