Another Day

Like sands through the something something.....

For those of you who may not have noticed that the sun rose and then set recently, we have ridden this merry-go-round we call the Earth for another full axial rotation.

I've learned through stat tracking and comment volume that my more thoughtful and introspective posts are, as they say in the parlance of our times, a "buzz-kill."  Therefore I'm forced to revert back to the anecdotal format that everyone loves so much.  As Harry Flugelman of Goldsmith pictures so wisely said, "We strayed from the formula.  We paid the price."



At any rate, I had a day today.  As we all did, I suppose.  Most of you played some role in my life, in some capacity or another, be it direct or indirect interaction, or just that you happened to cross my mind.  I have to say "most of you" because occasionally I get a reader from my Facebook page who I haven't thought about today, and even more occasionally I get a spammer from India.  But I suppose since I'm writing about them now, I'm thinking about them, and now they're in the first group after all.  Crap.  Blogging is complicated.

Anyway.  I had a day today.  It was certainly not a bad day, but it was also certainly not a good day.  And no, I'm not going back to that "learn something and you'll have perspective" bit from the last post.  My point is that my entire day was strangely summed up in one instant that happened at 1:36pm on Pua Rd. in Keaukaha.  Something nearly as unique happened almost exactly two hours later, but it didn't have the same saliency as the first event, and just sort of became something of a novelty in an otherwise odd (but not too odd) day.

As to the second event, it all goes back to last night.  Kalewa and I invited a couple of the neighbors over to play some music.  David (next door on occasion - Maryland more often than not) on drums and Gary (of Gary and Janice Down the Road fame) on guitar.  The pertinent part of this is that I stayed up way too late and had a beer or two more than was wise, and woke up tired and late this morning, and therefore skipped breakfast.  Then we got caught up with some work on the farm. and I ended up missing lunch as well.  After my work at the school, I was really starving, so I figured I'd get a burger somewhere on the way to the health-food store before collecting buckets.

One of my responsibilities on these bucket days is not only to pick up green waste, but to also deliver a tray of wheatgrass.  When I'm at work at the school, I bring it in with me.  I know it's a little odd carrying 200 sq. in. of lawn around, but the teachers and staff at the school are used to it now (although I got a few strange looks from the students today).  But back to the story, I was done with school, and had the flat of wheatgrass riding shotgun in the truck.  As I pulled up the drive-thru window, the lady in the restaurant said, "You've got some grass there."

"Yep," I responded.

"Huh....  Well, that'll be $7.03."

I gave her eight bucks, and then while she was making the change she said, "What's that kind of grass called again?"

"Wheatgrass," I answered.

"Oh yeah!  People eat that or something, right?"

"Yep." (I'd considered going into my pirate mode and answering with  "Aye" or perhaps New England mode and answering "Ayuh" but decided that I was just really hungry and wanted to avoid any further confusion) but at some point during the inquisitive pause where she was holding my bagged processed food just out of my reach while staring at the tiny lawn in my passenger seat I realized I was going to have to say more to get my burger.  "Yeah, we sell it to the health-food store down the road."

"That's really nice of you," she said.

"Well, you know, they pay us for it, yeah?"

"No..." as she hands me my food, "I mean it's really nice for the grass.  I mean you like take it out for a bit of a ride, show it a bit of the world, like a real passenger in the car!"

Playing along, I told her about my bringing it with me at work, so it could enjoy the AC instead of being stuck in a stuffy truck cab all afternoon, and she got a big kick out of that.

I'll probably get a free cheeseburger next time I go there.  But only because I didn't reiterate the point that I was basically delivering the grass to its doom, where it would be displayed to consumers until its looks just barely started to fade, and then it would be savagely cut from it's roots and ground to pulp, the liquid of which would be sold to the highest bidder at the price of about $2 an ounce.

Good times indeed.

But this is all pure digression.  My back and forth (balance to average) day was not summed up by that event.  But it was summed up by this one:

Today, a goat farted at me.

Yes, you read that right.

A goat farted at me.

As best as I can describe it, it was a "reverse drive-by" (which, on research, is a term nearly totally lacking on the internet, and I guess this remedies that.  Other terms that cannot be found are "Effects of putting orange peels in the clothes dryer" and "Turkey fights Polar Bear" and "Lawn riding shotgun in a truck at local burger joint" as well as "19 uses for a potato rake." These are the gaps I'm trying to fill, people).  So it was a reverse drive-by, in that I was driving, and the pedestrian (goat) was firing (farting) at me.  Strangest thing I'd seen/heard in a while.  Moments later I caught myself thinking "Is my mother a hamster? Does my father smell of elderberries?"

And how does this sum up my day, you ask?  Well, for one thing, I'm sure the goat meant no ill will towards me.  It just had to fart, and I happened to be in its fart's general direction, so to speak.  Also, I was moving quickly enough that I didn't have to deal with any smell.  It was just that perfect timing of passing a goat on the road and it passing gas at the exact instant that it's body was lined up with my driver's-side window at a quiet moment with no passing traffic or planes overhead, so that I received full and nearly overwhelming auditory confirmation of what was happening, but nothing else but that.  So, as you can see, not exactly a bad thing, not at all, but also nothing like what you expected to happen when you woke up in the morning.

Yep, it's been a day.