I have notebooks. So many notebooks.

Everywhere I look lately, I find stacks of ragged notebooks with incomprehensible hen scratchings and suspicious stains. Notebooks in the car, notebooks in the basement, notebooks stashed in drawers I haven’t opened in years.

I bet if I looked hard enough, I could find every notebook I’ve ever used over the past 21 years on the job.

Except the one containing notes from my current assignment. THAT notebook is always missing.

If I gathered all of these notebooks together, I could build a house — nay, a compound — out of them. It’s my retirement plan.

Please, no smoking in the notebook retirement compound.

One thing becomes clear by comparing the really old notebooks to the new ones: My handwriting has gone to hell over the past years. In the beginning, those scribbled words were full of hope and ambition. Each word was legible; disciplined soldiers waiting to join paragraph armies. It was a beautiful thing.

Now, not so much. In a fairly clean notebook found at the bottom of a toolbox, I found the following line stretched in baffling glory across a page.

“It’s really an incredible age when you can take your seventh or eighth garter.”

What could this possibly mean? Was I sent to cover a strip club or strange bridal shower and I’ve somehow forgotten about it? I’m pretty sure I could review all the news over the past five years and I’d never find a place where this line fits.

“The stolen cat we have today is the reason for this shrub shower,” asserts another meaningless expanse of ink occupying another notebook. It’s the kind of sentence that should exist only in the freaky dreams of Dr. Seuss or Hunter S. Thompson.

“I have wine dippers in the car.” Presumably, I understood what this meant when I recorded it in my notebook, but I surely don’t understand it now. Wine dippers? Not according to Google. There are wine slushies, wine and thyme and something called Skinny Banana Nutella Dip out there in the interwebs, but these mysterious things called wine dippers exist only in the lunatic landscape of my notebook.

“That will make it float and it has to have a binder.” Sounds like a really bad first day of school for some poor chap.

“You’ll do great things in life.” I don’t know who said it, but they were surely not talking to me.

“In the belly. It’s that time of year.” This one scares me a little. It sounds like a vague threat. Leave my belly alone, you!

“Well, this is incredibly embarrassing.” Not sure what this line references, but it would be right at home in my personal diary.

“Hugs and handshakes.” A scene from graduation day? A light day on the prostitution beat? My hopes for a peaceful, more prosperous world? No idea. I’m thinking of getting this message tattooed on my butt.

“Own the mold Sonny builds.” It’s all very philosophical. After all, don’t we ALL own the mold Sonny builds? You think about that.

“Floor mat. Eye protection. Tape measure.” This was probably more of a shopping list than a news item. I’m very serious about floor-mat installation.

“He’s the best.” I don’t know who said it, but she surely wasn’t talking about me.

Mark LaFlamme is a Sun Journal staff writer. Email belly binders, shrub garters and cat hugs to mlaflamme@sunjournal.com.

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