Walks and rambles: Whores in the graveyard

Today is Daniel’s last day of “school” until fall. I will be with him all summer as well as the other two boys when school gets out in a month or so.

We’ve fallen into our routine but he reminded me yesterday “We’re not going to go on a walk everyday when I’m home.” It’s been really fun – he rides his bike and I walk the dog. Yesterday, he made a literal beeline and changed our route to follow a real-live human (other than me). He caught up to the woman on his bike and started chatting away. It turns out we’ve seen her around – she works in the bookstore in town and has a HUGE yellow lab. This lab is twice as wide as our Tia and consequently we found out Ruby also weights twice as much. We also found out the bookstore in the “mall” isn’t doing too well and people keep telling her “I hope you don’t close.” And she tells them “Come in and buy some books.” The books haven’t been selling and they are hoping things pick up for summer.

As we were exiting the graveyard Daniel found more humans by the goats. He talked to the little girl who gave his some grass for the goats. She told him they like grass and yes, they do bite. He gave her a “lucky” penny that I found on the walk.

I seem to find coins almost daily when I am out walking. And in my excitement and surprise say something like “Look what I found.” Then of course Daniel says, “Can I have it.” And I give it to him hoping the universe will reward me in the future. Plus, we are not talking a lot of money here . . .

After that it was off to the Dollar Tree store – which by the way is filled with crap from China. It’s way WORSE than Job Lot, if you haven’t been, you actually don’t need to bother. But Daniel had $2.50 burning a hole in his pocket and had that money spent in about ten seconds. In fact, right inside the door he deposited those coins for a gum ball and a necklace (if you could call it that). That left $2 for two items – but he forgot about the tax and I ponied up 14 cents. He kept the change – I see a theme here.

Other funny things happened in the last day or two:

Michael didn’t know he was going to the state track meet and didn’t bring his clothes to school, so consequently he ran in his pants. He has actually done this before. And Doug told him he could probably take seconds off his time just by the simple act of wearing shorts. Anyway, I told him if he was an Indian boy he would have acquired the name “The Boy who runs in khakis” or “The Boy who runs in chinos” by now.

Doug brought his exercise ball to work to sit on and he left the house extra early so co-workers wouldn’t see him pumping it up. He said he lasted about 1.5 hours on the ball – because it’s tiring and takes work. I wondered if he would still feel like he was moving at the end of the day – like when you’ve been on a boat all day. He was lying up in bed at 5:00 p.m. and I wondered if that exercise ball had done tired him out.

We met a man in the graveyard on Monday who fed Tia biscuits. And he said he finds lots of whores in the graveyard . . . well I didn’t realize what he was talking about for a minute or so and was picturing high school students getting it on in the bushes but what he meant was he has biscuits for all the dogs. He is very friendly but wears a very bad hairpiece and I can see where those acquired the RUG moniker. I could see a heavy seam and stitching where a part would be.

I’ve been recording music and really got a little lazy regarding some of the more difficult guitar parts. I asked my producer/professional musician friend to fix a couple parts – the album is almost ready! Let it breathe. Anyway, he was having difficulty and told me I have a quirky way of playing, almost like my own dialect. So, he was having great difficulty matching my guitar parts. I guess being unique has its plusses and minuses.

I just wrote this excellent, bluesy, fun song – She got so skinny, her teeth look big (I want some meat on the bone). Coming soon!