Minor Flooding

Talk about local events. No storm at my house but town (17 miles away) got hit with a thunder shower. Minor flooding in the basement at the museum. Mopping up (when a janitor marries above his station) I had the great good fortune to find a hidden corner in a dark room where one of the kids had pooped several times. It's lunch time before I get everything cleaned up. Ate at the Pub, joined by two profs from the college. Mike, the music guy, still wanting to do some music for the installation, catch up on college gossip. Mid-afternoon docenting a pair of ladies around the exhibits, one I know from several openings, the other, her friend Jodie, was darkly attractive and had great legs. I was glib and funny. You collect wonderful stories at an art museum, one does. The Deputy knew I was flirting, hated to interrupt my narrative, but something needed doing and she and I were alone as staff, it was my job to do whatever it was, didn't matter, because the ladies called me back over, to explain what a burl was, why so many of the wood turners liked to use them. I did the five-minute burl lecture, making up shit as I went along, stringing together fact and fiction, realized I was in the same mode that I write from, the middle-distance. They were asking good questions, very like the questions I ask myself, and I was answering the way I write, little essays, posts, notes. I brought back lunch for a couple of staff, sat with them for a few minutes, then Pegi wouldn't let me leave, giving me a raft of shit about being a recluse, anti-social. Very funny stuff. Bottom line, I don't have any free time, it looks like I should, but I don't, and if I did have more time, I'd spend it reading and writing. Staff room conversation today is all about the new generations of pests, resistant to the usual batch of insecticides, nits, mites, bed-bugs, crabs; motels are deathtraps and movie theaters harbor disease. I'm cleaning up human feces in the basement, to which I'm not even related (an important distinction when it comes to shit, the Deputy pointed out) and they're talking about nits, hell, you just rinse off with kerosene and take a bath, it's not rocket science. I only had body-lice once but got them from a famous lady and considered it an honor. Raining off and on all day, clearing a bit on the drive home, sun visible as a white disc, and there are two sun-dogs, just visible in the clouds, stop at the lake and roll a smoke, three crows cleaning up after a picnic. Must trim the driveway, it's gotten scary, looks like nobody lives there, here. Three crows a cleaning, two sun-dogs shining, and a recluse in a pine tree. Sorry, thinking forward to xmas, the girls want to come here, put that into the mix, the Wrack Show, right, right, prioritize. I need a really large calendar for November and December, with room for notes, I can't write when other people are around, I just can't, and I'll need a handle, something, because other people will be around, so I need to take notes, I might use them later. I might not. It's not fair to say never: twice, when other people were here, I wrote when other people were around. It was an experiment, no one could tell any difference in the resulting paragraph. I thought that telling. I could have written about it, I chose not to, I don't know why. Really, I'd rather talk about my failures, they're more interesting, success is easy, failure involves some thought, and is way more interesting. Listen, there was a rock song at Kroger's this morning, The Grateful Dead, doing "Ripple" and I was gone, buy whatever they wanted me to buy, yes, sure, whatever. I know I'm protected, I have a vest, I only hope you don't shoot me in the thigh, or the neck.