I should probably document this. Seems important. In aggregate, I mean. Like there will be more, and more urgent, so I better get this shit down, however banal, before it’s covered over by the insistent present and I lose this piece of the puzzle forever.
I’ll start in the cemetery. The path out was a wending one today. Our black dog is reactive and so is the little one, but the black one is the herding dog and she was in three homes before ours and god knows how many shelters, so she can’t and won’t let anything go unmentioned and she mentions things loud and pulls on her leash like a spooked Clydesdale.
In our cemetery everybody and their dog has a dog, that’s why I mention it. There’s a lot to lose your shit over, if that’s what you’re into. For me, it’s not that. I don’t lose my shit as much as I used to. But it’s a lot to dodge, and as the responsible one, I have to dodge it. I can’t in good conscience add to the cacophony of all the dead screaming by yelling no! to my four-legged banshee over and over and on and on, even though that’s the polite thing to do.
Home Depot up next, up now, after the cemetery. I’m buying paint for our house’s exterior one gallon at a time, so I’m going there a lot. In part because I like the mini-diversions, in greater part because I can’t for the life of me judge or calculate square footage correctly. Cement, paint, Tyvek, roofing paper, shingles, dishwasher soap. It’s a cog in my manhood, for sure. My dad once ordered concrete for three slabs and a couple post footings and he was only over by one garden paver. I would have had enough leftover for Madison Square Garden.
Look at it another way, though, it was luck, maybe. You do want to order over, never under, not with cement. He was probably sweating it at the end, seeing the last of the mud hit the chute, one corner of the garage slab with rebar still showing. Look at it this way, you could say his order was under.
Most inconveniences are worse than tragedies. Be honest for one second. You’re headed home from a long workday and you’re hungry, like your throat’s sucking in your eyeballs hungry. You have fifteen minutes left on the freeway and you can practically taste the leftovers in your fridge that you only have to microwave and you’re sated. What would you rather have in this moment–be honest–a phone call that your mother’s dead or a smoking radiator?
When I leave the dogs in the car at Home Depot, I imagine this one inconvenience in particular. This one: I imagine that one do-gooder who’s just waiting in her Kia to dial Animal Control or smash my back window to give my poor abused dogs some air.
They wouldn’t stop barking! They’re distressed!
Some altruistic flex like that to wreck my day. There’s at least one of these punitive angels in every box store parking lot in America. When you let your guard down it’s bam! dog samaritan! So, you have to back away from your parking spot uttering cutesy assurances toward your car loud enough for others to hear.
Daddy’s just gonna be a minute. Hang tight in there, guys. Love you! Daddy’s gonna bring back a cookie!
It’s not for your dogs any more than Thanksgiving grace is for God. They’ll keep trying to eat the rearview mirror, but you’ll be absolved.
I need something from the grocery store, too. Something necessary. That I’ll have to go back out for later if I don’t remember now. But I can’t for the life of me remember what. I make a lot of trips back out. I could stand to write more down. List form. Get better at to-dos, like this one. Lists of words that I’ve forgotten, too, the ones that come to me with letters mostly assembled in order and flashing neon in the fog. Vacancy. No vacancy. Vacancy. No vacancy. What does it mean? I recently remembered encephalopathy.
todd of tacoma 