In Doors

This last weekend was not the weekend here in So Cal to be out at the beach or outside much at all. I had been looking forward to my Sunday ritual and taking my board out. Since I have problems with allergies and with all the heavy ash in the air there was no way I was going out.


I enjoy reading and being indoors. Sure I get out and exercise, since I write I have to other wise I will just be so fat and unhealthy. I was able to get some reading done since I had to stay inside, it was better than watching the news 24 hours. When there are fires like last weekend it is hard to get away from watching. It’s good to do something else. The news casters’ really want you to obsess and watch the coverage of the fire all day long. As if you will miss something if you tune out for a second, and you can’t do that now can you?

We rented some movies. Not that I really watched them I ended up doing more reading, research for a new character. It was the mournful sight of all the smoke in the air that kept us in as well. I had friends that had to evacuate from their homes. Out of the 29 families that I knew of that had to leave none of them had their house destroyed in the fires.

Some had some damage to their backyard but not their homes. That was great and nothing short of a miracle. After all is said and done, there was tons of ash in the streets and even in my yard at home.

I did get stir crazy by Sunday night and went to a reading in LA. I just had to think about something else for a while. This week at work has been stressful and I really want to go back out in to the sea again and relax on my board for a while. It really helps me to make it through the week. I don’t want to spend all my time indoors.

Walk

The walk to my car and get my board down from the roof rack or the walk to the shore line, there are many walks that put a smile on my face. My dogs need to walk and they are their own motivation. They are so happy when they see the leashes come out. It’s difficult to put them on since they are bouncing around and going crazy in the living room.

If I am stuck with something to write I might get up from my desk and talk a walk to the store, just to get some fresh air and move around for a bit. I walk around the mall sometimes, but that is not a refreshing as walking on the sand.

In our families sometimes we walk towards them or away from them. For me I have run away from my mother and sister and most of my family. Not all of them have hurt me as much as my mother and sister have, but if they ask about them, what can I say? I don’t want to see them ever again since they are so horrid. Its one thing to have disagreements and quite another to suffer abuse. After a while I started to lose respect for myself, for staying around my mother as long as I did.

With others it’s the same thing. If you are in a spot were its not working and you still stay can you still respect yourself in the morning? I see my friends treat their boyfriends or girlfriends and I have lost respect for them. I have to walk away from watching it happen all over again, I get really tired of seeing it. As for me, there may come a time when I might have to take a walk.

When is it time to take a walk? No one can answer that but you. Some times you have to stay since it’s not the time to walk. Not because you want to stay, there may not be a lot of options open to you at the time. What do you do in the mean time? For me I don’t need to make things worse than they are and I don’t need to create a fuss all the time. I make the best of things for the time being and find ways to get out of the house. I take a short walk to the shore or other places. I encourage others to walk as well, it helps build up your stamina for a much longer walk.

In Common

I have not grown up participating in sports. My sister did and my older brother sisters did and they used to talked endlessly about it. My father was one of those horrid little league coaches that used to yell at the players and probably had much to do with their emotional scaring.

Now that I am older I am grateful for the fact that the men in my life are not glued to the TV for baseball or football. I have not had to learn to love the team my man does or anything like that. When people do talk to me about sports I can feel my eyes glaze over and I just half listen. If anything I can use it in a scene in my writing; but I could care less about the sport itself.

At parties men seem to bond over sports and teams and have something to talk about. If nothing else there is that. I had this experience over the weekend. I was at a dinner party ad found myself talking to a very bigoted man and his wife. I had nowhere to run and leave this unpleasant conversation. I did change the subject and lastly we got on to surfing. From there it was a lot nicer. It was funny that he directed most of his surfing stories to my man. He does not surf and only tried a bit when he was younger. The older man did not think for a second that I would be the surfer in the family. It took him along time to address me with the stories and I was the one that understood about him going left and a kook dropping in on him or letting go of their board when they were trying to duck-dive and hitting his board.


While it wasn’t fun to have him assume that the only another white male like himself would understand his stories. It did get us talking about something that we did have in common. If politics and race and language divide people sports and the love of the same sport and bring people a bit closer. It may seem like a boring conversation to those that don’t enjoy the sport, but at least we are talking about something nice and if we disagree on other things there is always surfing.