2013-03-23 - 10:52 a.m.
�Here Goes another Goddamn Day�
She hadn�t thought her life would turn out like this. Where were the vacations? Where was the romance? Shit, where was the cheddar cheese? She had settled. Settled for him. Settled for Velveeta and for so many other forms of non-meaning. She rose at 10:00 a.m., first to the fridge to grab a beer, then to the outdated 32 inch Zenith television, channel-changed to Regis and Kathy, settled into the baby blue Lazy Boy and muttered, �Well, here goes another goddamn day,� while cracking open her Bud Light. Her father�owner of the largest trucking companies in the Midwest and an unabashed striver�had warned her not to marry Jimmy Dean. Her father had correctly seen all the red flags. He had said, �These are not our people.� By our people, in retrospect he meant, dignified, civil, respectable, in a phrase, middle class. But Jimmy Dean had bewitched her with his appetizing looks back then: firm buttocks, long, slim legs and a face that she could not possibly imagine held the capacity to disintegrate into the knobby, flappy mess that now greeted her most unpleasantly each morning. To make matters worse, the year they got married, he had moved her from her family and friends and the urban pleasures of Minneapolis and transported her to northern Arkansas backcountry so they could �be closer to kin.�
Last night�s sleep was curtailed, her dog�s were barking and she hadn�t even been much on her dogs. Her husband, she could hear rifling through the junk in the basement like a goddamn raccoon. She went to the stove, thought about making breakfast and when she caught a whiff of ammonia from the cat urine, she was turned off. She had five indoor cats and one litter box. She hadn�t had the energy to empty the litter box in a few months. Maybe tomorrow, she�d feel more energetic.
Jimmy Dean, I want you to take�
