…that’s pretty much it. Painting season is happening, and the time I can devote to writing is diminished to, like, not much. There are some other issues that keep me out of the water. When there’s no chance to surf, my studying of the charts and buoys and forecasts is less important. If I can’t go, do I want to know?

Probably. Do I still want to hear when some of my friends score? Probably. No, definitely.

Here is how house painting works: You prep and paint; body and trim. Then you go around and around the house doing what I call “Tightening up.” Then you clean up, load up, collect the money; move on.

I am still… still working on the current, hopefully last edit of my surf novel, “Swamis.” The biggest benefit of my trying to condense and focus is that I can tighten up the details. Here is an example: In the current ending, a pistol is taken from Joey’s Falcon. I have already set it up that Joey always locks his car. I am at the point in the rewrite in which Joey is sharing a story about his father, a San Diego County Sheriff’s Office detective, in which Joe DeFreines, Sr. has a run in with a couple of drunks at a Pony League baseball game, one of whom is sitting in his car, refuses to get out, and when he does, the Drunk Dad breaks the detective’s arm with a baseball bat another Drunk Dad hands him.

Joey’s father defends himself; the net result being that the Drunk Dad sues the Sheriff’s Office with the help of the attorney father of one of Joey’s schoolmates. The lesson from the baseball bat incident, Joey witll tell (haven’t fit this part in yet) the psychologist he is seeing as a alternative to going to Juvenile Hall for a violent act he committed on another schoolmate, is, as Joey’s father said; “I should have locked my car.” That the Falcon is unlocked, and a pistol that is inside is used in the climactic scene… well, that’s all part of the fun.

People come and go in our lives. The cut-down number of characters in “Swamis,” I realize, must be included for some good reason. They must seem real. Joey wants to be part of a group of surfers who could be considered “LOCALS.” He has friends from school who surf, who he labels as “Surf friends.” When he comes to terms with the attorney’s son, who has been taunting him (with some help from Joey’s surf friends), but who, before Joey’s accident that is pivotal to the plot, was his friend, I plan on giving that character an opportunity to tell Joey, “You need to… broaden your definition of friends.”

Or words to that effect.

We run into surfers and non-surfers. Not all are our friends. Some might never be. Some could be.

Okay, now I’m thinking about when I can go surfing again. Soon.