The Path To Happiness Lies In Suffering. At Least A Little Bit

I have been a Pretty Good Girl this week, staying out of trouble and getting in my walks and generally living life in a normal, sane, sober fashion and so of course, this morning I got up and could barely walk.

Oh please. Give me a break.

I've been taking good walks for most of my life. It's my way of exercise and I don't give a shit what anyone says, it's good exercise and science is starting to prove that and as I said a few weeks ago, the odds of injury are about as low as you can get with exercise, and it's aerobic if you walk fast and it's weight-bearing and it's cheap and above all, for me, it's what I will do and so there you go.

Plus, as I have also pointed out more than once, it satisfies my inborn Puritan need to suffer, especially in this heat. Honestly, I think I spend most of my time out there in an out-of-body state of mind, listening to my book on CD and a bear could probably cross my tracks and I wouldn't even know it. One step in front of the other, just keep on going, a walk is a controlled fall, and I just don't fall and that is how I walk.

I did notice that the blackberries are coming on. I think it would behoove me to start taking a plastic bag with me to gather what I can although that involves stopping so I'll probably do something completely insane which is to DRIVE to where the berries are, get out of the car and pick and then drive home.

So sue me.

I do usually stop to pee in the woods and I'm sure that's where I keep picking up these ticks so I'm probably killing myself by exercising but what are you going to do? Bathe in carbolic acid, I suppose.
No, no. Of course not.

Anyway, I'm back from my walk. I told Mr. Moon this morning that I could barely walk so why was I going to take a walk? and he said, "Good question."
See above: Need to suffer.

And he has just driven out of the yard with the boat and so I am alone here with the dogs and the chickens and the semi-feral cat who lives in the flowerbed and who only sighs with deep resignation when the chickens eat her cat food.

I have absolutely NOTHING I simply must accomplish today which is a sort of bliss. I not only have that Esquire Magazine, I have the New Yorker summer fiction issue AND the latest Oxford American which is so packed with good writing that to give it its due you need to spend as much time on it as you would a novel. I am also reading a real novel with my eyes and one with my ears and so I have plenty to do in the leisure category. However, I am going to have the Opera House Jezabels over for a pizza and martini ladies' night out on Saturday and so of course I am suddenly hugely aware of the mess and disorganization and plain old filth of my house. They don't really give a rat's ass but it's certainly a good excuse to at least do something about the kitchen and I am thinking it would be a good day to really do a good sweeping and mopping of my back porch. Owen pointed out two dog pees on the porch to me yesterday and I did wipe them up but let's just say that if something fell on the floor on this porch even I would think twice about picking it up and eating it.
That's pretty bad.

There are also tiny black sugar ants all over it and they are stinging me as we speak and mopping isn't going to do a damn thing about that but maybe I'll kill a few billion or so.

Don't you just want to come live in Lloyd? I know you do.

Last night I was out here on the porch typing away and there was a giant roach-like looking creature on the window sill right beside me but I knew it wasn't a roach because it had HUGE antenna (what IS that, Syd?) and he wasn't bothering me and Mr. Moon came out and said, "Do you see that thing?"
"Yes," I said. "It is keeping me company." I was thinking of that poetry-writing cockroach, Archie, friend of Don Marquis. I had to look that shit up, y'all.

Anyway, it's almost noon and I have SUFFERED and I am still suffering and if I do mop anything, it is going to be a slow process. And I'm going to take a nap today or know the reason why and the reason why better be a natural disaster which destroys my bed.

I'm pretty happy.

Love...Ms. Moon