I've already done three good deeds today

and it's only 9:03.

My friend sent me a link to a new online toy, where you can get Bob Dylan to sing "Subterranean Homesick Blues" while your message goes by on his cards -- it's fun.

I liked it so much I sent a note to the agency who developed it. They sent me a note. I even found a typo on their website and sent that to them.

I made my own Dylan message and sent it to my mom and two of my friends. Then I posted it online so other people can go play with it.

Oh, and I wished a bunch of people happy birthday. Now I've lost count.

I feel like a good fairy this morning and I haven't even started writing my book yet.

p.s. I even called that guy from outside the bookstore, the fellow who almost got pinned under his car but for my intervention at the right moment. I talked with him. He's an interesting guy who was in the Merchant Marines in WWII and served as an English Prof at Berkeley and CU and ran marathons ten years ago. Now he seems to be in some shock because his wife is an invalid (has a pinched nerve). He has spinal stenosis and can hardly move, much less run or racewalk anymore. He didn't sound like he's doing any better than he was last time I spoke with him several months ago. I'm going to see what I can do about that. Really, I just want to give him the info that the city's adult services folks sent to me when I requested a packet. He needs to know there are resources available. The tough question is whether he would ever use them. There's something intractable about this guy (and I think I know what it is, but that would be between me and him -- and his caseworker, should it come to that, and it may).

It's weird: I have been thinking about my own PTSD and I feel my daughter has a similar malady, too. That's something I really want her to know I understand. And lately my PTSD has been rearing its pointy heads. I was on my bike and heard a strange yell from an alley and had to make myself keep riding and not assume the worst, that I'd just heard someone fall off a ladder or something. Part of my thought process, I admit, was that I had a child on the trailer bike and didn't want to enter some kind of trap. How few ingredients I require to conjure such horrific scenarios: thoughts of my fellow oldster above forgetting once again to set any of his automobile's brakes, this time fatally; the store clerk I was working with when she fell off a ladder during an epileptic seizure; Susannah Chase, a victim of abhorrent violence near the same alley where I had this recent bout with fears of ladders and traps; and JonBenet Ramsey, another victim of appalling deeds whom everyone still remembers ten-plus years later. I am not feeling safe, I believe, with so many things happening like my child going back to school and family events coming up and knowing the fellow I just wrote about is still up on the mountain ailing in so many ways and not getting any attention.

I've asked myself if in saving him once I have made myself feel responsible for him, and I don't think that's it. I just need to let him to know he has some options, and I seem to be the one who was picked to tell him that, at the very least. He told me that his wife tells him he doesn't know how to take care of himself. If people tell you who they are, he was giving me a message and I feel an obligation not to let it go until I've seen to it that he gets some help with that.