Stuck in Kudzu Country, Dreaming of Lei Country

Badger and I headed over to the school this morning.
We thought the yard sale would be in the little gym or maybe the cafeteria, but instead it was set up in the big gym.
That meant a longer walk than we expected and more traffic than we cared to deal with.
The building isn’t connected to the main school, so we had to hike up the hill to reach it.
It sits right on the highway.
They had plenty of stuff, but Badger glanced once and said, “Forget it.”
It was mostly kids’ clothes and toys, and she didn’t even want to bother digging through them.

Heading home, we slipped past the PTO crew and took the steps to the main building, dodging the hill and the traffic

When I got home, Cowboy was awake with his phone in hand.
As soon as I walked in, he said, “You walk too slow,” and rattled off a number. 
According to him, I was moving at about 20 steps a minute, slow as molasses.

The tables turned, and he was tracking me with my own app. 
I’d put it on our phones to keep track of Cowboy, just to make sure he didn’t drive off the road and hit the river. 
With his age, vision, and long shifts, I worry about his driving. 
The stretch of road he drives at night is very dark, shaded by kudzu‑covered trees. 
The river runs from where you turn off for home all the way to the abandoned house you reach by crossing a tiny bridge, where the streetlights finally kick on.

Badger went to her room.
I sat down at my computer.
Cowboy ate breakfast, put the weed‑trimmer battery on to charge, and then dozed off

The morning crawled by.

The quiet broke when Badger rushed out of her room, arms full of bedding.
She snapped the crate back together and plopped a very bewildered Smudge inside.
Smudgey’s still mending from her dental work.
There’s a slow ooze, nothing scary, just messy.
One tooth was difficult, so healing will take time.
Cats aren’t like people; you can’t tell them to bite down on gauze and keep it there.
So she stays crated another week while we hope things settle.

Cowboy finally woke up, grabbed the new mailbox, and headed out to the car.
I stepped onto the porch and asked if he was heading out.
He grumbled under his breath, and I reminded him that without me and the receipt, he and the mailbox were no good.

I called out to Badger that we were leaving, and we headed back to Lowe’s.
The first mailbox was too long, jutting too far into the road.
Returning it was easy, and Cowboy picked out a smaller one.
It’s only a touch bigger than the original box, but maybe the books won’t get jammed in so tight.
At least we remembered the stencil and paint this time.
Our last stop was Walmart for worms.

Since tomorrow is Cowboy’s church homecoming and there’s no evening service, I figure he’ll be heading to the river.

We got home, and Cowboy opened the new mailbox, carried it to the road, and checked that it fit.
Then he covered it with newspaper, taped down the letters, and took it to the carport driveway to spray‑paint it.
When Cowboy does a job, it looks like a professional did it.
He’s probably been doing the same thing at the plant for the last 40 years.

We picked up orange spray paint.
I told Cowboy I was done with stick‑on numbers falling off and done fighting with the post office.
If my address is in neon orange, with my last name a foot high in neon orange, don’t tell me it’s not your fault my mail gets delivered to the wrong house.

I went out after he got it up and noticed he’d replaced the duck.
We’ve never figured out where those ducks came from or why.
One day they just appeared, and ours is the only row of mailboxes that got them.
Badger swears I’ve griped to the post office so often they’ve branded our box with ducks.
If that’s their warning to the mail carriers, well, duck on.

The mail’s getting better these days.
Maybe they just got worn out from me calling every other day to complain.
Still, it’s ridiculous to drop off a letter meant for Judy Jones at Candle Street at Jane Doe’s house on Marble Street.
And then keep shoving that same letter in all week, no matter how many times you’ve been told it’s wrong.
Sometimes they’d even leave my mail at the clearly abandoned house down the street, and the house number wasn’t even close to mine.
The place was half torn apart for remodeling, with boards over the windows and piles of construction junk in the yard. 
You didn’t need good eyes to see nobody lived there.
What really sent me calling to yell at them was when they delivered a box of medical supplies, and I hauled that box back to the post office four times, telling them it was sent to the wrong house.
And still, they delivered it again.
That time, I just walked it to the darn person myself.
Luckily, Cowboy goes to church with them, and they were only three streets over.

When he finished with the mailbox, he stenciled the address onto the carport, giving us our number back where the stickers had peeled away.
The trouble is, orange doesn’t stand out much against a rust‑red, barn‑red carport.
Eh, If you squint, you can see it.

One of the post office’s excuses was that our address wasn’t clear.
Well, don’t get an old country boy mad.
We already had our number on the house and the mailbox.
But Cowboy went out, made a giant metal sign, and in humongous letters put our name and address.
Then he bolted it above the porch, big enough to see from the road, plain as day.

We’ve added bright orange to the mix now.
If they still can’t tell which house is ours, they’re either blind, can’t read, or just plain ornery.

Once that job was finished, Cowboy put up the new motion detector light.
He didn’t put it on the she-shed; he mounted it on Heron’s RV.
Well, technically, on the post that holds up the roof over the RV.
Badger and I went out after dark to check it.
Heron’s at work, and of course, he won’t know about the new motion detector until he gets home after midnight.
It’s going to catch him off guard: it clicks, blinks red, and then blasts a bright white light across the whole yard.
It lights up the little stretch between my she-shed and Cowboy’s old tool shed.
He’s in for a surprise, but it should make it safer for him to get home at night.

Badger and I are still wondering what Cowboy ran into out there around 2 a.m.
I’ve always been afraid of something slithering out of that dark tool shed myself.
Then again, maybe Cowboy just couldn’t see well in the dark. 
He might’ve run into the RV without even realizing it.

Badger braved the mosquitoes, took the dogs, and stayed outside with her dad until dark.
We need to either sell the stock tank pool or flip it over so it won’t hold water.
That thing is breeding mosquitoes.
We didn’t use it at all this year, and barely used it last year, so I say sell it before it rusts out.

Me?
 Go outside? 
Are you nuts?
I stayed in with a book, the TV, and the computer.
According to Badger, my freckles are perfect bullseyes for every mosquito in the county.

I think we’re all settled back in the house now, and I’m heading back to my Hawaii real estate.
Look, I’ll never leave the state of Tennessee.
I may as well experience paradise through HGTV.
I can pretend I feel the waves lapping at my toes and smell plumeria blossoms.