will not be televised

under covers

 I love the Irish. I even adopted a young Irish lad last year, though now I can’t think what happened to him. Not to worry - he is nothing if not resourceful.

His firebrand of a daughter has me perplexed, however.  I proposed marriage some little while back and she set some stern conditions -which I am abiding by, at no little monetary and mental cost, mind.

Now she’s hit me with a meme. Which I am sure she knows I detest as much as her ol’ dad, my adopted wee lad.

Which, I am also sure, is why she did it.

“Bring to your consciousness those memories of the things you’ve seen and the places you’ve been over the last twenty-four hours. Good. Now select a one-minute sequence of events and try to replay it over and over again in your mind.”

Hmmm…

It was 56 degrees at 5:00 AM.

I was sitting on the porch of the small hut I rent here in Ushuaia, sipping a hot cup of coffee. Ushuaia is where the world begins,  a place where forest and glaziers meet, where mountains fall into the seas…

I had just finished a rather heavy breakfast of centolla fueguina, roasted lamb and orange soda and was contemplating what I would do if I did not get this job: the Isla Grande is lovely beyond description but work for foreigners is hard to come by. I did not relish waiting here another 3 years and 359 days without a centavo to my name.

The dwarf walked up exactly at 5:01.

I asked him to have a seat and would he care for a cup? He said no, thank you, and would I care to start the interview? Fine, I said. How do we start? With this, he said, and pushed a closed matchbook across the table and nudged it against my cup’s saucer.

Open it, he said.

I did.

Okay, he said. He passed me a number 2 pencil. Draw the pirate, please, sir.

No way I passed this test. There was nothing for it but to pull the TomCat and put one between his sky blue eyes. The dwarf slumped slightly in his chair but made no other sound or motion. I finished my coffee.

Damn. This was the third job interview in as many days that hadn’t gone well.

—

I have no idea why I own an alarm clock.

As always I woke a split second before the precursor sounds of the servo-mechanism inside the clock as it geared up in preperation to sound the alarm. My hand reached the off switch just another split second before the alarm could strike.

I lay in bed a moment. It was 5:00 AM and still dark. Yesterday had been my first full day on my feet, sans minder, since the incident. The incident. Less than 2 minutes. That’s all it took.

We’re still in Borneo. But that will change soon. Karl owes me and the little Turd Blossom is going to pay. That I swear…

5:01 AM.

—

I  woke before the alarm this morning, just a few seconds before 5:00.

I switched the alarm off and lay still a second while I listened to the caphony of snores surrounding me. Asta had planted her face firmly in my left armpit, more fool her. Nora had stretched out her right hand to hold Asta’s elbow. Asta Jr lay pleasantly snuggled in the crook of Nora’s left arm. My left arm rested on Nora’s shoulder.

We co-sleep. Have since the beginning and will be sad when they mature into their own beds.

But this morning my own little trio of lumberjacks were hard at it, sawing away for their company dole.

I leaned over and kissed Nora. Her eyes fluttered open but it was a good 10 seconds before they focused on my face.

“Happy birthday”, I said.

“Tanks. Go way now.”

I headed into the lavatory for a shower.

5:01 AM.

—

You owe me, K8.

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3 Responses to “under covers”

1. K8 on April 17, 2008 10:22 am

   Indeed and you are a sport of the highest calibre, sir.

   I must add that if this is true love that you speak of, you must be prepared for everything I have to throw at you. I’m not high maintenance, but I get bored quickly and require regular entertainment such as the above.

   Until we meet at the end of the earth…
   (I’ve hit major traffic at the Bermuda Triangle so I may be delayed a bit.)

   K8 -

   well, we’ll see: you do ask a lot of a fellow.
   On the other hand, it is absolutely gorgeous here…if not somewhat riddled with corpses.

2. Medbh on April 17, 2008 10:22 am

   Doc, I’m sorry but I don’t do the meme thing. I’m a pain in the ass that way.

   Medbh -

   You know, I knew that. In fact, as soon as I posted this I remembered. And I wondered
   if I should have tagged
   Stinkbait instead…

   But if I’ve learned anything from the game of golf over the years -besides cruel frustration
   that is- it’s to play it as it lies.

   Nice review of Monkey Warfare, by the way: look forward to watching it.

3. John B. on April 21, 2008 10:22 am

   I have no excuse for not seeing this earlier: I just hadn’t visited in a while.

   ::engages in self-chastisement::

   I gotta get me one of those new-fangled RSS readers that all the cool kids have now.

   This was, how you say, Gut. I’m sorry to have missed it, but very glad I read it.

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