The best is yet to come

I have a great blog topic, a fabulous one, but it will have to wait for a while. Instead I’ll have to pen a few random thoughts and be satisfied with that for now.

1. On Sunday I stopped at the gas station. As I was pumping gas a car pulled up on the other side of my pump. The driver caught my attention as he exited the vehicle. I didn’t see him, I heard him, and all it took was three words to get my attention: “Suck my balls.”

I leaned over just a bit, as I had to sneak a peek at the driver. When I did, I noticed that there was a woman sitting in the passenger’s seat of the car. I assume he was speaking to her. The tone of his comment wasn’t the least bit jovial. It’s not as if he was saying, “You want to go home, get drunk and have sex? Oh, suck my balls!”

I immediately wondered why this woman was with a guy who spoke to her like that. (I assume she was a wife or girlfriend.) What a way to live. I don’t know much about domestic abuse, but I know that in some cases it’s not that easy to get out of an abusive relationship, for one reason or another. Or perhaps she was perfectly happy with her relationship, what do I know?

Immediately after the dude was done telling, presumably, the woman to suck his balls, I heard him say something like, “If you f---ing touch that I will kill you.” Was he talking to the woman? Nope, he had opened the back door of the car. A young girl, probably 3 or 4, emerged from the car and must have spotted something on the ground that aroused her curiosity. So she was impolitely warned not to touch it. That made me sad.

This young girl was quite use to such treatment, evidently. She didn’t seem phased by the threatening tone, she simply responded by asking a question.

I couldn’t help but wonder, in retrospect, which will happen first: she’ll be pregnant; she’ll develop a drug problem, she’ll end up in juvenile detention. I can’t imagine this poor girl is going to grow up to be a successful, happy high school graduate.

Perhaps I’m overreacting, but I don’t think so.

2. My cousin was showing some of her jewelry in an arts show earlier this evening. The show features artistic items of all sorts, from pictures and paintings to pottery and jewelry. My cousin has been a jewelry designer for several years, so it wasn’t a surprise she was showing a few pieces of her work.

What surprised me is the fact that she teaches a jewelry design class at the arts center that hosted this show/sale. It’s not surprising that she teaches her skill, what surprised me is that she has been teaching at the arts center for six years. She teaches one night a week, it’s not her regular job, but somehow I never had a clue.

It makes me wonder if I’m really that out of the loop regarding my extended family or if it’s simply dumb luck that the topic never came up in any conversation I’ve been a part of. Or perhaps I knew this once, and I’m simply a victim of my bad memory.

Whatever the case, I have to believe several of my relatives were invited to the show. I’m not on a short list of relatives to invite, that much I know. And although I wasn’t there for a majority of the show, I was there for a while, and as far as I know I was one of two relatives who made an appearance. The other was my uncle, my cousin’s father.

A Thursday night arts show in the far west metro isn’t the easiest thing for everyone to squeeze into their schedule, but I managed to do so. Not bad for a guy who gets a bum rap for not being more involved with his family.

3. Two weeks ago tonight I was sick. Since then I have been congested. It has been worse, not better, in the past few days, so I went to see the doctor today. He determined I have a sinus infection. I’m not sure I’ve ever had one, at least not one that has been diagnosed. Now I get to take amoxicillin for 10 days.

I was highly unimpressed with the service from the pharmacy of my local Target. I don’t think I’m going back there for my next prescription, but they put my pills in the cutest little red bottle. And at least I had an excuse to buy more bottles of 9-cent mustard!

4. I’m having another bonfire on Friday night. It’ll be me, Doug and perhaps one of his friends I’ve never met. It’s not a social event, it’s just an excuse to enjoy a crisp autumn evening, a few drinks and burn a few more cards and letters from my past. At the rate I’m going I’ll be having a bonfire every weekend for the next six months before I finally sort through all my stuff.

I may be slow, but I know that once the ball gets rolling, that fire is going to burn out of control.