August Sweeps - Day 561

My nephew convinced me to take him fishing this afternoon, claiming I could get some writing done while he chased fish and frogs and turtles around.  There's an interesting phenomenon when it comes to him, that he sees turtles and frogs all the time, but I never see them, to the point that I wonder if they're really there.  Does he imagine these exciting animals?  If so, I never want the boy to go on a hunting trip.

There's so much smoke in the air from wildfires that it feels like it's getting dark hours early.  I'm sitting here on the bank of the river (which, at this juncture, is so shallow I walked all the way across it without getting my shorts wet), listening to the sounds of birds and crickets and cows and people out for walks.  A lot of them have dogs, and there's something I find romantic about that: going on a walk through the woods with your loyal dog at your side.

A lot of them have girlfriends too, which I suppose is similar.

My nephew has wandered off, now far enough away that I can barely see him.  I get incredibly paranoid about losing my laptop when I take it anywhere, and that's just sound evidence that I need to back up all the stories and podcasts that are on it.  Over a year of daily writing is sitting on this hard drive, and when I left it in the bushes to investigate the "three turtles" my nephew claimed to have discovered, I was super afraid that someone would grab it and run off, hoping to find tons of pictures of young Olivia Newton John on it.*

The last time I brought my computer here, I was working on the Dead & Breakfast novel, and was writing the bit where Mrs. Bice was telling Meeshelle about her childhood, growing up in a big, impressive house that was haunted from the day they built it.  That had to have been almost a year ago that I wrote that, yet that story isn't even close to being published, and it does make me wonder just what the deuce I've done with my ten or eleven months since then.

Ah well, on with the countdown.

Sit-ups Today: 111
Sit-ups In August: 1530

My cousin and I watched two more episodes of that show "Evil" I was telling you about, and I think I explained that there's a trio of three characters that investigate instances of demonic possession and such for the Catholic church.  One is a would-be priest, built like the kind of truck Optimus Prime transforms into: he believes that everything is God- and Devil-related.  One is a criminal psychologist, with four shrieking daughters: she has has an open mind, is willing to consider various explanations for what they encounter.  And the third is a techno-guy, an expert at engineering and computer programming: his job is to say that everything has a rational explanation.  The problem is: I hate this dynamic.  I've hated it since the second episode, and as the shows have gone on, I get super frustrated that all the things they've encountered have both a supernatural AND a rational explanation.  

For example, there's a truly sociopathic nine year old who has been attempting to murder members of his family, and he could either have a demon inside him (the show certainly leans that way) OR it could be that there's some kind of mineral deposits in the water, that are causing him to mentally deviate from the norm.  The episode ends (pretty impressively: the parents end up murdering their child because they can't take it anymore) with neither side of the argument triumphant.

And I hate that.  Take a stand, guys.  It's a much more interesting show if there are devils and escaped souls from Hell and an organization of demonic disciples set against them.  If it's just mentally ill people and hallucinations caused by lead paint in TV dinner trays, well, that's just a particularly interesting segment on "60 Minutes."

Push-ups Today: 208
Push-ups In August: 1827

Once it got dark, even though my nephew wanted to keep doing what he was doing, we walked back to the parking lot and headed for home.

I got some things put up for sale, made myself some rice and beans, watched John Oliver, and then, feeling ambitious, decided to--

Okay, that's a lie.  The thing is, around 12:45 or 1:00, the internet went out.  It was off on the computer and it was off on television (ESPN was literally the only channel available--the television wouldn't change channels or call up any On Demand, Saved, or currently-airing content.  

And so, I decided to finish recording "The Last Friday In December," the final story I was going to produce in audio before putting out my Dead & Breakfast collection.    I had intended to go through to the end, but you know how these things are--it took more than an hour to get four thousand words recorded, and I started to get sloppy, so I shut down and went to bed around two-thirty.

Not a lot of words, though.

Words Today: 300 (98 + 60 + 142)
Words In August: 9109

*You know the type.