After August 8th, I missed a few declarations of the summer count. In all my projects, I get moody or allow myself to lose access to my tools. In this case, I was away from my desktop or out in the country with poor cell phone reception. And I was facing that black, sticky glob of dread and unmotivation that curses me, time and again. I'll have to look back at my tweets, and see how well I did tweeting the summer count. Will I do a Fall count. I'm not sure. Will I post a count to summer again? Why not. I'll have to create a days to summer spreadsheet. I am, deep at heart, a computer geek. While reviewing the summer count to see how many days I missed and to give myself a grade, I'll also evaluate every ones #WilboSummerPoints position and make a declaration of that.
I am fairly proud of myself. I have never walked home from work before. It's around five miles. At the peak of my physical form, my 34th year, I could run five miles in less than 40 minutes. This is when I ran five miles out to Maybury State Park in Northville Michigan to run with the Rocket Dogs.. I would catch a ride to the bar and then walk home. I ran like an animal. I made the mistake of carrying my laptop bag as I walked home, and it through my walk out of balance. I had to keep raising it higher on my shoulder. There are no places to stop for a comfort break from the corner of McCracken and Seminole to Henry and Seminole. Unless one wants to stumble into a church. I found an old concrete bench to sit near the entrance to a subdivision.
It was a wonderful walk in many ways. I passed by Mona Shores High School as the band practiced. Please don't take this the wrong way. The Mona Shores High School band allows far too much confusion to reign during their band practices. I am a veteran of five years of Wednesday night marching band practices, and we never milled about like that, unresponsive to instructions over the loud speaker. I am partial to the Waterford Marching Captains who practice standing at total attention for amazing spans of time. I have witnessed this ritual more than once. You could knock them all down like bowling pins before one person would blink. I guess every marching band has its traditions, but Mona Shores is an exceedingly elite school for chorus and band. I'll have to see them march under the Friday Night Lights to be sure.
I stopped at the library, never having set foot in the Norton Shores library before. As a general rule of thumb, I never go near libraries in the last half hour of operation. The environment goes from reading books and thinking great thoughts to crowd control. Some libraries blink the lights. Some sound klaxons. Some interrupt study time with countdowns over the loudspeakers. I need to find me a library that never closes. I'm sure people who think about libraries are wondering, "but doesn't that lead to homeless using the libraries as homeless shelters?" If a man is homeless and he can stay up all night reading and writing, he's the equivalent of a middle ages monk, waiting for civilization to exit the dark ages. I remember when Royal Oak patrolled its library, ejecting the homeless during the day. I'm not sure how they profiled, but if a man has a book open in front of him, is it fair to interrupt his efforts to improve his mind? I guess homeless people make the library a bit scary for the gentler clients. It must be tough to be a librarian. I got pinned down by a librarian who called out to me as I was walking out of the library. "Sir, we close in six minutes". Really, I just wanted to leave the library. I was walking to the door of the library. By the way, the door was locked behind me, meaning the Norton Shores library closed at 7:54 PM last night. Again, don't visit a library in the last thirty minutes of the evening. Also, try to take your washstand bath before you get to the library and simply never, never, never get drowsy.
I took a call from my brother, who had just visited my mother at the hospital. General Motors Benefits, from who my father and mother had a pension, has decided my mother is deceased and now must prove that she is alive. Social Security started the mess by noticing my mother on the rolls under her maiden name. My mother spent several hours last month, very much alive, in the Social Security office straightening this out. However, it looks as if the error is going to cascade through the system and cause havoc. I called GM Benefits and wound up talking with the most automatic customer services representative I've met in my life. That conversation went no where. I asked for the ombudsman. Most companies don't make it easy to talk to the ombudsman or fail to staff the position. I called Solidarity House, and I talked to an International UAW Representative who advised me to follow the benefit plans procedures. Which is to produce a Social Security card for my mother. My mother never needed a social security card. After years of staying home with her children, she started her own business after the firs three left for college. So mom needs a social security card and social security had serious questions about her existence a few weeks prior. Advice to my readers. Make sure everything is straight at Social Security before the end of the month. I enjoyed this call to my brother as dark perfected itself, sitting in a wrought iron chair outside the Coffee House at US-31 and Seminole. The last class of Yoga had wrapped up, and the instructor locked the main door. Class members walked to their cars, yoga mats rolled up under one arm.
US-31 heading south to Grand Haven Road has a wide marked shoulder for bicycles, but it isn't a bicycle path. Several pedestrians have been killed on US-31 and have been ruled at fault in their demise. A van pulled over to the side of the road at the Travel Agency, and the man ran twenty feet over to me. "Do you need a ride?" "Thank you, but I want to walk all the way home!" He grinned, slapped me on the shoulder, "You're the Man!"
I didn't walk directly home. I walked over the median, looking both ways as I crossed the north bound and south bound. I walked over the strip of grass between Seaway and Airport, and had to climb up the broken rocks of the railroad bed, which was slightly painful for my ankles. At the Patio, I was hoping it was bottled dollar Bud night, but bottles of Bud cost $2.25 that night. The lovely woman, drinking with her boyfriend, recommended the Busch, Busch Lite, or the Bud Select, a dollar the can. I even tipped a dollar. One guy teased me about the laptop bag, saying that it meant my work wasn't done. He doesn't know the half of it.
Maybury State Park is 1000 acres of outdoor joy.
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