THE DRIVE HOME FROM WORK TONIGHT

On the way home there was a mini van with a sticker in the window depicting in stick figures every member of that family. Father, Mother, two girls and a little boy. I started thinking that we would have had three kids if Josie hadn't had a miscarriage the year before Brandon was born. I remembered how hard she took it, how it broke her heart to the point where I thought that maybe she would dive into such a depression so fierce that I would never get her back. Thinking of how little Ren sat on the edge of the bed, knowing something terrible had happened and kept guard over her. I started thinking about what that child would be like today at seven years old? Would it be a boy or a girl? Would it have been as smart and witty as both Miranda and Brandon are? How different would my life be with this person needing me to get them ready for school, or help with homework, or tell them what they had done wrong and why. But the truth of things is that this person never formed, nature took it's course and aborted the process because something went wrong. Devil didn't do it. God didn't call anyone home. Wasn't any grand plan. It just was. Then I thought about Ren. How he snuck out the door one night and ran away without anyone knowing, finding him dead the next morning in a bag after someone had picked him up off the side of the road when he had been hit by a car. How hard it was to see Josie at the door when she found out that I had found him, how hysterical she was, again thinking she was going to loose it. How hard it was to explain to Brandon (three years old) that Ren was never coming back. How hard it was picking Miranda up from school and telling her that Ren had been hit by a car. How hard it was putting his little body in a bag, wrapping him up and digging a hole in the unforgiving scorched Arizona dirt so that I could bury the family dog with some form of decency. How hard it was not to cry, even now. And what is the truth of all this? Devil didn't do it, and God didn't call him home because of his will, or a grand plan. It just happened. And as I'm sitting her typing all of this I think back how it rained all day the next day. I remember how I kept Miranda home from school and we called in sick to work. I took everyone out to eat and couldn't enjoy it because I felt baked like you do when you've been out in the sun too long. We drove to "The Puppy Place" and found this other little chihuahua that was very quiet, and didn't seem to care about much of anything until we put him in the play pen with the kids and he transformed into this lovable little spastic brown devil. We put him back and drove away. The kids both cried and Josie was angry as hell that we didn't take him. God I hated taking $500 out of the bank and giving it to the lady behind the counter at "The Puppy Place." Cocoa is still our spastic little devil. He's the goth dog, the spawn of Satan. I'll never be able to be angry with him like I was with Ren if he chews something up or gets a roll of toilet paper and rips it into a million little pieces. I don't feel guilty about much in life, but I do feel guilty about the way I treated Ren. Always yelling at him because he was always so skittish. It's the old adage, "Don't know what you've got till it's gone." Be happy you have anything! You could be living in a cave without. Waiting in a cave, waiting for some big corporate nation to come and blow the hell out of you so that they can exploit the oil that runs under your home.

EMERALD BALL

Wow, what a totally shitty day, beginning to end. Started off with getting up to work a breakfast shift, then getting cut (told to go home) two and a half hours later. Sure, I was tired and enjoyed going home and going back to bed, but I found out that someone lied to me about being cut and in reality I could have stayed and worked two more hours. Someone with less seniority stayed on and worked those hours. Pissed me off! Then, tonight I worked the wonderful Emerald Ball! What is that you say? It's the lovely yearly get together of Tucson's finest Irish to raise money for whomever. My luck would have it that one of my tables was directly under the air vent and some poor bitch froze her ass off and proceeded to be a total shit about it. Funny thing about those vents at work, they are controlled by computer and you have to call the Engineering department to have them turn things on or off. Well, knowing the Engineering dept. like I do, and knowing Sarah is probably the one who at this time of night works that computer, chances are she just said, "Fuck it!" and went on with whatever she was doing. Good for me. That lady froze her ass off for almost two hours, and ended up yelling at me all night. Best part of the night was when she was pointing her finger in my face yelling, "Computer MY ASS!!!" Well, fuck you too! Hope she gets the shits from the salmon they ate tonight. Anyway, I took the early cut and got the hell out of there. Watched t.v. for a while and fell asleep on the sofa. Josie being the wise and caring wife that she is, as always, disregards the fact that I have insomnia and wakes me up to tell me that I fell asleep. Lovely, here I am wide awake and sitting in front of a computer at 12:30 a.m. typing about my bitchy little day. Don't know if I should thank Jesus for the insomnia or thank Josie for destroying my chances of any type of normal sleep tonight.

UNCLE JIM AND AUNT DONNA

So to put the icing on the cake, the topping of my shitty little day, I just looked at my instant messenger. There was a window from my mom that must have been from sometime today. My Uncle Jim died tonight of cancer. He is a great guy and it's sad that something so fucked up can happen to someone like that. It's fucked up that it ate at him, his body and his brain like it did. It's fucked up that my Aunt Donna lost him, and lost her daughter Denise years ago due to complications caused by leukemia. If ever a person should be sainted, it should be Aunt Donna. To have to see Denise waist away then lie in a coma for years and years until she died (I'll write about that sometime if anyone is interested). To have to watch Uncle Jim waist away from cancer after he had beaten it so many years ago. If ever there was a saint it is my Aunt Donna. If I had a faith or believed in God I would say he's a bastard. But what I have grown to understand is that it's all a Process. The process of being human. Why is it so hard for you all to see that we are all human?