Sugar Tits and the Diminishin' Republic

Ever have a phrase looping around in your head for no apparent reason? 

"Thoughts meander like a restless wind inside a letterbox, they tumble blindly as they make their way across the universe." 

Thank you, John for that descriptive, insightful tidbit. One place they tend to stop over on their journey, however, is the inside of my skull, where they become trapped for a day or so before continuing on their trans-universal migration. Today, the phrase "Sugar Tits" ended up making a nest, joined later by an unrelated companion, "The Diminshin' Republic."

Let me just say straight off that the words "Sugar Tits" don't find their way out of my mouth, or into any of my communication regularly, or, like, ever. So, don't get the wrong impression. I may, in fact, be a lecherous old coot, but I don't somehow ever find myself in situations where that choice of monikers would ever suit my conversation. But I had the funny thought of a completely obtuse version of myself pondering the fact that my creepiness precedes me in any given situation:

"Could it have anything to do with the fact that I address every single female that I speak with as 'Sugar Tits' irregardless of age, status or the social context of our interaction?" 

Nahh! What then?

I guess the thought just struck me as funny due to its incongruity and complete inappropriateness in pretty much any social setting I could possibly imagine using it. "Hey, Sugar Tits--I mean-- Mom, pass the biscuits." I picture people fainting dead away at the offense as I look around, sniffing the air. "What? Did I fart?"

Some people get a pass based on age or generational status. I'm not sure if it's limited to people of a certain century or whether the date will keep rolling forward based on the person's birthday. Once you reach 50 and get grey hair you can start calling females "Sugar" or "Sweetie." My good friend, Chris Knoll, a Christian, no less, has such a card. 

Whether chatting up some lady in a supermarket or addressing the wife of a friend, he may use the words "Sweetheart" or "Darlin'" without reprisal. He manages to pull it off gracefully, even in today's strictly enforced, politically correct social climate, due to his genuine, if anachronistic, gentlemanly charm. I'm pretty sure Sugar Tits is off the menu, though, even for someone with his clearance.

The Diminishin' Republic is the autonomous region formerly known as the United States of America, in some imagined dystopian future. Huh, I just typed, "The Un-tied States of America." A Freudian typo. Same concept. The idea is that we are becoming so polarized in our thinking that the inevitable outcome must be a complete undoing of our system of government. 

The nation will heretofore be split up into two regions. One will be the left leaning so-called socialist side, inhabited by the "hippies, slackers, snowflakes...insert judgemental right-wing epithet here."  The other region will house the "intolerant, uncompassionate, mindless followers of a hateful demagogue...paste favorite idiom for Trump supporter here." 

Since these two groups will never get along, it will be necessary to let them evolve into their own separate experiments in democracy. They can choose whatever version of government or no government they see fit. One side will look like the Mad Max version of the wild west, while the other will take on the sinister supernanny hue of Orwell's Big Brother. Both represent negative utopias in my estimation, but whatever. Once you start down a path you tend to follow it to its conclusion.

Those were the two thoughts flitting about in my head as I tended to the seasonal business at hand in my late September's outdoor gardening. 

At this time of year all the weeks of watering and waiting turn into one gigantic stack of work, as the hay is meticulously cut, sorted and baled. Imagine cutting down the Black Forest with a pair of scissors. Best to get an early start or the frost will be on the pumpkin before the hay even comes close to making it into the barn, to use as thinly veiled a metaphor as possible for what I am actually doing.

It just occurred to me where these two phrases came from. They didn't come slithering and winding their way across the universe to nest in my brain. They were spawned there. 

As I was gently manicuring my forest with a pair of scissors, I was being mindful of the "sugar leaves," which one would wish to leave intact when trimming away the larger fan leaves. The tips, though, need to be cut off to prevent degradation of the final product. Hence, the sugar tips, which devolved in my own whirlpool of a brain to Sugar Tits, which I may now just go ahead and claim as my stripper name, should I ever find myself being asked.

Diminishin' Republic, likewise came from my focused attention on the task at hand. When one brings in the hay too early, there is a loss of potential growth and ripening that one wants to avoid. But harvesting too late can mean rot and fungus or pests make your hay unpalatable. So there is a point of diminishing returns for leaving your hay in the pasture to ripen for too long. 

That phrase morphed into diminishing republic, which sounded like a south American country. It wound up leading me down the unlikely and unwelcome path of contemplating the two prevailing political thought processes in our country right now, which in turn made me ruminate about the sad future we are making for ourselves in that regard. Something I normally don't like to think about.

So, I was really not thinking about breasts or politics to start out with. It only just happened to self-generate from repetitive thoughts while performing seasonal horticultural obligations. Plus, I may have smoked some of that hay earlier in the day with my Saturday morning coffee. That's my story,  and I'm sticking to it, innuendos, vague drug references and all.