Experimenting with Roman numerals , day IV .

The weather here has been no surprise . People will say , “Gosh , this has been a crazy spring ,” or “It has certainly been a wet summer so far .” You know , every year it’s an odd spring , and every year summer is either hot and mugly right off the bat , or it is wet . The weather is the weather , and it’s always the same or it’s different .

The really funny thing about this year are the multi-cultural gnomes living in my garage .

I’ll explain : Usually by this time of the year I have my garage and backyard shed emptied out and cleaned from top to bottom . Dust , leaves , spiders , dislocated nuts and bolts , etcetera , etcetera and so forth . This year I don’t know what happened . Either the extremely wet weather or my abject laziness has kept me from my duties . I vote for the weather , because , damn it !, I’ve been working hard and I’m tired , and I really did need all of those afternoon naps , and all the extra rain had me mowing the lawn more often so every dry moment was used up by the mowing of said grass , and golly gee , can’t a guy just be lazy now and then ?

Stupid garage … the cars don’t care if the garage is dirty , do they ?
Anyway , I guess it was time to clean the garage out at least . The wife was out of town for a few days , and it’s not like I was going to have a party or invite over some dancing girls . I don’t know any dancing girls , and I’m down to only a half dozen beers in the fridge , and they’re about 6 months old . I’m saving them for a nice dry night off when I can start a fire out back and kick back to watch the embers glow and slowly get stoned on stale beer and not worry about dragging my butt out of bed at 4 in the morning to stumble into work . Time to make the donuts . Gahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh . Kill me .

Clean the garage , right , OK . Maybe I should trim the shrubs first . No ! Clean the garage . It’s a pit ; you can’t even walk out to grab a can of pop any more without getting something wedged between your toes , or tracking dirt and cottonwood seeds into the kitchen . Cripes all mighty !

Forget the damned shrubs … forget the shed , leave the weeds alone for a couple days , what’ll they do , grow 6 inches over night and uproot the coreopsis ? Well , maybe …but forget it ; clean the garage !

Sure , it’s due . First thing is to move everything mobile out into the driveway . Then pick up all those boards and wood you were saving to re-floor the shed . Shift everything else to one side of the garage and sweep out the edges and corners , then grab the dust pan to collect the debris and chuck it all .

First thing I noticed was there was a big crack in the plastic dust bin that sat by the work bench . Probably because I was using it as a gauge to park my car . When I would drive into the garage , I would see the swimming noodle move the second my bumper made contact with the bin . At that point I would stop and switch off the engine . Sure beats running into the work bench .

Inside this dust bin were the following : A swimming noodle , 3 strands of Christmas lights , various screws , a bag of bird food ( put there because the chipmunks were getting to it on top of the workbench ) , and some Miracle Grow that had fallen off the work bench and caused everything in the bin to turn a faint shade of blue .

It was a motley collection of crap , it was . And because of the crack in the bin , now the chippies could get right into it and feast on the birdseed . And they did . And they chewed the swim noodle , and they nibbled the electric cords and licked the colors off of the bulbs , and they stuck the nuts and bolts into their cheeks and made goofy faces at each other , and all of it was coated with a thin film of chemical fertilizer so they ate that up , too .

You’d think it was enough to kill the poor little varmints , and it almost did . Man , I don’t relish the tummy aches they must have suffered . But they came out of it OK , and then went back for more . Don’t you know , they ate it , and hoarded it , and passed it on to their neighbor ground squirrels over a couple of three-day weekends until it was all gone . Then they went back to digging up my crocus bulbs and eating those .

Of course , the little creeps ended up having babies . They thought ‘why not , times are good ; there’s all this blue food laying about , so let’s have a peck of ‘lil ones .’
Good idea , bad execution .

Back to the garage . I‘m moving stuff around and sweeping and such , and I get down low to sweep under the workbench and hear this chattering and what sounds like cursing . You can always tell when someone is swearing , just by the tone , even if the words are in a different tongue . Chipmunks swear pretty damn good . These guys were letting me have it with both barrels . I was disturbing their dust . Geez . Anyway , I grabbed a flashlight and lit it up and pointed it under the bench . Holy … Unbelievable .

These guys were a furry , sparkly , cushiony conglomeration of raging , toothy , chipmunk-gnomes and they were living in my garage and building a miniature city out of spare hardware and stolen scraps . There were piles of empty soda cans that they were linking together with vacuum hose to build some kind of underworld sputnik station . I could smell the petrol they were collecting in a small vat , and a can of lawnmower oil was laying on its side . The things’ eyes were blue , like a native Arakin’s , and every hair on their body lit up like a fiber optic party lamp .

I would have seen more , but the whole bunch of them were brandishing the wrenches that I had lost earlier but never really missed because I didn’t actually have any use for wrenches .
Needless to say , I left them to their business and got along with mine . They can have that little portion of the garage , and I’ll be sure to keep mine clutter free for now on . I’m hoping that they finish up with their project and move out of my neat and clean garage . The neighbors , I’ve noticed are kind of slobs ; maybe their sloppy garage will be more appealing to the chipmunk-creatures that I have in my sloth created .

Last night I spread a trail of birdseed over there , and left the open bag inside the overhead door . Don’t tell .