Tricia Morgan's Tom-Foolery

2012-02-10T17:34:00.000-08:00

My time here is slowly drawing to an end, with only the vessel to unload and plans for travel to make. Tanker offload was great, partially because the fuels crew is hilarious but mostly because I got to be on nights for two weeks. The difference is astounding. First of all, let me say that the population is much more manageable. However, I have managed to make an enemy at lunchtime. The thing is this: at midnight, the meal more commonly known as "midrats", the panini grill is almost never on when we are finally allowed to eat. It takes a while to warm up. This always pisses me off because, you know, turn it on. There's a switch and everything for this purpose specifically. So tanker comes around. The fuels department has to offload millions of gallons of fuel round-the-clock. This means that although there is an hour allotted for lunch, an hour is not really taken. A person gets as long as they need to get food and eat food. So I'm like "yeah this food looks not good to me, I'll make a panini." And the grill... is on. Fucking yes! But there's this guy, he's standing there like "hey." And I look. There are three sandwiches on this grill. Normally not a problem since it can technically hold four, but this guy, he's made some irregularly shaped sandwiches with the artisan bread instead of just using the normal bread, so only 3 will fit in there.

"Hey."
"Hey."
Just making paninis. One guy. Making three paninis. He's just stuck them in there. Just going to take a few minutes. All my coworkers are already eating by this point, but I have to grill this damn sandwich because the bread is stale and will be inedible if I leave it cold. He needs his sandwiches perfect. I have minutes left. I reek of fuel. I have minutes left to make my meal and eat it. This guy is humming to himself. I want to destroy him.

The story ends with me eating a panini. All is well. Then the next day I barely beat him to it and then see him holding social court in front of the grill. He is my paninimy.

Now, since then I have learned that he is actually a cool guy, which I reasoned with myself even as I hated him the first time around, but still. The guy's sandwiches take up too much space. Something I did learn from this was that in the future, when tanker comes in, if I am in the galley and I start smelling fuel and seeing ten people running around with trays, I am getting the fuck out of the way. Something I would not have considered before. People who don't get breaks gotta eat and they gotta eat now.

The second great thing about nights is that the terrain is never more beautiful. During the night, The Royal Society Range gets lit in a majestic light- slightly more yellow and much more angled than in the day. Not dusk, but magic hour. It is best at around 2:30 a.m. Definition on the peaks is visible and Mt. Discovery gets to be more than that peak on the other side of the water. Truly gorgeous. Worth being on nights just for that alone.

Nights came to end for me. Because of the vessel, I must now return to days and help offload 500+ mattresses in addition to other tasks. I am excited for the manual labor, because since Byrd's "Fuel Bladders A-Go-Go", all my muscles have slowly melted away. I want my sculpt back. And also, what's with that discomfort in my knees? Dang. At this moment, I am in the middle of transitioning back to days. It hasn't been hard, mostly because I can sleep whenever I want to AND stay up as long as I want provided there is a computer somewhere. I decided to incorporate naps and wakey-times into my transition. Sleep from midnight until 4, be awake two hours, take another nap until 7, be awake for breakfast, go back to sleep until 11 and then power through the entire day, not sleeping again until 8 at the earliest. It's going great so far, except this thing where I'm really cranky. I got angry at this guy in the lounge for singing the BBC song at the end of Austin Powers. But in my defense, how many people really enjoy listening to grown men sing-count? Monday will be fine. Monday I will be normal.

Can I tell you all something? About two weeks before I left for WAIS Divide- the end of December, I suppose- I started getting violently ill when I ate, mostly at breakfast. I would feel great, then go to breakfast and eat, still feeling great, and then get beaten down with a brick of nausea. I lost a few mornings of work to it. Even had to go to the doctor. My boss started accusing me of eating too much candy (not the problem, I only eat a lot of chocolate when I'm at field camps, and all the candy in my room is in fact Spring's). This whole being sick in the morning thing used to happen to me at the Chattooga too. I blamed it on Sysco provided foods. I would eat, feel sick to my stomach, and then go to work. I had a schedule around it. This was bad, though. So I kind of just stopped eating, knowing that it was something I was eating but having no idea exactly what it was. Three days before I left for WAIS I was eating next to nothing.

"I heard that you can make yourself allergic to eggs if you eat them too much," one of my acquaintances told me the second day my illness showed up.

"That's no life for me. What would I eat? Eggs are all I have." At the time, Floating Chunks of Dinosaur Meat was all the rage in the kitchen. Un. Appetizing. But there is always an egg bar for night shifters, so they can have breakfast for breakfast instead of steak or Bobbin' For Brisket.

I got to WAIS with the egg theory under my belt. The first morning I had one egg over medium and was fine. Woo Hoo! EGGS EGGSEGGGSEGGGGGS! The next day I had two of them and got ill. The realization came that not only was I egg-intolerant, but had made myself that way. You cannot eat the equivalent of 5 eggs every day for a month and expect to be okay. At least I can't. And then worse...

"Oh my god. I've been making myself egg-sick for three summers solid. Three. I changed my life for eggs." Solution: Don't eat so many eggs. Actually I completely cut them out, and then started nibbling at them in little bits. Scrambled eggs seem okay in large quantities, but definitely not runny eggs. Life is hard, but I am learning.

The Big Dummy Award goes to me, for crippling myself with eggs for three years.

I am starving right now, in fact. Since I am transitioning, my stomach is confused. My brain is okay and I am appropriately awake, but my stomach is not having any of this. I bought a bunch of miniature Tony's pizzas two nights ago when I had to skip breakfast before work and ended up getting super mega hangry, a transaction that was very trying for me. These pizzas are available upon request to deparments and offices, but although GAs have an "office", we have only been there the first week for training or to get tools. There is no freezer or microwave. The only way for me to secure a pizza is to get it at the bar, where they are sold for $2 a pop. This was not a happy moment for me. I did not want to be in the bar, but I knew that all I could get from the galley was toast and I was wayyyyyyyyy past being fixable by toast. I ran in, bought 4 pizzas, and ran back out as quickly as possible just in case someone important was spying with a stopwatch in hand. There are two pizzas left in the freezer and I want one so badly right now. But I know I have to wait until A) dinner at 6 or B) I want to rip the 4-hour Facebooker's face off. Otherwise I will teach myself bad eating habits.

Hmmmmm maybe I should review that sentence.

A lot of people left the ice a few days ago, many of them friends of mine. It is going to get empty here very quickly. My neighbors in MMI are from Talkeetna, Alaska. Somehow I missed that that fact. Perhaps it never came up. Maybe I just asked them what they do and they responded only with profession and not where they do it. At any rate, it turns out that these two live right next to the tent lot I was supposed to live in. I was so close to living and working there. It's strange to think that had I gone, I would have been knowing these two remarkable people for years by now. But I guess either way I met them.

My own plannings for departure are kind of at a standstill. We know the things we want to do and when, but we have to make sure we get an okay from the travel arranger before we can rent the car that can make our dreams come true. I'm not a planning type. I show up and go where I can. This is freaking me out a little. I just want to be there. But I'm strangely more excited about the return to the south. Probably because a life of leisure is planned. Canoes and leisure. No beating that.

For the rest of the afternoon, I'm going to fill my head with Kid Nation. It was just recently introduced to me and I can't believe I didn't see it when it aired. It came under fire for questionable child labor issues. It's every nightmare I had as a child. Kids everywhere, people screaming, no dishes getting done. Some of these children have awful parents. Check it out!

The end.

Peril of Speaking With New People #32:

2012-01-18T23:53:00.000-08:00

"Man, you are the king of soft rock, aren't you?"
"This is not soft rock, this is Toto."
"Ohhh. Okay. My bad."
"That guitar is not soft at all."
"Yeah. They are shredding, clearly."

Byrd

2011-12-30T17:51:00.000-08:00

Tent city at Byrd camp. The winds were pretty constant. Not strong, but consistent. Drifts piled up super fast in no time, which could be problematic in flat light.

Grooming berms down to a walkable level. Vehicles have the right of way here. Although they will stop for you, it's a really bad idea to walk anywhere without looking every possible way first. The first thing I did was almost get run over by one of these machines. I quickly learned.

Marble Point Iceberg

2011-12-30T17:39:00.000-08:00

Photos from Byrd

2011-12-29T18:41:00.000-08:00

I was hoping to write this sprawling entry about Byrd camp and all the people and things there, but I just found out that I am leaving for WAIS camp on Monday. And this weekend is a holiday. So, for real, it's just not going to happen. There aren't a lot of photos of Byrd. It took me a while to figure out what it was all about, and I spent a lot of time having Crud #2, and but for the most part I just wanted to be there and not worry about having a camera in the way of it all. But, here's what I did manage to get:

This is a Herc. Three hours on this plane, sitting among all the cargo, can be very uncomfy.

Unless you get to ride in the cockpit, like me and Pinky. It was just for the descent and landing, but still. My legs were completely trapped by cargo for the majority of the flight and getting out of that for the landing was a supreme vacation.

For the three days prior to our arrival Byrd had condition 1 weather. This means stupid winds, stupid visibility, and even if you can see, it's pretty much pointless to do so. It was still windy the day we arrived. I can't say what the knots were, but it was windy. "Damn it's windy," I thought as I got off the plane. Ben and Nate helped each other set up their tents, I didn't have to set one up at all because I moved into the one the GA before me set up, and Pinky just wanted to do it all on his own. That's him, doing it all on his own. I peeked my head out of my vestibule more than a few times to watch him to do this all on his own.

This tent in the foreground is my first tent. It's a something-or-other four-season mountain tent. I know how it looks, but you actually stay very warm in these things. Walk around and get warm in your clothes first, throw a hot water bottle in your fleece sleeping bag, and then jump in. You'll be great in the morning. Especially if you let the tent get drifted in a little. It's a great insulator. I eventually moved into an Arctic Oven just because one was available and I wanted it. This allowed for a little more floor space and a lot more headspace, and ended up being so much more comfy because I didn't overheat when it got into the 10s.

These were footsteps outside of my Arctic Oven. As you can see, the looser snow outlining them blew away in one of our 24knot days and left raised footprints.

Galley. Even though there is a meeting tent, most people hang out in the galley because there is room to spread out and three Kuma stoves. Many games of cribbage have happened here.

Our chipper sous chef, Natalie, made this pie to be sent over to WAIS as part of an ongoing, friendly cook battle. I. Love. Ridiculous. Mail.

Ridiculous mail #1- Florence, Italy.

This is what you see when you exit the galley. That's an outhouse, and that right there is a peegloo. Stand there, face the wall, pee. Beyond that are the four cargo lines. Tent city is to the left, the airstrip is to the right.

This is a sample of what you can see inside the outhouses.

Ben at the fuel bladders. Due to constant winds and drift, these had to be worked on every day, the ultimate goal being to excavate them completely. That gold border at the bottom of the photo stands a little less than a foot off the ground. Most of what he's standing on is solidly packed snow, some of it ice, and none of it can be shoveled with metal tools. Plastic shovels, otherwise known as Barbie shovels, must be used in the offchance that you slip (all the time) and jam the shovel into the ginormous bulging bladder (three times a day), thus preventing a catastrophic spill and rendering every flight to distant PIG camp impossible. There are four bladders, and when I left at the end of my three weeks, I had not seen a completely clean border around any of them. From what I'm told, right after I left storms rolled in right after another. Boo. If the bladders' borders aren't cleared to a minimum, they can't be filled with fuel. Again, if the bladders are empty, Byrd cannot be used as a fueling station. Hard work, good work, Sisyphian at best. The day this photo was taken, Ben and I stretched out below the level of the snow for a break and a chance to get out of the wind. We watched the snow race along the wind four feet above our faces. Amazing.

Ben was half of the Spill Team, the other half being Nate of Environmental. Their job was to take a banana sled, put trash bags on them, and pick up all the snow contaminated with mechanical drippings and put them in the bags. They did this for about four days straight. They were tired. It was like playing picture pages, except life-sized and with about 50 pounds trailing off your shoulder.

In short, it was my favorite part of my Antarctic adventure so far, and I felt like it ended way too soon. I ended up leaving on a flight several hours earlier than my assigned one. A PIG flight boomeranged back toward McMurdo and had to stop over at Byrd for fueling. The motto on the Byrd sticker is "If a plane lands, get on it". I had given in to peer pressure and inquired about space when it first landed, but didn't expect there to be room seeing as it was full of PIG put-in crew and all their cargo. That was my answer as well. So I went back to the galley and prepared to slay Keith in cribbage one last time and generally waste time before my 10 p.m. departure (3 hour flight, between an hour or two back from Pegasus airfield, you can see why people would champion an earlier flight). I sat down with my fresh coffee and Kindle. After all the PIGs had loaded back up the camp manager radioed for me to get on the plane. Now, I had gone beyond coming to terms with a 3 a.m. bedtime and had actually worked up excitement over a prolonged goodbye with my new friends. But you don't go to The Price is Right in a crazy shirt and then not run down the aisle when he says your name, you know? I felt kind of lost, but Betsy, the other sous chef, was there to tell me to pick up my bag and get on the fucking plane before it left.

Weather changes too quickly to depend on later flights, or on the one outside the door waiting for ten minutes, for that matter.

I ran out the door with my backpack and a french-press REI mug full of hot coffee. Tony, the camp supervisor, was waiting a little less than halfway to the runway with a snowmobile and a sled full of my stuff. I jumped on the sled, held on to one of the restraint ropes, and he sped me up to the Herc. I was on a plane and completely in shock about it all.

And then I coughed for an hour all over the PIG camp manager because as I said, I had crud #2. Almost got barfy sick on the descent but didn't, surprised Spring by coming back early, didn't get any dinner because I didn't have time to pack the lunch at Byrd and by the time I got back to McMurdo dinner was over. But it didn't matter. I just filled that time with a really long shower and even longer night of sleep.

Home sweet home.

Then I got up and was homesick for Byrd.

Randoms from McMurdo!

Erebus with lenticular clouds, possibly my favorite day. It looked like it was wearing a sombrero all day long. These types of clouds are indicative of very fast-moving winds at higher elevation. Do not put your airplane inside that.

Erebus again, from the other side of the peninsula.

We drove for an hour or so from McMurdo in a Hagglund, tooling along at 4 miles per hour. Loomy is one of the teachers of this class. He's driving. He's also my neighbor in Mammoth Mountain Inn. He is awesome. We love him. I am sitting in the backseat of the first car of the Hagglund, but not so much in a seat as on the console between the back seats. I'm listening to my Zune beneath my earmuffs, eating a Moro Gold and nodding off to sleep every 15 minutes.

We were out near the Erebus Glacier Tongue for Sea Ice Training, a class where we learn how to test cracks for crossability by drilling and measuring. That guy isn't about to lose his hand, he is actually supposed to be doing that. Inspecting the shavings as they come out tells you the condition of the ice layers. The more moisture, the closer you are to seawater. I didn't get to use one of the drills that day, but the next week I got to accompany one of the FSTP people out on a sea-ice run and not only use the drill multiple times, but ride my OWN SNOWMOBILE TOO. It was a perfect outing for me, because I need one-on-one instruction for both of these tasks.

2011-11-03T14:15:00.001-07:00

... and then I got the Crud. A generic term for a cold/head stuffer that makes regular rounds on the base. I spent three days feeling like a run-down battery, or more accurately, like when you are trying to run in a dream but aren't getting anywhere. Then there was the day where my throat swelled and I couldn't get out of bed for all the fatigue. One day of work gone. Spent the next few days sniffling and dragging ass, but working indoors patching tents and writing numbers on parts of all varieties.

But then I got to go to Black Island for two nights on shovel assignment. Black Island is clearly visible from McMurdo, just right over on the other side of the McMurdo Ice Shelf. It took a ten minute helicopter ride to get there, and was crammed with 4 riggers and 2 of us GAs. Many T-Rex arms were utilized strapping ourselves in. I was terrified. First helo ride ever, and it was a bumpy start. If you don't know, wind blows hard in Antarctica. On Black Island it blows harder. By the end of our first day there, it was at around 60 mph. Nate and I were both in milvans shoveling out snowdrifts, so we couldn't really tell about the wind except that our snowfulls would explode when we threw them out of the doors.

On day 2 we went for a little walk to the frozen pond near the base. This was very exciting because it is a huge patch of blue in the brown and white of Antarctica. Since lunch was soon, I did not go all the way down to it and that was for the best; the terrain is all fine dust with a layer of small rocks on top. It wore me out walking back. What else to say about it? Well, it's great. Mostly because although there are only two people manning the station, they are both awesome. The manager is a loud and jovial man who dances in the style of fist-pumping, and the cook is a granola girl who didn't stop making sweets. It was as close to a vacation as I will be getting here, and it was a damn good one.

The Observation Tube is an excellent means of seeing what is happening under the water. And what is happening under there? Krill, mostly, and these little glowing things that look like angel fetuses. It's amazing under the ice. The roof isn't at all smooth, but undulates and has stalactites and fringes of flaky ice hanging from it. The little fishie thingies go up there and hide.

It's a tight fit.

I couldn't really get any good photos of the water, my little digital couldn't handle the low light. But, i did see a seal swimming off in the distance. Photos of seals to come, I promise. They are mostly out by Scott base right now, where there are plenty of holes and cracks to surface through. If you've never seen a seal, you should know that while they are devastatingly cute, they are disgusting. Always surrounded by blood and poop and pee. They don't have legs to run away from their messes after they make them.

Here are some photos:

This is me at Happy Camper, an overnight snow skills training session. There are mountains behind me. Mt. Erebus, Terror, and Terra Nova are back there. The flags are to mark the path in situations like these, otherwise people would certainly be walking off into cracks.

This is our snow-brick wall, put up to block the south winds, which is where all the scary storms come from. I liked Happy Camper very much.

Riding in a Hagglund.

Drilling to test sea ice depth near the Erebus Glacier Tongue, Erebus in the background.

Antarctica

2011-10-23T23:28:00.000-07:00

Week 1 in Antarctica was a bit rocky. That is, if you want to hear it as an understatement. It's been great, but there are other things I would have chosen for myself in this past week than what I served up. First, I would not have gotten a gut sickness on my arrival night and been up all night making toilet rounds. And since I wouldn't have been doing that, I also would have thought about looking inside the chapel for my group of coworkers the next morning when they were not outside at 7:30 as was discussed instead of saying "shit, I did quadruple check this, but I was early and nobody came... I must have the location exterior wrong" and walking all over the base at a frenetic pace, desperate to not vomit and/or fall onto my face. Day one and I was 1.5 hours late. Bad news. Very bad news. Then I would not have been late to a meeting two days later. This one was great. I was so paranoid about having been late on day 1 that I took to double checking everything after that. However, this particular double check came out all wrong. 8:15 and 8:30 are not the same. You can tell, because they are different. Why did I say 8:30? No idea. I messed up my double check. Had the meeting time actually been 8:30 then everyone would have no doubt been breathlessly impressed by my 8:22 arrival. It was not. I impressed no one. In fact, I un-impressed many. Namely myself. The shittiest part about all this is that one of my biggest peeves is tardiness. Ask Christi. Keep me waiting for 5 minutes and whatever it is I was supposed to do with you is already out the window. You have pissed me off and I'm not going to go anywhere with you. I will go alone or stay home and watch you pout because I won't go anywhere with you. And if I do go with you, you will hate it because I will just bitch at you about how you were three minutes late ten hours ago. Yet here I am, in hot water for tardiness. Is that what irony feels like? Does irony feel like shit? Because that's how I feel right now.

And after I would not have done all that, I also would not have been in a ladylike way during the winter camping skills overnighter. This isn't fair though. I can't control that, there is no amount of alarm clocks that can help me avoid it so all I can do is give myself accolades for coping with it heroically. But you know what I did do? Be the camp boss. No, I did not volunteer for this, but I was not smart enough to see my way out of the reverse psychology paper bag that has been trapping 3rd graders for millennia:

"Who wants to be camp supervisor?" *silence silence grown adults across the age spectrum staring at the ground* "Okay, well, who absolutely doesn't want to be camp supervisor?"

Shit that's definitely me I'm going to show all these stupid suckers who can't pick a side oh no oh no my arm is going up fuuuuuuckkkkkkkkkkkk I failed myselfffffffffff-

"Super! Thanks Tricia." And the walkie got thrown at me. What sucked most is that there was one other chucklehead retarded enough to raise his hand, but he was not in the direct line of sight. Who's the asshole now? This girl. So yeah, camp boss. Everyone laughing that me in their not-camp-boss heads. What was I supposed to do? It was windy and cold and I had cramps. I can't be expected to think clearly all the time. The first thing I did was order an L-shaped addition to the four-row high wall of snow blocks we had built earlier as a windbreak against the southern storms that can whip up. And thank god it got done, because I ended up in the tent at the end. About midnight or so some strong winds came up for a while. Without the L, I'm certain misery would have been a third tent-mate to Frederick and I. And let it be known that Frederick the Fleet Ops Man was sleeping on the outermost side of the tent and took some seriously cold blasts of Antarctic wind. The entire row of tents should buy him beer upon beer for being the speedbump to the winds that made it past the L-addition.

I don't know what time this happened, but I turned over in my mummy bag at the same time that he turned over in his. Eyes wide open but somehow so tired. Here we are. We're in mummy bags being ravaged by wind. You and me, man. Sleep. One second of eye contact and full understanding.

Despite being in Antarctica, this is not the worst snow camping experience in the world. It's pretty nice, actually, for one reason and one reason only, the most important reason in all the world: it is dry. Sleet is what kills you. Drizzle and snow is what makes a person hate their life, not snow. This really should not confuse a person. Snow is great. It's fine. Perfect. Wind sucks. Rain sucks. Drizzle turning to ice on your face in the middle of the night is fucking wretched, and then as a prize for dealing with being freezing and wet all night, you get to shove your body head to toe into crusty clothes which will instantly turn into soggy mess as soon as you try to warm up in front of your breakfast fire and think about how you will not be dry for the rest of that day. So snow? Yeah, that's fine. Snow is dry unless you mess up and get it warm. But I do happen to do this thing where I think the sleeping bag is the finish line.

"Yay I was smart and warm all day! Now I get to do whatever I want!" I put my overalls against the tent wall and forgot to make myself a pillow. Then I woke up with my head tangled in a rat-king formed by the my sleeping bag's shoulder and face cords, held fast by my headphones. I woke up ten minutes before Frederick and yet he still made it out of the tent before me. Crick in my neck and startlingly cold Carhartt's is how I started my morning.

Then I walked into a conversation about being woken up at 3 a.m. by people who thought it was 6:30. So that's what that was? All that crunching snow and people talking loud and being confused? Apparently a watch was wrong and a few people panicked and woke up 75% of us, some of them getting so far as to actually packing up everything, including their tents. Do you know what I did?

"God what time is it. 3? I don't know what these maniacs are doing but I will not be party to it." *roll over roll over snore* I kind of thought people were still up partying or making snow trenches. At any rate, this is why you do not throw the walkie to the person who admitted how little they want to do with responsibility. Now, I do need to say that had I known why people were crunching around on the snow outside, I would have yelled at them about how they were in fact cheating themselves out of three hours of delicious slumber. Sure, I may not have opened my tent to do it, but I would have made a general announcement from my bag and it would have been loud enough for all to hear.

The entirety of day 1 of camping was white where there ought to have been horizon and mountains. Day two was gorgeous. Erebus was out and though many miles away, it was right there. Steaming. Being all big and in Antarctica. I was there. Me. Frederick the Antarctic Squall Speedbump guy. The girl who takes notes on shoveling form. Seventeen others, too. Unbelievable.

Overall, the Happy Camper experience was great. Making a snow block quarry? Yes ma'am! Let's do!

At a certain point I became very worried about getting an ingrown toenail. Although I have not picked at the toe or caused it trauma, it hurt a lot. During Happy Camper it got really bad, and I started getting sickly worried about being evacuated for something so essentially trivial. However, In the end I think it had a lot to do with going to closed-toe structured boots after wearing sandals for a significant amount of time. Don't squash toes. Remedy found. Nurses must get frustrated a lot. "How 'bout don't squash your toes?"

"Oh. That works?"

Today I got to repair tents. It sounds tedious, and maybe it is, but that's the kind of stuff I love. Cleaning computer keyboards, hot splicing film: things of this ilk make me so very happy. Yes, I would love to pitch dozens of tents and search them inch by inch for tears and holes. Yes, I would love to patch the holes and then mix glue to paint on said patches. So great. Part of the greatness was that the office I worked in reminded me a lot of the neo-hippies of Lawrence whom I love ever so much. I managed to leave a swath of unfinished business in my wake-

"Let's throw the fly on and look for holes."

"She said that we should start clean-up in ten minutes..."

"What will we do for the other hour?"

"Thirty minutes."

"What? No, it will be an extra hour."

"It's 4:50 right now."

Instant panic. "Shut up no it's not. My watch says 4:05." He pointed at the wall clock which confirmed the time as 4:50. "No!!!!!! NO! This can't be!" How did my watch get behind? It was alright last night and it was fine this morning when my alarms went off, when did it find the time to go too slow? This is horrible, considering my recent problems with tardiness. "My watch is out to get me. It's out to get me." I was not joking, not at all.

What am I supposed to do. All I want is to be on time.

Snowmobile training tomorrow!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Yesssssssssssssssssssssss........

2011-10-18T00:02:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I feel big. There was that time I felt big because I went to that country of skinny midgets, South Korea. And that time I felt big because my head ripped the neck on the souvenir surfer t-shirt my mother brought back from California. Now is my moment to feel big because everything I put on is big. My boots are platform snowboots. My insulated overalls are 38x32 because my need for layer space necessitated several steps up. The overcoat is exercise in bigness itself. But, for a second, let’s go back to the boots. I am a women’s size 11, generally, and generally this is a 9 in men’s. You can argue all you want but that’s how it shakes out. So as most of my close friends know, I had this moment of mega-agony that hinged around my having buried a very important email regarding boot purchasing for this job of mine. This resulted in a quite rushed size check at an NYC shoe store and a subsequent two-day shipment of boots. Yes, the boots I tried on were trendy city boots but I dare you to find Antarctic boots in New York City. Said boots arrived after many nervous days, and though they fit, the toe well is quite narrow. The last two toes on both my feet could feel the edge of the boot. Perhaps I’m spoiled by my super spacious Keens, but that seems like something you don’t really want. Maybe they insulation just needs breaking in. Fast forward to my issued boots, the platform ones. I sized up to a 10 and all seemed well, but after arriving on the ice and walking around a bit, my toes were feeling crunched up.

“You know how sharks grow as big as their habitat lets them?” We’re in the Skua hut, which is the McMurdo equivalent of a thrift store but completely free.

“Yeah.”

“I think my toes are doing that. My toes are sharking. This is really annoying.” The other thing that was annoying was that I was still carrying my paper cup of coffee, which was dumb, because walking around outside when it’s -30 F will turn your cold in… I don’t know, I’m not a mathematician. But I can tell you that in the ten minutes it took us to walk from the main building over to Skua, there were coffee ice clumps in my little cup. Surely I could have ingested it, but somehow I made a condiment combo that made my coffee taste like coffee and chili. And I haven’t learned how to throw things away yet, so I couldn’t just drop it anywhere. “There’s just no stopping my toes.”

The boots they gave us are super warm. Can’t believe how great they are. I did manage to trip twice and fall once on the stairs while embarking the airbus, but man are they ever warm. Faced with this whole “toe sharking” thing, I figure that hell, I may as well wear the boots that I won’t break my face in since no matter what boot I wear, my toes are going to cram against the ends of them like dirty children at a bakery window.

Shark Toes. I kind of invented a shoe for this: shoes with holes in the ends for toes, like hobo mittens. Then I realized that they already exist in the form of yokel shoes. You know, the knobby-knecked, 6-foot tall, freckle-festooned and red-headed happy dude with a mouth full of yellow Chiclets who exclaims his perpetual happiness with “yuk yuk yuk” laughter. He wears them. I think what I have to do is just beat my little toes into submission, which they are very accustomed to. You can tell, as my toes all have a very peculiar sloping shape on the outer edges. That’s just the proof that it’s been done before and can be done again and again.

But enough.

After digging through other people’s things, we went to the main dorm’s lounge, played Scrabble, argued passionately about the pluralization of words for the use of formation of perpendicular words, and then I went to the first floor corkboard to see what the goings on are. “Learn American Sign Language with Ben”.

“Oh. Look at that.” This is interesting, because on my last night in my wonderful suite at the Red Lion in Denver, I decided that, you know, I want to learn ASL. It wasn’t 100% random; one of the people we interacted with that day had a reduced ability of hearing and talked to me and two others about his recent attempts at learning ASL. It rekindled the interest I had in Silver City, the week of intense interest that ended in my learning only how to sign “canoe”.

Tomorrow at 7. If I don’t go, that will make me the biggest asshole in the world. I asked for it, I have to do it. If my toes can shark, so can my brain.

2011-10-11T16:24:00.000-07:00

Poor New Zealand. One thing after another. God help them if they nuclear plants that can go haywire.

"Why did you run over our reef? We have maps!"
"Well, I was trying to go somewhere. I was busy. I was going somewhere. I was going."

And it's all going to get so much worse. This captain ought to be flayed publicly. Mary Kay Letourneau's photo was everywhere when she screwed one innocent, this captain screwed a whole nation and an ocean of creatures yet retains anonymity. And I'm willing to bet twelve dollars and sixteen cents that he won't marry ANY of them after he loses his job.

Moving on. Yes, my duffel bag sucks very badly. I bought a 42" duffel from Academy. I did not want one that long, it was just all they had. So many things can be crammed in there, but there is no structure to the bag and it just turns into a huge taco when I pick it up by the shoulder strap. It's going to be a long trek to Christchurch with that piece of junk. It just has to make it there; the load on the way back will be lighter.

The first day of orientation was as amusing as any can be, which is to say not very. The instructor was great and he did manage to spice up the Powerpoint presentation on scaffolding, it's just that most people aren't engineered to sit still and be quiet that long. It's a stupid thing to worry about, but every time I sit for this long (all day) I can't help but thinking of journalists crammed in tanks and the deep vein thrombosis which kills them. I am going to get up, and then I am going to drop dead. So I move around a lot. Wiggle. It annoys the people around me. Whoops.

Before that was the pleasurable experience of the flu shot. I did not cry, but I didn't exactly make a hero of myself either.

There are 4 other General Assistants here, three of them being at McMurdo with me and the other will be living out of a tent at the West Antarctic Ice Shelf location. We all expect to have the shittiest jobs on the base, and the experienced folks seem to confirm this. But maybe we have different standards. These are people used to good jobs that pay well. I'm not. I just want to be kept busy, retain my muscles and get to have as many different tasks as possible. Soooooo if that happens, I think I'll have the best job out there. At any rate, the GAs I've met so far are super. It will be a fun alternative to winter.

One of them saw a Chick-fil-a halfway between Raytheon and our hotel. We're going to try to get the shuttle driver to take us.

2011-10-09T22:12:00.000-07:00

This entire year has seen a very pronounced absence on my part. By this point most people know that this is due in large part to my Antarctic employment endeavor. A non-stop process of paperwork, interviews, mad dashes and medical visits complicated by the fact that.... maybe the job will disappear? Hmmmm. Busy times. Everything has worked out in the way of Antarctica, but unfortunately it came at the expense of expanding my rafting knowledge. However- and I say this word with many italicized letters- I did learn a lesson by means most people never encounter face-to-face... the Freakish Accident.

"This isn't working. It's dangerous. Let's jump out."

And now I'm leg-entrapped on a strap under this raft.

... still stuck...

Lesson learned: Always. Have. A knife.

So, my rafting skills did not increase in number this year, but I guarantee you I will never die due to lack of knives.

Seeing as Antarctica was a go, I booked a flight to New York. This is kind of a long and endlessly diverting story, but it was because I wanted to spring all my dvds from my mother's Connecticut cabin. It's been painful, these three years without my dvds. I really need How to Breakdance 101. I would like my copious amounts of foreign films back. And I need them most in Antarctica. Then, over one very long cup of coffee with Christi, I discovered that I do not live a lifestyle luxurious enough to afford to get to Connecticut to spring them from the lincoln-log pokey. "Ugh. God. This is horrible. This is the worst. Let's go to Barnes and Noble."

"Just to be clear, we're going to Barnes & Noble, we're not going to 'Barnes & Noble'."

"Yeah yeah yeah, I was going to say that. We're nouning, not verbing."

"Okay yeah. Just wanted to clear that up."

On the escalator up to the Children's section, I ran headlong into the realization that I will probably never see my movies again.

Lesson learned: stop populating the Americas with relics of Tricia.

As a motion for the revival of spirits, Christi suggested we go out to Coney Island, which I readily agreed to because nothing beats Teacups. But it was kind of late in the day already and I had this unreasonable fear the rides would be closed.

We exited the Coney Island train station to gray clouds and rain spittle.

"Christi. It's closed."

"No it's not..."

"And it's raining."

"No. No." She moved up the sidewalk for a better look. "Shit. Tricia I'm sorry." Hilarious. This is every way my life ever goes. But it wasn't out of my way, at the time I was staying with Cynthea and was less than 20 minutes back toward Manhattan. Christi, though, she was put out. We decided to walk the boardwalk and look at the water just to prove achievement.

Turning from the mass amount of birds on the other side of the boardwalk rail, we see another mass of gulls on the boardwalk itself, shyly gathered around a man who was digging in the trash.

"Hey Tricia. If I chase the birds, will you chase them too?"

"Of course." run run run chase chase gleeful shouts of joy. Christi veers to the right and I veer to the left just behind the man in the trash. He looks up very quickly and, dismayed by the scattering of the birds, begins to yell at the one of us he can see: The still-laughing Christi.

"Why you chasing the birds? What are you? You are an idiot! What are you thinking? You are a full-grown woman, chasing birds!" And I couldn't hear the rest of it because a full-grown elderly Russian digging out trash for gulls to eat calling out a full-grown woman for chasing birds was entirely too hilarious for me to not laugh my ass off at. Now I want you to imagine what Christi saw: Enraged Russian with a cup full of micro-trash, mouth open and bellowing, me five feet behind him and laughing at the both of them. We ran away down the boardwalk, two ladies in their 30's who get in trouble for chasing birds around.

Is there a lesson here? Hell yeah. Not Everyone Gets Excited About the Stuff I Do.

Later that week Cynthea informed me that she was displeased with my having left behind my cereal. Couldn't she eat them? No. Cynthea does not eat Marshmallow Mateys and would never stoop to defile the top of her refrigerator with a bag of them, even for decorative purposes. She wanted them gone.

"Oh my god! Can't you just be happy? They're a gift." I would LOVE to get all my crap in one place at one time, but I wasn't making out to Bensonhurst again any sooner than I would be getting back to Connecticut.

Once back in Corpus, I took a good look at all my clothing and donated a good third of it. The selection process was fairly simple. Does it look like something I would wear to teach? Does it look like something I would be upset to get dirty or bloody? Then it's useless to me and must go. I have three storage tubs of clothing. Not bad. One of the other things I did was develop a roll of film found in Christi's crisper, which I wasn't totally convinced was mine, but adopted anyway.

My aunt Julie visited New York shortly after I returned from Italy and started work at a kennel. You know, the one run by the woman who put a hate-letter in my last paycheck. Yeah. That job. That was in March of 2008. Finding a roll of film that old is surprising enough, but finding it in Christi's fridge's care is astounding. Add to that one moving of apartments during these three years and I simply must start looking around for a deity. The pictures aren't great, but they are mine. Once again, I must stop leaving my stuff around.

And once I get back from Antarctica, I fully intend on doing a better job of this.

Tomorrow I leave for Denver. For three days I will be there, getting lectured and briefed and what I'm told is a very quick and painless flu shot which I fully intend on crying over. From there I am off to LA and after a six-hour layover, I will head toward Christchurch. Two days later... McMurdo.

My friend Spring is already there. It sounds as though it was painless enough for her, but I know better. The last time I flew internationally was a disaster. I passed out/slobbered on myself in a taxi for two hours and spent the entire next day sleep-crying on my bed while listening to Korean gospel music. It was the most pointed mental anguish I have ever endured. After that, what I'm going to do is probably never call home because A) I'm in Antarctica and don't want to have to worry about when you are awake or not, and B) Not only will I have to cultivate hobbies to keep busy, but I'll have to get good at them so I'm not depressed about how I'm wasting my time trying all these things I'm not good at. My efforts at communication will probably be focused on this page, since most people will probably have the same questions. Send emails anyway, just don't expect a lengthy or timely reply.

On that note, I am going. With my knives, my enthusiasm, and with the full intent of not misplacing any of the four cameras I've decided I have to take along.

2011-09-30T10:08:00.000-07:00

“Weren’t we over 2012?”
“Huh?”
“You know, the world ending on New Years.”
“Not me! I’m gonna live it up! All this shit’s gonna be blown up, everyone burning up, but not me. I’m going to be down there on the ice having a party.”
“You think everything’s going to burn?”
“Well yeah. Molten lava at the core. You know. I mean I don’t think it would be like, the crust all explodes in a thousand directions, more like… you know, fractures and the lava comes out and burns people up from their ankles to their brains but not me, I’ll be on the ice and won’t know nothing about that.”
“I’ve been keeping track of the future-“
“Keeping track of the future-”
“-yeah-“
“-oh, oh good.”
“Yeah. And what happens-“
“How have you been keeping track?”
“On cable-”
“Oh great-”
“-the History Channel, of course-“
“-man-“
“-all they ever want to do is tell us about the future.”
“Or World War II.”
“It goes in waves. They like to talk about the end of the world until it gets to close. You remember when the world was supposed to end in May? Nobody cared.”
“They needed to start on that a lot earlier.”
“Yeah. It gets too close and there’s no time for people to start following.”
“You can’t make money like that.”
“So 2012 is too close.”
“I don’t really think the world is going to end, but it’s going to be a hell of a party.”

2011-09-23T17:10:00.000-07:00

One of the highlights of the season was a day put together by my neighbor, Ben. He bought a bunch of tubes and mats and I got a deluxe lounger for myself, and a group of us went up to the Narrows for the day. Amanda and myself showed up a little later than everyone else and were therefore unaware that the tiny hydraulic at the bottom of the rapid was sucking people off their floats. "Hey there's a hydraulic down there," said Deanna from the rocks as Amanda and I floated by, "but it's good to go!" In Deanna-ese, this means you probably won't break anything. As I approached, I wondered why Ben was standing on the rock directly downstream from said hydraulic. Ben doesn't smile like that unless something is about to be funny... I tried to punch the hole by paddling really hard, but that barcalounger was super back-heavy. I'm person #1, Deanna is person #2, and Amanda is person #3.

Ben McKie, I love you.

Christi Defuses the Song Bomb

2011-09-22T17:13:00.000-07:00

via text-

Me(12:52pm): "God?"

Christi (12:53pm): Life is a mystery everyone must stand alone I hear you call my name and it feels like hoooooooooome.

Me: I love you.

2011-08-12T20:24:00.000-07:00

"1.2. Man, this shit is getting low. We need some rain."
"One foot. Top rock killed me today. I'm coming back tonight to blow up that piece of shit."
"Fucking dink rock is out! What is it? Like .9? It has to be. I know it is. We need some rain."
"Holy shit, .8. If we could just get back to a foot, I would never complain again."

And so begins the chapter in our lives when Pain in the Butt turns into something more like Pain in the Pushing Muscles, seeing as raft guides being inside the raft is no longer an option.

"Yeah, I get there and all I see are a whole bunch of frowny faces in the water. Rocks. Everywhere. Rocks."

Yesterday may have been one of my hardest working days yet. I won't talk about how many people I had, their physical state or what they could or could not achieve. I will say that they had a collectively great sense of humor, and that when I multi-tasked a Chattooga history lesson while pulling my raft some yards across 3-inch deep shoals, they were most accommodating.

At this water level- "Point Fun"- I start to look downstream and think things other than "if I want to be there, what route must I take?" Now it is more like "How long is it going to take me to get there. Ten feet? Maybe 2 minutes if I try real hard." Shift moves are the act of moving people around in the raft for the sake of removing as much weight from a certain rock-bound area as possible. Usually it's left to right or right to left, but these days I've been invoking the teeter-totter. It is when I shift everyone to the back, cram as much of my raft as possible on top of the inevitable rock, and then move everyone to the very front of the raft. Couldn't even tell you how many shift moves and teeter-totters I did yesterday, all I know is two more and I would have had to rename my raft "Coney Island". During one particularly demoralizing part of the day, I admitted to myself that I had to get out and manhandle my raft again. Out with the right foot... good. It's calf-deep. Out with the left, right next to my right, and hell I'll just plop in. But my leg just kept right on going, directly to the bottom of an inconveniently located crotch-deep pothole.

"Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa-" I just kind of crouched there, one leg in a hole and the other shoved up to my chest, holding on to the raft tightly as though it could have moved on its own. I pulled myself out, noticed my pants were falling down, cracked some jokes, freed the raft and then looked down. Scrapes and bruises all the way from my ankle to the top of my knee and around it. Can my left knee get a break this season? For crap's sake. "You know, I just, I feel like it wouldn't have felt so bad if I had shaved. Every single hair got rubbed against pothole." There are some lacerations to be tended to and once again, bending feels like crapcakes.

Anyway, all day was like that, and not just in shoals. I'm talking about rapids. In the middle of rapids. Not just in the middle of them, like maybe I took a bad line and got stuck because I'm screwing around, I'm talking about being in the line where there is the most water where everyone goes because it is universally accepted to be the best way. I spent a solid 5 minutes stuck in the middle of a rapid where my other two coworkers had just floated with their 2-loads and fetus-loads. My limbs were shaking after that tug-fest. At the end of the day, stuck in the middle of a drop, I managed to break my raft free and jumped head first into my back compartment. However, the raft stopped abruptly, causing me to bounce/slide off the floor and elf-shoe out of the other side, ass over head.

"Holy shit, please tell me one of you saw that. Did anybody see that? Please-"
"I saw it, it was hilarious."
"Me too."
"Thank God. That was awesome."

Jake, who had been bobbing around in his raft on the other side of the rapid, said it strongly resembled a person sliding across the hood of their car. In honor of this, I am naming the move The Starskystern.

I could tell you everything that happened yesterday but this entry would go on and on into twilight and I'm pretty sure the point is made: I did a lot of pushing and pulling and sweating. So tired. So tired. Must sleep. Forget dinner, no one even cares about food anymore.......

In my room and on my couch, I'm looking at an online news article recognizing one particular lingerie company for their achievements in environmental friendliness. Making bras without causing pollution? Whoever heard of such a thing? Needless to say I was impressed. Any little girl would want to call up the CEO and congratulate them on this achievement and I am no different, particularly since the CEO also happens to be my Women's Studies professor. I pick up my phone and do just that. We can do this, her and I, we are like colleagues. I appreciate her candor in the classroom and she thinks my papers are smart and exhibit a philosophical maturity that most students she teaches won't achieve in their lifetimes, no less a semester. It's such a great chat, a real meeting of the minds. I'm on a couch with my legs under my butt and to the side. The only thing missing is a mug of tea. Then I tell her that this article made me draw parallels between that and her role on Mad Men... because my professor is Joanie. No, not Christina Hendricks, but Joanie herself. In dreamland this can happen. And after I say it I can't think of why one made me think of the other, perhaps I was just being starstruck. The intense awkwardness in drowning me. It doesn't get better. Joanie is very displeased that I would bring it up seeing as I am talking to her as a professional and not an actress. This is conveyed by her silence and heavy breathing. But in that moment before she calls me a fucking bitch I realize that it's not so much that I've blown the bridge up and can't go back, it's that I have crossed the bridge with the dynamite strapped to my body. No matter what I do, my ass is getting blown up, there will never be a bridge again and even if there were, I would not be invited to her side. Naturally I try to defensively pre-empt this by hanging up on her, but suddenly I've got an old-fashioned phone. When I let my finger off the receiver, I hear her still on the other end, hissing. "Fucking bitch!" has arrived and my blood is cold because at that moment I realize that my professor is not Joanie, it is Faye Dunaway. And as such, she will be hunting me down, cutting my face off, and murdering me so hard that I go waaaaaay past terrified to embarrassed. The two images of Joanie and Faye keep flashing in my head. How could I get the two mixed up? Shit! They are nothing alike? I don't even KNOW Joanie, no less turn papers in to the woman. I'm never going to be an intellectual now. There will be no more Celestial Seasonings phone calls. Now I must devote my life to not getting cut up by Faye Dunaway, starting with never going to class again. "Fucking bitch" ringing in my ears, I am fully aware of just how dead Faye wants me-

*gasp*OH MY GOD OH MY GOD what time is it... 7:30. Ugh. My god. Can't catch my breath.

It was so bad I almost looked under my bed for Mommie Dearest herself.

"Dang, why does my butt hurt so bad." Yesterday's endeavor to move that damn raft down the river made everything below my waist hurt like hell. I rectified this by thrifting and getting a WalMart haircut. Despite what my optimistic coworkers say, the water will not be coming up, not while I remain. The pushing will continue, the falling into potholes, the getting stuck in the middle of lines on rocky slides, all of it. Consider the ferris-wheel paid for. Can't get off until stops. As long as I can keep Faye at bay, I swear I won't complain again.

Winner #1

2011-08-07T17:54:00.000-07:00

Christi and Nightmare Anthropomorphic Frog

I have a perverse repulsion-obsession with this frog. When I am at this household, I find myself going into the kitchen just so that I can sneer at it and give it the side-eye. Why? Why do I do this? The bowtie, the hat, the skirt, the "no eyelids" thing- it's all horrible, but what I think I hate the most are the jaunty legs. Something about them. What's he doing with those jaunty legs? Where does he think he is going with those? Nowhere. He can't go anywhere because he's not a people. Secretly, I'm afraid to put my back to him out of the minute possibility that he will begin to move and I won't know it. Not that he will attack me, no, nothing more complex than just bicycle the air, and I'll be standing unaware, much like Christi is right here, and know nothing of his ambulation. And I won't have that. If he's going to me, it's going to be with me seeing him.

2011-08-03T15:01:00.000-07:00

"Were you writing a story? Journaling?"
"Oh, that was my journal. And a letter to my friend."
"I really like your handwriting."

Indiana has decided to strike cursive from their required educational curriculum. This makes me sad. It ensures that all children from here on out will grow into adults who write personal letters that look like ransom notes. When grown people write things on paper for me, sometimes I imagine them as Tarzans who are slowly integrating into mainstream society but still have not managed to understand how that bit of black stuff got crammed inside that itty bitty stick they are scraping against the thin tree-meat. The last daily art, assassinated in Indiana. Good riddance to refined tastes.

"Oh, thanks. It's been a while, my hand is cramped."

Sometimes I can tell how bad of a friend I've been, because lack of writing will cause my hand to cramp when I finally do. My hand was in tatters today. I finally wrote to my best friend and the task was almost too much. Updates are hard. They are short, concise, but somehow lack all the substance one wants to convey. But so much has passed. Lately I have found that being present has been far more enjoyable than recording occurrence. No writings of any sort, no photos, hardly any phone calls.

That, and I have been busy trying to get things in line for Antarctica. Which now- due to no misfortune of my own making and completely out of the realm of my control- may not happen. It will be at least two weeks before I know if I have a job, and I will mourn the loss of opportunity to learn more about the Chattooga until the day I hear that the sacrifice paid off. If not, then it is back to New Mexico I go. Not a bad deal. Just wish I already knew.

Work is work, meaning that some is good, some is not, and a whole lot is annoying. I won't go into details about any of it because people I work with have learned how to use Google and now look at this blog. But all will be pleased to know that I have been trapped under zero rafts since they last read this page.

So much waiting. Needing to see what shakes out. I'm on alert at the moment, for a family friend in the final stages of cancer. This sucks. I'm trying not to think about that, but the best one can ever do with that task is to occupy the brain with "don't think about it don't think about it."

I'd say things are changing, but that's all anything ever is. A series of changes. If you pay attention, it's fluid. Never static. No matter how accustomed we become to anything, it's always in motion. All I really have to do is make sure my legs stay away from the chicken strap and I'll count myself a success.

It would be an epic fail, however, to omit my trip to Dollywood. Yes, this Dollywood has finally happened to me. I went with my friend Spring to this bastion of cotton candy and country music and had the time of my freaking life. Too much fun. Dizzy Disk? Don't mind if I do. I guess I kind of regret paying $14 for a refillable plastic cup, but it seemed like the two of us actually could drink 12 of the 99 cent Coke refills and make it all worthwhile. We could not. I started feeling sick and had to fill up on water. The funniest thing happened on the trolley back to the parking lot. So, it was a free-for-all when loading on this thing. Spring and I were walking to this row where there were seats available, and I could see ahead of me this woman with her baby. She was scurrying, panicking, like she was in Tomes and Talismans and was going to miss the last transmission off the Wiper infested Earth. Anyway, as I stepped into the row, she nearly sideswiped me. Apparently she ran into Spring when this happened. She stepped back so the lady wouldn't hit her, but then the lady did not actually get on the trolley. So she excused herself, stepped around, and got on.

"She PUSHED me!" This redneck former teen-mom hissed to her mother, who was behind her, also frantically looking for a seat. What is with this family? There were a lot of them too, all of them ugly faced and anxious. Holy shit. Imagine what their family photos must look like: a horde of blurry frowny faces. The woman shoved her toddler onto the seat next to Spring, and then crammed her fat ass down as well. Spring said something to me, at which I realized this "thing" had actually happened. "She probably doesn't have a lot going on." You know. They usually don't. No life equals no excitement. They go to Dollywood, get panicked about being left behind by a trolley, then pick fights because they haven't heard anyone scream in anger since they left their house five hours earlier. People are always trying to bring their habitats with them.

When they got off, a little boy tried to stink-eye Spring. Now, maybe I'm being juvenile, but how awesome would it have been to be arrested in Dollywood for assault? Seriously. Two bitches in matching neon yellow Dollywood shirts taking on an inbred horde at the gates of an amusement park?

We will destroy you.
Sign me up. I would have thrown that $14 plastic cup full of lemonade slush aside and joined in for an elbow picnic. And part of me just really wants to have an awesome excuse for not showing up to work. "I got arrested for fighting at Dollywood. You need to come get me" is so much better than leaving a message on your bookstore boss' machine at 5 a.m. that says "I got real drunk last night and so I can't make it in tomorrow." The one sure failure of the day was that the paystub I took for my free entry was older than 30 days, so we actually had to pay to get in. Next time, though, they are going to let us in for free AND reimburse the fees from last time.

Today was a day off, and I devoted it to pretty much nothing other than swimming and taking care of my student loan. Or so I thought. I called The Man with the intention of being mature and having them readjust my monthly amount due to the fact that I perpetually live in abject poverty, but they pretty much said they didn't do stuff like that, that I was going to have to pay all or nothing. That's easy enough, I've been paying nothing for years. I will always be too poor to pay $200+ monthly. Always. Like, not even a discussion. I get the feeling that these people- "these people" being the American government- are just waiting for me to strike it rich so that they can swoop in and cash in big time which, I can tell them from two decades of solid experience waiting on my mother to do the same, is only going to lead to heartache and ramen noodles.

Biding my time, watching others do the same with theirs. The river is low enough that Bull Sluice becomes painful. Hoping for rain.

The German

2011-06-23T17:45:00.000-07:00

Down the darkened cement hallway I walk, alone with my thoughts. I have an important job- I'm not quite sure what it is but I have it and I am sure I do it very well. A man the very essence of handsome joins me: tall with picture perfect posture, a robust specimen of German heritage with the square jaw and military uniform to prove it. His manners and tendency to treat me as an equal in our separate but mutually important businesses more than hint at his underlying affection. I do not understand what it is he is being attracted to, but he shows a great formality and restraint and so I do not mind his walking with me to my lab.

My bedroom is of a nature similar to that of the hallways. There are no windows, no wasted space, no weaknesses of designer fancy in any parts of this life-harboring fortress in a dead zone. My personal quarters are my own. My work is too important and demanding to be bothered with a roommate. My room is two feet longer than my body and twice as wide, with a wooden wardrobe near the door. It is minimal but functional- two characteristics I cherish most in all things. Today I found a pair of headphones on the edge of my bed. A gift. Interesting. Or did I buy them and not know? Life is busy. Sometimes these things happen. Running from one test to the other, one file folder to the next, dropping dollar bills in various places as I go. The German was in my open doorway, standing with one hand on the door frame as I turned with the headphones in my hands, trying to figure out how they got there.

"Oh. Thank you. But you really shouldn't put things on the edge of my bed. I roll around a lot. Probably would have crushed them." The gesture is kind, though. Thoughtful. A small motion for a familiarity that I do not find horrifying.

Down another hallway we walk. Overhead lights, clicking of our heels on the cement, windowless for all the windswept cold outside. But there is a break in this hallway, a portion of wall that is glass. It shows the full expanse of the lab beyond: One very large control panel, walls festooned with high-tech displays and charts and blinking things with functions I do not understand. Of the men inside is one in particular who catches my eye. He is a man I know to be level-headed, good humored and with a scientifically genius brain which more than warrants this facility's existence. Dark hair, Buddy Holly glasses, and constantly sitting. Why is he always sitting? Perhaps it is timing, or maybe he is actually in a wheelchair. I've never taken the initiative to find out. He looks up from his paperwork and sees me with the German, the headphones dangling from my hand. His eyes betray his thoughts; he is unhappy with this and very much so. I myself am feeling that this chance passing is somewhat of a minor catastrophe because we are, obviously, meant for each other. But the playing ground is level. The history has not yet started, the paper for the novel not even purchased. We have never been introduced. What foul could there be against a man who has not taken the initiative to learn my name? Whose name I have never had occasion to learn? The glass panel comes to an end and the unsuspecting German and I walk on. Really, I am lucky such a refined man is showing an interest-

The German says something so beyond random that I must stop in my mental tracks. His head is thrown back and he is chortling at his own sentence, me looking on and realizing that such a long time on the ice has without doubt adversely effected this otherwise graceful man. Such a pity but oh my, what a mistake I have made...

"Holy shit Daniel Craig. Why was he in a Nazi uniform? He gave me my own headphones for a gift. Jesus. Jemaine Clement in a maybe wheelchair. Unfuckingbelievable."

A barely there diet, stress over the "secret Antarctic job" that everyone knows about, and my leg looking and feeling like this-

and it got worse

-leads to very very strange dreams indeed.

My priority list has one thing on it:

MAKE IT TO MCMURDO
A)Finish medical check ups
-Go to doctor and don't have angina
-Go to gyno and don't have cervical cancer
-Make sure dentist sent all the x-rays exhibiting my spectacular mouth.
B)Don't finish breaking my left leg.
-In case of broaching, jump upstream harder. No more leg entrapment for me.
-No more high-siding on the left. Let that bitch flip. I need tendons, dammit.

You've never seen a person ice so many times out of sheer panic. Were I to really actually injure this recovering, slightly twisted knee, I would be screwed completely.

"Goddddd. I don't want to work I don't want to work I never want to guide a raft ever again. I hate this. Fuck. Why would they even let Nazis in Antarctica? Better question: Why did I make him a Nazi? And just how hard is it I think I roll around in my bed? I never want to work again. Shit my leg hurts-" I hobbled myself down the stairs at 4 a.m. for a bathroom break on a leg that once felt like a non-stop charlie horse but is now just several needles, cursing pretty much everything in general. When I woke again in my bed at 7:45, the first thing that came to mind was that Ben was just on the other side of the wall, sleeping, would probably rather stay that way, but was going to be working on the river soon as well. Suddenly my leg being torn off my torso did not seem so inevitable.

I can do this. This will be fun. Yes, I feel much better. Man, I was so reputable and smart in my dream. Daniel Craig. Huh. Weird. Bacon! *snorrrrrrrre*

Four Awesome Things from Two Rockin' Days.

2011-06-13T18:17:00.000-07:00

#1 Yesterday: I got stuck in a storm on section 3 and witnessed a tree fall across the river.

#2 Yesterday: A guy complimented my cross-bow stroke, which I found hugely flattering. I don't have a canoe, just access to duckies and honestly, my right shoulder felt like it was halfway done packing its bag.

#1 Today: I cried in front of Medical Professionals #2, #3 and #4. There are two more to get out of the way before Antarctica can be mine.

#2 Today: Frank the Pizza Guy was trying to describe what type of fictional squirrel would make the scariest squirrel horde and inadvertently reinvented the flying squirrel. "Oh man, what if between their arms and legs- like right here- they had like, this flap... oh. Oh. Nevermind." I love reinventions. One time I reinvented the vacuum cleaner. Yet another time I reinvented the cookie.

Baby Jesus to the Rescue!!!!!!!

2011-05-28T14:37:00.001-07:00

FOCKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK fock fock fock! The Ocoee is haunting me, positively haunting me. So I'm riding high on Saturday, having been spared going to the Ocoee today by... I don't know what, all I know is this: I was on the schedule, I almost switched out with someone to avoid having to go because A)The work schedule is too hectic for my mellow self and B)admitting shortcomings is part of being a Big Girl so I can admit that yeah, I can't run the upper correctly. I said it, you heard me, "I can't do it right" and it pisses me off. About the time I got off my trip yesterday I had made peace with the fact that I was going to have severe indigestion all day and then end up dumping the all-american nuclear family into the maw of Humongous. Lo and behold, nay. Cancelled. Yay ya yayayayay I'm winning, foam fingers, me number one!

So here comes my boss five minutes ago up the stairs to tell me that I he's scaring up people for the Ocoee. "Your favorite place," and he does that thing where his face doesn't really change because he's too much of a badass, but you can totally tell he's getting some joy out of the events.

"You came up here to tell me that."

"Yep." And I know he was just trying to cut out the middle-man by trucking his butt up here, you know, getting shit done and whatnot, but there is a little part of me that believes he just really wanted to see my dismay. Because I'm paranoid. Because I believe everyone is out to get me and after they get me, they reconvene to laugh about how they got me.

Silent stompy scream back to my room so that I could rant on my blog about life is unfair and blah blah blah I was going to train on section 4 blah blah but really I wasn't because I can't get up that early etc.

Baby Jesus to the rescue! No upper trips, just the middle! I LOVE the middle Ocoee. LOVE LOVE LOVE. Yes, I have to get in a van at 6:30 a.m. and very probably be stuck in there with at least one grown man who hates every inch of my entrails right now, but I don't EVEN care because I get to get paid to be on the middle Ocoee. I'm so excited, I don't even know if I can sit down to organize my Antarctica paperwork.

2011-05-26T17:21:00.000-07:00

"I'm a big girl. I can do this. People do this. People must do this, because I don't see any of them here... they must have done this..." My first time mountain biking. I was having a grand time of it, even if I was running over saplings and not understanding exactly how gears worked. Left in the dust of my own volition, I slowly rode up to the rock ledge and decided to go ahead and ride over it instead of walking my bike. However, I had not yet been taught how to make the bike jump. The front wheel kind of plugged in directly at the base of the rock, sending me over the handlebars, my calves somehow hooking in behind the pedals and bringing the whole clown car over on top of me. My legs are festooned by radial tie-dye bruises, perfectly accentuating the massive bruise on my elbow, a bruise earned last week when I was flung at the bull. I landed on the tube, and when the raft nudged Decap I started to slither off. Not wanting to fall off behind the rock and take the swim, I put my hands on the rock with the intention of either pushing myself back in the raft or crawling on the rock. However, before I decided the raft got too much space between the rock. I made the comical people bridge and eventually fell in, resurfacing just in time to be crushed between the raft and the rock. Yay. It hurt.

Purple and blue and green and really disturbing yellows and pinks. This is what I'm covered in.

I'm a big girl. I can do this. This is easy. I can do this. People do this every day. This time I am in a pair of hand-me-down overalls and standing with a friend in a line one person deep, waiting to sign in at a little clinic for blood work. Having been so great the entire day despite knowing that I had an appointment to have a needle in my arm, I thought it would be smooth sailing. And it was, up until the point of pulling into the parking lot. My feet pressed against the floor of the car as though I could skid to a stop short of parking. Insta-freak-out. Standing in line, hands shoved in the pockets, shivering and looking from here to there to keep my mind busy. Sweating.

And then I was in the hot seat, trying to get my shit under control before the technician turned back from his computer because I was on the brink of uncontrolled sobbing, only just able to keep it at a silent cry. He beat me by about two seconds and fucked up all my plans. Good person that he is, he asked what was wrong. So, you know, guess I'll just start crying out loud now and talking about possibly being a fainter. He moved me to a recliner, and on the way I snagged an item clearly meant for younger patients: a stuffed bear.

"Can I have this now please?"
"Yeah, you can hold that."

A moment in time, just for me, just for everyone who knows me: Tricia Morgan, 30 years old, in overalls and sobbing her eyes out on the top of a teddy bear's head.

The rest of the day was par for the course; chewing my nails, hiding my hands, cringing at touch, counting syllables and crying not just because I felt stupid, but also because I know that this Antarctic job I'm pursuing requires a whole lot of poking and prodding.

I'm a lot of things, but a big girl I ain't.

Minnie Loves Me

2011-05-20T09:29:00.000-07:00

From this:

To this:

I am so good with cats.

2011-05-16T16:55:00.000-07:00

It'd be a fine thing if I could figure out what I wanted from places and people before I went running around asking for a whole bunch of shit. But I don't. So here I am with people and places trying to give me things and I'm not quite sure what I want to do with any of it. It's like... I begged for pizza and then I got five slices in each hand and then realized I wasn't all that hungry at all. Eat it anyway and get an ache? Or just nibble while the grease coagulates and basically turns the whole mass rancid? Or do what I want to do which is start over and do things right, but would unfortunately require the emptying of hands, a mess on the floor which can't be picked back up and eaten later.

All these pizzas, man. Life is hard.

I was going to go outside and socialize my brain clean, but I never feel like boater talk and I sure as hell don't right now. Technically I'm not hiding from my life because my bedroom door is open.

What's supposed to be happening is this: me figuring out what I'm going to do this winter. It's so very far away and thus an unfair problem for me to have to face, but I asked for something big and got it. It must be solved soon because of paperwork. It must be followed immediately by the problem of what to do next summer because I will be essentially off the face of the earth in every possible way until February. *sigh*. I have plots and schemes but an even longer history of my seemingly concrete plots and schemes falling through in a most dramatic fashion. Anybody else remember that time I was going to live the romantic life in Italy but then decided to run away to Panama? And if you just read that link, the later part of the story is that I returned to no jobs in New York, became a carny, and decided that yes, I will buy my ticket to Panama after I get off the phone with the captain of said vessel. He neglected to tell me he was no. Longer. In. Panama. The whole project was shelved, his and mine both.

This is why I HAAAAAATE making plans. They always end like this. Some would say that asking for unreasonable things is the true folly, but I say it's how you get ahead in life. People ask for raises all the time and sometimes they get them, you know? It's just that I asked for a Lotus and got one. Now I have to figure out how to park it in a bird-spike driveway.

I think there are several problems at work here, creating a superbad melancholy that will indeed dissipate by the morning but sucks toes right now. First, I am still retardedly missing Silver City. This shit should be over with by now, but goddammit I miss my people.

(I should have so many more pictures of people seeing as I invested quality time with three times as many last year, but I was thankfully too busy with living my life to hide behind a viewfinder.)

Second, I am not a natural returner at my job, meaning I have to re-make a bunch of stupid mistakes like dumping non-swimmers into a rapid because I overdid a panic-pry out of a Tokyo drift. It makes me feel like this-

That's me going to hell in a hand basket.

Third: I want to not fail at plan making for once, particularly when a good outcome is essential. Fourth: In addition to not getting to go to Silver City next winter, this job is also dealing me a plate laden with a raw serving of No Trees or Greenery of Any Kind. To rectify this I must plan two weeks on either end of said winter job with what I hope to be a New Mexico full of hot springs. Finally- and most notably- I will have to go to the doctor and dentist. Recreational sports, dance, swimming, dentists: all activities which require me to pack a change of clothes. Yes. I sweat at the dentist. Not just sweat lines at the collar and armpits, I'm talking about the stomach and entire back soaked through. I must also find someone supportive enough to go with me or be on deck when I run to their house crying directly afterward.

A satellite issue is me trying to make up for being bound to the outpost last year. This year I have a car and my sole mission is to enjoy all the nature things that I missed last year. Add to that my need of a canoe or kayak so that I can better do that. And the expectation of training on section 4. Yes, I want to do this, but I discovered that happiness in private hours leads to a better chance of happiness at work. Hiking and camping= happy. Happy Tricia= girl motivated to train on 4. Unfortunately, as math does dictate, Hiking and Camping does not necessarily = section 4. And why? Because those two things occupy the same calendar space. And so to you, mathematics, I say this:

Fuck. Fuck! FUCKKKKKKKKKKKKUCK. There's about to be an epic game of gawi-bawi-bo with Gaia herself. Going straight to the source.

It's a lot to figure out in less than four months. However, I know that I can get it all dealt with if I keep my head down and charge through. I can drive this car, hell yes.

2011-05-01T18:44:00.000-07:00

New season, new start.

Wrong.

How is it that I did not hear about this?

Video of me eating rapid at 4:56

So, what I learned from this video- actually in the back of my mind I knew I did this- is that while I assess and decide, I dawdle paddle. These strokes don't actually do anything, it's the equivalent of basketball busy feet, you know? Keep moving because when it's time to sprint, you'll be halfway to fast. How many were there in this particular video? One for sure. I don't actually remember this run at all. I don't know why, but all I recall really is that there was a video crew there for some reason. Anyway,this looks completely fucking incompetent here, especially since it ends in me being ejected and bowling several people out right before my raft gives up altogether. I'd like to say I remember more of this run, that my crew sucked and that they couldn't paddle and blah blah blah but the truth is that I probably hit Sex Rock up there, probably pinballed a litte after and ended up not hugging the curve as much as I needed coming into the first dropp. Lower water, ledge sticking out, my ass got bumped and boink, there goes the guide. This happens to me frequently. Not the flipping part, but the Sex Rock part. Because Sex Rock is out to get me and I cannot refuse the siren song.

What I do remember from watching this video is that I came back up laughing. It was an incredibly fun flip, the first and only one where I didn't mentally curse, hit a rock, or struggle for air. "WHEEEEEEE!!!!!" was what I thought.

So again, why did no one tell me about this video? I come back and I hear "yeah, I saw Tricia's video... nice paddle." Huh? I thought it was a strange inside joke.

Moving on. Yesterday I lucked into a trip. It was our longest trail and under our largest boats. One does not maintain muscles over winter by making espresso drinks and taking leisurely strolls in the woods. Somehow I managed to scrape my brand new helmet even though I did not drop it, fall on my head, or get ejected from my raft. How. How. Perhaps being plunked down on the back pad once we returned to the outpost? That's pretty shitty. Normally I wouldn't care, but my friend Kourosh painted my helmet before I left Silver City and I was in the middle of applying coat after coat of polycrylic. Again, it's a helmet and this is what they are for, but I really didn't think day one of no drama was going to be the start of the art's demise. Booooooo.

Missing Silver City a ridiculous amount. The river will help eventually.

The Paraphrase

2011-04-29T10:38:00.000-07:00

... If I may again, for just a moment, go on to say that this woman of whom I spoke in the first paragraph of my last entry is a phenomenally cool woman, making the whole New Yorker situation even more perplexing.

No personal attack intended, I swear it.

The last two weeks have been excruciating and awesome. My friend came to visit me in Silver City and immediately contracted the scariest looking case of Allergy Eye I have ever seen. Red, deformed, oozing, I was happy when she decided to spend her first day in Silver in bed, because her pain was on the verge of making me uncomfortable. The next day we drove another friend of mine and his visiting amigo to the Snow Lake trailhead. Sounds easy enough, but some piece of shit road was closed for the winter and so we had to take a 60 mile detour.

The sentiment after dropping them was this: "Well shit. We're already all the way over here, may as well go to Pie Town." It is not close. We went anyway.

Pie Town used to be a small town. Now it is a bunch of dilapidated trailers and two cafes that specialize in pies. The Pie-O-Neer advertised that they close at 4, and it was 2 minutes past, so naturally I hissed at my friend to jump out and go check that shit out. Four geriatrics hobbled in after us, all six of us in a pie panic. We lucked into a slice of blueberry and pecan, both delicious, and talked with the seasonal worker from New York, a girl who found the job on workaway. I love this. Had I known that this job could be found there, I would have been her coworker. While I was in Italy I actually emailed the other pie place about working there. Because of one of the comments I made to their response, they thought I would eat too many of the pies and didn't contact me again. Booooooooo. The Pie-O-Neer crew is awesome. We talked to the one about seasonal work and travel, and to the tall ponytailed man about paddling, and to the owner about delicious mo' feckin' pies. She gave us the last slice of pecan for free on our way out.

Look what else is in Pie Town! The Stool Bus!

And then we took it with us camping, all the way out to Jordan Hot Springs. Great hike, great breeze, full moon, two college kids smoking what I'm told was primo marijuana, perfect all the way around. The two dudes we dropped off before town actually caught up with us on our second afternoon there, making for an interesting night. Yes, we will call it that.

Hike out. Great. Yay.

The next day, Tuesday, was my day to get shit done and pack and leave. What happened was this: got shit done, packed, got tortured out of town. For modesty's sake- mine and others- I will not go into details. I'll say this: It started with a cat and bird fiasco and ended with the MOST awkward goodbye that I have ever witnessed in my life, even more humiliating because I was 50% of it. Ughhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

My friend and I made a two-car caravan to Fayetteville where I immediately had a crippling bout of Social Awkwardness. This is hard for me to explain, but basically I have a big problem going into the homes of other people if I haven't been there before. If it's empty, no problem. If there are people, I feel very very anxious and if it's a get-together, fuck it. I'm already nauseous by the time I get to the door and my fingers simply will not agree to be taken out of my mouth. The first thing I look for is a corner to put my back to and revert to that time I was 7 and believed that the secret to invisibility was etched on the back of my eyelids. You know if this happens because I will not talk and if I do, it is because you made me and I sound like a hesitant robot. Also, I am standing very close to, but behind, one of your shoulders. This subsided after a few hours and the next few days were for good food and witnessing epic Fayetteville flooding.

One day I decided to be sad about leaving Silver City. It is my home. It feels like home. I have mixed feelings about it, because although I can leave without saying too many goodbyes since I know I will be back, I still don't want to leave them. So there I am, in the truck with Friend, deciding to be sad. Yes I am going to be sad about this now and I don't know if it's more pitiful that I am physically crying about it or that this Michael McDonald song is what is triggering the episode. Cry cry cry. I'm crying about my life. And right about that time, the mechanic calls me and says that in addition to fixing my tire, I cannot drive my car cross-country until I replace all the spark plugs, and the coil because it's misfiring and trying to melt a bunch of shit that is also in that big chunk of metal mess that is commonly referred to as an engine. "And to think I was just crying about my life. Stupid me. I could be crying about money instead." And I did a little bit, sort of, mentally. Very nearly did I almost call my devil-may-care attitude to the front line to do battle, but it let me down once and I did not, as I had proclaimed loftily to both my roadtrip buddy and my alternator, drive into the setting sun. No. I broke down in Casey, Illinois and had a terrible time.

"Do whatever is cheapest which will still get me to the other side of the states." Friend took me to her amiga's salon where my unwieldy brows were adored and then waxed into submission.

Four-hundred dollars later the car was road worthy.

There was a stay of two days in an Ozark-nestled cabin, a delightful romp into the family tree which, due to the older average age of attendees, made me feel at home. Old people don't scare me, no matter how many. They don't give a shit about anything anymore and if they do, it shows immediately since they have mostly discarded the skill of hiding it because, as said before, they don't give a shit. However, since it was a family function there was nothing that could be done about my Tieperman instinct to take note of heavy furniture and calculate how far the weakest looking person could possibly sling it. A Tieperman must always enter a room with a body angle of at least 45 degrees- completely sideways is best of course- for there is always something already in the air and probably aimed at the door because that pissed person has for some reason deemed it the safest place for an airborne chair. That, or they know some asshole nephew is going to stick their head in to laugh and so yeah, they deserve this. Surprise, you jerk.

How many people are there? Is there music playing? Is it a mingling affair or are there bunches of activities going? Rotating door effect? Are there people in the corners? Is there one common area where people are expected to join? How many of them are already drunk? What loud noises are there and can be expected? These are things that go through my head prior to entering a house/restaurant I am unfamiliar with and there is no end to the anxiety. Most of the time I just don't do these things. Last year I skipped the first-year party at Wildwater because I could not cope with the idea of loud music and everyone talking and not knowing 75% of them- and I was a first year. "I cannot be contractually obligated to be there."

The cabin was obviously non-confrontational, a place to wander about as you like or wander off entirely, full of good-humored people. I like seeing normal families. No bloody noses, no red-faced republican screaming, no chicken legs in the air, no nudity.

There was this one hilarious moment where Family Member #5 missed her own laughing mouth with the Tums and it went rolling across the floor, causing me to absolutely lose my shit and laugh, which in turn caused her to nestle up to my ear and loudly hiss "you biiiiiitchhhhhh", and that only made me laugh harder because it reminded me of my beloved aunts Julie and Amy. Oooohhhhhhhh crazy lovely ladies. She was a mere 2 topless minutes away from being the missing Tieperman.

Back to town for grilled cheese sandwiches where I had to hold hands with a waitress and walk her through breads.

Me: "-but can I have it on this bread?"
Her: "Prosciutto."
Me: "Um... yes I would like prosciutto added. But can I have it on this bread."
Her: *blink blink*
Me: "...alright, um, is this bread here- the parmesan crusted sourdough- specifically different from this one here, the sourdough?"
Her: "I don't know..."
Me: "I mean, is the parmesan somehow baked with the bread or is just sprinkled on there?"
Her: "I think just... sprinkled on...?"
Me: "Okay great. Well let's just sprinkle some of that junk on there."
She walks away with the orders.
Person 3: "What just happened? Are you getting sprinkles on your sandwich?"
Me: "As long as it's not draped in chocolate, it'll be good."

She figured it out, and yes, it's a bread prepared in a specifically different manner.

Onward toward Little Rock, driving through tornadic storm #1. Hail everywhere, driving through rain at 10 mph but still not slow enough to really focus my visual pity on the motorcyclist in the right lane. Although I think I nearly lost a windshield, I have yet to check my car for hail damage.

Social awkwardness #2, spurred by severe hunger and a rotating door of people. On to a house in the sticks, no electricity because of a tornado the day before. The silence and lightening were a great comfort, right up until I found two ticks that ever so craftily ferried themselves from the Ozarks aboard my defenseless body. Social awkwardness #3, where I screeched and pulled my hair and tried really hard not to think about how House would show a close-up of the ticks' heads on the underside of my skin while Friend pried them off of me.

I recently remembered that not only did the Bergkamps serve as my second home, but the matriarch pulled my first tick off of me at 27 and tried in earnest to soothe me after getting stung in the spine by a hornet in third grade during class. I believe she also had the task of screening all us little scumbags for lice. My conclusion? I cannot deal with human-creature interactions. I am irrational. The conclusion probably ought to be that I am filthy for this to keep happening, but I don't believe that. I believe that ticks and spiders and lice and all those other asshole creatures are just like old people. The don't give a shit.

Onward through Tornadic Storm #2, trying to keep my head down and just make it to Atlanta so I could have margaritas with Loren. But I lost. Adamsville and Forestdale, Alabama, strongly resembled hour 76 of a zombie outbreak: no cars at businesses, no lights on anywhere, signs in the street, trash in the grass, sheriff cruiser crashed into guardrails, and random people still trying to get some action at Pizza Hut.

"What the hell...?" Two hours of sleeping in traffic and all I really knew was this: If not for the hour and a half I spent at an indian buffet and super-thrift store in Little Rock, I very possibly could have been killed in an F5 tornado. Thank you chicken tikka masala, thank you Ninja Turtles trash can. Thank you one and all. Darkness fell and I was halfway through two hours of sleeping in stalled traffic, my head lolling halfway out of my window, silently raging against 1) the assclown behind me who had not yet figured out about turning off headlights when in stalled traffic, 2) truck drivers for not turning off their engines and giving legions of civilians migraines from their fumes, and 3) truck drivers for being the low grade type of humans who would have pee bottles in their cabs and therefore not at all tortured by their bladders, feeling the centimeters of healthy urinary tract being infected moment by hellish moment. Damn them all.

"Hey!" And it's a guy going the opposite direction in the lane closest to me. He has decided to stop there, for whatever reason, but probably because I looked the way I felt. "Yeah! Man, traffic ain't goin nowhere. Nowhere. Y'all gonna be sittin there a while, gas lines broke open up there, you guys ain't moving NOWHERE."

"Is 20 East up there?"

"Yeah, yeah," he nodded.

"Is there any other way around?"

"No, no you gotta go that way."

"Damn. Well, thanks for the info." My bladder heard him and started screaming. I hate truckers. Perhaps the gas was to blame for my nausea and headache. We moved an hour later, past some truly surreal remnants of trees. Clothes in trees, shit everywhere, people walking along the highway, alien terrain backlit by moon. I ran over something big in the road and drove under downed electrical wires. And then there was a BP station surrounded by every type of emergency vehicle imaginable. The smell of gas was overwhelming. Although right on top of Birmingham, Forestdale was dark while the former was not. People everywhere, cramming themselves into Popeyes and Wendy's and what have you.

"Hey!" said a man walking on the street almost as fast as I was able to drive, which is to say hardly at all. "Can you help a man out?" He was cleanly dressed, not limping, not rough looking at all, and in accordance with my NY rules for giving money, was not performing doo-wop or playing a musical instrument.

"Sorry man. Trying to help myself out right now."

Clue #2 that someone didn't actually need your money: They don't care that you didn't give it to them.

Driving became too much after that. It's just, the drive felt like the vehicular equivalent of the duck and run, you know? Just, fuck. Man. So I gave up. I made it to Oxford, Alabama and gave the hell up.

The door I rented to keep me safe.

This door clearly did not make the grade for at least one other traveler, but thanks to the Desert Inn Motel of Needles, California, any room without blood stains, tire tracks, and two Stareasaurus Rexes is given a passing grade.

After much promise and diversion, I finally made it to Loren. I found his fresh, clean carpeted apartment so very soothing, and sat upon it. We ate food. We had ice cream. We caught up and then I had to leave. Now I am in Long Creek again, having given no one a heads-up as to my arrival date because honestly, who knew if I even would. It's strange. I think I expected it to feel more like a homecoming; a bigger sigh of relief. It is a home, but I guess I just can't enjoy it yet because I still miss Silver. There are some things making this okay; someone moved into the white house who cleaned the hell out of the bathroom, Boo the Dog, Katie the Friend, and the knowledge that at some point in the very near future I will be getting to ruin a coworker's life with my section 4 training mishaps and oh my, there will be many.

"I don't care, as long as you're not in my raft."

"Oh I don't want to be in your raft. I want to get stuck in front of you. I want to ram your raft. I want to be in your way everywhere." A la Amy, Julie, and Missing Tieperman lady, "I want to fuck your shit UP."

Yes, I am out to get you. Who wants to feed me whiskey now? Think you can stop me? Do you? Because I just outsmarted three tornadoes and two ticks to get here. And in Long Creek I am.

"Tricia at 4-Way Stop With Tornadoes" by Christi Bertelsen.

If I May, For Just a Moment-

2011-03-31T11:51:00.000-07:00

What manner of person can digest an issue of the New Yorker? I never really thought about until this past year when I met a woman who reads each issue from front to back and more recently- and even more perplexing- a man who enjoys the illustrations. The illustrations I cannot process. There is a humor there that I cannot understand, to single out one in particular, a humor I presume to be based on the emotional relationship between significant others, mostly that of tongue-in-cheek disharmony.

"I don't understand. Why are these people even together?" I asked as I flipped through a James Thurber collection. Granted, I am not credited as the most emotionally attuned by my friends or family. I prefer to find out what makes sense before I invest feelings, emotions, and more importantly, time. An illustration putting a point on the comical frustrations of wearing the same dress to a soiree? "I don't understand why this matters. Next." An illustration of domestic discord between a married couple, implying an inevitable physical affront of the slapstick variety? "What does roast beef has to do with this again?" Yes I understand he likes it well done, but I'm missing the link from "medium" to "shillelagh", that magical juxtaposed commonality I like to refer to as the "comic bridge".

The main problem I have with the New Yorker, though, is the fiction. Try as I may, I cannot connect with any of these fictions. "They are stories, all different stories with different feels," I tell myself. Still though, there is a feeling that all of these fictions, short or long, share a DNA of distance, meandering, and a slight mourning of a life not as exciting as the characters feel worthy. Ladies of whimsical personality with quirks so endearing to all that it really is a pity no one has invited her to marry into a line of the proper ilk. Millions spent by men who now have to live in the mediocre world that is the drone of the upper middle class.

"Jesus. This is ridiculously out of touch and boring. Who are these stories even for?" I imagine the legions of lithe 80 year-old women, each sitting at home alone in their penthouse parlors, reclined on a divan with the magazine draped over a demure knee, fingering a strand of their stacked heirloom pearl choker, reading the tale of the dowager's descendant's blase yet tragic decline to everyday-dom and yearning for those glorious days of New York's endemic social elitism. Not to so long ago as to be out of memory's visceral reach, not so much gone as seductively endangered. "Yes," they think to themselves with a sigh as they let their house-heels slip from their stockinged toes, "I do relate to Birgitte. I do. Where are the exquisite ladies with gloved wrists, the handsome men. Their suits pressed just so and their hands extended... the way of the handcarved mahogany ballustrade, I suppose. How does one get along in times such as these." Porn for the malaise filled white-collar.

However, I am no professional author. I do not pretend to know better than those who actually get paid to work although I steadfastly maintain that a paycheck does not confirm superiority. Remember, I was paid to be a teacher. What can one do then, but keep searching for that one piece of fiction that holds up the reputation of the New Yorker as a purveyor of the finest of literatures as opposed to a compress for the disenchanted elite?

"Let's see what we have in this one-" Murakami. "Shit." I flip past because the only thing he has ever impressed upon me with his writings is a deeper dislike of the Beatles and those who relate too much to them, as well as those characters who have the impossible combination of vividly colorful yet blandly monochromatic personalities which naturally mirror their lives of that same pursuasion. I hate Murakami for the same reason I hate French New Wave for the same reason I hate reading about the tortured average lives of divinely privileged individuals.

The New Yorker won't exercise a redeemable cross-section of fiction any sooner than Penthouse sells Girl Scout cookies, and I won't relate to any of it until three days after I figure out how to make a viable alien baby from two loaves of texas toast.

Fiction ruled out, I instead tried torturing myself through an article. This one being an opus regarding a Norwegian chess super-boy, a story how many pages in length? "Fuck, who knows how long I've been reading this. I may have accidentally taken a time-machine back to the beginning of the article. Someone either didn't make their deadline or this author really, really wants to be on staff." Again I look at the photo of the wunderkind, a tight close-up of his face, a king in hand pressed against his cheek, one finger lightly resting atop his "lady lips", as described by a fellow coffee-shop patron. This sexualization of a boy who casually dismissed his high school education as well as college in favor of a cosmopolitan jet-setting career was one thing, but the sexualization of chess? Unforgivable. Chess is sexy, but only up to the point of that fact being pointed out, kind of like how a punk band is only punk until they get successful.

A tangential question which I will entertain so far as to only ask: Why photography? If a boy holding a chess piece up to his face while nearly suckling a finger would look ridiculous in a painting, then why is it acceptable in photography? Reason #23 I did not seek photography as a career.

It was at some point in this jet-pack powered train of thought that one of my favorite songs struck up in my headphones and I could leave behind my ongoing struggle with what I'm told is a superior publication in favor of a different ongoing struggle.

Mozart vs. Verd. This was a source of friendly debate between myself and my friend Rebecca. She prefers Mozart's sweeping epic of Requiem, while I maintain that Verdi so accurately emotes the implied horror of the event as well as the paranoia and assumed overbearing guilt and doom of the upstanding, medieval Roman Catholic, that the abbreviated, shorter, more dynamic "Dies Irae" more successfully executes the overall desired effect of the text. Which I- although merely a baptised Catholic- understand to be this: "Holy shit, holy shit, we are all going to die and burn in hell. Does anybody know how to get out? Does anybody- did anybody get out? Hey, is anybody- holy shit. Holy shit what am I going to do." The opulent violence followed by a melodic warning; what better to teach a lesson of submission to the gathered hordes of uneducated sinners who have no option of reading and interpreting the mass for themselves? There is an idea in some methods of language instruction; the importance of communication is not the correctness with which you speak or hear this new language, it's only that you accurately convey your message. Thomas of Celano's message? "Everyone is going to get what they damn well deserve, so you'd better watch your ass." Mozart is using all his words with his best grammar, but Verdi is utilizing the entire encycolpaedia of body language.

Yes, yes, this is correctness I am feeling. I have once again won a debate in my head and feel all the smarter for having done so.

In my readjustments at the sun-drenched porch of Three Dogs, I discover beneath the New Yorker a small creature upturned. A mustard bug, it's legs curled in, upon its back and motionless. More than likely the poor thing was crushed while I was cursing Murakami. Fitting. I flipped the bug over and admired the glittering emerald elytra. It moved slightly then, proving itself alive but with multiple injured legs. What to do with an injured creature? Should I put it out of its misery? My mind immediate returned to Lazarus, my well-meant but hideously botched first attempt at showing the maimed how the afterlife can be a glorious release. I began to tear up at the memory, and then again at the realization that hey, I did it again. Crushed the limbs of a creature who probably would no longer be able to help himself. "Way to go, me." The bug flittered some legs, tried walking and fell forward on his little bug face.

"Boccherini," I said, listening to his Minuetto. Full and embellished though slight and whimsical, a fitting name for this small gem of a creature. Point #2 of how I botched Lazarus' mercy killing, if I remember correctly, immediately rendering me incapable of finishing the little mustard bug off. He rested on my fingertip for the next thirty minutes, enjoying the sun while I tried really really hard to find something palatable wedged between the hoit and toit of the New Yorker.

"That poor Magnus Carlsen. Constant travel is a tiring cross to bear, isn't it? Postively dreadful." *tinker tinker pearls, glancing beyond the highrise wall of glass*

"Ugh, fuck this magazine. I'm done."

Thinking Boccherini would have eventually wandered off my fingertip, but he was still there. Hard to believe that on my most sensitive of body parts there perched a creature trying to figure out just how he was supposed to go on living and I couldn't even so much as tell he was there. I removed him to the wooden counter, left to bask in the sun for as long as he decided to stay. I returned the magazine to the coffee shop proper, giving in to the fact that a person like me- logically emotional, one who covets peeping into the windows of all worlds to which I don't and never will belong, a fan of versatility and that which is not polished to the point of lacquered- is best served by Harpers.

2011-03-24T13:32:00.000-07:00

*Everybody looks like they are dressing like a billboard. Look at all the potbellies.* Leaving Silver City and Long Creek always does tend to make me feel like there's an invisible branch of hominid to which I belong. At present I am in the El Paso airport, surrounded by people who no doubt think I look strange. It is disorienting at the least, and puts a very tangible point on the reality that I live in a fantasy world.

*I want to go back to where adults don't style their hair,* I was thinking as I listened to a frat boy forget about courteous cell manners in public. I got up from my seat and walked toward the bathroom, down what I thought was the Shortest Distance Between A and B but was actually a cleverly disguised Tear in Psyche.

*Bang* Man with slicked back black hair. *Bang* Woman in polyester businesswoman suit with painted face eating a fast food salad. *Bang* College girl with sparkly eyeshadow applied from her eyebrows to mid-nose. *BANG* Old woman reading Harlan Coben.

I held on to the trashcan and concentrated on keeping my Quiznos inside since it was so damn expensive. It took all my remaining scruple to not scream "Stop being so damn pleased with yourself! Stop reading Harlan Coben!" A couple of well placed grab'n'slaps and things would change.

This has happened to me before. The last time was at Wal-Mart. On one of my happiest days in Silver yet, I went to this trench of humanity. My mental stamina began draining the instant I entered. Only sad fat elderly shoppers, all of them in the frozen dinner aisle. "Shit, why don't they all get together and make a club instead of going home alone?" It was.all downhill from there. Pitiful stockboys. Flourescent lighting. Really stale air. I barely made it out without crying and I didn't even get the bagels I went in for.

What. Happened.

My life in downtown Silver City is insular in a warm and cuddletastic way. Everyone says hello and then they dont try to grab your ass. Old people and young people mingle as equals. The transients are mostly kind with awesome stories and even awesomer pets. People live social life like back in the 80's; you say you will be somewhere at a certain time and then you be there at that time. You go places to where you know people to get info. No one wears perfume, and the people I choose to populate my Silver life sure as hell don't do what the turdlady across from me just did, which is listen to her longwinded friend's rambling message on speakerphone.

The guy catty corner is tapping his heel so hard that floor is shaking. Yes, this airport floor is shaking. I should like to think that a Hush Puppy wouldn't threaten the structural integrity of a major flight hub, but then, I am not a modern stone mason, am I. The man in the seat behind me is wearing too much musk and I think I can actually smell the make-up on the face of Beautiful Girl #32, who is also wearing her sunglasses halfway back on her head as a non-functional headband. Businessguy next to me is having a candy wrapper party. *Put your fingers on it. Put your fingers on the fuckin candy bar please? Put those finely manicured fingers of yours to work and TOUCH THE SNICKERS.*

Downtown Silver is my dreamland come true. It's not so much that everyone there is better than anyone anywhere else so much that it is a place full of people like me. I get comfy. I get confident. I get really happy in the mellow drone of weather and conversation and daydreaming in grass, then I go outside of all that with my defenses down and a stupid smile on my face and it's scalding water on a sunburn. I leave Triciatopia and run into this big ugly thing called Everywhere Else and it gives me a sensory overload.

So many sounds and smells and everything is moving and generally aesthetically displeasing. Thank god that guy over there is wearing Wranglers, because I am the only one in this Texas airport wearing a western shirt and it was causing me to lose touch with reality a little bit.

Someone get me out of Texas. Everyone else pray for me, because if I can't handle an airport then there is no way I am getting through the California suburbs unscathed.

We're all on the Japan Board of Action now.

2011-03-17T16:03:00.001-07:00

I feel concern for Japan. We all do. But my new concern is because of this: Had I been asked by Japan officials, I would have told them that my great idea for fixing the nuclear crisis is to fly over the plants with helicopters and dump water on top of them. This is the kind of thinking that separates me from the powerful men of action. Why I am not in public office or the head of a nuclear facility or of the safety of the public in general. Can you imagine the horror of the public masses if I were to hold a junket and announce my intention of forming a bucket line? This is not a criticism of Japanese actions of late, it is a deep sympathy. Because someone over there who had enough experience to be put in charge of some really volatile stuff actually had to stand up in front of some truly panicked people and say "On to Plan X. How many Super Soakers and rolls of duct tape do we have?" And those people were desperate enough to find out and assemble.

"Aww, it's that bad? I actually came up with the backup plan?"

Exhibit A: The Volcano Rover, later modified into a chopper form by Christi Bertelsen

And then the outcome was the same as if I had personally been at the helm: It fuckin missed.

Where does one go after the Super Soaker plan? That's the question, and I'm pretty sure that it's one that's open to the general public.

Great Camping and Stupid Assholes.

2011-03-13T08:14:00.000-07:00

The biggest battle in life is not thinking about how many shitheads surround you on a daily basis, hour by hour. You know what I'm talking about; that moment you have to run back to the cubicle that is otherwise your jail cell, put your head in your hands and breathe real deep because "that guy" just about destroyed your day.

This week I actually ran away to the woods to get away from my growing legion of admiring assholes, one of whom is a friend of mine. Still my friend, but upon hearing that I was going to go camping by myself he apparently became of the state of mind that I was competing with him and his camping expertise. Everything I mentioned packing came under fire. Maps, a stove, pepper spray, cord. "Why do you need that?" Now let's talk about how this person has all the above, with the exception of the pepper spray. Really? It's okay for Mr. Expert to have this stuff but not me? I don't need cord to lash things onto my bag or make a bearbag? And pepper spray, it's nice to have. Is that a huge starving cat that is stalking me? Good thing I have pepper spray because now I don't have to be a good shot. Oh look, it's a bunch of backwoods assholes. A moment ago they were studying their fingernails but now that they have seen a girl walking alone they think it will be funny to give her a hard time. I don't have time for that shit, and I sure as hell shouldn't have to protect myself with a knife, so here you go, scream that off and I'll just be on my merry way, you know? We're girls. We know this is how it goes. Every day.

So I'm wondering to myself. Why is he being critical every time I bring up this trip? We actually got into an argument about productive use of pack space while shopping in Wal-Mart. He sees nothing wrong with packing entire bottles of booze, whereas I would rather use that space for water, dry clothes and a little tiny bottle of pepper spray. This guy, I love him. He's my pal. I'm glad I know him. But if I had to sum him up in one sentence, it would be this: "I camp, other people don't know how to camp. I do. I do it year round. All these other people just go out there and fuck it up." That's like saying one person lives in a house better than another. What does that mean? That their cupboards are more organized? That they are more friendly to their neighbors? No idea. What I have come up with is that he thinks I should be asking his advice, and since I'm not, he feels as though I am infringing on his territory. Maybe he just wanted to go with. At one point last week all he would have had to do was ask, but shit, then Wal-Mart happened and he became one of the assholes I had to escape from. "Jordan Hot Springs is the worst place you could go right now. The worst. It's going to be full of people," he says as he rides with me out to the Gila Visitors Center. This is hilarious to me because he's been trying to get me to go to Jordan instead of Turkey since the day we both got here. "I think Turkey will have more spring breakers." "No, no. They'll all be at Jordan." "So.... basically wherever I decide to go is the worst possible place for me to go." Silence.

Someone help. I cannot figure people out and I keep attracting these types of people.

Six miles of beautiful country and eventually I reach Jordan. There is no one there. YAYYYYY no assholes! I set up camp, got firewood, took a little dip, had a real good time. Which brings us to asshole animals. Around nightfall I started hearing footsteps. Big, heavy rustling in the grass. I figured it was a squirrel, but it kept happening. Then it was close, just outside the area my flashlight could productively illuminate. By this point I already realized that the camp site was a mistake, what with all the dry grasses and leaves. Every movement of every creature sounded like a starving cat. Finally I could not take it. I grabbed my hatchet and walked down the trail about thirty feet, hollering as I went. Four shining eyes. Javelina. One jumped across the trail, allowing me to marvel at his heft.

"Shit." If they weren't going to flee from my shouting and weapon waving, my next best shot was rushing them. And I'm doing math in my head now, because one girl with one hatchet might could do the trick as long as I'm aiming for the torso, but two javelinas... that's eight scary tusks... and the rest of the math didn't matter. My hatchet figure-eight technique is not impressive and besides, I don't have insurance. They stood on either side of the trail, tapeta ablaze in my eye level flashlight, patiently awaiting my next move. I wished I had pepper spray.

"... fuck you guys." I walked back to my campsite, browned a bagel over my campfire and called it an early night. Then I listened to them tramp around in the grass for hours, waking up at 1 a.m. to the sound of them snorting five feet from my tent. "I hate you. WoooOOOOOOOH!!!! *clap clap clap*"

*snort snort snort. crunch crunch.*

"God DAMMMMMITTTT!" I ripped my tent open. I guess I thought I was going to see them and give them a stern talking to, but I couldn't see anything out there. It was a horrible sleep. I kept waking up with this awful feeling in my stomach, a feeling I initially thought was terror, but then it was so insistent I began to wonder if I hadn't toasted my bagel over some toxic branch. Poisoned myself with a bagel and can't sleep through it because of those asshole pigs.

Thank god I had rope for my bearbag.

The next morning I saw javelina holes everywhere. I bumped camp the next night to a site directly above the hot spring. Steep on three sides and just narrow enough for two tents, there was no reason pigs would go up there. Plus, it was just a twenty second clumsy walk to the swimming hole. Day two was divine. I put the hurt on a log with my hatchet, soaked for an hour, hiked up the Middle Fork where I saw jave-holes everywhere and smelled their skunky fear-scent. I read a book. A book that partially started on fire because "you don't have a windscreen for your stove?" "I'll use what I have." "No, you have to have foil." "I'll use what I have." "Yeah but that won't work. You have to have foil Tricia." "Whatever blocks wind will work as a windscreen." Yes my book started on fire, but it blocked the wind until I found a desirable rock.

Later that day one man with his five archaeology pals made camp across the Gila. It was pretty entertaining to hear their shrieks as they walked across it to get to the spring. At the time I was making a chicken quesadilla and had to decide between picking the vegetables out of the dirt before the tortilla burned or putting my shirt back on before the group got to the spring. It turned into the biggest quesa-tastrophe I have ever witnessed. All the ingredients ended up in the dirt not once, but twice. I heard my flesh sizzle at least once. But I won in the end, I could tell because I was standing there eating a quesadilla. It was crunchy, very crunchy. Not so crunchy as that meal where an entire group of us ate in slow silence for fear of chomping on the glass that had broken into our white rice, but it was up there. An entire stick had managed to get in with the chickens. It was embarrassing.

I liked the archaeologists. I only spoke with two of the group and not even that night, but the next day. No. That night after they left, after sundown, is when the group of college assholes showed up. You know these people, they are the ones who go hiking but not for the sake of hiking and beauty, but because they have weed and booze and want to see how many places they can get stoned and drunk. I was by my fire, listening to them in the spring being angry and scared because they couldn't figure out who had their paraphernalia. The trip was for nothing if there was no weed. Now, that's one thing. But being loud and obnoxious directly under someone's campground is Camping Cardinal Sin #1. But I can't really complain. It didn't last past, say, 11 p.m. and I wasn't sleeping yet anyway. The stars were out, my fire was a raging success, I had a good book and there was canyon everywhere.

After the college students went to bed I slept deeply and soundly. Yesterday morning morning I woke up to the sound of little splashes in the spring, someone twiddling their fingers on the surface of the water. Pleasant way to wake. I toasted a bagel, made coffee, finished my book and took a last soak. Eight a.m., steam rising up from the water, two hours of floating and relaxation. I had a puncture would in my ankle from a very angry splinter that had gone in straight instead of angled. I didn't find it until the morning after the javelinas, but had a vivid memory of me walking up a steep hill through bushes, feeling stabs in a lot of places and shouting an obscenity. The shard of wood was in half an inch and coagulated into place. Small hole, I splashed it with Purell, but still. The sensation of having the grip and rip something out of my body is not something I enjoy. I wondered how it was doing but didn't bother looking. Nick, the guy leading the archaeologists on their pleasure hike came along and took a soak with me. He was a nice guy, soft spoken and lively. They were hiking out "right now" and invited me to join them that night at one of the Scorpion campgrounds. Initially I was going to do this. It would be nice to converse with people who have the same interests.

At the time I wasn't sure that I would be hiking out that day, but his group had informed that spring break actually started this week, not last. Turkey Creek was surely a carnival by comparison, but I didn't need to deal with the possibility of more college kids. I started hiking at 1 that day, passed nine people hiking in, and made the trailhead by 3:45. At the trailhead I got into a long conversation with an Alaska man. Somehow we always find each other, me and Alaskans. But then, this is not a hard thing to do in the Gila area. Throw a rock, really. He and his acquaintance are driving "wherever we want to" in their converted extra-long cargo van. They both used to work on fishing boats, him being a captain of one and she working as a deckhand on another. He owned a 100-year old boat, the Merlin Schooner, that was sunk by a humpback whale. This is why I love elderly Alaskans. They are full of stories, and they are humble. They did not invent hiking, they did not invent fishing, but they do it and they like it. He gave me his email address and said if I ever make it up to Sitka or want words of advice and direction on finding a job on a fishing boat, I should look him up. One more in a long list of reasons to return to Alaska.

I came home feeling refreshed and reinvigorated, but also with severely sunburned lips (they are maroon-purple) and feeling like I had been beaten with a baseball bat. External frames can do that to a person.

Then I was woken up at daybreak by incessant barking. Guess I'm home again. I'm trying not to think about this. About being woken up every day by barking and having to drag my ass to Three Dogs where Ron can make fun of me before I am sufficiently woken up. About how my buddy hates me for a reason no better than "I camp better than you". I'm never going to sleep well again. And Albert, the newest crazy man at Javalina, is going to see me working and try to con more coffee off of me. How do I make it through the day? How do any of us make it through the day? Suppose it's not that different from what made my hiking trip the best ever despite the asshole pigs and asshole students: look at where I am, look at what I get to see. For every asshole there's at least ten decent people, four of whom I will get really excited about. If I could just get a decent night's sleep before heading out into it, I feel like my attitude would be better.

One More Day of This

2011-03-07T22:07:00.000-08:00

Yesterday an old man named Albert insisted that he made this particular t-shirt. Wasn't it beautiful? Didn't I want to give him free coffee now? How about two coffees? It was so ballsy I had to say, you know what, okay Albert. Okay. And then he came up with this other transient fellow to "buy him a coffee", and other dude was like "you gonna pay?" and was slackjawed when he realized Al's ruse. An hour later Al came to the register and wanted one of those liquid atrocities known as "Monster". Four bucks. You fucking fuck, you just got three coffees off of me and now you want a Monster. You fuckin' fuck. You know what, I cannot believe the testes. Take it.

"I'll pay you back Monday. Double."
The fuck you will. "Yeah okay Albert."

Albert comes up shortly before the end of my shift and tells me he has something very valuable for me as a gift. Great, another WWF shirt that he stole out of the Free Box. No. It was a small bottle with chunks of something brown and gnarled at the bottom. It looked like someone had tried to jam a shrunken head in there but only managed to chip a corner off.

"This is a bottle that holy men used to put holy water in." Then he tried telling me that the random numbers on the bottom of the jar indicated that it was manufactured in 1680. It is one of the most random and ridiculous gifts I have ever received in a coffee shop, but not... quite.

Well, I jammed my little ass out of there when 5 p.m. rolled around, which was approximately ten minutes after Albert divined reason to say to me in jest "you're some kind of Jew, aren't you?". Later that night I went back to talk to my friend Ryan, who told me that a man named Albert conned him out of a hundred-dollar knife and a carving of an elk or deer or some other cervidae. Albert cleaned house, the jerk.

And then, god, then today. Time was my sworn enemy and it did come at me cloak and dagger. I awoke at 3 after a particularly vexing dream in which I was youtubing Lionel's "Hello" but kept getting a mythical "Is It Me" song, the video of which consisted only of a first-person perspective of riding an escalator up to street level, where a man in silhouette held a single red rose. The hell I was in was the lovechild of Lionel Richie and Anne Geddes. I blame this:

you too can print one and hang it on a post in your hometown. I would, except now I know the power it holds. Lionel and Geddes in your DREAM ESCAPE WORLD. I cringe to think of the Yankee candles I may have inadvertently ordered during this sleeptastrophe.

Woke up 6:30 a.m. to a barking dog, watched "The Business of Being Born" and got grossed out by American medical practices, and went to work with cat hair all over my face where time once again worked against me.

Within five minutes of my being there an old hippie walked to the bar. He informed me that he is legally blind, needs a place to stay, and "just between you and me I think that guy at my table is having a seizure. Or is off in the head. He needs help." I look over and it's this guy who rides his bike an ungodly distance to town every day. At best he is reserved and kind, at worst he is massively dehydrated and distant because of it. He is facing the large windows, his posture beaten and tired, but he is acting civilized. Him with his little black biking hat on. "He keeps saying "yeah" and I'm trying to talk to him. He needs help."

"Hmmm that's strange," and I change the subject because I believe that I should have a grace period at the beginning of every shift in which I do not have to follow up on every lead that every out-of-his-mind person gives me. The guy behind Blind Hippie orders a decaf coffee which I see to. Dehydrated Biker knows Decaf and the three of them start talking at the register. Dehydrated Biker leaves soon after.

Kourosh the Artist comes in, rubbing wind-blown grit out of his bloodshot eyes. He had been up all night painting and for some reason did not crash out for half a day. He got a coffee and sat half alive at a table. Poor guy. I can relate. Had I a chair, I'd have filled it with my half-aliveness as well.

It wasn't exceptionally busy, it was just that trickle effect. The one where a potential customer thinks it favorable to not get into line until the person already at the register has JUST paid and I have JUST walked to the machine. They do this because they think it will expedite the process of them getting their order; "no one is at the register ordering now, so I will get my drink instantly." No, you won't. Because now I am busy making a drink. Let me tell all of you out there this: it is in everyone's favor to just get in the damn line when there is only one person working. I take ten orders, get everyone out of line, everyone gets to relax in a chair, and I get to work uninterrupted on churning out ten drinks. Trust me- no, trust every barista who has ever worked alone- you will get your drink twice as fast if you wait in line instead of trying the Pez Attack. So yeah, what happened is every time I turned around to steam milk, there's that guy who was lurking a moment ago looking very put-out at the register. Two minutes of waiting turned into five.

And all day was like this. Shit, I may only have had twenty customers in six hours, who the hell knows what with this Chinese water torture.

With 45 minutes to go, Mr. Certifiable shows up. He's not even past the window and to the entrance and I already know he's up to no good at all. I'm leaning against the register watching my boss talk to one of her friends, knowing. Knowing it all. Knowing everything.

"Hi! What can I get for you?"
will he or won't he, will he or won't he... kind of looks like he won't... nope, he will. "I need help with my lingua!" he shouts. I look at Polly and I think my eyebrows went up. "These fuckers...! They do it all the time!!!!" And he pounds his fist on the counter with all his might. I'm wondering to myself. Lingua? Lengua? Is he having speech issues or understanding? Or did he say "lingum", and if so, I really don't need to know about those issues. For real. I don't get paid enough to care about that. Polly jumped up at the pound, and I was saying nothing because shit, Polly has a reputation and I kind of wanted to see it in action. It must be very true, what they say about her, because as soon as he saw her he ran away.

Five p.m. again and I ran my little ass home, then returned to Java to let Ryan borrow my computer. Of course, here comes Albert.

"You gonna buy me a drink?" he asks Ryan. Ryan somehow grins and shrugs it off the way he can. Then Albert asks the same of me.

"Buy you a drink?! Where the hell is my $8?"

"Eight dollars?" he sighs in disbelief. Good for nothin. He helps himself to a chair near us and calls me Lisa. I walked off to the bar area to get away from him, talking to Steve to pass time. Lazily I turned toward the outside, hoping my movie buddy would come in and I could get away from Albert. There was Ryan, outside with a cigarette, frantically fixing his hair in the window's reflection. Ryan does not do this. He does not primp, he does not preen. I asked him ten minutes later what he thought he was doing.

"Albert told me I needed to fix my hair."
"Albert told you this."
"Yeah."
"And you did it." This is a guy who tried to make Ryan believe he could make $15,000 a week if he worked on his farm.
"He said it was messy."
"-my god-"
"What?"

And then here comes Albert, with a cup of coffee he tried really hard to con off Steve but ended up paying for because most people aren't impressed with retarded ballsiness the way I am. He sits down and I turn to walk off. "You ask her out?" he asks Ryan. Anything I say, no matter how unrelated, will make Ryan feel better because then he will not feel obligated to say anything.

"No, I'm going away."

Then I went to the movies with a girl who only eats the heads of gummy bears, leaving behind a box of translucent rainbow bodies. I love this. I get home and I'm wondering what makes people develop these strange habits but I never reach a conclusion I'm happy with because I discover my jeans are full of popcorn. Popcorn in my jeans, as in between the denim and my underwear. Popcorn in the bra is understandable, but underwear? Turns out I hadn't zipped up my pants from THREE HOURS PRIOR and every popcorn I dropped took the beeline from my gaping maw to my underwear.

Everyone has their special little thing, I guess.

Sometimes We Look Alike #2

2011-03-03T20:55:00.000-08:00

John Francis Daley

Me

2011-03-01T12:06:00.000-08:00

Dire need of a human blanket and a lush patch of grass drenched in sun.

sometimes we look alike #1

2011-02-27T16:54:00.000-08:00

Backpack Inventory

2011-02-26T20:15:00.000-08:00

My bag felt strange today. Here's what I found:

Kalamata olive bread loaf
Siddhartha
Forgotten paycheck
Tucumcari green chili jack cheese
Minolta srt-101
Someone else’s very important mail
Gigantic journal
Gigantic sketchbook
Sunglass case full of pens and pencils
Magnesium firestarter
Nail clippers
Leatherman Micra
Gerber knife
Phone
Wet ones
Contact prints for camping trip in South Carolina
Lens cloth for Minolta
2 tampons
Five year-old list of life goals
Protective cross tchotchke from grandma
Set of keys with flash drive and lucky pig keychain from Korea
89 cents
time release cable for camera
homemade necklace
two bendy Indian toys
pocket-sized notebook; correspondence with friend
Chattooga section IV sticker
Passport
Coworker’s address
Pocket Naturalist: Southwestern Desert Life
Yankie Creek food specials list
Fuji Instax photo of rafting friend
Phone number for elementary school- Havasupai
Paper crane from man in Florence computer lab
7 rocks: Arizona, Alaska, Colorado
3 wood chips from Alaska
3 shells: Grand Stirrup Cay, South Korea

Blast from the freakin past.

2011-02-23T18:15:00.000-08:00

I was looking for something completely unrelated to anything at all- a bit of info I'm not revealing because honestly I'm startled at what I found. One night nearly five years ago, I drove from Iowa to Connecticut and then decided to get my insane-from-travel self on the computer and made a list of jobs I wanted. All in jest, of course. And then I promptly forgot about ever having made it. Amazingly, I have achieved four of the professions listed here.

There is a part of me that is very amazed and grateful that I accomplished any of those things, but then there is this other less practical part of me that is really frustrated it took so long to get ANY of them done. "Why did it take me so long to work with paranormal investigators?" And somehow I don't accept "because you had no qualifications, background, or contacts to work in that field" as an answer. People think I have no aim in life because I don't have a house or regular job, but look at my list and you will know I seriously have cripplingly high expectations for myself.

And I would still kill and hide bodies for any of these lives.

Five years later and this list that I made for fun actually rings true. So what was I thinking then, that I was typing and laughing to myself? Better yet, what am I thinking now, when I not only consider over half of them viable options but have achieved almost a third of them? The only thing I can come up with is that I was trying really hard to not want to do the things I wanted to do. Stupid me. Ziggy, take me back to 2004 so that I don't almost lose my soul to film and find it necessary to hit the skids and work in the Hantavirus Hell known as Strand Bookstore. I will look myself in the face, tell me not to worry too much about that bird that hit the window, and to just go ahead and want the stupid things I want because I will only end up wanting them anyway, just that I will be a decade behind everyone else who didn't kid themselves. And then I'll tell me not to bother calling the authorities about the labor issues in the basement because they will only get paid off again anyway.

My family's favorite question for me is "Tricia, what do you want." Say it again with feeling, "Tricia, what do you... want." Never once in my life has there been an answer for this question, which is why mother has taken to adding more pauses between the words for more of that genuine feeling designed to elicit an answer she can comprehend. "I don't know" hasn't worked since middle school. Unfortunately, it's just as true. "I want to go places and see people and have fresh grass to lay in and have friends who will take me to Dollywood or at least not be angry if I try to take them". I will never say this because I understand that trying to understand it as a life goal blows the mind of most ordinary people.

God bless Emily, who has never once asked me that frustrating and ultimately impossible question, namely because she witnessed the formation of my nebulous mind from Kindergarten all the way up to today. She knows I want stupid things and she doesn't waste her time telling me so, she only just congratulates me when I achieve them. In fifth grade the teacher asked everyone what they wanted to be when they grew up. I watched with mounting horror as kid after kid told their dreams, me sweating my bowl-cut off because I apparently missed the Future Powwow. Had I been on the monkey bars? *I want to be Indiana Jones* *I want to travel* Why were so many girls saying they wanted to be babysitters?! DAMN! In the end, I could not even get my shit together enough to lie about what I wanted to be. It was my first "I don't know". Emily witnessed my genesis. Hard road ahead, yep.

Five years ago I was trying really hard to have the life I thought I wanted to have. One or two interesting things have happened on this five year mark and later revealed themselves as such through my blog, but too many stories for one night. All I can say is that a lot of junk had to happen for me to finally reach the place where I could finally live in a car, you know? For starters, I had to get my mom's car to do it. I imagine the taco hut will be just as difficult, but I will focus on that later because every day I feel myself getting a little closer to the boat crew.

I know this guy...

On Getting Out

2011-02-21T22:35:00.000-08:00

It has been brought to my attention- by myself and many others- that I have completely failed in the one mission I set out for in Silver: to camp my face off. As stated before, things have come up over and over again, and on one particular occasion I straight up talked myself out of it because I wanted to stay in bed all day. So why don't I feel as though I've achieved nothing? It's that magical element of Silver City, that ineffable feature of downtown life that makes even sitting on your ass seem like an adventure.

People here are strange. And people here love strange. Accepting strange is akin to the suburban practice of placing a child's taekwondo trophy on the mantel. It sounds like a concept that wouldn't make of a difference but the effects are far-reaching, namely in the form of eavesdropping. There is absolutely no limit to what one can expect to hear on any given day. From wholesale coca leaves to stories of ponies and naked cowboys busting in on hot springers. Every day I'm amazed. And that's just what people aren't even trying to tell me. My esteemed barista job puts me in the direct line of fire for any off-kilter conversation you can think of. I have one acquaintance who has yet to tell me a story that does not involve narcotics.

him: "Yeeeeaaaaahhhh... I was walking to the store yesterday to get some food. I couldn't concentrate though because I ate mushrooms and was trippin balls-"

me: "Why do all your stories go like this? They always start out like any other story in the world, and then the drugs show up in sentence two. Every time. Did you guys notice that?"

I could go on and on, but it would sound like many other customer service jobs, just with more geriatric hippies, a guy in a homemade kilt/headband combo, and a man with a tricorne hat. But I will tell you this: A man I had never seen before and probably never will again was at the counter two days ago preparing to order something. I'm sure I did something to bring this conversation on, but I never remember what the hell it is because I share my body 50/50 with a conversational copilot who demands more exclusivity by the day. It's always too late by the time I get back into my body. So this was an older man, tall, thin, long haired as those elderly hippies are bound to be...

*talk talk talk copilot blahblahblahokayimout* And then came the Quote of the Day to end all Quotes of the Day.

"...I was meditating with a vial of gold on my third eye, and then I went to the Chinese restaurant."

*blinkblinksigh* I deserve this. I imagine this is exactly the feeling of discombobulation, alienation, and "what the fuck"ness that Sam Beckett experiences each and every time he gets sucked into a new body. The great thing is that I have such a storied past with said copilot- demanding face time and then just abandoning ship- that I have developed an intricate set of responses and mental commands that keeps my poker face from ever breaking. Remember Monster? If I laugh at a bad time, it's either because I want to, I don't care, or I think someone needs to see me laugh at them.

Conversations aside, people in Silver know a lot about appreciating bygone fashions. For instance, the tricorne hat. This man had to beg the local hatmaker to make this antiquated style for him, such was his burning passion. Satin top hats, bowlers, porkpies, fedoras, berets. It's hats gone mad down here, and I'm not talking about artists or costumes. It's everybody from teens to old ladies. Hat watching actually gets its very own block on the schedule separate from people watching.

"Hey Tricia, nice hat!"

"Thanks!" And they look at it, inspect the seams and fabric. Appreciators of the craft.

That is a photo of me in the first hat I remember loving. It is covered in dancing Snoopies. I still own it, and I secretly hope that one day my head will shrink so that I might wear it without resorting to the Victorian method of pinning it askance atop my head.

I love hats and I love being in a city of hat lovers.

All of these things are entertaining, true, but hardly something to make me feel accomplished. This is where Three Dogs comes in. It is my daily coffee hangout, true. But it is so much more than that. A person cannot go to Three Dogs without meeting someone or learning something. Trails, conspiracies, horse training, wars, white chocolate, whatever. There are days I go in there just because I have something I want to know. A person can stroll in, announce their question to all, and stand in the middle of the answer rain. It's better than Google.

And look what else I've done! Found wonderful thrift store gems:

As busy as I've been keeping myself, tomorrow is the day I am finally ramming a shoehorn under my butt and getting some "me" time in City of Rocks. It will be car camping, and probably without a fire too, but it will be me and stars and lots of rocks and it will qualify, dammit.

Kidney Goes to Nationals with Tristan

2011-02-20T22:03:00.000-08:00

2011-02-13T17:33:00.000-08:00

This morning was going like gangbusters until about three minutes after I woke up. Rolling around in bed, enjoying the process of the mental stretch, Minnie the Siamese Cat meowed in my face incessantly as a hint to please feed her. She ever so cutely sniffed my cheek. I giggled. And then she ground in to my lower lip with hypodermic kitty fangs. It hurt like hell. I smacked her in the head and she ran away.

"Cat mouths are the filthiest mouths on earth" says a friend who got bitten on the finger. This finger now only has partial mobility, never again able to completely straighten it out. I lay in bed, feeling sorry for myself and marveling at my having an actual list of friends with digit maladies. About that time, Minnie's attention span terminated and she came back into the room and back onto my bed. I felt sorry for her and her insufficient brain power and reached out to pet her head. She slashed my hand. Fuck man. Little Chucky cat.

Minnie the Siamese Cat hates me.

Walk walk walk, feed the cats, laugh at my unruly hair. Step in cat puke. "Shiiiiit. Really?" But then I remember that, hey, it's not cool to yell at someone or something after they puke, so I try to make the cat feel better.

"Are you okay cat?" Whichever one of the two it may have been. Walk walk walk step in more cat puke two feet away. "GOD." I did what I could to get rid of this splatter fest and then tried to settle back into my daily routine; Three Dogs. I hung around there for about an hour, just long enough to reconnect with a fellow journaler I met last year, as well as get info on a good tailor in town.

What I really wanted to do was ignore this fact: Several days ago a metal window shutter was left on the sidewalk by our trash can, and wind blew it over so that it was half on the curb and half in the street. "I should pick that up. Wait. No way. NO way. Nobody will learn any lessons about cleanliness if I go around picking up after people all the time." Two nights ago I rolled up to my parking place and heard a horrendous crunching sound. The shutter. Dang. That was loud. I went inside with my food and watched Dexter til my eyes bled. The next day I got my hair chopped off, and discovered a completely flat tire upon my return from the salon. It was surely flat not long after I ran over that confounded shutter, but who would have known? It was dark. At any rate, I stood in awe because never before has there been a more classic example of being hoisted by one's own petard. "Yeah, I'm gonna walk away from this for now," I told the neighbor girls sitting on the steps. I successfully ignored the flat for the rest of that day by eating burritos and then going to an open mic at Yankie Creek. The next day I worked until past sundown.

Part of me didn't want to change the tire, some sort of misguided attempt at teaching someone a lesson. This is something I do all the time, this strange tendency to try teaching life lessons to inanimate objects. I convinced myself that showing a picture of my morning hair to Ria was a worthwhile endeavor, possibly scientific, so that I wouldn't have to go home and see how both the tire and the shutter had not learned their lessons. But the tire had to be changed. I left Three Dogs and came home, knowing that this is an easy transaction that people do every day. I myself have done it many times. However, once I crawled under the Escape to get a look at where the jack was to go, I realized that I had never really done it like this before. My last spare change was for my 67 Beetle, a car which doesn't really require any sort of specific jack placement so far as I could ever see. Put it anywhere. Or don't. Have three friends pick up the front bumper. Whatever. So no, I do not know how to change a tire, not really. Lucky for me there are these little graphics printed on my jack that show me just how to do so.

ringringring

"Hey Tricia, what's going on?"
"Hey mom, I just had some questions about the jack-"
"Tricia, this is why we got you triple A."
"Mom, it's in front of my house and I have the tools. I am not calling them for this, I can't have people seeing that. I want to do this. I need to do this."

My mom knows just how to be supportive. In my heart I know she understands why I have to do this. The woman rebuilt jet engines for a living and so she probably feels like this is an underling task, but my self esteem was on the line and Ron had already injured my outdoorsy reputation by calling me a "homebody" earlier in the week. I was going to show him. I was going to show the world. I was in my insulated overalls with tools in my hands and I was going drive on a tire changed by me out to City of Rocks where I was going to regain my confidence by camping. It was a call to arms for my street cred.

Into the house I went so that passers-by could not see me conducting a self-taught class on how to put together a newfangled jack and then use it.

ringringring

A phone call informing me that I will once again not be camping this week.

"WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY." And it's not so much that I can't go camping, because the situations that had to occur for this to happen are pretty heartbreaking. It's about timing. Every time I make up my mind to go camping, something happens the night before. Every time. Work, or illness, or ten below, etc. I'm going to have to figure out a way to sneak up on this camping business because I don't see how I'm ever going to catch a break if I don't put it in a headlock first.

In somewhat of a pissy mood at Destiny, I got back on my knees next to the car and started beating the shit out of the lugnuts. Very cleansing, that task. What happened next was me noticing that the donut was so small, and cute, and kind of uh, soft. I put it on anyway, because if there's one thing I do, it's try real hard. Lower the jack back down...

Flat.

"WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYY." Who puts a flat donut in the back of a car? Who does that? It's not like a spare, where you throw it in the back in shoddy shape because you plan on fixing it and casually hope you will not need it again. No, a donut is always there because some shit's going to go wrong and it's only a matter of time and by putting that comical piece of Save Your Ass in the trunk, you have acknowledged that fact and refuse to not be ready for it.

And it was flat.

I had gained some spectators in the neighbors, one of whom ever so kindly offered to drive me to a tire shop tomorrow morning to get the stake of a screw pulled out of my tire and patched up. People can be so incredibly nice sometimes. I can't say that it would have occurred to me to offer the same had our situations been reversed. Not that I wouldn't have it in me, I just sometimes forget about the obvious things in favor of playing with finger puppets or trying to dig caves in Jello Pudding snack packs.

This day of minor perturbances ended in a breath of relief, for today was the one-year anniversary of Three Dogs. Approximately 13 months ago I stopped dead on the sidewalk because I saw a man with a fascinating beard on his hands and knees inspecting stools on the front porch of what used to be a dental office.

"Is that an espresso machine in there?"
"Yeah."
"Are you guys open yet?"
"No, not for two weeks."

And so it began for me. Over half of the people I consider worth knowing in Silver City have been met there. To be crammed into that tiny building with them all at the same time was a reward, to say the least.

My lip is bruised, my footies smell like puke, my donut is out there getting a bent rim, my tent has still not known a fresh breeze, and I have this awful memory of telling someone at Three Dogs about that time Minnie chowed on my undies (perfectly clean, as in "out of the package" clean) for so long that she actually got them slobbery. That's my day, that's my life. All in all a great day in its own funny way, but I wouldn't be disappointed if I woke up free of the cat tomorrow.

The Dream Girl

2011-02-10T11:34:00.000-08:00

As relayed to me during a phone conversation with a friend.

"All I want is a glittery, shiny Transformer with... a flowing rainbow mane. On rollerskates."

Can I just tell you what a pain in the ass it is to try to make something look glittery? Particularly when one does not actually know anything about Photoshop beyond the magnetic lasso. I tried to outsource this job to Christi Bertelsen, a conversation that started out well enough but ended like this:

"How is my art coming?"
"I haven't started it yet, I'm sick today."
"I'm commissioning this from you, I expect the best."
"Oh great, then I'll send you an invoice."

End commission.

"Why don't you just do it yourself?"
"Because my mouse is in my car and I've been too lazy to go get it." In the end I did go get the mouse out of the car, used it for about five minutes and then forgot about it completely for the rest of the two hours, struggling through the lasso with this confounded finger pad.

My first attempt at commissioning a piece of art was a disaster, as was the reintroduction of the mouse into my daily life. All the same, "Dream Girl" is exquisite and I expect many more requests for Dream Significants to be rolling in at any moment.

I'm sorry, what was that you were saying about foreheads and necks? Yeah I don't get that part...

2011-02-07T00:23:00.000-08:00

On one end of the humanity spectrum are people with scruples who enjoy the finer things in life (this is where I am), and on the other end are Super Bowl watchers. I am constantly at odds with these people. They say stupid things and believe stupid things as well. However, the great thing about Super Bowl people is that for that one wretched day every year, you can count on not having to see them, period. Today was that day.

A very quiet day, it turned out. I sold approximately ten drinks in six hours. I was so bored that I cleaned years' worth of gummy ice cream splotches out of the freezer, and it still wasn't enough to keep me busy. At some point between Stevie Nicks' Gypsy and the end of the night I decided that I need to make more art.

"Yeah. I need to make art. Art."

Of course this means another Kidney Bean scenario. There is one that I had brainstormed over a little bit in the past, in that not so distant past when I was so unemployed that all I could do to keep myself sane was to go from one Bean scene to the next. For the time being though, all I had at my disposal was a pen and some post-its.

One thing that gets me is this: I don't understand bodies. Muscular makeup, appendages, heads and faces, etc. Don't even get me started on phalanges. If you can imagine someone holding four vienna sausages between each finger in a fist, then you have an idea of what my fingers usually look like. I cannot let it keep me from trying. And I have to point out, now, that there was a time when I maybe could have been able to draw well.

From that time. And no, I did not care about his arm. I just sketched it because the fingers were attached.

It was at this point that I think I could have probably improved my ability by leaps and bounds, but what I decided to do instead was have a mental breakdown, kick a hole in my bedroom wall to teach the crackheads upstairs a lesson in how to be quiet, destroy a relationship, then move to NYC to join an ill-fated, sea-bound reality show crew as partner to a camerawoman so obnoxious that the two of us were put on night duty to keep her from driving everyone else overboard.

Back to stick people, indeed. Who needs to know about obliques when you can just peruse the internet and Photoshop everything together and put a Kidney Bean in front of it all.

So here I am, regressed back to whenever the hell, thinking that yeah, this twenty second sketch I just made from a newspaper ad on a purple post-it ain't that bad. No sirree. But I don't have to worry about my shortcomings there, because I'm going to regulate on some Kidney Bean.

"I don't like Kidney. He's gross. I don't like looking at him. He makes me think of a liver."

"Yeah that's why they call it a kidney bean."

"I just, I don't like it." This is my dear friend, showing her true colors. I love Kidney, 99.9 percent of my friends love Kidney. But here is my night, having ended with a bonanza of Amanda Lepore, Alice in Wonderland and Hyperbole and a Half.

So there you go world, I give to you the purple post-it.

Christi and Tricia Talk Film, Part 1.

2011-02-02T21:49:00.000-08:00

It started out with this topic: "Which is more important in silent film: story or correct film speed projection?". How quickly our debates degenerate.

triciainharlem 12:05 am
Battleship Potemkin could not have gone by fast enough for me
"Look at those bitches run. Run faster please."
clickingankle 12:05 am
hahah i dont know if saw that
triciainharlem 12:05 am
believe me you did.
Women and kids getting trampled on a stone staircase as soldiers march down them,
and shots of cows at a slaughter interspersed.
triciainharlem 12:06 am
Imagine me in class, in the dark, my head thrown back... "ughhhhhhhhhhhhh goood
pleaaaaaaaaase"
20,000 bucks worth of pain
clickingankle 12:06 am
god
triciainharlem 12:07 am
youtube it.
clickingankle 12:07 am
my class was at 9am on a monday
triciainharlem 12:07 am
you will hate the thirty seconds you spend watching it
clickingankle 12:07 am
you know i couldnt learn shit at that time
clickingankle 12:08 am
i kind of remember the little american
and the train robbery i think was
they painted the gun fire purple
triciainharlem 12:09 am
yeah and the girls dress too
clickingankle 12:09 am
looked like they shot with magic
triciainharlem 12:09 am
ha ha ha
I feel so bad for the geriatric who had to paint that frame by fuckin frame
clickingankle 12:09 am
and birth of a nation of course
triciainharlem 12:09 am
"well great, there's another blob on a dress. Next"
triciainharlem 12:10 am
"Guys, I've been to the future, and in the future this is not at all impressive"
clickingankle 12:11 am
hahah
if only
triciainharlem 12:11 am
but you know, I'd do it anyway. It would probably be the only job I could have had
why use purple for gunfire?
clickingankle 12:11 am
i would totally take that job
triciainharlem 12:11 am
ha ha ha
clickingankle 12:12 am
you and me painting shitty bloches on frame and talking
triciainharlem 12:12 am
ha ha ha
clickingankle 12:13 am
oh god
triciainharlem 12:13 am
i love how that robber throws the dummy off the top of the train pitchfork style
clickingankle 12:14 am
i was talking to jose about art or soemthing im always going through and quoting lyrics from lavern and shirley without knowing it
triciainharlem 12:14 am
nice
triciainharlem 12:15 am
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onfUau7Smbs&feature=related
clickingankle 12:15 am
how dummys need to be the same wieght as a person to seem even a little believable
triciainharlem 12:15 am
the rabbit hole is a fucking grave!
Damn alice must have been real stones
stoned
clickingankle 12:16 am
this has been going on for ever hasnt it?
it is a grave!
triciainharlem 12:17 am
"Okay, let's go!"
"I don't see why I wouldnt."
clickingankle 12:17 am
im going to teach my child not to step into graves
triciainharlem 12:17 am
it's a good first lesson
at least teach them to not go into graves with bunnies
I love how Thomas Edison's men screwed Melies out of his genius fortune
What an asshole
clickingankle 12:19 am
i guess i can teach them not to follow shit that you would only see on tv
clickingankle 12:20 am
yeah
triciainharlem 12:20 am
random tests. Dress up like a bunny and try to get your kid to follow you to a graveyard
clickingankle 12:20 am
is that what i explain to child services?
"just making sure my kids not stupid"
triciainharlem 12:21 am
ha ha haha hha hh
please do
oh my god.
Can you imagine your kid? "God my mom is such a bitch."
"Shut up, you only half passed. You would have followed me all the way if the cop didn't see us jaywalking"
clickingankle 12:22 am
i can see myself making a costume for this lesson
i mena i cant
triciainharlem 12:23 am
I'm seeing a white sweatsuit with a plastic rabbit face.
But somehow I can't see you doing this. It's Rebecca.
With her high school Rebecca walk.
clickingankle 12:23 am
hahah so creepy
is it different?
triciainharlem 12:23 am
"Well let's go see how stupid my kid is now. Hey. Hey. Yeah come over here. Let's go"
clickingankle 12:23 am
not of angsty
of= so
triciainharlem 12:23 am
angsty for sure
the one where she's hunched over a little
clickingankle 12:24 am
haha
oh i love rebecca
triciainharlem 12:24 am
me too
I miss that spazz
clickingankle 12:25 am
i can see myself being lazy enough to just draw a map with the grave being the end and a creepy human rabbit and seeing if my kid finishes it
triciainharlem 12:25 am
Oh I know for sure my kid would go into the grave.
And then she would come back really excited and try to get me to go too
clickingankle 12:26 am
hahaha
you ever see movies where the kid is like wise beyong its years and like watching themselfs when mom is at work
clickingankle 12:27 am
if i have kids i need one of those
triciainharlem 12:28 am
Yeah that's the kind I need too
clickingankle 12:28 am
i'd have to had internet set up with a cam watching the apt
triciainharlem 12:28 am
I'm going to start training mine as a latchkey at two years old
"Ma'am, your kid was kidnapped while you were at the gym" "well then, I guess she didn't do it right, did she. Lesson 5 failed."
clickingankle 12:29 am
damn
clickingankle 12:30 am
well my kid gets karate lessons a cell phone
one where they can only call me and the police
triciainharlem 12:30 am
mine gets no cell phones
mine gets yodel lessons
and hapkido
clickingankle 12:30 am
hahah
triciainharlem 12:31 am
guess who isn't winning any popularity contests
clickingankle 12:31 am
good
maybe they wiill stay off drugs
clickingankle 12:32 am
that shit terrifies me and im so far from kids
triciainharlem 12:33 am
Yeah. Mine will know better. somehow.
I will show them Faces of Meth
clickingankle 12:33 am
oh me too
did you see Twelve
triciainharlem 12:33 am
I will take them on a car ride through Bushwick and tell that's where they will go to live if they do drugs
twewlve? no
clickingankle 12:33 am
shit that where me and my kids may live
triciainharlem 12:34 am
no, you guys will be in a LES project because you will still be refusing to live in a borough
clickingankle 12:34 am
yeah twelve is a drug that like cocain and lsd
triciainharlem 12:34 am
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOeIqYCeVxk
holy shit watch the girl "play" with the cat at 2 minutes
I think one of those girls accidentally punches it in the head
clickingankle 12:36 am
oh god!
this was back when horse get killed for film
is that supposed to be a girl
triciainharlem 12:37 am
yeah she loooks like a troll
clickingankle 12:37 am
yeah
makeup test please
triciainharlem 12:37 am
a troll and then her special friend
ha ha ha haha
ha ha ha ha
makeup test
fuck man. she's pretty creepy.
she looks alright close up, but that hair. Hair and make up struggled a bit
clickingankle 12:38 am
cus little girls are not supposed to look like they are wearing makeup
or tons of it
triciainharlem 12:39 am
"I told them, I said, you know, I can't do my work properly if they don't take the time to do hair and makeup tests, I said that."
clickingankle 12:39 am
hahah
triciainharlem 12:39 am
More bows plus makeup equals youth
clickingankle 12:39 am
"shes so talented. shes never going to have to do porn"
triciainharlem 12:40 am
ha ha ha
"Must be weird not having someone come on you"
clickingankle 12:40 am
hahahahahahaaf
triciainharlem 12:40 am
i don't know how this became about Showgirls so quickly
clickingankle 12:40 am
people got aids and shit
triciainharlem 12:41 am
pause the video at 2:14
clickingankle 12:42 am
creepy
triciainharlem 12:42 am
yeah

2011-01-30T11:01:00.001-08:00

Around this time last year I talked a friend into getting a leather vest from the army surplus store downtown. She can do this; she is petite, dainty, and has the ability to look feminine even with her Peter Pan hair. Needless to say I was jealous and have held onto the need to find a vest for myself since then. But for me it's different. The vests aren't long enough, or they don't fit my freakish anatomy correctly.

Until last week. During a trip to Las Cruces with Joanie, we came across a 2 for 1 coat sale, vests included. It was here that I found my perfect vest.

Nothing says loving like a free vest. Now, it is pretty thick because it is lined with sheep wool, making it kind of paunchy, but I love it. So warm. It is made for men, so I will have to do something about the extra inch of vest at the shoulders, but it will be magnificent once I get it tailored.

A recent addition on my list of things to purchase were velcro shoes. Now, those who have known me since middle school recall the debacle in gym class, the one where the day before I headed to WalMart to get myself shoes I didn't have to tie, the joke-target girl showed up with the exact shoes I was going to get. Naturally, I did not buy the shoes after that. Shausha Lee was already working hard enough to keep me from getting picked on for looking like a boy, I probably would have had to start paying her if I'd shown up in shoes that were actively being made fun of. Middle school politics are complex.

However. This last time around in New York I ended up living in my rain boots because of the blizzard. My running shoes would not have worked even a day since the mesh was torn, the sole was ripping away, and a hole in the side showed my sock. I forgot about them. This actually is unfortunate though, because although they looked like I pulled them out of a gutter, they were great for daily use and were super comfy. But I accidentally left them behind in New York. I've been having to wear my new Pumas since then, shoes I did not want to wear but with nicer casual clothes and/or dancing. Not to mention they are thin on the bottom and therefor super uncomfortable to work in.

All my friends jeered when I told them velcro shoes would be perfect for my work at Javalina. I set out to buy some at WalMart but they were all unbelievably gross and overpriced. But, approximately one hour after I found my vest, I found these:

Yeah, six dollars!

Now imagine me wearing both simultaneously. It's beautiful, isn't it. Next on my list of things to buy are suspender trousers. This guy at work wears them and I have decided I must have some too. Clip on suspenders don't work. I know this because I bought a $2 pair along with the shoes at Goodwill, and all the do is pretend to hold on until someone comes along and tugs. Button suspenders are where it's at, but to use button suspenders, you gotta have the button pants. Finding these for women will be near impossible, I'm sure. At least, the fit I want. I found the exact pair my coworker wears, but he's a guy. The size 32... this is hard to explain. The size 32 fist me perfectly. Like any pair of jeans I would ever want to buy. And these are guy's jeans. But you can't just wear suspender trousers without suspenders, it looks almost as foolish as wearing suspenders over your shoulders without being clipped on to anything. They are really high waisted with all these buttons just begging to be used. But isn't it kind of redundant to wear suspenders with pants that stay up on their own- really well? Another thing is that these pants would make good work pants. If I buy them, they will be multitasked. And so they must have moving room. Crouching, jumping, scooting, etc. I don't like doing these things in jeans that are clinging to me. Civvies. I'm sure that a man in these size 32s would have found them perfect for such use, but I am in between the perfect glove fit of 32 and the balloon paunch of the 34. This is why I need women's suspender pants. But when you go to women's pants, they all shoot for the tighter than glove fit. You can see my quandary.

Why do I want these pants again, you ask? Because I like the way they look. Because I want them. This dream probably will not come true, but I shall devote my time to it anyhow.

Scott Bakula, take me back to last night. I will be having that Corona after all.

2011-01-23T09:48:00.001-08:00

Last night I closed up shop at my workplace all by myself. It was the first time and I think it went well. Then I went nextdoor to the Buff to meet up with a friend and say goodnight. Before I got in the door I reunited with a different friend, one of the coolest, kindest hearted men I have ever met. I should have known it was coming, one doesn't eat at Don Fidencio's and not have some sort of Amos oriented interaction. Once inside the bar I found my friend Ryan. I could not manage even a single beer though, because the night before I had one Corona rather quickly and got a stomach ache.

There is a reason I do not drink anything quickly unless it is water. My stomach likes to dabble in coffee and alcohol, not swim in it.

So I turned the beer down so that I could- as I thought- go home and sleep because I was tired.

Then I got in my bed and wasn't tired. Hmmmmmmmm......... Susan is always telling me to read the vagina monologues and there it is right over there, guess I'll do that. BORRRRRRRR-ing. A bunch of stories where women liken their junk to flowers and gifts and whatever else metaphor they can talk their way around. Trying really hard to make a case for holding the vag as all things woman. I can understand "woman power" and I can understand "vag power", as medical as the latter seems it should be. But I don't understand glorifying being female and feminine by giving all the credit to the vag. I thought that was in the brain. Did I get that wrong? Power is in the mind and not the muscles. Kindness and wealth are not in the wallet. Stuff like that. I've never understood women who reclaim their feminine power by putting their vag on a pedestal. But then, I have always regarded my body and the things upon it as secondary to my mind, a kind of side-effect of being born. A body for moving from place to place and clothes on it so that I don't get arrested in transit. Perhaps that's why trannies and cross-dressers don't surprise me.

But then, I am the girl who showed up to the Women's Circle night in a fast food uniform, not even bothering to take off my greasy green apron before having to read a prayer of beckoning and thanks to the Goddess of the North. Perhaps it's just that I don't give a shit. More than likely it is this: worship or "acute focused praise" of anything has never been for me anyway. Catholicism didn't stick, neither did Dungeons and Dragons. No reason Vaginocity would succeed where others have failed. Joke about D&D aside, these things always come off to me as some sort of game.

Somewhere out there is a group of 10,000 men giving all their masculine credit to their obliques, and writers who show their creativity thanks by worshiping the thumb/index finger combo.

Needless to say, I read Vagina Monologues quickly because I skipped all the poetry and the metaphors. There were some interesting facts and figures in the books, but not enough to make me feel rewarded for the thirty minutes I spent with it. Then I put the book down and bitterly wished I had stayed at the bar.

2011-01-20T07:31:00.000-08:00

A few days ago I went into a coffee shop where an ill woman had been. Word is she was no longer contagious at the time, but you never can tell I guess. Then my roomie was a bit under the weather. Yesterday I ran into a guy I know: he was fresh off two days of horrifying illness.

The flu is back in town, has been for a month or so. I came back just time for butt-end of the rollercoaster ride, which is usually when I get sick anyway.

The flu. Needless to say, I am terrified. The last time I had the flu was right before I left Silver City, and it remains one of the worst experiences with the flu I've ever had. This is mostly because I was hiking at the time, but nonetheless the last thing I want to hear is that this is coming back around.

For the time being I will enjoy not being half dead and concentrate on other things, such as Turkey Creek Hot Springs and how I have my first day of work tomorrow. If you're in the area, come into Javalina tomorrow after 5 to see what kind of show I'm putting on.

Uh uh. Nope, no, don't keep me waiting. Uh uh. Bad.

2011-01-17T15:20:00.000-08:00

Strange thing, I don't consider myself a snooty bitch, I mean, I went to this interview in a vintage, paper-thin red Cardinal's shirt, with my red peacoat over it as a lame attempt to look classy. No clue what position the interview was for; could have been a night-stock clerk at a supermarket or as an assistant in the office, perhaps that was what the layering was for. So anyway I show up one minute before my appointed 2:15 interview. The secretary, instead of checking her books for my name, asked if I was expected. No. I was just going to see how close I could get to a professional man with a gun in my pocket by simply walking in the front door. "Yes", received the news of his being in a meeting with dignified grace, and sat on the couch.

Three minutes later I decided I had had enough of the charade and told the secretary I was taking off. First off, here's this: I awoke to a message on my phone from a Mr. Aforementioned, asking to call him back to set up an interview. Was I taking crazy pills? No, this guy simply forgot that he called me four days ago, leading me to believe that he probably didn't remember our interview long enough to write it down in an appointment book before he got off the phone the first time around. Second: The secretary didn't know I was coming. There's a secretary. Now, let me lay this out for anyone who doesn't know. A secretary is the person who gets paid to be exactly like that Nosy Bitch you hate. They know everything, you have to tell them your business before you even get close to the person you need, and if shit goes sour you never hear it from the person you care about, it's always from this know-it-all. But we like that. The Nosy Bitch is the one that gets shit done. And there she was, not even knowing anyone was supposed to be coming. Where is the appointment book for her to look at? Stupid me, they probably don't have one since nobody called me to tell me that a meeting was scheduled over me, but damn that's being optimistic because that's assuming they had one last week when my interview was made.

What good is a secretary without an appointment book? Might as well be a jello shot girl. Sit there, look pretty, and entertain me while I wait for the real party to start.

Those three minutes were real long. And I kept thinking about my mom, and how her face would turn sour when she was kept waiting. She does this thing where she jerks her head upward in a miniature hair-toss/nose sniff. Then she drops her chin and looks out from under her brows. That's how you know the shit is turning bad. So I'm sitting there thinking about this unicorn of an appointment book, my mother tapping her fingernails and sniffing, and how I could have just not left home and continued my Arrested Development marathon. How long is this meeting? Nobody knows. Could be all day, since Mr. Aforementioned apparently blacked out during our first phone conversation or maybe he does know I'm sitting out here waiting on him indefinitely- and in that case he's a real vile motherfucker. This is for the birds. I'm out like trout. I have no money, I have no reputation. All I have is my time, and even if I choose to fritter it away, it is time I will fritter away on relaxation and productivity rather than aggravation and confusion. A person's own time is always more valuable to them than anyone else's. If you ask a person for that time, show up.

The secretary offered to run into the meeting to get Mr. Aforementioned, but no. No. Really, it's fine. I'm not sure he realized he had this interview today, because he called me this morning trying to set up an interview. Again. So no. I'm going to call him later to get all this ironed out. But thank you. A note? Sure you can leave a note.

"At... 2... 18?"
"Mmmm hmmm." Approximately two and a half minutes longer than I should have been waiting. "Thank you."

No second job for me, at least not this week. But I really don't need to be counting on a paycheck from a company that can't afford to spring for an appointment book.

Stucifer

2011-01-13T18:13:00.000-08:00

My mother the petard hoister has finally seen what the other side of the stick is like. I don't want to divulge her secrets just on the off-chance that someone of Tieperman relation actually still reads this, but let's just say she burned herself in an attempt at sneakiness. In honor of this newfound letdown of hers, I have just now formed the Tieperman Surprise Consultation Guild. Our basic service is telling you how your sneaky plan could fail, but we can branch out and use not only our combined history of screwing ourselves over, but also our combined talents (mine being massive paranoia that something will go devastatingly wrong, mother's being that the potential target will somehow fuck your shit up) to set up a Failproof Sneak Attack for you.

I am once again scheming. There is a friend I have had for the better part of a year, kind of sort of. He really gets into where he's at, you know? So he's not here, which means it's hard to get him. Anyway, we in Silver miss the hell out of this guy, really really badly. On a side note, I am living with the same woman he stayed with last year. Upon my return to Silver, I visited all the old hangouts and all I can hear is "where is Matt?!" "I don't know!" I mean, crap. Two-thirds of the triumvirate managed to get back to Silver, but this last third is really bothering people. Okay, I will try for the fortieth time to find Matt Flick. Finally, after a year of trying to find him and keep his attention, he responded to the email in which I tell him that I have reunited with all his friends, that all our voices are joined in a raised "where the hell are you?" He told me where he is. He told me what he is doing. It is not enough. But not only that, I have found the perfect place for him to be: on the river with me in Chattoogaland. After dousing him with all the necessary informations, he has once again gone the way of silence. I wish I were lying when I say this, but I'm not... I have half a mind to drive to Fort Collins with an unlabeled glass jar of chloroform. Get your ass in the trunk, or I will get your ass in the trunk for you.

Now, let's move on to this morning. I woke up at 7:30 an immediately felt cheated because the ONLY perk to habitual unemployment is being able to sleep until a vulgar point in the afternoon. However, I had an ache in my neck at the base of my skull. A sort of headache. Thinking it would go away if I went back to sleep, I lay there for an hour. No luck. "Hmmmm I wonder if this has anything to do with me needing to pee really bad." I wasn't about to get out of bed for that, besides, I have positively poisoned my internals with urine without a headache. "Well, guess I stayed in bed too long. Up I get." And I walk around for a while. Poke the cats. Torture Gia the poodle. The usuals. Then I sit down because I felt fuzzy. BOOOOOM migraine in my face and my nose and oh my god I think I feel like barf. Back to bed to get away from the sunlight.

**********
I am on a dreary, snow and ice covered city sidestreet, and a Godzilla sized machine with tank tracks and a plow on the front is taking up the entirety of the street. It is so large that the plow cannot clear the buildings on either side, and the people below walk in perpetual shadow. It is loud, snow is falling everywhere, and my friend Philip is there. He is standing against the outcropping wall of an offset building, he is not only wearing half a stick of eyeliner around each eye, but he has sparkly stickers on his face. He is gaunt, heroin chic, and telling me something about our mutual friend being in love with me. He gives me a long hug and I turn to walk down the street. From beneath the shadow of the machine comes several people dragging a raft by the chicken straps. They are dripping wet, and my co-worker Jodi is with them. As he passes, I hear him saying "Pick it up! Pick it up!". These people simply will not put the raft on their heads. Jodi rips the PFD off the father in the back of the group and somehow this makes him feel better. There are more rafters walking out from between the tank tracks, and all I can think of is how I was just hiding in a bathroom stall from some unnamed rockstar, and that we are all going to get real messed up on this side street. Where was I headed, anyway?

And then I am in a room in what I understand is my mother's house. She and Jeff are outside doing yard work, and I recall that I had an unidentified caller on my phone a few days ago. I decide to call it back. Several times there is a presence on the other end, but just silence. I wander around the house, then out to the yard. Finally after another call, I get a voice. It is strained but solid, a woman's voice. She says hello and then we are cut off. Mom is running a mower. I call back.

"There is electricity under the shower," the woman's voice says in a weary whine. It is a spirit on the other end of the line, somehow I have called the Other Side. I accept this as fact.
"Well that's no good. I was just in there." Thinking of how inconvenient that is, getting electrocuted while I'm trying to be comfy in a hot shower.
"Ask it it's name," mom says from the lawnmower, for not only does she know it is a spirit as well, but she also wants to get to know it. I think it's wise as well, but only because I've seen Witchboard and know that you really gotta be careful who you're talking to.
"What's your name?"
"Stucifer."
"What?"
"Stucifer"
"Stefanie?"
"What's her name?"
"Mom!" I can't deal with spirits and mowers and my mom at the same time. "What? Drufer?" I ask, mistaking her name for one of the guy's who was in guide school with me.
"Stucifer." The voice is still otherworldly, solid, strained, tortured.
"Oh! Stucifer." Hmmm. Well okay. "It's Stucifer, mom." Mom wrinkles her nose and goes on with her business. I'm thinking that maybe it's Lucifer and he forgot his own name, but then no, it must be his stepdaughter or sister or something. Whoever it is, they don't seem to know that they are related to an underworld maven because they are really sounding miserable.
"Well, you'd better get rid of that electricity under the shower, Stucifer," I say with stern confidence, sure that this delivery can convince the step-something of Lucifer that they are responsible for straightening out my mother's plumbing-
**********

I wake up tangled in the blankets of my bed, head throbbing, and walk to the living room where I continue to feel nauseated and curse myself for going to sleep on a migraine. The cats will not play with me and so I go to take a shower. After that I lay facedown on the floor three feet from Joanie's heater and fall asleep until 3 in the afternoon. Joanie goes to take a shower but has not let enough time lapse since my shower.

"Yeah, the water heater used to be up here, but I moved it to the basement and now there's a gap."

Hmmmm. Heater in the basement. Hope that doesn't cause a problem... "Ugh I think I'm going to be sick." I did not get sick, instead I walked to Three Dogs, where Ria posited a theory of altitude adjustment, and I countered by suggesting my radical but magnificent change in diet from fast food to Joanie's organic vegetarianism. Perhaps a stressful couple of days. Or my mojo utterly stolen by this bottomless hole of job searching. Or all of it.

I drive to the Gila Nat'l Forest ranger station to buy a map and peruse jobs, narrowly escape an accusation of job-book theft, then go to Pizza Hut where I see a woman who is wearing Dr. Frankenfurter make-up without irony.

I cannot do this. I cannot do... whatever this is... anymore. This day has to go on somewhere.

2011-01-10T12:54:00.000-08:00

Glory, it does fade. Any thing or place that humans may touch, that beauty will one day perish. For instance, Tucumcari, New Mexico. A place once thriving with the hustle and bustle of a generation just discovering the majesty of America and the excitement of traversing it quickly, courtesy of route 66. Neon lights did abound, tracing forms of indians and tipis and horses, swimming pools everywhere, a dinosaur museum too. Today Tucumcari is a different sight these days, a ghost town of historic motels and graveyard of neon signs.

Nearly three years ago I passed a night at the Blue Swallow Motel, a cute little thing which still featured the original garages attached to each room. Tiny, tiny cars go in there. I was excited to return, but as I said, things go awry. This motel is closed now. If I can't get what I want, I'll get what is cheap. The Palomino Motel was the winner at $21.95, a motel which I'm guessing was something splendorous at the time but has now defuncted into a residential motel. The guy living next to my room may or may not have been skinning a woman alive, but he was most certainly sitting on the edge of his bed with the light off watching tv all day. I know because I could see through his window and past the fly-paper and food wrappers. His hair was beyond JBF, it was structural. It had solid integrity and probably inhibited his ability to lay down on his bed later in the day if he so chose. *sigh* The plan was to sit in my cozy room at the Blue Swallow and reminisce about life, but here I am in this craphole with Buffalo Bill instead. Oh crap here it comes-

August of 2008, fresh home from Korea and taking the vacation god himself owed me. I huddled up in the Blue Swallow to watch the presidential debates because dammit, not only was I going to vote, but I was going to be an informed voter. Later, while I was in Kansas and trying to figure out where I was supposed to vote, I discovered I had disenfranchised myself through a network of activities motivated by the necessity of having a drivers license in NY state. Needless to say I felt stupid for a very long time and vowed to never do that again. UPDATE: I am still a disenfranchised voter. I have no permanent home to speak of and probably never will be in my license's state of Texas during voting time. Also, I have run out of money multiple times and have found no magic bullet of employment happiness.

Although.

I'm a lot closer I think.

And it's worth mentioning that I have completed my glorious return to Silver City, New Mexico. In step with my past self, I had no job lined up and noticed halfway through my roadtrip that it was a fiscally retarded idea. But what can you do once you've already made it to Kansas? Well, I guess you turn left and go south. That's what.

On that same road trip in 2008, I had the genius idea to break into my friend's house in Manhattan, KS, and surprise the shit out of her. I sat in the dark a the front window and eagerly awaited her arrival. My mother talked me out of it, using a cocktail of your run of the mill comments that a mother says to a child in situations like these, such as "are you out of your fucking mind?". In retrospect, no I was not, but when you're in the moment and realize that hey, this is me sitting in the dark peering out of some blinds at the front yard and waiting for the moment I get to jump out and scream, you really do question yourself. To wrap the long story up, Emily told me she would have loved the surprise and would not have shot me because she does not have a gun.

Last week was my second attempt at surprising Emily during a roadtrip. I was going to show up at her familial home in Arkansas City, completely unannounced. Unfortunateness was already happening, though. My plan had been to live out of a tent in Silver City if I needed/wanted to, and at some point I realized that hey, I don't have a tent. Mother was kind enough to send hers on to me- addressed to Emily's home address in Kansas, with a delivery date of Thursday. But I got paranoid about this because like I said, my past attempt at a surprise was botched. I left my friend's house in Little Rock an entire day early so I could beat the package there and retain the surprise effect. Wednesday afternoon Emily called to ask why a big box off my belongings came to her house with her name on it.

"mmmmmmm that is curious. Really? So what else is up?" Didn't work for long. "Obviously... I.... am coming to pick up that box."

"Really?! When?"

"Well, um now. In three hours."

Nothing changes, nothing nothing nothing. Where glory never was, it will never be. This is not a moment, this is me.

And so I arrived in Silver City to the house of a wonderful woman, whom I know through a wonderful- if not perpetually absent- friend who lived with her last year. Her friend was in the kitchen making ayurvedic food, something I need to take intravenously if I'm ever to cleanse my body of all this fast food I just put in it. And surprise! I know him from last year too! A game of Scrabble? Don't mind if I do. And shall I pick up my friend who is insisting on walking all the way from Deming? Yes I shall. And do you know what we learned from the AARP superstar at the gas station? Those huge RVs only get 6 miles to the gallon when they are pulling an SUV behind them.

Our first stop was La Cocina, home of the Ridiculously Delicious Carne Asada burrito, smothered in green chili sauce. Right here, right here is something that will never get less lustrous with time. We entered our food coma and then I took Ryan straight over to Three Dogs so that one of the proprietors could give him hell for sending no salmon back from Alaska over the summer as he had promised to. And then on to chess, because somehow I managed to win three games out of the thirty we played last year and no matter how many games I lose for the rest of eternity, I will not be forgiven for that triumvirate of victories.

"You can move your rook right there, and then the bishop can take her queen. You see?" This is Susan at Three Dogs, and she for some reason felt the need to help Ryan destroy me even more thoroughly than he already was. He was up by approximately ten pieces. "It's over really. You don't stand a chance. It's over."

"Thank you, Susan, thank you." It's not about it being over, it's about other people around me not knowing that it is so obviously over. Maybe I have a trick up my sleeve, you know? Shit. "So, have you finished up school yet?"

"I start tomorrow."

"Again?"

"Oh yeah, it's too expensive for me to not go."

It's nice to be back. It's a warm glove, a marvelous feeling of falling back into a kaleidoscopic perfection of characters and activities, even if there is no money at the end of this rainbow.

So I guess what I was trying to say is don't go to the Palomino because there's probably just some weird guy in there.

Diva fingers

2010-12-26T22:06:00.000-08:00

It's blizzarding outside. For all but two or so hours I have been cooped up in the apartment. That two hours I spent at Cafe Amrita, catching up on journaling and watching people trying not to get blown over by the retarded wind. And then I did go outside, because I had to walk twelve blocks and two avenues to get back to Christi's. Five minutes into the walk I could not feel my legs. I could see them working down there, but there was not much sensation to speak of.

The story now is that I have not really been out of the house in two days. First, it was Christmas and I had other things to do, such as watch Christi cook and clean the apartment. And now today, a day of much snow. Two days of being pent up is rapidly leading to that state of mental duress I abhor: Life Review. Is it practical to just pick up and go to Silver City? I don't know, probably more practical than continuing to live out of my car in Atlanta. So I'm definitely winning on that count. What's strangely damaging to my psyche right now is that the ADHD study is no longer enamored with me. Ugh how am I supposed to get rich fast now? What am I supposed to do with my time until March? Hell. Hell. Damn.

But it's day 2 of being a shut-in, it's 2:54 a.m., and I haven't had any vegetables in at least a week.

Thankfully Christi is at her desk animating an 8-bit Mariah. I get to watch her act out diva fingers as she attempts to recreate it pixel by pixel.

"You don't get to laugh at this," she says, adamant that I not make her feel self-conscious about the animator's technique of faithful movement reproduction.

But it's funny. Because it's Mariah's diva fingers. And now it's the microphone. Hee hee hee hee this is so much more fun than worrying about where my life is going.

2010-12-25T09:22:00.000-08:00

Ahhhh Christmas. I'm in one of my favorite places, in one of my favorite new sweaters, smudging coffee all over the keys of my computer because the temperature of the coffee is so near to that of my body that I can't tell if I got any on my fingers when I spilled it on Christi's desk.

"Hey Christi, really do you need my help?"

"Um sure, you can slice these potatoes..."

Damn. I kind of didn't mean it because there is no room in her kitchen. It's a section along a tiny wall where maybe two people can stand if they try real hard, but I don't like going over there because I feel like I'm being stood in a corner for acting up.

But I did offer, and so I'm going to slice these potatoes. But I'm doing it on the couch.

2010-12-10T16:26:00.000-08:00

More on the life and times of pre-Bachian harpsichord later.

For now, let's talk about the life and times of me. For the time being, I work with Christmas trees. It blackens my hands, resulting in a unique hobo look. This work will eventually end, as will my housing. Well, the housing which isn't in the back of the car; the housing that is half of my friend's floor. I need a plan.

So here's my plan.

I go to New York to see Christi from the 24th until the 3rd, spending way too much money but hanging out with my best friends, getting to run a four mile race in Central Park at midnight on New Year's eve. How much fun? So that's housing, housing taken care of. What will I do when I return to my car in Atlanta?

Take part in an experimental ADHD medication trial, of course. That will take up two whole weeks in what I hope will be the beginning of January and includes housing in addition to money. After that? I've got two months to burn until the Chattooga white house is unlocked, I have to find something to do so I'm not just roaming about Long Creek like a zombie waiting for the food-people to make a break for it. What shall I do?

Make a run for Gila. This is my thinking. This is my next-best. I did, in fact, cry my face off on the train when I left, the thought of returning makes me feel happy. Plus, my friend is also kicking around the idea. This friend knows where all the hot springs are and is a person who finds much value in hiking, camping, and sitting around watching stars. And actually I do owe him; In late April I swore that if he would just let it go for that one damn week, we would return same time next year and make a raft out of scavenged wood to float down Gila. Now, the water is going to be nothing compared to what it was last year, but all I have to do is help him build it, throw it in the creek, and be frustrated with him until he gives up and beats the raft back into driftwood. Shouldn't take much more than a few hours for that to happen. Unfortunately, he's headed that way right about now and I don't think I can make it until early February at the soonest. This is a problem. Hell no, I'm not going into the Black Range by myself. I listen to Levi when Levi talks.

It occurred to me a long, long time ago that I do not make the best laid plans, and even when they are expertly laid, they are not the wisest. Who offers up their body to science for food and housing over money? Me. What's even more disturbing is that I like the idea and find it a good fit for my lifestyle. And not without fringe benefits too! I'm terrified of needles and can think of nothing more likely to kick the terror out of being poked and prodded than being poked and prodded multiple times a day for two weeks solid. Or better yet, a spigot put in my arm. Sign me up, yes ma'am.

If all else fails, I am always looking for a way to be a photographer's apprentice. If you know of one who needs a cronie, I'm willing to trade backbreaking labor for knowledge.

I Am Winning.

2010-11-28T07:51:00.000-08:00

The lady next to me is making me miss Julia, my Korean coworker in Daegu. It was something about how she was playing with her earring when I walked around the corner. Julia would do that when she was listening, sort of fiddle around a little and blink hard, opening her eyes very wide and leaning in to catch all the words and meanings before they escaped her. Don't know where she is or what she could possibly be up to, hopefully being a flight attendant like she wanted.

At present I am working in Stone Mountain, GA, on a Christmas tree lot with two raft guides and a paddler/chef. To say the least, it is a lot of fun. I get to curse, I get to lift heavy stuff, I get to be in the sun and rain. I am covered in sap, dirt, my own filth and muscles. As the workplace-injury lawyer said to me yesterday, I am "living the dream". Yeah, I kind of am. For those who don't know, Christmas trees is a job many raft guides run off to after rafting ends, a short burst of a job that fits nicely between rapids and ski lifts. Chances are, if you're buying a Christmas tree in this region, you are not talking to a bum who couldn't find a real job, you are talking to someone taking a break from getting thrown onto rocks for a living. A person who can't just take several weeks or months off and also knows they cannot be confined to a cubicle either. Be nice, be chatty, we are cool people. I promise.

Last night I went to the gym and damn near ran to the hot tub after my shower. I just needed hot. I needed to be surrounded by hot. So I'm running over there Olympic walking style, just trying my damnedest not to fall. I step in. I lower myself down. I win. I'm winning. I win everything. I win the world. I win. These are the thoughts that ran through my head with no prompting from my conscious mind. Reptilian. All the way. Programmed in. This is what animals think when they make the catch. I win. I am winning. I needed it; my back feels like a bag of ropes to the touch. True story. I lift trees, I throw them, I drag and lower them. I do all sorts of verbs to trees. Two nights ago we had to unload a truck full of behemoth trees and I just could not manage to stay on my feet. I fell on my face once and got to hear my coworker laughing from way down below because all she saw were my feet go up in the air. My favorite though, was me trying to tug a giant tree backward by one of the strings wrapping it. True to rookie form, I grabbed only one string instead of several and the thing broke when I worked up a powerful tug. So, seeing as my back was pointed down the tapering slope of the tree-pile, I fell pretty far back. But not just that, the sheer force of the string breaking sent me up in the air, turned me butt up with feet in the air, several feet back. I flew toward this guy who was waiting behind me and he thankfully put his hand out and shielded my head from hitting the wooden panel on the side of the flatbed. From my bed on the trees, I could see all the little helpers grinning.

"Believe me, I know how funny that looked. I felt it."

"What'd you put in your water?" Says the father who was trying to feed me beer just twenty minutes earlier. I was a complete clowncar all night. Falling into tree-holes, tripping on tips, ankles turning. I wasn't so bad the first night we unloaded a truck.

I stumbled into a second tree job. It is at a different lot with a different rafting friend and involves lighting Christmas trees. Craptons rolled in on her at one time, necessitating an assistant. For the last four nights I have driven over to her place after my shift in Stone Mountain ended and decorated for hours. I am slow. I am paranoid about my work quality. I am making her hold my hand through this and it is always because of tiredness. I don't know how Spring is making this happen every night. Last night we had to fill one tree to the brim with lights. So many that I would consider it vulgar. Branches were drooping. Before we even got done I couldn't look at the tree without seeing a haze, much like the NY skyline on a misty night. Spring and I may have flash burns on our faces. I hope they enjoy it the first time they plug it in because once is all they're getting. This shit is going to blow up when they turn it on. The kicker is that Spring is back there right now trying to cram the remaining lights on. I wish I had a biohazard suit for her to wear.

So here's a new development in my life: I'm somehow not as modest as I once was. I noticed while at the gym when, instead of changing in the bathroom stalls I changed by the bench. I would not have noticed except everyone else went to the toilets. I suppose that getting to walk around in a swimsuit for my job is partly to blame, but also my horrid swimsuit/shower experience in Korea. Nothing that has to do with being naked in a locker room could ever be as bad as that. Bring it on. I see a naked woman in a locker room and I don't think "they're naked", I think "they aren't being traumatized by swimsuit, luckyyyyyyy".

My task for whenever the opportunity presents itself is to find a job for winter proper. Anywhere, anything, I'm even considering ski resorts. Ugh. But I figure that I can get a CDL and that is useful anywhere. Or.... Gila. Gila. Gila and camping for weeks and weeks. Slaughter canyon. Animas creek. The Black Range. Indian dwellings for me to camp in. So much for me to see and do and disappear into. But I am getting to be a big girl, so I'm going to try to be responsible about this whole "outstanding student loan" thing and look for ways to get me some money. It is in this spirit that I relaunch my sporadic campaign of asking for jobs I do not deserve.

YAYYYYYYYYY.

2010-11-21T17:08:00.000-08:00

The people sitting right in front of me have been talking about marriage for what seems to have been forever.

"Someone needs to get married so we can have a wedding." Well, that is how the math would go, but let's go one better: just have a party. It's the same thing, except you don't have to dress up.

Going and going. But it's bigger than this, it's in two languages. When they get too personal, say, about the just married friends of theirs who live behind Taco Bell, they switch to Korean. Let me tell you, the memories are rolling fist over teeth in this Starbucks. And they are young, too. Must be 25 or younger, judging by the fact that the girl had to "reveal" that her boyfriend is 33. I have half a mind to smack the guy in front of me in the back of the head, but people have done stuff like that to me before and not only did I not pick up the message of "there's more to life" through osmosis, I found it disturbing. So I won't. I will not hit these fresh-faced Korean youths in the back of the head just because they are having a leisurely conversation about something I hate. I will just continue looking at this skirt I can't afford and let my subconscious run wild with the Jenga possibilities that must take place for me to be able to fit all my shit in my car while simultaneously sleeping in it. Diagonally.

Oh great. The Koreans started speaking Korean and then the dude just turned around and stole a quick over-the-shoulder-while-leaning look at me while the other guy spoke. Mind you, I have not been making noises or glaring. Just typing. And oh swell, the Koreaness just leaned to the side so she could see me around the guy's head. Daaaaammmmmm itttttt. Ugh. I hate it when that happens. I wonder if they are making fun of my festive winter sweater or my too-short jeans. Can't be helped. I left my only pair of fitting jeans in Corpus Christi. Oh my god this is killing me. Foreign languages are my arch nemesis. I'll never figure out how to Jenga my CarHome now.

2010-11-19T17:56:00.000-08:00

Ryan Marshall wins quote of the day. I don't remember what it was, but it was at my expense, regarding relationships, involving metaphors of "organic ingredients" and ridiculously long brewing periods, and made me chortle until I forgot how keenly true the statement was.

So true, so true indeed. I feel bad, but there you go. Do I know you? Yes I do. Do you know me? No you don't. Have we known each other a year? Yes, the better part of. Do I like you? Yes I do. Will I date you? If you ask me that, you are worrying about it too much.

I don't mind being like this. It has saved me from STDs and copious amounts of drama, particularly where this summer is concerned. Well, it saved me from some of the drama. Drama showed up anyway, like a mail-order bride that someone bought me as a joke. What sucks, though, is that other people are starting to notice that I'm this way. Excessively careful about who I get tangled up with and to what degree. This hasn't been a problem for a while, not since I started moving every three or four months.

But... I'm refusing to not come back next season.

Creatures A-Go-Go

2010-11-12T19:29:00.000-08:00

At some point in the early morning I woke up to feeling of something moving. It was Paco, the trusty yet barely socialized cat. I like him, even if he does have problems figuring out how to play.

He was sitting attentively at my side so I stroked his head a couple of times. But nothing. Nothing, really. Still in a sleepy haze, I flopped my arm back down and watched his silhouette sit. And then it became creepy. He was just sitting there, not moving, not pandering, just making me think back on the urban legend of the china doll. And then, naturally, Paco's head jerks downward and I feel his mouth clamped on my forearm. His little head tugging, shadow going here and there. "Paco!" I smacked him in the face. Paco went away. I'm sure if I tell my mother she will say it is Paco's way of getting me out of bed before 8 a.m.

Despite the early showers of the day I headed off to Corpus. "Yay beach!" Perfect time for me to try out the Speedo I got for twenty-five bucks. There are about thirty yards between the parking lot and the waterline, and during that short walk I saw not one but nine Portuguese Men-of-War. Eight little tiny ones, looking all small and pitiful like when you are trying to blow a bubble and accidentally shoot the gum out of your mouth when you're halfway done, and one decently big one. I crouched down next to it and watched it's rubbery bubble body expand or crawl or breath or whatever it is doing when it moves. Ugh. I looked around and no one else seemed to be bothered by this. Maybe they hadn't seen them. Maybe I had stumbled across a tight-knit flock of them and there weren't more all along the beach. Don't know. But as soon as I entered the water all I could think of was the "intensely painful sting" and the "whip like welts" those stings leave. I just found a website that recommends white vinegar and a meat tenderizer to relieve the pain. The vinegar I can figure out, but a meat tenderizer? Someone once told me that - ugh there's a McRib commercial on right now and it is making me need to vomit. Anyway someone told me there is a website one can go to in order to see how the jellyfish in your lovely neighborhood are doing. Are there too many to swim? Is the coast clear? Why didn't I look for this. Why aren't there signs at beach access points the way there are fire hazard signs in every national forest. Someone ought to do something about those things; how to pick them up? I don't think that you can treat it like dog poop, no paper wads for these things. What if I had stepped on one? Holy crap, that would be more than karmic revenge for laughing at Lindsay stepping on a bee, or Spring for swallowing a yellow jacket. I didn't stay in the water long, and I only went under once for fear of coming back up under a floating blue bag of painful venom.

Walking the dogs later in the day I saw a curious sight: an older woman walking her two dogs and trying to keep one of them in line by side-kicking it... in the neck. I think she wanted the dog in question to stop looking/growling at the husky I was walking, but then, I don't know, if you kick me in the neck while I'm pissed off and trying really hard to solve a complex equation, chances are I'm still going to be pissed off after you kick me in the neck. "Stop being angry, stop being angry," kickkickkick "stop being angry."

My mom found out the hard way-

- you cannot beat the angry out of any being.

Then, after walking the dogs, some old lady appeared at my door bearing letters and papers, telling me that she has been picking up my mother's stuff, taking breaks in her sentences to chastise the orange cat stretched on the porch, a cat which has been torturing Paco for at least a year just by being untouchable. It is this woman's cat. She has five. I know at least two of them, one being the cat of present, Moshy, and the other being the less sociable Monster.

"I have a FedEx package for your mom. Can you come down and get it? I'm two houses down." Off we go to a yard with many a holiday woodcut in the yard and into a house filled with anthropomorphized everything, mostly cows. Wooden. Sitting upright. Legs dangling over a table edge. Bookshelf edge. Counter edge. Bring me an edge so that I might dangle my freakishly long cow legs over it. Animals holding signs. Signs with animals on them. There are things on top of things that serve no purpose but to be on top of them. Doilies. Spreads. Cloths of some sort. There was so much in this woman's home, so much, I couldn't see anything. Never in the course of the day did I think I would stumble headlong into Tchotchketopia. If tchotchkes come to me when they die, I will be able to tell them where their heaven is. I don't recall much of what happened in there, there was so much hammered aluminum, I just tried to keep my head down and blaze through. I started asking about her cats. Wasn't Monster one of the other cat's names? Where is he?

"Oh he was a mean one wasn't he?"

"I liked him."

Well well well, what happened to Monster was he died.

"He fell on a stake."

"I'm sorry-?" Like, the kind you eat? Am I hearing this right? We walk back out to the front yard.

"You see I have these things in the yard that I put out," she motions to the wooden cut-outs in her yard, among them a gigantic turkey, "and they have these, you know, stakes on the back-"

"-ugh"

"-and... he just-"

"ugh."

How does a cat impale itself on a three foot tall stake? I won't even entertain you with the detailed scenarios that went through my head, but they involve tall roofs after tranqs, pouncing suicide, rapidly slipping along the grass into a tossed-aside wooden stake, and then there's the one with a really angry old woman. I needed to know. I wanted to know. How does this happen? You know... like... explain! Thankfully, I have this "off" button. It's in the same section of my brain that stops the drinking train and puts me on the water train without bothering to ask my id. This other button, though, it's pretty cool too. It stops me from asking questions about serious situations when the only possible outcome is me laughing very very hard when I don't want to. So I'll never know, but I will always know that this poor cat died in some ridiculous manner courtesy of a yard art tchotchke stick. And that fucking sucks.

Friday. It started with a cat, it ended with a cat.

2010-11-11T17:19:00.000-08:00

"Would you like some coffee?" This is a short, round Mexican man with pudgy cheeks like a toddler under a roughed up red baseball cap, hands in the pockets of his jeans. My face is crammed into my pillow, most likely sheeny with drool. It is hour 28 of my Greyhound trip and we have long since entered into that territory where English ceases to be the primary language of instruction and some other brand of bus is picking up where the Greyhounds don't want to go: south of Houston.

The bus is in the parking lot of a gas station/McDonald's, and I have decided not to eat because I've had nothing but crap up until that point (note to all: "beef jerky" and "beef steak" are different, the latter tasting remarkably like chemicals) and was afraid of enraging my stomach, not to overlook my having only one dollar to my name anyway. Food was a moot point.

"No, no thank you."
"You sure? You don't want something to drink, or some food?"
"Oh no, but thank you. Thanks."

He does a few quick nods and gets off the bus for our ten minute break. Several minutes later, lingering on the brink of sleep again, I feel something nudging my arm and open my eyes. He is standing there again, smiling and pointing at the seat next to me. A small bottle of Coke and a McDonald's bag.

"Oh no! Oh you didn't have to do that!" He puts his hands up and says "it's okay!"

"... geeze, thank you. Thanks." And I was almost panicked because if there's one thing I can hardly deal with, it's the kindness of strangers. He returned to his seat, looking out the window, leaving me to wonder why it is I have a problem letting people do nice things for me.

*I must look like hell. Some guy just bought me breakfast* That was my first thought. That I looked so incredibly greasy and- for lack of a better word- condemned, that he felt like he needed to buy me breakfast. But then, wasn't that the truth? I was both of those things, and still looking at 6 hours of travel.

*Am I supposed to talk to him? Like, go over there and talk to him? Was he hitting on me?* However, there is something very near to an actual rule about talking on Greyhounds, particularly concerning the early hours of the day. Don't do it. Someone on the bus will get pissed, so the driver makes a point out of telling people to either whisper or just not do it. But I was so tired and out of it, I put my face back in my pillow after the hashbrown and sausage biscuit.

*Maybe it's good karma from sharing my Dr. Pepper and fries with Mr. Moxie.* All possibilities aside, you have to just accept that sometimes people do nice things just because it feels good to do them.

Everything else was pedestrian, save for the guy walking around with a bible and doing what looked like rehearsing for a reading, and the guy who randomly decided to lecture this woman's four little boys on the importance of respecting one's mother.

Corpus is as I remember it, full of asphalt and palm trees and screeching birds. The warmth is a welcome element, particularly the humidity. The last week or two found me waking up with blood in my nose. Too dry too fast, I suppose. After a day solid of recuperating, I managed to get a lot accomplished. I deposited film, went to the beach, began the continuation of an inside joke, played with my guitar, bought a swimsuit for next season, and I am now on the verge of starting to bind another book. Productivity abounds!

2010-11-06T13:52:00.000-07:00

Under a down sleeping bag and a synthetic comforter, I exhale vapors and silently wish for a house fire because everyone knows you get five minutes of delicious comfort before you get melded to your own clothing.

Yes, it is cold. My windows do not shut all the way and the heater a friend gave me out of the goodness of his heart will not function unless it gets its way and blows a fuse. But I have lived through worse, much worse. Not even a year ago, in fact, sleeping in damp clothing in a one-man tent smaller than a coffin while it sleet storms outside. It lends credence to my theory that if I'm complaining, it's probably not a big deal. It's when things are harsh and I don't complain that one can tell it is very bad.

The rafting season is pretty much over, but it ended for me essentially three weeks ago, around the time I made plans to go to Corpus Christi. For the first time ever, I mentally checked out. I am certainly not proud of it, seeing as I could have checked out on the canopy and maybe had two extra days of work... in three weeks... a measly amount indeed, but not measly enough to feed my lazy ass. Mostly I sit around and dream about the eighty-degree weather in which I will be rolling around in a week. Thank you Jesus, thank you. It is not a very taxing hobby I'm participating in, all this fantasizing, but the payoff is huge. I'm talking about palm trees. I'm talking about refreshing my Keen tan. I'm talking about a sunfucking burn, the style which I can only achieve when I flirt with the TexMex border. And what I'm talking about almost more than any of that is Scrabble Thursdays in Portland, riding a bike to Indian Point every day, and those chicks at Sonic who can't seem to get their ice-to-liquid ratio correct in the cherry slushies.

Slummin' it, slummin' it, fantasizing hard about slummin' it.

2010-10-28T15:15:00.000-07:00

There used to be this thing called “flagellation”. It was when people would put themselves on public display and whip themselves in honor of something higher: god, gods, etc… Anyway, in the dark ages flagellation was huge. Men would whip out their cat-o-nine-tails and have a gory parade downtown to cleanse themselves and restore their favor in God’s eyes. People still do this, I guess, in Latin America and the Philippines, countries where maybe they don’t consider that Jesus is looking down at them and being reminded of one the shittiest days he ever had to live through. “Thanks guys, thanks. Every time I turn around…”

I do not take part in such travesties. People just have to take my word if I say I have faith in something.

I do, however, seem to enjoy self-punishment to a certain extent. The idea that I love people, that everyone has a good story, that watching America go by is exponentially more enjoyable than merely flying over it without so much as a peek at the land that feeds us- These are things I try to prove to myself by use of one specific tool of torture: Greyhound. Just as flagellants enjoy the sting of whips and the cracking of skin to some perverse extent, there is something fulfilling about the stink of three-day-old funk and the coat-muffled ragings of the maniac in the back. The elderly Amish man craning his neck to an impossible angle to see my computer screen as I watch Mad Men at 2 a.m. The terrified old white lady who had never been on a bus before and wouldn't unclench her purse. The hipster from Maine who is trying to make a go at life in Las Cruces. The mother with her two children outstretched on numerous seats, all of whom have not showered in days. And that guy, holy crap, that guy. The proverbial microcosm, that element of societal mishmash that creates a carnival of humanity that makes the rest of us- no matter which of the above rapscallions we are- ask ourselves where the fuck these people came from and how they all managed to get in the same place at the same time. “I’m the normal one,” I think, until I get kicked off the bus in a McDonald’s parking lot for wanting to go to some remote part of New Mexico that no one else wants to go through. “Go get on the bus on the other side of the parking lot, they’re going there.” And to a back seat on a bus full of people silent and wide-eyed, wondering what kind of ratty girl shows up in a McDonald’s parking lot with all her possessions crammed into two backpacks and a blue pillowcase.

"The splendor of it all", I think, until I wake the next morning in a bed lubed by my own hair greasies, body atrophied in the curious posture of a person trying to sleep on a bus: chin on chest, knees pressed against the chair in front, torso bent somewhere along the area that bisects the most vital organs. The effect is instant regret.

As always, the memory of mental anguish has faded, leaving only the relishing of trivial amusements that I so look forward to during these forays. And so I have booked a ticket to travel from South Carolina to Corpus Christi by bus. I am both looking forward to the next set of riffraff that will be present on a bus trip that originates in the south but horrified knowing that I will be stuck with them for 29 hours. “Yeah, you should see the itinerary, looks like the ‘Armpit of America Tour’”. Why am I excited about this? It’s got to do with part of my reason for being a mass transit flagellant: It’s true that everyone has a good story, but nothing beats being present when the very story itself unfolds in your lap.

In approximately nine days, I will board a bus way too early in the morning, without nose plugs, without reliable toilets and most likely without enough mp3 power, endeavoring to see who is out there and how they are spending their time in between point A and point B.

Keepin' it real on Wednesday night

2010-10-13T18:13:00.000-07:00

triciainharlem (8:53:29 PM):
holy shit, a huge fuckinng spider just ran in the front door and stopped right in front of the desk I'm at.

triciainharlem (8:53:43 PM):
It seriously ran in, turned, saw me, and stopped. Now it's just standing there staring.

Clicking Ankle (8:53:58 PM):
its thinking "oh shit"

triciainharlem (8:54:18 PM):
Is it stupid of me to think that spiders want to jump inside my mouth if I scream?

Clicking Ankle (8:54:19 PM):
what type

triciainharlem (8:54:24 PM):
I've seen too many horror movies.

triciainharlem (8:54:32 PM):
Shit what do I do? I'm trapped here.

Clicking Ankle (8:54:49 PM):
im sure you have swollowed hundreds whats one more

triciainharlem (8:54:50 PM):
Steve should be getting back to the house in an hour if it doesn't go away before then.

Clicking Ankle (8:55:12 PM):
what type of spider

triciainharlem (8:55:12 PM):
Don't give me that whole "nocturnal swallowing" thing.

Clicking Ankle (8:55:23 PM):
you lived in a basement

triciainharlem (8:55:24 PM):
The kind that are really big and hairy and scary.

Clicking Ankle (8:55:30 PM):
oh

Clicking Ankle (8:55:33 PM):
they jump

triciainharlem (8:55:36 PM):
Yeah I know I lived in a basement, that's why I'm terrified of spiders now.

Clicking Ankle (8:55:42 PM):
but are not poisonous

triciainharlem (8:55:54 PM):
Do they jump? Of course they jump? I wouldn't be terrified of them right now if they didn't jump?

triciainharlem (8:56:08 PM):
(that's my "Wag the Dog" nod)

triciainharlem (8:56:12 PM):
I think it pivoted.

Clicking Ankle (8:56:22 PM):
they do bite but it wont kill you

Clicking Ankle (8:56:27 PM):
i would

triciainharlem (8:56:41 PM):
shit.

Clicking Ankle (8:56:46 PM):
open the front door and let him see that he made a mistake

triciainharlem (8:56:48 PM):
I can't wait here all night for Steve to get home.

triciainharlem (8:56:59 PM):
The door is wide open, that's how it got in.

Clicking Ankle (8:57:06 PM):
ok

triciainharlem (8:57:13 PM):
I'm going to throw a pen at it.

Clicking Ankle (8:57:18 PM):
oh far no

Clicking Ankle (8:57:19 PM):
no

Clicking Ankle (8:57:20 PM):
no

Clicking Ankle (8:57:22 PM):
no

Clicking Ankle (8:57:23 PM):
NO

Clicking Ankle (8:57:25 PM):
NO

triciainharlem (8:57:29 PM):
Please. Please. I have to do something

triciainharlem (8:57:35 PM):
It's just standing there staring me down.

Clicking Ankle (8:57:52 PM):
if you throw something at it you better hit it or it will be on your face in a nano sec

triciainharlem (8:58:03 PM):
What should I do? They can't be reasoned with!

Clicking Ankle (8:58:07 PM):
ok

Clicking Ankle (8:58:26 PM):
how many thing do you have next to you that you can throw

triciainharlem (8:58:28 PM):
But you're right, I doubt I have the accuracy to spear this spider with a pen.

Clicking Ankle (8:58:50 PM):
a pen will not hurt it

Clicking Ankle (8:58:58 PM):
just piss it off

triciainharlem (8:59:00 PM):
I have a ceramic mug, four pens with fake flowers taped to the ends, and a mason jar full of rocks, water, and live flowers.

Clicking Ankle (8:59:14 PM):
rocks good

Clicking Ankle (8:59:25 PM):
and plastic botttles?

triciainharlem (8:59:29 PM):
It seems like the obvious answer here is to throw the mason jar with the rocks and flowers. But again, my accuracy is a problem.

Clicking Ankle (8:59:32 PM):
shoes?

triciainharlem (8:59:52 PM):
I do have a sports bottle here, but my Dr. Pepper is in it and that's what is keeping me sane. Plus, if I did hit it I would never be able to use it again.

Clicking Ankle (8:59:53 PM):
no you need to thrown many things in a row

Clicking Ankle (9:00:16 PM):
you want to scare it outside

triciainharlem (9:00:19 PM):
No way am I throwing my shoes. That little shit will straight for my toes and my left toe is already having a bad week.

Clicking Ankle (9:00:25 PM):
then never use that door again

Clicking Ankle (9:00:32 PM):
or you can kill it

triciainharlem (9:00:37 PM):
There is a lost and found. I can throw the whole plastic bucket at it.

Clicking Ankle (9:00:42 PM):
but you need something big like box

triciainharlem (9:00:54 PM):
God damn! Seriously I have been typing this to you for five minutes and it hadn't fucking moved!

triciainharlem (9:01:04 PM):
It's just sitting there! Staring! I can't take this shit anymore!

Clicking Ankle (9:01:31 PM):
i wander if you can give it liquor

Clicking Ankle (9:01:35 PM):
wonder

Clicking Ankle (9:01:51 PM):
don't let it know you are scared

Clicking Ankle (9:02:02 PM):
they sense it

triciainharlem (9:02:21 PM):
I'm sure it has me figured out by now, I've only been dodging my head back and forth from the screen to it.

Clicking Ankle (9:02:24 PM):
are you wearing sandals?

triciainharlem (9:02:58 PM):
Walmart slip-ons.

Clicking Ankle (9:03:18 PM):
does it look like this?

Clicking Ankle (9:03:19 PM):
http://easygopest.com/spiders/images/800px-Wolf_spider_white_bg.jpg

triciainharlem (9:03:43 PM):
And here's another angle of my quandary: If I throw anything and actually- shit it made a move

triciainharlem (9:03:48 PM):
It ran closer

triciainharlem (9:03:56 PM):
Now I have to sit on the desk to see it.

Clicking Ankle (9:04:23 PM):
hmm

triciainharlem (9:04:35 PM):
yeah definitely a wolf spider. They are beastly huge in these parts.

triciainharlem (9:04:47 PM):
Me and him could share floss

Clicking Ankle (9:04:59 PM):
you have any food

Clicking Ankle (9:05:11 PM):
it eat insects so i bet i will eat meat

triciainharlem (9:05:12 PM):
anyway if I throw the basket on him I would have to leave it on the floor because I'm too scared to ever move things that I throw on spiders.

triciainharlem (9:05:13 PM):
no food.

Clicking Ankle (9:06:14 PM):
Yes, wolf spiders bite. However, they only do so if they are threatened and feel they have to

triciainharlem (9:06:30 PM):
Oh yeah? Is that how your wolf spider story goes?

triciainharlem (9:06:53 PM):
John and Katie went up to watch a movie about thirty minutes ago, maybe they will come down when it's over.

Clicking Ankle (9:07:04 PM):
my story was that it was in the room. i threw my shoes is was on my pillow in flash

triciainharlem (9:07:20 PM):
Normal spiders run away from that.

Clicking Ankle (9:07:56 PM):
then i cornered it and threw every shampoo and beauty product at it until it was dead

Clicking Ankle (9:08:08 PM):
it was like a civil war battle

Clicking Ankle (9:08:43 PM):
i bunkered behind my bed and it used my things i was throwing at it to hide

Clicking Ankle (9:09:01 PM):
but after being hit like 50 times it died

Clicking Ankle (9:09:57 PM):
i was girlier in those days so i had more plastic bottles to threw

triciainharlem (9:10:15 PM):
ha ha

Clicking Ankle (9:11:52 PM):
so basically don't attack it unless you know you can kill it

triciainharlem (9:12:11 PM):
Great. "Go big or go home". Great advice.

Clicking Ankle (9:12:49 PM):
have and bug spray?

Clicking Ankle (9:12:55 PM):
hair spray?

Clicking Ankle (9:13:01 PM):
you might need to drug it

triciainharlem (9:13:04 PM):
This thing would just Flashdance in it.

triciainharlem (9:13:18 PM):
If I had roofies I would crush them and sprinkle them down.

triciainharlem (9:13:22 PM):
Oh I hear someone moving.

triciainharlem (9:13:27 PM):
No nevermind

Clicking Ankle (9:13:41 PM):
oh its ok to talk just dont sound scared

triciainharlem (9:14:42 PM):
Ugh. Looking at this thing is making me nauseated.

Clicking Ankle (9:14:44 PM):
i wish there was something like eye sleeves so that spiders never knew which way you wear really looking

triciainharlem (9:15:30 PM):
My life would have been easier if it had just kept right on running by instead of doing a ten point turn to stare at me.

Clicking Ankle (9:16:09 PM):
well then it would be in the house

triciainharlem (9:16:11 PM):
I can't go on. I have to get out of here. I'm going to have to get off the counter, walk around it, and cross behind it to the door. I'll have about fifteen feet at the narrowest.

Clicking Ankle (9:16:13 PM):
in the dark later

triciainharlem (9:16:23 PM):
It's in the house. It's in the house now. That's where I am too.

triciainharlem (9:16:52 PM):
Okay I have to do this. Pray for me. I'll text you when I get back to my room safely.

triciainharlem (9:20:06 PM):
Oh my god it just sprinted closer. It's right at the bottom of the counter.

Clicking Ankle (9:20:20 PM):
did you get up

triciainharlem (9:20:23 PM):
I might have to try a vault move.

triciainharlem (9:20:36 PM):
No I didn't. I was about to and then I looked back from my screen and the little shit was gone.

triciainharlem (9:20:42 PM):
It's right below me.

triciainharlem (9:20:45 PM):
Ooooh a car!

triciainharlem (9:20:52 PM):
I hope it's someone who won't laugh at me.

triciainharlem (9:21:01 PM):
Okay I have to go. Someone is here to save me. I'm so excxited.

Clicking Ankle (9:21:02 PM):
maybe its messin with you

triciainharlem (9:21:05 PM):
bye

Clicking Ankle (9:21:06 PM):
dont attack it

Clicking Ankle (9:21:21 PM):
bye

Clicking Ankle (9:21:24 PM):
good luck

2010-10-12T17:47:00.000-07:00

I'm fully aware that jobs do not rush out to greet me with arms extended and smiles plastered on their little job faces. Much the way a duck doesn't drag itself atop a dinner table to make itself into a hot meal, I must actually go out and find this fucking thing myself.

But I'm still not doing it. I can't really say why; I know I need a job. But um, yeah. Uh, hmmm. Curious things, the things I do. At the moment I'm drinking a Dr. Pepper, watching Sviatoslav Richter beat the living shit out of Chopin's revolutionary etude and wondering if Britt's car is out there for me to hot wire so I can go to Greenville and Lindy my face off. The money spent driving there would be sorely missed, but holy crap I have some swivel I need to drop off somewhere. Burning a hole in my back pockets. Suppose I could wait. Suppose I could chill out considering I just had an epically entertaining weekend with Steve and Ian on the Gauley. Two and a half days and two nights in a closet-sized cabin with two of the funniest and colorful characters of the summer. And this weekend I am going hiking with... I don't know who, but I plan on having a lot of knives and cheese because if I learned anything in Silver City, it's that life sucks without those two things.

And income, that too. But I've rarely ever had one of those, at least not one to write home about.

"Your phone is ringing."

"Who is it?"

"Satan."

"Oh. Yeah. Let it ring." This is Christi. She got so tired of various collectors calling her cell phone that she saved their numbers and tagged them all with various monikers of the ultimate lord of the underworld. "I don't talk to The Devil either."

New York

2010-09-30T11:40:00.000-07:00

Imagine my surprise when, during a trip to Bensonhurst to retrieve a pair of Aladdin pants and a pack of negatives, I discover an entire rolling suitcase full of my personal belongings.

“Ohhhhhhh fuuuuuuck. This is not going to fit into my backpack.” Plaid pants from a decade ago (which I dug out of an attic box after visiting my mother before heading to Italy, taking them along as “goal pants”), my Korean bank book from two years ago, two weeks worth of teacher clothes, my Aladdin pants, a blue stuffed bear from a Russian housewife (damn I should have stashed some of those brandy filled chocolates), and a pair of pajamas with sock monkey heads at the bottom and a bunch of bananas embroidered on the left chest.

“Fuck yeah footy pajamas!”

“Did you ever even wear those?”

“Uh, once. I just kind of laid in bed like a starfish and sweated my ass off until I got up and changed.”

And the final hurrah, the icing on the shitcake that is the metaphor for my employment life, a final forgotten paycheck from Paws in Soho, the bunker of canine revelry that my bosses referred to as a “doggie spa”. Taped to my check of $91 was a note:

“Just wanted to thank you for the three days notice you gave us. Showed great team playership! Fortunately, we were prepared for your sudden departure. Burning bridges is never a good thing to do. Good luck in Alaska or whichever state you decided on. “

Naturally I laughed my ass off. But contrary to what I would have done years ago as a mere overgrown juvenile, I asked before I acted.

“Is it wrong of me to write a letter back? I mean, is it petty? Like… is that-“

“Yeah,” said Cynthea, bastion of good sense and how not to be stupid.

“No,” said Nelson, walking through on his way to the kitchen, “I think you should get a picture of a burning bridge, draw an arrow to the flames, and write “you are there, burning.”

See, this is why Nelson often wins the secret “Who’s Cooler: Nelson or Cynthea?” contest I host in my head on a regular basis. But Cynthea is right, it is juvenile, petty, and self-serving to write a retaliatory letter to this beastly pachyderm of a boss who is probably too cracked out to remember what she wrote yesterday, no less 16 months ago. And if she can, she probably really does not care. We are, after all, talking about people who interviewed me in a 4x4 broom closet inhabited by a caged obese guinea pig. People who consider windowless cement cells a dog luxury. People who glare at their employees for taking their lawful right to a lunch break and demand that lunch be brought back and eaten in the basement with the dogs and their hair and God knows whatever else might be hanging in the unventilated basement air. People who write their names on bananas because they just know that someone is eating their bananas to make them crazy. People who violate overtime laws flagrantly. Three days notice, on the other hand, is not a law but a courtesy bestowed on good employers by employees who feel they have been nurtured or at the very least don’t feel like they are escaping just before they manifest a number of cross-species diseases.

Like I said, I’m more mature than retaliation, but that won’t keep me from putting a bad juju on them and laughing at my boss’ year-old rage by doing something fun for me.

For days I had been eyeing one particular dress that I decided against buying for several reasons: it’s expensive, one of those shirt-dresses I despise, it has these little ruffles on the shoulders and although it fits like a perfect glove now, it’s a size that I am sure to grow out of as soon as I move on from this arduous job of mine, that is, if the 100% cotton frock doesn’t shrink beyond my stretch after the first wash. Not practical, not smart, not me.

“Yes. Yes I look special, don’t I? Hee hee hee” and straight on to the bank to deposit that 16 month old check, paper bag swinging from my finger.

“Ha ha! Bitch bought me a dress.”

It also more than made up for the quasi-bad haircut I got earlier in the day, a conversation that started with “cut off this Carol Brady mudflap right here,” and included this conversation:

“I was thinking a bob could be good.”

“No, um, I had one of those before and it didn’t work out so well. My hair tends to turn into a mushroom.”

“Even if it’s longer in the front?”

“Oh yeah. That’s exactly what I had and it was… it was a bad deal. I don’t, um, do anything. I live in woods and stuff. If it requires maintenance it just won’t work out.”

Indeed, I had a bob once. It did not look like a bob on my head, it looked like any number of metaphors you can dream up to describe frizzy scary hair. It required a return visit to have this dresser’s opus carved out of my hair.

No. No bob.

So here I am with what looks like my sister’s hair from 1996, but it goes up into a ponytail just fine and now I have a pretty dress to put under it.

But struggling with my hair and physical remains of my past were just a few of the things I did this week. Mostly I chilled out. Took it easy. Could have been anywhere really, except I got to see several of my best friends ever.

“I want to make modern art portraits.” This is Christi, trying to think of a way to apply the art style to the practice of sketching portraits on the street.

“I wouldn’t pay for that.”

“Why?”

“I don’t want to be a bunch of triangles.”

I don’t know what modern art is all about. Freely I admit this. I try to understand it, I try to look at it, but it always ends up the way it ended yesterday, which is me rushing through the modern art exhibits as quickly as possible without running, pushed forward like toothpaste when you roll it up from the bottom. “Shit, there’s more. Where does this end? Goddamn, is it an installation-art hallway of modern art? Because if so I have just been trapped in my own personal hell.” All I wanted was to get to the photos and musical instrument displays. Instead I got shot into the rat maze of masters’ paintings, trying to admire while I frantically looked for a window to see trees, or perhaps catch a glimpse of Christi, who I left in the dust somewhere near the giant screeching metal sculpture. In true Christi fashion, she magically materialized next to me in the gift shop thirty minutes later.

One of the little halls on the second floor of the Met is for little exhibits, I guess, and at the moment it is full of one particular photographer’s work. The story goes that for the most part, this photog is unknown outside of the realm of other art photographers because this man did in the fifties what people take for granted today. He walked around and took photos of random people. Beachgoers, prostitutes, cool cats, all of them apparently in passing and not the beautiful versions of the above either. The fattie at Coney Island. That kind of person. Imagine 80’s street photography. So yeah, he kind of ended up in oblivion, his photos in the private collections of the few people that knew of him. Wish I could remember his name. Anyway, someone donated their entire collection to the museum. They were good, interesting photos, but I have to wonder: I have a shit ton of blurry, grainy, walk-by photos of people who are slightly irritated with me. Perhaps I can have Christi donate them under the guise of rich collectorship. I don’t know, it’s an idea and as I sit here I realize it’s not an idea that will make me any money whatsoever.

I prefer Roman to Greek sculpture. It’s in the noses and the bridge and the brow, the Roman’s had gnarly noses and weren’t afraid to let billions of people in the future know all about it. All the wrinkles, all the chin, everything on a face ended up on the sculpture for us to gaze upon thousands of years later.

“Damn. They lived so long ago. I need someone to make a bust of me.” Just like with the dream web-site, I must first do something to deserve it.

As much as I love the Met, nothing is greater than the Museum of Natural History. The interactive ice core, the Hall of Minerals, the grand diorama of Alaskan brown bears that welcomes you to the Hall of Mammals. I love it. With every visit I discover a new hall which I believed to exist only on the map.

My favorite steamed pork bun place is out of business, my favorite bagel place went out of business merely days before I got to NYC, and the MTA is still price-gouging. But. I found two excellent Korean restaurants: Boka, a Korean chicken wings place on St. Mark’s and K-Town’s Seoul Garden. Holy crap, mandoo. Christi is living large in her studio, Harlem has a new coffee shop which fosters hours of sitting and talking, Cynthea got her workspace organized, Loren is well on his way to making thirteen movies, and Philip is still having the happiest, most successful life ever.

Good friends, good food, good museums, but back to the trees and fresh air and exercise. I have a dress I have to stay in, after all.

Banana= good. Jammed finger= no good.

2010-09-26T07:13:00.000-07:00

Two nights ago I met up with my friend of many years for margaritas. This is something we do: me leaving NYC for a long time and then coming back, us marking the occasion by trying a new place for the frozen delicacy. It's a margarita-crawl on what will probably be a decades-long scale. Last time I was fresh back from Italy, preparing to go to Alaska. The margarita I remember from that night was a jalapeno infused train wreck that sat on the table and melted while we ordered other drinks around it. This past Friday night, while waiting on my friend and trying to heed his command to have drinks by the time he arrived, I spied a jalapeno margarita on the menu and thought for a moment on the virtues of the different place, second chance. Knowing the sideways look I would get for welcoming him to a table with that on it, I opted for something different. Banana. Could be gross, could be great.

It was great! Or at least I thought so. He took the strawberry and stuck with it, but I am a bananafan for life. The coconut was good, as was the pineapple, but nothing comes close to banana.

Which kind of sort of brings me to my next point of interest.

A strange thing is happening... the past two days I have awoken to a jammed finger. Painful to move and slightly swollen at the knuckle, I'd say it's because I'm rolling around hitting my hand on the bookshelf nestled next to the bed, but the odds of hitting a shelf with a completely horizontal finger are slim at best, and then for it be the same finger? The statistics would be staggering. Two months ago this finger- the middle one- and the ring finger were both oddly injured, once again mysteriously jammed. I don't know, maybe I'm walking around with my fingers splayed out in front of me all the time. Must be. So anyway, this finger. Killing me. Killing me with its mystery. If it happens again tonight I'm going to set up a camera. God help me I will. I'm afraid that I'll find Christi holding my wrist up in the air, repeatedly slamming her palm down on my finger and then rolling over and going back to sleep or something nonsensical and creepy as that.

Moving on, after an hour of not really job-searching, I'm off to Bensonhurst. Aladdin pants, negatives, and hopefully a dress are waiting for me out there, along with the life I left behind which- Nelson was so kind to remind me- involved a LOT of Resident Evil 5.

Haircut? Hmmm. Maybe. Boba? Definitely. Cha Shu Bao? You know it. Thrifting? Oh yeah.

My Boss Will Probably Never Let Me on the Bus Again.

2010-08-31T09:17:00.000-07:00

I am pretty certain that my career as a weekend Ocoee guide has come to an end. Not that I ever particularly enjoyed guiding there commercially anyway, because I did not at all. Canoeing the Ocoee is fun, running three trips a day with people whose names you don't have time to remember is not.

The Olympic section has seen me do some miraculous things: I have strolled through Godzilla and Humongous without calling a stroke, I have hit Godzilla sideways and surfed Huey, I have tried a backwards upstream ferry below Callahan's which resulted in surfing Huey, I have even T-boned Photo rock and done a 360 through Godzilla... all without consequence. Jesus himself was tapping his foot and checking his watch. So, third trip of the day, by all accounts a good crew of experienced rafters. First thing first, I get thrown from the raft on what I would call a kick-in-the-butt rock but for the fact it didn't actually go under the raft, it just completely stopped the butt of the raft and ejected me and a guest downstream.

"Get in. Get in." He is floating, both of us pointed upstream instead of downstream. About the time I tell all the starers in the raft to please help him in, I take a shot to the kidneys by one rock and the lower spine by another.

"Ughhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh..."

"Let us help you in-"

"Get him in ughhhhhhhhhhhhhhh." And then I couldn't drag myself in because rocks kept sweeping my feet out from under me.

So the Olympic section comes along. These people did all they could. They kept paddling, they listened, they were awesome. Seeing as I knew the fates were keeping tally of my charmed life, I told my boss I was following him as closely as possible in hopes that I would see the line and finally, you know, get it. The trip before the one in question I hit what is called Tombstone rock and got popped straight up in the air completely out of the raft, looking down at my seat and hoping real hard I landed back in it. I did not want to do that again. Nor did I feel like being the "T" on Photo Rock again. So I'm following him, and all goes well. The line into Godzilla looked pretty good, I thought, but I guess my angle calculation was a hair off. And Godzilla took that hair and destroyed everything. We were whipped around to the left at light speed and then- what the hell is this- Oh, I'm looking upstream into the backwash of Humongous- shit- shit- All Back- shit shit everyone is still getting back in their seats...

We didn't get surfed so much as karate chopped by the hydraulic. Butts and feet, butts and feet. One woman managed to stay in the raft with me. We got spit out, and up pops Mom, choking on water. As I am yanking on her jacket, her sons pops up. "Oh," I think, "wasn't he in my raft too? He was-" Over my shoulder I see the enormous boulder in the middle of the river, and I'm thinking about how I neither want to flip off it or have the kid hit it. I yank Mom into the guide compartment as quickly as I can and stuff her beneath my legs, pushing her head down, then crawl over and pull the kid in, grabbing my paddle just as the left butt of my raft hits the boulder and spirals us downstream. Butts and feet butts and feet, one coughing kid crouching on the floor, one woman trapped beneath my legs, one woman starfished out in the front compartments. As for the other three: The other boy got roped in to the bank, one man swam to the bank I think, and the other got recirculated in Humongous. Raft guides on the side yelling him instructions on how to get out but he not being able to actually situate himself to do it. He was finally able to push off a rock on the bed and Superman himself into the downstream current.

The boys were shaken and excited, the men were amazed and trading stories, Mom was reflective and open-eyed, Starfish was pursed and not at all impressed. This sucks. Now they all know what it means to fall into a rapid and what it is to really keep one's calm, but I hate being the teacher.

My back is slowly turning midnight blue from the lower center all the way to the lower right with a speedbump where normal American females get tattoos.

Like I said, never even wanted to go this weekend, switched as a favor and called it my "final hurrah" without knowing at the time what a final hurrah it would be.

Best Guests Ever.

2010-08-18T09:19:00.000-07:00

Coming down Bull Sluice picture perfect. Great angle, great speed, great guests who were thrilled with every little bit of the day and who by all accounts wanted to take me home and make me their pet. I even had both hands on my paddle for extra safety as I came over the ledge. However. When the raft hit the water I got bounced off my seat and up... then down... and my arms went forward and descended in just such a way that the shaft of my paddle perfectly pounded the nose of the woman in front of me.

In the middle of all that crushing water I heard a crunch. When you know, you know. "Fuck my life. Fuck my life and her poor little nose too." She immediately grabbed her nose. Before we even got to the point of being between Big Georgia and Decapitation Rock I had her head in my hands. Blood spreading down her face and a bit of it dripping on her blue and yellow PFD. Words cannot describe how shitty I felt.

"I feel fine," she said while I poured clean water on her face to see if the blood was still trickling. "It only hurts where that bump is." Her nose was not looking straight. The blood was thin and not copious at all, but I really could have lived without drawing blood from such a nice woman.

I grabbed the bridge of her nose in my hand and squeezed a little. "Does that hurt?"

"No. Just on the bump." Now, once upon a time I got a knee to the face during a heated buck-buck match. A similar thing happened to me; swollen nose, lookin crooked, hurting like hell, but no blood. Just an insistent face ache. Some days I wonder if I didn't really break it in an interesting manner. When I crinkle my nose the cartilage shifts/pops. No joke. If you watch me, you will see it happen.

"I don't know what happened."
"I think Glen's helmet hit you-"
"Nope, it was me. I got bumped and my paddle came down over your head." No sense lying, because there was a photographer. And all these people were nice. I can't live with them thinking they hurt each other.
"Really? Are you sure?"
"Uhhhhhhh yeah. One-hundred percent, it was me."

This lady, god bless her, got off the rocks with a smile on her face and ran back up to Big Georgia to jump off into the rapid.

"Did you get the blood?" She asked the photographer.

Thumbs up with a big smile, then as the lady turned away to run up for her jump, I gave the photog a wide-eyed grimace and she returned it.

The woman with the broken? nose had a blast the rest of the day, occasionally reaching up to touch the bridge and see what was what. I have never seen such a trooper. Her friends too. Every other raft I have had this season would have been pissed to high heaven but these first-time rafters were in it for better or worse.

"We're going rafting on section four tomorrow!"

"Well, I am pretty sure you guys are going to do just fine."

She thinks she just got a bad bump, but I am not the only one in that raft that will be surprised if she goes to the doctor and finds out it needs to be rebroken to be correctly set.

Back at the outpost the group of four went crazy on photos and even took a photo of myself and another guide, the wearer of a shirt that looks like he narrowly escaped a T-Rex attack.

Then, given my current state of never ever getting tipped and thinking his presence was enough to have changed my luck:

whispering: *Did you get greased?*
*No.*
*Seriously?! I can't believe that!*
*Dude I broke her nose! I'm serious, I think I broke her nose.*
*You must be doing something wrong.*
*Well, they had the best time ever, except for that time I broke her nose. Really man.*

I felt sick all day thinking about that woman. It's one thing if she breaks her own nose, or if someone else does it, but the person on the clock and in charge of safety should not be the one to draw blood.

I just remembered that when we hiked the raft down the trail she told me that they were taking the trip because rafting was on her bucket list.

Shit.

Seriously.

I hope it was a list she made for fun instead of one inspired by ailments. I am such an asshole.

"Don't worry about it honey. It was an accident and there was nothing you could have done. It happens."

It's true, and it's also what gets me most.

Chapter 314 in My Farcical Life.

2010-07-29T12:44:00.000-07:00

"Unemployment sucks.

It's staring me in the face right now.

It's like that creepy guy on the train, you know? He's sitting there looking straight at you and you're trying really hard not to look back at him."

Somehow the rafting season is more than halfway over. I'm sitting here with two jammed fingers on my right hand and trying to type magic to people in hopes that they will extend money to me. Remember New York? It remembers me. So does my roommate to whom I owe nearly $500 in backrent. She says it's more like $400, but hell does it really matter? I'll never remember $400. And I fear if I don't pay it off I will never ever see my Aladdin pants or Chinatown negatives ever again. I'm planning a visit to see said roomie and various friends, the trick is actually getting there. If I fly I have no ride to the airport, and if I drive... I have no car. However, there is a man here who promises that his Toyota Previa is worth every penny of the $350 he wants for it and that it can more than make it to NYC, it could probably even make it back, nevermind the sound coming from the engine that resembles an empty Coke can or that you have to kick the driver-side door open if you want to actually get out.

"Oh big deal."
"Steve, what if I drive into a lake? How the hell am I supposed to get out?"
"Don't drive into lakes."

Everybody's a genius. Suppose I'll crawl over to the passenger side which doesn't open from the outside but opens from the inside just fine.

South Carolina is hot

2010-07-23T13:39:00.000-07:00

At the moment I am sitting in Schlotzsky's waiting for the ass-crack of Satan to stop melting me in my own skin. It's so hot outside that I'm fairly certain I would bleed lava should I be scratched. In fact, I'm going on hour two of sitting in this back corner watching the pavement fry. Thank god tar can't scream, you know? Because holy crap. And Jenny's car is out there frying away as well. When I borrowed her car I had no clue there was no air conditioner. Or maybe I did. It never mattered before because we never went for more than a twenty minute ride from the outpost. Here I am, marooned in a sandwich shop and basically waiting for the day to pass so I can go outside without the spectre of butt sweat hanging over my head.

Sigh. I really wanted to go to the post office today. Looks like I have to just sit here. Too bad for me.

Danny found a freshly dead timber rattler in the road on his way to Belle Farm about two weeks ago. He put it under his windshield wiper and drove home with it, skinned it, dried it, and is going to make a belt out of it. You have never seen so many warm PBRs as that night when the flaying knife came out.

2010-07-07T08:35:00.000-07:00

“How do you hide money from a raft guide?”
“Put it under a bar of soap.”

Never did I think I would come to this, particularly after a summer of smelling Alaskan raft guides, incubated in their own multi-day stink by way of dry suits, but here it is in early July and I am a stinky raft guide. Like those DRA guides told me, it really does “just happen”. I manage a shower at the very least twice a week. Sometimes it doesn’t get rid of the stink. My scrubby rag will be going to work and I can still smell me. Laceration doesn’t always do the trick either. You would think that removing all those layers of flesh would get one somewhere.

For those who don’t know, I went to guide school. Imagine “Police Academy” but with stoners, rafts, and rivers. It involved carrying many rafts on our heads, diagrams of water, and getting tricked into swimming in the frigid shallows of the Nantahala. For me, it also involved falling into the middle of Bull Sluice over and over. It’s a fun swim really, but each swim featured me banging up my left knee every time. Directly after the week-long guide school finished began the ten-trip check out. This is about the time I started dumping myself out of the boat on each Bull Sluice run and on occasion, pulling my trainers in with me. All this because of one little rock at the entrance of the rapid called “Sex Rock”. I couldn’t not hit it. I couldn’t not go down Bull backward. I had resigned myself to a summer of being the Sex Rock girl. Waking up early in the morning with nerves and going to work so I could throw myself out of the back of a raft in a wide array of dazzling ways. Thankfully, after about two weeks I finally caught on. Which also happened to be two trips after my boss said “what’s your problem”. I figured it was time to stop seeing how many times I could do it wrong and try doing it right.

Today was the first time in two weeks that I fell out of my raft at Bull Sluice. I don’t remember what happened, just that we went over the edge and then water was all around me. There was no air in my lungs when I went under, so I tried swimming for the surface. This never works. Everything went dark and I thought I went under Decap, a swim that lasts twice as long and sometimes requires pushing off of rocks. I started poking around above my head and found that it was the raft. Yay, my guests stayed in! Shit, I can’t walk myself out from under the raft! I wasn’t under long, but by the time I came up I was starting to take water in. Not like the normal cleaning out of the sinuses, like, water that is in there so deep you can’t shoot it back out the nostrils. It got me to thinking. If I can take in water and not even feel it, perhaps drowning is a lot easier than one would think. Scary.

Last week:
“So, what do we do if you fall out of the raft?” asked a concerned mother as we careen through a shallow area.

“Well-” and my paddle gets jammed between rocks on the bottom and torques against the raft, sending me out the back of the raft. My mouth still in mid-sentence, I surface gurgling before they even realize I was gone.

“OH MY GOD!” And she is terrified because not only is her family in a raft with no guide, but she did not get her answer before I fell out. The raft lodges on shallow rocks and as I stand in the ankle-deep water and start walking back to my seat, I tell them “do NOT do what I am doing right now. NEVER do-” and I fall into an invisible hole between a collection of rocks and am gurgling under water again. Mom has had enough of the clown car show and pulls me back into the raft.

Cabin fever is creeping up on me, by which I mean that one day I woke up and felt an intense desire to kill the people around me. After some self-searching I realized that I don’t really get off the farm, ever. Maybe I go to Clayton for a Wal-Mart run, but even that is a rarity. There are several more months to go, and all I can do to cope with this nevergettingout-ness is try to severely curtail my exposure to these people. Read, write, play with cameras (Christi, what the hell?! Send it already), try to limit my social activity. Reading that to myself makes me wonder if maybe I’ve got it backwards. Perhaps I should try being more social so I don’t fantasize about throttling every bellowing type-A personality in the lunch room. I just don’t see how running over there at night to have beers can be a win-win situation. Lucky for me, my best friend is coming to visit me in a week. I cannot get past this initial shock of joy so I have no clue what we are going to do for three whole days outside of me not being here. I’m thinking camping. I’m thinking duckies. Maybe tubing. Shit man, I just don’t know.

Contra dance has been a great sanity keeper, though it is an hour and a half away and I tend to overdance myself every time. I was just recently informed by a fellow raft guide that there is swing dance about an hour away, but I have to rely on him to get that hookup. All I know is I want to dance. Three hours round-trip is a small price to pay for wellbeing.

2010-06-20T08:16:00.000-07:00

Overheard in other guides' boats being said about me:

"She looks like a female Israeli commando."

"Who's the butch girl in that boat?"

"Hey! He said we can swim here!"

As we can see, it runs the gamut. It is my lot. It will not change.

Stuck on the farm as usual, contemplating going on a ducky run with Katie even though I'm supposed to go trail running with a person who has yet to materialize today. If neither of these things happen, I'm going to go for a swim at Bull and hopefully see some carnage and get a tan.

Just last week I got a library card and it has made me feel alive in the brain again. Finally I have my hands on Hibbert's book about the Medicis. Haven't started reading it yet, but that's sort of beside the point. The potential for reading is there. On a related note, I picked up a crossword last night and found that I could not finish it. It wouldn't have been a big deal if it hadn't been torn out of a shitty weekly newspaper. Feeling dumb. Feeling dumb. I need more libraries and I need some museums.

2010-06-01T09:39:00.001-07:00

The thing I am noticing most about South Carolina is the moth diversity. Luna moths, tiger striped moths, moths that look like wood, all sorts of moths that are striking. Very much unlike the ones I find in Kansas, the ones that just make you want to squash the hell out of them because you can tell from the look of them that they are belly-full of your clothing.

I checked out earlier this week and am excited to get a boat of customers all to myself.

My black eye is gone.

My Netflix renewed.

My "arrow down" button will not actually go down on the page, only come up with "n/" every time it's pushed. It's worse than that time Christi's computer decided the number 6 would never work again, making it impossible to send someone my phone number without looking like a fool.

There's only one Golden Girl left.

There are so many fireflies out here that night looks like a Christmas tree.

Having fun, being relaxed, getting rained on and learning the finer points of wilderness first aid. *Ahhhhhhhhh*

The T-Grip was not the problem.

2010-05-20T19:48:00.000-07:00

Big guy went feet over head out the side of the boat, and man paddles went everywhere. Bruise in my hair, bruise on my lip, bruise on my eye. Yesterday I almost jettisoned three geriatrics out of a raft via centrifugal force after hitting a rock on the approach to Bull Sluice. So yeah, I screw up at my job every day but I'm having fun.

Treasure Trove: 2003

2010-05-05T16:58:00.000-07:00

Roberto Cavalli jeans embroidered with southwest scenes, if memory serves me accurately. These jeans are probably not fair trade.

Yes, I'm 29 and I still play MASH.

2010-04-28T21:04:00.000-07:00

Believe it or not, eating Ben & Jerry's while watching Star Trek can get old. Today I spearheaded this task of making scans and a few prints of the last negatives I had developed in Silver, the ones that proved to me I am not going blind. I like going to the photo lab in Corpus. The people are nice and they don't make really heinous prints or scans out of my negatives. What more could one want? The lady and I had a conversation while I detailed my requests on strips of paper stuck to the negatives. Lists of what to print and what to scan.

Off to Coffee Waves I go. Somehow I get it in my head to play MASH, which, if you know any female my age, they can tell you that MASH is a game played by bored middle schoolers which is supposed to tell you fate. Who you will marry, kids, how many dogs, what kind of house you live in. Basically it's a bunch of orderly lists that are whittled down to one-per-list according to a number obtained by drawing a swirl in the center of the page, arbitrarily stopping, bisecting the swirl and then counting how many times the line crosses through the line of the swirl. Start counting at the top of the first list, and every time you count up to that number, cross off the item the number lands on. Fate. Easy. This is one of the games I played with my Korean students. They loved it once they figured out they could use their imaginations and not be "doctor", "scientist" and "teacher" only. Of course, that took a while.

Anyway, this game is boring if not modified. It's actually pretty fun the more random you get. It can be a great tool for writing exercises. Today I played Movie Mash, inspired by the unfinished Indiana Jones 4 MASH found in my last notebook. Some people write down phone numbers or make lists of things to do, I doodle and play Movie MASH.

Moving on. So, this setup took me the better part of thirty minutes. And then, then I got all confused about the numbers because they were all so close together... it was a mess. I had completely screwed everything up. While bemoaning this I looked around. College coffee bar. Students doing homework, brown-robed monk trying to listen to his friend and play with his Blackberry at the same time, guy over there getting interviewed... I suddenly felt very self-conscious of my very intricate MASH game. How many people had seen it? So then I just got paranoid and actually had to move from my table to one by the window so that I could recopy my beautiful paper without witnesses.

Here, without further ado, is my blockbuster of destiny as envisioned by the number 6:

You'll definitely want to enlarge this image.

It was such a satisfying feeling once I finished, but after I exhaled it was something like this: "Alright um, I have totally wasted my time and accomplished nothing. Hmmm." But by that time my photos were done. Back to the photo lab.

Yay photos. I went straight back home because I needed to pee my pants. This seemed like a winning move but ultimately I lost because there were a about 15 prints and NO cd full of scans. "Son of a bitch! Really? Really?!" Swear to god. This is what I get.

"Do I not know how to communicate? Is that what it is? Because I feel like I tell people exactly what I want and they are looking at me and I think we are-"

*mom holds two hangers in front of my face. One has a t-shirt, the other a tank-top. She perches her eyebrows to ask which one I want.*

"-oh my god you're doing it to me right now! You aren't listening at all! You're looking at me pretending to listen- Oh my god! I can't believe this!"

I stomp out of the closet and throw myself on the couch. One hour later I would go to Papa John's for my large pizza, cheesesticks and four extra garlic sauces. No extra garlic.

"My god. Can I get anything I want today. Can I."

"I can't believe you didn't check before you left!" You know, I didn't think it was necessary because when I made the request, the lady said "okay" like she understood. Maybe "okay" means something different now. It's possible. I've been told that jeans cutoff at the knees aren't called "shorts" anymore, but "jorts". To some people a "scan" is actually a print from a negative, AKA "print". And hell just today some toolshed parked her SUV in the only outlet for Coffee Waves' drive-through, meaning that no one could actually leave the parking lot/drive-through area without doing a vehicular Madison back to where they entered. "Drive-through" equals "parking lot". I'm a huge advocate of an ever-changing language, but this is getting ridiculous.

2 a.m. ruminations

2010-04-26T23:43:00.000-07:00

Agh I feel like crap. And not, I don't know, just epic crap. Fatigued. The kind that not even Star Trek can fix. I want to just sit here and I don't know, not feel like a parasite is gestating inside my brisket. I'm wondering about the trails. I know I drank unfiltered water twice. But that was the on purpose stuff. Who knows what I accidentally ingested. I don't want to think about it. I'm sure I'm complicating things by eating a pint of Ben & Jerry's per day, but it seems the only way to sufficiently pity my current state.

Today I did the only preparing I plan on doing for South Carolina. I went to Academy and bought one pair of pants, one pair of shorts, three tank-tops, and a shirt. And of course I must boast that I have purchased my very first knives. A Leatherman Blast and a Gerber something-or-other. It's right in my bedroom, but my pity party is getting in the way of getting up and checking the precise name. The blade is black and is serrated at the hilt, I can tell you that much. I can't wait to cut ropes with it or whatever else may get in way.

There is an array of pepper spray in the check-out line. One is a 3-in-1 face blaster: one chemical to force the eyes shut, another to make them tear uncontrollable if they do manage to open them, and finally a chemical which dyes them so that when they run away really hard police will have an easy go of identifying them. I always say you can tell a failed rapist by the clawmarks around their swollen and teary orbits, but I do tend to be old-fashioned in these ways. Another cool gadget they had isn't so much a defensive device as it is a weapon. It's a pepper spray canister that you load into what appears to be a flare gun. Yes, a big pepper spray gun. More force, more accuracy, more "no". And it even says "Mace" on the handle, assuming every other gun in your purse has "Bullets" on the handle. Can't mix up the face melter with the face blaster, you know.

I once carried pepper spray. To work. I had to have it because people stopped responding to the miniature Louisville slugger. But I never did get to use it. In fact, I gifted it to a friend... Rebecca Klein, I believe... I will have to check up on it to see if it has been used. My former boss at Strand once shot himself in the face with pepper spray while confined in an elevator, a situation he says was most unpleasant. Now imagine that coming from an uber-precise gun. Worst day ever. But then why would you be pointing a gun at your face when you know there's pepper spray in it? Why point normal pepper spray at your face, for that matter? You know what's in there, a bunch of pain. The same goes for muggers. Don't run up on the ladies because they're just going to burn your faces off with chemicals that dye your skin, and you probably won't even get anything either.

The end.

I'm going to bet the farm that it's time for me to go to bed.

2010-04-21T22:05:00.000-07:00

Being found a fool is painful. Spending money just to be thought even more a fool is tragic. But learning the truth about the asshole behind the fool is worthwhile vindication. So here I am on the wrong side of over one-hundred bucks spent on the development and printing of 120 film.

Let's back up.

For about three months now I've suspected my eyesight was slowly degrading. I based belief on the fact that prints of my 120 negatives were consistently returning to me either slightly or completely blurry. Today I went to a photo lab in Corpus and learned a wealth of info. For starters, there is a difference between the old machines used to print 120s and new ones. In the old ones, a person had to close the lid over their hand and hold the negative while it was being printed. Chances are, if you're a spazz then you will not be having any focused photos. And if you are a spazz, you should invest in a new machine which takes the negative away from you and does the work itself.

After sliding a good deal of print requests across the counter, I returned to my car and chewed that over. Then suddenly I remembered my last visit to the lab in Silver. When I asked for a print from a negative, I was told the price of scans. Not caring for scans at all since they somehow managed as blurry as the prints but with all manner of schmutz on them, I said I just wanted a print.

"We print from scans." At the time I guess I blocked that out because that was not something I EVER want to hear from a lab. What happens is that a negative is scanned into a computer and then printed out on some high-faluting printer. This has never worked out well for me, but then my last real interaction with this was in 2002. What do I know.

My prints are focused. She confirmed that yes, quality is lost when scanned into a computer. At first I was thrilled but then, damn man, I knew it. And yet I kept putting money into that place. One of my Silver hangout pals had to listen to me rant every time I went in there. Sitting in his red Nissan rust bucket, breathing deeply and knowing I couldn't possibly hate this man because he was so god-forsaken cute with his coke bottle glasses.

And thankfully, now I'm moving on. To Kansas and then to Long Creek, South Carolina, respectively. It's given me something to do, this planning of travels. Something to get my mind off of my having felt not good since I arrived. I weighed myself this morning and I was ten pounds lighter than when I arrived. But something else I have discovered since I got here is this: you know those lines people get in their lower abs above their hips? I have the start of one those. I thought it was a bruise at first, but it didn't hurt and it went in. And there's only the one on the right side, probably having to do with how I can't switch arms with chopping tools. I love it. I want it to stay forever. This will require lots of work on my part and I have never been able to commit myself to self betterment. Or even preservation.

My friend Christi is at this very moment recovering from her brush with Presidential Pizza food poisoning.

I knew that place was bad news, always knew it. Food poisoning. What can I say, it's the pits. Her bathroom light wasn't working when it hit her which of course had to be in the nighttime.

My heart goes out to you Christi.

Oh the adventure of it all.

2010-04-13T17:54:00.000-07:00

Hmmmm... well, you know, you don't need a full range of motion every day. I can wear this dress when I don't need to reach up. Or out. Or if I do, I can have someone get those things for me. Simple enough. It's so cute. There are days like that, right? Like when I sit around or go to... coffee shops or... shit. I have to put this back.

And then I saved $60 on a Tilley TW2 winter hat. For those not hip to the jive, this is a tweed hat with not only ear warmers, but a forehead warmer as well, and a velcro strap to span the forehead and keep the wind from ripping my awesome hat off my fat head. And on a related note, although my hardhat told me my head is a size 7 1/4, the only hats that would fit me in the second hand store were the ones that were 7 1/2. Fathead strikes again.

While basking in the glory of this find, my friend Shausha called me. Driving in rush hour and screaming out of her window for permissions to merge, she got around to eventually telling me about the sword fighting club she is joining. They use wooden swords and have sewing sessions because they make all their own costumes.

"Yeah they lead guy is a bunny with a Jason mask." So much for the images of historic accuracy. Shausha is going to be a scorpion, and wants to put a knife on the tail so that she can- as she put it while cursing the drivers around her- cut the shit out of faces. She might have the spirit wrong, but she will have a truly amazing costume.

Needless to say, I am envious of her newfound club. I want a club, and I want it to involve swords that give splinters, not slashes.

Yesterday a friend in England told me that he might have a six-month gig working aboard a replica of an 18th century frigate in France. He did this before the frigate was sold from it's port in England, a job that required him to wear era-appropriate clothing while on the clock. He loved it. I love it. I want it. I want to be a wench aboard this ship.

Looking around, I have to wonder how my friends got these exciting lives. I suppose that my life is seen as pretty interesting to people as well, but I would love Whitney's life: her next job is to scout out things to do in Mammoth for an adventure camp. Having to raft, rock climb, mountain bike? On the clock? Damn that's rough. As happy as I am for all my friends, I cannot deny my insane jealousy. I'm headed back to craigslist to sniff out the adventure to follow this summer in South Carolina.

2010-04-07T18:50:00.000-07:00

"I'm sorry, I just want to say that you are really beautiful. You look like a model."

"Oh. Oh! Oh my god that's so nice. Really I mean that. I'm just having the worst couple of days. That's really nice of you."

This is me leaning on the counter of Three Dogs and talking to Ria, trying to accept a compliment from a guy who turned out to be a local musician whose cd I have been listening to over and over. And I really did appreciate this, because less than 24 hours prior I had been a crying hot mess in the Wellness Coalition, trying very very hard to contain both my emotions and inners. During the last day of our crew's last hitch, I came down with either food poisoning or the flu, whatever it was, it was an illness that was passed from person to person and over the course of the week, 2/3 of our crew got it in some form. Some blame the broccoli, some the breakfast sausages, but I think it was the flu.

"Man, that sucked. Really. I don't think I could have hiked out like that. I know I couldn't have," said one Hannah, who got sick in the middle of the week. This became of a mantra of luck to all.

Except me. Because all week I was knowing that I would be last. And true to form, at 2:30 a.m. Monday began a campaign of treachery. I won't go into details, but I will say that I used an entire mullein plant in the course of this night. I stayed up all night with the exception of 45 minutes of laying by a freshly dug hole in the earth to escape the strong spring winds, looking up at the moon and wondering if I really did just hear a coyote... I fell asleep at 6:30 and had to get back up at 7 to prepare for our eight mile hike out of Aldo Leopold Wilderness. No water or food in my body, no sleep. No fuel for function. Beep Beep Beep wake up.

*Fuck my life* "Hannah. Hannah come here. I'm sick." But there really is nothing a person can do. Our radios didn't work until halfway up the mountain and we had no way of getting a person out, not for something that didn't involve broken limbs or skulls.

It was decided one way or other that Christine would hike with me.

Christine Fuller, eating a leftover burrito and looking at a map of Aldo Leopold. Sometimes I think she's telling the stories of an octogenarian mountain man, but no, they are hers.

"Hike". If you can call moving the legs hiking, then yeah I was doing that, but only just barely. Every step jostled my gut and my pack's waist strap making it worse. Within thirty minutes we hadn't gone even a tenth of a mile and there I was in the middle of the trail, pack thrown to the side, trying to wretch. It was suggested that I leave my pack there, but I didn't want to because I didn't want someone to have to hike all the way back to get. It's not the hardest hike in the world, but it is a hike that warrants a high-five once it's over, and every other member of my crew was already at our first camp four miles in. The pack went back on for approximately two minutes.

My right boot is broken. The rubber on the toe split on the last hitch but wasn't too bad. However, I couldn't walk a straight line because I had no energy. The flapping rubber scooped rubble and rocks and tore even further. Staggering all over the trail, slumping to a stop, I looked like a death march. And then the pack got to my guts.

"I'm going to go... *burp*... poo." One row of bushes off the trail and woops, nope, I think I'll puke instead. "Oh god, that's not normal," after the first wave, a sentence that was hushed by a second torrent that seemed to never stop. Antifreeze. Think that, and you've got what I was looking at.

"Tell me if you need anything," said Christine.

How to say: "I'm staying behind. I can't do this. I cannot go on." Thinking of eight miles, over half of it uphill and full of scrabble rocks for my unsteady shoe to scoop up. She already told me that she knew I wanted to be miserable alone but that she couldn't leave me. I opened my mouth to voice my intentions, but saw her sitting on a rock in the trail having a cigarette and looking out at the Animas vista with either profound concern or anger.

Very similar to this photo but without the grin and through bleary and sweaty eyes. I dare you to tell her you quit.

I feared she would kill me or give me one those tough love speeches which no matter the situation, is always worse for me. So I wiped the puke off my lip, slumped on some rocks to feel sorry for myself, then went two bushes over to "poop" and returned to the trail. Barely a fraction of a mile into the hike, I left my pack behind. It did not help my "hiking" performance in the least, but it did keep me from barfing again. During one of my pity party sleeps, Christine gave me some aspirins and vitamin c. Man, let me tell you, when there's nothing in your body at all, pills and stuff really work. It worked so well that I stopped slump-walking. I think it effectively sort of woke my body up from the sleep it didn't get. We even had a conversation or two in there. One of them having to do with me crying so that the pressure in my head makes me forget about the pressure in my stomach. And yes, I was crying a lot in those first miles, the first of which took about an hour.

Fast forward to me at the site of our first camp in Cave Canyon, laying between two holes in the ground and wondering which to fill first before falling asleep. Chris and Christine were long gone, hiking all the way back to Animas to get my dropped pack.

Chris, ultimate team player, hater of smack talkers.

Hannah woke me up by yelling my name up the hillside, and when she found me she forced me to drink water. I was very saddened by this. And then she made me move to the sump we had accidentally left open the hitch before. She pumped water for me and made me drink more, then went to the firepit to hang out with recliner supreme, Mike D.

Hannah. "You don't have many options. Either start walking now or take a little nap and start when you wake up." She will make you drink water.

I puked. Walked back to where she and Mike D. were hanging. "I puked. I'm sure you heard. I'm going to go wash off whatever is on my hands and then I'm walking." Referring to the miles of fucking shitty uphill before me. Mike D. walked with me, behind me while I tried navigating that thing under my feet called ground.

Mike D. Hikes with hands in pockets.

As we rounded the uphill corner from hell a mere five minutes into the walk, an SUV rounded the corner above us. What the hell. It wasn't the van that Ian had gone ahead for, so in my mind it was just one more piece of crap for me to try walking around. But then two old people got out. They live in the area. I had talked to the man last week on the hike out, and the old woman gave Hannah and I a ride in seven days earlier. Against my will, I might add, but as I talked to Hannah in the passenger seat the lady jumped out and opened the back door. Can't turn that down. I tried hiding from my crewmates as we drove by them by laying down, but the woman kept stopping and Christine most certainly saw me hiding. She had not been pleased. So there they were, Jim and Dee, there to save the day... followed by Matt.

Matt Flick, my Silver City hangout buddy.

Then I realized they were there for us. I almost cried. But then I got in the car instead. Jim and Dee had never taken the vehicle in that far, but what better occasion?

At some point during my death march with Christine, Ian, Ryan and Matt had hitched a ride all the way out to our van with the other crew, who had parked closer. When they tried driving back in, a tree was blocking the road. Wind was insane. Not surprised. So Ian hacked at it with an axe and then head flew off. Then he hacked at it with a pulaski and the handle shattered. He needed a chainsaw. This is how Jim and Dee entered the picture with their SUV.

Ian, breaker of tools.

Ryan. Hey big Ryan!

We sat around until Chris, Christine and Hannah showed up with my crap at 4. And then off we went, in search of gas because we were not making it back to Silver as it was. We headed out of our way in favor of a closer station, a station located in a town that makes a living off looking like a ghost town and on this Monday in question, lived up to it by having everything closed. Even the pay-at-the-pump machine. Out of our way we went further, to some tourist trap station by a lake or pond or what the hell ever. After that was 2 hours of Black Range curvy insanity, during which all I could think of is how my urge to get out of that damn range was only two iotas of a shred stronger than my intense desire to vomit all over myself.

What happened next can only be called sad. Now, normally I'm very good with goodbyes and was prepared to give a graceful one to Matt as he left town from the office, but I felt like shit so that just wasn't going to happen. Details are very blurry. It involved a bit of vertigo straight out of the van, me not being able to write my name on my time card and crying on Matt's shoulder in the hallway. He had put my beanie on my head so I wouldn't forget it, but it was on all wrong and I know I looked like one of those hot messes you cross the street to get away from.

I regret this. I regret most of what I don't remember from that Monday. BUT! Today is a new Monday, a full week from the beginning of the horribleness, and I would like to report that I am fully recovered. Yesterday marked the first day I ate food without nausea! There is rejoice to be had after all.

And so now, on the other side of illness, I am left with four days to prepare for moving my life once again. This time to South Carolina to train as a raft guide. I do not plan on getting the flu. Or food poisoning.

Eight days

2010-03-24T18:56:00.000-07:00

My walk to work, lucky me

Cave in Gila. No riches, but plenty of dried up bat poop.

Eight days with no shower

Ron and Ria, owners of Three Dogs, the place I go to feel whole again.

"Crash and Burn", Surely It's at Least Worth the Learning Experience

2010-03-12T18:28:00.000-08:00

Every so often it happens. I have a dream that is somewhat like a nightmare but for the element of being grossed out. It sounds like it could be something along the lines of Hannah's ultimately visceral zombie evisceration/tracheotomy dream, but if you believe that I would consider that anything more than entertaining then you probably don't know me well.

I was in the back room of a church, sitting in a chair sideways eating a candy and trying really hard to understand why I needed to be marrying this boy. This boy being the man standing in the doorway.

"Just because he's divorced doesn't mean I need to marry him." I was really not feeling this, but my mother and sister seemed to believe that it had to happen that way. I am going on 30, wearing jeans with burn holes in the legs, and soon my child bearing hips will give up on me the way every other eligible batchelor has. And the boy- who is a total sweetheart whom I adore to the max but shall remain nameless here- was standing in the doorway of this room wearing a tux and quietly sad eyes.

Okay fine give me the fuckin dress. I swing my leg off the arm of the chair and go into the next room where my sister is waiting with two dresses. One is slim with a sweetheart neckline lightly beaded, and thin straps. It is not for me. It will not fit, she says. "Fine, give me the other one." It is ugly as a squashed cat on a highway. I would describe it, but I only saw it after it was put over my head and the details were obscured by the Skirt Of Copious Tulles. It was rough, in my face, there was no silk or anything over the tulle, and I think there were sleeves of mutton attached somewhere on there. I did not wait for it to get zipped.

"Uh uh. No. Take it off. Take it off. Give me that one." Pointing to the more elegant dress which I was told numerous times would not fit me. "I don't care. I'm wearing that one. Let's go." I put the dress on and it fits perfectly, but the head-tilting interest of this development gave way immediately to the ridiculousness of this whole charade.

"Seriously you guys. I do not want to marry him. I do not want to do this. I am not doing this. Sorry and everything. Sorry man."

And then me and The Boy are in what I'm guessing was a cafe, and he is wide-eyed and ecstatic, apparently having just discovered the brand new life that comes along with not jumping marriage to marriage. He didn't know he didn't have to get married. He just thought it was the thing to do. I always knew it wasn't. I'm telling him so. I love to tell people so. He is grateful and has a new lease on life. We appear to be best buds.

I wake up in a sweat because I believe that the waking me and dream me should have certain indefatigable commonalities. Not liking or putting on any wedding dress is one of them. Knowing the lingo of necklines is another. The feeling of scratchy tulle stayed with me for a good deal of the morning, perhaps contributing the overall feeling of physical and mental heaviness that haunted me all day.

One cup of rice, a grilled cheese with fries, a cinnamon roll from the way too jolly baker at Schadell's. This is what I have eaten today and it is all still sitting in my stomach. I can't not be sleepy today. Yesterday I couldn't not be cranky in that lovable way that is me. I fell asleep on the bedroom floor with a ruler in my hand and sketchpad under my face while trying to embark on a bookmaking journey. The two hour nap I took today has destroyed me in no certain manner, I can just say that it happened. Between yesterday and today, three people told me I was not myself. That and the nap/ruler episode make me wonder if I'm not being poisoned by the gas in my house. But it's probably something in the greater air. Yesterday my friend was off too. All we did was complain about everything. And today a dear friend told me she was not herself. The self is perplexing. And between you and me, I'm terrified that my self is going to make me have another wedding dream or god forbid- truly, truly forbid- pregnancy dream.

good enough for now, anyway.

2010-03-11T17:40:00.000-08:00

My great friend Matt is standing me up, right now as I type. I don't blame him, VirginWomanWhore is singing her meow song and if I remember right, that's the song that horrified him away from this coffee shop on Thursdays to begin with. But I am here trying to figure out how to make my own paper with the tools in my ghetto cottage and can't leave before I am thoroughly confident in my defeat.

Right now at this moment: my friend Matt- walking around somewhere that is not here supporting me, being smooth of the face since he ended his month-long obsession with growing the perfect mountain man beard. My friend Rick- chatting with me from Korea where he is reminiscing about the vacation he took to Bali with his girlfriend and preparing to go to the Philippines for a long weekend. My friend Alecia- texting me from mile marker 230 on the Parks Highway in Alaska, having returned in February to a life of working 9-5 in an office and then going straight to her apartment to watch movies. "Don't worry, it will get better when people start showing up", I respond, imagining her world of dark with no one in it but snow and her boss, whose house she must shower at. "Think of the money." And me- freezing my ass off in New Mexico and subjecting myself to an a cappella Irish trad song featuring a corpse and copious amounts of barley ("ha ha ha," Rick types, "a irish staple along with whiskey and stew") on the offchance I find the perfect example of a kettle stitch to jog my memory. I do, after all, have to have a journal by the time Monday rolls around.

Today has been a day of general downerness. Inadvertent, of course, and completely unfair to everyone around me since the day started out with a free fountain Dr. Pepper courtesy of a gas station attendant who reached her max with two teens trying to buy cigarettes. Whatever gets me free DP works for me. I think it started with Asian Jennifer Aniston. She was somehow not hittin' her stride today, and it was evident when the fogey in front of me decided to rearrange her purse on the counter after their transaction was complete. It looked like a smile, but it only just looked like one.

And now, the place I choose to end my official day, is what just happened to me as recorded to yet another acquaintance on Facebook:

"Oh my day just got better. Old man walking past: 'I didn't mean to stare, I just thought maybe you were Neve Campbell.' 'Oh you, you are too nice. Get out of here!'"

"show him your boobs."

"I don't want to horrify him. And besides. boobs are for two types of people:
1) people I'm going to do
2) people in the wrong place at the wrong time."

"do? i dont get it."

"have relations with and I told you, I have paranoia issues so both types of people are extremely rare."

Frisbee and Laundry.

2010-02-24T19:39:00.000-08:00

"Oh man, that guy's wallet just fell out! Grab it!" I'm in a truck with Ryan and a man jaywalking has lost his sensitive documents. We stop in the middle of the street and I jump out, grab the large wallet and return it to the man who, by this time, has turned around to find his stuff.

"Man that would suck!"

Fast forward to a few hours later, me with Matthew and a man named Claude in an antique store. I am beside myself with excitement because I found a book called "Let's Bind a Book" and not only is it in mint condition, but it's only two dollars. The three of us then walk to the library, where we meet Ryan (because there aren't enough people in this town to not see the people I know at least three times a day). I check out no books. Ryan and I go to the copy shop not far away. When we exit, I notice my wallet is gone. Immediately I freak out because I never lose anything. Not in my bag, not in the copy shop. I make Ryan take my bag and I take off for the antique store, quite literally trying to run up Arizona street, which is impossible due to acute steepness. And of course it wasn't there. So off I go to the library. On the way I recalled going to the bathroom. This is important because the pants I was wearing have shallow pockets and constantly dump things out when I pull them down to use the toilet. I begin to walk-race to the library, arriving two minutes after close. Nothing else to be done for the night, so I decide to go the way of anger and neurosis.

Lucky for me, there was a Scrabble game on at Java. Six players on a deluxe board. I'm talking quadruple letters and quadruple words. Stakes so high that waiting five minutes for one word was common. In the end, the winner demoralized us all by leaving a cavernous margin of over 100 points between himself and the next closest contender.

This morning I raced to the library to find that my wallet was not there. Once again, to the antique store and then the walk of shame one last time. The store owners were seriously tickled. Police station had nothing for me.

Bobby. I see Bobby, one of my Valentines, on the sidewalk downtown. We shake hands and reintroduce ourselves and start talking about our days. I'm running around looking for my wallet, I say.

"How about you? What you up to today?"
"Trying to get a couple of bucks to get my ID."
"Where's your ID?"
He shrugs with how-the-hell-should-I-know arms out to the side, smiling and says "I don't know!" Speak of the devil. This is clearly becoming a problem in Silver.
"Well damn. I'm sorry to hear that. I guess we'll be seeing each other in some of the same lines, then."

Alright. It's over. Me and my wallet, it's over. I froze my account last night over the phone and I have no credit cards, but I did have my social security card in there. I know, it's stupid. There's a wide variety of people telling me this, even my coffee shop woman. But there was a period in my life when everyone and their dog needed to see this piece of paper for some stupid reason, and it made sense to keep it in my wallet, especially considering I kept losing my Blue File of Important Papers. "Dodge a bullet this way, I never lose anything." Except I have. In elementary school I lost a wallet with $12 in it. I have never forgotten and if I don't find this Silver City and in fact, all of New Mexico will never look the same. Off to the bank when I get a temporary debit replacement and find out that the customer service woman's daughter lives in Fairbanks and studies birds. Sweet lady.

Post office to sent two letters, no Asian Jennifer Aniston. No experiments for me. While in line something horrible occurred to me: A while back I had taken my dad and mom's old licenses because I had no photos of them on me. So uh, those were in there too. This is the gift I give to my family. "Ha ha, looks like we all got stolen!" A doppelganger family just might be forming right now, with my dad alive and possibly someone taking my shitty identity and actually making something out of it. Wouldn't that burn? Been working on success for three decades and then someone makes an empire on my name? The line just absolutely would not move until the barista from Javalina got the hell out of line. Whatever, great, let's try combinations people, let's try them all because I've got shit to do.

What better way to deal with this than eat burritos at Don Fidencio's and talk about how we are getting more snow this weekend.

"Your life is crazy."
"It's a clown car."
"What are we doing here? Like, what are we doing here? Look at how we live."
"We walk around all day and drink coffee."
"I know."
"Hell. I hardly have a job, I haven't paid rent and now I don't even have any ID. I'm practically a fucking bum."

*chew chew chew**looking out of the window at traffic*

"What has happened to this town?"
"By which you mean that guy running down the street in a kilt and crown?.... or just in general."
"What?"
"Right there. See him? Go out the door, he's running fast." Snaggly blonde hair flapping behind him.
"Oh my god."
"Yeah." What was he asking about again? No idea. Didn't matter at that point now did it.

Crazy cakes back at the apartment, you know, the one I haven't paid rent for yet? Yeah, that one. It's stuffed like a collegiate phone booth in there, wine flowing from the box like a river of life, god bless 'em. I don't begrudge them the fun, it's just the age old problem of me not being able to catch up when everyone else is already drunk. One beer per hour gets me nowhere.

Booze and trivia night?

Ehhhhh...........

How about frisbee and laundry?

I know I suck, but apparently everyone else does too.

2010-02-21T18:46:00.000-08:00

That's it, I've had it. Every week I get sucked in to MSN's "Vote: The Week in Pictures" and I do it. I vote. And then I get to the part after the voting where you get to see how many votes each picture got and it's always something to do with military dudes running somewhere and shooting at something, or it's a portrait of some guy that people think is amazing.

Let me tell you something.

It's a military photo. Bullets flying and jarheads shouting with their blocky jaws does not a good picture make. Nor does a person of dark skin and blue eyes up close and personal make a photo worth taking. Yes, you can ascertain that they are from a different country by the cloth heaped around their head, but really, what do you see of that culture? Nothing. Because we're only looking at blue. This picture has been taken approximately 15 million times, because everyone was inspired by Afghan Girl and is giving themselves ocular hernias trying to recreate it, and I'm not counting the 14 million shameless Afghan Girl knockoffs that art students and photo labs proudly display in that 15 million figure; the ones with teenage white girls wrapped up in terricloth robes. God dammit. God dammit. And disaster photos? "Oooh look, that person is in grief, get a photo and get as close as you possibly can without scratching her corneas. We have to capture her tears with our lenses, literally.". Using grief as a vehicle for disaster or funeral photos is pandering. It doesn't make a great photo, it makes an easy one and usually makes a person with talent into a soulless asshole. If they aren't already for shoving their hundred-photos-per-second digicamera in the middle of a funeral procession.

So where did the photo I voted for end up? The one with the unique ankle-level perspective, movement galore and multiple points of interest on different planes? Number 11 out of 13, behind one dark-skinned, blue-eyed guy with colored cloth on his head, two pictures of jarheads- one screaming and one running fast with guns, two pictures of athletes going fast (one not bad, aerial of luge track made an interesting perspective), an airplane, a stupid fuckin rainbow with birds in it (woops, above military craft, this one could qualify as jarhead photo porn), a girl crying her face off at a loved one's funeral procession (woops, died in battle, could qualify as military porn) and a mailman wearing shorts in the snow. Number 12 is military porn. Number 13 is train disaster porn.

What makes a good photo? I don't know, try taking pictures of military situations you never see. Cookies trying really damn hard to make food for a bajillion tired and tortured souls. Disaster photos that show dispatchers having the world come down on them. Or maybe instead of focusing on the dead bodies in the street and the elderly weeping over them we can see the ambulance drivers who have to drive through them or the street sweepers who have to clean up once all the bodies and weepers and deadline crunching photogs have gone away. Photos that are interesting and timeless instead of just emotional and timely.

Stupid MSN. Stupid MSN voters. Never again. Maybe I'm just angry because all my own photos suck. Maybe. Or maybe it's because I came back to my computer and discovered that I didn't complete fixing the flaws from my last photo lab, the one area of the photos that happens to be the most difficult to fix: the mysterious chemical rainbow going down the side of a face. No amount of Photoshop can make this look natural. These things are possibilities, but I cannot believe that I am wrong about all of this.

I cast my last vote, peace out.

Building karma, taking names.

2010-02-14T11:06:00.000-08:00

Last night I crashed a Scrabble game at Javalina, courtesy of Matt and his lovely roomie/landlord, Joanie.

"Tomorrow is Chinese New Year," she said, "the year of the metal tiger," her friend chimes in as she bids farewell on her way out of the cafe. "Buddhists believe that whatever you do, it will come back to you one-million fold." My mind immediately opens the floodgates and memories pour out, begging to be examined for any trace of my being a cheapskate. I couldn't come up with anything obvious but it must have happened because my run of no money has been absolutely awe-inspiring.

"I'm going to do great things tomorrow." My mind was made up. Great things. Or minorly nice things in great quantities.

This morning Ria spotted me a cafe au lait. Apparently she was not pleased with what she gave me yesterday. I was, but no matter. Two hours of sitting, talking, and a few Hassy shots, and a man walks in. He is journaling too, but he prefers pencil. I like this. I like seeing other people with unlined notebooks of no particular brand, it makes me happy.

I bought a cherry poptart, left a tip, and went in search of Crazy Dave #1 with the intentions of making him my valentine. No luck, he is closed for the day. I went to Java to make Matt my valentine. He was not there. I walked to the Buff to make Diane my valentine but according to the two men standing outside, they for some reason had not opened yet. "Crap, they have to open soon." I cup my hands around my face and look through the window.

"They were supposed to open at 11:30. I left messages too."

And so I walk on toward the Big Ditch and over the bridge to where the transients are, hoping to see the dog. The dog is not there, but three men are. One sitting on a bench, one standing next to the trashcan, and one sitting on the barrier below the fence leaning on his arms on his cane. The dog, they tell me, was not picked up by the shelter. One of their friends wanted a companion, so they took the dog and are caring for it.

"As long as the dog has someone loving it."

"Yeah, that's what matters. Nice dog, too. Sweet." The man with the cane rasped almost inaudibly.

"What are you guys doing today?"

"Nothing special, just hanging around, you know," said the one by the trash can.

"Yeah me too." Nervous. "Well I came over to see about the dog, and was wondering if you all want to be my valentine." I hold out the brown bag with the fresh pastry. "It's a cherry poptart, homemade from Three Dogs. They're pretty good."

"Hey alright!" says the guy in the middle, "thanks."

"There's only one, you'll have to split it up or whatever."

The man with the cane asks my name and introduces himself as Paul. The man by the trashcan is Dave. When it comes time to shake the hand of the man on the bench I am still desperately trying to drive "Paul" and "Dave" into my brain, so I miss his name altogether. Agh. But he is middle-aged, hispanic, and wears a trucker hat on top of his finely cut hair, hair that is bobbed neatly a bit under his earlobes.

"You'll be seeing me around again I'm sure, I'd love to pet that dog again."

"Yeah! Thanks."

"You guys enjoy that. Happy Valentine's Day."

"God bless," says Paul.

"Yeah you guys have a good one. Later."

I have valentines. Three of them.

Off I walk, thinking I could get down into the Big Ditch but I walked the wrong way. Lucky for me there is a bakery at that end of the drag. And the man, he's in there listening to Rusted Root's "When I Woke" and helping a woman who is ordering items one by one. But he is maintaining.

It is my turn.

"This is a great album, I love this."

He perks up and says "Oh I was really making some noise earlier when no one was in here. This is their best album by far."

I was going to buy a single thirty-cent cookie, but then there were oatmeal raisin as well as chocolate chip. And then at the last minute he said something about pumpkin empanadas. One thing after another. I ended up spending a dollar sixty. But well spent, because some is for me, and if I don't eat it all then some will be for others too.

A Tieperman cannot go into a bakery without thinking of grandma Jerry. She's in Florida and must be living it up because she didn't answer her phone. But no matter, I'm about to go on a walkabout in search of things to photograph. Perhaps an Asian Jennifer Aniston is skulking about town. Or one of my plethora of single coworkers will be interested in polystyrene full of generic chinese food.

There's no way this day can go wrong.

Are There Going to be Snacks?

2010-02-13T10:23:00.001-08:00

Three Dogs coffee is hoppin', but that's cool because I have a list of things to do and that necessitates a cafe au lait to go. I report to Ria about the greatness of the farm-fresh Fugagli eggs and ask if there are lids to match my cup. There are not just yet, the provider didn't have them. No problem, I say, and off I go.

Crossing the foot bridge off market on my way to the post office I see a golden retriever. He is curled up, relaxing just beyond that post that stops morons from driving their cars over footbridges. I make noises at him that people make when they want to be casually sociable with a dog and he looks up, interested but not enough to move. There is an extension cord draped over him. Thinking it was wrapped around his neck as a leash, I pick it up, sloshing coffee on myself. This cord is not wrapped but draped on him, and has an immediate effect. The dog sits erect because it is not a leash, it is actually his toy. There are little scars on his nose, and his underside makes it look like he's been on his own for a few days at most. He jogs in front of me as I walk the bridge, looking back to make sure I'm still there. On the other side of the bridge is a collection of older hobos. "Hey! Is this your dog?"

"Nope, he just went over there and laid down about thirty minutes ago. Didn't see anyone with him." We chat about the dog, and I decide to call the humane society once I finish with the post office. One of the hobos digs a pack of bologna out of her bag and gives the dog a slice. The dog is certainly going to be hanging around.

In the post office, thinking about how the employee on the left looks exactly like a half-asian Jennier Aniston. She is bubbly, efficient, conversational, and somehow, even with all these pros coupled with the Jennifer Aniston coup- which I'm told is a substantial one- she is not sporting a ring. Really? Young, attractive, upbeat, single, but nonetheless working at the post office? It's pretty much freakish. She must have a boyfriend, I think, looking at the long, silky black bangs that curl out and over her eyebrows. I decide to formulate a test. I get my postage taken care of and when she tells me to have a good day, I say "have a happy Valentine's Day!" Cynic and hater of holidays that I am, I always return the salutation. Jennifer Aniston did not raise her head or utter a response. Ooooh... bitter maybe? Single and hating it? Other than everyone on Earth being here for me to stare out, be entertained by, attempt to figure out and fabricate lives for, this has absolutely no bearing on my life whatsoever.

Back at the bridge, the transients are feeding the dog sliced bread. "Man, you're never getting rid of him now." We talk about the dog more and the man leaning against the rail overlooking Big Ditch tells me that if I call the cops instead of the humane society, the dog will just end up dead in a few days. I reassure them that I will call the humane society and they tell me the dog will be safe with them. I traipse back across the bridge to Market street, sloshing coffee all over myself as I go.

Lucky day for me, the bookstore is open and I enter to get the number for the shelter. Dave is people watching, smoking a cigarette, waiting for good books to appear. There is an canister- oatmeal or something- on the counter. It's wrapped in white paper and is asking for donations so that a private detective can be hired to investigate the murder of Rachel Torrisi Sierra. What happened, he said, was that this much-loved woman was taken out to Mule Creek and shot in the back of the head with a shotgun. Nothing productive has come of it, despite leads and suspicious activities. There is no headway being made, one more unsolved murder for Silver City. I dump my change purse upside down into the canister and we talk about how shitty history is in the public education system.

The humane society is en route to find a retriever with an extension cord and a troop of hobos.

"'Djin- a supernatural being in Muslim mythology.' I swear Helen, I turn my back for one second-" the lady turns the rotating Scrabble board to survey the vocabulary damage Helen has done. A thumping at Javalina's door... a woman walked out the door without making sure her dog exited as well. She is looking at the street and yanking the collar. Not Helen turns around. "What are you doing lady? I swear to god-"

Synopsis from me; I can't concentrate long enough to write substantial things anymore.

2010-02-12T12:35:00.000-08:00

After an evening of babysitting two inhibited friends, the run to Wal-Mart and the purchase of a rice steamer finally happened.

The woman at Three Dogs coffee gave me two farm-fresh eggs to compare to the grocery store eggs. She gets them from Gila, which is where one of my crewmates, Fugagli, lives. Fugagli raises chickens and ducks and sells their eggs. My thinking is that I have inadvertently chanced upon the opportunity to try Fugagli's eggs.

And moment of moments, Go Girl arrived in the mail today. If all goes as well, this will put an end to the torment of peeing in a foot of snow. I have high expectations but a capacity to do anything I put my mind to.

2010-02-08T17:07:00.000-08:00

Today I found myself in the curious position of having to explain who Peabo Bryson is. And despite the obvious clues of "big mole" and "screwy cross on his cheek" along with the falsetto warble, no one had any idea who I was talking about. This was during a break in our 8-hour tutorial on the finer points of winter camping. Tomorrow we head out for an overnight excursion in Emory Pass, an area which should supply amounts of snow sufficient for building snow shelters and being cold in general. We're getting paid for this, so I'm pretty excited. The reason this is happening is because of our last hitch. There was so much snow that my crew didn't even get to go out, and the two crews that did go out apparently had the worst time ever. Igloos were included. People waking up soaking wet and going to sleep in the same condition. A rumored case of pneumonia after the fact. Given that such a bad time was had by all during the crash course, my crew was given the task of actually learning about winter camping before being thrown into it.

And thus, the overnighter. In the meantime, I look for a place to become a raft guide during the summer.

But for now, while my chicken breast defrosts on a pot lid in the fridge of the apartment I moved into two nights ago, I cruise Goodreads and realize just how off the book train I have fallen.