This time of year….
This time of year, I routinely don’t feel good. I feel good in the sun, when its warm, but in the cold, I feel chilled, and achy, and not depressed, just kind of, well—out of gear. Not like are we needed head games. Being sick-but not really sick, I think, can cause us to go pretty internal. Nothing like that, just like I’m in third gear instead of low, pulling a set of doubles loaded with engine blocks up that long-ass climb from the flat desert up the hill going to San Diego. Right lane, blinkers on, you can walk faster than I’m driving.
It’s been this way most of my life. I can handle it when its 123 degrees. When it was 121 and 122 degrees on consecutive days in Phoenix, I was in a motor home with a broken A/C monitoring a wiretapPhoenix’s hottest day ever, other heat records that remain standing. I had butt sweat and I was breathing air that was at least body temperature because I could not feel any cooling as I sucked in. I dislike the heat as well. You do one hundred days of above 110 and you start playing mumbley-peg Mumblety-peg – Wikipedia with the neighbor’s cat. If there’s no cat, you go to the grocery store and try to crawl in the refrigerator with the cottage cheese.
But cold is a different animal. I could survive in the cold if I had too. Unless we have to take our clothes off and spoon. We would just die then.
Sorry.
Your dog would live.
I can just survive, period. I would eat your pet bird and probably your cat. Your dog would live. But I think I would want to curl up and close my eyes and let my life leave in a blanket of sleep you feel right before you lose your shit, strip off your clothes and run naked in the snow yelling “Yonder are the lights of the great Mohicans campfires of the Mushka’s!”
Listen, I know this is Phoenix, but it gets cold here. I don’t want to hear from any of you Michiganians, or Minnesotans, and definitely no Canadians. I know we don’t have numbers in the negatives like you guys, but the bitch will freeze your hose water. These was the coldest days ever recorded in Phoenix
…I feel out of gear….
Today, I feel, like I said, out of gear-whatever that means. I’ve felt it for weeks, but the last couple of days have been noticeable. Nothing you can do about it. No fever, no kidney stones. Everything is working. I look at the board of systems on the flight bridge of my brain and everything is in the green. But this time of year, we are expected to be joyful, happy, bouncy, idea driven, taller, funnier. You all bring me joy, even those of you I shake my head too. That’s okay.
We live in ‘Merica and you/we are all allowed to be stupid sometimes. I discovered, this last quarter, I could never be a Navy SEAL. I watched them on the beach a month or so ago, sipping my coffee in my warm jammies, staying at a friend’s place overlooking the ants on the beach. I got up with them in the pre-dawn as they went out to swim from A to B. I was cold watching them with my sweats on. They were in shorts and swimming in water able to stop my heart. It was then I realized, ‘yeah, can’t do that.’ At least not now. Maybe when I was 10, when I swam in that same water like it was not a concern.
Look, most of us, well, maybe all but four of us, will be disappointed at this point in their life. I should have done this, I should have not done that, races around in our head. We sit on our back porch, or patio, or street corner and we grieve what we haven’t done. Well, guess what?
We are perfectly placed.
Yep.
…we are doing….
For some reason, we are doing this shit.
Okay.
Why?
Dunno.
…The Plan is perfect.
I keep reminding myself The Plan is perfect. It always has been. For some reason, I am sitting in a bar, with a Rusty Nail, an order of the best chicken wings in the western hemisphere, writing to you. You, apparently have importance. Significant importance. Like The Plan would not work if you didn’t play. You, yep- you are critical to the puzzle.
You can’t imagine.
Neither can I. I’ve seen you pee on the restaurant toilet seat of the uni-sex bathroom just because. If my dead wife had to use that room and you did that, I would slash your tires on your new truck.
The Author of The Plan knew that. And He still wants you in the game.
So, what does this mean.
No idea.
…so are the potato skins….
But the scotch is good, so are the potato skins and for some reason, I feel warmer and cozy now. So, the bike ride, or the gym before the dawn, or fixing the flange adapter on the coupling seem to be what we are doing today or tomorrow.
Could I swim in the ocean? Sure. But I don’t want to show those young guys what an old man can do. I can also order a good wine at dinner. But that doesn’t save the world or fit the plan of things.
Or does it?
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In