You might have noticed a large gap in time between this blog entry and the last one I made. Or you might not have. Based on the lack of movement of my visitor counter in the metrics section, I think I may actually be alone in noticing the gap. But no matter. I am back. I have decided to revive this blog, not because I have anything new or exciting to say, but because . . . well . . . gosh darn-it, everyone else is blogging, so I am. too.
Thanksgiving came and went so quickly that I can hardly remember it. I loaded up the family into the covered wagon and we began our wilderness trek to grandma’s house. Well, okay, it wasn’t really that dramatic. I loaded the family into the car and we drove nearly ten hours on the interstate through some dubious parts of the country to get to Mom’s house. Grandma’s trailer is out back, out of sight of the road. We spent four days there and had a wonderful time. We did all the usual Thanksgiving rituals: eating 7,500-calorie meals three times a day, wandering around the tiny town Mom lives in (mostly looking for something that was open), and driving along pretty backroads (again, mostly looking for something that was open).
But all too soon it was time to return to the big city and to resume the life of quiet desperation that I was allocated upon hitting middle age. Life since Thanksgiving has been just a blur of everything James Thurber had tried to warn me about when I was young, only I was too young to believe such things. And now, here I am.
“Here”, by the way, is just a stone’s throw away from Christmas. That analogy would work if one could throw a stone forward through time about two weeks. All I have managed to accomplish in preparation for the Christmas season is to lug down from the attic the one or two metric tons of holiday paraphernalia that we have accumulated over the past 15 or 20 years. I did that about a week and a half ago. It is all still packed neatly in the boxes and bins which are still stacked in the formal dining room. Hopefully, we will get some time this weekend in which we can actually unpack everything and get the house looking like it is the Christmas season.
I find it hard to get into the Christmas spirit when it is so warm and sunny outside. We have been having temperatures during the daytime in the mid 60’s. And the skies are not cloudy all day. Indeed, they are quite the opposite. The skies are blue, the sun is shining, and birds flit hither and yon, having decided that there was no need to jet south for the winter. It’s hard to put any real enthusiasm to singing “White Christmas” when the chances of actually having one are zero.
Last year, in contrast, was perfect for Christmas. It snowed all day long on Christmas eve. The snow was big and fluffy and was beautiful to watch as it fell lazily from the skies. It made it a real joy to look out the windows. However, the temperature was only in the upper 30s, so it didn’t stick to the streets (which was a good thing). We awoke Sunday to an honest-to-goodness white Christmas. There was about 3 or 4 inches of snow on the ground and it was still snowing slightly. However, the temperatures immediately climbed into the 40s and the snow went away soon enough. But it was sure beautiful and it really put all of us into a Christmas mood.
I am praying for a cold snap this year, but I don’t think we’re going to get it. We couldn’t be THAT lucky two years in a row.
December 9, 2010
Somewhere in Texas
Friday, December 10, 2010
Saturday, August 7, 2010
Journal of Journals
At some point in my life I became an inadvertent collector of journals.
I have a bookshelf full of journals that are a joy to look at. Some of them are leather-bound with gilt pages. Some are soft cover ones with what appears to be art-deco travel posters on them from a more glorious age. Some of them are hard-cover, spiral-bound journals that are really easy to write in because they lay flat on a table or desk. Some are small pocket journals. Some are large table-top journals that look like they might have been designed to be engineering notebooks or accounting ledgers. Some of them were a dollar. Some of them were thirty dollars. Some of them have grid-printed graph paper for pages. Some of them have simple lines.
But they all share one thing in common. That is: they are completely blank.
There are a multitude of reasons why these journals have never been used. After all, it wasn’t my intent when I bought them for them to remain blank. I had dreams of filling them up with my adventures and my pithy, insightful observations which future generations would read and go, “Wow! What an interesting man he was!” It was my dream that my grandchildren and great-grandchildren would read them and so come to know me, though I never met them.
Unfortunately, the adventures never happened and as for my observations . . . well, let’s just say that they’re not the sort of thing that would hold anyone’s attention, let alone make them go “Wow!”
There is another reason I never wrote in them. I think it was because I didn’t want to sully them with my horrible-looking handwriting. It is similar to the excitement that a school child feels when buying his school supplies. He loves the packs of neat, bright white notebook paper. He flips joyfully through the blank, brightly covered spiral notebooks. He is filled with dreams of the wonderful reports he will be writing in them and the beautiful complex math problems he will be solving. But by the second week of school, as his sloppy handwriting, poorly phrased thoughts, and incorrect math begin to fill up the pages, the beauty and the charm of the notebook wears off.
It is the same with journals. What is more exciting than holding a well-bound leather journal in one’s hands with its thick acid-free paper and its little artistic printed flourishes at the bottom of each page? One is filled with romantic thoughts of filling the pages with profound thoughts and thrilling adventures written in a flowing, calligraphic script. But, after a week of blotching the pages with grumblings of yardwork and house repairs and savant-like observations about the weather, the thrill is gone. What is worse, the journal has now been tainted and far from thinking the journal should be displayed proudly on a bookshelf, the owner seriously considers tossing it into the recycling bin out back in the alleyway along with last week’s newspapers and the empty vinegar bottle.
I still occasionally buy a new journal, but I have stopped deluding myself. Now I just buy it because I like the way it looks. It is no more than a knick-knack or an object d’art or an example of fine craftsmanship. And just like I wouldn’t use a Tiffany vase to hold loose change or odd nuts and bolts, I’m not going to ruin those journals by writing in them.
August 7, 2010
Somewhere in Texas
I have a bookshelf full of journals that are a joy to look at. Some of them are leather-bound with gilt pages. Some are soft cover ones with what appears to be art-deco travel posters on them from a more glorious age. Some of them are hard-cover, spiral-bound journals that are really easy to write in because they lay flat on a table or desk. Some are small pocket journals. Some are large table-top journals that look like they might have been designed to be engineering notebooks or accounting ledgers. Some of them were a dollar. Some of them were thirty dollars. Some of them have grid-printed graph paper for pages. Some of them have simple lines.
But they all share one thing in common. That is: they are completely blank.
There are a multitude of reasons why these journals have never been used. After all, it wasn’t my intent when I bought them for them to remain blank. I had dreams of filling them up with my adventures and my pithy, insightful observations which future generations would read and go, “Wow! What an interesting man he was!” It was my dream that my grandchildren and great-grandchildren would read them and so come to know me, though I never met them.
Unfortunately, the adventures never happened and as for my observations . . . well, let’s just say that they’re not the sort of thing that would hold anyone’s attention, let alone make them go “Wow!”
There is another reason I never wrote in them. I think it was because I didn’t want to sully them with my horrible-looking handwriting. It is similar to the excitement that a school child feels when buying his school supplies. He loves the packs of neat, bright white notebook paper. He flips joyfully through the blank, brightly covered spiral notebooks. He is filled with dreams of the wonderful reports he will be writing in them and the beautiful complex math problems he will be solving. But by the second week of school, as his sloppy handwriting, poorly phrased thoughts, and incorrect math begin to fill up the pages, the beauty and the charm of the notebook wears off.
It is the same with journals. What is more exciting than holding a well-bound leather journal in one’s hands with its thick acid-free paper and its little artistic printed flourishes at the bottom of each page? One is filled with romantic thoughts of filling the pages with profound thoughts and thrilling adventures written in a flowing, calligraphic script. But, after a week of blotching the pages with grumblings of yardwork and house repairs and savant-like observations about the weather, the thrill is gone. What is worse, the journal has now been tainted and far from thinking the journal should be displayed proudly on a bookshelf, the owner seriously considers tossing it into the recycling bin out back in the alleyway along with last week’s newspapers and the empty vinegar bottle.
I still occasionally buy a new journal, but I have stopped deluding myself. Now I just buy it because I like the way it looks. It is no more than a knick-knack or an object d’art or an example of fine craftsmanship. And just like I wouldn’t use a Tiffany vase to hold loose change or odd nuts and bolts, I’m not going to ruin those journals by writing in them.
August 7, 2010
Somewhere in Texas
Saturday, July 3, 2010
Later That Same Day . . .
Today turned out to be something of a disappointment in terms of personal accomplishments. I awoke this morning with high hopes (probably a form of early-morning delirium brought about by too few hours of sleep). All week long I had been planning to get out early and knock out a bunch of yard work before the temperature rose past the danger level. Imagine my disappointment when I awoke to the sound of a steady rain outside. Well, perhaps disappointment is the wrong word. Happiness is probably the word I meant. I love rain and I hate yard work, so I'll pause a moment to give you time to connect the dots.
Instead I spent the early morning hours between about 6:30 and 8:30 drinking coffee and tapping inanities into my laptop computer while listening to it rain outside. I can't think of a more idyllic way to spend a Saturday morning than that. It was one of those times that makes you glad to be alive and thankful.
But once the household was awake and it became apparent that it was time to stop drinking coffee and time to start getting busy, I formulated a plan in which I would make up for my inability to do yard work by overachieving in the area of house work. As I baked the cinnamon rolls (the kind that come in a tube) I formulated plans for vacuuming, cleaning up the kitchen, doing laundry, and just generally restoring order to a household that had fallen victim to the chaos of an ordinary week. So, after showering and getting dressed, I set about to put my plan in action. I did the clean-up-the-kitchen item. But then the boilers lost pressure and the train slowed down considerably.
I'll just cut to the chase and say that I ended up laying on the couch upstairs and taking a nap. This was not entirely my fault. I merely laid down a second just to rest my eyes, but then the cat walked up onto my back and made herself comfortable. Well, I couldn't very well disturb the cat, could I? So, between the sound of the rain outside, and the feel of a warm cat sleeping on my back, and the general comfort of my favorite ten-year-old couch, consciousness did not stand a chance.
When I came to an hour and a half later, the cat was still on my back, the couch was still comfortable, and the rain was still whispering outside. But a sense of guilt made me stand up (much to the consternation of the cat, who had finally found a use for me) and get busy again.
At some point during the day we decided to go to Target to shop for our upcoming trip to the beach. There was much impulse-buying and flimsy justifications for things only remotely related to a trip to the beach. But, it is part of the whole beach experience, so who am I to reign in spending at a time like that? By the time we got to the checkout line (about an hour after we got there), our shopping cart was groaning under the weight of the mound of consumer goods piled in it and on it. I believe that the hard rubber/plastic wheels of the cart were in danger of going flat. I had to walk away while the checkout girl rang up our purchases. It pained me greatly to think about the amount of money we were spending. I'm certainly no cheapskate, but neither do I like to watch many hours of my hard labor being converted into plastic doo-dads and other consumables that would just be a faint memory in two weeks' time.
So that was about it for the activities of the day that could in any way be considered to be productive (and even that requires a willing suspension of disbelief if not out-and-out self-delusion).
My excuse for the slothful wasting of an entire day is (a) it was raining and (b) I was exhausted from working so hard lately, and (c) it is the first day of being off of work for 9 days and so I think my mind and body just sort of collapsed like a sprinter crossing the finish line. Those are my excuses and I'm clinging to them tightly.
And now the day is at an end and I am once again in my pajamas and drinking a cup of coffee and tapping into this infernal laptop computer of mine. The day has been neatly book-ended by this coffee/pajama/laptop trifecta. Life is good. Thank you, God.
Saturday 6 a.m. --- The Minutia Continues
It is another glorious Saturday morning and I am up with the lark (or, at least, the dogs). I've made coffee (instant) and fired up the boilers on the ol' laptop. I now sit at the kitchen table tapping away at the keyboard to write another letter to the world (which, for the most part, is singularly uninterested in reading it). I can see through the bay window beside me, by the faint light of a still-yawning sun, that the world outside is drenched to the bone from two days of heavy, steady rain. There will be no yard work on this day. Grass will not be mowed. Bushes will not be trimmed. And canine leavings will have to remain, um, left.
No, today I will have to turn my attentions to indoor activities. These include (but are not limited to): laundry, vacuuming, dusting, picking-up-and-putting-away, etc. (Frankly, it is the “etc” part that I am worried about.)
One (and by “one”, I mean “me” … in case you didn't pick up on that) never knows quite what to put into these letters to the world, especially since the world tends to view them as something from the same species as junk mail or jury duty summonses. In days gone by I would fill them up with the minutia of the recent past. So, even now I can go back and read an old journal and find out that on the second Tuesday in August in 1988 I had bologna and macaroni-and-cheese for lunch and that I went to Radio Shack to buy a package of 5.25” floppy disks for my Tandy 1000 computer. Historically accurate? You betcha! Interesting? Not on your life!
In retrospect, I wish I'd been more honest in my journals about what I was thinking and/or feeling. However, for most of my life I was seized with the fear that my journal would be read by prying eyes and so I was always cautious about the sort of incendiary content that I put in them. Therefore, I tended not to speak of women that I may have had a crush on at the time, or make keen (and hopefully humorously biting) observations about the people I knew. If I spoke of someone, I tended to speak in code and riddles so that now even I don't know what the heck I was talking about. All's the pity, for that sort of stuff would be much more interesting to read than the collection of mind-numbingly trivial itineraries of excruciating trips through banality. And while it is true that I have proof positive that I paid two dollars and ten cents for a cheeseburger and small fries on the third Monday of September 1986 at the McDonald's at the intersection of Sandy Lake Drive and I-35 in Carrollton, Texas (should the question ever arise), I am beginning to doubt the historical significance of the event. Will future generations care? Will I ever be called upon to produce this tidbit of information in a famous murder trial or for a university study of the eating habits of young yuppies in the 1980s? I am doubtful.
However, about what I was feeling or thinking on that particular day my journal remains frustratingly silent. Today's entry (the one you are reading right now) is not much better in that regard. Even while complaining about the frustrating lack of personal commentary in my old journal entries, I am even now holding the cards of my thoughts and feelings close to my chest and revealing nothing about what is truly going through my mind.
I guess some things never change.
Somewhere In TexasJuly 3, 2010v
No, today I will have to turn my attentions to indoor activities. These include (but are not limited to): laundry, vacuuming, dusting, picking-up-and-putting-away, etc. (Frankly, it is the “etc” part that I am worried about.)
One (and by “one”, I mean “me” … in case you didn't pick up on that) never knows quite what to put into these letters to the world, especially since the world tends to view them as something from the same species as junk mail or jury duty summonses. In days gone by I would fill them up with the minutia of the recent past. So, even now I can go back and read an old journal and find out that on the second Tuesday in August in 1988 I had bologna and macaroni-and-cheese for lunch and that I went to Radio Shack to buy a package of 5.25” floppy disks for my Tandy 1000 computer. Historically accurate? You betcha! Interesting? Not on your life!
In retrospect, I wish I'd been more honest in my journals about what I was thinking and/or feeling. However, for most of my life I was seized with the fear that my journal would be read by prying eyes and so I was always cautious about the sort of incendiary content that I put in them. Therefore, I tended not to speak of women that I may have had a crush on at the time, or make keen (and hopefully humorously biting) observations about the people I knew. If I spoke of someone, I tended to speak in code and riddles so that now even I don't know what the heck I was talking about. All's the pity, for that sort of stuff would be much more interesting to read than the collection of mind-numbingly trivial itineraries of excruciating trips through banality. And while it is true that I have proof positive that I paid two dollars and ten cents for a cheeseburger and small fries on the third Monday of September 1986 at the McDonald's at the intersection of Sandy Lake Drive and I-35 in Carrollton, Texas (should the question ever arise), I am beginning to doubt the historical significance of the event. Will future generations care? Will I ever be called upon to produce this tidbit of information in a famous murder trial or for a university study of the eating habits of young yuppies in the 1980s? I am doubtful.
However, about what I was feeling or thinking on that particular day my journal remains frustratingly silent. Today's entry (the one you are reading right now) is not much better in that regard. Even while complaining about the frustrating lack of personal commentary in my old journal entries, I am even now holding the cards of my thoughts and feelings close to my chest and revealing nothing about what is truly going through my mind.
I guess some things never change.
Somewhere In TexasJuly 3, 2010v
Sunday, June 27, 2010
Adventures In Yard Care (Part II)
This morning began much like Saturday did. I awoke at around 6:30 to go let the dogs out. In their less-than-subtle way, they were letting me know they wanted to go out. While they don't overtly try to wake us, they adopt some passive-aggressive behaviors to get us to wake up and let them out. They sigh loudly. They pace. They will move to another spot of the room and flop heavily on the carpet as if they collapsed there from exhaustion. They lick. The Staffordshire terrier flaps her ears loudly. All of these “subtle” behaviors would wake up a coma victim.
Anyway, I arose and went downstairs to let them out into the back yard. I made me some coffee. I fired up the laptop. I sat in a torpor, drinking coffee and dinking around with the laptop. In actuality, though it is hard for me to get up in the morning and I don't really consider myself to be a morning person, once I am up I enjoy the peace and solitude of being up early in the morning. I can enjoy a precious hour or perhaps two of reading or surfing the Internet or watching TV.
But solitude, like anything rare and fragile, does not last long. Soon the household was awake and it was time to begin the day. Like yesterday, I decided to get outside and do some yard work. Specifically, I decided to continue my efforts to tidy up the front flower beds. Originally, I was going to pull up all the Japanese ivy that has been running rampant and unabated for the past ten or more years. However, just as I was about to grab my first handful and give a hearty yank, I noticed a large garden spider in the center of her orb web (see actual photo above). I've always been something of an “arachnophile” (if there's such a word). I've always been fascinated by spiders and like to observe them. I don't necessarily want them in my house and and I certainly don't want them on me, but I've adopted a live-and-let-live attitude towards them (and I hope they have the same attitude towards me).
So, I decided to leave that particular patch of Japanese ivy alone and to turn my attentions to other areas. There are two boxwood hedge bushes, one on either side of the walkway leading to the front door that did not fare very well during last winter's bitter cold temperatures and several snowstorms. They've looked sickly ever since. And, to be quite honest, I've never cared much for them anyway. So, I got out my trusty branch cutters, hack saw, and hatchet and got to work.
The conditions today were almost identical to yesterday's. That is, it was near 100 degrees and 100% humidity. So, while cutting the bushes down to their trunk was easy, removing the trunk took a lot more effort. I dug all around the trunk and the ball of roots immediately beneath the trunk. This was not made easier by the Texas clay in which the boxwoods grew. Digging in Texas “black gumbo” clay is either like digging in concrete if conditions are dry or like digging in modeling clay if conditions are damp. Today, the conditions were damp.
The roots of the boxwood shrubs were well established and it took much flailing with the hatchet and much leveraging with the spade to get the root ball up. By the time I'd gotten the two of them dug up, I was a physical wreck. My clothes were drenched in sweat. My heart was pounding at a rate two or three times normal. My breathing was fast and heavy. My muscles were quivering and twitching with exhaustion. I had to sit on the front step and rehydrate and wait for my bodily statistics to drop out of the red zone and back into the yellow (green was only a remote possibility at that point).
So, needless to say, I was pretty much done at that point. I tried to keep going. I did a little raking up of some of yesterday's trimmings. I got out the garden rake and raked up some of the thatch from the St. Augustine grass. I pulled up some Japanese ivy. But these efforts did not even rise to the level of “half-hearted”. By the time I'd gotten all of the trimmings lugged to the back alley, I was done for the day.
Saturday, June 26, 2010
Adventures in Yard Care (Part I)
This morning I awoke at 6:15. I wouldn’t ordinarily wake up at such an unnatural hour, but the dogs woke up and decided it was time to go outside for a potty break. Somehow over the years they’ve been trained to get up at around 6:00 a.m. to go outside. Not sure how that happened. Certainly they didn’t learn such behavior from me.
Anyway, I rolled out of bed and let them do their thing outside while I made me some coffee. I sat in a quiet nook in the house and played on my laptop for awhile until the rest of the house was awake. I made breakfast (eggs, sausage, and rice) and then went outside to get busy with the yardwork. By this time it was 9:00.
Another common theme you’ll notice in these blogs of mine is the fact that I hate yardwork. I’m not one of those people that will let it go until I get nasty letters from the homeowner’s association, but I begrudge every moment I spend outside trying to tame the untamable elements. I’m not an outdoorsy person. I’d much prefer to live in a high-rise penthouse where lawn care consists of watering the potted fichus trees in the entryway. Unfortunately, I was born in the wrong economic bracket and so far have only managed to claw my way to upper middle class. We here in the UMC have houses in the suburbs with the requisite lawns. Most male suburbanites like to get into competitions with their neighbors for the best lawn on the block. I’m not one of those people. I do enough yardwork to get by, but odds of me getting to put the “Lawn of the Month” sign in my yard are pretty slim. In fact, the odds makers are not even making odds that it will happen.
So, the fact that I was outside by 9:00 a.m. and in the process of mowing the lawn was a small personal victory, much like a child who manages to take a few timid bites of broccoli. Now, when I do finally manage to encourage myself to get out and do yardwork, I am no slacker. I don’t do it slapdash or half-heartedly. I put my all into it. Being borderline OCD compels me to do a good job. But it is a hollow victory. I should feel good about it, but I don’t. A child is not proud of himself for eating broccoli, he’s just happy that it’s over.
As if hating to do yardwork was not bad enough, doing yardwork in Texas provides additional punishment in the form of oppressive heat and humidity. And this morning, Texas outdid itself. The temperature quickly climbed into the 90s and, thanks to the rains yesterday, the humidity was near 100%. One can’t work in those conditions for very long without risking dehydrations. I kept myself well hydrated with some iced tea I’d made the night before, but the best one can do when working in near-100 degree weather is to merely postpone the point of heatstroke.
So, I did the normal things (mowed, edged, swept), but then I also got a wild hare and decided to trim up all the bushes in the front yard. They’ve needed it for a few weeks but my hectic work schedule and the intermittent rains have made me postpone it longer than I intended. So I got out my shears and my branch cutters (all manual … nothing electric for me) and began trimming. I trimmed up the crepe myrtles. I shaped the boxwoods (these in particular are a misnomer in my yard in that they are spherically shaped). I trimmed the pomegranate bush (i.e. I tried to make it look more like a tree than a bush).
And then, perhaps crazed by the sun, I decided to go a little bit further. There are some holly bushes in front of the house that have been large, green (and very prickly) rectangular boxes since I moved into the house. Once in awhile I dutifully clip them back into a box shape when they start looking a little shaggy. But today I thought I’d make them look more tree-like and less shrub-like. For me, this was like a neophyte, amateurish attempt at bonsai or topiary. I could have just plunged into the huge holly bushes with my cutters and sheers and started whacking off all of the lower branches. I did that to a degree, but I also was careful about which branches I whacked. I wanted the effect to be a sort of “floating box”. This I accomplished and was rather proud of the final cut (so to speak), even if I do say so myself. I should have done that years ago. It made the front flower bed look MUCH better.
About midway through my first attempt at holly topiary, the dehydration and heatstroke hit me like a hot frying pan. By this time three hours had gone by. Three hours of sweating profusely, exercising vigorously, and taking the full heat of the sun. When I hit this wall and realized that my day of working in the yard was over, I still had about 30 minutes of clean-up to do. I had to bag all of the clippings and drag all of the cut branches around to the back of the house. I did this, but every step became like a miniature Iditarod. By the time I got everything lugged back to the alleyway, I was a spent force.
I took an cold shower, put on some cool, loose clothes, and collapsed in a heap on the couch. Unfortunately, I can’t stay sitting for too long or my muscles start to seize up. The stiffness creeps into my muscles and joints and getting them unfrozen, while only mildly uncomfortable, has the unfortunate side-effect of making me move like an old man of 90. Worse still, a man of 90 who never particularly took care of himself.
So, I think I will be spending the rest of the day not doing much of anything except trying to stay moving so that the machinery doesn’t freeze up.
June 26, 2010
Somewhere in Texas
Anyway, I rolled out of bed and let them do their thing outside while I made me some coffee. I sat in a quiet nook in the house and played on my laptop for awhile until the rest of the house was awake. I made breakfast (eggs, sausage, and rice) and then went outside to get busy with the yardwork. By this time it was 9:00.
Another common theme you’ll notice in these blogs of mine is the fact that I hate yardwork. I’m not one of those people that will let it go until I get nasty letters from the homeowner’s association, but I begrudge every moment I spend outside trying to tame the untamable elements. I’m not an outdoorsy person. I’d much prefer to live in a high-rise penthouse where lawn care consists of watering the potted fichus trees in the entryway. Unfortunately, I was born in the wrong economic bracket and so far have only managed to claw my way to upper middle class. We here in the UMC have houses in the suburbs with the requisite lawns. Most male suburbanites like to get into competitions with their neighbors for the best lawn on the block. I’m not one of those people. I do enough yardwork to get by, but odds of me getting to put the “Lawn of the Month” sign in my yard are pretty slim. In fact, the odds makers are not even making odds that it will happen.
So, the fact that I was outside by 9:00 a.m. and in the process of mowing the lawn was a small personal victory, much like a child who manages to take a few timid bites of broccoli. Now, when I do finally manage to encourage myself to get out and do yardwork, I am no slacker. I don’t do it slapdash or half-heartedly. I put my all into it. Being borderline OCD compels me to do a good job. But it is a hollow victory. I should feel good about it, but I don’t. A child is not proud of himself for eating broccoli, he’s just happy that it’s over.
As if hating to do yardwork was not bad enough, doing yardwork in Texas provides additional punishment in the form of oppressive heat and humidity. And this morning, Texas outdid itself. The temperature quickly climbed into the 90s and, thanks to the rains yesterday, the humidity was near 100%. One can’t work in those conditions for very long without risking dehydrations. I kept myself well hydrated with some iced tea I’d made the night before, but the best one can do when working in near-100 degree weather is to merely postpone the point of heatstroke.
So, I did the normal things (mowed, edged, swept), but then I also got a wild hare and decided to trim up all the bushes in the front yard. They’ve needed it for a few weeks but my hectic work schedule and the intermittent rains have made me postpone it longer than I intended. So I got out my shears and my branch cutters (all manual … nothing electric for me) and began trimming. I trimmed up the crepe myrtles. I shaped the boxwoods (these in particular are a misnomer in my yard in that they are spherically shaped). I trimmed the pomegranate bush (i.e. I tried to make it look more like a tree than a bush).
And then, perhaps crazed by the sun, I decided to go a little bit further. There are some holly bushes in front of the house that have been large, green (and very prickly) rectangular boxes since I moved into the house. Once in awhile I dutifully clip them back into a box shape when they start looking a little shaggy. But today I thought I’d make them look more tree-like and less shrub-like. For me, this was like a neophyte, amateurish attempt at bonsai or topiary. I could have just plunged into the huge holly bushes with my cutters and sheers and started whacking off all of the lower branches. I did that to a degree, but I also was careful about which branches I whacked. I wanted the effect to be a sort of “floating box”. This I accomplished and was rather proud of the final cut (so to speak), even if I do say so myself. I should have done that years ago. It made the front flower bed look MUCH better.
About midway through my first attempt at holly topiary, the dehydration and heatstroke hit me like a hot frying pan. By this time three hours had gone by. Three hours of sweating profusely, exercising vigorously, and taking the full heat of the sun. When I hit this wall and realized that my day of working in the yard was over, I still had about 30 minutes of clean-up to do. I had to bag all of the clippings and drag all of the cut branches around to the back of the house. I did this, but every step became like a miniature Iditarod. By the time I got everything lugged back to the alleyway, I was a spent force.
I took an cold shower, put on some cool, loose clothes, and collapsed in a heap on the couch. Unfortunately, I can’t stay sitting for too long or my muscles start to seize up. The stiffness creeps into my muscles and joints and getting them unfrozen, while only mildly uncomfortable, has the unfortunate side-effect of making me move like an old man of 90. Worse still, a man of 90 who never particularly took care of himself.
So, I think I will be spending the rest of the day not doing much of anything except trying to stay moving so that the machinery doesn’t freeze up.
June 26, 2010
Somewhere in Texas
Friday, June 25, 2010
Friday Thoughts
Today turned out to be surprisingly cool thanks to some unexpected clouds that rolled in. There was a bit of rain that stopped soon enough, but the clouds lingered and helped keep the temperature at around 87, which is a far sight cooler than the 100 degrees everyone was expecting.
This weekend will no doubt be like all of the other weekends in my adult life. I enter the weekend with all sorts of bold plans and schemes, but by Sunday evening I have done none of them and am instead sitting there in a daze wondering where the weekend went to. I expect this weekend will be no different, though I have an ambitious plan to tidy up the front flower bed.
You may not think that the phrase “tidy up the flower bed” sounds particularly ambitious or bold, but in my case it is. For one thing, I hate doing yard work. I am an indoors person. Secondly, over the years the front flower bed has become less of a flower bed and more of a “whatever will grow” bed. That is not as bad as it sounds. You no doubt have visions of a xeriscaped lawn that inspires letters from the homeowner’s association.
No, my flower bed is nothing like that. It has become more of a shrubbery bed and is crowded with holly, boxwood, crepe myrtle, Japanese ivy, and monkey grass. The monkey grass I particularly loathe because it is just plain unsightly. But I save my most visceral hatred for the Japanese ivy. This stuff should be banned. It is advertised as a ground cover, but it would be more accurately marketed as blight upon the land. It is a creeping vine that will soon cover everything in its path. It threads its way through anything with an opening. It creates an impenetrable mass of vines and roots that cannot be dug up with any ordinary implement. It takes heavy equipment and napalm. I don’t have either. And, unless you get rid of every last molecule of the blasted vine, it will sprout anew and pick up where it left off as if nothing had happened.
At any rate, I plan to try and tame it this weekend. If you never hear from me again, you’ll know what happened.
June 25, 2010
Somewhere in Texas
This weekend will no doubt be like all of the other weekends in my adult life. I enter the weekend with all sorts of bold plans and schemes, but by Sunday evening I have done none of them and am instead sitting there in a daze wondering where the weekend went to. I expect this weekend will be no different, though I have an ambitious plan to tidy up the front flower bed.
You may not think that the phrase “tidy up the flower bed” sounds particularly ambitious or bold, but in my case it is. For one thing, I hate doing yard work. I am an indoors person. Secondly, over the years the front flower bed has become less of a flower bed and more of a “whatever will grow” bed. That is not as bad as it sounds. You no doubt have visions of a xeriscaped lawn that inspires letters from the homeowner’s association.
No, my flower bed is nothing like that. It has become more of a shrubbery bed and is crowded with holly, boxwood, crepe myrtle, Japanese ivy, and monkey grass. The monkey grass I particularly loathe because it is just plain unsightly. But I save my most visceral hatred for the Japanese ivy. This stuff should be banned. It is advertised as a ground cover, but it would be more accurately marketed as blight upon the land. It is a creeping vine that will soon cover everything in its path. It threads its way through anything with an opening. It creates an impenetrable mass of vines and roots that cannot be dug up with any ordinary implement. It takes heavy equipment and napalm. I don’t have either. And, unless you get rid of every last molecule of the blasted vine, it will sprout anew and pick up where it left off as if nothing had happened.
At any rate, I plan to try and tame it this weekend. If you never hear from me again, you’ll know what happened.
June 25, 2010
Somewhere in Texas
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
A Blog is Borne
Hello Everyone!
This is not my first attempt at blogging. I had a rather lengthy and long-running blog on Yahoo Y!360 that was very popular among the tens, or perhaps dozens of readers that I had. Yahoo eventually decided to pull the plug on Y!360 (doing a complete 180 on their promises to keep it going) and so all of my precious blogs were cast into the ether, never to be seen again. In retrospect, that may be a good thing.
After that, I had another blog here on Blogspot and I enjoyed writing it and it again enjoyed the traffic of perhaps tens of readers. However, I found I just couldn’t seem to get the creative juices flowing. After much contemplation I finally reached the conclusion that the reason my muse had abandoned me was that I had linked my blog to my Facebook page and so my blog was being read by people that I actually know. This had a stultifying effect on my writing.
So, I decided to start another blog, but this time anonymously. That way I will not be inhibited by knowing it is being read by people I know. The downside to this plan, however, is that my readership will drop from tens down into perhaps single digits. Or less.
So, I will have to get out and drum up readers somehow. Not having the personality of a salesman, this will be a challenge. However, I think I can pull it off by popping onto other peoples’ blogs and leaving random comments and pretending that I know them somehow. In this way, people will begin to trickle into my blog and may even read a thing or two. Or they may just browse without buying anything and leave to go to the blog down the street which has more interesting fare (at least, according to that blog’s owner).
So, you may be curious to know who I am. I doubt that sincerely, but I’ll try to tell you as much as I can without actually revealing who I am. Otherwise my muse will abandon me again and, the economy being what it is, I can’t afford another muse right now.
I’m a man firmly ensconced in middle age. I am neither young nor old, falling into that ethereal place that men find themselves in between the ages of about 42 and 54 wherein they become invisible. This comes in handy for listening in on peoples’ conversations, but it is also useless in that we are at that age where we can’t seem to remember things we hear for more than about five minutes. We’re too young for senior discounts, but too old to be able to use our charms to finagle (or finesse) discounts on our own. Women have stopped noticing us. Other men have stopped being threatened by us. Youth don’t seem to even see us.
So, it is a “best of times, worst of times” situation. We simply exist. We observe, but we don’t comment, because who cares what a middle-aged man has to say? Just at the point in our lives when we are the most opinionated, everyone simultaneously stops wanting to hear our opinions. So we just keep it inside. It’s easier that way.
Well, you may not care what I have to say, but I’m going to say it anyway. I won’t be commenting on politics or philosophy, but I will be spouting off on lawn care and traffic and anything else that catches my attention on any given day. I’m too young to be a curmudgeon, but I’m wearing the paper trainee hat as a curmudgeon-in-training.
Anyway, I hope you enjoy my blogs. Comments are always welcome!
June 23, 2010
Somewhere in the Suburbs of Texas
This is not my first attempt at blogging. I had a rather lengthy and long-running blog on Yahoo Y!360 that was very popular among the tens, or perhaps dozens of readers that I had. Yahoo eventually decided to pull the plug on Y!360 (doing a complete 180 on their promises to keep it going) and so all of my precious blogs were cast into the ether, never to be seen again. In retrospect, that may be a good thing.
After that, I had another blog here on Blogspot and I enjoyed writing it and it again enjoyed the traffic of perhaps tens of readers. However, I found I just couldn’t seem to get the creative juices flowing. After much contemplation I finally reached the conclusion that the reason my muse had abandoned me was that I had linked my blog to my Facebook page and so my blog was being read by people that I actually know. This had a stultifying effect on my writing.
So, I decided to start another blog, but this time anonymously. That way I will not be inhibited by knowing it is being read by people I know. The downside to this plan, however, is that my readership will drop from tens down into perhaps single digits. Or less.
So, I will have to get out and drum up readers somehow. Not having the personality of a salesman, this will be a challenge. However, I think I can pull it off by popping onto other peoples’ blogs and leaving random comments and pretending that I know them somehow. In this way, people will begin to trickle into my blog and may even read a thing or two. Or they may just browse without buying anything and leave to go to the blog down the street which has more interesting fare (at least, according to that blog’s owner).
So, you may be curious to know who I am. I doubt that sincerely, but I’ll try to tell you as much as I can without actually revealing who I am. Otherwise my muse will abandon me again and, the economy being what it is, I can’t afford another muse right now.
I’m a man firmly ensconced in middle age. I am neither young nor old, falling into that ethereal place that men find themselves in between the ages of about 42 and 54 wherein they become invisible. This comes in handy for listening in on peoples’ conversations, but it is also useless in that we are at that age where we can’t seem to remember things we hear for more than about five minutes. We’re too young for senior discounts, but too old to be able to use our charms to finagle (or finesse) discounts on our own. Women have stopped noticing us. Other men have stopped being threatened by us. Youth don’t seem to even see us.
So, it is a “best of times, worst of times” situation. We simply exist. We observe, but we don’t comment, because who cares what a middle-aged man has to say? Just at the point in our lives when we are the most opinionated, everyone simultaneously stops wanting to hear our opinions. So we just keep it inside. It’s easier that way.
Well, you may not care what I have to say, but I’m going to say it anyway. I won’t be commenting on politics or philosophy, but I will be spouting off on lawn care and traffic and anything else that catches my attention on any given day. I’m too young to be a curmudgeon, but I’m wearing the paper trainee hat as a curmudgeon-in-training.
Anyway, I hope you enjoy my blogs. Comments are always welcome!
June 23, 2010
Somewhere in the Suburbs of Texas
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