Welfare State

D and I were out back, having a smoke, busting our asses to get this show packed, and the welfare boyfriend shows up, bumming a cigaret, which he can't roll, because he cut his finger on a broken crack pipe. If we understand him correctly, he's hard to understand; he can't believe he actually has to work nine and a half hours a week to qualify for his disability check. I want to just shoot him, but D rolls him a cigaret from my tobacco and we go back inside so we don't have to listen to him mumble. I don't trust someone who isn't willing to work, call it profiling or whatever. That was Saturday, I think. Today, James and I had no problem getting the rest of the show packed, load the truck tomorrow, then off to Columbus. The gallery there is in a state building, difficult of egress in these times, but they have a truck elevator, which should be cool. Probably get home late tomorrow. Late this winter, early spring, I'm going to drop 6 or 8 smallish trees, all oaks, all right on the upper reach of the driveway, so an easy carry, cut them to length, and wall the woodshed with them. I'll cut them before the sap rises. I'm going to build that saw buck I was imagining. Save my back. Picked up another couple of pre-cut pine boles, at the Wood Dump, for next year's kindling. I want 3 cords of oak, and whatever else I can scrounge; I burn about 4 cords a year, I think, but the way I work wood, I've never really known, and I'd like to know, more precisely. In winter I can hear the trains in Kentucky, across the river, maybe five miles, as the crow flies, and it's hard not to make up country songs. I had a good one going today, the refrain was "but she left me, and took my truck, and I don't know what I'm going to do..." and I'd plug in stanzas depending on what I was doing at the moment. Some of them were very funny and I wondered at my ability to amuse an audience of one. My sister calls and we talk about the mental and physical condition of the parents, what would be best, what could be done; they're 90 and 85, and my brother, 54, lives at home, runs all their errands in exchange for a free ride. It's complex. On the one hand and on the other. Rain changing to something frozen. Better shut down, likely to lose power. Did, outfoxed that bastard. Went to bed early got up early, off to the museum. D already there with the truck, smaller than we'd discussed, but the only other option was a 28 footer. Load up the 14 footer carefully, and it all fits with room to spare, off a bit late, because of the care in loading, and miss breakfast. Stop in South Bloomfield, eat an early lunch on the fly, get to the gallery maybe 12:30, unload in less than an hour, talking Mary Gray and Stephanie through the awkward bits of the show to install. I expect numerous phone calls and may have to go back up. The dolls and animals will be a problem for them, they weren't for us, because installing our permanent artifact collection has made D a master of mounts. With several different thicknesses of brass wire and Mapp Gas, he could articulate a skeleton, make a dead person look alive. The dolls are not in good shape and need supporting in several different places. Always hesitant to offer much advice, because as a Preparator myself, I don't want much. Solving the problems is part of the fun. A winter nose drip like I've never had before, a clear liquid of which I'm not even aware until I drip on my shirtfront, while I'm seriously talking with the Director of the State Gallery in Columbus. I just looked at it, then back at her, mentioned the great unwashed and how I was one. D has things to do and I need to clean the stove and get a fire started. We bail Columbus in a hurry and head home, no stops, no savory delights. Good coffee at one particular Quick-Stop. We have stopped, I think, at every place you can stop between here and Columbus, and this place takes there coffee seriously. A treat we allow ourselves. I notice we have a shorthand way of communicating on this trip, and others that we've made dozens of times. A particular outcropping, a stone foundation, the way the Kame forms the landscape, the glacier stopped here, beyond is outwash, almost nothing is said. Sometimes just a nod, pointing a finger at something that wasn't there anymore, quoting a dead poet, referencing anything we had in common, establishes a more common bound more quickly. I don't try to make friends, I have enough already, not that I'm a closed system, but I'm comfortable in my skin. Someone gains admission, they're part of the crew. I don't even understand what the process is, the social dynamic. You include and exclude people based on something. I posit nothing here, I only know I do it. We all do. I have to go nap.