In my home away from home, I spend hours staring at the ceiling. There is no Michelangelo painting there, nor any by Jake Wells or Grandma Moses. It's just one of those paneled ceilings, the panels being of different dimensions, with little black holes or depressions in them.

The panel I stare at mostly is about 36 by 80 inches. When it comes to measurements, my estimations are always faulty compared to real ruler measurements. The little black holes are irregular and follow no repetitious pattern. Everything needs a name, so I call them the Black Freckles.

I have assigned myself the mathematical problem of counting the freckles in my stared-at panel.

I will use strict, unadulterated arithmetic, rather than a computer or calculator, to hone my skills. Sometimes I wonder if in the early grades students are still taught to learn the multiplication tables. I can still close my eyes and see those tables in my old Hamilton Brown textbook. Sorry, the page number has strolled from my mind-sight.

Talk about trivial, this must be the mother lode of all trivia.

When I spoke to Emmagene Ratliff who, with her husband, owns this beautifully decorated, well ordered place of Rest, Relaxation and Rehabilitation (I call it my RRR spread to give it a western cowboy tinge. However, most of the "cowboys" are "cowgirls"), she said I could get the in-house carpenter and fix-it man to measure the panel. I declined the offer, feeling that the fix-it man would ask why I wanted such measurements. After I told him, his gaze and voice would likely become gentler, as one talking to someone who didn't have all her belfry bats eradicated.

My procedure: Eye measure a 2-inch square in an upper corner of the panel. Count the number of freckles in the two inch square. There are 20. There are 18 such squares along the 36 measurements of the panel. Multiply 18 by 20. Sixty freckles!

There are 40 such strips down the 80-inch side of the panel. 360 times 40 equals 14,400. And there you have it.

Of course, there is not a textbook to turn to in the back and find the correct answer, as in the old Hamilton Brown's. I'll just ask, as does Bill O'Reilly, "Am I right?"

Someone laughed at my project and asked, "Why don't you do the whole ceiling?"

There are 17 such 80-by-36 panels. Then one runs into smaller-sized panels in order to get around the ceiling interruptions of a clothes closet and a bathroom. I immediately decided that would really be a problem for someone with non-eradicated, upper-level bats, although one might get in the Guinness Book of World Records. Besides, I don't know what comes after a trillion in case I should have arrived at that lofty number. I'll just keep an eye on that national debt or the estimated cost of the war.

Holy cow! I just noticed that the floor tiles have little black marbled flecks in them. Shall I ... NAW!

This counting syndrome may have been brought on by the therapists. They count from one to 10 with every knee bend and every arm stretch. Of course, who hasn't been asked to give a number on a scale from one to 10? A beautiful girl is a 10. An excruciating pain is a 10.

I think it will be better for me to look out my 16-pane window and count the trees, just the trunks, not the limbs not the leaves when they begin to appear which won't be too long from now.

REJOICE!

Jean Bell Mosley is an author and longtime resident of Cape Girardeau.