The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Mama said there’d be days like this. You wake up in the dark on the shortest day of the year, maybe you should expect what awaits you, maybe you should know the risk you take by ignoring nature’s call to hibernate, maybe old age should’ve taught you something. But life is nothing if not risk. And being a survivor of 66 years, hell, I threw off those quilts and prepared to embrace another day down in the wilds of the South End. Took a couple shots of caffeine, read the paper, realized once more Trump would actually be President of my country soon, the country I no longer recognize and may not actually want to acknowledge, brushed my teeth and headed down to the shack for another bracing day of glass cutting and glass-putting-back-together.

The radio told me another billionaire was going to be appointed to some cabinet position or other, Trump’s kids were going to run his empire so there wouldn’t be any conflicts of interest, the Russian ambassador to Turkey had just been assassinated, a truck had killed and maimed innocent bystanders in Berlin and Aleppo was still being destroyed. Civilization seemed to be teetering on the precipice. That, or it was just business as usual.

By the time the sun stumbled up over the horizon I was beginning to feel the coffee kicking in, the shack warming up, the day settling into its shortened ellipse. I walked out to get more wood from the shed and looking over toward the neighbor’s field I noticed a tree down. The wind had howled a little during the night so it shouldn’t have been too much of a surprise, but damn, it was by the wellhouse and as I walked toward it I kept thinking, don’t let it be on the roof, please don’t be on that roof.

Of course it was on the roof. Direct hit. Just snapped right off at the base of the trunk, landed smack center on the roof of the new wellhouse I’d built just a year ago. Damn and double damn! Well, you live in the woods, you have to expect these things, the price you pay, I guess. Free firewood and the opportunity to remodel your outbuildings. Last year a huge hemlock snapped halfway up and crushed the boathouse. Sick feeling, I’m telling you, walking down the trail and seeing that roof down on my little homemade sailboat with a broken tree crushing it.

But I got out the chainsaw and managed to cut the cherry tree off the wellhouse without too much further damage. Bucked most of it up, repaired the shake roof and went back to work in the shack. Aleppo was still being bombed into oblivion, Trump had another General in mind for his team, the sun was already starting to arc downward. They told me on the radio this morning that the daylight today was going to be one second longer than yesterday. It’s a hopeful sign.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, December 22nd, 2016 at 3:31 pm and is filed under rantings and ravings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.