(Darn, I called this Day 210, when it was actually Day 211 [or later]. I discovered it more than a year later. Sorry)
Today's the day Big Anklevich reaches his goal for the year. Yes, he's a turd, yes, he loves the NFL, yes, he once shot a man in Reno just to watch him die. But on his last birthday, he set a goal of writing 300,000 words before October came around again . . . and he did it.
Of course, as I write this, he's still a few hundred words shy of his goal, but I've no doubt he will reach it, as he texted me in the morning and said he had already started writing, and was planning on eating a bag of chips, a stick of butter, and over-full ashtray, and an entire tub of chocolate pudding as a reward for when he finished.
And good for him. We've all set goals and failed to meet them, giving up after a couple of months, a couple of weeks, or a couple of days. But to do something difficult, when you'd rather do something--ANYTHING--else, because you said you would . . . well, that's integrity.
Now, while I have written more this year than I ever have before, and written more days in a row than ever before (almost twice the record, I would guess, though I sure as hell ain't gonna look it up), I don't have that sense of accomplishment that Big surely will in a few minutes (just waiting for his text). You see, I didn't start this daily writing thing because of Big, and while his enthusiasm certainly kept me motivated on days when I gave no craps, my daily exercise, writing, and blogging routine has been different. Fear, love, regret, sadness, desperation, and self-loathing have been my fuel. But whatever gets you there, right?
Sit-ups Today: 150
Sit-ups In August: 5410
I also did one hundred of something called leg-lifts, and they were difficult. I ought to do them again.
Today turned out to be one of my favorite days of the year. Despite very little writing or exercise on my part, unless you call mud-crawling exercise.
For weeks, my nephews have been bugging me (and their parents, and my uncle, and my niece) to take them to a pond about an hour from here, not far from where I grew up, where there were minnows, crawdads, and frogs to be caught. Normally, I'd be all over a frog hunt, but the two boys have so many animals they've obtained over the past few months that their mother is constantly complaining about the smell and threatening to dump everything in the trash. If I told you my nephew has eight fish tanks in his room, would that surprise you?
But there was a family reunion at my brother-in-law's childhood home going on, which is only fifteen or so minutes from the lake, that he told them he'd take them to the lake before going to his parents' place. And not wanting to be left alone, where I might be forced to write or record, I said I wanted to go too. My plan was to drive down with my (12 year old) nephew, look for frogs, and when it was time to go to his grandparents' place, I'd head for home.
Well, that didn't end up happening. The lake was (literally) the closest place you could fish to where I lived growing up, and we went there all the time. But once I got old enough to not go with them, I never went back. So, scarily, it's been more than thirty years since I went there.
As we pulled up, my nine year old nephew managed to catch a frog with his bare hands. I don't know how he did this, because I spent hours trying and never could achieve the same thing. There were hundreds of large (and small) green frogs. Except for only one frog being visible, this is what the edge of the lake looked like:
For a little while, I made the attempt to just enjoy the lake--my sister had brought two inflatable rafts--but my nephews' frog-hunting mania was contagious, and I started trying to catch them myself. And it was incredibly difficult (I'd say impossible, but both of the kids managed to catch frogs).
In the very first screenplay I ever wrote, I had a character talking about something from his childhood, and had in the screen directions that, for a couple of lines, the character has been replaced by a ten year old boy. It was something I had never seen before in a film, and I just liked the imagine (in my head) of it. Now, I realize that I'm a grown-up, and am expected to act like one, but after trying (fruitlessly) to catch frogs in a standing position, or a less dignified kneeling position . . . I eventually abandoned all decorum and laid down on my stomach in the water and crawled with my face at frog level, trying to sneak up on them that way.
I realized while I was doing it that it probably looked absurd, and absolutely something no self-respecting adult would ever do, but a) the only people within a mile of us were a group of teenagers on the far bank, chattering and grab-assing amongst themselves, and b) I've never been particularly high on self-respect. And it was fun. Eventually, my two nephews joined me, and we tried over and over again to catch the frogs, and though they had success, I did not.*
I've talked before of my love for frogs. I can't explain why I dig them so much, but I always have, and remember being a little kid on a fishing trip with my parents and discovering frogs in the bushes, and going nuts trying to catch them. Some things never change.
Eventually, it was time for my sister's kids to change into dry clothes and head to their grandparents' place. She made the kids let all but two of the frogs go, while I was changing my own clothes behind the truck. I still hadn't decided to go with them, but the twelve year old was having such a good time, he convinced me to stay so he could keep "fishing." We had about a half hour left before we had to go, and we made the best of it, though we kept losing the frogs and would chase them around the grass and reeds before they reached the water and were out of our reach.
Normally, I would loathe such an unflattering photo of myself, but the frog jumped just as I took it, and I like how odd that looks.
Finally, it was time to go, and we had managed two more, for a total of four. I didn't realize that my nephew would get in trouble for bringing twice the amount of frogs home that his mother had allowed (she had initially said he had to let them all go and he had talked her down to keeping two). That bit's my fault, but I was worried that if one or two died, there would be none left (except for the bullfrog I used to keep in my turtle tank, which I raised from a tadpole, which now lives in one of the boy's aquariums), because one of the frogs (obviously not the one in the above photo) seemed sluggish and near death.
My nephew told me that was a defense mechanism they do--pretend to be dead so predators will leave them alone, then they leap to life again a moment later.**
We loaded ourselves into my dad's pickup truck and headed northwest, singing The Weeknd, Dua Lipa, and Post Malone, just like we did on our road trip in March.
I have been to my brother-in-law's childhood home several times over the years. His parents had a metric ton of kids, and there are always a bunch of grandchildren and folks I don't know the names of running around when I go there.
They live in a tiny town (pop. 256) that's so rural, it made my town look like Gotham City. This is a photo from their backyard:
It is a big farm with horses, cows, pigs, chickens, rabbits, cats, Mccaws, pheasants, geese, dogs, and until recently, two emus. It's several hundred acres in size, and the nearest neighbor is maybe half a mile away. Quite an amazing place to bring your kids.
Here's a selfie that shows what's in front of their house:
Anyway, there were about fifty people there, just for a gathering, and the old man told me twice he couldn't remember my name but that I was always welcome. He's a super decent human being, and one of his sons hitched up a trailer to their tractor and took everybody on a hayride.
There were more than twenty kids, and they can be loud. I declined to go, choosing instead to sit and try to get some writing done (I'd brought my laptop), and then playing tetherball with my nephew as the sun went down.
The sunset was really, really beautiful. I had my nephew take a picture, and he got a bunch of me walking down one of those country roads that looks like it goes on forever:
Then, as the sun went down, we each took a picture of each other standing there, and wow, I don't know that a professional photographer could have taken a better one. He even got a bird flying past in there.
Oh, and speaking of pretty, while they were all gathered, one of the cousins pulled up in her car. She was young (in her twenties) and enormously attractive, and even though she didn't know me at all, she said hello and hung out with all the gathered folks there. You know, I guess it bears mentioning: everybody there was nice and friendly, and several people greeted me or asked me who I was. I guess that comes with the territory of living in or growing up in a small town.
As it was getting dark, a bunch of the kids wanted to go on the hayride again, and the three year old--who didn't have any shoes on--wanted me to carry him over as it was getting ready to leave. I planned on just passing him on to one of the family members, but he wanted me to go with him, so I hopped up there and went on the trip with them. It was about eighty degrees with a breeze, and that's practically perfect in every way, just like Mary Poppins, y'all.
I had to really hold on to my nephew because he wanted to run around and there was no railing or handholds or anything on that ride, and not only did it get dark quickly, but the tractor had no lights on (only brakelights), and the idea of somebody falling off and getting run over was all too possible.*** I was sitting next to the dad of the really attractive twenty-something girl, and he chatted with me quite a bit, which was again, pretty nice. I'd have liked to have talked to her, though.
But I gotta wonder how that might have gone. Turns out I'm only ten years younger than her dad, which I suppose is going to be more and more common the more years I live.
The nearly-full moon came out, and one brave star among the clouds, and it was the only light there was out there in the desert, where the nearest city was more than an hour away, and even the nearest school was one town over. I have to think, in retrospect, that the driver purposely left the lights off the tractor (though it's possible it didn't have lights, I dunno) so we could watch the moon rise and just enjoy our surroundings. It was enormously pleasant, and, as dorky as it sounds, holding on to my nephew and sitting fairly close to a pretty girl made me feel like I was alive.
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| (I'm aware this is not a good photo, but it was the only one I took) |
We got back to the farm after about twenty or so minutes, and the family members all started to head home. To my surprise, the pretty girl said goodbye to me, like she knew who I was, and I scrabbled for something clever to say. "Have a nice drive," was about all I could manage.
The twelve year old got this idea that he would be able to find toads out in the pasture, so he and a bunch of the other kids got flashlights and went looking. Indeed, he found one fat little guy and scooped him up to take home to add to his menagerie. My sister said there was no place for a toad, and told him to let it go, but he didn't (instead, putting it in the truck, under the seat in a Big Gulp cup). I told him that he could always let it go in the garden out back and it could eat bugs and be fine (but he tossed it into one of his fishtanks, where he's got a tree frog already living he caught on a fishing trip a month ago).
Almost everybody had gone home, and I loaded up what I could, and was surprised when the nine year old said he wanted to go home with me too. That was nice, and we had a good time singing songs and stopping for a drink on the way home.
After that, the boys went to sleep and I had to do my exercise and writing, and was pretty tired myself, but like I said, I considered it a really good day.
As far as the boring stuff goes, I wrote a teeny bit more on my Natalie model story, and discovered that in five paragraphs of writing, I used the word "otherwise" three times.
1. She'd traded shifts with Mason, otherwise she'd be at work right now.
2. She wished she were not alone in the otherwise-comfortable bed.
3. Otherwise, why didn't she cut up the card before she'd paid it off?
I don't know why stuff like that bothers me so much (I also can't abide native English speakers that confuse "to" and "too" [or worse, "two," but nobody does that, do they?], just one of my quirks), but I spent four minutes of writing time trying to find substitute words for "otherwise." The weird thing is, I did a search throughout the whole document, and in 8700 words, I hadn't used "otherwise" anywhere else but those three paragraphs.
Words Today: 1043 (I had about 500, and I kept making myself add to it until I could finally go to sleep--3:07am)
Words In August: 28,978
*I did catch a pretty red crayfish, though, and let it go after a minute, forgetting that there was room for one in one of my nephews' many fish tanks downstairs.
**There has to be truth to that because the "dying" frog is totally fine a day later, and indistinguishable from the other three we brought home.
***I am often reminded of when I was a kid and a bunch of members of the community went on a wagon to do Christmas caroling, and the mother of my friend Steven fell off and got run over. It was traumatic for all involved.
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