I Left Texas To Follow Lucinda, Now I’ll Never See Texas Or Home

It’s a Tom Waits sort of morning, I think.

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Allow me to tell you a story, hmm? It’s a story that has a young boy and his mother and a stepfather of large stature.

There’s also a dog.

With the boy in the condition he’s in, broken arm with no cast (Wednesday, for the casting), the wife and I have been doing his weekly paper route for him. Not a difficult job, mind you, but time consuming and, to be honest, a bit annoying. So to speed things along, the wife and I each take a bundle of papers and split the street in half; she heads north, I head south, and so forth. It cuts the time taken to distribute the papers in half.

So I’m walking up sixth street, the sun at my back and the wind in my hair, when our car passes me. Our car. The car that was parked two blocks behind me. I stop and turn, looking behind me in confusion, a paper fell and hit the concrete as the car pulled up next to me.

“I’ve gotta run home for a minute.” Danielle said from the driver’s seat. Another paper fell.

“Wha-”

“A dog bit me and I need to wash the wound. I’ll be right back.” she interrupted me and pulled away.

The other papers fell.

By the time I walked home, she was already getting into the car.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“I’m fine! It’s a small bite, I just put some Neosporin on it. I’m fine.”

And she is. It was an Irish Setter that bit her ankle while she was trying to put the bagged paper round its owner’s doorknob. She pointed me to the house. I talked to the owner, who was apologetic and, I believe, a bit afraid of me. He was half my size and I was angry. The dog is up on its shots, it’s perfectly healthy and the owner assured me she’s not an aggresive dog, but that she’ll be kept inside from now on.

“What happened?” Danielle asked when I returned to the car.

“I had to rough him up a bit.” I said in a tone that was trying to sound like Clint Eastwood, but probably sounded more like Jack Black.

“You are such a liar.”

“He was afraid of me.” I said, proudly.

“I’m sure he was.”

For the record, he was.

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Given the stress of life and all the things attached to it lately (the boy’s broken arm, the costs stemming from the broken arm, general things related to being poor, etc.), I’ve been unable to focus on writing. Which is a damn shame, but unavoidable.

Once we get the greenlight from the MinnesotaCare people telling us that we won’t have a ten thousand dollar hospital bill looming on the horizon, and once we’re able to pay off a few more of these bills, and once we recieve our stimulus check, all will be back to normal and I’ll be able to focus a bit better.

Until then, I don’t see writing much more than blog entries. Even those, I fear, are more boring than usual lately.

But hey, this one had an injruy. And our faithful hero (read: me) intimidating a small man in glasses (read: the very nice owner of a dog that was merely protecting her home). And ice cream.

Oh, I didn’t mention the ice cream.

…

There was ice cream. It was delicious.

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I’ve begun e-mail correspondence with a relative I’ve not seen or spoken to or heard from since I was a toddler. It’s an odd experience, but a nice one.

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As of May the fourteenth, I’ll have officially been working at the local gas station (Casey’s) for a year. Hard to believe, really. But I suppose that’s due to my only working three days a week.

Speaking of work, I have to stock the cooler full of chilled liquid goodies today, so I should probably get some sleep.

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Edited to add:

I’m a forgetful bastard.

The lovely Lisa has created a Live Journal feed to this very blog.

So if you’re a Live Journal user, and would like to have this blog’s updates appear in your friends list, add the Rob Kaas feed.

Thank you, Lisa.

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