Paint Creek

Can't sleep. As I wrote in my diary, it's bad some nights, when I am laying there staring at the ceiling and then for some reason I'll think about my dog Crash or my brother David. That makes me start saying "SHUT UP" to my brain,I can't let those thoughts in, not in bed where I have plenty of time to think about them. But then some nights it will start off with thoughts of David (he died in October, and every October I get very sad before Halloween, and don't know why, then I remember) but end with thoughts of Carol.
I wrote her a love letter, that I have no intention of sending, wrote it two weeks after I saw her last. I just re-read it and I'm glad I didn't send it: It's not my best work. It could use some finesse. At any rate, it would most likely be the end of her talking to me.
So I was thinking about her tonight and I turned the light on and wrote about Paint Creek. Carol was moving me from Richmond to Louisville in her station wagon: my mannequin 'Sinead' strapped to the top (which made me love Carol all the more, her driving all that way with a nekkid mannequin on the top of her car like a modern day Joad family that happened to have a masthead). We passed over a creek that was named PAINT CREEK and one of us looked at it and said something like "Why that's just plain water."
We got to speculating on why it's called Paint Creek and thought perhaps it was full of Red Snapper.
And Bluefish. And Rainbow Trout. And Bluegill.
And that went on for a long time, sometimes it would take us minutes to come up with one but come up with one we did and say it nonchalantly and then we'd bust out laughing, laughing until we cried.
But like all good things it came to an end and we ran out of fish; that is I thought we did. We got nigh to Louisville when Carol said, out of the blue, "Orange Roughy".
I gotta tell ya to this day when ever I see a fish that has a color in its name, especially Orange Roughy, I really want to run from the room or start crying or both.
One day, driving to work from my home in Anchorage, I passed the marquee of the seafood store on the corner and it said RAINBOW TROUT/Halibut/Orange Roughy/Pink Salmon and I stopped, got out of my car and took a photo of it, sent it to Carol's mom (Carol and I were only just saying hello to one another now and again, we weren't talking like we are now) and told mom to show it to Carol, that she would know what it meant.
I thought about her that whole day and every time I passed that stupid sign I silently prayed they would change it asap.
Tonight, I mourn the fact I can't call Carol like I used to, no matter the time I could call her and she would read to me from Winnie the Pooh , or the Tao of Pooh, or from 'The Wind in the Willows'. And all would be right with the world. I wonder what got me down back then . Probably the same thing that is geting me down now: that I can't have Carol, nor can I have anyone like Carol.
I laugh at myself and hope now I can get some sleep.