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While my guest was here, the dirty dishes washed themselves. It worked like this: we would eat a meal, and then I would get up from the dinner table and do something and when I returned to the dining room, all the dishes and utensils and even the pots and pans had been washed and were in the dish drainer, clean and shiny as new. It was like magic. I don't know how it happened, but I figure poltergeists were somehow involved.

I had an errand to run this morning, but when I got out of bed the outside temperature was 27°F and to my recently hibernating body the inside temperature felt not much warmer. The thought of walking to my car filled me with shivers. Then I realized that I could run my errand tomorrow instead of today, and the decision was instantaneous: I returned to bed. Because I believe in that old adage, "never do today what can be put off until tomorrow." Or something like that.

When I cleaned up the supper dishes, I found a pound of bacon (uncooked) lying on the kitchen countertop. It had been lying there since about noon. I would like to report that it was hidden in an inconspicuous corner of the countertop, behind one thing and under another thing. But alas, it was in plain view and I didn't see it. The package was open and had been off refrigeration for about six hours, and I wondered briefly if it was still okay to eat. Then I thought "Sure it is," because it wasn't cooked. After I cook it crisp, all the germy critters that have been growing in it for the past six hours will be deceased. Probably. So I stuck the bacon back inside the fridge. Now, I'm thinking of that bacon less as food and more as a science experiment.

It's evening and the outside temperature is 27°. Looks like tonight will be a repeat of last night. Tomorrow morning I'll get up and take a shower and watch some TV news and then I'll get my Jeep out of the garage and drive to LabCorp where I'll be stuck with a syringe and some of my blood will be drawn out for tests. It happens every six months. The results are always the same. My cholesterol and triglycerides will be too high. My doctor wanted me to take a statin. I resisted for a long time, but I finally said "okay" and I took the statin. It made my cholesterol number go up! (In case you don't know, statins are supposed to make one's cholesterol go down.) On one visit, my cholesterol was so high that I asked my doctor, "With my cholesterol so high, how is it that I'm still alive?" She responded, "Some things we don't understand."

After LabCorp, I have to go to the grocery store. Maybe if the doctor knew what foods I eat, she would understand my high cholesterol. Or as I put it to her once, "Doctor, how many Whoppers do I have to eat to get my recommended daily allowance of chocolate?" 

She didn't answer. It's possible she thought I was joking.