The Daily Grind
The landscapers are outside, their machines blowing, snorting, and growling all over my lawn and driveway. It’s not a gentle hum of a modern society. It’s like waking to a child scratching its talons on the biggest blackboard in the world while also playing a French horn poorly. Let’s blow the leaves into the street so the other company can blow them back later. I need an eraser.
I was driving home from my daughter’s house yesterday, and my car started shaking. The proverbial engine-check light came on, and I pulled over for fear I might become combustible. My car guy said to drive it home. I always listen to him. Once I got it back over 30, it went okay. I am too old to convince myself that the car is fine. I am waiting on a tow truck.
I wonder what my mom thought about in the mornings before high school.
My girl cat yawns a lot. She’s not tired; she just likes to yawn. I can’t blame her. Everything is so similar these days. They are still blowing their horns outside, defiling the sounds of nature. She sits on a pile of unopened mail, and I wish she would take each piece away, one by one. Daily detritus.
I had oatmeal for breakfast. Every time I eat oatmeal, which is a lot, I remember when my mom took me on a cruise to Bermuda when she was sick. I was actually doing a commercial for Macy’s for Father’s Day. Everyone pinched my cheeks the whole cruise. She was sick and pretending to be seasick when she had cancer, so she sent me down to get breakfast on my own. I was maybe seven. I was so shy, I forgot to find the sugar when I got the oatmeal. The texture was gooey and clumpy; it was fantastic, but I had never had oatmeal without sugar. It tasted like cardboard. My mom couldn’t get out of bed.
My schedule stares back at me with disdain. It doesn’t understand why I use it as a to-do list. I do what I do. The day limps along under a downtrodden overpass on a nondescript highway in the middle of Nowheresville. Someone hangs a banner off of it that says Free Will.
They are still buzzing like a pack of steroid-fueled bumblebees after leg day. I wonder if bumblebees have trouble sitting on the toilet after leg day like I used to. Calf raises are just like raising your eyebrows. Effective, but seemingly too easy to do. My days are so up and down.
It’s crazy that as parents we all learn to lift our children up to smell their diapers to see if they went to the bathroom. It works every time. Aliens somewhere must think we are really batshit when they see us do this. Oh look, they lift their children; that’s so nice. Wait, this is weird. Can you call a supervisor?
Sometimes the day is over before it has begun. Awash with I’d rather not do this now and full of it can wait until tomorrow, I sludge through the hodgepodge of monotony and come out the other side slimy like a newborn.
© Jonathan Greene, August 20, 2026
