Slackjaw's Forum

I painted the front door red this weekend -- A deep colonial red with a high gloss finish. Three years ago when we decided that the trailer would look better with wood screen doors, I took that opportunity to strip all the paint off the front door as well and that’s the way it’s been sitting for the past 1000 days. Zane, our old blind cat, came out and kept me company for some of it, cautiously moving about the front yard sniffing the flowers and laying in and out of sun spots. It made me sad to think that there likely wont be many more times in her life that she’ll get to do that, so I tried to let her roam as far as I could. I didn’t let her get to far out of my site though, people don’t always pay attention when they’re driving through the park and I don’t think she would want to go out of this world under the front tire of the Dodge pickup Earl drives. Dewy and Ham have a new dog named Slot-car that they’ve been dragging around for the past month or so. I say draggi...

The gifts keep coming, little boxes wrapped in newspaper or red Christmas ribbons, or showering down out of the sky in little spitting drops – Rain before the real rain begins. They come in the form of letters, in the form of four letters of an upper left-hand cornered envelope marked T.E.S.C. In the form of friends, old and new, friends I didn’t even know I knew, who would come out to listen to live music on a Saturday night and write how much they enjoyed it on a Monday morning. They come from inside my grill in the shape of a salmon’s side – skin blackened but not the deep pink flesh – or from dodge-ball games the Older Boy plays with is friend from across the way. In the small containers that push themselves up from the garden’s dark soil, in the shape of pumpkins and tomatoes. In Straw Flowers, Fox glove, Dahlias and Lemon Balm. They come in the form of a half-inch reel-to-reel eight-track machine sitting in Corlis’ front room. And thankfully they come in the...

I wonder if it’s that I don’t have enough going on in my life right now. I mean what else could explain it? It must not be enough to be thinking about finding a new house, or getting Ike his new chair or getting presents and cleaning the house for Sweeties birthday. Maybe there was something lacking and unfulfilling about the Steve Earl concert that we took the boys to last Wednesday, or the Forth of July party on Lake Desire on Sunday or the family birthday get together yesterday. Though that may sound like a lot, I don’t think it’s a matter of trying to do to much, because if that were the case, wouldn’t I be lying in bed trying to figure out the logistics of getting everything organized for the next event? No, if I had enough to do in my life I most certainly wouldn’t have to spend quality sleeping time helping PBS’s reality show Colonial House. Not that there WAS any problem with the show to begin with. Hell, I only watched one or two episodes anyway…not enough to ma...