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Ever have one of those days where you’re fishing in really shallow waters, knowing your chances are slim to none of catching anything worthwhile? And yet, you keep it up hoping on hope that something will come of it?

This is one of those days. Slackness masquerading as substance.

We have a clock mounted on the bulkhead between our kitchen and dining room that we call crazy time and I actually took a picture of it for this post before realizing how unbelievably lame it was.

The picture- not the crazy time clock, but maybe this post.

The clock was given to us by one of Miss Carol’s brothers when he came to visit. It’s hip and cool and very contemporary, with loads of textures and gobs of happy colors. It’s onliest problem is that it doesn’t keep time in the linear, accepted, sense, choosing instead to keep time in a more abstract and contemporary fashion.

I’ve fixed it a couple of times but it’s stubborn, which is fine, meaning I finally just succumbed and gave up. You gotta pick your fights and there’s lots you’re not gonna win and this was one.

Instead, Miss Carol and me have accepted and embraced our crazy time. The clock’s hands freely spin at their own speed, whenever they want, at a rate known only to them, and we’re just constantly entertained by whatever time it gives us.

Hoo boy, can laziness pirouette?

Me and the boys are alone tonight and tomorrow and tomorrow night.

Miss Carol’s out of town on business for a couple of days so Cutter and Tug sit and stare relentlessly at the horizon waiting for her jeep to come around the corner and bring her home.

Hour after hour, just waiting and hoping.

Their fierce devotion to Miss Carol always makes me glad somehow, while at the same time maybe just a tad envious.

Cutely spastic and gangly beyond all reason but a killer nonetheless.

Fresh crab blood is coursing through his veins and a keener look has come to his eye, a newly bolder swagger to his stride.

In the past Cutter has always sprinted up the beach pausing only to plunge his nose into each and every sand crab hole snuffling deeply his disappointment at not catching one.

We laughed and thought it funny until last week. It’s all funny until somebody gets hurt.

Miss Carol had to go into the hospital on Saturday to do some programming so we were walking the beach earlier than usual and as usual Tug was loping along waiting for his next biscuit and Cutter was crab hole sniffing.

Same old, same old, until we saw him corner a crab away from the security of it’s hole, darting in and out snapping at it. The crab had it’s claws out, scurrying back and forth, and I was just waiting for it to lock onto Cutters face, thinking that would be the end of this nonsense  when all of the sudden Cutter juked and jived and came up with the crab in his mouth and flung it, trotting away.

Miss Carol was worried that maybe the crab had been hurt so I trotted up just in time to see it’s little legs feebly kicking their last. Sorry bud.

Miss Carol was not happy.

Then, on the way back up the beach to home, Cutter cornered another bigger crab and without wasting any time at all snapped it in half and spit it out before we or it could do anything and moved on seemingly uncaringly.

That’s my boy.

A cold blooded remorseless killer with crab breath.

I finally drove Mighty Whitey home the other day.

What  an oddly, absurdly, lengthy, stupid story.

Back in history, back in the day, a company, a guy, gave me a quote to totally restore my Suburban. He promised me the world- everything would be new and freshy and I trembled in anticipation and threw money at him.

What began as a three week project, tops, slowly ground into months and months of endless visits to his garage hoping to keep the project moving forward and seeing that it wasn’t moving forward at all and then finding out that he does this.

All the time.

Come to find out, there are some cars on his lot that have been there, unfinished, for YEARS.

YEARS.

So I’m thinkin’ I’m gonna have to ride shotgun with a shotgun and have Mighty Whitey towed out of there but something about my personality and good looks convinced dickhead to at least get the body work and  paint done and he did and so I picked her up and drove her home on Friday.

She’s not the perfect restoration that I was wanting and hoping for but she’s to the point that I can finish.

And she’s home.

Another touron tragedy and yet another solid reason to stay away from the beach and the ocean.

Once again a touron did something stupid, something that he may have been forgiven for in another place or time but not in this time or place. Nature can be a bear, or in this instance, a shark.

Mr. Snead was a 60 yr old man prolly just out having a good time on vacation- checkin’ out the babes, maybe sippin’ some coldies. But he forgot the biggie and inserted himself as the weakest link in the food chain by swimming at night in the ocean.

C’mon dude. Did you not watch JAWS?

Sharks feed at night and in the dark hours before dawn. I feel for him. I can’t imagine a more horrible death than quietly paddling about and feeling the brush of something big and circling and wanting.

But, c’mon dude.

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.