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Bored to Death

 

 

Yesterday the Pickles and I were walking our dogs in the desert and came across this really beautiful little canyon containing an intermittent spring and waterfall.  Also a cross bearing a woman's name who died there in 1999. It didn't say how she died, just that she had, in that spot. 

"Climbing this motherfucker," is what I said, as I was trying to climb the motherfucker in question.  The walls were steep and there were handholds but the rocks were slick and if you fell, it wouldn't be pretty,

"Please don't," the Pickles said repeatedly.

"I DO NOT want a cross with my name on it here, PIckles," I told her, "Just burn my body and say Scout did it."

Scout was staring at me with eyes that can see straight into your Bad Intentions--  through any goodness or benign thinking and right into the meat of your dank, putrid, flammable soul.  The other dogs were off sniffing and wagging. 

"Please don't," the Pickles repeated.  She sounded as if I were peeing all over her innocent way of looking at the world.  Shitting in her hope chest. "Please."

She would have to drag me 3.5 miles back to our cars.  She didn't have a match and Scout wasn't good enough to cause combustion with her mind. Yet.

I did not continue to climb. I like the Pickles very much.  She's a good friend and hiking partner.

When I got home, Pickles had already emailed me the dead woman's obit.  Sure enough: climbing accident.

Pathetic.  I was hoping that it would, after all, be something less predictable.  That she had died choking on raw meat during a satanic feast...or she died holding in a sneeze. She died doing what she loved: Huffing sterno while taking a butane torch up the ass.  I didn't care.  It just seemed like it would be nice to have it turn out to be more interesting.

RIP climber.

 

 

You'll never know the love of a good torch.

News....

Komen Kuts Kancer screening for poor people! - Susan G. Komen For the Cure, the world's largest breast cancer organization, has cut off funding for breast cancer screenings and education programs run by Planned Parenthood and it's affiliates.  The Komen spokespeople deny that it's political pressure from the right driving this decision...it also involves Walmart and the Baptist Church.  Poor people don't have breasts. They have Hooters.   

Get Her a Pony- Fourteen year old homeschooled girl asks Maryland legislators to ban gay marriage for her birthday. WTF? We are yielding the floor to children now? I think homeschooling should be illegal.  Unless we put them in a homebreeding program,too; force them all to interbreed until their lines devolve back to eel. A delicacy.  

David Brooks writes about the great growing chasm between what he calls the Upper and Lower Tribes, gaps not in just income and housing, education and healthcare...but also behavioral.  Upper Tribesmen tend to work harder and marry forever.  Lower tribes fuck and have children but no legal spouse or job.  Lower tribespeople are less likely to go to church or be active in their communities.  They are more likely to watch television excessively.  Brooks suggests that it's all in attitude, really - we should force the tribes to live close together for awhile and intermarry, etc.  Brooks would probably move to Canada and take his daughter and her pony.

 

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I can't write about my boy - it's discouraged or maybe not even really permitted and since that's mostly on my mind lately....I am going through a relative drought, creatively speaking. 

My run yesterday.  I like the tree at the top.

Best Case Scenario - Too Many Kittens

Some people believe in the Sanctity of Marriage, I believe in the Sanctuary of Escape.  Some people believe Until Death Do Us Part...I believe Death is Relative. Some people believe in Belief, I don't trust anything I can't recreate by dressing up cats and pretending they are us.

Motherfuckers.

Stove in Three Parts

There's a man on my roof.  I hope he doesn't fall through.  His name is 'Dave'...

There's another man on a ladder in my tiny living room.  I don't know what his name is.  He asked me to clarify mine,

"Is your name 'Kathy' or 'Katy'?"

"Katy."

"It says 'Kathy' on my paperwork..."

Yes, well.  Does this make it official? Like getting a new stove is similar to a new spouse and henceforth I shall be known as Kathy...all because of the paperwork.

Damn paperwork. I hope this stove doesn't come with Expectations.  Doesn't want me to make it happy or vice versa. I just want a little heat. Some ambience.  I'm not into committment. Appliances ask so much.  It's why I don't have a riding lawn mower. Or a lawn, really.  Unless you count that grass out there...and I don't.

I'm going to keep yammering here on this post, on this blog because otherwise I'd have to talk to these nice men on my roof and in my living room. I'd have to make small talk. Chit Chat. I'm not good at that.  I'd jabber and say something offensive or wildly inappropriate that would make this 'install' last forever in all our minds.  Would make our time crawl by.  Still Not Dave tries,

"Where did your dogs go?"

"What dogs?"

See? That's me...can't help myself.

Blink. Blink blink...

"Didn't you have 2 dogs here yesterday?"

"I thought they were YOURS!"

blink blink blink.  Cessation of drilling.

I laugh. Not Dave fashions his face into a smile that is equal parts relief and confusion.

Continuation of drilling.

"Nope," he says.

I'll bet anything he calls me Kathy when he leaves. Just like on the paper work.

Not Everything Is Bigger There

Flint talks slowly and his words move like bumper cars, running into other words, constantly and abruptly moving his sentences in new directions. It stopped driving me crazy when I stopped being a passenger. Now I just sit here and type and watch people's expressions.

He peppers his speech with filler that means absolutely nothing in context,

"..if you will,"

"and what have you..."

Everything is 'fundamental,' like an orifice.

Sometimes he just ends his paragraph with something sudden, but superficially satisfying, albeit nonsensical...like,

"So, I guess that's good news," or,

"...I guess we'll just see where it goes from there..." or even,

"What time is it again?"

He's from Texas.

Shit and Shit

I like the desert.  I can scream,

"WHY THE FUCK WOULD ANYONE STAND IN LINE TO BUY SWEATERS AND SHIT?!" and it would be okay.  I don't, because I'd rather hear the coyotes howl,

"WHY THE FUCK ARE YOUR DOGS EATING OUR POOP!? WHAT ARE YOU FEEDING THEM THAT MAKES COYOTE SHIT LOOK GOOD?!"

It's all relative.  

Waxing the Short Bus

 You won't catch me agreeing with that pasty conservative weevil on much, but on child labor laws, the Newt and I are like two nits on a nog.  Our tastes are the same. 

I don't care if they do away with child labor laws completely, to be frank.  Public school janitor service is perfect for most public school children.  Infact, don't stop there - I say let the brighter kids teach the classes:  Sweeping for Beginners,  Vomit Sawdust The Right Way, Toilet Plunging for Dummies (remedial classes).... You don't have to be that bright these days to be overqualified. AND the good news is that a semi-intelligent 12 year old can smack the living shit out of a smartass 10 year old for not paying attention and no questions asked, everyone is a winner. 

The only sad thing is that kids just grow up too fast.

Heads you Lose

Carlos and I hike at night in the foothills.  Sometimes it takes awhile for one's eyes to adjust enough to not trip and be laughed at by one's much more fit and coordinated adult boy. Still, I'm a faster hiker/walker than most people, him included, so the constant tripping makes us more even.

Lately there has been a near full - full moon and enough light to barely see the trail.  Shadows.  It's beautiful and mildly eerie so that my pulse never quite goes down to it's regular hiking rate.  I'm always pretty certain that with every click into this hike, we're a few words,  dogs... one big young man away from me being disemboweled by something hungry and ruining Christmas.

"If I get eaten by a mountain lion, I want my head preserved and kept in a jar. A festive jar. I want to be a center piece for every family dinner or occasion that deserves a head in a jar from now until ... the next Mother's Head takes my place."

"Ok."

Carlos is a man of few words. He wishes he had inherited this trait from me during these long hikes.

He leaves in January for the Navy.  I won't hike alone on those trails at night.  I'm not brave enough. I've hiked with my son since he was born.  During his teenage years he was not a fan, but I'd make him go and usually he'd talk. The most words I'd ever get out of him.  We didn't start hiking at night until recently. It's not a workout for him. He's just being nice.  He knows what it means to me.

"After you leave, I'll never do this. It's sort of ...scary.  It will be another thing I'll miss about you," I tell him.

I remind him how he used to be afraid of a lot of things. Most things.

"You wouldn't let me read you those insipid 'Goosebumps' books, thank god...you kept stopping me at words like 'midnight' and 'goosebump'..."

"Yup." he answers.

"You were afraid of most of the rides at the Fair, so we never went."

"Yup."

"You were afraid of that talking Barney doll that Cindy gave you for Xmas...but then so was I..."

"Uh- huh."

"You were afraid of the DRY CREEK HIKE during DAYLIGHT HOURS!"

It's always a creepy hike. Very remote. Stretches of high granite rocks towering above the trail.  Half eaten deer or elk carcasses.  It feels farther away from the top of the food chain than I like.

"Yup."

"And now you want to be a fucking NAVY SEAL?" I say, tripping.

"Yeah. Well, it's been awhile since I was afraid of the word 'midnight', Mom," he says, helping me up. 

Yup.

Thanks Babs You Bitch

When I drink I agree to go to people's Holiday Parties. 

Last night, several glasses of wine, plus a whiskey drink into the evening,  I agreed to go to my good friend Deanah's Thanksgiving 'Feast'...

'SURE! I'll go! It will BE FUN! What can I BRING!?"

I was, as I do, channeling someone named Barbara Gushington whom everyone calls Babs; a woman with one of those stupid bi-level hair shelves, who wears lip liner badly and reads her junk mail before SHREDDING IT.  As if anyone would want to steal her bullshit SAM'S CLUB identity and end up on the business end of a Mary Kay cosmetic. Babs loves parties! 

It takes a shit ton of alcohol to get me there. And then I HOPE that I left my fly open for the rest of the evening just to retain some dignity.

I probably touched Deanah's arm, but I don't remember.  Thankfully.

Deanah asks me every year for Thanksgiving and I always polititely decline,

"I can't. I hate Thanksgiving. It seems needy to be giving thanks over a plate of cranberry sauce and something known as Candied Yams...WTF are you people thinking? We should go to a casino and apologize while plugging wads of cash into the Wheel of Fortune slot machines until there is nothing left but Friday."

I like casinos.  I like giving BACK to the natives.  Since they refuse my blankets.

I have not actually GONE to a Thanksgiving dinner since circa 2000 when Deanah had her Vegan Feast, thanks given to the phase her oldest daughter was going through, I had to rejoice gratitudinally over Tofurkey, seed balls, and a carrot cake that still had the leafy tops on. 

Deanah has 106 friends. They all cook complicated and huge, aesthetically pleasing side dishes and desserts.  They 'mingle' and have normal, civilized, politically-charged, but always correct conversations.  They use napkins.

I hate Thanksgiving for too many reasons to list here and always have.  An entire holiday revolving around A MEAL.  Normally I eat standing up or walking. I hate sitting at a table, unless it's in a restaurant because then I don't have to CARE who is doing the dishes later.  Things are all equal in the restaurant.

Deanah is jewish and I know there are Forbidden Foods and complicated rules that govern how food can be prepared...like meat and cheese cannot co-habitate on the PLATE!! I found that out once by bringing 3 huge canadian bacon cheese pizzas to the synogogue on Getting To Know Your Somali Refugee Night.  The night I also discovered that CANADIAN BACON IS STILL HAM and FORBIDDEN just like it's yummier cousins BACON AND SAUSAGE.  I thought the Canadian part meant it was probably some other animal meat. Like a Canadian pig was actually what we call a Horse.

Or Babs.

Luck Off

I am superstitious.

I don't believe in anything except the possibility of some small random thing bringing about My Bad Luck.

I wear bracelets and necklaces that mean something personal to me.  Build me up or remind me in some small way what is important, what isn't ....

I have lost or broken ALL my bracelets in the past month.  I lost one in Missoula, in the 'haunted' old jail house my friend calls an office.  I hooked one on the restaurant table having lunch with Ch*ck a few weeks ago, one on the pen gate worming sheep this last weekend... one fell off in bed last week. My B*ise bed. 

I don't buy expensive (really) jewelry because it just doesn't seem right that harbingers of doom should set you back much.  Thank God.  Still, I keep looking at my naked wrist thinking...I am so fucked if I don't buy something with a snake or violent weapon on it SOON. 

And you might think I'm kidding...but that is really how my mind works.  Like cheap jewelry.