My normal good humor seems to be reasserting itself. I had the most traumatic experience of my life and am adrift and alone. How can I be mostly cheerful?

I’m finding in some ways I’m putting on a more serious face in public than I wear in private. The smiles of a clown when no one’s around just sounds creepy, man.

Part of me wants to know what sort of emotionally stunted monster could be in a good mood three months into widowhood. Part of me is willing to be a monster if that’s what it takes.

I was cleaning off my desk and found a cd from BMG that had arrived months ago, just after Steve died. I kept shuffling it from place to place, wondering how to notify them of his death, but I had never opened the cardboard sleeve. Today I did.

He bought it for me. “Hard Candy” by the Counting Crows. I had told him right before Christmas that it was the only CC album I didn’t have.

He was like that, storing up little bits of information so he could surprise me. He loved giving little gifts, and when I wasn’t being disapproving about the money he was spending, I loved receiving them.

It’s so fitting that on “Hard Candy” Counting Crows did a cover version of Joni Mitchell, because don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone? They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.

I’m 38. I feel 148 on the outside and about 8 on the inside.

I’m having a good day. Wish me well if you would. I need all the help I can get.

And another spring rolls around. It feels like it shouldn’t, but it has.

My allergies are, of course, letting me know how much they hate me. The grass is growing like a bad weed which really makes sense since my lawn is more weed than grass.

Yeah, grump, grump, grump.

But I survived Easter completely alone. That’s going to be my bright side for a while. I did it.

Oh, and a novelist asked me for a poem for her latest book. Thanks, Pepper. That was a boost I needed right about now.

That’s what’s new with me. I hope to talk a bit more later, but I can’t make many predictions right now.

I’m exhausted by spring. My mom has put her house on the market so most of the family was over there helping get the place ready for video and pictures and showings. Tiring work.

I come home to an empty house and an empty refrigerator. I need to remember how to cook for one person.

I’m so tired.

Baseball starts in a couple of days. I was looking forward to it, but now I’m dreading it. I seem to dread everything.

I think I need to move to an apartment. The house is too much work, too much anxiety and responsibility. There’s only one of me and I’m stretched thin.