I didn't accomplish all that much yesterday. I come to the cabin for a number of reasons--but chief among them is supposed to be to write. If I'm still doing this daily writing thing when winter comes, I'm going to have to take my laptop to the park and sit in the car, like I did when I first started in February.
Or the library, of course. I tend to be most productive in the library, because of the ticking clock (you used to be able to reserve a computer for two hours for free, and then have to pay to get more time--which I have done on a couple of super-dedicated occasions--but now, because of COVID, no one is allowed to used a computer for more than two hours. I don't really understand it, except that they spray and wipe down each keyboard, desk, and mouse as soon as you're finished, so that might have something to do with it), and there's lack of distraction up there on the second floor.*
Up here, there's so much I can do: read books, go for walks, sing a damn song in front of a camera, narrate audio, edit audio, write stories, write blog posts, write sketches, listen to music, do sit-ups, read stories for possible Dunesteef episodes, go out on the deck and look up at the stars (I so rarely do this, even though the stars are beautiful, and I never tire of meteor showers...maybe it's just not a solitary activity), watch videos I brought from the library, exercise with milk barrels (yeah, it's stupid, but sometimes I will lift them like they're weights, because there's no one around to make fun of me for doing it), eat, clean, play video games, and sleep.
Those last two are sort of the opposite of what I'm out here to do, but there's probably never been a single visit to the cabin where I haven't fallen asleep, either out on the deck while reading, or on the couch. There are two bedrooms here at the cabin with beds in them. One is down in the cellar, and it is always cold and has no windows, so it is darker than a Joe Abercrombie sex fantasy, and I have never, ever slept in there.**
The other is here on the main floor, with large windows facing south and west. But someone (my sister, I suspect) has nailed thick blankets to the two windows, so that this room too is almost totally black, except at the edges where warm sunlight tries pathetically to get in. I don't know why she's done this--the sun rises on the other side of the cabin, so there's never any chance of it waking somebody in there up the way it wakes me up on the couch. It has occurred to me a time or two that, if I went in that room, and took a little nap on the bed, my nap could last for hours instead of ten to forty minutes . . . and that unnerves me. I don't want to waste any more time on sleep than I have to.
Of course, I still do. I am a lazy person, and the body does need sleep. Today, I woke up to go to the bathroom and there was just a tiny bit of light in the horizon as the sun was approaching its rise over the mountains. I went to the bathroom, and for a second, I thought about booting up the computer and starting my day, as I've done a few times out here, writing or editing or blogging while the world sleeps. But instead, I went back to the couch, threw a blanket over my head, and was dead to the world.
At least I woke up before my alarm went off. That much hasn't changed, but I robbed myself of hours of productivity, and time I could work toward making myself proud of my accomplishments. Someday, maybe.
So, last night, I watched FIGHTING WITH MY FAMILY, and was stunned by how much I enjoyed it. It's about a wrestling family in Norwich, England, and their daughter's struggles to make it into the WWE here in America. My cousins were into wrestling when I was a kid, but I never was, and pretty much everything about it is what I most hate about masculinity in America, so I guess it took a film about a British girl to make me care about wrestling.
You bet, I cried.
Florence Pugh is so good in everything I've ever seen her (all two movies, kids) that I'm reminded of how I felt watching Jennifer Lawrence in WINTER'S BONE years ago, and how amazed I was by everything about her, so it was no surprise when she became a big star, and delivered great performance after great performance, until the first lazy one I saw . . . which gained her an Oscar.
When I get back to civilization, I'm going to urge my buddy Jeff to see this movie, because he'll love it despite the wrestling angle, and I know what he's going to say: I've already seen it, and you're right.
Today, I put in SAN ANDREAS (two movies in a row with the Rock in them, though that was not planned), a DVD I've had from the library for more than a month now (and am paying late fees on, despite not ever watching it), and the opening scene was so stupid that I turned it off at the two minute and forty-three second mark. Weird.***
If Big and I were still podcasting together, I'd have to sit him down to complain about it--this stretched-tanktop blonde teen is driving down a sheer cliff two-lane road and as a truck is coming toward her, turns and reaches into her back seat for a water bottle, then faces the road again as the truck drives past. Then she gets a text on her phone just as a black sports car is coming toward her and she reaches down to read the text, then faces the road again as the car drives past. Then an earthquake pushes her off the cliff and . . .
I dunno. As a failed screenwriter myself, I really do try my best when I write. I have so many faults it ain't even funny ("We all have our little faults . . . mine's in California"), but I hope I've never written something like that. I even kind of understand what they were going for there, but your audience should never murmur, "Oh, fuck you" that early on. When have I ever turned a movie off within the first two minutes? Even BED OF ROSES back in 1995 I turned off at the fifteen minute mark (though I would've probably said, "Oh, eff you" in those days).
Sit-ups Today: 300
Sit-ups In September: 2562
Push-ups Today: 40 (I've got to figure out a way to do this more, or I'll never be able to compete with my crazy uncle and his crazy 400 push-ups in a row)
Push-ups In September: 592
I've spent the last hour editing audio, and if there was ever a thankless job . . . well, it's probably something like garbage collector. My brother is a linesman for the electric company, and they had a windstorm up north last week, so he went up there to try to get the power back on with a couple dozen other power company employees. He was telling me how miserable the job was (getting up at sunrise and working until it got dark, day after day) . . . except the people who he helped were so grateful to have electricity again that I got the impression he felt it was all worth it. That's nice.
Plus, my brother owns his own home, and unless he dies while working on powerlines (which happened to a member of his team just four or five years back), he'll be able to retire while he's still young enough to enjoy it. And that's good--he works hard and he deserves it. Me, well, I don't work hard, and I will only ever be able to retire if I inherit money or I find a winning lottery ticket. Quite a catch, I know. No wonder I'm peeling the girls off me like I'm in a K-pop band.
The wind keeps blowing outside, then stopping, everything so pretty and still (even though there's a yellowness to the air, an effect of all the recent forest fires, I suppose). The deer are back outside my window (that reminds me, I recorded some video a time or two back, and never uploaded it. I need to get on that sometime).
I drove home at the usual time, right as the sun was going down (I say "the usual time," but it gets earlier every week. By the time we close up for the winter, it'll be time to go at six).
As the evening progressed, I started not to feel well, and I thought, "Okay, guess that's it, it's my turn for COVID." But around eleven, when I asked myself if I felt up to going on my nightly run, I thought I was okay to do so, but the second I felt sicker, I'd turn around and go home. As always, the first half mile was the worst, and I knew I wasn't going to make it . . . until I passed the landmark at .5 miles, and then felt a little bit better. As I continued, my lungs seemed to go from tight to freely open, and I did just fine all the way back home, even pushing myself to run as hard as I could there at the end.
We'll see if I'm more or less sick tomorrow, but it's nice to be able to simply will the Coronavirus away.
Words Today: 1143
Words In September: 18,517
*That reminds me, I used to see a homeless man up there, in the same seat, virtually every time I'd go to the library. I complained about his hacking cough previously. Sometimes my cousin and I would see him at the only twenty-four hour Del Taco in the whole county, always sitting in the same seat there, at one, two, or three in the morning. But they curtailed the hours on that Del Taco during the pandemic, and closed the library altogether (eventually closing down the restaurant permanently, which sort of breaks my heart [the high school used to be across from it, and then they built a new high school across town, and one by one, those businesses by the high school went out of business]). . . and I never saw the guy again.
It's possible he moved on to another town. But it's also possible that he got sick, and ended up a number on one of those daily reports we're always seeing. Hmm.
**I had a story for the Dunesteef to narrate yesterday, and I had planned on going down there to record, where it would be absolutely silent . . . but I just couldn't stand to be in there, even if the sound quality would've been better.
***But I hear you saying, "Three minutes in isn't the opening scene, is it, Rish?" And that reminds me of a truly excellent joke I heard about four or five years ago, where a guy is rushing to a movie theater, but he's gotten there late. He asks the girl behind the counter, "Have I missed anything?" and she says, "Well, you've missed the commercials and the trailers and the theater chain reel and the no cellphones clip, so now the production company logos are playing, so you have about three minutes before the film starts."
Genius gag that, if I do say so myself.
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