I don't know if it's hurricanes or a president who I suspect of being the anti-Christ, or a combination, but I have this vague feeling that cataclysm is at hand.

I imagine when Sputnik launched in the late '50s, people had a doomsday feeling, though I was much too young to remember that. Historically, there is nothing new about doomsday predictions. Still, times now feel extremely uncertain to me.

Here's what I think: Bush is so ludicrous that it's hard to respect anything he says and does. Surely there are those who want to bring death and destruction to the United States who are squirreled away somewhere laughing at his declarations about fighting terrorists abroad so we don't have to fight them at home. The idea that serious terrorists are going to be deterred by a guy like George W. Bush is absurd. Whether it'll be biological or some more traditional weapon, or some unleashing of poison gas or something, I hate to think. But I'm having an increasingly hard time believing that it's not going to happen any day now.

If not, then the natural forces of nature will catch up with us. A new strain of the flu or smallpox or something to wipe out half the population in a matter of weeks. A major earthquake. Some bizarre weather phenomenon. Aliens from another planet! (Just kidding on this last one.)

I have no idea why I have this sudden bout of pessimism. Could it be that I'm approaching 50? Maybe I'm just so scared of what the religious right is on the verge of doing to our country that, by comparison, it wouldn't be so bad if we did blow up and fall off the planet. I don't know.

How do you plan for the end of days?

I think you just go on doing what you do every day. Go to work, clean your house, go out with friends, go to the gym, go shopping.

But the big dilemma is this: should I stop saving for retirement?

I am no domestic goddess, and I used to think people were nuts for spending hundreds of dollars on a vacuum cleaner. No longer.

I have an old Eureka upright, and it doesn't work well, plus bits of the rubber trim have broken off, so I have to be careful against walls and stuff. Usually I have to go over the same areas three or four times to get Rose hair out of the carpet. Its probably been used twenty or thirty times and the bag is about 2/3 of the way to the full line.

I read in Consumer Reports that the Eureka Smart Vac Ultra is a Best Buy. So I went to Best Buy (co-inky-dinky?) to get one, and they were all out. So while I'm there, I'm looking at the Dyson, because everyone I know who has a Dyson swears by them, loves them, loves vacuuming with them. I want to know why. So I'm looking at it, and there's another brand called Vax that seems similar but less expensive, and I'm looking at that one too.

A sales girl comes over and I ask her why does everyone I know love the Dyson so much. So she gives me a demo. She is a Dyson owner herself and she loves it as much as everyone else.

Then I ask for a comparison demo of the Vax. It's a little noisier, but it seems to work just as well.

I ended up buying the Vax, and I got home, put it together in about five minutes, and vacuumed.

Once over every spot and it's clean. And here's the clincher. When I was done vacuuming, the cannister (it's bagless) is full. I dump out as much dog hair and dust and dirt, probably, as has accumulated inside my Eureka over the last three years.

I'm sold. I'm still no domestic goddess, but I'm sold on my Vax.

Another Sunday morning at Monkey Grind.

Four years ago today was the day that changed the world forever. Only it's odd how little has changed in terms of my daily life or the lives of people. It was the kind of tragedy that made me expect we'd be different toward each other, more united, more unified. I blame the president for making us more divided in the face of the common enemy of terrorism, but I guess I also blame human nature. I remember in the days just after 9/11, I'd drive more politely, and it seemed everyone else was too. There was a sense that even the strangers in other cars were my friends, that we were brought together in our shared grief. That feeling is completely gone.

The tragedy two weeks ago in the Gulf coast and, especially, New Orleans brings this particularly to the fore. In spite of the common outpouring of grief and the desire to help, there's such a feeling of anger at whoever didn't do enough. There's a desire to politicize the event. It comes both from victims, those who survived but lost so much, and those on the sidelines who watch the news and whose sadness is mixed with frustration and fury.

But still, I go on. Another Sunday at Monkey Grind. I'll try but probably fail to motivate myself to go to the gym, do some writing, clean the house, be productive. I'll watch some TV, a movie perhaps, surf the internet, and relax as another weekend nears its end and another work week approaches.

Maybe today I'll break the pattern.

The situation in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast has become unimaginably grim.

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