My Robot Is Pregnant theme song!

photo posted from my iPhone

Went out to the country to see Rusty yesterday. Big hay delivery and wood’s blocked up and seasoning. Got a bucket for a Massey Ferguson out there with a for sale sign on it. In the desert you sell shade, there’s always a market where ever you go.

I sat down at the folding table inside Rusty’s office, he draped a blue terrycloth towel over it years ago as a table cloth. Never once washed it since. The nap is beaten down and gives my forearms the impression they’ve stuck to it, but they haven’t. He needs some bills written out, and there on the notebook of blank invoices and the matching duplicates, white yellow white yellow, are a pair of tweezers, nail clippers and a dental tool you pick up in a little box by the register at the hardware store.

Normally I find used Q-tips while doing his billing. I’ll move a pile of receipts and I gag slightly when the crudded up thing appears, both ends black with general grime and a chunk of burnt orange wax dangling off.

“Rus!” I yell. He does a shuffling laugh and picks it up, then puts it back in his ear and twiddles it around while he thinks about numbers or the address of the next bill.

This time the stainless steel tools are right on top and he says, “Let me move those for you. I had a couple ah’ dingle berries I was trying to get out,” as he scoops them up and walks back into his quarters.

I snap on the desk lamp and adjust the folding chair. It ain’t easy gettin’ old.