I'm still home. I've tried to call my dispatcher a couple of times, but keep getting his voice mail. So I'm just going to take a shower and make sure I'm ready to go, then go send him a message on the satcom.

I've been looking around the house this morning. It's stunning, really, how messy this house is. If we were capable of caring, we'd be ashamed for anyone to come into this house. If we could all just walk around the house and see it from the perspective of an outsider, we'd be ashamed of it. Not that we're knee deep in pizza boxes and dirty clothes. There's just a lot of clutter. Well, there are genuine messes in places, too, where papers have been printed out and wound up scattered in the floor. But it's hardly a college dorm room. Mostly it looks like we live in a storage room. There are things sitting around that should not be. Boxes of CDs, Christmas decorations, etc. We've become packrats somehow, and most of our junk is just sitting around the house.

For the most part, the house looks like a renovation project that was abandoned mid-stream, and we've just been living amid the mess ever since. Therefore we've stopped caring about certain standards of house keeping. What's the point?

The bathroom is a good example. Paint rollers lie aroun on the floor. There are splatters of paint on the vinyl tile. The walls, doors and trim are unfinished. The closet door isn't even on its hinges. And we can't use the sink because the pipes aren't connected.

The rest of the house isn't in that bad of a shape, but our outlook seems to spread from there. Mara's and Mama's makeup and other stuff is sitting around on and around the cabinet in the hallway. They can't really put on their makeup in the bathroom because of the sink, and so the bathroom problem causes other problems elsewhere. We've run out of room to put things, and so they just sit around, so there's another problem to be solved.

It's a long, long list. I'm hoping that I can make a difference now that I'll be home every week. Of course, that's assuming that I can stay away from Everquest long enough. Still, it's a new year, and I'm full of hope. We'll see.