Monday

Reaction to my having posted my photo is pouring in and it has been totally positive. Comments are up an astounding 150% over my daily average of two. Anonymous, one of my favorite commenters, said that he or she was surprised that I am younger, thinner and less slovenly than he or she imagined. His or her exact words were, "I pictured you as fat and old(er). (Oh, and slovenly.)" Same thing. A guy always enjoys a compliment. I know that I vowed not to work, but I have been toying with the idea of asking for a part time job at garden center near my house. I almost asked the manager when I was in there this morning, but I was kind of afraid that he might say yes. This place is a huge operation with a lot of employees. It is one of those places that people really want to work at. Speaking of working, I haven't mentioned our youngest son lately. The guy that I refer to as Cletus. Cletus called me a couple of weeks ago to tell me that he had been fired from the job that he has had for a number of months now. Cletus has kind of a niche career field. He is a lot man and mechanic for shady car lots. The buy-here, pay-here, weekly payment joints. He gets fired from one and seems to find the next one pretty quickly. You can never get a straight story out of Cletus, but according to him it is never his fault that he gets fired. The boy is a victim of bad luck. Over and over again, nothing but bad breaks. According to Cletus the latest firing involved a car battery and an unhappy customer. The manger blamed him for the unhappy customer and the rest is history. Within a week he had landed another gig at an equally shady car lot on the south side of town. Unfortunately, about the same time, he also lost his apartment, a hole-in-the-wall he was sharing with another miscreant. Cletus has been evicted, asked to move or skipped out of every apartment that he has ever had. Every one. He has never left an apartment or a house on good terms. But it is never his fault, he has had the misfortune of meeting a string of crappy landlords. When it wasn't the landlords, it was his roommates that caused the trouble. As astonishing as it might seem, he left the last two places he was living because his roommates were bringing undesirable people home. That is Cletus-speak for he didn't pay the rent and got kicked out. So, I wasn't a bit surprised when I heard from him a few nights ago. He wanted to come over and spend the night here. He claims to have been staying in a fleabag motel since he left or was kicked out of his last flophouse, uh, I mean left his last apartment rather than associate with undesirables. He said that he was out of money and needed a place for the night. The last time we took Cletus in under these circumstances, we couldn't get him to leave. He stayed about eight months and paid no rent. As it turned out our free living arrangement allowed him to devote all his money to his drug use. We practically had to call for the jaws of life to get him out. I had to tell him that he couldn't stay here, even for one night, even if he promised to leave, even if he wouldn't be a pain-in-the-ass. Last night he called wanting me to give him forty bucks. Forty bucks is Cletus-speak for drug money, although he claimed it was to pay for a night in the roach motel. We got into a heated discussion about his inability to live like a real citizen. According to Cletus, he is doing just fine. Except for having no home and calling his father for money. It bothers me to be put in a position where I have to tell him no. I wish he wouldn't ask. Actually, I wish he would disappear. Of course, this is exactly why he asks me and not his mother. He knows that I am the easier mark. Things in this blog represented to be fact, may or may not actually be true. The writer is frequently wrong, sometimes just full of it, but always judgmental and cranky