Stupid People

But, of course, stupidity makes work for the janitor that no one else wants to do, will not do, in fact, and that's a good thing. Job security. I expect the kitchen to be a disaster after a food event, and I'm not disappointed. We have two 55 gallons trash cans, heavy Rubbermaid, and they're maybe 42 inches tall, slightly rectangular opening, wheels, good handles. For food events I line them with 55 gallon, 3-mil contractor bags. You could dispose of bodies in these. Two other cans, both 30 gallons, I line with 42 gallon contractor bags. One of the smaller cans is not over-loaded, so I take that bag to the truck (I have to haul everything to our dumpster over at the Cirque), then put a new bag in that can and start sorting garbage by hand. This is an awful job but I don't mind too much, because I can sort out stuff to be recycled and several meals for the dog. A kind of shell game with garbage. In one of the larger cans, after it was more than half-full, they put in a dozen empty wine bottles, ignoring the empty case, then filled the empty case with waste food, and put it on top of the bottles. Naturally, when I go to lift the empty case filled with wet food scraps, so I can put the empty bottles in another case I'd stashed, the bottom falls out of the formerly empty case, and the bottles are covered with a semi-liquid food sludge. By the time I get done it's almost noon. Down side of this later, when I finally get home, is that Little Sister smells it on me, and as both of my hands are full, I have to kick her in the head to keep her from jumping on me. An incident at the coffee shop. I was manipulated into a position where I was scant inches away from Erica's chest. It was flawless and I had nothing to say. I forgot to breathe, coughed and backed away. I'm one of the stupid people too, I have papers, I walk among you. Everything I ever owned is stacked against my trailer, or in the yard somewhere, it's all there. What you not trailer-trash don't understand is what I want you to realize, this shit is actually important. Even now that I longer live in a trailer I tend to collect things other people discard. Phone line went dead last night, after yet another couple of calls about the trip in May. So I couldn't SEND. Mind-numbing number of things I need to get done. I start two lists on two pieces of the folded paper I use as notebook: one is the museum list and the other is the house list. I'll need to cut back on the reading for the next six weeks. I need to drop some trees before I go. Organizing stuff at the museum, patching and repainting the upstairs gallery, helping Pegi edit text to send the Ohio Arts Council for the final report. I got into town early, did a big shop, juices, milk, cream, butter, ingredients for several meals I can fix quickly. I need to work outdoors here, for just an hour, most days, to get ahead of the brushwork and firewood. Leaving work, I was in a kind of thought-out mode, driving slowly, looking around. The last of the ice is gone from the wet-weather springs facing north. Some of these stalactites were huge, as big as a storage shed. I imagine a house, built a certain way, with a ramp down to the well-drained cellar, a really well insulated cellar, with a removable wall panel to get in and out. You bring one of these ice chunks in, early spring, cover it with sawdust, and it cools the house all summer. Actually doable, I decide. Thank god for Forsythia. It begins to hide the endless piles of trailer junk. Past Boobie's abandoned sawmill, into the State Forest, and there's a dead woodchuck on the road. I stop, as I always do, to pull bodies off the road, so they need not be further violated, but this one is still body-warm and flexible, not dead half-an-hour, and I realize I could cook it for Dog. A couple of day's dog-food. Meat. I have a great drop-point knife (my preferred, for skinning) clipped inside my pocket. What the hell? I stop, backup, and pull-off into a staging site, where they'd clear-cut after the last ice storm, go get the dead critter and drag him back to the truck. I can't believe I'm doing this, skinning another animal, but I do know how, and I'm making short work of it, when a good-old-boy stops by, I recognize the rust patterns in his truck, wonders what I'm doing, and I explain I'm skinning this woodchuck to make dog-food. He asked if there was anything he could do and I told him if he held the head I might be able to pull the pelt off. He grabbed on to both ears and planted his feet. Came off like a glove. Where's the camera when you need it? He went off, to meet his best friend's wife, and I had a neatly butchered woodchuck, wrapped in the contractor bag I keep behind the seat of the truck. A three-mil, 55 gallon contractor bag. You could live in one of those. I imagine a scenario. Dog is fucking crazy, she knows she will be eating woodchuck, whoever that fucking asshole is, that controls when she eats. Which would be me. I'm confused. I want to mean nothing, but I mean something, in spite of myself. You and me, babe.