Hmm, Okay.

I'm the maintenance guy for the Catholic Church here. Fixing shit around the place isn't too hard, and if its something I can't do, like electrical work, or something I refuse to do, like plumbing, I get to call someone to take care of that crap. I have had various jobs that have led me into this way of life, I was a construction worker out of high school. That's most of my building shit experience. Mowing lawns was easy to begin with, and with four acres to take care of we have a huge riding mower that is a blast to drive around at a good 20 mph. It is built chariot style, no seat, and I fell off the back of the damn thing a few times, high speed, zero point turns can knock anyone's ass off this mower, and the damn thing would just slam itself to a dead stop in two or three feet. It's a beast of a machine. And I also do yard, perimeter checks to look for the various shit people tend to do to churches through their hatred of the place. So far in the seven years I've worked there, I've had to deal with busted rock work on the bell tower, scratched “666” into the paint in various places around the property. Once someone decided to use sidewalk chalk to do an entire scene on the sidewalk of several demons ransacking the church with everyone burning. It was pretty nice artwork too, and I only slightly felt bad pressure washing the crap off before the funeral started.

That's the view I have to deal with every day.

Quite the bitch but someone's got to.

I was hired at the church to help put in a security fence around the back part of the property, a new lawn had just been installed with a nice path and one hell of a view of the mountains here. There is a nice statue of the Virgin Mary sitting out there with a mound, and roses, and some awesome flowers around it. The reason for the fence was because someone decided to decapitate the previous one. It was a plaster cast for the statue and wasn't too hard to remove the head but the person thought, “I'm taking this.” Just like the episode of the Simpsons, where Bart cuts off the head of Jebidiah Springfield. So nine hundred feet of fence attached to poles with some barb wire has pretty much kept all the hooligans away, also the new Mary statue has a nice cage for her own protection.

The past couple years, I haven't had to deal with any vandalism, some odd scratching into the paint in a bathroom is pretty much it. Lately though we've had a lot of homeless people. I knew we had a slight homelessness problem in Bishop for a long time but it seems to be getting worse. The thing I learned is that not all homeless people are homeless because of shit just happening to them, or drug use. Sure those are for most cases, but there are two people that have chosen homelessness as a lifestyle choice. One guy drives with a van, stocked to the hilt with fucking trash, and bike parts attached to the roof. The guy is a know it all type of person and felt the need to preach to people coming to the church to pray, or you know, listen to the fucking priest preach. The guy has always been an ass, and he's been asked so many goddamn times that he's not welcome on the grounds. He didn't think a restraining order was a good enough hint, that he should find a new hangout. Until I caught him bathing in the restroom. By the time I get to work, church services for the morning have long ended but the problem wasn't that he was using the bathroom, we leave it open to the public. The problem was that he propped the door open and had stripped to his not so tighty-whities. When he got hauled off by the cops, I felt that it was a good day. And he has only come back once, and when a six foot two inch tall, two hundred-mmmmm pound guy tells you to fuck off, you tend to comply. Of course holding a pitch fork was just for the show. He hasn't been back. I used to be a bouncer at the local dive bar, which describes them all in town, and if you think it's a nice kind of job, good for you, that is the most boring job I ever had. After the first night I would have quit, but I really needed the money. And because of that, I'm now the bouncer for the church grounds. Church bouncer, check that off the bucket list.

These deer skulls sure do fancy up the place.

But yesterday has been the weirdest I've seen so far. Two well sun bleached deer skulls, and a rusty ore car wheel. Just sitting there, I go into the office ask about what I found. I was guessing someone was either getting ready to perform some mystic demon ritual, or someone camping on the grounds again and thought they needed something to make the place feel like home. No one in the office knew anything about it, and told me to just toss the stuff into the dumpster. That took no more than five minutes, two minutes solid just for laughter, and I go back outside to the park and the fucking stuff is gone. Like it had never been there. I looked at my phone to make sure I wasn't just having a dream, and no the pictures were there. And now one of them is here. And if that fucking picture is just blank to everyone else, I'm having one hell of a hallucination.