My Cousin Elmo says, “The only reason I speed is to get there before I forget where I’m going. Yeah, the cop didn’t buy it either.”

As I sat down to begin the job of researching news articles and seeing whom I might be able to call or visit to get a quote or statement, my wife came into the room, looked around, and sighed heavily.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“This mess,” she answered. “What am I going to do with it if you die before me?”

“Honestly,” I returned, a bit surprised, “I haven’t a clue.”

“Then we should get rid of it,” she said.

“That is easier said than done,” I protested.

“Why, if you don’t have any plans for all this crap?” she added.

It was my turn to sigh.

“All I want when I die is to be remembered for more than taking up space,” I said. “I don’t want to be famous, and I don’t need butt-loads of money, I jus’ wanna be remembered as someone who wore his heart on his sleeve and worked hard to make that happen by writing, painting, taking pictures and collecting stuff that people tend to no longer value.”

“So, in other words I’m stuck with all this shit until after your dead,” she replied.

“Pretty much,” I smiled. “Unless you kick the bucket first.”

Instead of writing as I would have liked to have been doing, my day has been a myriad of chores. That is how Wednesday’s go as it is the only day I have off from my usual duties — in other words, I do not chase news stories on this day.

No. Wednesdays are filled with stripping the beds, washing and drying the sheets, and then remaking the beds. I also do all of the towels in the house, from both bathrooms to the kitchen.

I also wash all of the white cloths, fold and put them away.

Between washing, drying, folding, making, and hanging, I listen to music or do some reading. This morning I picked up my old copy of Gray’s Anatomy for no particular reason.

The book is a bunch of line drawings of the human body and labels. I used to use it for my emergency medical studies.

As I was looking at an illustration of the foot, I saw the name of the small strap of muscle that controls the outward flexion of the little toe. It is called the “abductor minimi digiti.”

Our hands have the same muscle, which also controls the outward flexion of the little finger. While I was quick to realize I could flex my little fingers outward from the accompanying four, I cannot move my little toes in the same manner.

Because I became obsessed with making my little toes do my bidding, I ended up behind in my chores. And this is why I am so late in writing this evening.

I have concluded that my little toes are not actually attached to my nervous system, and therefore the little band of muscle is as beneficial as a ruptured appendix.

It’s been a long-held belief of mine that the politics between plants and drought are a double-edged sword that cuts both ways. Case in point…

A new Nevada law outlaws about 31 percent of the grass in the Las Vegas area to conserve water.

The ban targets what the Southern Nevada Water Authority calls “non-functional turf.” It applies to grass that virtually no one uses at office parks, in street medians, and at entrances to housing developments, but excludes single-family homes, parks, and golf courses.

The measure requires the replacement of about six square miles of grass in the metro Las Vegas area. By ripping it out, water officials estimate the region can conserve 10 percent of the water supply and save about 11 gallons per person per day in an area with about 2.3 million people.

When the ban takes effect in 2027, it will apply only to Southern Nevada Water Authority jurisdiction, including Las Vegas.

Meanwhile, Tiehm’s buckwheat, which grows only in Nevada’s high desert, should be protected according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

The six-inch tall wildflower with yellow blooms is fewer than 30,000 individual plants and hasn’t been found growing anywhere else in the world. It can only be found along Rhyolite Ridge, west of the Town of Tonopah, in the Silver Peak Range.

This is “another man-made problem” problem.

My Cousin Elmo says, “According to Facebook, I have a very anti-social life.”

My Cousin Elmo says, “I’m in Home Depot and some little shit called me an old fart. So, if you are missing your kid, they’re on aisle 17, red dryer.”

It was jus’ before midnight as I left my friend’s home in Virginia City. Once out the front door, there is a set of well-lit stairs to the right of the porch.

The night breeze coming down from Sun Moutain, now known as Mt. Davidson, felt delicious, and so I paused, letting it cool me off. As I stood there, I saw a quick movement from the side of my eye.

Someone had peeked around the corner at the bottom of the stairs. I was sure they were planning to scare the crap out of me.

“Hello?” I called. “I saw you.”

No answer.

So I raced down the stairs to see if I could catch them. As I did this, I turned my camera on and let the flash engage.

My plan was to ‘blind’ them temporarily. It did not work out that way.

When the flash lit the area beyond the corner, I realized I was not dealing with anything ordinary. Whatever it was, it left my butt puckered as I stumbled up the stairs and ran to my truck.

A tall, beautifully-built blonde with green eyes met him at her apartment door as he was preparing to knock. Vicky had a way of doing that to Tim.

Raised in what some would call a “commune,” but what followers believed was a “community, Vicky intrigued him, and he hoped that he did more for her than that. She was like two different people, one fun-loving and adventurous, the other academic, serious, and he was still learning to distinguish between the two.

She was fun-loving and adventurous today.

“I have a surprise for you,” she said as she pulled the door closed behind her.

Tim followed her out to her Mini Cooper, “But we can’t take my car, so we’ll have to take your truck.”

“No prob,” Tim said.

Forty-five minutes later and several miles of rugged dirt road behind them, they came to a rise that overlooked a ghost town hidden in the folds of the Nevada desert. Vicky smiled as she watched the look of amazement on Tim’s face.

“Wow,” he said.

“I knew you’d love it,” she said.

They slowly drove down the steep embankment and into the wide center strip of land that had served as the main street at one point. The buildings, though old and abandoned, were in good shape.

Tim reached behind the seat of his truck and pulled out his camera. Vicky could see that he was excited about the photographic possibilities of the place.

“How did you find this?” Tim asked.

“I didn’t,” she answered. “It found me.”

He wanted to ask her to explain, but it wasn’t the first time she had said this, so he knew it was useless. Instead, he allowed his mind to wander to a favorite subject, the Spann Ranch.

The ranch, as it was known, had been a one-time movie set. Forgotten since the hay-day of Western films, save for Charlie Manson and his followers, Spann was hardly used, except for a hang-out.

Not counting location, the abandoned town could be the same.

Without thinking, he said, “And to think I’m here with a woman whose family was considered ‘the Manson family of the East Coast.’”

The smile slipped from Vicky Lester’s face as she replied, “I know, why do you think I brought you out here.”

Tim felt a sudden chill of death’s hand surge over his body as he came to realize his mistake.

It was no surprise that my wife knew about the possibility of having to get a booster shot for COVID-19. It was also not surprising that she did not know about the Freedom Of Information Act that netted three thousand emails from Dr. Anthony Fauci’s government account.

While I do not want to go into the email’s contents, I will say that Fauci’s integrity is under fire. They are online and searchable if you are interested in learning more details.

That aside, I have not liked the man since the AIDS ‘epidemic.’ I like him even less since I recognized a pattern.

In many of his emails, he seems to agree COVID-19 may have been a viral bat-to-human transfer. We know that is not untrue.

It is the same direction he took with AIDS. In 1984, the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases reported that HIV (the virus that causes AIDS) might be a monkey-to-human viral transfer.

Though no one knew it at the time, Fauci is the one who developed that theory. So when I heard of the bat-to-human viral transfer premise and that Fauci was involved, I knew it to be bull shit.

My Cousin Elmo says, “I decided to get ahead of the game today, so I woke up pre-pissed off.”