I suppose that those who die slowly assess their lives and give some serious thought to whether or not their lives were well-spent. My friend Susan Harris once remarked that no one on their death bed says, “I wish that I’d spent more time at the office.” I heard this and I went whoa, this is a truism. Those who commute long distance to work and spend their work time in cubicles. Or those who do short commutes and spend their work time in factories – most certainly they do not, during the final moments of their lives, wish they’d spent more time there.

Today it occurred to me that it is best, at the day’s end, to give serious thought to whether or not the day was well spent. I can honestly say that, yes, most of time I feel a sense of satisfaction in regard to how I spent my day. Most of the time.

Today – I now have a new pre-breakfast routine. I take Tinni and Shadow for a short half-hour walk, after tending to the goats, chickens, and horses. I have discovered that I first need to feed Shadow, or she wanders when on-trail.

Now, at 8:30 a.m. I get to see the sun’s first rays. Doing this also gives me time to think about the day’s plans.

I did this today, and then with Pete I headed to the recycling center. I was, because I had gone for a walk in single digit temperatures, pretty chipper. This enabled to me to deal with those who weren’t as chipper. There were not very many books on hand – this is the first time in little over a year this has happened. Bill, who also sorts, was at a bit of a loss about this and left shortly thereafter. I had made an appointment to drop off books at a thrift store in Wasilla – this was a big mistake because those sorting through donations there intimated that they bring unwanted books to the recycling center. Oh oh.

So, I have decided to be more discerning as to where I’m distributing books. It seems to me that the most prudent thing of all is to follow Bill Schmidtkunz’ s lead and get kiosks in public places, and regular stock them. This way, people can take what they want.

Our bread and butter are children’s books, so we’ll be very discerning as to where they go.

Pete assisted me in doing the drop-off. We got home and went for a horseback ride – the sun was again low in the sky. And again, there were moose in the woods; one, in fact, bedded down near the trail head. It does my heart good to see them – this is, after all, their and not our stomping grounds.

I lastly took Tinni for a walk around the loop. It was then 5 p.m. The temperature by this point in time had dropped markedly and it was breezy. Tinni, when urged to do so, moved with a decided bounce to his step. He may be an Icelandic horse and therefore unphased by the cold, but I suspect he is going to welcome hanging out in warmer temperatures.

All ‘n all, a good day, well lived.

Next: 31. 1/31/21: Shadow’s Dog Blog