Homeward

"When are you coming home" the wolf that raised me (otherwise known as my mother) asked me for the hundredth time in a month. I tried to explain, again, that I was speaking to her from my home. Where I live now is my home. The lair that I was born and raised in no longer qualifies as "home" to me. I moved away for a reason, and no amount of mother's guilt (much more plentiful than mother's love) will make it home again. I guess she did not realize that she raised a roaming wolf and not one that was willing to stay in the same territory. I have no desire to go back to the den where I was whelped. I do not wish to here that the paterfamilias is not long for this world. He has been trying to die for three years, and I know that one of these times he will, but each time I have to be guilted by that story makes me feel a little less badly. Not that I wish for him to take his last bow, but his quality of life has to be very close to zero. I am sure he has a different view, and that is part of the problem. Him and I have always had different views on pretty much everything. Also, I have no desire to go home to the rest of the clan either. It seems to be a character trait of my family to think that when I open a book it is an invitation to start a conversation with me. There is a reason I am reading a book it is to attempt to avoid having to talk to anyone in the room. I like to read, it is the ONE thing that my father and I can agree on, of course we read wildly different stuff, but hey it is a start. Another lovely aspect of going "home" is the couch on which I get to sleep. It is not a fun time, so I get very little sleep, and then get to wake up and face the family in a foul mood to begin with. Then comes the meal, my grandmother (who has taken her last bow) could cook VERY well. The she-wolf not so much. I guess I should not complain I cannot cook either, but at least I do not bother to try. Perhaps, the cooking gene skips a generation or maybe two generations. Going "home" is like falling off the edge of the world. My parents have no computer, no internet, barely have cable, and my cell phone does not world there. It is like becoming a political prisoner, all ties with the outside world are cut off, and I am held incommunicado until I scale the wall i.e. get in my car, and make a break for it. I am just not a fan of "home" nor I am giddy over Thanksgiving, though you could never tell it by the looks of me or by the look on my doctor's face after I climb off the scale in her office. The small black thing I call a heart is certainly no longer at the "home" of my family. It is merely an exercise in frustration when I go back, and one day I suppose I should screw my courage up to the sticking point, and explain to the she-wolf that she did, much to her dismay, raise a lone wolf.

Can't Get Right

To steal a song title from one Joe Purdy, I just can't seem to get right today. However, unlike the sad sack bastard in that song, my ability to not "get right" has had an extended run. It seems that weeks have gone by without one thing going right while everything else I touch falls to shit in spectacular fashion. I work in the Domestic Violence Unit of my office, and I get exposed to a lot of people in bad situations, and people who are not the most truthful in the world. That being said, I have still managed to "make" three women cry this week, and it is only Wednesday. The Kleenex company should sign me to a three year contract. A few words from me and volia the tears start to flow like a water hydrant. It is very fun. Like most males I do not deal well with women would cry directly in front of me. It is like they are on fire, I just want to put them out, and make it stop and will do what is necessary to make that happen. Though this is not the only disaster that I have achieved in the last month or so. If I were a scientist I would have given half the population cancer by now. My luck has been that bad. If I were a baseball player I would have struck out every at-bat. I feel as if I could not hit water if I fell out of a boat. It is like I am 7 seconds behind on everything I do. A few degrees left of center, and that makes all the difference. Plans that would normally go smoothly collapse like a house of cards as soon as I become involved. Even if told backwards the last month or so of my life would still be a comedy of errors. The lovely part of it is I see no way through this particular bad patch. It is like the more I struggle the more I become entwined in a web of my own failings. Ships sink, planes fall out of the sky, horses come up lame, wells go dry, crops fail, and it seems that most of it is somehow my fault. If I light a match, somehow the whole bloody house burns down. It is best not to get to close to me because I am not certain that this disaster disease I have is not contagious. Even this post "read" much better in my head than when I wrote it down, and that I think is my cue to draw the curtain, and hope for a change in fortune. I guess it could be worse, it could be raining.