Snits and Scoffing

I am amazed. No, not because the sun is shining after 372 days of sullen, dirty-sheet gray weather, but because snit is not in either of my dictionaries.  Snigger, sneer, snipe, snot and snob all figure prominently.  I am not getting up from this chair to go to the bookshelf. 

Snit-it's probably why Jorge hasn't called.

"Hey, ya got coffee?" 

I'm in a short snit because I'm not feeling well.  I'm used to playing while injured.  I did a whole season of championship organic gardening with a hernia.  In between, I suffered through bouts of gut wrenching arthritis with the pleasant name gout attached to it.  Every time I hear that word, the image of a fat demented king gnawing on a turkey leg, dirty bandage wrapped around his toe, comes to mind.  My former physician's solution for hypertension was a generic drug which elevates uric acid levels.  Hence the swelling of joints and accompanying pain.  Then, he prescribed a medication for arthritis which elevates my BP. 

I have a new health provider, the same woman Dawn, my wife uses.  I love her so much I brought her potatoes after a visit to the clinic recently.  If I give you potatoes watch out.  It means commitment. 

Ailments which cause an undue amount of focus on a natural function like walking, breathing and eating disturb me. The stricture of my Schatzki ring makes eating an hour long event with copious amounts of water to help wash down food.  This morning's first entree was oatmeal, brown sugar and organic apple sauce.

So that explains a bad attitude. Not because of the oatmeal. I know it's good for me, but I'd like to make some crepes, especially the ones Jeff Smith makes with beer.

Scoffing is something I do.  It's accompanied by eating crow frequently. Crows are a protected species, by the way, under the Migratory Species Protection Act, so don't call up the DNR.  It is a metaphorical statement. 

My high school when it was brand new. Note the cars.  It was the former German-English Academy.

From grade four through the end of high school, I was imprisoned in this building. At the extreme left, jutting out from the structure is the auditorium.  It's where we had school wide assemblies, Thanksgiving and Christmas pageants. The main entrance is the center edifice with two sets of steps.  Twenty minutes a day we were required to perform tasks for the school. It was called "work service."  If I was lucky I got assigned office monitor because the principal and vice principal had a office on either side of the entrance.  The administrative offices were located there. If I was real lucky, my second wife was assigned duty with me.  She was a Norwegian blond, soon to be cheerleader.  She'd do things like ask me a saucy question,

"Do you ever wonder what it's like?" 

It being having sex-we were only eighth graders.

Then she'd get up. kiss me softly me on the cheek with a shy wink, and walk away as the bell rang.  Whoa. Think about what the little snot did to me on purpose, an eighth grader with soaring hormones.  It will figure prominently in my future life with her. 

The far right attached building is the gymnasium.The first floor was reserved for elementary grades and the upper floors were secondary school.  There was a third floor with the biology and chemistry labs.  Two staircases led from the third to the second floor.  One was reserved for seniors, only.  You could get the crap beat out of you for unauthorized use of the senior stairs.

There were 54 people in my graduating class. The school was the only co-ed  private school in the city, so my senior class was equally divided between girls and boys.  27 women were people I saw every day of my life from fourth grade on. Made it hard to find a date for the Prom. Especially if you weren't a jock, a lawyer, doctor or banker's son. Maybe that's why I hung out with the outcasts like the local Mafia boss's son and a crazy kid who lived across the street.  Going outside the building was verboten during school time.  I got solitary confinement and three days suspension for having lunch with Joe across the street.

I was pretty impressed with the new Pontiac my ma purchased when I turned 14  The bubble burst when everybody turned sixteen. Some classmates got their own Porsche's and TR-3's.  My mother, bless her heart, was a high school teacher all her life.She had two degrees from UW-Madison.  As an only child she knew the value of giving me a good education. I scoffed most of my life at the education I received.  Mom. rest assured, you were right.  I did get a good education. 

I learned to despise the wealthy and privileged. I didn't learn some lessons very well when I married one wealthy snot-the cheerleader- but I scored high that year on envious, go-figure  looks. Besides, I was a farmer, lived across the road from a commune, wore bib overalls. and wasn't bald or  fat and bored with my life. I showed them.  She left after three years to have an affair with a wealthy, fat advertising exec from Chicago. Like my son, it takes a couple of hits with the cosmic slap before sanity is restored.

Enter Dawn, my wife, not the time of day.  She started this sweater before Christmas and finished it in July. I scoffed one hot July; squirming when she asked me to try it on. She grinned with that special feeling one gets after months of hard work.    The humidity makes you break out in a sweat if you even think about work. A sweatband was required apparel.

This morning Mother Nature throws another cold one at us.  I'm chilled.  I don't have the energy to start a fire in the wood stove. With the sun out, it'd be 75 in the house by noon with even a small fire.  I think about a rationalization Dawn and I made when we decided to move back to the frozen tundra.

You can always dress up for cold weather, but in hot  weather there's a limit to how many clothes one can shed.  There's a reason why the Arabs wear those flowing robe besides hiding an assault rifle. I cropped my head so not to show the feathers hanging out the sides of my mouth. Yeah Dawn.  It's a great sweater.