Dear Lyzako,It's cooler than normal here for the second week of May. Five years ago I more than likely would have casually put the furnace on just to take the chill from the air, but nowadays... well, the cost of energy has just about sucked every bit of energy out of me. I'm getting used to the goosebumps, though. At this point in time they really don't seem all that bad, considering the direction in which the world appears to be headed.
The way I figure it, there's a good chance that five more years down the road here in Michigan we'll all be huddled in the corner of our basements in the middle of January waiting to freeze to death.
Especially if we elect John McCain.
The beer seems much colder tonight, and this Scandinavian-designed, steel-and-pressboard computer desk feels especially frigid on my bare forearms as I wait patiently for summer to arrive dressed in my Mutants 'Clown Nose Freakout' tee and khaki shorts.
I'm looking forward to summertime this year. While I continue to find our Great Lakes humidity difficult to deal with and could easily do without the barking dogs and the obnoxious teens driving their cars playing hip-hop so loud I can feel the vibrations in my chest as I sit on my sofa, I do find comfort in the fact that there will be at least a few days wherein I can enjoy living nearly naked in the sunshine, drinking Blue from the can and grilling meat in my own back yard.
After looking like rain all day, we had a spectacular sky at dusk tonight. Thin lavender clouds angled upwards to the north in ripples across a pale peach backdrop as the sun sank behind the trees, now fully-leafed and green, and the temperatures dropped into the fifties. The air was fresh and I could hear that train rattling through Royal Oak and Ferndalia, its warning whistle calling as if from the other side of a closed door as it passed in the distance.
In all honesty, I feel pretty good, lately. In lieu of watching television I've been reacquainting myself with my record collection. I believe I mentioned a while back that I'd fetched some Tom Jones LPs from the basement during my fiftieth birthday party just prior to passing out on the futon downstairs, leaving my guests to fend for themselves as I slept off the spins. Good sports that they are, they cleaned the dishes and left, then dutifully covered me with a blanket before leaving.
Sometime during the hungover Sunday that followed I discovered those fetched records on the floor leaning against the shelves below my stereo and put one of them on. I think it was a live Tom Jones recording that I dropped on the turntable that day.
Right now, I'm listening to Tom sing 'Delilah', a song about a man who stabs his lover to death. As evening moves towards bedtime, towards bundling up under the covers and forgetting what month it is, towards forgetting that it's colder than normal and I can't afford to turn on the heat, I feel some comfort in the tragedy portrayed in the song.
In comparison, my life seems relatively comfortable and calm these days, but I have to admit that by the time the old lady finally left two years ago, I had seriously contemplated pulling the butcher knife out a time or two myself.
Regards,
Marty 'The Ripper' Sherman
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