Well, since facebook is doing “site maintenance” (I love that “Hey” they add at the beginning of the message telling you that the site is down. So chummy.) for the fifteenth time in as many days, I thought I’d check in on my old blog here.
Soon I hope to be doing a bit of maintenance on this site as well. Another Kind of Cowboy comes out September 1 in Canada and December 1 in the U.S. and its existence ought to be reflected on my website with a lovely new site design. (By the way, thanks to all of you who read advance reader copies of Cowboy and sent me such lovely messages.)
On Monday I handed in a new book. If all goes well, it should be out in fall 2008. I will post more more about that later.
Finally, part of what has been great about this past month has been the time I’ve spent observing boys and their varieties of behaviour.
A week ago I was resting on “our” rock on the lake near our house when I happened to notice an object moving slowly across the water. Frank and I went in for another swim and got closer to the object. It was a dock and it was being towed by about four young men. We swam near enough to hear them cursing and complaining. “Damn,” said one. “They better get in the water now that we brought them this f#^%* dock to sit on.” I looked toward the shoreline they were headed for and there, naturally, were four girls sunbathing.
Eventually, Frank and I got tired and went back to our spot. I watched as the boys swam for at least another thirty minutes to bring these young vixens a dock, presumably “borrowed” from one of the houses or the beach on the other side of the lake. I didn’t see the girls get on the dock, but I hope for the sake of those dedicated young swimmers that they did. God, what perseverance! What strength and indomitable spirit!
The other notable boy moment occurred recently when we were tubing down a local river. We got a late start, so there weren’t too many other tubers about. We’d been traveling for about two hours when we rounded a bend, saw a group of other floaters and heard music. Loud music. We got closer and saw that one of the guys had a giant sound system tied to his inflatable raft. It included sub-woofers. He was playing Metallica so loud that the trees were shaking. Oh, and he wasn’t a little boy. He was more of a forty-something boy. His raft was outfitted with a little flotilla of devices that floating along behind him, most designed to hold his beer cans and his snacks.
When one of our party said something along the lines of “woo hoo” the captain of the Love Boat said, “You like that song?” and very generously played it again.
This kind of thing is why I like the male of the species so very much.