Decompression

It’s snowing right now. Or raining. Depends on the hour. It snowed last night so Shane and I built a terrain park in our front yard; drop, rail, quarter pipe and everything.

Now it’s really windy, and our terrain park is pinwheeling through the neighborhood along with garbage cans and a Volkswagen Fox. The wind is blowing towards the shooting range, so all our stuff will probably get caught in a tree and people with shotguns will have to get it down for us. In case you didn’t know, that’s the best way to get stuff out of trees. Shotguns. It works on pinecones, coconuts and a Volkswagen Fox.

I wonder how the chickens across the street like all this wind. I would wager they don’t. I would also wager that they don’t care that they don’t, being that they’re all chickens and all. They’re not all chickens, though. They are roosters too. Sometimes when the weather is nice the neighbor will let the chickens play outside. Sometimes when the weather is nice the chickens will escape and run around the neighborhood. Sometimes when the weather is nice the roosters will crow in the morning as I get into my car, and I will laugh because I think it sounds funny.

But tonight the weather isn’t nice. Tonight the weather is pulling the chickens and the shingles off the roof, and sending them into the field. Most of our stuff is probably in the shooting range, but the other stuff is in the neighborhood that they’re building right next to our neighborhood. You see, that’s the thing about neighborhoods. They’re never done. There’s a vacant lot across the street with all sorts of hardware and junk and machinery, and that’s where most of our terrain park comes from. That’s also where the neighborhood kids build jumps out of dirt and hit them with their bikes and break their wrists.

The kids that break their wrists don’t live in the neighborhood that they’re building right next to our neighborhood. They’re still building that one. They’re still exploding stuff in that neighborhood. They come by our house during the day to warn us that they’re going to be exploding stuff, and they say that they’ll be exploding stuff until they finally get an explosion that’s in the shape of a neighborhood. They come by to warn us but we’re never home because we usually work.

I say usually, because sometimes we take time off from work for certain things. Sometimes we take time off because we were snowboarding and we dislocated our shoulder doing that. Sometimes that happens. It didn’t happen to me, but it happened to someone. She’s doing okay now, but her left arm is slung up and out of commission for six to eight weeks. She’s getting kind of bored with movies and TV and she tries to read, but reading makes her fall asleep. She falls asleep instead of reading, but when the explosions wake her up all she wants are coloring books.

Her name is Erin and she’s a very nice girl and she deserves coloring books. She didn’t even get a chance to play in our terrain park before it got blown into the trees. When you see her, please wish her a speedy and colorful recovery. If you don’t see her, you can wish her well right here and I will make sure that she knows. She’s afraid of clowns, though, so if you get all fancy when you wish her well please no pictures of clowns.