Coming around the bend again
I called Marty from the road to tell him that Gary from E&G Pest Control told me that the fence had to come off the dirt because no amount of treated lumber or treating for termites would absolve the moisture that was going to come straight up that fence and make it rot within a New Orleans second – read: could be now or eighty years from now – and he wanted me to call George and find out how high the mulch was going to be and so as I was dialing the number, I looked up to see a line of stalled cars getting off an exit and a truck directly in front of me that was stopped in my lane so I slammed on the brakes, fishtailed to a roaring stop inches from the back of this truck and didn’t take a breath till I had gone a couple of car lengths and pulled off the highway to scream.
It wasn’t like the trip had started with any less portents considering that when I was finally able to get away from my desk, I had Arlene on the porch as I turned on the alarm and came out to get in Blue. When we got to the end of the brick walkway, I went to pick her up and she really doesn’t like to be picked up and started bucking like a bronco but this time it was WAY over the top bucking and pretty soon I was in the middle of the street trying to body block her against the truck so she wouldn’t jump out of my arms but I couldn’t get the door open so next thing you know she was out of my arms and ran down the side of the house and through the doggie door onto the locked screen porch. JFC escaped my mouth several times as I finally trudged back into the house, turned off the alarm, and leashed her up and brought her back to the truck where I encountered my next door neighbor – the good one – and asked could you get my paper tomorrow and he asked “what was going on? I almost came running thinking K had come back and attacked you?” I pointed at Arlene and said, “she went nuts.” And he said, “you can just stop at she – it’s something with your gender – they’re all nuts.”
Minutes later, I was walking in to Hyme Tyme off Metairie Road to get my earrings he had repaired when his weiner dog, Mojo – normally a sweet dog – lept up from the comfort of his nap and lunged to bite me then started barking at me as if I was a cat on a ledge. Is it a full moon I asked? And everyone shrugged.
As I was approaching the DisComfort Inn just now, I looked up and saw the biggest, roundest, brightest moon in the ink dark sky and said – uh huh, I knew it.
June 1st, 2007 at 1:44 pm
Hi Rachel –
Not only was it a full moon – it was a blue moon, the first in a couple years, and good for extra lunacy.