summer has arrived in full blast, as it got warm and steamy here, school let out, and all of a sudden there were police incidents on at least half a dozen corners on my way to my son's house, where i go every night.

tonight i've gone already, glad to be home at only nine, glad to be off those streets on a friday which could only be worse than a thursday. though you never know, sometimes trouble comes in waves and it can be very quiet out there when you least expect it.

i've been mulling over using the power of writing to change a perceptual dynamic which could ruin us, between my wife and son; neither can see their way out of it. i can but am not sure i want to throw my writing in there like a firebomb where everyone talks about stuff i wrote indefinitely for a few years, i'm just not sure it's worth it to draw all that attention to the writing itself. it's kind of like here: i'm free to tell the brutal truth because very few people read it, and if they really started reading it i'd be challenged a lot more and would get into arguments. if the writing were to really solve the problem, or even unravel the strands of lifelong habits it would be worth it. but why would reading something i wrote make anyone change? for the most part they already know how i feel.

if then i back down on that project then i need to revive one of my other writing projects. almost have beasts entirely proofread and much to my chagrin there were more errors than i thought. most all of them typos but hey. have to get down in there and fix them as one of my top priorities.

but then there's memoir of a dmdd parent survivor or some such thing that is really almost written, maybe i should just finish and put it away, don't publish, don't share. send it to some people maybe. only as i'm ready.

then there's bluffs leveretts, a prize project but one that keeps getting stalled as i come up against the birth of my grandfather who after all i knew. for some reason that's a problem. i can't write about people i know because i'm afraid i'll say something they might not have approved of. so i'm suspended in time, at about 1900, when grandpa was five and was just about developing his own personality. i'm having trouble just moving forward: to the war, the roaring twenties, the depression, the meat of the book it could be although the late 1800s was already pretty intense.

i have a novel called sorry for late. it's about esl teaching in carbondale, and it too is at least half done. wouldn't be too hard to just finish that one up if i got inspired and just got on the horse and did it.

i heard my wife give the "page-a-day" lecture to our foster son who almost finished high school but who now is languishing; things happened; he didn't quite get there; now he has to ask their permission for him to just get that last half-a-class done. i think they'll let him finish - he's come this far! but i'm sure also that they're sick of this kind of last minute graduate-me event. enough! he lazed around all semester, couldn't get in there at 8 30, or 9, or even 10 half the time. we're wondering if he'll ever make it.

my point being, that "page-a-day" advice really should be applied to me, as i am having trouble tacking progress on any of the above projects. here are a few yet more.

vowels, my lifetime project. its whole name is actually vowels on an elevator. it's pure language theory and i'm not sure i can do it under such stress.

rewrite of one woman's voice, turns out to be one of my better sellers, i'm enjoying marketing it and i can easily keep it in the one-millions range as i can usually find someone to read it.

wallace book - intended to cover the whole range from back in scotland, 1500-1600, their coming over ~1798, the new castle / beaver county years, three or four generations in western pennsylvania; grandpa's epic trip to iowa; finally uncle bones and whatever my cousin might say about him, yet to be determined.

lots on my plate, and i sit here languishing. i have trouble when my family is under huge stress and there's nothing i can do about it. that's why i came up with that writing project - in hopes that maybe it was doing something about it. it's not. believe me it's sitting in this computer having nothing done on it.

family seems to be doing ok, growing up and out for the most part except for #8, subject of that book. #9 got a job, #10 already had one; both will have apartments or rooms or something before long. and will be paying for it themselves.

i kind of feel like watching the front street, but i have closed off the front windows to keep the searing afternoon sun out of my room where it will really heat up the front part of it, especially right here where i like to sit and write. so these quilts are now hanging here and it does help keep the sunlight off me and off the space around me. but there was a value to the open windows: i liked to cast my eyes down to the bricks of the b-road (we live on broad), and watch as cars zoom by. i'm barely even hearing them these days. much as i like not hearing them, i miss them too at the same time.

then with summer comes itchy eyes, sweat that makes me feel like i stink as i sit here, snd scratchy legs where i walked around and they came up against some weeds. the weeds will drop their little sticky things on you if they think you'll carry them up the yard a little. they mostly just itch me 'til i take a shower.

got one son who's driving straight west out of atlanta tonight, fixin to go across alabam, mississipp, louisiana(?) and texas, as far as he can go in an evening. i'm tired already though, and not going to keep him company, by text or call, beyond a certain point.