Feb 19, Two thousand whatever . . . .

I ease my '95 Isuzu trooper onto Baseline Road in third gear. I'm tired of shifting. It's just one more drop in the bucket of what's become an exhausting day. There are to-do lists that grow with every blink of an eye and I've spent more than I wanted to . . . again. Seems that the simple life is a pretty complicated goal for this mind. My head hurts just enough to annoy me, but the pain is bearable. My appetite has been gone for two days, ever since I bit my tongue. The little canker sore at the very tip makes me loath food and anything else that would upset his delicate little world. He thrashes and burns whenever something disturbs his slumber. He's definitely best left alone.

It always smells like cows as I drive down Recker. It's a wonder that anyone lives in a town like Gilbert, Arizona. It's a wonder that it's constantly expanding, or at least that the new houses haven't driven the dairy farms away. The houses are like mistletoe on an old oak tree. They'll soon suck all the available resources away, and the dairy farms will have to quit spreading their rank manure on the land. People won't stand for it on their lawns.

There are so many lights. Each one of them burns into my retinas like battery acid. There are so many lights. Even the reflectors that mark the lanes send the light from my corrosive headlights back into my mind, reminding me that I'm contributing to the horrible pollution that blocks out God's little decorations in the sky. Oh well, it's a full moon. At least that's visible. My old friend, my one-time answer to a prayer, my half-month salvation in the wilderness.

I hit next . . . wait a second . . . next, next, next. All the songs sound the same. Wait . . . what's that one? I don't recognize this. How in the world did that get on my Ipod? I like that song, but I need something new. Nothing is quite new enough, nothing that I've added recently. I should really be content with the old, the classic, and the faithful. Smashing Pumpkins seem to be making a strong stand against the new. Maybe the new just won't cut it. Maybe the talent ran out in the early 2000s.

Things are about to get good though. Things are going my way. Ha! There are a lot of stop signs in this neighborhood. The subdivision just south of this one doesn't have any. Do they have more wrecks? I doubt it. I'll justify it that way as I roll through one. I haven't seen the sheriff in the black SUV that patrols my streets in a little while. He's just waiting for me to roll through a stop. It's his evil scheme. There he sits, rubbing his fingers and hands together, up and down, like an evil witch on some old Disney cartoon. Nope, not tonight, but soon.

So now . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . home.