BREAKING THE CYCLE OF NONBLOGGING

I need to write something. Anything. I suppose the six words I have just written constitute writing "anything," but...you know what I mean. This once-a-week blogging is shit.

***

crickets chirp the taffy

stretch of brutal writers' block

how much for a muse?

***

Andrew Jennings stumble-slouched along the sidewalk, his checkered fedora lying limp against his skull. The first Outbreak of Winter--hear all about it on the eleven o'clock news!--had hit and the small town of Yerkers, Maine, had ground to a stop. Spin-outs and fender-benders. Pedestrians, bundled up like five-and-a-half foot toddlers, trudged like ants through the whiteout world. Jennings wasn't dressed for the inclement weather. Three sheets to the wind, the truth was that he couldn't even really feel the cold. His internal thermostat was all fucked up.

In his drunken state, he had been staring blearily at the kitchen TV, not-focussing on a Disneyworld commercial, when Jiminy Cricket, of Pinnochio fame, had rapped with his umbrella against the inside of the screen and said, "Drew? Getcho ass outside and find you a muse, you drunk motherfuck."

Oddly enough, this had not surprised Jennings. A cartoon cricket was talking to him from inside the television set? So? And Jiminy had the voice of Samuel L. Jackson? So what? What was odd about that? Miracles happened every day, his dear old mother had once told him. If a hallucination constituted a miracle, well, so be it. He had simply nodded sagely at the screen, tipped a wink to good ole Jiminy, and, in his slippers and his ratty bathrobe and his checkered fedora, had set off down the slippery streets of Yerkers, intent upon finding his muse.

"Are you a muse?" he asked now, sidling up to a snow-woman, waiting scarved and puffy-coated at the bus stop.

She turned stiffly and regarded him with blue-eyed New England pragmatism. "Do you know that you're wearing a bathrobe?" she asked. Her eyes slid down. "And that it ain't exactly tied shut?"

Jennings glanced down. His boxer shorts had slid a bit, during his commute, and now his pal Mr. Friendly was wagging in the icy wind. He tucked himself back in and tied his bathrobe tight and looked down the street. The bus was slowly winding its way around the snowed-in cars and drifts of snow. It reminded him of a huge white beetle, its windshield wipers eyebrows. "The bus is coming," he said.

"Ayup," she said, looking past him. "It surely is."

They stood for a silent moment, and then Jennings spoke. "Well, I guess I'll be going now. There's gotta be a muse around here, somewhere."

"Ayup."

And so Andrew Jennings slouched off, his fedora plastered to his head like an upside-down buttercup, his knees purple with the cold.

HARD-BOILED EGGS

I just boiled the fuck out of nine eggs. I had set them in the pot on the stove and racheted up the burner and then I came in here and got...distracted. Damn computer! Damn internet!

I think--I'm not entirely sure--but I think that I had the eggs in the boiling water for about 15 minutes longer than they should have been in the boiling water. I have the eggs on simmer, now. Kinda like whistling up at the sky and kicking at some dust, I am hoping that my brain-fart will be overlooked and that the eggs will not be ruined. That would be horrific.

I'll check in later with the results.

It's a wild and kah-RAY-zee Saturday night, here, in Adamland. Cooking eggs (badly). I have to beat the paprazzi of with a stick, I tell ya.

DEAR MR. WILLIAM CLAY FORD,

Dear Sir,

I am a long-suffering Detroit Lions fan and, I have to say, I am pleasantly surprised with the Lions' recent success. If you'll allow me the vulgarity, it's about fucking time...Sir.

However, I have an issue with the team that I would hope that you, a savvy businessman, would have the good grace to address. I am dismayed by the fact that a professional football team--one which sells out every damned game--has no cheerleaders. Is it too much to ask, Sir, to plop a team of scantily-clad women, dressed in the beloved Honolulu-blue-and-silver, on the sidelines so that the fans--men and women alike--can goggle and appreciate the beauty and atheletic purity of cartwheels and pantomimed bumps-and-grinds?

I must congratulate you on the omission of the 13-year-olds with batons in recent years--that's just wrong--but I must, again, plead with you to get some T-and-A on the sidelines.

Thank you for your prompt attention to this important matter.

Yours in Sheepdom,

Adam [last name redacted]

HINDENBURGUS: THE DOGGY DISASTER

Simply put, today was a disaster. A canine disaster. Like the Hindenburgus Caninus, but on a smaller scale. Okay. Much smaller. Like two-dog small.

Last night, Louie was asleep on the La-Z-Boy in the computer room. Ollie was sleeping with me. Before I acknowledged the Sandman, I was aware of Oliver bouncing off the bed and trotting out to the kitchen. Before I fell asleep, he was back, nestled at my feet, breathing deeply, an unconscious dog-log. I thought nothing of it--perhaps he wet his whistle?--and succumbed to the night.

I woke blearily this morning and slammed off the Superman alarm clock. After the Morning Porcelain Ritual, I staggered to the kitchen and let the dogs out. As I walked to their food dishes, I was assaulted by the ripe smell of dog feces. "Shit," I said.

Exactly.

A nice smooth soft pile of dog shit lay, in all its Stank glory, about a foot from the empty food bowl. A smaller "tip" of dog excrement lay a few inches away. Shaped like an arrowhead, it pointed to the larger pile. Two seperate piles, one of which seemed an almost-afterthought? [Or forethought?] Oliver! That sumanabit....

Paper towel in hand, I crouched to scoop the interloping fecal matter and, what to my wondering eyes should appear? But a puddle of moisture, 'neath the table, oh dear. Okay. So...to recap. While I slept--or slightly before--Oliver had sprung from the bed to see what was the matter and had said, ah, fuggit, here's good.

I cleaned up the offenses and bid the dogs a good day. I left Oliver, the cute shitting chewer, ensconsced in his small cage and I left the door to Lou's cage slightly ajar. His choice. He could stay in the cage or he could wander about the house as I worked in the dirt.

At work, we did some tractor-trailer training. In the cab of the truck, my nostrils flared at the unwieldy odor of feces. Like the malaise from the morning was trailing me, following me, white gossamer tendrils of Stoonky-Stank adhering to my nose-holes, giving me not a moment's peace. I crinkled my nose. "Damn," I said to Robert, "smells like someone took a dump in here. Jesus." He told me that he had a cold and that he could not smell it. I told him that he was probably lucky. After he had practiced a bit, I got back into the cab and right away I was struck with the smell of manure. And it seemed stronger. I figured someone must have stepped in a pile last night and smeared a bit on the floorboards on accident.

Rob wrinkled his nose the next time he got in the cab. "Yeah, I smell it now," he told me. "Pretty bad." I agreed and sat on an adjacent trailer to watch as he practiced his reverse 90-degree angle alley dock. The smell was insistent. A lightbulb must have shone above my head as I did the obvious thing: I looked at the bottom of my boot. Yup. There it was in all its glory: Poop. It must have been hiding in the tall grass and I must have stepped in it. Laughing to myself and at the alacrity at which I had passed the Shit-On-The-Shoe buck, I scraped it off with a crumpled Gatorade bottle. And the day continued.

I ended up working late. There was a gas meter relocation that ended up being a bit more involved than had previously been thought and so I got back to the shop at 6:30 and back to my home at 7:00. The smell assaulted me as soon as I opened the door. Lou was bouncing around like a maniac and Oliver, the cute shitting chewer, was howling/baying from his crate. Oliver! I thought to myself with Seinfeldian angst, my fist clenched, my mouth a slash. Yes. 'Twas true. Oliver had pooped in his crate and, unfortuantely, had scampered (or slid) about in it, leaving little shit footprints. I was running late to meet my sister at the coney island restaurant, so, with little fanfare, I released Oliver, the cute shitting chewer, and Lou to the Great Outdoors, whereupon they could, ostensibly, empty their bladders and jettison their intestinal fortitiude. While they were outside, I took the foul-smelling floor of the crate down to the washtubs in the basement and--quite literally--scoured the shit outta it. Satisfied, I walked back upstairs and walked towards the computer room to survey my Fantasy stats.

On the way to the room, I noticed/smelled a nice splotch of spit-up in the hallway, on the carpet, next to the kitchen doorway. Louie? I asked myself. What the fuck? Grimacing, I crouched and cleaned the puke out of the carpet.

Nice, I thought, poop in the morning, poop in the afternoon and vomit for a nightcap. And then I got into the computer room.

The smell was heavy. It didn't make sense. Why would the smell be stronger in the computer room, three rooms and a hallway, from the pile of poop? 'Twas nonsensical, 'twas. And then there it was: Another pile of shit. This one was arranged nicely on the corner of the Oriental rug, almost symmetrical to the designs of the floor covering. Louie! The good dog?

It isn't often that one can truly say that they are flabbergasted but, there I was, leaning in to scoop another pile of soft-serve shit, flabbered to the motherfucking gasted. I cleaned up that pile, let the boys in, scooped Oliver up immediately, swept down the basement stairs, with him at arm's length, and lathered the fuck out of him in the aforementioned basement washtubs.

And then I went to eat coney island hot dogs. The stuff on the plate looked suspiciously familiar to...something.

So the final tally: Twenty-four hours, two dogs, one explusion of odor-ific vomit and three piles of soft brown-cream-cheesy dog shit. And one extremely exasperated owner.

[And that's not taking into account the shitpile in which I stepped when I was at work.]

But I learned a good lesson today. I really did. And that lesson is this: If one has slices of corned beef, and one doesn't feel good about eating it oneself--due to the fact that it doesn't smell particularly right--one should not feed said corned beef to the dogs, thinking that they will appreciate the Kindness of Meat. If it smells funny, toss it.

Or suffer the consequences.

NEBULA

that river in

africa that river in

africa that river in

africa

dam it

break the dam

send waters--salt--streaming

down the convexities of my face

that fucking river in africa

that fucking river in africa

denial

break the dam

send waters streaming

--salt--

to the corners of my mouth

i raise a cotton-candy

fist

earth shakes

dam breaks

my fist is melted plastic

dry dusty tawny hides

feline grace

be lion-hearted

fight the sorrow

fuck it

let it come

let the tears purge

let it come

GO FOR FOOD, FIND A MUSE

Hollywood grocery stores seem to me to be fertile ground for blog topics. A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about the Fall of the Middle-Aged Woman, and, today, from a different location, Hollywood Market came through for me again. It all started because I was being conservation-conscious.....

I had picked up one of those fabric bags from the grocery store down the street from me. You know the kind of bag I'm talking about: Made of canvas, the bag is meant to decrease the use of plastics and papers by being reused every time one goes to the grocery store. I bought it for about two bucks and I'm sure all the little chipmunks and owls thank me for saving their homes. Anyway, I went to the store today to purchase some eggs and some shoelaces, some toilet paper (for pooping) and some shaving cream. I took my green bag with me, and filled it with my soon-to-be-purchases. I felt like I was doing my part for the Earth.

After blearily wandering around the store and sticking to my list--but substituting a chocolate cream pie for the unlocatable shoelaces--I wandered towards the front door, thinking that the ATM was probably located around the entrance.

I heard a sharp whistle from behind me. I ignored it and continued to the Chase ATM in front of me, right next to the entrance. Again, the whistle came and I had the sensation of a large mass of a person quickly closing the distance behind me.

I turned around.

A big man stood there, older, paunchy, with receding reddish-blonde hair slicked back from his forhead. "You can't be doing that with the bag," he said, standing about six inches from me. "You gotta use a cart. Take the items out of the bag and flatten it and use a cart. Or a basket."

His proximity annoyed me. I like my space. "Oh," I said, and stepped back. "I see."

I gathered that he was the Loss Controls Ossifer, or whatever the hell they're called: Big, invading my personal space, sweating Authority. In retrospect, I reckon I might have looked a little nefarious and a little guilty, the way I was walking towards the door with my bag filled with items, looking around, over my shoulder, looking for the ATM. I guess I was sweating Guilt.

"People gotta use baskets," he said, his voice a gravelly mess. [He might have had a cold. Thought and prayers to him and his family.] His eyes were baggy and it looked like he had high blood pressure, all squinty eyes and red florid face.

"I...understand, man. No problem," I said. I set my bag down on the ground, next to a caramel apple display and wandered over to the ATM. "I just had to get some money," I added.

"Or use these," he said, striding bowleggedly over to the baskets near the front door. He grabbed one and walked over towards me. I met him halfway and took the proffered metal handbasket.

"I wasn't going to steal this stuff, you know," I said.

"Yeah, well, we just gotta keep everything under control."

"I...understand, man."

I walked around the bananas and oranges and slid the basket across the floor, where it came to a rest next to my illicit green recyclable bag. That was my nonverbal smack-talk, as if to say, All right, dude. I got your fucking point. Now can I please use the ATM so that I can buy this shit?

Rebel roar.

TEST, TEMPTATION OR A TIGHTROPE?

I was driving home from work today, anticipating the unbridled joy of a three-day weekend. Friday. Fun-day. And, in the past, "Time-to-Crack-the-Unending-Beer" day. This is the phenomenon in which one cracks a cervesca upon opening one's front door on Friday afternoon and not stopping the beverage-fest until around 11:00 on Sunday (or, in this case, Monday) night. Suffice it to say, one feels a bit woozy and sick by the end of the "party." So one cracks a hair of the dog on Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday and--whee!--we're right back to Friday again. It's a viscious cycle, and it is a cycle that I am pretty happy to have broken. On the 7th of December, I will have not drank a truely alcoholic beverage for 365 days, also known as 8760 hours or 525,600 minutes. Or, for all you Minutians out there, thirty-one-and-a-half million seconds. So, yes, I am glad that I have a lot of clean time behind me.

But I still get cravings. Obviously, I still get cravings. Be it because I am happy or because I am sad or because the day ends in a "Y," I still get cravings. Like today, for instance.

I was driving home and I was listening to the radio and I was feeling pretty good, driving along Woodward Avenue with my arm out the window and I thought to myself just how damn good a beer would taste. And then I realized I needed cigarettes, so I pulled over at a liquor store and went inside. When I was drinking, this store would have been heaven. They carry all kinds of beer: microbrews, imports, domestics...you name it, there's a good chance that they have it. The beer didn't really interest me, though, as I walked past the coolers to the small freezer section and selected a frozen burrito that goes by the name "The Bomb." I walked up to the counter, behind which there were oodles of different types of liquor and I bought my burrito and a pack of smokes and I got my change and I left the pit of snakes.

When I was walking to my car, I noticed a blink of blue out of the corner of my eye. Damn, I said to myself, that looks amazingly like a tall-boy of Labatt Blue. And something seems strange about it.

So I executed a picture-perfect double-take and my suspiscions were confirmed: It was indeed a big ole can of Blue and there was something different about it. It was unopened. I looked up and down the sidewalk. There was no one around. No cars, no pedestrians, just the can o' Blue, unopened and dripping with cold heavenly condensation. I would like to say that I said, "Oh, fiddlesticks," and returned the beer to the man behind the counter with the explantion that someone must have left it outside when they got into there car. That would have been the logical thing to do, sure, but when the hell have I ever been logical? I am an alcoholic in recovery and I have just passed my eleventh month of sobriety. It's not always easy to be black and white about some things. So I pocketed the beer and got in the car and slid it in next to the frozen burrito.

[Let me pause here to say that if that is not a delicious slice of irony--putting a virtual life bomb next to a foodstuff entitled The Bomb--I am not a bald man who wears his pants too high on occasion.]

Bombs in place, I pointed the car towards home.

The drive from that liquor store to my house takes about ten minutes. It seemed much longer. What're you doing, Adam? I asked myself. You're not going to drink that, are you? You've got eleven fucking months, man. Don't be a fool. You know what happens. You know how you get. Do you really want to start all over at the beginning? Will it be worth it?!

Of course it wouldn't be worth it. But.... But, come on, one fucking beer? 22 ounces of water and barley and hops? What the hell could it hurt? I am not a dummy. I knew what it could hurt. It could hurt all the progress that I had going for me and, even if I stopped after drinking that one beer, it would pave the way to future weaknesses. It would--yes! just having that one beer!--it would make it so much easier to rationalize relapse on a later date.

"Then why the hell is that beer in there?" I asked the brown paper bag. "Because you want it," I answered.

And the fulcrum teetered.

I got home and put the burrito in the freezer and lit a cigarette and looked at the can of beer. The angel and the devil were fighting on my shoulders, pointing sharp little fingers at each other from around my bald pate. In the end, the angel won.

I took a picture of the beer, snapped in an ominous light, and I walked the Labatt to the bathroom and cracked the top and--after inhaling deeply of the ambrosic odor--dumped the motherfucker into the toilet. That seemed fitting, to me. I know without a doubt that going down the Drinking Path will only lead me and my life into the toilet. So what more fitting grave could there be for the delightful beverage than a commode?

But--holy catfish!--that was a close one.

OLIVER HASKELL: "WHO? ME??"

So I was in the kitchen, laying out my wallet and cell phone and keys for the bleary-eyed morning, when I heard the rapid light bass of approaching beagle footsteps. I set down my wallet and turned from the counter and reached the doorway just as Oliver was skittering around the stove and into the kitchen.

His tail wagging furiously, Oliver skidded to a stop and simultaneously dropped at my feet the snack-sized bag of M&M's that heretofore had been mocking him from the living room table. With that declaration of his omnipotence, Oliver turned on a dime and trotted back into the front room, whereupon he hopped up onto the chair and curled into a beagle-ball.

The kid is Eddie Haskell. Had I not been in the kitchen, I'm sure that I would have found little brown pieces of an M&M's wrapper scattered about the floor and Oliver would have had chocolate candy chips in his chaw. But I was there. And so Oliver improvised. He shifted plans in mid-skitter and laid the offensive delicacy at my feet, my fearless beagle knight.

[And I'm sure that Lou watched the goings-on from the living room, thinking to himself, Okay. It's been fun. But when does this buzzkill leave?]

FOOD OF THE PAST

I was thinking, today, about some of the food choices I made in my youth. We three kids were brought up on unfailingly healthy and nutritional food, so it's the food that I snuck that I was remembering.

I used to make myself peanut butter-and-butter "sandwiches"...when my mom and dad weren't looking, that is. What I would do is cut off a couple of pats of butter and use those as the "bread" of the sandwich. Then I would take a spoonful of the all-natural (just peanuts and salt) chunky peanut butter and spoon it in between the two slices of butter. Voila! A cholesterol sammich was never better.

I also liked sweets. I still do. But now I have all kinds of money to go to the store and buy Reese's peanut butter cups or Heath bars (to dip in peanut butter) or Three Musketeers, or whatever. Back then (when candy bars were twenty-five cents) I had only my allowance to satiate my sweet tooth. My sisters and I would walk the quarter-mile to Sav-On Drugs and load up the small paper bags with contraband like Coca-Cola and candy bars and Doritos. I was partial to Mallo Cups, too. If you've never had them, they come in a yellow wrapper and they're like whipped coconut cream in a chocolate cup. Just like a Reese's, but with coconut chips. Ambrosia.

I also remember secreting away the Minute Maid frozen concentrates of lemonade and orange juice. I would take a grapefruit spoon (with the serated tip) and I would scrape at the tangy sweetness (um, not that tangy sweetness) until it was melted enough to squeeze out into my mouth. And then there was that container of frozen strawberry pie filling that I, over the course of a month or two, surreptitiously scraped at until all that was left was a sort of frozen sweet red backwash.

Ah...good times.

NEWSPAPERS

the house stinks of

mental instability, illness

stinks of newspapers

stinks of reclusiveness

closed curtains, wrapped like

the wings of a bat

the house oozes darkness and

loss

newpapers and periodicals cover

every square inch of tabletop and furniture

through the haze of Print

an old television sits silent

'i'm sorry for the mess,' she says

'i've just been busy with all the paperwork

of customs to france.'

she wears a knee-length winter coat

and a scarf

and blue jeans tucked into pink socks

tucked into moon-boots

and her eyes are black olives

behind her wire rim glasses

i nod and say that i've seen worse and

i have, but barely

she is alone and old

and her family (?) has gone back to paris

after hurricanes katrina and rita

'i've been so busy sending money and clothes,'

she says

'i haven't had time to keep the house up but i will,

soon.'

i nod and say that i've seen worse and

i have, but barely

she follows us outside

through her garage, in which

a celica with a half-amputated front bumper

and newspapers and newspapers and

newspapers reign supreme

'i'm embarrassed by my house.'

she rifles through sheaves of legal papers

'i had to hire a handwriting expert,"

she tells us,

because They were forging my signature in customs.'

the cost of the expert: 1500 dollars

her peace of mind: priced out of her reach

i go back in and turn down her thermostat

--she might forget about it--

--and she might run up the bill--

--and she might get it shut off again--

she flips through the legal papers and

shows me the forgeries

i know not at what i am looking

--nor do i really care--

and so i nod and say, 'yup.'

lost woman

forgotten woman

in an invisble hovel

and i wonder just

how many of them are out there,

flying under the radar of

news at eleven and

two for tuesday pizza deals?

FAVRE TO JENNINGS...*

An 82-yard bomb on the first play of overtime, after Denver kicker Jason Elam had scrambled onto the field and made the 20-yard field goal with one second left in regulation. From the lowest lows to the highest highs, this is why I love sports.

That a 38-year-old quarterback, two time zones away, at the end of his Hall of Fame career, still has the ability to raise the hairs on the back of my neck and birth goosebumps on my arms...that is why I love sports.

*Oh, and it doesn't hurt that I started Greg Jennings in one of my Fantasy leagues this week. ;-)

THE TRIP TO [at] THE GROCERY STORE

We never lose it, do we? Though we stretch out and gray and bald and wrinkle, we are still always the little child from yesteryear. Though we layer Adulthood atop our Ids and our Superegos, we are still little Sally or little Bill, close to tears after skinning our knees.

I went to Hollywood Market today, intent upon picking up (ONLY!) some dog chew-bones, some Liquid Plumr, lunchmeat, eggs and some milk. Of course I gathered much more than that [I can never stick to my list] and I had the young vixen-angel--she was dressed in white with wings--pack my purchases into some paper bags. (Actually, when she asked me if I wanted paper or plastic, I surreptitiously took in her delicate cleavage and smiled and said to her, "Whatever's easier, angel." Got-damn, I'm a laugh a friggin' minute! Hell, at least I got a smile and a blush out of the angel.)

Anyway, enough about the loveliness of young 22-year-old breasts.

When I started towards the exit, I saw an older woman walking into the foyer from the drizzly outside. Actually, I saw her right foot first, and then I saw her left knee and then I saw her posterior and then I saw her midsection and, finally, I saw her shoulders and head as she slipped on the wet floor and skidded to a graceless stop on her knee, on her ass. Public falling. Gotta love it.

Surprisingly, I had no urge to chortle. Rather, I felt empathy for the woman.

I started my cart towards her and said matter-of-factly, "You wanna hand?" Like the world's oldest toddler, she looked up at me and said, "Yes. Thank you." I helped her up and said to her, "They should have a rug down here, or something." Her companion--her mother, maybe?--said, "Yes. They should." "Maybe you should let them know that the floor is slippery," I said. "Yes. Maybe we should," replied the fallen woman.

My duty done, I tucked my Superman logo back into my shirt and continued on, bemoaning the fact that I am wholly unable to stick to my carefully-considered lists.

SUDDEN FICTION--HEMINGWAY

The man went fishing. He jabbed a worm onto the hook and cast it into the green lake. He caught a leather boot. He was pleased. He went home and sawed the tongue off the boot and scraped it clean of algae. He warmed up the skillet and sauteed some onions and mushrooms. When the onions and mushrooms were caramelized, he gently laid the tongue out, making sure to keep it flat to ensure adequate cooking throughout.

Then the man opened the latch-handle refrigerator and cracked an Olympia. Whilst the tongue cooked, the man sat at the red-checked kitchen table and sipped at his witches' brew. He knew the tongue was done when the sharp acrid cartoon smell waves of Leathered Mushroom slid into his nostrils.

He got up and, with a practiced motion, slid the slop onto his cracked plate. He sat down to eat and all was good.

FAILURE IS not AN OPTION...

But I guess it's going to have to be. I have been feeling quite inadequate lately, mainly at work. I just switched departments to the Lines Department (now I'm working with natural gas services and mains) and so there is a lot of training and such because there is a lot of new shit to learn. That is fine. I expect to feel a little overwhelmed, especially because the company (though incessantly preaching, "Safety, safety, safety") seems to think that this is some kind of fucking race to get us to where we fall under the category TMO (trench machine operator). To reach this oh-so glorious pinnacle, we have to go to basic Lines Department training and get our CDL and pass the operator qualification for TMO--in other words, we have to be able to drive the truck and trailer to the job site, with the backhoe, and operate safely and efficiently at the site.

I get that. What I don't get is why, after about three full weeks of actual on-the-job training, we are being pushed through so quickly. When I took my CDL (which I failed) I had only driven the big utility truck and trailer twice. Twice. That's not a whole hell of a lot of experience, you know? To put this three weeks actual on-the-job in some perspective, most of the people in the department had had about six months of experience before they were asked to get their CDL and to pass their TMO training. And some had been in the department for over a year.

So that explains, perhaps, why I didn't pass my CDL on the first try. I had a shitload of trouble backing the thirty-foot trailer, at a 90-degree angle, into a "loading dock," basically eight cones in the shape of a small rectangle, just a little wider than the ass end of the trailer. I chalk that up to inexperience and to the fact that I have never driven a vehicle with a hitch and trailer before I switched departments--I drive a Ford Focus, for cryin' out loud.

That--inexperience--does not explain, however, just why I have been so inept at operating the Ditch Witch and the backhoe at TMO training. Save for one guy who has been in another headquarter's Lines Department for a year and a half and has had much digging experience, we other three (Robert, a girl named Jody from Lansing and myself) are all basically at the same level of expertise. Robert and Jody are doing fine. They have dug their 4x4x4 holes and have moved on to shelving the hole and sloping the hole and on Thursday they will be working on trenching, an operation in which the TMO digs a level ditch about 18 inches in the ground for the purpose of laying a new gas service to a house.

I know what I have to do when I am digging, it's just that the execution, for me, is so difficult. It is both frustrating and irritating and, the last two days, I have left the training grounds pissed off at myself and my glaring ineptitude. I have looked longingly at beer and have quickly looked away. I'm not about to throw away 10+ months of good living just because I am pissed at myself...but the temptation is most definitely there.

At TMO school, there is something called OQing. Basically, it just stands for Operator Qualification, and you can't attain that level until you prove to the qualifiers that you understand the material and are able to meet the basic requirements of the job. My trainer today told me that I won't be OQing on Friday. She and the other trainer want me to continue working on my 4x4x4 holes and my shelving and my sloping and I will be expected to report back to my headquarters on Friday instead of testing my skillz with the Qualifiers. Nice. I feel humiliated and I feel like an inadequate boob.

I am not used to failure. I am used to succeeding. (For the most part and, I guess, everything is relative, no?) So, to recap: I didn't pass my CDL, I will not be OQing for TMO and my Fantasy Football teams are a combined 2-10.

Motherfucking Calgon?! Take me away.

THOUGHTS AT 2:30

Today--tonight--in a span of about five hours, I saw no less than 13 cop cars. I am ten-and-a-half months without a drink of alcohol. In the past, because I would have had a buzz, the 13-plus cop cars would have had me quaking in my captain's seat and would have sent my heart rate off-kilter and I may have felt a suffocating feeling and I would surely have admonished myself and kicked my own ass and have said to myself, "Adam, you fucking dumbass, why do you do this to yourself?!"

I would have formulated in my mind a scenario in which the pole-ees ossifers were all cocks and were all on power trips and but I would have been gripped nonetheless with a sinking feeling of powerlessness and inferiority. And, let's face it, fear. Not of the assholes, per se, but rather the power with which they sashayed. The power that could crush me like an insect and render my life as I knew it a pile of debt and ashes.

Tonight, though, I had perspective. I saw them simply as men and women doing their job. I saw them as headstrong and cocksure power-trippers and I saw them in my rearview mirror as I drove soberly past them, flipping my middles at their doughnut-crammed front porches.

Yeah. I'm working on my cop complex. :-P

FRIDAY NIGHT AT THE FIGHTS

The dogs are quiet and then

the dogs explode into a frenzy of growls and fake-bites and ass-licks and snarls and then

there is quiet once again.

Oliver is an interesting toy to the three

behemoths o' brindle; Ollie has spent

a good portion of his time, here,

on his back, his feet pawing for purchase in the

gray sky and

pushing off 'gainst marbled muscle

And then, he has had enough and the little boy bares

his teeth and charges at the

big 'uns,

with a mewl of Napoleanic hubris.

He comes in low, torpedoing his sharp little teeth

at crotch-level, and the

big dogs skip out of the way, protecting

what they have left.

It is a cartoon of spinning limbs and echoing snarls and

flashing teeth and flapping tongues and then

all is quiet.

And all is good.

(Until Petey starts mouthing off and it begins anew.)

MEET THE FAMILY

I have to go to backhoe training in Lansing, MI, this week and next. Instead of staying in a hotel, I am going to stay with my sister Melissa and her husband, Matt. This way I can bring my boys instead of having to kennel them. Melissa and Matt are the proud parents of two of Lou's littermates, Pete and Willy.

Lou has visited often. Obviously, this will be Oliver's first time. One would tend to think that a small beagle would be out of sorts, what with being surrounded by 200 pounds of brindled, muscled pit bull/boxer. I will disagree. Oliver is like Rocky Balboa: He never lets up.

Plus, if he starts feeling cornered, I think that he will be more than comfortable pulling out his Humper-mania Card.

This should be interesting.

LOST ALONG THE WAY (DIRTY DAWGZ)

So...I went golfing this morning, taking advantage of the 85-degree temperature in Michigan. I shot a 113. That, unfortunately, is about par for the course--my course, that is. Anyway, I came home after the 5-plus hour round and let the dogs outside. I went to my bed and laid down and promptly fell asleep for about two hours. That, too, is par for my course. I love me some nap-time.

I awoke at 4:45 and walked outside with a cigarette dangling betwixt my lips. I watched as my boys lay quietly in the grass and dirt and then I called them to me. Dirt. Dirtiness. Everywhere, in every place, they were dirty. Lou had a nice scab on his jowls (courtesy of the sharp-toothed wonder, Ollie) and it had filled with--you guessed it--dirt. As Pink Floyd would say, "This. Will. Not. Do."

So I got up and walked to the outside water dish. I topped it off and I walked back to my unsuspecting children--all lounging, lolling pink tongues--and I cupped some water in my hands and briskly rubbed it into Lou's jowls. Oliver looked avidly on, his tail whisper-wagging and his yellow eyes bright with curiosity.

Lou is a good boy, let no one tell you differently. He took the cleaning with a stoic tranquility that would have made Ghandi jealous (had he been susceptible to emotional currents). I got into it, then, chortling maniacal laughter and cupping and splashing and rubbing and cleansing my boy Lou. He took it well and, after all was said and done, the wound on his jowls was not caked with dirt anymore and so I massaged some Neosporin into it and clicked my heels and headed towards Oliver, the metal water dish in my hand.

Oliver backed warily away and sat down at a safe distance, his tail wagging rapidly underneath his haunches. "Come here, Oliver," I said. He didn't, so I ended up going there. With him, I basically unloaded the water over his head and back and briskly massaged out of his thick black hair as much dirt as I could. I walked back over to the spigot and filled up the bowl again. When I turned around to unleash more Cleaning Vitriol, I saw Oliver on his back, in the dirt patch (Dogpatch), doing his damnedest to unseat any progress that I had established.

There is a lesson to be learned, here, and that is this: When you wash your doggy, you have to be prepared, and armed with logic. Don't be a spontaneous ignoramus and say to yourself, "Well, I reckon I'll just get as much dirt off the mofo as possible," and dump a water dish on the canine. Especially do not take this strategic tack when you are a tail-wag away from the ever-beckoning Dirt Patch of Joy.

On the plus side, Louie showed off his big brother instincts, licking the evil H-two-Omigod-it-cleans! from Oliver's fat neck. What a good boy....

AND THEN I SAW HIM...

I am sitting on my front porch, smoking a Spirit and enjoying the cool Fall night. It is my kind of weather: dry, invigorating, breezy. The boughs of the oak trees sway with the zephyrs. The moon has made its uncensored appearence earlier in the week, and so now the street is lit only by the street lamps down a dozen houses. They cast all in a slightly unsettling yellow hue. I inhale and expell a dual plume of gray-white cigarette smoke.

I am not but my mood is tense. And I know not why. And but then I see him.

Twelve-and-a-half feet tall? Shorn oblong skull, reflective almost in its lack of color. He (it?) walks (shambles?) in an almost floating gait. From the distance at which I sit, I can't tell if it walks or flies. But it does it so slowly. I should be screeching like a banshee and running to the protection of my hounds. (Oliver is a sumabitch when he gets riled up. And Louie? Well, Louie's got 60 pounds of pressure loaded in his jaws. Lest ye forget.) But I don't. I stay.

And so I sit on my porch, calmly smoking my cigarette and watch as the being approaches. Closer now, I can see that he/it possesses a featureless face. Flat as a shovel, it is, and the "eyes" are crudely-punched black holes. Its nose is a suggestion. Its "mouth" is a dark-ochre slash. It stands almost thirteen feet tall. That is difficult to convey, through print, just how abnormal--and disconcerting--its height is. Consider this: Imagine a man the height of an 18-wheeler walking into your local drug store and buying a pair of sunglasses. Surreal doesn't even begin to explain how I am feeling. It's like watching a tree play golf.

Its arms hang to its shins and I note that at the end of each of its six-fingered hands, four-inch nails (talons?) scrape methodically at the night sky. I can't see its feet. They are--for some reason--obscured, a blur. A tooth loosens in my mouth and I absently spit it out. It bounces off the concrete bottom step and comes to rest on the walkway. The being is two houses down, now, and still I am uneffected. Just curious, truth be told.

The wind intensifies and, through the sighing of the branches, I begin to hear snatches of conversation: "...the oven was off i know the oven was off i know..." and "why did you do this to me?" and "...you to look in the got damned book, it's in the got damned book, you..." and "...lights are brighter than i had thought they would be so bright so brig--"

The being is one house down; and the wind intensifies further. Well.... The sound of the wind intensifies--is a train hurtling down my block?--but there is no overt manifestation of meteorological phenomena. The branches sway just as they had and the newly-fallen leaves spin as they had. The sound, the amplification, is in me. In my head. Between my ears. Behind my eyes. How does one run from Internal? To where does one flee?

I sit. And I wait as the being shambles down the street, not twenty feet from me, directly in front of my house. As it passes me, I smell sulphur and I see cotton-plumps spinning 'round its knees. Its feet are still blurred to me--it ends at the knees and morphs to the concrete of the road. Yet it moves. And as it moves, as it passes before me, it turns its head in my direction, it stares straight at me. Into me.

I am calmly paralyzed on my front stoop. I wouldn't be able to move if I wanted to. Its eyes...nothing and everything. My heart seizes and my breath stops. I am horrified and terrified by what I see in its dusty eyes, yet I am loathe to pull away. Courage or cowardice have nothing to do with it. I cannot pull away. I see Ages in its eyes. I see corrosion and erosion in its eyes. I see the passage of time in its eyes. I see myself naked in a tub, face-down, in its eyes. And I try to close mine, but they will not close. I see...I see. The being speaks not a word to me. It fixes its haunted eyes to mine, and then it slowly turns its massive head back to the straightline.

I finish my smoke and I go to bed.

A SPECIAL DAY

In about five hours, Melissa will have been breathing on this earth for 46 years. She owns a weblog at this site. Perhaps you would like to shoooooooot on over and wish her a happy Day?

Happy birthday, Melissa, my dear sweet sister. And here's to many many more.

=o)