First thing, my pets are suffering from the evils of capitalism just like the rest of us.
Second thing, I am beginning to dislike pets more than children.
Third thing, and there is always a third thing, I am on the precipice of my new life and I am listing.
Ok, lets detail these things.
Pets have become substitutes for humans to interact with. They are peoples "children" I hear said. I have young friends that treat pets like people. My da was very specific about pets not being treated like people. Do not feed them from the table and don;t let them sleep in your bed with you. I had a cat that loved to sleep under the covers. He would sneak into the room, climb under the covers, migrated down to my feet and deposit all of his fleas under the sheets. I thought I was with a cheap hooker in the Angolan jungle. I scratched for three days. One cat is very, very skinny and his fur fell off the back half of his body. It grew back without stripes, well now the stripes are coming back. Anyway, I feed him extra little smokey hot dogs every night in hopes that he gains some weight. He is an asshole so we cannot let him in the house. That is the the thing about cats, they just expect us to provide everything for them, I mean, if you leave them outside, they will do just fine except when they are road crossers. Road crossers will eventually get killed by a car, it is sort of Darwinian.
I raised 5 children, not including myself. I give my wife credit for that. Fortunately, she was an adult when I met her. She did not know much about raising children though. She is a great nurturer of the babies and invalids. Thinking, conniving, trecherous children above the age of two were pretty much out of her wheelhouse. I was ready and willing to pick things up from there. A child is like a bike wheel with loose spokes, It will wobble and break down, you just need to help it get straight and keep nudging them down the road, sometimes with a stick. I did not dislike any of my kids, there were two kids from little league softball, Alysa and Malysa, I think they were the two twins from "The Shinning". They gave me the evil eye because I they did not want to stand out in the sun and heat, they were ten years old and I am sure they have ruined many a life since I exorcised them from my team. They scared me with that look.
I think children are just too much work, never ending. I mean even now they are grown, I worry about them, help them out in ways of guidance and guilt. I am old and tired, I want the children to cook and clean for me and do all the things I am tired of doing. I am tired of doing most things. Nobody is going to do all those things for me. Raising them was mostly chaos and pain, very little smiling, even less joy, but the joy was enormous when it came. The sheet is not balanced though. That is why I am listing.
This precipice I talk about, I just lost a bunch of weight, finally see the end of the mortgage, have a decent idea about what I want to do with the last part of my life but there is that listing. Listing from the old english meaning of " the edge". Precipice should translate to"listing" but whatever. I wander while I list. If I am going to act drunk, I may as well be drunk. I came to that conclusion and my daughter bought me one of those cute little pocket flasks. I do not imagine I could take it on a plane but everywhere else I have a flask of vodka in case I need it.
I need to sum this up, Pets get fat, unhealthey and unruly, children destroy vaginas, spines and order, precipices lead to change, and uncertain growth as well ass hard landings.
