It's a Monday evening, 6:26 PM. It's at least three hours until a respectable time to go to bed and sleep and I just don't know what to do with that three hours. I don't like this early darkness that leaves me both tired and restless. Since I don't have television, the option of sitting down and staring at the TV set doesn't exist. I would be pathetically staring at a blank set (Why is it called a set?).

Anyway. Here I am. Blogging because I am too tired to do anything else and it is too early to go to bed. How sad!

It has been almost four months since my three month road trip. I remind myself that it wasn't so long ago that I was on the road. I do this because sometimes I feel like life is not too thrilling and I certainly don't want to waste the time I have been given. For me, traveling is thrilling. It is accomplishment. It makes life worthwhile.

Not that I haven't things to do. I have books. I have paint. I have YouTube. I can exercise (ugg), I can write Christmas cards (groan, not in the mood!), I can meditate (who am I kidding, I've tried, my mind won't stay still for ten seconds!), I can go out and get some ice cream (too lazy), or I can ................................I don't know........................OK, I am stuck for things to do. That's the problem here.

I have found that when I am alone and bored, the boredom is so much more difficult than being bored with someone else around. I don't know why, but it is.

You know that Sinatra song "Regrets, I've had a few, but then again too few to mention." Well I've a few and I am going to actually mention them, just for the heck of it. I regret getting a teaching degree in college instead of studying art, writing or medicine. I regret marrying at 22. I regret not traveling more. I regret not naming my daughter Jillian instead of Jill, although she would probably prefer Jill anyway. I regret following the safe worn path instead of making my own. I regret not going to a therapist before I asked for a divorce and not insisting he go too. I regret not planning my divorce better. And I regret trying to look sexy and sophisticated at my junior prom and instead looked cheesy and nothing like myself. And I regret not having my teeth all straightened and whitened and capped when I was younger.

I have other regrets I am sure, but I can't think of them just right now. I have never understood people who say that they wouldn't change anything about their lives. Come on now! Is any life that perfect? Is it possible to have always made the right decisions? Wasn't for me. Having some regrets seems reasonable. (As long as one does not dwell on them.)

So this is what I do on a dull evening, review my regrets. Sad, huh.

But OK, I am done with that now. I was just mussing anyway. There are things I am terribly happy I did as well. Like, having gone to college at all even if I played it safe with a teaching degree. And it was good to have babies, work some of the neat jobs I did, travel the trips I did, run a camping store, operate a B and B, make and keep the friends I have, and have a lot of people over for holiday dinners, and move to Indian Rocks Beach. All good stuff.

If I were to design my life it would be pretty close to what it is now, only I would be just a little richer, with a full kitchen, a laundry room, a bathtub, and full ownership of this building I live in. So really, I'm pretty close pretty close. I am almost there. Life is good.

The "to move or not to move" decision that I kept putting off not so long ago resolved itself by the potential tenant never getting back to me, so I had no one to rent this place to and so I might as well stay a little longer. And really, I am OK with that. I won't revisit that particular issue until at least next summer. I am soooooo much better at dealing with the concept of you know living next door. It just took some time. Not much of a problem anymore, really. Opps, that brings to mind another regret....my having been so darn generous and thoughtful even in the mist of a divorce. If I had it to do over, I would have taken soooooooo much more when I left, both money and things. I don't know what I was thinking. I hear other ex wives took their ex to the cleaners. Darn, I shouda! It's not like he appreciated the generosity, or even noticed. Big regret!

I am going to Seattle in three days to be there for the birth of my new grand baby. I can't wait. When I leave there, and I think that will be hard to do, and I get home, I am planning on some serious landscaping between me and next door. And finishing writing the history book. (The publisher wants it by February), and gearing up for the busy winter season in my gallery, and having my girlfriends visit in February for a grownup pajama party, and going to a family reunion in July.

And planning another big trip somewhere, and working on my second book ( I do have a plan for it), and eventually rethinking my living arrangement. Isn't that enough to do? Ain't life swell?

This is why I like to write sometimes. It takes me from listing regrets to listing things I want and will be doing. I am about 80% happy most of the time, Not bad when a year ago, I was 80% sad most of the time.