Kid's Day

Seventh and eighth grade classes, bouncing around on cookies and punch. I'd forgotten punch. I felt like a hallway monitor. After they left, checking the bathrooms, discovered a mess of vomit in the men's room. He had aimed for the sink, missed, mostly. Not too bad a clean-up, as it was fresh; dried puke has certain cementitious properties that make it more problematic. Carried some things to the museum, in case I get stranded there, extra razor, wash-cloth and towel, a pillow, a blanket, a sweat shirt. Carried supplies home, baking powder, condensed milk, beans, salt-pork. Beans and cornbread in my future. Also ground beef, onions, and potatoes for a Shepard's Pie. Go to the library tomorrow. Work on firewood Saturday, then I can bail out on Sunday if I need to, take my dirty laundry with me and wash it on the way to the museum. Do a couple of episodes of "The Night Watchman". Theoretically I can access my AOL account from there, write on the computer in the extra office. A taste of life in town. Got to get D to figure out the linkup. I like the idea of writing from the museum, I've never done that. A change in habit (two nuns go into a bar...) would do me good, I think. There are a couple of singer songwriters that play at the pub I'd like to hear. Mostly I'm interested in the way I'll respond to a much higher noise/sound level than I'm used to. Florida, motel rooms with the girls, are not really a fair test, because I'm not writing. When I first started working this way, there was a very proscribed ritual, writing in that odd shaped piece that came to be known as a "Reverse Idaho"; I still get a drink and roll a smoke, but that's about the last remnant comparison. Now I write anytime of the day or night. Finish paragraphs the next day. The whole operation is looser, which I prefer; but at the beginning I needed more ritual to access the remembering. This last trip, in Florida, I wrote a piece in my head. The girls, Kevin and Karol and I, on the back porch, laughing, drinking, really enjoying ourselves. Kevin went off to play his war game, Karol left, the girls went inside to watch some specific TV show, and I was alone, in the dark. So I wrote in my head, much as I'm writing now: going back, changing words, altering punctuation, and it seemed to go fine, if I'd had a laptop it might exist, along with all those pages I've lost due to user error. Shit happens, and vomit. Maybe I need a smart phone. An electronic bulletin board. What I really need is a load of dry firewood, and a day to spend under my floor, repairing what the dog has ripped asunder. Relationships are hell. But at least you can snuggle at night. Never go to bed with a toaster-oven. Better, heaven forbid, to go to bed with a goat, than with anything that could shock you. Assuming a goat doesn't shock you. Sailors are a long time at sea, using even the vent hole of fowl to satisfy their need. I think I could write anyplace, let's go see.