Short Lazy Daze

     

The worst advice I have heard of as late to break writer's block

"Write about what your life might have been like if you had taken the path that it turned out you were too afraid to do."

Aaaaauuuuuuuugggghhhhhh

I'm better now.  Just watched my go to feel good movie.  2000's Replacements with Gene Hackman and Keneau Reeves.   That's about how exciting things get around here these days.  Lots of television and relaxing.   Still has the feeling of summer only it gets dark around 5:30.  With some regret I have slowly come to realize that our mom and pop business that sustained us the last couple of years is really fading into history. Of course the trade off is cheap gas which kinda softens the blow. I'm also down near the beach so note the "some regret".  It's the middle of November and temperatures are just now settling into the low eighties and high seventies the way I like them.  The downside are the skeeters and the damn ants. But I really can't remember the last time I wore long pants.  Once in the last two weeks I have actually put on shoes and socks in lieu of flip flops.  I'd really given up fishing the last year or so mostly due to lack of time (and interest) but now I think it is time to take it up again.

I was driving past the bay the other night after walking the beach which tends to have an incredible calming effect on my mind.  .  The lights reflecting off calm water.  Window down and salty sea breeze.  And I think why did it take so long?

Some other things banging around in my brain.

The French tragedy will likely rewrite the refugee crises.  As probably it should.   The concept that a significant portion of a country can leave and be absorbed by the rest of the world is shaky at best.  When there is not only the possibility, but the likelihood that dangerous radicals will be among them.

I'm reading books by Thomas Picketty and Joseph Stiglitz.  One a Nobel Prize winning Economist and the other a likely will be.  Gives a much more informed base when listening to the Presidential debates.  

   Seems like the inequality argument is resounding with the right as well as the left.   Though as one article put it  "The presidency ought not be an entry level political job".  Politicians work for the top tenth of one percent.  Some on the left try to hide it but the right is brazenly open about it as far as I can tell.  But one thing I'm sure of:  When all them social issue questions get a little uncomfortable to answer there's only one solution, go to war.  Drowns out those pesky things like raising the minimum wage, astronomical price hikes for health care and big govt giveaways.  Then everybody can get back to poor shaming and praising the poor guys coming back all f'd from a war.

I hear on and on and on it's a US problem.  But the thing that just won't go away in my mind is the 20000 strong Iraqi force that fled from just 800 crazy insurgents and left all that expensive US stuff. ( A decision the one's who were caught regretted I'm sure and likely in the back of the minds of the Kurdistan fighters).  A Saudi army of nearly 200000 and lord knows the size of the armies of the rest of the countries.

There has been another horrible tragedy although this time in another country.  The repercussions of which will probably set in motion another Three Trillion dollar war.  But when there is a tragedy here, of which there have been many,  initial reactions are meh! with the occasional "mental health" comment.  Then it all just dies away.

But I am in favor of everybody screaming to go to war have that opportunity.  That's right, young and old give em a gun and a plane ticket and let them go.  I just don't want my tax dollars invested or relatives to go.


       I do love being retired.  Though with each passing day I realize the difficulties of getting older. Walks that used to be around five miles get to be two to three and slower.  At sixty one I  Notice that I'm a bit more bald, maybe a tad fatter and this last thing, Arthritis in my hands.    I got this condition in my right hand about seven years ago called "Trigger Finger" in my middle finger. It's a bit of a handicap though not so much now that my road rage has softened and I am not in as  immediate need of my go to hand signal.  See I had saved a pile of money to get a couple of egress windows dug out in my basement.  I'd calculated it to the dime based on my phone calls to local contractors.  Unfortunately their phone estimates and their onsite estimates were not even close and the price during the construction boom had doubled seein's how the pickin's were so good.  I dug my feet in and decided to give er a go by myself.  So I got the holes dug and had some guys cut out some concrete windows.  Afterwards, with my careful planning I decided I needed to double the size of said windows.  To be completed with a skill saw, concrete chisel and iron bar.  Eventually all that banging with the bar damaged the joints in my hand and my middle finger locks up in the down position.  Sometimes so tight I have to soak it in hot water a period to loosen.  Well now for some reason completely different from the last time, my left hand now does this as well.  Cortisone shots help but in the US Doc's will only give two and then schedule you for surgery or as I like to call it, indentured servitude.  Now in Costa Rica they have no such limit and the Orthopedist I conversed with said I could pretty much have as much cortisone as I could pay for.  Surgery he quoted me at about fifteen hundred bucks.

So while I sit back and ruminate what the solution eventually will be, there have been a few rare occasions when the middle fingers of both hands have locked back at the same time.  Should anybody ever notice or look at me funny or ask stupid questions, well I'm just gonna say "I'm Spider Man" and walk the opposite direction with my hands pointing all different directions over my head like I'm shooting webs.  No wait, this Texas.  I'll probably get shot.  (sigh)

The house in Twin Falls has finally rented for a while easing that burden. I guess I am going to spend some time on projects.  I have started a fourth short story.  Are they crap?  I'm not sure.  But one thing I am sure of is as most of the greats say.  Finish it.  Leave it alone and then go back to it weeks or even months later.  So I would have to say at least one has been vastly improved as demonstrated by my most recent Kindle Select's rejection letter.

Yeah, I probably consider myself a writer like Ed Wood thought himself a film maker. But there is one BIG difference.......


                      I'm Spiderman


Bwahahahahahahhahahhahahhaha