not the dog and the butterfly

Okay. Here I am. There's no one else here. I'd almost like to say that it's eerily quiet, but I can't because of the washing machine noisily going through it's routine.

Chaco and Meego both started school yesterday and that pretty much went off without a hitch. I soon noticed that Chaco had forgotten his lunch. It's like getting the first dent in a new car, might as well get the first forgotten lunch out of the way for the school year.

Normally, I'd just let him suffer the consequences, but since Wolfgang was home and I was taking China out for a walk anyway, I decided we'd walk to the high school and bring Chaco his lunch. Wolfgang could keep China occupied outside.

So we walk over there, me toting the lunch. I enter the building and approach the office. There's some ladies - "staff" - in there shooting the breeze. I walk in and they look at me expectantly like, "what the hell? it's the first day of school..." I set the lunch on the counter and explain that it was forgotten and I'm just dropping it off.

"Oh, well, there's a free barbecue today", the woman behind the desk says. Oh yeah, I vaguely remember something about a freshman barbecue. So I'm all thinking, crap, I just carried this lunch here for nothing.

"We'll get the lunch to him if you don't want him to have the barbecue", The Crackhead continues. I say, "The Crackhead" because I realized that the woman I was speaking with is "The Crackhead" that some neighbors mentioned at one of our neighborhood block parties over the summer. A few neighbors have either been students at this high school or have had children as students there, and this office woman is affectionately known as "The Crackhead". She'd been mentioned in a strictly just-a-few-things-to-be-aware-of-at-that-school kind of way.

I stand there in a moment of stupor, then I reply, "No, that's okay. He can eat the barbecue", and I'm on my way again, having met The Crackhead and still carrying the blasted lunch.

Outside, I look for Wolfgang and China, but all that's there are these groundskeeper guys with their gas powered groundskeeper tools. Now, China, our dog is sweet, but a bit mental. We're pretty sure she had a rough childhood that we've surmised involved a man or men and loud noises in evil combination. She doesn't like men. She doesn't like loud noises.

Men walking around with gas powered groundskeeper equipment throw her into PTSD.

I locate them in a remote spot. "China was freaking out from the weedwackers", Wolfgang says, not that I hadn't figured it out.

We turn around and walk back home. China all too happy to be out of there, and me still toting that lunch. We counted nearly 50 stinkbugs on our walk.

I'm hoping that's a sign of something good?
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