Horse Manure Park

This time of year when the sun is never far off the horizon and noon shadows are long and frozen, I really start to get stir crazy. Cabin fever, I suppose.  Perhaps you can relate? Lately it is been ridiculously cold outside, so activities in the great outdoors are limited. Many of my indoor projects are completed, although the downstairs living room still needs to be painted (I am not doing that in the winter, sorry).  I can only read so much for so long. I am a notoriously slow reader, but I've already polished off several novels this winter - two were almost 900 pages long each - which is impressive by my standards.  So, as I do on occasion, but not nearly often enough, I turn to writing. But what to write about? Usually that's a difficult subject with which to negotiate, but today it is easy.  This time of year I think of my parents more than usual. They are always on my mind, but especially so in the cold, excruciatingly long winter months. In...

Please forgive me. It has been two months since my last blog. I have no idea where that time went. I suppose it went to that place where all the other time goes. I was kind of surprised to get an email from someone who asked me if I had given up blogging. It made me feel kind of good that someone checks in to read now and then. Believe me, I think about writing all the time but "thinking" and "doing" are two different things. Actually, I have written a couple of posts over the last 60 days, mostly on rainy days (which has been 55 of the last 60 days), but I decided the posts got too political. There's nothing worse than somebody rambling on about their political/moral beliefs. Especially when you run the risk of upsetting others and when you don't really know what you're talking about. I confess I usually don't know what I'm talking about. So here I am sitting on my unstained deck, typing away. The neighborhood is alive with the sound of...

I noticed that 334 people have visited my blog since I started counting 18 days ago. Good heavens, the pressure is on! I better get up-to-date here. My readers await me! Could I get more full of myself? Yeah, I probably could... Beth is at work, Ava is watching "Maggie and the Ferocious Beast," a cartoon about a little girl with a very active imagination (hmmm... fitting my daughter should be watching it), so this is a good time to catch up on my blog. A light snow is falling outside, much to Ava's excitement. She's already asked 14 times to go out and make a snowman. I've already explained 14 times that we don't have enough snow yet, but her neurons are not making that connection. Some things cannot be processed by a two year old mind. "Not enough snow" is one of them. "Daddy stands up to tinkle because he's a boy" is another one. But we won't get into that today. Today is Veterans Day, or if you are old school, Armistice...