Travelin’ and unravelin’
leaving miles of web behind
tangled up with sticky notes
caught flat on my tongue
I see you in my mind’s mirrors
through a complex lens
hearing you
with jaundiced eyes
missing you
until I overflow
and crash
Demand
I demand that you see me as how I think I am
in the world as I believe it to be
and not as you think I am
in the world as you see it.
Telling
Beers glasses were raised and clinked together. Tastings followed. The trio got down to business.
“How’d it go with the date?” Ron asked Pat.
“Good, real good.” Pat smiled. “Third one, so you know what that means.”
Bryan laughed. “Is that what that still means?”
“Yes.” Pat nodded. “Indeed, it does.”
Ron raised his glass. “To your new girlfriend? Or is it too early?”
Pat grimaced. “It might be too early. She’s a swell person, wonderfully intelligent and accomplished, sexy, of course — ”
“Of course,” Ron said as Bryan said, “That’s a sexist attitude.”
“It is, but she is a knockout.” After glancing over his shoulders, Pat leaned in over the table. The other two leaned in as well. “The only thing is, she farts a lot,” Pat said in a low voice. “They don’t make any noise, so it’s not that, but they smell terrible.”
“She farts?” Bryan said.
Pat nodded. “And it’s not a little poot now and then. When she farts, I want to flee like the villagers running from Godzilla. And it’s not her fault. We’ve talked about it. She’d apologized after I complained about the rank smell invading my car. She told me it was a side effect of a medicine she’s been on a long time. She’s tried changing her diet and she’s looked into other meds, but nothing will work for her. And anxiety, like from dating, apparently makes it worse.”
“Wow.” Looking at Bryan, Ron sat back. “That’s a shame. A smelly farter. Damn”
Pat sighed. “Yeah, I’d hate for it to end for that, because she’s otherwise so wonderful, and I feel lucky to know her and be dating her.”
Bryan nodded. “Have you told her about your troubles in peckerville?”
Sitting back, Pat sipped his beer a moment and then smiled. “No. The way I see it, there’s no sense in telling her about that until I know if I can live with the farting.”
The Green Chair
Above – Scheckter (on ottoman) and Pogo on the green furniture.
Well, the green chair is gone.
I know, it was just a chair. An ottoman and love seat originally went with the chair. Made of a textured green material, the furniture had straightforward lines and were without embellishment. But they were comfortable and sturdy, and they fit our little study.
The little study was in the first home that we bought in Half Moon Bay, California. It was right off the breakfast nook, by the dining room. Sounds fancy, right, but it was small, yet elegant. It’s where we ended up spending a lot of time. With the windows open, we caught a cooling ocean breeze diluting the sunshine. Fog horn often sounded above the sound of Highway 92 traffic. We could watch television, read, and listen to music in there, and be very cozy. Our living room furniture was too large for the little study. Besides, if we put that furniture in there, we’d need to replace it. More furniture was needed, an exasperating decision.
The green chair with the ottoman supporting my legs is often where I sat. That’s where the cats would join me. We had three then. The elderly Queen, Jade, had joined us when we were stationed on Okinawa in 1982 and was twenty-year when she passed away in our HMB home. The sweet, affable Rocky came from our Germany assignment in the late eighties, the sole survivor of his litter. Later came the black long-haired, handsome fellow, Sam, as direct and unpretentious as his name, abandoned at Moffett NAS when some family moved away. Each gave me happy hours of purrs vising with me in the green chair before passing away.
The orange boys, Pogo and Scheckter, (Chubbosaurus Orange) found their way to us, joining us on the green chair and the green love seat, stretching out in the sunshine. They moved up to Ashland with us in 2005. Between cancer and a car, Ashland is where their story ended.
As we moved, the green furniture dwindled. First, the love seat went, because there wasn’t room in our newest house. The green chair and ottoman ended up in the master bedroom. Alas, though, besides sleeping on the chair, the cats found the green furniture to be excellent scratching posts. After Rocky, Sam, Jade, and the orange boys made their marks, Lady and Quinn took up the task of shredding the chair and ottoman. The ottoman was finally defeated and tossed. Tucker and Boo joined Lady and Quinn to work over the chair. All had floofnesia about not scratching the furniture. Lady and Quinn found their way over the rainbow bridge, but then along came Papi, aka Meep. He found the green chair quite comfortable.
Now the final piece, the green chair where I shared their company, is gone. It was just too shredded for my wife’s tastes, so out it went.
Stupid chair. Makes me tear up and cry just remembering it.
The Medical Bill
My latest medical bill arrived. This was a follow-up to the doctor’s office. On that day, I was weighed and then peed in a cup connected to a computer to measure my flow and output. Then a nurse asked me some questions about how I was doing, before the doctor came in, read the reports, and made some follow-up actions. Including waiting — they were overbooked and I waited twenty minutes to see him — peeing, and talking, I was out of there in about forty minutes.
Before going further, I want to say that I’m amazed and grateful that my military retirement gives me health benefits. I can’t say that enough. That’s not what this is about. This is about a neophyte in the healthcare’s billing process.
The bill began as a total of $277.10. That’s not bad, I thought. Insurance covered $59.36. Cool. Then, total adjustments and discounts were $180.84. Of that, $4.10 was a discount given to me for the prompt payment of previous bills. The other $176.74 was an insurance adjustment. The total due for me to pay is $36.90.
I’m not complaining so much as stating my surprise and confusion. What in the world is that insurance adjustment that reduces the bill by sixty-three percent? Is it a volume thing between Tricare and Asante? Makes me wonder about the original bill and its legitimacy.
I don’t know. The discount wasn’t explained. I suppose I could do an Internet search, but, well, I’d rather just note it and press on, at least for today.
Breaking it Down
While working on the yard and house today, songs run through my head. I don’t mind it if they’re barefoot, but some of them wear heavy combat boots. That leaves a mark.
One song was the Rupert Holmes song, “Escape”. Most know it as “The Piña Coladas Song”. It’s all about how badly Rupert and his lovely lady were doing. He sees an ad in the newspaper’s personal columns and reads, “If you like piña coladas and getting caught in the rain. If you’re not into yoga, if you have half a brain. If you like making love at midnight in the dunes of the cape. Then I’m the love that you’ve looked for, write to me and escape.”
So he writes to the paper, answering the ad. They meet, and guess what? It’s his own lovely lady that he’s meeting. She’s the one that put the ad in the paper! So, Rupert continues, then we laughed for a moment and I said, “I never knew
That you like piña coladas and gettin’ caught in the rain. And the feel of the ocean and the taste of champagne.”
Mind you, she’s advertised for a lover; he answered that ad. They were both looking for someone else.
At this point, in real life, if he said, “I never knew that you like piña coladas, she’d reply, “That’s because you never listen to me.” Then it’d probably be on. He’s already confessed that he was tired of her. She’s clearly tired of him, too.
Yeah, I don’t see a happy ending here. I don’t think that either one is the lover that the other one was trying to find.
Of course, my mind also suggested, “Well, maybe it’s a small town. What are the odds of her putting the ad in and him answering? Those odds improve if it’s a small town.”
Then my mind went all Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind on me. I imagined the bar patrons familiar with the situation saying, “Oh, no, here we go again.”
I concluded from this that my romantic band of my spectrum of being must be tiny.
Floofball
Floofball (floofinition) – A broad set of games involving housepets and round objects. Balls may be used, but blueberries and peas suffice, as do lids, buttons, and pens. The rules vary, usually dependent on species. Generally, cats like to play, “Knock It Off” and dogs enjoy fetch.
In use: “She wasn’t large, but she was smart and playful, particularly enjoying floofball games. While an expert at “Knock It Off”, which she played on the bedroom dresser at one in the morning every day, she also starred at knocking down bouncing ping-pong balls, and was a champion playing fetch with plastic jingle balls.”
Dead Voice
The dead voice comes from my girlfriend’s friend
She tried to tell what was to come in the end.
She said, “You think she loves you and she probably does,
but she’s a minute lover, and your minute’s almost up.”
I declined to hear her lines, I knew what the was, was.
Because I knew better, I knew how I feel, I knew the moment,
I knew my feelings were real.
That must count for something in a life of change.
If you can’t trust yourself, what else remains?
I told myself, she’s wrong, it may have been that way before,
but this sex is love, of that I was sure.
Fast forward the way that time flies in our lives.
Like birds we see in the corner of our eyes.
Here and then gone leaving echoes of their songs,
leaving us to wonder and question, where’s it all gone?
Michael Seidel, writer 