I'm a Hard-Working, Yard-Working Man

So, one thing that I don't like about living in the South is that you have to mow in November. I know this because I've done it for the past six years. One year, when I had a particularly aggressive patch of thistles (ironic) and crab grass, I mowed on the first week of December.

Now, I understand that this is not Florida or Southern Texas or Southern California where you have to mow pretty much year-round (I imagine). This is North By God Carolina, but I'm still not used to it. In northeastern Indiana, it was time to put the mowers away in the middle of September. Sometimes, if Indian Summer falls just right, you might have to mow in October, but after that, you're sitting pretty until April.

Not so here. And while I don't mind mowing--especially if my wife is home to make sure the agents of entropy children don't kill each other--there's just something unright about mowing in November, at least in my mind. Shouldn't there be a law forbidding you from sweating and being cold at the same time? Usually, I come in from mowing and take a shower to feel cool and refreshed, not to warm up and refresh.

And that's the other thing I don't understand: it was a perfectly lovely day yesterday, warm and sunny with nary a cloud mottling the perfect blue dome of the heavens above. Yet, whenever I was in the shade and shadows of the many trees lining my yard, I felt cold. Not shivering cold, but cool nonetheless. And, I was sweating like the proverbial pig, or whore in church, whichever way you want to go with that. When I came in and shucked my pants and boxers, my ass cheeks were ice cold. They were more like ice cheeks. More ice, less ass. We won't even talk about how badly I was turtled.

My only beef with mowing--aside from the fact that it is suspiciously like real work--is that this is a time when I should be communing with my yard and the vast world around me. While I'm locked in the silence within my head, I should be able to ponder the world at large, or--better yet--do a little soul searching. However, this is not the case. Instead of some life-altering and self-improving ompahloskepsis, I think about work. Like, my job work. Like, the job that I'm trying to escape by being home and relaxing on the weekends work.

For instance, yesterday I thought about how I need to register and submit compounds 007 and 009 (yes, the former does have a license to kill...Trypanosomes!). I also thought about how I need to spot the 150 tubes in my hood and then take the cleaned-up compound on to the ring-closure this afternoon, if possible. And from there, I planned out the rest of the week depending on how much material I get out of the ring closure.

Argh! This is not something one should be thinking about for two hours on a Sunday afternoon in early November! Fortunately, while doing the yard on the western side of the house, I was able to put together the scene I'm envisioning for the next chapter in the book I'm currently working on, so when I finally finish up the second chapter tonight, I can get to working on this next one and fill out this scene that I've imagined.

In case you couldn't tell, I didn't really write much last night. Instead, I bitched about the Packers losing on the heels of Notre Dame being whupped on by Navy and how that tore at my poor, despondent heart. And then I put some new things up on the sidebars of the blog! Hooray!

It occurred to me that someone might want to go back and look at all of the Friday Morning Latin lessons. That someone might be me when I'm trying to reference an older lesson, for instance Aut futue, aut pugnemus!, so I thought I'd make it easier on myself and anyone else by just making a link that you can click on and access them at your leisure. Then, I thought the same about Totally Blowing Shit Up Tuesdays. And finally, I thought the same thing about all my TMI stories, so I collected those, put them together, and then added in the five-part story about my stay in the hospital when I got my gall bladder removed back in 2006. For, you know, posterity's sake. And while I probably should have used Lilu's button for the picture linking to all my TMI goodliness, I opted for the Hobbes picture, you know, the class the joint up some. Plus, mooooog used it last week, and I thought it was pretty fucking awesome.

Those are all located over on the far right, beneath the Followers button, because, really, if it wasn't for the 140-plus friends I've accrued over the past couple of years, none of these stories would have made it to electronic print. Think of it was a way of giving back to you.

Now, get off my lawn. I just mowed it and I need to look nice until the end of March.

What? Me? Heckle?

I went to a rather small school for undergrad. It was located in a rather pastoral setting at the south end of a very small, farming-oriented community. Describing it as one-horse probably is lending it too much credit, though it was the town that the driver's ed kids from the next county over would come to, so that they could practice driving through intersections with stoplights. From a certain point of view, it could be described as a booming, thriving metropolis...I guess.

Anyway, the college tried to get comedians and shows in to entertain the students as much as they could. Bear in mind, this was a small college, so the acts weren't always the greatest, and I doubt I could name a single one of the performers or comedians who stopped off in Rensselaer for an hour's worth of self-promotion and a meager paycheck at the end.

However, sometimes, we got really good acts or really good comedians. That was the case on the night in question. The comedienne was actually a very funny lady. I remember a couple of times laughing until tears came to my eyes. As per usual, she went on about driving through cornfields and such to get to the college. Everybody pretty much did that when they came to Rensselaer, but when she entered into her own act, it was damned funny.

I say all this as a preface for the crux of the story. Now, this particular comedienne was a black lady of, we'll say, ample proportions, and as such, she started talking about her love of ice cream. She had me right there. If there's something I love, it is the ice cream (along with a variety of other things that I have detailed here time and again). As luck would have it, Rensselaer had a small ice cream shop called Busy Bee, which was a common congregation point in the late spring evenings for the population of the college. We'd walk into town, enjoy our frozen dairy comestibles, and then sometimes stroll through other parts of the town or simply walk back to campus. It was truly idyllic.

The comedienne saw Busy Bee on her way to the campus and was, appropriately, fired up. But, she was worried. Like me, she had a refined palate and had a few prerequisites as to whether it would be worth her time to enjoy this fine fare.

"Now, this Busy Bee place, it doesn't have just one flavor, does it?" she asked the crowd.

No, was the general response from the crowd.

"No? How many flavors does it have, then?"

At this point, I thought, in the blink of an eye, Hey, she's really funny. Perhaps I'll throw something up there for her, and she can hit it out of the ballpark. We'll all be rolling in the aisles, holding our sides, pissing our pants because she's that fucking funny!

The end result of this internal monologue was me, firing off: "Two!" This was met with a few chuckles from the crowd.

Oh goody, I thought, my internal voice rising in pitch as I pondered the looming possibilities, here comes the comedy gold!!!

"Two?" she asked, her eyes wide, an eyebrow cocked. I swelled up in eager anticipation. Here it comes...

This is where, I should point out, things made a turn for the worse.

"Two? Is that all that makes you happy, farmboy? Two? You and that little ear thing you've got going on. Two flavors for me and my ears, please." And then she turned, dismissively, and continued on with her routine.

I. Was. Crushed. She even, in the course of pointing out that my ears stick out a tad, grabbed the upper part of her ear and pulled it out some. It was like she had just stomped on my puppy, and then kicked its gasoline-soaked carcass into the middle of the street, where it was to burst aflame the moment it was run over by a speeding semi-truck, trailer in tow.

Where was the funny? Where was the comedic gold I had known was coming? Is this all I get? Being called a "farmboy" and my ears made fun of? Not that you needed the help, but I just fired off a slow pitch over the middle of the plate. You could do something with it, other than point out the shortcomings of my personal appearance.

I shed a single tear, much like the Native American standing at the side of the road, an empty 7-Up can rolling at his feet.

Perhaps she thought I was trying to heckle her. Perhaps she wanted to get her entire act finished within the allotted time. I don't know. What I do know is that, after that moment, no matter how lousy or how funny the comedian or how talented the performer, I vowed never to interact with the person on stage, lest my personal attributes are once again held up before the jeering gallery to be judged and mocked.

This does not, however, include the time that, during a screening of The Scorpion King in the theatre, when Lucy Liu straddled the Rock's chest shortly after he had been wounded, I shouted (for all to hear) "Lay here while I suck the poison from your chest with my vagina!"

See, you can bite a movie, and the movie doesn't bite back.