October 07, 2009

8:13 a.m.

Pouring

Oh, the days when I could sit at the kitchen table and play MyFarm on Facebook. Oh, the tomatores I harvested, the houses I bought! I built a whole section of Main Street here, with my house and Rose�s house, and our neighbor�s in between, and the library, and several hundred fruit trees representing the forest in back. It was a way of affirming that I�d live here, and now, look � I do! And no time to play Farm!

I just realized I wrote �tomatores� up there. I wonder what that is. Maybe it�s a matador who battles a giant tomato in a Spanish arena. He wears tight, spangly clothes and has a cape with a Campbell�s Tomato Soup logo on it. This angers the giant tomato, who rushes at him. They parry and feint. There�s a bit of chasing and running under the cape. In the end the Tomatore runs the giant tomato through with a sword. In a last gesture of retaliation and disrespect, the tomato falls onto the tomatore and squishes tomato juice all over him. The crowd boos. It�s very bad form to be crushed by a giant tomato and juiced. He loses a few points.

Still, he is a hero, and at the celebration that night in the local bar, among back-slaps and toasting, a mysterious stranger across the room buys him a Bloody Mary. A mysterious, rotund stranger in an odd, green hat and a dark cloak� was that a flash of red underneath? �.The tomatore sips the Bloody Mary. Suddenly the world begins to go dark. Oh, no! It�s the Revenge of the Lycopersicon Esculentum!

Okay, I looked that up. But what do you expect at 6:10am � Ellery Queen?

Yesterday the moonlit predawn was so bright, like a day seen from inside the mirror where the silver is. This morning it�s raining steadily, pitch black. I haven�t vacuumed up the water from last week�s rain, which still sits in the basement. Now there will be more. Tonight will be busy � Home Depot run, practice, downspouts if it�s finished pouring by then. Sucking up water. Maybe I�ll find my snake again. Someone suggested a notched stick, then picking it up behind the head. It would have to be a very shallow notch. Snakey was very thin at both ends.

That reminds me of Miss Ann Elk�s theory about the brontosaurus. �The brontosaurus is thin at one end, much, much thicker in the middle, and thin again at the far end.�

I guess I have to get ready for work. I can�t go in my pajamas, much as I�d like to. But I�m finding it hard to wake up this morning. I could so fall asleep on a nice, comfy cement floor right now.