If that big bald-headed sonofabitch can work this thing, I should be able to. He isn't so much of a much.
What does Turkish want for his birthday? Opposable thumbs, so he can open the goddamn door. He wants out! Out! Out out out out out, as in right fucking now, thank you very much.
The great furry swine turned 2 years old today, but he’s been very deep into the terrible twos for the better part of quite some time, stalking about the joint complaining about this and that and reminding me very much of me, only sober. Plus he can lose all the white hair he wants and never go bald.
Just be careful what you wish for, big guy. You ever get those opposable thumbs you crave so desperately, we’re making you clean out your own litter box. The presents you leave for us in there could blow a buzzard right off a gutpile.
I used to be hard core. Lately I’m all brittle exterior and soft interior, like a Tootsie Pop, but not as sweet. Why, there was a time not so long ago that if the temperature rose to the freezing point, I was out the door like a congressman fleeing the vice squad. I had my own private cyclo-cross course, and at 8800 feet, too. Used sunning rattlesnakes for obstacles and carried a pistol just in case the course decided to redesign itself in a hostile fashion.
Somewhere along the road from there to here I turned weaker than 7-Eleven coffee. Maybe it was moving from the mountains back to town, or switching my pet preference from dogs to cats. Dogs must go out, we will go out, let me out, for the love of God. Cats find the one sunny spot in the house and cover it like Sherwin-Williams. Fuck a bunch of winter, I shit in a box. What’s t’eat around here, anyway?
But there must be some small, vestigal hint of a whiff of mutt in me somewhere, because today I ventured out for 90 minutes on the Eurocross despite a high pegged right at freezing and a dampish breeze that took the wind chill 8 degrees lower. Rode the sonofabitch over to Palmer Park and zipped around the single-track, skirting the occasional icy bits when possible and generously yielding trail to various porky nitwits sporting headphones and unleashed dogs.
Then I rolled home, whipped up a skillet full of peppers, potatoes, chicken, parsley, onion and garlic, topped it with some hard-boiled eggs, and gobbled it all down, refusing to share so much as a single solitary nibble with the housecats. Stand back and let the big dog eat, you pussies.
Gave myself the day off in honor of William S. Burroughs’ birthday. I can do that, because Mad Dog Media is a one-dog shop. Unsnap the leash and off I go.
It being 60-something and sunny, I broke out Old Reliable, my Reynolds 853 Steelman Eurocross, and rode the trail to Fountain and back. It’s about a two-hour U-turn, if you throw in a few didos on the return leg, like a lap of Monument Valley Park for extra vitamin-D absorption.
A couple largish downed trees this side of Highway 85 require a quick zig and zag; a short pair of run-ups around a washed-out concrete climb follow. Other than that it’s smooth sailing. A guy could do it on a road bike. Not me, though. Not as long as I have five ‘cross bikes taking up space in the garage. Put those fat bastards to work and save the skinny rubber for the streets.
Ike got a fine crop of tulips to keep her company last spring.
A bit of drama greeted me on my return home. An elderly neighbor needed an assist with her equally aged greyhound, which has been having balance issues and today lost control of its front legs. Being creakily past my own prime I commiserated briefly and then helped load the dog into her car for a trip to the vet. She was expecting bad news and got it. The vet prescribed a dose of steroids, but confessed it was a delaying action, the equivalent of locking up the cantis on a sandy descent. You may slow that long downhill slide but you ain’t gonna stop it.
Upset me, it did, in part because I have a beloved cat — Ike, a.k.a. Chairman Meow — buried in the back yard. I miss any one of my departed animal pals more than all of my deceased relatives. So I showered the grit off and went to Trinity Brewing Company for a couple of IPAs and a bowl of their mac’ and cheese. I’d never been there, and the online reviews were not encouraging, but I was not in the mood for my usual haunts, so I took a chance and it paid off. Good beer — the brewmaster used to whip up the popskull over at Bristol Brewing — and a friendly, attentive staff. Just what the doctor — or, in this case, the vet — ordered.
King Turkish I casts a steely glare across his realm from the battlements of the Fortress of Turkitude.
Everybody got out for a bit of sunshine yesterday, and a good thing, too, because the weather is taking a turn for the worse again today. Snow and big wind are in the forecast for this afternoon, and something wintry is already sliding down Pikes Peak and taking aim at Bibleburg.
Turkish, who lives for the great outdoors, often proves difficult to retrieve. He can dematerialize at will and reappear at a time and place of his own choosing, like Radar on “MASH.” Step out on the porch, you will see nothing. Call the cat, ditto. Turn around to go back inside and poof, there he is. But just try to catch him.
Recent careful observation has led me to two of his hidey-holes. The first is underneath the front porch, where a previous owner overlaid the original concrete stoop with boards for a decklike feel. There’s a Turk’-sized space underneath, camouflaged by shrubbery.
That’s his low sentry post. I found the high one yesterday after watching him stalk a squirrel for practice, in case he needed to bring down something more challenging, like a mule deer or perhaps a moose. Turk’ hopped onto the back fence and then stepped onto the garage, briefly vanishing from sight before reappearing on a perch near the neighbor’s tree, scanning the horizon for the Enemy.
Meanwhile, my friend Hal has weighed in regarding his layoff. We spoke briefly last night, and he’s choosing to look at this as an opportunity rather than a setback. I was laid off in the mid-1980s and was briefly furious before realizing that I should’ve left the paper on my own six months earlier. I spent the next six months hunting work, cashing unemployment checks and riding my bike before something finally popped up on the copy desk at The New Mexican in Santa Fe, two weeks before the public sugar tit was due to run dry.
That would be my last newspaper job. And I think The Chieftain was Hal’s.
You know it’s cold outside when The Mighty Turk would rather be curled up in a nice warm bathroom washbasin than outdoors, oppressing squirrels in honor of the winter solstice. We put him out a couple of times, but like a furry boomerang he just kept coming back.
Tonight I’m making a chicken cacciatore for Herself and a couple of pals. It’s a variation I picked up from Emeril back when we lived up in Weirdcliffe and still had TV, and it’s pretty hard to screw up. I do without the wings, which I consider too much trouble to eat, and on occasion I’ve used whole wheat flour and red wine instead of the white stuff, and somehow it almost always turns out edible.
Of course, a true Zappatista would be serving up the Lonesome Electric Turkey for a solstice banquet. But I’ve always been something of a backslider, no matter which faith I happened to be professing at any given time.
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