Double Trouble

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Writing at night makes saying what I see in the interim more difficult than it has to be. For one thing it becomes harder to get to sleep. Writing activates my brain and if I do it just before I go to bed it takes a while to reach the serenity it needs to let go of the world.

I don't think it was just the writing that kept me awake. The fact that I had been overcharged because the meter reader made a mistake was on my mind and my nerves. I've had trouble with the county water department people before. Dealing with them is like death and taxes. I can't win because they can't lose. They will just take my property and sell it on the courthouse steps.

After laying awake until around three in the morning I got up and took a Tylenol 3 pill hoping that it would relax me enough to fall asleep. It did help, but I tossed and turned until around eight o'clock this morning and decided to get up to see if I'd received any e-mail that would give me an excuse or subject to write about. No. Nobody loves me.

Not being married and living alone is not very appealing to many people. I've heard probably every reason in the world that some people offer as an excuse for remaining married. Even after they spend considerable amounts of time complaining about being in that predicament. I never get invited anywhere couples will predominate. No blame. People don't keep asking if I keep saying no.

It sorta amazes me that I'm still finding a ripe fig or two on my tree this late in the season. As I've mentioned before, a big flock of birds, probably starlings, descended upon the tree right when the fruit was getting ripe and they ate every fig except the immature ones. There were hardly any figs left for me to eat. I picked about ten figs yesterday and they were tasty. Some of them seemed to have developed a tougher skin than usual, but they were very sweet.

Maybe it's because there was no e-mail to provide an interesting topic to write about, I turned on the TV to catch the weather report. After that I clicked on the PBS station to see if there were any interesting travel programs on. A program about the National Parks was showing some old films about an expedition by some rich folk to a series of the Parks on the west coast. Yosemite National Park was featured.

The term "Yosemite" is familiar to me in another way besides being the place I jumped off a cliff to commit suicide after I had turned blue from a freak snow storm one summer. The second time I was in the Navy I was stationed on a destroyer tender named the U.S.S. Yosemite. In a way, I guess I committed a kind of suicide on that ship too.

The ship was the home of the Admiral who commanded the Atlantic fleet. Because of this it was renown for being very "spit and polish". It was a choice assignment for me because of the nuclear torpedoes and rocketry I'd been schooled for. That job revealed to me a side of myself that was never going to go away or be fairly accounted for. My kismet was revealed to me so irrefutably it changed how I viewed life on Earth.

The schooling had some bearing on why I re-enlisted four years after being honorably discharged from my first enlistment. Mostly, however, truth be known, I re-enlisted in the Navy to get out of my first marriage.

My barely considered ploy didn't work. Tough lady. Eventually I had to feign dissembly and run for my life. Now, if the lady is still alive, she detests the very mention of me with the same passion she pretended to love me. I haven't laid eyes on her for at least twenty years nor our daughter in ten. "What's love got to do with it?"

Love, as far as it goes with me, is all about being around people. I agree that "Absence makes the heart grow fonder.", but for me, there has to be a foundation of personal community for my absence from a person to create a lingering fondness. I've moved around too much for there to be much love in my life.

I don't mourn the death of many people, and don't expect to be mourned upon the occasion of my own death. Some people might celebrate joyously upon learning of my death, if they don't die themselves first. Some people who made life a little miserable for me have already died. I don't feel much of a victory.

This summer has pretty much proved to me that global warming is a fact. I don't much believe it's man-made. The Earth is too large for that. There are documentaries by these experts that explain how the ocean used to cover the place I live not that long ago, and they reference indiginous camp sites they've explored ten miles out on the Trans-Atlantic shelf.

The real problem with global warming as I've personally observed it is the absence of bees to pollinate plants. That's gonna be a real drag, man, but I'll probably croak via the aging process before it gets too devastating. Previously, I've never encountered the perculiarity of the honey bees' reaction to persistent hot weather.

The local weathermen say this is the hottest summer on record. It's been over 95° (35° C) more days than has ever been recorded ere now, and the seven-day forecast predicts at least seven more days of extreme temperatures to extend that record even more. I'm gone help by burning some more ground cover today. '-)
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