Ouch. That’s Hot.

… but they don’t like to be alone with me.

Half our fence fell prostrate before Mother Nature as She decided that 50 degrees was too magnanimous a December fortune for Her children in Ohio. The error was sternly corrected with a high-winded 30 degree drop over the next few hours.

My neighbor and I meet the next day to walk the line, one to a side. “It never was a good fence,” I tell him. He says it doesn’t matter that it’s down for awhile. “I can take Duke out on a leash,” he says. “Don’t worry, he can poop in my yard,” I reply.

A New Year dawns, the temperature stretches for 60 to greet the second week. Remembering my duty, I apply hammer to nail and stake to earth to raise the fence back to a useful, if not perfect, condition. I rejoice in the afternoon spent in the sun. I remember back to earlier existence when I purchased these same boots, this Carhartt jacket. When afternoons and often whole days were lost in the silence of the woods. When I earned my paychecks turning trees to cord wood, wrestling boulders, caring for the saplings of another harvest. Though today I’ve neglected most of my responsibilities, I sleep the deseved sleep of satisfaction in work well-accomplished.

But Mother Nature disagrees. She does not think that a few e-mails should be sufficient to cover my ass. She sends Her winds again. She taunts me with Her warmth and then sends Her storm. Feeling the fear of a five-year-old as the house shakes/shudders/moans, I scramble to the safety of sleep with covers pulled high over head and dread blowing all around me.

I awake to find my fence face-down again, genuflecting to its Mistress. My still-sharp stakes torn up and strewn about. Like shark’s teeth on the beach, they give evidence to a once great creature, now no more. Today, I must mend the wall again. Armed with twice the nails, deeper stakes, but a broken will, I buttress again without complaint.

It never was a good fence. And now there is poop in my yard.  But I am happy.

Maybe it was the pending solstice, which seems to have hit at 6am this morning. I don’t know, but something flipped today for the better.

Yesterday was a bad day for my insides. How do I know?

I felt compelled to listen to Born To Run (both album and song) repeatedly. For some reason, it’s a guaranteed tear-jerker for me. Ask Rocs, she’ll tell you: there’s times I’ve bawled. Oh yes. Yesterday’s listening was shear masochism. Tramps like us… (sniff)

Then it switched to the music of my youth. America. (The song, not the band.) Which has just a darn tootin’ few too many similarities to the aforementioned Springsteen number. I’m getting concerned.

So I’m trying to run away from something. But then I woke up with Love Bites on the brain. At 4am. It’s a breakthrough!

The days are again getting longer. Springtime is in the air. I can hear the birds. Can’t you?

… if you can’t write a cohesive paragraph or three about it once you’re done? I enjoy staring at words and turning pages while on the john, but perhaps I should be a little more engaged.