Maybe I should get out more.

When you enter my home, you will see a large oil painting in a heavy, antique, white and gold encrusted Victorian frame of a Winters, slushy street of simple homes. With large, grey black, nobby crusted trees that compete with ugly, garish brown power poles, pocked up by the utility men who climb up the old belt and heel spike way. Tattered, horrific, long, swaying, power lines that drip all day from the melting slices of snow that taper from one end to the other. Along side that painting, is a number of different size frames of various types - what ever I find at garage sales and flea markets - with pictures of ink line art, watercolors and pencil drawings that I have worked on over past years. There is a small worn, gothic cement bracket in centre of these pieces of art, that holds a spiny, vibrant spider plant with shoots of healthy crawlers, spinning out from a crack in the pot that "wears its roots on its shoulder" you could say that "it has found its home," it seems. In front of the pictures is a large, antique, one armed brown leather chair, it has this magnificent, low creak when you sit on it. The chairs leather seat is so old, it has varnished its skin over the years and cracks now show its soft, light, inner-flesh of suede. Beneath your feet is a long, skinny carpet runner that has lost its frilled edge at its end and has a well worn path leading you into my living- room. From the furthest you are, to the farthest you can see are windows, wall to wall and knee to ceiling, windows. You can not see around the first bookcase, so your eyes are taken by a wonderful Christmas cactus, hanging just from the ceiling off an iron hook and spilling dark, green blades to the floor. I call it a "she," I do not know why, but she is so heavy, she scares me. She (Cactus) demands water from me, demands light, demands food and continues to groan, laughing at the iron hook that holds her in place. I do not know what to do with her, because the clay pot that mothers her, that claims her like a child, holds her young growth, is always of dry soil. Should I put her in a bigger pot or just continue to feed her and water her and let her grow bigger, wider? She is so fat and grown wide around, that she leans from the wall instead of just draping down. she sits one side higher than the other, pushing off the wall showing her basket and straining to loose herself from the end of the iron hook. One day as she pushes herself from the wall, her ring might finally pass the end of the iron hook's lip. Coming Christmas she will have out dark red, young white mouthed flowers, spitting white stems, in time they will shrivel and fall to the floor, scattering themselves as though she is bleeding to death. On the wall, between two tall bookcases is 5 frames that surround a portrait of my daughter, her long brunette hair and green eyes watch us(my son and I), always. Her brothers are to her right and left who like their sister, have silenced me with their beauty. Grandma and Grampa on the top right and left corners watch them and in the top middle, a frame sits empty. I do not want to put their mother(ex) there, I do not want to put myself there and I am unable to decide what should fill that picture. A fat, black leather couch is beneath and on this is my son, who favors a corner, closest my big red recliner. A large, square glass coffee table sits in the middle with our metal jacks and balls seen shelved under the glass top with my magazines, coffee-table books and our place mats on top. We eat here on the coffee-table, us 2 bachelors, since the dining room is where our loom is, yes, a loom, an old loom, but still a beautiful 6 foot tall wooden loom. I have worked this loom for years as my mother did and just can not stay away from it. The dust from the worsted strings on the loom are bad for me, since sneezing can be dangerous and could cause my stress fractures to break, again, but I love the feel of linen, the trappings of things made by the hand. Beside the loom is a large fish tank on an old, silvered cedar cabinet my son and I found by a dumpster, but now looks gorgeous holding this behemoth of a tank. The aquarium holds three goldfish, who are over 15 years old and as big as my swollen fists. They surface when I open the top lid and can swish out a cup of water at me when its time for feeding. At night the glimmering reflections about the living-room and dining-room are moody and calming, as are they(fish). If you stare at them, without moving, they will stare back, trusting that you are no more than the computer desk or the office chair in front of it. All night, if I am caught asleep in my recliner, I can hear them picking threw the gravel, rustling a pebble in their mouths and spitting them out against the side of the glass, tink, tink, tink. Through-out my home is hardwood floors and carpets, strewn about where we gather to sit or path threw the home. The kitchen is tiled in earth like stone as is the washroom, which may seem wonderful, but I have found it is harder to keep clean than the usual carpeted homes. The smallest grit, the lightest dust or the bits of this crumb and that, do stand out more than you may notice if you only came to visit, though for me, its all that. It makes me feel lazy, if I do not remove it, I do not know why these things bother me, when I do not have the strength to deal with such little, stupid things, like dust and bits of whatever. It is these kinds of thoughts, that make you think of what you used to have, as far as help and health. The things my kids used to help and do as far as chores go, my ex wife used to do and maybe I took for granted or maybe I just did not see these little things before. Maybe I should get out more?