HidingThe Morning Paper

I was outside in my bare feet. It was really too cold for that but I was out there anyway. The sun was just up and I had my cup off coffee in my hand looking past the stand of cedars that mark the property line. The grass was still wet but I could feel a little of the warm sun on my toes and that made a difference I guess. The difference of me standing here versus going back in side and forgetting the whole thing.

The paperboy was back to playing his game of hide the paper and I decided that this morning I would accept the challenge. “Bring it on,” I said in my most Sly Stalone Rocky II tone of voice. (Or was that Rocky IV, with the Ruskie?) No mater, because coffee cup in hand, I was willing to bare footedly battle the elements to read this mornings headlines.

Where could it have gone? I have, in the past, found its tattered remains strewn amongst the woodpile or in a far off corner under the cinderblock supports that shore up the far end of the trailer. I looked there first of course, then under the car, the fire pit, the kids wading pool and sandbox.

When I say that he hides the paper I don’t mean to imply that he does this on purpose or if the “he” that I’m referring to is in fact even a “he” and not a “she”. I’ve never actually met him/her. I have enough trouble getting out of bed simply to make coffee, much less be part of any sort of early morning social exchange program.

There in the cool morning my pajamas covered in dust and cobwebs, my neighbor Jake who lives in the dark red singlewide that we all jokingly refer to as the brick comes up to me with an envelope in his hand. Jake has a big mouth and an over inflated sense of who he is and how much anyone else cares or thinks about him. He’s fat.

“I’m having a surprise birthday party for Hannah,” he says “and the whole park is invited!”

“Great” I lie, “when is it and what do we need to bring?”

The one great thing about having been together with Sweetie for so long is that now I know which questions to ask so as to feign interest. A surprise birthday party… That’s great.

I’d met Hannah once before at Dewy and Hams at their “After The Bash Hash” last new years day morning. She wouldn’t eat anything cause she didn’t know what was in it. She just spent the afternoon with a hand full of carrots and a diet Pepsi.

I have little tolerance for picky eaters and I made no exception in her case. I can’t say that I’m any great observer of people; for the most part I leave that up to Sweetie and would have again if she had been able to shake off that brown bottle flu and come to the party with me. Instead she was at home with an ice pack on her head eating Advil and I was left to fend for myself.

I will say this. She in no way, looked like someone who would enjoy a surprise 30th birthday party held in her honor, ever. She did look like someone who would bite the head off of a so-called husband who would be so insensitive as to plan a surprise party on that day.

“I’ll supply the beer, just bring a dish to share. It’s all in the invite,” he says, and off he goes down the road to drop invitations into all of the other mailboxes.

As he leaves my eye catches a glimpse of the paper sticking out of our mailbox. What our paper carrier was thinking this morning is beyond me. And unless I get my ass out of bed earlier to ask them I guess I’ll never know.

I think about tossing the invitation away right then and there. Sweetie won’t want to go and neither will I, I’m thinking. But I don’t. I take it and the morning paper and go back in to see if all my bumping about has woken anyone up.

Sweetie thinks that one dish to share is a small, small price to pay to watch an episode of Cops being made. Hell, we don’t live the most exciting of lives anymore anyway. Who are we to turn up our noses at a free beer?

Nothing

We’ll all in all it’s been a quiet week. The little one continues to get a bit stronger every day. The older one keeps getting older…funny how that works.

The sun, which had hidden its self for so long has finally come out of hiding and turned the weather towards spring.

I haven’t had much time to update this site this week as I’d like. I’ve been working on a web page for my band, the Prairie Dogs. Just something that would give dates of gigs, cd information and things like that.

The movie that I did the soundtrack to (kennewickman: an epic tale of the west) was shown at a film festival in North Carolina this past weekend. I haven’t heard yet how the screening went but I think it’s a very good movie and I’m sure it did fine.

I’ll try to get back to some real writing (whatever that is) next week. So until then you can listen to some new music I just put up.

A Letter To Rev. Trotter

What follows is a letter I wrote to my good friend the Reverend Trotter. It just seemed like a good way to show where my mind is at lately.

Dear Reverend:

There was this article in today’s paper on the front page, the mental health issue, and I thought of you over coffee this morning. I didn't read it or anything...just saw it and said, "hmm, another article about the crazy people in Washington that the good Reverend Trotter works with."

I like the fact that the articles in regard to your livelihood find their way on the front page of the newspaper from time to time. That seems to happen less frequently with my livelihood; likely due to the fact that we have our own section I suppose. The fact that we do should make me feel proud about the profession that I've chosen, but somehow it doesn't really. My section seems out of the way and cold, buried near the K-Mart inserts and the classifieds. After the comics but before the junk.

And here is where you say..."What about Enron, Bill Gates, NASDAQ's decline, Pioneer closing? That's all front page news."

And you'd be right of course. In my narrow mindedness I've misappropriated the facts.

I want to believe it's the crazy people who make the news these days. That it's all suicide bombers and presidents with "shadow" governments playing nuclear war games. That we can park in the handicap spot near the mall and refuse all charges placed on our Karma bill. That now that all products can no longer be repaired we can shore up the economy by re-buying things we already own. That we've become a nation of sad eyed clowns holding up our daisy of Americanism as a shield against our rampant id.

But it's not "crazy people" that make the most news it’s just crazy...crazy. Like what you read to make "crazy" go down a little easier. "Woman drowns all four of her children: not insane says Texas jurors" "People might become more crazy if untreated, say Western specialists" "Museum of Glass needs more parking to come into state compliance" " New dog show is a bread apart".

Texas almost has it right. They’re just killing the wrong thing.

Slack


Dear Slack:

Heavy shit, man. I'm serious. I don't know what to say. Umm...the article was partly about how they're gonna start kicking people out of the nuthouse cause the state is making some pretty deep cuts in mental health care. So...they're gonna give quite a few crazies their walking papers along with two weeks supply of medicine...and down the road...somebody's gonna starve to death...and somebody else is going to shoot themselves...and somebody else is gonna freak out and manage to get himself/herself shot by the cops...and quite a few others will simply "disappear." And, worst of all, I guess, is that I'm watching this happen in front of my eyes and there's nothing I can do because in order for me to "prove" that these discharges are dangerous somebody apparently actually has to end up dead. You have to let the Titanic sink, it seems, before you can convince anybody that lifeboats are a good idea. For some reason, I'm particularly worried about this one guy I know out at the farm named Stewart--he thinks I'm a Catholic priest, by the way--and this big lady who wears her lipstick clown-style and carries around a teddy bear. They're the ones I think about at night.

Holding my daisy,

Rev. Trotter (Ret.)

Nothing

This Saturday night, the 16th of March, my band The Prairie Dogs are playing Kings Coffee again. We played there back in January and had a pretty nice time all in all. I think they liked the size of the crowd we pulled in since they were quick to book us for another show.

We’ve spent the last two months working on a CD that we can sell to family and friends and the like. We finely finished it last week and the picture above is the cover.

We’ve also worked up a bunch of new stuff so even if you’ve seen us before, we have lots of new songs to offer. Doug Mackey, of Mr. Blackwatch said he’d warm us up again and things should get under way right after 8 PM. Kings Coffee doesn’t sell alcohol but there’s a bar right next door where I grabbed a pint before the last gig we played even though the coffee house makes a nice latte if that’s more to your liking.

Other stuff this last week, our littlest one had his second birthday on Thursday and we had a small get together with family and friends on Saturday afternoon. The therapy chair/stroller we finally got for him had to be sent back Friday because it was the wrong size so now we wait and wait again.

We’ll be selling the CD at the gig but if you want one and think you won’t be able to make it drop me an email . I’d be more than happy to send you one.

I’ll see what I can do about getting a song up on the site. Keep checking my notes area to the left this week and I’ll get to it.

Other than that, we’d love to see you this Saturday night so come to the show.

20th Aniversary

This is an extraordinary week by any measure. On Tuesday night Sweetie and I will be celebrating the twentieth anniversary of our first date and on Thursday, the littlest one will have his second birthday.

What makes them both so extraordinary is the improbability of those events happening at all, much less in the same week. When most of the time life feels like driving with your hands off of the wheel, it’s always a surprise when you keep winding up mostly where you wanted to go in the first place. That inexplicably, all roads do lead to the proverbial Rome and that elusive thing we call happiness is found in the most unlikely of places all along the way.

Twenty years ago I started to fall in love with a beautiful, blond haired, blue-eyed girl that had the lead in the school play. She had the one quality that I couldn’t resist: she laughed at my jokes. Twenty years later she will still laugh and as I’ve gotten older I find that that’s all that matters.

Two years ago this Thursday, our youngest boy was born. He almost didn’t live past forty-eight hours, coming as close to death as you can come without stepping over that edge. Of the first ten months of his life, he spent four of them in the hospital. Some of them as near to death as he was in the first few hours after he arrived.

Though I wouldn’t say those were joyous months, we did laugh a lot. Tragedy and comedy are not as I once thought, on opposite sides of the spectrum. They are as close and connected as conjoined twins. In a lot of ways, laughter is the floatation device that keeps your head above water after the ship sinks.

Tuesday night Sweetie and I are getting a sitter for the boys and are going out for dinner. Saturday we’re having a small party for the youngest with family and a few friends. In a lot of ways it will be a week not unlike any other week, full of the same events and the same people that I feel lucky enough to still be around. But in another way, it will be a week that speaks to the wonders of the universe. That in a world that can move in any direction it wants, at any time it wants, isn’t it amazing that this is where I wound up? Not exactly where I thought I’d be, but in a funny way, right where I belong.