THE BLESSINGS OF JOB--several weeks condensed into one rambling confusing narrative.
As I have not posted for a while, because of distractions...

Leo had to go to summer school. It could have started then.

But I THINK IT started one morning when I got up to go to work. It was 2:30 AM. Go to work and get there by 4:00 AM, all overtime, leave at 12 noon. I still have the day. A Saturday. It was June.

Almost fell over Friskit. He’s a dog. He is fourteen years old. He’s my brother Chuck’s dog, in a way. When the dog was born, he was not breathing. So Chuck broke open the little sack, opened his jaw and did a touch of mouth to mouth and helped the dog to breathe. One little Szhi Zu, saved. The breeder, a girl friend of Chuck’s, gave the dog to my Mother. The dog proved to be hyperactive, so the dog was then given to my son. My son would later be diagnosed as hyperactive.

Assembled a lunch, watered the dogs (there are four), and closed the door and got into the car. A few minuted later driving on route nine, I hit a deer. I saw it trying to get on the road and it was stuck in the mud. I slowed down, and the impact still resonated.

I stopped. I moved forward a little bit. No smoke or water was boiling out of the engine. Diagnositcs shows the system was running.
Later in the day, bits of fur and mud and blood were stuck on the side of the car, and stayed there for a week. I never found the body, and someone might have carried off the road kill Bambi for sausage. The signaling light was broken.

A COUPLE OF days later, Laura complained there was no hot water. I went and reset the heater. It blinked back into activity. The heater over the next several days would shut itself off. Worse, yet, Leo would take a shower and use all the hot water and then the heater would shut down.

A FEW WEEKS later Laura and her boyfriend decided to move out of the house and into a small house just outside of Kenton Delaware. Seemed like a good idea. The boyfriend and his dog were getting underfoot. He insisted his dog be with him, because his father threatened to kill it. It was a strange animal: hybrid of greyhound and pit bull. Everytime the dog entered, John had to carry him. The other four dogs would have a howling chorus. Sometimes John came in at odd hours, like three AM. His dog’s temperment was agressive wimpy. He barked endlessly. The pooch did not bother the two cats in the room. One cat barfed constantly on the rug and on people’s clothes and on the computer keyboard. The other cat ate the barf.

The dog always barked at me. I didn't like the dog much.

THE TRACTOR stopped working properly. I phoned the local gouging tractor repair place, which took a week in time to get it, another week to find time to repair it, and when it get back, it ran for forty minutes and stopped.

This house have several acres to deal with. I used the mulch mower for small areas so Giani could get in and out of the garden without passengers (ticks, mostly), though it was hot. A tick has trouble distiguishing between your body and a rock in such times. The grass was getting high and a push mower for eight, nine acres is a bit much.

GIANI AND LEO went camping; I stayed home and dealt with the goats and the chickens and the dogs.

SOMEWHERE on all this, my brother Chuck went missing.

LAURA phoned in and said that her “boyfriend” had tried to place his hands around her throat during a brief disagreement session. She’d still live there, she just wouldn’t sleep with him anymore.

IT rained a lot. And it was hot.

I got a call at work from Giani telling me that Chuck was found dead wedged in the shed in the parents' back yard. He had been dead a week. He was unrecognizable. His skin was black and flies had their way with him. He had suffocated from trying to squeeze through a hole in an attempt to get the keys back that he had locked into the shed.

ON THE DAY of the funeral, I was going to work, and attend the wake. The rain had flooded over three of the roads I’d use to go north. I went back to bed. When I woke up there was a darkening on the ceiling. The roof popped a leak. I just could not move the bed and avoid being dribbled on. It is a water bed.

Later, I spent some time scanning pictures of my brother and sending them to other people who knew him. I broke down and wept.

I got a called from Giani informing me she was not going to be able to visit, because Leo got into a fight at school and they think his nose is broken and he is bleeding all over.

So I drank some beer.

Leo and Giani came home, found me lightly drunk and stoic. "Well, his nose isn't broken. He bled all over his shoes." I looked down and said, "those are MY shoes."

Leo said, "Not any more. That's my blood on them."

A day later, Giani said someone had lifted $3,000 from her account and went shopping at places like GAME STOP, RAINBOW RECORDS, and the like. $600.00 at GAME STOP alone. I guess he/she bought an X Box system.

And on the weekend, the grass grew, the depression I had got a little darker.

The two of the dogs got into a fight. The one we call Scampy bit the eyeball of Friskit.

It was Saturday night and the Veternarian shops are all closed until Monday.

Happily, Friskit's temperment was light, we fed him, he wagged his tale and he bled a bit. He's now a one eyed dog.

Laura phoned in, her boyfriend is now unemployed, has no car, drinking and smoking and watching Television and become greasy and turning into a couch slug. He tried to punch his way through her iMac laptop screen. She wanted to move. Right away.

Details to follow...