Another fine fall day. Easy chores around the house, then walking Dot around. Blue sky and the fireweed have fully gone to seed. Someone dumped a deer carcass off the road behind our house so we are keeping Dot close. We let her go at all and she comes back with deer bones to chew on which is not good because she gets a taste for venison which could get her in big trouble around town if she gets into peoples meet supply or if she takes a notion to start taking deer on her own which would also be bad for both the deer and Dot running across roads as well as picking up bugs in her stomach.Or chewing up sharp bones and perforating a gut.

Met my friend Norm for lunch at the Chinese joint downtown. Masks on. Jan had an outdoor meeting planned with her people at the University. She is gradually transferring her work to her former students now with advanced degrees. I was going to ask Norm for a ride home but the little sneak rode his bike to our lunch date and he refused to ride me on his handlebars the six miles out the road to our house. Big Baby. So I walked over to the University to grab Jan before she drove home.

It was a lovely walk but for some reason my back was killing me by the time I got there and I was grumpy. Jan did not have her phone with her during her meeting, and when I showed up as her meeting was closing down she just stared at me as if I was a ghost not saying anything. (I should mention too that Parkinson’s flattens a person’s facial expression, so Jan has a particularly cold star these days which is not her fault at all, but it can still strike me the wrong way at times. Like when I have been calling her and texting her to not leave me down town and my back is killing me and I show up and she looks at me like “What in the hell are you doing here? Can’t you see I’m working?” I just asked her for the keys and said I would wait in the car before I drove home. . Which I admit was an odd thing to say out of the blue and WAS kind of snotty.

Jan and her team finished their meeting. I helped her load up her stuff. Last night she had wired together a solar powered bilge pump for her boat and had brought it to show everyone, so we loaded that, the walker and Dot into the Honda Element and when she got in the car, she said, “Why are you so grumpy? “ I explained about Norm and his bike and about feeling old because a short one mile, if that, hike over the bridge had made my back hurt, and when I showed up she hadn’t said hello to me. Jan just looked at me with the same dead flat expression then opened up her Chinese Lunch that she had gotten to go. “I did too say “Hello.”

Why oh why did I say it? “No you didn’t.”

“You’re wrong.”

“Okay…” I said. Then I scratched Dot’s ears. Dot was about to make an attack on Jan’s Chinese food and that would be my revenge.

“And what do you thing YOU ARE doing Missy?” Jan pointed a pair of chop sticks at our French Dog. “Back OFF!” Dot and I were both chastened.

I think the real reason I was grumpy was Norm had been talking about how everyone seemed to be grumpy and not getting along with their spouses these days. “Everyone is bickering. Have you noticed that. All my friends say the same thing,” and I told him, “You know, I think Jan and I are getting along better than EVER.” then not ten minutes later I walk right into a tiny little spat just proving that I am never right about anything.

Then I started speaking in my outrageous French accent which I sometimes use for Dot’s interior monologue, to tease Jan how Dot had no intention of eating the Chinese food for heaven’s sake, and eventually Jan started popping pieces of chicken in yummy sauce into Dots mouth and we were all having a fine time again.

Which brings me to the reason I’m writing this blog. In case you are wondering. I’m trying to write something short everyday, that comes from my actual experience every day, which transforms every day experience into something somewhat funny… not necessarily rip roaring funny— but just funny enough or smart enough or wise enough that makes life bearable. Something you are not getting from other places.

So, you see I’m not setting the bar too high for myself. Something that makes life bearable. Realizing that life is shit…during this time in history with the covid and the uncertainty of the election, and all the craziness of the political rhetoric. I mean… we have a guy who is running for our City and Borrough Assembly who made a Tik Tok video where he says that he will supply guns to shoot all our politicians and go to war. Really? The thing that this really makes me think… is why the hell does he want to run for office? He is going to be so disappointed. He’s not going to be able to shoot anyone. I just don’t see him really doing that. He just wants to shock people by saying it. The truth is he is going to have to read thousands of pages of incredibly boring documents and he is going to be asked if he wants to add his vote to spending money to do this thing, or that other thing. Now of course he will feel good the first few times he votes things down. But after a while the people who elected him are going to ask him, “Yo… Buddy… what else you got besides not doing anything?” He will insult people until they stop coming or he gets sanctions. It sounds boring and frustrating and why would you want to spend what’s left of an unhappy life doing that. Why not just take your guns out to the range and blow the shit out of some more bottles? Maybe draw the faces of people you don’t like on milk jugs full of water and shoot those early every morning? I can think of a million things more satisfying for an angry person to do than run for office. Get a lawn tractor and protest outside every Assembly meeting that has windows in the back you could drive past with a huge sign that says, “Save The Salmon, Eat My Shorts!” or something. Or bring a hippo to every Assembly meeting and have all the proper paperwork saying its a service animal and covert it with a huge “Don’t Tread On Me” banner, wait until it needs to urinate then back it towards the Assembly table and…. this is the genius part… Hippopotamuses urinate by lifting their butts as high as they can and spinning their little tails around as fast as they can then spraying a combination of urine and fecal matter using their tails as a kind of high powered fan. What better thing for a rageaholic?

Sorry… I got off track. All I’m saying is we live in pretty miserable times and the only purpose of this blog is to maybe make life bearable. Not to high a bar… that’s all I’m saying. Like going out to lunch with a friend, and eating Chinese Food with a French Dog and a person who still loves you even when you act like a brat sometimes.

Last night before dark,

we heard the geese flying south,

and I held your hand.

jhs

Here is a recording of me reading three chapters of Raymond Chandler’s Farewell My Lovely: