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um, I don’t get it.

Granted I typically don’t like short story collections, I don’t like my reading enjoyment interrupted every ten or twenty pages by a whole new cast of characters- I’m shallow like that- but I picked up Olive Kitteridge because I had read good reviews of it and, let’s face it, the book won the Pulitzer Prize so I figured it’s got to be good right?

eh, not so much.

I mean don’t get me wrong, it’s certainly well written and I love the way Elizabeth Strout wove each of the thirteen short stories in and around Olive Kitteridge- a central character that kinda makes the book read more like a novel and less like a collection of short stories.

And make no mistake about it, I really did enjoy reading it. Hell, if you’re a chick, some of the stories might even make you cry.

But.

When I finished it and set it down and thought about it for a little bit- a real little bit ’cause I’m shallow like that too– I have to admit I found myself wondering what all the fuss was about. I mean it’s good, but it’s not THAT good.

So.

In my humble opinion? It’s well worth reading but I guess maybe I was just expecting a little bit more from a book that won the Pulitzer Prize.

Next up- Affliction by Russell Banks

Ah yeah.

That four letter word representing our constant struggle between hate and need. Nobody wants to work and except for the very few freaks that somehow love what they do and are out there lurking and lingering in their offices like potted plants, hiding from home and family and fun, I don’t get it

But, they’re the few; which I thinks a good thing.

The rest of us? Not so much. We do the daily, the weekly, the monthly, constantly tuned to the siren song of the weekend and it’s schools out feeling of wanton freedom and wretched excess.

This post got into my head today and wouldn’t get out, no matter how much Be My Baby replayed  over and over again in my brain, wanting to erase the etching, the tattooing that writing about work had become. Ya know how a song gets stuck? This was plugged in like in-laws at Christmastime.

So.

Instead of tossing it, I scrutinized shit and realized that I don’t really like to work. I mean, at all.

Big surprise, right?

Except that it is. Miss Carol and me have always been borderline workaholics, driven through necessity and need to put the pedal to the metal.

And we did, for centuries and decades. And Miss Carol still does.

But me?

I don’t know. Something happened along the way and I don’t want to bury myself anymore and maybe miss out on the things that make our bleary existence fun and exciting and worth enduring.

And when I try to talk to Miss Carol about it, she mostly agrees with me- all the while shivering and shaking from her Blackberry addiction thats somehow become a focal point in our us.

We’ll work it out I reckon.

Meet Jessica.

And meet Abby.

Besides being pretty girls on the decks of sailboats and except for the fact that Jessica is Australian and Abby is a Californian, they both have a lot in common.

Both are currently attempting to sail solo, non-stop and unassisted, around the world. Jessica left Australia back in October and has just rounded Cape Horn and Abby left Marina del Rey about a week ago.

Both are 16 years old and want to break the record currently held by Abby’s brother, Zac, who sailed around the world a couple of years ago when he was 17.

Both are parts of well-oiled, corporate sponsored, celebrity-making machines.

I’m not sure I get it. I’m not sure how I feel about parents allowing (pushing?) their teenage daughters (or sons, for that matter) to single handedly sail approximately 23,000 nautical miles around the earth on a journey that will take approximately 8 to 10 months to complete.

Alone.

Makes me wonder how much of this is a teenager’s silly dream and how much of this is a teenager suddenly finding herself caught up in something too big to stop. Or maybe a parent seeking a reflected limelight and all the sudden saying goodbye to their kid.

I soooo don’t know.

Granted both girls and their boats appear to be outfitted with all the latest and greatest electronics and safety gear and both are backed by state-of-the-art teams helping them via satellite to skirt bad weather and keeping them in touch with their families back home.

Still.

They’re little girls on little sailboats out in the middle of one of the most unforgiving places on earth, hundreds, if not thousands, of miles from any help. They are not seasoned sailors with years of bluewater experience under their belts, in fact, Jessica began her journey amid controversy concerning her lack of sailing skills.

If that’s the case, I hope her luck holds.

A few days ago, Jessica was caught by a storm packing huge waves and winds she clocked at 65 knots, until her anemometer broke. Her boat was knocked down 4 times. (A knockdown is when wind and waves slam a sailboat over on it’s side so that the mast is laying in the water). During one of the knockdowns, she turned turtle, a rogue wave picking up her 34′ sailboat and slamming it into the water upside down. Fortunately her boat righted itself and luckily there was no severe damage to either her or the boat.

I admire the courage of these two little girls and I hope they have a safe passage and get back home to their families.

But I also wonder how their parents and corporate sponsors are gonna sleep at night if they don’t.

You can follow their journey here and here.

This just ain’t fair and it ain’t right.

It snowed for days and days on Saturday.

We live at the beach. It’s not supposed to snow here. And it’s certainly NEVER supposed to snow 6 inches. EVER. I mean, really, WTF?, right?

Looks kinda purty, huh?

Kinda like one of them there places in Alaska that the crab fisherman come from ‘ceptin’ acorse we don’t LIVE in friggin’ Alaska.

Hmmm. Hold on there just one minute.

Maybe we do.

I am so over this. One day every coupla decades is more than plenty for me.

When I was a little kid, just a wee mite of an oceandoggy, my parents forced me to live with them and my brothers and sisters in waaay upstate New York. In Massena, which is practically on the Canadian border and where it snows roughly 360 days a year.

The other 5 days are summer.

The two year ordeal traumatized me to the point where I can’t stand snow. Hatey-hate it. Even a little bit makes me crazy and I thought by moving to the beach I’d escaped it forever.

I’m guessin’ I was wrong.

So I sat inside on Saturday and watched it snow outside knowing that, on Sunday, when it finally stopped I’d get to do all the other fun-in-the-snow stuff that I remembered from childhood.

Like shovel. Woo-hoo.

First I shoveled the driveway so Miss Carol could get to her Jeep without slipping.

And then I went out back and shoveled off the deck so she could, you know, make me some dinner tonight?

And then I went back inside and grabbed a coldie, worn out from all that manly shoveling stuff.

Is January too early to hope for spring?

Reading Elmore Leonard is a lot like eating chiffon. Or cotton candy. It’s a lot a fun, it’s real good, but there ain’t a whole lot there, if ya know what I’m sayin’.

Leonard’s latest, Road Dogs, is no exception. And that’s fine. Lots of times you don’t want to read something that makes you think too much or too hard. Sometimes you just want to be entertained.

And this is a great book for those sometimes.

In Road Dogs, Elmore Leonard brings back Jack Foley, the thinking man’s bank robber, and Cundo Rey, the little machismo Cuban one man crime wave.

Foley and Cundo meet up in the Florida prison where Jack has been recently sentenced to 30 years and to where Cundo has been transferred to finish the last half dozen years of his sentence.

They become road dogs, slang for convicts watching each other’s back, and Cundo hooks Foley up with his high powered attorney who gets Foley’s sentence reduced to roughly the same half dozen years.

The years pass, and.

Jack is released earlier than Cundo so Cundo pays him to go out to Cali and check on his angel-but-not-quite-wife, Dawn Navarro, until he gets out a couple a days later.

And ya know what?, most all of this happens in the first few pages of the book.

The rest of the story circles around the post prison week that they all spend together.

It’s always surprising what can happen in a couple a days time.

It’s good.

It’s fun.

It’s cotton candy.

And there ain’t nothin’ wrong with that.

Miss Carol and me, we had to attend a black tie gala affair to benefit the foundation that does whatever good things for the hospital on Saturday night.

I always feel spotlighted at these kinda things. Like a big turd. Like I don’t belong. Like at any minute someone will point at my Wal-Mart dress shoes or my JCPenny tux shirt and tie and call me out.

I hate stuff like this like a root canal.

But we had to go.

We were the guests of one of the vendors that Miss Carol works with and there weren’t no gettin’ around it. All week long, I envisioned a huge room full of self important muckedy-mucks clustering in small clusters and talking quietly and importantly to one another while a string quartet played annoyingly quiet music in the background and with me wondering how I’d get a second beer without them staring down over their narrow noses at me. You know, with distain?

I couldn’t have been more wrong.

But then again, I’m wrong a lot.

It was a blast.

Sure the bar was closed for fifteen minutes or so during the invocation and the CEO’s speech but other than that? Full time, full throttle party. I didn’t know that men in tux’s and women in beautiful gowns could be that much fun.

It was almost like there were regular folks underneath all that finery.

Who  knew?

I was being yanked around on our nightly walk and between the herking and jerking and the panting and the cursing Cutter and Tug I got to thinking that I was getting to wear my raincoat WAY more than I’d ever dreamed I’d wanted to.

I was thinking that maybe if it keeps raining all hope will disappear and I’d just somehow get used to the soggy existence that’s been our unending evermore.

Maybe dry, maybe warm, is overrated?

And so I splashed through the road lakes, dodging the spray from cars and trucks and hurrying behind the twin turds.

I know there are way worse places during the winter than our little island I gotta admit age and pussiness are rapidly converging to make me long for sunnier and warmer. And bikinier (new word)

Cause honestly? There’s times, lots of ’em, that I’m over it. Times that I wanna just grab Miss Carol and Cutter and Tug and head south. Waaaaay south.

But then I think, and I remember. And the decades and centuries all pile up and crest over me and I know I’m luckily stuck in a deep mire of old friendships, inescapable.

And so, I’m just keepin’ on as winter grinds on churning ever endlessly and my Cutter and Tug pull me down the road twice a day whether I want to go or not.

Things could be worse.

I loves me some Stephen King.

I loves his storytelling and I really loves his length. There’s just something about settling in with a thousand-plus page book that just makes me want to put life on hold and curl up and grab a beer and just read ’till my eyes bleed.

His newest, Under the Dome, is all about a small town in Maine that’s suddenly cut off from the rest of the world by a huge, impenetrable, semi-permeable, invisible dome. Think of the world’s biggest salad bowl slam down, cupping your world.

At first, the inhabitants of Chester Mill treat this weird anomaly as a strange, larger than life, mostly unbelievable, novelty. But then, it begins to collectively dawn on them that they are well and truly trapped like specimens in a jar. And that’s when Stephen King weaves his magic.

I’ve always loved the way Stephen King’s books feel and read like a long story told by an old and loving grampy.

If I ever had me an old and loving grampy.

But I didn’t and that’s a hole nother story.

Anyway.

I loved the book and while I wasn’t real crazy about the ending, maybe at 1072 pages Stephen King got a little tired and just needed to wrap it up. Or maybe that’s the only way the story could end. I don’t know and don’t really care.

The story was that good and that fun and just get it and go baby.

What to say?

I stumble and fumble for words, knowing none are even close to adequate.

Imagine, just imagine, your world turned upside down, strapped in, and sent for a bonus ride on the world’s worst roller coaster that demolishes everything you’ve ever known and kills just about everybody you grew up with.

And then.

Imagine being slapped in the face with the reality TV event that Haiti’s suffering has become. Imagine, instead of food and water, you get a steady stream of reporters, correspondents, photographers, videographers all angling for the best victim shot or story. Media trucks and satellite dishes elbowing for space, focusing on the need but doing nothing about it.

If you don’t believe me watch one of the network segments with the sound off.

Over the years, we’ve been through hurricanes and storms and while nothing like what hit Haiti, there have been events that’ve left us powerless, in the dark, and cut off for days. And since we’ve surfed the way outer fringe of something like what they’re enduring our empathy and sympathy gush like a fire hose.

I can’t even imagine what it must be like in Haiti.

And I wonder what’s going on.

I wonder, why, after six days, aid is still just “dribbling” into a country less than a hundred miles away from the US. Why, after six days, news correspondents are still forlornly wringing their collective hands and posing with the hurt and torn for their photo ops but doing little else. Why, after six days, it’s looking more and more like fun times in news story land.

Hell, they can milk this baby for weeks. Or months. Ain’t nothin’ better for the six o’clock news than bad news.

And meanwhile the people of Haiti suffer. Truly suffer.

And I wonder- WTF?

Things are accelerating rapidly downhill in oceandoggy postingville.

Tonight I bring you Poo-Pourri.

One of Miss Carol’s sisters gave us this at Christmas. I’m not quite sure what the motive was but we laughed wholeheartedly, guffawing in a friendly, familial way knowing all the time that MY poo doesn’t stink.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA, that’s one of them there goodun’s

Anyway.

We got back home and eventually we took the Christmas tree down and moved the gifts around, slowly absorbing them into our lives and our little home and we came across our Poo-Pourri.

Miss Carol put it in one of the bathrooms and later that following day I test drove it.

And guess what?

It actually works just like it says it will. Amazing.

Who’d a thunk it? and who thinks up this shit? er, I mean, stuff?