Category Archives: Personal

Personal, Springdale

The Monster Is Always There

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Do you want to read some words which will take you in a different direction?

No matter where I live, invariably there is a neighbor behind me with an apparent need to recreate the jungle and underbrush of some faraway land. It’s never the landscape featured in tourism photos, either. It’s the type of terrain which tends to appear in crime scene photos or as seen in a disturbing documentary about abducted people.

The house where I now live is new, but the subdivision it’s in abuts the rear of Green Acres Road in Springdale, a much older spur of Springdale.  Unlike the tv show with a similar name, this ‘Green Acres’ heyday has long since faded away, leaving the footprint but stealing the foot.

There are days when I peer through the extra bedroom window, where I just know that some fantastical monstrous face is going to return my curious gaze, eyes blazing with danger.

Or so I hope.

So far, though, my expectations of interesting mayhem have clashed with reality.

I have sun catchers in the window facing west. These power the illusion of things unseen coming in and out of focus as I watch. Most days, these prisms cast out intricate webs of color. As with most such things, though, it is precisely through this sort of misdirection that things also take advantage of in order to slink from the shadows.

Optimist that I am, though, I peer out and draw in a breath, especially on those majestic evenings when dusk approaches and the sky is already darkening from impending rain.

Many people may not be aware of this, but dusk cleverly invites such monsters and rain makes them feel welcome. It’s a truth that most of us as human, frail and subject to disconcerting biology, feel in our bones but rarely utter. Such utterances bring the reality into focus. Rain tends to cluster people inside, where human nature boils in a slow cauldron.

There are days in which I identify the monster as the reality, the one so hell-bent on hiding its kaleidoscope of truly deep shadows from me. I know that most of our universe is empty space, even as I reassure myself by leaning in against the horizontal slats of the blinds and looking more closely at the underbrush facing my house. It’s precisely the empty spaces and the dark where we cower with the most silent vigilance.

On such a day when the monster materializes, I think instead of drawing away from the rush, I will lean in for an embrace of the unknown, even if its salutation comes teeth first.

I can only wonder at spilled paint cans which not only surround you but hide in plain sight, waiting for eyes to focus on them.

Personal, Whimsical

Fart Synchronicity

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I’m about to give you a glimpse into the inner sanctum of my life. It will irrevocably change the way you look at me, perhaps with more or perhaps less admiration. If you are allergic to humor or gastrointestinal references, you should go back to watching the news, where the worst you will see might be a recap of the horrors of the day. Please stop reading now. Continuing to read is a legal agreement that you, like me, have absolutely no taste whatsoever.

Dawn was at one of the computers, watching SNL skits from last night’s episode. I was sitting at my desk behind her, busily making snarky notes for my mammoth list of nonsense.

After a few minutes, Dawn started watching the RKO movie set sketch with The Rock and Vanessa Bayer. I swiveled around in my office chair to see what mayhem was about to ensue. (PS – the sketch with Rock visiting the doctor for a prescription was the funniest, in my opinion.)

Without warning, I felt a rumble in my stomach and passed gas – and not the light gentlemanly type typical of what you’d expect from such a lightweight such as me, either. No, this was a reminder that I should stop eating pizza, horseradish sauce and lemon pepper, especially at the same time – and that I should seek immediate relief from a qualified medical professional.

Coincidentally, the exact moment my colon exhaled, Vanessa Bayer’s character also passed a loud blast of gas in the sketch. I didn’t hear it, though, given the volume of my own contribution. Dawn turned to look at me, bemused and aghast. My contribution had kept her from hearing what had happened, too.

Dawn backed up the video to re-watch the portion I interrupted.

We both shared a great laugh, as the odds of my flatulence coinciding perfectly with that of the character on the sketch had to be at least a million to one.

(In fact, the premise of the entire SNL skit was one of Bayer’s character being flatulent in creative ways as The Rock struggled not to laugh.)

As Shakespeare once quipped, “Each of us, even reluctantly, must play our own f̶a̶r̶t̶ part in this tragic comedy of life.”

Peace to each of you still reading this, my friends. May your days be filled with spring breezes of the kind we all look forward to.

Biographical, Personal

A Snortee For Someone Encountered

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A few days ago, I was at the liquor store. (These are places which sell alcohol, for those who’ve never heard of such a thing.) I had heard an almost-familiar voice as I wandered the aisles, searching for the things which I already knew to be in their places. I looked to the side and saw an older gentleman, wallet out and open, fingering his money. He had a couple of tens and a few ones. He had a bottle of wine perched on one of the shelves. It was a nice one, a happy medium between cat urine and the kind one might drink at a million dollar wedding. Like men of his generation, he was carefully dressed, his white hair cut short and his shirt without a wrinkle.

Seeing him and hearing his voice reminded me so much of my Uncle Buck, who could be as jovial as a box of delighted kittens. To be frank, he also died from complications resulting from alcoholism. He and my aunt had decided a few years before his death to engage in a race to the bottom of their shared bottle. He won. But as troubled as his life was, he gifted me the word “snortee,” his humorous way of saying ‘a small drink.’ It was only after he retired that alcohol became his consuming passion. Yes, I recognize the incongruity of the word ‘snortee’ for someone who passed in this manner.

I told the cashier that I was going to pay for the elderly gentleman’s wine in addition to mine. Rarely do I question my impulses to pay it forward; so often they’ve rewarded me with reminders of the incredible overlapping of our lives.

“Are you friends or acquaintances?” she asked.

“No, I’ve never seen him before. But I bet he’s going to be tickled when he finds out someone bought his bottle for him.”

After ringing me up, the clerk toggled the conveyor and dragged the gentleman’s bottle forward and scanned his bottle.

“Hey, miss, that’s mine,” the man said.

“This man bought your bottle for you,” the clerk said and smiled, pointing at me.

The smile started at the older man’s chin and stretched halfway across the room. “Well, I’ll be. I never thought of getting a surprise at the liquor store, but I thank you and will most assuredly pay it forward!” He was beaming.

As I left, I turned to watch as the man strode with pride from the liquor store, as best as he could given his age. To my surprise, he opened the door to a minivan exactly like one my aunt and uncle had owned.

I’m not certain why I know it, but I am certain that the encounter pleased him and that he was contemplating it as he drove way, his life bifurcating away from mine.

Uncle Buck would have loved to share a laugh with that gentleman, in another life. In some small mundane yet wonderful way, we all saluted one another, even though one of us had long passed beyond this place.
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The picture is of me on the left and Uncle Buck on the right.

Personal, Whimsical

…that untouchable moment

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Each day contains a secret moment in time; in that moment, colors belie their nature, music kidnaps our senses, and laughter beats at our hearts like a long-lost friend. We never know when that moment might be or who will inhabit the moment as our day overtakes us. The happy people in life reside in a parade of those moments. We mortals are lucky to experience a handful.

Today, I hung the remainder of the crystals I surprised Dawn with so many weeks ago. Intent on my mundane tasks, I casually forgot that I had done so. The globe crystals went well with the obelisk I had already placed there, facing west.

I went outside to take out the trash and detoured around the house to startle my cat Güino, who was sleepily occupying the chair placed against the street side window. (It’s ‘Bird TV’ for him there, and he can lie there and accompany Dawn as she crazily types at her computer.) As he lazily turned his head to peer over the windowsill, I tapped the glass with a bang and yelled, “Boo!” The cat rewarded me with a total body lift from the chair. I laughed. The neighbor across the street looked over at me, her right hand shielding her face from the sun; undoubtedly, she was gauging what nonsense the gringo might be up to again.

Returning inside, my eyes switched from the glare of the nuclear sunlight outside to the dim confines of my living room. The cat had jumped up to either greet me or bite me, in order to register his contempt for my idiotic scareplay at the window.

I opened the door to the back bedroom and a million shards of polychromatic light greeted me. The crystals had chosen that moment to cascade in a dazzling colorscape. Even though I rarely succumb to such impulses, I wanted to capture the breadth of the surprise all over the ceiling, walls, and contents of the room. Instead of standing there to observe the fleeting barrage of hues, I left to capture the image.

By the time I returned to snap a picture of it, the words of Nate from Six Feet Under resounded in my head: “You can’t take a picture of this. It’s already gone.” And it was – not just the array of colors and shards of color thrown haphazardly about, but the moment of amazement.

I can re-imagine the spectacle of surprise and light, or feebly attempt to share it via failing words with Dawn, but it has departed. It has escaped, after having briefly pushed out the walls of my life for a moment. I have this picture of it, after 90% of it had vanished, a speeding car already in the distance. I can lie in wait tomorrow or another day, hoping to recapture the surprise but these moments are nimble thieves, stealing our precious seconds as we scamper from one possible moment of happiness to another, never tiring of the possibility contained in the moments.

Business, Personal, Uncategorized

Vindicated…

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Long personal story…. Please read knowing that all businesses, no matter their reputations, have countless great employees who don’t misbehave and/or don’t appreciate how their employers conduct business. It’s a conundrum we all face with businesses. Unless my issue is with a specific person, I in no way wish for people reading my words to think I’m painting all employees of any business with a broad brush of accusation.

A couple of years ago, I shared a story with you about Arvest mistreating my wife. An ATM failed to give her $400. She reported it immediately and Arvest fixed the error. Months later, without notice, they reached into her checking account without permission and without telling her and took the same $400 back out. There was no appeal. They had waited months, after all video evidence was gone, and without following up. Dawn politely worked to get the error fixed. Not only did she not get the error fixed, but a couple of the people working at the bank had an attitude which was dismissive, as if Dawn somehow had lied about what happened. Dawn’s feelings were hurt, to say the least. She’s polite and was certain that logic and patience would fix the problem. No one at the bank cared.

Dawn responded by deciding to leave Arvest, after many years of doing business with them. She took all of her accounts and later we got another mortgage to get away from their shenanigans.

Just because I can, I have also frequently picked on Arvest on social media. I’ve been polite, but I’ve satirically jabbed at them a few hundred times and made several memes to poke fun at the bank.

Yesterday, before coming home, we stopped at our community mailbox and checked the mail. I handed the mail to Dawn, who was seated in the passenger seat. I told her, “Look, you got a big check from Arvest,” and laughed. We joked that it was one of those fake mailers, especially since it didn’t have postage. Also, we had never given Arvest our new address, having wiped them off our feet before we ever decided to move.

I told Dawn to open the Arvest envelope. Lucky for us, she did, instead of discarding it. Inside was a check addressed to Dawn, in the amount of $400. In read, in part: “…during a review… we determined one of more disputes was denied in error. Due to this error, we are enclosing a check…” It was an unsigned form letter with no explanation as to how they got Dawn’s address, nor did it contain any sort of apology.

The look on Dawn’s face was priceless.

More than the $400 Dawn got in the mail, the admission that Arvest screwed up a couple of years ago when we said they did is worth much, much more than that. It should have never happened, because Dawn would have stayed with the bank for the rest of her life, if possible. Now we have the magical words in writing and those words all this time later prove that we weren’t lying or crazy: Arvest took $400 of Dawn’s money without cause and worsened the problem by strangling us with bureaucracy and apathy.

It’s easy to get a customer, but very difficult to get one back after you’ve mistreated them. You should never let a customer walk all over you, but you should also remember that customers are people. The $400 is nice, but nicer still would have been for one person at Arvest a couple of years ago willing to stand up and say, “Enough. We can’t do this to a customer. It is our error.”

PS: You should always address customer service issues or old business before taking any steps toward acquiring new business. The disgruntled folks are going to eat your lunch telling their stories.

Advertisement, Humor, Personal, Satire Parody

Joe Kwon Do

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Click link and button above to hear the latest ad I made for Joe, to compete with the Krav Maga system.

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Joe, a large friend of mine, someone who looks like a human Bigfoot, despises those Israeli Krav Maga self-defense courses. Not content with merely turning off the radio when a commercial comes on for the local version, my friend rips the entire radio out of the dashboard and hurls it across the freeway. Naturally, this costs him a lot of money. His point is that if he can yank the stereo out of his vehicle while driving, he doesn’t need a goofy martial arts course to show him how to pull a human arm from its socket.

If you know anything in life, other than “You do not talk about Fight Club,” the second rule is that you do not tell your friends what you despise, or you will see and/or hear it for the rest of your life, and probably nine times at your funeral.

Given my friend’s hatred for Krav Maga commercials, I had no choice  but to make 11 different versions of the same jokes for him.

You’re welcome Mr. Bigfoot. Stop ripping out your car stereos. Not everyone was born with arms that look like the back leg of a bull. PS: And if you try to whip my butt I will use those Krav Maga tactics I learned just from listening to the terrible ads on the radio.

 

Batesville, Personal

A Stolen Day in Batesville

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As an infrequent transient in this small town of Batesville, I confess that at times I feel the old souls of this place lingering around me, dwelling in the interesting remnants and observing its residents. I sit here, alone, in this sunlit open-air courtyard, surrounded in my periphery by those who live here, each of them unable to join me in my admiration for this place and this day. They are chained to their mundane duties as I experience their home. I wonder if the old souls lurking here find the humor in a visitor frolicking amidst their endeavors.

It is a noon on Friday, in the early reaches of March. Spring has already declared its foothold and despite the chilly breeze, people move with the enthusiasm that only spring can provide us. While my previous spar with itching-inducing plants still irritates me, I can’t help but enjoy the day as it unfolds.

I drove haphazardly about Batesville, vaguely looking for places of interest such as the expansive cemetery and the railroad spurs along the river, which, no matter where I find them in any small town, evoke a pungent nostalgia for a time I never lived in. The technology behind such places hasn’t evolved and though I am one to love the reaches of our creativity, I too relish the idea that we are the same nervous souls as we’ve always been, tied to places by the roots of who preceded us.

I made another loop around the railroad tracks and spurs along the boundaries of downtown, then alongside the incredible view of the river serenely passing me by. I stopped to slowly walk along the bank, wondering how many thousands of people had stood in that exact place, feeling March breezes and enjoying one of the quintessential smells of the American South. I then drove around the cemetery, a perfect blend of meandering stones and old town atmosphere, and behind the new park center being constructed. Looping around Harrison Street, I drove until the businesses and houses grew sparse and then returned. I stopped at Goodwill, hoping to find a hideous shirt to make Dawn gasp in mock disgust at my style choices. Instead, I gave my only $20 to someone who was buying a stack of clothing. I didn’t have to be in the conversation to know that she wasn’t buying out of a desire to hoard her closet with clothing – she was buying to keep it from being empty. All I said to her was, “Here, this is for you and I hope that you continue to find the luck you deserve today.” I smiled and left without granting her opportunity to reply. The clerk hollered, “Thank you so much, sir,” as the bell on the door jarred into a high-pitched clang and I made my escape.

Because I was inattentive to my whereabouts, I missed the quaint place near downtown I had chosen to invade with my appetite. As I looped around, I spotted the holy grail of double-barrel fried foods: a double location of KFC and Long John’s Silvers. I learned to distrust my hometown Long John’s; while it might lure one inside with the wafting scent of fried batter and hush puppies, there are myriad reasons to resist its deceptive Siren calls. Anytime I near such a place, I can almost hear a coven of cardiologists applauding their approval, knowing that increased visits to these places guarantee ongoing Colorado skiing vacations for them. In my defense, though, I could eat a platter of cardboard if I have tartar sauce to drown it in.

As I neared the entrance to the double restaurant, I noted a piece of paper taped inelegantly to the glass. “We no longer accept $100 bills or $100 checks,” the note indicated. Sardonically, I asked myself how often such a scenario might arise.

I approached the cashier and he said, “Buffet, I assume?” I laughed and said, “I don’t think you guys can afford to fill me up, so I’ll go for the pirate menu today.” With relief I noted I wasn’t going to have to pay with my chipped debit card. As I was getting my drink, a demure man had approached the other cashier and began ordering. There was a huge language barrier. I could make out he was ordering for 4 people in his family. I went back to the table near the buffet (to better be able to stare at what I was missing) and sat down.

From nowhere, I heard the cashier tell the gentleman, “We don’t accept $100 bills.” I groaned. “You have got to be kidding me!” I told myself. I filed away a mental note to stop mocking the notices posted on doorways as I entered them.

There were several exchanges between customer and cashier. He found an emergency $20 bill folded in his wallet. He then began a lengthy process of finding pennies, nickels and whatever loose change he could. The cashier did the same with the penny jar. I could see that he was going to be way short, so I approached and motioned to the cashier. “I’ll pay for it. All of it, if you will send it to the card reader.” I swiped my card and all 3 of the people working there came up to tell me how gracious it was for me to do so.

“We’ve got to pay it forward or there’s no point to any of this,” I laughed. “Besides, he can come back later for more with what he saved today. This tartar sauce isn’t going to eat itself.”

While I wasn’t sure the gentleman was Latino, I asked him in Spanish if he spoke Spanish, and then told him to repay the favor to someone else who needed it. His smile almost shattered the edges of his face, as it became so wide and pronounced. I felt a little piece of my heart slide away, recognizing that he hadn’t experienced many such unsolicited offers of help. I went back to my seat to eat my 77 packets of delicious tartar sauce.

As the man I had helped passed by he held out his hand, the same bright smile across his face. I shook his hand and told him to go home and enjoy his day with family. You might think he benefited more than I with our chance encounter, but the opposite is true. The gift of language united us for a brief moment, strengthened by one of the most underrated of our human powers: to help. The people working there got to forget the rush of work demands for a moment and see that we could manage to see beyond the roles of customer, stranger, and employee.

So, I sit in this courtyard, the same sun still beating down on my balding head, probably temporarily blinding anyone sauntering by the open end of the courtyard. For this day, I am thankful. Batesville’s heartbeat can still be heard and felt. For a brief day, I had the opportunity to step away from normal life and be an exclusive member of what can only be described as peace.

Personal

Diary Notes

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A few anecdotes from my diary…

Earlier today, I went to Wal-Mart to buy an array of botanical poisons for the fence line. As they were out of agent orange, I bought a huge supply of the stuff that kills plants, bushes, and probably even the entire biosphere of North America. In addition, I saw that table salt was on sale for about fifty cents a container. Naturally, I bought twelve or so. As I was checking out, I asked if I could borrow a kleenex. The clerk looked up and before she could ask, I warned her that the chip reader was about to make me cry. I think I’d rather have a burglar steal my underwear than deal with chipped cards. As she was scanning the large volume of salt, I could tell she was curious. Instead of letting her wonder, I volunteered the reasons for so much salt. “Well, meth uses a lot ammonia and bleach. The salt can be used to reduce the dissolution temperature of the third stage of the process. Having made a few hundred batches, salt is a cheap way to keep the house from blowing up – again. I was the lucky the first time.” I pointed at my half-closed eye, as if it was the result of a past meth explosion at my house. The look on her face was as startled as any I’ve ever seen. I think she ultimately realized that I was a clown, having a good time. We shared several laughs after that. PS: When she asked me if I wanted cash back, I replied, “Yeah, wouldn’t that be great, to hear his smooth country voice again?” Surprisingly, she got that dumb joke immediately.

(Sidenote for the SWAT Team: I was kidding about the meth thing. While I adored “Breaking Bad,” chemistry requires math -which excludes my participation. Also, given my poor tooth maintenance program and total lack of juvenile dental care, I have to cherish my remaining teeth before they escape my mandibles.)

Once near Batesville, Dawn opted to eat at Aubrey’s Mexican Food and Pizza for the second time. And yes, they do both. It was much better this time – and I made a few friends. I think our waitress wanted to marry me. I only say that because she got down on one knee and proposed. Just kidding, but she was so excited to find someone who is bilingual and so weird. She was very familiar with NWA and lived a long time just North of there in Monett. We talked a long time and shared many laughs and jokes. She came to Batesville to care for a sick daughter and while she loves the area, would love to go back across the state. Although having no personal worries about the law, she was concerned about the change in mood lately. I told her enough reasons in Spanish to allay her fears. There’s nothing like pico de gallo, cheese dip, and taking a moment to both laugh and think to lift a person’s soul a little bit. As a bonus, we also got to work into the conversation my resemblance to a fat version of Pablo Escobar, as well as Dawn’s poorly-concealed admiration of Ricky Martin and Chayanne. While she denies it, I think she keeps muttering “Delicioso” when they appear on TV.

Dawn wanted a cup of coffee. That or some exotic hallucinogen – I couldn’t be sure. All I know is that she had that intense look of mysterious determination, evidenced by a trail of spittle around her lips. After investigating the infamous whereabouts of the Notorious missing Starbucks (we did find at least 3 doughnut shops in a cluster, though, as if there was a pastry mafia at work in Batesville), we stopped at a stop-and-rob near our intended hotel. After I was able to give the useful and hilarious “Your other right” advice to Dawn when she was vainly searching for a coffee accessory hidden directly to her right, we ambled around the convenience store like drunken sailors on leave after having been quarantined for a month but yet desperately wanting an obscure snack cake. After what seemed like 90 minutes of wandering in the wilderness of the aisles, I went up to the cashier’s station. A large, thick-bearded gentleman offered to help me. I pointed at the cups and said, “Two coffees and two ices.” Dawn for some reason only known to sages and blind gurus, mentioned the coffees again, as if the clerk had been rendered instantaneously blind by my comment. To be funny, I repeated what I had chosen, except in reverse. “Two coffees and two ices,” I bellowed in a strange voice, just to be amusing. To my shock, though, the word “ICES” when shouted sounded exactly like I had screamed “ISIS.” The clerk momentarily looked at me like he was a concealed carry permit holder anxious to exercise his right to blow my stupid head off. I wouldn’t have blamed him. Instead, a slow smile spread across his face. I pointed to Dawn and uttered, “She don’t get out much, sir.”

When we got to the car, I relented and decided to get gas. (Dawn and I engage in an elaborate dance about how frequently we need to put gas in the car. I like to pretend I’m just about to let it coast into the garage on fumes.) Since I had one eye partially closed from my battle with the fence line this week and my glasses weren’t helping, I kept vainly trying to get the gas pump to work. I had a new chipped debit card which evidently didn’t affect anything – but in my mind, it was that darned new-fangled technology that was the problem, rather than my inability to follow simple instructions. I leaned in an kept reading, “Prepray before pumping,”instead of “Prepay before pumping.” Darn, I thought to myself, they have no idea I’m about to start doing just that if I can’t get this pump to work. In the back of my mind, too, I thought I might scream a prayer if the large bearded clerk had changed his mind about my shenanigans and came out to either offer to assist me in the complicated task of pumping gas, or hurling me into the highway.

When we arrived at the hotel in Batesville, I attempted to circumvent my wife’s notorious OCD-whatif-omg tendency by insisting we take both laptops to the hotel room before proceeding with anything else. I didn’t want her to enumerate the potential 47 illicit things that could wrong if something happened to our personal computers. In her defense, she made an impassioned plea to include the package of lemon ice cookies regardless of whatever else we took up. After exiting for the return trip to the car, Dawn noticed she had only one key card in the fold-up holder. “I probably dropped it,” she joked. I replied, “Yes, you probably did, but if not, we’ll be okay with just one.” As we came back up to the room and exited the elevator, we both saw a room key card in the middle of the hallway. As we neared, we could see that Dawn had, in fact, dropped the other key card outside our door where anyone could have picked it up while we were absent for a few minutes. Naturally, we both laughed at the idiocy of it all, because for once we brought the most valuable things up to the room first, only to be vanquished by Dawn’s butterfingers with the keys.

Bonus: Despite several reasons and opportunity to do so, Dawn did NOT in fact push me out the door of the car around the serpentine curves to Batesville. Personally, I think she was afraid of the ‘No Littering’ signs along the highway.

Personal, Social Rules

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After you’ve been married long enough, there’s no need to wait for your significant other to say, “I told you so.” It’s easier just to say, “You told me so” preemptively and steal their thunder. It’s one of the few pleasures for those in the AARP spectrum.

For those who aren’t married, it would help you to know that at least 7% of all married life is spent saying some version of “I told you so,” or “Duh!” -albeit in more cleverly-concealed word packets. You have to choose your battles, with most of them being silent and snickering skirmishes along the periphery of your partner’s attention span. I’ve heard fables of those with the ability to just directly smack-talk their spouses, but I presume these are distraction stories planted by some nefarious society for the abolition of living husbands.

After moving, I swore off fixing the neighbor’s messes, including the inevitable neighbors who let their lawns and fences start to look like Isla Nublar from Jurassic Park, after 100 years of abandonment. My wife Dawn told me ignore the encroaching wilderness or pay someone to do it. (Remove it, not ignore it, although one camp of thought firmly believes that ignoring a problem either solves it -or solves you from being around to need to be involved.) The afternoon we were expecting powerful weather, I convinced myself that the foliage hadn’t had time to mature enough to trick me into making contact with it. I not only trimmed it all, but carefully cut it and compacted it into compost recycling collection bags – and thereby ensuring that it touched every square inch of my body, just as an idiot bonus. Thinking back, I wish I had sneaked over to the neighbor’s house and shoved it through the side windows where, according to the hoarded collection of things shoved there, Bigfoot was probably already living.

At the Cottonwood house, I had some epic struggles with skin rashes caused by some unknown plant, ones which made me resemble the ‘before’ pictures in leprosy photos. Even wearing a bee suit under an astronaut’s gear, I still broke out. We paid thousands of dollars for tree and foliage removal, after which I continued the Sisyphean and quixotic task of removing everyone’s else mess. While wasting my time keeping other people’s messes at bay, I (mostly) silently practiced my barrage of creative cursing, inventing newer and cleverer ways to imply my neighbors were lazy cretins.

At this new house, we have zero trees and zero bushes, so our landscaping ideology could be best described as ‘Spartan.’ The upside to this is that we can’t be accused of allowing our choices to encroach on other people or their property. When I bought this house, I had to shame the home builder into clearing the property to back line as I had been promised, trees, bushes, and any remaining squirrels included. Almost immediately, however, I noted my neighbor’s were more interested in smoking foliage than in maintaining it. Lest the wacky weed fail to dull their senses of duty, they also drown the remainder of their responsibility in small, conveniently packaged cans of work inhibitors.

Wednesday morning, I awoke to skin that felt like it had been dipped in fiberglass itching powder and spread on my body. My right eye looked like I had stepped in the ring for Rocky Balboa for the Clubber Lane fight. And, of course, I had scratched in my sleep, spreading the fun into my unmentionable nether regions.

I tried to work, but finally went to the doctor and admitted that I had ignored the admonition of my wife and ventured into Isla Nublar again. If you’ve ever wondered what it would feel like to sleep on a fiberglass insulation mattress, come over and I’ll have you toss about in the neighbor’s fence line.

I realize that it would have been much, much cheaper to hire semi-professionals to cut the fence line back, even if they, too, contract my irritating case of itchy-nethers instead of me, rather than me miss work and pay for the privilege of a doctor basically telling me, “Don’t do that and you won’t have this problem again.” He should have handed me a “Here’s-Your-Sign” sign a la Bill Engvall in addition to the prescription for 5,000 steroid pills.

Next time, I’ll grumble dismissively at Dawn and heed her words of advice as she counsels me against doing something else stupid. I’ll listen, though. (She preaches ‘advise and no dissent’ instead of ‘advise and consent’ as Congress does.)

If you hear about a 911 call from the boundary between Vanleer and Green Acres, don’t worry, it’s me. I’m ordering plans now for building my own DIY flamethrower, the kind that can blast waves of fire 20 feet. I could use machinery to trim the neighbor’s neglect, or hire innocent bystanders to do it. I think, however, that a tower of flame, held in my maniacal laughing hands of destruction will send a better message and make for better optics, even if the fire department comes and puts me on the wagon. I’m going to blame it all on the massive dose of steroids the doctor gave me.