~ 34 - 7 ~

Uh... what was that score again?

Really! My my my.

Bob

~YON IN IRAQ~

A picture from Michael Yon. Damn... that guy does good stuff.

Bob

~ALI SURFIN IN BALI~

One of the great things about the internet is that your friends can be on the other side of the world and still find ways of making you envious. Ali and her hubby are in Bali, Indonesia and are making a circumnavigation in their PDQ sailboat. This girl is discovering that surfing is a way of life... like her hubby, a commodities broker who gave up the good life in the frozen north to cart his board around the world looking for the perfect wave. Welcome to Waterworld lady.

Bob

~THANKSGIVING~

Well, I said a week ago that I would probably be looking at one of those weeks... and sure enough, it's been one. At this point I'm sitting in the office staring at nothing, wondering if I should go find the redhead and have her hold my head but I know that she's busy feeding and lubricating the masses... ah, women... and I know that my moodiness would just infect her with that special kind of angst that defines me as selfish... so I'll just sit here and ruminate. Bla bla bla.

Half of our unit is either quit or out vacationing so the lovely Melanie and I have been holding down the fort all week, through Turkeyday... and now for the long weekend. And believe me it's been special. I guess it started with a shelter for a kid with asperger syndrome who had threatened his mom with a knife. "I'll kill you with this steak knife if you don't give me all the yu-gi-oh cards in the world! Gimmie gimmie gimmie." Even the cops were scratching their pointed little heads. Strange. Now understand, I work in a building full of social worker/teacher wannabes... all young women with minimal degrees... entry level jobs with nice new apartments full of rented furniture and shiney new Geos sitting out in the parking lot. Boyfriends who work construction and drive equally new pickups. (Oh, someday we'll prolly get married but in the meanwhile I'll stay on the pill and just raise Afghan puppies.) They're here doing "good"... whatever the hell that is.

Anyhow, the kid committed an aggravated assault on his mother because she didn't have the money with her to go out and buy him all the yu-gi-oh crap in the world...so he went nuts (for about the fortieth time in a month) and lunged at her with a kitchen knife. Being the country girl she was she went and got her boyfriend's Glock and offered to blow the kid's head off. But... Gee Mom! You promised! Boo hoo hoo. Here come the cops, the kid is arrested, the cops don't have a clue what they're dealing with, they call us, my boss... a circuit judge... decides that the kid can't go back into the home since the mom has a loaded handgun and has run completely out of patience and compassion. The trouble is, what do you do with an autistic thirteen year old who wants to kill for yu-gi-oh? Believe it or no, there are theraputic programs run by Devereaux for just such critters as my little guy. But the nearest unit they have is over in Viera (a suburb of Cocoa) which is close to where I keep my boat... about a hundred miles away. That's my only association with the Devereaux hospital. Well, about a hundred pounds of paperwork later (thank you Melanie thank you) I find myself stuffing this little guy into my Volvo with a grocery bag full of yu-gi-oh cards and we're off for the beach. Whee. Three straight days of babysitting a special needs kid (just short of having to diaper a thirteen year old... ick) and I was just about in the same place as the guntoting mama. But thank goodness for the good folks at Devereaux... my kid loves the place. It's full of wackey kids who are all Asperger kids (a very special type of autism, often very verbal but behaviorally off center... remember Rainman? That guy was one of those. Anyhow, the kid likes it, the bio-mom likes it, the judge likes it, and I guess I like it... but the week was full of little snippets of strangeness and voiceless sorrows:

I'm talking to a kid who says over and over that "She promised. She promised. She promised. I'll get a knife and stick it in her throat. Yeah, that's what I'll do." While he rocks back and forth, bugging himself and me too. Skinney little thirteen year old who can't tell you his name. Oooo...weeeee....ooohhh. A Public Defender from the same school as the schoolgirls that I have an office full of telling the court that the bio-mother should be in jail for threatening the kid with a handgun... Why your honor, it's scandalolus! Just horrid! I saw something on PBS last week about these kind of horrible parents. Just scandalous. Dr. Baird should do something about this RIGHT NOW! Well... gee. OK. Well, what can I do? Follow the wishes of the court... that's what. OK... Or? Or be found in contempt. I see. Thank you Your honor. Come on kid, you're gonna stay with me for a day or two until I can find somehwhere you can stay that's not a hotel with armed guards.

Like I said, it's been one of those kind of weeks. But... all's well that ends well. But just think, somewhere out there there's a mother with a Glock grieving for a son she thought she loved, a sad little broken baby with his wires crossed up playing with his damned yu-gi-oh cards, making up make believe universes in a world full of the monsters that live in his head. But hey... in my little part of the world I have a good looking grandson who will snatch a biscuit out of my hand and start gumming it with his three official teeth while growling and looking around for more. This is the same grandson who completed the circle with my lovely only-child daughter. So yes, I have much to be thankful for. At least I have a daughter who isn't having to live with the horror of an Asperger Syndrome kid who wants to stick a steak knife in her gizzard.

Bob

~over it~

Yeah... as in way over it, over the hill, had it. My daughter once summed it up nicely: she was at the Orlando office with a girlfriend of hers from UCF... the yummy Heather, I believe... one of those girls who is just drop dead good looking and totally oblivious to the fact that guys were walking into walls behind her... Katie was in the office doing something, I really can't remember what, and there were a gaggle of young bondsmen in there waiting for the phone to ring, and here comes these college girls giggling and twittering... My guy Billy
Burden was in there and he was inspecting the nubile merchandise as only he is prone to do... anyhow, Kathryn jumped in his shit--- "you quit looking at my friend's butt you you you bondsman!" Well, I was sitting out there too, staring out the window at the traffic creeping by on
Colonial Drive.
So I perked up and said, "I was looking too" and Katie said... "Oh Daddy. It doesn't matter if YOU look.... You're OLD!"

Thanks kid.

I got a message that my oldest budd from Sumter County ,Bob Valentine, died this morning. So long, Bob. His father's farm and my grandfather's muckland butted together at the Umatilla Muck Flats, a open piece of swamp that those guys made a living off of for about the last three centuries. Valentine was a little bit older than me. I think he was about ten years ahead of me... and a whole lot more of a "rounder" than me. Old time drinkier, partier, whore monger, watermelon grower, truck driving country boy. He and I always got along because he was the kind of guy who would throw a hundred dollar bill on the bar and say... come on guys. Let's drink that up then I'll see if I've got another one. He used to buy a brand new Lincoln
Continental every year and then beat it to death wallowing arround in watermelon fields trying to get his trucks unstuck from the muck. Shit like that. Work hard, play hard, carried a handgun to settle any arguments. Chewed Redman chewing tobacco and was fastidious enough to not spit into a cup, but would open the door of that Lincoln and then spit out onto the road. That was always a thrill when he'd had a few Buds and was driving on the Church Hill Road outside Center Hill at two in the morning, trying to get back to his Daddy's barn without hitting anything.

God damn it. We all have to die. It just chaps my ass to have guys the same age as me leave before me.

Bob

~LAKE WALES~

I find myself settling in to this old Florida town. There are a few nice things... the library has wifi so I can keep up with my email, but the library itself has odd hours by my "big city" standards. It's hard to think of Orlando as the big city. Sigh... But the library is only open till 5:30 during the week and it closes at 3:30 on Saturdays. I suppose that that is OK. I'll be long gone by then... but 3:30? Jeez. Other than that things are going nice. Work is a little overwhelming but is managable. I have the On Call duty this weekend and the loonies are already filling up my InBox but I would have that no matter what. Maybe I'll go over and hang out with Elaine this evening. Nothing like a soft redhead to soothe my bored brow, right?

Bob

Like I've said before, the dead would take us with them if they could.

~HMMM~

Here's an interesting post about missing fathers and ADHD kids. Hmmm. Whatchathink?

Bob

~ WELL.... ~

It's turning into one of those Mondays. Maybe it's just the fact that it's been a long weekend. One of those weekends where things accumulate, then they have to be delt with on Monday no matter what. Gee... thanks. I'm on the phone with a teen aged mother who left her six month old son in the tub full of water while she ran next door to borrow some baby shampoo... naturally, the little boy was face down when she got back. blue. You guessed it. Now she's yammering to me about how the state should pony up enough money for her to get a car because all of her problems would go away if she just had a car. In the meanwhile, her boyfriend is in jail because he had a warrant. Yada yada yada. And she's weeping to me at the other end of the phone line. Can't you just help me can't you just help me?

Sigh. How do otherwise intelligent people find themselves in this kind of a fix? The state has sheltered her children because she failed to protect them from drowning. Yeah, I know it was just a mistake. Everybody makes mistakes. But.... but.... buy you a car? What the fuck is that all about? I mean.... come on.

Bob

Beware the neuron encrusted stream of steaming hot dark matter. No shit!

Bob

~AT LAST~

I have a friend, Stanley, who still can get into his dress blues to go to the annual Marine Corps Birthday dance (which was held last night by the way) at the armory in Orlando each year. I love the guy most of the time... he's one of those squared away guys who seems to go on and go on, never changing, just getting a little greyer each year. But, he can still stuff his ass into that formal uniform that his mom bought for him when he and I both graduated from Paris Island boot training a couple of thousand lifetimes ago. I admit it... I hate him. But there you go. Shit happens. If you feed a teenaged grunt he will blossom into a middle aged fat guy wearing an oooold... I mean an old greasy cover with my name still stenciled inside it, a smile coming from the memory of better days, and a complete set of war stories to make easy listening for all the new teenaged grunts in the pipeline to Falujah.

Now, at last... there's hope for us progressively fatter and fatter guys. The magicians at the doctor spot have isolated a hormone for fatness. Check this out.

Just think... I may live long enough to cram my fat ass into those pants. I gaurawn-tee you that the things are somewhere in my Mom's house over in Center Hill. She never threw anything of mine away. Busy making some kind of a shrine of everything that ever touched her precious son I suppose. I always figured that it was kind of like the priests saving the bowel movements of the Chinese princes. Ugh.

Bob

~HAPPY BIRTHDAY ~

It's birthday time again. Semper Fi my brothers. Here's a blast from the past: first day of the Tet offensive 1968. Ah... happiness. I wonder if that dog was lunch or just happy to see us.

Bob

~ QUICK~

Can you name the other three? Hmmm... maybe we have more time that I thought.

Bob

~NEW DIGS~

This is sort of like the kind of thing that Lilek does except it's just a picture of the new digs I've conjured up in Lake Wales. I got a corner room, of all things... and I don't have to drive back to the boat every afternoon. A residence hotel full of old guys with pee stains on their trousers... grumbling about the damned Republicans and rolling their own cigarettes out of Bugler in the bag. What a life. --- Bob

~ CHE ~

I was chatting with a bud from the old days of teaching at UCF last night and Dr. Dave Hernandez came up. Hernandez had a secret life before he sold out and went to teaching... he was a government spook. He was the guy who was there when Che was brought in. He sent in a grisly proof of Fidel's head recruiter's demise: a thumb, complete with thumbprint. Here's a pic of the bod. Ah... the good old days!

Bob