No Question

I am not remotely hip enough to be in San Francisco. Or California, never mind that I once lived here. In fact, if you really want to know, I'm not remotely hip enough to even be alive in the 21st century. I'm a fucking dinosaur, OK?



I just went downstairs to get a packet of decaf, since whoever made up the room missed the whole Coffee Pot Thang. I go down and ask for a packet of decaf, and the hip young woman at the desk, who may or may not have been the same one who, this morning, had a reverse French manicure, which probably has another name but not for me: she had the tips of all her nails painted black, which looked, as you might guess, as if she'd been doing manual labor of a particularly nasty sort and hadn't had time to clean the sewage from beneath her nails--she brought the little cheap-ass packet of coffee and handed it to me and said, "No question."



I said, "?" But I said this silently, and quickly, as I immediately realized this is the natural progression from "No problem," which I've accepted and can use comfortably.



But "No question"? It felt kind of like she was giving me a pass about the interrogation, the one she had planned to administer, complete with the rusty dental tools and the guy named Claude.



Sigh.

It's been an eye-opening day, here in the city by the bay. In part, it was lovely: we had a wonderful vegetarian lunch with Debbie, a dear friend we see way, way too infrequently. We had a drink at Top of the Mark, where we talked by phone with Wendy, who is in her family cabin in upstate New York--and we're all old enough to be just the tiniest bit impressed by this: both of us being over 1000 miles away from home, in some remote-to-us place, having a phone conversation in the afternoon, complete with the 3-hour time difference.



Plus we went to Flax, where my mother used to buy my Christmas gifts, so that I went around corners and ran into things my mother gave me years and years ago. Sad, but cool.



But the overriding truth of the day is that, once again, I realized that I am not made for Real Life. I am not made to live in cities filled with people and traffic and filth and stench and men talking to their shoes and--oh, get THIS: an obviously-well-to-do white woman who leapt out of her SUV in front of the opera house and ran over to fall to her knees and puke in the ever-so-manicured lawn.

[Which, if you know me at all, you'll know ruined my entire fucking day, sending me into Panic Mode, with sweating and a stomach ache and hyperventilation and much, much ranting.]

I am Not Made For This, and I am ready to go home. I do not want to smell other people's piss and vomit and body odor--and oh, honeys, I have smelled more stale, acrid sweat in the past week than I have any need of, ever. I do not want people to ask me for money or for Jesus or for guidance. I do not want anyone to touch me. I do not want to step in things so foul that I have to wash my shoes every day.

In short, I am ready to go home. I want my regular computer, rather than this POS laptop, never mind that The EGE bought me the Top-O'-The-Line PC Laptop just two years ago--I hate it. It hates me. We cannot do anything at all together (it just restarted itself, without warning, right in the middle of this whole post).

I am made for long days of working at home, in front of the computer, and hours spent stitching on the front porch. I am made for a life of living in a town where everyone thinks I'm a freak but--get this!--leaves me alone. Where you don't run into people who, ideally, should be somewhere where someone can take care of them and clean them and feed them and make sure they're taken to the toilet and don't get lost for hours playing with their shoestrings and walking around in clothes in which they've completed all their bodily functions.

It's sad, and it's nasty, and it's disgusting and depressing and scary and hopeless and noisy and overwhelming.

I always think fondly of California, but I don't know why. I didn't like it when I lived here, and I don't like it now. I do not like big cities, and I don't like crowds. I do not like traffic. I don't like paying twice as much as I pay for things at home. I like walking in cities, and I like talking to people, but I like talking to people who are present, who know what species I am and don't think I'm their shoestrings (yes, we saw several people today who seemed to have a Thang about their shoes, yes, we did).

Sure, Midland is not the bastion of intellectual culture. It is not the place you'd go for entertainment or shopping or, gee, much of anything but religious fervor and an abiding adoration of our last appointed president. But, by god, it's also not the place where you'd constantly be bombarded by other people's issues: their mental illnesses (and I'm not talking just the street people; the well-off successful people with their suits and expensive shoes are pretty weird, too, let me tell you: at home, I'm the wacko because I talk to myself; in the Big City, I'd fit right in: they ALL seem to talk to themselves, and not in any Bluetooth sort of way) and their paranoia (these are people who lock everything they own if they're going to step two feet away; we're people who lock our door only at night, when we go to bed). Yeah, I understand the necessity of all this: I know cities are a different thing entirely.

And that's the point: I'm not made for cities. I'm not made for crowds. I'm made for a much quieter, simpler life. And, as always when I'm away from home for way too long, I can't wait to get back to it.

Sorry to rant. We've met some wonderful people, yes, we have. Kind, charming, funny, nice-smelling people. People who followed me out to the truck to tell me that I'd tucked my skirt up into my underwear. How's that for nice?

But also people who were so remote to me that I had to marvel at how I'm better able to understand and communicate with the animals at home--with the dogs--Freddie and Bella and Gus, and the cats--Angle and Humphrey and Paddington and Milo--than I ever would be with them. I know what animals are saying. These people? I had absolutely no clue.

Travel is broadening, yes, indeed. It also serves to remind you of your place in the world, should you be lucky enough to have found yours, never mind how odd and uncomfortable the fit often seems. If you're lucky enough to have found a place that seems at all like home, you're very lucky indeed.

I can't wait to get back to mine.

Hello, My Little Chickadees--From Redding, California

Hello, hello! I think I'm somewhere I've never been before. I'm not really sure, of course. Since we lived in California for a couple of years, and since we once spent several weeks driving up and down the length of the state, I may well have been here at some point. As you might guess, I have absolutely no memory of this.

I can tell you nothing of Redding. We arrived about 6 pm. It was 108 degrees, according to the thermometer in the truck. We unloaded the stuff we needed, ate almonds and cheese and drank a bottle of sparkling Spanish wine from Trader Joe's in Portland, and didn't set foot out into the hot world. Holy moly. Normally one would have to go to Midland, Texas, for 108 degrees.

Today we go to San Francisco for a couple of days. It's not very far, and we hope to find some wineries along the way. Or, rather, not too far out of the way along the way. But, since it's Monday, and since lots of places are closed on Mondays, we may be out of luck. There are some other places we hope to find and visit, but that's always sort of iffy. I'll let you know.

Art Fiber Fest--it was fabulous. Four days of riotous creativity, people from all over the world (one woman flew in from Taiwan; there were a lot of Canadians--those marvelous Canadians!). A lot of walking--Reed College is perhaps the most beautiful urban space I've ever seen. One afternoon I went down and walked along the creek, a lovely place that took me right back to the creek in Ponca City, Oklahoma, and the endless summer days I spent there.

Do I have photos? I have no clue: one morning I was standing at the espresso cart, paying for my latte, and I looked down and saw my camera on the ground. It was in its little case, so I thought nothing of it. But later, when I tried to take a photo of something fabulous, I discovered that the LCD screen was shattered. It has no alternate viewfinder, so although it appeared willing to take photographs, I had no way of knowing if that was, in fact, what it was actually doing. So I put it away. I need to get the card out and see what's on it, but eh. Later. I'm just thrilled it was my little camera and not The EGE's Official Camera--which was the whole point of the trip: for him to take photos of Art Fiber Fest.

There were lots of great things--the Wine Bottle Installation, wherein I artfully arranged all the empty bottles of all the wine drunk in our dorm over the 4 days: 38 bottles: so cute! So empty! The last night, after show and tell, I spent several hours serving as hostess, pouring wine (we took a case and bought another case from Trader Joe's) and passing snacks. Much more fun (for me) than actually drinking the wine or eating the snacks: I was happy playing hostess, plus I felt great at 5:30 the next morning, whereas some of the other celebrants were wearing their sunglasses at breakfast. I tend to be sort of an enabler A Feeder, really.

Perhaps my favorite thing was meeting the fabulous Judy Wise for lunch at The Cup and Saucer on Hawthorne Street, or, maybe, the next afternoon, when I sat at a table with Teesha and Tracy and their daughter Tiphoni, Judy, and Theo Ellsworth--that's three people (Teesha, Judy, Theo) who are in the next book, all in one place at one time. Yowza. [They were journaling; I was asking nosy questions (duh) and recording with the little recorder. Oh: and stitching. I've been doing a LOT of stitching.]

[That link for Judy's blog has some photos for you.]

There's more, of course. Lots more. But goodlordalmighty, it's a pain in the butt trying to do stuff on a laptop. Sure, I have my plug-in keyboard. But the laptop mouse! And the slowness! I get grouchy every time I have to use this. Just ranting and ranting. So I'm going to leave you to enjoy the various websites of the various cool people while we go off to see what there is to see between here and San Francisco. After that, we're off to Bakersfield, Flagstaff, and then a couple nights in Santa Fe. And then home to get a new roof, new siding, and a new internet provider. Yay!

XO

Hello, My Little Chickadees--From Salt Lake City

Yikes, what a lot of driving! I mean, a LOT. Thank god I wasn't the one doing it, right? We were on the road forfuckingever yesterday--from Albuquerque up through Colorado through Cortez (lived there) over to Utah, through Moab (lived there) and Price (lived there) and on up to Salt Lake City. Haven't ever lived here. I don't even know if I've ever BEEN here. It's weird, you know: used to I could just call one of my parents for stuff like this. Now there's nobody who knows it. And since I sure as hell can't remember it, it's lost forever.

Like that's a big deal. Nope.

Here's a photo of us standing at the Continental Divide. I had no idea about the water. Did you? Probably everybody on the planet knew that but me.

A woman got out of her SUV, which was filled with other people, and offered to take the photo. People are amazingly nice.

These are in Moab, Utah. Every lamppost along this road had these rock sculptures hanging from them, and I LOVE those. I wanted to take them all with me.

Nothing really to report here. Days of stitching in the truck and listening to CD's of Molly Ivins bashing W are a great way to spend time, but they don't much lend themselves to entertaining stories. Oh, sure, I got us ever-so-briefly lost yesterday, failing to make the non-turn in Shiprock that screwed us up and had us heading toward Farmington, waiting patiently for the highway to turn north and having it just keep on not happening. I think it was Fate, trying to force us to go to Farmington, as I'd earlier said to The EGE, "Gee, if we just went over to Farmington, we could go through four places I used to live today." So there was much bitching about the wrong turn. That would be by me, as The EGE doesn't care about stuff like that. Wrong turn? No problem: go back and take the right turn. Wanna see the Two-Headed Rattlesnake? Sure, let's turn around and go back.

Me? Holy crap. I HATE it when I make A Navigating Mistake. Drives me fucking NUTS. See, I firmly believe (although My Adoring Husband thinks this is just the teeny, tiniest bit totally wacko on my part, not that he ever says anything right out loud, like, "Jesus, do you think you could lean back and take a breath before I'm forced to crash us into the side of this mountain just to shut you up?" No. Not The EGE. He just looks at me the way people do when you say, "Wow, man, 'soup,' what a great concept! Can you believe it?")--ANYWAY--what I believe is that we've made a Pact. As in A Contract: he's agreed to drive us everywhere and not screw up (because, well, "screwing up while driving" pretty much = death and destruction), and I've agreed to make all the arrangements and get us there without getting us lost or wasting time or never, ever, EVER not knowing exactly where we are every second along the way.

Have I ever mentioned to y'all that I love maps? As in, reallyreallyreally love them? Oh, yeah, baby: I LOVE maps. Like, without even checking, and with my horrible memory, I can tell you that, to get here last night from the interstate, we took Exit 308 west, and then Exit 115 from that. I LOVE exit numbers. I can tell you at any time which direction we're driving and the name of the next town that's coming up. I'm about maps like most people are about their iPhones/Blackberries. I don't leave home without them. I favor the Rand McNally ones that show the rest areas and have all the exit numbers clearly marked, but sometimes I have to make do. Right this minute, the Atlas and Idaho and Utah are spread out on the bed. The trick for me is to look at them and get most of it in my head so that, periodically throughout the day, I can casually say things like, "Over to your left is Big Bald Mountain, which is a little over 10,000 feet."

He's not fooled, but he pretends to be impressed. No, scratch that: he IS impressed. He's impressed as hell that I remembered anything since breakfast.

Well, I could go on, but typing on this laptop just drives me crazy. I have the plugged-in keyboard, but it's a little different, too, and I can't access my Windows Live Writer account to set that up, so the whole photo thang is a pain in the butt, too.

So I'll go brush my teeth (and aren't you glad?) and get ready to get us to Boise. Well, not Boise, actually: Caldwell, which appears to be a suburb. Then, tomorrow, on to Portland.

Hope y'all are all having fun, doing exciting stuff and never getting lost along the way. Unless, of course, you actually LIKE getting lost.

Shudder.

Eye Candy

I hardly ever post any cool photos—I’m such a slacker. So when we went through The EGE’s photo cards last week, I picked out some I like a lot and thought you might enjoy. Here they are, for your Viewing Pleasure:

Some flowers that have lasted almost three weeks sitting out on the front porch in the heat. They don’t have a scent, but they’re gorgeous.

Angel Rodriquez, who lives down the block and comes to get The EGE to walk her home and feed her at least twice a day.

Humphrey, who lives next door to Angel (she loathes him). He fell asleep in the tree after this photo was taken, waiting on the squirrel to come back.

Monk and Larry.

Larry.

Larry again. I may have already posted this photo, but I love it.

A kitten who came around for about a week. The EGE saw her recently in the next block, much larger and apparently staying at home.

Candy, chillin’.

This isn’t the photo he wanted, but I love it:  it perfectly shows our relationship. I’m very cautious and make no sudden moves. Candy will come to me to be fed, but the minute she’s got that pecan, she’s out of there, just in case I get any weird ideas about trying to pet her or something.

This is what our sunsets look like. Not every day, but often enough. I didn’t do a thing to this photo except size it—no cropping, no color enhancing, nothing. Some people say the sunsets are the best things about West Texas.
XO

Albuquerque on Sunday Evening

Leighanna, I swear you made The EGE blush. Holy moly, woman:  I have to LIVE with this man!
We’ll be in ABQ on Sunday evening. We’re staying at the La Quinta here:

Albuquerque I-40 East

2424 San Mateo Blvd. N.E.

and we’re going to try to find the Trader Joe’s that’s supposed to be nearby at the Indian School Plaza. If y’all Albuquerquians are going to be around, send me a note! Sadly, La Quinta’s do not have hotel bars, which are some of my favorite places to hang out when we travel (the fancy ones, with upstairs lobbies and great views, or fireplaces, or piano players. I’m a sucker for those on a rainy evening—we’re trying out all the ones in New Orleans, a few at a time. Too bad I can’t remember the name of the hotel that has one with a great nighttime view of the river. . . .And ones with a balcony? Yowza.)

Hey, Warty Mammal!

The No Evil Voodoo Doll couldn’t resist your semi-salacious post and hints of adventures far beyond anything experienced here at the Voodoo Cafe. Send me your address—and, gee, a name, unless you get your mail addressed to Warty Mammal, and this baby, sans scary eyes (remember, they’ve been removed—you’ll have to think of something) will be on its way to you. Today, I hope!

Dog Drama

So I go through the living room on my way to Water Pik my teeth, only with not a Water Pik but with whatever off-brand water cleaner I use, since Midland water eats machines like that for breakfast and I have gone through millions of them. But never mind that; check this:

I look outside and see two dogs in the water bowl, which is, technically, a cat box (scrubbed!  bleached!) that sits out under the tree as an emergency watering station for the birds and squirrels, neighborhood cats (Angel and Humphrey) and, irritatingly, any dog who happens to stroll through.

Never mind that I bought a perfectly good, heavy, solid concrete birdbath at an estate sale last week, for $8, and that it’s sitting on the sidewalk, waiting for us to see if anyone’s going to use it before we find a permanent place for it. Because no one has. Used it. They like the box so much better:  they can hang onto the sides and drop their food in it and then fish it back out. That would be the birds. The squirrels hang upside down on the tree trunk and drink that way. The cats sit and sip delicately, and the dogs? They jump in and stomp around and make a huge, nasty, smelly mess. Wet dog = yum!

Anyway. So there are two dogs out there, and I yell and say, “Hey! What’re y’all doing here? You don’t live here!” Usually this will make dogs cry, “Flee! Flee!” and race (or amble) away. Today? Today they rushed over to me, panting and dripping and drooling and making huge tracheal noises.  An old, fat female pug and a hyper, neutered male Boston Terrier. With collars and multiple tags that I set about trying to read as the dogs cried, “Help us, please, nice lady!” and drooled on my feet and tried to lick my face. Like THAT’S going to happen.

Got the cell phone, called the owner. Who, it turns out, knows me—she says I used to sub for her. She’s not at home (which is about seven blocks away) but is all the way across town. She tells me this several times, pausing each time as if hoping I’ll jump in and offer to take the dogs home. I tell her I have no leashes, no rope, no way to confine them (the male has already tried to pee on the recycling, and there’s no way he’s going on my porch). And as she promises to call her contractor and send him to pick them up, and we hang up, both dogs take off across the street, racing heedlessly as fast as they can. For the pug, this isn’t so very fast. For the Boston, it’s very fast, and very reckless, and very dangerous. I call her back. She’s not nearly as freaked by this as I am.

Long story short:  I end up corralling the dogs out in the street, leading them back here by their collars, holding them with one hand while scrabbling around to find a long piece of thin rope and then winding that around their collars and using it to hold them out under the tree, while they slobber and nip and snork (the old female is on medication and has a crushed trachea) and tangle each other up and make me stink like I did when I worked at Animal Control.

It’s hot, I’m not in my Sun-Repellent Clothing, nor do I have a hat. The dogs, frankly, stink to high heaven. Can we say, “Dog Shampoo”?

I call again, impatiently. She’s found a ride and is on her way, she says. I wait. I wait some more. Just as I’m about to try to open the gate to the side yard (something that requires two hands and lots of lifting), the contractor drives up. He’s grouchy. He takes the dogs and puts them in the truck and yanks the rope from their collars and snarls, “I don’t even like dogs.”

I think, “Buddy, neither do I, but I like them a lot better than I like you.”

Thirty-Three Years. Thirty-Two Years If You’re Picky.

Yep, today’s our anniversary. And this is where I should show you a photo of us when we got married. I know there’s one around here somewhere, although I don’t think we were both in one at the same time.
It was a miserable day, let me tell you:  107 degrees and no working air conditioner in any building where I spent time all that day. I was hot and tired and grouchy as hell, esp. after the old fart of a preacher snuck in the “obey” part after I’d told him, specifically, to leave it out. Plus it was in a church, and no one I knew showed up except my Matron of Honor, who flew in from Dallas.
Me. A church. A long, hot, sticky white dress. It was not a recipe for joy.
But! It was the best thing I ever did, and I’d do it again, sweat and itchiness and grouchiness and stiflingly hot church, if I had to. All worth it.
My gift to him? A trip to Portland. His gift to me? Driving me there!
So here’s an old Anniversary Photo from two years ago:
  

POM Wonderful, My Blog, and The Mysteries of the Internet

I’ve been getting comments and e-mails from companies—POM Wonderful, Suddenlink—various companies I’ve mentioned on my blog. I get a note from a supposedly real person saying they read my blog, blah, blah, blah.
You know me: Queen of the Skeptics. The first time it happened, with Janny from POM Wonderful, I was all like, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, I’ll BET you want to send me some product.” I just automatically figured it was some scam.
Shame on me. Not only was it legitimate, but POM Wonderful overnighted a case of their drink, which, in case you’re not familiar with it, is The Ever-Gorgeous Earl’s Favorite Drink on the Planet and just amazingly good for you in a whole wide variety of ways but is, umm, just the tiniest bit spendy, you know? He drinks it every day but mixes it with other fruit juices. They sent about $30 worth of this stuff. I’m serious. Janny also sent a book of coupons. And not the kind of coupon booklet that has coupons for, oh, plastic monkey glasses and toilet paper roll holders. No! The Good Coupon Booklets, where you get multiple coupons for large amounts off products (in this case, great juice) you actually like. Whoa.
(Plus, you know, for a company website, theirs is kinda fun, don’t you think?)
This both astounded me and made me stop and re-think my automatic distrust of almost everyone. Given that, you’re wondering, how on earth did I come to send Janny my home address in the first place? You’re thinking that, even before we received their fabulous gift (and, no, they did NOT ask me to post about it:  like I said, The EGE has loved this stuff forEVER; this morning I sent her a note and told her I was going to post about it), I was a believer, right?
Uh, no. It wasn’t that I was a believer; it was that I went, “Duh. Tons of people—literally tons!—already have our address. It’s not like it’s a secret.” And here’s the thing: I have never worried about strangers showing up at our house. For one thing, there’s no reason for them to. It’s not like anyone famous lives here. Those people on the covers of the tabloids at the checkout in the grocery store? I have never seen any of them in this neighborhood.
And I have trouble with the whole The Internet is Full of Stalkers myth. Sure, there’re some weirdoes out there. But not as many as people seem to believe. And I’m not exactly a weirdo magnet:  skeptics usually aren’t.  We mostly have pretty excellent Shit Detectors and tend not to suffer fools gladly. You show up at my door and I don’t know you? Bad idea. Even the Jehovah’s Witnesses back off about halfway up the sidewalk.
Plus:  I’m thinking there aren’t a lot of stalkers in Texas, people who show up at your doorstep. ‘Coz, see, Texas has this thang wherein, if you’re in your house late one night and hear someone out in your yard and you’re just the tiniest bit freaked and so you get your gun and go out to see who it is? And it turns out to be someone who frightens you, like maybe they’re wearing plaid pants and scary shoes, and they’re on your property? And you’re forced to shoot them?
Well. Let’s just say it’s not as big a deal as it might be in, oh, say, Connecticut. Sure, you’re going to have some trouble. But if the guy’s got “Stalking Weirdo” tattooed on his forehead and sketches of you in your nightgown stuffed down his underpants, you’re not going to be spending the rest of your life in prison for having shot his sorry ass on your front porch. That’s all I’m saying.
You know, “I’m from Texas, and I have a gun.” Scares the crap out of ME, even.
But back to the story:  so I’m getting e-mails from companies, and I have no idea if some of them are cyberbots (Janny was not, bless her heart, and didn’t even take offense when I suggested as much) or what, but they’re from places I’ve mentioned, offering everything from “product” to advice to free coupons for my readers (I’ve deleted all of the latter, since I don’t know what’s going on—if it turns out these are all legitimate, some of y’all are going to hate me for not posting the coupon code for $30 off some nice-looking shearling boots. Sorry about that. Not that I’d be encouraging you to wear little dead lambs on your feet, anyway. . .)
So. Here’s to POM Wonderful:  a great juice, plus a gentle nudge to an old skeptic like me.

Reservations

I love that word as a title. It could be about Second Thoughts, or about a bunch of very quiet people. Or Native American land, some of which we’re going to see next week. In this case, however, it’s about hotel/motel reservations. As in Making a Ton of them. I think it’s all I’ve done for the last week. Besides work. Work and make reservations.

I’ve made reservations in Albuquerque, Salt Lake City, Boise (some little town right nearby, actually), Portland, Redding (CA), San Francisco, Bakersfield, Flagstaff, and Santa Fe. I’ve made reservations for a Friday evening train ride we love in Santa Fe. I’ve plotted and planned and tried to keep the driving-per-day reasonable, although we’re in for a long haul between ABQ and Salt Lake City. And I worked in three Walking Days—days when we spend a day walking around in a city we like. That means I have to arrange two nights in those places, of course. And then there’s the choice of where to stay. We almost always stay at La Quinta’s when we travel. They’re generally (not always! well, not always by MY standards) clean, usually easy to get to, we earn points we can use later for free stays. Etc. Larger cities have multiple locations, though, and you have a choice:  larger nicer room for more money; smaller, older room for less. So on the nights where we’re going to be getting in late, crashing, getting up early and heading out again, I picked the very cheapest. In ABQ, that’s $35 a night. Pretty good, huh?

But if we’re going to spend two nights there, like in San Francisco, then I try to find one that’s still reasonable but not tiny. In SF we stay at the airport, which is affordable and has a shuttle to take you to the terminal, where we get on BART and ride into the city. It’s excellent, easy, stress-free.

And then in Santa Fe we stay here. Without the damn snow, thank you very much.

We love this place. The larger rooms have windows that open onto the Sangre de Cristo mountains, and with a little rearranging of the furniture, I can sit in front of the open window and have coffee. The first time we went, The EGE discovered the jigsaw puzzle table on the landing, where he subsequently spent a LOT of time. He loves jigsaw puzzles but hasn’t been able to have them around since, oh, gee:  since we got taken over by CATS. Cats and jigsaw puzzles are not a good match, in case you hadn’t ever thought about it. Oh, sure:  we tried various systems for storing the pieces and keeping them out of reach, but all that made it too much trouble to work the puzzle. They’re best if you have them lying out on a big table and can pass through the room and pause and find a piece. Which is how it is at this hotel. And late one night he met a woman from Colorado, one of the first female attorneys in the state, who’d driven to Santa Fe in her vintage (!) Porsche. She was in her 70’s, and she loved late nights and jigsaw puzzles, and she and The EGE spent many hours out there.

Imagine how happy he was when, the next year, same weekend, he went out to check the puzzle and found her there again, working away. We keep hoping we’ll run into her, but I think she’s there for the weekend of the Buckaroo Ball. Alas.

And if all that weren’t enough, I felt compelled (all into the Reservation-Making Mode, I guess) to go ahead and book the room for New Orleans at the end of July, for Satchmo SummerFest. We stay here, in a room with a balcony overlooking Orleans Street.  And you have to stay through the weekend so you’re there for the last bit on Sunday evening when Kermit Ruffins and the Barbeque Swingers bring down the house. Or, well, since it’s outside. . .bring down the walls.

Still two more to make—in Shreveport and San Antonio, but those will have to wait. I’m tired of the planning and plotting of routes, the measuring and googling of maps, the changing and re-adjusting of dates and times. Whew.

Time to go run errands.

What are y’all up to?

This Week’s Give-Away

Man, last week’s was a bust, wasn’t it? That’s OK. That one will probably go to Goodwill, since there’s no way keeping stuff I don’t wear.
And I’m not keeping stuff I don’t love. This was an experiment in working with flannel:  stamping on flannel, embroidering flannel, layering flannel. It was fun, and it turned out OK. But the fuzziness of the stamping has always bothered me. While I like doing the voodoo dolls out of flannel sometimes, I have no desire to stamp on flannel pretty much ever again. And so I don’t want to keep it around, either, looking all fuzzy and irritating me.



  The eyes have been removed for another project. Other than that, this is what it looks like, complete with channeling from Mama Goode.
Post a comment. I’m going to pick on Thursday and try to ship this baby out before we leave—I hate having loose ends waiting on me when I get back from traveling.

Computer Woes, In Which I Am Forced to Face the Extent of My Internet Dependency

Oy. This is painful. I’d always thought that, since I don’t surf the web or game or read a lot of blogs—because, lord knows, I can barely manage to read the few blogs I try to keep up with (with which. . . )—or, really, do much of anything online, well:  I thought I was safe from that addiction, that time-eater, that thing that steals people’s lives away from them. I know all about it, of course:  artists tell me about it all the time.
[Teaser:  we talk about This Very Thing in the next book!]
And I didn’t do those things, so I’m safe, right?
So, so wrong. So very, very wrong.
So I’m sitting out here Tuesday afternoon, working away, and my computer (whose name is Roland, in case you’re wondering, and in case I need to remember it next time I have to tell a member of The Geek Squad what it is, even when he very obviously doesn’t give a flying fuck what some old woman calls her PC) –Roland says, “rrrrrrrrr.”
Now, Roland has been saying “rrrrrrrr” to me with some random regularity lately, for, oh, the last couple months, maybe. Random regularity is when it happens randomly, with no pattern, but it seems to happen quite a bit. I’ll be working, and he’ll say, “rrrrrrrrr.” and I’ll figure he’s just working a little harder. Or maybe trying to remember more stuff for me. Or whatever it is he does, which is completely wonderful but not anything I tend to think a lot about in any technical way. You know?
So I didn’t really pay much attention. And then he said, “RRRRRRRR!!”
And I was all like, “?!”
Because this wasn’t the nice little Revving Your Engine at the Stop Sign to Be Butch kind of “rrrrrr.” Oh, no. It was the Engine Racing and Getting Ready to Explode and Kill You kind of sound.
And then he said it again, more loudly, “RRRRRRRRRRR!!”
And I quick-like-a-rabbit closed all the programs and googled “loud noise pc” and decided it must be his fans getting ready to go out. I shut him down, unplugged all the wires, set him in the floor and turned him over to The Ever-Gorgeous Earl, who is King of the Vacuum Cleaner in this house and who did a thorough job of sucking what was probably 14 lbs of dust and cat fur out of the vents.
I do not know this. I did not see it, and we (that would be King of the Vacuum and only very rarely sometimes I) vacuum the vents regularly. Randomly as well, however.
But I was still just the teensiest bit freaked, seeing as how the googling resulted in various dire tales of what can happen to your motherboard when your fans go out.
Things that involve the word “fry.”
So, pretty well panicked by then, I got my husband to load Roland into the car (no way I was going to carry it out of the house, out into the dangerous world, where I could easily be tripped by any one of the neighborhood cats and drop Roland to let him shatter into a bazillion pieces. Oh, no. Not I.)
So The EGE is driving, and I’m doing just the tiniest, most minor bit of obsessing.
Oh, screw that: I was losing my mind and obsessing like a crazy person. I began pointing out all the things I cannot do without a computer, from paying bills to, well, working. I went on in this vein for the whole trip across town. The EGE helpfully said that if the computer were actually dying, we’d just get another one. Or use his, which is actually newer than mine. Or use the laptop, which is very fancy, even with a webcam (that I don’t know how to use).
Wrong thing to say to someone in the middle of an obsessive rant.
“Get another computer?! Are you Crazy?! Do you have Any Idea how much work that would be? Downloading and installing everything from audacity to Skype to Windows Live-Writer to . . . .and I don’t even know where I GOT those things! How am I going to find them all again and download and install them all again and WHERE WOULD I FIND THE TIME?”
And then the wailing, “I don’t have time for this! I have things to do! Things I should be doing Right This Minute, instead of going all the way across town to let some adolescent open up my computer and spit in it!”
Because that’s what they do, you know:  they open it up and look at it in their unconcerned adolescent way while you’re standing on the other side of the counter, wringing your hands and feeling all like Carrie in that episode of Sex and the City where she gets the Sad Mac and wraps her laptop in her pashmina and races across town to have the geeky tech guy act all amazed because she didn’t Back Up Her Work.
Only not as young and cute, and sans the shawl. Plus I do back up—I save like a tic, and the external hard drive backs up, um, well, whenever I scheduled it to back up. Whenever that is. Hell, I can’t remember. But I did it, and it saves shit for me, OK?
And so, sensing my panic, the Tech Dudes get all cute with me, in their geeky Tech Dude form of humor, pretending to drop my computer on the floor and peering in and going, “Uh-oh” and then laughing like hyenas.
I said, “Ho. Ho. Ho. I’m laughing.” Evil little rat bastards.
They find nothing wrong with it. Roland says, “mmmmmmmm,” just a tiny little polite hum, just like he’s supposed to do. They look at me and then at each other. You know. They suggest that they could give it the Squeaky Clean something-or-other, and they tap the computer in its Hidden Place, the place where, I now believe, The Daemons live. You know computer daemons, much like the daemon that sat in the head of the alien jeweler in Men in Black (I or II, I certainly can’t remember). As you might be able to imagine, I have my own ideas about what daemons actually are and what they might look like.
But never mind. They take the computer away to a back room, where we Are Not Allowed to Go, and clean it. I suspect that they take it into the loading bay, set it on the floor, and smoke a couple cigarettes. Then they take the back off, spit into the innards, and close everything back up. Then, in a couple weeks, the tobacco-infused spit will eat into something in The Hidden Place, and things will happen, and you’ll come back and have to pay, instead of the $29.99 Squeaky Clean charge, the full $79.99 Diagnostic Fee. Plus a hefty Find & Repair Fee. Plus a Now You Grovel Fee, of course.
Whatever. We bring Roland home, I set him back in place and hook up all 5,735 wires and cables and cords and turn him on. He goes through all the preparatory stuff and then says, “mmmmmmmmmmmm.”
And I smile and go to bed and all is Right With the World.
And I get up the next morning and come out to check e-mail, as I’m waiting to hear from one of my editors, and Roland won’t go on-line. I look up at the modem, and damn if I have no lights.
If you’re not familiar with this, here’s the deal:  I have clearwire, a wireless ISP, and I have a modem that sits on a shelf and connects via a cord to the internet phone modem, the router, and, ultimately, Roland. There are five little green lights on top of this modem, and I live and die by these lights. If all five are glowing brightly, we have Great Signal Strength, and things should be fast and zippy (more about that, though, momentarily). If we have four, not so great. Three sucks. If there are only two lights or—god forbid—just one:  I’m screwed. Something's wrong,and woe be to me if I need to do anything online. I have never, ever had no lights at all, though, and so I start checking stuff. When I finally give in and call tech support and tell her what I’ve tried, she says, ever-so-gratefully, “Thank you so much for doing all the trouble-shooting for me already.”
“Trouble shooting.” Yeah. We just call it “checking.” We’re very good at Checking. I unplugged and re-plugged everything. Unplugged and waited the requisite 10 seconds. All that stuff that we’ve gone through a million times, on the phone with tech support.  But still no lights. None. Nada. Zilch.
She says they’ll send me a new modem and that, since I’ve called so early, it will go out that day and get here the next day. So I prepare for 24 hours with no internet access. Piece of cake, right? Sure, I have no phone service, either, but I’ve already done this week’s interview, and I have the notes and the digital recording, and I’m set to go.
Only no. This is the part where I find out exactly how bad things actually are. I start the work on the interview and need to look up “Haystack,” as in the art school, to find out
--its full name
--its location
--when it was founded
--its purpose
In rapid succession, I find I need to look up other things, as well:
--the correct spelling of Joanne Mattera’s name
--the exact title of her book
--how to spell “fayum”
--more information about fayum portraits
--the date of The Textile Biennale—French? Swiss? Who knows about the spelling, either?
These are not the kinds of things I can find in my handy-dandy encyclopedia. Oh, sure, I could take my laptop and its charger, go to Starbucks, pay some fee, connect there, and work.
Only I can’t work where it’s noisy, where people are making noise and asking questions and visiting. I need to work HERE, damnit. And it’s only 24 hours, right? So I just make notes in the manuscript, places I’ll go back to and fill in later. Thursday, when my new modem arrives.
Only it doesn’t. I wait all damn day Thursday, working and stitching and going out periodically to check and see if the UPS guy has left it on the porch. Nope. Not Thursday.
Friday morning I call clearwire. They sent it Wednesday morning, overnight. I just know they’re going to give me a tracking number and tell me to go online and check the status. I’m just WAITING for them to do that.
Remember the line from The Kings of Comedy (I can’t remember which guy, but I love him a lot) says, “White people will come into a theater late and go, ‘Oh, I hope nobody’s sitting in our seats.’ Black folks will come in and go, ‘I wish someone would be sitting in our seats.’”
I’m all wishing, let me tell you. I’m ready for it. I’m ready to say, “Gee, you know, I’d be more than happy to go on-line and check the status of the modem you sent me Wednesday that was supposed to arrive yesterday but hasn’t, but I can’t, because I. Don’t. Have. A. Modem.”
Alas. I didn’t get to say a word. She checked. The modem was delayed in Dallas “due to weather.”
OK. This is running on forever, isn’t it? Cut to the chase:  the modem arrives last yesterday, about 7 pm. I set it up, hook everything up, try to get 5 lights. I can get only three, but that’s enough to download e-mail and find all the things I missed:  things several editors needed done as soon as possible. A glitch in payments caused by my paypal account still having the old credit card info, since I didn’t want to input the new one until I could see if it was going to transfer the raised limit that was supposedly granted me by the transaction that I suspect was the cause of the credit card fiasco in the first place. A notice to come pick up some paper at the printing company on Friday before noon. A note that one of my father’s brothers, one of my favorite uncles, died on Sunday. I had not seen him since high school, but I knew where he was and kind of how he was doing. I have his grade school photo right here on my bulletin board.
What I realized is that this technology has taken over my life. On the one hand, it’s made things a lot simpler:  I get phone messages and news alerts, mail and notes—everything by e-mail. I pay bills and order supplies, I send in work and get assignments—all online.
On the other hand, it’s made it virtually impossible for me to do any of those things without the computer. I have no idea how to make a payment for my internet service without access to the internet. I can’t check my bank balance or order books without it. It’s kind of scary, when I think about it.
The good thing was that I got a ton of stuff done during My Days Without the Internet. The EGE and I spent two hours going through all his various photo cards, weeding out photos and moving the rest to the external hard drive. I got three pieces ready to stitch and then did a lot of stitching on one of them. We spent hours out on the front porch (never mind that it’s been over 100 degrees—we drank a LOT of fizzy water).
Well. So I’ve been thinking about technology, my dependence on it, its benefits and perils. And then this morning I sat down and faced the fact that clearwire just isn’t doing it for me. The lights aren’t lighting up in great enough numbers—they’re all shy and un-friendly with each other—and things are very slow. I called tech support once again, and damn if I didn’t spend two hours of my Saturday morning on the phone with the nice young man there trying to solve this. I have Packet Loss, apparently, and in his analogy, used to explain relative internet cruising speed to someone who seems to remind him a lot of his mother, I am driving around in first and second gears, when I need to drive in 3rd gear. Fourth, he tells me, is impossible unless I’m living directly under a clearwire tower, which is where the metaphor breaks down and falls apart, not unlike the engine of a car that’s been driven all over town in first gear. Which may well have been what Roland was trying to tell me Tuesday when he kept saying, “RRRRRRRRRR!”
So now (and I’m winding down here, much to your relief, I’m sure) I’m looking for another ISP. I want cable, and I want fast and reliable. The ones people recommend—Grande Communications, Time Warner—are not available here. The ones I could get—AT&T, Suddenlink—don’t have such good reviews. I need to make some kind of decision before I leave next weekend. Grrrrr.
Anyway! (she said brightly) That’s my story. I’m sure there’s a cautionary tale in there somewhere, something about not putting all your eggs in one basket, or old ways being the best ways, or the importance of trying to find ways to live off the grid, or something. Whatever. All I know is that I’ve worked all day today, trying to catch up and make up for lost time. If the internet really saves time and speeds up our lives, why did I spend my Saturday morning talking about upload speed and packet loss and not even making a dent in the things that need to get done?  And then all of my Saturday afternoon doing those things?
Time for a walk. A nice, natural activity that doesn’t require anything except a good pair of shoes. And a bag of cat treats. And a long-sleeved shirt. A hat. Anti-UV sunglasses. Long pants. A pad and pen for taking notes. . . .

Hi! Hi! Hi!

Just a really quick note to say I’m here, albeit swamped and frazzled:  I’ve been without internet service for THREE FULL DAYS, with only a tiny window late Tuesday evening before the modem died. The new modem, supposed to be here within 24 hours, got stuck in Dallas and didn’t get here until almost 7 tonight.

To say “I’m behind” would be a laughable understatement. I’ll tell the sordid/boring/pathetic story (I hope) sometime this weekend.

The Quirks of Memory

Y’all know that I have hardly any memory, like an old, cheap computer. I’ve never had a good memory, and menopause sure hasn’t given it a boost. But then it surprises me.
Remember I told you about the time I recognized one of my nephews in the store, seeing him from the back, from the knees down? So just a pair of calves, standing in line, from several aisles away. I said to The EGE, whose brother’s child this is, “That’s Trey.” And he goes, “?”
I was right. I’ve also a;ways been able to identify handwriting of people, meaning there’s some memory for something—just not the usual stuff. I can’t remember faces at all. Or names—that’s the worst. Or much of anything that happened to me as a child. Or really much before I woke up this morning.
So the other night we’re watching an episode of Numb3rs, and a guy walks into the room, and speaks a line, and I go, “That’s that guy! You know, that guy!” I have to stop the DVD and go back and check the guest stars, and sure enough:  it’s Will Patton.
Now, we’ve never seen Will Patton, because we don’t know him as an actor; we know him as the voice of  James Lee Burke’s Dave Robicheaux series on CD. We’ve never seen him, but we’ve heard him do a hundred different voices. He spoke one line, and something clicked.
Isn’t that funny? Memory is endlessly fascinating to me. If you have a quirky memory, one that seems to work in its very own idiosyncratic way, tell me about it—I’d love to hear.
Then I don’t feel so alone and memory-impaired.

Don’t Y’all Even THINK About Going Out in the Sun. I Mean It!

Get back in there and put on a hat. Some sunglasses. A long-sleeved shirt.  Maybe a jacket. And take your parasol. You heard me!
So the report on the latest skin biopsies was good news. And also weird news. No more melanoma going on, which is Excellent News, indeed.
But one of the little things on my leg turned out to be pre-cancerous for squamous cell carcinoma, the second-most common skin cancer (basal cell is most common, and so far I seem to have missed that one. Not that I’m feeling left out or anything! No! Two out of three is plenty, thank you.)
Once again, we removed it early, it’s gone, everything’s hunky dory.  Copacetic. 
But here’s a thought:  what would you imagine is a really good way to drive someone with, oh, say, anal-retentive tendencies and maybe the tiniest bit of OCD completely fucking nuts? Wanna guess? You know, just in case you know someone like that and find them to be, oh, maybe a total pain in the butt, with all their rigidity and checking and general tight-assed-ness about everything from their computer files to the way they tie their shoelaces.
You tell them, Oh, hey, this is great:  you caught these things early!  Good job! Now you just have to be reallyreallyreally vigilant for the Rest of Your Life! Check every inch of your skin every single month! Note any changes, any oddities! Keep track of everything! Don’t miss anything!
I don’t know about you people, esp. You Young Whippersnappers who have not yet reached Middle Age, but me? My skin is a veritable Collection of Dermatological Circus Freaks and is changing faster than a chameleon in a kaleidoscope. Bumps, wrinkles, lines, spots—you name it, it’s there.
Oy. Do you know that now they’ve added a new visual test for identifying melanomas? In the past, it was the ABCDE test:  you checked for Asymmetry, Borders (poorly defined), Color (not a uniform color), Diameter (bigger than a pencil eraser—some number of millimeters I can’t ever remember—2, maybe?), and Evolving, (something that’s changing).
Now they’ve added The Ugly Duckling Sign, having found that melanomas don’t always follow the rules, above, and sometimes just look different from the other moles around them. Contrary little shits, refusing to go along.
[Sorry:  I find the word “mole” disgusting, too. But we have to talk about this.]
So you have the ABCDE test, and the Ugly Duckling Test, and the itching or bleeding test. Scaliness. Rough patches. Raised edges. Go here to find out all you need to know, with links to photos.
Pretty much anything on your skin can be Something To Watch. So you tell someone with OCD that—that they have to watch their skin closely for all these varied things, and you tell them all the possibilities. And then you sit back and watch the fun!
Only:  it’s not really bothering me. Oh, sure—it’s no fun to hear that there’s yet another kind of skin cancer I need to watch out for. And there are all these scars on my legs that I see every day when I shave (because of course I shave my legs Every Single Day and have done so since I was 11. But you knew that already.)
But it doesn’t freak me out. I think about what it would have been like 20 years ago, when this stuff would have driven me crazy. Part of it’s that I’ve mellowed A Lot. I mean a WHOLE lot. Part of it is that I’m older. I’ve lost both parents. I’m learning, slowly, to come to terms with the fact that I’m going to die (and coming to terms with that fact is, for an atheist, a whole nother thang, let me tell you. We don’t have a lot of wiggle room, seeing as how we can’t count on heaven or hell or reincarnation or floating for eternity in the glow of the ether or being beamed up by space aliens. Try meditating on the idea that at some point everything will just end. Permanently. Not a lot of laughs there, but I’m working on it).
So, anyway:  not freaked out, but really frustrated that the information about sun exposure and skin cancer are not meaning anything to most people. I don’t know about where you live, but here in West Texas, short shorts and a good tan are the requirements for summer, if you’re a) white and 2) a girl. And, oh, honeys, I had both. I had a tan every single year of my life until I was over 45 (the tattoos were the reason I quit:  I spent too much time and money getting them to ruin them with sun).
[We won’t talk about the shorts. The EGE found a pair of them in storage and just shook his head sadly.]
But I see all these people with tans and sunburns and hardly any clothes to speak of, all standing out in the sun, and I know they’ve heard the warnings, and I know they’re no more likely to heed them than I was.
The good news for them is that most skin cancers won’t kill you.
The bad news is that some of them will.
So. Go buy some sunscreen. Find a nice, cool, long-sleeved white shirt (yes:  I actually own a white shirt. Linen, and—of course--from a garage sale.) Dig out your umbrella and call it a parasol.
This is mine:  isn’t it fabulous?
When you twirl it, it goes through the whole rainbow. So get you one of those ($19.99 at Target) and use it, and don’t be foolish about the sun, and you’ll be safe. Pale and pasty, maybe, but that’s OK.
And don’t think this is only for You White People. It’s for You Thank-God-I’m Not Pasty People, too. I had The EGE have his GP check a mole on his back—it was irregular and scaly—and she had him go have it removed. Better to be safe. And being Not White does not mean you don’t need to
--check your skin
--stay out of the sun
Go. Twirl that parasol.
Damn it:  anyone want to make up A Parasol Song? ‘Coz I’ve got the tune to “Pussycat, Pussycat, I Love You!” going on in my head.
Want me to come to your office and sing it to you?
I thought not.

A Little Loveliness for Your Monday

From the Ever-Gorgeous Earl:

Some Good Books

It’s only fair I give y’all some titles, too.

Those Who Save Us—by Jenna Blum. I really liked this one, although it got iffy at the end. About a woman who did what she had to do to survive World War II.  Well written. I’d give it a 4 out of 5 stars.

Away—by Amy Bloom. About a woman who’s come to the US and is looking for her child (I’m not big into giving synopses, since I have such a horrid memory and frequently leave out stuff. Plus I’m less interested in the plot than I am in the writing—if I love the way the writer writes, I’ll read almost anything, as I’ve said about Martha Beck:  I’ve read her wacko religious/spiritual/ghost stuff and loved it.) Anyway—Away:  I’m reading it now, and I love the way she plays with language and story-telling. Almost a hint of a kind of magical realism that reminds me of Alice Hoffman (Practical Magic, which I’ve read several times and adore. Or at least I did the last time I read it—and I see, upon looking, that while I have two of her books, I seem not to own a copy of Practical Magic and have to wonder how that happened.) I give it a 5, but after the wine tasting the other night, where we rated the wines from 1-5 stars, I realize I may tend to rate things I like higher than do other people, who seem to hold out for perfection. I tend not to believe in perfection and so give 5 stars freely to Things I Like a Lot, even if there are flaws. Pshaw. Flaws.)

This Week’s Give-Away

This is a blouse I altered for the column I was doing for Altered Couture.


[Did I mention I’m no longer doing that? I think I got fired. I’m not sure, since I’ve never actually been fired from anything before. Something about the economy. It was such a huge relief, I have to admit—I’d been wondering if there were a way to back out gracefully and figuring pretty much: No. Since it had been my idea in the first place. While I love the idea of doing a column about altered artwear and have a ton of stuff I could share—all the kinds of things I covered in New Techniques for Wearable Art (the worst title in the history of how-to books), the column was way, way more work than I’d anticipated. Oh, writing it was easy—it was short, and I’ve been writing how-to stuff forever. But making a brand-new piece of altered artwear each time? Oy. I am definitely not one of those people who whip things out in an evening. I like hand-stitching, and handstitching is never going to be one of those quick-n-easy crafts, you know? And to say I don’t believe “less is more” is the understatement of the century. It’s not even More is More; it’s More is Never Enough, is what it is. Plus the kind of text I stamp on stuff is not exactly the kind of thing I can do for a magazine. The story about Mowing Drunk on my wine dress isn’t everyone’s idea of fabulous. It’s MY idea of fabulous, which just goes to show that it’s best when I limit the making of artwear to my own wardrobe.]
Anyway, this blouse is pretty groovy, but it’s not the kind of thing I’d ever wear. Why? It’s PASTEL, people! It’s a size small, but it fits me, so it’s not tiny. It needs to go somewhere where it will be worn, please. Post a comment and tell me who’s going to wear it. I’ll pick on Friday.
And I’m sorry, but I’m not going to be sending any more give-aways out of the country. While I’d love to be able to include anyone who wants to put their name in for something, I can’t do it. The book I mailed last week? Almost $13. For a book! The postal people are tired of this:  it bothers them that I give so much stuff away, for one. They think I’m just the tiniest bit nuts. And this was kind of the final straw for them:  the one who waited on me shook his head and told me to put a note on my blog saying that I regret it but that I can’t send stuff out of the country.
Nice to know they’re looking out for me. They remember the $1800 in postage from last year, even when I forget.

Why The Midland Reporter Telegram Makes Me Crazy

File this as another of those rants I come back to over and over. But, man, this is ridiculous, and I see it more and more and more. Jesus.
Yesterday I scanned part of the front page, where the writer used “spicket” when she meant “spigot,” and, if that weren’t scary enough, when I looked it up online, to see if there were some new coinage—“spicket”—that perhaps was confusing her, I found where people had sent in questions to some forum asking why they couldn’t find “spicket” in their dictionary.
And every single one of us knows what causes this problem—this one and a whole host of other examples that Are Not Coming to Me right now, but what the hell. It’s because people don’t read. They don’t read books, and they don’t see words written out, and they have no idea how to spell words they’ve heard (mostly words they’ve heard mispronounced, because they live in Texas. Hello!) but have never actually seen.
Isn’t that scary? That there are supposedly literate people—people who can read and write—and, in this case, who WRITE FOR A LIVING, people!—who do not read? How can people not read? If you’re able to read, then how can you forgo that most luxurious of pleasures? I remember how I felt when my father’s vision deteriorated to the point where he couldn’t see well enough to read. It was so, so sad. And so scary. Both my parents had been readers all my life. I have been A Reader (def:  someone who cannot—canNOT—exist without books, who has to have a book going at all times and panics when The Stack gets low, or when there’s a chance that they may run out of books and somehow not be able to get to the library or the bookstore, never mind that there are two floor-to-ceiling bookcases completely filled with books, many of which have not yet been read. And others of which have been read but so long ago (meaning:  before yesterday) that they could be read again right now and seem brand new) all my life and can’t bear to think that there may well come a time when I can no longer be one. My brain refuses to go there.
Anyway. I’m ranting about—oh, what was I ranting about? Non-readers, for one thing.
And then—and then!—when they DO read? What do they read? They read this newspaper! Yes:  The Midland Reporter Telegram is delivered to the Midland Public Schools as a teaching aid. Yes, indeed. And isn’t that just the scariest thing in the world?
And, no:  I do not expect everyone on the planet to be able to spell. I myself [“Ooooh, and isn’t that the neat use of the reflexive?” is what y’all’re all saying] have trouble with tons of words. Tons! I can’t spell any word that comes too directly from the French, for example. If it weren’t for spell-check, nasty little fucker that it often is, I would never even try for “liaison,” for instance. But here’s the thing:  I know I have trouble with that word and its ilk, and so, if I did not have spell-check or if, for some odd reason, I did not trust spell-check (quelle horreur! And, no, I cannot pronounce it, as I do not hang out with People Who Speak French; I can only pronounce Spanish and, sometimes, English, although of course my pronunciation of English is of a bastard sort, coming as it does from generations of Texans. Like that’s a liability. Huh.)—then I would resort to—gasp!—a dictionary. Online, sure. But also any one of the many dictionaries that lie in almost every room in this house. I double-check things since, as you might guess, I’m often skeptical of the accuracy of any certain one of them.
ANYWAY. My point—and yes, I do have one—is that I know I have trouble with spelling many words, and so, if I were using them in, oh, something that was going to be published, like, oh, a newspaper? I would look them up.
Wouldn’t you?  If you had written that story (and thank god you did not, because as many people pointed out, that story was written by someone who has no business ever holding a pencil or touching a keyboard. The word choices, the sentence structure, the pacing, the order—every single thing about it sucks the big winkie, including the photographs—and if I were that guy, I’d sue:  I’m sure that, no matter how pathetic he looks in real life, it can’t be as bad as he looks in that photo)—but if you HAD written it, and you’d come to the part where you wanted to use the word “spigot” but weren’t reallyreallyreally sure how it was spelled, never having actually come across the word in print, like while you were READING, what would you do?  Would you shut your eyes, spin around three times, and launch your dart into the air, hoping it would land on the correct spelling?
No. Of course not. Spinning around more than twice would serve only (why do we not say, “only serve,” boys and girls? Because the modifier, “only,” must snuggle up as closely as possible to the word or phrase it is modifying, which, in this case is “to make you dizzy.” If we let it lie over there by “serve,” we would be saying it would only serve, it wouldn’t do anything else. When what we mean is that it would serve only one purpose:  to make you dizzy.)
Where were we? Oh! If you didn’t know how to spell it, never having seen it because you don’t fucking READ, then you would do what?
--ask Bob, who sits at the desk next to you and is reallyreallyreally smart, and you know this because he tells you this every day, never mind that he’s been sitting at that same desk, writing copy for the Oil & Gas Section, since 1962 and fills in during the bust cycles by emptying the wastebaskets and making the morning donut run.
--check online, where you can find oh! such bounty of usefulness, like this. Oy. The Wasteland. But also this, which lets you see where there’s some wiggle room. Now, there are people who would point to this and say, “See? This is how language works!” They might try to convince us that Ms. Thurber (and god only hopes she’s not remotely related to James—and, by the way, you needn’t read further than that he was “known for his concise, witty prose” to get the gist and then heave the big sigh, waxing nostalgic about the days of Concise & Witty Prose, which you certainly do not find here, as “concise” is just too much like work, you know?) is a scholar of 15th-century English. They would be the same people who point to this as justification for those who say “aks” rather than “ask.” I have been that person, in arguments. I have also argued of the legitimacy of the word “dis,” as a shortening of disrespect, pointing out to the person who argued against me that it does, indeed, Date Back. Here. See?
But! Also useful things like this. Which, alas, serves only to reinforce my argument that we are a nation of slackers, filled with people who never, ever, ever read anything and so go only on pronunciation and just love helpful little tools like this. It is pretty snazzy, though, isn’t it? Would that all knowledge were so easily distilled and presented. Not to say “digested and spoon-fed.”
--check your dictionary.
Well. Whatever. Thinking about this just makes me tired, you know? If the purpose of language is to communicate (which it is. Duh.), then anything that interferes with communication is a liability. And when I read that intro and came to the word “spicket,” I had to read it several times, trying to figure out what it meant. At first I thought it was a Farm & Ranch Term, you know, like some piece of water well equipment I’d never heard of. A cross between a fence picket and a spigot, maybe.
See, you should never, ever have to re-read parts of whatever you’re reading. Unless:
--it’s new material, tough material, something you’re trying to learn. You know:  math. History. Science. English. Pretty much anything that doesn’t come with pretty pictures.
--the writing is so wonderfully brilliant that you have to go back over it slowly, savoring every word and artful turn of phrase again and again
--you are somehow lacking a functioning memory and can’t hold a thought in your head long enough to get from one paragraph to the next, in which case all bets are off and you can just read the same book over and over and over, finishing the last page and immediately turning to the introduction and going, “Gee, this looks like a really good book. It sure is worn out, though. That’s odd.”
In other words, the only time you should have to re-read something is because of YOU, the reader:  you don’t understand it, you can’t grasp it, you love it, you’re trying to memorize it. It should never, ever be the fault of the writer. The writer’s job is to write so clearly and effectively that you can read it once and know exactly what you’re supposed to know.
OK. I’ve ranted enough for this morning. Go. Find something to read. Then come tell me about it. Tell me about the best book you’ve ever read—or the best book you’ve read lately. Tell me what you read for fun, and what you read for comfort. What inspires you? Give me hope that there are lots of us out there, forging our way through the un-reading wilderness.
Huh. Now there’s an image you could argue makes no sense:  The Unreading Wilderness. But it works for me:  a forest of trees, stacks of books all around them, but with their limbs folded across their trunks and their tree lips all pursed and their reading glasses hanging dusty and unused around them, refusing to read.
“No, we will not read. It is Our Job to be the Unreading Wilderness. We have cable.”
Ah. Words.

Just Shoot Me. Please.

I used to have the editor on speed dial.

I finally gave up.
[This was on the front page of today’s Midland Reporter Telegram. ]

Howdy! So How’s Your Weekend?

I’m sitting here listening to murder in the backyard. I figure if the cats in The Cat Palace, confined during the day to the backyard, can still manage to catch a bird, it’s none of my business. Apparently one of them caught a young grackle this morning, and The Grackle Community is having a fit. It’s been going on for hours. The racket! Jesus.
So since nothing momentous has happened this weekend, I thought I’d just list some stuff and hope y’all will tell me tales of your own weekends.
1. On Friday evening we sat out on the porch and had a bottle of Summer Rain and cheese and crackers and olives and stuff. Since the wine was only 8% by volume, it wasn’t as decadent as it sounds. A really nice sipping wine, indeed.
2. Then we went to a dance at St. Stephen’s, the Catholic church where they have regular dances. We thought we’d stay a couple of hours but stayed the whole evening, until 11:30, visiting with friends and having more wine and dancing a lot. A lot.
3. Which meant that, at midnight, we’re eating chips and queso and watching Numb3rs, the series about math, which The EGE discovered when he had to show it to math classes at school. They liked it, he liked it, I got the whole series. We’ve been interspersing it with more Noam Chomsky.
4. Yesterday we walked to the Farmer’s Market and bought a loaf of bread and half a dozen tiny heirloom tomatoes at 50 cents each. We’ll eat those for dinner tonight.
5. Then last night we went to a wine tasting from the UU Auction. The Unitarian church has an auction every February, and you can bid (usually a fixed price) on things like dinners and cooking classes and wine tastings. The one last night was our first—we were out of town for the one we bought last year—and it was fabulous fun, with a big group of people, 5 diverse wines, lots of snack food, and scorecards, which I love. I got to hang out with one of my favorite people, the guy I’ve mentioned before:  he cooks, and he loves food, and he lights up when he talks about either. So he was fun to sit by while we were all discussing wine and food. He could actually detect aromas of raspberry and oak and stuff.  Me? It smells like wine. I’m trying to get better—at one time, I said I could smell pine. Turns out I don’t know my wood odors very well:  all wood apparently smells like pine to me.
6. Today I’m messing with some fabric, spraying it with spray dye and leaving it wadded up in the sun to see what happens. I’m also reading the blog of the artist I interview this week—it’s fun to have someone who does a blog, and I can go back and start at the beginning and read through it. This one may take longer than I anticipated, but it’s terrific—she writes about her experiments with various techniques, and since she uses fabric in her work, I’m getting all kinds of ideas.
7. Working here and there on other things—stuff on the computer for the next project, stuff for a new stitching project—I find myself in one of my least favorite positions:  I finished one piece without having another one ready to stitch. This means that I’m forced to pick up random pieces of stitching, which is never as satisfying as having a really complex piece to work on. It also forces me to get out the ironing board and the spray dye and the paint and do all the stuff to get the next piece ready to go.
Now I’m off to the front porch, where I can’t hear the grackles yelling. The cats need to just go ahead and dispatch the injured bird, but I can’t force them to do that, and I can’t stand listening.
So what have y’all been up to this weekend? Exciting stuff? Projects? Or just relaxing? And, if the latter, how does that go, exactly?  Tell me about it--

Pattie T., You Win!

Pattie T. gets Mail Me Art. I already have her address, since she actually—whoa!—sends me mail in actual mail art envelopes. Cool!

The Perfect Champagne

Sometimes you want a treat, a reminder that Life is Good, that you don’t have to wait for big stuff to be happy, that a warm summer evening is reason enough to pop the cork.
And if you like almond and you like a light champagne, oh, honeys, you can’t do better than this. From Su Vino, in Grapevine, hands down our favorite winery. My only regret? I bought only one bottle.
Oh, well. As The Ever-Gorgeous Earl says, there’re a lot of excellent reasons for going to Dallas-Ft. Worth. This is just one more.
[Man, that’s some good shit. (Sorry—I can’t seem to resist.)}