Genevieve; Spring Rushes Forth by Edward Drobinski - HTML preview

Chapter 11

All winter type poochie things considered, Daisy was doing pretty well in handling Waylon’s indoor knocking around of his now patched beach ball. He had taken to this interior activity after a brief loss of his ball in a winter wind gust. If that hadn’t been sufficiently distressing, when found it had become the victim of a deflating puncture. It sat in a heap, impaled upon a low lying Russian olive thorn. Russian olives are actually native to western and central Asia, but they are now widely established in North America after an ill-advised, un-natural introduction for ornamental and wind-breaking purposes.

This ostensibly ignored its propensity to be invasive and somewhat hazardous to wild life.

Russian olives invading a rare cienega (wetland system) in New Mexico; property of the author.

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Waylon’s ball wound up surviving its Russian ordeal with the help of Genevieve, his wife Daisy, and the fabulous Johnson and Johnson invention called duct tape. He was still a bit cautious about bringing it outside, but had become particularly animated indoors. An occasional china lamp got its world rocked as a result.

Waylon and his beach ball; property of the author.

Daisy pranced around; her regal looking head always up.

Possibly for that reason she also periodically induced a china lamp to rock, well beyond what it had come to expect in its sedate world. To some, this may have suggested some sort of Waylon-Daisy equality, as their activities, though likely worrisome to those not so engaged, kindly precluded any personal complaints. To others less inclined to be analytical, the

“weighty” non-issue periodically regurgitated on lackluster,

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non-news day, toddy time views of “popularly” innocuous, mid-day television, which ultimately culminated in whether or not china manifested a decent lamp base, and if it was needed at all if one had “successfully” been able to nod out.

Daisy; the kind courtesy of Pexels.com under their CC0 license, modified.

Once again, Daisy and Waylon appeared to have had adapted to and recovered from the briefly exaggerated problems caused first and primarily by an ephemeral, rude wind.

When they saw and felt that it has gotten warmer outside, it took no conversation to agree that it was time to re-paint the house exterior. Waylon took to the brush and Daisy to stirring the pot.

Clara and Barney were glad that their son, Gizmo, had been spending time with their recommended “Sims4” computer game, rather than a competitive, creepy, or shoot-em-up one.

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Barney and Clara; the kind courtesy of Pexels.com under their CC0 license, modified.

Proudly watching their son navigate between stylistically engendered, non-judgmental choices, Barney said; “No way to keep score.”

Clara said; “And it’s free.”

Gizmo and his computer; property of the author.

Not entirely sharing his parent’s opinions and consequent approval, Gizmo pushed a series of keys. He sought something he had not yet encountered; a game with some degree of competition

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to keep things interesting, yet nothing at all like the dark, ugly, false-competitiveness computed by Resident Evil 7: Biohazard.

The screen flashed. Gizmo watched it move and move, each time creating a new screen which lasted no more than a second.

It settled on the weather report in Poochville, saying that the temperature had reached fifty degrees.

Gizmo said; “Let us try this for a while,” and shut down the computer. He walked outside, followed by his folks, and they all saw that the snow and ice were almost gone.

The little shelties, Tardiff and Lenta were huddling together, watching a sporting event of interest to neither.

Table tennis semi-finals did display constant frantic motion, but after two minutes it struck the two as absurd, and unfortunately not amusing in that; much like one suffers through with a dreadfully written Bizarro book. There are times when it is innocently feasible to record a lying joy in order to not easily offend an able cyber friend’s recommendation; thereby losing one’s innocence, were that illusion not already ripped.

Indeed, this may well be the limit and ironic zenith of social obligations truly, of seeming common sense; as opposed to that which is not designed in a Machiavellian manner to perpetrate an obvious, but perpetrator thought clandestine agenda. Well,

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either that, or the perp is a baboon ass, best to stay downwind from.

Tardiff and Lenta; property of the author.

Being beautiful aesthetes, their glazed eyes re-focused on the painting in the center of the wall; just a bit to their current leftward, mutual position. Unsigned “Yank Farm” by Jason Polack was a pleasant old staple in their home. Catching Lenta’s gaze, Tardiff said; “I’ve always liked it quite the tops, but he really should have used a bit more of the red variations.”

Lenta laughed and said; “I just knew that you thought that.

I’d have gone for a bit more of the purple myself.”

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”Yank Farm” by Jason Polack; property of the author.

Tardiff said; “It takes much red to make purple. But, look at the whites. I’ve been noticing them more recently. They’re actually mixed in with all the other colors too.”

Lenta said; “Especially near the horse’s and cow’s heads.”

Tardiff said; “And that back fence. I don’t understand that part.”

Lenta said; “Me either. I guess it could just have been a technical thing. To show the fence contrasted with the reds,

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greens, and blues; Jason was stuck with an imperfect choice of black or white, and chose white to retain color.”

Tardiff said; “Yes; the declining and increasingly vague hints at the remnants of that black wire fence would be lessened if black was used elsewhere on the canvas, resulting in an overly dour overall expression.”

Lenta said; “A statement pertaining to some sort of alleviation of the nature of being confined. In fact, when you focus on the horse’s and cow’s heads, you clearly see ...... “

Tardiff cut his wife off to interject; “I didn’t want to bring this up the first time you mentioned it, but where in hell are there any horse and cow heads in the picture?”

Lenta gave him a hard bump, and bolted for the front door.

When she opened it she said; “Come on outside with me and I’ll show you. It’s warm again.”

Contemplative Willy sat by himself on the carpeted bedroom floor of his sturdily constructed and maintained house. Nothing to do and nowhere to go, he was sensing that magic feeling sung by the Beatles when his mother Heidi was a pup.

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Willy; the kind courtesy of Pexels.com under their CC0 license.

Willy sometimes enjoyed his solitude. It was something which kept him centered and didn’t necessitate a crosstown trip to a flouncy, flustering, huggy-huggy from a distance New Age meeting. All too often his periodic penchant for peace and quiet brought about unwanted queries about his being “all right” or not. After becoming aware of a stream of those he naturally complied with his interrogators through no longer feeling all right.

The beauty of his today was that no one was around to break his all too often misunderstood good mood; which they may have conveniently chosen to vocally interpret, in a very rude manner not easily corrected, equated the solitary with depressed, anti-social, or some other Dr. Phil un-defined type of disorder.

Through his picture window, he watched the last parade of his roof dwelling, white snow hit the ground in clear liquid form,

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forming a line of precisioned, previsioned and incongruously widening dot-dot-dots in the dwindling remainder of their ground based acquaintances. Having been afforded that privilege, after another dreamy hour of contemplative time, Willy felt that he wanted to see other Pacific Lane friends. He walked outside, and immediately thought; “Gee, it really is warm again.”

He looked at himself in a puddle created by the melting snow.

Willy looking into the puddle; property of the author Wind rippled it. Then he saw Misty’s face for the first time in a dog’s age. He thought; “It couldn’t be,” then changed that to;

“Not now,” then changed that to; “If not now, then when?” The wind subsided and then it was gone and he saw his own face

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again. Misty was an old “Romeo and Juliet” thing of his, and he had run before the threatening Catulent family could do him harm. He had no idea about her fate, and didn’t really want to be reminded about the whole thing in this particular puddle or anywhere else for that matter. But, now it had happened. He decided that the best thing he could do was walk Pacific Lane and find some neighborly afforded distraction.

Misty; the kind courtesy of Pexels.com under their CCO license.

The remaining puddles were a potential distraction which he didn’t wish to re-encounter only in a mirror type of false duplication. So, he deftly danced around them, as some of the superstitious do with sidewalk cracks.

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