Yesterday was a beautiful day around here. Sunny, warm enough to work outside but not so hot as to be miserable. It was even warm enough out for there to be mosquitoes in the evening (goddamn bugs. I can’t wait for winter). Anyhow, it was about as close to perfect as it gets, and today we’re supposed to have more of the same, at least until some rain heads in later on in the day. I needed some hitch pins and clevis pins and a fence post pounder (got one somewhere, but darned if I can lay my hands on it), and some other manly-sounding things, so I headed over to Tractor Supply in the morning whilst waitin’ for things to warm up a bit.

All they had was a (rather pricey) spring-loaded pounder, which is nice in that you don’t have to lift it up to pound it, what with the spring and all, but which kinds sucks in that you’ve gotta overcome the spring tension to pound the post in. A bit of a workout for an old-timer. Only had a few posts to do yesterday, but I’ve got a shitload of fence to put up, so my triceps or whatever them muscle thingies are called ought to be pretty well developed by the time I’m done (so I can have them bury me in a muscle shirt and looking good at the wake).

TSC also had cute little chicks (I’m referring to the kind that grow up to be chickens, not the cute one behind the register, who was, indeed just the cutest little freckle-faced kid – with her overbite and doe-eyes, she looked just like a little bunny rabbit). Probably not even as old as the flannel shirt I had on, which has recently been brought out of retirement since it fits me again.

Speaking of bunny rabbits, they had them, too. Very cute, but the sign on the cage said “the rabbits are being sold for agricultural purposes so don’t handle them.” I assume ‘agricultural purposes’ means ‘meat,’ so I’m trying not to think about it.

Speaking of fresh meat, I found a dead mouse on the basement floor yesterday. Pretty good size one, too, and not your typical field mouse that the cats generally present me with (as if that’s supposed to make up for what a pain in the ass they are most of the time). He was lying on his back, and he was all white underneath and brown on top. Cute little fella (other than being dead and a little on the flat side – I think I may have inadvertently stepped on him before I saw him as I was pondering the reason for the sudden appearance of mouse shit all over the floor).

Not sure where he (or the shit) came from. I had been down there on Friday pulling ceiling tiles out in an effort to locate some wires and cabling, but I don’t recall being showered with mouse shit (or, thankfully, any flying mouse cadavers; I’m a manly-man, not afraid of mice – alive or dead – but would probably shriek like a little girl if one came flying out of the ceiling at me; come to think of it, I shrieked like a little girl when I looked down and unexpectedly saw the dead one).

That reminds me, I suppose I ought to scoop the little feller up and give him a decent burial (aka, wing him over the fence). Normally I reserve critter funeral duty for my lacrosse stick (just seems kinder and gentler than using a shovel; damn shovels scrape the poor things and roll them around and leave bits of them on the floor, which I suppose is at least a warning to the others, but with the lacrosse stick I can cradle them in the pocket, which sounds much gentler, and as a bonus, I can get some impressive height and distance when I chuck ’em – especially a big juicy fella like this guy; at the old house, I even managed to drop one – bloody, eviscerated, and turned inside-out by one of the cats – on the windshield of a car going through the Burger King drive-through. I regret having been unable to hear the ensuing conversation inside the vehicle, or whether they then decided to pass on that Whopper with cheese), but the lacrosse stick has yet make it over here, so I guess it’ll just have to be the shovel. Oh well.

So far, I’ve used up about half my 4-yard load of topsoil, but not before I got to hear from my dirt guy about his experiences with the best goddamn health care system in the world. Seems that thanks to a defective medical device (a staple gun, of all things), a two-hour surgery turned into a five-hour surgery, which then necessitated a second surgery. Oh, and he’s one of those young adults with no health insurance (funny, I thought Obama and the Death Panels – great name for a band; much better than Merkin Wranglers – were gonna fix all that), so the hospital is doing him a big favor and settling for a mere half of the $300,000 bill, which he can pay either all at once or $4,500 a month. His choice. Might as well tell him to pay a million dollars a month.

Really nice kid from what appears to be a really nice family, and he really doesn’t deserve this shit. But, well, we can’t have universal health care now can we? That’d be a commie pinko socialist thing (speaking of socialist evils – “This Land is Your Land” Vernon? Really? There’s no place for your socialist crap in baseball, buddy. Next thing you know, you’ll want steroid injections covered by the health care plan).

Well, the sun aint quite up yet, but it’s getting bright out there, so I reckon I better think about moving out of this chair – even if it’s only to get more coffee.

In the meantime, have a look at these, and tell me which one I ought to get.

Happy Sunday.