Again, my son will question my masculinity

. . . but that's the way it goes. I wanted to get close up pictures of the rose of sharon blossoms last year but there were japanese beetles all over them, munching happily. This year I learned if you put out bug bags with attractant you get bugs from miles away migrating to your yard. More than you could ever catch in bags because it's a sexual pheremone.

I took a really cool picture of a japanese beetle last year, much to the disgust of my brother in law, Greg, who views them as the enemy. Even one's enemy can be attractive. Anyway, since they are not so horny, there are fewer of them this year, which is a blessing.

There's a little robber fly in this one. This fly is colored like a bee, but not really shaped that way. This must work for him. We are not always what we seem and this is usually a survival strategy. I seem to be a harmless middle aged man, so there you go. My goal is to be increasingly less harmless.

I'm well. I have a new non-narcotic pain reliever, which is nonetheless an opioid, and helped me get some stuff done today even though my back began rebelling early. I'm not sure what I did yesterday, other than see two new clients. There isn't a one to one correspondence between when I exert and when I have aches and pains. It was manageable today with a light dose and Wikipedia says this stuff isn't addictive except at the maximum dose, which I am nowhere near. Most of the time Tylenol 500s work well. I helped get the house clean and did some shopping and took little breaks and it all got done. This is more than I can say for my macho son who has done absolutely nothing we have asked him to do today, claiming fatigue. I'm an asshole dad so I suggested that he was too exhausted to do anything with anyone including the Xbox and he seemed to begin to move. It's looking like rain and I don't think the lawn is going to get mowed. Nor is his laundry going to get done or his room clean. His grounding will last until tomorrow when there's probably something he'll want to do. So it goes. Yelling at him doesn't make me feel better and still doesn't get the job done.

Rose O' Sharon was a character in the Grapes of Wrath. She nursed a dying man after her infant died as the family rode from Oklahoma to California, the promised land during the depression. These days there's no place to migrate to, except perhaps Alaska and I don't believe they are promising anything there.

I'd actually really enjoy mowing the lawn. It was one of the jobs I found satisfying, along with shoveling the snow. I liked being strong. Picking up rocks and making walls and shoveling holes and planting things. It has been strange to be weak, anemic. Atrophy has been almost alarming at times. Nowadays, I'm gaining my strength and can see progress. It's easier to have pain when one can see a progression. Robyn's back pain isn't like that and I'm noticing the difference. At some point I suppose I'll come to the conclusion that, in the words of the sage Jack Nicholson, this is "as good as it gets."

I suppose it won't be good enough.

Tough.