It’s a real stuffed leopard. Some people will pawn anything. This is up on Davie Blvd in Ft. Lauderdale. Obviously done by an expert taxidermist, it is a real beauty. I didn’t ask the price. I decided not to surprise Pudding-Tat.
Brainiac over here decides the local Sudoku isn’t challenging enough. So I buy this booklet of super-tough puzzles. They are. Sounds exciting? It rained all day so I puttered around the house with Pudding-Tat keeping an eye on everything. Reading? I’m doing the occasional chapter of “The Way of All Flesh”, another of those slow-moving opiates most recommended elementary school teachers and nobody else.I also tore apart the snack dispenser, which is one of those weird models where the product drops at the back of the coil rather than the front where you can see it. What do you expect for a hundred bucks? Made in China. Everything that can be made to work is ready. I have two broken coin mechs.
Uncovered in the shelving is a new set of records from 2003. I’m publishing them here, even though my style when I’m working tends to mention work things. Hey, I’ve often warned people that is what having a job does to you. I’m also (slowly) scanning the thousands of pictures we all have a half-trunk full of. (Note, the bad grammar in sentences like the last one is intentional.) Most photos are going on the Internet. Nobody has looked at them in years, so they hit the airwaves soon. I plainly was not that great with a film camera.
You’ve heard me mention Judy Mintie, the first girl I was ever truly in love with? Part of the problem is I didn’t know it until it was too late. For example, I didn’t know that lovers squawk at each other once in a while, until later I was to have one that didn't squawk. Instead, I thought she purposely refused to see things my way and would [see things my way] if she really loved me. But hey, I was what, nineteen? There is hardly a week goes by that I don’t remember her. We broke up just after I turned twenty-one and she married within six months. And divorced in another six, or something like that.
One of the things we squabbled over was money. She had lots, I had none. However, what I had, I worked for and viewed it differently. Her daddy was rich and she tended to see treating or spending money on anything as incurring a debt to be repaid. The extreme example was when we traveled to visit her parents, she wanted to be rewarded with a marriage proposal. I never understood this until I talked to her father, hoo boy!
On the other hand, I tend to view visiting parents, or going to dinner, and so on, as little more than doing just that. No hidden meanings. When I spend money, it is on necessities or a good time. I am quite capable of going on a date without it meaning anything more than going on a date. We had coffee means we had coffee, nothing else. The women who lasted with me understood this without discussion. The amount of money (or time) spent together is not, to me, a measure of anything. Unless you start wasting it. Good companionship is more important that romantic progress.There are very few pictures of Judy during our time, maybe four in total. That is only because she didn’t have a camera and I was too poor in my teens to operate (as in buy and develop film) such things. Here is her photo taken outside Missoula, Montana. This was developed years after we split, I didn’t know I had it. I remember that pink bikini well. Quite user-friendly.
Believe my word, the stuffed leopard is easier on your heart than Judith A. Mintie ever was, for I still miss her. At least I think I do because I think about her every other day.
[Author's note 2015-10-07: this is one of the reasons, years later, I tend to be so picky about who I take up with. Once I fall in love, I tend to stay in love. Simple as that. The last thing I need is another Judy.]
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