A Brief Timeline Of Recent Events
I was walking around a park in Long Island with a few hundred others in a fundraising march against ALS and the rain came down only after its completion.
Pretending to be suit and tie wearing bird watchers at noon under umbrellas at a park in NY we all together witnessed the marriage of two dear friends and the sun came out. Another glass of wine? Oh, I guess so. And then to that fifth floor gym of sin where we stair walk and work the free weights which are magnums of champagne and bottles and bottles and bottles of other intoxicating liquids with labels understood by only a few, oh the bottles carried up and down those stairs.
In the southwest. I can't see how I would object to another margarita and to make up for the lack of exercising stairs we drink them from personal shakers heavy with ice and tequila. One sip rest, two sip rest, three...
Bernadette asked when does it cool down in the evenings and I said never but what I meant was, late October.
The water was fine though, come on in.
In these economic hard times the larger group was unable to chaperon the married couple to Barcelona but the ongoing slide shows of culinary porn have kept us all in varying measure jealous and happy for their well-being.
In PA we were forced to take solace in the mildly grotesque slow rotation of a pig over fire and for the 17 hours anticipating the first slice we kept ourselves distracted with new friends and old and beer and wine and moonshine.
No one ever hits it to me the children would cry as the shuttlecock landed gently on their foreheads.
...more recent posts
Mr. Fastidious
Cantrell Jefferson was squandering his clean clothes. For two weeks running every new shirt put on was within minutes dotted with mustard squirted from between dog and bun or stained with some dripping Korean sauce or soup spilled from a spoon.
Evander Fastidious, known more often than not as Mr. Fastidious by those who admired his always clean and seemingly condiment-impervious attire, was not always true to his name, for although he did demand of himself exacting and sometimes even daunting standards regarding all things within his control, he did not lord over others his obvious superiority, and could not only associate with lesser beings, but be gracious to them.
Oh it doesn’t look that bad, Evander said to Cantrell, who at the time was smearing with a budweiser-soaked napkin the small dark yellow mustard stain into a large light yellow one.
That’s very nice of you to say, Mr. Fastidious, said Cantrell, while searching for just a single speck of anything on Evander’s shirt. Knowing that Mr. Fastidious would soon grow wary of his sloppy company, Cantrell tried changing the subject and began telling his meticulous associate about a recent trip he had been on to visit his relatives in the South.
After the second margarita I apparently lost my mind and began discussing politics with my brother, who still lives in the South and is apparently still deeply entrenched in those conservative southern beliefs that the liberal northern elite find so alien, if not laughable.
I suppose my phrasing was condescending to begin with, for I had asked my brother how he and his fellow party-members felt about the selection of a single-celled organism as a potential vice-president, especially considering that his presidential candidate was so old and with certain health issues that might prevent him from finishing out his term. I mean if, God forbid, your candidate should die in office, we would have an amoeba running this country. Are any of your people concerned about that? I asked him. He countered by reminding me that my candidate was a foreign-born, homosexual-loving, baby-killing, terrorist, who wanted to tax us back to the stone age, and take homes from the rich and turn them into housing projects for the poor.
Mr. Fastidious listened to Cantrell Jefferson without so much as a blink or nod, and when Cantrell paused that first time, Evander remarked, you’ve got a bit something...and pointed to the right side of his own mouth and made a flicking motion, to clean off that bit of errant food that he so often observed on others, but never in his own mirror.
Cantrell Jefferson was squandering his clean clothes. For two weeks running every new shirt put on was within minutes dotted with mustard squirted from between dog and bun or stained with some dripping Korean sauce or soup spilled from a spoon.
Evander Fastidious, known more often than not as Mr. Fastidious by those who admired his always clean and seemingly condiment-impervious attire, was not always true to his name, for although he did demand of himself exacting and sometimes even daunting standards regarding all things within his control, he did not lord over others his obvious superiority, and could not only associate with lesser beings, but be gracious to them.
Oh it doesn’t look that bad, Evander said to Cantrell, who at the time was smearing with a budweiser-soaked napkin the small dark yellow mustard stain into a large light yellow one.
That’s very nice of you to say, Mr. Fastidious, said Cantrell, while searching for just a single speck of anything on Evander’s shirt. Knowing that Mr. Fastidious would soon grow wary of his sloppy company, Cantrell tried changing the subject and began telling his meticulous associate about a recent trip he had been on to visit his relatives in the South.
After the second margarita I apparently lost my mind and began discussing politics with my brother, who still lives in the South and is apparently still deeply entrenched in those conservative southern beliefs that the liberal northern elite find so alien, if not laughable.
I suppose my phrasing was condescending to begin with, for I had asked my brother how he and his fellow party-members felt about the selection of a single-celled organism as a potential vice-president, especially considering that his presidential candidate was so old and with certain health issues that might prevent him from finishing out his term. I mean if, God forbid, your candidate should die in office, we would have an amoeba running this country. Are any of your people concerned about that? I asked him. He countered by reminding me that my candidate was a foreign-born, homosexual-loving, baby-killing, terrorist, who wanted to tax us back to the stone age, and take homes from the rich and turn them into housing projects for the poor.
Mr. Fastidious listened to Cantrell Jefferson without so much as a blink or nod, and when Cantrell paused that first time, Evander remarked, you’ve got a bit something...and pointed to the right side of his own mouth and made a flicking motion, to clean off that bit of errant food that he so often observed on others, but never in his own mirror.
The Vice-Presidential Debate
I think Sarah Palin held her own for the first 20 minutes but otherwise I think she got soundly beaten. The early punditry is seemingly giving her more credit than I am. I love an upset at any cost but I don't think Sarah Palin represents that. Mostly though, I am just thankful to be an American in Austin, Tx., with Bernadette, and Jose, on road trips to that which is available around here, some exceptional scenery (as pictured), and barbecue to die for (and if I ate all the best of it available here, I would surely do just that.)
I think Sarah Palin held her own for the first 20 minutes but otherwise I think she got soundly beaten. The early punditry is seemingly giving her more credit than I am. I love an upset at any cost but I don't think Sarah Palin represents that. Mostly though, I am just thankful to be an American in Austin, Tx., with Bernadette, and Jose, on road trips to that which is available around here, some exceptional scenery (as pictured), and barbecue to die for (and if I ate all the best of it available here, I would surely do just that.)
Where T-Shirt Meets Pants
In the waning winter-like light of a North Carolina day Cantrell Jefferson looked at his frail wrist and squinted to determine if the dot there was a freckle or a flea. His bare feet and the backs of his hands had a glossy clear sheen from the chemical repellent he had heavily sprayed on them. It had been worse once when without a home of his own he entered late at night a friend’s apparently abandoned house in Austin, Texas and laying down on one of the mattresses strewn about the place noticed a barely perceptible muffled clicking sound that turned out to be hundreds and hundreds of fleas jumping from whereever they had prior been to land on his fully clothed body and then work their way to any exposed skin they could find. That experience had set the bar at a level all other flea infestations would be measured against. This wasn’t so bad Cantrell said 20 minutes after finding the gin in the freezer and medicating internally. The swell of all the initial bites seemed to be subsiding and he felt fortunate to be able to sit still staring off into space without the distraction of itchy spots on his feet, his wrists, and belly where t-shirt meets pants.
In the waning winter-like light of a North Carolina day Cantrell Jefferson looked at his frail wrist and squinted to determine if the dot there was a freckle or a flea. His bare feet and the backs of his hands had a glossy clear sheen from the chemical repellent he had heavily sprayed on them. It had been worse once when without a home of his own he entered late at night a friend’s apparently abandoned house in Austin, Texas and laying down on one of the mattresses strewn about the place noticed a barely perceptible muffled clicking sound that turned out to be hundreds and hundreds of fleas jumping from whereever they had prior been to land on his fully clothed body and then work their way to any exposed skin they could find. That experience had set the bar at a level all other flea infestations would be measured against. This wasn’t so bad Cantrell said 20 minutes after finding the gin in the freezer and medicating internally. The swell of all the initial bites seemed to be subsiding and he felt fortunate to be able to sit still staring off into space without the distraction of itchy spots on his feet, his wrists, and belly where t-shirt meets pants.
The Apology
She was commenting from a thousand miles away in response to my question who got shot this time. She remarked on what a strange world it is where I am able to ask the same questions being ask of her by neighbors in the next block, at approximately the same time.
The headlines I had read on the glossy screen of this computer made me fairly certain that the two shootings seven blocks apart, while not known to be related by the news agency, were in fact not only related, but that the shooting two blocks from her probably included young people that she had some ongoing contact with.
She had already been to the hospital and had names that the news agency had not released. The 17 year old with the bullet in his stomach is the only one of the young men I have met, if only briefly, on those ocassions when his father left him on the porch as a much younger boy, quite a few years ago. His stomach wound is serious but she was led to believe he would live. In her opinion his getting out of the hospital alive was only a precursor to his eventual violent death. She reminded me that he was afterall the intended victim in the shooting back in April that mistakenly left two boys dead in front of her house.
The 19 year old was the son of a dwarf woman in the next block and he had been hit twice in the head with bullets from an assault rifle used in the first shooting. The mayor’s wife was attending services at a nearby Treme church and Swat teams rushed in to clear the church of its 30 occupants because a suspect or just someone trying to escape the spray of bullets had run in there.
Suspects of the shootings abandoned the red Ford Focus marked with at least one bullet hole near the Iberville Projects and police spent several hours looking for them, without success.
Within minutes of the online reporting of this crime citizens were once again spewing their vitriol in the comment forums with so much apparent fear and hatred that it would almost seem to match, albiet from the theoretical comfort of an easy chair, the desperation some of these street kids experience from birth to coffin. Razing the Iberville was seen by some as a solution.
I have mixed feelings about the Iberville but know without a doubt that the razing of it will have little or no influence on whether or not young people continue to kill each other. And I at best as little more than a casual observer of this violent phenomenon have no answers either.
And my friend, with now 15 years in the trenches, ended her brief email report this way--everything I try to do seems like an apology. I can’t stop this.
She was commenting from a thousand miles away in response to my question who got shot this time. She remarked on what a strange world it is where I am able to ask the same questions being ask of her by neighbors in the next block, at approximately the same time.
The headlines I had read on the glossy screen of this computer made me fairly certain that the two shootings seven blocks apart, while not known to be related by the news agency, were in fact not only related, but that the shooting two blocks from her probably included young people that she had some ongoing contact with.
She had already been to the hospital and had names that the news agency had not released. The 17 year old with the bullet in his stomach is the only one of the young men I have met, if only briefly, on those ocassions when his father left him on the porch as a much younger boy, quite a few years ago. His stomach wound is serious but she was led to believe he would live. In her opinion his getting out of the hospital alive was only a precursor to his eventual violent death. She reminded me that he was afterall the intended victim in the shooting back in April that mistakenly left two boys dead in front of her house.
The 19 year old was the son of a dwarf woman in the next block and he had been hit twice in the head with bullets from an assault rifle used in the first shooting. The mayor’s wife was attending services at a nearby Treme church and Swat teams rushed in to clear the church of its 30 occupants because a suspect or just someone trying to escape the spray of bullets had run in there.
Suspects of the shootings abandoned the red Ford Focus marked with at least one bullet hole near the Iberville Projects and police spent several hours looking for them, without success.
Within minutes of the online reporting of this crime citizens were once again spewing their vitriol in the comment forums with so much apparent fear and hatred that it would almost seem to match, albiet from the theoretical comfort of an easy chair, the desperation some of these street kids experience from birth to coffin. Razing the Iberville was seen by some as a solution.
I have mixed feelings about the Iberville but know without a doubt that the razing of it will have little or no influence on whether or not young people continue to kill each other. And I at best as little more than a casual observer of this violent phenomenon have no answers either.
And my friend, with now 15 years in the trenches, ended her brief email report this way--everything I try to do seems like an apology. I can’t stop this.
In The Pit With BM/MB
A man said mister you got a flat tire on Sudley Rd. which was a surprise to me having just recently left the highway barreling down at seventy plus miles per hour. I nodded and said thanks man not realizing that to receive this news I had rolled the electric window all the way down and would therefore never see it up again without paying for a new window motor. I pulled immediately into a service station and began airing up the tire while trying to remember did I have anymore of that fix-a-flat or did I months ago give the last can to a woman in distress in Jersey City. I would soon realize it did not matter because for every pound of air I was pumping in 252 grams of it were seeping out. There were maybe 20 minutes to kill before my passengers being driven to the airport would begin to fret. I was determined to use considerably less than half of that and pulled the car over to a parking space and began barking orders. Bill Macy you need to get out of the back seat and when he hesitated I cried now Bill Macy, now! and I started throwing his bags into the back compartment to further punctuate the rare exclamation mark. Bill Macy was on the team now and stood ready in the pit, hoping I’m sure that he would not be called on to change out the head gasket, which luckily at this point in time was not the problem in question. I lifted up the bench seat on which moments earlier Bill Macy had been lazily sitting comtemplating self-flagellation with a baseball bat and began pulling out the tire changing tools stored there but which I had never before used on this vehicle. It sure was a little jack for such a large vehicle. The first lug wrench I tried seemed too large for the lugnuts and I cursed out loud a world populated by improper lug wrenches. There was another smaller lug wrench with a swivel head on a short handle and this I put over the first nut. Bending the handle to ninety degrees I then put my foot on it and standing up erect pumped down on the small wavering handle with all my inconsiderable weight and it made that cracking sound which shouldn’t be good but when changing a tire, is. I did this for every lugnut and then looked for a place to put the jack. Bernadette came out from the store attached to the service station from which she had been procurring cigarettes for her sister in NY who desires to pay less than nine dollars for a pack. She was a little concerned with my jack placement as it would seem I was setting myself up to be crushed by a Jeep in a service station off of Sudley Rd. She asked me if she should inquire inside about a real jack and in classic male dedication to any tool I chose to consider mine and which had not yet been proven a conclusive failure, I took slight offense to the question and assured her, without any real confidence, that this jack would work fine. Bill Macy, having uncovered and unsecured the spare tire in the back compartment, continued a posture of vigilance . After unsatisfactory progress with the short crank I procurred from under the seat the long folding crank but not of course before pinching my finger when unfolding it. The tire rose and I then removed the lugnuts and put them in Bill Macy’s outstretched hand. The clock ticked. Bernadette, my love, will you get me a bottle of water I said with more urgency than required and forgetting the my love part. But she got it anyway because she forgives me my frequent quirks of mood. Bill Macy grabbed the spare from the back and dropped it on my foot. No need for apologies I assured him, Jetblue awaits.
A man said mister you got a flat tire on Sudley Rd. which was a surprise to me having just recently left the highway barreling down at seventy plus miles per hour. I nodded and said thanks man not realizing that to receive this news I had rolled the electric window all the way down and would therefore never see it up again without paying for a new window motor. I pulled immediately into a service station and began airing up the tire while trying to remember did I have anymore of that fix-a-flat or did I months ago give the last can to a woman in distress in Jersey City. I would soon realize it did not matter because for every pound of air I was pumping in 252 grams of it were seeping out. There were maybe 20 minutes to kill before my passengers being driven to the airport would begin to fret. I was determined to use considerably less than half of that and pulled the car over to a parking space and began barking orders. Bill Macy you need to get out of the back seat and when he hesitated I cried now Bill Macy, now! and I started throwing his bags into the back compartment to further punctuate the rare exclamation mark. Bill Macy was on the team now and stood ready in the pit, hoping I’m sure that he would not be called on to change out the head gasket, which luckily at this point in time was not the problem in question. I lifted up the bench seat on which moments earlier Bill Macy had been lazily sitting comtemplating self-flagellation with a baseball bat and began pulling out the tire changing tools stored there but which I had never before used on this vehicle. It sure was a little jack for such a large vehicle. The first lug wrench I tried seemed too large for the lugnuts and I cursed out loud a world populated by improper lug wrenches. There was another smaller lug wrench with a swivel head on a short handle and this I put over the first nut. Bending the handle to ninety degrees I then put my foot on it and standing up erect pumped down on the small wavering handle with all my inconsiderable weight and it made that cracking sound which shouldn’t be good but when changing a tire, is. I did this for every lugnut and then looked for a place to put the jack. Bernadette came out from the store attached to the service station from which she had been procurring cigarettes for her sister in NY who desires to pay less than nine dollars for a pack. She was a little concerned with my jack placement as it would seem I was setting myself up to be crushed by a Jeep in a service station off of Sudley Rd. She asked me if she should inquire inside about a real jack and in classic male dedication to any tool I chose to consider mine and which had not yet been proven a conclusive failure, I took slight offense to the question and assured her, without any real confidence, that this jack would work fine. Bill Macy, having uncovered and unsecured the spare tire in the back compartment, continued a posture of vigilance . After unsatisfactory progress with the short crank I procurred from under the seat the long folding crank but not of course before pinching my finger when unfolding it. The tire rose and I then removed the lugnuts and put them in Bill Macy’s outstretched hand. The clock ticked. Bernadette, my love, will you get me a bottle of water I said with more urgency than required and forgetting the my love part. But she got it anyway because she forgives me my frequent quirks of mood. Bill Macy grabbed the spare from the back and dropped it on my foot. No need for apologies I assured him, Jetblue awaits.
Print Some More
Hell yes, is America a great country or what? After an arduous day of mostly sitting on my ass I was rewarded with a one one hundred millionth share of a huge, lumbering, mismanaged, American insurance corporation. Say what you will you detractors of this great country of mine but I am now a stockholder. While you hide away in your caves plotting evil me and a hundred million of my closest tax paying friends are pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps and pitching in to save this country from certain economic doom. Some of us may choose to cash in our stock and run but others of us will have a bake sale in front of Walmart. We will raise money. We will buy more stock.
I will soon need to write this stuff down but for now my portfolio is pretty simple. I have me a little Bear-Stearns, some of that Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, and yesterday I added AIG. You can argue that a portfolio full of failures is a fool’s portfolio but about that I have this to say--I don’t think so.
There was a time...excuse me, I have a phone call...
It was a solicitor wondering if I would be interested in three million foreclosure properties. I said to the man, with no little bit of pride, that I was perhaps too heavily loaded with real estate and would first have to check with my investment manager, the government of these United States of America, and see if there is any money left in my account to invest.
Hell yes, is America a great country or what? After an arduous day of mostly sitting on my ass I was rewarded with a one one hundred millionth share of a huge, lumbering, mismanaged, American insurance corporation. Say what you will you detractors of this great country of mine but I am now a stockholder. While you hide away in your caves plotting evil me and a hundred million of my closest tax paying friends are pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps and pitching in to save this country from certain economic doom. Some of us may choose to cash in our stock and run but others of us will have a bake sale in front of Walmart. We will raise money. We will buy more stock.
I will soon need to write this stuff down but for now my portfolio is pretty simple. I have me a little Bear-Stearns, some of that Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, and yesterday I added AIG. You can argue that a portfolio full of failures is a fool’s portfolio but about that I have this to say--I don’t think so.
There was a time...excuse me, I have a phone call...
It was a solicitor wondering if I would be interested in three million foreclosure properties. I said to the man, with no little bit of pride, that I was perhaps too heavily loaded with real estate and would first have to check with my investment manager, the government of these United States of America, and see if there is any money left in my account to invest.
Birdhouses 501
Do you want to get a birdhouse? I asked Bernadette and she said sure so I drove down the highway a bit until it was safe to turn around and returned to the yard full of birdhouses, a fairly impossible to ignore distraction while driving between South Boston and Lynchburg, VA, on 501.
This is a lot of birdhouses is what we were both thinking and after a few minutes of roaming around, a tanned man with shortly cropped white hair and smooth skin came out and we talked to him about his birdhouses and he talked to us about the big labor day flea market in the area and his various properties and his father, now deceased, and a 37,000 dollar marble and a Honus Wagner baseball card that he hid under a cushion in his shed for a collector to find and a woman with big breasts, now deceased, who I ferreted out to be Anna Nicole Smith, and he said none of her stuff after her death is that valuable to collectors, not like it was while she was alive but one of the hottest things on the market right now is anything to do with Daisy Duke.
He didn't know why they made her blonde which flummoxed me for a second until we were able to determine he was talking about the most recent Dukes of Hazzard movie and I just said I hadn't seen it as if to end any discussion which would seriously consider a blonde Daisy Duke.
I liked his bird houses as things to look at and paid no attention to the fact that the only bird we saw in any of them was dead. I have looked at handmade birdhouses before and knew they were hardly ever cheap and when the man said the bigger ones were a hundred and the smaller ones were sixty-five this supported for me that opinion of what is a not cheap birdhouse, but we knew we were going to buy one and I didn't want to haggle. Bernadette said it's what you do but by "you" she either meant any of you out there or any number of other people who are not me. I could have haggled him down 20 bucks and frankly it still would have been more than I wanted to pay. And in truth I am not against haggling; I have done it before and will do it again. I just wasn't feeling it that day.
The man opened up a couple of his sheds for us and we politely looked inside at some of his stuff. We were supposed to meet someone in Lynchburg for dinner before heading a couple of hours north to arrive back here at Mt. Pleasant. Well I guess we better go I said to Bernadette about ten minutes after she had said the same thing to me and in between which we had learned a few more of the interesting details about a man whose passion is birdhouses.
Do you want to get a birdhouse? I asked Bernadette and she said sure so I drove down the highway a bit until it was safe to turn around and returned to the yard full of birdhouses, a fairly impossible to ignore distraction while driving between South Boston and Lynchburg, VA, on 501.
This is a lot of birdhouses is what we were both thinking and after a few minutes of roaming around, a tanned man with shortly cropped white hair and smooth skin came out and we talked to him about his birdhouses and he talked to us about the big labor day flea market in the area and his various properties and his father, now deceased, and a 37,000 dollar marble and a Honus Wagner baseball card that he hid under a cushion in his shed for a collector to find and a woman with big breasts, now deceased, who I ferreted out to be Anna Nicole Smith, and he said none of her stuff after her death is that valuable to collectors, not like it was while she was alive but one of the hottest things on the market right now is anything to do with Daisy Duke.
He didn't know why they made her blonde which flummoxed me for a second until we were able to determine he was talking about the most recent Dukes of Hazzard movie and I just said I hadn't seen it as if to end any discussion which would seriously consider a blonde Daisy Duke.I liked his bird houses as things to look at and paid no attention to the fact that the only bird we saw in any of them was dead. I have looked at handmade birdhouses before and knew they were hardly ever cheap and when the man said the bigger ones were a hundred and the smaller ones were sixty-five this supported for me that opinion of what is a not cheap birdhouse, but we knew we were going to buy one and I didn't want to haggle. Bernadette said it's what you do but by "you" she either meant any of you out there or any number of other people who are not me. I could have haggled him down 20 bucks and frankly it still would have been more than I wanted to pay. And in truth I am not against haggling; I have done it before and will do it again. I just wasn't feeling it that day.
The man opened up a couple of his sheds for us and we politely looked inside at some of his stuff. We were supposed to meet someone in Lynchburg for dinner before heading a couple of hours north to arrive back here at Mt. Pleasant. Well I guess we better go I said to Bernadette about ten minutes after she had said the same thing to me and in between which we had learned a few more of the interesting details about a man whose passion is birdhouses.
With Cat Towards Appomattox
One can argue, oh it's not that bad, the smell of your cat defecating in her carrier, first time about 10 minutes into your 4 hour trip and the second time, kind of a freshen up, at about the 3 hour mark.
I talk to myself, mostly just inside my head, and especially during extended periods of solitude.
You going to clean that up? Naw, I'll just breath through my mouth. Aren't you worried about the stink, that palpable stink--sticking to your tongue, coating the insides of your mouth, lining your lungs? Naw, not really man, I haven't kissed anyone in days, and haven't really spoken to anyone in days either, other than to grunt at cashiers in stores when sliding my card or handing over cash, so I'm not all that worried about the potential waft of cat dooky escaping through my mouth. What about your cat, don't you care about your cat? Yeah, I care about her, in proper proportion I think, but she hates traveling. She's not going to be happy inside or outside that cage, and she has the good sense not to roll around in her own shit. Me cleaning up that crap is not going to make her that much happier. What's going to make her immediately happy is when I pull into the driveway, open her cage, wipe the two inches of hanging viscous drool from her chin, and fill her food bowl. She'll be purring up next to me ten minutes later. If I ask her then, hey do you remember the last four hours being nauseous and stuck in a small cage with just your own extracted poop for company, she will only respond with a blank stare and maybe a lick to my hand. I will cup the entirety of her small head in my palm and with my fingers knead the back of her neck, and say, that's a good kitty.
I'm not sure what I'm daydreaming about while driving but I'm on my way to Appomattox, 20 miles off course, before I know it. There are no mountains in site and that is wrong. I'm traveling on an easterly road when I should be traveling on a...I have to pause and picture in my head N. Carolina and Virginia on a map and where they are in proportion to each other. I can't see it. I should be going north, or south, I am certain of that. But which one? I really am at this moment the definition of stupid. The next time someone calls me a stupid ass I will in all fairness have to nod, or shake my head, it doesn't really matter which, and just take it. I'll see a sign soon and it will have on it both a direction and a nearby town. Before veering off I had been outside of Lynchburg so I don't need to go back there. I am heading towards Charlottesville. It will be easy. I will get back on track. I really don't remember what I was thinking about for those twenty miles. It was as if I just woke up and I was 20 miles in the future. I follow the mountains back home, through Charlottesville to Madison county and follow 231 into Rappahannock. Stretches of 231 are fairly breathtaking. I can breath through my mouth for a little while longer.
One can argue, oh it's not that bad, the smell of your cat defecating in her carrier, first time about 10 minutes into your 4 hour trip and the second time, kind of a freshen up, at about the 3 hour mark.
I talk to myself, mostly just inside my head, and especially during extended periods of solitude.
You going to clean that up? Naw, I'll just breath through my mouth. Aren't you worried about the stink, that palpable stink--sticking to your tongue, coating the insides of your mouth, lining your lungs? Naw, not really man, I haven't kissed anyone in days, and haven't really spoken to anyone in days either, other than to grunt at cashiers in stores when sliding my card or handing over cash, so I'm not all that worried about the potential waft of cat dooky escaping through my mouth. What about your cat, don't you care about your cat? Yeah, I care about her, in proper proportion I think, but she hates traveling. She's not going to be happy inside or outside that cage, and she has the good sense not to roll around in her own shit. Me cleaning up that crap is not going to make her that much happier. What's going to make her immediately happy is when I pull into the driveway, open her cage, wipe the two inches of hanging viscous drool from her chin, and fill her food bowl. She'll be purring up next to me ten minutes later. If I ask her then, hey do you remember the last four hours being nauseous and stuck in a small cage with just your own extracted poop for company, she will only respond with a blank stare and maybe a lick to my hand. I will cup the entirety of her small head in my palm and with my fingers knead the back of her neck, and say, that's a good kitty.
I'm not sure what I'm daydreaming about while driving but I'm on my way to Appomattox, 20 miles off course, before I know it. There are no mountains in site and that is wrong. I'm traveling on an easterly road when I should be traveling on a...I have to pause and picture in my head N. Carolina and Virginia on a map and where they are in proportion to each other. I can't see it. I should be going north, or south, I am certain of that. But which one? I really am at this moment the definition of stupid. The next time someone calls me a stupid ass I will in all fairness have to nod, or shake my head, it doesn't really matter which, and just take it. I'll see a sign soon and it will have on it both a direction and a nearby town. Before veering off I had been outside of Lynchburg so I don't need to go back there. I am heading towards Charlottesville. It will be easy. I will get back on track. I really don't remember what I was thinking about for those twenty miles. It was as if I just woke up and I was 20 miles in the future. I follow the mountains back home, through Charlottesville to Madison county and follow 231 into Rappahannock. Stretches of 231 are fairly breathtaking. I can breath through my mouth for a little while longer.
Take Back That Flange, Sir
Jeeesus Chriiist am I still in that bathroom? Oh, no, please, don't go on. But I have to tell you about the toilet flange. Please no, please no don't. Well, I ripped out half the floor down to the joists but there weren't enough joists present so I scabbed some treated 2X6s onto the existing hard as a rock pine 2X10s and did some boxing around the waste pipe (which in some future will piss off a plumber) so I could put in the "for rent" ad--toilet will support a hippopotamus-- and one support here and another there and one diagonal because I had to and then cut some treated three quarter inch plywood and drilled holes for the supply pipes and roto-zipped one around the flange and then added another layer of three quarter inch plywood, same drilling and roto-zipping and when that was done I took a breath and attended to the closet and got it up to level, I mean not really level because that would require tearing the house down and starting over, but level to the rest of it anyway. This whole bathroom is only 6X8, including the closet and I am only working, as far as this floor reconstruction part is concerned, in half of that space. And I've been at it for almost 6 days. What? No, I'm not smoking pot. I'm just flummoxed some of the time. So today I was thinking about laying down the final layer, some quarter inch oak plywood for the linoleum to go on top of, when I noticed the toilet flange was sticking up too high. Like way too high but I don't trust my eyes (yes I do) so I brought the toilet in from the kitchen and set it on top of the flange and no fucking way will this work. I had been online some days ago reading about flanges so I took a cold chisel to the oakum and beat the flange with a hammer and got it to break off. Then I went to the home improvement store and found a new cast iron flange that purportedly will go on without an oakum process (which I think is a joint packing material over which you pour molten lead) and it damn well better work because it cost 42 dollars. The next most expensive flange I saw was 18 dollars but it would not suit my needs. Oh I love a good flange story. Don't you?. I bought a cheap pedestal sink for 36 dollars because the sink I took out was crap and the two back up sinks out here in the junk pile that I considered using were, upon closer inspection, broken. And a faucet and some closet bolts. And another sheet of plywood because now, without the flange, I would be able to snug up to the waste pipe itself and have the flange rest over the floor, which is proper. And I got a sheet of green sheetrock because I need to do some of that too, after this floor. And some baseboard and some shoe molding.
In answer to your question what am I doing tonight?...pretty much this. I've never been one for Friday nights. Assuming it is in fact, Friday night.
And then I took a pair of channel locks and broke off in pieces the lip of the cast iron waste pipe until it was level with the floor. Hell, I should probably take that flange back and get a proper one and some oakum, and a torch, you know what I'm saying?
Jeeesus Chriiist am I still in that bathroom? Oh, no, please, don't go on. But I have to tell you about the toilet flange. Please no, please no don't. Well, I ripped out half the floor down to the joists but there weren't enough joists present so I scabbed some treated 2X6s onto the existing hard as a rock pine 2X10s and did some boxing around the waste pipe (which in some future will piss off a plumber) so I could put in the "for rent" ad--toilet will support a hippopotamus-- and one support here and another there and one diagonal because I had to and then cut some treated three quarter inch plywood and drilled holes for the supply pipes and roto-zipped one around the flange and then added another layer of three quarter inch plywood, same drilling and roto-zipping and when that was done I took a breath and attended to the closet and got it up to level, I mean not really level because that would require tearing the house down and starting over, but level to the rest of it anyway. This whole bathroom is only 6X8, including the closet and I am only working, as far as this floor reconstruction part is concerned, in half of that space. And I've been at it for almost 6 days. What? No, I'm not smoking pot. I'm just flummoxed some of the time. So today I was thinking about laying down the final layer, some quarter inch oak plywood for the linoleum to go on top of, when I noticed the toilet flange was sticking up too high. Like way too high but I don't trust my eyes (yes I do) so I brought the toilet in from the kitchen and set it on top of the flange and no fucking way will this work. I had been online some days ago reading about flanges so I took a cold chisel to the oakum and beat the flange with a hammer and got it to break off. Then I went to the home improvement store and found a new cast iron flange that purportedly will go on without an oakum process (which I think is a joint packing material over which you pour molten lead) and it damn well better work because it cost 42 dollars. The next most expensive flange I saw was 18 dollars but it would not suit my needs. Oh I love a good flange story. Don't you?. I bought a cheap pedestal sink for 36 dollars because the sink I took out was crap and the two back up sinks out here in the junk pile that I considered using were, upon closer inspection, broken. And a faucet and some closet bolts. And another sheet of plywood because now, without the flange, I would be able to snug up to the waste pipe itself and have the flange rest over the floor, which is proper. And I got a sheet of green sheetrock because I need to do some of that too, after this floor. And some baseboard and some shoe molding.
In answer to your question what am I doing tonight?...pretty much this. I've never been one for Friday nights. Assuming it is in fact, Friday night.
And then I took a pair of channel locks and broke off in pieces the lip of the cast iron waste pipe until it was level with the floor. Hell, I should probably take that flange back and get a proper one and some oakum, and a torch, you know what I'm saying?