Cat's And Guns

Saturday night it snowed, not a lot, but some anyway. Enough for the oldest boy and I to build snowmen have a snowball war and make snow angels: Enough to forget about rain and mud and the short winter days for a while. Enough to keep a fire burning all day too read books in front of. It’s the first real snow we’ve had since he’s been born.

We also bundled up the littlest one in a snowsuit he got from his cousin. I took a lot of pictures with imaginary film and a few more with the real stuff. Ate chicken soup with dumplings and banana bread muffins. Watched black crows fight over a dead squirrel and watched the cats watch the crows.

We have two cats named Batman and Zane, though they are both girls. They are old and past their hunting days but they will still keep an eye out for a careless bird. Hunched in the window ledge, tail flicking behind them they watch and wait. Pretending that they would pounce on a moments notice given the slightest opportunity. Knowing full well that the very idea of getting their feet wet in the snow is a definite impossibility.

I think our cats would love to own a gun. In fact I think all cats would like to own guns. From high on a window ledge or balcony they would take aim through the scope, slowly following their prey for just the right moment. It seems to me that they have the kind of patience needed to hunt with a gun. They could (and in fact will) sit there for the better part of a day just watching and waiting, knowing that if the perfect opportunity doesn’t come up today there’s always tomorrow.

They would also make sure that they were petted RIGHT with no namby-pamby excursions to someplace like their stomachs or hind legs; that they were fed on time and always had fresh water and a warm fire.

There’s something clean and distant about guns. Something that a cat who didn’t want to get their feet wet in the snow would find appealing.
Our neighbors asked the older boy and I to walk their dog while they were caring for a sick friend yesterday. When we got back the cats had not moved but their eyes were now little slits, watching us all the way from our neighbors till we got inside.

The Parade

She had a basket of daffodils hanging off her elbow. She stood pressed against a storefront window, beneath an awning that protected her from the rain as she sold then for 25 cents apiece.

Lewis and I had taken his 48 Desoto into town to see the parade. He was in it last year, but due to a disagreement with the local Chrysler chapter about suspension and engine modification they had asked for his resignation. “Those old fat bastards were looking for a reason to get rid of me anyway,” he said. So last year he painted it a fire engine red and we parked it right off Pacific Ave. so the floats would see it when they passed by.

Lewis didn’t see her right away. I had caught her out of the corner of my eye and kept my mouth shut. With Trina you never know what you’ll get. She and Lewis had dated a few times, but that was during the Gulf war when he was still wearing his patriotism in the form of an imitation bomber jacket with a two-foot American flag decal on the back. Since then, she had done a little time for meth and found Christ. Lewis got himself a new jacket after Waco and had stopped talking about joining the Marines.

I think she saw that car first and then Lewis. She came right over and started telling him how much she liked the car and asking what he’s been up to and all that. She hardly even said boo to me other than to ask how Sweetie and the boys were doing. I thought she looked good. Better than I’d seen her in the past anyway. I don’t always go for the Christian beauty makeover thing but I gotta say it’s done more for her than meth ever did.

Lewis wound up buying all her flowers and accepting an invitation to her church as well. He tried to buy her a cup of coffee but she said she had to catch up with her daughter who was watching the parade with some of her friends. He asked if he could call her and she said she would meet him this Sunday. From there they would see.

After she left, Lewis didn’t seem to have much interest in the parade. He had missed seeing his old car club pass by as he was talking to Trina but I don’t think it bothered him all that much. We took off for Frisco Freeze for some lunch and then wound up cruising Ruston Way for the rest of the afternoon. The waterfront was empty on account of the rain and the parade but that didn’t seem to matter. He just kept on steering that old boat from puddle to puddle, driving that one stretch of road like it was summer and we were in high school. Past the dock, past the smelter, looking for seagulls to scatter to the wind.

Nothing

Well the old site just blasted through the 2000 viewers mark this last week. Minnie’s bang-up job fixing my page made it a lot easier to update and I think people are going back to look for updates more often now. I know I find myself not as fearful of updating as I used to be, so I don’t avoid doing it as much.

Getting everything ready for the gig on Friday night at Kings Coffee in Tacoma. We’ve named the band The Prairie Dogs (thanks to sweetie) and Doug Mackey (from Mr. Blackwatch) said he’d warm us up. Right now we have about twelve songs we can play and that should get us right around and hour and a half. Just perfect.

I sent out the gig email today so if your reading this and you didn’t get one you know what to do. Get your self on the mailing list so you can keep up with my non-existent music career.

On the home front our health woes never seen to end. The older boy threw up all over his bed around midnight and after cleaning him up and changing the bedding and everything the younger one was wide awake and pissed. I took him in to our bed to see if he’d go to sleep in there but that just seemed to piss him off more. Finally Sweetie changed places with me and I slept by the older one with the barf bucked in one hand in case it was needed. It wasn’t, but that doesn’t mean that I got any sleep. His, is an awfully small bed and I felt like I went through a grinder by the time I woke up.

I gotta say that I’m getting a little tired of constantly doing the medical updates for the Forums… I’d like to think that I have a life outside of cleaning up puke, but right now I’d say that’s delusional. Still, it’s time to move on from healthcare issues in this space, even if it is all consuming at home.

Ones life is only how one sees themselves in it. Even Cary Grant took years to become Cary Grant and he got to play the part in movies for years.

Minnie and Otto

Well Minnie and Otto headed back to the central states, and that leaves our home a little quieter than it has been. Played a gig on Saturday night at a local coffee shop, warming up for some friends in a band called Mr. Blackwatch (www.misterblackwatch.com) The people who were going to warm up for them had backed out so they called me in a bit of a bind. Fact was I was happy to do it, being that I don’t get out and play as much as I’d like to. I had warmed up for Mr. Blackwatch before and in fact have been in various bands with some of the members over the years. Though their music is a little more atmospheric or mood driven than mine is, it was just fun to play and catch up on old times.

The only drag was that I really didn’t have enough time to get ready, so the show was a little rough to say the least. Got a very nice response from the crowd though and Rick, the guy who owns the place, asked me to play again. So I’ll be appearing with my good friend Michael Shin at King’s Coffee on the 18th of January. I’ll be sending out an e-mail with all the details, so be sure to send me your address if you’d like to go.

Friday night we all wound up at the Java Jive after much beer and pizza from The Cloverleaf Tavern. Friday night is Karaoke night but there was hardly anyone there so it was up to us to liven the place up. Karaoke is not something I’m usually that interested in but given enough beer, boredom and a desperate need to not to go home too early because we have a baby sitter, I will upon occasion imbibe. Somehow over the years the Java Jive has gone from very, very strange to Tacoma hip. It would be cool to say that it didn’t change and that the rest of the world has caught up to it’s strangeness but that’s not the case. Like most things out here in the Pacific Northwest you can date them pre and post 1990. Old Tacoma (pre-1990), just like old Seattle, is pretty much gone for good replaced by alehouses and coffee shops. Tacoma is slowly loosing its blue-collar edge and for better or worse the Java Jive is changing right along with it. They still have the best fries around though.

New Years

Happy New Year all! Time sure is a fast mover when you get over the age of 30, Itellyouwhat. I’m just starting to get the hang of writing 2000 on the tops of my checks and now I gotta learn 2002. What the hell happened to 2001?

Minnie and Otto have finally made it out to the Pacific Northwest and spent a few days hanging out with us and enjoying all Tacoma has to offer. Spent last Saturday up at the pass inner tubing with the older boy and Otto. The older boy had been a little disappointed these last few years in the amount of snowfall we’ve had here in the low-lying areas. I had told him that if there wasn’t any snow by this Christmas we’d go up to the mountain and find us some, so that’s what we did. Sweetie and Minnie took the littlest one to a bar, did some catching up and had a drink.

Somehow in the midst of all the snow and parties and guests, the littlest one managed to come down with something. New Years Eve, Sweetie and I we’re all dressed up and ready to go when she decided that he felt a little warm so she took his temperature: °102.5, crap! Any time you have a kid with a suppressed immune system who sports a fever of over 102 you have to take him in. That meant a trip to the emergency room to get all his labs done and make sure it’s not an infection. Sweetie went and I stayed home with the older boy. I don’t like going by myself anymore cause it always seems like the shit hits the fan if it’s just me and the boy and we wind up in the ICU or someplace like that. Sweetie wound up bringing him home with an IV still in his wrist because there was no way in hell she was spending New Years alone with the boy in some hospital room making sure that his meds are there on time.

We took him back on New Years day for some more antibiotics and they took the IV line out and said we were free to go. I wound up taking both boys to our pediatrician the next day and find out the older one has Strep Throat! (See what I’m talking about when it’s just the boys and me?) So off we go with our prescriptions in hand to the Pharmacy to drop them off and then home. I had forgotten some tubing I needed to give the littlest one his anti-rejection meds so we ran home to get that and as I’m getting the boys out of the car I’m hearing this hissing sound. The front tire has a leak. So I toss the boys back in the car, and head out to Kirks place to get it repaired before it gets flat. Only problem is on the way there I’m stuck behind a driver that’s just wasted and is swerving all over the road driving the oncoming cars into ditches. I thought I was going to have to pull someone out of a head-on collision before I got there Itellyouwhat. I couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman driving but they we’re out of their mind drunk. We managed to get there right before I started riding on the rims.

Minnie and Otto are visiting some other friends around here before they head back to the Midwest on Sunday. Said they would try and stop by again before they head out. Minnie did some work on my web page in the Past Forum part. It’ll make it easier for me to update so hopefully I can do that more often.

Here’s to hoping that all hospital stays are in the past and that the New Year finds us healthy, wealthy and mercifully a little bit wiser. Cheers!