Spring at the Dunnevant House

Spring has sprung at the Dunnevant house…

Comfort

Perhaps the most sought after human condition is comfort. All of us long for it. When financial rewards come we don’t admit to riches, we prefer the elegance of the word comfortable. Our possessions are often referred to as creature comforts. In the movies just before things start to heat up someone says, “Let me slip into something more comfortable.” Let me share with you what comfortable means to me.

Today is Saturday. What I am about to describe for you is typical for me on Saturdays. It has always been my most comfortable day. The day started a couple hours ago with my everyday wake-up routine. But now, Pam is in the kitchen while I write this, making our special Saturday morning breakfast. We never eat breakfast together on any other day. Our routines collide awkwardly during the work week. But on Saturdays she makes a proper sit down meal. This past week I sent her a Tik-Tok video of a delicious looking breakfast dish that someone had made. I thought that she might like it too so I forwarded it to her and now she’s in there playing that video over and over, making sure she doesn’t miss a step. 

Its now 8:23 and Lucy hasn’t come downstairs yet. She hasn’t peed since 10:00 last night, hasn’t eaten since 5:00 yesterday afternoon, and yet she still lounges on our bed by herself. Why? Because neither of us has “issued her a proper invitation to come downstairs.” You heard that correctly. She is a lunatic.

After breakfast I will workout. For me this used to entail a trip to American Family Fitness. But my 19 year membership at that institution ended with COVID. Since then my workout has become an improvised routine that takes place in my home with dumbbells and the two staples of DIY fitness—push-ups and sit-ups. Saturday is not a road work day, so there will be no walking, running or biking.

Then around 10:30 or so I will spend two hours putzing around in my yard. There is perhaps no other activity in my life from which I draw more pleasure than taking care of my yard. Its not a huge yard so it doesn’t take forever. The tasks involved vary by the seasons. Sometimes I rake, other times I mow. I gather sticks, remove Lucy’s deposits. I trim the edges of everything. My leaf blower gets a workout. When I’m finished two hours later I will admire my work for a few minutes as I walk the perimeter. This work is the very essence of comfort for me. My real job of 42 years isn’t physical work. Its a job that involves slow moving things like growth. Sometimes it takes years to measure real progress only to have it vaporize in the ill winds of interest rate policy. Not so with my yard. I can see the results of my efforts in the lush, clean lines of the mower. Comforting.

After a shower I might grab an afternoon nap, nothing more comforting than a nice nap. Then at 3:00 our volunteer shift at Hope Thrift starts. Pam will man the cash register while I am collecting donations at the back door. I spend a lot of my 3 hour shift harassing the other volunteers, teasing them about one thing or another. Sometimes I slip across the parking lot to Wendy’s or McDonalds to buy them ice creams or French fries. When I’m feeling extra generous…both. At least once during my shift I will encounter someone at the back door who has been in the process of cleaning out a dead parent’s attic. Their grief is still raw. I mostly just listen. Other times I will see a family of immigrants inside looking for and finding bargains. I smile at them and they smile back. It’s always quite a comforting afternoon at the Thrift.

Afterwards we will go out to dinner with old friends who also have spent the afternoon at Thrift. We will find a nice place to catch up over a meal and a beer. These are the type of friends who you can easily relax with, the very best kinds of friends.

And, that’s it…my Saturday. It will be the most comfortable day of the week. Hope your’s was too.

Theft and “sibling’s day”

I am at hour 48 of an annoying headache. Haven’t had one like this in a very long time. So, what do I do? On the way back from the Cafe I pulled my car slightly off of Pump Road in a dangerous spot and stole these wisteria blossoms off a huge tree from some random person’s yard, brought them home, stuffed them in a vase and presented them to Pam because I love her and it took my mind off my pounding headache for ten minutes.

Then I opened Facebook and saw that my sister had posted a picture because of something called “Sibling’s Day”

Although this Sibling’s Day nonsense is most likely a plot hatched between the big shots at the greeting card company and the big shots in the Florists Industry, I couldn’t help but stop and stare at her picture. That’s the Dunnevant brood that I grew up with from oldest to youngest from right to left. Looking at them I am overcome with gratitude for being so lucky, so divinely blessed to have these people in my life. All three of them have my back. Always…always. There’s a lot of humor, music, love, and brain power in this photograph.

My head is still pounding, but all is well.

The Eclipse, Basketball and Pollen

The solar eclipse has come and gone and if not for a random trip to the bank I would have missed it. When I pulled into the parking lot there was Clarice, my banker, gazing upward with bright red sunglasses. She loaned them to me for a second, I looked up and there it was. I’m told that the next one is in 2044. I’ll probably be dead by then so this was it. I must say that I don’t quite get the fascination. The moon comes between the sun and the earth and momentarily and blocks our view. Let’s all lose our minds.

Then there’s college basketball. Now that Connecticut has won its second title in a row I can admit the fact that I haven’t watched a single game of the tournament. The Caitlin Clark story was pretty cool but I didn’t watch a single woman’s game either. Sure, I watched some highlights and read a few recaps of the more pivotal games, but to sit down for three hours and watch a basketball game? Nope. My sister Paula is a sportsaholic and watches practically everything and gets annoyed with me when I don’t. I used to be just like her, watched everything. I suppose I’ve become semi-obsessed with writing and thinking about writing. The only thing it hasn’t affected is my devotion to baseball. We’re only ten games into a 162 game season and I’m already pouring over box scores every morning! I’m a hopeless addict.

I suppose that mention needs to be made of the beginning of pollen season. Suddenly, the stuff is everywhere, a soft coating of yellow goo has descended on our world coating every single surface, including the inside of my lungs. I made the dreadful mistake yesterday afternoon of going out for a short run. By the time I returned I was a coughing, gasping mess, a 100% self-inflicted wound. What was I thinking? When I got back I decided to sit out on the deck. But first I had to crank up the leaf blower to clear the pollen. When I did a cloud of yellow swirled up from the deck’s surface like a sneezy fog—another idiotic idea. Instead, I went upstairs, took a shower and snorted in a couple poofs of Flonase. It will be like this for another month. Lucky us!

Lastly, as of this morning only 19 people have RSVP-ed for my book launch party. I don’t know what to make of this. Its awfully early, its a full four weeks away. Maybe a lot of people thought the rapture was gonna happen because of the eclipse and thought, why bother? I’m sure business will pick up as the day gets closer. If not I might have to put a FREE BEER sign out by the railroad tracks?

Big Announcement Post!

Several weeks ago I published a blog post announcing the creation of my Author Webpage. Here’s the link… https://dougdunnevant.com/.

Now comes another announcement. We have a date and venue for the Book Launch Party for A Life of Dreams. Pam has added an RSVP link to the Author Page. The party will be at 7:00 pm Monday night, May 6th at the Hanover Arts and Recreation Center in Ashland, Virginia.

If you’re anything like me, before maybe five weeks ago, you’re probably wondering “What the heck is a launch party?” My first introduction to this came from someone at my publisher who insisted that I needed to have one, and since I am nothing if not cooperative, here we are. Essentially a launch party is where authors invite anyone and everyone they know who can read to attend a party where a charming emcee interviews them about what their inspirations were for writing the book in question, what the creative process was like. Then the author reads a chapter from the book. Afterwards there is time for Q&A from the assembled throng. Then the author sits down at a table where everyone in the crowd rushes forward to buy an autograph copy from the future Pulitzer Prize winner. The trouble is, who in the world is going to come out on a random Monday night for a first time author’s book launch? What happens if you rent the space, get it all decked out for the night and then nobody shows up? Excellent question.

Like every thing else about this endeavor, absolutely nothing is guaranteed. It might be a wonderful and profitable experience or it might be an embarrassing bust. But its too late to back out now. I’m betting on myself and this book.

So, if you’re reading this it means that Pam has added the RSVP link on my website. If you would like to come we need you to click on that link and let us know. This will help us with the planning. It will mean the world to me to see you there.

Honestly, there is a part of me that still can’t quite believe this is happening. I was on Amazon.com the other day and saw this and thought…

…is this even real? There’s got to be some mistake! But now I’ve got boxes of books in my library and I’m as jacked up as a 12 year old after two bags of Skittles.

So, I would love to see you Monday night the 6th of May at 7:00. Go to my webpage. RSVP. Show up. Then say a prayer for me that I don’t pass out during the reading.

My 66th Birthday Recap

What did I do for my birthday?

6:00 am workout featuring my usual regime of push-ups, sit-ups, curls etc etc

7:00 am 8 mile stationary bike course in 30:00 flat

9:00 am breakfast at Cracker Barrel featuring country ham, fried eggs and sourdough toast

10:30 am exploratory visit to Trinity Renovations where we took the first tentative steps on a bathroom and kitchen remodel journey, the second step of which will be them coming over here today to measure, then us returning there on Saturday for a quote. Yikes!

2:00 pm Pam gifted me a 50 minute session at a place called Stretch Lab. Loved, loved, LOVED it.

3:00 pm did some writing

6:15 pm met the siblings at Firebirds for dinner. I had steak, au gratin potatoes, a BLT salad and a couple of beers. I also got this very cool gift…

…believe me, we could do worse.

9:00 pm started watching a new show called Alice & Jack on PBS.

10:30 pm got to sleep over with my beautiful and beguiling wife.

I win at life.

Breaking News

NEWS ROUNDUP:

- In a wide ranging interview on 60 Minutes former President Donald Trump has apologized to the nation for “being such a colossal dickhead” for almost all of his adult life. The current Republican front runner also said that he regretted the “temper tantrum I threw after losing in 2020” explaining that the rabble rousing speech he gave on January 6th was mostly the result of being “sleep deprived and the fact that I had gotten ahold of a bad quarter pounder and was very very ill.”

- The White House has reported that after President Biden ate two helpings of ice cream after Easter dinner he suddenly began speaking clearly and in complete sentences for the first time since Obama’s first term. Doctors have suggested a possible link between the ice cream and the incontinence medication he has been on which may have caused some sort of mental acuity boost due to a chemical reaction. It is too early to tell whether the condition is permanent but just in case, the White House mess has ordered 100 gallons of pistachio.

-Elon Musk has admitted that he isn’t a genius after all, only a “stoner dude who got lucky with a couple ideas years ago and now everybody thinks I’m Albert freaking Einstein.” When asked whether he worries that this admission might damage his reputation and the viability of Tesla going forward Musk replied, “I don’t know man. You got any coke?”

-This just in from the Fan Duel studios of Major League Baseball. The Draftkings Pregame show investigative reporters have discovered that Shohei Ohtani received several thousand dollars of free bets when he signed his endorsement deal with BetMGM. It is not known at this time what specific bets, if any, Ohtani placed or if he bet on baseball. More information is expected during the Caesars Palace Sportsbook postgame show.

APRIL FOOLS