1. Get lost three times on way to car dealer, who has blades, unlike every gas station in 20-mile radius.

2. Park.
3. When spare parts man asks what year the car is (you were proud you remembered the make) say, “eh, not sure.” In response to funny look: “It’s my wife’s car.”
4. “Where’s it parked?” he asks. Point it out. Notice you’ve parked wrong, and in an absurd place, as if you were on drugs. You’re not. That’s the problem: you’re not on drugs. It’s seven in the morning and no coffee yet.
5. He changes blades. Pay and leave.
6. Drink coffee.
7. Blog.
8. Walk kid to school.
9. Go into town with wife, to shop for clothes and Japanese food and maybe look at a hotel or two for upcoming visitors. If there is time. And it’s not raining too hard.

Humor, the really good kind, has been thin on the ground here lately, I realize that. So you will understand my sigh of relief when my turtle woke up a few days ago. Funny turtle posts are just a matter of time.

Nothing funnier than a turtle, is there.

She’ll do something funny soon, and I’ll post it immediately.

Even without the humor aspect, I’m always relieved when she emerges from hibernation, because not being accustomed to pets that hibernate, I’m never really convinced she’s not dead only sleeping.

She’s still not firing on all cylinders yet, so she’s still moping around being serious. But it’s only a matter of time.

“She”, I say. I’m just guessing. We read in the turtle book that you could sex them by looking at the shape of the shell around their tail. Her’s is distinctly female-shaped.

She was eating a little today. Lettuce and turtle sausages, little pellet things. So it may be a while before that works its way thru her system and she defecates and walks in it and the kitchen floor looks like something by Jackson Pollack.

She was definitely more alert today, though, than yesterday.

Day before yesterday, it was warm so they put her outside and then couldn’t find her, although she was in her habitat. That’s escape-proof, man, I made sure of that. But they went out for her (it was after dark) and couldn’t find her. Called me at *work* to report it, as if I could do anything.

They thought she’d burrowed down. She was hiding behind her birdhouse when I looked for her the next morning.

Is that funny? Not especially…

Just wait, though.

Lambs, I mean.

When I was young you knew who was special because they had the special haircut and wore the special outfit. Not like now, where sitting in traffic I have to wonder whether the young man bopping down the sidewalk singing inanely to his Walkman is brain-damaged, has severe mental retardation, a mild learning disability or is just a fucking dork. Or is maybe cool, and that’s the way cool guys maybe dress now.

When I was young all the Downs Syndrome sufferers, and the fellow who’d suffered oxygen deprivation during birth and stood outside the supermarket drinking Nehi orange pop all day and reciting the weather report at great speed, and without interruption, and the mental hospital outpatients all went to the local Barber College to get their hair cut.

This I know for a fact because I saw them there when my mother took me in for my haircuts.

So, you knew. When someone struck up a conversation with you in the street, or on the bus, or waiting in line somewhere, one look at his haircut and you knew not to be shocked when he started petting your hair or reciting average daily temperatures day-by-day back into the fifties.

You may recall the look. More or less what you expect Dick Cheney dressed like as a kid, back before he discovered patriotism and his company started bilking the military out of billions of dollars.

Now, my cousin who has Downs is the best-dressed guy in the family.