Run Sheet





00/08/11

I have to start this with an apology.

I'd like to take this opportunity to apologize to Kathleen.

It's been a month and a half since I've added anything to my site, and I wasn't conscientious enough to email. For that, I'm truly sorry and I'll do my best to make it up.

I'm sorry Kathleen.

****
Late in June I hit a roadblock in my writing. I sat at the computer and stared at the screen with blank confusion. Life was whirling past me at an ever-increasing speed, things were happening, big things in my life, but I couldn't seem to get them put down.

I realized that I didn't want to write.

I had never experienced that before and it was confusing. I tried to get myself to want to, but that only served to make me feel more sick of it.

It was confusing, it was scary, and truth be told it still is. It's confusing to have something that I love doing become distasteful to me suddenly, and it's scary to think it might not come back, ever. I know it's silly, but that's what it felt like. It felt like a big section of my soul just got up one night and walked away,didn't leave a note or anything. It felt like I woke up and it was suddenly just not there.

Today I read my email and Kathleen had sent a message to the group asking those of us who had not updated in a long time to examine our priorities, and update or leave.

In all fairness, I have to say,  Kathleen's message was nowhere near that blunt, nor heartless, however, that's the impact it had on me. I sat back in my chair and examined what I had done in the last six weeks or so, and said to myself "Okay, I'm one of the people she's asking... what am I gonna do?"

Well, I've gotta tell you that the idea of giving up my place in Johndoe hurt like hell, and knowing that I hadn't been holding up my end of the bargain hurt like hell too, so suffice it to say that I'm staying, and writing.

I dunno what the writing will be like, as I'm still not feeling all that creative, but I guess this is something that has to be worked through. So here I am.

I appreciate Kathleen's kick in the ass

What's been happening:

July:

July started with a particularly nasty MVA here.

Three kids in a sports car decided that they were immortal, and that the laws of physics didn't apply to them. Unfortunately this happens all too often. This time there was a gravel truck turning beneath the crest of a hill that they didn't see until it was too late. The skid marks from the car were almost 200 feet long and they still broadsided the truck hard enough to buckle the little car in the middle and shorten it by three feet while burying it well under the truck's chassis.

It took most of an hour to get them all out. The mother of one of them drove by as we were trying to get the car out. It was all enough to tear your heart out. The mother screaming, the daughter screaming, and the other two kids all too silent. They all were still alive when we got them out, as far as I know they survived, but we never hear much about them afterward. The thing I remember was that the front seat passenger left her knee imprints on the dashboard. I also remember finding three teeth scattered in the blood on the dashboard where the driver sat.
It was pretty ugly.

Early July was renovation time at our house. we got rid of our old wood stove and got in a gas fireplace. unfortunately this necessitated doing some serious work to one of our walls and also replacing our floor tiles in the living room and hallway, as well as repainting the living room. This is a real milestone as i believe it to be the first home rennovation job we've actually finished. Our houses have always been a collection of unfinished projects. Mary and I are both quite amazed. It isn't the best job i've ever seen, but its not the worst either, so I guess we'll keep it.

Mid July was the Vancouver Folk Music Festival and a very dear friend of mine and I went to it for a couple of days. When she comes out in the summer we always go out and do an inspection of my bees together. This year we discovered way more honey than I expected considering the crappy spring we had. The folk music festival wasn't as good as it's been in the past, but it was very nice getting to visit with my friend and share some time, some conversation and listen to music that we both love.

Right after the folk festival my family and I went camping at Chilliwack lake. This has become an annual summer event with us where we go off for three or four days and I say I'm going to fish while everyone else swims, explores, plays, lounges, and does all the other camping stuff. I usually end up getting about an hour of fishing a day because I'm too busy exploring, playing, lounging and watching them swim. oh, and I never, ever, catch fishwhile camping. I catch plenty when I go off on fishing trips with friends, but never when camping with my family, it's like a tradition. This year I actually caught a couple. I was amazed. I never keep fish as the enjoyment for me is in the fishing, not the killing and eating so it's just as well that they were tiny ones. Catching fish is catching fish. The thrill of feeling the hit on your line is just as good with a four inch Rainbow trout as it is with a twenty pound steelhead.

There is also lot to be said for laying at the side of a lake as night falls and listening to the silence. There is a point in the night as the daytime animals fall silent and before the nighttime animals make noise where there isn't a single sound. Very few of us get to experience it anymore, but if you possibly can, you should. It's amazingly restful being outside, at the base of some mountains and hearing... nothing. I lay there for hours watching the whispering shapes of the bats swooping at bugs in the darkness and hearing the night slowly come alive around me, then walk the half mile back to the campsite hoping i don't run into a bear.

Oh yeah, I fell down a bit of mountainside while fishing one morning and broke a bone in my right hand, it makes it a bit challenging to use a keyboard. When we got back from camping I had to extract my honey. This is done with a centrifugal extractor that spins the uncapped frames of comb in a drum. The extractor I have is turned by hand so there is a fair amount of physical labour involved. I got three hundred pounds which is a bit more than i expected, but still short of a really good year.

 I worked for the last two weeks of July. There is a new recruit class beginning in September, so work preparations had better be well underway by July or things just aren't going to happen.

August:

We were off again on the fourth of August to Okanagan Falls for a gathering of my wife's family. I don't mind talling you that this caused a bit of tension on my part. Most of my wife's family are really good people, whose company I enjoy, but a couple are fairly difficult for me to stomach. Fortunately only one of these attended and so I was able to ignore him for the most part. My wife and kids had a great time, and I had a pretty good time myself, except for not getting any sleep. The first night one of our dogs spent the entire night whining ouside our tent trailer because he's afraid of the dark, so  I had to go outside and sit with him every hour or so, there being no room for both of the dogs and all four of us inside. The second night began with the neighbour's burgular alarm going off every minute until 0200, then, once silence returned, a cougar started screaming in the bushes for the rest of the night. They make a hell of a racket. The third night I spent with the dog again. So there was damned little sleep. On Monday we drove back from OK falls and decided to camp a few days at Ross Lake. It's a six hour drive from OK Falls to the lake, so we got there tired, and ready for some relaxing. Unfortunately there appeared to be a mosquito convention there at the time. I have never seen mosquitoes as bad, exposed skin was covered with them in seconds. We spent the evening in the hastily erected tent trailer and fled home in the morning. Since we've been home we've gone on a couple of day trips out to other lakes scoping out other camping areas for next year and just enjoying local scenery that none of us have seen before. Man, we live in a beautiful place if you like mountains and lakes.

So here I am, looking back on the last six weeks or so, seeing that i've had a pretty good summer. I've spent a lot of time with my family and we've done a lot of things together, we've seen a lot of things, been a lot of places, got things finished and started.
Am I ready for the year ahead? Hell no, I'm never ready.
Am I rested? Some, but I still feel like I could sleep a week
Can I write yet? Who knows, but I'll try to keep up my end of the bargain.

See you next time.

~B
 

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