The Divine Versions, 9th Day of Midsommar, 526 M.E. (Electra): I track my meditation with the health app on my phone. Every second day, when I'm finished  with my sitting, I enter the start and finish times as "Mindfulness Minutes." Not that practice requires an app, but keeping a record adds to my motivation - if I miss a day, there will be a visible gap in the record (the app records the minutes as a bar graph on a time scale).

I could lie and add minutes on a day I didn't actually sit, but what would be the point of that? Then I wouldn't be able to trust the app and wouldn't have a record of my effort. 

Anyway, to get to the point, I sat today (3:14 to 4:44 pm), but I missed last Friday, the day I had Eliot euthanized. Last Friday was the first day I missed, other than when I was at Big Ears, since October 13, 2025. Since April 20, 2025, I've only missed three days (other than Big Ears) - May 16, when I was waiting all day for an AC repairman to arrive, October 13, when the young man who would have been my stepson if life had gone differently was in town, and last Friday, May 8, when Eliot left this realm of existence.

Of course, it certainly wasn't zazen (sitting meditation), but a day spent digging a grave for your pet while he's still alive but asleep in the house, and being present at the veterinarian as he receives the fatal injection that ends his life, and then putting that pet in the ground and filling the grave with earth, is an exercise in mindfulness and a profound contemplation of life-and-death. It's certainly a better alibi for missing 90 minutes of sitting that waiting for the repairman.