it's seven in the morning; i got up at five, and took a foster-kid to work at six, in a factory just west of town. it's been going this way. apparently he will keep this job as he's gone every day since he started, though one day he was quite late. it took, in other words. the rest of his life will just have to adjust.

which for me means getting up at five, having coffee, driving him at six. i've taken to walking late at night, so it leaves me a little short of sleep, but i'll survive. one way i'll adapt is taking naps which is my right as an old-timer. i could also do my walking at other times or earlier, though my wife still insists we "be available" for a son who has rages and needs things to be brought to him.

that son is suffering considerably. he's watching all his other friends get jobs, but can't really get one himself. he could but has conditioned himself to be unable to do the simplest things, or perhaps he's simply unable. unable fo finish school. unable to walk to the store. unable to cook. it's getting to him. he's at an age where he values independence yet his whole training, his whole life, has worked against him. maybe he thought it was a victory to always have other people bring stuff to him, or clean his room. it wasn't. we are suffering too, wishing we could let go of him and be free. i myself am resigned to doing it on my wife's schedule. she however is finally coming around, now about ready to be free too.

i'm nodding out as i sit here. the puppy has taken the lap knowing it's not around all the time and he'd better take the lap while he can. i know on some level, it's helping me, having way too much to do, being short of sleep, unable to finish my writing projects or even put enough time into them. i read like a fanatic and for that reason i have some readers on some of my books, but only on. kindle as i've abandoned the paperback market and the acx market, both of which are according to our local bookseller stronger than the kindle market. i have no time or patience for the social media and have begun to look at them as being like television, bad for the world overall. yet what am i doing better? mostly just reading stuff and peddling my old books. not coming up with much new.

that's mostly because i'm absorbed in my language project. the language project is about what whole groups of people do to a language - creating it, changing it, using it, making rules about it. what's up with that?

so people consider me the preoccupied writer, slightly dissheveled, always out of sleep and burnt-out looking, clothes in bad repair.

i walk in downtown galesburg, late at night, sometimes as late as eleven. the police look hard at me as they constitute a good percentage of the traffic. school is back in session so there are a few partiers out there and i often walk past the bars just for something to look at. i really enjoy just the window shopping of eing down there, it seems better to take in something that someone wants you to see, as opposed to doing the. neighborhoods where everyone is a little threatened by a dissheveled guy. at eleven.

i'm relating to the world, as i know it, for what it's worth.

went to advertise my cloud quaker group and the site was gone. the profile was gone. all its posts were gone. my pop art gone. not a trace. no profile, no site, no nothing.

today was the first day it wasn't 94 in about a week. today it only got to about 85, and it still seemed hot. it being labor day, and this being a labor town, it was very pleasant, but to me i'm still recovering from a week of going in and out of 94-degree afternoons and i'm in no mood to start going back outside, and doing things outside. i have to mow. i have a garden. i have weeding. but i can barely move.

started up with a facebook bot, but when i told him about the page, he couldn't find it, and therefore couldn't do anything about it. of course you couldn't find it, you made it disappear. let me talk to a real person. no there's no way to do that. click here to appeal, but that leads you right back to this site. i'm in bot land, going around and around. Might as well complain to a brick wall.

might mow, as soon as it cools down enough. i've been going for long walks in the morning, probably two or two and a half miles, hitting all the high points of downtown. the innkeepers (coffee) and seminary street shops; the kensington; the bean hive (other coffee shop), cherry street (the bars) the standish park, the town square, the north broad street block, then home. it's got just enough variety that i enjoy it even when it's empty, as it usually is in the morning. i come back good and sweaty; i'm drinking more water. i raid my own garden on my way into the house. i take another shower and set about to do prolific reading.

these days i'm reading four books, all novels, all at least fair-to-middlin. one is good and i might just finish that one tonight. i've become a fanatic reader as an escape from various other things and various other things have suffered a lack of my attention.

a daughter, off in the country not far from here, turned twenty-one today. here's to her. may she make it to many more, and thrive despite the damage she received growing up with us. we barely made it. she's already way more mature than dozens of other twenty-one-year-olds but everyone is on their own paths. she's almost stopped asking us for money. we're grateful that she seems to be making it without.

another day, another facebook site. guess i'll start a new page.

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.

it is hot and my eyes are tired. it could be my glasses getting dirty after a long day of working and reading. it was supposed to rain and cool off today, but it never rained. not sure it cooled off either. i am back. by my aircon where i'm comfortable and the itching in my eyes. has eased up a little.

when i go driving kids around i beg to take the prius instead of the much older honda. that's because there's a lot of waiting involved, and i'm too cheap to just run a gas engine to keep myself cool. i am not too cheap, however, to let the prius's battery cool me off. today we were like twenty five minutes at the hy-vee. these kids aren't trying to piss me off but they can make me wait twenty minutes without even thinking about it. so it wasn't so bad, i had the prius, it was cooling me off a little, and i was reading. but then the engine came on. the prius does that. if it can't run, or start, or go, on battery alone, it just starts its own engine and lets the engine recharge the battery. i consider it genius because we never have to charge yet we get like fifty miles a gallon, and lots of times it's really quiet.

at this moment though it rumbles beneath me and lets me know that twenty minutes of battery-power aircon is too much. unnatural.

when the fall comes i'll be grateful. it's my favorite season.

i fear losing my sight. having lost my hearing, i'm attached to using sight for phone calls and everything else. this computer, as i type, is dropping little periods. and i'm finding it hard to see them, which i have to. do in order to correct them. yeah i might come back tomorrow when i can see better. i worry that there io tomorrow that looks like that.

i have to write my books quick. while i can.

the house is way too quiet; the girls are gone. even the puppies know. we were all very attached to them.

i am not talk about this on social media, so i won't. i have a lot of feelings though, and send my love their way. puppies do too. for their part, they may even miss the puppies more than they miss us, as we are just among the grownups deciding their fate.

these days it's ninety-two/ninety-three days, way too hot for me. my strategy is simple - run around in the morning, and in the evenings, afternoons just sit here by the aircon and refuse to budge. enough is enough. even going in and out all the time when it's eighty-eight or so is hard on me. stay calm. restrict and combine trips. get it done early, then don't budge.

i'm doing a lot of reading. at the moment i have six books open. one is a rambling, modernist view of living in england with the present chapter focusing on whiskey. appropriate since, today, england has a huge football game (soccer) and may lose. our days have a lot of running around in them. i'm tired. don't want to leave this chair. the puppy finds my lap, and he doesn't want to either. he's lost his girls, and doesn't want to lose me.

i was going to my son's trailer, near knoxville, and took the interstate because it was faster. this put me near the knox county fair which is set up on that corner where the love's is. through the fence i got a sense of wha was. happening in there. a couple of nights ago i'd seen the trailers moving in to set up.

the carney's life is a hard life. there was a downpour last night, friday night, and really their whole show is friday night, saturday, saturday night, that's it. they're squeezing every penny out of people every minute. yet it's hot, mid-july, very intense sun, peak of summer. i don't envy them.

tomatoes are turning red, cucumbers are sprouting, in short, my garden is exploding and i'm happy about that. i'll eat it straight off the vine. i'm finding a little too much of this intense summer, even though it's barely ninety, is enough for me. i like being home by the aircon, curtains blocking out the intense sun. will send pics.

at the trailer, my daughter's booyfriend is patching drywall and doing other things to keep the raccoons at bay. could have been a mistake to tell them about the fair. they're young and easily led astray.

cleaned up bags and bags of garbage. sorry to say, the definition of disabled is, dad's gotta do it, that's the bottom line for me. if i'm gone he'll need an institution, or, maybe as an alternate theory, he'll learn it himself because he has to. things aren't looking good in that regard, though.

the trailer is long. the raccoons have been entering from below, and then climbing up into the ceiling through a hole in the center, where they can get up climbing near the hot water tank. that has to be sealed so they can't get up there. once in the ceiling they have babies make a racket. once one fell through - that's what the boyfriend is patching.

through this ordeal, though, some of the neighbors have come to know him better. he's not a bad kid, and he even mows their lawns sometimes.

it's been in the nineties, hot and steamy. my daughter says, as long as there's a pool we're ok, but i don't swim much anymore and not sure i'm ok. i have that kind of heat stroke that you get from going back and forth from an airconditioned car to the outside, hauling groceries or something, and you go back and forth one time too many. Your body gets readjustment fatigue.

so i came in and did my numbers, which in this case is blog visits, it being the first and all, and i put some of my complaints on that page, which is where i simply notice who's coming to blogs like this every month. last month, over twelve thousand came to this one, which is really quite remarkable, and remember i don't do much to commercialize it or lead people directly to my books. it's been around for a while. i keep it up. it's fully me. and no caps which is my way of saying, take your shoes off.

the puppies have to be separated. it's hard on both of them. my little one is locked up in here a lot.

somebody's booming firecrackers out there in the world. i don't care for it. i realize living in a world where you scrape for every dollar, gas goes up to five, and the big man walks off with a couple of billion in crypto leaves everyone with a lot of stress waiting to blow, might as well blow it on the nervous puppies who are strung out anyway already. i'm thinking, now that it's evening, might do some of these errands that need done while it's cool, but i'm still set back from the heat, the groceries, the going back and forth, and the stressed-out people.

would like to get some writing done, but this is the best i've got. hang in there.

monday afternoon and i'm clunked back with puppy on lap, blogging, enjoying being out of the sun.

it's gotten to be high summer i think you could say. i go out into the garden and there are wild sprouts of weeds all over the yard busting out threatening to take over every place where they've started out; the garden itself is doing well with some vegetables appearing just to give me a good show and a bite to eat. hot, though - i come back in sweating, eyes itching, wanting to sit back in the aircon maybe with a fifth cup of coffee or something.

what's really botherring me is a kid who's caught in a behavioral trap - can't see his way out of doing what he's doing, not getting what he's wanting. if this doesn't work why keep doing it? or rather, something has to change but it has to be something you think of, that's under your control. we clearly are having trouble changing our ways.

i'm vigilant about dizzyness - had a big cinnamon roll this morning and then, later, a few pieces of another one. too much sodium? it seemed, at the time, like i badly needed mood correction and i've always felt cinnamon did that for me. at the expense, in this case, of a few pounds probably. it's the icing, the butter icing that will clog up my veins till i keel over. but somehow this morning i just needed the mood correction.

still reeling from a trip to iowa on friday. almost two hours to get there, it is two hours counting iowa city traffic, but my friends live in a farmstead out in the country, and have two red barns, and mulberries, and a horse, and are surrounded by corn. my view of paradise, i thought. plus the potluck was fantastic, they all make great food and still do, it filled me up and more so. caught up a little on what happened in my fifty years or so of absence. some people maybe were jealous. i talked about galesburg a lot, but believe me, they have nothing to be jealous of there. iowa city is a special place, enlightened, libertine, no matter how many thousands of apartments they jam into its center. galesbug on the other hand is a railroad town, and that's ok, i've learned to like it, but it's not iowa city. and never will be, as far as i can tell.

coming back i get a coffee on the illinois interstate, and i did the same thing last night, just to get through the late-night driving to make sure all kids are where they need to be at the end of the day. coffee leaves me a little zoing in the late night but hey, it's summer, days are about as long as they're going to get, and somewhere the Cabo Verde national team is glorifying in the international stage, since everyone knows, it's all about the world cup, even if nobody shows up for the games.