Sunburns, Softball and Sofas

Okay, I'm late. With this blog and a lot of things just to name a few. Why? Wellllllll…….

This brings us to the major stumbling block to being a writer. Life. Yeah, you can't avoid it. If you could people would be sending condolences to your loved ones. Nobody wants that. Especially the writer in question. This is something that may shock you, but writers don't get to sit in comfy chairs all and hang out with that guy from the Dos Equis commercials, no matter how bad this author would love to do just that. Stay muse-y my friend!

Nope. We have day jobs. We have softball games to go to and long lists of Honey Do's that my wife wants done. Okay, that last one may be gender selective, but Jenn does have some things that she wants completed post haste. Which brings me one of the reasons this blog is a day and a half late. She has been after me for a few months now to redo and extend our porch so our precious children, two doggies named Paco and Maxine, can run around like ijits when it's rainy outside and not leave little messes all over the house. I see no sense in this, since little messes on porch are still little messes that need to be cleaned up. That could just be the man in me talking.

In any case, this weekend saw the completion of her dream. It also resulted in me having a third degree sunburn over most of my upper body. Since this is the South, I follow the strict rules of conduct for such things and went topless to ensure my neck became red enough to appease the neighbors and anyone I might run into at Wal-Mart. Needless to say, I manned up and spent most of Sunday whining and having Jenn apply copious amounts of sunburn ointment to affected areas. But! The porch is now finished, almost. Well, I have to leave something for this weekend, so that hopefully a finished porch will make her forget the rest of the things on that list.

Life jumps in yet again. Spring means softball or baseball if you have boys running around. I don't. With the exception of three nephews who don't live anywhere around me, I'm surrounded by little girls. Five nieces and one little sister who lives next door, so for the remaining part of spring and a week or two of blistering summer, I'm off to softball games, so that I can act the fool and scream at umps, and yell assorted clichéd softball rhetoric at the top of my lungs for two hours twice a week. It also means that I'm tossing the softball around when she knocks on my door in the evenings after work.

After all that, I'm more ready for my sofa than sitting in front of my laptop writing. Exhaustion is a terrible thing. It takes you away from the things you love to do, namely writing and watching season finales of my favorite TV shows. I can't wait for Castle, let me tell you. The point is sometimes that you have to step away from what you love, so you can enjoy those you love. As much as writing fulfills me, I wouldn't pass up the chance to make memories. I built the porch with my dad. To me, those hours in the blistering sun weren't wasted because they were spent with him. To me that was way more important. Yep, I'm a daddy's boy and proud of it. Just like with softball, I got to spent two hours with him and the family watching my sis. Seeing her smile at us as she makes an out on third or even ground out to first are memories both of us will cherish years from now. Besides, she might be the one to put me in one of those 60 Minutes nursing homes. I figure I better get in good with her now so she'll remember her Bubba came to her games and spent time with her. Yeah, I'm a Bubba. Get over it and let's move on.

To my fellow authors, next time you have a chance to make a memory or write something memorable, pick the memory. To you readers out there, though this might get me booted from the author guild, if there is such a thing, next time you have a chance to go out and play catch, or whatever it is your kids bug you to do when you're on the last five pages of a book, put the book down and go do it. Take it from a father who looks back on a lot of five pages to go, the five pages will be there, kids grow up and you'll regret not spending those times just being goofy with you kids, or even your parents. I've got a goofy dad, so I know. It's why we get along so great.

I'm going to sign off with that. I've got another blog to work on tonight and a few thousand words to get finished sometime in the next couple of months. Until then, I'm a slave to my life and loving every minute of it.