Some days you just have to strap yourself to the most stable object while the wind blows everything past. Look! There goes Dorothy. Looks like she only strapped herself to a house. That sucks. It's a wood house too. Brick's the way to go baby; that's why it's higher up on the wedding gift list. It's not as high as gold, but then again, you find yourself a hunk of gold big enough to strap yourself to, I think you can actually bribe the wind to blow somebody else instead.
"Here's a gold brick. Go blow Bob Dylan. He needs inspiration."
Dorothy wasn't that rich; she lived in Kansas. She got a tornado and a bad case of Technicolor. Sucks to be poor. She had the bad day that the Die Hard series writers would kill for. Uprooted, accused of homi-house-o-cide, hunted down by a vengeful sister who's already in morning black before the ruby slippers go cold, and forced to sing happy road songs with the local transient population. Yeah, I know, I know…"off to see the wizard…" I got that two or three verses ago.
John McClane just got divorced and shot at by terrorists. Big whoop.
Don't get me wrong, I loved the Oz thing as a kid, and those flying monkeys? They scared the crap out of me. Now as an adult, maybe I'm just jealous. Dorothy had a great adventure, and lived happily ever after. I'm struggling with the day to day, and can barely imagine my happily ever five minutes from now.
Ever after? That's a mightily long time. Dorothy must have found the pot of gold over that rainbow.
Some days I catch a break, then there are times like this weekend. Saturday night, my work drug out forever, typing audio codes until 5am. I also spent a few hours on the phone with Mom as she relayed her last week with her father. I felt useless. Most of what I did was "uh-huh," but what else can I say? I'm there for her, but I'm on a phone, 300 miles away. The empathy blanket gets pretty thread-bare before it gets to the other end of that phone line. Now I know what they mean by "phoning it in." I'm doing it without even trying. Yup, gonna get me "Son of the year" for sure. What's more, I'm trying not to say a word about my divorce. This is her time, and anything I say about my situation sounds callous.
"Yeah, enough about you, let's talk about me."
No. I joke about that, but I really feel for her. I wish I could do more than listen. But it's all I could do, so it's what I did.
I wanted to go to church this morning, but that didn't happen. God doesn't want me there with only 3 hours sleep. I'm already a bad example. When I finally did get up, I grabbed my paper as the coffee brewed and checked my perimeter.
The Santa Ana winds greeted me at the door, and blew the screen back into my face. If you don't live in California this means nothing to you. Santa Ana winds are these strong gusts that last for weeks on end. It's always windy and it's not like just a little breeze, it the type of winds that swats trucks off the highway, and incites brush fires.
They're apparently also the type of winds that knock down my fence. Standing in my driveway with my paper in hand, I see it laying in the neighbor's yard. It was too tired. It gave up.
"Sweet." That's what I said. Or something like it. Anyway...
I lose a fence, someone else lost a castle. I'll take my end of the deal.I go pole up what fence is still standing so it doesn't sway out and wreak itself more. I also leave a note for my neighbor. I'll need his help to lift up the chunk that's down, it's too much for one person, even without the added wind difficulty.
"Fence down. Come get me when you see this."
And he does. I open the door to see the little straw man nearly blow away. He's hanging onto a cigarette in one hand and my porch post with the other. I think I saw this in an old Charlie Chaplin movie, or was that Buster Keaton? It only matters so far as he needs to eat something. I saw his ex over at his house last week, that's probably it. Maybe she's trapped under the fence.
I check for her protruding skippered feet as we investigate the downed slab of wood. Nobody's there. We agree to wait until later in the week; better not to battle the wind. There's already too many rusty nails sticking out to offer us tetanus, no reason to turn the wall into a Punji stick.
He hints again at the block wall he'd like to put up, and I hint again at the divorce I need to wrap up. He scampers away from that trap. This straw man already has a brain.
I'd pay for a wall. I really would. Hell, I'd borrow the money to get one up, but it's been advised by several people that I shouldn't erect large money barriers until my divorce is finalized. It doesn't matter if it's money I have, or money I borrow. Any moving money looks like a cash cow during hunting season.
"Wabbit Season!"
"Duck Season!'
Yeah, I know how this ends. Robby sleeping on a street corner for trying to maintain the house, rubbing his hands together over the hot coals of irony. I just have to suck this one up until MyUnwife files and I get the state's okey-dokey. I can't risk having my house torn out from underneath me. I mean I don't think she'd try anything, "unfriendly" but then again, I thought we'd be together forever; my trust balloon is now a bathysphere in a bile pool.
I’m not blaming her for everything, my share of guilt gusts through the empty house late at night. It's a banshee reminding me that something had to bring her from:
"People at work complain about their husbands, but I never have anything bad to say about you." -Pookie 2004;
through:
"You've got a lot of flaws, but I tell myself 'at least he's faithful.'"- MyWife 2006;
to
"If I can't stop hating you..."-MyUnwife 2007.
I had to do something that lashed her up and drag her down this path.
"follow the yellow brick road."
Still, it's not all about me. And like my wobbly fence, it's the lack of support from both sides that knocks it down.
So yesterday it was my fence, today I fix my bath tub. Oh, I didn't mention that one yet? Yeah, I've got cracks across the bottom. It should be replaced, but that would actually require somebody to come in and tear out the doorway, because the old tub won't fit out, let alone allow a new one to fit in. I've got some fiberglass epoxy, and I'll mix a batch about the consistency of peanut butter to spread across the tub basin. It should hold, so long as I don't step in the bottom of the tub.
So it's been hectic. I've decided tonight I'm resting in the poppy field of denial. I'm calling the pizza guy, and he's gonna deliver the works. I'm getting the "scantily clad serving girls with rose petals and grapes" special. I can't really afford it, but I need it. It's a simple pleasure, and allows me a moment to recharge. I hope they bring palm fronds.
Today the pizza, tomorrow the fence. Maybe if I'm lucky, I'll get back to Kansas-normal soon.
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