All the catalogs are gone. Simplify simplify simplify. (Thanks, H.D.!)

Also gone is the REM fan club newsletter which folded out into a poster of the group in their early days looking scruffy and self-conscious.

Also the West Missouri Spirit which I never did get around to reading. Try as I might, I can't make myself get interested in diocesan affairs.

Gone too is The Phantom Tollbooth, which I could not like. And Cherry, which I did like and finished.

The only things on the top of the table now are the lamp, the clock, the prayer book, and the biography of Robert E. Lee. So the downstairs cat has more room to turn around and sit. She likes to sit on the table and look prim and disapproving at me. Or sometimes she looks sweet and narrows her eyes at me, as cats do when they want to seem friendly.

Because I don't want to risk running out. It's the only thing that seems to work on the little red itchy bumps I get from time to time on my feet or ankles. I thank God for Benadryl cream because if I hit the bumps hard and fast with it they fade over the course of about an hour. If I don't, or if I give in to the desire to scratch, they get worse and spread and are very hard to get rid of.

I won't inflict you with a description of what happens if they get infected.

On a less medicinal topic, I am still trying to finish Cherry. I'm getting a bit bogged down in her descriptions of her prodigious recreational drug use in the 70's. I guess that's not really a less medicinal topic, is it? But at least she is honest about the havoc it created among her friends. Ruined lives. Lost lives. And not really that much fun when it came right down to it.

but I'm almost through reading Cherry. It seemed from her references in the book that she's about my age so I looked her up. Turns out there's a Wikipedia article on her. She converted to Roman Catholicism as an adult. I'm always interested in adult converts to Christianity, because I am one. She has a volume of sacred verse called "Sinners Welcome" which I expect will appear on the night table soon.

When it gets cold and rainy and dark in the middle of October, it's tempting to take your spaghetti into the bedroom and set the dish on the coaster on the night table and read while you eat. That's ok in moderation, of course, but one must try to resist the urge to eat all one's meals using the nightstand as a table. And the urge to spend most of one's time under the comforter, as the cat gets to do if she wants. One must be resolute and keep up the exercising and the moderation of diet and the activities of daily living. You mustn't wish too hard for a snow storm that shuts down the whole city. Because those can cause widespread inconvenience if not actual suffering. Staying away from the bedroom as much as possible during the day is probably best.

I don't have the kind of insomnia that is truly worth complaining about. I don't toss and turn for hours while sleep remains out of reach. I don't wake up at 2 and find it impossible to get back to sleep. I just wake up every couple of hours or so. For a few minutes. When I do I always look at my night stand, because the digital clock is there and I must know how much of the night is left and how long it has been since I last awoke. Sometimes 4 or 5 hours will have passed and that is a good night.

The insomnia rarely gets so bad that I have to get up and eat cereal or read or pace the house or talk to the cats.

When I was a child I often walked in my sleep. I remember once waking up in the living room and my mother was asking me if I was ok and didn't I want to go back to bed? Another time she told me that I had walked into her room and said I was looking for a little puzzle piece. I don't remember that at all. She told me shortly before she died that my sleep walking had been scary for her. I had never known that. It had always been presented to me as a sort of quirky funny thing. I'm pretty sure I don't walk in my sleep anymore, except that once years ago I found a chair moved from one room to another in the morning. I was the only one who could have done that, and I didn't remember doing it.