Hurricanes and Ice Cream...of Which Dreams are Made.

I forgot to mention that on July 4th we broke out the ice cream machine for the first time in years and did the home made ice cream deal. It was great! Vanilla ice cream, but we had all sorts of stuff to add as toppings. Fresh strawberries. Chocolate syrup. Pecans in syrup. Etc. It was glorious.

One thing about this July 4th was that Hurricane Arthur had passed to the east of us, sucking up all of the heat and humidity and depositing it to points elsewhere. The weather for about five days after was absolutely flawless. Clear cut blue skies. Almost no humidity. Highs in the mid-70s. It was like a dream. All at home. No crowds. No noise. No fireworks. No false and disgusting platitudes. Just peace, and quiet, and family.

And then...

...Perfection!

Da Forf

We were busy today. Doing the whole grill out and eat thing for the holiday. No fireworks, though. I've never been a fan of fireworks. They bore me. And Carole is way too tired to head out to a fireworks show. She prefers to sleep this evening. Only Andy is going to watch the aerial displays tonight.

Anyway, here's a photo of a partially unfurled rhododendron blossom from last week.

Forgetting

I have a really lousy memory. I always have, even way back into my early childhood. This has been mildly frustrating, and as to its source or solution, I cannot say.

It may have something to do with the fact that my imagination is always working in overdrive. This has ever been the way of it, even when I was just a very little kid reading comics, watching movies, or pursuing novels. I reckon I can blame it on Jack Kirby, Willis O'Brien, and Ray Bradbury.

Having a crappy memory leads to a lot of social problems. I tend to forget faces, names, appointments...that kind of thing. But the worst of the social crimes of which I am guilty is that I cannot recall any birthday or date, no matter how important those birthdays or dates are to other people. Is it that I'm an asshole? Well...I'm not vindictive that way. I just can't recall birthdays--not even my own.

Maybe this has something to do with the fact that for many years my parents had my birthday on the wrong date. When your mom was the mother of eight kids (plus two miscarriages), then I can understand how it's super-difficult to keep up with something as mundane as a birthday. In my case, they only had it wrong by a few days, but wrong it was. Finally, when I was nine or ten years old, they dragged my birth certificate out of the box and realized that it was June 28, 1957. I think that they had the year right...it was just the day that they kept getting wrong (when they recalled it at all).

There have been times when I don't even remember my birthday myownself. Many have been the years when, around the second week of July or so, I will suddenly recall..."Hey! My birthday was two weeks ago!" No one else remembered it, so I was left to ignore it, too.

It's no big deal.

But from time to time over the years I've had people make a deal out of my birthday. My wife, sometimes, and my sister, sometimes. But I can't recall their birthdays, at all. When are those birthdays? If you told me, I might know. The only reason that I can remember to mark my wife's birthday is that she constantly reminds me as the date approaches. There are occasions when I'll remember to do something nice for her on that day in March. (Don't ask me what day...I can't recall. She'll remind me again starting in January.)

Unfortunately for those around me, my head is constantly ringing with ideas and plots for novels and short stories and scripts that will likely never see the light of print. Is this selfish? I don't know. It may be. It's definitely compulsive and not something that I can help. The world, apparently, would be much poorer if not for folk who suffer this malady. Without them, there would be no novels or movies or paintings or sculptures or comic books. Well...maybe some how-to stuff.

At any rate, that's the way it is with me. I apologize for the troubles and bruised feelings it's caused over the years. I've tried everything: notes of reminder, calendars, bulletin boards, what-have-you. The trouble is that I tend to lose track of such things. (Of course!) What good is that notebook reminding you of someone's birthday if that notebook was misplaced ages ago? Alas.

So here I sit, wondering about it all. I've just finished writing my latest novel. Ben Whitaker and Amy Braun and Sheriff Brace and Billy Sothern and Ghost Boy Tommy and the bad seed are all in their places in 108K words. I've consigned them to their fates. I spent a lot of time with them--almost as much time as I've spent with real humans over the course of the writing of that novel.

And now I'm at it again. There's a nameless assassin whose precognitive abilities aid him in hunting down chemically altered berserkers escaped from a corporate prison. The personalities and actions of these folk will fill my head for the next few months. There's nothing I can do about it. They talked to me one day while I was daydreaming and their voices were loudest and foremost in my mind. I can see them. The color of their hair; the cut of their clothes; how they react to the heat, the cold, with being afraid, happy, alone, on the run...it goes on endlessly.

My 25th wedding anniversary is coming up. I'll have to ask Carole the exact date. I keep getting it mixed up with my birthday and my son's birthday and Father's Day and some Holiday that falls around that general time period.

But the 25th anniversary. Damn. I'd best not forget that one.

Clueless in North Carolina.