i feel pulled down into an overall slump and depression which has been mostly caused by troubles in my family. there is a good possibility that we will have to move yet face overwhelming problems if we choose to do it. there is no doubt that i should be cleaning out the basement, attic, and garage, and every day i get up and try to do it. each is full of things i saved partly because they worked, they could be used, or somebody somewhere valued them. yet now they seem to be extra weight, preventing us from moving or even feeling like it would be possible.

a part of me feels a spirit of possibility. our kids are over 18 now, capable of taking care of themselves, or should be, though that's another story, they aren't, they'll flip, they may not make it on their own. but we could conceivably duck out and go anywhere. having traveled all the states, i'm not afraid of any of them, and capable of being happy where i am. but there are problems there too. i'm not writing much, i'm not happy or inspired, i'm worried about the marriage itself which opens up all kinds of other possibilities. at the moment i'm healthy. but i'm 72 and people are watching us both warily.

so i started walking. i go about a mile and a half a day, up to downtown and back, or if my wife invites me to walk out at the lake with her and the dog, we go out there and walk in the woods. i just found a little tick on me, though he was a little hazy, perhaps already dead, as he'd stuck himself into my shirt instead of into me. but this no doubt came from the woods, where we were today. i walk too slowly for my wife who is pulled along by the dog and needs to go fast for her own exercise program. but i am happy to be with her and this is one of the few things we do together. i worry about moving off alone with her if she's truly unhappy as that won't be much fun. but alas that may not even be possible either.

so how can i begin to get my writing back on track? here i am alone with about an hour, perfect opportunity and i pull out this old clunker of a computer to get started. all the ideas in my head pertain to a book that was about half done, bluffs leveretts, for which i'd gathered all this information about my great grandfather leading up through my grandfather and into my father's own life; all three generations lived in council bluffs, iowa. i find myself more and more paralyzed as i get closer to the people i actually knew which would be my grandpa and of course my dad. i didn't know my grandma on that side; she ws from a family of german farmers who were interesting and who of course had to bury all reference to their origins once the first and second wars came around. it was really a story of conflict that made that one large ethnic population hide their origin, don't speak german, don't carry german letters, newspapers, etc., just shut up and speak english. it was actually illegal to speak german there for a little while in iowa and that i'm sure made a big impression on people who had basically been speaking german all their lives.

so i had fun writing about that crowd, and what happened, leading up to my grandmother's birth, but i mull over some reorganization and then find i've become a little too separated from my notes and my work on the family. so i thought, just write it all out and i can go back, do more research, and fill in the gaps later. but that doesn't seem to be working. i can't just pick up this computer and write it all out. i'm a little too paralyzed.

one thing i am doing, and that is, reading a lot of other people's work. it's my only active way of marketing as i'm disillusioned with making noise on facebook, twitter, etc. i do fill up these blogs and people by and large are opening them up for whatever reason, which doesn't appear to be buying books. but anyway, i write it, and they are reading it, so i guess in a way i am writing, it's just that, if this is all i do, it's not enough.

i do however have a new book out, beasts of ayutthaya, and it's wild, and i need to get it connected to the series it's in (writers from all over doing the global beasts series, all retellings of beauty and the beast). i should kick back, be proud, and make some noise about that. it's just that, instead, i'm paralyzed, and fall is coming, time to clean out the garage.

i did my numbers and i usually check in here about that time, at the beginning of the month, but i didn't this time, not sure why. maybe it was the b. my small computer has begun to be unable to type a b. so i can copy a b and then make paste every time i need one but that's no fun. it also leaves poops - little random periods. just getting old i think. the periods are not random so much as they are some kind of problem with the space bar - they always appear between words. like some little bunrab in your garden who forgets and leaves a poop there while he's nibbling.

today i had a moment of joy so i thought i'd write about it. three little girls, nine nine and ten, went back to their dad recently, two from our house. i like to think we were borrowing them; they were our foster daughters for a little while. i was over there to give their older brother's girlfriend a ride to work. as usual, even though she was late for work, she wasn't quite ready. that would irritate me a little but it no longer does. what is a little stressful is that you can actually get blocked in, in their driveway, as a community of about twelve households all uses the same driveway with a couple of spaces which are usually full. so as you sit there, in car, delivering or giving ride, you're on edge a little thinking you might have to back up, squeeze out, honk, etcetera.

so these three darling girls all come out and give me a hug right through the car window. one of them has very frizzy hair, not done in braids like the other two, but i tell her i love her hair too. i actually do, i like it when it's frizzy. it's part of who they are. they are adorable girls. and then, they start dancing for me. it's a dance of joy. it's morning, it's summer, they're on their porch, and they're young, and cute, and know it. it was a sight to behold.

my life is fairly mundane - a lot of driving around galesburg. i'm beginning to see quite a few homeless people, on benches, in the doorway of the library, in the park, in the roundabout main street circle. not sure what this means. they haven't really caused me much trouble. a couple of them called out to me while i was walking but i was having hearing aid problems and didn't really want to engage. so i pretended i was deaf which i am, halfway, and kept walking.

i've been walking a lot, every day. i found a peach tree today, right off the sidewalk, peaches all over the ground, they're ripe and falling. at other peach trees, nothing, i was beginning to think it was an off year, or i was way too late. no, for this tree, they're ripe, they're plentiful, there for the pickin. i also walk by an apple orchard and a mulberry tree. it has been great. i go downtown. i stay off main street but just walk different routes every time. there's a coffee shop or two up there if i want but lately, no, i've had my coffee here.

my son is a truck driver. he's picking up a load of beer in denver as we speak, and heading for indianapolis. i tell him the story of how midwesterners used to fill trunks of old boat cars with coors and head across nebraska back to ia, in, & il so they could have their coors fresh. it was not a national beer back then, you had to drink it fresh. they valued this highly though, and i guess i was not as much of a beer fan as they were, the whole thing sounded kind of amusing to me. but the old boat cars had huge trunks so they could have quite the party upon their arrival. drink all that fresh coors right down. reminded me of rolling rock, locally made (pennsylvania) beer always fresh. somewhere in there, went national and now nobody knows what i'm talking about. maybe serious beer drinkers do. but i was never even all that serious so to me it was just a good road story.

the b problem on my computer means i'll have to give it a little break, get more used to this old clunker. the clunker is good because all my serious writing is here and i've been in a kind of a slump, not actually producing anything. my latest book is out. i'm tired. i'm fighting at home and figure i need to walk above everything. not too motivated to clean out garage etc especially since it's mostly not my stuff. but i will and i'll get it out of here.

the weather, at least, is cooperating. not bad for early august.

paul vandebunt's birthday came and went. i'm not sure why, in my mind, i celebrate it. he actually was a good friend. a little over protected by his mom, but his house had a den and a record player with the animals' 'we gotta get out of this place' song and we'd play records. my other friend and i would go on long traipses through the woods, swinging on vines, going down by the highway or out by the baseball field, but he was often not allowed and therefore we could only play in that den under careful supervision. that supervision was necessary, now that i think of it, but it's way too late now to change anything so i just remember that day for some reason, middle of the summer, heat all over the place, and 'we gotta get out of this place.'

on my walk i found this peach tree, then walked by this friend's house, the guy who made the documentary 'boxcar people.' then across the tracks to downtown where i walked by our premier coffee shop which had people out on the sidewalk. up through gift shops downtown where i saw two benches, each sitting there facing the shops themselves. like you could sit there and just do window shopping as you sit. i considered it because i was already about a mile into the walk. at the other coffee shop i considered going in for an ice coffee, or a nice coffee as i've come to call them, but didn't. turned and came back home. stopped at my own garden on the way in the door. a good routine, i'd say.

and it could be a good summer, knock on wood.