Chewed on by a Dog

I am squinting at the small plastic pieces of my face, as formerly embedded in the clear plastic of my employer's ID badge - the one they gave me when I started working at the company. There is very little left of it, just tiny shreds and I can just make out part of my face on the largest of the pieces.

Yesterday, I was hoping to go to the North Carolina Transportation Museum, in Spencer, North Carolina. Every year they have "Rail Days" and they get out all their dusty old steam and diesel locomotives and they shine them up a bit and run them up and down the tracks they own, a several mile-long loop. This attracts 'railfans' from all around the world, and there are a lot of people present. There is a chil cook-off and a bluegrass band playing - it's a lot of fun; if you like old trains. Which, you know what? I do.

This is primarily due to the fact that I like old things, things that were made of iron and steel and made to last, and they are not perfect - they're just 'right'. Durable, solid, reliable; in many ways they are all the things that most people are not. And yet they were made by people, so there's your early morning pre-coffee philosophy, chew on that awhile.

Yes, I like trains. I like old mechanical watches, wind-up clocks, mechanical cameras, and small precision steel tools. I like old stuff that works as designed and keeps doing longer than the lives of those who built them, and longer than they were wanted by the society that once demanded them. Overbuilt, solid, and real. I like trains.

Last year, Mrs. Wiggy and I had just arrived in NC from New Mexico, where there is no such thing. We went, and it was hot and humid and I took lots of photographs that I enjoyed. I wanted to go again this year. Which is this weekend.

It nearly snuck by me! Someone at my photography club said something about trains, and I mentioned 'Rail Days' and then I looked up it up when I got home - eek! Nearly let it slip by. But Mrs. Wiggy was amenable and so I made plans to go yesterday - Saturday.

I also asked some new friends of ours, Durgle and Twila Gargle. I met Durgle online, he shows up at the same photography discussion board I do, and we don't live too far apart, and we both enjoy old cameras - I thought that interest might extend to old trains as well. They accepted, and so plans were made to pick them along the way - two couples visiting a train museum.

Well, the weather report looked bad - serious thunderstorms predicted for the area, and morning presented the requisite heavy storm clouds. Mrs. Wiggy and I drove from Wilson down to Clayton to pick up the Gargles, and then we started driving down towards Spencer.

But the clouds just got darker and darker, and soon all in the car were muttering incantations and whispered warnings about 'serious thunderstorms'. All in the car, that is, except me. I had brought with me tons of B&W film and orange and red filters - designed to make cloudy days look threatening, and threatening days look ominous, and ominous days look like the freaking wrath of God. This was going to be great! I have no aversion to getting wet, and I brought cameras with me that could a) stand up to a little water or b) were not 'worth a lot of money' and could be replaced.

But I had asked the Gargles, and therefore, their opinions counted as a matter of courtesy. And Mrs. Wiggy - she was making serious faces at me and and you could see she was struggling - on the one hand, she knew that I really, really, wanted to go, storm or no storm - on the other, she didn't want to stand in a thundershower holding a ragged umbrella over me while I crouched in the driving rain trying to focus on an 80-year-old heat-steaming locomotive. But she also knew that the Gargles were not feeling the love, so she put in her vote for not continuing.

No poetry. That's what we got a car full of. A car full of no poetry and fear of getting wet or electrocuted, I guess. A fear of catching your death of pneumonia and missing work and chafing and shivering in wet clothes, I suppose. You got your modern generation and your death goth rockers and your "I'm-so-depressed" disaffected youths - enui on the half-shell and the volume turned to eleven. They're not impressing me, they don't wanna get wet, for God's sake. Nobody wants to get wet. They just wanna see the video of the rock star in the rain; that's close enough. Sing me a song about standing in the rain. Lemme buy a new-age music CD of thunder and rainfall to calm my nerves whilst I sip my jasime freaking tea and think pure non-meat-eating thoughts about love and peace. But stand in the rain? To take a photograph of a rusty old train? You must be mad.

You know what I'm scared of? Bees. A bee flys in the window of my car, I'll drive the damned thing into a ditch to get away from the bee. But not water. Not rain. Not wind. And I take shelter when I see lightning, for God's sake, I'm not stupid about it.

And so, we pulled the plug on my vision. I put on a brave face and we turned about and went to Raleigh and we visited lots of interesting places - two camera shops that have a lot of cool stuff, and some health food stores that would have ticked me off except they had some decent coffee beans in them, and some antique stores with old junk sold as treasure. I tend not to like antique stores much, because the 'items' have become 'items' and are no longer what they are. A lamp is not a lamp any more, it's some kind of objet d'art. Well you know what? It's a freaking lamp. Get over it. I like it as a lamp. I like it as an old lamp. I like the way it looks. But the second it is no longer a lamp, I'm not interested.

Anyway. So we did that all day, and then drove the Gargles back to Clayton and we drove home and ordered some pizza from Tony's. The puppies had been in their crates all day - since 6 a.m. - so they were happy to see us and needed to go outside. They were actually quite good.

So last night, we were thinking that perhaps - just perhaps - I would drive back to Spencer on my own today (Sunday) and get the photos I had been hoping for. But you know what? I don't really want to now. The weather, I see, will be fabulous - not a cloud in the sky, high of 70 degrees F. Right. A three-hour drive each way to see trains under a cloudless sky. Nah, pass. But I'm still ticked about it.

And, we decided that it is probably time to start letting the puppies sleep with the doors to their crates open - we just put up the barrier that keeps them in the kitchen and let them try that for awhile. Mrs. Wiggy and I both want them to eventually have the run of the house, but not while they're going to poop and pee everywhere, eat the contents of the cat's litterbox, and chase the cats around. So we're giving them a little at a time. They're five months old now, so we thought this would be a good first step.

They got me up at 5:30 this morning. I went downstairs to let them out, and it appeared as though they had behaved all night. Nothing out of place, no puddles on the floor. Good dogs. I let them out, got their breakfast, made coffee.

Then I saw the little 'schnitzels' on the floor. That's what my german grandparents used to call things like that, I don't have another word for it. Little pieces of torn up plastic-coated paper, it looked like.

Ah. My ID badge for work. Hard, laminated plastic with my name and photo and a magnetic strip that lets me in and out of the building - and you really need one, because we have these turnstiles at work, you can't piggyback in on someone else's card, not even if you want to. And the central computer knows if you are in or out, so no one can pass you their card and let you in that way, either. Nope, gotta drive to the head office and get a new card tomorrow. What a pain. And here it is in the palm of my hand, torn to little shreds by needle-sharp puppy teeth. I guess I should not have left it on the kitchen counter last night - the little buggers are getting tall enough to stand on their hind legs and examine the countertops, and apparently grab the contents thereof.

So here I sit. Cold coffee in one hand. The tiny remnants of my face shredded into another.

Is this some kind of message? Some not-so-subtle metaphor for the tattered tapestry of my life, for example? Prolly not.

God, I hope it rains.

Smooches,

Wiggy