The slide of time

On the edge of time, age 53 getting ready to scoot into 54, as I find my self getting older, I find myself not realizing birthdays coming up. I was cutting the lawn today, and even though we had talked about it, I actually had to stop and think there was a birthday coming up-mine. Then, and this was the hard part, to remember what year it actually was. Have you ever done that? Forgotten or at least temporarily misplacing your age, let alone your car keys, wallet, forgetting when you last bathed, you know, typical stuff? Being born in the last century didn't help. I had to use the new math to figure it out, subtracting the year I was born from the current year, which required borrowing and carrying ones.


There are a whole lot of changes I've gone through, probably you as well. If you're younger and walking down the age path like me, you're experiencing these things. You people who are older, you're already there. Sit back and smoke your pipe.


Look I'm not dead, not by a long shot. I just won a major battle with those invading little roof rat bastards. Slaughtered them and their children and cooked them with the morning bacon. I had climbed up into the attic, going toe to toe with things that go bump in the walls. Just got checked by the doctor and she said my blood pressure and labs should be the standard for all men 51-57. I still do at least 30 minutes of cardio a day. What I am finding is as I get older, I don't care about things I use to build a whole plan around.


Like showering on weekends
Like hurrying-I'm walking slower now
Like clothes with wrinkles, leaving them in the dryer until I darn well want to take them out-sometime this week
Like mold on cheese-trim it off and keep going
Like the Oscars-haven't seen any of the movies and won't until Netflix has them
Like putting my hands in stuff


I developed that hand thing when I was a father with three kids. You could only run to the Brawny so often, eventually finding yourself no where near a roll of paper towels and if you weren't quick, something was going to run off the table, toilet seat, sink, or dashboard, unless you used your hand, usually followed by your shirt/sleeve. When I climbed up into the attic, I was in dust undisturbed since the middle of the last century. No worries, that's was shirts are for.


Bathing, especially on weekends, I can still do that daily, many times twice. I just kind of forget to shave, soap, and well, use deodorant. You know, I figured what it came down to-I just don't care.


Really.


Those of you who are older, its true, isn't it? Years and years of doing the same thing, day in day out, days, weeks, months of caring, being on time, making sure you're shirt is buttoned up, pants zipped, socks matching or at least in the same color spectrum, why? Why do we need to wash the towel every week? If its dry, its good to go. You don't cycle it until it starts to smell a little-funny. Then you let it dry for a couple of days, like on a weekend, when you know you aren't going to touch it.


What's wrong with going to bed at 7:30 at night? And frankly, what' wrong with taking your clothes out of the dryer after three days? So what if they're a little wrinkled? There is a style to wrinkleness.


When you go to your 10 year high school reunion, everyone is sharing what they are 'doing'. When you go to your 30th, the conversation centers around who is still alive, had their cancer removed, or something else added.


Comfort is the name of the game. Comfortable shoes is the answer to many of life's problems.
A good book at bedtime is the answer to many more.
And a dog asleep on your foot while you blog, fits everything into a perspective involving peace. If that guy in Iran and the kid in North Korea did these three simple things, there would be flowers growing in their garden and someone would be inviting someone else to lunch.


I have been told that 54 is the new 42 or something like that. I don't want to go back to 42. I like where I'm at. I'm at an age where I can still do many of those things from my youth, just not as fast and if that's the case, ah-I was good in my youth. Breaking down doors, guns, fear, adrenaline, the good fight, aye-the good fight.


I still have fight. That's what's kind of cool about this age. No one expects the old man to have much fight. We hide it until we truly need it. Hoping we don't need it because we know, from experience, we're going to get some crap on our wrinkled shirt. We'll win-we'll have to cheat, but we WILL win. We'll just get crap on our shirts. Then we'll take our time to wash it. It will sit in the hamper until is forms a firm ball.


We'll just let people think we have no fight left. I help them with that image with a fine scotch and a good $4 cigar. I like peaceful music and dancing in the cereal isle. I could change my grand kids diaper with a couple of paperclips, a red Expo marker, and a clean sock, taking them to Home Depot with one-ONE diaper tucked in my back pocket. We dance in the fastener isle there.


Nope, I like where I'm at. So do my dogs. Now, if you'll excuse me, I need think if I've showered today.

Shock and Awe on the Roof Rat!!

Its before

dawn and I am typing this blog in gloves to soften the key strikes on the computer. I have wrapped my coffee cup in a sock so when I set it down, it makes no noise. I wrapped the dog's collars in duct tape and toilet tissue as well. They stand as sentries, well, they're sleeping right now, but they could stand as sentries if they really wanted to.  Stealth is my soul, Ginsu Knife is my moniker. I am at war. I didn't think it would take this long for them to arrive. But now, now they are here, the Al Queda of the vermin world-the infamous Roof Rat!

They migrated out of the Arcadia District, leaving the posh homes and the upscale gardens filled with fruit trees, being driven out of that section of town by women wearing Versace, shewing the animal with designer brooms. Sure, they're not as big as their New York cousins, nothing requiring collars and leashes, but evil just the same.  Most left laughing, if rats laugh, not wanting to deal with their hosts, they moved out into other neighborhoods. Unfortunately for them, they wandered onto our peaceful street. Poor choice.

I first heard their scratching in the walls. It took a bit to figure out what the noise might be. I was hoping a lizard, geckos. We have geckos. They are our friends. We live in harmony with our gecko brothers. They eat the crickets and we supply outside electric boxes for them to sleep in.

It wasn't geckos.

There is no negotiating with these guys. They have their own hostile religion where they think they can impart their forced societal beliefs on anyone by living and eating and crapping in food drawers. You don't talk sweet to these animals. You burn their villages, snipe their leaders, putting their heads on little pikes made out of toothpicks around their living spaces to be a sign to the others they might want to leave before they too, have their beating hearts cut out and cooked with the morning bacon.

Shock and awe baby.

We started with the neighborhood  ACE Hardware. I asked the salesman what he had for rodents such as these. He took me to an aisle, half of which was just for this animal. Traps, poisons, baits, sonic disturbance devices-I was a man standing at the temple of a weapons' factory. But I had to stick with the plan. If I showed my hand too quick, these little bastards would talk to each other and let the others know where the claymores were. First off-we give them the feeling they're welcome.We put out the recommended poison which has the taste of peanut butter! The salesman at the store told me "It won't kill them right away, so you have to be patient. They have to drink water to activate the poison. Then, they explode!"

I got a warm tingly feeling, like I just won $5 playing a $2 Powerball ticket. 'Explode'? What a great idea. They wander back to their little nest, thinking everything is okay at the end of the day, and WHAM! Rat juice all over their family. Psychological warfare. I even left a little tray of water right next to the bait so, you know, they didn't have to walk so far-poor things (insert evil laugh here). Within a day, some of the scratching was gone-it got loud and then--nothing, like death spasms.

Two days went by, more bait, signs of them still around. They were taking the bait. I refilled the water with good, bottle water. Take, drink, enjoy! Then, late at night, one came out in the open. There was an initial sound of controlled panic from the other end of the house. The dogs were asleep next to me and frankly, I don't blame them for our issue. Their dogs for crying out loud. They don't want to mess with these things unless I can throw them like a baseball for the dogs to chase and retrieve.

I went into the den where I found Joni standing on the couch pointing at the corner of the room. She said it was moving slow, in the open. Good! the poison, oh the sweet elixir of death has come, confusing them, like a cockroach coming into the light before they die, this varmint was doing the same, finding the solace behind the dryer on its way into the wall again. That was fine, there were mines there too. Luckily for the rat, we didn't go hand to hand. I was willing, just as soon as I could have found something to club it to death with. The first thing I reached for was a dog's water dish.

Insufficient.

The next day, Phase II kicked in. Standard, old fashioned traps were deployed around the bait. You have to understand something about the territory. We have a 60 year old house. There are gaps, the width of a little finger in small spaces these guys fold their bodies and push through, gnawing it a little bigger when they have time.  Like napalm in war, traps have a political incorrectness about them. So? its a rat that can crawl from your roof's sewer vents, out through the toilet, and if you happen to be using it at the time, will cause you years-YEARS of counseling and you will never sit and read the paper again-ever. 

I disposaled him/her. I didn't want to give the dead rat's friends some place they could go and build a shrine to martyr their buddy.

And the little pike stood, as first a red toothpick, designed to hold green olives at a cocktail party, finding now true honor, mounted in play dough in the pantry, holding the head of our enemy high so the others could see what happens when you stray into the wrong neighborhood.  

So, like I said, I'm typing you this message in measured silence. They always come out this time of day, early, dark, morning. My listening posts are up and the wire is strung, holding empty baked bean tin cans in case they try to come in. I hope they do. I still have Phase III in reserve--DE-CON, the same poison my dad used at our cabin fifty years ago, the hydrogen bomb of rat poison. But its quiet. Maybe they moved on or the last of them crawled back to their nest and scribed a note with  its last dying breath, pinning it on their fur for anyone to find, warning them of the crazy bastard down stairs.

They will be back. They always come back. But we will be ready. Always vigilant. Always stealthy. Always Ginsu-ish.