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Poison Ivy Etc.
I have poison ivy blisters the size of lady bugs on my fingers. Some that face each other between the fingers are like lady bug lovers, doing God only knows what all while I sleep trying not to scratch them. Or I try not to scratch them while I don't sleep. I haven't slept through a night in months and that may only be part of getting old(er). Locals tell me they have seen worse but I have never in my life seen something under any name erupt so grotesquely on my or any other body.
The blisters are in the red ripened stage, almost done being themselves and will soon either burst by some casual contact of my work day, and bleed a mixture of blood and viscous poison ivy puss, or just recede, leaving perhaps mild scaring. Those could scar J said looking at my fingers. I looked at my hands and thought I bet you won't be able to tell a difference.
I got these blisters from Morton, Lorina's ex, whom I got to see this week so soon after voicing the desire to kill him that the possibility of it for one tiny second became in my mind real enough in all the inherent unpleasantness of such a deed that I immediately lost the desire to do it. Lorina said she didn't set up the potential train wreck of our meeting but if she didn't it was either God or the Devil so you pick. Morton's act of innocence was sufficiently convincing and I had to at least give him the credit I would give a street hustler or lie n' deny artist with an equally convincing pitch.
I got the dose, on my fingers and both sides of my face, from cleaning vine off the tiller that both Morton and I had borrowed from Lorina. But Morton say hey, he just don't know, which is probably true and either way is fine with me. Live and learn is what I say. And killing is so permanent. I was mad for awhile though, which of course is no reason to kill somebody.
That Lorina is friends with her most immediate ex is something I write off to the occasionally annoying inconvenience of living in a community the size of a small desert island, where every public gathering is guaranteed to have a hodge podge of ex-lovers intermingled in the mix. As for the witnessing of the ex-spat, where former lovers relive the past negative energies that made them so loveable, well, I'd just as soon have a dull needle inserted in one of my testicles.
My mom in Dallas with Alzheimers is getting a little more used to the idea that her children are going to be messing in her affairs and called my sister in California to leave a message on her machine that apologized for being rude to her earlier in the week. My sister handles some of mom's banking. We got somebody in the house with her, coming by a few hours five days a week but while my mom is somewhat polite to the person, the person is just too young to have any experience in common with her, or so she thinks. Another woman has been introduced recently and my mom is apparently taking to her better.
I was starting to panic about the cumulative disarray of my affairs so attempting proactivity I sent a pointed email to my New Orleans property manager and said what up? I expressed the concern that I felt my luck was running out regarding having a house left unoccupied in that neighborhood for this long. I applauded them for the high standards with which they qualified perspective tenants but that maybe now was the time to lower those standards, and maybe the rent too. I received a response telling me, oh sorry to have worried you, we leased out your place earlier in the month, (and for fifty dollars more than what was already questionably high rent for the size of the place.) In a neighborhood pretty constantly on the edge of destruction. So if improving a ghetto property without contributing to gentrification is a good thing then this is me stroking myself for accomplishing that (or just thinking that I have*).
I still have the business of convincing my insurance underwriter not to cancel my policy on the house, which they think is over-insured by almost a factor of two. I believe an appraisal delivered to the desk of the underwriting agent 90 miles away will take care of that. I've been given a deadline and that may be construed as a good thing.
So like a tree frog burrowed underground for the winter but without the ice crystals around his heart I have started to emerge from my less than active winter work schedule and the work is emerging faster than I care to think about and the same goes for Lorina who has several thousand vegetable and flower plants outgrowing their individual planting cells, at least two weeks before potential last frost.
I have too many projects started and a few I have contracted out. Firstly I need to scrape and paint the metal roof of the bighouse (while not completely ignoring the back porch which I sanded down after fixing the few rotten areas.). I got the ladders set up and a rope tied around one of the chimneys and I made a little plywood platform to hold my paint buckets level on a slanted roof. I have started scraping with a six inch mud knife taped to a stick and am about ready to start spot priming the first section and the goal will be to finish this before it gets too hot and also not to slide down one of the 10 or 12 gables to the detriment of my burgeoning well being.
Their is rumor of a future beach house needing the attention of one skinny caretaker so my territory may expand. Curmudgeon International, Slim speaking, what the hell you want?
(*my nephew sends me an email yesterday, from which I excerpt: "... but should see [your former neighbor, Melba]
maybe tonight at a meeting or something, and will be
sure to inquire on what should be her latest gripe
towards you: the increased chance that the tax
assessor for your district, under steadying pressure
from state tax commission to stop the tax breaks to
under-assessed uptown mansions, undertakes a
comprehensive reassessment of the entire district,
thus driving up her/your/everyone's insurance rates.
what are you some sort of bougeoise (I don't even know how to spell your kind) gentrifier?"