My editor’s flare…

My editor, slave driver he is, was wondering where I’d been, how I was doing. He sent up a flare, something I saw in the night sky as I looked up from the hardwood floor I was tearing out of my new home. It was a bright flare, one I enjoyed watching because, of late, moving and drudgery has been No. 1 on my list.

So as a decided to put my hammer and saw down and watch my editor’s flare fade into the distance, I wondered if he really thought I was lollygagging somewhere in the Cayman Islands with a cold Bud Light in my hand and a dame at my side, buttering me up with oil and whispering sweet things in my ear. My body told me differently. It told me things weren’t what they used to be. Before I turned 40, working full-time, running six miles a day and then moving would have been a breeze. I may have even been able to take one of the kids to a ball game in Tulsa in my free time. Now, well, the Cayman’s can’t come soon enough. The nearest comfortable bed has my name on it. Someone, please, kick sand in my face. Margaritaville, here I come.

My back hurts. My head is stuffy from all the sawdust and dirt in the air. My fingers and hands are gnarly and bruised from moving boxes, tools, beds, furniture, and a book I’ve been working on for about two years. My blood pressure and patience can’t take much more, especially after some hired-hands knocked my new garage door off its hinges and failed to tell me about it until I asked why it was crooked. “Sorry, Mr. Schneider, but Delbert here didn’t realize the door had to be up to back out.” Delbert, well, he won’t be invited back to the party.

A sink leaks. A shingle is off the roof. The neighbor’s dog barks at me each time I walk through MY yard. And my financee, get this, she uttered a four-letter word at me last night I won’t repeat because I wasn’t painting correctly. I patched that all up, though, when I went and bought her a new brush!

Good money was paid for all of this agony, too. Actually, I got a deal. A good deal. A foreclosure. It’s a buyer’s market, everyone said. But I say this: It’s a sucker’s market. My chiropractor can vouch for that.

My dad and his children, though, always knew what hard work was all about. My dad, the land baron, still has an apartment that someone was and is always moving in and out of. There are 23 steps from bottom to top of the second floor. A lot of our blood and sweat is somewhere mixed in the gray paint on those blasted steps. We spent hot summer days and cold winter nights moving refrigerators and stoves and boxes from top to bottom and from bottom to top. My middle name could’ve been MULE. But I guess those steps and that apartment was nothing more than experience, or sweat-equity, as they say, for what I’m doing now.

And that is sitting in my comfortable chair, wondering how much a cheap ticket will cost to go somewhere warm and exotic. Instead off to my foreclosure, the one calling my name, telling me how lucky I am to have such a nice deal, a sore back, and an editor who cares about me.