Poor girl.

Since her surgery she hasn't been able to do much of anything except lay in bed, miserable, watching episode after episode of some damn show that I can't bring myself to get into. I know that it is incredibly popular among women, but the political agenda is painfully clear after only a few seconds of listening while I brush my teeth. Gun control. Jesus Fucking Christ. Why can't they stick to gay marriage, abortion, and marijuana? Things I'd actually support.

She hasn't been able to cook our paleo menu and I'm way too fucking busy so we've both kinda accepted that our hugely successful weight loss program will just have to be put on hold until she can get back in the kitchen. Til then I guess we'll be eating out quite a lot.

Coming back from a breakfast that was anything but paleo, I stopped at a gas station to pick up some smokes. Newports, please. Shorts. Yeah, the green ones. Do people even smoke the red ones? Fuck that, at $7 a pack if it isn't menthol why not buy Pall Malls or Winstons? I leave her in the Sequoia to go burn one, my first of the morning, around the side of the gas station because there is NO SMOKING ALLOWED WITHIN 25 FEET from the propane tanks in their cage by the ashtrays at the front doors of the convenience store.

Standing in the little-used rear driveway of the station I am staring down at my phone, checking my emails and browsing the news while I smoke, and I can see, peripherally, a vehicle approaching so I quickly hop over to the curb out of the way and continue smoking.

The vehicle doesn't move, and without looking up from my screen I wave them on by, go ahead dude, I'm smoking, you're safe to enter.

The vehicle still doesn't move.

I look up to find out what is going on, why they are still parked.

It's a baby blue VW microbus, a Mommy Slug Bug- worth two punches in the arm in some families, and the driver is a scowling, shaggy bearded older man in a dusty wide brimmed hat. Hawk feathers and multicolored bead trinkets hanging from his rear view and sticking up out of the air vents along the dash.

Apocalypse Hippy Cowboy Gandalf Gypsy are the words that come to mind.

We stare at each other. I at him and he at me.

Shit is getting strange.

I shift my cigarette to my left hand, calmly drag smoke and tuck my phone away in my front right pocket. A whispered sonuvabitch escapes my lips as I feel the vacant spot on my hip where I usually have my pistol holstered. Not today though, we brought the truck instead of my Outback so I couldn't even sprint to grab a rifle if Cowboy Gandalf in the little Hippy Wagon wanted to make big trouble here in the sleepy parking lot of the Chevron.

A few more seconds of staring and he slowly raises a Canon D50 SLR digital camera and takes a picture of me.

What the actual fuck?

I glance over my right shoulder to see if this is one of those times when you think someone is looking or waving at you but it's really someone behind you, and it's not because nobody is there and I turn back to see he is already setting the camera aside.

This shit is too weird to walk away from so I puff smoke again and he pulls up to the curb next to me and motions for me to come around to the driver's side, which I do and take note of the fact he has only rolled his window down three inches.

Cowboy Gandalf has a sleeping bag and a gallon jug of water on the passenger side and he asks me something I don't quite catch so I give him the say again? command that is probably never going to leave my vocabulary.

"Do you have a badge?" He repeats, much louder, over the edge of the window, he tips his face up so his mouth is next to the opening between door frame and glass.

"A badge?" I ask. I thought he might have asked for a cigarette or for directions and I was already reaching for my pack.

"Are you a cop, man?"

"You think I look like a cop." a statement, not a question.

"You look like a detective, I seen you reach for your gun."