My girlfriend went out of town, tonight, for a few weeks, so I'm going to go to bed with another woman. Her name is Sylvia.

I just scared the piss out of my cat. He was laying asleep on my bed and I threw a half full bottle of hair conditioner that I didn't want to forget to pack later for a trip that I was going to take, onto the bed; it hit some books that were lieing there, made a loud gun shot like sound and bam, Kobain was up and off the bed in an instant. Mind you, this is a fearless cat, who regularly brings home snakes, rats and mice. We live in the city too, so I don't know how or where he's finding snakes. He's kind of like the apartment complex cat; everybody thinks he's a stray and everybody loves him and lets him into their apartment. Maybe he is stealing their pet snakes and bringing them home to me and my kids, half-dead.

Kobain did an intense under the bed inspection before he let himself out through the custom made cat door that occupies our back window. I figure that the cat was headed out on the prowl to find out who had woken him up and to take measures to assure that that will never happen during one of his cat naps again.

I was just clicking my fingers so ferociously to the introduction to "L.A. Woman," by The Doors, that I woke my oldest dog up. Oldest dog places himself near me, nearly at my feet, not so much out of love, but because that is the best vantage point that he can get to the kitchen. This dog does not miss a beat, when it comes to the kitchen. Whether you are preparing food for yourself, for him, for the other dog or for the cat, older dog is down and digging on the scene.

Oldest dog's name is Javi and he has these soulful brown eyes that don't so much beg for grub as hypnotize you into giving him an extra dog treat here and there throughout the day.
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Dude next door is dealing bags; I'm convinced of it. I can hear his door get knocked on, open and bang shut all day long and way into the wee hours of the night. Cars pull up. People knock on the door and enter. Many come right back out; many stay about the time that it takes to smoke a joint. Cars pull out. None of this would piss me off(I think that pot should be legal and thus someone would and should have to sell it) except that his customers park right in front of my house, good ole apartment number 17, and take my parking space. I live here. I pay rent. And I can't get a parking space anywhere near my front door nearly three quarters of the time.

I thought about dropping a dime, but I don't really want to do that. I thought about grabbing a can of spray paint, and tagging his door with "A DRUG DEALER LIVES HERE." I've thought about this and all kinds of other things to try to get this and other neighbors to conform to my expectations of what is neighborly and what is not. Why won't people do what I want them to? Why won't the world conform to my expectations? Who died and made me King?

Suppose I drop a dime and dude shoots my kid.? Suppose I spray paint his door and the landlord evicts ME and I get arrested for vandalism?

Live and let live; ehhhhhhhhhhhhh?

Like Lee Ving, of the band Fear, screamed in one of his songs, most raucous and wonderful punk rock songs, "I LOOOOOOOOOOOVE LIVIN' IN THE CITY!!"

Girlfriend headed out of town to California for two weeks, about an hour ago. Before she left, she left two Easter baskets on my daughter's desk; one for my daughter and one for me. When I kissed her goodbye, she said, "I smell peanut butter cup on your breath; you been in your Easter basket, already..." I lied and said, "No, I haven't. That is the smell from the pancakes that I had for breakfast this morning." We both laughed.

When I got home from dropping my gal at the crowded airport, I went straight to my Easter basket. Before she left the house, girlfriend had been stuffing money in brightly colored plastic eggs and sticking them in my daughter''s basket and I wanted to see if she had put any money in mine. She hadn't.

I'm not a Christian. I don't buy the myths. I think that they were promulgated to subjagate, dominate and tax in the name of the Lord. But I dig chocolate Easter bunnies, though, and peanut butter cups and the act of handing a basket full of goodies to a kid and watching the kid smile.

That's what God wants: smiling kids, not a bunch of rules and regulations handed down from some old men in weird robes who run back to the church and hide with their money when it is learned that abstaining from sex has created a bunch of child molestors within their ranks.

Happy Easter.

This poison pet food thing really sucks. I just heard on the radio that pet snacks are now suspect, as well as wet and dry food. The thing to do, said some vet, who also said that the most important thing to do was to get your pet into the vet, was to check for wheat gluten from China. He said that if the wheat gluten in your pets snacks, wet and dry food was from the US then you were ok; your pets weren't in danger of kidney damage. He also said that one of the signs of kidney damage was if your animal was drinking a lot of water.

I drink a lot of water.

I have kidney damage; but no I haven't been eating my pets' food. My kidney damage is either from diabetes or the use of lithium to combat this little bipolar thing that I have going. The Doctor put me on some sort of pill for the kidney damage. I'm not sure if the pill is supposed to arrest the process of kidney disintegration or halt it. Often, I just do what my Doctor says, because I trust her; and I don't trust many doctors. Do most kids go to med school to save lives, to promote health or to make a good living?

My insurance said that they would not pay for the drug that was supposed to help my kidneys. I wonder if they in in cahoots with the wheat gluten makers in China?

This morning, moments ago, as I looked in on love, who was still sleeping, while I was pounding the typewriter keys, in pursuit of the perfect poem, the perfect journal entree, I thought that maybe she and I could fill the John and Yoko "all you need is love" void that was created when John was shot. Yes, I thought, me and my gal could be the new champions for love. We could be the new champions for great relationships and relations amongst men. We could be the new champions for peace and love in the world.

Stop.

I don't want to champion anything. I don't want to show anyone how to do anything. I don't want to tell anyone how to live. I just want to live in peace and quiet. I just want to live in love.
You do your thing, mate; I'll do mine. Let's just respect each other and not step on each other's toes or fuck each other's girlfriends or steal an election and then fuck the nation over.

Dig?

Cynthia B. and I went to Helen, Georgia to have dinner, last night. The drive was pleasant. Girlfriend let me listen to some tunes. (She sometimes would rather that we chat when we drive.) I didn't hit the button for Mastodon; I played these best of the '70's cds that girlfriend had laying around her house. The first song to play was, "More Than A Feeling," by the band Boston. It is funny that after all the times that FM radio has played this song in my cars, over the years, that I can still listen to this song and enjoy it. It is sad to think that the singer of this band is no longer with us.

"Smoking In The Boys Room," by Brownsville Station was one of the next songs to play. I, still, really dig this song, also, but think it funny that when the character in this song, a high school student, gets stressed out, he heads to the school bathroom to have a smoke. Getting busted for smoking in the high school bathroom is pretty much a high stressor itself; don't you think?

When we pulled into the parking lot, there was this sign that said, "Parking Three Dollars, Pay At The Store Across The Street."

Girlfriend said, "I don't see anyone else paying," but I have seen all kind of parking scams, over the years, where you come back to your car and there is a big metal boot on one of your tires, so I grabbed two dollar bills and four quarters out of the spare change compartment in the car and headed across the street. The guy who took my money handed me a ticket and I said, "should I put this on the dashboard?"

He said, "That won't be neccessary," so girlfriend was right. The parking lot was based on some sort of honors code, where suckers like me, from the city, who had seen many a car towed for not putting money in the parking box at the lot, got beat.

Girlfriend said, "See, I told you so."

Why are women always right?

We got the killer table right by the river. What a view. Water rushed over rocks on the way to the bottom of the beautiful mountain that we were perched on. The hostess was an old grump, though. Back when I was in the restaurant business, they always told me that the host or hostess might be holding down the most important job in the joint, because they were the guests first impression of the establishment; bitch was foretelling evil.

Two couples came up behind us, looking for a table on the water. Dude was drunk, I guess; he kept asking one of the waitresses who had wandered up to the hostess station if she could sing. I guess that he thought that he was funny. Later in the evening, I had to wait for longer than I should have to piss, outside a locked men's room door; when it opened, it was dude and his lady leaving the head. Dude said something to me that was, I guess, supposed to be clever, leaving me to wonder if his lady had just sucked his dick in the filthy bathroom or maybe she was a golden shower freak and he had pissed all over her, before they returned to dinner.

Dinner sucked. We were at a tavern or more aptly a big ole bar and we were eating bar food. Huge margaritas and many pitchers of beer kept coming out of the kitchen. A couple pulled up beside us, at one point in the meal and started lustingly fondling each other before they got their table. I am all down with peace and love, baby, but I've never been into porn and I certainly don't want to watch it live over my bratwurst and sauerkraut.

It sounds like I'm bitching about my dinner, doesn't it? Well, I'm not. Though the food sucked and a couple of the patrons were one toke over the line, baby, the night was beautiful. Girlfriend looked lovely. I wanted to take her into the bathroom and...