Well, I'm starting the week off feeling as if I need a weekend, but c'est la vie in the home-recovery business. I've now got second coats of paint on all three upstairs rooms, a closet completely done, and an alcove first-coated. This evening I'll prime two more closets and the hall ceiling and put a second coat on the alcove, which, being yellow, may need a third.

This is dull conversation, I know, but I'm trying to put off wailing about murder. Trapped in paint as I was, I managed not to hear anything about the terror attacks in Edmonton and Las Vegas until this morning. And now that I know, I am gnashing my teeth and pacing around and asking, What the hell?, just like you are, I suppose.

And yet I am also reading the biography of a terrorist.

Here, beside the doll-house, drivers sweep around the corner on their way to work. That abandoned red bike is still locked to a post beside the park. Chilly walkers rush down the sidewalk.

In five days I will turn 53. I wonder what world I was imagining 50 years ago.