Thursday, September 10, 2015

Jeffery the Guard Pig

Jeffery on patrol!
"I need a nap!"



"Formation, get in formation!"
Jeffery is growing up.  My little teenager (in pig years) is starting to defend the property from evil doers. 
"If I can see them before they see me........"
"Surprise is mine"
Jeffery is a good-natured beast.  He whines a bit when the food is late but what teenager does not.    He enjoys his buddy, Pumpernik the little limping, stinky dog.  The horses are sloppy eaters and he gets to clean up what grain is remaining. He stays in the yard except for an occasional raid on the neighbor's dog food.  He gets scolded for that.  I tell him, "Jeffery, bad dog, stay in this yard, go away until you show me you are sorry for leaving the yard!  He understands "bad dog" so I just keep that going.  It is like when I told the kids that  cauliflower was white "broccoli" and since you like broccoli shut up and eat it.

Monday, August 31, 2015

None of that

I am so so aggravated about everything.  I do not think that is an overstatement or an exaggeration.   Can a person really be aggravated about EVERY THING?  The older I get the more I think it is possible. 

Age can throw an entire bunch of new challenges your way.  With eyesight fading and body parts aching that never ached before, the total number of grievances is increased before you even open your eyes in the morning to start another exasperating day.  I woke up with a headache and realized I was having a dream about getting the hell beat out of me in a hotel bathroom.  Symbolism aside, why was I in a hotel bathroom at all? While sleeping, I had a pain in my knee that made me jerk myself almost completely out of my bed.  It was obviously a misfire of the nerves because as I was flying off the bed I was thinking "I wonder if narcotics would help prevent this flying out of bed shit?"  My meth-head neighbors could enlighten me on a possible solution.

I think a shift in my attitude started last week at work when the Safety Committed was and still is suggesting that we initiate a "fatigue" evaluation form, more useless paperwork,  for people who are going to be working overtime hours.  They want to make sure we do not fall asleep on the drive home after working overtime and blame it on the company.  Ninety three percent of the people where I work are resting with their heads up there butts seventy nine percent of the day anyway.  The drive home is the most exciting physical and mental challenge of the day.  We are not garbage collectors, who by the way in my city do not even get out of the truck anymore.  They just scoop up the bin with a noisy pincher like thing and dump it in the back of the truck.  We are not ditch diggers or Wichita linemen so sitting in the fetal position for another few hours is not taxing to anything.  They pay us straight time anyway so the company could not give a shit what we are doing after hours except if they can show the lawyers that it looks like they care about us.

Grammar, now there is a real peach.  I have used many words so far that have double letters in them.  The "double g" thing always looks wrong.  Then there is the "i before e" thing and the words you want to pluralize that end in n.  Do you use "es" or just "s" or shit for that matter.  There are words like "everything".  Is it one or two words?   With "butts" and "diggers" and "aggravation"  all rushing to my head the instant I wake up and trying to write this rant down before I forget it, there is a possibility I am dropping wing nuts right and left.  I just changed that last sentence because I could not remember if the word loose as in loosen or lose as in losing my mind was correct.  I know now I do not give a fuck.  It is not like anyone is going to be reading this blog.  Well there is those two  hackers from the Ukraine that seem to be trying to read this stuff.

And about waking up.  Every morning when I wake up, a song streams into my head.  This morning it was "Martha, My Dear".  Yesterday it was "Lolly, Lolly, Lolly get your Adverbs here".  Why is Grammar (double letters, shit) Rock getting in my brain? If that is not bad enough, last week I woke up to "Beat It".  This went on for three days, and I do not even know the words to Beat It.  I would be at the ATM trying to skim someones account and my head would be bobbing (shit) to the beat of Beat It making up words as I go.  Sometimes my morning jingle is a TV commercial like "Zestfully clean".  Aggravating!

The top of the list of things that are bothering me is the fact that really I do not have any friends.  Who would want one that has joints that make more noise than a freight train and who runs around singing "zestfully clean" as he searches for his car in the mall parking lot.  I have a pen pal  (without looking it up this could be one word) that answers with one sentence answers, not much bonding going on there.  I remember reading the letters of Ernest Hemingway and the journal letters of Emily Dickinson and thinking how great it would be to have pen pals like that.  My friends are the people I work with and whenever I try to get together with one of them outside of work I get an answer like "I have to cut grass with my wife's vagina" or my son has a Cricket game in NJ that week end.  My wife is not my best friend, well she is steadily climbing the ladder partially by default but also because increasingly she is the only one who puts up with my bullshit. 

My children have finally reached the age where I barely recognize them and I guess it is supposed to be that way.  They are a faint vision, a mere whiff of the little kids I laughed with and at All Those Years Ago.  Oh no, another song in my head.  The kids say and do things I do not approve of or I am sure I never hinted they do.  They are grown and I have to hold my tongue sometimes.  I need to refresh their memory that I am still their parent and I can say anything I want.  It is there fault I hate kids.  My grand-kids are getting the  brunt of that new attitude.  I am a grouchy old man.  I am not apologizing (damn, one "p") for it.  That is the way it is.  I fully understand how a drug fiend of a drunk could abuse a child.  I am inches and seconds away from it most of the time.  If my resolve was weakened by drugs or my fortitude was dulled with alcohol, any child screaming "don't touch me" to his sibling for the three hundredth time would push me way past the edge of reality.  I cannot take it much longer.  I may have been a shinning example of parenting long ago  but now I am a danger to myself and others. I tell them, "if you play by the street and you get hit by a car I am not taking you to the hospital, you can bleed all over somewhere else and wait for you mom to come get you, it is your choice."  

At my residence I have seven horses, a pig, two ducks, two dogs, five chickens, four cats and one teenager.  I had a hermit crab, Herman of course, but he ran away under the house.   One of the cats went missing last month and I think the hermit crab got him.  I found a giant discarded conch shell in the pasture.  Yes, I hate animals.   Actually, I love animals but something has to give.  Jeffery the pig is the cutest thing even though he now weighs ninety pounds.  He was raised in the house but now he lives on the back porch.  He has a wading pool, a hovel and fifteen acres to roam in.  Animals are everywhere and my grand-kids torment the shit out of all of them.  The animals run for the hills when the kids come over. The cats are under the couch and in closets.   My kids love animals but do not want to take care of them.  I cannot walk in my yard without stepping on, in or around something.  I cannot leave the door open or a barnyard animal my come in the house.  The chickens and Jeffery like the air conditioning.  The horses like the porch and the ducks are just nasty creatures and I wish they would run the cats off.  The dogs are useless barking fart machines.  Three barks a fart and a bark.  That means the mail man is coming or the Nazi three houses up is flying his plane again. 

I am missing three window screens.  They are metal and they are not ambulatory.  I could see one disappearing because of the wind or  the cat pushing one out but not three.  There is some kind of conspiracy concerning window screens.  Why I do not know.  It is a devious and dark thing I tell you.   I am missing a machete, a saws-all, a catcher's glove and  pogo stick.  If you see a crazed maniac boinging down the road on a pogo stick swinging a machete with a tree trimmer in his belt yelling "strike three you are out" he stole all of that stuff from my house and he needs analysis because the machete is dull, the battery on the saws-all is dead, the pogo stick veers to the left and the glove has a hole in it. Ask him about my widow screens. Ass hole.

I have no money, no sex, no prospects for either, a mortgage, an old car, animal shit all over the place.  I do get fresh eggs from the chickens but my family will not eat them because they taste funny and it was my idea to eat them in the first place.  If it was my idea to go somewhere, eat anything, do anything, fix anything the answer is no thanks.  My son says, Dad, can you go buy me a milk shake?  No son, I can make you one with the ice cream we have in the freezer.  No dad, it will not taste the same.  My wife acts like I am trying to poison her.  No dear, even though I am hungry, it looks good I just do not want that right now, did you spit in it? No, I did put hemlock in it and I found something in the back of the fridge that I used for blue cheese dressing.  

There are actually more things to be aggravated at than I can even write down or remember at this time.  I wish I could say this venting helped but it really did not.




 



Thursday, July 30, 2015

Grocery List

I have a grocery list on my IPhone6.  This is the list I have created over about three weeks.  I keep adding to it and never delete anything.  It is a representation of what is required in my household.  Some of these items I never purchase or receive but I keep them on the list.  I am cheap and frugal but mostly cheap so my family instructs me on the exact nature of their needs are for food.  I tend to pick the cheapest in many cases and they explain at the meeting "that will not do".

Pizza  --  This can be frozen or fresh made.
cat food  --  Various types.
nibbles  --  Whatever I think the humans and/or animals will like as a snack.
corn  --  Any type but usually includes cream style and frozen.
Peas --  Same as corn.
blowjob  --  I do not expect to get this at the store or anywhere else.
Ibuprofen 
Seltzer water  --  Any flavor, no sugar.
Mixed fruit, canned  --  Mostly for Jeffery the pig.
Garbage bags
Bananas  --  There is nothing better than a solid, slightly ripe, stiff banana in the morning.
Coffee cream  --  Specific type.
Bug spray  --  For prevention of various mosquito borne diseases for humans and Jeffery the pig.
Chips
Sausage --  I like mild Italian style.  My family thinks it tastes funny.
Breakfast sausage  --  No it is not a duplicate, silly me.  It has to be fully cooked and processed pseudo sausage.  If not my family says it tastes funny.
Dog food  --  Purina One puppy.  We do not have a puppy.
Pig food  --  Mostly a catch all for breakfast oatmeal or anything like that on sale.
Ice cream
Donuts --  mostly powdered sugar cake donuts.
Potatoes
Milk --   Cow and Almond because we can.
Chips
Tomatoes
Lettuce
Ham  --  I like the Black Forest type.  It brings back memories of carnage and barbarism while I tear into the packaging.
Chicken  --  This is cheap ass perpetually frozen chicken thighs that are boiled and given to the dogs.  It is cheaper than any dog snack. 
Cheese --  I want to be a cheese maker.
Meatballs  --  I have found a brand that with a little help are as good as they need to be.
Sugar  --  A fine symbol of capitalism that is holding its own in the every changing diet world.  With modified corn syrup  losing sway with the "civilized world", sugar is making a comeback.
Tea  --  This is for ice tea with sugar in it.
Butter  --  Also making a comeback in the civilized world.
Candy  --  Kit Kat and Starburst
Bread  --  Special, more expensive bread that will take longer to go bad because although someone wanted it, sandwiches are so not interesting.
Pasta  --  Now the trend has shifted from egg noodles to Ditalini.  I do not guess I should tell them it means "little fingers".
Soup  --  This is a hot button of resentment.  It has to be beef consume for the ditalini.  Beef broth will not due even though beef broth is half the price.  Any other soup must be approved by my son and wife to meet the strict requirements at the bi-weekly "You are a lousy shopper meeting".  "It must be something they want to eat at the given time they think they want soup".  It is really very simple.  I will fail.
Salami  --  It must be "hard" salami.  I grew up in Florida in the 60's.  I figured there was on type of salami, one type of milk, and one type of hurricanes.  I guess it is like the banana.
Fabric softener  --  The most expensive kind please.  I tried to explain that "please" does not help.
Suffering  --  I do not pay to receive this but it must jump in the basket because as soon as I get back from the store I start suffering.  Misery lives under my house and come out when Suffering needs help.
Spaghetti  --  Silly me, I again thought there were only three types of pasta, spaghetti, macaroni and the big round stuff.
Cocoanut Milk
Syrup
Cilantro 
Shampoo  --  Do not get me going again.
Soap
Fix-a-flat --  What a great invention.
Tennis balls
Goat milk  --  For when Jeffery was a baby.







Friday, July 24, 2015

Delusions and goals

"A well-formed delusion can go a long way to aid in achieving your goals."  Who said that.  I did but I probably read something like it somewhere, sometime.

It got me thinking though.  I know a lady that told herself constantly that she would become a veterinarian some day.  She was a bit of an air head and we all have dreams and I said to myself, "Good for you lady with the nice butt".  She is now a veterinarian and I am doing the same thing I was doing back when she visioned her dreams.  Not that I am complaining about how many of my dreams were not realized yet.  I can only blame myself.

I know that in my past, any goal desired in which I drove my heart and soul toward was achieved and with quite nice results.  There have been far too few goals that I went after with the kind of zeal that was needed to succeed.  I have acquaintances that still just seem to fall into shit and come out smelling like a rose.  I cannot believe it is intelligence that get them through it mainly because they do not have much.  It takes very little effort to make a wrong turn and falling down a rabbit hole is usually fatal.

My perception of the entire issue must be the problem.  That is where delusion comes in.  Maybe my delusions are just not framed correctly.  Maybe they believe their delusions more deeply than I believe mine.  I can be quit the skeptic and naive.  I would be a good politician.  I know a guy that can get a job doing anything from the highly technical to the mundane.  His job mowing the highway lead him to being in charge of a major labor contract for a government agency.  He was arrogant and a giant tool.  His delusion was that he was something special and he could convince everyone of it.

Some goals are never verbalized and can still be realized.  Things like raising decent children or being a person to be respected are never really talked about but in the end seem very important.  I cannot imagine anyone not having dreams of a better life for their kids when they are born.  I know the sidetracks life takes while trying to raise brainless crumb-snatchers and at times it too much to take for all people.   This again is where the delusion comes in.  I was expected to be a college graduate and a decent person.  It was my parent's dream that they somehow placed in my brain and made it my dream.

What is the difference between a dream and a delusion?  The difference is just a nuance.  Society will determine which it is in the long term.

Thursday, July 16, 2015

Status on Jeffery

In case you are new to this blog, Jeffery is a pig.  He is four months old and has been living quite happily in my house since we obtained him from a hunter.  What is most interesting about that day was that when I sent the initial photo to my wife she said "I have to have him".  As with most things with my wife, children, couches, husbands and pets soon obtain the title of "dirt generating pains in the ass".  

Jeffery is all pig.  His skin is a magnet for dirt.  He has no discernible figure or body shape aside from a torpedo and he acts like one.  His neck is fatter than his butt.  His nose is this truly remarkably soft dirt modulating jackhammer.  He has the sweetest eyes and squeaks when you scratch him under his arm.   He thinks he is a dog which is sad because my dogs think they are humans so I am not sure what they are teaching him.  He chases the balls when we throw them, he first runs toward a barking dog and then runs away scurrying under the porch and stick his nose out the steps.

The other day, Jeffery and Pumpernik, one of our dogs with a broken leg went adventuring out in the swamp.  They were gone about an hour and I figured one or both of them were eaten by an alligator or a python but Pumpernik came slogging though the ditch covered in mud and dehydrated.  I tried to clean him up before my wife saw him but he darted upstairs to jump on the bed and show mom how much fun he had in the swamp.  Jeffery came strolling in about ten minutes later.  I scolded him and told him to stay in the yard while making him get in his wading pool to cool off.  It was his first adventure into the wild and it was wild.  I knew their adventure was over and mine was beginning when my wife started screaming about the dirt.