Today was orange. The summer sunshine threw itself over the television stand and into my eyes, and I woke up. I struggled into consciousness and moved my feet around looking for my shoes. I reached up and found my glasses and finally with some help was able to climb into them after rolling out of the deep cushions into a standing position.

I made my way to the door, sat down on the cool metal, of the white and brown chair on the porch, and lit a Seneca menthol, and stared down at the newspaper. Nothing had really changed. The mailbox was slightly ajar, so I knew there was something in it, probably nothing spectacular again, so I let it rest for a moment while I finished being thankful for a good day’s rest.

Waking up at 3pm in Niagara Falls was nothing new to me. I’d been doing it for going on ten years now; sometimes earlier, sometimes later. It had become something of a trouble just to climb stairs, but I knew that was coming next, so with reluctance, I dropped the cigarette on the ground, stamped it out, opened the box, grabbed the mail, and stepped back through both the screen and wooden doors, on Norwood.

As I set the mail on the table, and shuffled through it, I thought back to that Scott Norwood field goal attempt, and wondered if the entire doom and gloom over my life had anything to do with it, and then I shrugged it off.

Today there was an Internet provider offering hosting and Domain Name services in the mail. Better than just the bills that had literally been coming for years, I supposed, and so like all the other junk mail, I left it sitting on the table, and decided to make good on the daily challenge of walking up to my room.

For some reason, I’ve always sort of stopped between the second and third step to just check out the house, and get my balance for the rest of the eight of them.