It’s an exercise thing and I think it was a lot worse when I was running. I felt a lot of guilt when I skipped running and called my sister to be absolved from my crimes. Not that not running was a crime. In any case, I was away on a business trip for a week and the only time I was close to exercising was in the awful Holiday Inn mini-gym, or carrying my bags through an airport. Tomorrow is my usual day at the gym, but it’s the one day a year I get to hand out candy to a bunch of little terrorists. I have to do it. It’s yet another compulsion of mine.

The other thing I feel guilty about is the garbage can I just put out. It’s mostly empty. I have a lot of stuff I need to throw away, but I never plan far enough ahead to put aside the things I should be throwing away. And if I put aside things, my father will start picking through them.

And yet another thing I feel guilty about is not doting on my father, but if I tried to do that, he’d drive me nuts. I mean, it’s hard enough trying to get him to put on pants. And by put on pants I mean not go around wearing a t-shirt and absolutely nothing below the equator. You’d think a guy who’s always cold would want to wear more clothing, but it’s not the only thing he does that confuses me.