Kibbles and Bits

Well, let's start off with some sad reality, shall we? My computer is in the hospital. Metria down at the Gulfport Technology Center is taking care of it, hoping for a complete recovery by Wednesday. But this, you see, is only Monday. I'm at my buddy Mike's shack down at the Boca Ciega Resorts, which sounds a lot more ... resortic than it is, also more plural. But that's another blog.

Judging from the lawn signs in my neighborhood, it looks like a landslide for Century 21 ...

My friend Wayne Clark died last Saturday. He was too young, of course. Lung cancer. Harlan County, Kentucky. He was a huge smoker of most smokable products, but he'd also worked in the mines. Mainly, though, he was a big romantic figure from my girlhood and I've decided he shall remain there. Whenever I hear I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry, I'll grin and think of Wayne when he was thirteen, balanced on a ladder, strumming his guitar, taking a break from our silly badminton games, which we played all summer long. Well, it was only "all two weeks long," but that fortnight in Kentucky was the high point of my childhood and it seemed like it lasted a year. Wayne was a huge part of it. I'm never really sure what "sardonic" means, but I have no doubt that that describes his smile. Described. Described his smile.

It's hard, at first, to talk about dead people. I remember wondering if I could still love my dad, even though he was dead. It seemed impossible to do that. I felt I had to say it in the past tense, since he was past.

Well, I heard from another classmate I haven't seen since 1968 who couldn't make it to the reunion. He lives in Florida. There's talk of the six or seven of us Floridians getting together.

Wow. I was getting ready to be way too sad for blogging when Rico jumped up on the desk. No. Rico's not some Latino from my sordid past. He's one of Mike's cats, or at least a cat Mike thinks might be his. Rico's a sharp, clean, black-and-white short-hair with a voice you can hear three houses away. Hence his name -- for Enrico Caruso. We called him The Opera Cat until Mike acquired his contract.

As I type, his tail -- Rico's, not Mike's -- is flopping onto the keyboard, then off. On. Off. On. Off.

I'm taking that as a sign to go home and paint something.

Here's a modern Murphy's Law. Ideas for fun blogs come as fast as rain in July in Gulfport, as long as one's computer is out of commission. We all know that typing on someone else's computer is, well, sufficient, but only barely. Hah! but wait till Thursday. THEN there'll be some bloggin' goin' on!

Except for a modern Murphy's Law which states that fun ideas for blogs only come when one's computer is down ...