i was having a good sleep in my car
in the parking lot of the showboat casino hotel
i say i remember you... you drive like a pta mother
you brought me draft beer in a plastic cup

i'm feeling thankful for the small things today
i'm feeling thankful for the small things today
happy happy birthday to me happy birthday to me and to you
happy happy birthday to me happy birthday to me and to you

happy birthday, baby, to me

(david lowery, singing for cracker)

i didn't wake up in my car in the parking lot of the showboat casino hotel... nobody brought me a draft beer... or needed to... but today is the day. i woke up in my great big bed with a fuzzy old black cat under my nose... jumped up humming this catchy tune (you know it?)... thinking i'm also a prettty lucky guy... not a sliver of sarcasm anywhere in sight... because i AM a pretty lucky guy... really really happy that mom and dad arranged it all... and attended to early essential maintenance... way better than all those blank kerjillions of eternities before... thought i'd never get into the light...

well, i had plenty of light this morning because it's saturday... i didn't get to teach today... so i put off pre-dawn rising for exercise... dom and i walked in a more civil manner... in the full light of day at 6:30... then a trip to the bank... to the vet's for special cat food... to target for kitty litter and some new teaching pants and an armload of crayola markers - a steal at seventy-eight cents a pack...

yesterday a box arrived from levenger's (you know how you thumb through their catalogue and cuss those filthy rich elegant "readers" who can actually afford some of that silliness... a hundred and sixty bucks for a ballpoint pen?)... but the box from mom contained a very cool bookstand which is now propping up and open my big american heritage dictionary atop my tall swivel shelf for cds... this is great... now the book is in perfect eye-shot... i jump up, spin around, and whammo... there's "hyperbaric"... there's "orchestra"... very nice... i'm feeling kind of elegant... kind of filthy rich... popping up for words every other minute... "hoo-hah"... "fulminate"... thanks mom...

reading the odyssey with the world lit class... a gorgeous old pagan tale... "pagan" used to be a bad term... is it still a bad term?... in some minds, no doubt... i know people who identify themselves as such... they find their ultimates in nature... as much as there are ultimates anywhere... they might say...

yesterday after school one kid stopped by for something and mentioned that "if i believed in anything, i'd believe in that greek stuff" which seemed kind of odd to me because those tales are so unbelievable... great stories provoking great questions about human living... but a basis for 21st century belief? o well...

(yes, many years ago i donated pennies to our pagan baby fund... hoping to get that far-off poor little benighted soul saved... today... it's all kind of embarassing, isn't it... we were so small back then... but our hearts were good... we're so much bigger now... but our hearts...)

well... structurally the odyssey is as crafty a novel as anything more contemporary... starting with the son, the absence of the father... layering theme upon theme, stories within stories, a bloody reckoning, a tearful reunion... good stuff...

did some laundry this afternoon, read some more, trekked out with dom to the carpet store... how the hell does anyone ever buy carpet? we were clueless... at the mercy of the salesman... he showed us some "lower end" stuff that he says wears just as well as the pricier rugs... i suppose he gets some points for that... not pushing the high end... but... how can you tell what's right for the room? even with the samples we brought home... it's a crap shoot...

like so much else... and all the more reason to be thankful for the small things...

which i am.

Each day is a little life: every waking and rising a little birth, every fresh morning a little youth, every going to rest and sleep a little death.

Arthur Schopenhauer

 

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