The Mouse Revisted

            The field mouse is exploiting my cabin's imperfections. I'm being haunted by all the instances where I said while building, "eh, that's close enough," or "good enough for government work." I plugged a few holes and found myself listening later that evening to the mouse as he tried to gain access to my cabin. He sounded frustrated and desperate. A smile came to my face. I took great joy in his suffering.
            The mouse kept at it. I heard him run toward the closet. I got out of bed and turned on the light. I thought he'd run scared with my activity. I sat at my desk and turned my computer on to read the paper. The mouse didn't scare. He was furiously scratching at the closet.
            I heard a noise behind me. I turned around. The mouse was crawling on the shelf of the closet. I was spooked. I went one way and the mouse went the other. I think. I lost sight of him in my haste to get away. 
            I gathered myself and emptied the contents of the closet but the mouse had disappeared. I spent part of the next morning plugging holes. Which reminds me of an old adage someone once told me, "if you didn't have the time to do it right the first time, why do you have time to do it over and over again?"

The Burglar

            Last night I found myself face to face with a field mouse. My cabin had been breached. I knew there was some riff-raff going on. There was evidence of it, a broken shot glass here, uncustomary rustling sounds in the exterior, a rodent dropping on my kitchen counter. The dropping was the catalyst for war!

           The field mouse knocked into something pretty hard. It made a racket. I popped up from a dead sleep and turned on the light. I pointed the light in his direction and waited him out. He buckled under the pressure and made a break for it. That's when I saw him, and he saw me. He was scared, but so was I for that matter. What rodents lack in strength they make up for with disease. I'm a bit of a germ-a-phobe. I wash my hands a lot. 
            I got out of bed and thought I'd show him the door. I moved things to get at him. I grabbed a broom for protection. I was a bit jumpy. I was careful not to be surprised by a counter-attack. Somehow the little critter eluded me. I figured he ran out the same way he came in. I spent part of the day reinforcing the cabin. I'm hoping he gives up, but something tells me he won't, survival tends to be persistent.    

Advice For The Average Man

            If I could give one piece of advice, it would be, don't wash your ass before you wash your face.
            I was sleeping on an air mattress. I woke from a deep sleep. I had a premonition that the air mattress was going to lose its air. At that exact moment the mattress lost its air and sank to the ground. I have supernatural powers, I reckoned, as I lay on the collapsed mattress.
           I laid on the hardwood floor and imagined that I was at a superhero convention in Las Vegas. I was walking from booth to booth in my superhero suit with an emblem of a deflated mattress on my chest. Other superheroes slowed their gait to get a glimpse of me and my chest. I knew they were intrigued as to what my powers may be.
           Finally, one of them had the courage to ask, "Excuse me, now just what are your super powers?"
           Deadpan, I answered, "I can make an air mattress deflate on command."
       
       
       
         
         
             

The Fourth of July

            I spent the fourth of July in the working-class neighborhood of Cypress Park. It was a war zone. There were so many illegal fireworks that for all intents and purposes they were legal. The police didn't even bother to issue citations.
            I had a good seat and the display was spectacular. It was more professional than in the past. The quality of illegal fireworks has improved dramatically over the years.
            I stood and watched one explosion after another. There was a barrage of different types of fireworks in the air, combined with M-80s and Cherry bombs on the ground. The neighborhood was taking the fourth very seriously.
            I heard someone playing Stars and Stripes Forever in the distance. I couldn't tell where it was coming from. It was a faint sound at first; it sounded like it was coming from a neighbor's house. How brilliant, I thought.
            Smoke filled the air and Stars and Stripes Forever was getting louder. I saw a car emerge from the smoke. It was a police car, LAPD, with two officers laughing uncontrollably inside. Stars and Stripes Forever was blaring from from their loudspeaker. I caught one policeman's eye and waved, he waved back. He was still laughing.
  

Pelicans

           I've been going to the beach on weekends with my hot lady friend. She gets hotter as she lays in the sun. It's a secret beach. I can't tell anybody where it is as a matter of principle. I've made that mistake before and I've ruined a great beach by word of mouth. People are blabbermouths. It took years before it was ruined, but the last time I was at the great beach, there were models doing photo shoots and people from all over the world speaking in strange tongues with pallid skin. It was a disaster. 

            I found the new secret beach by accident. I couldn't explain where it is if I tried, that's how secret it is. 

          When I'm at the beach flocks of pelicans fly overhead. They do maneuvers, drills of some sort. They're organized flyers with multiple formations. They look well fed, and as of yet, I haven't been able to determine who the ring leader is. I'm amazed they can fly as well as they do. They're chubby birds, viable replacements for Thanksgiving. With all the fish they eat, there's a good chance they taste like sushi. 

  

White Pants

         I saw a man wearing white pants. I was thankful he was wearing them. It was night and I was driving on a dark winding road and if it wasn't for his pants I wouldn't have seen him at all. 
            Men don't wear white pants anymore. White pants use to be cool. John Lennon went a step further and wore a white blazer with his white pants for the Abbey Road album. 
            I have a white summer suit that I haven't had a chance to wear, but I swear I'm going to wear it someday. I'll probably wear it at night when it's cooler.  The idea of wearing a suit during the day in the summer time seems like minor form of torture. I'm thinking I'll wear it to a restaurant, some where like Musso and Frank, or Dan Tana's. I'm bound to impress somebody, even if it is just the maitre d'. 

Sound Bath

            I went to a sound bath yesterday. Gongs and singing bowls. There was a crowd of people for the event. It was free and we were lucky to get in. We had to sit on a bench in the back of the room. I wanted to lay down. I was disappointed. I'm from a culture were we can fit five people in the trunk of a Nissan Sentra, so in my mind there was a lot of space being wasted, but there was nothing I could do to change it. 

            A man and a toddler sat down next to me. The man had a strange odor to him. I was trying to convince myself that bringing a kid to a sound bath was a good idea. I was interested to see the response of the kid to the sound. I wondered if it would calm him down. It didn't. The kid started to squirm and vocalize two gongs in and the man stood up and walked off. 

            I was having difficulty sitting still. I'd close my eyes only to open them moments later to have a look around. A woman had fallen asleep and was snoring. Another woman stood up and got something out of her purse. I closed my eyes and tried to think of love and patience, but soon opened them to find a man in his thirties holding a skateboard with orange wheels, tiptoeing through the mass of bodies that were laying on the floor. He was looking for a place to land. He found a spot next to me. There's something about a thirty year old man holding a skateboard with orange wheels at a sound bath that I found amusing. 
If I was a woman, I wouldn't sleep with him.