Stop in again!

Ever have a pleasant uninvited guest? I guess putting the word "uninvited" has so many negative conotations you probably haven't. Well I did. I had 5 very large guests this evening.

My neighborhood isn't at all different from planned communities you see everywhere. A yard just big enough that mowing it with one of those electric mowers wouldn't make sense. I have a small yard in front and a decent sized area in back and the kicker here is for the story, my yard ends in a very thick wooded area.

After work tonight I decided to do something productive and clean out my car so I left it out on the driveway. Normally I am not productive in the evening and on days like last Friday, I drown my sorrows in a Jack and Coke, or as I like to call it "Pain go bye-bye juice".

So I'm out in my driveway pulling Wendy's rappers and Kleenex (the title of my last album) out of my car when I suddenly hear a leaf crack behind me. I check quickly to make sure my "Sounds Of Nature" CD is out of my car stereo (BTW - if you ever need to grab a couple quick Z's at a stop light - BUY IT!) and I turn around to see three deer not 15 feet away from me in my yard eating my crab apples. I freeze. VERY slowly, I back up against my car and face them resting my butt against the car for support. All of a sudden, three deer turn into five. At this point I am just in total disbeleif at what I'm seeing. There's about three fawns and two adults and one of them is pretty big and eyeing me up flintching at any move I make.

Not like I'd ever have an opportunity to take a picture but it's just KILLING me that I can't take their picture. This is the one time I didn't have my cell phone camera with me. So there I stood, motionless........leaning against my car just watching these peaceful creatures eat the fallen crab apples. It's about then I try to test my psychic abilities to get my wife to look out the window. No dice. What struck me as amazing was these deer, again, not 15 feet away from me just stared at me and looked at the ground too as if to say "Sooooo......we cool?".

This whole event lasted a good ten minutes with the adults bolting first and the younger deer sticking around (kids!...Pfffft!, right?). So I go back in the house, my hands almost shaking from being that close to so many.........the theme from Born Free playing in my head.......then it hits me. Those are the bastards that have been clearing out my bird feed every night!! "I HOPE YOU GET THE SHITS FROM THOSE YOU SEED STEALING ASSHOLES!!!".

A lesson in perspective

Some sounds are good. Some are bad. As I was backing out of my garage this morning I heard one from column B, the bad sound column. Ever hear the sound a balloon makes if you rub against your hand, a sweater, sleeping hobo? That sort of 10 percent good squeaky sound but mostly bad? Well I heard that, and it was not a balloon being rubbed on a hobo it was my car rubbing against the wood trim on the garagae. This was indeed a bad sound.

So with my daughter in the back lost in her 8 billionth viewing of Wall-E there I was in the driveway at the crack of dawn feverishly trying to make the bad bad site go away. First a wet rag to get the white paint off my still not fully ours yet car. Then an old bath sponge. Finally I Got the paint off but could feel (but not fully see due to the small amount of sun around) a scratch, a protruding scratch. Out of frustration and the need to harm something that wasn't me (the REAL culprit) I angrily tossed the bucket of water i brought out against the driveway and it loudly smacked against our garage door. My daughter didn't find this scary, just odd. She is quite the observationalist and knew this wasn't right and she proceeded to tell me that it was "bad to make a mess". Yes sweetie, but the bucket had it coming.

So off we go, her to my in-laws and me to work all the while I'm cursing the big loon that is me. Then I look in my rear view mirror and I see my daughter with her knit hat but the mittens I had just put on her tucked up under the hat. "Sweetie, what are you doing?" I said as she made a sound that appeared to be clucking. "I'm a rooster Daddy! Cluck..cluck!". I know what foolish is now. Foolish isn't a three year old pretending to be a rooster, nope,,.....we NEED that type of nonsense to ground us. Foolish is a 43 year old yutz behaving like a baby in his driveway at 6:50 am on a Monday. Now I know.