21 posts from March 2008

What's your favorite thing about being sick?

Dead kin

Not dying. 

Speaking of which, coming to you straight-outta the TBWard:  the dude who was carried out last week is out of the hospital and back home as of yesterday.  We got another call but instead of our TBWard ullness, this gal tripped over the ottoman (not really but it was similar and that's a Dick Van Dyke reference or how I remember it from childhood -- we've ascertained my memory isn't very good) and broke several ribs last night.

What-with the several others who are out with the ullness, it's a wasteland in here.  Brighter news, I'm not dead and so far nobody else is, either.

One of the things about being a Hillbilly (or at least a gen-u-ine Hillbilly's daughter) is that I get to do things like yesterday. -in 1968 my father and several brothers helped cut down a line of trees up into the mountains to take electricity up where we're from...Yes, I said 1968.  I'm not funning you when I say I was raised (at least partially) like it was the 1800's)

I'm still in recovery from the TBWard so I'm not up to much but one of the many J-named friends wanted to haul out some brush (scraps-junk-botanical waste) from her place in Webster Groves.  She asked about it way back in autumn and I just made sure she understood we don't want garbage.  Brush is fine, it rots and makes the land healthier.  Sometimes we burn a brush pile that's stacked on top of huge stumps that are too big to pull with the tractor.  The rest of the time, there are always ravines to fill (never being able to actually fill them) being this is the Ozarks.

She rang and said she was on her way.  I ran and put my quilts on the clotheslines when, taking about ten minutes.  Then I went over to the old barn and grabbed a pitchfork.  I had my cell phone, in case she needed to call -- this is "going to the country" for her and even though she has been here several times, it's still a road trip to city folk.  I took a large cup of coffee and juggled the camera (still carrying the pitchfork).  My second job as a kiddie (after tending rabbits) was hauling beer and rifles behind my dad when I was about three or four years old.  I'm just saying is all...That was a lot to tote behind a six-foot one inch man when your legs are less than a foot long.  Made me feel like Beetle Bailey.

I went down front (north-east part of the property that runs into that valley) and happened upon a bench.  We used to just leave nice-sized stumps to be good sittin-spots but about ten or fifteen years ago my mother started having my dad make these "benches."  It's really just two sticks of fire-wood and a plank of wood across the top leaned against a tree.  They wobble a bit but you can get a balance and tilt your head against the tree so as to rest your eyes.

That's just what I did for an hour, waiting for J.  After about twenty minutes I sort of thought, "Hmm.  I think she's going to be later rather than sooner."

This is something I can do for hours on end (as I imagine most Hillbillies can):  I listened to the wind through the trees.  You can hear it over across the valley tops.  You'll hear it at least one "hill" over or more and it takes several seconds or maybe even a minute to get to the treetops above you.  Since I was in the valley but partially in a ravine, I was mostly sheltered from the winds and just got to enjoy the way they sounded.  As few as ten years ago, I could lie down on the wet spring ground and never worry about getting run over by neighbors coming and going but then old farmers died off and their farms were chopped up to be bought by big developers -- or in our very local area -- people putting up their own wee house or trailer.

It's too bad.  They've fucked up a very remote, lovely and isolated place.  Remote and isolated may sound redundant but by remote I mean far away place and by isolated I'm referring to people rather than space.  At any rate, I can still get twenty winks with my head against a tree even down in the valley with all the city people trying to be country people driving their cars to and fro every fifteen minutes or so.

J finally showed up with one of her brothers, another J.  We emptied her pick-up and I offered them hospitality that they declined.  She was afraid to back her truck out so I walked point (literally, I was carrying a pitchfork) along the "scarier" side of the road (ravine) until she was out on the county road.  Had she not come bt or not been late, I'd have missed a nice meditative session there filled with bluejays, cackling hens, the sun behind my eyelids and the occasional nickering of a horse.  -I have the world's least exciting "documentary" video but I can't upload it what-with getting my internet via carrier pidgeon.

In the interest of preparing you for the weekend, here's a recipe for something one of my many J-named friends drinks: 

Bewarw da Bunny Wit da Wed Eye

Red Eye

Keep in mind that like most recipes, there are variations.  I was intrigued to find that in all probability it is a bastardization of a "morning after" drink meant as a curative to hangover.  To alter it for such, simple crack and beat a raw egg into the mixture.

I can remember my mother drinking orange juice and raw eggs in the mornings.  Of course, I remember her playing Rod Stewart albums on "repeat" and spilling White Russians in the afternoons about the place, too, and me cleaning up White Russians pre- and post-imbibed.

I think Red Eyes taste weird as if the raw garlic, McKillhenny's, Worchestershire sauce and vodka were forgotten.  I'd rather have a Jamesons, anyway.

I know you kids know who Jane Austen is now but I had to learn on my own, without the movies or school to help clue me in.  That's okay, whatever small bit of knowledge I have was usually gleaned from books and I think there's a line there from the Affleck and Damon joint.

My point is, I was watching this kick-arse chord version (not the picking) of "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" on ukulele and these things sift up, you know?  I actually heard myself quoting -what?  Like you don't hear voices in your head?  Liar.

"If I had ever learned, I should have been a great proficient."

I love that broad.

Here's what prompted me:

They just hauled out a coworker with the same thing:  strapped to a gurney.  I'm not exaggerating about how bad this is.  I'm on the mend but this stuff is still going around.  If you have a breathing issue (my lungs were damaged in a "smoulder" a few years ago or as this man has C.O.P.D.), you're going to die.

Go to your breathing specialist first thing or you'll end up "just dying" or being hauled to an ER in the bus.  Please take this seriously.

Prepare yourself, Val.  I've recounted another Hillbilly story involving the darker side of rabbits...or at least the dangers in being near one of my family.

This bastard is amazing.  Check out this lesson.  I mean, being milk-fed, Ozarks farmgirl means I'm the only human I know who plays uke and all but this guy is really doing a service with these lessons.  The first minute and a half or so is him talking but then he kicks right in to the lernin'

I had this idea for Script Frenzy this year to do a kid story.  I liked the idea of using furry animals (mostly because they're fun to drawr, not that drawring is part of it) with the subject of going to school.  This is from the middle niece being not so hot on school and I would like to make it feel like a neat thing or whatever.

Then I thought "Oh, geez.  School is great innit?"  "Yeah.  School's great" isn't very interesting.

Remember, I normally write things with lots of blood-loss.

Then I thought the protag could deal with nerves about making friends and going to school and just about the time he's settled, he has to change schools.  That traumatizes a lot of kids (and who doesn't want to traumatize fictional children and/ or small, furry animals)?

I don't know.  It's lame and I seriously am not sure I can crank 100 pages of dialogue out of that.  I might have to fall back on mass carnage.  Oh, and "Squeek" is the name of my protag, a guinea pig.

I've spent hundreds of dollars making up packages for 3 soldiers (2 in Iraq-now dead, one was in Afghanistan-now home).  This was on my lonesome.  I've never felt okay about this admin.  I mean, did you see the recent Martha Radditz thing with Cheney where she basically says that US citizens are against the war and his response was, "So?" 

That's one of our "leaders?"

It makes it a little easier for me to understand why people are wetting themselves over Mr. Obama.  I have nothing hard-core against him.  I'm simply still not that impressed.  He ain't Roosevelt.

People say he's brave to speak up about racism existing in America.

We have RACISM?  When did this happen?

No shit, Sherlock.

Saying it exists isn't new.  Ask my Jewish family who came here and met the KKK.  My family lived in the black part of town (or rather, just outside of town).  Hard to not know about racism when you're not allowed in town after dark because you're "dark," too. 

Ask my GODDAUGHTER who is black.  Maybe this is "news" to some people who never met or interacted with people of different races but in that case, apart from the Amish, who the fuck doesn't know racism exists or doesn't interact with anyone of other races?  Well guess what?  If you're that isolated, you just might be a racist.  ARGH. 

"Talking about it is better than not talking about it." 

Who the hell hasn't been talking about it?  The Clintons have been talking about racism for decades as have Rev. Sharpton and Rev. Jackson and many more. I'm not saying the Clintons are gods -- fuck 'em.  I don't care about them because I studied poli-sci.  -some could say I'm jaded, I call it a good education   I learned the history, I spoke with my elders, I grew up getting hit, defending my non-white brothers and sisters (and I don't mean we share a biological parent).  

I'm beside myself that anyone is the new god because s/he said racism still exists.  You know what this tells me?  It's not me not getting it.  It's people who have never been political before suddenly rushing in on the bandwagon -- good for them, become involved.  Just because you discovered the Beatles today, doesn't mean that ga-billions of people haven't known every word they recorded for decades.  I admire you're unbridled enthusiasm, now back that shit up and please, give some respect to those who've been at this for their whole lives.  How many times have you been punched defending someone?  How many speeches have you given -- in public, not in a chat room?

Maybe if these "new to politics" folks would look a tiny bit into history, they'd learn even more about the Middle East, where we were in the 1970s compared to now... Keep digging new-to-politics folks.  Please.  Read your history and not from the book they assigned you in high school. 

And please, if new-to-politics folks get around to actually studying why and how people have been dying for decades, I hope they're response isn't:

"So?"

We know we haven't won the battle.  And we want you to do better.  Just give some fucking credit goddamnit; don't sweep people under the carpet.  People have been fucking broken and killed about this shit and I mean people of all colors. -some people in your neighborhoods, virtual and geographical who you'd never, ever know.  Let's work together and not tread carelessly upon the ones who made it possible for you to show outrage and not get broken or killed.  It's not because you're so pretty.  It's because others got made real ugly for you to have what freedoms you enjoy.

-I'm exasperated with my friends is all.  They've never voted, many into their 30's and have no clue about...anything, really, except American Idol.  One thing I am thankful to Mr. Obama for is getting people interested.  I hope he starts telling them to study, too.  We learn from our history.  Ignoring it means making the same mistakes, not only about racism but so much more.