It's Official...

I'm a Dirty Old Man.

Let me explain.

Since the beginning of the Sugar Harvest, I've been working 60+ hours a week and things tend to get left undone at the old Ranger Tom Homestead, so I've hired a woman to come and clean my house once a week... It's nice to come home to a clean house and most of the time I'm just to damn tired to do it.

No, I have not started nailing my cleaning lady.

Since I work nights and get home from work around 8:15 every morning, I use that one morning every week to go out and do some errands and leave her to the cleaning. Most of the time I'll finish up my trip around town down at the Tiki Bar around 11 when they open. I'll have a few ice-cold adult beverages and get a sandwich, getting home around 12:30 or so to a nice clean house and clean sheets to crawl into. (If you've ever had the chance to get real 1000 thread~count Egyptian Cotton sheets, get them! They're HEAVEN!)

Yesterday was no different. I did some running around town and found myself perched on my favorite stool at the Tiki Bar sipping on a ice cold MGD. I'm alone down here in Purgatory, and it gets kind of lonely this time of year. I haven't spoken to anyone in my family really save for my brother since my divorce five years ago and now I'm unsure how that's going to go since he's started sending me Watchtower propaganda...

Not only that my birthday is coming up... on the 27th I'll be 44 and I'm really starting to feel all the abuse I've done to my body over the years... So with aching knees, Christmas and my 44th right around the corner I was feeling kind of low, even though I have the best job in the world in my humble opinion.

I'm a regular at the Tiki, and know almost all of the bartenders and servers by name, and consider most of them my friends. I'm moping a bit watching ESPN highlights on the muted TV when one of the servers sits down next to me. She does this quite often when the place is empty, like it was yesterday, and we began talking. She is quite the looker, and I have been know to take a look-see (ogle) once in a while but she's a bit younger than me, in her mid-20's. But she's engaged to a really nice guy so I've never put the "moves" on her. Besides, after the last few relationships with women who are Bi-Polar, have Borderline Personality Disorder or a Chronic substance abuse problem, I've put myself into a self-induced celibacy for a while.

But I'm not dead.

I do look, OK?

Anyway, I was lamenting to this very attractive friend of mine how I was feeling old, because my birthday was creeping up on me...

What she said next was harmless, I knew she was trying to cheer me up a little bit...

But she might have well just hauled off and kicked me in the balls with steel-toed boots...

"Oh Tommy! You're not old! My mom is only 41!"

D'oh!

Now I feel really great. I'm ogling girls young enough to be my daughter.

Happy Birthday to me, you dirt old bastard! I might as well be like the guy pictured below.

On second thought....

That's not really all that bad, is it?

Yes it is...

I've just creeped myself out!

Whining lament Copyright 2009 Thomas J Wolfenden
Photos pinched from the Interweb