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Doing Time

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  With my head on a swivel I spy the corners of my room like a prisoner with a slit for a window and a gym mat for a bed. Plotting and wondering about my next move, because that’s all you got to do. Except for the few moments you are outside or when you get mess call to prepare meals. It’s a routine with a hierarchy born out of intimidation and necessity. Where everything’s a little game you have to play, the side hustle, the secret deals. Funny thing about this prison, is it’s all voluntary. No one sentenced you other than yourself. But you stay because you have to, because you’re needed, because you think you got nowhere else to go. So you serve your time, till a hearse finally rolls you out and they bury you in the cold, cold ground. Don’t sound like much and it doesn’t mean there isn’t a little excitement. Like a visit from a friend or a phone call or two, don’t forget the long letters home that get spied upon by god knows who. So you don’t think about it much—you...
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After You

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  Well you can tell school’s out; every youngin with a tablet, smartphone, or a video game is up this morning. Sucking every meter of data out of the fiber optic stream and have been since this weekend. Last night my phone would barely run music let alone stream video. While this morning my laptop still hasn’t woke up, running at dial-up speed, lagging while I try to use a word processor. The bad part is I pay premium cost to get the fastest speed, the problem is so does everyone else! But you can only flush so much shit down a pipe at one time unless you put in bigger pipes. So I’ll get off my soapbox now and learn to practice patience for the next four months. Life has a funny way of showing us we are not special, that we are just part of the status quo. The thing is, most average people already know that and deal with it. But there is 1 or 2% of the population that lose sight of that. They literally think their shit don’t stink, or at the very least don’t care if you smell i...
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Dictate Your Beliefs

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  Waking up this morning, for some reason I decided to bring up my daily newspaper on the big screen to read while putting my medicine together. What I had forgotten about was the reason I decided not to read my digital newspaper in the first place. No better than the headlines screaming across my TV on news channels were the headlines of doom and gloom. It meant that if I wanted any sliver of cited information, I was going to have to dig deep. So I turned the app off and went back to real life, finishing a call to my urologist about a prescription. It seems like even reputable news sources have jumped on the hype-train to catch more views and subscribers, while the forces of FB, TT, and 24-hour news all fight for our limited attention spans. It doesn’t seem that long ago when I’d see my dad or granddad at the kitchen table, their heads buried intently between the pages of the Savannah Morning News or The Evening Press respectively. Even as a kid, I’d ask for the comic strip ...
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Casual Words

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  Sometimes it feels like all is lost. So often we amplify the responses in our heads with the worst sort of things. The car breaking down and not having the money to get it fixed. The light bill is past due, and the fear of having the electricity shut off. A pencil breaking in the middle of a test, all sorts of things. And for the moment, we panic not knowing what to do.   Funny because I’ve lived through each and every one of these situations in my lifetime. Cars breaking down on a lonely stretch of road, on the Interstate with the kids in tow. The power getting shut-off multiple times in the summer, winter, and fall.   And with each of those times, it was up to me to pull up my “big boy panties” and get things done. You can ask my kids, although they may not tell you, we had it rough for a long time. But with each setback it made them tougher so they could face the roadblocks in their lives. Fortunately for us there wasn’t too many physical aftereffects, ps...
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No Brainer

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Jekyll Island, Georgia   Despite my better angels, I’m here at the keyboard typing away for the first time in a few days. For months, my wife and I had planned a trip to the beach to do some seashelling. But, as it is with most things, good intentions get trumped by the reality of life’s demands. Still, with a couple of extra bucks in my pocket, I decided I owed it to her to take her down to Jekyll. For the average healthy person this trip is a no-brainer—just hop on US 341 and head South till you run out of real estate. But for the past ten years or so, nothing in my life is a “No Brainer.” ​So, despite temperatures in the mid-80s and my increasing fatigue due to new medication, by sheer will I pushed ahead and made the trip. I made sure I hydrated well before the trip, and I think that helped make the whole thing more bearable physically. Still, my bride seems to have enjoyed combing the three beaches we covered to find her shells. After a fair night of sleep at a budget motel,...
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Worthless Cliche

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  Well, I assume I made my last run over to my daughter’s house to tend to the dogs and cats. They are leaving their holiday resort in the morning and heading home. I took out the trash, sprayed the furniture and the curtains with Febreze, and put the dogs and cats in the yard, fed and watered. Outside my apartment window, the neighborhood cat is toying with what looks like a big field mouse. I wish the cat would get the job done before the damn thing gets into an apartment. Other than that, the world's still a-turning as I work on my second cup of decaf. Of late, I have been having long conversations with a young (at least to me) person who is a recovering addict. At the moment, she has been struggling not so much with her addiction, but with life’s circumstances. Living alone in a motel room, abandoned by family, she has no money, nothing of value to pawn, and nowhere to go. I really feel for her and can sympathize with her situation, being that me and my family have been in ...
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Listless

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  I finished up feeding the dogs and cats and changed their water. Sent them outside into the yard, took my own bath and shaved, because frankly I stank. Now I just got through taking my own meds and cleaning up my crowded computer screen. My blood pressure is normal for those of you keeping count. Although there’s not many of us left that remember when that was a thing in conversation. I feel like getting back in bed to be honest. But my wife took that idea away by making up the bed. Still my eyes are feeling heavy, but I’m doing my damnest to stay motivated. But considering it’s the middle of the month and all the things that drove me in life have either moved out or work themselves. I starting to feel like one of those old folks rocking the morning away at the old folks home in Lumber City. Our goals are different now, gone are the obligations that kept us chained to a job. If you’re lucky you get to work a job for something to do. But sadly most of us old timers have to work ...
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