The musings of a madman...

  Y’all know why I do this? For the practice of it! [ Phlip note : I know today is Monday, I still got y’all on Thursday! ]      Several years ago – September 1, 2017 – I made a silly BookFace post that started with the words “True Story©” and proceeded to tell an absolutely unhinged short work of fiction. It made no sense, I did it because I was bored and people REALLY enjoyed it. Because people enjoyed it and I am often thirsty for positive reinforcement, I did it the next Thursday morning and a habit was formed.      In the intervening years, I have continued to do this – at a monetary and time cost to myself – because I have always wanted to write and needed something to motivate me to do so. For anyone who has been around while I have been doing this, and I can honestly say that there are six who have been on for the WHOLE ride (no matter how many “both of you” jokes I tell), have actively seen that I am approaching this developmentally. Where...

  … and we’re back!        It should be noted that I spend roughly a third of my time alone with my dogs.  Wife Person™ leaves for work at 7am, and twenty minutes later I take Ava to my mom to drop off at school, from which she will also be the one to pick her up.  I am out and back before I clock in by 8am.  I am in the house by myself until Wife Person™ returns at about 4.  Carve out the eighty minutes I spend exercising before waking them and I’m alone with the boys 11.5 hours a day five days a week and there went 57.5 of 168 hours.      It is further noteworthy that middle-child-by-birth-order life has already instilled me with the social awkwardness that allows one to become their own favorite company.  I say that to say that social cues have and likely will never be my thing, and that working from home will prove to have done nothing to fix this. Anyway…      Despite my normal isolatio...