Monthly Archives: September 2009

Everybody knows we are blessed with the most unretrievenous retrievers ever to grace the planet.

We’ve pretty much given up on training them to do anything other than what they want to do and we’re pretty much good with that.

Aim low and you’ll never be disappointed.

But then, the other day, when I was at Wal-Mart picking up dog biscuits I saw the Flying Squirrel in the toy section (which kinda looks like a Flying Squirrel if Flying Squirrels were neon green and had glow-in-the-dark paws) and remembered that someone had e-mailed me months ago saying that THEIR unretrieverable retriever LOVED these things, so of course I bought one.

Hope springs eternal, ya know.

I got home and pulled it out of the bag and Cutter went berserk. Tug was a little interested but Cutter was madly in want.

I took them outside and sent the Flying Squirrel sailing away. It was hilarious. Picture teenage nerds trying to play basketball, all gangly arms and legs and desire and want but no real coordination and that was Cutter running and leaping after this thing. And when he finally got it he actually brought it back. Whoa.

Tug, as usual, just watched and waited.

After the second spastic retrieve Tug attacked and the two of them rolled around wrestling as they are wont to do and then Cutter picked up the Flying Squirrel and ran it inside and chewed it up.

Took about ten minutes. Me and Tug watched.

And then Princess Cutter got up, shook out his coat, and barked for a biscuit like he’d done something good and worthwhile.

I was gonna post about somethin’ else but then somethin’ else happened.

I work by myself, building stuff for people who are power tool challenged. I like it. I feel, I hope, I’m helping them in my little way to build their dreams.

Today, I went by a fairly big job, checking with the subs, answering questions and what not,  and once things were settled I went to another job to build a fence. It was nice and cool and quiet and I was gettin’ into some me time.

My cell rang.

It was a friend of the customer I had just left saying that she had been trying to reach her all morning and she wasn’t answering her phone nor her door and she was worried because she was a fucking manic depressive and had tried to commit suicide the year before and was worried that maybe she had succeeded where she had failed before and could I possibly meet her in twenty minutes back at her house?

Whew.

So I hurried back and pounded on the door. When I didn’t get an answer I tried the knob and, finding it unlocked, went in, yelling her name.

Do you know what it’s like to call out to the maybe dead? It dries up your spit.

I moved through the house, my yells bouncing around, scared what I’d find. When I got to her bedroom I yelled louder ’cause I could see her, a mound under the blankets, with her dog lying next to her.

She didn’t move so I went to her and shook her and she woke up and I told her that her friend was worried sick about her and she needed  to call her and I went back out into the noise and grit of construction around her house and buried myself in it.

Life’s gotta lighten up a little bit.

OK.

Enough already of the dark stormy introspective posts for awhile. Suffice it to say that, after yet another summer of hard partying fun, I’ve made certain promises to myself. Promises that I don’t want to broadcast for fear of the ridicule and snickering when I fail.

But I won’t.

So,  I’ll let ya’ll know what happened last week on November 1st. That way, one way or another it’ll be done. Or well on it’s way. Actually THEY’LL be done- there was, like, 4 things I swore myself to in that moment of shaky weakness.

We’ll see, huh?

On another note- a quick update in response to e-mails about my loser ability to keep a story line going-

MIGHTY WHITEY- I don’t know what I’m gonna do. My most favorite Chevy Suburban is slooooowwwwwwwlyy being re-built and I’m just about at the end of my patience. I’m thinkin’ I might just have her towed out of the shop she’s in and into another to finish it up. Enough already.

WEIGHT LOSS- This is something I touched on a while back. I’ve lost about 50 lbs and Miss Carol has lost so much that sleeping with her is like sleeping with another woman and who amongst us doesn’t chub over that? Ooo baby, baby.

CUTTER AND TUG?- Are fine as frog’s hair. I’ll post soon.

OCEANDOGGY.COM- Thanks to all y’all, I’m not going anywhere. Like Miss Carol says, you’re stuck with me.

Next- Fetch.

So.

You wake up in the early dark hours with your heart squirreling away and you make promises.

I won’t do that anymore.

I’ll try to stop eating those.

I’m gonna start doing more of that.

I’m over it.

No more and no more.

Promise.

And you lay awake staring at the little alarm clock numbers changing while Miss Carol and the dogs snore next to you and you wait, wanting to sleep and knowing it’s done.

Finally it’s time you can get up.

Outside a storm’s blowing rain sideways and you saddle up Cutter and Tug for their morning walk and head out.

Walking along the side of the road in the darkness a school bus plunks through a road lake drenching you and the dogs.

It’s gonna be one of THOSE days.

motherfuckermotherfuckermotherfuckermotherfuckermotherfuckermotherfucker

When you get back, you towel the dogs off, give ’em treats and food and water, change your clothes, and head out to work.

But as you climb up into Big Black and drive up the street towards the beach the sun breaks through briefly and brightly and-

Something clicks.

And just like that it was over, a memory rapidly fading.

On Monday, the 2009 Touron Season ended, as did one of the bigger weekends of me and Miss Carol’s summer, and maybe possibly my life.

So.

When I started this post I had intended to write a detailed account of our weekend complete with, in no particular order, house guests, beachness and boating, pergola building, attending a 60th birthday party and a wedding in New York, all replete with the overabundance of food and alcohol that holiday weekends always inspire.

And don’t get me wrong we had a blast. But.

As I typed, my fingers numbed to the stupidness that is my life and I slowly realized I’m facing the same fork in the road that I’ve been idling at for way too many years.

The thought pushed me back.

I’ve been lazy. It’s easy to be complacent and lazy. I love easy. I say lazy because while I’ve enjoyed the motivation that writing this blog provides and loved hitting the publish (like it’s really being published) button, my writing hasn’t been good. Nor even close.

For the past year, I think I thought that just posting/writing something, anything, would fill the void, that tepidness in quantity could somehow equal something approaching quality and it doesn’t, nor should it.

So something has to change.

I need a challenge or something looking like it. Whether it’s the challenge of changing the mundane content of oceandoggy.com or doing something that challenges me to write better I’m not quite sure.

But I’m gonna try ’cause the days shorten and the years quicken.

090909.