The Best/Worst Boss I Ever Had

Another break from the old writing today. I've decided to let myself come and go with it. If I have a moment I want to share or a thought to get out I'll hold off on the writing that day. Just remember everything in italics is me now and everything that is not is from eight years ago. 

I woke up this morning on my day off slow. It's cold in the mornings and I recently heard how the lead singer of the cranberries died drunk in a tub. Made me sad to think about so I've been going back and listening to their stuff. the album with Linger on it. Made me think about coffee and cigarettes but I recently got over a head cold and that always makes me glad I quit smoking. I made a cup of decaf coffee that was ok, just ok because decaf is annoying like w sheep in wolves clothing. 
I live near the beach and on my days off I like to drive to a park that's always quiet and has beautiful trees and an open grass section. I have great thoughts out here. It's perfect to put my feet in the grass and get the morning sun. 
Today there was a guy mowing and I got to smell the fresh cut grass. It doesn't rain here in California and I see more fake grass than real stuff. fake grass always makes me shake my head. I get the lack of water and having regular grass is a waste of water but respect to people who do rocks or some natural landscape instead of going with plastic grass of all things. Anyway, The picture above was taken a few minutes ago. me laying in the sun smelling the fresh cut grass. It took me back to Rochester NY where I grew up. There mowing is a big part of life. My first real job was for a property management company. I would get a weed wacker and just go for hours. I worked for a guy who was hard. He was mean, smoked like chimney, he was short and probably was over compensating a bit for it. He was so focused on the details. He tried to teach me about hard work, about taking pride in things and doing it right even when no one is watching, about cleaning something that will get dirty the next day. I feared him, I respected him and I would have done anything to make him proud of me. I was young and lazy and not very interested in the details, I still struggle with it. I didn't have anything to compare him to at the time. Now I am finally starting to learn some of the lessons he tried to teach me. He is one of those people I think about often. When I do something right I think that I wish he was there to see it because I still want him to be proud of me. He was trying to teach me to be a man. He was far from perfect and some days I hated his guts. I would say things about religion or about the girl i was dating being special and he would look at me like I was the stupidest kid in the world then he would tell me how I didn't know anything. He was right now if some seventeen year old tried to tell me that they were in love or that they knew the truth about religion I would probably do the same thing. 

So to cut grass and my first and best boss who is still teaching me lessons now that I am grown that I heard twenty years ago.   
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