How the hell can you go for week after week after week of getting no numbers in the lottery? Well, not exactly true. On rare occasions I manage to get one number. How does that happen? Cripes. Sure makes you wonder why the hell you play the damn thing in the first place.

In reality, it’s only been the last several months that I’ve been playing again. Once a week, when I buy gas, I get a “quick pick” for the next Mega Millions and Powerball drawing. A big two dollar a week gambling habit. No, not a lot of money, and like they say, if you don’t play you are certain not to win. But the results I have been getting so far are the reason I quit playing in the first place. Still, what the heck does two dollars even buy nowadays? If I lived or worked in the city I would probably be better off dropping the two dollars into some panhandler’s hat. At least then someone would get enjoyment out of it.

It sure seems like you should have figured out your life by the time you have hit sixty, doesn’t it? ‘Fraid not, chillun. Ain’t no closer now than when I was sixteen. I have a marriage that didn’t work out because I never was, and never will be, the man that my wife really wanted as a spouse. I have another romantic relationship that started out strong, but feels like it has hit a permanent roadblock.

I have a boring, unrewarding job, but at this point in my life I ain’t gonna change that. I have no desire to deal with looking for another job and all that entails, and who wants to give up five weeks of vacation? Besides, after all these years of working and having different jobs, you come to realize that one job is just like another. Retirement? Ha! No money for that. I’ll only retire when they pry my pencil from my cold, dead hand.

Sure makes you wonder why you get up every morning. Guess I shouldn’t worry about that because it probably won’t be long before that inevitable wake-less morning comes. Can you tell I’m having a good day?

It’s a beautiful summer day here today; the kind of day that somehow reminds me of the summers of my youth. Maybe that’s just selective memory. They say that as we get older our memories tend to retain the happier memories more than the nastier ones, so maybe I’m just forgetting about those sweltering, summer vacation days of long ago before my parents could afford an air conditioner when I would lie in bed at night, clammy sheets sticking to me with sleep almost impossible.

No need for an air conditioner today, though. A very pleasant break from the hot, humid weather that has been the hallmark of this summer. Oh well, that’s what summer is. I’ll take it over winter any time, no matter how hot and humid. I don’t have to wear layer upon layer of clothing just to keep warm every time I go out of the house (and sometimes inside) and I don’t have to shovel humidity. And, unlike my childhood, I can enjoy the luxury (you mean it’s not a necessity?) of air conditioning.

I’ve just finished cutting my lawn, trimmed it up and blew all the grass clippings off the driveway. I filled all the bird feeders and washed out and filled the birdbath. I even took care of some Styrofoam packing material that needed to be broken down and put in the trash. (I sure hate doing that, but I can’t find any other way to get rid of it. They sure use a lot when packing something big, too.) Sure is nice to do something active for a change instead of sitting at my desk at work all day.

So far today it would seem that I have been doing my health a favor. Even if I’m not exercising, at least I’m on my feet, and a new study published in the American Journal of Epidemiology indicates that people who sit more in their leisure time than stand are more likely to suffer higher rates of death and disease. Unfortunately, I sit all damn day at work and my leisure activities tend to be those (like sitting in front of the computer) that require sitting. Independent of that study I had been attempting to quit sitting so much. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that being on your feet more would be better for you than sitting on your ass. If nothing else you are actually using more muscles standing than sitting.

That is easier said than done, but I still need to do some laundry today and I hope to spend a little time in the workshop, so that will count against my sitting time. So, guess I better get up off my buns and do something!

Sigh.

It just keeps getting better. A trip to the optometrist yesterday could have been cheerier, but I suspect anything to do with my physical being is going to be less cheerful with each passing year.

I wear contact lenses, mostly because I can see “better” with them than with glasses. Let me explain “better.” If you are nearsighted, particularly as badly nearsighted as I am, you will notice a world of difference between wearing contacts and wearing glasses. It may be hard to understand if you haven’t had this experience, but with contacts everything looks “big” compared to how things look with glasses. Actually, it’s the reverse; with contact lenses everything looks normal, as it would to a person with good vision, but with glasses everything looks smaller, as though you were looking at things through the wrong end of a pair of binoculars. Sure, everything is clear, but it feels like the world has moved away from you. I much prefer the view with contacts.

As far as glasses are concerned, with the state of my aging eyes a single correction is no longer sufficient. You’re thinking I’m going to talk about bifocals? Hell, no – try trifocals. Bad enough to need correction for both distance and close-up; I also need correction for in-between to be able to see, for example, the computer screen. If you think it might be a little difficult using bifocals – needing to position my eyes just right for either seeing distances or for reading – you are correct. Add in that third division for trifocals and I can start to look like a bobble-head doll trying to find the right section of my glasses to look through, not to mention the neck strain that can result from that activity.

So why was my trip less than cheerful, aside from the fact that I couldn’t get everything taken care of in one trip and have to be back again in two weeks? After he examined my eyes he told me there are cataracts starting to form in both of my eyes. That is not unexpected as I get older, but in someone as nearsighted as I am cataracts apparently tend to appear earlier. My father had cataract surgery and I think my mother did, too, so if genetics plays a role, combined with my extreme nearsightedness, I’m a natural.

I’m not really as upset about it as I could be. Not too many years ago I would have been really depressed over such news as the prognosis would have most likely been eventual blindness. Today they have refined the surgical techniques to such a point that it is almost foolproof. The doctor said that they don’t even wait as long as they once did to do the surgery because they are now getting such good results. This is a good thing. Besides that, cataract surgery replaces the lens in you eye, which means that you are getting your correction built in. No more glasses! Well, maybe reading glasses, but I could live with that. Hell, I could live with a slight correction if I had to. At least it wouldn’t be the Coke-bottle-bottom glasses I need now.

So while getting older sucks for one more reason, at least it’s not something that is the end of the world. I’m sure that will come, though. Call me an optimist.

I recently purchased a tool for my workshop. It wasn’t cheap, but it wasn’t even close to a monthly rent payment. In the past, I loved buying new “toys” and would do so when even remotely possible. This inclination did not do my financial situation any good at all, but the things I bought made me feel good – for a while. Then the glow would wear off, the bills would come due, and I would start looking for my next “fix.” It was a vicious cycle that I thought I might never break, but those days are now gone.

I debated the purchase of this tool for a long time. The decision to buy was truly based on utility this time instead of its worth as an emotional pick-me-up. I also did not use credit to purchase it. What has changed?

The simple answer to that is that I have gotten older, but there are many facets to that answer. Perhaps foremost is the realization that I am not going to have a lot of money to spend after I retire. Actually, my intention is to never retire, but sometimes you don’t have a choice in that. So, the less money I spend now means more money later, or at least theoretically. Then there’s the flip side to that same thought – I won’t have the money later to buy the things that might make retirement worth living through, so I better buy them now while I can.

There’s another consideration that may sound strange to anyone who is not at my point in life. Wouldn’t it be better to not have so much stuff that people will have to go through when I die? I watched my mother go through a cleansing binge when she was just a little older than I am now. She emptied cupboards, bookcases and display cabinets, giving things away or selling them to relieve all the clutter in her life. After having cleaned my father’s house out after he died I became intensely aware of the situation. So much stuff accumulated over a lifetime, and most of it means nothing to anyone else. Why add to the clutter?

Another constraint on spending is the desire to never get into debt again like I once was. Through the good planning of my father, and sadly his death, I was able to clear the decks, financially speaking, and do not ever want to find myself so close to being underwater again. That’s not to say it can’t happen, but if I have any say it will not be because I was buying things just to make me feel good. In the end, using credit only makes me feel bad.

And finally, buying things no longer makes me feel good. All those things I just mentioned have taken the joy out of buying something for the sake of buying something. The thing itself does not generate joy – only the use of the thing can do that. If whatever I want to buy cannot be used in the pursuit of a further goal, then it has no inherent worth. I’ve never been someone who loves fancy clothes or jewelry and such, and have considered such extravagances silly. At this point there are even more things that fall into the category of extravagance, and that helps keep things in perspective when considering a purchase.

It is a scary thing going into your old age with what will likely never be enough money, but it is downright crazy to drill holes in your own boat with frivolous purchases. I think I have finally figured that out.

Lately I’ve been on a real book reading jag. My television watching has dropped to almost nothing and my magazines are stacking up. I suppose it has a lot to do with the books on writing which I recently read. They really made me appreciate what an author can do.

I read a mix of fiction and non-fiction, but mostly non-fiction. Non-fiction appeals to my rational, analytical, learning mind. I can schedule my reading, leaving off and picking up at natural breaking points in the book. Unless it is a very complex subject I usually don’t have any problem continuing the chain of thought from where I left off reading. Non-fiction is well-mannered and adapts itself to my schedule.

Fiction is crack. Fiction is a mistress with a whip and me pleading for more. Fiction is forgetting how late it is because I ain’t gonna stop reading until my eyes cross and I pass out. Fiction is, “Awww, mom, just a few more minutes, please?”

Or at least good fiction is. Bad fiction, as well as bad non-fiction, is merely a waste of a finite amount of time. I am not one of those readers who feels compelled to finish a book no matter what. I’ve gotten halfway through a few books in my lifetime and said, “Enough is enough. This sucks and I’m not reading any more.” At least with bad non-fiction there are usually (but not always) a few good facts that you can walk away with. The only benefit of bad fiction is the knowledge that you may not care for anything else that the author has written and can avoid wasting that time. Well, I guess it also serves as an example of how not to write, too, if you are a writer yourself.

Reading fiction – good fiction – takes me out of my life entirely. I start to live and breathe within the story. I am compelled to keep reading because it is as though I am reading my own story and I must know how it turns out. My life is no longer my own; it belongs to the book and I MUST READ!

I have to admit that I tend to consciously avoid fiction. It can be very emotionally draining to be so involved with a book. The story stays in your mind even when you are not reading. It haunts your dreams and daydreams. It is as close to being obsessive as I ever get.

Some people would argue that that is the reason for reading fiction – escapism! Who would want to read a book that didn’t take you away from your normal, hum-drum existence? The only problem is that when you are done reading you have to go back to the real world. That’s tough when the book paints a world in which you want to stay, but then again, not so had when you were already anxious to crawl out of the book, and that does happen.

Even with all the emotional upheaval I’m still not ready to stop reading. I just wish there was more lifetime to spend doing it.

I awoke early this morning. As I had stayed up way too late last night, I knew I was up way too early, so I went back to bed.

I had been up too late because I watched a movie I had recorded. In the movie there was a woman who reminded me of my friend Jerry, who passed away last fall. Too little sleep, accompanied by that memory, was enough to set the stage for dreams.

I am in a cabin in the woods. Other people are there and one man wants to know where I took my two pheasants by bow and arrow. We walk outside and I show him the first place and we discuss how the hunt unfolded. After that, we are somehow back in the cabin again, sitting on a couch with a coffee table in front of us. There is another man sitting in a chair across from us. My friend Jerry comes into the cabin carrying a box full of little containers that are partially filled with water. They are all sorts of little glasses, pitchers and vases. I recognize them as trophies from the club that we all belong to.

Jerry says, “I figured we might as well get rid of these.”

I am shocked, because this means that Jerry has given up on the club. I start pouring all the water out of the containers into one larger container, incredulous that he could really be serious. As I’m doing this, my emotions are building and finally I run out of the room saying, “No, I can’t do this, I can’t do this.”

It is time to wake up, and I do, sobbing.

Dreams are memories seen through fun house mirrors. Things that are small suddenly become huge, while other things diminish to the point of invisibility. What was plain and simple becomes distorted beyond belief, and the complex falls into simple facets. Some dreams reflect the world around you, but some reflect what is inside you. This was one of those.

I never got to say goodbye to my friend, Jerry, even though I had plenty of warning and plenty of time. Diagnosed with cancer, the prognosis was certain; maybe ten months to live but gone in six. I had put off the difficult call to my dying friend and missed my opportunity. There is no second chance. Jerry will not arise from the dead just to hear my confession of avoidance. I have to live with both the loss of my friend and my abject failure as a friend.

Then again, perhaps a dream like this is my second chance.

Tomorrow I am sixty years old. Today I am fifty-nine. A day passes and a decade turns.

I have been in my fifties for a lifetime. Each day passes so swiftly that it seems a ghost, but having passed, the days intertwine and become a rope that anchors me to the past.

In my last decade my mother and father have joined their mothers and fathers. My son, though still my child, is now a man half my age and gaining on me by percent each year. The lie in thirty-nine years of marriage was exposed; a wife who molded her ways to mine in the hope that it would someday redound to her benefit, not seeing that the longer she stayed in that mold the less likely that would be, sought solace in another and finding only an empty promise, she returned, released from the mold but also released from me.

The latter half of these ten years has been spent in a new relationship that finds me in the same place at the end of the decade as in the middle – nowhere, wondering what is next, and doubting if anything is.

I know that in this next decade losses will most likely exceed gains. Friends and relatives will likely pass and it is entirely possible that I may face my own mortality. Life will no longer maintain itself; it will take more attention and effort just to see the next day. I will no longer be able to make the assumption that the sun will rise.

I struggle to see the bright side of this coming decade, overwhelmed by a sense of loss than rather than imbued with hope. Appreciation should be the keyword of the day; appreciation that I have come this far in my life with as many riches as I have. I do, indeed, acknowledge that, but somehow the boons of yesterday do not balance my dread of the future.

However, my choices are limited, and I would still rather check off one more day on the calendar than check out. So, tomorrow I will cross that invisible line and become sixty, sure in the fact that it is all downhill from here, but unsure of the speed of the trip. I hope that I can write at the end of my sixties that it has seemed like a long decade, not because of the trials and tribulations, but because of the triumphs. Somehow, I am skeptical, but stranger things have happened.

When I was in junior high school I had an English teacher who stood out from all the rest. Mr. Whitmer is probably long dead by now so I’ll never get a chance to thank him in person, but not only did he make the subject come alive, he was the first teacher who gave me the confidence to think that I could be a writer.

It was in his class that I developed a love of Robert Service’s poetry. His was poetry to be read out loud, and Mr. Whitmer obliged, possibly satisfying a frustrated dream to be an actor. He read The Ballad of Sam McGee with a drama that I remember to this day. I have several volumes of Service’s work sitting on my bookshelf. It may not be up to Shakespearian standards of excellence, but it certainly captures the mood and spirit of his subject matter.

I started out writing poetry. I turned out poem after poem, searching through the rhyming section of the dictionary when I got stuck for a word. I kept this up through high school, college, and beyond, though I was not quite as prolific as I was in junior high. Eventually I even thought some of my poems were good enough to be sent off for publication, so I submitted them to all the large circulation magazines which were still publishing poetry and to many of the small literary magazines printed on a mimeograph machine in someone’s basement. Some of my poems have been published, though none in the big magazines, and all paid solely with copies of the magazines.

I also wrote several short stories, including one for a creative writing class in college. The piece for the class actually won second place in the college creative writing contest and was published in one of the college’s publications, though I never got a chance to see it because I had to drop out of college after the semester of that writing class.

I’ve always felt awkward writing fiction. It has always felt strange to put words into characters’ mouths, and the dialogue has never sounded quite natural to me. It’s been some time since I had the urge to write fiction, but lately I’ve been reading a book by Steven King – On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft – and he’s got me thinking about giving it a try again. With all these years under my belt I feel a bit more confident that I might be able to create a world of fiction – dialogue and all – that might seem plausible.

Of course, as soon as I consider the idea I hear, “What the hell is wrong with you? Do you really think that you could stick to something like that? Doesn’t King say that you have to commit to writing a certain number of words a day? Do you really think you would do that? And if you really wanted to write, wouldn’t you have been doing it all these years? Not to mention, you’re not a people person, so how the hell do you think you can write about people?” Man, my muse is a real bitch.

All those questions are good, valid questions . . . unfortunately. But, hey, what have I got to lose? There have been plenty of writers who started their careers late in their lives. Why can’t I be one? And while King is a writer who knows his writing, and has actually taught it in a classroom, it doesn’t mean that all his rules apply hard and fast to every writer (though one would be foolish to disregard them entirely). I wear big-boy pants now and can make up my own rules, and pay the price, too, if I don’t follow them. Again, what have I got to lose? If I give up in the end, at least I tried.

Hmmm, where to begin, let’s see . . .

Once upon a time, in a galaxy far, far away . . .

Some old farts hit sixty and feel like they are still forty, while others feel like they have entered a time warp and slipped through to eighty. You can count me among the latter, particularly after a day like today. No, I didn’t run a marathon or fight a bear, but I did cut my whole lawn, trim it all, and power blow all the trimmings off the driveway. Sure, it doesn’t sound like much . . . for someone who feels like they are forty, but for someone who feels like they are eighty it was a big deal.

The worst part was trimming the weeds along the fence in the back yard. I must have been cutting down the mosquitoes’ homes because they attacked me with a vengeance. I’m sure I looked like a spastic dancer out there, the way I was trying (and I do mean trying) to swat them away. Man, was I glad when I was done with that and could escape into the house.

Doing that much work when you are totally out of shape can be difficult, but quite honestly the sense of accomplishment outweighs the pain of sore and stiff muscles. Besides, I’m not so stupid that I don’t know I need to be active and do that kind of work in order to get back into shape and stay there.

Of course, yard work isn’t usually a daily thing so one must find other work to do to stay in shape, even if it means (gasp!) exercising. I make no excuses for myself. I freely admit that I don’t exercise because I hate to exercise. That doesn’t mean that I don’t think about exercising every day. If I could burn calories with intentions I would be dropping weight like a hot potato. Unfortunately, it just doesn’t work that way.

There are two things that really start to screw up us older folks. The first is losing strength and the second is losing flexibility (which usually is accompanied by loss of balance – deadly in those of fragile bone). The way to fix that is to have a stretching program combined with a strength-training program. Yes, aerobic activity is needed too, but if you don’t maintain your strength and flexibility you won’t be able to do aerobic activities.

I have yet to get myself going on such a program. I bought some DVD’s of stretching and yoga programs and have yet to open them. I also have books on strength training for seniors (damn, I never imagined the day I would consider myself a “senior”) that I have perused, but that’s about it. One of these days I really have to sit down and make up an exercise program. The trick will be in getting up and doing it.