Them Nuttings.

Today, I woke up early and took the dogs for a walk. I decided that we would walk in a direction we had never walked before, and walk until we were lost and had no idea what direction home was. I need this, I told Warden and Regrette. This is a metaphor for something, and even I didn't know what I was talking about.

But that's what we did, we walked, for what ended up being six hours. I hadn't considered how hot it was going to get, and by the end of it we were all walking with our tongues hanging out, panting. I am a hairy man, and I sweat a lot. I walk around without a shirt in the summer, because I'm too old to care. Sometimes small children point at me or make ape noises. They have a right to. I would have done the same thing when I was their age.

I thought a lot. I thought about things I've done, and things I wished I hadn't. I thought about this blog, and it's future, and whether I could see myself still blogging every day at 55 years old, 60, 65. Would I still be washing dishes then? Would my vision start to go? My legs? My mind?

What if you logged onto the Betterbutterblog one day, and it was obvious that I was losing it? Would you do something?

I thought about being an old man, or practically an old man, and my cholesterol, and whether I might just have a heart attack right now and maybe the dogs would finally have the freedom they'd always lusted for. Or maybe Regrette would stay by my side while Warden ran off to get help. Or maybe they'd wait for me to pass so they could start gnawing on my flesh.

Stop it, I told myself. You can't think that way.

It's a funny feeling, being close to home, but far away enough that you don't really know where you are. It shows you how big the world is, in a way. You see the laundromats you'll never use, the pizza shops you'll never try, the small businesses you'll never patronize. You wonder how they'll ever survive when you've never even heard of them, even though you're a horrible consumer, and a closet socialist. You wonder how people get brave enough to open their own business, or you get jealous that somebody's family had come here and started something, and then passed it down to their kids, and their kids' kids. Where's my inheritance? you ask yourself.

And you answer:

What if I hadn't ruined everything? What if I'd gotten that insurance money that went to my dad and my sister instead and I'd opened up a little breakfast joint with homemade butters and cranberry almond pancakes and special homefries that everybody knows are always cooked to perfection and your regular customers come in every day and say "hey Curt, what's wrong with them Buccos?" and you just laugh and shake your head and say "damn them Nuttings" and pour the poor sap a cup of coffee and ask him if he'll have his usual and you get it for him and things are mostly the same every day, but just different enough to make life always seem worth living and to make you never question why you get out of bed on any given day, because you know something interesting might happen and even if it doesn't, at least you know you're doing something that people need and appreciate.

What if?

What if we can't figure out how to get home?

But we do, and it's okay.

It's okay.

It's okay.