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I have an interesting job, to me anyway.

I work in peoples homes, adding stuff or renovating stuff or fixing stuff and sometimes I get to spend some quality time with the folks that own the homes and listen to their stories, their fears, hopes and anxieties, and, if I’m lucky, a real tale.

I was lucky today.

One of my regular customers is on older retired couple (not that that’s strange- I’ve many and many single mothers wondering dispiritedly what the hell happened to their perfect life) whom I’ve always felt a little sad for.

She’s been fighting cancer for a long time and he’s been embracing alcohol for a longer time. Which is fine. Not the cancer part, but the alcohol part- we live at the beach and I’ve often thought that between the constant partying and the salt air drying us out I’m surprised we’re not ALL alcoholics. Or maybe we are. Whatever. Throw the first stone, dude.

Anyway.

I was back working at their house today and she was back in the hospital (but doing well) and he was shakily, jerkily, trying to help me install a new propane gas line from their leaky old tank.

Finally he stopped helping (something I normally charge customers double for) and sat watching me as I dug the ten foot trench to bury the gas line, swinging his big leg back and forth and kinda grinning.

I didn’t pay it much mind until he said- if you find something it’s mine. I shrugged mentally thinking well, hell yes, it’s your house, and kept digging. Whatever dude.

And then he said- if you find a PVC tube it’s full of cocaine and money and pictures of lawyers and judges snorting coke and it’s mine. I buried it years ago when they were chasing me and I forgot where it is and it pisses me off.

And I stopped my digging and I looked up at him and, ya know what?- I don’t know if it was the light glinting off the water or what, but, for a second, for maybe a minute, the years, the decades, washed down off of him and for the briefest of seconds I saw him as he’d been.

His normally bloodshot hooded eyes crackled blue and his smile was one of those engaging, don’t fuck with me just ’cause I’m havin’ fun right this second smiles. His eyes glittered briefly and then he settled, sighing, back into his beat-up old life.

For a second there, though, he was what he’d been.

A pirate.

And honestly? I like him more because of it.

And I wish I’d found the tube.

You know that feeling of exhausted accomplishment you get when you’ve completed something difficult and strenuous? When you sit, panting, head in hands staring blankly at the wall?

That’s how I feel when I finish reading a book by Jose’ Saramago or Hemingway or Faulkner. Kinda like I’ve wrestled something tenuous and tough and come away, if not the winner, at least a little bit better having done it.

Blindness ain’t no exception.

Not only is Jose’s’ work translated from the Portuguese which adds it’s own twist to the story’s tone but he writes in a free-flowing style that buries dialog in the narrative making the whole thing kinda hard to figure out, especially for tiny simple minds like mine.

But it’s good. Way good.

Blindness is the story of an entire country suddenly and inexplicably infected with a white blindness. Think the common cold gone suddenly and dangerously crazy.

But more importantly it’s the story of the doctor’s wife (who can still see), the doctor, the girl with the dark glasses, the boy with the squint, the man with the eye patch, the first blind man and his wife and later, the dog of tears and how they all come together and bear the unbearable.

Blindness explores the worst in human nature while serving up the best in little bitty bits.

Like anything tough and hard and worth doing, reading Blindness will leave you tattooed for good.

So anyway.

I was moving through my day and it was getting late and I had to stop at the bank and the grocery store, but before I did those things I had to stop and let Mr.Greene. slurp up some diesel. At 12 miles a gallon he likes to slurp.

The diesel pumps where we live don’t allow credit cards at the pump. You have to go into the store and surrender your card and then go out and pump your shit and then go BACK in and pay for it.

Pain in the ass, but honestly? usually painless.

Until today.

I pulled up and walked into a line that stretched to the door. At first I just thought it was a busy Friday afternoon. But then I watched and waited and watched and waited.

Two women were at the head of the line buying cigarettes. Simple, yes? You’d think so. But it wasn’t.

The first woman, clutching her silly looking adolescently hopeful pink wallet, kept pointing out  brands she wanted and then changing her mind like she was surprised that the cigarettes she wanted weren’t sold there and nudging her partner.

It would’ve been cute and maybe even laughable if they’d been 20-somethings in thong bikinis and high heels. But they weren’t. They were the older, used up, rode hard and put away wet chicks, plumply primping their bristly hard straw colored hair and dark tints that they think make them look edgy and cool but screams too much salon time and wearing those big, garish, rings on their mannish fatty fingers that are either trailerpark trash fake or the marrying and burying rich old guys real thing.

Whew. How’s that for a sentence?

Anyway.

They both had that dusky, smoky, end of the bar , been that, done that, sort of voice that maybe boys masturbate to, but men steer clear of.

And as I watched them holding up life while they went through their stupid routine of blondness gone old and not cute I got mad. And then I got sad at how pathetic their badly bleached blond lives had become.

What if this was the highlight of their rum soaked middle-aged do-nothing lives?

Sad.

But I still wanted to punch them when they finally walked by me.

Moms came down for a visit this weekend and brought her new dog Bob with her. Bob is a three year old rescue and he’s part beagle and part something with short legs. He’s 20lbs. of heart wrench that walked into our house and decided he was in charge.

And Cutter and Tug agreed.

After he’d made the grand tour and sniffed everything and taken a poop in the middle of the living room, Bob jumped up on the couch, made himself nice and comfy on the pillows, and growled at Cutter and Tug if they dared join him.

And since they are pussies they immediately backed down and spent the entire weekend cowering between my legs, hiding from the terrible Bob. Honestly, they are SUCH pussies.

To make matters worse, or better, depending on your point of view, Miss Carol fell hard for Bob. He was soooo cuuuute she just couldn’t stop picking him up and hugging him and every time she did the boys would look up at me with their WTF? eyes. And I’d be like- sorry dudes. It got so bad that by the time Moms was leaving, Miss Carol carried Bob across the lawn and put him on his blankie on the back seat of Moms car.

Then, while we were standing arm in arm waving goodbye she turned to me and said that she wouldn’t mind having a little dog like Bob around our house because he was soooo cuuuute and because she swore he’d had a little tear in his eye when she’d laid him down.

Jesus fuck.

So I hugged her and told her she’d probably been squeezing him too tight.

Twice a day, everyday, when I walk the boys, it’s not enough that they have to pee on every scent, on every plant, bush, rock, and mailbox, on every garbage can, and on every little kid standing still that we happen to come across on the same one mile loop we ALWAYS walk.

No way.

That ain’t near enough. They gotta top the yellow stream with the pee pee dance-its like it’s their end-zone celebration- their slamming the ball down and dancing off, hip-hoppin’ sideways to the roaring crowds.

This is how it goes-

They snuffle up something worth peeing on which is anything and everything and then they lift opposing legs and pee on each other and then, while they’re reveling in the warm gift they’ve given each other, they happily root?, or rut?

They both become furry little rototillers, churning up the grass and sand and dirt and hurling it back behind them in huge clumps.

It’d be cute if they did it once every now and again.

But they have to do it EVERY time they pee- which is like every ten feet?

I don’t get it- is it because they still have their dangly bits?

Ya know how some days you’re just off the charts chatty?

Shit’s clickin’ and you’re feelin’ like every little word droppin’ off your lips is some kinda pearl of wisdom that everyone needs and wants to hear and muse over?

The kinda shit that you think people would just want to roll over and over in their minds and hands and appreciate and rub smooth like pebbles or snowballs, making them better?

Yeah. So you continue on, giddily full of yourself, secure in the knowledge that others find you as entertaining as you do.

But then reality kicks in and you get a forearm bolt check to the chin and a follow up knee to the twins when Miss Carol says- you know what?

Why don’t you just shut the fuck up?

And you do.

‘Cause you’re good at that too, ’cause it’s something you learned when you were little.

I’ve always loved Stephen King.

Even when he was Richard Bachman.

In the late 60’s and early 70’s King wrote under both names, publishing magazine horror stories as Stephen King and writing novels as Richard Bachman that sold to no one.

Then, later,  as his star streaked meteorically skyward and publishers were clamoring to publish anything and everything he wrote and since there was only so much Stephen King to go around- the Richard Bachman novels slowly started leaking out.

Like Running Man.

Like The Long Walk.

Like Rage.

Like Thinner.

Blaze is the last of them and actually pretty damn good. Stephen King always tells a really good story and has that knack for making you care for his characters whether you like them or not and Blaze is no exception.

In Blaze, King’s homage to Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, Blaze and George are cast as shitheel, low-rent losers who hatch a plan to kidnap the kid of a rich family. Unfortunately George is dead and Blaze is fumblingly going ahead with the plan alone, even though he’s bull-simple. (George’s words, not mine)

It’s classic Stephen King, albeit younger and rawer and less polished.

If you have a chance, pick it up- you can read it in an afternoon and won’t feel like you’ve wasted your time.

Honest.

Yeah, so this weekend was our annual Big Chill- our fishing fueled, alcohol drenched, memory erasing, bikini-clad romp back into adolescence.

Woof.

I LOVE Beaufort

Every year about this time we all converge (we all being a group of decades old friends) on a little cottage in Beaufort NC and hang out and wish we’re younger than we are.

And mostly we succeed. Mostly ’cause we try hard.

Each morning the women make sandwiches while the men drink bloody marys and stare at the Weather Channel wondering what it’s gonna be like offshore.

Then we load everything and everybody up and head out. We drop the women off on an island so they can hunt shells and gossip and suntan and we head out to do manly fishing things.

And it’s cool and it’s fun and it’s one of the best weekends of the year.

But ya know what? Getting back home and having Cutter and Tug proudly jerk and yank me kicking and screaming and cursing around the block makes me realize how much I love home.

Home Sweet Home baby.

On the perfect day of the year I finished the most perfect book I’ve read in a long while.

The History of Love is amazing.

But when I was trying to tell Miss Carol about it and why it was so excellent, I couldn’t think of why it was so perfect.

Did it have bombs and action and car wrecks? Miss Carol asked.

Nope, none of that. I said.

Were there a buncha love scenes that gave you a woodie? Miss Carol purred.

Nooooo, none of those either, I said, blushing.

Then what was it that made soooo great? Miss Carol shrieked, angrily flipping up her hands.

I don’t know. I said.

And that’s when Miss Carol looked at me the way she does when she can’t figure me out or like we’d just met or something, and said- Hmmm, like maybe I was lying or had done something wrong.

But it’s true and I can’t figure it out- it’s just one of the best books I’ve read in a long time. It’s not gonna change the world, it’s not the sorta book that would be a box office hard charger- were anyone ever to make a movie out of it- It’s just good.

It’s good like your first kiss. It’s good like hugging a puppy.

It’s a ten- I loved it.

A coupla months ago, at the beginning of the summer, when I was already tired of tourons, I said to Miss Carol-

We should build a little house on our property in North Carolina. I said

Then we can rent our house to the tourons for the summer. I said.

And come back after they’re gone. I said.

It only makes sense, right?. I said.

And Miss Carol put her drink down and looked at me over her sunglasses and said. NO.

So I was cool with it and didn’t think too much more about it. It wasn’t that big a deal. We have a little land on an island in North Carolina and a little land on a beach on the Outer Banks, so we COULD build a little house on an island and continue to work our jobs and then maybe build an even smaller surf shack on the beach in a year or two and not have to deal with the touron hordes.

But Miss Carol said NO and I was like, whatever.

Then, just a coupla weeks ago, we were sitting on the beach and I was sipping a beer, babe watching while pretending to search the horizon for boats and Miss Carol said-

She said- We should build a little house on our property in North Carolina.

She said- Then we can rent our house during the summer.

She said- And come back after the tourons are gone.

She said- It only makes sense, right?

I’m just glad I was wearing shades so she couldn’t see my eyes. I picked my jaw up from my lap and snapped it back into place and just like that- that’s what we’re gonna do.

So I started the permit work with the county and got a commitment from the power company to have temporary service for construction installed by mid-October.

I’d like to have the house dried in before December so I can spend the really cold nasty months finishing the interior.

I’ll be posting about all of this because I want to build this little house on stilts for under 60K. I’m being told I’m crazy. We’ll see.

But that’s not all.

Further ch-ch-ch-changes include changes to oceandoggy.com and other stuff. I’ve bitched and moaned about all of this before but I’m getting blogged down and need to freshen and change things.

I’m not quite sure how or what form it will take but the changes they are  a’comin.

Change is GOOD, right?