The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Over on the other side of the island I have a little 5 acre park I caretake, mostly mow the grass, weed eat the ditches, chainsaw up the trees that fall over the trails and pick up trash my visitors are kind enough to leave behind. It’s a thankless job but I figure it’s the only park on the South End, one that nobody else volunteers to help maintain, so somebody ought to step up and if that someone is me year after year, so be it.

The other day I was sprucing up the picnic grounds and found a little baggie of dogshit considerately left on the table for someone else to dispose of, but not the dog’s owner, apparently. Giving credit where credit is due, at least my visitor, no doubt ‘woke’ enough to scoop the poop and bag it, cleans up after her/his pup. But what I always wonder when I find the baggie tied and left behind is whether they/them/it understands the principle behind scooping. I’d prefer they/we/us just shoveled the crap into the woods where it could compost naturally somewhere no one would walk on it or smell it, but to encase it in a plastic bag and leave it on the picnic table, somehow that seems, oh, I don’t know, inconsiderate unless the leaver is mentally challenged by the concept of scooping and bagging.

I could leave an instructional sign up, I suppose, although I’m not wanting to man/womansplain to the folks who walk their dogs there how the process is supposed to work. Seems obvious to me. Too obvious to explain. But there are folks out there who definitely could use a manual. A few years back the South End String Band decided to set up an impromptu concert on one of the hills at Terry’s Corner, this being before Freedom Park was imagined. Fools on the Hill, we called it that day. Eventually a woman drove in and we thought, well, here’s the first of what would be a gathering audience.

She got out of her car, attached a leash to her german shepard and proceeded to walk the path up the hill to where we were playing Cripple Creek. About toward the finale she came up beside us and the mutt took his dump next to our bass player, then the woman turned and headed back to her car. A lesser band might have called out, hey, you forgot something, lady! But instead we shook our collective heads, finished the song and then laughed until we cried. Critics, I guess, come in all breeds. I wonder, though, if that same woman is the one who leaves the bagged poop for me/you/or them. Maybe doesn’t like the way we maintain her park…..

Maybe you saw where a gang of killer whales over in Europe launched coordinated attacks on sailboats, the speculation being that a dominant female orca had been injured by some encounter with a ship and was severely traumatized. Traumatized is a nice way of saying she was mightily pissed off. Out there in Mother Nature the birds are dropping rapidly in numbers, the insects are being reduced too and of course the amphibians are thinking about skipping metamorphosis and staying in the water. We humans haven’t been too kind to the creatures who share the planet. A little busy developing combustion engines, clearcutting the Amazon and working to develop artificial intelligence.

Course we homo sapiens aren’t too concerned, not yet anyway. Global warming? Climate change? What, me worry? We got our jet skis and our air conditioners, who cares about a few less mosquitoes, right? If we have to put up dams to keep the Atlantic from flooding Florida, well okay, we’ll put up sea walls and tide gates, not gonna stop burning coal just because a few environmentalists are whining, sure not gonna litter up Arizona with fields of solar arrays. The future will take care of itself, always has, always will. The birds, well, they’re on their own.

But … I just wonder if this gang of killer whales might be a harbinger of nature taking revenge. I watched Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds as a kid, the world under siege by billions of feathered attackers, nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. What if all the insects banded together in massive swarms? Or the frogs formed militias? And the snakes joined them? I know, it sounds paranoid, but dammit, what are those orcas up to? We even gave a few of them nice homes in the swimming pools of SeaWorld and fed them their favorite fish and all we asked was they do a few acrobatics for the paying customers. Geez, talk about ingrates.

I don’t know about you but I plan to keep an eye out down by the garden for any … well, unusual activities by the squirrels or the robins. Yesterday I watched two robins attacking a red squirrel, something I thought was probably normal. Today I’m not so sure.

As a home improvement specialist I had a set of toilet seat hardware break, no big deal, just buy the replacement parts and attach them back on the seat and top. Trouble was, when I did just that, the seat top had to be held so that it wouldn’t slam back down. The seat and top were custom fit by me about 30 years ago when I built the house, big thick curly maple and maybe the new hardware wasn’t spec’d out for twice that thickness. Although … it had worked well enough for 3 decades. Plumbing, as any of you know who have ventured into that matrix of horror, is as mysterious as it is implacable, a labyrinth of broken dreams and leaky futures a mere mortal might emerge from babbling and cursing. Me, I have been there many times and some might conclude that this is the reason for more than most of my, let’s call them ‘problems’.

Today I spent four hours assembling new hardware. Backwards, upside down, inside out, you name it, I screwed it in, I screwed it out and I screwed it up. Nothing I did seemed to work, most were just total lack of engineering brains, something I have none of apparently. I have the kind of brain that is spatially dyslexic, so I flip the hinge backwards, then realize my mistake. And then do it again. And possibly, later, one more time. Something in my synapses is short circuited, I don’t know what else to call it.

In the end I had a toilet seat whose lid had to be hand held to keep it up. I suspect some evil femme in a factory somewhere in Hunan modified the design to accommodate women’s pleas to us men to leave the damn lid down when we’re done peeing, but of course the problem is more likely in the design of my weak brain. Finally, out of frustration, I took an old wood toilet seat from the shack and replaced it with the Chinese revenge model, then hauled it up to the house here and installed it. Thirty years on that curly maple throne and now I’m stuck with a store-bought.

Nevertheless, all dark toilets have a silver lining, isn’t that what they say? And mine is to hurry down to the patent office to lock in my new specially designed SEAT DOWN commode for the women of the house whose husbands refuse to listen to their laments and protestations and leave the seat down when they’re done. I expect to make a fortune and trust me, I don’t care how many threatening messages I get from pissed off men who tried to fix that seat on their own so it would stay up. Of course I’ll pass some of the royalties on to that Chinese factory worker. If I can ever locate her….

I just read that 60% of wage earners in the Land of Opportunity are living paycheck to paycheck. Which means they don’t make enough to save anything for, oh, that next ER visit or the unexpected auto repair or the jump in their house or apartment rental. Sure, some folks just spend everything they make anyway, wouldn’t matter if they got a 50% raise in their hourly wage, they’d run out and buy more, probably put it on their credit card, pay the monthly minimum, ignore the huge interest accumulation and just sink deeper in debt. But … I suspect most of these 60%ers are struggling to feed their families, pay the mortgage or the rent, cough up the car payments and buy clothes for their kids. Their incomes are probably down in the minimum wage bottom area.

Nice to know, though, that the Fed keeps jacking the interest rates to try to keep inflation at bay. Or put another way, the Fed wants to see unemployment rates rise. And the last thing they want is for hourly wages to start rising too, just another form of inflation. The lower the unemployment numbers, the more employers will have to pay to entice workers to hire on to flip burgers, repair tires, serve café patrons, scan groceries or make beds at the motels. Yeah, it’s a vicious cycle, a downward spiral, at least for the poor.

Housing prices are going through the roof. Gas is high. Try to find an affordable used car or get in line to buy a new Honda. Supply chain issues, price gouging, too few rental apartments, remote working, you name it. Opioid addictions, homelessness, civil unrest, what’s not to like if you’re the Fed? Crank up those unemployment numbers, keep the wages low, spare the rich. This time around we have the debt ceiling crisis looming, a game of chicken where the right wingers in the GOP put a gun to everyone’s head and dare them to refuse more tax cuts for the wealthy and less benefits for the poor. You might think the richest country in the world might worry less about its billionaires and more for those 60% hanging by a thread. But you’d be wrong…. The rich, in case you hadn’t heard, just keep getting richer.

A couple of our friends’ daughters were dutifully dragged along to our dinner party awhile back. They’re in their late 30’s, working women, one divorced and the other dating, which means, I’m guessing, they’re both dating. I don’t ask, give me that much credit. Once we got past the health care issues of us Boomers, all those geezer geriatric complaints, we finally settled into politics. Trump, Biden, the smackdown rematch coming up in 2024.

“I can’t believe,” Katie, the daughter of our oldest friends, said, “the same two old white guys are going to run again.” Jenny, the divorced kid of our other two oldest friends, rolled her eyes and chugged the half finished glass of sauvignon, then filled it with a sloppy flourish. “No kidding,” she growled, shaking her head. Her latest paramour lightly touched her wrist, no doubt worried we geezers would take umbrage, but he was the new squeeze, he’d learn soon enough us old birds were hard to rile. If he lasted long enough ….

“There ought to be an age limit. Reagan went out with Alzheimers. Biden’s a hundred years old, give or take. Trump’s going through his 10th childhood, the spoiled old fart. It’s time to retire some of these white dudes, put em in a Home!” Wally, I think her beau’s name was, took his hand home, wrapped it around an empty beer bottle and probably felt like he’d walked into an assisted living facility by mistake.

I wandered over to the fridge, pulled a beer, opened it and handed it to Willy or Wally or whatever. “New blood,” I said lamely. “Gotta say, we old farts are leaving you with a helluva mess. We didn’t do doodly about climate change, left you with more guns out there than most armies have. We had our fun and you’ll get left with the bill. Seems only fair you might have Senators or Presidents who had some new ideas. We seem to have run out of them. Can’t even come up with new candidates. Gridlocked Congress is our answer. History’s gonna be a little harsh with us,” I said, “but give us this, we gave you rock and roll.”

So okay, not a great trade-off.

Luck’s a funny thing.  Some folks don’t much believe in it – or don’t want to – since they think they’re the Captains of their own Destiny.  Me, I’m easily seasick on the storm tossed waters of my life … so I put more faith in luck than my own crummy navigational skills.  I guess living on the South End had a lot to do with it.  You find yourself on an island on the edge of a continent, you think it’s a short walk before the next move is a wet one.   I came when no one had heard of Camano, few people lived here and most of the cheap land was far down at the south end where I stumbled in one dark and stormy night.  Luck had pretty much run out, jobs were scarce and a bad marriage had foundered on the rocks thanks to the aforementioned maritime skills.
I bought a shack and 7 acres for the princely sum of $25,000, everything I had down, $225 a month for the next 15 years.  Sound cheap?  Well, I had a hard time meeting that mortgage the first few years.  But a funny thing happened on the way to the poorhouse.  Corny as an A.M. radio pop song, I fell in love, got married to my old sweetheart and fell in love too with my place, the South End and my life.  Lucky?  You bet!!

We take forks in the road all the time.  I know buddies who always wonder where the other road would’ve take them. Maybe they have regrets like all of us but I don’t look back wondering if that detour I migh’ve taken would’ve led to … oh, something better. Me, I think it might have led to something worse so why want to change the future if the future is fine. I don’t use the rearview mirror because it takes all my attention to drive the road I took, the one with the NEXT fork and the unexpected curve.  You ask me — and I know you didn’t —luck is part being ready for it.  It’s not a lottery ticket, it’s that small opening, that slim opportunity, that sudden chance that may not come twice, the one that veers up out of the headlights and offers, for those who are ready for it, a new game, a fresh start,  a brand new road.  Luck, I’ll admit this: it does take some skill.

Content Advisory: Readers should be aware that the following might contain adult language, sexuality, some light violence and possibly was processed with products containing peanuts. Reader discretion is definitely advised.

You would be amazed, flabbergasted really, gobsmacked actually, what you turn up when you spend days looking for something you lost. In my quest to find my lost funny bone, I searched high and low, near and far, under and over, in and out. I found stuff I hadn’t even remembered losing. In a suitcase up in the shack’s attic stuffed in an alcove I found old manuscripts, early poems and some photos of my ex-wife. I remembered why I stuffed them in a suitcase and buried it behind a couple layers of detritus and memories.

Downstairs, in a desk drawer that hadn’t been opened in about two decades, I discovered mouse-eaten letters from friends and from the mizzus back when I first moved to the South End. Sure, I saved em. And someday I’ll sit down and read them again, same as I did 20 years ago when I found them that time out in a box in the woodshop and brought them where I hoped the mice wouldn’t go nearsighted reading them in the dark. Handwritten letters, imagine! Now there’s a lost concept.

I found a couple of tools I’d mislaid, some plumbing parts I could’ve used when I searched for them a few months ago, an old outboard boat motor in the weeds where the blackberries were strangling it, a backpack I haven’t used in I hate to tell you how long, a couple of cameras that take actual film which is another Kodak moment but one that’s relegated to history. Back in the walk-in closet which is barely walk-in-able anymore there were boxes of photographs and slides. I started to dig through those, but geez, I could’ve gotten sidetracked for weeks and I was on a mission to find that missing sense of humor. Old photos would spin me into a cobweb of inescapable reverie I might not free myself from for days, if not months.

In the back of an old Hoosier cabinet I found some tattered pieces of my innocence. I’m not even sure how long it had been lost, but it sure looked like a long time. A long hard time if the tears and rips were any indication. Funny how you never really noticed it was gone until you stumble onto it and then, what good is it? Probably better if I hadn’t. There were old Boy Scout merit badges and little medals from some school in Georgia for some forgotten things those Southern Daughters of the Confederacy had thought important. I found my old I Ching yarrow sticks that I quit using back probably when my innocence was lost. I remember throwing them when I bought the shack, asking if I should take a chance on moving from my ghetto hellhole to a dilapidated house at the end of the world. It said good fortune would surely follow. Why would I quit the sticks when it predicted my life so accurately?

And of course I came face to face with my long lost youth one night searching the back rooms of the studio. Sometimes I like to think I’m still that same kid who moved out here back in ’77, the same optimistic yahoo who called up his old girlfriend and asked if she’d come out and live with him in a love shack in the woods by the Puget Sound with a view of the Olympic Mountains, the very same boy who never wanted to work for anyone, who kept searching for an alternative to the American Dream which didn’t seem like much of a dream to him, who really had no direction home, no direction at all, just a misguided faith in himself and a longing to be a country boy, a half assed Huck Finn who preferred being a bum to selling himself to some job he would hate but probably learn to accept.

I barely recognized him. And I’m sure he didn’t recognize me even though he had that imbecile grin on his face like something was funny but maybe only to him. It was just a brief encounter, sort of like a shadow you catch behind you before the sun drops behind the clouds and it disappears. But I was sure it was a younger me. You know it when you see it and there’s no doubt. None at all. Course, doubt is what made me lose him in the first place. Ironic, isn’t it?

The other day I went looking for my sense of humor. I searched everywhere I could think of. I looked in all the closets, checked under the laundry, dug through cabinets and behind the sink, under the beds, in drawers I hadn’t opened in years. Nothing. It had to be here somewhere, it couldn’t have wandered off on its own. I’m sure I just put it down absent mindedly and walked off so if I retraced my steps, maybe I would run into it.

It’s been a few days and I’ve been to the studio, the shop, the woodsheds, back on the trails, down to the beach. Nothing. Not a trace, not even the shadow of a smile. It’s been raining nearly constantly lately and I’m worried I left it outside where it’s shrunk down to something small enough for the slugs to slime over, something I might not even want to find much less use again, just some icky sog of a remnant nobody would recognize.

The shortest day of the year is coming up and I really need to find that funny bone. The sun comes up about noon and starts sinking immediately, the rain drips off our clogged gutters, the storms keep blowing down trees in the back 40 and the news is too bleak to listen to anymore … at least without that lost sense of humor. I checked on E-bay to see if maybe someone had stolen mine and now was selling it, used, slight wear, free shipping. Not only didn’t I find mine, I didn’t find anyone offering a reasonable replacement.

Although, someone from Wisconsin had one for sale. “Funny bone, never used, won’t be needing it. Voted Trump. Best offer.” Bidding started at $25 with a $250 shipping charge. I noticed it had yet to get a single bid even though it had been listed since the election. The idea of an unused, nearly new sense of humor was seriously tempting. And at this point of desperation the exorbitant price was almost acceptable. But I’m going to hold out for one that’s more tried and true. That one from Wisconsin, I bet it’s dark and mean spirited. You know, if it even works. I worry that its idea of funny is to belittle and bully, then laugh out loud at the victim’s misery. Just make fun of others who are different, whose religion isn’t the same, who have a disability. I’m not sure how much I’d be willing to pay for that. At least not yet.

Meanwhile, I’m going to keep looking for mine. It’s got to be here somewhere. I just worry if I don’t locate it soon, if I find it after prolonged inactivity, it’ll be like my flashlight batteries, pretty much dead. Inauguration Day is coming right up. I’m going to need to find it before then. That, or buy the one on E-bay and take my chances.

A year or more ago my glass biz website went dark. Just disappeared from the planet and from the internet and probably from reality itself. Gone, all that work of putting together the thing, poof! If you’re trying to compete for art projects, you really need to have that website showing your past work. Not much getting around it, even for a Luddite like myself. Sure, I ranted, I raved, I threw myself on the floor and pounded the living daylights out of the rug. All, of course, to no avail. The gods of technology, in case you didn’t know, have no ears. They are a little bizzy building a world without compassion.

Turns out the website was hosted by a company with a cute name. Small Orange. Or Tangerine. Something citrus. And when we contacted them, the nice lady with a foreign accent nearly undecipherable explained the last bill had not been paid and so, without so much as a warning, they dropped our account. Which might not have been so bad … except they also deleted all the data, the photos, the entire enchilada and none of it saved or retrievable. Thanks, guyz! Thanks for nada, literally!

So after spitting nails for a week I taught myself web design, spent two more weeks in trial and error mode but finally built a website that was updated and even nicer than the one we lost. Ha! Take that, techie jerks! Mark one up for the stupid human. And stick it up your Elon Musk while you’re at it!

Course two days ago I checked on that website only to find it had been replaced with some strange other site under my domain name archibaldglass.com, nothing whatsoever to do with me or with glass, but nevertheless living and breathing in the vast world of the internet under my aegis. You cannot imagine the rage that boiled under my battered hat for the past couple of days trying to fathom what had caused this to happen. Probably, like myself, you cannot imagine the inner workings of the internet itself, its domain name companies, the servers, the cable companies, the hosts, all those interconnected bits and bytes, the buzzing of bizzy electrons, the algorithms, the inscrutable technologies.

I’m currently playing Sherlock with no clues. My website may have been hacked. My domain name may have been sold. My week has definitely been ruined. What I know is that I live in a more complicated world than I asked for. One controlled by Tech Boyz who live on the farther end of the spectrum than where I live. And now I have to journey into their world, without sword or prayer, without much hope, with only my analog wits to help me. It don’t look promising.