Written by Roger Kovack

My front deck got busted last week. It was called "in poor condition". My poor deck. I feel sorry for it and I feel sorry for myself. I\'ve worked endlessly for the past decade and my deck has worked day and night for much longer than that. This entire millennium has been a continuous struggle, perhaps I should say challenge, for me. From the dot com bust that caught me with the right skills in the wrong millennium to the financial collapse of the century that again caught me in the wrong business, I\'ve been on the run.

My deck doesn\'t get to go on the run but it does have to work 24 hours a day, rain or shine, light or dark. It stands outside in the elements trying to clutch onto the front of the house, something like a railroad bum clinging to the ladder of a boxcar. Its posts are riddled with termites, its beams are rotted through to the point that several of them have literally fallen to the ground below. Its final embarrassment came the other day in a letter from my home owners insurance proclaiming it to be "in poor condition". It could have done without such a condemning judgment but there are spies in this forest that sneak into my yard when no one is here and photograph my deck\'s most compromising moments as if it was caught doing something naughty.

Aside from the official notice written in "the home owner shall" kind of language, in all upper case printed on a form letter that looks like something from the IRS, I\'ve been aware of the problem for the past few months. It really is a hazard and my wife dutifully put yellow caution tape around it. People shouldn\'t walk on it and that even includes those spies that I never invited and other thoughtless people that may think my house is just an abandoned shack and that they have a self-given right to poke around. I\'ve been proactive with my responsibility to keep even those unwelcome people safe and now I\'m going to be proactive with my carpentry skills.

"It might be nice if the new deck is moved this way and that way," my wife observes and she is quite right as usual. She is quite right and if the new deck had legs and some obedience training it would be no problem to get it to move to a somewhat more useful place in front of the house. For example, perhaps I can just get it to crouch down about two feet so it is at the same level as the living room floor. It\'s hard to imagine but the deck is actually above the level of the floor. It\'s convenient for the cat or raccoons to just stand there and look in the window. This is either a sunken living room or an uppity deck.

"Sit, deck," I command. No luck. Either it doesn\'t understand me or is unruly. This deck needs more obedience training?

Okay. Its not even funny anymore. That letter that the deck gestapo sent included the threat that I would be canceled and not renewed. That made me bristle but I don\'t need any homeowners obedience training to know that I\'m going to obey.

I\'m going to strap on my tool belt that hangs on me like a new suit of sails on a ghost ship, measure and plan and maybe make engineering drawings on the computer just to waste some time, and then start lifting and hauling and buying new deck wood that is heavy and poisonous to people and everything else living and just create a brand new deck from the sheer dint of determination.

A couple of days and a lot of swearing later (rough carpentry has a very limited vocabulary) the new posts and beams are standing proud and stiff like newly minted Marines. Not only that, the officious looking drawings off the computer indicate the possibility of a real floor below and a frame for walls that could be the beginnings of a new and sorely needed storage area under the house. The bureaucratic powers are going to get their deck fix job but I\'m going to get a new storage area. The new deck project is working out for everyone.

"I thought the new deck was going to be low enough that we can replace the living room windows with a wall of French doors," she said sniffing around the the pungent new wood.

I sigh and lean back on the frame that will make an airtight, clean and dry storage area some day . Maybe it will have a little heat, too, so all our old IRS papers won\'t get soggy. I gaze up at the dull gloss of double-plated bolts and metal plates, the edges of precision cut lumber and even the new diagonal bracing that the old deck never had.

Maybe the new deck is better trained than the old one so I try again. "Sit, deck."

Written by Roger Kovack

"I just wanted to take down the Christmas tree yesterday morning." She was stroking the needles softly as if stroking that part of a cat between the ears. They were still stiff and green and weren\'t dropping. There really wasn\'t any reason to take the tree down except that New Years has come and gone. The holidays are over, the glow of the New Years party has turned into the cool, clear light of a rainy morning and the confusion about the calendar has settled down.

"What day is it," she asked. Now, my wife is a pretty sharp person, if I may say so, but without a purpose during the holidays or without the itinerary we\'d have if we went on a vacation somewhere, the days are meaningless towards the end of the year. The little squares on the calendar page have lost their meaning and, in fact, the entire calendar has lost it\'s meaning because it had no future.

\'Today is the first day of the rest of your life\' is a fine but rather banal truth. It seems like today doesn\'t have very much meaning if there is no hope for tomorrow and along about these days, the tomorrows don\'t look that inviting. Maybe this is the whole purpose of New Years resolutions- to put some meaning and purpose into the future.

"Do we have a plan?" she asked.

"What kind of plan?" I knew what she was talking about but just in case I missed the guess, I might as well ask. Would something as simple as a grocery list be a plan? But then again, why plan when we have cell phones. "Hi, honey. I\'m standing around in Andy\'s. What did we need from here?" This is the standard drill. Go to the grocery store, get a coffee from the stand outside to awaken my amazingly perceptive intellect, flip open the cell phone, push a button and then make these big decisions someone else\'s problem.

Andy\'s is an old fashioned produce stand with the front of the store completely open to the highway. Just walking towards the store fills you with the smells of fruits and rows of bulk granola and cinnamon. I always want to look in when I\'m driving by but the road is too fast along there to get a good look. Apple orchards and vineyards strobe past the window bringing memories of lush growth even though the trees are bare and the vines are brown, twisted knots this time of year. They have a purpose and a future but I can only know that from my memories of summer. The fields don\'t announce their New Years resolutions.

But the question is a good one- "Do we have a plan?"

"It looks like next year is just going to be the same thing as last year," I hesitantly offered a couple of days ago. What was I supposed to say to that? Like I know some miracle strategy that I\'ve been keeping top secret and now that the new year is firmly in place and we still don\'t have a new calendar, it\'s time for me to reveal my startlingly new and different twelve month plan?

Or maybe the question is more important than the answer. You have to read between the lines if you want to escape one of these trick questions with dignity. The questioner doesn\'t really want an answer, she just wants to know that someone is in charge here; that someone is going to stand up and puff up his chest and pontificate and then we will all be satisfied that the future has an in-house authority.

"I think it\'s just the same as last year," I mumbled. It was a pathetic comeback. I tried to fluff it up with the list of things that didn\'t get finished last year. They were all worthy goals that never even got written down. They aren\'t pinned to the calendar. Maybe they aren\'t making progress at all and maybe that\'s the way they are supposed to go.

"I\'m waiting for further instructions," said some bright, smiling Deva at a holiday party. She is way past the stage of being the flower girl she was in the \'60s. It would seem like that "waiting for further instructions" period had been long abandoned back in the go-go \'90s and everyone now knows that life can be conquered with enough coffee and not enough sleep. (My doctor wants me to take a sleep test. Why would I do that? Sleep is all of the sudden important or something?) But back to the future and, by the way, is the future my problem?

The new fangled desk clock displays "FRI 1/02". The old clocks were more coddling around the turn of the new year. They had hands and they didn\'t nag you about the date at all. Ignorance is bliss. Even though, this muddle about what to do with the future is starting to make even me uncomfortable. I think the wisest thing to do is just let myself have a little mini breakdown. It\'s sort of gift I can give myself when things aren\'t going well. I don\'t afford myself a short term breakdown very often. Maybe only a few times a week.

"I must go to the beach to clear my head," I announce putting on my best voice of absolute entitlement. I deserve it. This is one of those blue sky California winter sun days so the beach will be sparkling.

"Alright," my overly tolerant wife allows. "Do you want to take the grocery list?"

Oh no. Here she is again pressing me about questions about the future. Do I have to think ahead, scrounge around in the pathetically empty refrigerator, try to remember what we eat and at least do something as unthinkable around my house as meal planning?

"Oh, that\'s alright. I\'ll know exactly what to get once I get to Andy\'s after the beach." I casually slip my cell phone into my pocket, try to act nonchalant as I slip out of my own front door with the same suaveness as sliding last year\'s calendar into the waste paper basket.

"Um, I have my \'tiny-tel\' with me. Will you be around later just in case I have to call?"

"No," she says with a subdued voice of real authority. "Are you sure you don\'t want to take a shopping list? Or are you waiting for further instructions?"