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Chili Dogs For Breakfast
My knees are open wide to about 75 degrees and are pressed up against the wood paneled counter-front at the diner in Roxboro.

I took the storm windows off the other day so I have no screens but the windows are open and flies are landing on me. You MUST close the windows by 5p.m. or you will have mosquitoes to pay for it. No, it doesn't matter if you just painted three rooms with oil-based Kilz, close the windows.

At the diner I am an early customer at 7 a.m. because I woke up at 4 a.m. because I went to bed at 9 a.m. because I was doped on Kilz. I'm done with that now unless I'm mistaken about being done with it.

I watch an order come out and I crane my neck to see into the other room because I am curious who is ordering three chili dogs with onions at 7 a.m.

I head on over to the home improvement super store. I've been gone 14 years and Roxboro (which is ten miles away from the house) finally got a national chain home improvement store. It's been open six months. The locals are resisting it. I don't mind being one of five customers in a great big store.

The flies are wily and fresh, just born I guess and quick and full of life and hard to kill. I have a fly-swatter near me and I make an occasional effort but who am I kidding, not these flies. Wait, just got one, right on my shin. That kind of hurt. Got another one. I'm killing them now, boy.

My new phone keeps ringing but I ignore it. I put my name on the solicitor no call list yesterday but I don't think it takes effect right away so I'm playing it safe.

I think that fly I just swatted was already dead. I'm not taking credit for that one, not twice anyway.

I stop at another great big everything under one roof store and pick up a 2gb flash disc because I took some videos of the travesty out here and they are taking up too much room on my computer. I have one more video I want to take of the hidden cache of junk stashed out in the woods, some years ago I guess because small trees have grown up around it. I was out there day before yesterday with a chainsaw and a hand saw and a pruner, cutting a path big enough for a vehicle. I threw the green stuff on the burn pile.

After getting back from town I climbed up on the roof and smeared some patching cement on a bad spot where a shingle came off and around the chimney flashing, as a stop gap until I can replace the roof. It rained inside the house last week.

Phone's ringing again. I had to get up anyway and kill a bee that was buzzing by the front door so I checked the ID on the phone. Those people at V*k*ngMag*z*ne are relentless.

I got off the roof and snipped the bailing wire from the wood pallets leaned up against the hog wire attached to the two by fours nailed to my trees which were all part of Jethro's dog pen. I drag a few of the pallets, the heavy ones, and carry a couple more, the light ones, one in each hand, over to the burn pile. I am using my last dead cedar tree kindling which makes starting a fire a simple flick of the bic. I will have to construct the piles more carefully now because paint thinner is almost 10 bucks a gallon out here and gasoline's flash point I am not fond of. I have lots more to burn.

I have a pot to piss in, literally. I am afraid of the bathroom, but use it when I have to.

The cat just came inside. She is trying to catch flies. She seems to love it out here.
- jimlouis 6-03-2008 4:32 pm [link]