For several years, I had meditated upon the quietude of life on the edge of a forest.

I had personally celebrated seasonal events, recording them here, such as tree leafing, flower blooming and concentrated water vapor succumbing to gravity in the form of rain.

In other words, I had developed a new persona after years of cultivating the office manager role.

But my benefactor, my sponsor of this adventure — my wife — wanted her own adventure using her disposable income to include me with her so we took up the social interaction known as ballroom dancing, which led to Balboa and then West Coast dance forms.

We met new friends whom I have transformed into fictional characters here and elsewhere.

My wife saw that our disposable income had soon been almost all spent on dancing, including out-of-town weekend competitions and dance studio showcases, not to mention weekly lessons.

Her happiness lessened.

Thus, it was no surprise that, while visiting a partner of one of our dance instructors, we were [in]voluntarily shown images of polyamorous/swinger sessions involving some of our dance instructors in an unidentified hotel room, my wife found yet another reason to distance ourselves from the dance instructors who had been burning through my wife’s disposable income.

My wife is purely monogamous — I am her only intimate mate.

She has zero interest in extramarital bedroom activities.

It was one thing for her to suspect the possibility that the out-of-town events served as a cover for swingers to get together on the pretense of dance competitions.

It was quite another for her to visually be exposed to images confirming her suspicions.

It raised a lot of questions for her such as the likelihood that a dance instructor and/or another person with whom she socially danced would pass on a debilitating or incurable infection they acquired through extramarital sexual encounters — a bloody sneeze, an open wound accidentally contacting her mouth or other mucus membrane, etc.

Plus there was for her the stigma of general association with swingers, an activity she did not condemn but also not condone, something she was not involved with at any time or in any way during her upbringing.

So it seems we are probably finished with social dancing for now, if not forever (she also has a bone spur under her Achilles tendon that makes walking AND dancing painful).

Although I thoroughly enjoyed social dancing with others, despite the minimal risks, even if I wasn’t all that good, I am happy to return to my hermit’s life in the woods, conjuring up my scientists and team of comedy writers to keep me entertained while watching the flora and fauna around me change with the seasons.

I have other celestial bodies in the universe to explore, leaving alone the political, military and religious arguments of my species.

Next on my list, however, is building a grave marker for Merlin and a small bridge across the wet-weather creekbed that separates our driveway from the woods where Merlin is buried.  I would love to construct something fanciful such as the one below but will be satisfied with a simple marker and a minimalist bridge.

WHAT I WANT TO BUILD…

WHAT I WILL PROBABLY BUILD (agile design methodology)…

Meanwhile, I’m staying away from Facebook — my satire/sarcasm is lost on the literalists (as opposed to Federalists (or just not exclusively them)), and some of my posts seem to bring out the “crazies” in large numbers?

I am a forest introvert at heart — best keep to my natural surroundings and enjoy life with Rick as long as he lives!