Kelly’s Neighborhood

... for making me love her so much that even during the absolute worst of times, she makes me smile, giggle and laugh.
Which brings me to the hate part.
Just the other day I felt a very small pressure in the center of my skull and seeing as how the weather here has been a bit on the squirrelly side I attributed it to the change in barometric pressure and left it at that.
Well, it got worse as time went by and I knew it for what it was, the precursor to Hell on earth inside my head, a full blown migraine. Just a matter of time as to when it will break me, for break me it will ... they do every time.
I am certainly no stranger to pain and can “work” with it to a degree, but this ... this is ... is ... you just can't begin to imagine, you just can't.
All the Hells depicted throughout history, be they visual depictions or of the written word, flights of fancy from learned men and those of the cloth are nothing ... NOTHING, compared to what goes on when Torquemada Grand Inquisitor comes to play in your head and pays attention only to ... you.
It's been a bad few days with everything conspiring to make things worse, but these too will pass (or at least I sincerely hope they will) and last night was, I am hoping, the culmination, ergo the decline and eventual end of this particular misery.
Again, I sincerely hope so.
I thought I was being smart and doing just what the Doc said to do, “Take one of these right at the onset” and so I did, nasty little things where the dosage can't exceed six pills a month, can you imagine that, anyhow there I was chemically armed and ready when it floored me none the less.
Didn't do diddly squat.
Remember those old radios and TV's' with the dials that would click every time you turned them regardless if it was channel or volume, imagine one of those dials, the volume one as it gets turned up ... click.
The pressure was increasing, not so slowly anymore now, click, and my movements become slower, more calculated. Click
The world starts to look like a painting from Dali as images start to melt, click, lights become unbearable and the slightest sound ... the slightest sound, click click ... most of my beautiful feathered family feels, knows, understands what is happening and are just ... good and silent pillars of support.
I said most.
Click.
Rivers of agony flow passed my eyes as I realize it is the pulsing of my life's blood that I see, I feel, I am being consumed by from the inside out as it gets (click) hotter and hotter flowing toward my brain, until it reaches the boiling point just at that moment in time where the demon in my head pauses to take a breath, and enters full force destroying everything that makes me human.
Nothing but a collection of bones encased in a blubbering (click) mass of flesh as you huddle there holding on to sanity and the crowning glory of the porcelain industry retching out the last dregs of what seems all of last weeks nourishment when an errant thought born from the contents of my bowels brings a smile to my quivering lips.
Click, click, click
Then a smile that quickly turns into ... PAIN, more pain than any creature should ever have to bear as I laugh out loud only to lose myself again to explosion after explosion as consciousness leaves me. Click. The last thing to have graced my gullet was chocolate, in the form of ice cream and ... OK, I admit to eating a really big bar too, so one can imagine ... well the actual visual is what triggered that errant thought I mentioned.
My favorite holiday has always been Halloween and so it came as no surprise to me that my darling wife should get my something to brighten my day as they have not been so good as of late.
We have a store here called “Big Lots”, kind of like a big discount store where you can find some pretty good bargains if you are into that sort of stuff, or just plain need. Click
She got me a pencil holder shaped like a gravestone with a few skulls on it and some writing, it is this writing, or rather the remembering of what it said at a most inopportune time, that caused me to hate her very much.
You see, as I was desperately trying to hold on to what little shred of humanity, sanity, dare I say almost life itself (I wanted to die very badly right there and then) and seeing the contents of my passed repast the thought struck me, “How prophetic her gift.”
Click.
Causing me to smile, and ... I want to die! Click
Written on my pencil holder that she so lovingly gave me were the words “Death by Chocolate.”
Smile, giggle, laugh, click, click, click ... consciousness has left the building.
This morning there is some improvement, to me it's still the same day and I doze here and there as I got no sleep the night before, the pressure is still there but the volume knob has been turned down a bit, slowly clicking its way back to ... silence and peace and old friends, pains that I can deal with one way or the other.
So now you know why I hated the women I adore more than life itself even if it was just a nanosecond in the grand scheme of things.
She is able to bring to me, during my darkest times, a glimmer of light and hope and love, something to hold on to, to want to come back to, she completes me, she simply IS my life, plain and simple.
I don't want to die anymore but this living thing isn't all it's cracked up to be you know, wasn't in the brochure that I got I tell you.
Nope, not at all.

The wife is at work and I was doing the dishes as the last of the chores for the day with the birds all on their respective playgrounds being good when something caught my eye outside the window on the railing.
I paused mid swish while still holding the frying pan that still needed cleaning and squinted my eyes a little more to get a better look at what was crawling its way along the side of the railing then on top of the railing and then the bottom of the railing and … so I dropped my pan which promptly fell into the sink with all the icky dish water still in it making a big splash sending it all over my new t-shirt that I had put on clean this morning.
Ignoring all that and trying not to break my neck on the now slippery floor as I rushed to get my camera I hurried out the door in the hopes I could get a good shot of the little interloper that had caused such a stir in my household by simply flabbergasting me with his presence right outside my kitchen window.
I had seen this particular critter here before but was never fast enough, or fleet of foot for that matter, to get any good pictures. But this time, ahhh yes this time, this time I got the little sucker … and he almost got me back too, putting a serious dent in my perceived manliness and drastic lowering of testosterone as the fear response kicked in flooding my system with adrenaline and making me (almost) scream like a little girl.
I didn’t of course (honestly) I just … just … tripped, yes that’s it I tripped just at that moment.
Well anyhow here are some of the pictures of my visitor from outside my kitchen window.

And here is his flashy tushy:

So I have been trying to get a good picture of this fellow forever and now that I had him "cornered" so to speak I was going to take full advantage of the situation and take some close ups ... Big mistake.
Ok so here we go, Macro on ... all the right settings set to where they are suppossed to sit ... punchbowl full ... dance ticket... wait ... that's something else... Ok, anyhow ...

See now that's not so bad ... just a tad closer and ...

Getting a little interested in the goings on on the railing and wanting to check it out ...

"Ok Buddy, too close, too close" I hear him think at me in a raspy little voice as those hairy little legs start to reach for me and I see fangs dripping with venom ready to tear my jugular right out and jump rope with it ...

When right out of nowhere I hear that Tarzan yell in my head and the little bugger launches himself at me ... causing me to trip of course, because I wanted to get closer and there was this crack in the concrete ... anyhow.

After regaining my composure a bit (and picking up the camera again) I looked to see where he might have landed so as not to step on him when there he was, right where I had left him staring me right in the eyes as if to say "I warned you buddy!"

I would have loved to stay and play some more but ... ah ... um, I still had the frying pan to clean. Sigh, a househusbands work is never done.