A MONTH OF UN-DAYS

A LOT OF PEOPLE DIDN'T THINK I'D MAKE IT THIS LONG, and I confess, I had my doubts. Particularly when I've squandered aimlessly instead of effectively repurposing those dearly departed hours on the links. 

I keep wondering when I'll actually sit down and start working on my next book. When will I pick up my 6-string and give it a long-overdue tune-up? When will I actually master the little things, like chords on the piano? When will I just quit fooling myself and put the Cobras, Titleists, Clevelands and Eidolons back in the trunk? 

If the answer is "when hell freezes over," I'm afraid we're almost there. The course was blanketed with frost this morning. But with the economy flown south for the winter, another kid going off to college next year, and a bailout of the ad industry nowhere in sight, who has time for golf anymore anyway? No wonder the book isn't written, the guitar's out of tune and the piano is merely a piece of furniture in my living room. All I do is work these days.

But I guess it beats the alternative. 

Or does it? 

RETREAT, YES. SURRENDER, NO.

FORGIVE ME FOR NOT WRITING. It's difficult while wearing a straitjacket. I have to peck the keys with my nose. The spacebar's a bigger target and I can use my chin, but capital letters are a bitch requiring simultaneous strikes of the chin and nose. 

Speaking of big targets, they were blowing the leaves from the 16th green this morning as I sucked down a cup of coffee on my deck above a hundred feet above. I wondered if the jump would kill me. 

Then Fletcher called to inform me that the forecast for tomorrow is 71 and sunny and suggested I trade in the blog for a more desirable four-letter word. Fuck.

And then Mully and a couple of our coldblooded Canadian friends called from Vegas to let me know I was an asshole for not making the trip, and that they were off to play 36. 

And then Brain rang me and told me of his recent adventures at Pumpkin Ridge where he mercilessly drove a golfball into the chin of his cousin who had to have reconstructive surgery. 

Aha! Who am I to feel sorry for myself? At least I can still use my chin. Spacebar, look out.

THE TOUGHEST DAY YET

IT WAS AN ABSOLUTELY SPECTACULAR FALL DAY and worse yet, it was Sunday. I busied myself with work, bills, college apps, errands, garbage, recycling, running and email. I did everything but the thing I really wanted to do. Yesterday was a breeze because it poured. Friday was a long day of work that persisted till evening. Thursday I listened to my brother give an inspiring presentation on how you can fuel profits and growth while taking drastic measures towards corporate sustainability. The audience was enthralled, and it was not an easy crowd to enthrall. They were the top people from around the world who make up the 30-year old consulting firm PRTM. Their incisive questions showed how closely they'd been listening as my brother told his tale of elevating operations at Burt's Bees in pursuit of The Greater Good. It's constant innovation, and most everyone's inolved at some level. The kind of company you really want to work at, and feel pride about it. And because of this, their remarkable growth has seen an inverse relationship with their carbon footprint. 

Oh to be making my own green footprints along the 16th fairway below. But it seems I'm meandering toward my own greater good. 

OBAMA COMES TO OUR LITTLE TOWN

IT WAS AN HISTORIC NIGHT IN LEESBURG. And just when I'm wondering whether or not I can survive a year without swinging a club, the crowd erupts with a resounding  "YES WE CAN. YES WE CAN."

OFF THE BEATEN CARTPATH

I'M SURE AS HELL NOT ON IT.  And with each invitation to play I turn down, I become more painfully aware of the excruciating pang pang pang pang of withdrawal that tears at my psyche more violently than a four-putt.

Last week it was Nick inviting me to play Congressional. Last weekend I had to blow off a 36-a-day jaunt down to Raleigh with Randy and the boys. And I'm getting 16 emails an hour from that squeakiest of wheels Tracy who's doing his damnedest to cajole me into joining him and a dozen or two other lunatics for 3 days of golf, gambling and gars with comped hotel rooms and passes to The Big Smoke. What, no showgirls?

I'd be surrounded by fellow Golfoholics, but with one big difference - they'd be feeding their addiction while I'd be starving mine. Would I ride along and get vicarious pleasure, or hole up in my room with the lights off after losing my dry-fit shirt at hold 'em?

So I'm just a happy camper. Last weekend I stacked wood and have splinters and sciatica to show for it. Next weekend, perhaps I'll take up knitting. Because it is getting downright chilly around here. Hell, I could knit myself a fuzzy pink straitjacket. 

It's medication time Mr. Balata.

ONLY 51 WEEKS TO GO

IT WOULD PROBABLY BE EASIER TO GIVE UP SEX. I've resorted to dreaming about the game. And it feels like cheating. Even my morning run along the course gives me tinges of guilt. Particularly when I check out the pin position, choose a club in my mind, tee up a virtual ball and begin my backswiSTOP! This can't be right. Like Jimmy Carter, I have lust in my heart. Only it's for a damn game. Please don't tell my wife.

LOST WEEKEND

IT'S SUNDAY MID-AFTERNOON AND THERE'S STILL ENOUGH DAYLIGHT left to play 9. I question how much resolve I have to refrain from playing. What was the point of this pointless exercise, anyway?

Oh yeah.  To see what I can do with those 10 hours a week I'd otherwise be spending on fairways and greens (which probably wasn't close to 10 hours at all given the amount of time spent in fescue and bunkers and water hazards and somewhere over the rainbow and the out-of-bounds stakes).

So here's how it went. Woke up. Made coffee. Drank three mugs. Did some work. Went for a run. Made breakfast. Did some more work. Went to the bank. Then to Costco. Then borrowed a seen-better-days wheelbarrow from Scully. Tried to repair the thing. Then put on my golf gloves. 

But instead of reaching for a golf club, I reached for a log, and proceeded to unload a pick-up truck overflowing with a cord of wood that I then had to move from my front yard to my back and stack in neat little piles so that we can heat this damn house when I can no longer afford to pay the bills, which could be any day now given the economy. My repair job to the wheelbarrow gave way before the stack of wood did, and I was hard-pressed to get it moved before daylight disappeared and the chilly air of evening set in.

But fortunately I had a cord of neatly stacked freshly cut hardwood that I could build a nice fire from. After bringing a load up to the fireplace, it only took three newspapers and a blowtorch before I could coax it into flames.

My log supplier, The Woodpecker, clearly was not inspired by Gallo's old tagline, "We will serve no wood before its time." Fortunately I had a box of those fake packaged logs in my garage and I conscripted one to serve as nuclear kindling for my reticent hardwood. Before long my bride and I were hunkering down before our stone fireplace with a pizza, a bottle of wine and a chick flick that lulled me to sleep faster than a couple of Ambien.

That was yesterday. Today looked a lot like a repeat, only the wood hauling was replaced with helping my teenage daughter with an essay assignment that would have been considered extreme at Harvard Law. This teacher must have a grudge more sizable than the national debt to bear. This is not how I want to spend my former golf days.

I haven't touched the guitar, looked at the piano or dusted off an old manuscript waiting to be rekindled. But I did get a few miles in on the trail each day, and my knowledge of my daughter's high school government studies is probably at nearly 3rd grade level by now.

And if I hurry, I can still get 9 in. Or head on down to Home Depot and pick up a new wheel and axle and try to repair the borrowed wheelbarrow. Again.

Only 359 more days. But who's counting?