A couple of days ago The Yummy Biker called me out on to the front porch. He was pointing at the weeping alder. "I swear, I just saw something weird hop on its hind legs underneath that tree! Like a kangaroo! It was black and white and it had a long tail. You stay here and watch the tree and I'll go try and see if I can flush it out." He crept out into the driveway and made a few fooing gestures at the alder. Tiptoed around to another spot and tried again.
Nothing ran out. We looked at each other.
The two old ladies walking past with their tiny dog in a coat looked at us too.
"Hi!" I waved.
We looked for tracks and trails in the wet grass and rustled around in the plantings nearby.
Meanwhile, I was pleased that for once I was not the one who'd seen Bigfoot flying the UFO.
Sometime later the Yummy Biker called me into the back yard. "It's a rat," he announced. "It's a black and white rat. It just ran under the deck."
"Oh my God you have to be kidding," I said.
Nope. Hearing our voices, the worlds cleanest, fattest rat waddled out from under the deck and sat in the grass, calmly washing its little ratty face with its little ratty paws, looking from the Biker to me. Meanwhile our Girldog ambled around the yard sniffing bumblebees.
"There it is," I said. The Biker looked. The girldog tried to eat a bee.
We watched it for awhile. It waddled around, sat in the sun, kicked its head like a dog.
Our dog squatted and took a whiz three feet away from the thing.
So much for those terrier instincts.
The biker raised the lid of the barbecue and turned the steaks.
The rat waddled up onto the deck and stood next to the barbecue.
Then it sat up on its hind legs.
And begged.
"That's it", I said.
I walked next door to the freaky people's house and knocked on their door.
No answer. Cars in the driveway, television on.
Knocked again.
No answer.
Probably huddled in a corner saying their rosary until the Evil One passed them by.
So I did.
I went to the next door down, the apartments.
A woman was standing out on her porch having a cigarette.
"Hi, did you happen to lose a pet rat?" I asked. "I live the next house over here, and we have someones pet rat over in our yard. Really tame."
"A rat?" she said.
"Yeah, a rat. A black and white rat. Comes right up to you, not afraid a bit."
"A rat?" she said.
I heard a mans voice come from inside the house. "A rat?"
He came out onto the porch. "Hey, you're that lady that mows the lawn," he said.
.......OK.
"Yeah. Did you lose a pet rat? I guess no, huh?"
He looked down at me. "A rat?"'
Another person, a slab faced woman smoking a Lucky, squeezed out onto the porch and looked down at me. "Hi," I said.
"Djoo lose a rat?" she said.
" No, I found a rat, I explained.
"A rat?" she said.
Engaging as this was, I sensed I had hit a dead end in my ratquest. Suddenly smoker #1 bellowed across the parking lot to a large man out on his balcony putting a diaper into a garbage can. "Hey, 'Tonio! You lose a pet rat?"
Tonio looked over and squinted. "A rat?"
"Well, thanks, " I said. I walked away. Behind me the conversation continued.
"Someone lost a rat?"
" She lost a rat."
"No, she found a rat."
"A rat?"
Have some more meth, folks. Seriously.
YES IT WAS A FUCKING RAT. GOOD GRAVY MARIE ALREADY.
I came back in and shut the door. "Please tell me you didn't feed it," I said to the Yummy Biker. He snorted. "Jett's trying to eat it right now," he replied.
I looked out the kitchen window.
Sure enough, our girldog was out in the back yard, sloooooooowly lifting one paw and setting it down, then the other, advancing with her head down and her gaze fixed, jungle senses focused on the obese, hygiene obsessed rat busy washing it's butt in my yard.
It looked up, noticed her and waddled back underneath my deck.
Jett came prancing in through the dog door smiling a big doggy smile, wagging her tail. 'You can calm down now, guys! I took care of it!"
I would like to move now.
Saturday, June 07, 2008
Friday, June 06, 2008
Green: You get what you pay for....
...when you pay other people to be responsible for your choices.
Remember back when it was so easy to be green? Fill your own containers at the Co-Op, compost the yard waste, separate the beer bottles by color...yeah.
You know why that was? Because back then we all lived a little closer, metaphorically speaking, to the point of origin, and everyday life was not as technologically supersaturated as it is now.
This isn't the 60's anymore. Not even the 70's. The ramifications of those early green choices are completely different now, in many cases. 'Green' means 'dollars' now, not just 'save the earth'.
Here's an example of what I mean:
I used to work in the cleanup and removal business. I've seen the end result of a lot of recycling operations. Once the valuable constituent- the chip or rare metal scrap or compressor tank or what have you has been harvested, the hulk-usually 80% of the mass- goes straight to the dump. Steel, aluminum and all. Plastics too. I was the one who took it there.
Yes, this is perfectly legal.
Ok, now let's say you decide to bust that appliance down yourself. A newer washing machine, say. With a chip. First of all, read up on those EPA regulations. And your covenant. And your zoning regulations. Now, separate and store:
Assuming you don't live in an industrial district, your local rare and non-ferrous metals reclamation point will be some miles away. With the cost of gas at 4.00 per gallon, is it worth your while to bring in .0o8 grams of platinum (or gold, or silver, or irridium or...)? Probably not. Store it up until you get enough to make it worth your while?
Over the course of your lifetime you will NOT consume enough to make it worth even a tank of gas.
There's a lot of steel (see fig. A) in a major appliance. The price of scrap steel is a variable...generally fairly low. Where do you store all that metal until you have enough to make a trip pay for itself? And by 'pay for itself', I mean, break even on the expense of operating the transport vehicle. You don't get paid for your time.
Do you have a truck? Because you'll need one. (Unless you hired me.) And a materials storage permit (and all the buildings and other infrastructure in place to comply with that permit) and a hazardous materials handling and storage permit, and a non-restrictive covenant, and a largish piece of property...
You live in an apartment?
Ooooooh, bummer.
Until I worked in the business, I had no clue either. I thought someone took that stuff and it ALL got broken down and went back into the raw materials stream.
Nope.
This is they way you have to think now, from the smallest nicad battery to your family automobile. Simply choosing to recycle has a whole new host of attendant considerations than when it just meant 'separate your paper'. And recycling is only one small part of the 'green' equation!
The biggest mistake I see people making is assuming that anything described as 'Green' is automatically the sounder ecological choice. It simply isn't. These days, 'Green', as used by corporate America, has as much legal and semantic meaning as the term 'Guaranteed' does.
NONE.
NONE WHATSOEVER.
America and the market are very different places now. Minimizing your impact on the environment is no longer simply a matter of riding public transit or composting your yard waste. There are a million more technological layers between the market and raw materials now.
The very first thing you should do is go out there and learn what 'green' really means these days.
What the consequences of your choices will be.
Prepare to be appalled.
This post by Inner Voices would be an excellent place to start.
WHAT DO THE VOICES MEAN: go green!!
Well fucking done, Voices!!
Folks, THIS is why we blog.
__________________________________________
Remember back when it was so easy to be green? Fill your own containers at the Co-Op, compost the yard waste, separate the beer bottles by color...yeah.
You know why that was? Because back then we all lived a little closer, metaphorically speaking, to the point of origin, and everyday life was not as technologically supersaturated as it is now.
This isn't the 60's anymore. Not even the 70's. The ramifications of those early green choices are completely different now, in many cases. 'Green' means 'dollars' now, not just 'save the earth'.
Here's an example of what I mean:
I used to work in the cleanup and removal business. I've seen the end result of a lot of recycling operations. Once the valuable constituent- the chip or rare metal scrap or compressor tank or what have you has been harvested, the hulk-usually 80% of the mass- goes straight to the dump. Steel, aluminum and all. Plastics too. I was the one who took it there.
Yes, this is perfectly legal.
Ok, now let's say you decide to bust that appliance down yourself. A newer washing machine, say. With a chip. First of all, read up on those EPA regulations. And your covenant. And your zoning regulations. Now, separate and store:
- Scrap steel, stripped of coatings and fasteners, if those differ in makeup
- plastic, sorted by type (can you tell the difference?)
- cadmium coated parts removed and stored for later pickup +transport cost
- hazardous wastes removed and stored for later pickup+transport cost
- rare metals set aside by type (less than 1% of the total mass)
- glass, if any, sorted by type and color (pyrex and other safety glasses are not recyclable)
- unrecyclable synthetics set aside for later safe disposal (more of these than you'd think)
- copper, stripped of coating and fasteners etc.
- aluminum, stripped of coatings and fasteners etc.
Assuming you don't live in an industrial district, your local rare and non-ferrous metals reclamation point will be some miles away. With the cost of gas at 4.00 per gallon, is it worth your while to bring in .0o8 grams of platinum (or gold, or silver, or irridium or...)? Probably not. Store it up until you get enough to make it worth your while?
Over the course of your lifetime you will NOT consume enough to make it worth even a tank of gas.
There's a lot of steel (see fig. A) in a major appliance. The price of scrap steel is a variable...generally fairly low. Where do you store all that metal until you have enough to make a trip pay for itself? And by 'pay for itself', I mean, break even on the expense of operating the transport vehicle. You don't get paid for your time.Do you have a truck? Because you'll need one. (Unless you hired me.) And a materials storage permit (and all the buildings and other infrastructure in place to comply with that permit) and a hazardous materials handling and storage permit, and a non-restrictive covenant, and a largish piece of property...
You live in an apartment?
Ooooooh, bummer.
Until I worked in the business, I had no clue either. I thought someone took that stuff and it ALL got broken down and went back into the raw materials stream.
Nope.
This is they way you have to think now, from the smallest nicad battery to your family automobile. Simply choosing to recycle has a whole new host of attendant considerations than when it just meant 'separate your paper'. And recycling is only one small part of the 'green' equation!
The biggest mistake I see people making is assuming that anything described as 'Green' is automatically the sounder ecological choice. It simply isn't. These days, 'Green', as used by corporate America, has as much legal and semantic meaning as the term 'Guaranteed' does.
NONE.
NONE WHATSOEVER.
America and the market are very different places now. Minimizing your impact on the environment is no longer simply a matter of riding public transit or composting your yard waste. There are a million more technological layers between the market and raw materials now.
The very first thing you should do is go out there and learn what 'green' really means these days.
What the consequences of your choices will be.
Prepare to be appalled.
This post by Inner Voices would be an excellent place to start.
WHAT DO THE VOICES MEAN: go green!!
Well fucking done, Voices!!
Folks, THIS is why we blog.
__________________________________________
Thursday, June 05, 2008
nsfw: Bad Fiction Alert
...and SSA? You'd be better off not reading this. 'K?
_____________
Yes, in the finest tradition of bad biker magazine fiction, I bring you this modest offering...a tale of motorcycles and revenge, of leather and the men who wear it, of drugs, produce, and albacore tuna.
These characters are from an ongoing series I've been doing over at UJ. For those of you who've been reticent about taking a squint, take this as a reassurance of sorts. This is every bit as bad as what's over there, minus the sex.
Not the swearing, though.
Because, come on. This is 'Paul'.
__________________________________________
I was going to make someone a great little wife someday.
This was the thought that occurred to me when I pulled my cash out of my front pocket. It was rubber banded to my grocery list, and there were coupons paper clipped to that.
Meanwhile Susan chose me a nice fat baggie from the pile atop the suitcase she was using as a worktable. I pinched out a nice bud and loaded up her bong.
The flame illuminated her face as she fired up. She looked like a friendly witch for a second, uplit features surrounded by rag curls and smoke. Of course this friendly witch had a Colt Navy issue hidden someplace under all those yards of batik, and all her Munchkins rode Harley Davidsons.
At the moment we were largely Munchkin-free. One lay snoring on his side atop the pool table with his ankle chained to a cinderblock. Otherwise, Susan and I were alone in the house as far as I knew.
"Roth ain't here," she said out of the blue.
"Fuck you." I grinned.
"Ranger Rod is," she replied, rolling her eyes. "Anywhere two or more pussy are gathered, he is with you."
"Huh. Fucker still owes me a lump of hash," I replied. "I might go looking for him."
She rolled her eyes again. "Don't expect to collect on that shit and get away. He's a cunthound, that boy. All them mountain lions and wolves and shit up in the woods, man they avoid his horny ass. You lucky motherfuckin' Roth come up when he did. That's worth it. Ranger Rod justa throwed you over the top rail and hogfucked you."
She pushed her hair back over one ear and set the bong aside, drug the triple beam out into its place and reached into a grocery bag at her side. "So what that Roth about?"
I loaded another hit. "Fineass. Put together like a goddamn building."
She put a handful of dope up on the platen and nudged one of the weights with her finger. "Yeah, I heard about you and buildings, man, like that garage building. Couple of animals."
We reached across the suitcase - slap and snap! - and then cracked up at our dorkiness.
"Business doing pleasure with you" she said. I got up, picked up my Slurpee cup and took a drink. "Mind telling me something?" I looked down at her and shook my head. "Why you got all blue teeth?"
I took the lid off my Slurpee and showed her the contents. "Fuck that nasty," she said. "You some kind of circus freak? Carnies drink that shit. Raspberry and schoolboy? You sick."
Well, I couldn't exactly disagree with that, so I just shrugged.
_____________
Generally I wouldn't have walked to the store, but I found myself dawdling along down the block, looking at the neighbors houses, looking at the cars going by, humming a little tune.
Yeah, shit, hoping that Roth would ride past.
I got to the grocery store finally and pulled out the list. I hit the aisles systematically, put all the coupons atop each item they discounted, arranged all that in one neat corner of the basket, and marvelled at my own dorkiness once again. I was good at this shit. Of course, I had to be... I had an allowance to work with, and once the check was cut nothing else was disbursed until the next month. The 'sink or swim' school of household budgeting.
I probably enjoyed it more than I should have, though. I probably took my produce a little too seriously too. I went back to the swinging doors at the rear of the store to see if maybe they had some fresh basil they hadn't put out yet. My inner dork was exulting by this point. Probably hoping I'd pick up a copy of PC World on the way out.
I followed the sound of running water to where a man in a green apron was uncrating lettuce over a set of steel sinks. As I got closer I began to reconsider the benefits of a vegetarian diet; the guy in front of me was enormous. Then I saw the ponytail curled up beneath the hairnet.
'Fuckin' Roth, man!" I said.
Apparently my inner dork was from Oregon.
He turned around with a lettuce in one hand and a Dexter knife in the other. "Well hey. What are you doing here?"
Just....casual.
Just...nonchalant.
Just...'Oh hey, it's that chick I f(edited for the sake of my children) pile of shop rags like a rabid (here too) ravening and slavering, possessed by a thousand priapic (see, you're sorry you didn't listen to me now aren't you). Huh. Yawn. Whatever.'
Simply awesome.
"I'm, um, looking for basil", I said, sounding both sad and lame. "Do you have any in?"
He wiped his hands on his apron and looked off in the distance. "We don't get it in for another three days."
I shuffled. "Oh. I thought maybe you had some back here stashed waiting to go out, maybe, or something. I thought that."
The inner dork was now squeezing out of my pores and engulfing my head.
Lord Jesus. I thought that, did I? Wow. Leave. Leave while you still can. The darkness is descending. Run.
He looked at me for a second. "We don't stash basil," he said finally. "That's...not something we do." He stood looking down at me, one eyebrow raised slightly.
"...OK then," I said. "I'll go hit the rest of the store. So. See ya."
I was completely engulfed in dork. It was controlling my movements like a horrible brain sucking alien. I strolled on out casually, so very obvious; obvious as hell, obvious with the intensity of a raging Norse war-god, while dork-nano generated black, horn-rimmed glasses that sent biomechanical tentacles burrowing into into my face.
Mustering my last shreds of self respect, I resolutely bypassed the magazine rack and rented a copy of Videodrome on the way out.
____________________________
I heard a motorcycle come up behind me while I was waiting for the bus at the corner, and I grinned like a pirate. "You son of a bitch", I thought. ' You totally messed with my head.' I shifted the bags. "Yeah, you'll be stashing some basil when I get done with your ass."
Of course I didn't turn around when I heard the engine switch off.
"Hey," said a voice.
There sat Ranger Rod.
I looked at him over the top of my sunglasses. He looked at me over the top of his and smiled.
"You got my hash?" I asked.
He shook his head. "Not on me."
"Then fuck off," I said, and turned away.
I heard the engine start, and the gravel crunching beneath his tires as he started down the street.
I should not have thrown a can of tomato paste at him.
Luckily the bus arrived right then. He followed it for quite awhile before he finally turned off.
_____________________________
So I was a can of tomato paste down, but I'd made a new friend. I reflected on my good fortune as I made my dinner. I was so rat fucked I couldn't believe it. I always did this. I always did this. Why did I always did this? Why?
Think. Then act. Think FIRST.
I always messed that part up.
I picked up the skillet and grabbed a fork, then I went outside and sat down by the creek to eat. Leaves fell into my food and I picked them out. I threw an occasional noodle into the shallow water by my feet and watched the minnows school around it, picking and darting.
I heard something come through the brush at a run.
I stood up swinging the skillet and nailed Ranger Rod right in the side of the head. Noodles flew everywhere. The pan landed a county away.
I backed up fast, my hand over my mouth, tripping and panicking and losing my shit, Oh Jesus Christ Oh God Oh shit, and turned and ran.
__________________________
OK now, I thought, sitting on the curb. OK. Now I know what the smart thing to do here is. The smart thing to do would be to call the police. Be totally up front. This was clear trespass. I was...
No wait. My dad would come home, there'd be a record, all kinds of shit would come down,
No wait. I knew what the right thing was to do. I knew it. Maybe it would be OK. Maybe it would.
Or maybe it wouldn't either. I nailed the guy with a cast iron skillet for the love of shit; his ass was deceased.
I should go check.
-Like fuck I was going to go check. That would look great forensically, wouldn't it? Like I went back and gloated.
A beat to shit Toyota came to an idle in front of me. Roth rolled down the window and looked down at me for a moment. " I just got off work and I thought I'd stop by and say hi."
"Hi," I replied. "I just killed Ranger Rod. He's back down by the creek."
He rolled his window back up.
A few moments later he pulled into the driveway and parked his car. He got out. Still dressed for work, minus the green apron. "This way?" he gestured toward the line of maple trees in the back yard. I nodded.
_____________________
"Well, here's what we have to do, " he said quietly. He was standing next to me where I still sat on the curb, a fair sized mountain of cigarette butts on the pavement in front of me. "Once it gets dark I'll come back with a truck and pick up his bike. It's got to be parked someplace close. Then once I get the bike taken care of me and a couple of the guys will come back and take care of the rest. "
I didn't say anything; I just shook. This was so fucked up. This was so wrong. Oh my fucking fuck this was messed up beyond all belief. I couldn't even think about it either; every time my thoughts approached the point of 'skillet' they went veering off wildly like scared animals and I had to light another cigarette while my vision faded to a tiny point of static.
"We need to call the police," I said. mostly to my shoes. "Don't get, I mean, it's not, just, call the...oh shit." I put my shaking hands over my face.
A pair of arms closed around me hard from the rear, pinning my arms to my sides. Before I had a chance to kick or scream another pair clamped around my legs, and I was being carried.
I was shifted, none too gently. My face was pressed hard against someones side. Someone running fast.
I heard breathing and jingling, feet pounding over turf, over pavement, over turf again and then we began going downhill.
I was leaving my body. I was falling upward fast, hands tingling, the cold rising. I could feel dirt falling on my face from someplace high, high above, falling like leaves.
That was when I hit the water.
_____________________________________
I stood and dripped on the back patio. I was thinking hard.
I had both pieces of Ranger Rod's helmet sitting on the cement in front of me.
All things considered, Rod and I were even. I still wanted to staple a weasel to his ass, but only for the sake of general principle. Ranger Rod was background noise at this point.
Roth, on the other hand, was going to take some consideration. And I was going to do this by the numbers, dammit. Learn from the lessons of history. Listen to the voice of the past.
These things, as Margaret Hamilton once said, must be done carefully.
My World History teacher had a poster series of famous men and their notable quotes on the wall in the front of his class, and as something to do one day I'd copied some of them down in the back of my folder. Three of them stood out as being immediately relevant to my situation:
1. If an injury has to be done to a man it should be so severe that his vengeance need not be feared.
2. No enterprise is more likely to succeed than one concealed...until it is ripe for execution.
3. It is double pleasure to deceive the deceiver.
Now the question was, 'What Would Machivelli Do?'
Suddenly a solution sprang into my mind.
Machiavelli would stock up on Starkist.
___________________
I received an actual standing ovation when I went back a week later to buy some more herb .
Every degenerate in the place took his thumb out of his ass and gave me a warm, warm welcome. Oh, how we laughed. Aw hell yeah, what a fuckin' excellent joke! Oh, I just bet the look on my face was priceless! Wow, ol' Ranger Rod about puked from laughing so hard, huh? You say Roth almost drove off the road he was laughing so hard? Wow! I'm laughing hard too! Yes, I'm just laughing this aaaaaaaaaaall off! Yessiree!
But...could you speak up a little bit, please?
The Ranger himself came over and did the ol' buddy hug around the shoulder routine. Oh heavens no, you skulking degenerate, no hard feelings WHATSOEVER. I'm exactly the kind of person who takes this kind of thing lightheartedly! I bet you were just out in my woods looking for wildflowers to press in your bible, huh! Sure! We're buddies! And you know what, buddy? I'm gonna catch you sleeping someday and superglue your dick to your stomach! Yeah I am!
I had to ask him to speak up a few times. Complete sentences went by without my replying; I just stood there and looked at him expectantly.
Roth came up to speak to me on the front porch as I was leaving.
__________________________
"....Calm down," he repeated. I was shaking, tears running down my face. He held my arms down at my side and looked down at me. "You have to calm down and speak because I can't understand a word you're saying. Now just tell me. Come on."
I took a ragged breath. "Whu whut?"
"Calm down," he repeated.
I took a ragged breath. "I've been l looking for it all wuh week...My dad is going to ki hi hill me. He's going to fucking kill me. He'll ha have to come home and and he's right in the middle of shit because thuh thuh thuh they can't cut ano nuh nother check out of the account without a thumbprint signa na na ture fuh from him....." I lost it some more. " I loo luh luh looked everywhere! It's not there! I looked! Buh by the d driveway and all in the guh grass..."
"Now what do you mean? What got lost here?" He asked.
I looked up at him with pure hate, tears streaming down my face. "My CIC."
He looked puzzled.
I snuffled and blew my nose on the handkerchief he offered me. "My hearing aid."
_____________________________
He pulled into my driveway several hours later. I was sitting out on the porch with the watering can, having a cigarette.
I moved the watering can down onto the grass and came halfway across the lawn with my hands on my hips.
He got out of the car , and kept getting out of the car, and standing up, until he was looking down at me. "Have you checked down by the creek yet?" he said.
________________________
It was a beautiful afternoon to be out wading around in the water. I wished I didn't have to take it so seriously; the sun dappled down through the leaves, the little fishes darting from rock to rock. We started upstream on opposite banks, bent low over the surface, turning rocks and feeling around slowly. "It's going to look like one of those foam spinners, you know? So if you think it's a fishing lure, pick it up anyway and check. It has a kind of short little aerial thing that pokes out of one end.'
"An aerial?" he said.
"Huh?" I replied.
We let the silt wash downstream. Then we moved down a couple of feet and crossed back again. Dragonflies flittered and skated low over the water, leaving trails of circles that spread and were lost. My feet were getting pruney.
After nearly an hour I splashed on past him back toward the house. "I gotta take a piss."
"No problem," he said.
"Huh?" I replied.
_________________________
Once the door shut behind me I took off like a scalded cat up the stairs, through the house and out the front door. I only stopped to pick up the watering can on the way.
Windows of the car rolled down? Excellent!
I reached into my pocket and pulled out a crumpled gas station towel. Just in case.
Then I stuck the long spout of the watering can down the passenger-side vent.
And filled it with tunafish oil.
_____________________________
"You know, I can pay for it," Roth repeated. We were walking back through the yard, up around the side of the house.
"Hey, that's excellent. How much does a produce boy make?" I replied.
"It could still be in the grass around here. It could still turn up. Maybe I can come back and"
I went into the house and slammed the door on him.
He got in his car and left.
Halfway down the block he stopped and opened the door. A cat jumped out.
Come the first frosty morning a couple of months from now, he was going to turn on his heater and old Charley Tuna was going to jump out. And kiss him right on the lips.
Really old Charley Tuna.
Night of the Living Dead Charley Tuna.
He'd be riding his motorcycle everywhere for quite awhile.
I hoped it was a long, cold winter.
_____________
Yes, in the finest tradition of bad biker magazine fiction, I bring you this modest offering...a tale of motorcycles and revenge, of leather and the men who wear it, of drugs, produce, and albacore tuna.
These characters are from an ongoing series I've been doing over at UJ. For those of you who've been reticent about taking a squint, take this as a reassurance of sorts. This is every bit as bad as what's over there, minus the sex.
Not the swearing, though.
Because, come on. This is 'Paul'.
__________________________________________
I was going to make someone a great little wife someday.
This was the thought that occurred to me when I pulled my cash out of my front pocket. It was rubber banded to my grocery list, and there were coupons paper clipped to that.
Meanwhile Susan chose me a nice fat baggie from the pile atop the suitcase she was using as a worktable. I pinched out a nice bud and loaded up her bong.
The flame illuminated her face as she fired up. She looked like a friendly witch for a second, uplit features surrounded by rag curls and smoke. Of course this friendly witch had a Colt Navy issue hidden someplace under all those yards of batik, and all her Munchkins rode Harley Davidsons.
At the moment we were largely Munchkin-free. One lay snoring on his side atop the pool table with his ankle chained to a cinderblock. Otherwise, Susan and I were alone in the house as far as I knew.
"Roth ain't here," she said out of the blue.
"Fuck you." I grinned.
"Ranger Rod is," she replied, rolling her eyes. "Anywhere two or more pussy are gathered, he is with you."
"Huh. Fucker still owes me a lump of hash," I replied. "I might go looking for him."
She rolled her eyes again. "Don't expect to collect on that shit and get away. He's a cunthound, that boy. All them mountain lions and wolves and shit up in the woods, man they avoid his horny ass. You lucky motherfuckin' Roth come up when he did. That's worth it. Ranger Rod justa throwed you over the top rail and hogfucked you."
She pushed her hair back over one ear and set the bong aside, drug the triple beam out into its place and reached into a grocery bag at her side. "So what that Roth about?"
I loaded another hit. "Fineass. Put together like a goddamn building."
She put a handful of dope up on the platen and nudged one of the weights with her finger. "Yeah, I heard about you and buildings, man, like that garage building. Couple of animals."
We reached across the suitcase - slap and snap! - and then cracked up at our dorkiness.
"Business doing pleasure with you" she said. I got up, picked up my Slurpee cup and took a drink. "Mind telling me something?" I looked down at her and shook my head. "Why you got all blue teeth?"
I took the lid off my Slurpee and showed her the contents. "Fuck that nasty," she said. "You some kind of circus freak? Carnies drink that shit. Raspberry and schoolboy? You sick."
Well, I couldn't exactly disagree with that, so I just shrugged.
_____________
Generally I wouldn't have walked to the store, but I found myself dawdling along down the block, looking at the neighbors houses, looking at the cars going by, humming a little tune.
Yeah, shit, hoping that Roth would ride past.
I got to the grocery store finally and pulled out the list. I hit the aisles systematically, put all the coupons atop each item they discounted, arranged all that in one neat corner of the basket, and marvelled at my own dorkiness once again. I was good at this shit. Of course, I had to be... I had an allowance to work with, and once the check was cut nothing else was disbursed until the next month. The 'sink or swim' school of household budgeting.
I probably enjoyed it more than I should have, though. I probably took my produce a little too seriously too. I went back to the swinging doors at the rear of the store to see if maybe they had some fresh basil they hadn't put out yet. My inner dork was exulting by this point. Probably hoping I'd pick up a copy of PC World on the way out.
I followed the sound of running water to where a man in a green apron was uncrating lettuce over a set of steel sinks. As I got closer I began to reconsider the benefits of a vegetarian diet; the guy in front of me was enormous. Then I saw the ponytail curled up beneath the hairnet.
'Fuckin' Roth, man!" I said.
Apparently my inner dork was from Oregon.
He turned around with a lettuce in one hand and a Dexter knife in the other. "Well hey. What are you doing here?"
Just....casual.
Just...nonchalant.
Just...'Oh hey, it's that chick I f(edited for the sake of my children) pile of shop rags like a rabid (here too) ravening and slavering, possessed by a thousand priapic (see, you're sorry you didn't listen to me now aren't you). Huh. Yawn. Whatever.'
Simply awesome.
"I'm, um, looking for basil", I said, sounding both sad and lame. "Do you have any in?"
He wiped his hands on his apron and looked off in the distance. "We don't get it in for another three days."
I shuffled. "Oh. I thought maybe you had some back here stashed waiting to go out, maybe, or something. I thought that."
The inner dork was now squeezing out of my pores and engulfing my head.
Lord Jesus. I thought that, did I? Wow. Leave. Leave while you still can. The darkness is descending. Run.
He looked at me for a second. "We don't stash basil," he said finally. "That's...not something we do." He stood looking down at me, one eyebrow raised slightly.
"...OK then," I said. "I'll go hit the rest of the store. So. See ya."
I was completely engulfed in dork. It was controlling my movements like a horrible brain sucking alien. I strolled on out casually, so very obvious; obvious as hell, obvious with the intensity of a raging Norse war-god, while dork-nano generated black, horn-rimmed glasses that sent biomechanical tentacles burrowing into into my face.
Mustering my last shreds of self respect, I resolutely bypassed the magazine rack and rented a copy of Videodrome on the way out.
____________________________
I heard a motorcycle come up behind me while I was waiting for the bus at the corner, and I grinned like a pirate. "You son of a bitch", I thought. ' You totally messed with my head.' I shifted the bags. "Yeah, you'll be stashing some basil when I get done with your ass."
Of course I didn't turn around when I heard the engine switch off.
"Hey," said a voice.
There sat Ranger Rod.
I looked at him over the top of my sunglasses. He looked at me over the top of his and smiled.
"You got my hash?" I asked.
He shook his head. "Not on me."
"Then fuck off," I said, and turned away.
I heard the engine start, and the gravel crunching beneath his tires as he started down the street.
I should not have thrown a can of tomato paste at him.
Luckily the bus arrived right then. He followed it for quite awhile before he finally turned off.
_____________________________
So I was a can of tomato paste down, but I'd made a new friend. I reflected on my good fortune as I made my dinner. I was so rat fucked I couldn't believe it. I always did this. I always did this. Why did I always did this? Why?
Think. Then act. Think FIRST.
I always messed that part up.
I picked up the skillet and grabbed a fork, then I went outside and sat down by the creek to eat. Leaves fell into my food and I picked them out. I threw an occasional noodle into the shallow water by my feet and watched the minnows school around it, picking and darting.
I heard something come through the brush at a run.
I stood up swinging the skillet and nailed Ranger Rod right in the side of the head. Noodles flew everywhere. The pan landed a county away.
I backed up fast, my hand over my mouth, tripping and panicking and losing my shit, Oh Jesus Christ Oh God Oh shit, and turned and ran.
__________________________
OK now, I thought, sitting on the curb. OK. Now I know what the smart thing to do here is. The smart thing to do would be to call the police. Be totally up front. This was clear trespass. I was...
No wait. My dad would come home, there'd be a record, all kinds of shit would come down,
No wait. I knew what the right thing was to do. I knew it. Maybe it would be OK. Maybe it would.
Or maybe it wouldn't either. I nailed the guy with a cast iron skillet for the love of shit; his ass was deceased.
I should go check.
-Like fuck I was going to go check. That would look great forensically, wouldn't it? Like I went back and gloated.
A beat to shit Toyota came to an idle in front of me. Roth rolled down the window and looked down at me for a moment. " I just got off work and I thought I'd stop by and say hi."
"Hi," I replied. "I just killed Ranger Rod. He's back down by the creek."
He rolled his window back up.
A few moments later he pulled into the driveway and parked his car. He got out. Still dressed for work, minus the green apron. "This way?" he gestured toward the line of maple trees in the back yard. I nodded.
_____________________
"Well, here's what we have to do, " he said quietly. He was standing next to me where I still sat on the curb, a fair sized mountain of cigarette butts on the pavement in front of me. "Once it gets dark I'll come back with a truck and pick up his bike. It's got to be parked someplace close. Then once I get the bike taken care of me and a couple of the guys will come back and take care of the rest. "
I didn't say anything; I just shook. This was so fucked up. This was so wrong. Oh my fucking fuck this was messed up beyond all belief. I couldn't even think about it either; every time my thoughts approached the point of 'skillet' they went veering off wildly like scared animals and I had to light another cigarette while my vision faded to a tiny point of static.
"We need to call the police," I said. mostly to my shoes. "Don't get, I mean, it's not, just, call the...oh shit." I put my shaking hands over my face.
A pair of arms closed around me hard from the rear, pinning my arms to my sides. Before I had a chance to kick or scream another pair clamped around my legs, and I was being carried.
I was shifted, none too gently. My face was pressed hard against someones side. Someone running fast.
I heard breathing and jingling, feet pounding over turf, over pavement, over turf again and then we began going downhill.
I was leaving my body. I was falling upward fast, hands tingling, the cold rising. I could feel dirt falling on my face from someplace high, high above, falling like leaves.
That was when I hit the water.
_____________________________________
I stood and dripped on the back patio. I was thinking hard.
I had both pieces of Ranger Rod's helmet sitting on the cement in front of me.
All things considered, Rod and I were even. I still wanted to staple a weasel to his ass, but only for the sake of general principle. Ranger Rod was background noise at this point.
Roth, on the other hand, was going to take some consideration. And I was going to do this by the numbers, dammit. Learn from the lessons of history. Listen to the voice of the past.
These things, as Margaret Hamilton once said, must be done carefully.
My World History teacher had a poster series of famous men and their notable quotes on the wall in the front of his class, and as something to do one day I'd copied some of them down in the back of my folder. Three of them stood out as being immediately relevant to my situation:
1. If an injury has to be done to a man it should be so severe that his vengeance need not be feared.
2. No enterprise is more likely to succeed than one concealed...until it is ripe for execution.
3. It is double pleasure to deceive the deceiver.
Now the question was, 'What Would Machivelli Do?'
Suddenly a solution sprang into my mind.
Machiavelli would stock up on Starkist.
___________________
I received an actual standing ovation when I went back a week later to buy some more herb .
Every degenerate in the place took his thumb out of his ass and gave me a warm, warm welcome. Oh, how we laughed. Aw hell yeah, what a fuckin' excellent joke! Oh, I just bet the look on my face was priceless! Wow, ol' Ranger Rod about puked from laughing so hard, huh? You say Roth almost drove off the road he was laughing so hard? Wow! I'm laughing hard too! Yes, I'm just laughing this aaaaaaaaaaall off! Yessiree!
But...could you speak up a little bit, please?
The Ranger himself came over and did the ol' buddy hug around the shoulder routine. Oh heavens no, you skulking degenerate, no hard feelings WHATSOEVER. I'm exactly the kind of person who takes this kind of thing lightheartedly! I bet you were just out in my woods looking for wildflowers to press in your bible, huh! Sure! We're buddies! And you know what, buddy? I'm gonna catch you sleeping someday and superglue your dick to your stomach! Yeah I am!
I had to ask him to speak up a few times. Complete sentences went by without my replying; I just stood there and looked at him expectantly.
Roth came up to speak to me on the front porch as I was leaving.
__________________________
"....Calm down," he repeated. I was shaking, tears running down my face. He held my arms down at my side and looked down at me. "You have to calm down and speak because I can't understand a word you're saying. Now just tell me. Come on."
I took a ragged breath. "Whu whut?"
"Calm down," he repeated.
I took a ragged breath. "I've been l looking for it all wuh week...My dad is going to ki hi hill me. He's going to fucking kill me. He'll ha have to come home and and he's right in the middle of shit because thuh thuh thuh they can't cut ano nuh nother check out of the account without a thumbprint signa na na ture fuh from him....." I lost it some more. " I loo luh luh looked everywhere! It's not there! I looked! Buh by the d driveway and all in the guh grass..."
"Now what do you mean? What got lost here?" He asked.
I looked up at him with pure hate, tears streaming down my face. "My CIC."
He looked puzzled.
I snuffled and blew my nose on the handkerchief he offered me. "My hearing aid."
_____________________________
He pulled into my driveway several hours later. I was sitting out on the porch with the watering can, having a cigarette.I moved the watering can down onto the grass and came halfway across the lawn with my hands on my hips.
He got out of the car , and kept getting out of the car, and standing up, until he was looking down at me. "Have you checked down by the creek yet?" he said.
________________________
It was a beautiful afternoon to be out wading around in the water. I wished I didn't have to take it so seriously; the sun dappled down through the leaves, the little fishes darting from rock to rock. We started upstream on opposite banks, bent low over the surface, turning rocks and feeling around slowly. "It's going to look like one of those foam spinners, you know? So if you think it's a fishing lure, pick it up anyway and check. It has a kind of short little aerial thing that pokes out of one end.'
"An aerial?" he said.
"Huh?" I replied.
We let the silt wash downstream. Then we moved down a couple of feet and crossed back again. Dragonflies flittered and skated low over the water, leaving trails of circles that spread and were lost. My feet were getting pruney.
After nearly an hour I splashed on past him back toward the house. "I gotta take a piss."
"No problem," he said.
"Huh?" I replied.
_________________________
Once the door shut behind me I took off like a scalded cat up the stairs, through the house and out the front door. I only stopped to pick up the watering can on the way.
Windows of the car rolled down? Excellent!
I reached into my pocket and pulled out a crumpled gas station towel. Just in case.
Then I stuck the long spout of the watering can down the passenger-side vent.
And filled it with tunafish oil.
_____________________________
"You know, I can pay for it," Roth repeated. We were walking back through the yard, up around the side of the house.
"Hey, that's excellent. How much does a produce boy make?" I replied.
"It could still be in the grass around here. It could still turn up. Maybe I can come back and"
I went into the house and slammed the door on him.
He got in his car and left.
Halfway down the block he stopped and opened the door. A cat jumped out.
Come the first frosty morning a couple of months from now, he was going to turn on his heater and old Charley Tuna was going to jump out. And kiss him right on the lips.
Really old Charley Tuna.
Night of the Living Dead Charley Tuna.
He'd be riding his motorcycle everywhere for quite awhile.
I hoped it was a long, cold winter.
Tuesday, June 03, 2008
Jewelled Green Snake Washes Several Laundry!
Hey, kids! Ever wondered what it would be like to take a big ol' swig of gasoline and chase it with a match?
Do you have questions about God, the Afterlife and Eternity?
Do timor mortis really conturbat you, bucko? Or is it all just a big pointless exercise?
Test those fears and face your demons! It's easy!
PISS OFF FIRST NATIONS!
It's the latest craze that's sweeping the globe! Kids of all ages love playing 'poke the crazy person with a stick' with FirstNations! It's fun! It's exciting! It's substantial proof that you sustained a traumatic brain injury at birth!Do you have questions about God, the Afterlife and Eternity?
Do timor mortis really conturbat you, bucko? Or is it all just a big pointless exercise?
Test those fears and face your demons! It's easy!
PISS OFF FIRST NATIONS!
So what are we waiting for? Let's get started, OK? Here's how....
1. Be a thief. No, go ahead. Being untrustworthy is awesome. Yes, you're really sticking it to the universe, no doubt about that. Number one on my hit list! With a bullet, if you're a trespasser!
1.a Be a thief, and brag about it. Because not only does that brand you an untrustworthy MORON, it tells me that you think I'm the type of person who'd be impressed by the fact that you steal. Thanks for the compliment!
2. Pull something, do 'X' right in my face, right out in the open, and then DENY IT CATEGORICALLY when I call you on it. Are you 4? Do I have a lobotomy scar? No. Never do this. There is not the slightest fucking chance in hell that I'm going to buy your denial. I SAW YOU DO IT! DUH!
If you think that a policy of 'deny everything' is going to spare you a scene, GUESS THE FUCK AGAIN BUCKWHEAT. You just bought a WAY BIGGER ONE.
Two for the price of one!
3. Argue with your significant other in front of me. Bye now.
3.a Attempt to enlist me as an ally when you 'jokingly' ridicule same. Oh FUCK that action. Gosh that makes me feel so welcome. And comfortable too! I'm so glad I came! We'll have to do this again REAL SOON!!
3.b Come into my home and compare some aspect of my housekeeping unfavorably to that of your significant other as a way to 'discipline' them. Make sure you have a biiiiiiiig audience, too. Oh, I'll certainly be inviting your ass back.
4. Make vague, misleading excuses for any decision you've made. That way nobody can disagree with you!! Yes, give me lots and lots of wrong information to work off of. That sure lets you off the hook, right? Nobody can pin you down to a stand, can they? Except you've put all this garbage information out there, see, and now anyone attempting to use that information as an indication of your tastes or preferences is going to fail miserably! Rock the fuck on! I love being made an idiot of!
5. I also love it when you deny ever having made any vague, misleading excuses. That just makes me want to jump right up and kiss you. With a big rock.
6. If we aren't related, don't treat me like a parent. Sure, invite all your other friends out partying and tell me about it! Don't forget to add '...and I knew you wouldn't be into it; I mean, you're like my mom or something."
I will not make decisions for you. I will not listen to you whine. I will cut you off, though.
7. I'm a married woman. Don't hit on me.
8. He's a married man. Step way the fuck off, bitch. Don't even LOOK at him. I WILL orphan your children.
8.a Waitresses; this is particularly aimed at your whore asses. Do not come all up on MY HUSBAND with them titties laying on his shoulder and call him honey. Forget about a tip. It won't happen. I won't say a word to my husband. I will go back to the table and pick that money up, though, right in your face, you cracker sow. I've done it before.
Think I won't complain to the manager? Oh, guess again.
9. Never come to me about my people. Any of them. Including friends. I don't care if you have a valid reason. We're all mean and most of us are violent too. Here, let me demonstrate.
10. The sky is blue, the grass is green, the nice birdies are singing, tra la la...oh look! There's a pretty flower! Isn't the flower pretty? It looks like a daisyNOGODDAMMITTHATSNOTADAISYOUIGNORANTPIECEOFSHITTHATS APONTIACDIEDIEDIEDIEDIEIHATEYOUWHYAREYOUSOHOMOPHOBIC?!
....well all right then.
11. Come to my home bed shitting drunk and make a scene! Alcoholics are our favorite thing in the whole wide world. I appreciate you bringing your substance abuse problem into my home. I love it when you expect me to accept it as a valid excuse for any stupid shit you happen to do while under the influence. No really, I buy that. Totally. I do.
12. Please confuse 'biker' with 'Nazi sympathizer'. Please do that. Please come here with swastikas and Aryan Brotherhood shit all hanging off you. I respect that as a perfectly reasonable, well-thought-out position in a nation of immigrants. Tell me about how the mud races are oppressing the white man. I'm listening.
__________________________________________
DISCLAIMER: This is aimed at the ENTIRE UNIVERSE. Did you think you recognized yourself here? That, my friend, would simply be a case of guilt displacement on your part.
Which by the way is something else that pisses me right the fuck off.
___________________
FOOTNOTE: in case you didn't receive all thirty of the email notifications I've sent out recently, there is YET ANOTHER POST up at UJ (which is MEMBERS ONLY and also PORN.) For fucksakes people, comment. Does it reek? Is it great? Do you have any requests? And most importantly, will you light a candle and pray for the state of my mental health after this last one?
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
UPDATED: These are the people in my neighborhood
Hardcore gardening post here. Serious, serious gardening. Oh my goodness is there a lot of gardening in this post. Heavens yes. With photographs of my plants taken while they were out growing in my garden (rather than out at WalMart shopping for canned salmon.) Gardening, gardening, gardening. Just dirt and plants and botanical latin laying all over the funka da funky.
UPDATE:
...Gardening, and THIS LINK for all you Mythbuster fans out there.
deeply, profoundly and comprehensively NSFW, btw.
http://community.livejournal.com/ohnotheydidnt/23793528.html#cutid1
....because after all, gardening isn't everything. Ahem.
REMEMBER: Perennial means it comes back every year
Annual means that it only lives for one year.
perennial Iris pseudacorus, or yellow ditch iris. Just opened an hour before I took this picture.
Iris pseudacorus tends to be a very small flower on top of a very tall, very leafy plant, but what a lovely small flower it is. This is not something you ever plant unless you really like tall (5 ft!!) green, leafy clumps because thats what this does for most of the year.
It can grow in standing water, where it will spread and live happily for years without any attention whatsoever...freeze solid and come right back like a champ. Or, in other words, this sucker is a bitch to get rid of once it's in, so you want to put it someplace that you can easily get to, so you can stick a shovel in and chop it out when it begins to spread. Yes, CHOP. And yes, SPREAD.
In the garden it is perfectly happy with damp, heavy, neutral-acid soil in partial shade, though, which is where I have it.
Beneath a willow tree.
Which it is out-competing.
Yeah.
perennial Aquilegia 'Barlow' series columbine. This is a columbine that was bred to look up at you, instead of hang downward. The Barlows are doubled, which means that they have twice the number of petals that a columbine usually does. I know I have Nora Barlow, Black Barlow and a couple of others but I can never remember which name goes with which one. Anyway, they're pretty.
The Barlow aq's like partial shade, but will put up with full sun. They want a rich, damp, acid soil.
perennial Papaver orientale, oriental poppy. This is a dwarfed selection and I'll be damned if I can remember the cultivar name. It's like a Prince of Orange that stays short; it only gets about a foot and a half tall. Usually orientals are big, spready, wandy things about 3 feet +. It likes full sun and average soil-heavy, sandy, slightly to the left or right of neutral; it isn't picky. It is also highly invasive if you don't cut off the seedpod before it dries out-those seeds are REALLY lively. You want to underplant it with something that will grow up tall around it, because once the flowers finish the foliage just goes to hell and looks awful. It needs no care whatsoever, and will thrive on neglect for 90 YEARS.
perennial Lychnis flos cuculi Ragged Robin. The pink lacy stuff. Although it looks nice with all the crappy buttercup coming up through it, doesn't it? It gets about 12 inches tall. This is a completely carefree plant. It will seed itself around happily but is easy to take up. It isn't picky about soil, as long as it isn't completely waterlogged, and it's light requirements are pretty easygoing too. It makes a nice filler type flower, running around in between everything else.
flowering tree Cornus kousa in full mature blossom. This is over my Opie dog. The blossoms start small and greenish-white with a red line around the edge of the petals, and gradually change color and size over time, getting larger and darker. It changed to pink this morning (5-28) after the clouds burned off, Mr. C., and right after I took this picture I went inside and heard your sad news. My heart is with you right now. If there is such a place as heaven, then only dogs qualify to get in. Your guys and my Tater man are playing together. And more than likely eating cat crap.
perennial Aquilegia, an open - pollinated mutt. Some of these look upwards, some face down, like the ones in the background there. The solid blue ones that come up in my garden tend to pillar, and get anywhere from one to two feet tall, depending on what they happen to feel like doing or what song is playing on the radio or whatever. These grow in full sun. The spiky thing is its seedpod. The pink thing is my hand.
perennial, native to the northwestern americas Aquilegia canadensis. Years ago I ganked the seeds from out in the woods and threw them in my garden, and it's followed me around ever since. This columbine has a really nice habit; it doesn't pillar so much as it wands gracefully out, the long stems taking random gradual curves. When you run onto it in the shady woods, the effect is that of a small bright bird, like a hummingbird, standing motionless in midair. This can reach 2 1/2 feet tall, although its more common at the 1 ft height. It isn't very floriferous, but the flowers are incredibly striking and the plant itself is very elegant in all its parts. It likes at least half a day of shade, which is why it planted itself near the walls of my house where the afternoon shadow falls.
...another shot of the plant. Theres some blue columbine behind there, and the whitish stuff on the bottom left corner there is Lychnis coronaria Rose Campion, not in bloom yet obviously.
perennial Meconopsis cambrica, Welsh Poppy. Likes damp soil and partial shade, and at least here it seeds itself around happily. This is another plant that began as stolen seeds, this time from a planting in downtown Lynden. Ha!
perennial Aquilegia chrysantha, yellow columbine. This one likes to stay in the shade. It seeds itself rather far away from the parent plant, but once seeded in it lasts for years. It gets quite tall too; up to 3 1/2 feet for me in ideal locations. It has the most lovely, graceful long spurs, like a falling star.
perennial Clematis 'Niobe'. This selection is supposed to be much redder than this, but I suspect that given a different soil and warmer springtime temps the red tones would color up. As it is, it comes very dark for me some years; almost black. That makes me happy.
Clematis wants to have its roots in the shade, but the rest of the plant wants to grow in full sun. You can overplant with something that stays short to achieve this, or set the root mass in beneath a large flat rock with the growth tips just barely sticking out from under the sun side.
A bee's bottom through a Cornus sericea ssp. occidentalis Red Osier dogwood. Yup, I ganked it. Started it from a stolen cutting. This strikes quite readily from cuttings too, so go ahead; grab those shears and head for the creek!
It likes damp soil and shade. The online descriptions call it a shrub, but here at least it grows into a very spready small tree. If you stool it back at the end of the season it shoots back up in the Spring with bright red stems, and this is how it's usually used in a garden setting. I like the tree form better, although its kind of a pain to keep trimmed back. The honeybees are enraptured by this tree. They climb all over the umbels from morning until dark, their legs so full of pollen that they look like they're wearing mukluks, and the whole tree hums.
First rose of the season, opened this morning!
I have no idea what kind of a rose this is. I call it Jackie Kennedy for no particular reason other than I couldn't let it run around without a name, and Jackie Kennedy sounds like a good rosey name. I took it as a cutting from an abandoned homesite where it was holding it's own against a himalayan blackberry. So yes, it's a rampant climber. It grows on its own roots, though, and I've never had much of a problem with black spot, powdery mildew or aphis. Plus, you can ignore it completely-I have it out in the full sun right in the path of the northeaster and in six years its never noticed a thing. The new growth is dark bronze-red, and the flower has no scent, unfortunately. It will repeat in late July.
perennial Sisyrinchium montanum Blue eyed grass
It's really not worth the trouble...she says to herself every year, when it comes up everydamnplace and looks boring. Until the pretty, pretty little blue stars open up. Then it's great.
perennial Frangaria x Pink Panda strawberry. Bulletproof, evergreen, pretty most of the growing season, a great groundcover, not picky about conditions, AND it produces a really tasty, sweet little berry!
perennial Asphodel, Aarons Staff. I've grown this for 16 years, and nothing seems to bother it, except me. Each main crown sends up this one flower spike in May, then that fades and you're left with a nice blue-green spire of long wandy leaves. It pups from the base of the crown, and you can crack those off and stick them in a pot for next year, to start new mother plants. Otherwise you can let the offsets grow and have a clump with taller and shorter spires. It forms a cluster of berries after the flowers finish, and they're pretty lively if you let them mature on the plant and then drop off naturally. It wants moist soil, neutral, full sun.
Sandwort...? I am drawing a complete blank on this, and its really common too. It's a woody little sub-shrub guy used in rock gardens, and it likes dry conditions and full sun. Agh! Anyway, its pretty.
perennial Iris, German Iris, Bearded Iris. Just the plain old iris with the big knobby roots that your grandma grew. This one happens to be a lovely clear blue. Supposedly I have a black one too, 'Interpol', but in five years it's only given me three blossoms, and it isn't out yet anyway.
Again, drawing a blank on the foreground flower. Its the same variety as the other one that I drew a blank on; just a different selection. If someone can identify it, please do! This is driving me nuts. Still, doesn't it look nice in front of the thing with the broad leaves there, heuchera 'Fireglow'? Both of them are dry landers and want full sun; otherwise they arent picky. Off to the left there is a little white tuft of Quails Feather.
Orange: papaver orientale
Pink: centranthus ruber
blue: aquilegia
yellow: crappy buttercup that needs to die
My favorite 'cottage' color combination. The flower colors don't fight with the green of the leaves either; and after all, green IS the most predominant color in the garden, kids.
What a nice little tree! Hello little tree!
My son gave this to me. I have completely forgotten what kind of a little tree it is; but it's about eleven years old. And I could have that wrong.
Once "sittin out" season comes around though it's going to have to vacate that little table there so I have somewhere to set my beer.
UPDATE:
...Gardening, and THIS LINK for all you Mythbuster fans out there.
deeply, profoundly and comprehensively NSFW, btw.
http://community.livejournal
....because after all, gardening isn't everything. Ahem.
REMEMBER: Perennial means it comes back every year
Annual means that it only lives for one year.
perennial Iris pseudacorus, or yellow ditch iris. Just opened an hour before I took this picture.Iris pseudacorus tends to be a very small flower on top of a very tall, very leafy plant, but what a lovely small flower it is. This is not something you ever plant unless you really like tall (5 ft!!) green, leafy clumps because thats what this does for most of the year.
It can grow in standing water, where it will spread and live happily for years without any attention whatsoever...freeze solid and come right back like a champ. Or, in other words, this sucker is a bitch to get rid of once it's in, so you want to put it someplace that you can easily get to, so you can stick a shovel in and chop it out when it begins to spread. Yes, CHOP. And yes, SPREAD.
In the garden it is perfectly happy with damp, heavy, neutral-acid soil in partial shade, though, which is where I have it.
Beneath a willow tree.
Which it is out-competing.
Yeah.
perennial Aquilegia 'Barlow' series columbine. This is a columbine that was bred to look up at you, instead of hang downward. The Barlows are doubled, which means that they have twice the number of petals that a columbine usually does. I know I have Nora Barlow, Black Barlow and a couple of others but I can never remember which name goes with which one. Anyway, they're pretty.The Barlow aq's like partial shade, but will put up with full sun. They want a rich, damp, acid soil.
perennial Papaver orientale, oriental poppy. This is a dwarfed selection and I'll be damned if I can remember the cultivar name. It's like a Prince of Orange that stays short; it only gets about a foot and a half tall. Usually orientals are big, spready, wandy things about 3 feet +. It likes full sun and average soil-heavy, sandy, slightly to the left or right of neutral; it isn't picky. It is also highly invasive if you don't cut off the seedpod before it dries out-those seeds are REALLY lively. You want to underplant it with something that will grow up tall around it, because once the flowers finish the foliage just goes to hell and looks awful. It needs no care whatsoever, and will thrive on neglect for 90 YEARS.
perennial Lychnis flos cuculi Ragged Robin. The pink lacy stuff. Although it looks nice with all the crappy buttercup coming up through it, doesn't it? It gets about 12 inches tall. This is a completely carefree plant. It will seed itself around happily but is easy to take up. It isn't picky about soil, as long as it isn't completely waterlogged, and it's light requirements are pretty easygoing too. It makes a nice filler type flower, running around in between everything else.
flowering tree Cornus kousa in full mature blossom. This is over my Opie dog. The blossoms start small and greenish-white with a red line around the edge of the petals, and gradually change color and size over time, getting larger and darker. It changed to pink this morning (5-28) after the clouds burned off, Mr. C., and right after I took this picture I went inside and heard your sad news. My heart is with you right now. If there is such a place as heaven, then only dogs qualify to get in. Your guys and my Tater man are playing together. And more than likely eating cat crap.
perennial Aquilegia, an open - pollinated mutt. Some of these look upwards, some face down, like the ones in the background there. The solid blue ones that come up in my garden tend to pillar, and get anywhere from one to two feet tall, depending on what they happen to feel like doing or what song is playing on the radio or whatever. These grow in full sun. The spiky thing is its seedpod. The pink thing is my hand.
perennial, native to the northwestern americas Aquilegia canadensis. Years ago I ganked the seeds from out in the woods and threw them in my garden, and it's followed me around ever since. This columbine has a really nice habit; it doesn't pillar so much as it wands gracefully out, the long stems taking random gradual curves. When you run onto it in the shady woods, the effect is that of a small bright bird, like a hummingbird, standing motionless in midair. This can reach 2 1/2 feet tall, although its more common at the 1 ft height. It isn't very floriferous, but the flowers are incredibly striking and the plant itself is very elegant in all its parts. It likes at least half a day of shade, which is why it planted itself near the walls of my house where the afternoon shadow falls.
...another shot of the plant. Theres some blue columbine behind there, and the whitish stuff on the bottom left corner there is Lychnis coronaria Rose Campion, not in bloom yet obviously.
perennial Meconopsis cambrica, Welsh Poppy. Likes damp soil and partial shade, and at least here it seeds itself around happily. This is another plant that began as stolen seeds, this time from a planting in downtown Lynden. Ha!
perennial Aquilegia chrysantha, yellow columbine. This one likes to stay in the shade. It seeds itself rather far away from the parent plant, but once seeded in it lasts for years. It gets quite tall too; up to 3 1/2 feet for me in ideal locations. It has the most lovely, graceful long spurs, like a falling star.
perennial Clematis 'Niobe'. This selection is supposed to be much redder than this, but I suspect that given a different soil and warmer springtime temps the red tones would color up. As it is, it comes very dark for me some years; almost black. That makes me happy.Clematis wants to have its roots in the shade, but the rest of the plant wants to grow in full sun. You can overplant with something that stays short to achieve this, or set the root mass in beneath a large flat rock with the growth tips just barely sticking out from under the sun side.
A bee's bottom through a Cornus sericea ssp. occidentalis Red Osier dogwood. Yup, I ganked it. Started it from a stolen cutting. This strikes quite readily from cuttings too, so go ahead; grab those shears and head for the creek!It likes damp soil and shade. The online descriptions call it a shrub, but here at least it grows into a very spready small tree. If you stool it back at the end of the season it shoots back up in the Spring with bright red stems, and this is how it's usually used in a garden setting. I like the tree form better, although its kind of a pain to keep trimmed back. The honeybees are enraptured by this tree. They climb all over the umbels from morning until dark, their legs so full of pollen that they look like they're wearing mukluks, and the whole tree hums.
First rose of the season, opened this morning!I have no idea what kind of a rose this is. I call it Jackie Kennedy for no particular reason other than I couldn't let it run around without a name, and Jackie Kennedy sounds like a good rosey name. I took it as a cutting from an abandoned homesite where it was holding it's own against a himalayan blackberry. So yes, it's a rampant climber. It grows on its own roots, though, and I've never had much of a problem with black spot, powdery mildew or aphis. Plus, you can ignore it completely-I have it out in the full sun right in the path of the northeaster and in six years its never noticed a thing. The new growth is dark bronze-red, and the flower has no scent, unfortunately. It will repeat in late July.
perennial Sisyrinchium montanum Blue eyed grassIt's really not worth the trouble...she says to herself every year, when it comes up everydamnplace and looks boring. Until the pretty, pretty little blue stars open up. Then it's great.
perennial Frangaria x Pink Panda strawberry. Bulletproof, evergreen, pretty most of the growing season, a great groundcover, not picky about conditions, AND it produces a really tasty, sweet little berry!
perennial Asphodel, Aarons Staff. I've grown this for 16 years, and nothing seems to bother it, except me. Each main crown sends up this one flower spike in May, then that fades and you're left with a nice blue-green spire of long wandy leaves. It pups from the base of the crown, and you can crack those off and stick them in a pot for next year, to start new mother plants. Otherwise you can let the offsets grow and have a clump with taller and shorter spires. It forms a cluster of berries after the flowers finish, and they're pretty lively if you let them mature on the plant and then drop off naturally. It wants moist soil, neutral, full sun.
Sandwort...? I am drawing a complete blank on this, and its really common too. It's a woody little sub-shrub guy used in rock gardens, and it likes dry conditions and full sun. Agh! Anyway, its pretty.
perennial Iris, German Iris, Bearded Iris. Just the plain old iris with the big knobby roots that your grandma grew. This one happens to be a lovely clear blue. Supposedly I have a black one too, 'Interpol', but in five years it's only given me three blossoms, and it isn't out yet anyway.
Again, drawing a blank on the foreground flower. Its the same variety as the other one that I drew a blank on; just a different selection. If someone can identify it, please do! This is driving me nuts. Still, doesn't it look nice in front of the thing with the broad leaves there, heuchera 'Fireglow'? Both of them are dry landers and want full sun; otherwise they arent picky. Off to the left there is a little white tuft of Quails Feather.
Orange: papaver orientalePink: centranthus ruber
blue: aquilegia
yellow: crappy buttercup that needs to die
My favorite 'cottage' color combination. The flower colors don't fight with the green of the leaves either; and after all, green IS the most predominant color in the garden, kids.
What a nice little tree! Hello little tree!
My son gave this to me. I have completely forgotten what kind of a little tree it is; but it's about eleven years old. And I could have that wrong.
Once "sittin out" season comes around though it's going to have to vacate that little table there so I have somewhere to set my beer.
UPDATED: Another non-gardening post!
UPDATE: new one up at UJ!
_______________________________________
So I was asked is it worth it. 'It' being all the years of work and crap you go through making a family. It threw me for a loop. I think I ended up talking about compost or something.
Let's give it another try.
'Worth' as it relates to life is a way of thinking that I associate with being a Catholic. We were taught that any particular event in life was a test (and usually sucked), and if you passed it, God rewarded you. Guaranteed. You pay, you get.
Now granted, you could look at parenthood as a trial of endurance and not be far off the beam. You're broke all the time, you spend three years stuck with a short crazy person going through puberty, and then of course there's all the unpaid overtime spent attending those interminable goddamn school programs (oh sweet fuck the CHRISTMAS programs especially; gaaaaaaah!!!) Not to mention losing jobs because your boss just doesn't seen to understand that you can't leave a sick 4-year-old at home by herself, or same being eligible for free school lunches and then finding out that the poor kid's been doing without because of the stigma attached to that; yeah.
Are we having fun yet?
Still, here's the way I see it: In and of itself, no. Parenthood isn't worth it because it isn't a price you pay for something and there is no exchange involved. You don't get a guaranteed reward if you do it well. Most of the time you don't even get noticed. The fact of the matter is, you can raise a kid and make a home and do those things perfectly, and truthfully it doesn't mean a whole fuck of a lot in the universal scheme of things, all that effort and sweat and all those good intentions. It really doesn't. It can, but chance doesn't exactly favor that outcome, either.
True fact.
If parenthood ends up being worth anything, then that will be the direct result of your values and how seriously you take it. In other words, you make it worth something.
So that explains why I fumbled the handoff. You can take the girl out of the church, but once she becomes a nihilist she ends up talking about compost. Or however that goes.
_______________________________
For me, at least, being a parent sucked about half the time. That's the simple unvarnished truth. It wasn't the kid, so much...aside from a few episodes of 'stupid' the kid was pretty excellent. It was the other stuff. Mostly it was the constant terror. I had no idea what I was doing.
The worst part of having a child was the baby years. Of course then it was simply a problem of a baby not being able to express itself in words that raised the frustration level. Once I survived that, the 'kid' part was actually kind of fun a lot of the time. Certainly tolerable if nothing else. And if, like me, you haven't really crossed over into adult mode yourself, it probably was a lot more fun than it would have been otherwise, so there was that too.
The bad part is all the bullshit you have to put up with and all the crap you have to be on your guard about. I know I went head to head with shit on behalf of my family that I would never have put up with for a friend. And you have to win those battles, too. You HAVE to win. You have to go in and risk looking like a hysterical bitch or an idiot, just put the fear and the ego to one side and go deal with the scary nurse or the condescending bank teller or complain to the manager.
It's dealing with incompetence and indifference on the part of teachers, sanctimoniousness on the part of doctors, freakjob parents, attitude from strangers, and worst of all, the people with weird agendas they wanted to foist off in the name of good parenting. (Boy, there's another post right there. ) Religious nuts of every possible stripe come out of the woodwork, and the first thing they target is the kids. Awana, Tiger Cubs, the fricken' Ba'hais for heavens sake, the fundies with their VBS...oh, it's just wonderful. Then there's the media you suddenly have to be hyperaware of...a media which is WAY better at sneaking in and pushing childrens' buttons than it was when we were growing up.
One of my favorite 'screw the parents' ploys is when the fucking PTA decides to have a fund drive and your poor little six year old kid shows up with a sheaf of tickets or overpriced candy they have to sell or they get in trouble, and they're crying, and you realize that the only way that shit ever gets sold is if the parents buy it all because there's no way in fucking hell that you're going to send a six-year-old girl out door to door in this day and age....and you realize that you're being conned.
Oh yeah, that's a barrel of laughs.
Of course there was that whole issue of me not being the most socially well-adjusted person who ever lived, in the beginning (I am of course the very soul of reason now.) Being a chambermaid, no matter how evil, simply does not prepare you to to take care of a little kid; forget that suddenly I also had to be a manager, an agent of the Spanish Inquisition*, a spy, a cop, a public relations officer, a prosecuting attorney, an ambassador, a hostess and a rampaging berserker at a moments notice.
OK fine. The rampaging berserker part came easily. The rest, not so much. **
________________________
So. How did I make it BE worth it? And will there be coffee and donuts afterwards?
I guess first of all, I took it seriously. Dead seriously.
Things were absolutely NOT going to fuck up on my watch.
That attitude right there is what got me through those 18 years.
Second of all, when we made a decision, we always chose quality of our family life over any other consideration; including financial gain. Always.
Thirdly, I got a lot out of being the person whose job it was to teach a new human being the ropes. I really, really liked that. And then seeing that person learn it, and use it? And having it work? That's....shit, that's a big relief if nothing else!
Fourth, I liked my husband. No, seriously, I know plenty of parents for whom that's simply laughable; liking one another. We were able to share responsibility pretty evenly without any ego or entitlement issues involved.
Fifth, I just like being part of a family. That's the way I'm wired. So parenthood didn't seem like this big, onerous imposition because I expected it to be what it was and just dealt with it. In fact, I expected it to be a hell of a lot worse than it turned out to be. When it wasn't, that was pretty cool too!
Sixth, when it did suck, it NEVER SUCKED ONE TENTH AS MUCH AS A TYPICAL DAY IN MY PARENTS HOUSE. And that's sheer circumstance there. Still, it was a huge source of pride for me every single day of those eighteen years. Not even on my worst day did it ever even OCCUR to me to pull any of the sick shit that went on as a matter of daily fact in my family of origin.
Seventh, I never had to make my kid be like me. I saw parents who did this and it was just creepy. When she did something cool, that was her doing it, and I was like 'Wow! That person lives with me!' and was all blown away and impressed. Still am, in fact.
Eighth, I had my own interests. I didn't let being a wife and parent engulf me. I might be having a shit day as a mom, but I could still learn something new or make something nice and at least reassure myself that I wasn't a complete failure.
Being a wife and parent has not been the most personally rewarding thing in my life-working with plants and pursuing my studies and and interests has been just as rewarding. A whole hell of a lot less frightening, at least. That it all turned out well is nice, of course. Still, it could have gone off the goddamn rails so many times, for so many different reasons that I had no control over...yeesh. How much credit can I take for that? None.
I spent eighteen years flying without a net, and I'm glad it's over
________________________________
So. Here I am. And here's what I have, some of which is at least somewhat due to good choices having been made prior...
Once I no longer had that third person in the house, I methodically set out cleaning out the joint top to bottom...and that 'mommy' persona got cleaned out right along with it.
Mommy is done. Mommy is OVAH.
Now that I no longer have to be a good example, I don't even fucking pretend any more. Things that I quit doing or ramped way back on for the sake of being a responsible parent are once again part of my life, like taking recreational drugs and cranking up my music really loud and being really vocal politically and artistically. My kids know me as an adult woman. I'm no longer their boss-fuck that. I'll give you my perspective on things if you ask, but I could give a hoot in hell how you fold your laundry or clean your house or what kind of soap you wash the baby in. Wash it in ketchup. Wash it in ranch dressing.
The time we formerly spent riding herd on the kid we now put into our interests; which, thank God, we HAVE since we didn't play the 'my family is my WHOOOOOOLE LIFE' thing. Let me tell you, sweet, uninterrupted TIME to concentrate and really get into the kind of depth you want to with something, without feeling that your stealing time and attention from your family responsibilities, is EXCELLENT.
Furthermore the sex is so goddamn much better now I cannot tell you. I'm one of those people who gets all squicked out if the dog wanders into the room, right; so having a little kid in the house was really really inhibiting.
That is no longer a factor. At all.
So yeah. Life is good! We have a lot more free time now and money to play! Come over and party some time!
Just, you know...call first.
__________________________________
*which, if you do it right, nobody will expect. their chief element is surprise.
*not that i didn't catch on fast; i did. oh FUCK yes. soon those who would subdue us found themselves consumed. MUAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAA
_______________________________________
So I was asked is it worth it. 'It' being all the years of work and crap you go through making a family. It threw me for a loop. I think I ended up talking about compost or something.
Let's give it another try.
'Worth' as it relates to life is a way of thinking that I associate with being a Catholic. We were taught that any particular event in life was a test (and usually sucked), and if you passed it, God rewarded you. Guaranteed. You pay, you get.
Now granted, you could look at parenthood as a trial of endurance and not be far off the beam. You're broke all the time, you spend three years stuck with a short crazy person going through puberty, and then of course there's all the unpaid overtime spent attending those interminable goddamn school programs (oh sweet fuck the CHRISTMAS programs especially; gaaaaaaah!!!) Not to mention losing jobs because your boss just doesn't seen to understand that you can't leave a sick 4-year-old at home by herself, or same being eligible for free school lunches and then finding out that the poor kid's been doing without because of the stigma attached to that; yeah.
Are we having fun yet?
Still, here's the way I see it: In and of itself, no. Parenthood isn't worth it because it isn't a price you pay for something and there is no exchange involved. You don't get a guaranteed reward if you do it well. Most of the time you don't even get noticed. The fact of the matter is, you can raise a kid and make a home and do those things perfectly, and truthfully it doesn't mean a whole fuck of a lot in the universal scheme of things, all that effort and sweat and all those good intentions. It really doesn't. It can, but chance doesn't exactly favor that outcome, either.
True fact.
If parenthood ends up being worth anything, then that will be the direct result of your values and how seriously you take it. In other words, you make it worth something.
So that explains why I fumbled the handoff. You can take the girl out of the church, but once she becomes a nihilist she ends up talking about compost. Or however that goes.
_______________________________
For me, at least, being a parent sucked about half the time. That's the simple unvarnished truth. It wasn't the kid, so much...aside from a few episodes of 'stupid' the kid was pretty excellent. It was the other stuff. Mostly it was the constant terror. I had no idea what I was doing.
The worst part of having a child was the baby years. Of course then it was simply a problem of a baby not being able to express itself in words that raised the frustration level. Once I survived that, the 'kid' part was actually kind of fun a lot of the time. Certainly tolerable if nothing else. And if, like me, you haven't really crossed over into adult mode yourself, it probably was a lot more fun than it would have been otherwise, so there was that too.
The bad part is all the bullshit you have to put up with and all the crap you have to be on your guard about. I know I went head to head with shit on behalf of my family that I would never have put up with for a friend. And you have to win those battles, too. You HAVE to win. You have to go in and risk looking like a hysterical bitch or an idiot, just put the fear and the ego to one side and go deal with the scary nurse or the condescending bank teller or complain to the manager.
It's dealing with incompetence and indifference on the part of teachers, sanctimoniousness on the part of doctors, freakjob parents, attitude from strangers, and worst of all, the people with weird agendas they wanted to foist off in the name of good parenting. (Boy, there's another post right there. ) Religious nuts of every possible stripe come out of the woodwork, and the first thing they target is the kids. Awana, Tiger Cubs, the fricken' Ba'hais for heavens sake, the fundies with their VBS...oh, it's just wonderful. Then there's the media you suddenly have to be hyperaware of...a media which is WAY better at sneaking in and pushing childrens' buttons than it was when we were growing up.
One of my favorite 'screw the parents' ploys is when the fucking PTA decides to have a fund drive and your poor little six year old kid shows up with a sheaf of tickets or overpriced candy they have to sell or they get in trouble, and they're crying, and you realize that the only way that shit ever gets sold is if the parents buy it all because there's no way in fucking hell that you're going to send a six-year-old girl out door to door in this day and age....and you realize that you're being conned.
Oh yeah, that's a barrel of laughs.
Of course there was that whole issue of me not being the most socially well-adjusted person who ever lived, in the beginning (I am of course the very soul of reason now.) Being a chambermaid, no matter how evil, simply does not prepare you to to take care of a little kid; forget that suddenly I also had to be a manager, an agent of the Spanish Inquisition*, a spy, a cop, a public relations officer, a prosecuting attorney, an ambassador, a hostess and a rampaging berserker at a moments notice.
OK fine. The rampaging berserker part came easily. The rest, not so much. **
________________________
So. How did I make it BE worth it? And will there be coffee and donuts afterwards?
I guess first of all, I took it seriously. Dead seriously.
Things were absolutely NOT going to fuck up on my watch.
That attitude right there is what got me through those 18 years.
Second of all, when we made a decision, we always chose quality of our family life over any other consideration; including financial gain. Always.
Thirdly, I got a lot out of being the person whose job it was to teach a new human being the ropes. I really, really liked that. And then seeing that person learn it, and use it? And having it work? That's....shit, that's a big relief if nothing else!
Fourth, I liked my husband. No, seriously, I know plenty of parents for whom that's simply laughable; liking one another. We were able to share responsibility pretty evenly without any ego or entitlement issues involved.
Fifth, I just like being part of a family. That's the way I'm wired. So parenthood didn't seem like this big, onerous imposition because I expected it to be what it was and just dealt with it. In fact, I expected it to be a hell of a lot worse than it turned out to be. When it wasn't, that was pretty cool too!
Sixth, when it did suck, it NEVER SUCKED ONE TENTH AS MUCH AS A TYPICAL DAY IN MY PARENTS HOUSE. And that's sheer circumstance there. Still, it was a huge source of pride for me every single day of those eighteen years. Not even on my worst day did it ever even OCCUR to me to pull any of the sick shit that went on as a matter of daily fact in my family of origin.
Seventh, I never had to make my kid be like me. I saw parents who did this and it was just creepy. When she did something cool, that was her doing it, and I was like 'Wow! That person lives with me!' and was all blown away and impressed. Still am, in fact.
Eighth, I had my own interests. I didn't let being a wife and parent engulf me. I might be having a shit day as a mom, but I could still learn something new or make something nice and at least reassure myself that I wasn't a complete failure.
Being a wife and parent has not been the most personally rewarding thing in my life-working with plants and pursuing my studies and and interests has been just as rewarding. A whole hell of a lot less frightening, at least. That it all turned out well is nice, of course. Still, it could have gone off the goddamn rails so many times, for so many different reasons that I had no control over...yeesh. How much credit can I take for that? None.
I spent eighteen years flying without a net, and I'm glad it's over
________________________________
So. Here I am. And here's what I have, some of which is at least somewhat due to good choices having been made prior...
Once I no longer had that third person in the house, I methodically set out cleaning out the joint top to bottom...and that 'mommy' persona got cleaned out right along with it.
Mommy is done. Mommy is OVAH.
Now that I no longer have to be a good example, I don't even fucking pretend any more. Things that I quit doing or ramped way back on for the sake of being a responsible parent are once again part of my life, like taking recreational drugs and cranking up my music really loud and being really vocal politically and artistically. My kids know me as an adult woman. I'm no longer their boss-fuck that. I'll give you my perspective on things if you ask, but I could give a hoot in hell how you fold your laundry or clean your house or what kind of soap you wash the baby in. Wash it in ketchup. Wash it in ranch dressing.
The time we formerly spent riding herd on the kid we now put into our interests; which, thank God, we HAVE since we didn't play the 'my family is my WHOOOOOOLE LIFE' thing. Let me tell you, sweet, uninterrupted TIME to concentrate and really get into the kind of depth you want to with something, without feeling that your stealing time and attention from your family responsibilities, is EXCELLENT.
Furthermore the sex is so goddamn much better now I cannot tell you. I'm one of those people who gets all squicked out if the dog wanders into the room, right; so having a little kid in the house was really really inhibiting.
That is no longer a factor. At all.
So yeah. Life is good! We have a lot more free time now and money to play! Come over and party some time!
Just, you know...call first.
__________________________________
*which, if you do it right, nobody will expect. their chief element is surprise.
*not that i didn't catch on fast; i did. oh FUCK yes. soon those who would subdue us found themselves consumed. MUAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAA
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
Quaint vignettes from my charming rural idyll
-Aw shit, more stuff about plants? Because I know you're going to write more shit about your fucking garden and really, please Nations, enough already. I mean Jesus Christ on a red bicycle please stop with the goddamn gardening posts. Nobody cares. Most of us live in town. We think vegetables come from small steel cylinders, like Martians, and take over small towns in New Jersey. We like to sit on the copy machine at work and take pictures of our butts. That was fun until the glass broke. Then we got fired. But it's OK now, we have another job, and the buzzing sound in our heads is almost indistinguishable from the screaming of the gulls here at the county dump.
-Oh fine. Here. I hope you're happy now. Bitch, bitch bitch.
______________
My husband has made it known that he won't be buying me a motorcycle anytime soon. Hell no, not after this incident.
Now here is the reason I love this man: Despite my ongoing love affair with excessive speed and disaster, apparently he sees no problem with buying me another utility.
The last time I had one of these vehicles I did STUPID shit in it. I broke the law. More accurately I stomped on it and set it on fire and buried it and then dug it up and set it on fire again. I think they actually made some new laws to cover the shit I got away with. How did I get away with it? For the simple reason that I looked like a nice little housewife (ramping over intervening watercourses Dukes of Hazzard stylee while lobbing Molotov cocktails out the side window) and the cops couldn't believe what they were seeing until it was too late to do anything about. That's my theory anyway.
Here's the deal: A utility vehicle is less a small truck than it is essentially half a car, so it's very, very light.
There is no weight on the rear axles to speak of. Even with an average engine it takes very little pressure on the gas from a standing stop to chirp the tires.
Now remove all the extraneous equipment and give that same vehicle a very LARGE engine and it's no longer a question of chirping the tires,
it's giving the gas a little rap and sending a tsunami of gravel and chunks of pavement shotgunning out from beneath your smoking rear tires as little fragments of soot float around and the entire car torques 20 degrees out of true and people come out of their houses and
*ahem*
For the same reason the Utility Vehicle is unusually well suited to doing donuts.
Slow vehicles on the highway, like gravel trucks and police officers, are no longer an impediment. The concept of 'time' and 'distance' becomes real fluid. Drifting corners becomes possible. As does getting airborne. On rail crossings. Like the one down near Cherry Point.
And see, you'd think with a little extra weight in the car (say about 70 pounds...about the same as a grade school-aged kid yelling " Do that AGAIN, mom!!!" ) that this shit would be more difficult, but you'd be wrong.
My husband sold my Ranchero to a man who shipped it to Germany. This may have been connected to certain unsubstantiated rumors concerning my driving habits having been passed along by the aforementioned grade school-aged kid.
In any event, he made sure that once it was gone, it was REALLY gone.
I miss it. It was an awesome car. It was flat black and dechromed; had a rubber rake of about 3 1/2 or 4 inches, black tuck and roll upholstery, a tiny little handcuff steering wheel and an accelerator pedal shaped like a foot.
It had an El Toro gas cap.
It had red steels with chrome baby moons.
I still have that accelerator pedal, and I still have that steering wheel.
And now they'll have a new home.
Stay off the roads, folks. Trust me on this one.
__________________________________________
We rolled into Bobs for their Sunday brunch last week and found there ahead of us about 15 Canadian HOG (Harley Owners Group) members, all decked out in their brand-new shiny leather, wearing their HOG rockers, strutting around like banty roosters.
It was...sad.
This is what I continually fail to comprehend:
See, there is nothing particularly 'cool' about being an outlaw biker. Being a biker in general; yes, ok, that's cool. But in general I don't see why, if you are genuinely bad-and I mean, righteous now, not evil- you still feel the overwhelming need to maintain all that constant advertising? "OO, See all my wings? See my spiderweb tattoo? Aren't I scary? Aren't I mean? See my 1% patch? See my pins? See my outlaw rocker? I'm bad, y'all, I mean it. Bad, bad bad. Really really bad. I am. "
Whenever I run onto that I am reminded of those people you see driving cars with about a thousand bumper stickers plastered all over them.
Someone needs a hug.
As far as needing to belong to a club goes; that, I do not get at all. I know plenty of genuinely bad people who did NOT agree to spend two years undergoing various types of ritualized**humiliation, only to earn the 'privilege' of living under someone elses' rules, wearing a brand, and answering to yet another leader in your free time. Do you really need that much supervision?
I mean yeah; I know I do...but I don't fucking volunteer for it.
Anyway, here we were monopolizing the hollandaise sauce looking over at this group of people who are probably the furthest thing from 'outlaw bikers'
that one could imagine...happy, functioning Caucasian cogs in the system, all sporting these imitation outlaw patches and wearing leather and none of them with the vaguest clue as to what 'outlaw' means. 
They obviously think that they are automatically 'bad' because they're wearing this costume they've purchased, though, and this mistaken assumption is causing them to act like total morons.
It dawned on me what this was, finally... the direct, middle-class equivalent of 'Juggalo' . Not only were they not cool, they were trying desperately to be cool by imitating something that's not cool....only to come off even MORE uncool than they were originally.
Anyway, we calmly ate our brunch while they strutted and guffawed.
Then we got on our Victory and did 90 miles like maniacs with no religion.
_______________________
*I have personally experienced 'Red shift'.
**Some of it more than a little abusively homoerotic. I mean come on... jizzing for distance? yeah, that's really....um...outlaw. and you claim you're all straight men, huh? Straight, middle aged men all standing around...seeing how far you...yeah. OK then.
(not that i find anything wrong with that.)
(at all.)
(seriously. i mean it.)
(like, ok if you're one of those really hairy burly type guys, and particularly if you smoke a cigar, right? and you have a lot of friends who are also really hairy burly cigar smokers who wear leather and ride motorcycles, particularly if they have really BIG arms, and say they were all really sweaty because it was a hot day out and they all had to take off their shirts, and maybe even their pants? and one thing lead to another like how it does, and a chalk line got drawn on the pool table....I promise you i would be the LAST PERSON ON EARTH to judge you.)
-Oh fine. Here. I hope you're happy now. Bitch, bitch bitch.
______________
My husband has made it known that he won't be buying me a motorcycle anytime soon. Hell no, not after this incident.
Now here is the reason I love this man: Despite my ongoing love affair with excessive speed and disaster, apparently he sees no problem with buying me another utility.
The last time I had one of these vehicles I did STUPID shit in it. I broke the law. More accurately I stomped on it and set it on fire and buried it and then dug it up and set it on fire again. I think they actually made some new laws to cover the shit I got away with. How did I get away with it? For the simple reason that I looked like a nice little housewife (ramping over intervening watercourses Dukes of Hazzard stylee while lobbing Molotov cocktails out the side window) and the cops couldn't believe what they were seeing until it was too late to do anything about. That's my theory anyway.
Here's the deal: A utility vehicle is less a small truck than it is essentially half a car, so it's very, very light.
There is no weight on the rear axles to speak of. Even with an average engine it takes very little pressure on the gas from a standing stop to chirp the tires.Now remove all the extraneous equipment and give that same vehicle a very LARGE engine and it's no longer a question of chirping the tires,
it's giving the gas a little rap and sending a tsunami of gravel and chunks of pavement shotgunning out from beneath your smoking rear tires as little fragments of soot float around and the entire car torques 20 degrees out of true and people come out of their houses and*ahem*
For the same reason the Utility Vehicle is unusually well suited to doing donuts.
Slow vehicles on the highway, like gravel trucks and police officers, are no longer an impediment. The concept of 'time' and 'distance' becomes real fluid. Drifting corners becomes possible. As does getting airborne. On rail crossings. Like the one down near Cherry Point.
And see, you'd think with a little extra weight in the car (say about 70 pounds...about the same as a grade school-aged kid yelling " Do that AGAIN, mom!!!" ) that this shit would be more difficult, but you'd be wrong.
My husband sold my Ranchero to a man who shipped it to Germany. This may have been connected to certain unsubstantiated rumors concerning my driving habits having been passed along by the aforementioned grade school-aged kid.
In any event, he made sure that once it was gone, it was REALLY gone.
I miss it. It was an awesome car. It was flat black and dechromed; had a rubber rake of about 3 1/2 or 4 inches, black tuck and roll upholstery, a tiny little handcuff steering wheel and an accelerator pedal shaped like a foot.
It had an El Toro gas cap.
It had red steels with chrome baby moons.
I still have that accelerator pedal, and I still have that steering wheel.
And now they'll have a new home.
Stay off the roads, folks. Trust me on this one.
__________________________________________
We rolled into Bobs for their Sunday brunch last week and found there ahead of us about 15 Canadian HOG (Harley Owners Group) members, all decked out in their brand-new shiny leather, wearing their HOG rockers, strutting around like banty roosters.
It was...sad.
This is what I continually fail to comprehend:
See, there is nothing particularly 'cool' about being an outlaw biker. Being a biker in general; yes, ok, that's cool. But in general I don't see why, if you are genuinely bad-and I mean, righteous now, not evil- you still feel the overwhelming need to maintain all that constant advertising? "OO, See all my wings? See my spiderweb tattoo? Aren't I scary? Aren't I mean? See my 1% patch? See my pins? See my outlaw rocker? I'm bad, y'all, I mean it. Bad, bad bad. Really really bad. I am. "
Whenever I run onto that I am reminded of those people you see driving cars with about a thousand bumper stickers plastered all over them.
Someone needs a hug.
As far as needing to belong to a club goes; that, I do not get at all. I know plenty of genuinely bad people who did NOT agree to spend two years undergoing various types of ritualized**humiliation, only to earn the 'privilege' of living under someone elses' rules, wearing a brand, and answering to yet another leader in your free time. Do you really need that much supervision?
I mean yeah; I know I do...but I don't fucking volunteer for it.
Anyway, here we were monopolizing the hollandaise sauce looking over at this group of people who are probably the furthest thing from 'outlaw bikers'
that one could imagine...happy, functioning Caucasian cogs in the system, all sporting these imitation outlaw patches and wearing leather and none of them with the vaguest clue as to what 'outlaw' means. 
They obviously think that they are automatically 'bad' because they're wearing this costume they've purchased, though, and this mistaken assumption is causing them to act like total morons.It dawned on me what this was, finally... the direct, middle-class equivalent of 'Juggalo' . Not only were they not cool, they were trying desperately to be cool by imitating something that's not cool....only to come off even MORE uncool than they were originally.
Anyway, we calmly ate our brunch while they strutted and guffawed.
Then we got on our Victory and did 90 miles like maniacs with no religion.
_______________________
*I have personally experienced 'Red shift'.
**Some of it more than a little abusively homoerotic. I mean come on... jizzing for distance? yeah, that's really....um...outlaw. and you claim you're all straight men, huh? Straight, middle aged men all standing around...seeing how far you...yeah. OK then.
(not that i find anything wrong with that.)
(at all.)
(seriously. i mean it.)
(like, ok if you're one of those really hairy burly type guys, and particularly if you smoke a cigar, right? and you have a lot of friends who are also really hairy burly cigar smokers who wear leather and ride motorcycles, particularly if they have really BIG arms, and say they were all really sweaty because it was a hot day out and they all had to take off their shirts, and maybe even their pants? and one thing lead to another like how it does, and a chalk line got drawn on the pool table....I promise you i would be the LAST PERSON ON EARTH to judge you.)
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Mauve Squirrel Delivers Seven Forks!
It pains me to have to break it to you but honestly, my kids are SO MUCH COOLER than your kids.
..no, I don't wanna hear it. Truthfully. I don't. There is no way that your kids could possibly be cooler than my kids. It would be both retarded and terribly sad of you to try and compete by telling me sad, lame little tales of purportedly 'kewl' things your kids have done. Seriously. Unless your kid is Stephen Hawking.
...please don't tell me you actually BOUGHT that wheelchair routine.
1. My daughter has a degree. A non-traditional degree. My daughter is a fricken' STRUCTURAL ENGINEER.
A FRICKEN' one.
I must also point out that she is COOL engineer. She does NOT eat with her mouth open or pick her nose in public. Neither does she collect boogers in a pill bottle or wipe earwax in a big streak on the bathroom wall. No. She is the Dana Scully of engineers....gorgeous, bitchy, mean to parasitic aliens, and MUCH smarter than your daughter.
How cool of an engineer, you ask in a high, piping little whimper?
Now all right. Just stop. Drop what you're doing, now, and stop. Fall down on your knees and thank whatever God you own that you have LIVED TO WITNESS THE EXTRAORDINARY COOLNESS OF MY DAUGHTER.
Do they pay your sad, tepid little daughter to set shit on fire?
They do not. They pay her to sew buttholes on Care Bears.
My daughter knows how to THINK.
FURTHERMORE, my daughter knows pretty much everything about contemporary world politics. More, in fact, than Condoleeza Rice; plus she has a better jawline and would not be caught dead in no stinkin' Dior knockoff pink boucle' jacket. My daughter could kick her ass. In fact my daughter SHOULD kick her ass. My daughter, basically, could straighten the fuck out of this country, square away the national budget AND hand-sew a Log Cabin quilt at the same time.
...the Holy Infant of Prague agrees: "That SSA is A-OK!
incidentally this thing really is full of Chambourd."
This is an informed woman. You want to know some stuff? Forget it. She knows it already.
Give up. Go home. Go ask your daughter 'Why can't you be more like the SSA? I am so ashamed to know you. No I will not make you a peanut butter sandwich."
You see, my daughter is not merely a gorgeous, international super-smart person, she can also COOK some food. Hell yes. She can just go in the kitchen and as soon as that stove goes on, pilots abandon DEA helicopters to parachute down and eat dinner at her house. Astronauts abandon their missions and drop out the sky for a sanwidge. All the time this happens.
Meanwhile your cut rate ol' daughter is looking at the jar of peanut butter and the table knife and back at the peanut butter and her lower lip is beginning to tremble.
Too many moving parts.
2. My son is SO MUCH COOLER than your so-called sons which are make the laughing so much my face!! HA I say toward your sons!
The dude apprenticed at Full Sail.
Please try and understand. The man is a brewmaster. He knows about HOPS. He makes beer. In fact he just whups up a batch of beer WHENEVER HE FEELS LIKE IT. Just for something to do. Good beer. Rockin' ass beer.
...this is what YOUR son drinks. they put an umbrella in it for him.
Your son cannot make beer. Your son cannot make Koolaid. He doesn't even know the words to the Koolaid song.*
My son has a degree.
My son has a degree in AGRICULTURE.
HE GARDENS FOR A LIVING.
That's right friends and neighbors. He actually scammed a paying job with benefits GROWING PLANTS.
Oh my God! How can you stand the humiliation of living on the same planet as this man, knowing that your progeny are so inferior? Here is how it is. And this will be difficult but pull on your big kid uns and deal with it, because it's like this:
Please. The coolness is blinding me here. Frost is forming. This is like minus 40-below coolness here.
God it must suck to be you.
Does your son grow stuff? Pfft. Moss under his balls, maybe.
...this is what YOUR son wore last Halloween. he told people he was a radio telescope.
Yes, I'm afraid YOUR SON is a dork.
Feel my pity. *snoooork* Waves and waves of extreme pity rolling your way like the vast moon-driven breakers on a tempestuous berg-strewn arctic sea full of narwhals with big pointy things sticking up out of their heads going 'Woooooo' like they do.
Thats right.
As if this were not extreme liquid nitrogenlike coolness enow, my son was a RODEO RIDER. Mercy yes. Testify: He subdued WILD IRRITABLE ANIMALS in a WESTERN SETTING is what I am trying to convey to you here, motherfucker.
Oh yes.
Yes.
Cows FEAR MY SON.
Cows taunt your son.
Your son carries a big paper bag in his car so that whenever he has to go by some cows he can put it over his head so that he does not have to endure their cruel mockery. You ever wondered about that big paper sack he carries in his Gremlin? Now you know.
You really have to ask yourself why you even bothered to procreate. Lotta wasted effort, wasn't it. And now you have nothing to show for it but some stained sheets, crushing debt and a broken heart.
My DNA has prevailed.
FUCK YES!
Look on my kids, ye mighty, and despair.
__________________________________
* " Oh yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeah-"
...thats it. those are the lyrics. thats how the Koolaid song goes.
you see how incredibly sad and lame your son is? return him and get your money back; and if the fly problem in your home ramps back up use it to buy a frog. don't even bother to give it a name.
..no, I don't wanna hear it. Truthfully. I don't. There is no way that your kids could possibly be cooler than my kids. It would be both retarded and terribly sad of you to try and compete by telling me sad, lame little tales of purportedly 'kewl' things your kids have done. Seriously. Unless your kid is Stephen Hawking.
...please don't tell me you actually BOUGHT that wheelchair routine.1. My daughter has a degree. A non-traditional degree. My daughter is a fricken' STRUCTURAL ENGINEER.
A FRICKEN' one.
I must also point out that she is COOL engineer. She does NOT eat with her mouth open or pick her nose in public. Neither does she collect boogers in a pill bottle or wipe earwax in a big streak on the bathroom wall. No. She is the Dana Scully of engineers....gorgeous, bitchy, mean to parasitic aliens, and MUCH smarter than your daughter.
How cool of an engineer, you ask in a high, piping little whimper?
They used to PAY HER TO SET SHIT ON FIRE.
Now all right. Just stop. Drop what you're doing, now, and stop. Fall down on your knees and thank whatever God you own that you have LIVED TO WITNESS THE EXTRAORDINARY COOLNESS OF MY DAUGHTER.
Do they pay your sad, tepid little daughter to set shit on fire?
They do not. They pay her to sew buttholes on Care Bears.
My daughter knows how to THINK.
FURTHERMORE, my daughter knows pretty much everything about contemporary world politics. More, in fact, than Condoleeza Rice; plus she has a better jawline and would not be caught dead in no stinkin' Dior knockoff pink boucle' jacket. My daughter could kick her ass. In fact my daughter SHOULD kick her ass. My daughter, basically, could straighten the fuck out of this country, square away the national budget AND hand-sew a Log Cabin quilt at the same time.
...the Holy Infant of Prague agrees: "That SSA is A-OK!incidentally this thing really is full of Chambourd."
In fact-and this has become a problem in recent months-Martha Stewart calls my daughter up and begs her for crafting advice.
Sometimes, Martha cries. It is tragic.
...my daughter is cooler than THIS DOG. and this dog, my friends, has an AFRO.
Sometimes, Martha cries. It is tragic.
This is because my daughter has great taste. AWESOME taste. The editors of Dwell magazine duck down and hide when my daughter drives past because they know that her taste is so well respected that she could huck like half a melted vanilla ice cream cone at them or like a part of a burger with mustard hanging out and maybe a pickle? And drive away and the cops wouldn't do anything to her.
If I need a second opinion? I go to her. I say "What is this ol bullshit type of situation going on ?" and she give it to me STRAIGHT UP.
If I need a second opinion? I go to her. I say "What is this ol bullshit type of situation going on ?" and she give it to me STRAIGHT UP.
...my daughter is cooler than THIS DOG. and this dog, my friends, has an AFRO. This is an informed woman. You want to know some stuff? Forget it. She knows it already.
Give up. Go home. Go ask your daughter 'Why can't you be more like the SSA? I am so ashamed to know you. No I will not make you a peanut butter sandwich."
You see, my daughter is not merely a gorgeous, international super-smart person, she can also COOK some food. Hell yes. She can just go in the kitchen and as soon as that stove goes on, pilots abandon DEA helicopters to parachute down and eat dinner at her house. Astronauts abandon their missions and drop out the sky for a sanwidge. All the time this happens.
Meanwhile your cut rate ol' daughter is looking at the jar of peanut butter and the table knife and back at the peanut butter and her lower lip is beginning to tremble.
Too many moving parts.
2. My son is SO MUCH COOLER than your so-called sons which are make the laughing so much my face!! HA I say toward your sons!
The dude apprenticed at Full Sail.
Please try and understand. The man is a brewmaster. He knows about HOPS. He makes beer. In fact he just whups up a batch of beer WHENEVER HE FEELS LIKE IT. Just for something to do. Good beer. Rockin' ass beer.
...this is what YOUR son drinks. they put an umbrella in it for him.Your son cannot make beer. Your son cannot make Koolaid. He doesn't even know the words to the Koolaid song.*
My son has a degree.
My son has a degree in AGRICULTURE.
HE GARDENS FOR A LIVING.
That's right friends and neighbors. He actually scammed a paying job with benefits GROWING PLANTS.
Oh my God! How can you stand the humiliation of living on the same planet as this man, knowing that your progeny are so inferior? Here is how it is. And this will be difficult but pull on your big kid uns and deal with it, because it's like this:
He could have been paid to make beer, or paid to garden.
Please. The coolness is blinding me here. Frost is forming. This is like minus 40-below coolness here.
God it must suck to be you.
Does your son grow stuff? Pfft. Moss under his balls, maybe.
...this is what YOUR son wore last Halloween. he told people he was a radio telescope. Feel my pity. *snoooork* Waves and waves of extreme pity rolling your way like the vast moon-driven breakers on a tempestuous berg-strewn arctic sea full of narwhals with big pointy things sticking up out of their heads going 'Woooooo' like they do.
Thats right.
As if this were not extreme liquid nitrogenlike coolness enow, my son was a RODEO RIDER. Mercy yes. Testify: He subdued WILD IRRITABLE ANIMALS in a WESTERN SETTING is what I am trying to convey to you here, motherfucker.
Oh yes.
Yes.
Cows FEAR MY SON.
Cows taunt your son.
Your son carries a big paper bag in his car so that whenever he has to go by some cows he can put it over his head so that he does not have to endure their cruel mockery. You ever wondered about that big paper sack he carries in his Gremlin? Now you know.
...this is the wallpaper on your sons computer. do you know why? because cows hacked your sons computer. and now he can't get it to go away.
You really have to ask yourself why you even bothered to procreate. Lotta wasted effort, wasn't it. And now you have nothing to show for it but some stained sheets, crushing debt and a broken heart.
My DNA has prevailed.
FUCK YES!
Look on my kids, ye mighty, and despair.
__________________________________
* " Oh yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeah-"
...thats it. those are the lyrics. thats how the Koolaid song goes.
you see how incredibly sad and lame your son is? return him and get your money back; and if the fly problem in your home ramps back up use it to buy a frog. don't even bother to give it a name.
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