So. As life has been somewhat difficult lately—mental, physical and spiritual lives, one-and-all—I have chosen to keep my giant rattle trap shut. I was asked to reprint a long-past posting, gladly done, but I have lacked the impulses needed to write, edit, rewrite, re-edit, and re-edit again that are required for me to post an almost literate string of words hereat. Herein, possibly. Okay, maybe hereon.

But as life pitches us many unhittable curveballs, living with a small, brown Dog such as mine can send you back to the dugout shaking your head, scratching your balls and slamming your bat into the rack. First, some background.

Since December, when the dogs and I moved back to the Austin area, the under-construction and then-vacant houses on either side have sold and occupied. I don’t mean the houses took over the state capitol, I mean families took residence in each. When I say “families” I mean adults, multiple kids, dogs and in one case grandparents. Oh, and many cars, some of which are always parked in front of our little place, I assume to leave the space of theirs vacant for potential visitors. A disturbance indeed, but not subject to the ADD-addled ramblings hereafter.

Today’s actual subject shall be contrived by mixing fenced backyards with tightly-spaced slats, sex, modern technologies, and spinning them through the centrifuge of an obviously broken brain. The fenced backyard is ours, newly-built of cedar slats, each pinched against the next and screwed tight to their bracing to limit the spacing the hot Texas sun will surely create in the months to come. The sex in this case isn’t actual sex but, rather, sex as in the desire to git chu sum. Modern technologies would include cell phones and their backup resources, and the centrifuge is my mind. The raw materials placed into the centrifuge spin at incredible speeds turning them into rich combinations of tangled threads, those threads spun into a sometimes understandable thought.

Maybe a better analogy might be a comparison to a mass spectrometer, one wherein an occasional reading for a lead-and-brass amalgam is mistaken for solid gold—pure, 24-carat gold.
Which reminds me. Do your fucking squats people! One of the meds I’ve been prescribed for the past two years causes significant muscle loss and likewise inhibits the production of new muscle. Working out only helps to limit the loss, and I’m learning that loss of certain muscle groups is worse than others. Me, I started with a solid base so I have more left than if I had started weak. Upper body mass is important, but nothing compared to lower muscle sets. The evidence:

Would you rather not have the Ability to lift a 40-pound bag of dogfood with one hand, or…be unable to get up off the pot without putting your hands on the floor, giving both body halves opportunity to apply leverage to raise your freshly-wiped and quite attractive ass off the toilet?

But I digress. Since I was born I’ve had the ability to communicate with most of my dogs. As a kid I lacked the understanding of said ability as did my family, who thought me nuts with imaginary friends. It wasn’t until I was a teen that my understanding and the family’s acceptance of that skill matched.

When I was in college we got Trixie—Dixie’s grandmother—a three-months golden with a red-blonde coat and stunning amber eyes. I was assigned to train her and had taught her several tricks after starting college here over to UT-Austin. Streaker Jones and I had a keg party populated by more than a dozen of each sex. Wanting to impress one particular coed, I told Trixie, I said to her, “Come here, Trixie, let’s show everybody your new trick.”

My dog ran to me and mounted my leg and started humping away. When the laughing died down the lady of my attention focus slipped me her number, an incident leading to my first marriage. “No way you taught her that trick, Mooner,” she told me. “But I’m studying psychology and I need a subject for my abnormal psych class.”

You all know her as Dr. Sam I. Am Johnson. Sammie went on to become a psycho analyst of some repute, my first ex-wife, and since then personal therapist.

Anyway, on the south side of us the family has three kids, two dogs and grandparents, all moved in about a month ago. Nice people and the one dog is one of those mangled-looking, curly-haired mutts with its twisted tongue always hanging out the side of its mouth, a cute little shit. The other is this handsome German Shepard, a dog of incredible pedigree and I’m told a desired Shepard stud.

And the focus of the Squirt’s every attention. The day the neighbors moved in I met them all in their front yard for intros and offers of help. Thank god they needed no assistance so I returned to the comfort of my office. I’m sitting there a few minutes when Squirtie girl comes racing down the long hall, skids to a hummana-hummana turn on the fake wood floor and lands at my feet.
“Get up shithead, you gotta come help me. His name is Rooger and I need a better look. I can’t see shit through that fucking fence, so come on. I mean it asshole, move your shit!”

OK, let’s take a break at 1,400 words. As Walmart is making their employees get vaccinated I won’t say, “Fuck Walmart!” But I will say:

“Stay tuned for more!”