“You must concentrate upon and consecrate yourself wholly to each day, as though a fire were raging in your hair.”

—Taisen Deshimaru

When I awakened on the morning of my 70th birthday, March 27, 2024, my heart was still beating. Tick, tock; tick, tock. Fifty-two beats per minute, just like clockwork.

I was pretty sure I wasn’t in Hell. I don’t know if we take heartbeats with us to Hell, but if we do, I expect they’re slightly more elevated, what with the pitchforks and roasting and screaming and all.

Also, it was almost six o’clock, and it seemed I had been allowed to sleep in. I’m almost certain that’s not part of the drill in Hell. If there’s any extra sack time in Hell it’s probably spent in an actual sack, being dipped like a teabag into a giant iron mug of boiling shit that you have to drink instead of coffee in the mornings that look just like midnight, only more so, while a grinning D.I. who looks like a cross between R. Lee Ermey and Hellboy screams at you: “You gotta be shittin’ me, Joker! You think you’re Mickey Spillane? You think you’re some kind of a fuckin’ writer? Now get on your face and give me infinity!”

When I finally crawled out of the sack I was 99 percent convinced I was not in Hell.

For one thing, instead of Gunnery Sergeant Beelzebub demanding an eternity of pushups I found a sweet little kitty-cat purring happy birthday to me. Like Herself, who had slipped silently off to work, Miss Mia Sopaipilla had granted me a little extra catnap instead of yowling me up at stupid-thirty to fill her bowl and/or empty her litter box.

And for another, it was 29° outside, with a dusting of snow on the green grass.

Huh. Not Hell. Albuquerque. Some people think it’s Hell, but everyplace is Hell to someone. Especially in March.

So I enjoyed two cups of coffee instead of a bottomless mug of Lipton Shitfire Hellbroth, attended to Miss Mia, and got back to the bloggery. Tempus fugit. Tick, tock; tick, tock.

Thanks to one and all for the birthday wishes. And apologies to anyone who had 69 in the office pool. I had 30; imagine my surprise.