First Thing Tomorrow

Maybe Kira or Bonnie who have "ears" for poetry can straighten this mess out.


I'm feeling the need to read
something I've written inspired.
I'm feeling the urge to splurge
on thoughts that are new.
But I'm stayed from the page
by an old stubborn fear
that grips me and strangles my muse.
In the night on my bed I can dispel the dread
with promise and damn good intentions.
But with the first light I awaken to fright
and I write all but what was intended.
The task is at hand
I have made a good start.
There are pages already aplenty.
I just have to go and recapture the flow
at the site where the story resides.
But I stay locked up inside and I just want to hide
from the thing I know I must do.
Tomorrow I say I'll get started again
but I blog and avoid the real writing.
I know I can't quit, I've got too damn much grit
to leave this hard thing left undone.
I'll face up to my fear and when it comes near
I'll just write it away.


First thing tomorrow.

Predictions Past, Present and Future

Now what do I do? I've successfully picked the Final Four teams in the NCAA Tourney by virtue of their wearing blue (see blog "Holes and Hoops"), but now I have to pick a winner and I don't have color to help me choose. Not to worry, Memphis it is. I'll be backing Kansas of course; my five bucks is riding on them.

And now, to prove that my sports expertise extends beyond hoops, I will give you my baseball predictions.

NL East - Brooklyn Dodgers
NL Central - Chicago Cubs
NL West - There is no NL West

Cy Young - Don Newcombe
MVP - Stan Musial

Surprise - Cardinals get Lou Brock in steal of a trade with Cubs.

AL East - The New York Yankees whose souls were not sold to the Devil by George Steinbrenner
AL Central - Cleveland Indians
AL West - There is no AL West

Cy Young - Bob Feller
MVP - Al Kaline

Surprise - Mickey Mantle gets caught NOT drinking in a late night club.

And, to prove I am far seeing, I predict that in some distant time, these will be my picks. Mets, Cubs and Rockies in NL. Red Sox, Tigers, Angels in AL

Cy Youngs - Santana and Matsusaka

MVP - Tulowitski and Big Papi

Playoffs - Rockies beat Red Sox in seven game WS. The other playoffs are just filler to provide owners with more revenue.

Full Belly Empty Mind

I strode elliptically through a Gothic castle where Vincent Price was up to no good before showering and heading to the kitchen. There I made a spicy cheese omelet, heated up precooked morning sausage, popped up some toast and alerted the denizens of this castle that breakfast was ready.

I'm stuffed. During the week our morning repast is whatever we feel like and in that case I'm usually good for a container of yogurt or a hard boiled egg. Sometimes just a muffin will suffice and none of these are consumed until after I've blogged, exercised and completed morning ablutions; the shave, shower, dress, insert coffee into veins kind of ablutions. It is often noon before I am fully clothed. No wonder I'm stuffed.

A young Indian man in shiny Sunday clothes - yellow dress shirt, blue slacks, polished to a high sheen shoes - just came up to the house and wandered about the driveway until I went out to talk to him. It is the custom here to not knock at your door, but rather, to simply walk in front of your windows until someone sees you. This, I guess, gives the householder the option of ignoring you or not. The man was looking for work and I had to tell him lo siento, mi hermano y yo hacen todo el trabajo. My brother and I do all the work. The man was very disappointed. Yesterday, another young man who had been part of the crew who did the painting on our house, came here with a puppy he wanted to sell. Lo siento, tenemos un perro and uno perro esta basta. We have a dog and one's enough. He was disappointed too. What amazes me is that we are not exactly on the beaten path. We are hard to find and even if you know where we are, it's a serious hike to get here. RTGFKAR says we should put a gate across our driveway so that we can be "a gated community." Of course, we have no walls or fences around any other part of the property so I commented the idea might not work.

I've lost track of what I was going to say. No, that's not true. I have NO IDEA what I was going to say. Let me think.

I saw the last 45 minutes of "Snakes On A Plane" last night. Lame movie, lame acting, lame snakes. Samuel Jackson should be ashamed of himself. I had been watching basketball until my eyes had began to stop blinking and go all coma on me so I surfed around the channels until I found Snake. Thought it might give me an adrenaline jolt and keep me awake through the North Carolina vs. Louisville tussle. No luck.

I've got a message on my screen that says "Could not contact Blogger.com. Saving and publishing may fail." I'm thinking this will be no loss.

Beach Daze

"God gave man a penis and a brain, but not enough blood to make them both work at the same time."___Robin Williams (This is a gratuitous quote that has nothing to do with the text that follows so don't get your hopes up.)

I sat outside in the dark for awhile last night contemplating the events of the day. Woowoo Charly had gone to bed with her book and RTGFKAR was engrossed in a cooking show, so I had the night to myself. I turned on the sprinkler to nurture our new grass, fired up a ceegar, poured a smidgen of Frangelica and dialed in 95.7 on the radio. It was cool enough out there on the patio that I wore a sweatshirt and a ball cap to fend off any chills sneaking around and I was pleasantly comfortable as I sat there mentally reviewing our day at the beach.

It's a long ride from here to Las Lajas. It's even longer when the road is clogged by a plodding bull dozer and unhurried traffic. We made it though, in a shade less than two hours after stops for chips, ice, gas, and money from an ATM. I was reminded of youthful trips to the "shore" as the beach is called in New Jersey and the long haul down the Garden State Parkway to get there. The view from our windows on this day was dramatically improved over those of the Parkway, but I couldn't say the same about the roads. Pot holes abounded. To pass the time we had brought along cards from a Trivia game about the Eighties. After an hour or so of not answering most of the questions it was clear that the Eighties had slipped by all five of us without making much of an impression. Personally, I blame the fall-off in drug usage from the Sixties and Seventies. I remember those decades much better contrary to colloquial wisdom.

We arrived at Las Lajas right about noon, parked the car, unloaded and boogied to the small surf side restaurant that's housed there. We all had chicken, rice, beans and salad except for RTGFKAR who had pork chops, rice, beans and salad, the only other menu option. Gus and the house dog growled at each other for a half minute and then ignored each other for the rest of the day. The only other people in evidence apart from our waiter/cook were two old guys at a nearby table playing checkers using beer bottle caps as the checkers. After downing our almuerzo - the food was unexpectedly good by the way and, of course, dirt cheap, twenty bucks total for the five meals and that included a good tip - we set about doing beach things.

Fill in here descriptions of RTGFKAR and Yers Trewly splashing in the surf, Woowoo Charly, Bonnie and RTGFKAR hiking on the sand, LJ the Old Redneck and I sitting in the shade drinking Coronas and almost doing a crossword puzzle that Bonnie would mostly solve later and all the usual things you would expect to see a group of people doing at the beach with the exception of we guys eye-balling young things in bikinis. This latter was noticeably absent from the day as there was not a soul on the beach as far as we could see until late in the day when a couple of other old gringos showed up for a quick dip. Amazing. Beautiful day, warm pleasant surf, serenely quiet beach with shady Palms and nary a person, thing or thong to distract us from the excellent day we were having.

RTGFKAR drove a shortcut on the way back that I had passed up on the drive there and saved a bit of time. There was little difference in the actual mileage between the two routes but the shortcut had far less traffic. The conversation was lively the entire way and we only had to stop twice for LJ and I to rid ourselves of Coronas on the side of the road.

We dropped Bon and the Redneck at their place around the corner from us, went home and unpacked. American Idol was surprisingly unblocked so Woowoo Charly got that in before heading to bed. RTGFKAR grabbed the tube in the other room so I eschewed the basketball that was on and headed to the patio.

When I was finished contemplating the day, I contemplated going to bed and followed that up by doing so. There I slept like a rock. If rocks toss and turn, dream, make funny sleep noises and get up to pee three times, that is.

It was all in all a swell day and nobody enjoyed it more the Gustavo the Wonder Dog who roamed untethered throughout it. Swell, by the way, is an adjective that needs to be used more.

Speed Writing

Return to the Beach is playing at our house today so I have to hurry. I have to write this, do a half hour on the elliptical strider - yes it's a strider not a glider as previously reported - because I am once again engaged in the quest for fitness, a thing ever elusive, after reading earlier this morning that men with round bellies are doomed to dementia - scientists don't know why yet, only that there is a connection proved by a recent study - drink two cups of coffee, shower, shave, dress, pack the car and probably twelve other things I'm forgetting, but that's no wonder, I have, after all, a round belly.

For the second week in a row American Idol was blocked from our Panama satellite box. As our programming comes from Venezuela, we suspect Hugo Chavez is yanking the show just to annoy Americans. RTGFKAR doesn't like Idol so he won't watch it on our Puerto Rican box which means no Idol at all and a deep depression for Woowoo Charly. Depression for her, dementia for me.

We have in compensation for this double dose of d's a beautiful day, warm, sunny and still. All we have to do now is shoehorn into the car five people, a dog, five chairs and a cooler full of Coronas and less important stuff like food. We'll see how that goes. Hasta Manana.

My Right Foot

Here, if I can successfully cut and paste, is what I sent to our writer's group as an example of close focus description.

My mother used to say that she had pretty feet. I didn’t get it. Still don’t. I understand beautiful eyes, delicate hands, a shapely this or that and an overall sense of beauty, but feet? Does anyone really care?

MY RIGHT FOOT
By Doc Walton

It takes a double B, sometimes a triple A, size eleven shoe. This is a narrow foot, but better foot than mind. There’s not much arch left. Years of running and jumping in one sport or another have pretty much pounded it flat, although, truth be told, the arch wasn’t all that high to begin with. This would be a 4F foot if I were a WWII draftee. There’s the usual compliment of toes that start from the left as I look down with the widest one, a kind of pear shaped digit that has a very rounded toenail – worrisome that - and ends with the shortest and smallest on the far right that leans to the left and “spoons” nicely with the “piggy” that lives there. The two toes in between vary only in that one is a smidgeon taller and thus stands straight, proud and independent while the shorter looks for support from the toes to its right. All have neatly trimmed nails because I am, of course, a fastidious, well groomed guy, but mostly because I knew I was going to write this. The “big” toe however, has a nail that is chunky and thicker than the others and sports a yellowish tint that may be a result of its having been subjected to a misspent youth in which the toe itself was broken once and the nail blackened and fallen off on several less than memorable, usually embarrassing occasions. A horse tromping comes to mind. A healthy pink shines through the nails of all the other toes. Moving up the foot towards the ankle I can see cords of tendons that lead one apiece to each toe. These are crisscrossed by large blue arteries in a seemingly random pattern that look like major thoroughfares on a road map. Barely visible through the overall pale pink of the foot are dozens of purple hued smaller veins that appear and disappear like country roads on the same map. The under foot has very little arch, it too having been flattened by time. The “ball” of the foot, the area directly behind the toe bottoms, where one balances poised and ready for action in sports and flight, lacks now the calloused, tougher skin of its hey-day, but still has a harder shell than the rest of the foot which, for the most part is smooth as the proverbial baby’s bottom. The heel appearing at the far end of the foot is the narrowest part of the whole and ultimately my personal sports bane as it made me subject to frequent sprained ankles. Where the foot meets the ankle there is a bone protrusion on each side about which I have nothing to say other than damn it hurts when you clip one on a piece of furniture. The whole foot is hairless apart from some rogue shoots on the joint of the biggest toe. Years of removing the adhesive tape from wrapped ankles, a thing that includes all but the toes of the foot, have yanked out any hair that may have foolishly grown there. I am not limber enough these days to get my foot very close to my nose, but a whiff of yesterday’s socks suggests that colognes will not be inspired.
All in all it’s a foot lacking, I think, any sort of beauty. But then, sorry Mom, most do.

I've Joined Boring Blogs Anonymous But I'm Not Cured Yet

Don't worry about a thing, I have ALL the answers. If I could just remember where I put them.

We have a large tree in our yard of an unknown type that I'm going to call the Gringo Tree because unlike the other trees here in Boquete that stay green and blossomed all year round, this one shed all its leaves and looked deader than a door nail - and you know how dead door nails get - until now. It seems to be on the U.S. tree cycle of leafless for football season, sprouted for baseball. I mention this for no particular reason other than I'm staring at it through one of my office windows and it's staring back. Not to worry though, I gave it my most bad-assed "what the hell you looking at Bark Breath?" attitude and now it's staring at RTGFKAR who is outside mixing cement in a wheelbarrow and oblivious to the prying eyes of the Gringo Tree.

I have nothing to write about again today which is the beauty of blogging because I'm compelled to write anyway. Something, a blog, from nothing, my mind, is what creativity is all about. It's also, in my case, what bullshit is all about, but c'mon, we all have to be good at something and I'm refining this skill so that when I enter my second childhood and have to go back to school, I'll be able to knock out those term papers with ease. "Compare and Contrast in one thousand words or less Denny the Dunce, Marvin the Moron and George the Bush." Okay, that's a tough one. Comparing is easy but there is no contrast.

On a diary entry kind of note, I made up a basketball pool. Woowoo Charly, RTGFKAR, LJ the old redneck, Bonnie the bookworm and Yers Trewly each picked teams from a hat, winner takes all, which in this case is twenty five bucks don't alert the IRS. I've arrived at the first weekend and I'm already down to just four teams, Tennessee, Louisville, Kansas and Oklahoma. I think Kansas is my best hope because, as I noted in another blog, they wear blue. Woowoo Charly has nine of her original 13teams left and RTGFKAR has Memphis and UCLA so he's in a catbird's seat which I'm told are quite comfortable, although I've never actually seen a catbird and I'm not sure I want to and why they have special seats remains a mystery to me. I don't know which teams LJ and Bon picked but there are good teams not on the other lists, North Carolina comes to mind, so we are all still in the hunt for the twenty-five big ones, a new car and an all expense paid trip around the world. Those last two, of course, have nothing to do with the pool but we are hunting them anyway.

I have to go now and work on that moron, dunce, Bush contrast that seems impossible so I'll leave you with this. Go Volunteers, Sooners, Redbirds and Jayhawks. And for the hoop aficionados, where is Belmont and what does UMBC stand for?

Elliptical Glider

I woke up with this old goodie from Aretha on my mind: Whenever I wake up, before you put on your make up. I run in fear and hide from you.

In my never ending quest to return to those thrilling days of a taut hard belly...okay, day, I've purchased an elliptical glider. I can now be seen gliding elliptically all over the place. I had one of these some years back, the year Dara got married in fact, which was, let me see, cough cough mumble mumble, called an Orbitrek and the odd looking contraption worked as advertised, can you believe it? Woowoo Charly hated it because it was in the living room/kitchen - we only had one other room in the cabin - and she said it was ugly. "Hey", I would point out, "that's like saying workout gyms are ugly"; a not too convincing argument. I would peddle away each morning to Sportscenter on the tube and by the time Dara's wedding rolled around, I was fit as a fiddle if a fiddle could do push-ups and jumping jacks. My tuxedo hung nicely and my cumberbun was not too snug. (Cumberbun? How do you bake cumber buns? RTGFKAR will know.)

The Elliptical Glider, yeah that's its name although I call it Fred, came in a box and required assembly. I remember assembly from high school. The Principal would come out and speak for awhile, we'd boo and try not to get caught doing it, and then some kind of program would occur. With that in mind, I called everyone I know to gather but nobody showed up so I was forced to assemble myself. In the Sixties, assembling yourself was called "getting your shit together." Maybe it still is. Anyway, tools and instructions came with the glider and, miraculously, the instructions were in English. This may in part be a result of the product being made in some place called UK. I think that's pronounced uck and they must speak English there which is lucky for them because Bush wants to invade all non English speaking countries before his term is up. Excluding Texas, of course, where they don't speak English, but they do speak Bush. I got the whole thing assembled in about an hour and a half of steady cursing and then took it for a test ride in front of the Spanish version of Sportcenter which apparently recognises no other sport but soccer. Gooooooaaaaaalllllll. I've put the glider in our guest room away from those you know kind of people who point their fingers at things and say, "that's ugly."

If anyone is getting married about six months from now, give me a call. I'll look real good in a tux by then. RTGFKAR will bake the cumber buns.

Holes and Hoops

Alrighty then. Another birthday is in the bag and put on the shelf. And a good one it was too. I'd tell you how old I am, but I've never been able to count that high. My daughter-in-law Heather turned 39 yesterday and I'm sure she's older than I am. To celebrate her birthday RTGFKAR, Woowoo Chuck, The Old Redneck and Yers Trewly played 27 holes at Valle Escondido where we defeated the Trolls, Gremlins and Leprechauns once again by playing some ferdamnshure good golf.(No need to thank us Heather.) RTGFKAR and I, playing as a team, matched Woowoo and and LJ with 32's on the middle nine. This on a par 30 golf course. Woowoo Charly and I were at par through seven on the first nine before bogeying the eighth and triple bogeying the ninth. We would have hung our heads in shame and maybe even our whole bodies had not our 34 been three strokes better than RTGFKAR and LJ. By the time we got to the third nine, fatigue was taking its toll on all of us except Woowoo Charly who doesn't weigh anything and therefore never wanes and the golf deteriorated somewhat. Still, no score over 40 was posted.

Yeah, yeah I know how thrilled you all are when I talk about sports, but c'mon, this is golf, a deeply spiritual game about which Arnold Palmer once said, "golf is the sport in which the walls between the natural and the supernatural are rubbed the thinnest", and LJ says, "*#*x***...." which, although not as lyrical as Arnie, is more to the point. Nevertheless, being a sensitive 90's kind of a guy, I'll eschew the finer details of our round and talk instead about.....basketball!

Here's the "Sweet Sixteen" I'd like to see. Mississippi Valley State, Belmont, American, Mount Saint Marys, Winthrop, Boise State, Texas Arlington, Oral Roberts, Cornell, Saint Marys, Austin Peay, Portland State, Kent State, Siena, Davidson and UMBC. (I have no idea what those initials stand for.) Yup, they're all in the tournament and nope, they haven't got a prayer.

If sport prayers WERE answered you might wind up with an all Catholic Final Four, St. Marys, Mount Saint Marys, Saint Josephs and Notre Dame. Catholics being serious kneel down and get after it prayers. Xavier might be in that mix as well. Of course, Oral Roberts and BYU fans will be praying like crazy for their teams to crash the party. All should beware of the Duke Blue Devils and I'll bet there are Demons in the field somewhere.

My own Final Four picks are UCLA, Kansas, North Carolina and Memphis, not because they are all good, which they are, but because they wear blue and I'm partial to blue. If a team wearing green sneaks in, I could go that way as green is the best color of all, but the only team wearing green I see having a shot is Michigan State. I don't think they are good enough. Oregon wears green and I'm told they're talented, but I haven't seen them play. They do have the advantage of a great nickname, Ducks.
Go Ducks, Kick Tiger Butt. Seems unlikely.

And apart from sports, the other thing on my mind is...

Oh Come On, there must be something.

A March Madness Sunday

Sometimes I type very slowly in the hope that a new sentence will come to me before I finish the one I'm on. Rarely happens though.

I've just polished off a magnificent, spicy, cheese omelet, three strips of crisp bacon and a slice of zarsamora jellied toast. This spectacular repast was prepared and served by the unchallenged king of the Sunday breakfast, a man whose culinary skills defy description due to the lack in English of words comparable to sounds like yechk and bleck, a man who carries on each and every Sunday through thick and thin pancakes and french toast, a man who, yes it must be said, would rather go out and was heretofore unheralded because of the shortage of heralds in this part of the world, a man known to all who know him, namely, Yers Trewly.

That's all right. Don't get up. Hold the applause. Oh please, you're too kind.

Mother Nature, Father Time, Aunt Jemimah and Say Uncle have conspired to present we humble recipients with a beautiful day here in Boqueteland. The sun is around somewhere, the sky is overhead and predictably blue, the grass is green and from what I can tell, nothing looks out of place except RTGFKAR who is over there building a fire to burn coffee stumps which is my job. I think he's just ducking the dishes. Woowoo Charly is out playing in the dirt with garden tools and looks darn cute in her bluejeans and white tee. I tell her every day she should wear a bonnet, but she adamantly refuses, saying bonnets are for old ladies. She clings, instead, to her baseball cap with its Jack Daniels logo. I'm over here in the office part of my room-with-a-view and I can see forever. Yes I can so, I just have to close my eyes. Gus, our noble defender of home and hearth is napping off his share of omelet and bacon in a dog bed under the desk and at my feet. He likes to stay close in case I need back-up and also because I occasionally drop edible things.

So there you have the setting and now for the plot.

Will Yers Trewly actually step forth into the great, not so great and sometimes downright lame outdoors to catch a bit of sun, a breath of air and a modicum of exercise? Or will he instead opt for the reclining sofa, the remote control, the beer, the chips, the Conference Basketball Championships and The PGA? And, more importantly, does he deserve the latter fate while Woowoo weeds and RTGFKAR burns?

Damn straight he does. He made the breakfast didn't he?

A Fair's Remembered

I remember when Fairs, Carnivals and Amusement Parks were much seedier and a lot more fun. Of course, I was a tyke then and a trip to one of those magical places was about as good as life could get. Was there anything more thrilling in the world than a roller coaster? And, given the chance, what kid wouldn't have spent a day in the fun house alone. For "one thin dime" I could gain entrance into any of the side shows which mostly, I thought, turned out to be "cheats" because the two headed lizard, frog, chicken, baby, pick one, was packed in a jar of formaldehyde and not walking around the room. Bearded ladies, fat women and giants were common then. They'd strike up a conversation with the crowd as it moved by gawking. They usually had some standard patter that was borderline "blue" material the adults seemed to like, but it was dull stuff to a kid. I guess I was asking a lot for my dime. I was too young then, or too short, to be allowed into the exotic dancers tent. No loss there though as I didn't really care much about girls. By the time I grew old enough to appreciate them, they were readily available in cages at the nearest Disco.

There were no floors or sidewalks at the Fairs, just dirt. I remember stepping on sticky stems from candy apples and the paper cones from cotton candy. There were too few trash barrels scattered about and the ones available seemed to be ever flowing over. The air was thick with the combined smells of the best foods in the world, hot dogs, hamburgers, fries, popcorn, taffy, caramel and cherry coated apples and cotton candy in three different colors that all tasted the same; a kid could live forever on this diet - and, of course, there was an over-riding scent we knew from our dad's favorite vice, beer. They sold it in paper cups in those days and lots of it got spilled.

Most of my memories come from visits to Fountain Ferry Amusement Park in Louisville and the Kentucky State Fair. I lived in Kentucky from the fifth through the eighth grades. We would usually go at night to "beat the heat" but it seems to me it was always hotter than the dickens anyway. One of my strongest recollections was of the entrance to the Fun House. There was a wooden railing in front and a suspension walkway into the building. Someone hidden somewhere would send an electrical current through the railing and give anyone touching it a mild shock. My dad would grab the railing and then reach out and catch me by the shoulder. I would bounce around like a crazed puppet at the end of his arm screaming let me go, let me go as the shock tingled and yes, hurt. My dad would let go, eventually, but not before he got a good laugh. The walkway was where the ladies had their skirts and dresses blown up to their waists by a blast of air shot up through the slats. Women didn't wear long pants then, although some did wear shorts. I liked watching the gals trying to hold their stuff down and scurry off the planks; not, as you might think, because it was in any way titillating, but because this kind of slapstick comedy was right up my eleven year alley. Dad and I both got our laughs.

And I would be remiss if I didn't point out that almost yearly I would stuff myself with all the food I could talk my father into buying for me and then attempt one more ride. Tossing my cookies is an almost accurate description of what followed. I say almost, because I don't really remember cookies being part of the nasty mix. Kids recover fast though and I would be well and pleading to stay longer when it was time to go home.

I'm sure the amusement experience is still just as much fun for kids today. The parks are cleaner, better and the rides are safer. I'll take my memories though. They're grittier, funkier and they smell better. C'mon, stale beer and popped corn? Smells as good today as it did then.

One last note. If you haven't read Ray Bradbury's "Something Wicked This Way Comes"...you ought to. It's the ultimate Traveling Carnival read. Spooky as hell.

A Fair Fair

I can tell I'm old because I've been to Pricesmart and purchased things in quantities that can only be described as "a lifetime supply." I've done this, many times.

We, RTGFKAR, Woowoo Charly, Bonnie and I, finished up our Pricesmart run and loaded our new lifetime supply of napkins, paper towels, dirt cheap wine - but only the finest dirt cheap wine - etc. in the rear of RTGFKAR's car and set off for the fair. I don't know if it has an official name, everybody just says the feria in David, but it's much like a state fair in the U.S. There are rides and exhibits and enough tents selling food and drink that placed end to end they'd reach form here to there and that's a long way. We walked and gawked and the ladies marveled at the plant exhibits and art work while I counted the baseball caps for sale at every other booth. There were twenty nine thousand twelve and twenty eight thousand of them bore the New York Yankees logo. This is further proof that under the surface of this beautiful and serene country there lies a sick and twisted society. There were no Broncos, Nuggets or Rockies caps available anywhere. I did purchase a nice broad brimmed, pseudo fedora made of straw whose price I haggled all the way down to fourteen dollars from the fifteen being asked. Can I negotiate or what? Our neighbor Dalys had said the feria was expensive but apart form the hat and a small jade plant we didn't buy anything to take home. We did, however ooh and aah over a hand carved, Nicaraguan wooden bar that was going for a mere nine hundred bucks. RTGFKAR said I should buy it, but I told him I'd left my wallet in the car. After an hour or so of hoofing around, we stopped for a cold cerveza under a crowded tent near the amusement area. We could see a few rides from where we sat and most of them were the traditional shake, rattle and rollers that have been around forever. There was one, though, called a Crazy House I'd never seen before. It was a bright yellow, old school house sized abode that sat on the ground waiting for unwary children to enter. Once the kids were all in and seated, the house lifted off the ground, spun around, dipped and dived and generally behaved in an unstable manner before settling back down to earth. It looked like a gas to me, but since no one over the age of twelve was getting in or out I passed up giving it a go. Right next to where we sat sipping were the bumper cars which I wanted RTGFKAR to include as part of our house construction budget. He opted for guest rooms and banyos instead. Because of the nearness of the rides we had to shout to be heard above the din. It was clouding up outside and one of our group said we were going to get a shower. I said, "great that will free up my Saturday" but nobody heard or if they did they were trying not to show it so as not to encourage me; a thing they often do. Our tab for the three brews and one soda was $2.50. I figured fifty cents a beer and a buck for the Pepsi. This, I'm sure, is to discourage people from drinking sodas which are bad for you. After we'd taken in the bulls, the horses, the furniture, the plants, the knickknacks, the Yankee caps, tractors and the "Hamburger and Soda $1" stands (we didn't get a hamburger we were robbed!)and I bemoaned the lack of side shows, freak shows and gaming booths, especially the free-throw basketball toss where I excel, we motored back to Boquete and unloaded our lifetime supplies. How long should a thousand napkins last anyway?

Good Lines and a Small Whine

A fellow Panama blogger, Don Ray, starts his blog, "Chiriqui Chatter" with a quote. Today's was, "Incontinence Hotline. Can you hold please?" Cracked me up. And Deepak Chopra got the jump on the whole Spitzer affair in his book, "The Third Jesus" when he wrote, "People who live in glass houses shouldn't throw scripture." Good Stuff.

I've got a birthday coming up and I'm kinda (it is so a word) wondering how to celebrate it. Life in retirement pretty much allows you to do whatever you want on a daily basis so finding something to do for a special occasion gets problematical. (That's a word too. Isn't it?) My drinking is down to a boring "moderate level" and I'm not going to change that even though my B-day is St. Patrick's Day, I'm half Irish and previous years required a dual celebration. The hangovers are just no longer bearable. There will probably be food, dinner or lunch out, but even though I like to eat, I'm not really a food guy and I just don't consider dining out a special thing to do. The company will be good for sure. I've got Woowoo Charly, RTGFKAR and teriffic pals to share the day with, but we often get together, so that won't really be a unique birthday experience. And of course, there will be golf. The thing with that is, we've been playing regularly for a while now and I want that to continue as a routine part of my week and not be a special occasion treat. This, though, is dependent on our continuing to get a decent rate from the pro shop. There are no sporting events to attend and I get plenty of movies from Direct TV so, really, what to do, what to do?

Hahahahahahaha! I'm kidding, I'm kidding. My whole life is one big celebration! I don't need to change a thing. Just give me a regular old day and wake me up to have it, I'll be good to go. Nothing special is required because it's all special to begin with. I don't need anything more.

Hmmmm. On the other hand...a hole-in-one would be nice.

Land Snakes Alive !

A Coral Snake came to help RTGFKAR with the gardening yesterday. It was a little guy, no more than 13 or 14 inches in length and about as big around as a pencil. We watched it pass through the side yard and slither up the hill and gone. We locked Gus in the house while the snake was in the neighborhood because he'd have to poke it with his nose or paw at it; two not very good ideas. RTGFKAR got a couple of photos of the striped reptile, but I haven't been able to figure out how to attach them to the blog from my mailbox.

One summer when I was a young teen, I began a snake collection in an old chicken coop behind our house. I rigged a number of cages in there and set about finding "The Snakes of New Jersey." I caught so many garter and common water snakes that I let most of them go, keeping only the largest ones. My prize was a three foot Pine Snake that I'll tell you about a bit later and I had a few other snakes I just couldn't identify as our town library didn't have many books with snake pictures. I'm guessing now that they were probably varieties of Rat Snakes. I once spent a week trying to catch a Scarlet King Snake, which is a Coral Snake look-a-like. I knew where it hung out and I spotted it everyday, but I could never get close enough to pin it. Snakes can disappear faster than Houdini.

One of the crueler things I'd do - teenage boys are not the most sensitive of creatures - would be to take a water snake and drop it in front of one of our neighbor's barn cats. Water Snakes are bad tempered and will strike and bite at anything that messes with them. Barn cats, on the other hand, are just plain bad-assed. The snakes were never a match. What amazed me most was watching the cat go right up to the coiled snake's nose, provoking it, and then backing up faster than the snake could strike. The cats would usually play with the snakes awhile, sometimes killing them and sometimes just getting bored and wandering off. I thought it was a great show while it lasted.

My collection came to an abrupt end one early summer evening when one of my older sister's boyfriends, who had come to pick her up for a date, said "sure I'd like to see your snakes." Dumb cluck had to show me how brave he was by sticking his hand in a water snake's cage. He wasn't nearly as fast as a cat. His hand came out with the snake neatly attached, and then, to make matters worse, he tried to rip it off him with his other hand which made the bite go from puncture to real nasty. My father made me get rid of the snakes after that. He was afraid we would get sued. The guy never came back though, ever. A thing that didn't help much with relations between me and my sister. Apparently she liked the guy a lot. Go figure, I thought then. Who could like a guy who was that dumb.

I let all the snakes go except the Pine Snake. Our back yard terraced down to small creek and then rose into deep woods on the other side of the water. The land there was owned by the city and kept as a game preserve and water reserve. There were several small lakes back in there and it was in that "private property" that I spent most of my summer days when I wasn't practising my jump shot. I dumped all the cages down by the stream saving only the Pine Snake. Inspired by one of my many man-in-the wilderness books and magazines, I had decided that its black and white skin would make a nifty belt. Following the instructions in one of the books, I cut off the snake's head, slit it down the length of its belly and peeled its skin off. I nailed it to a board, salted it and leaned it against the garage wall to "cure". I then threw its remains into the brook where I watched in complete creeped out horror as the headless, skinless corpse swam away. I've been kinder to snakes ever since.

NewPost

I have to click on a tab that says "new post" to start this thing. When the screen appears, it's blank. What's the deal with that? Shouldn't a new post say something? Why is it always left up to me to fill in the blank? Really, if the tab said "create a new post" I wouldn't be so disappointed when the screen turned up empty. I'd know what I was getting into. But nooooooo, as John Belushi used to say before he joined the cast of Saturday Night Dead, I have to click my mouse (and here I have opened myself up to Sons#1and#2 commenting if you click your mouse too often you will go blind)each time and confront the no post there phenomena. Ah well, such is the life of we who blog.

I don't know what it is where you are, but here it's the month of March which means the wind is blowing. It's probably June in your neighborhood, quiet and still. I wouldn't swap though. I've been to your hood and it's got mean streets and a thousand stories in a naked jungle. Or a thousand naked people in a storied jungle. Something like that. Besides, wind is good. I'm told it blows pollution to somewhere else. Your neighborhood most likely. I don't like it though. As I've said before, it disturbs my wah. (If you disturb your wah too often you will go blind)(Just keeping ahead of the boys.)So here I sit, my wah completely out of sync, trying to "new post" and it's not going as planned.

Ah well again. Maybe tomorrow when I click my mouse the "new post" will be there. One can always hope. If not, I'll blame the wind, the rain or something like that but in my heart I"ll know the truth.

It's all Bush's fault.

Three Hundred and Counting

Trumpets blare and the band strikes up "Hail to the Chump." This then is the long awaited 300th blog which qualifies me as Greatest Blogger Of All Time At The Woowoogolf Site and enshrinement in the Hall of Who Cares is sure to follow. A great day indeed, and here comes a truck up our drive delivering either my trophy or 200 four inch concrete blocks that RTGFKAR ordered.

All in all a fine close to a good week that included golf, a new lawn, an installed closet, several excellent repasts, the Nuggets knocking off Phoenix and San Antonio and now, darn, a load of bloqueas concreto. Oh, and also, my car battery didn't die.

It was raining and misty when I Jack-in-the-boxed out of bed this morning. An idea lingered from a late dream and I wanted to get right to it. Sometime during my ritual of preparing coffee, putting away the night-before's dishes, unlocking the doors to let the dog out and three point four other tasks I've forgotten, the idea slipped away. I plopped down on a patio chair to smell the rain, the mist and our new lawn while I tried to recapture it. No luck. I think it may have been simply, "get out of bed" which is an idea I have most mornings as a deterrent to the biblical concept of thy bladder runneth over. I took in the great outdoors through all my senses until the sound of coffee finishing its slow drip into the pot - a sound like muffled horse hooves fidgeting in a stable - spurred me to action anew. (I was going to say once again, but anew needs to be used more often.)I grabbed a cup of the steamy stuff and took it to the office where I plopped down and waited for the computer to come to life. While I waited, I perused a crossword puzzle that is there specifically to fill those moments in which the computer yawns and stretches and groans into wakefulness. Can anyone give me a six letter word that means "gossip down South" that possibly ends in the letters r-e-s? After that, I wrote my blog and then motored downtown where I was presented the keys to the city by the mayor in recognition of my 300 contributions to Boquete's blog world.

Kudos, I said to myself, kudos. (I don't know the exact English translation for the Spanish word kudo, but it's most often used in the phrase, "careful, don't step in the kudo.")

Not Feeling It

I don't feel like writing this morning. Truth is I never really feel like writing. Not like I feel like playing golf or feel like watching a good movie, anyway. Writing is hard. I have to engage some part of me that is part intellectual and part mystery. Whatever it is - we'll go with muse for now - it always seems reluctant to get in gear. Even as I approach my 300th blog the process gets no easier. You would think that by now this would be as facile and routine as slipping on my sweats first thing in the A.M.; something done offhand, with ease and only partial awareness. But nooooo, I've got to read and answer mail, check out Yahoo news, follow my sports teams and anything else I can think of to avoid getting to the writing. I am told by other writers that this is not uncommon. My question is, why? Do painters dodge painting? Sculpters take up magazines before their chisels? Why do we, the wordsmiths, go to our task so reluctantly? The answer, for me anyway, comes from an anonymous quote I read years ago that paraphrased says, writers don't like to write they just like to have written. I find that verdad, the truth...in part. Ending is far more satisfying than starting, but there is also a subtle joy I experience along the way, even when I'm struggling to dig out the next word. Creativity, I surmise, even on this small scale, is as necessary for me as sunshine and water are to our new lawn. And, as I don't know how to do anything else, I'll just have to keep wading through the miasma of fear and doubt and get to the task.

And there it is, done for another day.

Grass and Closets and Stuff

I was reminded of Greta Garbo"s "I vant to be a lawn" when the turf guys showed up at some gawd-awful hour yesterday morning. I tore myself free of the entwining sheets and blankets which I could hear - yes I could - softly begging me not to go. I promised to return ASAP. I then staggered over to RTGFKAR's side of the house and alerted him to the situation. He was the guy, after all, who had ordered the sod. I didn't wait to see if he got up, I just started timing the droop of my eyelids to be fully shut when I flopped down into my own bed. Welcome back it said and then I was gone for another couple of hours.

When I awoke for the second time there was a nice green, St.Augustine grass lawn looking laurel and hardy or is that hale and hearty, just off the patio. I was hoping for blue to match our house trim as there is no shortage of the color green around here, but apparently green is still the hot "in" shade when it comes to grass.
I have to say that it looks good as an outside decoration, but it is pretty deep and I wouldn't want to hit anything lower than a wedge or nine iron out of it unless I had a fluffy lie.

The second of the day's surprises came about a half hour after the turf guys departed. Our ibanista - I don't know if that is the correct spelling or even the correct word, but that's what we've been calling our cabinet maker - showed up in a taxi truck with two helpers and all the unassembled parts of RTGFKAR'S closet. He was a week late off his last prediction of dos semanas, two weeks, which really wouldn't be too bad if that hadn't been the third time he had told us dos semanas. A few hours later RTGFKAR was closeted which is a good thing because a man needs a place to hang his hat and, if your are, you know, that other kind of guy, a closet to come out of.

I spent most of the morning and early afternoon burning coffee blankety-blank bushes but crashed back down into my bed about three for a nap. There was another Denver Nugget game coming on the tube at nine that night and I wanted to be able to hang in there for it; a thing I was able to do for the entire first half before responding to the calls from the bed once again. Damn thing's getting to be a regular chatterbox.

Somewhere in the first paragraph I was going to write "sodding the lawn," but was stopped by the realization that all but one of the books I have read this year have been by British authors. Relevance you say, relevance? Well, to a Brit, sodding has a different connotation. Doing it to a lawn is either perverse or impossible.

Describe in 1000 Words or Less

I've been diddly-doing around all morning, reading this, writing that, avoiding the other.

Our latest writer's group assignment is to put down a detailed description of something, anything, as long as it's not an event. The piece is not to exceed a thousand words. That's a yuk yuk for me. Here's my entry: The book was bound in blue.
That's less than a thousand, right? Really, description is not my strong suit. My strong suit is a dark gray, pin striped, three button in a size 40 regular. I'm tempted to write,...the book, when opened, contained words in small, black print that say, "Call me Ishmael" and whatever follows that for the first thousand words. Either that or, it was an itsy bitsy, teeny weenie, little bitty, tiny, very, very, very, very, very, very, (950 verys later) small bikini. That should do it.

Odd, though, that this assignment should come up right now. I have just finished "From Where You Dream" and there is an exercise that Robert Olen Butler gives his students where they have to orally describe something in the smallest detail that I thought was far too difficult for me. Lo and behold for a thousand words, here it is anyway. One of the book's chapter starting quotes is Picasso's "If only we could pull out our brains and use only our eyes." Of course those two onlys in the same sentence show why Picasso painted instead of wrote. Ah well, I'll give it a go at some point and bore you with the result.

In the meantime I sent the group a slightly revised version of the nightmare I recounted several blogs ago. It doesn't quite fit the criteria, but our group leader suggested reading Dean Koontz or Stephen King for description examples and I thought my nightmare scenario slipped neatly into that category.

I have to go now. My mind is very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, empty. (What am I fretting about? Description is a piece of cake.)

Fucryinoutloud

On the side of a Hilary grows in Brooklyn. (I make no apologies.)

Enneagram 5's like high energy people so it's not surprising that Woowoo Charly and Bonnie the Bookworm like Papa Ricco. He's a loud monologist who has opened an Italian restaurant in downtown Boquete named after himself. We had dinner there anoche and the fare was excellent as Papa is a good chef and at six bucks an entree you can't beat the price. Papa came out of the kitchen to regale us with his now- getting-repetitious tales of tossing people out and I wonder how many times his neighbors have heard these same stories as Papa is, as I've noted, very loud. He's also profane, although his swear word vocabulary seems to be limited to the word fuck. The ladies in our group, Woowoo, Bon and Cheryl were seated together at one end of the table and all seemed entertained by Papa Ricco's colorfully told tales. The guys, RTGFKAR, Paul, The Old Redneck, and Yers Truly, had opinions ranging from mildly amused Paul, to tolerated by Ramon and Yers, and then down the road to the instant dislike of Larry the O.R. who pronounced Papa "full-of-shit." He is that, of course, full of it, but it's his "schtick" and he throws it out there take it or leave it. I'm sure we will be going back on future occasions as Papa does serve up the best Italian food we've had in Panama. Personally though, I'm hoping he stays in the kitchen.

Today is Sunday and there are political pundits - a person who has or professes to have great learning; actual or self professed authority - (I'm thinking in this case, mostly self professed) chattering away in the background. This means that Woowoo Charly is getting her weekly fix of Democrats versus the blankety blank Republicans (that's her way of swearing although she can get more graphic if a Bush is involved)and it's time for me to get busy with breakfast. I'm thinking French Toast although Botswanian toast is also an option. Anybody got the recipe? Afterwards there should be some NBA or golf on the tube so I can appease my jones as well.

I heard this next on a bad movie last night: If you catch yourself saying the word fuck at an inappropriate moment (and most of them are) follow it immediately with "crying-out-loud."

Roundball and TV

He's all Barack and no bite.

The Nuggets were on last night. Apart from highlights on Sportscenter I had not seen them play this year and it seemed unlikely that I'd catch them in action last night in that game time was at 10:30. That's P.M. as in Pastmy Bedtime. I was hoisting up jumpers, slam dunking and dishing to the open man myself at 10:40 when the phone began ringing insistently from the bedside table. Our phone never rings after 9, so I knew it was either something urgent or a wrong number. Yo creo tiene el numero equivocado senor was my reply to the guy on the other end when my head cleared enough to realize which of the two possiblities it was. Wrong number. Sheesh. Now what? I'm wide awake and...wait a minute, there's a game on. Alrighty then. I stumbled to the couch, clicked the remote a few times to get past the food channels and settled in to watch my team humble the lowly L.A. Clippers. I made it through three quarters before my droopy eyelids and the realization that it was twenty minutes beyond midnight drove me back to bed. The Nuggets did prevail, I learned this morning, but my perception of the game was that I could be a star in the NBA if I got to play against the Nugget's defense every night. Of course, going back to my pregame dreams, I don't play much D either.

We have two TV's here at Casa As-yet-unnamed which makes for a harmonious household. RTGFKAR, Woowoo Charly and I vary widely in our viewing habits. When not watching entertainment televsion shows, I prefer sports, movies, history, biography, or any show about nature. I could care less about mankind's inventions, creations, scientific achievments, technology and food peparation, all of which are RTGFKAR's staples. Woowoo Charly will watch a bit of anything, but we guys leave the room when E-TV or American Idol comes on. (I'll come back when Idol gets down to twelve people.)Also working on the side of tranquility is that we are all three readers. This contributes to our televisions being on far less than the hours and hours statistics show average Joes viewing. I'm thinking that's a good thing.

If, however, the networks want to get my viewing hours up to par, they'll have to air Nugget games earlier or convince me to follow an east coast team, because, damn, 10:30, that's late. Isn't it?