I’m not saying doing labor is bad. It’s just that most of the kids around here don’t seem to have to do much of it. Neighborhood mothers have adopted Mrs. Howler Monkey’s war-cry of, “Why should the children suffer?” therefore giving excuse to why on this street, empty trash cans and recycle bins lie in gutters for days, lawns go un-mowed for weeks, and bicycles and skateboards remain forgotten wherever they were last dropped for months on end. Apparently, the poor economy has created the elimination of all chores usually reserved and performed by children of all ages. “Let them have fun,” rounds up the war-cries as if all of their kids had previously been enslaved in labor camps.

I remember very well how little school had prepared me for my employment years. In today’s world, having children from the ages of 5 through 18 attend school for a five hours a day or less, for only three-to-four days a week regardless of economic cutting back measures, and continuing the outdated allowance for months-long summer vacations aren’t doing them any favors.

People with kids will scream their disagreements here. Great, fine, trust me when I say I’ve heard it all. I don’t care. This is a new world and I’ve got little else to do but pay attention to how things are working, or aren’t working. Most of the parents in our neighborhood haven’t been paying attention. They gave up parenting the minute they gave birth. They have allowed culture to raise their kids, and in fact, many insist that’s the way it should be.

The current education system has been broken for a very long time. All of you who end up having your 36-year old kids still living at home with no prospects of a permanent job, let alone a career, or even establishing their own lives elsewhere because that would interrupt their social network time, can argue the point with me then. But until then, I just a little tired of hearing our street’s war-cry for the children who are doing anything but suffering around here.

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Yesterday’s exercise: Day 28 of P90X 90-Day workout routine, end of the program’s ‘Recovery Week.’ Onward to Phase 2.
Today’s weigh-in: 145.4.

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I had the most amazing day yesterday. I mention it because of the rarity of that happening around here. It was full of nature and being close to so many creatures at once in our own back yard, was magical. It’s been a long time since that’s happened.

Late in the afternoon, a bird flew into one of our living room windows. This happens occasionally, despite the anti-bird stickers covering the glass, more often in late summer than other times of the year. I attribute this to birds feasting on late, over-ripe and fermenting berries and flying a little drunk. There are lots of berry bushes down in the green space, inaccessible to humans; an endless, late summer banquet for birds and animals without worry of harm from people.

Inside, I jumped up, grabbed my garden gloves, and a small paper bag from a garage cabinet and went out back to see if I could be of any help. Luck’s been on the birds’ side lately and we haven’t lost anyone in a while.

A large female house finch rocked precariously back and forth, perched on the edge of the gutter over our fireplace. A little fluff of inner white feathers blew across her left wing in the slight breeze with every back and forth motion she made. I approached slowly, quietly and when within ten feet, I began talking to her in a soft voice so she’d get used to me. Closer, closer, finally I was standing almost beneath her; she being less than two feet over my head. I kept talking and remained very, very still. If she simply needed to recover, this could take a while. It didn’t look like I’d need to touch her at all.

She tilted her head to one side, eyed me, and then closed them and rocked side to side. After a few minutes, she stopped rocking and watched me. I didn’t move but kept talking. I figured if she hadn’t dropped over by now, she’d be okay with just a headache to show for the smack.

Movement by my feet caught my eye as the youngest squirrel wandered around. He was probably looking for more whole walnuts but I know he’d greedily take the whole bag if I caved in to him. He’d already gotten a dozen for the day but that didn’t stop him from looking up at me as if he were begging. I honestly think he’d take one from my fingers if I were silly enough to try.

A rock dove flew onto the top of the fence about eight feet away and watched me watching it. They are notoriously cautious around people and I tend to frighten them off more than I’d like when I’m working out back. We’ve tried our best to keep bringing the doves back to our yard and this year we’ve had more than in recent years – four just the other day. Five years after moving in here, we had up to sixteen at once. Those days are long over around here, I’m afraid.

The house finch stayed perched on the edge of the gutter, resting. She didn’t seem to mind me at all. The squirrel hopped on top of a nearby mossy boulder, stretched his belly over the cool, shaded surface, and listened to me yammer on, softly, to the recovering finch. The dove took flight, soaring merely a foot away from me; I felt a breeze from its wings, and landed near the fountain to drink before flying off. The squirrel kept watching, blinking up at me, and at last, the finch hopped across the gutter, took a long look over the side, and took off around the house and up into one of the tall birch trees. Twenty minutes spent watching nature and ensuring one little bird had a safe environment and quiet time to recover and success!

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Yesterday’s exercise: Day 26 of P90X 90-Day workout routine, end of the program’s ‘Recovery Week.’
Today’s weigh-in: 145.2.

Click image to see entire photo in separate window.

The squirrels nearly have me convinced we’re going to have a cold, cold winter. Naturally, they are in cahoots with the Canada geese who have been returning very early to the green space behind our development en masse since late July. The geese are in partnership with our daylilies that bloomed early and fast and died down even faster, and our dwarf crepe myrtles that don’t usually put on a final upward burst of autumn-y colored growth until mid September, but did so the first week the geese began returning.

Usually, around this time of year, WS and I go ‘hunting’ for fall but not this year. Fall seems to be coming to us and it’s just as well. Finances are squeezed to the max. In years past we used to buy spiced pumpkin candles, baked apple potpourri and room spray. I’d shop for autumn silk flowers (the old lady shopper in me), whole nuts in the shell, and we’d buy dozens of squash in every variety and color we could find. I’d salivate at the thought of finding the first fresh pumpkins on sale because nothing, nothing says our favorite time of year has arrived like decorating inside and out with assorted sizes and colors of pumpkins. Baking and eating them ain’t too bad either. Ah, memories of standing at the back glass door, a bowl of warm, baked pumpkin custard in hand, watching through the drizzle the latest batch of Canada geese flying overhead.

Darn it. I think I made my eyes all sweaty.

The littlest squirrel has been pulling wads of coco mat from our window boxes and taking off with it to parts unknown. When he isn’t doing that, he’s chewing on long-dried, rock-hard quince fruit that has fallen from the tree nearest our living room window. Chewing on those, that is, when he isn’t chewing, wearing down his teeth actually, on a metal portion of our lawn furniture. Stop it! Here, here’s some ancient walnuts in the shell I used to use for decorating upstairs. Chew on these for a while and quit wrecking our stuff. But thanks for the autumn hints!

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Yesterday’s exercise: Day 21 of P90X 90-Day workout routine.
Today’s weigh-in: 144.6.

I keep my eyes and ears open but every once in a while, someone comes right out and tells me something even I would have never speculated on. This particular piece of news came to me amid the school supply aisles of that roll-back price leader and I’ll admit I kind of walked around in a bit of a daze for a while.

Apparently, some people on our street think, no, believe is the word that was used, the only reason why I get to stay home instead of having to work outside the home like all the other women living around here is because I’m a well-paid writer.

If I hadn’t nearly choked a little on my own spittle, I might have laughed. Oh, I wish!

A few people know I was interested in writing years back. No one has asked me in just as many years if I were still doing it. Using my evil superpower of memory, I distinctly remember telling no one I had made any money off writing because that would have been an outright lie and I try hard not to be too big on those.

If anyone living on my street had asked as of last week if I had made any money from writing, I’d still say no because that’s the truth. Yes, I ‘sold’ a story to a southern hemisphere magazine but I won’t be paid for it until this fall and even then, twenty bucks (southern hemisphere equivalent) will equate to about four bucks U.S. dollars.

Four bucks is four righteous bucks but hardly enough to say I don’t have to work outside the home because “I’m a well-paid writer.”

This neighbor and shopper of the roll-back price leader went on to say they had lost their job and all prospects of finding another and decided that because I was obviously “making it” (Obviously???) they figured writing couldn’t be all that hard and they were doing it too. Writing, that is, not selling. I asked specifically, right after I assured this neighbor that I hadn’t made a penny yet from my writing.

To which this neighbor and savvy roll-back price leader shopper visibly blanched. Outside of writer’s terminology used to describe sudden skin color, blanched means color drained from their face. They may also have taken a small step backward as if tapped off balance.

I had a strong sense of déjà vu and recalled Drill Sergeant Dave’s wife stating somewhat the same thing last year only to hear of her disgruntled crash and burn a whole month later.

As if writing can be learned, honed and accomplished in 30 days. (Shut up all you King, Scalzi and Gaiman fans. Neither am I going to acknowledge Meyer fans either.) Knowing Drill Sergeant Dave’s wife, as kind and sweet of a soul that she is, and knowing this neighbor from whom I was hearing this shocking piece of street rumor from, I can say that neither are the Susan Boyle of the writing world.

I wanted to tell my neighbor while standing in the roll-back price leader’s local establishment not to commit the same mistake Drill Sergeant Dave’s wife had by slapping together a memoir only they feel will bring the world to it’s knees in thanks, send it off, unsolicited no less, to the biggest book publisher on the planet and then quit and badmouth said publisher when a month goes by without word back.

It just doesn’t work that way. I know, that sounds awful but I don’t make up these rules. It just doesn’t work that way.

But I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want to sound discouraging. Too many people have seemingly gone out of their way to discourage me, fairly recently in fact. But the way I see it, hey, if this bad economy ferrets out some damned fine fiction authors, more power to them.

I told the neighbor we ought to get together and share what we know about the writing world. I asked hopefully, if they were writing fiction. They said no and made a wry face before grinning from ear-to-ear. “I’ve led a fascinating life. I’m writing a memoir!”

*sigh.

What if we were told we’re not even to the halfway point yet? Better or worse?

You know those sayings, “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket” and “Don’t count your chickens before they’ve hatched?” There’s a reason those sayings exist and it isn’t a stupid reason either. Just sayin’.

Dorky as all get out. The crossed arms thing, not the workout. The workouts rock, rock hard with an extra helping of rocking rockiness on the side. I’m about two weeks in and yeah, I notice a difference.

That doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll notice a difference in me. Frankly, I’ve got a lot of fat on me, fat that covers muscle, not bulging muscle, not yet, just your standard “I’ve got muscle because that’s what humans are made of” kind. Add over that an extra helping of “My mama was the Brown Fat Queen as seen by the massive hump that lived on the back of her obese neck and upper shoulders.” I’ve come to realize, workouts or not, I’ll be fighting dreaded back fat every living day of my life because of inherited genes.

But I have lost weight in some right places. It’s true, I can wear every pair of shorts I’ve bought since 2003. I knew I was hoarding a drawer full of those things for a reason. *fist pump* No, I can’t fit into the last pair of Levis’ 501 34×36 Man-Pants I saved. My waist is still too thick, my barrel-chest still um, barrel-shaped. My body is shifting weight. A little bit added here, a little bit subtracted there. I feel good, I’m still at or slightly below Race Weight (147 lbs.) give or take a few ounces depending on the day, but I still have a spare tire, most noticeable whenever I sit. I can’t button the top button of those 501 Man-Pants without bulging badly over the top, sides, and back (said as if I’d ever wear those again. As if!)

Official Blogeois Whining icon.

But not me. I’ve always been one of the invisibles and I’ve been away too long. I wasn’t there when the big bonding moment had taken place, whenever, wherever, or why ever that happened. Perhaps I had already shared too much of my live before I left. Mental illness is a social disease it would seem, even when it’s not you. Perhaps the group thought I’d never be back. I know I didn’t think I would and there are still more days than not that I don’t think I ever will be able to attend again.

I’m happy for the group. It was a little uncomfortable at times before. But perhaps more importantly than the cold shoulders I feel directed at me now, I’ve changed. I feel like a phony, a fake, maybe a little bit of “I’m not striving for the same goal as you” feeling that’s leaving me feeling flat, lifeless, and unmotivated after meeting with the group. And I leave thinking I never want to go back because, what’s the point?

People change. Groups change. The world changes. I wish it wasn’t so in this case, but there it is nonetheless.

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Yesterday’s exercise: Day 11 of P90X 90-Day workout routine.
Today’s weigh-in: 146.2.