My latest little bit of progress was some home cleaning. Too much paper. Much of it recycled. Too many piles. Now either less-piled or, for now, on my bed while I figure out better places to put it. (I've started a bag of single-issue comic books that I'll donate to my county library, for instance, because I know the branches will take them.) Dust, dusted.

One particular chore I'd neglected was one I've previously, with one exception, been pretty good at: going through my bank statements. They usually get here each month, I compare it with my checkbook, correct any errors, and recycle the statements. Except that I hadn't done so since last summer. I'd gone a long time without doing it before, nearly two years during the time I worked at the construction company. For various reasons, I felt kind of weird about money at the time; it was like I didn't want to think about it. But the stack of statements grew and grew until I finally dealt with it, and that felt better. Like this time.

It turned out I'd mislaid one month's statement, from last fall. But since I am, no matter what, good with paying attention to my online statement, I knew nothing surprising would be in that period, and no math errors I'd have to correct. Still, balancing the checkbook without checking that month again felt like cheating.

Once that was done, one of my other habits kicked in: cutting out the parts of the statements that have my account number, and throwing away those parts of them in a completely different place. It's a small handful of paper in a garbage bag, which won't be picked up until next week's trash pickup, which is every other week for houses in Portland. Anyone going through our recycling in tonight won't find anything to rip me off with.

At least, I hope so.