Cattywampus:
ADV. Performed in a non-straightforward manner; approached from an unexpected angle; askew; askance.

“Poets may go at the big truths a little cattywampus, but sometimes they do get to them” (Ted Kooser writing in The Poetry Home Repair Manual, University of Nebraska Press, 2005. 141)

(Ready for the snap in a game between arch rivals that hearkened back to the days of Bo and Woody. Photo Ann Arbor News).

I could not finish the NYT article about the disaster of the health care roll out this morning- too many sections and not enough time. Maybe later. I was (as is increasingly the norm) lost in several quests down a variety of rabbit holes and things had become all cattywampus.

The big deal was that the emotion-fueled nap after the dramatic resolution of The Game this year left me awake all the way to eleven, so I was behind before I even began.

I still did not know what to make of the game. The valiant drive by the Wolverines in the closing minute to close within a point of the hated Buckeyes, and then the bold attempt to just end it- go for two, screw ‘em.

Didn’t work, and I blinked at the screen as the game went into the record books, 42-41, a loss that contained the elements of greatness, and a whisper of those titanic struggles between Bo and Woody.

Crap. Still groggy, I drove over to the Russians to catch up on events of the week, and managed to start puttering on the contents of the farmhouse, the garage, the office and the barn.

See, things arrived here in waves. The initial wave was the wreckage from the efficiency apartment at Big Pink- second-string stuff- overlaid by the mass of crap from the Little Village By the Bay, untouched by human hand since the movers jammed it into the garage and the office annex.

Then a last wave from this summer, when the Stager directed we pare down the mass of knick-knacks and bric-a-brac to a spare, bare-bones look for showing the place. That is the shopping-bag phase of the pile of debris, and it is beyond time to get organized.

The World’s Fastest production pick up needs air in the tires, and an oil change from two years ago, and the cargo bed is filled with a jumble of loose object d’art and books and clothes and canned goods.

When I shut things down last night, pleased with the cheery glow of the Christmas lights that had emerged from the pile last week, I thought that I would have an entire day to get to work and wrest order out of chaos.

Hahaha! Not so fast, Dummie!

I overslept, of course. There is nothing like that pillow-top mattress for extending the passion of the dreams into the faint gray light of dawn, filtered through the trees as the pastures gleam with silver frost. And then the usual nonsense from the outside world, once the coffee was made, and the computer booted up.

First up was an acid comment on the article posted by my professional group of Old Asia hands- it was some poppycock about the “bold flight of B-52s into the new Chinese Air Defense Identification Zone.”

“Wait, I wrote. “This mission was ordered months ago- the idea this was a clever and rapid response by a resolute US Government is nonsense.”

I don’t know if anyone responded to that fit of pique, since by then I was off on an ongoing and exchange about the nature of media, and why the Casper, WY, media is dredging up the e murder of a local Professor by his son (with a bow and arrow, no less, and in the classroom- quick, ban bows!) after the kid had also killed the Dad’s girlfriend off campus. It happened a year ago- maybe it is the millstones of justice grinding exceedingly slow.

I was looking at the picture of the police emerging from the building where the slaying happened- the one officer as one visualizes what the cops should look like, the other representing the new reality of law enforcement as we have talked about this week. The tactical cop looks like he is going on patrol in Sadr City in Baghdad with M4 automatic rifle (and probably grenades). With the obligatory K9 unit, of course.

WTF, I thought. I didn’t see the up-armor tactical vehicle, but I imagine it was around there somewhere.

(German night-fighter with remarkable early air intercept radar and upward firing 20mm cannons to savage the unprocted underbellies of the RAF Lancasters. No branch of the armed forces- except the submarine force- took bigger casualties).

Then, my Navy buddies were conducting an in-depth analysis of WW II night fighter tactics, playing that off with the philosophy of Air Marshall “Butcher” Harris, the Royal Air Force strategic bombing chief. That rapidly devolved into a discussion of horrific slaughter of the RAF bomber crews, German civilians, and then the personalities of the top German night-fighters (almost all of whom died, since there was no retirement in Hitler’s Luftwaffe short of unconditional surrender).

Then there was the usual back-and-forth with other old farts about the triumph of the Vanguard of the Party in the Seattle city council election. Some woman there wants to seize the assets of the Boeing Company for the workers, and that, of course, lead directly to an analysis of the New York Times article about the ObamaCare roll-out I had not completed yet.

I am thinking about framing my copy of the New Yorker cover that seems to sum it up the best.

So, I am, like, behind, and am completely cattywampus for a story this morning, and I need to start working on the garage.

I am absolutely committed to getting some great work done today- which probably involves a ladder- and as you know, nothing good can ever happen when at the top of a ladder- and the prospect fills me with more than a little dread, but we have to start someplace, right?

Anyway, I am hoping it all passes without significant event, and there is every possibility that it could actually happen. Either way.

Lurking out there someplace is the prospect of the late NFL game, and a cheery fire, and some nice local vore food to cook for dinner and perhaps a festive beverage.

This is great living, but it is still a little cattywampus at the moment. I swear I cam going to get it all straight one of these days.

Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303