Work, work, work. Been out in the garage busting through drywall in order to put in a new electrical outlet. I don’t get to do the work as Mary has someone she’s had do work at her old job, coming out to install it. Ain’t gonna see me crying about not having to do extra construction.

She’s also lined up someone to insulate and hang drywall in the garage. No crying over that either. I am laughing though, as I wanted to do this shit back when we were younger and had the body for such work. Her reasons are different from mine. She’s wanting it done to keep her new freezer from getting warm.

Don’t see the irony in that? Hmm…

Gripped a slab of drywall and yanked on it and ended up breathing in a bunch of the dust and plaster. Choked off my airway. I finally laughed and when I did, I blew a big white puff of crap out my mouth. That made both my wife and our house guests laugh till they retired to house. So glad I could make their day.

Got up after both woman and when I came out to get a cup of coffee, first there was no more and I had to make some, and second my wife, while attempting to pay me a compliment, said, “You look like a young Ernest Hemingway.”

I smiled, responding, “So I look like death warmed over, huh?” making them both laugh.

Decided to take a quick shower while the coffee was running through it’s second brew. Got finished, dried and dressed, only to come back out and find all the coffee was gone. I must have had a confounded look of stupidity on my face, because no sooner did turn around and look at the two all-too innocent looking women at the dining table, they started busting a gut laughing.

“Good one,” I said as they showed me the extra large cup in which one of them pour the full pot of coffee into.

I did not share.

It’s not often that I get to use my sophomoric radio humor on someone other than Mary. In most cases she simply looks at me with that eye roll that says, “Oh, christ…” so it is nice to have a fresh audience, which is what Cathy makes.

Since we’re her way-station, she’s been busy with the process of packing away supplies for her trip to the cabin. To wit: Cathy filled two large plastic bottles of water and as she carried them to her room, where Mary’s new freezer is residing, I said in my best barroom voice, “Nice jugs.”

Without missing a beat, Cathy held both up and stated, “And they’re Diamonds.”

I looked at the blue printing and by god, she was right. They are diamonds and we both fell about the place, laughing. Mary admonished us in a half-assed and laughing way, “You two.”

Got laundry to wash, dry and fold before lunch. Perhaps there’s a cold Guinness in my future.

With the white clothes washed, dried and put away, the three of us went to lunch. Chili’s. I had the chili burger, fries and a beer. A Dirty Wookie. Never had one of those before and it was good, not a Guinness good, but good none-the-less. There was so much food in front of me, along with the chips and dip, and Mary’s corn on the cob, and my beer, that I had a lot to eat.

“You need to clean your plate, young man,” our waitress ordered. I was hoping that she was smiling when she said this.

“Aye-aye,” I grinned and proceeded to do exactly that. As a seated customer, I didn’t have my mask on.

It wasn’t until we were in another shopping center that I realized that I forgot to collect my gold star for being a good boy, by eating everything on my plate. Thank you, Cathy, for lunch. I enjoyed it. I’m beginning to feel popular again as this is the second time this week that I’ve been out to a sit-down restaurant.

I am still so full!

As I sat in the car waiting for Mary and Cathy to return from the candy store they shopping at, I was watching the parking lot. Lots of women with gorgeous bodies, too bad everyone of their face masks were up and I could seen nothing more than eyes and eyebrows. Too bad. Can’t help but think about the March 1979 Bellamy Brother’s song, “If I said you had a beautiful body, would you hold it against me.” They said nothing, absolutely nothing, about faces and that works for me.

We are planning to barbecue some steaks this evening. It looks like I’ll be doing this under threatening skies, thunderclouds again and a flash flood warning. Don’t expect to see much flooding or that much rain for the matter. But that light show should be spectacular through the smoky grill’s chimney.

Lord, lord, lord, I am miserable as I ate far too much today. Lunch should have been my last full meal, but them Mary made and served her chicken enchilada’s and Spanish rice. I couldn’t refuse. Now I sitting around, and I do mean around, with my jeans undone and passing gas. Good thing I’m in the other room at the moment.

As we were cleaning up following dinner, my wife and her friend started talking about Cathy having to use an outside at this cabin. Listening to the conversation I think there is a homemade commode inside to use if needed.

“I don’t want to go out there after night because I don’t want to run into any wild animals,” Cathy said, “I mean a deer is fine but a bear or a cougar, no.”

Couldn’t help myself and responded, “Well, if it’s a cougar then — that would mean there are two cougars out there.”

Laughter all around.

The garage has two new electrical outlets. Cost 120-bucks. Not bad I guess. Another case of irony is the guy putting the electric works, did so during a lightning storm. Perhaps I’m the only one that see the humor in that, proving how odd my mind is.

As for that storm, it caused some problems for the folks on the east side of our valley, the Wingfield Springs area, by causing a pretty good sized wildfire. This is the second blaze they’ve had in the last couple of weeks.

Rushed down to the end of our road and did my best to video tape it with my cellphone, but while I could see the orange flames dancing jus’ over the top of some trees, they didn’t show up in the capture. All I really got was smoke. Smoke is never as exciting as the sizzle or the flame.

Seeing how this ‘stream of consciousness’ stuff’s being received in a lukewarm fashion tells me that I may have to change up what and how I write. I’m gonna give it another day as I brainstorm and sort things out.

So, if we become a cashless society, how will I be able to tip a stripper?

It’s been a strange day for sure. Sat out back for a couple of hours after my son brought over his wife’s childhood friend’s dog, Bailey, for us to sit while they went to Donner Lake for the day. Bailey has not been happy with the arrangement and has been laying at our front door, whining for his human. I think I’d be crying for mine too if I were left in a strange environment with no way of communicating my displeasure.

While playing with the dogs, trying to exhaust them so that they’d rest a little while in the late afternoon and before their doggy din-din, my dog, Buddy accidentally got a tooth caught in my shorts and ripped the ass out of them completely. He was going after the tennis ball I had in my hand and missed. It was a rather close shave for my left ass-cheek. He had a rather large target, one that’s hard to to miss.

Not only did the spring hinges prove difficult to adjust properly, the damn door leading from the front room to the garage refused to completely close. Discovered that one of the hinges was broken and that it refused to fold shut itself. So the job is only two-thirds finished when it come to this particular door.

I hope to get to the hardware store to replace and install it while the two women are off lunching tomorrow afternoon.

Mary has been busy cleaning the house as we’re expecting company for the next two days. Her childhood friend, Cathy will be using our home a way-stop for gathering supplies and such, before she takes her tuck and heads for the hills for a week. This is an annual thing now, Cathy having stopped over last year too.

“I’ll let you know when I get ready to mop,” my wife said.

“Okay,” I answered from the back room.

After a few minutes, “Hey, be careful, the floors wet where I mopped.”

“Okay,” I respond.

Later, she asked, “I thought you were gonna help me mop?”

“I was,” I answered, “But you told me to be careful of the wet floors, so figured you were done.”

“You could have come out and taken over for me.”

“Ah-ha!” I say to myself, adding, “Match, set, game. No l’oeuf there.”

She finally got me off the bench into the game this evening…

Before I could sit down and work on this, I had to do some touching up in the living room. Though Mary swept and mopped the floors earlier, all four doggos tracked in dirt, drooled water spots, and furred up the place. Kind of forgot how much work having four pooches roaming to-and-fro can be.

Then while getting ready to back out of the driveway, a streak of white thread zipped across the darkening skies to the east. A thunderstorm. My first thought is of Cathy who is flying in with that raging through the our air and next Mary, who is en route to pick her up from the airport. I don’t envy either woman.

As it is, I may have to turn this computer off to prevent a possible power surge. Admittedly, I am going to push my luck on this one because I want to get this journal finished. Like I stated at the beginning, “strange day.”

Anyway, I never got to take a shower, nor did I get to paint today. Best laid plan and all that. While it is top of mind, thank you for all the birthday wishes. Mary hid a birthday card in our refrigerator, leaving it for me to find when I went to get myself a snack late in the night.

Lastly, I had a very vivid dream that has stayed with me even after I had my coffee this morning. Sometimes dreams don’t stay for long. They’re like wisps of fine mist, not patches of heavy fog. I’ve had lots of fog the last few days. Anyway, in this dream a couple went to the beach, where she stripped down and was taken into the ocean by a Cthulhu-type creature, who was going to teacher her how to make desserts.

Honest, I haven’t had a drop in two-weeks.

I’m wanting to quit reading this book, ‘Big Sur.’ It’s hard to invite a man, syllable-by-syllable into your head, then read in his own words, how he is drinking himself into an early grave. Makes me want to break out into a high flying semper fidelity fit.

That sounds like a bunch of hypodermic needle hip-ship. But no drugs, nothing, all-natural, not even the drink to cause my thought process to unfold in such a psychedelic phase, jus’ this damned book!

This from a mind, my mind, that wants to say more, but has neither the intelligence to put into thought, nor the words. I’ve been caught, flat-footed, standing out on a barren landscape, scratching my ass from this one.

It’s a mind that doesn’t fully sleep even when it is sleeping. My dream-state remains plugged in and fully charged, tuned into the oldies on that made-up memory chart, the kind ever so rarely’s in tune musically with my circadian rhythm that a sleeper is supposed to have to successfully navigate through the nocturnal.

But I am an abnormal person. My body has been born in tune with night owl’s rum-dumb life under phony lights and lamps.

Furthermore, how can I set myself loosed when it’s God’s brain power that I operate on? No thought is mine alone, for He is the salesman, the One with all the stories. I am merely an instrument; one of a multitude and akin to all His stars in the universe.

Maybe it is laughter that I need. It is a sounds which comes, goes, arrives and fades like a wind from off the sea, over mountain top, through tree branches across the desert to me.

This is how I like my days, with coffee and imagination and sometimes a general dare to go beyond my emotional bounds, break my mental bonds, into that space only I can explore and describe, if I had a full grasp on those needed works to complete the work. So who needs drugs or drink to find that they are lost, alone and hurting? Not this old man for I’m fully equipped to find myself, rescue myself, fail myself.

In other words, and there are always other words, the medicine in that needle, that button of peyote, that final dribble at the bottom of that bottle are not the drug I need to aid me in telling my stories. My mind is my fix and it keeps me awake at night, deep into morning, brain click-clacking like an old manual typewriter, that rolls along in the misshapen form of a locomotive, emphasis on loco, heading over here, there, somewhere and nowhere all at once. There is no siding, no rest, only full-throttle fatigue where the head-on crash becomes imminent and impossible to avoid.

But it is a flat-afternoon now, dry, dead air and heat. I can tell that it is flat by the puffs of white cotton, gray, even bottoms, resolutely shapeless and altogether billowy at once. This too, will not last long as finally a leave overhead begins to shimmy a shadowed strip-tease, wolf-whistling in the fact that a breeze is picking up, moving west to east. The cloud, that puffy slacker, the one which builds up higher and higher, into a striking thunderhead will be well on its way from here to there within the hour and another tick upward of the red-glassed thermometer beneath the house’s eve.

I am no quitter. At least not yet, not till my death…

It may be difficult, but I shall finish what I’ve started, including this dusty, worn-out book, published the year I was born. I’ll read it cover to cover. I do, however, feel like the dog’s red water bucket, filled with floating mud water, mud clumps at the bottom.

“Dog germs!” Charlie’s friend, Lucy screams.

And soon I’ll decamp from this chair that I dragged into the under-shade of our aspen. And like that red bucket, I shall empty it and refill it. This is in my nature, and that bucket with the mud, and me, share a terrible inert languor: we each seek refilling after dirtying ourselves, whether by our own doing or another.

In the end, I only selected this spot to scribble because I wanted to exhaust the dogs in the heat while spilling a few words on to a spare sheet of paper. Notes actually, and all about this day or perhaps some other day.

There’s also a strange and gentle sameness to it all, as I absorb it, take in, find refill, so that I might spend it in awe, record my findings, then sending them out like a kindergartner on her first day away from mother, screaming.

That god-damned chapter won’t read itself.

Woke to hearing my wife say ‘Happy birthday.’ Made me smile until I remembered how horribly I treated her the day before, having gotten angry over something trivia; the removal and exchange of a blind from one bedroom to the next.

I can be a very thoughtless man at times.

Sadly, no birthday cards in the mail for me. I believe that time, the time of the personal touch that a card makes, is passed. Such is water under a bridge.

Not only is today my birthday, it is also the 25-year anniversary of my father’s passing. He had a stroke and was brain dead within minutes of the event.

My wife has been and remains busy. She got up at 0500 hours, took her usual walk, returned home, had breakfast, showered, re-dressed and is gone to the grocery store.

Got up less than ten minutes ago and have only gotten as far as a kitchen chair as I wait for the coffee to finish brewing. She set it up for me, so all I need do is toss the switch. Come on, Mr. Coffee!

Made the mistake of taking my cellphone to bed with me last night. I couldn’t sleep, so instead listened to a few podcasts, which somehow add themselves to my already strange battery of dreams and make for some cockeyed visions.

How it is that my subconscious mind can concoct a scenario whereas I am naked, running through a light drizzle, locked inside a cemetery and awaiting rescue by Robert Stack only to have Minnie Pearl find me, is beyond my ability to understand. I cannot think of one thing in this dream that isn’t somehow frightening – especially a pudgy, pale thing like me, nekked.

It is smoky once again this morning. It is from the Hog and Badger Fires, burning in Siskiyou and Lassen Counties, California with the smoke being blown in during the morning hours and clearing by noon or so.

My son jus’ called to wish me a happy birthday. My day is complete. He and his wife are on their way to Lake Tahoe, with her childhood girlfriend and the girlfriend’s two daughters.

All of the new locks are on, along with door handles and such. Still have some hinges to put on. Not looking forward to those damn spring hinges. Never seem to get them set properly and have to adjust them over-and-over till they are.

We also went to lunch at Red Robin. Had a free birthday burger. Got the Royal Robin, some fries and a Guinness.

“Living large in the land of the free and the home of the brave,” as my old friend Max Volume says.

While there, one of wait-staff and I were clowning around after I misheard what he asked. I thought he asked for a drink of my beer I said yes, trying to hand it to him.

“No, no, no,” he said, “I want you to take a sip of your beer and tell me if it tastes right.”

I did and it did.

“I had one the other night and it tasted like soy sauce to me,” he explained.

“Nope,” I said, “Tastes like beer to me.”

Told him how I misunderstood him and we laughed about the fact that I was willing to give him a drink. That’s the way I am, shirt off my back if need be.

After he left, another of the wait-staff, a woman came over and in hushed tones asked, “Did he take a drink of your beer?”

“No!” I said, “We were jus’ kidding around.”

Now we know who the brown-noser of the outfit is now. I pulled our male waiter aside and warned him that he needs watch out for her.

“She’s looking to make her stripes by being a tattle-tale, and she’s got you in her target,” I said.

Offering me a fist-bump, he let me know he appreciated this. Told you I could be an effing a-hole!

Had to go to Home Depot after lunch for some bondo and a door stopper. Would have gotten two strikers for the doors, but they’re are out of stock. Even with the air on in the building, my glasses remained fogged up and I was sucking hot wind back in from my face mask.

As we were walking up to the front doors, my wife asked, “Remember the good old days when there was a line?”

I answered, “I remember the good old days when we didn’t have to wear these fucking masks.”

Since all I could see of her face by this time were here eyes and eyebrows, I could tell she was serious when she told me not to ‘talk like that.’

“Or what, you’ll wash my mouth out with hand sanitizer?” I thought, but didn’t say.

Then I saw the bottles of sanitizer they had on a table in front of the door for the convenience of their customers. It was a close one.

As is my wife’s nature, she searched around until she found the strikers that she wanted. That means I had to drive back into town to pick them up. I think her drive to finish some projects is more of an overdrive and I end up looking like I’m utterly lazy because I don’t have that same drive.

But this is my problem as this is how I see me and not how she sees me.

Here’s one of the big differences between she and me: she wants activity, me wants adventure. It’s also one of the reasons that she doesn’t enjoy shopping with me.

I tend to find it.

Got to the store, stood in line to pick up the strikers and discovered the guy behind the customer service counter, like me could not hear or understand what I was saying to him, or visa-versa. Then we got to laughing so hard that neither one of us could speak and as we were each wearing glass, we began to steaming up our peepers. This made everything even more funny.

Finally, sides aching, I had to pull down my mask. He did the same.

“I swear the more I have to wear a mask, that harder it is for me to hear,” I said.

“Like turning down the radio in your car helps you read addresses better,” he returned.

Then we got to laughing again and both had to be reminded my the other service tech to pull our masks back up or risk his getting written up and me getting ‘86’d.’

And as I get ready to close out my day, I have plans to do some painting tomorrow. I did go to Walmart and buy a couple of inexpensive canvasses. What I’ll paint, I have no idea. And that’s exactly how I like it.

With all the unrest in the US, Canadian’s must feel like they’re living above a meth lab.

True story…
“Look at what I found in my book,” Mary said.

Half asleep, I rolled over and looked. It was a photograph of our son Kyle, sitting next to Chuck E. Cheese.

“Cool,” I said, smiling, as I turned over with the idea of falling back asleep.

As I drifted off, my brain suddenly kicked into gear. I spiraled back and asked to see it again.

“Where did you find that?” I asked.

“In this book, a marker, I guess,” my wife answered.

“Isn’t that one the paperbacks we bought at the Sally-Anne?” I asked, referring to the Salvation Army.

“Yes.”

“And you found a picture of Kyle in it?”

“Yes.”

“Were you using the photo as a book mark or something?”

“No.”

“So how did it get into the book?”

“I don’t know.”

There was a length of silence between us before she offered, “I read this book a long time ago.”

“When was it published?”

“Nineteen-ninety-eight…you don’t think?” she asked.

“Yeah, I do think. I believe you bought the same book you read years ago and had at one time used that particular photo as a book mark,” I answered, “And you know how I don’t believe in coincidences.”

1843 hours — Soon the sunshine will be removed from the sky and replaced by a multifaceted star shine. That is how most days close when there are no clouds in the sky. And I was honored to sit, looking up, seeing the first twinkle from the vast and coming darkness, so my day is complete.

Never did get my planned shower in, instead spending my time writing. Besides, my wife likes it when I skip a shower because it saves a few cents. During the high heat of the summer months, watering the grass, along with doing the dishes and laundry really plays havoc on the financials.

And speaking of laundry, I must remember to spray my tee-shirt tonight before bed. As terrible as it may sound, I have not changed my clothes since the start of the weekend and it shows by the various stains of sloppy joe from Friday night, Saturday evening’s spaghetti meal and tonight’s chicken wings.

Another thing I will do prior to bedtime is check my various social media statuses. I always end the night as I begin my morning, checking Twitter, where I am participating in a year-long writing exercise. This is all that I use the platform for as it is filled with snatches of news and other snatches busy, trying to take down what’s left of my Americana.

Everything that I have written today, I have also posted. This comes after having been told a couple of days ago that I post too much and that this is the reason that people stop following me or simply disconnect from my social media. I find that a good thing to know, because they’d really be upset with me today.

Finally, my friend Rick McNamara sent me the Ernest Hemingway poem, ‘The Age Demanded.’ He said, and I must absolutely agree, that it describes the culture in 2020:

The age demanded that we sing
And cut away our tongue.
The age demanded that we flow
And hammered in the bung.
The age demanded that we dance
And jammed us into iron pants.
And in the end the age was handed
The sort of shit that it demanded.

I’ve taken the liberty to add my own verse:

The age demanded we go in silence
And with battle axes ready.

1233 hours — Sitting in direct sunshine, dry heat of middle day on my freckled back, I find myself quickly exhausted, a sign, perhaps from God Himself, telling me I’m getting old or am already there. I need to be moving, not seated, not at rest, if I’m to remain outside in this summer’s blast, but I also like to think of myself, bare foot in the freshly mown grass, recharging my astral batteries.

Hardly a sound can be heard, the buzzing bug, a singing bird, and even the raucous laughter of playing children are absent. Seems all have found a place to avoid this heat and the sun’s rays.

And now I return from my daydreaming, learning that I am not paying attention, as looking about, finding myself alone. Even my dogs are smarter than me, the superior being, having escaped to the air conditioned interior of our home, where I can picture each in my mind’s eye, them lay on the brown leather couch, tongues lolling limply from their toothy grins, panting, cooling.

But me, I’ll sit here until I begin to feel that subtle quake, the one that comes from somewhere deep inside me. I’ll pay attention to it, knowing it will grow into a stronger tremble that will tell me I need, that I must, go inside before I grow sick to my stomach and I begin to taste that bile-gas that slowly grows and rises in one’s throat, burning at my esophagus and touching my epiglottis without warning.

Maybe this is something peculiar only to my body, my non-astral body…

Such is a Sunday afternoon of sitting thinking, reciting unwritten prose to myself with the hope of remembering even a fragment of what is mentally stated later as I sit before my notebook. And there’s my quake.

Try as you might, you can’t Febreze all the odor out of bullshit.