Mulling Over

I had no idea what the noise was. It didn't register at all, like seeing a completely new color smeared against the sky. My personal sound library is fairly vast: a young rabbit being killed by a hawk, three crows fighting over one mouse, an alligator trying to spit out a fishing lure it had mistaken for a fish. I awoke instantly, used the very small LED light to find the LED headlamp and grabbed the cut-off shotgun from it's hidey-hole. I'm not particularly paranoid, but I do keep some firecrackers around, and I do have a sawed-off shotgun loaded with bird-shot. I flip on the outdoor light. It's a rabid coon, and three Black-Lab crosses. I throw some rocks and go back to bed. Not to diminish, I throw a good rock, shotgun shells have gotten expensive; and experience has shown that if I actually shoot the shotgun, it's difficult to get back to sleep. The noise lingers in my head. A beautiful day in paradise, fifteen degrees cooler, not a cloud in the sky. The driveway is as bad as it's ever been except when it was completely impassable for six weeks after the ice-storm of '04, and I creep down in 4-wheel low in first gear. Even then, the new wash-outs grab the tires and force you where they will. Coming up is a bad dream. I spent most of the day as a janitor, mindless, but my copy of "The Swerve" arrived and I did spend a little time with that. I ran errands, Pegi needed some documents taken over to a foundation that grants us some money, and I ended up with some people there, talking about the new directors. I told them right out, that I thought this change was great, that M and C were insightful and intelligent, and, that, if the money was there, we were good to go. I'm not a PR guy, but I meant what I said. I went back to the garbage, and the president of the board called and he needed some keys right then. So I had to drop what I was doing again. Run to the hardware store, get the keys, run by, by the president's office Then it was lunch-time. After lunch I hauled several loads of trash to the dumpster and then everyone was gone. When I'm there alone, I need to be in call of the front desk, so I usually hole up in my office, and read non-fiction.