AELEOPE

Open Mike Magick...

2012-01-25T12:31:00.000-08:00

We get all sorts coming in to sing at open mike.

They come out of the woods, unpack their gear, play some, pack up and then usually find a nice quiet corner for a beer...

Sometimes it pays just to start the tape rolling...

Silly Song--

2012-01-20T17:12:00.000-08:00

Sometimes while practicing chord changes I make up stuff and sometimes the stuff I make up just tickles me...

I Wanna Be A
Flying Fly

(G)They’re All Dropping Like Flies
(D)They’re All Dropping Like Flies
(G)They’re All Dropping Like Flies
(D)They’re All Dropping Like Flies

G G7 D(etc…)
I Wanna Be A Fly That’s Flying
I Wanna Be A Fly That’s Flying
I Wanna Be A Fly That’s Buzzing
I Wanna Be A Fly That’s Flying

(G)They’re All Dropping Like Flies
(D)They’re All Dropping Like Flies
(G)They’re All Dropping Like Flies
(D)They’re All Dropping Like Flies

G G7 D(etc…)
I Wanna Be a Fly On The Wall
I Wanna Be a Fly On The Wall
I Wanna Be a Fly On The Wall
I Need To Get Me To A Wall

G G7 D(etc…)
I Wanna Be A Resting Fly
I Wanna Be A Resting Fly
G G7 D
Don’t Swat Me While I’m Resting
G G7 D
I’m A Resting Fly

G G7 D(etc…)
I’m A Resting Fly
I’m A Resting Fly
Don’t Mind Me
I’m Just A Resting Fly

(G)They’re All Dropping Like Flies
(D)They’re All Dropping Like Flies
(G)They’re All Dropping Like Flies
(D)They’re All Dropping Like Flies

G G7 D(etc…)
I Wanna Be A Fly That’s Flying
I Wanna Be a Fly On The Wall
I Wanna Be A Resting Fly
I Need To Get Me To A Wall

(G)They’re All Dropping Like Flies
(D)They’re All Dropping Like Flies
(G)They’re All Dropping Like Flies
(D)They’re All Dropping Like Flies

G D(etc…)
I Wanna Be A Fly That’s Flying
I Wanna Be A Fly That’s Buzzin’
I Wanna Be A Fly That’s Flying
I Wanna Be A Fly That’s Buzzin’
G G7 D(etc…)
I Wanna Be A Flying Fly
I Wanna Be A Buzzin’ Fly
I Wanna Be A Flying Fly
I Wanna Be A Buzzin’ Fly

(G)They’re All Dropping Like Flies
(D)They’re All Dropping Like Flies
(G)They’re All Dropping Like Flies
(D)They’re All Dropping Like Flies

G G7 D(etc…)
I Wanna Be a Fly On The Wall
I Wanna Be a Fly On The Wall
I Wanna Be a Fly On The Wall
I Wanna Be a Fly On The Wall

G G7 D(etc…)
I Wanna Be A Resting Fly
I Wanna Be A Resting Fly
Don’t Swat Me While I’m Resting
I’m A Resting Fly

G G7 D(etc…)
I’m A Resting Fly
I’m A Tired Fly
I’m A Tired Fly
I’m A Resting Fly
G G7 D(etc…)
Don’t Swat Me While I’m Resting
I’m A Tired Fly
Don’t Swat Me While I’m Resting
I’m A Tired Fly

(Fading)
G G7 D(etc…)
I Wanna Be A Flying Fly
I Wanna Be A Buzzin’ Fly
I Wanna Be A Flying Fly
I Wanna Be A Buzzin’ Fly

G G7 D
I Need To Find Me Some Poo

It's About Snowy Time...

2012-01-17T20:09:00.000-08:00

Just two days ago I was out playing doubles tennis with my motley assortment of tennis playing friends...

To give you an idea of just how motley, I'm the least motley one there.

One woman (who is a great doubles player) wakes up every morning to a beer. One guy we play with has early onset Alzheimer's and we have to remind him who to serve the ball to, where to stand, etc... but he was an exceptional athlete before he got the disease and seems to play fine once the ball is in motion...

If it weren't for the great weather for this time of year and the tennis, I would have been pulling what little hair I possess out because after the initial snow storm we had in November, there hasn't been any snow on Mt. Ashland UNTIL NOW...

Let it snow, baby, let it snow. I've got new gloves and my skis are waxed.

I'm ready.

Monkeying Around

2012-01-15T19:46:00.001-08:00

I've kind of had my hands full being busy lately....

Momma And I Are Learning This For Next Wednesday...

2012-01-10T19:00:00.000-08:00

I'm gonna let her sing it, of course...

Goalie Do... Goalie Don't...

2012-01-05T20:29:00.000-08:00

<a href='http://foxsports.com?vid=fac369d7-cda9-4662-a062-1b4b3af67df7&mkt=en-us&from=sp^foxsports_en-us_videocentral&src=FLPl:embed::uuids' target='_new' title='GOTD: Howard scores amazing Goal' >Video: GOTD: Howard scores amazing Goal</a>

As someone who played goalkeeper for many a year and was quite good at it, this video made me smile and cringe at the same time, depending on which end of the field I was focusing on...

Nothing like a wind-aided boot that fools a keeper to make you smile and cringe....

Marvelous Music Makers....

2012-01-01T18:45:00.000-08:00

I need more practice...

I Keep Writin' 'em....

2011-12-30T01:48:00.000-08:00

Music Makes Me Cry

Em
There’s a young girl singing on a summer
G
swing
Dm Em
Music makes me cry…
Em
There’s an old man banging on some
G
strange thing
Dm Em
Music makes me cry…
Em
There’s an old voice trying out a brand
G
new song
Dm Em
Music makes me cry…
Em
There’s a new voice singing ‘bout an old
G
folk’s home
Dm Em
Music makes me cry…

Em G
Someone’s singing ‘bout a dying man,
Em G
someone’s singin’ ‘bout a baby born
Em G
Someone’ singing ‘bout a laughing clam
Em G
Someone’s singing ‘bout the foggy morn’
Em G
Someone’s singin’ ‘bout poverty
Em G
Someone’s singing ‘bout riches and fame
Em G
Someone’s singing ‘bout the mystery

Dm Em
And why music makes me cry…
Dm Em
Why music makes me cry…
Dm Em
Why music makes me cry…

Em
There’s a small boy humming to his
G
momma’s breath
Dm Em
Music makes me cry…
Em
There’s a beggar singing for a loaf of
G
bread
Dm Em
Music makes me cry…
Em
There’s a pack of dogs singing to a sunlit
G
Moon

Dm Em
Music makes me cry…
Em
There’s a stadium of fans singing out of
G
tune
Dm Em
Music makes me cry…

Em G
I like football… I like mud
Em G
I like SWEAT And I like BLOOD
Em G
I like THE CURVE OF A WOMAN
Em G
Who can’t walk a straight line
Em G
I like beer, BURGERS and pizza
Em G
and a mighty fine wine

Em G
But there’s JUST one thing
Em G
I find it hard to admit
Em G
There’s just one thing
Em G
And I don’t know why…

Dm Em
Music makes me cry…
Dm Em
Music makes me cry…
Dm Em
Music makes me cry…

makes me cry…
makes me cry…
makes me cry…

tHE bEST tHING aBOUT yOU tUBE...

2011-12-27T20:06:00.000-08:00

This Is For An Old Friend Of Mine...

2011-12-23T22:22:00.000-08:00

Happy Holidays

2011-12-23T11:13:00.000-08:00

A Great HONOR....

2011-12-17T17:33:00.000-08:00

Whew!!

2011-12-09T23:55:00.001-08:00

For The Girls...l.

2011-12-02T21:24:00.001-08:00

Love This

2011-12-02T15:52:00.001-08:00

Momma's New Singing Buddy...

2011-11-26T09:29:00.000-08:00

John has decided he wants Momma to sing stuff with him. Gives her a great ego boost. The two of them tried "Hello In There" without a run through. I say pretty good for off the cuff... Momma says she needs to get John to sing in a lower key...

Singer stuff...

Primadonnas and all...

I say rock on Momma...

Scrabbling....

2011-11-24T01:15:00.000-08:00

I went out last Saturday night with some friends and they were telling me that the place here used to hold some pretty good scrabble tournaments along with some pretty wild bar shenanegans...

So I wrote a song about it...

Give me some bonus poins for effort, would you please...

Bassin' Baby!

2011-11-23T15:02:00.000-08:00

There's something way cool and something way weird about this...

Dreary Weather... Not!

2011-11-21T16:34:00.000-08:00

Today would have been a dreary ICKY LATE November DAY WITH FOG AND COLD AND WIND AND RAIN EXCEPT FOR THIS---

That's the Mount Ashland Live Webcam. And that's SNOW! baby! Lots of snow coming down!

Time to wax up the skis....

Jammin'

2011-11-11T12:25:00.000-08:00

I went last night into Grants Pass with a friend to participate in an acoustic jam held at a local grange not far from where I used to live. There are three or four "professional" musicians who give their time and lead people through a great assortment of mostly bluegrass and folk songs. As you can see, people show up just to learn and have a great time.

Everybody who wants to can get up and lead a song in the key of their choosing and everybody figures out as best they can how to play along...

There were ukes there, guitars, banjos, an auto-harp, some mandolins, stand up bass, and a "Bazooky" or whatever it's called, and lots of fretting fingers...

What a great way to spend a thursday evening...

Good Lawd!How'd you like to have these guys as your local bar band?

2011-11-04T21:44:00.000-07:00

Gosh. Life Is A Business!

2011-11-04T19:42:00.000-07:00

I've been so busy lately I am all out of time. Yep. I've used it all up.

What am I gonna do now?

I'm playing tennis, working (we just built a two-car garage/shop up in Grants Pass) writing songs, learning to play my new acoustic bass guitar (not the stand up kind but the one that looks like a long-necked guitar) still tossing frisbees, taking Mum in on Wednesdays for singing (plus rehearsals!) running the dogs and trying to get in shape for ski season.

Add to that the chores around here and social time....

Whew!

Not much time for my camera!

But here are three I took recently with the winter weather finally starting to encroach upon us....

I Bought An Acoustic Bass...

2011-10-29T22:09:00.000-07:00

Who knows if I'll ever learn to play it...

I'm Drunk...

2011-10-17T22:22:00.000-07:00

Remember those days when you didn't know how to maintain, and you had too much to drink?

I do.

I wrote this song about it, while I was mostly sober...

Mostly...

--I’m drunk--

G
I’m Drunk
D C
Help me home
G
I’m Drunk
D C
Leave me alone
G
I’m Drunk
D C
I’m gonna pass out
G
I’m Drunk
D C
I’m gonna throw up
G
I’m Drunk
D C
I’m spinning out
G
I’m Drunk
D C
I love you
G
I’m Drunk
D C
I love you
G
I’m Drunk
D C
I love you…

(Repeat all x 2)

Tennis George

2011-10-10T09:23:00.000-07:00

We have a pair of tennis courts in Cave Junction that are made of asphalt with grass growing out of all the cracks. I used to go down there when I first came out this way to see if anybody ever played.

I never saw anybody.

And as there was no practice wall there I sighed and put my tennis racket away thinking the nearest courts were in Grants Pass which was 45 minutes away.

I've taken up frisbee golf instead, and while out on our two-plus-mile rather hilly course I came upon a very old couple sitting on a bench on hole seventeen "resting". They had a couple of brand new frisbees you could tell they just bought and were looking at them and talking about them as if they were both new and mysterious at the same time.

"Old newbies!" I thought. "Maybe they need some of my sage learnin'?"

I stopped and chatted with them for a bit. Turns out his name was George, and he's 82years old. His girlfriend's name was Evelyn, and she's "in her seventies" and had double mastectomies with some removal of her pectoral muscles.

And they were out learning a new sport and getting some exercise. I thought "COOL BEANS!"

"We usually play tennis," George explained.

I thought "DOUBLE-DUTY COOL BEANS!" and left them there as a couple of groups of frisbee tossers were backing up behind us.

A few nights later, I met a woman named Sandy while having a stout down at my favorite brew pub-pizza place. She looked a few years older than I but sun-beaten pretty good.

"I'm from San Diego. I play a lot of tennis."

Ahhh... that explains it.

"TENNIS? TENNIS? Did you say tennis?!"

"Yeah, we play at Jubillee Park. The courts are really bad but at least they're courts. You get some interesting bounces sometimes. Adds flavor to the game..."

It turns out there is a motley crew of die-hard tennis players who meet in the mornings about four days a week to play doubles, so I am finally getting out and playing tennis again! Yeah for tennis! The strings on my racket broke on the first day as they had rotted- it had been that long.

The point of the story of course, is George and his girlfriend. The first day I went out to play, George and Evelyn were in the next court, hitting long rallies back and forth.

"Hey I know you!" we both said, and I thought "Cool beans! What an inspiration at 82."

Every time I've gone out, George and Evelyne have been there. George first goes out into the baseball field and practices throwing frisbees- his new sport. Then Evelyn shows up and they hit tennis balls. Yesterday, George showed me a few things he got at a garage sale and then he told me about a guitar amp he scored for free because it "Lit up but didn't work". He took it apart and fixed it... "So I had to go out and buy me an electric guitar."

"Do you play?"

"I'm learning. I got me a book that says it can teach anyone six or older how to play. I reckon I qualify."

"Over-qualified," Evelyn piped in.

Way to go George at 82...

Newer Draft, Current Poem

2011-10-08T09:24:00.000-07:00

The Ebb And The Fall

The elderly
Fall
Like the days

We expect
The fall, prepare
The way
We ready for sleep

Each day
Wakes
Like a child
Each child
Lives
As present as a day
Each day a present
before
Sunset
Befalls us all

Water falls
Its mist
Fades
The willow preps
For the cold
Its leaves
Fall
Wash away
Find the sea--
The sea that begat
Us

We feed the sea
Its tides
Ebb in and out
the moon
Prescribes
The tides
The globe spins
We circle
Around the sun
Once a year

The years fall
Like the days
The elderly
Ebb in and out
Bent like the willow
Circle
Expecting to fall
Marking time
Like the moon and the sun

One day is a year
When you are expecting
To die

What I'm Watching That Awes Me...

2011-10-07T23:01:00.001-07:00

What Awes You?

Why He's My Favorite Songwriter...

2011-10-06T02:41:00.001-07:00

First Draft New Poem--

2011-10-02T08:32:00.000-07:00

The Ebb And The Fall

The elderly
Fall
Like the days

We expect
The fall
Prepare
The way
We ready for sleep

Each day
Erupts
Like a child
Each child
Lives
As sure as a day

Sunset
Befalls us all
Water falls
Its mist
Fades

The willow strips
For the cold
Its leaves
Fall
Wash away
Find the sea
The sea that begat
Us

We feed the sea
Its tides
Ebb in and out
The way the moon
Demands

The globe spins
We travel
Around the sun
Once a year

The years fall
Like the days
The elderly
Bent like the willow
Wait
Expecting to fall
Marking time
Like the moon and the sun

One day is a year
When you are expecting
To die

Momma Did This To Me...

2011-09-25T08:48:00.000-07:00

Well here is a recording of my debut performance down at the open mike night at our local brew pub. This is actually the third song I did, and I was so nervous my throat had dried up to the point where I put up EXTREME FIRE DANGER signs.

I performed "Sam Stone" by myself- "there's a hole in daddy's arm where all the money goes..."

and then Momma and I did the John Prine classic "In Spite of Ourselves"- "He ain't been laid in a month of Sundays, I caught him once he was sniffing my undies..."

This is one I wrote a few weeks back when I was learning the D7 chord called "You Did This To Me." I also call it the "dude whining song" because his half is nuthin' but a big whine while her half explains why she dumped him...

When I watched this video for the first time on my camera (a friend shot this for me so I could send it on to Paris where my brother's family lives) the thing that struck me and made me laugh was just how big I look playing the ukulele. This uke looks like a guitar so it looks like I am a giant playing the guitar! It still makes me laugh when I look at it that way.

I need to learn to play one of these, I think-

New Callouses, New Conversations...

2011-09-18T19:12:00.000-07:00

The thing about taking up something new is that it is hard at first, and then reaps you some kind of reward for your perseverence. My two newest endeavors (that I practice on alot) are playing the baritone uke (and Momma's guitar!) and frisbee golf. I somehow fit these in with climbing trees, riding the mountain bike, etc... and it makes me feel cheated every time the lights go off and I have to sleep.

There isn't enough time in a day anymore...

I've got musician's callouses on my left hand fingertips and the coolest thing is I can talk about a minor chord configuration while having a beer where I couldn't before. New hobbies open up whole new conversations.

Which is cool because old conversations get... well... old.

So take up something new and get passionate about it.

It's pretty cool.

C2-C4 How 'Bout you?

2011-09-16T17:06:00.000-07:00

Still Penning Classics...

2011-09-06T09:09:00.000-07:00

I have a friend we call Wiz (short for Wizard)who brought his girlfriend from Philly out here to our woodsy land and was driving her around showing her the sights. He took her down a dark and scary road in the woods while she protested.

"I've been in these woods my whole life," he told her as if that meant anything.

Well, the road went into the woods and dead ended, with no place to turn around. As it was rather steep coming back out in reverse, Wiz blew out an ailing transmission and they had to walk out of the dark and scary woods in the dark...

Wiz is a Wiz on the guitar but he doesn't write songs for himself. I was foolin' around trying to make fun of him with this song (which I wrote for him to doll up with fancy guitar playing) and I ended up with something kind of nice. Every chord is played with an eight count though blogger won't put them where they belong...

In These Woods
C Em
I’ve been in these woods… all my living days
C Em
I’ve been in these woods… since I was born
C Em
I’ve been in these woods… forever, I’d say
C Em
I’ve been in these woods… looking for you

C Em
Come with me, baby… let me show you
Am Em
How dark-green green can be
C Em
Come on, baby… let me show you
Am Em
how much fun fungi can be
C Em
Let’s go see the ancient stumps
Am Em
Find our small place in time
C Em
Let’s go down this scary road
Am Em
And see what end we find
C Em
Go with me, baby, explore with me, baby
Am Em
All these dark woods of mine

C Em
I’ve been in these woods… my whole life
Am
Looking for you
C
Looking for…
Em
You…oooooo…

C Em
I’ve been in these woods… my whole life
Am
Looking for you
C
Looking for…
Em
You… oooooo…

C Em
I’ve been in these woods… all my living days
C Em
I’ve been in these woods… since I was born
C Em
I’ve been in these woods… forever I’d say
C Em
I’ve been in these woods… looking for you
Am C
looking for you… looking for…
Em (fade)
you… oooooo… looking for you… oooooo…

You Can't Argue With A River...

2011-09-02T07:47:00.000-07:00

"Water doesn't argue and you're never right. That much you can't argue with. Water does what water will do according to the laws of physics and hydrology. It doesn't bend the rules to accommodate we smart people who are dumb enough to try and ride atop her when she's raging." S. F. O.

(A CONTINUATION FROM PREVIOUS POST)

So we four adventurous men went driving happily on a two lane, nicely paved highway up river to a friendly campground and quite cheerfully filled up four white-water kayaks full of air with our clever air pump that runs off the truck battery.

It was the first time I had met Charles' friend Stuart and I felt confident he knew what he was doing as he looked like a fit old bastard who had been doing for quite some time.

I should have known something was not quite right when he showed me where the straps were that you loop over your knees and thighs to "hold you into the boat". And before that there was the question "do you have a helmet?" which I wrote off as over-cautiousness at the time. I'd bring one, but like normal, I'd just tie it to something in case I needed to put it on.

Then there was the gate we had to climb over. The big tall one designed to keep people out of certain "unsafe" areas in public spaces. Then there was the near cliff we had to climb down, using a tree trunk in opposition to the bank- what we rock climbers would call a "chimney".

And then of course there was the water. Hooboy...

It was already in its fine broiling form where we were to put in. There was a small eddy and a rock. "Place your back half of your boat on this rock and get in. Then scooch off the rock and off ya go."

I wasn't sure but I think he said "get in". There was so much noise from the raging waters it was hard to tell.

So I got in.

River eddies are interesting places. There's an odd stillness in them. The current is usually slightly backwards and in a circle, as faster water rushes by one edge of the eddy and turns it. I got myself into my boat and into that eddy, then waited until Jesus on a Piece of Toast got into his boat, and Charles got close to getting into his.

"You go ahead," I told Jesus On A Piece Of Toast. I was worried about Charles and wanted to keep an eye on him. Jesus On A Piece Of Toast was from Idaho, after all, and had done quite a bit of white water rafting.
So off went Jesus On A Piece Of Toast and then Charles got into the small eddy next to me. I went next, focused on the huge rapids we were about to enter without as much as a stroke of kayaking practice...

Holy Moly! Woohoohoo! I was white water kayaking. The water noise was a roar around me. There was a wad of cotton in my mouth. Paddle paddle, brace, adjust... big giant rapid coming up...

I went over a big rock and thought "I hope this doesn't flip me over" and was all braced with my leg straps to stay attached to my boat no matter what...

As I came over the top and was coming down into the great maw of pounding water I noticed something I'd never seen before. Jesus On A Piece Of Toast was part of the great maw of water and on his face, which I could barely see because it was covered with water, was the look I can only describe as "I'm drowning".

He was sucked into the downward and backwards action of the water, grabbed by physics and hydrology and stuck there, his face breaking the surface of the water just barely and only on occasion. He told me afterwards that all he was thinking at the time was "Oh no, not today. I don't want to die today."

I told him that what I thought was "Oh shit, Jesus On A Piece Of Toast is about to die. He's drowning!" although I probably didn't think "on a piece of toast" because there wasn't a lot of time.

I did the only thing I could do as I was bouncing around over the top of the vortex that sucked him in, still in my boat...

I reached over as far as I could and managed to get a hold of the top part of his life jacket. Then I pulled him out.

I don't remember the next few seconds because the act of pulling him out pulled me out of my boat and I was rag-dolled down the river in a massive tumble that only stopped when the river calmed slightly and my life jacket righted me to see where the heck I was. My first instinct was to look back and I saw ol' Jesus On A Piece Of Toast coming by so I grabbed him and we stood up in the waist deep water and was just able to stand against the current while we blew water out of our noses, mouths and (in Jesus On A Piece Of Toast's case) lungs.
"I thought I was toast," said Jesus On A Piece Of Toast. (Well OK. Not really. But wouldn't it have been great if he did.)

We were both actually too in awe and shock to say anything and had the task of getting to an eddy ahead of us, so we both staggered against the current and got out of the river completely. The water was 51 degrees, after all, and a warm rock would help our situation immensely.
Jesus On A Piece Of Toast was prolly thinking "I nearly drowned", and I was thinking, man, Jesus On A Piece Of Toast nearly drowned.

Stuart was downstream watching helplessly and thinking "Uh oh. I brought them into this", and Charles didn't see much because he was, after all, in white water strapped to a kayak.

The thing about an event like that is that it tends to dampen the goofy joy one feels when one does something exhilarating like riding rapids in a toy... The rest of the 3 and a half mile trip was spent seriously riding the rapids, trying to stay in the boat and out of the holes. Jesus On A Piece Of Toast fell out of his boat a few more times and in so doing, knocked Charles out of his boat twice.

Once we found Charles clinging to the side wall at the bottom of a ten foot water fall we had just spilled out of, having come down the falls and landed on Jesus On A Piece Of Toast's boat which was bobbing around near another hole that caught Jesus On A Piece Of Toast's boat this time but not Jesus On A Piece Of Toast the man himself.

This time, it was Stuart who got out of his boat and ran up the side of the river to help Charles escape the great maw that was sucking him into it.

Charles had the look on his face afterwards of "oh shit, that was serious".

So all in all it was a fun day. I only came out of my boat the one time, and I got to be a hero while doing it. Nobody wanted to say the obvious very loudly, but everyone acknowledged that Jesus On A Piece Of Toast nearly died and it was very lucky I happened to be coming by and able to get a hold of him with my big carpenter arms...

I keep trying to get Jesus On A Piece Of Toast to come over and mow my lawn or something for saving his life, but all he'll offer up is to let me come over and watch the San Francisco Giants play baseball on his giant screen TV...

White Water Drowning Trip

2011-08-29T23:04:00.000-07:00

Sunday I went with a couple of carpenter friends on a white water trip up the top of the Rogue River. This is where you find the class 3 and 4 rapids, and where, if you're not careful, you become a river statistic and food for the steelhead.

And I discovered this about 100 feet into the trip, encountering a drowning river trip buddy stuck on the downside of a large boulder in a rather dire predicament. You see, he was being sucked under the water and upstream into the rock with about as much force as his life jacket had to keep his head at the surface.

In other words he was trapped by a dangerous "hole" and was about thirty seconds away from drowning.

Backing up a few days, I got a call from my friend Charles who asked if I wanted to go River kayaking down the rogue. Now the last time I did that was about ten years ago, and we went on the lower mellower section of the rogue, and I got sunburned on my nose and we had a great day. I even wrote about the trip here, and Charles and I had a laugh recalling Jonny D. and her rather large backside....

So I said "It sounds like fun" and my friend "Jesus On A Piece Of Toast" (who is from Idaho and has run many a river in large boats there and who bought a white water inflatable kayak off of a mutual friend who was moving) asked "Can I go?" and the fourth man on this trip was Charles' friend Stuart, who owned three of the boats and had lots of experience on white water as he winters in Honduras every year with his white water boat and lots of rivers down there.

The thing is, Stuart thought we all had more experience than we did, and we all thought we were going on a floaty floaty down the rogue river...

There was definitely a lack of communication that morning, and if it weren't for the fact that I'm stronger than you, things would have turned out badly for ol' Jesus On A Piece Of Toast...

(to be continued...)

(What can I say, I gotta be at work in twenty minutes!)

I Can Sing Lower Than Lee...

2011-08-28T02:14:00.000-07:00

For years and years I thought I couldn't sing because I always tried to mimic the tone of the person singing. All these years, the problem has been that I'm a bass, and if I sing where Michael Jackson sings, I sound like a couple of cats fighting in a bag.

But if I sing where Lee Marvin sings.....

Hello!!!!!

I'm a natural.

Who knew???

The Black Box

2011-08-24T08:21:00.000-07:00

I have a neighbor who lives across the valley from me. He's a bit of a rube, a yabbo, a park drunk and a nice fellow. I guess he's about 44 and he doesn't have a driver's license so he walks through the vineyards by my house and up the road to the park where he plays frisbee golf and drinks cheap beer.

By eighteen holes he's well lubricated and then he'll stagger around the park like a clown in borrowed clown shoes for a couple of hours talking to any other park drunks that will share their slurry with him and he'll try and score some more beer down at the store. Then he'll stagger home where he rents a room from some christian fellow who also employs him sober hanging gutters and painting houses.

I play frisbee golf with him up until his 4th beer then I tell him I won't play with drunks and he falls back and sits on a bench and thinks about what I said while drinking another beer.

The thing is, he's a pretty good player up until that 4th beer- a challenge to beat, actually, and Selma lacks for competition when it comes to things like good frisbee golf players so I tolerate the drinking and just make fun.

"Goddamn it, now how can a park drunk beat me like that?"

"Wow, good drive for a drunk,"

That sort of thing.

This fella is big and dopey and very pleasantly dispositioned- he just doesn't like himself very much, I suppose, and wants to escape his rather boring life with some frisbee golfing and drinking- so he don't mind my ribbing as long as I'll stay and play with him.

Well, the other morning he was stone cold sober up at the golf course. Drinking ice water!

"You won't believe what happened to me the other night."

"You're prolly right."

"The sherriff came to my door after I got home. I was pretty hammered..."

"That's a surprise,"

"...and he wanted to see inside my bag."

(This fella carries a backpack, a big backpack, around with him all day. In it, he carries about six frisbees, about six 16 oz. beers, and all the empties to get his deposit back.)

"I told him no way. I just got out of the shower and had a towel wrapped around me so I wasn't about to wrestle with him. But I got really angry. Luckily, my boss was there and he settled me down. "Ron," he said "just show him what's in the bag." I let him look and he found nuthin' but my beer cans and frisbees."

"What was he looking for?"

"Some black box that brings down airplanes."

"What?"

"That's what he said.He said he got a report I had a black box that brought down airplanes, that some neighbor saw me trying to use it and reported me."

"You're not smart enough to know how to use a black box that brings down airplanes."

"THAT'S WHAT I SAID!"

Such is life here in Selma...

When It Rains It Pours...

2011-08-16T07:25:00.000-07:00

I still do better learning to play the ukulele when I compose my own stuff. Guess I don't sound much like Avril Lavigne so things get a bit complicated doin' someone else's stuff...

Here's one I wrote yesterday mornin'.

Oh... I play this on my new baritone ukulele, a bigger instrument than my pinapple ukulele with more of a guitar sound and a bigger fret board for my hands made of meat...

It’s Fixin’ To Rain

G
Grandma passed the other day
C
Died of her age is what they say
D
She died disappointed is what I know
C
Tryin’ to make it on her own
G
(without the help she needed)

G D G
It’s fixin’ to rain

G
Nobody listened to her anymore
C
All they left was the family farm
D
Stopped helping grandma with all of them chores
C
Went to the city and bought new 4-wheelers
G
(and drove ‘em on the freeways)

G
Bring in the laundry
G D G
It’s fixin’ to rain

G
She ran the farm where we all grew
C
On homegrown tomatoes and country stew
D
Kept the lazy men-folk toiling too
C
And the children helped out a little

G
(didn’t hurt a bit)

G
Bring in the laundry
C
Turn off the sprinklers
G
Roll up the windows
G D G
It’s fixin’ to rain

G
Ninety-seven was her official age
C
Though I suspect it was ninety-nine
D
Grandma had some of the biggest guns
C
From chopping wood and milking cows
G
(Scared the hell outta us children)

G
Bring in the laundry
C
Turn off the sprinklers
G
Roll up the windows
D
Pull in the tractor
G
Cover up the hay bales
G D G
It’s fixin’ to rain

G
I’m gonna miss old grandma and her old ways
C
There’s no one round here like her any more
D
We think we’ve won when we’ve grown soft
C
With backsides and bellies all turned to fluff
G
(Grandma’d have none of that stuff)

G
Bring in the laundry
C
Turn off the sprinklers
G
Roll up the windows
D
Pull in the tractor

G
Cover up the hay bales
C
Shutter up the west side
G
Clean out the gutters
G D G
It’s fixin to rain

G
Grandma chased a bear with a chainsaw one night
C
Naked in a sheer nighty under the moonlight
D
Must have given the bear a horrible fright
C
I know it got our attention!
G
(way to go grandma!)

G
Bring in the laundry
C
Turn off the sprinklers
G
Roll up the windows
D
Pull in the tractor
G
Cover up the hay bales
C
Shutter up the west side

G
Clean out the gutters
D
Tarp up the wood pile
G
Pick up all this clutter
C
I’m only gonna ask ya once
G
What’re you waitin’ for?
G D G
It’s fixin’ to rain

G
Grandma didn’t die peacefully
C
She was too busy keeping’ her farm alive
D
And was out the back forty by herself
C
Tending to her bee hives
G
When her heart stopped beating

G
Bring in the laundry
C
Turn off the sprinklers
G
Roll up the windows
D
Pull in the tractor
G
Cover up the hay bales

C
Shutter up the west side
G
Clean out the gutters
D
Tarp up the wood pile
G
Pick up all this clutter
C
Don’t make me ask ya twice!
G
What’re you waitin’ for?

G D G
It’s fixin’ to rain

Polished Like An Old Doorknob...

2011-08-14T07:32:00.000-07:00

Tuesday nights I meet with a poet friend of mine to discuss writing and bits of flotsam scribbled down on paper we bring in to eviscerate.

The cool thing is I get to use words like eviscerate and nobody blinks or thinks me haughty...

Unless, of course, the softball team is sitting at the next table...

Here is the finished (I think, maybe, well... I dunno....) version of the poem I wrote about Bones. No real woman was used in this poem, I just had an idea about seeing people as their structure (and used it in my novel) and was thinking about a tall girl I know (who isn't problematic) and tossing in conflict for interest and oila! got this poem out of it.

---------Stubborn Bones---------
I see your structure when we fight
The way you are construed
Your mother’s long bones
Grown into yours, holding
your metatarsals far
From your angry mind

Your bones give you
leverage-- are in fact, levers themselves
A framework
For launching sad arguments
Both a casing and a cage
For your discomfitures

You are made sure by your bones
Held lofty by your bones
Given that righteous smile and haughty strut
By the calcium you’ve collected
(Since that malleable escape
through the pubic space
Of your superbly heeled mother)

When you accuse me
Of thoughtlessness
It is your distal phalanx
That points at me
Your humerus that lifts it high
And makes it shake
In my innocent face

Your bones snap now, you know
Just as you do
Without flesh
Are frightening, they leap
From dark spaces
Rattle me out of my skin

If it weren’t for stubborn bones
I would mold your pleasing flesh
Fix your shapely form to
One that I agree with
And agrees with me

NOTE-- I'm still trying to get the shot with the doll and the dragonfly. I'm trying to make the dragonfly look like a hair bow or something.... Here is one as I try and train the dragonfly to land on the head of the doll so I can hide the aerial...

Move Over Bob....

2011-08-08T00:42:00.000-07:00

There's an artform out there in the world, a kind of cross between poetry and song.

I stumbled into the artform by waking up and doing my day the way anybody else does their day. I'm trying to learn chords on a ukulele (who knew a Bb could torture one?)and it is easier to learn something I wrote than to learn a Bob Marley classic "Old Pirates yes they rob I..."

Anyhoo, I wrote this poem song last night- it just sort of "became" what it is.

Yer Little Fella

C
Come on over here son,
G
Bring your little fella
C
Is he stayin’ outta trouble?
G
Is he minding his own business?
C
Is he tucked away safely,
G
where he’s not any trouble?
C
Did your Mama tell you all about
Am
Gonorrhea?
C
I bet they’re driving you crazy
G
Now that the weather’s turned
C
all them spindly legs
G
Leading on up to heaven
C
Come on over here son,
G
Bring your little fella
C
Let me tell you all about
G
the trouble he’ll get into
C
Did your Mama explain about prophylactics?
G
Them avoiding pregnancy tactics?
C
Did your Mama teach you manners?
G
How to be a gentleman?
C
Come on over here son,
G
You and your little fella
C
I’ve only got the one hour
G
To tell you not to succumb
C
To the pressures of the moment
G
Don’t do regretful things
C
Because of the pressures of the moment
G
And the things your Mama wants
C
You might have to drop out of college
G
You might have to drive a truck
C
You might have to build fences
G
Just like your daddy has to do
C
Come on over here son,
G
bring your little fella
C
He looks just like his Mama
G
And a little bit like me
C
Hold him up to the glass
G
Where I can see he’s such a spunky lass
C
Is his Mama nice to you?
G
Does she want more than you give?
C
Come on over here son,
G
Don’t you be afraid
C
Your Mama told you all about me
G
Didn’t she?
C
Did she tell you I’m much nicer
G
When I’m a person
C
Than when I’m a number
G
In a place like what you see?
C
Come on over here son,
G
bring your little fella
C
I think it’s nice
G
You named him after me…

Introducing Fred...

2011-08-06T08:35:00.000-07:00

Catching Fish....

2011-08-03T23:13:00.000-07:00

Arlo Githrie was once asked about writing songs. "Where, Arlo, do songs come from?"

Arlo replied... "Well... Writing songs is a lot like fishing. You throw out your line and you wait...

Every now and then, you'll reel in something that resembles a song.

The trick however... is to always fish upstream from Bob Dylan."

Bob Dylan could write a nonsensical song that just "works"...

Go figure.

Catchin' Da Momma...

2011-07-29T20:58:00.000-07:00

I took the mumster down to town the other day to run errands (shop for make-up and wrinkle cream- the woman has her pride) and we went into Taylor's Sausage to grab a hotdog while we waited for a prescription to be filled.

Mum has been walking without her walker or a cane lately, but I stay nearby (and she doesn't like it) just in case.

As we were leaving, I was holding left-overs in a bag in one hand and Mum's unfinished soda in the other. I thought to myself, "if she stumbles, I don't have a hand free" so I put the coke up to my mouth and bit the rim. We were going out the front door and the door mat got caught up in Mum's shoes and she stumbled face first toward the floor.

Not sure how I got there, but I manged to leap forward five or six feet and grab her around the waste, just as her face got to about two feet from the floor. I held her like that until I could see again because the coke, of course, had splashed me in the eyes.

Momma just hung there, held by me (now with my hands around her ribcage), staring at the ground and she said "that was close"...

She hasn't minded me hanging close by while she walks in unfamiliar territory lately but we'll see how long that lasts.

The woman has her pride...

But... But... I can Explain...

2011-07-25T07:26:00.001-07:00

The other day I stopped into a local thrift store and bought five Barbie dolls. I walked up to the counter and set them down, wanting to wander about the store a bit just to see what was unwanted by someone else that I wanted. I found a nice wooden box for two dollars. You can't make a nice wooden box for two dollars so I bought it.

When I set the dolls on the counter, I told the seventy year old rehabilitated woman with long and grotesque chin hairs sitting there, "watch my girls for me while I look around," and I winked at her.

She'd seen far weirder than I you could tell because she just nodded and smiled politely, pulling the girls back away from the edge of her counter lest they fall off. My girls were in good hands.

I also found three old games of trivial pursuit and I bought those too. For three dollars, I've got all the trivia a mind could ever hope to riffle through. I don't like playing the game so much as I like sitting quietly on my back deck with a coffee in the wee mornings asking myself questions and then trying to answer them.

Was it Descartes? Or Dante?

I'd soon find out.

Now you may be wondering by now why I bought five Barbie dolls. I stopped specifically while in town and hunted them up. I turned into the parking lot, parked, told my dogs to "stay" and went into the store with Barbie Dolls in mind. I would have asked at the counter "Where are your Barbie dolls?" but I found them before I needed to. There were twenty five or so all mostly naked and piled in a basket, their naked plastic nipple-less flesh all intertwined in orgiastic, pretzel-like contortions...

Oh my!

The male mind is such a dumb and simple thing...

I picked out five that would serve me well and took them to the counter. I want to photograph them," is how I explained it to the hairy-chinned grandma.

I want to get a picture of a dragonfly on one of their heads. I don't know why, I just do. I have a large collection of dragonfly pictures, and I want some different ones. A dragonfly alighting on the head of an attractive plastic doll seemed like a good idea. So I taped it to the aerial on my Saturn where a dragonfly has been touching down for the last week or so.

Which freaked out the dragonfly and now it just hovers and looks down at all that wild hair.

I'll let you know if I get the shot or not...

Illegal Smile??

2011-07-21T21:37:00.000-07:00

I Work On Stuff--

2011-07-21T08:06:00.000-07:00

The best part of writing anything is when the original inspiration just appears in your head. When I hear chords or melodies without words, my brain puts words to them.I oftentimes wish I knew someone who was a melody-maker stuck on the words part. I'd add the words and we'd become rich and famous.

That would be the plan, anyway...

My "song" from yesterday has been evolving. What started out as a chord exercise has become one of those little things you work on until you get it not necessarily 'right' but as good as you can make it given your "whatever parameters"...

I got the chorus done (I think) but the verses are monotonous so I need a melody-maker to come up with a melody for the verses...

Hello?

Everybody left the building...

The finished chorus for those sitting around in an office somewhere pretending to work who happen to have a ukulele with them...
G7-----Am
You should
C--------------------F--------------C
Sip the time you’re given like the fine wine you’ve been
G7
poured
C---------------------F--------------C-----------G7
don’t strive for forgiveness or god forbid, get bored.
C--------------------------F---------------C
Treat people like they’re dying and your own life like a
Am
bed
C---Am------------------C-------------G7--------C
of tangerines and roses and a shotgun full of lead

Writing Songs With My Uke...

2011-07-20T07:58:00.000-07:00

Once a fella can play a few chords on the ukulele he can get right down to the business of writing songs. I've written two, so far- not really grand compositions, but a good way to practice simple chords without having to play "You Are My Sunshine" over and over...

Can't seem to get blogger to hold the chords over the proper words so it is 4/4 basically with the last notes of the chorus picked on the strings (a uke won't play that low!) and G played 2&4. I've got one more verse in me for this but it'll have to wait...

----Sip The Time You're Given----
C F C G (repeats)
Life they say is longer than your fading memory

You remember some of yesterday but half a century

has come and gone so quickly, you think it’s all not real

You hang on to your worthless stuff, where the sentiments reveal

A thing or two about you, the stuff you’ve focused on

The things that mattered most to you, the things you’ve relied on

You should…

CHORUS
C F C
Sip the time you’re given like the fine wine you’ve been
G
poured
C F C G
don’t strive for forgiveness or god forbid, get bored.
C F C
Treat people like they’re dying and your own life like a
G
bed
C Am C (strings)EDC
of sweet tangerines and roses and some buckshot full of
C(string)
lead…

Life they say is harder than the life you think you’ve led,

The roads are full of potholes and the bad deeds in your head

You make the best of everything, you do the best you can,

you stand up for the weak ones, shake your fist at the man,

You should…

CHORUS
C F C
Sip the time you’re given like the fine wine you’ve been
G
poured
C F C G
don’t strive for forgiveness or god forbid, get bored.
C F C
Treat people like they’re dying and your own life like a
G
bed
C Am C (uke strings)EDC
of sweet tangerines and roses and some buckshot full of
lead…

Turning In Some Pages...

2011-07-19T10:29:00.000-07:00

HERE'S A CHUNK OF WALTER'S SAGA...

“Is everything alright in here?”

Everything is alright in here.

“Oh yes!” says Barbra. “Everything’s fine.”

“Do you want to sit up in your chair, Walter? You might prefer talking to your visitor sitting up? I can go get some help…”

“I’d like to sit up, if it’s not too much trouble. Yes, I would like that, thank you.”

Barbra looks at me and sort of sighs and smiles at the same time. I’ve never been helpless like this in the time she has known me so she’s taking it all in and trying to come to her own terms with the new reality.

“Are you going to be able to walk again, Walter? Did the doctor say…”

“…It won’t be long. The doctors say I had sixteen broken bones and my muscles have atrophied. Plus I’ve got brain damage where my brain fell out of my head.”

“I’m so sorry you have to go through this.”

“Me too. But this is what my options are. I can’t change them. This is my life at the moment and I just have to keep living it.”

“Yes! Yes, yes, Walter, you do! And I’ll help you with the hard parts. Can I help you with the hard parts?”

“I could use help with the hard parts. I’ve always needed help with the hard parts.”

“Me too. Me too. And when you are better you can help me with my hard parts too?”

“If you help me I can help you. Sure. That I can do.”

“Walter, can we come in?”

The boys are poking their heads in my door.

“Please do,” I say.

“Are you ready to stand? We’ve got the chair handy.”

“Bring it in,” I say. “Bring in the handy chair!”

I hear the familiar squeak of wheels and then my familiar chair is brought in and they position it like they did before and Barbra shuffles back out of the way up against Baldeeny’s bed where he’s three quarters naked of gown and sheets but fully clothed in man-fur like a naked fat ape.

The boys act alacritous and well rehearsed and before I can slow them down they’ve got my feet over the edge of the bed and are barking orders in my ear.

“Sit your head up, Walter.”

“Feel where your feet are.”

“Get yourself ready to stand.”

“Ready? On three… One, two, three…”

I stand and it goes easy for me. Tubes and wires dangle off of me but the boys reach for those and keep the catheter tube from pulling on my crotch. I realize I am showing my naked ass to Barbra and I wonder if she recognizes it without much meat there?

“Okay, now a couple of steps…”

I take those steps. They too go easier than before and I know I am feeling stronger all the time. One day soon I’ll simply walk out that front door and go home. It won’t be long now.

“Are you ready to sit?

“Turn a little this way. That’s it.”

“Okay sit… easy does it… bend your knees… come on Walter, you got this thing.”

I sit down mostly on my own. I got this thing.

“A couple of blankets, Walter? I bet you don’t stay warm without much meat on your bones?”

“I would like a couple, yes, please.”

“You did good!” Barbra calls out from Baldeeny’s side of the room.

“I did, didn’t I? I’ll be out of here soon, just you watch me.”

The boys spread two blankets over my skeletal remains and I smile at them to thank them. They don’t waste much time chit-chatting once they’ve done their jobs- they’ve got other patients to seat and floors to mop and whatever else it is they do they need to go to do it. I take a moment to orient myself to my new position in the world. I can see the floor. I can see what’s outside my door. I can see Barbra’s foot, the one with the funny shoe?

“What happened to your foot?” I ask without thinking it through first.

“I’ve been ill too, Walter. I’m a diabetic now.”

“You are?”

“My own damn fault! You know how I am with food…”

“You like food.”

“I like it too much. I’ve got diabetes and they had to amputate my toes. Isn’t that just awful?”

“I’m sorry.” I truly am. Barbra never had an easy life and this just makes it all the more difficult for her. I want to ask her all about it and I don’t.

“I’ll tell you all about it sometime. Not now. Okay, Walter? I just want things to be pleasant today. I haven’t seen you in forever.”

“They took your toes?”

“Walter…”

“Sorry.”

Barbra tries to come to me, to be very close to me, but her large size keeps the core of her far away from me. It’s like she’s padded her inner self to protect it from the cruelness of the outside world- all this fat that she wears like an insular bubble- and even if she desired closeness she can’t attain it because it is essentially- with her short arms- out of reach.

She reaches for my face with her plumped fingers and in her eyes, far away, I can see that she is miserable.

“It’s so good to see you,” I tell her.

“You too, Walter. I missed you so much.”

We’re quite a pair, Barbra and I. We were always quite a pair, but now look at us. I’m a skeleton with skin who can barely move about, and Barbra is a bloated woman who can barely move about and here we are, gazing into each other’s eyes not measuring the love for one another we hope to see there, but the pain and misery behind the facade.

“I am so sorry about your foot. That must be awful.”

“It is awful, Walter. So let’s not talk about it.”

“Did you know there are twenty six bones in the human foot, twenty eight if you include the sesamoid bones at the base of the big toe?”

“Walter, please!”

“Sorry. Sometimes I don‘t know what to talk about.”

“We can catch up, Walter. I’ll just sit and we can talk. You can tell me what you were doing before they… before the accident and I’ll tell you what my life was like.”

“There’s a chair over by Baldeeny. He won’t mind if you wheel it over here.”

Barbra turns and walks like a parade float, those inflated, tethered characters with short fat fingers and a gaiety about their languid bounce that make children smile as they float by. The swollen rolls of fat beneath her armpits hold her short, plump arms outward and she’s wheezing as loud as Baldeeny, laboring to breathe under the weight of herself. The special shoe on her right foot jumps out to the mind as the cause of her rhythmic limp.

I can’t imagine anything she does is comfortable under her own skin, but that’s where Barbra is trapped, her self held captive by her own shell, a mind put away in a padded cell, peeking out through eyes that can barely open due to the fat piled up to the tops of chubby cheeks.

“What’s wrong with him?” Barbra points with a cartoon finger.

“Baldeeny? He sleeps.”

“He sleeps? Lucky guy. Why can’t he sleep at home?”

“They don’t know. I mean, that’s all he does now is sleep. He has something wrong with the sleep center in his brain.”

“I have sleep apnea real bad now. I wake up all the time scared to death I’m going to stop breathing and never start again.”

“I sleep a lot too. I’m never scared about not waking up. The being awake part is the hardest.”

Barbra wheels the lone chair up alongside my hospital bed and somehow manages to center it beneath her. When she sits she falls the last few inches and I hold my breathe but the chair holds up and now Barbra is low enough that I look down on her like the old days.

All that exertion has flushed her face and set her lungs into second gear. If I were to close my eyes, I’d swear I was hearing the panting of a St. Bernard.

“So…”

“It’s good to see you, Walter.”

“How have you been, Barbra?”

“Okay. You?”

“Before this happened, I suppose I was okay too. I don’t know… I was signing checks and getting along okay. I had my job. I got by.”

“I wasn’t even working. I’ve been staying at home, mostly.”

“With your parents?”

“Yeah.”

“How are they?”

“They’re getting older. Mom is on her third heart operation. Dad won’t do anything around the house but watch television.”

“They make you do all the work?”

“We have paid help that does most of the work. Look at me, Walter. I can’t do much of anything anymore.”

Barbra has indeed grown since the last time we were together. She was short and heavy then. Now she’s so big she looks like an inflated version of herself left out in the hot sun to expand some more. If I poke her with something sharp she could easily pop and fly about the room.

“You look uncomfortable,” I say sadly.

“I am, Walter. I don’t know how I did this to myself but I did and here I am.”

I have copious feelings for Barbra but I’ve already run aground conversationally, at least for now. I’ve learned over the years to just sit quiet with sadness and just let it be because I find it to be sad. I try a gentle smile and to make my eyes attentive and kind, but don’t know if I pull it off.

Barbra stares at me from her chair and the look she stares at me with- beyond the rolls of fat and the truncated foot- is from a kind and frightened little girl.

I can still imagine the essence of her. The being inside the swollen body mass that makes up the outside of her. The mind that takes in everything and reacts to everything and smiles and laughs and cries. The Barbra stripped of fat and two hundred pounds of unnecessary substance. The lean, skeletal Barbra that is so light she bounces when she walks and can jump and skip and surf and ski and dance and cartwheel and play hopscotch and jump rope and slink and sashay and taunt and tease and flirt and wrap her thin legs around me while I squirt and squirt into her. I can see that Barbra in my mind’s eye. The little Barbra doll who can get what she wants and have the life of dreams and be the girl to fulfill my passions and have her passions fulfilled by me.

“There you are,” I say out of desperation to fill the air with words.

“Here I am,” Barbra echoes back.

Barbra yawns. Inside her mouth, small white teeth glisten and align themselves perfectly along a tiny skull and jaw bone. I always loved looking at Barbra’s teeth. They were incredible teeth. I’m glad to see that in spite of all the changes Barbra’s gone through, she still has those nice ivory jewels.

“I’m so very tired, Walter. Do you mind if I just sit here with my eyes closed for a minute? I was up earlier than ever this morning just to come and see you.”

“Did you know you have 28 teeth in your mouth as an adult? Thirty two if you count the wisdom teeth that only some people have and many have removed.”

“What else, Walter?” Barbra says with her eyes closed.

“Tooth enamel is the hardest and most mineralized substance in the body.”

“What else?”

“It’s primary mineral is a crystalline calcium phosphate.”

Barbra just smiles and nods peacefully. My facts always put her to sleep before, like they were so factual they put her mind at ease and she could stop thinking and fretting.

“Another.”

“George Washington did not have teeth made out of wood, but he did have teeth made out of hippopotamus teeth…”

In the hallway I can hear the familiar click-clacking of cowboy boots growing louder, heading this way. The great messianic savior is back in town.

“You’re messing up my sermonizing!”

And that familiar voice. It’s Paul The Cowboy Preacher. He’s standing in my doorway but he hasn’t crossed over into my room.

“Hi Paul!” I call out.

“You’re telling Papa Brown there ain’t no heaven! You’re messing with my sermonizing. How’s he gonna get to heaven with you telling him despicable nonsense? That’s just cruel and unusual punishment, if you ask me.”

“How is Papa Brown?”

“That’s not the point! Splltt! The point is, if he wants to get to heaven he’s gonna have to do some things here on earth before he dies! He needs to take Jesus Christ into his heart and accept him as the only way to the promised land! That’s what the good book says and I’m sticking to what God himself wrote! Not something some miscreant like you made up from his hospital bed!”

“But that doesn’t even make any sense.”

“Of course it makes perfectly good sense! Who are you to claim you know what happens next? How the heck can you possibly know?”

I want to ask of Paul the very same question. He seems so full of certainty but he can’t possibly know that which is completely unknowable. If I can’t know then how can he know? It makes no sense to me. “It just seems very implausible,” I suggest to him, “like a very limited explanation for a very profound question. Doesn’t it sound made-up to you? Like the fantasies of fearful children?”

I await an angry answer but nothing comes. Instead, I hear Paul grumble things beneath his mighty mustache as he click-clacks down the hall in his mighty cowboy boots. I imagine he throws his mighty hat on the floor and stomps it mightily to get the almighty fire to go out of it.

There are sixty-seven percent of six point eight billion, or four point five seven billion non-Christians living on our planet who all think Paul is kind of goofy.

Freaky.

“You’ve made a friend,” Barbra says quietly and sarcastically, her eyes still closed and her posture that of someone coveting sleep.

“Hmm,” is all I say and I let the noises in the room settle like dust onto the floor and swirl away.

--ss--

Barbra’s breathing has adjusted into resonance with the hairy chest and swollen throat of Baldeeny. Her eyes are closed but her mouth is agape. That was fast.

One minute she was present, her mind engaged with my mind, her self intermingled with my self, and the next minute she has drifted over to the other side- to the side where peace reigns above fear and ease overcomes difficulty- and I’m happy for her.

Sleep can rid oneself of many evil things.

If I close my eyes, perhaps I too can get there? That place where nothing reigns supreme? That place where everything is nothingness, and blackness is not a color but the absence of all that painfully lasers and glints and blinds us while we live?

The world now comes into my mind through the holes in the side of my head. The world without sight changes places in my brain, shifting the location where senses are processed. I think differently without my eyes feeding me images of what’s outside myself. I feel more of my skin and take in a different world altogether.

The world now hums like a refrigerator and murmurs like a mumbling old man. It hisses like wind through louvered shutters and clicks-clacks like the play of tiny children. The world without sight is a softer, kinder world void of certain acuities.

When the world is relatively quiet.

Baldeeny and Barbra become one animal while my eyes are closed. They wheeze and exhale in harmonious stereo. I breathe in and out matching the cadence of their comfort… slowly inhaling… then slowly exhaling… inhaling… exhaling…

Click-clack. Click-clack. Hum.

The lights go out for all of us.

--pp--

The lights come on. Barbra is still sitting asleep in her chair whishing air between her fine teeth.

Baldeeny is dead silent and my first gasping thought is that he died in his sleep. The hairy ape snorted his last honking breath!

But he’s just not here. Whatever happened to him happened while I was gone, while my mind was switched off and I wasn’t registering anything. It would be hard to move a guy like Baldeeny around without my noticing if my brain were in the noticing mode. Maybe he woke up and found his pants? Maybe he’s trying to skip out on his bill?

Maybe he did die and they carted him off without disturbing my sleep, thinking I’d be relieved to lose the giant noise-maker and couldn’t handle the trauma of a stiffening body?

Imagine going to sleep and never waking up? I mean, going to sleep and dying- that kind of never waking up? Your life is going along just fine… you’ve got things under control… you’ve got plans for your future… you go to bed and close your eyes…

It’s over.

You died.

Imagine that?

I wouldn’t mind that at all.

Going to sleep, becoming fully unconscious, and then never waking up wouldn’t bother me. I’d never know what happened to me. My brain would be in the off position permanently like a computer in a landfill. There would be no me to register why I no longer exist.

Being scared is an emotion registered by the brain to help you fight or flee something scary, to preserve your brain and your vital organs from that scary thing. Without the brain being alive, there is no registry. Nothing is scary once you have died. So it is silly to be afraid of death, though not so silly to be afraid of not being you anymore.

If you like who you are.

I think Barbra sleeps to remove herself from the being of herself. She’s depressed inside her mind about the woman she has become and sleep is a short term solution to a lifelong problem. If the you that you are isn’t liked by others, pretty soon you become like those others and despise the you that you are. Your fear of no longer being you is so large you don’t do yourself in, but your dislike for yourself is large enough that you prefer sleep to having awareness of being the kind of you that you can’t abide.

Whew!

The bad thoughts of others can really, really knock a person’s being about!

Michael, my respiratory therapist, has slipped into my room and is holding out my toy for me to blow into.

“Gently but firmly,” is all he dares to say.

I cross my eyes and blow gently but firmly, watching the red ball dance in the clear plastic window.

Michael has his stethoscope out and he’s probing my chest with it. I have lungs that power me and they feel more open and less gurgly than I can remember. Michael nods while I blow and then smiles at me kindly.

I’m getting stronger very quickly, it seems to me.

“That’s enough.”

I stop blowing.

“Everything sounds good on the inside.”

Everything sounds good on the inside.

Imagine that?

--tt--

Isabella essentially died in her sleep. When something inside of her burst open and blood flooded her abdominal cavity she was in bed and asleep. We don’t know if she woke up when the pain of something wrong sounded the body’s alarms, but in our family, we always maintained that she died in her sleep. It’s better that way. We want to think that when she died, she was not afraid of dying.

Being afraid of death while you face it is almost as bad as being afraid of life while you live it. At four, I don’t even know if Isabella understood what death really meant? Perhaps the concept of the end was not clear to her, and therefore she could not have been afraid of death if she died while she was awake? She would have been ignorant of the idea that her self would no longer be there in the morning. And she would not have been frightened.

I feel sad for the multitudes of people out there who are so afraid of death they invent another life to go to after this one ends. You go on to become another human being in another body? And in the new body you learn things you didn’t know in your last body? That doesn’t even make any sense.

Or you ascend up to a mythical place where everything is soft and pillowy and you get to see your long lost friends and relatives?

“Hi!” you say to them in your new pillowy home.

“Hi!” they say back to you. “What took you so long? It’s so much nicer here than it is down there. We couldn’t figure out why you waited? What are you, crazy?”

“I didn’t know.”

“We told you long ago.”

“How did you know?”

“We were told about it too.”

“Where do I sit?”

“On that white and fluffy pillow.”

It’s all so silly.

Baldeeny must be out getting tests run on his malfunctioning brain. What could he have done to have a damaged brain that makes him sleep?

He and Barbra make quite a pair.

Where is Barbra now while she sleeps there in that chair?

When Barbra dreams, who does she have sex with? Is she skinny in her dreams?

“Yazoo! Yazoo! How do you do?”

Walter erupts into the room like an unexpected Mardi Gras and startles Barbra back to now, exploding herself into herself the way that popcorn fills a pot when the oil’s hot.

Walter and Barbra confront each other’s presence in my room. Barbra fuzzily trying to figure out where she’s located and with whom? Walter trying to figure out who and how she located herself in a chair next to me.

The room shrinks with the predicament.

“And how do you do?” Walter asks Barbra in a lower octave. Barbra’s eyes roll upward to meet the happy greeter face to face, confronted with far more energy than she has exhibited herself since I’ve known her. This type of man frightens Barbra- someone who looks at you directly without shirking off, who expects you to participate in the hustle and bustle and grandness of living a life large and loudly. Here before Barbra is a man with expectations, and what frightens Barbra most is her inability to live up to those expectations.

I know because I’ve always been just like Barbra in that way.

People like Walter frighten me out in real life where I’m forced to stand on my own two feet and separate myself from everybody else and work and live and hold my own in the world.

Walter sees me as the potential and refuses to see the reality.

“I’m not like you,” I could tell him.

“Of course you’re not. You’re like you!” he’d say, then he’d expect me to be boisterous and happy and enthralled by the joyousness of everything anyway.

While people like Walter can lift your spirits up and make you feel joy bubbles that rise up and smash against the roof of your mouth, they can also make you cower and shrink and cover yourself with an inverted version of yourself, folding inward like a sea anemone when touched by a rambunctious hand.

“I’m fine,” says Barbra now with down-turned eyes and a quiver.

“Well ain’t that something! And how is our local hero, Mr. Walter‘s-gonna-get-up-and-boogie, sir?”

“I feel stronger,” I say. “And my head is a little clearer.”

“You’re off the juice and you’re feeling it! That morphine’ll make you fuzzy all over but it does the trick when you’re hurtin’. Without morphine you are now officially the you that you are gonna be! How’s it feel? Can you be you from now on?”

“Do I have a choice?”

“I suppose you could choose another you and try to be that version? I don’t see why not? Who’s your gorgeous lady friend? I’m sorry I didn’t catch your name?”

“Barbra.”

“Barbra. It is a pleasure to meet you Barbra! Are you ready for the momentous event? You’re just in time to see Walter here stand up and walk around. I think it is high time he stop lazing about in that bed, don’t you?”

“He’s going to walk?”

I’m going to walk?

“Well not out the front door of the hospital, not just yet! But soon that’s what he’ll do. He’ll put on a pair of trousers, get his shoes all tied up, and walk right out the front door of this fine establishment and then head off into the sunset like the glorious hero that he is! But first we just want him to be able to walk to the toilet so he can evacuate himself without ado. Today the toilet. Tomorrow the world!”

Walter laughs in a big, maniacal bellow. He’s showing off for Barbra who just sits expanded into her chair, gripping her armrests like she’s having the ride of her life.

The thought of walking out of this hospital frightens me.

In here, I’m Walter, the skinny guy who woke from a coma.

Out there…

Out there scares me. There are gale force winds out there. Winds of change. Ill and ominous buffeting winds swirling around and round and I’m a reed without a solid core.

“Shall we walk about a bit?” Walter insists.

“I don’t think I can,” I try and reason with him.

“I think you can. I bet Barbra thinks you can. But we’ll never know until we put out the effort, now will we?”

Walter is going to push me out into the world whether I’m ready to go or not. It’s his job and he’s very good at it. I bet he runs up against lots of different types of me all the time? People so banged up and beat up by life they don’t want to go on. They’d just assume stay in a hospital bed and get their food spooned to them and their asses wiped by The Ass Wipers.

The world outside can be a tough place for those not properly equipped. It is Walter’s job to see to it that those who don’t want to go back out there go back out there anyways.

“We’re gonna organize your bells and whistles now.”

Walter is sorting out my wires and catheter tube so when I stand, I have slack. He’s moving my urine bag beneath my drip and disconnecting my chest monitors entirely. I’m now free to stand and walk about if I can stand and walk about. I have my doubts but Walter is so sure of himself I’m compelled to follow him as if by magic.

“You’re set to get your legs down onto the floor. Here we go, Walter. Bring your legs out here and we’ll set them on the floor.”

I am stronger now and I can move my legs out over into space by myself. With Walter’s help they find the floor and I’m not real sure of where they stand or when they land. I’m not on firm footing and worry about my center when I rise. You need to know where you start and stop in order to navigate your self through all of the obstacles that make up the world. Being one with all might sound super delicious, but it is not easy to be one with something that will trip you up and make you fall.

Around my waste Walter wraps a wide cotton belt, giving him a handle to manipulate me with.

“Okay Mr. Hero, sir, let’s get you straight up and down, shall we? I’ll put my hand on your back and help you stand up, then we’ll just stand there for a moment to see how it all feels. Anytime you are ready.”

I’m not ready for this. I’m not ready for this. I think I’m standing!

Whoa!

“Get your balance, Walter. Find your balance. I got ya!”

“You got me?”

“I’m here if you need me. But you got yourself, Walter. You’re doin’ it on your own!”

“I am?”

“You are!”

I’m floating over the floor that is a part of me the way cartoon ghosts hover over their shadows on TV.

What’s me down there? I can’t really say, but whatever is me is holding me up and I am standing up and looking down on Walter who is a big man but not a tall man like I am.

I flutter some like a twig in a breeze. I tremble some like cold and frightened knees. But I am standing up.

“You’re doin’ it!”

“You’re doing it, Walter!” I hear Barbra piping in.

“I’m doing it!”

“Now you’re gonna step this way. Just one step. Right this way, sir!”

I shake my leg out in front of me and put it down. Just one step for man…

“Excellent!”

“Way to go, Walter!” Barbra sounds excited from her chair.

“Now another step. The other leg, Walter. You can’t step with the same leg twice. It doesn’t work that way.”

The other leg. I try and change my mind. The other leg. Which one is that? Not that one. The other one. That one.

“That’s the one, Walter. You got it now. Put your weight on it. You have to lean toward where you want to go.”

“You’re doing it, Walter!”

“I’m doing it!”

“Now the right one.”

“Which one?”

“That one, the first one.”

Oh. That one. I manage to find that one in the universe and get it to slide forward.

“Excellent! The other one.”

I find the other one too and get it to slide forward. I’m walking for the first time in a long time.

“You’re walking, Mr. Hero, sir. I told you you were ready!”

I’m not ready. I won’t be ready. I’m too unsure of the future to be ready.

“Keep going, Walter!” Barbra chimes in.

I keep going.

“Out the door, Walter. Let’s get you outta this room for a minute.”

Out the door? There are people out there who can look at me.

“Hey everybody, look at Walter!”

There are a few nurses about who look at me. Where is my Caroline? O Caroline? I am walking and I cannot find my Caroline. I want to turn around now.

“That’s far enough,” I say. “Please. Let me go back.”

“We can go back. Let’s get you turned around. Nice big circle…”

“Around and round.”

I make Walter laugh. I know how to make circles. I trace out a half circle and begin my retreat back into my room. My feet are down there cooperating but I cannot be sure they won’t mutiny. They want to join the carpet and run down the hall to go find all and be one with it. I need my feet to be a part of me.

“Stay with me feet.”

“You made it back!” says Barbra still sitting in that chair.

“Walter did amazing!” says Walter.

“That was fun,” I say. I’m not sure I mean that. “I’d like to get back in bed now. Please. My legs are gone.”

“Alrighty. Back to basics it is then.”

“I need to get in bed now!”

Walter cinches up on the belt that’s around my tiny waist and man-handles me easily back to my bed.

“I got you, Walter!“

I sit with great relief and fall back with great surprise. My legs are carted back to me like the detached legs of a corpse and tossed beneath me. Walter makes me square to the bed while I stare at his bleached head of hair and smell the sweet sweat of him as his effort trickles down his cheek and drips off his chin.

“You’re as fine as cherry wine now.“

Several layers of blankets are tossed over me and I feel safe again, snug in my discomfort, happy to be back where I feel I belong.

“There now. That wasn’t such a bad start to your new life, now was it?”

My new life…

Just what will be my new life? Where will I live? Who will look after me? What if I can’t make it outside of here at all?”

“That was hard,” I confess.

“You did great, Walter.” My ex-wife is my biggest fan.

“Of course it was hard. You’re in a hospital, man. Broke up and gettin’ better. It’s gonna be hard. You don’t expect just to float on outta here and take the world by storm, do ya?”

I don’t know what I expect. Looking backwards all the time like wading through boxes in your attic- precludes any focus on the future. But with each forward step comes the future like an upcoming town. Each step I take propels me closer to there. I just need to figure out where there will be and I hope I’ll be safe and warm and happy there, wherever it is.

The future is a scary place but if you have no future, you’re dead.

And death is the only place I know of where there is absolutely nothing.

“Are you ready for some exercises in bed? You got anything left in your tank?”

“I’m out of gas,” I say to Walter.

And out of town.

“Okay then, Mr. I-just-walked-in-the-hallway, sir. Let me just hook you up to these machines and I’ll see you again later. And it was a pleasure to meet you, Barbra. I’ll leave you both to do it to it without my getting in the way.”

Walter dances out of my room with large hips a-shaking, and I notice this makes Barbra crack a genuine smile.

“He’s a very nice man,” she says to fill in the blank space left by his departure.

“Yes,” I say. “He is.”

--ii--

The thing about a guy like Walter is his aftermath. He fills up a room and then leaves a silent eddy in his wake. The silence swirls around and round and serves to remind those not like Walter that they are lacking.

Barbra stares at me afraid to compete with the energy Walter leaves behind after everything he does.

I stare at her as if to say “I am sorry too.”

The silence we both generate is an intake of breath for a guy like Walter. Yet for the two of us, it is the air, it’s what we often live on for long periods of time.

Since I had the brain damage I’ve noticed I’m less silent than before. I can’t explain why but I’m different now, and this difference makes me want to blurt out something, anything, and I just do.

“Will your parents let me come stay with them? Until my parents come home?”

Barbra registers what I’ve asked of her with a couple of receding blinks and a thoughtful head-tilt on fat-inflated shoulders. Her small head lolling atop her bloated mass makes her thinking gesture doll-like and unexpectedly cartoonish. The cartoon darkens as we both realize what I’ve just requested.

I’m asking myself back into her life.

“It might be hard,” Barbra says. “My mom needs special care. We have so little room.”

“Oh. Okay…”

“And I’m not sure where we’d put you. Where would you sleep?”

“Oh, I can sleep anywhere.”

“Hmm…”

“It was just a thought.”

“We can make it work, Walter. We’ll have to make it work. You have no place else to go. Who else will take care of you?”

“You’re all I have,” I say. Barbra is all I have that isn‘t overseas or dead.

An unfamiliar nurse walks into my room and looks all business-like, reading from a chart.

“Says here,” she says, “it’s time to remove your PICC Line.”

“Okay,” I say. “Whatever that is.”

“You’ve got a tube running up a vein in your arm. It leads to a much larger vein that gives direct access to your heart. We put those in patients who require long term drip medication. That‘s where your medicine goes.”

“Oh.”

“You have direct access to his heart?” Barbra asks, surprising me with her sarcasm.

We grow as we live, I guess. Barbra has grown in more ways than one.

The nurse feigns a smile. Her dry lip catches on a crooked tooth giving her an evil mien.

“Hold out your arm,” she demands. “And hold as still as you can.”

I can hold pretty still. I’ve been holding still since I remember. If you find yourself surrounded by many others, holding still is one way not to be seen. If you’ve got sixteen broken bones and parietal brain damage and your muscles have atrophied, holding still is what comes naturally to you when you wake.

There is an internal tugging up my shoulder. It feels worm-like- an invasion of some kind. No. It feels more like an escape. Like whatever has been residing in me is trying to worm its way out of me through my arm. The nurse focuses on my scrawny limb and is all business.

“Tell me if you feel anything but a slight tugging in your arm.”

“I feel a slight worming in my arm.”

“There,” she says. “I need to measure this, but I believe we got it all.”

“Good,” I say. “That’s good to hear.”

“You’re just about free,” she says. “You’ll be out of here in no time.”

“That’s great news!” says Barbra.

Outta here on to what? I think without saying.

The nurse continues on with her business. I will never get to know this nurse. This is not the sparkly kind of nurse I want to wake up from a coma to.

This is the kind of nurse I want pulling foreign serpents from my arm.

My arm is swabbed and a gauze patch applied. The dingly-dangly things attached to clear hoses I’ve been living with are gone.

I’m one step closer to getting up and getting on with things. I can sense the town looming down the line a ways, and I know I’ll be a stranger there once again when I return.

“Good luck to you,” says the nurse as she tosses the coiled creature that came out of me in a garbage bin and leaves the room.

Good luck to me indeed.

“That was gross,” says Barbra, and her face wrinkles as if a Hissing Cockroach had just alit on her button-nose.

“I thought it was pretty cool.”

--ee--

The silence between two people often talks. It tells two stories out of the same truth. It talks to your inner dialogue and you hear the silence in your own words in your own mind. Barbra stares at me in this silence and a story is being told. How we met… What she saw… The world that she knew with me in it…

I stare at her and see her half the size she is now. I see the softness and the sweetness of her. The fear and the unassuming nature she never lost. I see her painful shyness in a world that basically ignores her.

In the silence that talks between the two of us, I see Barbra and I think she sees me.

You signed those checks, she’s thinking.

You were the best friend I ever had.

You tickled me and I miss your tickle.

I miss you being there when my thoughts were spoken.

You look like a bag of bones strewn by buzzards.

You look like you could float on outta here toting a gondola.

I liked it when we sat together and watched TV.

I miss the way my face fit between your breasts.

“So,” says Barbra, “What should we talk about?”

“I dunno,” I answer. “Do you wanna watch TV?”

“Turn the sound up so we can hear it.”

“Look,” I say.

“That’s funny.”

I'm Getting The Hang Of It...

2011-07-18T07:52:00.001-07:00

Clarity Of Night Contest

2011-07-16T00:19:00.001-07:00

The Clarity Of Night Blogspot runs a contest every now and then where you take a picture he gives and write a 250 word story (without going over!) and there are awards and prizes and an opportunity to see what a bunch of different minds came up with all from the same picture.

GO check it out.

Here is my submission this time around--

--The Fire--

When Evan stood before fire he felt the shame of three generations.

There glowed his father’s shame- the grey hotness- like embers of a burnt-down house. There danced his own shame- the gas-soaked burning of couches and curtains. And there… there wafted the future shame that would cling to his young son, permeating all nearby good things like the befouling odor of burning-garbage smoke.

When Evan looked at fire he saw too much red- anger from within was a fire that desperately wanted out.

When Evan looked at fire he re-saw raw burning flesh that fried like common bacon with its fat feeding the larger flame ala candle wax, tossing out pennants of pure yellows and oranges.

When Evan got near fire he’d raise a shielding hand, warding off the implications fire imposed, protecting himself from its raw and puerile honesty.

Fire could destroy pain if it were hot enough.

Fire could act as an elemental cleanser.

Fire was no panacea but purely a violent remedy.

Fire was the final judgment.

Transmutation occurred by immersion in a great fire.

An adolescent angry hand lit the fire and a repentant hand desired to reach into the flames and pull out the father who once beat Evan so badly his bruises melded with old bruises until all history of each hand-strike became unreadable on the torso and face.

“You weren’t supposed to be home,” Evan chanted.

If only he could reach back into the flames…

Could he pull his father out?

Tree Climbing (For David)

2011-07-15T13:24:00.001-07:00

Walter Lives And Lives...

2011-07-13T16:24:00.000-07:00

Tuesday nights I meet with a poet friend of mine and try to turn in at least ten pages of The Lights Were Off The Lights Were On (Or is it The lights Were On, The lights Were Off?)...

This week I only turned in six but it struck me, without context, how odd these six pages were. I can tell you Barbra is Walter's ex-wife who is enormously (and sadly) obese. Walter is tall and frail and prone to emotional inner-mind rantings and is wearing a catheter... Caroline is a hottie nurse he has a crush on...

The lights come on and I can’t breathe. My chest! My chest!

There is a great hairy weight on my chest and I can’t breathe or move and the room is dark and confusing and I can’t breathe! I’m being crushed. I imagine dying and I think not like this! Not like this! My chest! My chest! I can’t breathe! I try to breathe but the monstrous hairy weight on my chest presses me into the bed and I will die if I can’t get a breath…

“Good morning Walter!”

“I…” I try and gasp out. “I…” my lips mouth without sound as it fills with a large rope of human hair, “…can’t breath!”

“Oh, sorry Walter!”

It’s Barbra! Lying on top of me! And she can’t get off! And I can’t breathe!

“Get off!” I try and squeeze out.

“I’m trying Walter! It’s not easy!”

Barbra manages to roll off of me slightly and I can inhale air finally.

I think of dying again and I think not like this!

“You almost killed me!”

“I am so sorry, Walter. I was just trying to give you a hug. I wanted to surprise you when you woke up.”

Sobs bubble out of Barbra the way that hot lava mud percolates. It’s slow and rhythmic and one single blubber at a time. Her entire mass quivers with each sob, every bubble of sadness and disappointment that leaks out of her twitches her body and I feel the sadness against me the way one feels a slow moving motor boat when lying on its floor.

I don’t know what to say right away so I say nothing while I let Barbra lie next to me and lose some of the sadness to the outside world. I’m safe to feel sad around. You can cry around me all you want. I know sadness and I am comfortable in its midst. If sadness were music it would play in all the elevators of my life. Barbra is sad being Barbra and that is very sad. If I could wrap my arms around her and hug her I would. I hug an arm instead.

I close my eyes and hang onto the rotund arm, thankful I can breathe again, trying to tune in to the pulsing of Barbra’s crying. Her soft cries are soothingly familiar to me, relaxing. My racing-suffocating heart has receded and is no longer leaping around inside my tiny chest.

“I’m glad you came to visit me,” I tell her in my soft-voice.

“Me too.”

“How did you get here so early?”

“I took a bus.”

“Thanks for the hug,” I say. “It’s a nice way to wake up in the morning.”

“I miss waking up to hugs.”

“Me too.”

“I miss this, just being next to you.”

I pull my face in tighter to Barbra’s immense arm. I don’t know what to say about this so I just make a light moaning sound as an answer to appease her. It seems to work.

This turns out actually to be quite nice.

When I was a small child I would hug my father’s leg with my arms and my legs and he would walk around our apartment like a monster, chasing my mother. This was before Isabella was born, back when the two of them dreamed of going to Paris and Rome and all of those other really far off places where there were lots of Isabellas running around. I didn’t know it then, but I realized it later- I had always been wrapped around my father’s leg the way I wrapped around it as a small child. It limped him up in life, hampering the dreams he once held and shared only with my mother.

“We were going to Europe,” he said to me only just the once, “before you came along.”

My father had wanted to see all of the great wheels of Europe. The trains, the buses, the German engineering…

But then there was me, and the dreams he held before there was me were recalibrated to a smaller scale. Rather than visit Europe and see the wheels go around and round first hand, my father sat in his brown chair under that conical lamplight with his bottle of mead and read about them.

“Did you find my parents?” I ask Barbra.

“No. I tried to try, but I didn’t know where to start.”

“That’s okay. They’ll be back soon enough. I don’t want them to miss out on any more stuff because of me.”

“They must be having a great time. Can you imagine going to Milan to see all of that new fashion?”

I can’t imagine so I say nothing. My mother wanted to ride in a gondola and have some handsome guy in a striped shirt sing to her while poling her around a canal under old bridges with nice arches. There were several prints of paintings hung on our walls when I was growing up of these dashing young men, and Mom kept them as dusted as anything else. Quite often as a child I imagined these men were my uncles and that if I needed some assistance, their punt poles would become ninja sticks and I’d have two handsomely striped men at my side twirling weapons and cracking skulls.

“And Paris… Can you imagine being in Paris, Walter? Wouldn’t that be so romantic you would just fall over?”

Beneath the Eiffel Tower I’d meet them and pass on what information I had. I’d meet Caroline at a Bistro and we’d pass along more secrets hunched over a small table with a candle between us, stirring up the glow. Beneath the whisperings of espionage and power brokering would lie the subtext of love. Caroline would be yearning for a safe time and place and I would be yearning too.

“All those great art exhibits. The Louvre…”

And when the coast was clear we’d tryst in a farmhouse in the Parisian countryside surrounded by grape vineyards and olive trees. There would be planes flying overhead but we’d ignore them- nobody would waste their bombs on a small farmhouse without knowing that high valued targets were inside. I’d lift her up and carry her to the bed and set her down gently. As I pulled her panties down I’d kiss her inner thigh and move my lips around until I too found the high valued target and Caroline would say my name over and over and over.

“Oh Walter. Doesn’t that hurt?”

It’s very tight and uncomfortable and not what I wanted to have happen with Barbra at the moment.

“It’s not comfortable at all. It hurts a little.”
My erection has cheered Barbra up. “I miss that too,” she says to me. “I’m sorry I’m hurting you.”

“I just need to lie here and not move and think of something else.”

Barbra has a self-satisfied smirk on her fat face. It makes me happy I put it there and I don’t do anything to change things- I just lie here and hang on to Barbra’s arm and wait for things to settle down there while the clock on the wall just goes around and round.

Waiting for time to be consumed…

I got what I got…

I bury my face in Barbra’s arm and smell the powders there.

Ukulele Madness, Baby!!

2011-07-12T17:58:00.000-07:00

Mum bought a ukulele to try and learn to play, but she knows guitar chords so we found her a small necked guitar she can play instead. What that means is... I have a ukulele to learn to strum and I'm up to five chords now.

I get great inspiration watching this video. There is a big tall goofy guy in this video I would have swore was as unmusical as I am...

...and he's in the back playing with the West County Uke club OUT IN PUBLIC!!

Rock On! Eric, Rock On!!

Strum strum strum... G... C... G...

A Few Tidbits...

2011-07-09T18:41:00.001-07:00

I was down at the lake playing Frisbee golf the other day. I threw a nice three hundred footer on a four hundred foot hole. When I got to my Frisbee and set to throw my approach, I noticed about a one year old doe eating poison oak and stuff about fifty feet away from me.

I made a kissing sound, like I do with my dogs, so the deer would move on and not be frightened (or hit) by my Frisbee. The deer looked up and walked right at me!

It walked up to see what was in my hand (just a Frisbee!) and then I worried that it’d get mad, so I made the sound of a dog barking and it skedaddled off casually.

*****

When I was down at the Kate Wolf Festival, an old friend told me he too was sleeping in the back of his truck. He said he used a quart-sized bottle to pee in at night so he wouldn’t have to get up and stagger in the dark to those stinky blue boxes.

What he didn’t tell me was that when you are parked and surrounded by people in tents, and you pee in a bottle, the bottle SINGS! and amplifies the sound of the pee the way a metal sink will amplify the sound of running water. He also didn’t tell me you could fill the bottle before you are finished if you’ve been drinking water to wash the beer out of your system, meaning a pinch and pour technique that was harder than it sounds…

*****

Being big can resolve lots of issues you run into without a fuss. I was (again) down playing Frisbee golf. A couple kept “throwing in” meaning starting the hole I was on before I was out of the way and on to the next hole. The first time I gave them slack. The second time I told them it was rude. The third time, I told the husband if he threw in on me again I’d break his arm. Problem resolved peaceably…

*****

We have a reggae festival going on at the lake this weekend. I put a rope into a tree and spent a nice afternoon listening to music while perched about 90 feet in the air where the breeze was plentiful…

*****

Oh yeah... I rescued a crawdad who seemed lost and was running away from the lake yesterday. I didn't know they got out of the water but apparently they do!

For Those Of You Who Can't Take A Fucking Joke...

2011-07-05T22:48:00.000-07:00

Happy 4th (For those who care)

2011-07-03T22:40:00.001-07:00

Momma Rocks Out With Denny

2011-06-30T16:56:00.000-07:00

This was from last night at the brew pub's open mike.

Momma is 76. Denny is 72...

Rock on...

Just Back...

2011-06-28T09:01:00.000-07:00

Just got back in town from The Kate Wolf Festival. Still trying to catch my breath...

Oh Lordy, It's Poetry...

2011-06-18T20:55:00.000-07:00

-Bones Beneath You-

I see your structure when we fight
The way you are construed
Your mother’s long bones
Grown into yours, holding
your metatarsals far apart
From your angry mind

You are made sure by your bones
Held lofty by your bones
Given that righteous smile and haughty strut
By the calcium you’ve collected
(Since that malleable escape
through the pubic space
Of your superbly heeled mother)

Your bones snap now, you know
Just as you do
And without flesh
Are frightening, they leap
From dark spaces
To rattle me
Out of
My calm comfort

Your bones give you leverage-- are
In fact, levers themselves
And act as a framework
For launching your arguments
Both a casing and a cage
For your discomfitures

When you accuse me
Of thoughtlessness
It is your distal phalanx
That points at me
Your humerus that lifts it high
And makes it shake
In my innocent face

If it weren’t for stubborn bones
draped softly with your
pleasing flesh
I could form you into an other
Wad you up to make you anew
Find a shapely form
of flesh-- by molding you--
That I agree with
And agrees with me

Same O same O...

2011-06-15T21:50:00.000-07:00

I play frisbee golf, climb trees for fun, and do work around the property.

I'm trying to finish a novel. I'm up to page 330. I take Mum to sing on Wednesday nights.

Tuesday nights I have a writers meeting with a poet friend of mine but we are looking for a few more people to round out the criticisms.

Thursday night I meet with the boys, all of my carpenter buds I never see because work is so sparse around here I never get invited to the party because I have savings I can eat off of.

I kayaked all day yesterday.

I still hike with friends to high places.

An American tourist asks an Irishman sitting next to him at a beach side bar in Florida "Why do scube divers always fall into the water backwards?"

To which the Irishman of course replies- "Why are all Americans such idiots? If they fell forward, they would fall into the bleeding boat, of course!"

Same O same O, only I'm not skiing because there ain't no snow.

I Didn't F--- It Up...

2011-06-05T06:20:00.000-07:00

Did I Really Just Say That?

2011-06-03T09:38:00.001-07:00

Ever get a beer in ya out on the town with friends and you say something that the next morning gives you pause?

Well I woke this morning and thought Did I Really Say That?

I have a friend who runs a martial arts dojo here in town. He's a smallish guy, with all the black belt wily moves hidden behind a "published poet" outer persona.

We've been meeting over words this last month or so. He's been a beta reader for my novel, and I've been pointing out the flaws in his prose...

Well, he's helping to train a cage fighter, one of those evil looking men with tattoos and scars that get in to those evil looking rings and kick the shit out of each other.

He was telling me how hard it was for this kid Josh to find training partners, because he's so big and strong.

"He needs someone your size, Scott, to practice on."

"OH I CAN DO THAT. SURE. IT SOUNDS LIKE FUN."

I believe what I am called is a "practice dummy".

Did I really just say that?

Stepping Back To The Days...

2011-05-31T07:15:00.000-07:00

I get emails from this website that sells rare live concert footage. They have lots of free stuff I like to wander through with ears wide open.

I see lots of stuff from the Oakland Colisium in the late seventies and early eighties, back in my high school days...

Oldies but goodies...

This Is Really Really Cool...

2011-05-30T08:01:00.000-07:00

Crappy Weather...

2011-05-26T09:13:00.000-07:00

We've been having an unduly cold and icky spring. It snowed in the mountains again the night before last. It is cold and rainy right now. Our swimming pool is clean and ready to heat, but there is no heat to heat it with.

I want to go tree climbing but it is too wet and cold to make it enjoyable.

I want to see the young girls out in halter tops and shorts...

Sigh...

I think I'll stay indoors and try and finish my novel...

What else is there to do?

Like Father Like Son....

2011-05-24T22:42:00.000-07:00

Frisbee Golf And Dropping Your Pretensions...

2011-05-12T06:43:00.000-07:00

I've been playing a lot of frisbee golf lately. We have an eighteen hole course down at the lake often visited by frisbee golfers as far away as Springfield (that's far). When I'd walk my dogs, I'd occasionally run into an errant and lost frisbee and I'd scoop it up and take it home. After awhile I had a small collection going and coupled with invitations by local yokels to "go out and throw some" I was inspired one day to go out and throw some.

If you like throwing frisbees accurately, doing alot of walking on rough terrain up and down steep hills, and hunting for easter eggs you'd like frisbee golf.

I've been hooked for awhile now, and I've managed to bring my average down from 20 over par to about six over par. And my average would be lower if it weren't for all the damn trees.

Lake Selmac course is known for the large amount of trees on the course. The fairways are narrow and usually, right in the middle of them, a tall and skinny (but very attractive) tree will stand, collecting dings in its bark as frisbee after frisbee takes a chunk out of it.

And my frisbees are no exception.

I coined the term "tree-anoia" to describe the fear you possess when you are about to unleash a great distance throw and you have a single tree not far from you to miss.

Your mind keeps saying "don't hit the damn tree" over and over and, like when I say don't think of elephants and you now do, you of course get so focused on the tree that you hit it with all your frisbee throwing might and it bounces right back at you with the sharp humiliating thud that a pilliated woodpecker makes when knocking on your front door.

When I began to play I actually started finding more frisbees. You see, there is a hole where you are required to throw a considerable distance over water. This water is about two feet deep throughout the area a frisbee tends to land when it doesn't reach the other shore. As a novice, I've thrown my own frisbees into the water many times. And since I found them fair and square, I really hate to lose them. Off with the shoes and socks and pants! Even in the winter, with snow on the ground, I'll go wading in my underwear and get my frisbee.

Well, not everybody is as intrepid as I am and I've run across many a frisbee sitting right near my frisbee, its owner too cowardly or drunk to wade in and retrieve it.

So I have a collection.
And I tell you all this so you'll know what I was doing out in the middle of that field on a cold morning with my pants pulled down around my ankles, hoping beyond hope that no one was around.

After all the excitement I've felt finding frisbees these last few months, losing one is such a bummer that I'll spend all the time it actually takes to find one of my errant flyers.

They're like puppies to me. They are all dear to me and all need looking after. A lost one is a sad event to be sure.

Now I am a regular guy, right? And by that I mean, I drink coffee every morning, feel the rumbles of a bowel movement, and head to the loo. Actually, I drink two cups of coffee, head to the loo twice, then wait around for that final emptying so I can rest assured the rest of my day will go on uneventful in that particular department.

Well I don't always like to wait around for that final emptying, so I plan ahead, making a mental itinerary that always involves one more visit to a park outhouse or a gas station or rest stop. I know where all the last emptying places are.

As for playing frisbee golf, there is an outhouse well stocked with fresh toilet paper and minty odor tablets right at the end of hole number four. It is in a perfect place timing-wise, for my final emptying.

And thus I set out to play a round of golf by myself early one morning a couple of weeks ago (it has taken me this long to overcome the shame enough to tell this tale.)

Two coffees. Two musical movements. Off I went to play four holes and then a quick duck into the loo and back out to hole five with the creek and blackberry bushes to avoid on a right hand dogleg...

But on hole number three I noticed something. One of my favorite frisbees was missing!!

Not one of the cheap ones but one of the nice ones, the one I use on hole three because its flight path matches the nasty tree configuration of the fairway perfectly.

And I thought and thought about where it might possible be, and then I remembered I had thrown it out into the grassy field the night before along with five or six other frisbees. I simply must have forgotten to pick it up. I hoped it was still there, and hurried out into the field to look for it before another golfer came by and found it. It was my frisbee, after all. I had found it fair and square.

And I am talking about way out into the field, like three hundred feet out, right out beyond the very middle of the field. I went out there and paced back and forth for well up to ten minutes, ignoring the rumblings in my lower gut in a crazed effort to find my frisbee.

Alas!

My green translucent frisbee! I picked it up with smug satisfaction and then realized I had better get to the loo quickly, as all this extra walking far past the loo on hole number four had churned up my final coffee and last night's dinner affair and I was in the middle of a field (think four soccer fields made into a square) and I had a considerable distance to waddle if I was gonna make it without soiling myself.

Now I know you've all been there. That waddle to the end. You're gonna explode but you hold it in and you waddle, ass cheeks as tight as you can make them.

That's where I was in that field, still far afield from a porcelain hole in a vented shack.

And I was not, in any way shape or form, gonna make it.

I had two options at that point. Inside or outside.

There was no third option. There was no Waddle and Wish left for me. I had done that for a hundred feet or so.

I looked around. It was early morning. The few people about were mesmerized by their fishing lines in still waters over at the lake. Pam, the nice woman who hosts the campground, was probably still watching tv in her trailer and sipping coffee...

I dropped my pants smack dab in the middle of that field, exploded out the backside, stood up as quickly as I had squatted down, and walked back to my truck, thinking "that's something I'll never tell anybody about".

My! how a few weeks tempers things...

Evidence...

2011-05-09T22:44:00.000-07:00

That Osama Bin Ladin is actually dead...

Dogs Love Bacon...

2011-05-04T08:26:00.000-07:00

Frostbitten Twice Shy...

2011-04-24T18:00:00.001-07:00

If you look carefully at this photo, you'll notice a single cross country ski with the sole of a cross country ski boot still clipped in and a pair of cross country ski boots lying on the ground in bits and pieces.

This wasn't the state of things last thursday, when I agreed to travel back up into the mountains with a couple of friends to go cross country skiing for probably the last time this year.

We knew the snow would be extremely soft as the weather has been mildly warm. We knew there would be patches where the snow had melted altogether, usually in places where a creek of running water helped take the snow off down the mountain in the form of water.

We knew that none of us were very good at cross country skiing, and that I was in the best shape but had the least amount of time spent on cross country skis (and that I got all my equipment for ten bucks at a garage sale back in the early 1990's)

We knew all these things and off we went. Skiing in about three miles before the "incident" that would alter my life forever. (Well, if you consider the fact that I'll have to go out and buy new cross country ski boots, I'd say my life has been altered!)

One minute I was second in line of three, chugging along and trying to make my skis do what I wanted them to, using my big arms to pole my way along, trying my best not to let my friend Charles catch up to me, and the next I was flat on my back, staring up at the sky "looking for eagles".

I had let myself get too far back balance-wise and as I tried to pull myself "up", my right ski boot tore apart and I went down on my back in an instant.

And I know it wasn't any longer than an instant because I didn't even have time to start the first consonant of a cuss, not a whisper left my lips until I hit the snow with my back and uttered a large ensemble of vowels.

I believe I said "Ooouuf!"

My friend Charles said "I missed it!"

As if watching me fall on my back was something you were supposed to see.

But there I lay, staring skyward and laughing, and then I tried to get up and get my skis beneath me and my right ski wouldn't do a single thing I wanted it to. It just went floppity floppity.

The toe of my ski boot was still in the bindings, but the sole of the boot was no longer attached to the actually boot. I had ripped the sole mostly off the boot, and now my right ski would only go floppity floppity.

"You guys go on and enjoy yourselves. I'll just limp back to the truck."

The trail was an out and back so I'd see them again soon as they were old and out of ski-shape and not likely to go too far out as this meant they'd have to come too far back.

I turned myself around and set my uncontrollable ski in a ski track and just pushed it along in a kind of cross country limp.

I couldn't turn it so if the track turned, I'd have to take my ski pole and use it to pull the tip of the ski over one way or the other. I did this many times, and within a half an hour, the two intrepid back country boys had returned and were overtaking me with much gladness in their aging hearts.

"Kind of slow going, ain't it?" Charles asked.

"Oh it's alright," I said. "I'm just happy to be out in the woods today. I don't even notice how slow I am unless you two come along and pass me by."

They traveled ahead and then waited for me to catch up, doing this twice before making the final push to the parking lot and the truck.

The trouble was, right after they started this final push I fell over again! This time, my left boot had exploded and my foot had stove-piped deep into the really soft snow. I fell over to where my head was much lower than my feet and got kind of stuck there for a bit. I laughed and laughed at my lonely predicament, then righted myself the way a drunk might, getting all my limbs beneath me doggy style and then standing slowly up from that position.

The trouble was, I could not walk in this snow. It was very soft and at least three feet deep. Each foot I placed on its surface shot through to the bottom and sucked onto my legs like mud.

I would have to stand atop my skis and just shuffle them along, trying to keep them from twisting over and dumping my feet into the deep and soft, slushy ICE.

The front of both my boots were wide open to the world, and my socks were now completely wet and my toes were completely numb, and I had better keep moving before I froze a digit off, is what I thought.

I had a hell of a time shuffling along atop of those very skinny skis. I fell off them many times and sank deep into the snow. With the will of Allah and some Magic Prayer, I managed to get myself along until the snow turned into parking lot.

"We were just about ready to send out a search party," Charles said as I approached the truck.

I pointed to the other boot.

"That one too? How'd you... aren't your feet cold?"

I sat down on my tailgate and changed into some fresh and dry socks and my wooly boots.

"They're frozen. They hurt like hell."

ADDENDUM

My right toe would not stop hurting so I went out and played eighteen holes of frisbee golf that afternoon when I got home. The walking helped press out dead blood that was dead-ended in the tissue there and they feel fine now, more like they are lightly bruised.

Momma Lays Down Some Tracks...

2011-04-14T06:42:00.000-07:00

ULLR Lives!

2011-04-07T07:11:00.000-07:00

I broke my skis about a month ago and went out and bought some new ones for the first time ever. Usually, I've picked up second-hand skis at thrift stores or had them given to me by someone "no longer using them". The new trend in skis is probably a very old trend. Skis made out of wood (in my case bamboo) and quite wide all the way through the ski. I paid too much money for these Solomons but they have proven themselves to be simply awesome skis. I can now ski in hugely deep powder, chunked up powder, bumped up moguls and of course the well-groomed stuff. These skis allow me to go ski "the back-country"- that area of Mt. Ashland where you feel like you've been deposited there by helicopter and you have to pick your way through rock and tree to get back down to the parking-lot of the ski resort. These skis make you feel like you are water skiing when you ski on fresh powder. They also have a flipped tail which means if you want to, you can ski down the hill backwards. The other day I was up skiing without my ski buddy. I got on the chair with a guy who had a jacket on and on the back of the jacket it said "Ullr Lives!" I asked him about it and he told me he was trying to start a new religion. I thought "Great! Just what we need. More goofy nonsense." He explained that Ullr was the ancient Norse God of skiing and that they still had festivals in his honor way up in the coldness of northern Europe. He said that Ullr was the nephew of Thor, and I said that I liked Thor because he swung a big hammer and I swung a big hammer as a carpenter and if I were choosing a God, I'd choose one with a hammer and not one nailed to a board. He got off the lift and I got off the lift. He then proceeded to ski down the same steep slope I was skiing down, only while I powered my way through turns and picked my way through the bumps with skill and daring, he did the same only he did it BACKWARDS all the while looking back at me as if mocking me and my conventional approach to skiing. Ullr lives! indeed.

The Rich And Famous Momma...

2011-04-01T05:41:00.000-07:00

Our local brew pub has an open-mike night on Wednesday nights, which I've been taking the Momma to for the last six weeks. For the first four weeks, she would refuse every push I gave her to sing something, and then on week five, she shocked everybody there when she got up and sang "Angel From Montgomery".

The thing about open mike nights is that you usually get people who can modestly play an instrument but can't really sing all gathered around dreading each other's voices (but politely!)

Good musicians and singers play gigs somewhere, so open-mike night collects the "for fun" folks who enjoy banging pots and pans around just to make some music.

Well, they've got da Momma roped in to be their go-to singer, happily passing over the mike so they can just have fun playing (without dreading their turn to sing).

Now that Momma broke the ice on her own fears (the stroke makes her talking stilted, and she forgets the words to songs on occasion mid-song) she's been given a whole slew of songs to come home and learn and practice for the following Wednesday's "gig"...

I thought to record her at the last second with dying batteries and my camera all set up funny, so this video is crappy. It starts out blurry, then clears up and at the end, you can see da Momma giving orders to the musicians to "bring up the tempo"...

I'll try to get a better video next time, with a little pre-planning.

One Of Those Days...

2011-03-31T06:55:00.000-07:00

A Minute Forty Wasted...

2011-03-22T11:06:00.001-07:00

NOT TODAY...

2011-03-20T09:32:00.000-07:00

I look at the Mt. Ashland ski report every morning about 6:30, trying to work out the weather patterns and the best days to go skiing...

These are screen shots of this morning's second peek...

Road almost closed... snow drifts... resort closed... 60 mile an hour wind gusts, 16 inches of new snow and still snowing...

That white fuzzy image is the live camera they have pointing out from the lodge... Those faint white things on the left are big trees, those two bipedal things are lodge workers and the mountan itself SHOULD be visible on the upper right...

I think I'll go play frisbee golf down at the lake...

Losing My Nuts...

2011-03-15T10:02:00.000-07:00

So a few weeks back, I was riding to Mt. Ashland to go skiing with my she-ski-partner in her older model Subaru wagon...

And we were so busy yacking we ignored the dire warnings of the needle-gauge and ran out of gas 3/4's of a mile from the exit we always stopped at to gas up and pee.

I hopped out of the car without hesitating and said "I'll be back" (saving five minutes of debate over who should or should not make the walk)...

I'm the one with the 37 inch inseams and therefore the faster paced walk, and my she-ski-partner is the one with a car full of stuff she can organize while she waits on the side of the freeway with her lights a-flashing...

The only trouble was, I was already wearing my ski pants and we were not yet in the mountains and the sun was shining...

Which meant that I was going to fill my underwear up with sweat no matter what and I'd have to ski the day in them...

And fungal spores just love sweaty crotches....

So I picked up a case of jock-itch and suffered with it for several days before I passed by a Walmart on the way home from somewhere and pulled in to get relief...

Some people may not know this, but the Walmart employees are not necessarily experts in their departments...

Which means when I had to approach the older woman walking the aisles in a blue smock and brandishing a price-gun to ask her about jock-itch remedies, I was a bit on the leery side. What I really wanted was a nice gentlemanly pharmacists with a pair of reading glasses perched on the end of his nose and an air about him that suggested "I've had jock-itch before so I'm all sympathetic to your woes, brutha"...

And this woman looked like she didn't really like men at all...

"Excuse me," I started politely. "Where are your remedies for athlete's foot, jock-itch and the like?"

"Next aisle over, bottom shelf on the end."

Well that was easy...

But when I got there all I found were athlete's foot remedies. Sprays, creams, powders...

Nothing there for raw nuts and red-on-fire crotches...

I went back to the lady. "I found the stuff for athlete's foot, what about the other?"

"The other?"

"Ummm, yeah. For the ummm, jock-itch?"

"It's the same thing."

"Are you sure?"

She rolled her eyes as if to tell me I was stupid for not trusting her because she DID work in the department, and all...

"It's the same thing."

"You can put that stuff on your tender parts?"

"I'll go ask."

She left me and went back to where a pharmacists MAY have been hiding (I didn't see one when I looked, which is why I asked her in the end). Then she returned with a smug look on her old face and said "It's the same thing" and then walked off as if I were sated.

Well I wasn't sated. But I thought about it some more. If there were no areas devoted to jock-itch remedies and a big section here for athlete's foot fungus, and jock-itch is a fungus...

So I bought two spray-cans of the generic equivalent of Tenactin (because they were on a two for one sale) and headed home, hoping I had made the wise choice for my boys and the sack that surrounds them...

OH MY WOOCHOW WEE!

So spray going on a foot FEELS NICE when it is cold and soothing. And I mean cold like freon- the spray they use to freeze things they want frozen...

But IT DOESN'T FEEL great going on yer nutsack in the winter time.

One minute I have a pair and the very next second I have an empty sack!

Gone.

Like touching a sea anemone...

Bloooop!

Gone.

Empty, shriveled sack...

Now an ashen grey...

And smoking...

SMOKING???

My nutsack was smoking!

My nuts were gone.

And the tender skin betwixt the limbs was burning as if someone had doused the raw skin with rubbing alcohol...

"It's the same thing", I could hear that smug woman in the blue frock saying.

NO. IT IS NOT!

WooChow Wee...

2011-02-19T11:15:00.001-08:00

Yesterday was one of those days where you wake up and go to bed with so much sandwiched in-between you think you can’t eat it all in one sitting but you do, making today a day of sleeping in and resting old bones for other big-sandwiched days to come…

Taking inventory over coffee I realize my calves hurt from THE DAY BEFORE the big sandwich day where I took a friend up snow-shoeing between snow storms and we climbed about 1200 feet in elevation in about two-hours-twenty and then turned around and came home. On that particular day my friend B got a large dollop of snow down his backside that fell from a snow-laden fir tree which made him holler “Woooochow Wee!” (wouldn’t you?) and the whole tree let loose its snow-holdings and I cowered in the snow dust as B got COVERED in a conical pile of the light and fluffy white stuff…

Moving on up, I can tell you my knees are a bit achy and my thighs are tired and sore (and it’s prolly too much information but I’ve got a little rashy thingy going right next to my real-deal-thingies as the LAST TIME I went skiing before the big sandwich day, I convinced the girl who goes skiing with me it was her turn to drive because the roads were clear after the long faux-spring we’d been having and we ran out of gas on the freeway and I hopped out and walked the mile to the exit where I bought a gas can which I filled and toted the mile back, all the while wearing my insulated black ski-pants which are supposed to release perspiration vapor but I tend to sweat in droplets… so yeah, I developed a bit of an itchy hot spot where my legs and things all rub together…)

And my neck and shoulder are all a bit stiff but I’ll get to that in a second…

---So after spending an entire month dealing with Spring snow and skiing on a choice of dimpled ice or machine-groomed slush, I watched with great joy as Mt. Ashland got hammered Monday Tuesday and Wednesday with snow. Three beautiful feet of it, to be precise, coming down in magnificent silence transforming Mt. Ashland once again into a winter-wonder-land right in our own backyard.

Well not exactly MY backyard but close enough to drive up and back to in a day. From there to here it is an hour and forty minutes to be precise (heck, people in the Bay Area commute that on a daily basis, don’t they?)

And if there is one thing we all know about new powder, is that EVERYBODY wants to be the first to ski it up, making those really cool snaky-tracks that look good on ski-films and resort-destination posters.

Which means everybody (including me) wants to get up there early, before the lifts are even running, meaning that I had to have my female ski-friend here with me at seven am… which would have worked out except we got walloped with twelve inches of snow here in Selma while we slept causing all kinds of weird power problems like brown-outs, and the roads don’t get plowed here except by four-wheel drives mushing it all down with their “really big” tires.

So my morning started at six am before the sun was up. I woke up and left my little apartment and headed toward the house. When I opened the front door to the out-of-doors I thought “Holy Crap!” when I saw how much snow we had gotten over night. Twelve solid inches of fresh new powder! In my yard! Woochow Wee! “Mt. Ashland must be smothered!”

I turned back inside and changed my kicking-around-furry-slippers for boots so I could make the walk to the house, then grabbed my walking stick so I could beat on my trees overhanging my walkway to empty them of heavy snow so I wouldn’t have to crawl beneath their sagging archways full of snow (I’ve seen what snow falling out of trees will do!) and made it to the house (an eighty foot meander turned mini-saga by the new foot of snow) only to find the nights lights we leave on (so Mum has a way of finding the toilet at three am without falling down) all glowing sickly and flickering off and on- a sure sign we were getting less than our normal load of power to the house…

Crap!

And we had no water coming out of the taps…

Crap!

And the microwave didn’t have the power necessary to warm a piece of left-over pizza…

Crap!

And the heat pump (which is needed even with our new fireplace due to old-ageism) was laboring under the reduced power and needed to be shut off…

Crap!

And I had to trudge on out to the pump-house and check on the pump…

With a flashlight while it was snowing…

Crap!

And by the time I got everything turned off and a note explaining why left on the table and my ski gear on without my shower or coffee and a lunch made, the phone rang and my friend was lamenting “I can’t get my car out of the driveway and there’s a cracked branch hovering over it full of snow.”

Woochow Wee.

“I’ll come and get you.”

So I went out and shoveled the snow around my electric gate so it would open, then headed out onto our very rural roads with a foot of new snow on them and headed down behind the lake on a narrow two-laner which turned into a one-laner which turned into a gravel road which then turned off into her friend’s driveway where she had spent the night. I was the only track on the road which is both cool and confusing. On a road I’ve ridden hundreds of times on my bicycle, I took the wrong turn twice (heading up driveways that Y off the main road and then backing up off them) and took a few guesses as to where the large pot-holes were…

Things look way different under all that snow.

So we got her driveway shoveled enough to move her car out from under the tree branch (that crashed down later that morning) and her gear in my truck and drove the hour and forty minutes or so uneventfully (thankfully) up to the Mt. Ashland ski resort parking lot where we were amazed to see the transformative powers of three feet of new powder…

WooChow Wee!

Now I’m not a good powder skiier (because I grew up skiing groomed slopes and skied very little of it as an adult) but I have the leg strength and conditioning now (all those miles on a bike in these hills around here) to make a go of it and I was bouncing around in it just fine (falling in soft piles of it every now and then) for a couple of hours while my friend floated over the top of it (she has fat skis designed for powder and it showed) and made me ever more determined to master the art of skiing with snow up to the level of my itchy balls…

And then it happened.

I was skiing on a slope that had been packed once by the grooming tractor and then a foot of new snow was built atop that. A foot of powder was perfect for me as I am heavy and my skis were both short and narrow. The deep powder was swallowing me up and this powder over the packed powwder was perfect and I was skiing fast and bouncing out of my turns and then WoooChow Weee! I skied into a spot where the snow was four feet deep of pure powder.

It was like going off the front of your surfboard or over the top of your handlebars on your bike. It was like I had skied into a giant hole that was bound to swallow me up (it took my legs and skis down that’s for sure!) and it must have been a total surprise to me because I had that mouth-agape expression on my face as I went tumbling head first into its white maw (and I know this because I landed face first into the snow and it shoved about an eight-ounce glass full of snow’s worth into it as well as packing both nostrils full of snow).

And I should correct that, as I didn’t land on my face, I basically bounced off of my face because I made another rotation and landed on my back, completely trapped by the sticky snow which held me two feet or so beneath its surface…

So after I dove over my skis and bounced off my face and got a monster wad of snow pack over my goggles and up my nose and in my mouth, I lay there trapped like a man strapped to a table and realized that I was drowning.

Ever try to inhale a snow cone all at once?

Can’t be done.

I spit out as best as I could. My heart was racing and adrenalin was pumping and a large wad of snow the size of a snow ball good for throwing flew out of my mouth…

Air. At least I now had air.

I could lie there and calm down now so I did. I thought of water-boarding at that moment and realized how tortuous that would be. The act of nearing-drowning made you fight in a panic for life.

For air.

Air IS life at that moment.

Nothing else matters but getting a lung full of air…

And then I realized that I hadn’t been water-boarded. I had been snow-boarded.

Yeah.

When the lift-operators asked me why I looked like the abominable snowman, I could tell them what happed.

“I was snow-boarded and it almost killed me.”

They’d get a kick out of that.

So I managed to get a ski off and roll over onto my knee and then I stood up out of the big hole I had made for myself. I then put on my ski and skied warily down the last remaining section, like a boxer trying to find his corner in the eleventh round after a knock-down that almost ended the fight. I skied slow and careful as something didn’t feel right and then my left ski went hair-wire and I crashed again.

Crap!

Not only had I been snow-boarded, but I had broken my ski.

ADDENDUM- The ski-lift operators took pity on me and radioed up to the rental office and they set me up with a free pair of rental skis for the few hours remaining in my tank. I quit early for the first time this season (even though I was enjoying the new powder skis they lent me), and then slept in my truck for an hour (to sleep off the adrenalin) while my friend kept skiing and we eventually made it back to Selma to find a broken branch next to my friend’s car and the power out at my place until long after I fell asleep on the couch…

WooChow Wee!

Heh...

2011-02-16T22:55:00.000-08:00

Walkin' Da Momma...

2011-02-11T08:06:00.000-08:00

Momma's been doing pretty well lately. She still Wii's three or four days a week, doing many of the dance and yoga routines and then going on to play the games.

On the other days I take her out to the park to walk around the field. Or I walk with her from our house up to the lake and back.

Coming home from the lake in the truck, I ran across a buddy of mine and he asked what I've been up to? I yelled across momma out her window - "I'm just walkin' da momma!"

My mom thought this the funniest thing she's heard in weeks or months or perhaps years...

Walkin' da momma...

--- We have two new musical events occuring 'round here. Our local pizza place has live music on Saturday nights now, and on Wednesday nights they do an open mike/acoustic jam thingy in the back room. Mom wants to attend both events so I've tried to get her down there (where I can get GOOD BEER) just because I am a good son and all...

When we got home after her first open mike event last Wednesday, she asked me "Could you get my guitar out from underneath the bed?"- A location the guitar has idled for close to ten years now...

We'll see...

---While at the open mike event, some players were having trouble remembering the words to "Battle Of New Orleans".

I piped up "I know the words".

"You come up and sing it then?"

"Oh no. I know the words but I can't sing."

"Oh, I'm sure you'll do fine."

My mom piped in "Trust him when he says he can't sing."

Thanks momma...

The Great "At Fault" Debate...

2011-02-08T22:20:00.000-08:00

Clearing The Tracks....

2011-02-03T07:16:00.001-08:00

Ever wonder how they get all the snow off the railroad tracks?

Plowtrains (in this case, two locomotives coupled together for "oomph!"...

Sure wish we could have some of that snow for my skiing...

"Does That Me Crazy"...

2011-01-23T09:45:00.000-08:00

Shastashland Mountain...

2011-01-16T10:38:00.001-08:00

That's what Mt. Shasta looks like from Mt. Ashland when it's a foggy day down in the valley where I live...

Only I'm NOT IN the valley, I'm up on Mt. Ashland going skiing again...

With Momma doing very well for an old broad and a pocketful of fog creeping around every nook and cranny of my house, the best way to feel superior to the folks stuck down there in all that miserableness was to simply drive up to Mt. Ashland and strap on a pair of skis and spend the day in partly sunny skies flying down the mountain with a red scarf a-flappin'...

I'm a better skier now than I've ever been. It's foggy all the time this time of year around my place, so I depart with a frigid heart up to where the world makes me laugh and sing...

True story-- I got on the lift with an old guy wearing a ski helmet and goggles (meaning I never could tell how old he really was) and we began chatting about age and sports... I told him about my father still playing racquetball at 76 years of age against a pretty young gal (all of 46), and then recounted the one-liner that made me laugh months ago. "I knew I was going to outlive most of my friends, but I never thought I'd outlive my own prick!"

The old stranger in the chair next to me slapped me on my thighs as he laughed and laughed. "ME TOO!" he exclaimed with great joy or so it seemed to me.

As we both leaned forward to get off the chairlift and go on our merry skiing ways, he mentioned to me proudly-- "By the way, I got two years on yer dad!"

That meant he was 78 and still skiing. I had hope for my latter years and I felt hopeful then.

I skied really fast down the mountain thinking about that old guy. How cool was that? Still skiing at 78? Pretty gosh darn cool if you asked me.

Then I skidded to a stop at my "stopping rock" ( a large boulder with great views and a steep section following it. I am in the habit of skiing down the mountain at high speed on a groomed slope and then resting my legs to assault the bumps below the boulder).

Skidding up right behind me was the old feller, spraying me with a fine mist of snow-spray (he did it on purpose, the old duck!) and wearing a mischievous grin showing yellowing teeth.

"You're a bit hard to keep up with for an old feller!"

He winked at me through his amber goggle lenses and took off down the hill, attacking the steep bumps without having rested his legs at all...

So much hope indeed...

ADDENDUM- This was the same day I skied with my friend Jesus On A Piece Of Toast (so nicknamed by me because if you found an image of what you thought was Jesus on a piece of toast, it would actually look just like Robert (pronounced row-bear, I kid you not) who was complaining about the visibility right before we skied past a blind skier (he had a minder and a two-way radio) and then about his legs as we passed a one-legged skier. Just before he complained about his age I told him about the 78 year old skier and Robert (aka Jesus On A Piece Of Toast) simply sighed and declared "I'm gonna shut up now."

And snow it goes...

Ran Across A Fisher

2011-01-08T08:21:00.000-08:00

I was out riding my bike in the woods the other day and ran across this little guy. I had never seen one before so I had to find out what he was...

It was late afternoon and he was running down the ditch on the side of the logging road toward me while I quietly pedaled toward him. He saw me and jumped out of the ditch and ran across the road about thirty feet in front of me, then jumped up into a tree like a squirrel would, only then changed his mind and jumped down and ran off down the hill toward a creek...

Some wildlife encounters I like...

Peace Of Me...

2010-12-30T10:19:00.001-08:00

Digital Days...

2010-12-28T09:10:00.001-08:00

A few pics from my walks at the lake...

Not So Fast! I'm Not Falling Down...

2010-12-19T06:51:00.000-08:00

I stole this image off of Mt. Ashland's home page while checking for new snow this morning (we got eight inches!) This is what it was like Friday morning when we hit the slopes ourselves...

Looks can be a bit deceiving, which is what I found out the first time I came off the upper chair and began my usual high speed descent down a run called "Dream", where the only real obstacle is a tree right in the middle of the run (a tree I call the Sony Bono Tree for obvious reasons if you know what happened to Sony) and promptly was confronted (at high speed, mind you) with a large patch of ROCKS!

I somehow managed to lift a ski, straddle, lift a ski and fall in a tuft of heavy wet powder to miss every single granite landmine poking out of the snow like tiny tombstones kooking for new people to label "dead"...

I'm still lucky, I guess...

And speaking of falling... the gal I go skiing with (the blonde with the big guns from chopping so much wood) has been taking lessons from me. I like teaching people stuff I know fairly well, and skiing is one of those things I can impart wisdom on and see improvements in people's abilities in short order.

The problem is, I can't really ski much better than I ski. I'm older and I have older knees and lower spine issues and yaddy yaddy... I have no business skiing out of control and really going for it, because "it" is a long stay in a short bed with one of those thingies that make it go up and down and handrails to keep me from falling out...

So my blonde ski buddy is starting to "almost" keep up.

Which means I don't get to stop half-way down and rest my legs and watch her ski, offering up such misogynistic gems as "You've got to keep your tits pointing down the hill. Tits pointing down! Just keep saying it to yourself and you'll get it "Tits Down! Down tits, down!"

and...

"Wriggle your ass! You're not wriggling your ass enough! Put a bigger swing in your backyard! Cock with your hips, talk with your lips! (Did I tell you my ski buddy is a stronger-than-most feminist who can wield a mean axe? I get her attention this way and she seems to remember what I tell her- she stews over my words, after all...)

Anyhoo... her vast improvement means that later in the day when I'm skiing on tired legs, I have to keep a slide ahead of her (to keep my male ego intact) which also means all the great ski songs I have stuck in my head (like "Ice ice baby, doong doong doong doong do doong doong...) get replaced with "Crap! Don't fall! Crap! Don't fall. Crap! Don't fall..."

Crap.

Mushroom Metaphor...

2010-12-08T08:15:00.001-08:00

I happened to catch this pair of mushrooms growing in my yard and I thought "Now THERE is a metaphor!"

Sort of like "don't let the grass grow beneath your feet"- that sort of thing.

Well... I've been out biking, tryking, unicycling, skiing, tree climbing and running a large chainsaw since I last posted.

There are no mushrooms growing out of the top of my head as far as I can tell (not as much hair either!)

I have this new weight dilemma which is requiring me to rethink some basic thoughts. It used to be "I can drink beer if I weigh under 250."

The trouble is, I've been doing so many things with my legs I've added ten or more pounds of muscle mass to them, which pushed me over the 250 mark without my getting any chubbier.

So do I go for skinny legs and beer? Or change my scale? I'm gonna have to sit down with a beer and work that one out one day...

Mt. Ashland opened last Friday and I went with my female friend that I skiied with last season. She's a super-fit and able-bodied fifty year old blonde who loves to chop her own firewood and talk about sex.

Last year, I had to ask her to refrain while on the lifts because I kept crashing right after, unable to focus on the ski bumps- they kept turning into breasts...

I was in the brew-and-pizza pub the other night and a couple I know were in there. "Who'd you ski with?" they asked.

I told them.

"Lots of blonde hair, likes to talk about sex all the time?"

"That's her."

"We went on a rafting trip with her for four days. By the end of it, my wife was livid with her."

"I was! Her and my husband spent the whole trip talking about sex. Sex sex sex... And the worst part of it was, THEY KEPT AGREEING with each other!"

I know when to step out of a domestic dispute so I did about then...

I was reminded, though, of a conversation I had with my ski partner other than about sex while on the lift. It was- of course- about beer.

"There was this really cool couple on a rafting trip I went on last summer. They were really great until late in the afternoon, when they both got really drunk on beer and would start fighting..."

It's a small world after all...

--- This year I tried out my new used skiis. I scored two pairs of "modern" skiis for essentially five bucks plus 20 bucks for a wax kit to slick them up. They're both shorter and sportier than my old downhills and I found myself able to ski straight down the black diamond runs (lots of short, sporty turns to control speed). All the added muscle in my legs and the reduction of weight in my belly was a great help in this endeavor, and I could get to the bottom of the run and back on the lift without the always present and dreaded thigh-burn I suffered through last season.

Hot Dog! I'm now a hot dog skiier once again!

Some 13 year old deer hunting kid shot a 140 pound male Cougar here in Selma last month. I tell you this now because I was starting a fire the other day and read about it in the newpaper. I clipped out the photo to upload but my scanner isn't hooked up after creating this new computer desk. I used to spend much time alone on my bike in the woods, rehearsing survival strategies and "what-ifs" in the event of a cougar attack.

"Cover my neck with one arm and POKE'EM! in the eyes!"

Now I see my mental rehearsals were well-founded.

A couple of pics off my new camera--

New Camera, Same Ol' Lake...

2010-11-29T22:10:00.000-08:00

So I replaced my stolen camera with another Powershot by Canon. This one boasts 14.2 pixels and a 28-850 zoom. The buttons are all redesigned which would be fine except that I'm so used to the old one it'll take some time to retrain the brain into manipulating this one.

I did manage to take this photograph on my first day out with the new camera...

The Sly Fox That Didn't Smell Like A Rotting Corpse...

2010-11-27T21:16:00.000-08:00

A few weeks back I was riding my (now stolen) bicycle up one of our local back roads in the latter part of an afternoon. The road is a little more than one lane wide and is such a beauty it gets written up as "a great road to ride" in all kinds of cycling publications.

For me, it is simply a left turn out of my driveway and then six miles or so riding up the valley we live in until the road turns narrow and begins to climb a long and arduous mountain.

I usually ride two hours out and then fly back down the steep hills I had just climbed so slowly up, putting on a windbreaker for the descent and hoping to get back before the sun dipped behind the ridges as there are no lights of any kind out there.

But there are plenty of critters.

And on this particular afternoon as I was cruising back down the mountain, a red fox caught my eye as I passed it not ten feet from me.

I thought it was going to pounce.

It was arranged in that position- the position a cat takes right before it attacks your leg as you walk past it. That position. The pouncing position. Only this fox didn't pounce. It didn't, as a matter of fact, move. I hit my breaks and slowed and turned, curious as to why the fox was lying in the ditch, ready to pounce, but immobile.

Then I realized the fox was dead. Hit by a car? Maybe. But it ended up in an unusual position for road kill. Poison? There was a property that raised livestock very nearby.

I noticed that the eyes of this fox were still glistening and shiny. It hadn't been dead long.I felt sad for the pretty little fella. He was such a beautiful little fox, all grey and red with clear glistening eyes.

I stopped myself from getting too close, as road kill always smells and it is a smell that makes me throw up in my own mouth if I'm not careful. I turned and headed my bike back down the hill, and made it home before dark.

The next day I had a niggling thought, so I got back on my bike and rode back up to where the fox had been. I was right. The fox was gone. There were no drag marks and very little of the surrounding dried grass had been disturbed.

Somebody either picked this fox up by the scruff of the neck from the road or -oddly- the fox just leapt from the ditch and continued across the road and went on his merry way.

I imagine the fox was running down the embankment when it heard me approaching too rapidly to run from. The fox just hunkered down and tried to hide right there in the ditch as I passed, only I caught a glimpse of him out of the corner of my eye.

"Crap!" thought the fox as I made the u-turn and came back and looked at him. He held his breath and convinced me that he was dead by not moving at all. I assumed he was dead and didn't look too close or get too close for fear of my own bile.

When I left, the fox stood up and high-tailed it outta there.

That's what I'd like to think anyway...

Smart little bastard.

Got Yuan?

2010-11-26T23:52:00.001-08:00

Been Busy Being Busy...

2010-11-20T07:37:00.000-08:00

You know how it is, this life thing getting in the way of blogging about this life thing...

A good old friend of mine gave me a good deal on a nice wood-burning insert firebox, but I had to go to Santa Rosa to get it. So I did. I stopped in to see my pops and while sleeping over there got my camera and my bicycle STOLEN from out of my truck while parked in his driveway.

The thing of it is, my pops lives in a very nice neighborhood in a culdesac up a long driveway. You can't see up there from anywhere, so you have to either be snooping around nice neighborhoods looking for easy targets, or you have to be a friend (or ex-girlfriend)of my step-nephew (who was partially raised by my pops and his wife)... Either way I'm out one newly rebuilt bike and my old camera, which I've toted along everywhere for quite some time now.

It kind of ruined the weekend for me.

My pops told me this funny story though--

On one of his last gigs as a pilot, he was gathered with a bunch of stewardesses awaiting a return flight back to California. One of the girl's mentioned that she had spent many years when young in Santa Rosa. My pops said "I live in Santa Rosa! Where did you live?"

"In a place called Blankety Blank Heights."

"I LIVE in Blankety Blank Heights!"

"YOU live in Blankety Blank Heights? I lived in Whatsit Court. We had a house by the lake."

"I LIVE ON WHATSIT COURT! Were you that girl who used to throw those giant parties and filled our culdesac up with beer bottles and cigarette butts?"

"Were YOU that old man that used to call the cops on us?"

Passing On Fred On Everything...

2010-11-10T12:37:00.000-08:00

Ever read Fred? I like Fred. Fred's got a lot to say on lots of stuff...

Is Time Short, Or...

2010-11-07T21:44:00.001-08:00

Life Long?

Unisex... Unicycle...

2010-11-05T22:01:00.000-07:00

So about three weeks ago I bought a unicycle.

I had ridden one as a teenager (before I discovered vaginas) and I thought it would be good for balance as well as good as a leg exercise if I rode one again.

I remembered the old adage "once you've learned to ride a bicycle, you never forget" and wondered if that were true, was it also true for half a bicycle?

Well I remembered alright. I just wasn't nearly as good nor as comfortable on the seat as I remembered being as a teenager...

I'm close to one hundred pounds heavier than I was at the age of fourteen. I'm also considerably fonder of my testicles (having been through so many adventures with them over all these years) and so a unicycle seat JUST CAN'T HAVE ENOUGH PADDING.

The day after the first day I rode mine, I had bruises on my inner thighs. I don't bruise easily but there they were, two dark patches of broken cappillaries about an inch away from the boys and down each thigh. On day one, I rode the unicycle in short, amazed-at-myself-spurts. On day two, I couldn't even contemplate sitting on THAT SEAT!

But I persevered as I tend to do and now I ride it about a thousand feet up my road and then back again to my house. I consider it part of a days workout as it is indeed a workout (and great to keep an aging body in balance). The first thing I have learned to do when getting on it though, is reach down inside my pants and pull the boys up and out of the way so I don't inadvertently sit on them. Which also means I have to start by holding on to something while I do my reaching and pulling.

SO here is my story--

I took my unicycle out of my front gate the other day, closed the gate to keep the dogs in, and walked the unicycle up to the stop sign nearby and mounted the unicycle using the stop sign for balance. Then I reached down and pulled my boys up out of the way so my ride would be a far more comfortable one and set off up the road like a drunk circus bear. Behind me I could hear my dogs barking and barking on their side of the fence but I assumed they were just barking at me and my silly new one-wheeled look so I told them to shut up and kept teetering and wheeling down the road. I zigged and I zagged and I pedaled and I flapped my arms around a bunch to keep from falling over, and I eventually made it about a thousand yards down the road before I got tired and lost my balance and fell off.

Then I walked another sixty feet down the road to the nearest mailbox so I could mount my unicycle, adjust the boys, and make the return leg back to the house. As I got to the mailbox, something in the vineyards caught my attention. Then I preoccupied myself with smoothing out the gravel next to the mailbox so my start would be uneventful (starting on a unicycle is harder than going. You want a smooth first pedal or you often fall flat on your nose). Then I mounted the unicycle, holding on to the mailbox for balance, got "situated" by reaching down the front of my sweatpants and grabbing a handful of penis and testicles and pulling them up and out of the way. Finally, I raised my head towards home and prepared to begin my wobbly return flight ONLY TO BE ASTONISHED THAT JUST TEN FEET FROM ME- WALKING TOWARD ME AND LOOKING RIGHT AT ME- WAS A CHUBBY SCHOOLGIRL ABOUT THE AGE OF TWELVE complete with backpack full of school books and pigtails and freckles on her cheeks...

Oh my...

She had just witnessed me grope myself bigtime!

And the thing of it was, WHAT SHE SAID was so perfect it nearly knocked me off my wheel. Do you KNOW what she said to me? I shit you not. She said "I bet that's hard."

OMG...

I had ten things to come back with as a retort for that, but I kept having to remind myself THE GIRL IS ONLY ABOUT TWELVE!!

I said "It's very hard, you shoud ride one sometime" and rode past her like a drunken bear back to where I couldn't possibly get into any trouble...

Atta Boy Timmy...

2010-10-31T21:24:00.000-07:00

I Like To Stir The Pot....

2010-10-27T22:36:00.000-07:00

Another Award....

2010-10-19T23:21:00.000-07:00

I submitted a few more pictures I took yesterday and this morning and Woohoohoo!

I was awarded another prestigious AC award....

Not too sure what it all means except that people seem to like the pictures....

PHOTO-JOURNALISM

2010-10-18T18:46:00.000-07:00

So after winning a prestigious mention for one of my photographs, I went out this morning with camera in hand looking to win another award....

Little did I know I would capture a heinous crime instead...