My stay-at-home vacations are thing to behold

The view from my upstairs patio overlooking the pool and courtyard of Bienville Square on Hughes Street in Fort Walton Beach. Image courtesy of Del Stone Jr.

This morning I slept in until the late hour of 7:25 a.m. And I didn’t make the bed immediately. My God, what’s happening to me?

This is the day I usually become panic-stricken. It’s the first real day of vacation and I begin to sense the time slipping away. Saturday and Sunday are always the free bonus days where I get to do anything I want, though Friday night is the best. I have a full week of no stress, no obligations and lots of free time ahead. I can finally, completely relax, knowing that if the phone rings it won’t be a calamity that I am responsible for fixing.

I vow each vacation to not waste my time off sitting behind the computer. I promise to GET STUFF DONE, life-changing “stuff,” even if it’s finally ironing all the clothes in the ironing closet. I pursue this with great enthusiasm on Saturday, let up a little on Sunday, then awaken Monday to realize time is slipping away and I’d better get busy. That’s what I did today.

The house reeked of jambalaya. The fridge was packed to the point of nearly exploding with leftovers from yesterday’s Super Bowl extravaganza. But at least the kitchen was clean. In fact, the entire house looked neat and orderly. I was pleased.

So. I got my stuff together for my taxes. I take them to a CPA. In the past my taxes were so complicated I decided it was worth the money to hire somebody to do them. I’d been doing them and getting back $300 or so – the first year I took them to a CPA I got back well over $1,000. It’s been that way ever since, except one year when I made so much money writing I actually had to send the IRS a check. Unfortunately that has never happened again.

My first stop was the tax collector’s office. I had to apply for a rebate on the Pathfinder’s tag. The tax collector’s office is now conveniently hidden in the very back of the new Uptown Station expansion. You enter a foyer; on the left is an office that has not yet been finished. The guts of the thing are hanging out. On the right is the tax collector’s office. You walk into a spacious room and are immediately confronted by an electronic device that wants to know about your “transaction.” You push a button and it spits out a piece of paper with a number on it. Then, you wait until a very pleasant female voice calls out over a P.A. system what you hope will be your number. It reminded me of that Ridley Scott commercial for Apple back in the 1980s. The lady who helped me was pleasant but not overly friendly, which I guess is not a complaint per se. It’s just that every other time I’ve been there the staff was very chatty and personal, which I like. This person had that professional distance I’m not accustomed to encountering at the tax collector’s office. She did, however, get me the form and tell me where to mail it so my mission was a success.

I then dropped off bags of beer bottles, tin cans, plastic bottles, and aluminum at the recycling van. Wasn’t I just there Saturday? Why yes, I was. But over the course of Saturday and Sunday I filled two more bags! So there. And the drunken wasps were nowhere to be found.

As it was just around the corner, I dropped by the used book store to leave a couple of paperbacks and see if they had two books I’m looking for, The Bourne Supremacy and Ben Bova’s Mars Lives. They were closed! Seems like every time I go by there the place is closed. They keep irregular hours and who knows, maybe they close on Mondays. Or maybe the hired help was sick. Don’t know.

So I set out in search of a day-old bakery. There’s one on Green Acres Road but I thought there was one over by Santa Rosa Mall, so I headed off that way. No such luck. One thing I noticed, however, was the emptiness of the mall. At first I thought it was closed. A sad cluster of cars was parked outside the entrance to JC Penney, and another in front of the main entrance. That was it. My God, at that rate the mall won’t be able to stay open. I haven’t been there in years and probably should drop by just to see if they have some interesting new stores.

One other thing I noticed while I was over there is that Mary Esther has a nature trail! I guess it’s been there awhile but I’d never seen it. The place was unusually busy for a workday. I’ll have to drop by with my camera and do a photo gallery.

I visited the Salvation Army’s new digs at Mary Esther Plaza and bought a couple of books, The Flight of the Intruder and another war-themed novel. I’ve been reading lots of those lately and I enjoy them. Paperbacks at S.A. are only 50 cents. The selection is pretty bad but I saw a few goodies on the shelves.

Then it was off to the bakery, where I found a package of hoagie rolls for $1.75 and a loaf of whole-wheat bread for the same price. Why would you buy bread from the supermarket ever again?

I decided to make one more attempt at the used bookstore. Still closed. Arghhh! So I came home, changed clothes and went to Mom’s to work in her yard. I got a swath of leaves raked up and hauled out, and yet again mourned the forlorn “garden” I’ve tried to establish in that weird little space between her carport and house. I’ve tried everything in that spot and NOTHING will grow there, not even cactus. The only thing that ever did well was monkey grass, which I hate. My new attempt includes green and variegated spider plants, which you can literally throw on the ground and they’ll grow. If that fails I might just stick a bunch of artificial plants in that spot and be done with it.

Afterwards I returned home, got cleaned up and sat down to work on my zombie story. Gosh, I hope Steve isn’t reading this because he might be irked to hear I am just now starting the story. Truth is I’ve agonized over this thing. When I first heard of the anthology an idea immediately sprang to mind, but then I began searching for an alternative. Now I’m back to the original idea. I hope it’s trendy enough. I ran into that problem with a story I wrote for Live Without a Net. Turns out all the stories in that book were super-trendy; mine was a dowdy conventional story. I felt like I’d worn blue jeans to the prom. I didn’t want to repeat that mistake but the truth is, I can’t pretend to be something I’m not, in life or writing. So I’ll just do the best story I’m capable of writing and hope it’s good enough to make the cut. I created a Word file and started putting words on “paper” so to speak. The story began to unfold and better, because this is something I struggle with, the tone began to emerge. I like what I’ve done so far and that’s a good sign. It’s interesting – to me, anyway.

Then I settled down to eat dinner and watch that Steven Seagal movie I rented Sunday. Dinner was the vegetable tray we didn’t touch during the Super Bowl. I cooked the broccoli and carrots, and ate the rest of the veggies raw. The movie was predictable. Steven Seagal is a former member of the Russian mafia who now writes novels. His ex-wife and daughter are killed and he must find out who did it. Seagal is barely comprehensible when he speaks English. With an affected Russian accent – and his mumbling – you can’t keep track of anything he’s saying! At one point I fell asleep during the movie and will have to rewatch it.

I went to bed at the insanely early hour of 9:30. Isn’t that crazy? I was tired and immediately crashed asleep. With luck I’ll make good progress on my story Tuesday … and maybe get that ironing done. Won’t THAT be fun!

About the author:

Del Stone Jr. is a professional fiction writer. He is known primarily for his work in the contemporary dark fiction field, but has also published science fiction and contemporary fantasy. Stone’s stories, poetry and scripts have appeared in publications such as Amazing Stories, Eldritch Tales, and Bantam-Spectra’s Full Spectrum. His short fiction has been published in The Year’s Best Horror Stories XXII; Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine; the Pocket Books anthology More Phobias; the Barnes & Noble anthologies 100 Wicked Little Witch Stories, Horrors! 365 Scary Stories, and 100 Astounding Little Alien Stories; the HWA anthology Psychos; and other short fiction venues, like Blood Muse, Live Without a Net, Zombiesque and Sex Macabre. Stone’s comic book debut was in the Clive Barker series of books, Hellraiser, published by Marvel/Epic and reprinted in The Best of Hellraiser anthology. He has also published stories in Penthouse Comix, and worked with artist Dave Dorman on many projects, including the illustrated novella “Roadkill,” a short story for the Andrew Vachss anthology Underground from Dark Horse, an ashcan titled “December” for Hero Illustrated, and several of Dorman’s Wasted Lands novellas and comics, such as Rail from Image and “The Uninvited.” Stone’s novel, Dead Heat, won the 1996 International Horror Guild’s award for best first novel and was a runner-up for the Bram Stoker Award. Stone has also been a finalist for the IHG award for short fiction, the British Fantasy Award for best novella, and a semifinalist for the Nebula and Writers of the Future awards. His stories have appeared in anthologies that have won the Bram Stoker Award and the World Fantasy Award. Two of his works were optioned for film, the novella “Black Tide” and short story “Crisis Line.”

Stone recently retired after a 41-year career in journalism. He won numerous awards for his work, and in 1986 was named Florida’s best columnist in his circulation division by the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors. In 2001 he received an honorable mention from the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association for his essay “When Freedom of Speech Ends” and in 2003 he was voted Best of the Best in the category of columnists by Emerald Coast Magazine. He participated in book signings and awareness campaigns, and was a guest on local television and radio programs.

As an addendum, Stone is single, kills tomatoes and morning glories with ruthless efficiency, once tied the stem of a cocktail cherry in a knot with his tongue, and carries a permanent scar on his chest after having been shot with a paintball gun. He’s in his 60s as of this writing but doesn’t look a day over 94.

Contact Del at [email protected]. He is also on Facebook, twitter, Pinterest, tumblr, TikTok, and Instagram. Visit his website at delstonejr.com .