Mosquitoes, Stairways To Heaven, And Retards...

So the guy who delivered these stairs made a delivery prior to this one where the customer inquired about the stairs.

"It's a stairway to heaven" the delivery guy told them, thinking he was really clever (groan).

Then when he arrived at our gate, he wanted to share that story with me (groan) and then tell me about how- while he was looking for our house- he got confused and thought the cemetery just up the road was the place for the delivery.

"See! It really is a stairway to heaven!" (groan groan groan, where the f*** do I sign?!)

I am trying to resolve the old-lady-in-the-pool conundrum. The pool ladder is just a wee bit difficult for Mum to use without me having to shoulder her up heave-hoeing on her backside...

I'd prefer a simpler approach, and these "safety stairs" were found online and I ordered them and they may turn out heavenly, but for the time being they float so now I've gone and filled black abs pipe with concrete to attach to the inside of these stairs to keep them on the bottom of the pool where stairs belong...



I'm still melting. 256 when this was taken, but I am down another two this morning. That's four pounds away from BEER!

The trouble is, my weight first thing in the morning is the lowest, so if and when I break the 250 barrier going downward, it'll be at seven am right after a long piss...

I'm still trying to decide if a beer at that moment would be appropriate, helpful, or even enjoyable? We'll see...

The other night I was jogging out in the field next to the lake and the campgrounds. Seven men wandered out of the forest and started marching across the diagonal of the field. The first man was in his early fifties, with a goatee and a pied-piper hat on. He was carrying a walking stick which he obviously knew how to use.

Behind him were six merry men. I mean it. They were a ragtag bunch who walked like they were exceptionally happy. You know, flippety arms, dancing shoulders, goofy gaits...

They were all wearing highway safety vests, and, after my first thought "The seven dwarfs!", I thought I was witnessing a litter patrol, with the walking stick guy taking six prisoners out to clean up the park after the biker boys had trashed it. "Get all the cigarette butts!" I thought.

Then I realized the happy six behind the leading seventh were not carrying trash bags nor picker-upper tools, because they were swinging their arms merrily and flippety. As I jogged closer to their direction (they were on my way around the field) I realized that the safety vests were to help keep the seventh one from losing any of the first six.

"Retards," I thought.

Then since I was jogging and had nothing better to do with my mind than have thinking-thoughts, I questioned my own use of the term "retards" and wondered if a better description were available and far more appropriate and socially acceptable?

"Special"? Nope. When I was a kid, Momma once told me that I was "special".

"Underdeveloped"? Nahh. These guys were all in their sixties, were each at least six feet tall, and had enough scruff on their faces for me to imagine they were "developed" just fine, thank you very much!

"Mentally challenged"? Wouldn't that depend on the task at hand? I've been mentally challenged playing scrabble or trying to unknot a favorite rope. And lord knows, women can be mentally challenging at the best of times...

"Retards". I thought. Short. Exact. Easy to understand by all...

"You better pick up the pace if you want to do your heart some good!"

The leader of this party pack was yelling at me.

"Any faster and I start tearing up my knees!" I yelled back. "I do my heart work on a bicycle. I'm just burning calories to get rid of this beer gut..."

"And I'm just kidding!" he yelled back."You look like you got lost in thought and needed to wake up!"

"Well thanks!" I said, as I jogged on to the corner of the field where they had come from.

Three minutes or so later, I had run the A and B legs of a right triangle, and these magnificent seven had walked the hypotenuse. We were meeting up again at the kitty-korner from the first time we met.

"I might be slow, but it looks like I'm gonna beat y'all to the corner."

One of the retards started giggling and said to the leader in that nasally retard voice "Hurry!"

There was a race on to the corner of the field. I sped up a little but mostly did Michael Jackson moon-jogs to keep the race even. We all met at the corner in a giggly, retarded heap of old men with gray grizzle, and Wenzel and my Mum's dog Bubby were happy to join the fracas.

"Can I pet your dog?" one of the retards asked. His face was twisted into a happy smile. It was almost as if someone had stolen his bottom jaw.

"Oh absolutely!" I said. The little one's name is Bubby. She'll come if you call her."

"Bubby! Bubbeeeee! Bubbeeeeeeeee!"

(It was then that I realized how glad I was to have changed her name from "Rosalynn". No wonder she didn't behave when our neighbor had her).

Wenzel did her usual wiggle-her-tail-like-crazy-and-run-to-everyone-but-let-no-one-really-get-a-good-pet-in while Bubby lapped up some scratchy-scratches, as I checked out the motley crew of retards and their supervisor with the walking stick. It made me happy to see the kindness in the man leading the foray, and it made me happy to see these old, happy, goofy men with their orange safety vests all calling out "Bubbeeeeeeeeee, Bubbeeeeeee, Bubbeeeeeeeeeee!" while trying to get a hand on Wenzel's wriggling fur.

Bubby held still for everyone to pet, and while this was going on, the mosquitoes that I had outran a minute ago had caught up to me, and were swarming around behind my head, landing on the backs of my bare arms... trying to get a good bight out of my naked ankles...

I turned around and squatted just a little, to bring the sky behind the swarm of mosquitoes so I could see them better, and started clapping them out of the air.

"You bastard! Die sucker! Ha! Take that!"

I was getting a mosquito with almost every try and really carping on the remaining flyboys buzzing around my head. "Come'ere ya little shit! Ha! Gotcha!" and so on and so forth...

One of the happy old men- the one who looked like his lower jaw had been stolen from him, asked "What are you doing?"

"Chasing mosquitoes. I hates mosquitoes!"

"It looks," he said, "like they're chasing you!"

"They are. They are. So I'm chasing them before they chase me!"

"Well," he said, his eyes all squirrely and not staying too focused on anything, and sort of pointing at me accusingly, "you look like a retard."


(I don't care who you are... THAT'S FUNNY!)