The Wooden Works, 61st Day of Spring, 525 M.E. (Betelgeuse): I got my walk in today, a Van Buren (8.6 miles) despite the threat of rain. I missed Sunday's walk because of the rain and it even rained on me briefly today, although very gently and while I was under tree cover. 

Even though I got my sitting time in yesterday, I felt very unsettled late last night, possibly due to not walking on Sunday. Or possibly because the Celtics lost Game 4 of the Conference Semifinals in New York on Monday night, and are down 1-3 against the Knicks. Or because Jayson Tatum went down in the late Fourth Quarter with a game, season, and, not impossibly, career-ending injury. All this on the same day that the Red Sox were humiliated in Detroit in a 14-2 loss to the Tigers. 

Yesterday, I noticed that a part of the lower dashboard of my car seems to have come apart from the rest of the dash. Everything still works fine, but it's an unpleasant reminder of impermanence and that my 16-year-old car isn't going to last forever, and I have no clear idea how to afford a new car on my fixed retirement income, especially in these times of tariff wars and recessions.

My eyes are getting worse. I was told I needed cataract surgery nearly a year ago, but I've done nothing about it to date. 

I live alone and have few friends. My cat, my only constant companion, is the same age as my car and is in worse shape. I'll miss the furry bastard when he's gone.

So all this unpleasantness was in my head last night as I settled in for the evening to read the ending of Cormac McCarthy's post-apocalyptic novel, The Road, a dark, depressing read by any standard.  

So, in summary, after a week of rain, I was housebound and cooped up, my teams had lost, badly, I felt like everything was falling apart on me, and to relax I was reading a grim end-of-the-world novel. 

But that was yesterday. The sun came out for a while today, enough that I got my Van Buren in (even if I did get a little wet), and now I feel much better. We think that we're such complex, sophisticated beings, capable of logic and discerning thought, but our moods are really controlled more by our metabolism than by the ideas rattling around in our minds.

Please remind me to walk again on Thursday, even if the weather doesn't look ideal.