I've noted for some time now that my sobriety birthday - May 4th - is just about exactly halfway between the end of one college football season, and the beginning of the next.

Well, somebody else has finally taken notice of that fact. And a good thing, too, as I'm never to sure of my own ability to count days.

It IS late spring - although usually by now it's summer - and the Sonoran Desert has been lovely, albeit darned windy, lately.

          

This is what we saw as we pulled into the homestead on Saturday evening.

But the picture doesn't show the WIND - the wind has been blowing for a week. It's the kind of wind that makes me crazy - I don't do well with constant high winds - and the addition issues of having just had five 25-foot tall queen palms put into the ground and having to protect them against the wind don't help much.

In addition, Silas makes most of his money waving a sign for Domino's, and when the wind gets high enough, he can't do that - so he loses hours, and money. So there's that to worry about, as well.

This half - the half of the non-football year between my birthday and kickoff - is the worst half, without a doubt. Mainly because of the heat, of course. Last year we spent three weeks plus in Hawaii, but we won't be doing that this year, because any money that wasn't spent on the pool or on the plants or on the teak will probably be hoarded by Ethel for the next binge. I thought that we were going to to up to Colorado for the month of August, but I've been quickly disabused of that notion - I think that Ethel wants to hang around in the heat to maximize her ROI on the pool investment.

Okay, okay - I'm just tired. Way tired. I've been trying to regain some aerobic conditioning on the elliptical machines at the gym, and it's not going very well. And I'm fat - I've got a layer of bearfat on my body that I don't care much for. I'm supposed to do see the orthopedist this afternoon to determine how the broken bones are healing; he'll tell me when, and/or if, I can start running again.... Not that I'm in any hurry, as I'm finding out that, as my friend Jack said this morning in the gym, it's going to be a "long, slow road of recovery".

I'm 51 years old. I've wasted most of this life, and certainly haven't done this body any good. I'd like to get on with the NEXT life now, please - but Ethel says that she's not through with me yet, so I have to hang around a while longer.

That's hard to hear, when my body hurts, and it won't do anything, and the wind won't stop blowing, and when the wind DOES stop blowing it will be hot as Hades, and it's a long time until football season starts again.

But at least the sunsets are pretty.