You can have my shorts when you pry them from my cold, dead legs.
I’m a late adopter. Hardware, software, pants in autumn.
Herself cracked this morning and pulled on the long johns — plus long sleeves, socks, and a vest — but not me. No, sir.
The uniform of the day until further notice remains Columbia shorts from the previous millennium, a mildly pilled Paddygucci T-shirt, and some battered old Tevas. Shucks, I even went outdoors in that kit to water the shrubs.
Not for long, mind you. But still. It keeps the blood flowing briskly and the neighbors at a comfortable distance.
“Don’t get too close, now. You might catch whatever it is he has.”
“Do you mind? You’re letting the cold air in.”
Miss Mia Sopaipilla, meanwhile, welcomes the advent of cooler weather. That means the Return of the Bedcave, a passive-solar getaway that’s like a day at the beach without the sand in your undercarriage. It’s the cat’s meow, if you will.
A thunderclap yesterday afternoon startled Miss Mia Sopaipilla, who was curled up in her favorite sack, enjoying her eleventy-seventh nap of the day.
I did not tell her, as did Johnny Lundgren’s dad in Jim Harrison’s “Warlock,” “That’s God barking at you for being such a miserable little pissant.”
No, I reassured her that it wasn’t God, probably, or even the work of a (much) lesser (would-be) deity — say, Felonious Punk, commanding a few of his masked ICEholes to shock-and-awe us back to wherever we came from, or didn’t, whatever.
Even if fascism were to come a-calling at El Rancho Pendejo, Miss Mia should have nothing to fear. She’s a Russian blue, and since the Punk just blew a Russian, she should be A-OK with him and his goons. Cream for all my apparatchiks!
Now, me, I’m an Irish-American Red, so who knows where I’d wind up? Where would a Adderall-snorting asshat send a sober Mick scribbler with a bicycle fetish? A Boston pub to pull pints on St. Patrick’s Day? The International Space Station, to chronicle its “retirement,” slated for 2030? Couldn’t log much saddle time up there over the next five years, but I’d get to rip one helluva descent when NASA — if it’s still around — pulls the plug.
And Herself? Conscripted into the Punk’s platoon of librarians, I expect. Condemned to catalog the pestilential archives of fuck books, Truth Social screeds, and unpaid bills.
And she wouldn’t be allowed to shush any of his minions, who never ever give their festering gobs a nanosecond’s respite from telling the FreeDummies that Making America Great Again requires chop-shopping it into a Dollar Store knockoff of Pooty-poot’s Russia.
Troops to Ukraine? Hell no! But troops to DeeCee? That’s the real global trouble spot, amirite?
The best intel I can muster tells me that the enemy is bunkered up at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. NW. Careful with the arty and airstrikes, lads, and try to avoid damage to the facility if it’s feasible — it is a National Heritage Site, but may have been desecrated beyond resurrection.
I mean, have you seen what these terrorists have done to the Rose Garden?
Uh, whatever it is, I’ve got it penciled in … or not.
Whenever Herself zips off someplace for an extended stretch I suffer from delusions of creativity.
The idea is that somehow a window will open onto a shining world full of possibilities — blogging, podcasting, cartooning, etc.
Ho, ho. Miss Mia Sopaipilla gets more accomplished in one trip to the litter box than I do all day.
Here’s that annoying poet again, poking his big beezer through my window:
Between the idea And the reality Between the motion And the act Falls the Shadow — T.S. Eliot, “The Hollow Men”
In Herself’s absence Mia and I both find our daily routines disrupted, but Mia bounces back faster. Initially, upon discovering that her support staff has been halved, there is a related increase in vocalization, perimeter inspection, game-playing, and other attention-seeking practices related to separation anxiety.
“You may amuse us.”
But then she rockets right through all five stages of grief — denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance — and simply takes more and longer naps in various sunny spots, reasoning that time passes more quickly that way, and soon she’ll awaken to Herself offering a soupçon of half-and-half while preparing her breakfast coffee instead of that old baldheaded sonofabitch grumbling over a mug of tarry black heart-starter.
Me, I get to pick up a few more shifts in the barrel.
Herself gets up at 4 a.m. most days, so when she is not around to arise and deal with Mia, well, this means that I get up at 4 a.m. most days. This cuts deeply into my beauty sleep, which anyone who has seen me in the flesh knows I need desperately, the way Stephen Miller needs a walk-in freezer full of dead teenage runaways. (“Time for a cold one. …”).
Then there’s the cooking for one. Takes as much time as cooking for two, but now I have to handle the post-dinner cleanup.
Laundry. Won’t do itself. I’ve done the research. Same goes for taking out the trash and recycling, and loading/emptying the dishwasher.
And don’t get me started on the whole “making money” thing. Lucky for me it rolls in like the tide. I ain’t got nothin’ to do with it.
Birds gotta be fed. We were out of seed, so it was off to our seed dealer, who is a talker. Hummers are back, so their feeders had to get filled and distributed around the yard, which was in need of mowing.
Somehow mowing is one of my regular chores. I’ve argued that it should fall to Herself, since it’s basically vacuuming outdoors, sort of like the parkour of hoovering. But she just chuckles and reminds me who makes all the fucking money around here.
Then my old VeloNews comrade Casey Gibson happened to be rolling through town to spectate at the Tour of the Gila, so it goes without saying that we had to get together for a couple of meals and complain about all the money we weren’t making.
And of course bicycles must be ridden and runs ran. Run? I’ll get back to you on that.
Thus a whole lot of my daylight (and best-laid plans) went up in smoke. And all I’ve got to show for it is clean laundry, washed dishes, a trimmed lawn, a couple extended chats over restaurant meals, empty trash bins, full birds, and a happy cat.
Because Herself just came home. Half and half is back on the menu. And I’m sleeping in tomorrow.
“One of these nine lives it’s gonna be me putting you in a plastic satchel and taking you to the vet.”
Miss Mia Sopaipilla is resting comfortably in her custom BedCave® after having a cyst removed from just above her right eye.
One day the thing was just sort of … there, like bad news from DeeCee. So I took her to the vet to get it checked out. Vet drains it and says: “Full disclosure: These things can come back, sometimes almost immediately, and occasionally even bigger.”
The only real fix is to take it off, she added.
Well, it did come back, almost immediately. And it looked bigger, but pretty much everything does when it’s front and (off) center on your furry friend’s face.
Thus, we scheduled the surgery, which took place yesterday. And now we can’t call her “Knothead” anymore.
We all have our little routines. Spontaneity, first thing in the morning? No, thank you, please. Predictability is what’s wanted before coffee.
So I arise at stupid-thirty, since that’s how we roll around here. Dress in the dark, because one day this will not be optional. Visit the bathroom. Greet Herself and Miss Mia Sopaipilla. Tidy up Miss Mia’s bathroom and give her a vigorous massage on The Chair of Love.
“Take me out to the ball game.”
And finally, make coffee.
Thus fortified, I usually scan the headlines to inspect humanity’s latest self-inflicted wounds. But lately that feels like rubbernecking at an inner-city ER. Let’s start with something light, shall we?
Jaysis. Even the weather report is all like, “We have good news and bad news.” The good news is that yesterday Herself and I took an afternoon stroll in shorts and T-shirts. The bad news is that high-temperature records are dropping like staffing levels at USAID and if the current precip trend continues we’re likely to be drinking our own wee-wee by March instead of August.
At this point a second cup of coffee is indicated. Black, hold the wee-wee.
Check the email? No joy there. Evil tidings, in fact. Avert the eyes.
Toast, then. With butter and jam. Also, and too, oatmeal, with banana, pecans, cinnamon, brown sugar, maple syrup. Black tea to give the coffee some backup. Play ball with Miss Mia.
Time for The Times? Y’think? And a-one, and a-two, annnnnd. …
Mad Blog Media 