So you know about Eliot and the very expensivce girl.  And there’s the guy in Detroit, and the one in Newark, and, of course, the naked cop in Tehran.  There was also Jim McGreevy, remember him?  The New Jersey governor who was giving his boyfriends cushy jobs.  Now Teddy Pederson’s come forth.  Who’s Teddy Pederson?  Why, Teddy is the guy who did three-ways with Mr. and Mrs. Jim McGreevy. 

Sheesh.  A. started off this whole sordid day with a penis passing itself off as scissors.  Good gracious, what’s next.   

I’ve moved to the living room now, which is not where I planned to work today, but Tony’s coming and I can’t hear him when I’m out back and I didn’t want to just wait, lingering, with nothing to do, so I brought it all – PC, Dumas, Yates, the whole thing.  And picking up Yates again, it hits me what I’ve known all along but haven’t done — The Good Wife must tell it from Howard’s view as well.  Right now it is, for the most part, Ellen’s tale, and the protracted trials and small insults that are her life, but Howard must have his voice, too.  He has also suffered the wearying trivial routine, the day-after-day that tries a man’s soul, makes his back hurt.

I just moments ago returned from the back room.  I ran there to hide because I saw the church girls with notebooks at the door across the street — it was unnecessary, they never came.  Perhaps they saw me run, or maybe they skipped me and went to Ned’s.  Or Ty’s.  Is it Ned and Ty?  They’re our nice-enough neighbors around the corner, last house on the dead end.  Though they run a rental on our other side that leaks trash and front-porch tv screens and sometimes old gutted cars.  We’d prefer it wasn’t there, but it is, and the irritation it creates has caused me to insult them (Ned and Ty), I think, twice. 

First I didn’t invite them at Christmas.  Then I stopped either Ned or Ty outside recently and was snide about the new renters.  He seemed impatient. 

Since then, the renters have scrammed.  In the middle of the night leaving bicycles and shoes on the porch and it’s haunted me. I behaved poorly.  I sneered at them, I talked behind their backs, I picked their trash up off the lawn and then glared at them when they cursed too loud.  But who am I?  It’s well-known that I sometimes curse loud and I leave all sorts of things around the house in places they don’t belong.

I should photograph the bikes and the shoes to show you.  You’ll be disappointed in me.  I should have brought them a cake instead of worrying about the trash. 

That all seems to have little to do with Ned (or Howard and Ellen, for that matter) except that when I think of Ned or his house, which I did when the church girls disappeared, I think of how I behaved to the neighbors and how they left in the night without their shoes. 

A number of things have happened and it’s not even 9:00.  First, A. has sent me a penis.  Not a real one, just a picture, and not a photo, it was drawn, and not by him.  Also, in A.’s defense, the artist intended for the penis to be scissors.  Still.  Inappropriate for a Monday, don’t you think?  I’m going to tell his mother. 

Second, Scruffy has developed an insatiable taste for underwear.  We knew that it lurked but it used to be infrequent.  Now three pair in shreds since yesterday, I’m not telling whose.  Just please don’t bring underwear to Bills Street, it isn’t safe.

I had minestrone today for breakfast because minestrone is in abundance, I have it coming out the walls.  It was for soup club and I must’ve had it in my head there were 20 of us instead of three.  If 17 of you would like to come for soup, please do.  (But remember, no underwear.)

My thoughts are completely out of order.  Before the minestrone, for instance, I went looking for Revolutionary Road.  I have a battered paper copy and refer to it occasionally, to keep myself on track.  (I sometimes refer to The Good Wife, as you may recall, as “Revolutionary Road with sight gags.”  It’s my pitch.  Sincere apologies Mr. Yates, just trying to make a buck.) 

Anyway, before I found it, I glimpsed Dumas on Food a wonderful little book I picked up at the beach.  Dumas on Food made me think of minestrone, which led to my breakfast.  It also made me think of someone either in real life or on TV once pronouncing Dumas as ”Dumb-ass.”  I’m picturing a character on Friends or Anna though I’m sure it was neither. 

Two more things and then I’ll go.  Tony is coming around 10, to pick up a check.  Tony did the built-ins in the study but you don’t need to remember it, there won’t be a quiz.  I’m a bit peeved, though, about his coming at 10 because it will interrupt my work.  Which I don’t like to do.  Which I am sensitive about.  But that’s not the “two more things” they’re just related to it.  Here they are: 

1.  I couldn’t find the checks.  A. has moved them to his drawer in the built-in.  (We each have a drawer, there are four.)  I knew this but for so long I’ve been going to the messy drawer in the kitchen for checks that it’s automatic.  Now I had to consciously think of where the checks are and I don’t like to do that either. 

2.  I don’t ever want my laptop cord put through the little hole in the top of the desk again.  I realize the hole is made for that but I need to feel free and loose with my computer.  I need to know I can leave whenever I like and when the cord is dropped and looped through holes and cabinets and hidden away and not easy to get out, I feel trapped.  My creativity suffers and real things like kitchen ants and animal waste creep into the picture and foul my mood.

There it is.  My Monday before nine.

Here is some book copy from Rev Road:

“It’s the story of Frank and April Wheeler, a bright, beautiful, and talented couple who have lived on the assumption that greatness is only just around the corner.  With heartbreaking conpasion and remorseless clarity, Richard Yates shows how Frank and April mortgage their spiritual birthright, betraying not only each other, but their best selves.” 

[Pictures courtesy of the Lisa Hakesley's brilliant mind, see more here.]

 … And you, too, Al.  Happy Birthday.

Anna has baby goats. They just popped out, four of them. Craig found them when he put out the hay.  How many of you have baby goats running around you didn’t know about?

Life is elsewhere.

Send a Pi Day greeting card, here. Listen to a pi song here. Compose your own pi song here.  Hear a guy reading pi in French, here.

I find pricey hookers dull compared to a woman who sits in her bathroom for two years.  Nothing personal, Eliot, but your story’s old as dirt.  However.  A woman who sits on the toilet seat so long her skin grows around it?  That’s new. 

The NYTimes “Laugh Lines” blog links to Woody Allen’s 1970s short story “The Whore of Mensa.”  It’s about a joy buzzer mechanic who pays women to talk smarty to him. 

He was one of those guys whose weakness was really bright women.  I felt sorry for the poor sap.

“Now she’s threatening to tell my wife,” he said.

“Who is?”

“Flossie.  They bugged the motel room.  They got tapes of me discussing The Waste Land and Styles of Radical Will, and well, really getting into some issues.  They want ten grand or they go to Carla.”

[Watch the YouTube clip, here.]

Flies who fly in a square.  Have you seen them?  Perhaps they only live here.  They sneak in unannounced, pick the biggest room, fly in sharp quiet squares.  Right angles, all day long.  They don’t land, there’s no squashing them, it’s harrowing. 

A. peppered me with hostile questioning this morning, before 6.  And then was aloof.  If you’d like to scold him, send it here.

Do you still like jazz?
I think you do.
I don’t know why.
Buncha cats with all their notes.  Nonsense.

Play certain notes.
Be selective.
Don’t just play any stupid note.

Lazy jazz cats with their heroin tracks and same-sounding songs.
Harumph. 

Arizona clamps down on hugs.  Oregon starts health insurance lottery.  Mars is having an avalanche.

In local news: Chiquita is scratching the couch, the floor’s dusty again and I might take a shower.  Also, a spider just crawled by.

All right Rene, back to you.

(There is no Rene.)