Slackjaw's Forum

In my dream, I could hear the sound of a policeman’s radio. I just couldn’t remember the context, if it was in the middle of a bust or watching “America’s Worst Drivers” or some other FOX network program. You know, the kind where they recreate all the sounds of car crashes and the dispatcher says little things like “They’re heading southbound on Madison” in the background. I woke up when our oldest boy came into our bed at around four this morning. Sweetie had to work late last night and so I was left with the duty of putting them to bed. It’s not that hard to do, both boys go to bed real easy for the most part, but you can always tell that it’s not the way they’d prefer. So anyway, after everyone gets re-settled and I’m just starting to drift off, I think I hear the police radio again. So I sit up and listen real hard to see if I can hear it or if I’m just doing some sort of post-REM hallucination due to the hours I’ve been keeping. Silence… Then from the quiet of our sing...

I thought for some reason I would talk today about how much I like the band The Vulgar Boatmen . Sure my littlest boy has a cast on his leg for the next three weeks and my other boy is bored out of his skull because his friend from across the way is in Main visiting for the next two. Sure that means a lot more stress in our little singlewide. Heck Sweetie and I haven’t hardly even found the time to give each other a peck on the cheek before our heads hit the pillow lately. Our life is such a jumble right now that opening a can of Chicken Noodle Soup seems like a hard cooked meal. Like we’ve been slaving over the stove all afternoon. So why waste my web breath on talking about an obscure band that only a hand full of people have ever heard of? Um…so I don’t have to re-read the paragraph I just wrote again? The older boy and I went to a birthday party the other weekend. Corlis’ daughter was turning four and since we were looking for distraction we bought some art supplies and...

Well, Ike did just fine last Friday with his surgery. It wound up being a little more complicated than we had originally thought it would. Turns out they had to break the bone in his leg as well as just lengthening the tendon. Our neighbors showed up with a little breakfast for us to eat in the waiting room. We had to be at the hospital at 6 a.m. so we were feeling a little groggy and in need of a cup of coffee. Made for a welcome site at any rate. We were checked into our room before they came to get us and out the window we watched the rain on the foothills of the Cascades. The Mountain was hiding in a bank of clouds and way off in the distance someone was riding in a hot air balloon. The view from his room overlooks Wright’s Park and most of Tacoma’s downtown. Later that night, after we were back in the room and had both taken naps, Rainier came out from it’s hiding place and we watched it turn from a soft pink to a deep red as the setting sun did its thing. Ike had visitors through...