Wordjanitor Strikes Again

Sometimes you can't do the things you're supposed to do. I was supposed to go to a memorial for a friend today. I couldn't. They're adding up. It would have been the fourth such gathering this year. Maybe that's not a lot, but it's enough for me right now. I'm tired of loss and focusing on loss. Real loss, impending loss, potential loss, metaphorical loss. There's a lot of it swirling around, near and far. I started running out of words. OK, I had words, but more often than not, they started resembling an unpunctuated string of cursing. I was running out of coherent sentences and paragraphs. I couldn't find them.

My dad has a plain ol' farm gate at the end of his driveway. It's the gate that comes right after the END OF ROAD sign. It's the gate that has a NO TRESPASSING sign on one post and PRIVATE PROPERTY painted boldly on a watering can attached to the other. It's the gate people drive through and find themselves sitting in front of his garage asking themselves, "what happened to the road?" If I happen to be there, there are also two large dogs barking at them while they attempt to figure out how their sign-blindness or illiteracy allowed them to drive to such lengths. I find myself in what I have officially labeled my "mid-life craft crisis." Fear not, I am not going to the dark side and diving into the cult of scrap-booking. Exacto knives, stickers, and such don't have the right potential for injury. I'm buying tools. I'm looking into welding classes.