Cincinnati Crumbling Chimneys

The chimney is crumbling, I have to fix the chimney. Every day another two or three bricks fall off of it and into the yard or down the flue into the fireplace. I shouldn't say "two or three bricks," because this suggests that there are whole bricks falling off, when really it's just crumbling, like bread--it's falling apart in crumbs.

The other day the cat was in the chimney and was nearly crushed by a particularly large crumble falling down the flue. The cat jumped up and down several times, with all its hair sticking up and screeching like crazy before it finally had the sense to run off. The wife was furious--when was I finally going to fix the chimney, was I waiting for the cat to get killed before I finally got the initiative to finally fix the chimney? I asked what the hell the cat was doing in the fireplace anyway, but that was, apparently, "immaterial." I said it was very material, since since we knew the chimney was falling apart, why were we letting the cat anywhere near it. The wife said it wouldn't be a problem if I fixed the chimney, whereas the chimney would still be a problem regardless of whether we let the cat anywhere near the fireplace. I turned up the volume on the TV.

This is my son. He has a pet turtle named Numbers. This is my son. He enjoys riding his bicycle around in the grass.

They tease the boy, I know. I hear it, when I'm working out in the yard. They make him say the word "hamburger" because they swear he says it funny, even though to my ears he says it just fine. Sometimes you want to run down there (to the cul-de-sac, where they're usually playing basketball or whatever) and slap 'em around, you know, show 'em what's what. But that passes. The boy has a social circle, that's something to be thankful for. At dinner he calls them his friends. At dinner he never eats more than a couple bites of his salad before he asks to be excused.

This is the kitchen. It is colored yellow. The color was picked out by my wife. Her favorite color is yellow. She picked out all the colors. That's why all the rooms are yellow, and the doors are yellow, and the siding (vinyl, you'd never know it) is yellow, and all the furniture is yellow, and all the curtains are yellow, and there is yellow paint smeared on all the windows, although we didn't want to cover those completely.

I built this house myself, with my own two hands. In a way, I did, because I hired the contractors myself--I interviewed several and chose the one I felt best represented what I was looking for in the contractor who would build our house. The contractor was a gentleman who was a schoolteacher by trade who was pretending to be a contractor so that he could rob the houses of the families who contracted him. He was upfront about this in the interview, and I respected his honesty. Ultimately I only picked him because he was reasonably priced and I liked an idea he had for the back deck, and my first choice dropped out. I watched him constantly to make sure he didn't rob us. He made away with nothing more than yards and yards of copper wire.

This is my son. If he could, my son would only eat caramel candies. This is my son; he spent his allowance money on a rock tumbler. This is my son; he went to the petting zoo and cried and wouldn't tell anyone why.

I had a dream one night a burglar had broken into our house and was roughing up my wife. I pretended to sleep (in the dream). My wife was screaming for help, of course, so I pretended to be snoring. Then the burglar pulled her by her hair into the boy's room and roughed up the two of them for a little bit. I pretended to sleep until I heard him leave. Then I ran into the boy's room and found them there, all roughed up, and comforted them as best I could, and they were grateful for it.

After the dream I went into the boy's room to check on him. He looked very unhappy, sleeping there, so I woke him up. We turned on his rock tumbler and the two of us and Numbers listened to the rocks crashing into the sides of its cheap plastic drum until morning.