Notes from the Edge 25

Posted 10-27-2013

Never say never. Of course I did last week. I said last week would be the last of full time carpenter and I would be back to full time writer. Remember all those little things I said would take ten minutes? And then I did them and they took ten hours? Well, there were dozens more.

Moldings, door trim, lock sets, cat choking, switch-outlet-speaker connection cover plates (Those I put in a bag and put them somewhere where I would not forget them or lose them, and of course I lost and forgot them so it took a few hours to find them). No cats were actually choked, but the cats went tearing around on the laminate floors, chasing each other and boy were they surprised when they went to put the brakes on, and I felt like choking them at first, but then I was laughing too hard.

Shower doors, medicine cabinet, window cleaning, curtain hanging.( A word about curtain hanging. My mother bought all new curtains so I had to install curtain, drape and blind holders for every window. And I had decided on frame-less window openings, so the edges were all wrapped in metal, which is then finished into the drywall. That stops the drywall breaking down, chipping, etc.. What that means to curtain installation is that I had to pre drill every hole. Two days, between deciding on placement, drilling, mounting, getting the correct blinds. $#@*.

On Tuesday I decided to pour Coke on my keyboard. It was day two of the Great Curtain Hanging and I had opened the Coke, sat down to check emails, and my hand rebelled and poured half the can into the keyboard. #@$*, I said. I actually watched my hand rebel and do the deed, mouth open, other hand, fingers extended to type, frozen above the now soaked keys. The mouse cursor started jumping all over the screen, multiple versions of Google Chrome opened up and then everything crashed. A few minutes later I tipped the keyboard, smacked it against the desktop a few times to get the majority of the Coke out of it (it was diet Coke. I think that made the damage lighter somehow), cleaned up the puddle and rebooted. It worked fine.

So, back to curtains, then outlet covers, caulking, 32″ sliding doors on a 48″ shower. The sliding doors looked great. But was pretty sure my elderly mother was not gong to squeeze herself through the remaining 16″ of space to get in and out of the shower. I called her in anyway…

“Do you think you can fit in there, Mom,” I asked?

“I wish I hadn’t dropped you on your head when you were two,” Mom said.

“What,” I asked?

“Never mind… ” She shook her head. “No,” she said. “And won’t try it.”

The next day I went and bought the materials to fit the opening. I wondered about the dropping on the head thing, but not too much.

After I got the new doors on, I sat down to check my email. Worked great, but when I went to type a reply I found that several keys were sticking, or hard to push. It wasn’t too bad. I told myself that maybe I just needed to pickup some computer keyboard cleaner and blow it all out really good.

Back to moldings, bathroom cabinets and all the other ten minute items. Last night I finished up, the last job was to change in the new locks. I came back, gave the keys to Mom and sat down to check my email… With a coke… But, this time the Coke was in my water bottle so I could simply keep it closed near the keyboard. I opened it, took a sip and started to set it down.

“So,” Mom said, “Tomorrow we can set up the living room.” (Translate that as Recliner, sectional with built in recliners, 40 inch wall mounted TV)

I watched as my hand sat the bottle down on the edge of the keyboard and it tipped onto the keys. “%$#*,” I said. The mouse cursor took off, the cat that had been on my lap startled as the cursor took off (He likes to watch the cursor, thinks it’s alive, he’s a house cat, doesn’t understand the difference between furry and digital mice.)

An hour later I had the keyboard dried out again and everything working, however today almost every key was sticking as I sat down to write this. The keyboard was a little too close to the edge of the desk so I decided to push it back with my coffee cup.

After I cleaned the coffee out of the keyboard and rebooted I realized I will have to find my old keyboard I loved so well, and only replaced with this one as it came with the new system. This one smells bad, like the Coke is eating into electrical circuits under the keys, sort of a plastic-silicon-electrical smell, and it’s taking me five times as long to write this as it should, because I have to go back and correct the missing T’s, I’s, O’s and other important letters. Somewhere, in a box, is the old keyboard, which I liked better than this one, (and wrote four books on) and later today I will have to find it.

Please check out Earth’s Survivors  or Zombie.

That’s it for me. I’ll leave you with a set of lyrics I wrote that I like a great deal. Writing lyrics and then the music for them is just another thing I do. I have over a 1000 sets, and about 100 of them that I like. I hope you had a great week, I’ll be back next Sunday.

Verse One:

War has taken my country… Brother fighting his brother… It will be what it will be… See how we kill each other…

War it ain’t no way to live… It ain’t no way to die… Takes all that you can give… Takes every tear you cry…

Instrumental————-Steel drum rhythm with short lead transition———–

Verse Two:

War along the borders… Kills the father and the mother… Soldiers acting on their orders… Little Sister… Who will take care of your Brother…?

Their blood is crying from the ground… Who will reap the seed they’ve sown…? as you turn to run… pray that God will take them home…

Hook

let me have my country… Leave me to my home… Go back to your land of plenty… Leave this man alone…

You have come to kill the people… Watch them weep and moan… Come to kill our spirit… Why don’t you take yourself home…

Instrumental———————————————-Long Lead———————————–

Verse Three:

See the hills light up with fire… Young men running to their graves… Bad news coming down the wire… But you tell me Jesus saves…

Children sleeping in the gutters… Bodies lying in the street… Machine gun stutters… Pray… Your soul to keep…

Bridge:

Generals send their orders down… From their bunkers underground…

Freedom fighters honor bound… March to death without a sound…

Death is falling from the sky… Did you march today to die…?

Why is no one asking why…? too sad to cry…

Verse Four:

See it on your television… It all seems so far away… Think it’s real think it isn’t… Anyway… Don’t affect you today…

Take off your silver glasses… Take a good look around… As your time passes… may be you… that is lying on the ground…

Hook

let me have my country… Leave me to my home… Go back to your land of plenty… Leave this man alone…

You have come to kill the people… Watch them weep and moan… Come to kill our spirit… Why don’t you take yourself home…

Instrumental———————————————-Long Lead———-Steel Drum—————

Verse Five:

Justify your means… It is not you who has to die… Tell me it isn’t as it seems… Still… You can not answer why…

When judgment comes upon our heads… We will stand as we must… His words can raise us from the dead… or… return us to the dust…

Instrumental——————————-Short Steel Drum Rhythm——————————–

Verse Six:

I got to get away from here… This life is taking a toll… Always living in fear… I am… Less than whole…

Blood is welling up in fountains… Shooting up into the sky… I’m going home to my mountains… There is where I’ll die…

Hook / W Xtro

let me have my country… Leave me to my home… Go back to your land of plenty… Leave this man alone…

You have come to kill the people… Watch them weep and moan… Come to kill our spirit… Why don’t you take yourself home…

Why don’t you take yourself home… Leave us to our war at home… Take yourself home… Leave this man alone… Leave me too… My war at home… … … …

Why I Wrote It:

When I was a kid, Vietnam was all consuming. The hippies hated it (I wasn’t quite old enough to be a Hippy but I liked the drug, rock and Roll, sex culture), society was torn. Young men kept dying. The T.V. Was full of news stories. They followed the soldiers into firefights. It was very graphic and there were kids all over the place that sat in front of televisions and watched that violence.

I saw dead men, children. Children crying, burned, separated from loved ones. The song came from that, although, really, war is war. It could be just as applicable to what’s going on now in the middle east… … …

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Home: https://www.wendellsweet.com

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