Changes To The "Man Rules"

Okay, so here is a post to distract you from the super boring one I just posted so that I could refer back to it.

I hurt myself yesterday. And it made realize just how much has changed in my life since I was younger. Injuries use to be something you could be kind of proud of in a weird way. They gave you a few man points and you got extra if you pretended like they didn't really hurt.

Here's a quick list of a few of these so that you see what I am talking about: Tweaked my back roofing the house, twisted my knee playing basketball, cut my hand putting in the car stereo, sprained my ankle diving for a touchdown, sprained my wrist seeing who could put the biggest dent in broken refrigerator, twisted my neck "car surfing", broke my…well you get the picture. These are all real injuries I have had in my life. And some of them were admittedly stupid injuries, that you only get when you’re a drunk 20 year old but you could tell people what happened and you looked like a man – a stupid man, but a man just the same. You could practically smell the testosterone just hearing the stories about how they happened.

Yesterday, I was on the floor playing with the babies and the phone rang, I stood up weird and sprained my big toe. Sprained my toe carrying a baby. Hmmm…not a great one to put on my man resume. At least I pretended like it didn't hurt. Not sure if I still get points for that.

I am starting to wonder if the "Man Rules" change as you get older. When I am 100 years old will walking down the hall without breaking a hip get me a couple of points? Hmmm...I need to get an updated rule book.

Trees and things

It has been a pretty busy summer so far, and I have not had much time for writing so there hasn’t been a whole lot to report so far as my writing goes. Here is a little tidbit from my regular life. There was a thunderstorm on Friday, this is a pretty common event in late June. There was a little hail and a lot of wind. I got off of work to find this.

Yep that is a two hundred pound “branch” that fell on my brand new fence. Thankfully the branch did miss my wife's car just a few feet out of frame and came no where near the house. It was a little shocking. The storm wasn't that bad.

Anyway, I am a man and part of my manly duties is to fix things like this. So Saturday morning I went to the hardware store got some more pickets and a new two by four( the one the tree is sitting on is shattered but somehow still holding up the tree in the picture).

A few hours and one pretty jagged cut on my hand later I was done. There was much rejoicing as I proved that I still deserved my man card. We played computer games and drank massive quantities of crystal light.

As for writing, it has been the same old thing. There has been one new development. A publication I have a story in has sent out an email to writers it has worked with in the past. They are looking for independent film/book reviewers. I sent an email back saying I would give it a try. So sometime in the next few months to a year I might be a published reviewer.