Why Do I Have Nipples?

I aggravated an old injury in my lower back at the gym yesterday, so today I’m so damn healthy I can’t walk. Putting on socks and getting dressed for work is about as feasible as making 100 foot leaps from North to South Florida every other Tuesday, just for fun. Not going to happen. Although this Earth and everything on it is an endless cornucopia of miracles, God did mess up on a few things.

Lower back problems are more common than Termites in Florida. There must be a better way. And for that matter, why do we have so many nerves in our teeth? Wouldn’t it make more sense if they were made of stone or maybe stainless steel like “Jaws” in the bond films? He didn’t even flinch when he unlocked a door by biting through a heavy metal padlock.

Don’t get me started about woman’s menstruation. I mean, that can be a mess, right? Why couldn’t girls just eject a neat little pellet once a month, something about the size of a cigarette lighter? It could easily be slipped into the soil of potted plants, a nutritional boost. Also, why are our skeletons on the inside and all the soft gooey stuff on the outside? Wouldn’t exoskeletons make more sense? Battle armor outfitted at all times. Look at ants, it works for them. We could all lift 100 times our weight and deflect small caliber bullets. What about mosquitoes though, do we really need them?

Two large ladies came to my front door last week. Both sported “practical shoes” as my Mother used to call them. Both wore ankle length dark dresses. They wouldn’t want to work the men into a frenzy by showing too much skin. I thought they needn’t worry about that, but I did appreciate the free literature. Apparently God has plans to return to earth, and I’ve started a list that I want to give him in hopes that when he does return, he’ll tweak a few things so that they make more sense. 

He could start with my lower back,

But for right now, I’ll lie here on a fulcrum of ice packs and stare at the ceiling as I ponder the great questions of life. Like, “why do I have nipples”, and “does the liquor store deliver?”

hmh

No Agenda...

It’s way more than simply not minding the rain. I love it. Especially when it’s a torrential Florida downpour, as if entering a waterfall accompanied by the explosions of a 4th of July fireworks soundtrack. God’s bowling hall and all that. It provides variety and perspective. But the center of the Bell curve is pretty wonderful too. No huge extremes, but rather an exhilarating appreciation for the sweet routine of life. Like this morning. I wanted a big breakfast and was tired of my own cooking. Carla was about to get off from her night shift at the hospital so I texted her to say that I would meet her in the cafeteria when it opened at 7am. That’s when her shift ends. The hospital is only 7 minutes away. We walked out to the courtyard with our bounty. I loaded up on scrambled eggs with spinach and cheese, a piece of sausage, a biscuit, all to be washed down with a cup of fresh brewed Columbian coffee. We were the only ones there, five other tables sat empty. The garden perimeter was being misted with an almost imperceptible spray that caused the plants to drip silently, as if in a rain forest. A central fountain gurgled and played quietly by itself. Morning sun had just started to breach the shading roof to cast a brilliant slat of light across the fountain spray, turning it into a rainbow of cascading jewels. Carla sat softly in her green scrubs, a cluster of ID badges and pictures clipped to her lapel. No agenda pushed us as we sat together, other than my own unspoken insistence to appreciate the hell out of the moment. So that's exactly what I did.

hmh

Welcome!

Over the course of 3 million years or so, rock, bone, flint, and obsidian have given way to titanium, ceramics, Damascus and high carbon stainless steels. Handles made with modern materials, Micarta, G10, carbon fiber, pair with a wide variety of lock-ups and openers. From neck knives to push, fixed blades to folders, I've been in love with knives since I was a kid. 

When my Grandparents went to Europe, I begged them to bring me back a switchblade from Italy. Those knives were poorly made from cheap materials, but unavailable in the States. Just by dint of the fact that it was a switch blade, I campaigned heavily. I guess they thought that I was a good kid and over the top about this knife thing, so they caved and brought me one. My parents did the same thing several years later. By the time I was in high school, I had a small collection. That ended one day when my older brother and I were wrestling at home. Kenny had one of my switchblades in his pocket. Our wrestling pushed the opener button and I got stabbed in my upper thigh. Mom found out and when I came home from school the next day, she was standing on the concrete floor of the open garage, methodically smashing each of my switchblades with a sledgehammer.

With time, I got over the trauma of having my favorite toys smashed but I never lost the pure lust I have for edged weapons.

Put your hand on top of the shelf closest to my front door if you want a fixed blade. Double daggers hang in their sheath next to the side doors. I keep a hand ax by the bedroom doors and two blades hang from the bedpost. There's a knife clipped to the underside of my car seat and one in it's carrier tucked under the seat of my bike. I always carry an assisted opener or an automatic with a very secure lock-up clipped to the inside of my belt.

These days the materials are so good, the blades made from amazing steels that didn't exist 50 years ago, they are like jewels to me. It wouldn't go well for a burglar breaking into my house That's exactly the kind of theft protection I rely on from a pair of stainless 38 Special revolvers and a nice 12-gauge pump shotgun.

I'm serious about that "WELCOME" sign over our front door, but be sure to only use that entrance...

hmh

Coroner

My new, part-time job is a freaking money machine!! All I have to do is bring the bodies in to my buddy, Ted, at the crematorium. Boom! $100 cash! And business is growing. I told my friend who runs the gym that if anyone drops from over exertion or whatever, just call me. Depending on their weight, maybe I’ll need a hand getting them into the trunk of my car, but other than that, it’s all good. He said “But what if they just fainted? We all just took a CPR class…” I pointed out that he doesn’t want to do CPR on some nasty fat guy, and he agreed. Let me handle it, I reassured him again. “But what if they’re still breathing?” I pointed out that after spending a day locked in the trunk of my car, parked for 8 hours in the blistering Florida sun at the parking lot of my day job, they most certainly are not breathing by the end of the day. In fact, you can’t get within 20 feet of my car on a day like today without knowing that something very dead is nearby. That trunk works like a crock pot, so now I keep a bunch of onions and celery in there so the drive over to the crematorium at night has me fantasizing about pot roast. Of course Ted can make a few extra bucks off any pacemakers, rings and dental gold, but I’m just a simple guy, $100 is plenty, I just bring them in. Some nights I get lucky and pick up two or three from under bridges and behind liquor stores. (Those people need extra onions, they’re pretty stinky to start with) The opportunities for extra income seem limitless. Monitor the ambulance dispatcher and get there first. No one questions you if you wear white and push a gurney. On nice days I take a ride through senior communities on a golf cart, looking for geezers snoozing on a park bench. A friendly tap on the head and no one questions why my cart-mate seems to be resting their head on my shoulder. “Oh, that’s sweet” they think. A quick ride to see Ted, and Boom! Another $100 cash! At this rate, I may even quit my day job

Express Breakfast Buffet

The Holiday Inn Express, as you might guess, has an “express start” breakfast bar in the lobby. Like their coffee machine, it’s complimentary, but unlike that Keurig in our room, it didn’t say anything nice to me one way or the other. But it was definitely calling my name. Although I’m a “foodie” and constantly plotting what I’ll cook or where we’ll go to eat (I’ve normally got plans a week out on an Excel spreadsheet.) I wanted what that bar had to offer. Bad. Lots of different kinds of coffee in pump thermoses, under-ripe bananas and oranges, “three minute pancakes” from the “never touched by human hands” special three-minute pancake maker. And there, center stage, shining like the big stone in a diamond ring, sat the hot bar. Cheap greasy pork sausages like the fingers of a fat man who had floated face down in a retention pond for a week or two, biscuits next to a tub of sausage gravy, made from those same perspiring fingers, sunning themselves too long under the heat lamps and frequently sneezed on by patrons who seem to hold it in until they lift the Plexiglas shield. The star of the show, a large deep-dish pan of scrambled eggs. Dehydrated, flaked, reconstituted, formed…that certainly had never met a chicken. The orange juice dispenser held juice made from concentrate made with a bad orange in there somewhere, or maybe the whole batch was turning on itself, effervescent. It’s not supposed to be fizzy, right?

Anyway, even though I should be embarrassed to admit that I love that stuff, very early in the morning with lots of black coffee, I’m not, and I do. It makes me feel like I’m at a realtor meeting but I don’t have to go to work afterward.