Trailer Park Karma

How Much Practice Do I Want: London's Losing Its Charm

I know. I can't believe it either, and I never thought I'd say such a thing. But then, I never thought I'd live in London.

And ya know, it's been coming for several months. It's no surprise to me, even though you may be caught off-guard by my pronouncement. Disillusionment in a love relationship is probably most often a slow dissolving of gauzy haze, not an abrupt casting off of the veil. 

First, there was the increasing feeling of being a watched specimen. I expected it, sure, especially in the earliest months. But when I started friendly'n up to the Happy Hour crowd once a week, the air around my sanctuary in The Sticks started becoming a little stinky. (And that's metaphor. It actually smells great out here constantly, one of the things I'll miss when I'm... anyway...)

I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the ins and outs of who hates who and why and how many generations back it goes. As soon as you start hearing all that, you eventually hear some detail that makes you think "Oops! I do that..." This part of the disillusion wasn't too tough to bear. I rolled with it, knowing it was part of living in a place this small and old.

And I didn't entirely mind the phone calls to check in on me when folks didn't see me when they expected to. I thought it was sweet. And that neighborly vigilance came in real handy when the neighbor's and part of my acreage was on fire while I was in Swamp City.

Plus I was kinda surprised that I didn't get begged invited to go to church across the road more often. I think the Methodists ha ve been extremely considerate of my sleeping in on Sundays, though I still do stick to the other side of the house, away from the front windows, from 9 to 10 AM.

But a few weeks ago, I was privy to a Happy Hour conversation that I'd rather not have been. It was damned uncomfortable at the time, but I didn't realize just how much it'd gotten under my skin until a couple of weeks later. I've actually skipped out on Happy Hour just to keep plowing through my recent piles of menial labor. But my absence was also partly because I'm a little wigged out.

At that last tea and beer-soaked gathering I'd attended, conversation centered on what is apparently a Resident Evil out this way: Renters.

I know people have a right to sit around and gripe when they're drinking with their friends. I don't begrudge them that opportunity to vent. But me being a Renter and all, well, I felt a little like the proverbial red-headed stepchild.

I didn't utter a word. And every single person at that table knows not only that I'm renting, but at least some of them (and possibly all) know that I've paid rent late a few times in recent months. Oh, I make up for it by reimbursing them the $15 per day late fees, but still... when you hear statements like, "Well, hell, the way the law is, they [we Renters] have the advantage," uttered after a story is told of one idea to get bad renters to leave: You pull the toilet out of the house...

It's Us versus Them out here. Not just regarding Renters & Owners, but nearly every other way you can categorize folks. Sure, it's like that everywhere, but in a microcosm like this, the smell of hate and fear gets really bad, really fast, and there's nowhere to escape it.

SO, you might be saying, why worry about a handful of people with nasty attitudes? Because that's all there is here. The Owners With Nasty Attitudes and the Renters (who I imagine have their own brand of attitude to boot). I'm surrounded. And alone. At least at happy hour, since I’m the only Renter there.

Add to the increasing stench the fact that gasoline's been $4 a gallon out here for a few months, making treks to see The Boy and The Editor and the rest of my loved ones in Swamp City downright unaffordable, and I essentially have more practice opportunities than I care for.

Then, they started ripping up Whiskey Road a few weeks back. But that's another whiney blogpost...

ADHD Weekly Med(itation)s: 5-8-11 (The Times Aren't A-Changin'. It's The Whole World Around You.)

Just noticed that the lower my kitchen supplies dwindle, the more recipes I churn out. Hm. Huh. I really do much better under pressure.

I'm clear on this: Living in The Sticks has afforded me many opportunities to observe both emotional and physical discomfort. Part of my practice I can *never* get enough of...

Finally. Enough surplus cash to buy nail polish remover = my toes look normal again. Good thing. That was a lotta fun, but if Nature intended me to have Rose Gold toenails, there'd be a litte pedicurist living at the foot of my bed, waiting eagerly for each evening so she could pamper and paint my pretty little piggies. And Nature ain't that kinda girl.

Ahhh, Small Town Bank. Your Head Teller shouting "Will that be two 20's and a 10, Tracy?" obviously hasn't read all of the many postings about identity theft and personal security at the other end of the lobby. Even though her voice projects all the way over there.

And there goes the freakin' neighborhood...

ADHD Weekly Med(itation)s: 5-1-11 (Wishing All You Workers A Flowery Beltane)

One of the things I've learned out here: librarians are the real purveyors of sophistication in a small town. And wanton wickedness, apparently.

It's a little bit phenomenal how much work I can accomplish when my phone is dead.

I'm so glad my bathtub has one of those metal stoppers in the side under the faucet with the 2 bolts side-by-side and the long lever jutting out from the middle. The way it resembles a funny face brings me back to my childhood, whenever I'm in there for awhile.

The key to uploading video via Sludgenet from The Sticks: Do it when everyone else is in church.

Sometimes I think it'd be a good thing to expand my audience more towards college students and single men who live by themselves. I don't know a whole lot of women who would eat some of the crap I cook up, unless they're destitute. And college kids all have Internet. Most homeless women don't.

At the bottom of the ad column that's on my freeware version of MS Word (the kind that comes with most PC's and expires at some point or you never get full access to all the bells and whistles): a graphic that says "Microsoft Office 2010 is now available to students for only $79.99!"
That. is. so. cute.

What do neurosis and convenience stores have in common?
I can't afford either one.

My cat knows what he needs and pursues it with a vengeance. My dog plunges into the pitch black to bark away things he cannot see. My hummingbirds kick bird ass. There are no shrinking violets here. And if there were, they would not shrink.
 

ADHD Weekly Med(itation)s: 4-24-11

When every little thing is a skunk to tackle, it makes the big things-to-do swell to the size of mountains. Today, even oatmeal feels too challenging.

I'm finally a proud graduate of the Boring As Hell Ticket Dismissal Online Class, for which I cannot reel back in a solid 6-ish hours of my life. Just in time for another ticket between Swamp City and The Sticks. Don't tell me the Universe isn't conspiring against me.

Last spring when I was first checkin out The Sticks, with the glorious fields of wild color everywhere and the smiling folks who kept a good-neighborly distance... Heckuva marketing shpiel, that was...

I think the trick to homelessness is making it seem and look like a big fun adventure. I mean, we're all homeless, really. May as well live it up.

ADHD Weekly Med(itation)s: 4-17-11

On self-discipline and the benefits of working for yourself at home: I don't have to feel chipper or even friendly in order to get my work done. I can be grumpy as sin and still write in a voice that says "You're gonna love this!" And never mind that whole taking-a-shower thing... 

Some people call it perseverating. Some people call it becoming an expert in something.

I'm totally with the Conspiracy Theorists on any topic related to AT&T.

With a man who loves me enough to clean my bunny slippers fueled by "so much devotion and OCD", how the hell can I lose?

Do I really think that what I write is so interesting that people might enjoy reading it? Yes. Yes, I do. And implying otherwise is like trying to tell a Texan that there's anything wrong with being uber-proud of the state they're from.

ADHD Weekly Meds: 4-10-11

I'm pretty sure that my last remaining Revereware pot -- the only one I haven't burned all of the copper off the bottom -- is trying to kill me. That, or I need to drink a lot less coffee before making my oatmeal.

I think being pecked to death by cute little songbirds on my porch a la Suzanne Pleshette would be a way to die that's really worthy of a story. And maybe a State historical event plaque on my front door.

Even though I've lived here nearly a year, I still forget that the hot and cold are switched on my kitchen faucet, so I keep drinking loads of warm water. I may be morphing into a Leadhead. Not to be confused with a Deadhead. Or maybe it's the same.

Confession: When the very rare vehicle pulls up, drives by, or (gasp) honks near my house, I groan very loudly when Burb Dawg barks. Loud enough for whomever it is outside to hear. I'm working on that Grumpy Old Woman In Town designation.

Why did it disturb me to learn that 4 of my neighbors (at least four that I know of) are also drinking a tablespoon of cidar vinegar every day? Even if they're all doing it to "clear up" joint pain?

Word on Whiskey Road is that there's a plethora of demented 'coons being caught. I'd better take care.

[wondering what the heck this is?]

Sometimes, It Just Takes a Small Clump to Bar Independence. And A Bitch to Free You.

Happy Texas Independence Day!
You didn't know that today is the 175th birthday of The Republic?

That's funny -- neither does Burb Dawg. Yet.

Because so far this morning, Dawg is demonstrating how little it takes for even the fiestiest of us to get duped into thinking we're stuck. 

See, we ain't got a fence here at The Park. And while that may sound like the way we all look forward to living, the truth of the matter is that fences make for nice boundaries that keep us alive. 

I know, I know, this is a really tough sell, especially to Americans, and good lord, really tough to explain to people born and raised in The Republic. But I'll take a stab at it...

Just imagine yourself as Burb Dawg:

You love to run. I mean really run. None of that pretty canterin' crap, but full-on, tongue-hangin-out-your-mouth's-side, eyes double-sized, barrelin' ahead with nary a thought to what's gonna stop you from either direction. This kinda love should be illegal. It's tantamount to addiction, and we all know that addiction is Bad. This kinda lovin' to do somethin' is the kind that makes you think about it when you're not doin' it, do it with all your might and gusto when you're doin' it, and be in nothing short of Blissful Nirvana immediately following doin' it -- until you start dreamin' about the next time you're gonna do it.

You're healthy enough to do what you love to do. Nothing but good graces there. Why, you're so healthy that you don't even know that the opposite is possible.

You live in a place where that kinda runnin' just ain't allowed.

Okay, so now that your mind's swimming with What It's Like to Be Burb Dawg, here's the rest of your story:

Where you live is so freakin' gorgeous, it's just made for that Thing You Like To Do. "Wide open spaces" and all that Susan Gibson song kinda thing. You can see for miles and at the end of that are rocky hills. Holy Sense of Abandon, do you wanna get there! 

But wait! The bitch who owns you locks a tether to your chain collar as soon as your front paws hit the concrete steps, front or back. What the hell? She knows you love to run like you do. She knows it! Have you been bad? 

[Enter Reality: Ranchers around here use coyote bait that consists of yummy meat, tasty flesh, juicy muscle tissue -- all covering a mechanism that puffs cyanide into the nostrils of unsuspecting, delighted carnivores. That delight ends pretty quickly. 

And while these ranches are, yes, surrounded by fences, they're the kind that keep cows and horses in. Not so much for keeping dogs out.

But you're Burb Dawg, so you don't know that tidbit of deadly fact.]

While it's nice that your Owner Bitch let's you romp down the caliche road a bit with her every day, she keeps you on the line then, too (and lord, does she run slow...) If you had a nickel for every time she yanked that choke chain just because you headed for a hapless creature -- hell, even just a tantalizing scent! -- well, you'd be living on your own for sure. I mean, you love her, sure, but really... nothing and no one beats running.

And sure, sometimes she takes you to that place where your dog friend lives and the two of you get to run loose and free there, barking at the Big Dogs (who have pretty strange barks, themselves) and coming home just to lap up some water before heading out again to terrorize the peace. But she always makes you leave there at some point, and you're back where you started -- on a tether in your own yard, watching those *#&%$#&!! cats and deer and armadillos skirt the edge of where you've carefully scented. If you could just once get away, you'd show them.

But... you're a good dog. You really do love that Bitch who feeds you. She talks to you, too, and though you don't understand a word, it's a pleasantly appealing sound. Oh, and she drives you places, and that's a LOT of fun, being in that moving thing. And when it's cold, there's that fluffy, warm bed that's so high off the bare floor.

And really, if you didn't have her, where would you be? 

Out there.

And yeah, that sounds cool, but how tough would it be to have to get your own food all the time? And what if you couldn't find a place to hide when it's scary, or a place to stay warm when it's cold or dry when it's raining? And who would talk to you?

So, being a good dog, you wait for the click that signals you're tethered before venturing beyond the porch steps. You travel at whatever gait is best for the moment -- sometimes that's a scent-driven flash, but mostly it's a mildly curious saunter -- to the end of your rope. You look beneath your feet at the burrs that are destined for your coat once you're bored enough to roll in them. You survey the edge of your home territory in case there's something that needs a good barking-at. You lift your nose and catch what's on the wind. Your gaze is directed to the ranch beyond your pee line and the rocky hills past that, and you blink. 

One day.

And you're such a good dog that all it takes is a tug on that tether to tell you that's it, you've gone as far as you're gonna. Sometimes all it takes is the rope getting caught on a small clump of grass. At least until the Bitch comes out and unclumps it for you. Then the End of The Line stretches farther. 

Happy Independence Day, Texas.  

New Year, Happy or Not

"Well, here's to a new, BETTER year ahead!"
"Yeah, no kidding."
"I hear ya, sister. It's got to be..."
"Can't be much worse, right?"
"Yeah. This year has to be better. This last one was really bad."
Nods and affirmative mumbles all around...

I sat at the wobbly wooden table, peering into the styrofoam cup at my iced tea dregs, wondering what to say, and knowing that I couldn't echo their sentiments. So I didn't.

I didn't say anything, in fact, as I looked around the weekly gathering of friends who all, apparently, had just experienced a really rough year. At least it's good they were looking forward with some hope, even if it came off the tongue with a sort of dread in the lilt.

I didn't offer up that my year had been pretty damned grand. It only took me a few decades to wise up and know when it's just cruel to utter positive thoughts. Besides, explaining to a group of relative strangers how a year such as my own could be labeled "grand" would take a lot of energy. It's just not so good to get your forehead stamped with "Ignore This Crazy Woman's Ramblings" during your first year of residence. Better to wait until they're convinced you're really an Okay Gal first, then lay the crazy on 'em.

A few days later, I'm prepping to take Burb Dawg on what might just be the Time Of His Life -- camping in the cold -- or what could possibly be One Big Lesson In Dog Camping for me. And in between the tent rolling and coffee packin', I'm reading RevEl's latest. I'm reading her approach to the time-honored New Year's Resolution tradition (a game I've always found utterly ridiculous; probably manufactured by marketing copywriters), and I'm likin' her educating us on Janus/January and how He was granted the gift of seeing backwards and forwards, and how we can be standing in the
metaphorical doorway that is really just a turn of the page on the Western Art calendar hanging on my pantry door, looking backwards, looking forwards...

And I started to cry.

No, no, not tears of the Auld Lang Syne variety. Not even weeping from the joy of Holy Cow There's Nothing But Glory Ahead Of Me. It was more like Yet Another A-ha Moment Revealing Another Possible Reason Why I'm Out In The Sticks kinda cryin'.

Those A-ha's are damned relieving, if nothing else. I mean, I may be staring down a task that looks about as meaningful as avoiding the deer poop in my field, but at least I'm seeing something. And down goes the left shoulder with that breath out. Aaahhhh. Aha.

Last year at this time, I had no idea that I would be leaving The Swamp for the first time. I wasn't exactly sold on anything happening, in truth, because that's just the way I think. Pondering possibilities is what keeps me waking up every day. Nobody in their right or wrong mind could've convinced me that I'd be takin' my Burb-raised, middle-class, metaphysics-lovin', out-of-the-box-thinkin', Buddhist butt out to live among people who appear quite nearly the opposite of me in a lot of fundamental ways. But here I am, and some folks already know that I felt pulled or pushed, or that maybe I even floated over here, without really knowing why. I keep my eyes and ears open for clues, but mostly I let the silence wrap around me tight enough to hear my heart.

My heart hears people out here who feel forgotten. The world is moving beyond their reach while they hold tightly to what they were always told -- by people who love them, mind you -- was right and good. The ambience of fear and fortitude was the first thing that hit me. Now I'm feeling their sadness and sense of abandonment. 

They're just like me. Apart from appearin' quite nearly the opposite...

So, I've changed my "permanent" address, even on my driver's license (thanks, young Mr. Trooper, for that warning). I'll continue to sit in as just another jester in the weekly happy-hour court at the Grill. I'll let them get more glimpses of how much like them I am. 

Eventually, I'll let them see how crazy good all of this really is...

What Winter Reveals

One of my favorite things about one of my favorite people is how the Reverend Ellen Cooper-Davis loves winter. When she was new to The Swamp where I once lived, she and I used to commiserate about how we missed seasonal transformations. Well, she missed them, having moved from northern regions. I'd never known them. Until now.

But I knew instinctively, all my life, that seasons are good. I've been a fan of change forever, ya know. My history is peppered with evidence of a continual search for something other than comfort. 

And like a lot of people, I see that my favorite seasons are the ones that conjure up the most change. I suspect everyone likes a little predictable novelty, deep down inside. But it's the deep-down part that's missing for people like me and The RevEllen (as H2 calls her). We don't just want to see the visually lovely variations in color around us, though those do send strong signals to our hippocampi (hippocampuses?). What we dig is the burrowing in, cocooning, hibernating, and yes, death that winter brings.

There she goes again, harpin' on death...
Well, sorry.

But my little chats a couple of years ago with RevEllen were on time and on target, for reasons I'll not expound on here. Yet. She's one of a handful of people in my whole life with whom I felt a solid kinship around this sort of love of winter. I don't think we're different from anybody -- maybe we just like to yammer about stuff that a lot of folks find boring. At any rate, the idea of death as necessary to living is brought home through the season of winter -- out where I live today. Not so much in The Swamp.

The Swamp is always green. Yes, green is pretty. It's my favorite color, in fact. And I grew up in a place with enough mythology that every kid I met who moved there from elsewhere had a lot of expectations, most of which were dashed to the ground by the boring reality of Burb Life. But the green was real. Not just green. Forever green. You fly into The Swamp any time of year and what do you see? I mean besides parking lots and chemical plants. Green. If you're quiet during a jet's descent, you can hear the folks from elsewhere ooohing and ahhing about the green.

My second favorite color is brown. And I get lots of that here in The Sticks this time of year. In fact, everything turned brown back before Thanksgiving. Not just brown, but golden brown. Being a native Swamp Girl, I wouldn't know if this shade is drought brown or winter brown, but I like it. And most of the trees haven't a leaf left. If there's anything that represents seasonal dormancy to me, it's the silhouette of a bare tree against a blue sky. The sun's still there, doing what it does, promising life, and the tree just waits.

Just like RevEllen used to wistfully reflect, going inside is easier with changes like this all around you. Not just going in the house, although that's pretty much a given. But turning my own reflections inward. Winter reflection is absolutely innate.

And yesterday I encountered a bit of tangible evidence of what winter reveals.

I believe I stumbled on a grave in my yard. 

Those who know me well know I was giggling as I brushed the dirt away from what might be a broken headstone. It's at the base of a big, old scrubby tree (I'm waiting for Those Who Know Better to confirm the tree's type, but I'm thinking mesquite) and I originally thought the unusually white, roughly rectangular stone was there to help the leaning trunk. I've seen it before, partly covered by weedy plants, on walks around my property with Burb Dawg. But with winter's cold, there's no more bushy life cluttering the view of what remains, and there's a glint of etching revealed.

Did ya ever stop to think that we're dead a lot longer than we're alive? Kinda funny, especially since we know nothing about that being-dead part of life. I always thought we had scientific efforts pretty backwards. Sorta like those companies with trucks that run around The Swamp spraying chemicals all over the living to keep them green and "alive". So much effort to keep things the same as we know it. Dang, we're a scared bunch, aren't we?

Well. I did bring my potted plants in off the front porch when every single night started dipping below freezing.

I'm gonna ask around about that maybe-grave. And now that the snakes are sleeping, I'm finding other fun stuff out there in the dead brush, too, like ancient bottles and root cellars and another rectangular plot covered with a sheet of metal and small boulders in the yard of my neighbor who lives out of state.

RevEllen would love it out here as much as I do.

Love Affair & Tangy Dead Bird Salad

You know how sometimes you don't know what's going on in your head until it comes out of your mouth? Well, in this case, my thoughts first came out through my fingertips, into the little box where you type comments on a blog. Later that day, another clue to my current state came stumbling from me to the cat's ears. He seemed entirely disinterested.

On a day when I attended services in a tiny, conservative Christian church, then cooked for my son before whisking him back to his home hundreds of miles away, I moved from a sense of pleasant sacrifice to elation and contentment to sadness. In between, I listened to my head.

In the morning, I thanked a blogger for her post on death, grieving, mothering, and Avalokiteshara, and I referred in an off hand way to my "love affair with death"... Many hours later I "heard" what I'd written, as I started to prepare for early morning training to do volunteer hospice work.

A "love affair with death"? What am I, nuts?

Later in the evening as I puttered around the house, I said aloud to my cat, "Some days I do more begging than meditating."

Again, I found myself splitting in two and looking at myself askance. "You what?" I recognized that what I'd been doing much of the day, what a lot of folks call "prayer," was what I do when I don't feel my own "Buddha nature." I was begging for outside help.

Later still, I was chatting with a good friend online and said, “I think I'm having a midlife crisis, but I'm feeling okay about it.” She announced, "Confusion is your most unprotected expression." When I asked, she clarified that that wasn't an "Everywoman" reference -- she meant me, explicitly.

I replied that I'm nothing if not agnostic. And also very good with that, too.
You know what's really amusing, though?

I'm enjoying the hell out of eagerly anticipating the absolute unknown that's apparently in front of me, even though I believe that there's no proof the future exists.

Maybe I’ll start a betting pool on my next five years.

****

In the meantime, here's yet another idea for what to do with all that dead bird you're fixin to have in your fridge (not in my fridge, which is dying a slow painful death):

 

Tangy Dead Bird Salad


2 to 3 cups diced cold grilled bird

juice of one whole lime

1/2 red apple, diced

1/2 tsp coriander

1/2 tsp caraway seeds

1/8 tsp nutmeg

2 tbsp sunflower seeds

1/2 cup mayo


First, cut up apple and marinate in lime juice. Stir in everything but the bird. Blend well. Add meat now and mix well.