More Words on Wednesday (Incidental)

Seems I am unable to go to bed at a decent hour. Got home a little after ten and here it is pushing eleven and I'm ... what? Starting a blog post?

Nine would be a good time to go to bed.

But I went to the house at sundown, when the outside temperature dipped into a civilized range, to work on the truck a bit. I did some damage last year, helping her pack up at the end of Burning Man. Moved the truck, and the shade structure caught the camper shell hatch knob and ripped the hatch halfway off its hinge. It's been a rattly broken thing ever since. I finally ordered a replacement and it arrived and now I'm spending a wee bit of each evening putting it all together again.

I'm getting hardened to being at the house. I was one of the designer/builders, you know, and built the shed, and the retaining walls, and ran underground water and power for the RV slot, and had the fence put in, and mowed weeds uncountable times, and lived a full ten years plus of life there. Now I visit, and I am not a visitor, because the ground has been stamped flat by my own feet, and the smell of every rose and weed and blade of grass is as familiar as the shape of my own nose.

So: Hardened? Not really. I just don't get emotional. I'm business. Here on business. Get this done.

And visit my dogs. They're so big! And all jump and tail and tongue and play. They maul me continually. They smell like dogs. They sit on command. They wrestle. They are all kinds of in the way when I'm working on something.

And visit my current and former wife. No papers done (tax reasons). She is strong and driven and is getting through. She's very passionate and intense and some people can't handle that. I can -- not why I left (she asked). I left to follow my own thing. I say that now. No more blame.

So we talk and she gets hugs and her hugs feel even more familiar to me than the aroma of my ten-year yard. It's scary, almost. Scary enough that when she asked if I wanted -- actually she put it this way.

"If you want to sit in the hot tub with a cold one, I won't tell anybody."

Our secret, right? But I said, no, thanks. I wanted to get back home. Get to bed. She walked off as soon as I said no. Probably a smart thing to do. And here I am, still up, an hour and a half later.