Old Decathlon Olympics Journal

Sun. Oct. 3: My Last Olympic Decathlon Forever

Sunday, October 31st, 2004

Happy Halloween!

Rick and I were up in Pineville at Camp Beauregard to visit Billy for Family Day. He looks and sounds so good. It is amazing how good military training is for young men. He is seriously thinking about joining the CB’s, Construction Battalion.

He goes to Baton Rouge to start training on heavy equipment January 9th, 2005. He hasn’t told me the serious reason why he has chosen heavy equipment, but the smart-ass answer he gave me is, he gets to sit on his ass and let the equipment do the work. God, I hope that is not the only real reason he wants to be a heavy equipment operator, surely not?

Jon-Ray was there too. He looked good and he is driving back to Fort Benning as I am typing this. He has further to drive than we did, but I am mad at him. He said he would put my dishes in the dishwasher and take out my trash. Guess the military can teach a young man to do just about anything except what they promise their mama their going to do.

Ray Daniel, my oldest son is here, and I don’t know why, he hasn’t said, but generally my kids don’t just show up and hang around out of mere love for me. He wants something, and he is obviously just waiting until exactly the right moment to ask for something.

Kids can, will, and do break your heart. I don’t think my brothers and I were this hard on my daddy, I hope not, but I honestly can’t remember. I do remember that daddy use to say that we could f*** up an anvil. Now, what kind of thing is that to say? I wish I could remember what we did to make him say that so often.

I just heard my son refer to us as “my people’s” and say he was just here at “my people’s house”; he is well over twenty-one, what is wrong with these kids?

Well this is the end of this writing challenge for the month of October. Tomorrow is the beginning of NaNoWriMo. One door closes and another opens.

I just hope that this year I have more success with this Mork & Mindy sounding NaNoWriMo than I had last year. I feel like I will.

As I write this, my son is brushing my hair, and I have to admit it feels good. If he continues I will be asleep in a very little while. He must really want something big.

With this entry I have completed this year’s promise to myself. It started out as part of the Olympic Decathlon, but I am not going to say anymore about that. The important thing is that I kept the promise I made to myself. I used this journal, as like a warm up exercise to get ready for NaNoWriMo, and tomorrow it starts with something like 1667 words a day needed to make the 50,000 words count for November. Now, the question is can I do it, and have it all make sense and end up with a piece I can edit and hopefully have my first completed book. We’ll see.

I am always saying I need a higher word count; tomorrow I will have it, and is this going to prove to be another one of those things that you tell yourself that you should be careful what you ask for?

Trick or Treat?

Hallelujah!

Amen.