Let’s raise the bar some.

The past few entries here read like a soap opera. All is well, the semi-annual check up with the medics this week shows I am disgustingly healthy so we’ll forget the tick attack and other pleas for sympathy, I guess, and talk about the book.

The title will be Powers Trace III, a foregone conclusion,  but I haven’t decided on the subtitle. As with the last book, I’ll probably wait to see what the major theme is before picking something to hint at the story line. Decisions, decisions. The title is a big deal. Kinda like naming your first born. Cute doesn’t impress people forty years down the road, it has to be right forever.

The writing is slow now. It seems to flow with the weather. The heat is one reason but that is to be expected here in the South. We had a very unusual week as July moved in. The temperature and the humidity dropped significantly, and it felt like September. Low 80’s during the day dropping into the 50’s at night. Sleeping with the windows open and no hum from the air conditioner was great. It wont last, the temps are rising again, the humidity is on the upswing and weather from the gulf is bringing rain, which we need.

Keep signing on here for general updates and check twitter for daily nonsense.

Tough little bugger!

We have two dogs who own the backyard. Luey is a 14 year old Schnauzer and Cookie is a Jack Russell terrier, 8 years old (as far as we know). Both spend hours everyday roaming around their turf, Luey putting his nose to ever leaf in the yard, and Cookie chasing squirrels back up into their trees. For daily diversions they have toys. Three Frisbees, two soccer balls, and an undersized basketball, half flat, leaking air. The back part of the yard is a jungle with a lot of underbrush. The growth is controlled by weed-whacker once a year which was accomplished less that a month ago so the growth was minimal and revealed another ball that had been missing for some time. This is all background for the real story.

Luey was the first to spot the long-lost ball and was about to descend to inspect it. There is a pronounced slope, a drop-off maybe ten feet before you reach the fence, and I knew he had no way to retrieve his ball and carry it back up the hill. To the rescue. I slipped and slid to the ball, picked it up and tossed it back up into the yard. I was now Luey’s best friend again. While I scuffled through the weeds I apparently picked up a tick. At least that’s what I assumed it was later that night, in bed, when my arm brushed across it. I felt it, turned on the light and looked at it, then, not thinking, picked at it with a finger nail. I placed in on the night stand and saw the wiggling legs.

Back up a couple of hours. While watching TV I was feeling a bit off. Joints ached, stomach not feeling well. These are not unusual for us old folks but, now as I watched this small many-legged thing under the light, I knew something was amiss. I now had a fever, my head ached, and my hands were cold. I looked at them and could see swelling, enough that I could not make a fist. The stomach was getting “that feeling” and I headed for the bathroom. I waited, the tension was building, and I sat on the floor awaiting the inevitable. I sat. After about a half hour the body started to feel better. I waited another half hour before I got up and went back to bed. The headache had subsided some and the fever was going away. The hands were still puffy but not as swollen as before. As I lay there going over the symptoms it didn’t make much sense. It came on in a hurry but now seemed to be going away just as fast. The white blood cells must be beating back the attack. It was five o’clock in the morning when I finally ventured back for a couple of aspirins before finally falling a sleep.

When I awoke at 11:30 I felt fine. I wondered if it was all just a bad dream but I knew it really happened. I still had the bug on the night stand, still wiggling it’s legs, still alive I guess.  I had tried to smash it after I found it but it was hard shelled so it did not squash. Suffer whatever you are. I’ll place it in a small, airless tube, and let it die a slow, agonizing death.

Moral of all this: Let the dogs retrieve their own toys.