I'm in the closet. Feels good.

Writing, I mean. I've spent the afternoon painstakingly constructing a shelf inside my closet that will function as a writing/breakfast nook. It's stuffy, but at least it smells like clean laundry. Also dirty laundry. I keep my dirty laundry in here.

I'm working on a Toshiba Chromebook 2. I ordered it from the internet and the internet delivered it to my house. I'm still getting used to the chiclet keyborad. Reminds me of my very first writing machine. Beep bop boop.

My nephews are playing Minecraft in the gaming room. My closet is in the gaming room.

I am in the closet.

Feels good.

Gurg has joined the room
(12:57) Gurg: Fashion is a cruel mistress, if mistress she be.
(13:00) Gurg: Long has the human head gone adorned and un-adorned. Earliest recorded instances of hat-wearing is found in the Babylonian temples erected in 1975, with crude cave-drawings depicting human-like shapes with large crescents upon their brows.
(13:02) Gurg: It is unlikely they were comfortable, and most hat-scholars agree that they were not so. However, there is no serious academic that can deny they don't look damn good.
Invited benO
Invited libstrom
Libstrom has joined the room
Ben has joined the room
(13:05) Libstrom: Interesting
(13:05) Ben: We should bring back the egyptian pharoh hat. That looks comfortable and boss.
(13:06) Ben: Also, the historical phrenologists agree that crecent people of Urdu/Babylon had no need for hats.
(13:07) Gurg: Friezes upon the Great Wall of Appalachia, artifically aged to appear over 3,000 years old, depict a caste system in which the lower-castes were forced to wear more and more hats as the upper-casts could not possibly don the great multitude of hats were forever ordering from the hat-making-caste.
(13:07) Gurg: It was a vicous, jaunty cycle.
(13:08) Ben: *edit Urdu is a language from a completely different area. Ur was the city from Mesopotamia.
(13:08) Libstrom: I am not knowledgeable enough to comment
(13:08) Gurg: The hat is its own language.
(13:08) Gurg: PERFECT!
(13:08) Ben: I am hat-illiterate.
(13:09) Gurg: I think you can change the topic, if you wish.
(13:09) Libstrom: Hmmm....
(13:10) Ben: I'm the topicoligist here! Are you licenced to guide discourse?
(13:13) Libstrom: I just said something out loud that sounded very bad
(13:14) Libstrom: "The only way for her not to be a stranger is if she comes."
(13:14) Libstrom: >.<
(13:14) Ben: lol
(13:14) Gurg: She better bring a hat.
(13:15) Libstrom: I'm dying laughing right now
(13:17) Libstrom: Ok I'm done dying now...please continue...
(13:17) Ben: I'm imagining a yellow rain hat, like for a fisherman.
(13:18) Gurg: See, I was thinking of those Dutch hats. The really tall cone ones.
(13:19) Ben: lol
(13:20) Libstrom: In Isabel and I's conversation the sentence was perfectly normal....but, leave it to me to take it out of context.
(13:21) Gurg: Quit taking it out.
(13:22) Libstrom: I need a hat
(13:23) Libstrom: In other news....
(13:25) Ben: Stimulus package.
(13:32) Gurg: In the late 1800s, the denuding of the forests and overfarming of the land created massive swaths of bare earth. Exacerbated by a decade of drought, the autumnal high winds swept the plains mercilessly. This was known as "The Hatless Time."
(13:33) Libstrom: Now I know how Penny feels
(13:33) Ben: I think we should be bullish about the Amazon, we burned and farmed North America to within an inch of its life.
(13:35) Gurg: No thank you Ma'amazon.
(13:35) Gurg: The cursed river flows two directions, despite every law of physics decrying it.
(13:37) Ben: Is this the Illinois river connected to the Missisipi?
(13:38) Gurg: Ben, this is Searching4Truth, not DoneFoundTheTruth.
(13:38) Libstrom: hahahahahahahaha
(13:39) Gurg: Everything I say is a lie.
(13:39) Ben: We should do a live action version of the famous paradox.
(13:40) Gurg: Maybe we're already not doing it right now.
(13:40) Ben: I wouldn't know what you aren't talking about.
(13:41) Libstrom: :-\ I'm not knowledgeable enough to comment
(13:41) Ben: Stop being down on yourself! #libbyisawesome
(13:41) Gurg: I don't believe you.
(13:42) Libstrom: I don't believe him either...
(13:42) Libstrom: #Libbyissometimesawesome
(13:45) Gurg: A Slovakian communications satellite was knocked out of orbit by a grapefruit sized chunk of space debris. As it fell to Earth, its scanners picked up extremely high levels of awesome in the vicinity of Libby. It found some comfort in this, and transmitted the information to Alpha Palmetto, a distant binary galaxy. It felt no fear as it crashed into the red dirt of the Namibian desert, frightening a local goat.
(13:46) Libstrom: Hopefully not a fainting goat...
(13:47) Gurg: The goat did not comment, as it had fainted.
(13:47) Libstrom: nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
(13:48) Ben: Where were the Checklo in all this?
(13:48) Gurg: And fell into a goat-sized bed. When it awoke, goat milk and cookies were on the tiny night stand next to it. Then work called and told the goat to take the day off to focus on goat stuff.
(13:49) Ben: You just yell like a man and eat garbage. Chill.
(13:51) Gurg: The Checklo could be reached for comment, but refused to speak in any known language. They would only click the knob of an ancient black-and-white TV set. Every channel showed Fox News.
(13:51) Gurg: The TV's power cord dangled in the red dust, plugged into nothing.
(13:52) Ben: I plug the power cord into a grapefruit.
(13:52) Libstrom: Some people say that humans should not drink other animals milk because it's not natural, and they use the example that cows don't drink goat milk...but, in all reality, how often does a cow have the opportunity to drink a goat's milk?
(13:53) Gurg: You are turned into a sky whale. Is this awesome? Y/N
(13:53) Ben: Y!
(13:53) Ben: I mount the sky whale, excelsior!
(13:54) Ben: I think some people do drink goat milk, libby, or at least make cheese.
(13:54) Ben: And if it isn't natural, how come my genes make lactase, an enzyme specifically made to digest milk? That's pretty damn natural.
(13:55) Gurg: You receive the +5 Baleen of Baleful Blades. Super-effective against ogres and mournful dirges.
(13:55) Gurg: Humans naturally put everything in their mouth.
(13:55) Ben: lol, too true.
(13:56) Libstrom: Oh
(13:56) Libstrom: I see.
(13:56) Gurg: Consider the lobster.
(13:56) Libstrom: I thought this was going somewhere else...sorry
(13:56) Libstrom: please continue

A Deal's A Deal

The artistic thing to do would be to make this deliberately obtuse. Try to seem deep and mysterious; brushed by the feathers of the heralds of the gods. It is cold, and I am weary. The story can tell itself.

The night my dog died, I couldn't sleep. Every story of the house reminded me of her. The first floor when she was a pup, confined as she was by the staircase and her strong but short legs. Her deep dark eyes shining up at me as I ascended to sleep. How her tail would wiggle as she slept with her chin on the first tread, anticipating in dreams the family's descent.

The second floor she mastered by stubborness. I hadn't loved her until she peeked into my study. The fire was low, and I was about throw into it my entire manuscript when she tried, and failed, to leap into my lap. Pitying her pudgy belly and deep gaze, I picked her up. She sat still for a whole minute. Stoic, she sniffed at my overly-romantic tale of love and deception, sitting stillborn next to my typewriter. She whined, and pawed at the keys.

"deft"

Deftly, good or ill, be quick in your actions. (I wrote, and from here on I will)

At the end of our lives, we do not tally up the right or wrong of things, but the why. Thus, be deft in your actions, swift in your judgement, that those of us waiting to react can do so.

Tallies are for the scorekeepers. We, the privileged few, are the players. Given our lines, we can but interpret, and wiggle an eyebrow or two in defiance of the text.

That is what you taught me, silly pitbull puppy. And if I weep now, it is for the loss of you, and not because in all my intellect, I taught you nothing that you, blind and eager to love, already knew.

I always knew she would break my heart.

My poor baby girl. The cancer had spread quickly. She died peacefully in my arms.

Watson seems fine, but he knows, I think, that she was the only one tough enough and stubborn enough to be his friend.

I will be brief
Our love
Was bigger on the outside

Everything is dying. Well, two things. Seems like everything, sometimes.

El Guapo, Aka The Noobers, Aka Guapo L. Dog, died on Saturday.  Put down, actually. I saw him on Friday, I think. I tapped on the window at  my parent's house, as I always do when I am too lazy to reach into my pocket and grab my keys. He didn't bark. And he didn't seem to recognize me. Didn't respond to my calls.

He was already somewhere else.

Now, I lie in bed, in my own home, with my own dogs. They hog the sheets. The ever-blowing fan chills my bare shoulders. It feels good; I lifted the 40-pound weights I keep in the bathroom and trip over every morning and my shoulders ache a bit. I'll be too cold soon, but any attempt to pull the blankets 'round me will disturb Leela. She'll growl coldly, as if she never loved me, and storm away. The only time I see her fierce, or fear her ire.

Watson I can slide around all day. Though the larger of the two, he is far more graceful.  Trusting, too. I cradle him in my arms and gaze lovingly into his eyes.

He tolerates it. It's hard to be adored, I think, without lacking a sense of self.

Can't go around loving people; it makes them realize what they are.

Sometimes I think of my tech and my toys and my tattoos and how I see them as an extension of myself, or at least what I convince myself I am, and how they're just things and anyone could own these or draw them on their skin and how my identity is a dull veneer of consumable products and advertisements for an idea of myself that I want to exist in a tangible way, but wasn't that the point of my consciousness, that it isn't a thing that can be seen or touched but only perceived as it bursts forth in thoughts and actions, creates and strives, and turns every human interaction into an impromptu symphony of invisible instruments.

Sometimes I think of my tech and my toys and my tattoos, but only sometimes.