Toto vomited on the bed again today. She does this all the time.

It’s not so bad if we discover the hairball midday, but it’s kind of a pain if we don’t notice it until we’re ready for bed. This time was sort of in between. Kris happened to wander into the bedroom just after dinner, and from her loud cursing, I could tell what had happened.

Sometimes Toto manages to get the outermost layer of bedclothes, which is fine. But often — like tonight — she pukes all over the fitted sheet.

“Can you help me take the covers off?” Kris hollered down to me. I was writing at the kitchen table.

“In a few minutes,” I called back. “I’m in the middle of something.” I had spent all day trying to craft a rare personal-finance article about credit cards. I couldn’t find the right tone. I was frustrated.

I continued to write while Kris watched the Republican National Convention. Half an hour later, she came downstairs.

“Do you need help with the bed?” I asked.

“It’s too late,” she muttered. “I’ve already done it.” Out of the corner of my eye, I could see she was carrying something in her arms. Oops.

Later, when it was time for bed, I went to the laundry room to fetch the sheet. It was dark, but I didn’t bother to turn on the light. The sheet was easy to spot amidst the socks and t-shirts. I also found a pillowcase. “Toto must have vomited on that, too,” I thought.

“Just one sheet and one pillowcase?” I asked Kris just to be certain.

“Yes,” she said. I went upstairs to make the bed.

When I got there, however, I noticed that both of my pillowcases were missing. (I sleep with two pillows, and have done so for most of my life: one for my head and one for my side.) I sighed and walked back to the laundry room to fetch the other one. I couldn’t complain, of course. If I’d helped Kris in the first place, I would have known how many pillowcases were in the dryer.

We made the bed. Kris fed the cats their bedtime treats. (Each cat gets three “greenies”, a sort of organic treat they love. Then they’re kicked out of the bedroom. Except on Cat Night. Cat Night occurs once or twice a week, and is a cause for much feline celebration. On that night, they’re allowed to sleep in the bedroom. Of course, during the summer it’s rare that all four cats are even ever in the house at the same time, even over night. Tonight, for example, Simon is outside and refuses to come when called.)

The bed made and the cats indulged, I went to my office to write.

“Aren’t you coming to bed?” Kris asked.

“I’m not done with tomorrow’s post,” I said. And I’m not. I can’t find the right tone, and I’m not sure if I should list specific credit cards. Hell — I’m not even sure I should cover credit cards at all. I’ve given them a wide berth so far.

“Oh,” Kris said sadly. Then she said, “Where’s my pillowcase?”

“What?” I asked.

“Where’s my pillowcase?” she said.

I got up from my desk and walked to the bedroom to gave her my best look of incredulity. Then I said, “When I asked you if there was just one sheet and one pillowcase, you told me yes.”

“I know,” she said.

“But then I came up here and I put that one pillowcase on my pillow, and I realized that you were wrong. My other pillow needed a pillowcase, too. So I walked back downstairs to fetch it.”

Kris realized what I was getting at. She started to laugh. I continued my lament: “And now you tell me there were actually three pillowcases in the laundry?” I let out a long, dramatic sigh and trudged downstairs.

“See how it is to live with you?” Kris called behind me as she continued to laugh. I confess that I laughed a little, too. Our roles in this sort of situation are usually reversed.

Now if only Kris could see how it is to live with her.

Disclaimer: I love my wife, and would not share these stories if I didn’t think they were fun.

The past two days have been strongly autumnal. The high temperatures have been in the low sixties, even though the sun has shone lazily through light clouds. The nights are almost cold. The lawn has begun to turn green again, a month earlier than I’d expect it to do so.

This evening, I worked in the yard. I wore a sweater as I pruned the trees. In the air, I could smell a nearby fire, but not a barbeque fire — a fire in a chimney for warmth. I could have sworn it was late October or early November, except that the leaves were still green (and the berries and tomatoes were still on the vine).

And just now, it’s 8:15. The sky has gone dark. Night is closing in, and with it comes the promise of winter.

Last night, I made what may be an important move in my attempt to get my electronic life under control. I separated my work e-mail from my personal e-mail.

I’ve complained for months that I’m overwhelmed by my e-mail load. I’m also overwhelmed by my browser tabs and my text documents. Things are out of control. I’ve been paying Michael and Lisa to help me at Get Rich Slowly, but I’ve done a poor job of giving them assignments because I’m buried by all the stuff. I don’t know what they should be doing!

Worse, I’ve turned into a terrible correspondent with my friends. It’s one thing to be slow with my GRS e-mail, but it’s a shame when messages from Dave or Andrew or you get lost in the swamp that is my inbox.

So, in an effort to take control, I’ve told my desktop computer to stop checking foldedspace e-mail. I’ve told my laptop to only check foldedspace e-mail. What’s more, after two years of having a zillion open browser tabs, the laptop now has none. The browser is in its default state, ready for me to poke around. If I use it for work, I’ll try to work on one task at a time, and try to finish that task before moving on.

I don’t have all the text documents closed on the laptop yet, but I think I can get there over the weekend. I may just zip them up and e-mail them to the work machine. What’s another ten text documents when I already have nearly 100 open?

Anyhow, what I’m trying to say is: I’ve begun to compartmentalize my work life and my social life. I’m hoping this leads to a revitalization of the latter. Work has been my whole life for too long…

“You know our house isn’t really cluttered, right?” Kris said last night.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“When you write about your battle with clutter, it makes it sound like we live in a house filled with junk. We don’t. Our house is pretty clean. You’ve just got a lot of stuff you’re holding onto that you don’t know how to get rid of.”

“That’s true,” I said.

Our house isn’t cluttered. Sometimes it gets messy, but that’s my doing. For example, the dining room table has been covered with personal finance magazines for the past week as I worked on a forthcoming article at Get Rich Slowly. Or before that, I had all of our exercise stuff (yoga mats, exercise ball, stretch bands, etc.) strewn across the floor. But it’s not like we have junk all over the place.

Instead, I have piles of Stuff in my office, in the guest room, and in the workshop. Even these piles are moderately neat.

“And you know why you can’t get rid of Stuff, don’t you?” Kris continued.

“Because I want it,” I said.

“You think you want it,” she said. “You like the idea of having certain things, but you don’t actually use them. You’ve got dozens of books stacked in the guest room. They’ve been there for a year. Have you needed any of those books in that time?”

“No,” I said.

“That’s my point. You can’t bring yourself to get rid of them, yet you don’t use them, either. So they sit there. You wouldn’t even notice if you got rid of them. You should just do it.”

As always, Kris Gates is right. The difficulty is forcing myself to move from acknowledgment to action. Tiffany has offered to help me get rid of my Stuff. Maybe I’ll take her up on the offer. Or maybe I’ll just pile everything in the workshop and let it sit there for another year or two…

This has sort of turned into the “dumb things J.D. does” blog. Here’s yesterday’s dumb thing.

I drove to Eugene to participate in a neuroeconomics study. I spent an hour inside an MRI scanner answering questions about personal finance. For this, I was paid $120.

Because I knew I might fall asleep, I had a diet soda for lunch. Lying on my back for an hour (or more) is a recipe for slumber, even if I’m supposedly taking a survey for money. Sure enough, even with the diet soda, I was very, very groggy.

After the study, Paul and I spent more than an hour working out at the gym, and then went out for Thai food. (I could splurge — I had an extra $120!) I was still groggy, though, even though I had exercised. The sun was warm, and I had a long drive ahead, so I ordered diet soda. Three times.

“You know what I do when I’m groggy and have to drive?” Paul said. “I stop at a minimart and pick up an energy drink.”

“Like a Red Bull?” I asked.

“Sort of,” he said. “Only bigger. And with more caffeine.”

So, about half an hour north of Eugene, I pulled over to pick up an energy drink. There was an enormous selection. I had no way of knowing which one was “best”, so I just grabbed a can of something that boasted 344mg of caffeine. I drank it. I drove home.

“Are you coming to bed with me?” Kris asked at ten o’clock. I wasn’t tired.

“Uh,” I said. “It’s too hot. Plus I had too much caffeine.”

“How much caffeine did you have?” she asked, but I didn’t really have an answer. Now, a few hours later, I do have an answer. Twelve ounces of Diet Pepsi have 36mg of caffeine. By my calculations, I had four such servings yesterday, plus the energy drink, which contained the equivalent of ten similar drinks. In other words, I had a much caffeine as if I’d had fourteen Diet Pepsis.

No wonder I couldn’t fall asleep until 3 am. I probably won’t be able to sleep again until next week.

Here’s the product of my recent misadventure:

Yes, those are as painful as they look. Kris feels smug in an “I told you so” kind of way. Several people have told me I need to print up those “Kris Gates is always right” t-shirts. Lisa even did research on where I could get them done.

When I started working from home in March, Kris and I developed a system to encourage me to get some household chores done during the day. We’ve placed a dry-erase board at the top of the landing, and every day Kris writes down her top priorities for me. Most of the time, I this works well. (I don’t always get the chore(s) done, but I do try.)

I had to laugh at this weekend’s chores, however:

• Pile on bench
• Kitchen table pile
• Guest room piles

And this doesn’t even include one of the tasks I have for myself: “office piles”.

Yes, I’m a piler. Anything I don’t get processed gets stacked. Unfortunately, right now I have more things in piles than I ever have in my life. I count eight distinct piles of Stuff I have to process.

If I were efficient at processing piles, this might not be a problem. And if I weren’t so busy right now, that’d also make things easier. But as it is, I feel like I have piles of things to do.

“What in the world are you doing?” Kris said, stopping in the middle of the road. She pointed at my bare feet.

“It’s just a whim,” I said. “I want to see if I can do this.”

“It’s over a mile to Paul and Amy Jo’s house,” she said. “The asphalt is hot.”

“My feet feel fine,” I said. “Don’t worry about it. Let’s go.”

We walked up the hill, past the smokey bar, and then down the hill to Laurie Avenue. We chatted about her job, about how Mom is doing, about the garden.

“Hold up a second,” I said. “I think there’s a rock stuck to my foot.” Kris gave me a knowing look. I rubbed the bottom of my foot, but there was nothing there. That seemed a little strange, but I kept walking.

My feet began to hurt a little. For large stretches along Laurie, there are wide expanses of asphalt that are basically smooth tar. Walking on these was a blessed relief. I sighed inwardly at the cool, smooth surface.

At the end of Laurie, I stopped again to pull pebbles from my feet. There was nothing there. “That’s strange,” I thought. And somewhere in the back of my mind, I began to realize this might not have been a good idea.

The last few hundred yards to Paul and Amy Jo’s house were sheer torture, but I tried not to show it. My feet were on fire.

“Look at me,” Kris said, turning into the driveway. “I’m walking on gravel.” I ignored her and walked up the lawn. I relished the cool, green surface where the grass had recently been watered.

Amy Jo opened the door. “I’m not even going to ask,” she said.

“It seemed like a good idea at the time,” I said.

“I tried to make him go back and put on shoes,” Kris said. “But he wouldn’t listen to me.”

“How do they feel?” asked Paul.

“They hurt,” I said. And they did. In fact, I was in pain. I slumped in a chair on the back patio. “Ouch,” I said. I looked at my feet. Each one sported two huge blisters.

“You know what that is, don’t you?” Kris said.

“No. What?” I said.

“That’s psychological,” she said. “Right now you need to be an adult. Your mom’s situation requires you to be at your best. This is you rebelling. You’re being a kid.” I gave her a look. Like she knows anything about psychology!

Paul brought me a pair of socks. “These should help,” he said. I put them on, and while they did help some, my feet still felt like they were on fire. We ate dinner. We talked about life and about work and about the weather. We talked about our gardens. We ate berries and burgers and ice cream.

When we’d finished, Paul said, “Are you going to walk home? Or would you like me to drive?”

Everyone was silent. I didn’t want to speak. At last I said, “I guess you’d better drive us.” My companions laughed.

“And what did you learn from this?” Kris asked.

I was reluctant to admit it, but I knew the correct response. It’s the same response to every conflict we have. And so I said, “Kris Gates is always right.“

Ah, friends, so many things to tell you in order to relate a simple story. I should write at this blog more often. I’ll do my best to be succinct.

In March, I wrote a post at my fitness blog asking which whole wheat bread is best? I picked up one of every loaf from Safeway, compared ingredients and price, and then asked six people to taste test each loaf. I concluded that Milton’s Whole Grain Plus offered the best bang for the buck.

After some advice from readers, I tried a couple loaves from Trader Joe’s, and ultimately decided that I liked Rainier Organic Sasquatch Grain & Seed Bread. Eating a slice of that stuff is like eating a field of wheat.

But during that discussion, Brad suggested I should try making my own bread. “That’s crazy,” I thought. “Making your own bread is too much work.” But Brad pointed me to a Mark Bittman recipe for No-Knead Bread. Soon after, Kris and I discovered some refinements from Cook’s Illustrated. Over the past few months, she and I have been regularly baking an easy and cheap home-made bread that is far better than any store-bought stuff.

When I wrote about our breadmaking experience at Get Rich Slowly, several readers told us we could make the process even cheaper by purchasing our ingredients at Costco. On Friday, we headed over to pick up two pounds of yeast and fifty pounds of bread flour. (We also met Rhonda for lunch, where we talked about clothes and clubs, but that’s a story for later.)

While Kris was looking for breadmaking stuff, I nosed through the books. I found a title called Back to Basics: A Guide to Traditional Skills, which I fell in love with immediately. It’s an illustrated how-to manual for people interested in homesteading and self-sufficiency. It features lots of advice on growing your own food, both vegetable and animal.

This afternoon, Kris went across the street to chat with our neighbor, Patrice. I eventually went over to join the chat. Patrice was offering to let us pick more from her cherry tree, an enormous old thing that may never have been pruned. While we chatted, we started talking about the property she rents from John.

“This used to be a farm,” she told us. “In fact, John still calls it The Farm. The barn was actually a chicken coop. That’s where the vegetable garden used to be. And he had cows and horses. He was pretty self-sufficient.”

This is unsurprising. In addition to the old cherry tree, he has several large apples, rows of raspberries, and the best grapes in the neighborhood (which grow wild along the fence and up into the trees). When we moved in, John was the one who gave me wood and advice to set up our own grape and berry arbors. He’s happy to see us growing our own food.

This evening, Kris and I went back over to pick cherries. We’ve already picked all the low-hanging fruit (which led me to understand finally what that phrase actually means), so we carried a ladder over. Kris climbed into the tree first, but she chickened out. “You’re a girl,” I said. “I’m a boy. Let me at it. This is boy’s work.”

I loved climbing trees when I was a boy, monkeying around from branch to branch. I did something similar this afternoon — in a 39-year-old man sort of way — snagging all the gorgeous cherries. (While I was in the tree, I thought I was doing a very Joel-like thing. “My new motto should be WWJD — what would Joel do?” I thought.

As we were finishing, the new neighbors came down to pick cherries, too. While Kris went inside to make some cherry preserves, I stayed outside to meet them. I let them use my ladder to climb into the tree to pick fruit of their own. We chatted a little to get to know each other.

“This is a strange neighborhood,” said one of the new neighbors. “It feels so old-fashioned. We’re so close to Portland, but it feels like we’re in the country. I mean, here we are all getting together to pick cherries.”

Exactly. That’s why we love it here. In a way, it feels like getting back to basics.

On my recent visit to the doctor’s office, a nurse weighed me and measured my height.

“How tall am I?” I asked. “I can’t ever get a good measurement.”

“You’re five-eight,” she said.

“Ah,” I said. “I thought I was five-nine.”

She laughed. “You’re like every other guy — always trying to say you’re taller than you really are.”

If I were a cartoon character, a little black cloud would have formed above my head. I don’t give a rat’s ass how tall I am. I’m not trying to be macho by claiming to be five nine. I weigh more than 190 pounds, for goodness sake! If I’m going to lie about something, it’s going to be my weight. I say I’m five-nine because that’s how tall I think I am.

Today I finally went to the sidebar at Get Fit Slowly to change my vital stats. Heaven forbid people believe I’m five-nine when I’m only five-eight!

As I was changing my data, I took a look at the vital stats from the doctor’s visit. I noted that the nurse had indicated my height was 174 centimeters. “That’s strange,” I thought. “Wasn’t I 175 centimeters before?” I checked.

Sure enough, when I measured my own height, I had come up with 175 centimeters. The nurse came up with 174 centimeters. But you know what? Here’s how those numbers convert to Imperial units:

• 174 centimeters == 5 feet, 8.50393704 inches
• 175 centimeters == 5 feet, 8.89763135 inches

So, not only was the nurse quibbling over about one-half of once percent of measurement, but she was also truncating instead of rounding. That is, she was lopping the fraction instead of rounding up to the nearest whole inch. I really am five-nine.

But just so you don’t think I have some sort of macho need to overstate my height, let’s all agree that I’m five-eight-and-a-half.