It was 3:30am when I turned out the last light. I wasn't even tired so I laid there for awhile in the darkness feeling content. I didn't want to release the first night alone in the house. I'm glad I took a couple of pictures now. I can always look at them and think, "I took these on the first night, the best night."

This morning I found a tower of CD's on the floor that I hadn't seen before. Good things in that pile, so I changed out all five discs in the player for Chris Isaak, Annie Lennox, David Byrne, Indigo Girls, and Leonard Cohen. It's Chris Isaak now, the Forever Blue album. You know I can sing alongside him because I have played and replayed this album on two continents, but mostly I just wriggle in my chair to certain songs. If I'm up, I'm dancing; but I am severely addicted to this computer so most of the time I'm adhered to the chair. There is even a pile of laundry dropped nearby, halfway to the door leading down to the laundry room. I am incurable. And lazy.

One of my housesitterly duties is to water the foliage. This is not an easy task for me, but I'm trying. For some reason I'm worried about missing some plants or drowning them. I have such a horrible history of killing things I try to nurture and I just can't help thinking I may damage someone else's hard work.

I've done the laundry now. I've handwashed that sweater I've been wearing everywhere. Finally, I'm in a place where there is both detergent for it and a tub in which to scrub. I have hung it over a chair in the yard where the sunshine is still reaching over the slope of the roof.

There is no food here. I guess the woman of this house has little need for a full fridge and stocked cupboards. I'm foraging and for awhile I just toured through each cupboard several times hoping I'd see something I missed before. (Surely there must be some bread in the house?) I finally just put a couple of the greening slices of provolone I've been carting around with me onto the remaining outdoor - not hot dog anymore! - bun, which I've had for about three weeks. It is not the least bit green. Amazing. I brought some salsa too, that still smelled all right and I put it over top of the cheese after I had toasted it and the bread in the toaster oven. Wow. I haven't used a toaster oven in 3 years. There was always one in the house growing up and I had one when I lived here previously, but for some reason we decided to get rid of it when we moved overseas. Then I had another bag of M&M's. I think they belong to the artist. I'm sure they do because they're in a drawer with packages of top ramen and a box of Macaroni and Cheese. I almost fixed up the Mac & Cheese but refrained. I mean, I could replace it… but I don't really want to start keeping a tally of things I have to replace (although if I don't lay off the M&M's I'm going to have get someone to take me to Costco for more). Better to eat the aging things I brought anyway.

Bottom line: I need to go shopping. Eventually that will be the thing that gets me out of the house today. That, and summer camp. But I don't really want to go anywhere. I want to sit here listening to every single note of all this music that is different from the tired, overplayed things I have been carrying around with me all summer. (I have asked Dave to send me some Peter Gabriel. I've lived without that music for too long.) I have work to do around here - watering, remember? - so I can just listen for awhile. But now I'm eating and I always eat in front of the computer. Can't do anything productive while eating so I might as well just sit and read, or write.

There is a built-in bookshelf to my left. It's painted green. I see possible connections between the owner of this house and me: The Giver, The Killer Angels, Native Speaker, Two Old Women, The Odyssey and The Iliad. It goes on. There are lots of art books, Frida Kahlo and Edward Weston among them.

I see the trick to watering is to manipulate the live sprinkler without getting myself wet. But I did get wet and somehow muddy too. What happened? What kind of city person have I become? An apartment dweller. Can't even maneuver a sprinkler. I had to come in and clean up.

I am completely unpacked now. For two weeks I am free of the suitcase. I'm in the artist's room and I tucked my things in around his. His clothes are in the closet, among them a bright iridescent green button-down shirt. It occurred to me that I could wear it. Wear his clothes, sleep in his bed. He has books and I could read them too. I could learn all about the "him" he has left here and he would never meet me. There's a book in his room, called Sex: Real people talk about what they really do. The pages are yellowing a bit and there is a thick crease in the binding that has permanently bookmarked the section on addiction, one man's story in particular. He says: "I attracted women who really cared for me, because I have a sensitive, gentle, sweet side. But I also have a decadent, adventurous, mischievous side, my dark side." Hm.

I rode up to Gregg's Greenlake Cycle to buy a rack for the bike. The guys working there were a bunch of jerks dicking me around, saying stuff like they weren't sure the rack was going to fit my bike and that it would take a half an hour for them to put it on. It's as if by asking them to put it on, which is why they're there, I declared myself some kind of imbecile they could deride. I had no patience for that and just barely the amount of time they said it would take to put on the stupid thing, so I left to wait at a nearby café. I drank tea and ate a cookie while reading the newspaper. When I returned the rack was on the bike and I thought the thing look domesticated somehow and I felt bad for it. Now it is utilitarian. But that feeling of regret disappeared when I removed the weight of the lock from my backpack and attached it to the rack. What a relief.

Have you ever sat down and listed the ways in which you are gifted? I was asked to do that today and found myself unable to do so. The primary obstacle was that telling what I thought was good about myself would make me appear arrogant. And I am arrogant. In general, I think I'm better than you. But I'm fairly shy initially and I don't have any trouble hiding out of the spotlight. I don't really get off on being grandiloquent and I will allow other people their opinions without asserting mine. The thing is, I'm judging you. And, in turn, I think you're judging me, which makes me falter and feel intimidated if I think you genuinely know more than I do. And THAT'S a problem if you're an expert in the field I want to study. Because, then, when it's truly important for me to prove to how smart I am, I usually appear shallow and inarticulate.

See how easy it is to digress toward the negative? The positive - the gifts, right? Well, the other thing about that was that I realized many things I see as being positive qualities are things that other people have told me about myself. That's good and bad: It's good because how else would I know how others perceive me and what I'm really conveying with words and affect? It's bad because, of course, I should be able to see the good things in myself. And some things I can. Some things I just don't want to admit to believing because I don't want to appear arrogant, like I said. But the list there is short and when I run out of items to add I find that, really, I'm just as deficient in self-confidence as I feared. It was useful to confront that issue and to experience the various feelings associated with maintaining appearances and the realization that I really do underestimate myself.

I had no sooner propped the bike against the wall and continued the whole watering ordeal when Clark called saying he was going out with his friend Mace. He said he would bring over the dresses I left at his house and he would remove his networking card from my computer and then we could go somewhere. Which is what happened except he forgot the dresses. We went down to The Triangle at the bottom of the hill. I ate; they ate and drank. Then I said I wanted to come home.

Now it's just me in the spotlight in the dining room finishing up this play-by-play with Chris Isaak crooning one of the slow ones over there in the red room.