What a night!  Awake from three to five, lying there with the blankets pulled up tight, yawning and yawning but never actually pulling the whole deal together.  And then sleep from five to seven, filled with one bad dream after another.  A divorce fight.  A big, four story house somewhere in the mountains, but apparently rented out as a dormitory to what seems like an entire college.  Some young guy calls me dude one too many times and I almost rip into the guy.  Another dream with some sort of police interrogation.  Someone escapes.  There’s shooting.  I’m trying to catch up with someone, but the snow is so deep.

There was more, but I think I’ve forgotten.

Wake up and shower the boy.  What’s with little boy B.O.?  Did I sweat and stink when I was eight?  I can’t imagine it.  I was skin stretched tight over a few puny bones.  Nothing more.  Bones don’t sweat.

Drop off the boy at school and a quick breakfast and coffee at the cafe.  Answer a few emails.  I love this place.  Good coffee, good food, and wireless internet.  But the table I slip into, the one nearest the only outlet in the place, proves to be a bad choice this morning.  A couple of young women on one side of me with a baby, and an old lady on the other side.  Everyone is quiet, no complaints there, but I keep smelling urine.  Is it the baby or the old lady?  I don’t really want to know, and yet, I love a good mystery.  Between slurps of coffee I discreetly lean one way, then the other, sniffing.  But my sniffing is as effective as my early morning yawing.  No results.  Maybe one of them will leave and solve the mystery for me.  Maybe it’s me.  Maybe the dog peed on my shirt last night, it dried, and now I’m officially part of his territory, no matter how far I walk around the city. 

I need to push my way through those child support figures and come up with an agreeable alimony payment.  I have to factor in loan and gift money that will need to be repaid over time.  The house deal confuses everything.  The farm was bought from my parents with the help of money from her family.  I am over a barrel.  Everyone walks by and takes a slap at my ass, including the Employment Department.  Erin, the friendly audit woman, is getting restless.  How did she get my new cellphone number?  Did I give it to her?  I can’t imagine I’d get that lazy with my privacy.

“Hello Keith.  I’m just following up on those loan agreements that you promised to get to me.  Will I be seeing those soon?”

“I should be getting those to my accountant today,” I tell her.  That was Monday.  The days slip by so fast.  Surely she must have other files.  Someone else to pick on.  I should have never joked about resting my head against her breast.  She must have access to my email and website.  She’s resharpened her pencils and is coming after me.

But I wasn’t thinking about Erin as I tossed and yawned my way through the night.  Maybe I should have been.  Maybe that would have put me to sleep.  No, you know what I was thinking about?  I was thinking about hiring a secretary.  I was thinking about the huge, huge mess that my desk and accounting has become.  I was thinking about the daily payroll and billing that I am always behind on.  I was thinking about the luxury of someone else answering my phone.  I’ve wrestled with the mess all by myself for more then fifteen years, and the idea of turning it over to someone else becomes more and more attractive each day.  With each yawn this woman saviour became clearer and clearer in my imagination.  I almost had her completely visualized but then fell asleep.

But realistically, how in the world would I ever hire this person.  My office, which is honestly in a shambles, is now located in my apartment.  Who in their right mind would accept such a job?  And then there’s the move.  My guess now is that I’ll be back in the house before Christmas.  Do I hire someone for the next month or so, then give them a leave of absence while I relocate, only to call them back into yet another home office situation?  The whole thing is chaos.  I need to face the truth.  I have worked for fifteen years to create perfect chaos.  Let’s hope my insurance company doesn’t find out.  The worker’s comp rates for chaos are bound to be through the roof.

With the boy’s tenth birthday looming in the distance, he has started to think about having a party.  He’s at a new school, making new friends, so maybe a party would be good.

“I’m thinking maybe forty kids,” he says.  “Or maybe it would be easier just to invite everyone from my class this year and my class last year.” Yea, right.

“Easier for you.  All you’re doing is making a list.  How many do you have so far?” I ask.  “How many boys?  How many girls?” He looks down at his list and counts.

“Twelve and zero.”

“Twelve girls!” I try to sound incredulous.

“Daaaaad.”

“Well, what about girls?”

“Yea, I kind of forgot about girls.”

This is an outright lie.  Tonight at the movie rental store, everything he asked to get had a picture of some woman on the cover.  “What about this one?” he’d asked, holding up a copy of Wild Things.  “It looks interesting.” I think I answered with the International Sign Language Face for “Nice Try”.  I had my eye on Robots, but for whatever reason, our household is all out of whack and I always end up the one begging to rent cartoons.

“So, how do you spell Nicole?” I tell him.  “Emily?” The spelling goes on a bit.

“So, what are you up to?” I ask.

“Twelve and six.”

“Better invite six more girls and even it up.” My mock fatherly advice knows no limits.

“Why?”

“For the dance, of course.  I’m sure you’re going to want to dance.”

I waltz around the room.  He groans.

Six o’clock on a Sunday morning is about the only time anymore that a guy can wander around on the road out front of his house without being run down.  I’m not sure why everyone’s in such a hurry, or even why there are so many of them for that matter, but they’re out there these days, there’s no doubt about it.  Oregon’s lazy little capital city has grown since I came here in ‘86.

So I wandered around and snapped some pictures.  A beautiful morning - sun coming up, chirping birds, dew on the grass, the smell of fresh cut hay coming from somewhere off in the distance, the azaleas in bloom along the front of the house - the whole pastoral nine yards, you might say.  The cars going by will begin to ruin the effect in an hour or two, but for the moment, I have the road to myself. 

I snap some pictures.  The azalea is called Everest, a nice specimen, easy to grow, with large, pure white flowers.  I love white in the garden and use it freely when designing for others.  Nothing brings a garden together with as much ease as the soothing tones of white as it threads its way from bed to bed.  I try out the panarama feature on the camera that helps you line things up, which I later will fool around with in Photoshop.  Turns out you still need to do some work to make it look right, blending the contrasts and brightness, hiding the transitions, etc.  The picture above is of the farm, and is comprised of five separate shots.  Something to do while I watch the birds at the feeders and listen to roosters crowing over at the neighbors. 

Before going inside, I take a picture of our new screen door - bought by the boy for a buck while hitting some garage sales yesterday with his mom.  As we hung it last night, he says to me, “Finally you’re cooperating, Dad,” which is in reference to my refusing to go into the free couch business with him.  The boy is a junk collector at heart, and wants us to stop and pick up every broken down couch and recliner we see along the road, no matter what condition.

“We’ll put tarps out in the yard and sell them,” he tells me.  “We’ll make tons of money.”

As is the case with old, uncooperative dads like me, I’ve failed to recognize the beauty of his business plan.

And yes, that’s Scrine out there, sunning himself on this fine morning.  The only bird around who doesn’t feel the need to poop on the back porch.  That alone makes him dear to my heart.