Truck Problems

Dave replaced the right front axle, which he said was shot. Driveway eats trucks. Thought he had the 4-wheel drive figured out, then backing it out of his garage so I could pick it up tomorrow, damn thing slipped out again. Not working. He wants to keep it a few more days. Got to get out and get my mail. Rains all day. Finish what books I have. Conversation with Mom. She's in good spirits and I can still make her laugh. Physical therapy for the ankle, and she has to stay there, so she and Dad are apart. A nightmare of driving for my sister. Rain changes over to snow while Anthony and I are having a drink at the pub. Lovely in the streetlights. A lot of water on the streets and very cold tonight. Just as glad not to be going out to get my truck tomorrow. Watch a National Geographic special, on hulu, about the storm of 1993. I was in Colorado at the time, and didn't keep up with the news. Almost finished painting the galleries, still have to touch-up the little one, where I took down The Memory Project. On my painting schedule, though, all the offices need attention. There was no elephant. I locked the doors and had everyone check under their chair. I missed a day, thinking about Mom and my truck. A Country Western song. Three coats and the entry wall is finally acceptable. I roll up the blue tape into a fairly tight wad, about the size of a baseball, and try to sink shots from one end of the main gallery to the other. I finally sank one, after eleven misses and a dramatic increase in the size of the trash can. Lunched alone and quickly. Then a strange scene. The main gallery lights were off, just the back hallway lit. I'd come in the back door and left it wedged open, staff, probably, going out for lunch, I thought. Dude follows me in, fit, middle-aged, white guy, brush-cut blond hair. He's holding a cellphone in one hand, and in the other is a very wicked looking knife. Assessing the situation, I had a great many thoughts very quickly. The knife is strange looking and doesn't look sharp. The guy doesn't seem like a killer. I don't seem worth killing, for the 5 dollars and 34 cents I have in my pocket. This is a museum, people bring things in all the time, for information, opinion, value. I think he's one of those, and I'm correct. He'd found this knife forty years before, as a kid, playing in a field, and he wondered what kind of knife it was. I tell him it's handmade, probably from the leaf-spring of an early car and the proof of that is the crudely hammered knob at the end of the handle that holds the equally crude leather rings, that form the handhold. What it looked like was a primitive rip-off of a WW1 bayonet. Not a useful knife for much of anything but killing. I don't particularly like knives, cringe at the thought of fighting with them, but I've carried one for fifty years and use it several times a day. A succession of knives, actually, because people take them, they disappear into worm-holes, I lost one, once, for two years, in a sofa. For years I carried a four-inch Buck Knife in a holster on my belt, it finally wore out the seat-covers in the big truck I drove when I was building houses. Someone took that. Went to a pocket knife, after that, a lovely small drop-point Gerber, with which I could skin a large animal in short order, carried it for more than a decade, but in the great robbery of '06 it was stolen. Linda got me my current Gerber, a larger drop-point, that clips to the inside of my pocket. Still, technically, a pocketknife. Knives wear out pants, paper covers stone, what I mean is that if you carry a pocket knife, you wear out the bottom of the pocket sooner; you wear a clip on the inside type, and you fray the fibers at the top of the pocket. You're destroying your pants. If you never had to carve a notch, your clothes would last longer. To a large extent, it depends on what you imagine. Deconstruct the most simple thing in your life, something completely mundane, see how quickly you're bogged down. I miss Arial 10, this fucking 7 on 6, or 6 on 5 they have me working in, not really acceptable. Something about the way she moved. Granted me some extra hours, when I would grab a magnifying glass and look at something closely, trying to determine if your point-size put you out-of-bounds. That's as asexual as my people getting in touch with your people. Sometimes I'm ashamed. The world is not my crossing. If we had argue, I'd say you were wrong. I've given up everything, to hold the high ground, I thought that was the point, Now, we're getitng somewhere, did you notice how thin everything had become. You and me and a very thin dough. I love history, don't get me wrong.