Arpil Sweeps - Day 426

I tried to train my nephew to answer the question, "What does Groot say?" today.  It was surprisingly difficult.

I asked him, between ten and thirty times, "What does Groot say?" and even after I showed him a YouTube video (turning the volume all the way to 10--I'm not sure why it was so quiet) that someone had edited all the times he says "I am Groot" together, the boy still had a hard time with the answer.  Eventually, he would say, "I am Groop!" which I considered a fair attempt, but by the time his older brother got home from school, the three year old had forgotten all of it again.

Sit-ups Today: 100
Sit-ups in April: 200

It was extraordinarily warm outside today.  Like, put on a long-sleeved shirt in the morning and by noon discover that you're a sweaty mess kind of weather.  I tried to get some editing done (finished my Patreon address for April, only a day late), but it was so hot and stuffy in my room that I will probably have to not only wash the sheets on my bed, but burn them as well.

I opened the window to let a little air in, but the children jumping on the trampoline outside started screaming, and absolutely would not stop.  It wasn't just occasion yells, but outright Fay Wray-level shrieking (I originally typed "Jamie Lee Curtis-level screaming," but didn't want to date myself).  It's enough to make you want to turn the hose on people.

Push-ups Today: 155
Push-ups in April: 205 (and wow, push-ups have already pushed ahead)

I sometimes tell people I grew up on a farm.  That's not technically true, though I did grow up around farmers.  We had cows and chickens (and one summer, pigs, but they turned out to smell a little too bad), and my grandparents next door had sheep and horses, but we just lived in the country with a very large backyard.  Even so, I still sometimes finding myself thinking like a farmer.  When the temperature reached nearly eighty degrees today, my first two thoughts were, "Oh, poor Big Anklevich is going to be sweating his frijoles off!" and the second was, "Oh, this is going to be a hard summer on the crops."

I find that weird.

Three things I saw today: 

1) I was at a red light, and there was a van in front of me with a big dent on the bumper--from a collision, no doubt--and two Band-Aids had been placed over the damage.  I tried to take a picture of it, but the light changed before I could zoom in.*

2) At the mall, a teenage(ish) boy went zooming by in his motorized wheelchair, going faster than I would have ever guessed a person could go (apparently, it had the salvaged engine from a Pontiac Firebird powering it).  While the boy seemed to be having a good time, I couldn't help but notice he had no arms or legs.  It made me wonder how he steered the thing or made it speed up or stop.  It also made me a little disgusted that I so often feel sorry for myself.

3) Quite the opposite, I drove past--on my way to the library--a Jeep Cherokee with the top down, and four teen or college-aged (maybe that's the same thing) girls in it.  They had the radio on** and were all four singing along to a pop song as loudly as they could, and when the light changed, I paused my audiobook and listened to them singing in the other lane, just as a reminder of what youth felt like.  It warmed my heart a little bit, even if it surely annoyed everybody else around them.

I dug it, maybe more than I should have.

Damn, I just can't write today.  I've been sitting here for over an hour, blogging, surfing, reading Wikipedia entries, Facebooking, farting, and have only managed 189 words.  I should be ashamed of myself, but I think I'm just going to take off, get some exercise, stuff my face, and think about writing while running.  It could work, you never know.

Words Today: 327
Words In April: 810

*That reminds me: in Las Vegas, it's illegal to have your cellphone in your hand while driving, whether you're talking on it or not.  My uncle got a ninety dollar ticket for, what he claimed to be, placing his phone in its hands-free cradle while driving.  Surely taking a picture, turning on YouTube videos, or using your phone to spank the monkey would also be ticket-worthy, no?

**Yes, I'm aware that they surely weren't listening to the radio, but a cellphone, or a bionic implant that Bluetooths music to a vehicle's stereo system, or whatever young people do now.  But it reminds me of being younger, and at a stoplight next to somebody who was listening to the radio with their windows down, and we'd shout, "What station is that?" and they'd tell us, and we'd sing along to the same song.  Yes, it was a long time ago, and yes, it was probably Big Band music playing live by Tommy Dorsey or Benny Goodman in New York.