I'm Only Guessing

I don't know where to begin (or end) this morning.  I've been awake since 2:30, though I stayed in bed.  I couldn't sleep.  I thought I was supposed to sleep better when I stopped drinking.  The only thing that has happened so far is that I miserably want a cocktail at the cocktail hour.  This has been the hardest Dry January yet.  I don't feel any sharper mentally.  I am still a broken mess physically.  Spiritually?  I can only say I have attained no enlightenment and I sure as hell ain't attaining internal peace.  

So what's the point?

You know.  Discipline.  

I'm sure I feel better.  I just don't know it.  

I finally got out of bed at 5:30.  At least, I thought, I'd have some moments of peace.  Really?  Not on your life.  My mother got up right behind me and hasn't quit shuffling back and forth through the room on her squeaky walker since.  

"Serenity now."

I didn't call the home care for the elderly place yesterday.  I will today.  I did manage to get some things done, but most of it was a bust.  I texted a painter T recommended and he is going to come by my house to take a look.  Cha-ching!  He won't be cheap, I am certain, but I am not going to be painting high up on ladders for days anymore.  

Or many other things.  What I want is a driver.  Not all the time.  I just want to take photos out the car window, so I need a driver for that.  They would drive my car, so it would only be their time I would need.  Who would like to be my driver?  Should I take out an ad in the paper?

"Paper?  WTF are you talking about?  What paper?  Are you fucking daft?"

The flu epidemic is at a 25 year high.  I'm flu-averse.  Paranoid, really.  This is the flu that kills old people.  I guess I'm not really ready to go yet.  Reality check.  I haven't been going to the gym, though I may go today.  The gym is the place to pick up bacteria and viruses.  It is second only to schools.  O.K.  And nightclubs.  

Yesterday, when I got to my house, there was a crew putting in a new gas line for the house under construction across the street.  My street is very narrow and their trucks--many trucks--were blocking both entrances to my mulched drive.  I'm cool, though, and I parked at the apartment.  As I was walking back to the house, I saw that they had dug a six foot deep, four foot wide hole in my front yard.  

"Hey man," one of the crew addressed me.  "Would you mind if we put our drill in your driveway."

Still cool, "Sure, no problem."

I went inside to change into my workout clothes when I heard a siren coming down the street.  Then another.  When I finished dressing and went outside, there were four cop cars, two fire engines, and one ambulance blocking the road.  I stood and watched from the end of my drive.  People were coming out of their houses to see what was going on.  The medics took the stretcher (?) from the back of the ambulance and went into my across the street neighbor's house.  One of the workers came over and said, "Heart attack.  One of the fireman told me."

Wow.  The fellow across the street is younger than I am, but he has had a bad heart for a long time.  He is a bum, a drug dealer, and a lout, but he got in with the woman who has lived in that house her entire life.  It was her mother's, but it was her grandmother who had all the money.  She left her granddaughter a bunch of properties and some gas rights on some land out of state.  The Lout gave her two children who are retarded in most ways, and he thinks he's The Man.  I always wave and say hi, but if we talk, I try to use the 30 second rule.  He's a big guy and dangerous in the way of retarded pitbulls.  Talking to him is not enlightening and is hardly entertaining but for the character analysis you might put into one of your stories.  

A fellow who rents half of an old duplex on a big piece of property around the corner rode up on his bicycle.  He is kind of a bum.  He washes windows for a living, but I think he lives off disability pay.  Maybe he had been in the service.  Again, I am guessing, but I know that he always looks like more of a bum than I.  Hands down.  

He wanted to know which house they had gone to.  I pointed to The Lout's.  

"Probably domestic violence," he said.  I was thinking the same thing, but I told him what the worker said.  He nodded and rode off.  

A woman from down the street walked up and stood with me.  I can't tell how old she is.  I don't know if she works.  She lives alone, I am pretty sure, with two big dogs that she walks by my house.  Sometimes she waves and comes to say hello and can be very chatty, but other times she doesn't even look.  I think maybe she is bipolar, but I only have her brief encounters to base that on, so don't take it literally.  The thing is, she is kind of attractive, and I think she might like me.  I'm a bit of a nut magnet, so it is possible.  She is not thin, but. . . I don't know.  Something about her.  

"What's going on?"

I told her the heart attack story.  We stood looking at the house across the street.  

"I see you got a new roof.  It looks nice."

It looks nice?  What?  

"Oh. . . yea. . . I have a lot still to do.  I'm calling a painter today.  And I still have to re-rock and mulch the drives, then I will tackle the garden."

She looked concerned.  "You're not moving, are you?"

"No.  I like it here."

"Good.  Me, too."

I was getting a vibe.  She's on her meds, I thought.  I looked at the smooth skin of her face. Surely MedSpa.  Her hair was dark, not her natural color, I thought.  How old was she?  I couldn't tell.  Forty?  

Just then, the medics rolled out the stretcher (?), but it wasn't The Lout on it--it was his daughter!  She looked white as a sheet and was crying out.  I've known her and her brother, of course, since they were born.  Not "known," really, but known of them.  They are both simps, I think, but I have been told they are going to college.  Well, everybody does now, and everybody graduates.  It's the new rule, so I am not really surprised.  But she is, by all appearances, a bad girl.  She wears the sluttiest costumes I have ever seen.  She was a fat girl who got skinny.  Drugs, I assume.  And the boys would come and park down the street to pick her up.  They'd call her on the phone and she would come running out in something showing her hoo-hoo.  The boys didn't dare go to her house.  NOBODY is allowed in the house unless they are fellow druggies.  The cops are often at the house, and one day they were there when a tow truck brought her wrecked car.  One late night, I guess. . . but I am only guessing.  I'm just saying that the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.  

The Lout followed her out.  He didn't look very concerned, but he was miffed that everyone was standing around looking, I guess, and he mugged me, crouched, and acted as if he was taking a picture, and indictment to us all.  My blood boiled quick, and I almost yelled "Fuck you you drug addict moron," but I only got the "Fuck" out when I remembered the bipolar woman standing next to me.  I was still trying to figure her out.  

So nothing was clear except there was no heart attack.  The Lout looked over and said, "She had a seizure."  Hmm.  O.K.  So why the four cop cars?  

The woman from down the street said, "It was nice to see you," and turned back in the direction of her house.  I got into my Xterra and tried not to back over the two policemen standing in the street behind my drive like entitled pricks.  I had to go the long way 'round.  

I worked out in the park's outdoor gym, walked and stumbly old man ran, and came back home.  I'd been gone about an hour, I guessed, maybe a little longer.  The fire trucks were all gone, but there were still two police cars there.  Seemed weird they would hang around for over an hour because of "a seizure."  Something else was surely at hand.  

By this time, the big drilling machine was in my driveway and trucks were parked all along the narrow street.  It was not a peaceful day.  

All that to say. . . I didn't do everything I had planned.  After I showered, I worked on more of the pictures I had taken.  You have to take photos if you want to be a photographer.  That's the rule.  But. . . if you want to be an artist. . . . 

Still. . . it is all work.  

I need a driver.  Hell. . . I need an assistant, plain and simple, and a studio, too.  Why didn't I become famous and have all that?  Why didn't I marry the ultra-rich girl and become funded?  

The answers to these questions can only be guessed at.  I'm certain we can chalk it up to a character flaw.  

But I am only guessing.  

Much to do today, but I have gotten an early start.  If it weren't for mother, I'd have it all done before noon.  As it is. . . . 

I really don't know, but I think the woman down the street was giving me vibes. 

Still, I'm only guessing.