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You fine, five readers know that this past year has been busy here at Casa Claire.

It seems like Honey Do projects kept appearing in wack-a-mole style, and while it often wore on my last nerve, the little free time flew.

And throughout it all I was always tethered to a professional schedule. There was always a work week to work around.

You see, I’ve been working for my money since I was a Herald Statesman paperboy at twelve. Before that, it was child slave labor at the McCaffrey compound on Mosholu Avenue, where you were conscripted – dragging and kicking – as soon as you were able to say “No” – into the keep-the-home-running trades by elders who had it a lot tougher than you. Your palms were calloused before your tenth birthday.

For over the past half a century, I’ve also stocked shelves, slung hot dogs, bussed and waited tables, ran a snack shack, drove school buses, lifeguarded, been a night watchman, Manhattan messenger boy, ran a JCL company, security guard, bartender, construction worker, practiced law from the Wall Street firm to the entertainment boutique levels and now written five novels.

I’ve also tinkered with Green Acres life for the past 8 years, where building, repairing and cleaning barns, digging fence posts, shoveling shit, humping hay, cleaning troughs and otherwise caring for creatures great and small were a recurring, endless cycle.

Over the past four years I’ve also written over a thousand daily blogs.

Factor in being married to a woman that has never let me get away with anything, and being intricately involved with raising and educating three very precocious and rambunctious children (I blame their mother), every second of my life has been accounted for. My vacations were spent accompanying non-stop travelling teams with our children (although Lisa and I did get to Paris in 2008).

Oh yeah, let’s not forget the grans.

I’ve enjoyed being busy. My very regulated, budgeted and constrained time flew.

The “proportional theory” in physics and psychology has only accelerated this passage of time as I’ve aged.

For example, I remember being slapped (whiplash hard) by Sister Rosilda in the Old School halls of St. Maggies like it was yesterday. My left cheek still has the phantom sting from being slapped many times since then (most of the punches landed on my eyes, nose and chin – I wasn’t born this pretty). Not too many left handed women. The only man who ever slapped me on a regular basis – the aptly titled Dean of Discipline in High School – always switched his clip board from his dominant hand before firing, which at least gave you a moment to close your eyes before impact. I deserved every one of them.

Shit, I’ll be 69 next month (which means I’ll be entering my 70th year).

Since I was five years old and was first enrolled in the kindergarten of PS 81, Sundays have always had a melancholic ambiance. Mondays alway mandated some form of mental and/or physical employment.

Today is the first shade free Sunday I can recall experiencing. I’m not sure how I’ll respond to it.

And tomorrow, I’ll start off apologizing to Monday for the litany of swearing and cursing I have rained upon it for over 6 decades. I intend to make it up to this poor wretched 24 hour period, whose name derives from the Old English “Mōnandæg,” meaning “Moon’s Day,” and is linked to la lune, symbolizing intuition, emotion, and cycles. I mean, come on now, with that provenance, Monday and I were destined to be best friends. Moon buddies.

I know that it’s time to write another novel. It will be the first without the distraction of a full-time job.

I’m also going to continue focusing on manifesting a film deal for The Claire Saga. It’s coming.

But before that happens I still have to prepare Casa Claire for the Winter. There’s outdoor things to mend, like my hot tub heating controller, and the corner of some perimeter fencing, and a huge load of my winter hay to hump and stack coming in next weekend. The water troughs need to be cleaned of any residual summer algea and their heaters installed. US weather bureau posted a frost warning this morning. Summer is definitely over. Still not sure what I’m doing with that pool out front.

The farrier comes in this morning, so that means I need to get a move on. Seeing first to Claire and Honey, the Beagle brothers and my rounds.

But I will continue to blog with hopes that the creeping boredom doesn’t reduce my readers magic number below five – Claire’s Theorem – https://thewisenovelist.com/claires-theorem/

And at some point, I’ll go silent, which will mean I’m writing my next novel, or having another adventure, on this energy level/dimension or another. Stay tuned.

You all go ahead and enjoy this Biblical day of rest.

But no matter what I or any of my fine, five readers get up to, let us make this particular Sunday a great one.