Treading Water

About through a nine-day holiday break. Haven’t shot myself yet. Don’t know how to use guns. Have spent more time with a leaf-blower in my hand than I normally care to. Trying to cut down on drinking is like shouting after a horse galloping past, "Slow down!" Ten days out from oral surgery and my damn molar still hurts. Just learned of a young woman's suicide. She was overseas, unhappy, on her own. My boy is making a timeline for the Muslim Caliphates and Medieval Europe; our dog is chewing on his pajamas as he copies down notes from the computer. Took Ali out for dinner for her 46th birthday. The hostess sat us down at a tiny table by the front door, next tor bar. I told her I had secured the reservation weeks prior, that it was my wife’s birthday, etc. She apologized and told me all the other empty tables were reserved for parties of 4. She’d just seen me hug the owner, an old friend, who I refrained from calling over so to make the woman pay for her transgression. Luckily, the owner saw me fuming and went over and solved the problem. The gin and tonic had some sort of pear and spice in it. The rain has glazed the driveway. There was a short morning meeting of crows by the golf course this morning. They filled a small tree with their jabber. Then they flew off to their designated spots. There’s a neighbor who lives on the corner up the hill whose property feels and looks like country life—dog tied to stump, tractors in the lawn and a car half apart in the driveway. Country music blares on the tiny radio. When we cleaned out drawers in the front foyer this morning Ali found that she owned a dozen handbags. She just went shopping with a friend; I warned her that I would throw out any new handbag that came through the door. I spent the morning deleting all extra spaces after sentences in an old essay of mine. Quite an accomplishment. Just so I don’t go back and re-space the sentences later.