It’s my birthday. I didn’t spend the day weeping. So it’s a good one. This is one of the good ones!
I made my own cake—chocolate raspberry with a raspberry syrup-vanilla frosting mix atop it. If it has raspberries in it, there are no calories. That’s, um, how that works.
Oh, I took the three dogs for a mini trip. I drove up the road toward the state park. I pulled over onto the little side roads, parked, let them run and shout as I collected rocks for my garden efforts. We all had a lovely morning. They flushed a rabbit. And possibly found a snake. I just heard the hissing. I did not see the snake. One of the dogs brushed against an electric fence and got a shock. Poor baby! Yes, it’s cattle country as well as state park area.
Just a low-key enjoyable day. I even rented myself Little Women for tonight. The new one. I discovered you can stream videos from a service…yeah, it’s a whole thing. Why didn’t nobody tell this near-Luddite??
Two good things this week. DACA is still a thing. LGTBQ people cannot be fired for being LGTBQ. There are actual meltdowns going on because…people retained or gained some rights. Grudgingly so. Some folks are losing their minds! Because other citizens of their same country have the same protections they do, sort of…
It’s…mm. STOP BEING HORRIBLE SHITS TO EACH OTHER. There. I said it. I even wrote it down.
The DACA decision hinged on some paperwork that didn’t get done right…so yeah, America, still gotta vote. Still gotta get Pumpkincunt out of office.
So, hey, June is flying by.
Oh. Union County, up the road from moi, is swimmin’ with COVID-19 cases. Traced to a Pentecostal church in Island City. Eastern Oregon, we’ve joined the pandemic team, so to speak.
Tomorrow is Juneteenth. June 19, 1865, when the slaves were freed. This is not a date I was ever taught in a school.
All righty, fellow babies, cuties and assorted stardust mamas, have a great month.
Yesterday, it was theorized that people try ingesting cleaning products to cure the virus having its way with America. Not to mention the other parts of the planet…Okay!
DO. NOT. DRINK. BLEACH.
It’s poisonous. It will cure the virus because you will be dead. But that’s rather extreme, dontcha think?
And sunlight? It also won’t do much more than give you a sunburn. Sorry.
So I saw all that flurry yesterday caused by these batshitteries and…
This is where we are now as a country? Debunking loony pronouncements by the POTUS that will actually kill people if followed? Yes, indeedy. That’s where we are. Been there for a while.
At Thursday’s White House coronavirus taskforce briefing, the US president discussed new government research on how the virus reacts to different temperatures, climates and surfaces.
“And then I see the disinfectant where it knocks it out in a minute,” Trump said. “One minute! And is there a way we can do something, by an injection inside or almost a cleaning? Because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs, so it’d be interesting to check that. So, that you’re going to have to use medical doctors with, but it sounds interesting to me.”
I couldn’t even begin to write something approaching the levels of WTF here. Fiction has to slink off and lick its wounds after trying to compete with the actuality of hey, inject or drink bleach, whaddya got to lose?
Sipping coffee, considering where to plant the rosemary, rejoicing that my bachelor button’s are sprouting, happy I got some cheap manure and generally in a spring frame of mind. Instead of, oh, writing. I did get off three submissions yesterday. I plan to write today, even if it’s just a paragraph. Bad habits lately, not writing lately, wonder why that is…mmm.
No, I can’t blame the VIRUS for my utter disinterest in writing. I get into cycles where I write a lot, then just don’t, then write a lot, then eh…that’s all this is. I also need to dust off a project, give myself a deadline, then go from there. Oooh!
I have a stack of novels I need to work on, for instance. I need to rework short stories, spruce them up, trim, throw out and start over, etc! Poetry needs to be written!
Jaws the cat is doing splendidly. She is now twice as big as she was, with a gorgeous shiny coat overlain with ginger tones. A sort of tabby with auburn patches. I don’t know my cat coats. She’s sort of striped with orange patches here and there. Short-hair. The dogs are bored! The fields around the house use drip irrigation as well as being organic so dogs not welcome at all. Normally I would take them out in the afternoon, for a jaunt down the bank and into the fields so they can hunt rodents.
To sum up this hodgepodge—DO NOT DRINK OR INGEST OR SHOOT UP BLEACH INTO YOUR BODY. No!! Bad!! Sunshine is not a miracle cure, either. Sorry. I am not in a writerly frame of mind but will overcome that by opening files, staring at words, perhaps doing more than that. The cat is well, the dogs want to get out and run.
I don’t know who came up with this but I laughed, then I burst into tears.
America seems to have lost what little mind she had. This is common rhetoric lately. The Red Scare, y’all. This one won’t die. That the virus is bio-engineered. Ugh.
Ever seen it? If not, you should. It’s great. You get a mystery basket with four ingredients. Random ingredients. You are on a timed deadline. You have to incorporate all four ingredients into one dish. You then get judged. If your dish sucks more than the other dishes served up, you get…CHOPPED. It’s just brutal and so much fun to watch! Three rounds, starter, main course, dessert. Starts with four chefs, whittles down to two, with a winner declared at end of the hour.
I’ve seen things like Spaghetti-O frozen pops. Goat head. Salmon ice cream. Dried tarantulas. Vienna Sausages, in the dessert round. Vienna sausages. In your dessert.
Now they can do with these four ingredients as they want, with a full kitchen to help out.
Okay.
I’m trying to make myself write. I thought I’d do a quickie blog post, maybe open that short story I’ve restarted several times now. A story already written, where I switchedPOV and yeah, it’s a whole thing. I did manage to finish it but it…ugh. It’s not right yet. I didn’t hit that groove. I might have a last go today, then just…let it go, let it go. Let it ferment and pickle if that’s what it needs!
Waiting for stimulus check, of course. It’s like a game. Check my account, still not there! A bad game.
I streamed JoJo Rabbit. Loved it! That’s my professional film critique. I have it stored away for a month on Red Box, so might watch it a couple more times, then do a post about it.
Some writing, some cooking tips and a movie. I’ve also been outside moving rocks about, looking for stray sheets of metal and whistling back at the ground squirrels. I do live in the boondocks, in the middle of actual nowhere. It’s vastly easy to social distance if there’s nothing much around you but dogs, a cat and some cheeky rodents.
So, perusing, from a safe distance, the American political brouhaha taking place. That a president can and should seek foreign ‘help’ in going after political rivals when seeking re-election. That is, I believe, the base of Cheetolini’s lawyer’s ‘arguments’. Or that it’s all to investigate Hunter Biden, son of presidential candidate hopeful Joe Biden…cause corruption rumble rumble grumble rumble.
Madeline Peltz–Alan Dershowitz has repeatedly cited Harvard professor Nikolas Bowie’s scholarship to support his argument that abuse of power is not a crime.
You are welcome to go argue that on various battlefields across social media. It’s nonsense, sure. A president isn’t a king…anyway.
I’ve started and abandoned many a post about American’s descent into actual WTFery. Many others far more urbane, sophisticated and wordsmith-ish than I have tackled the various HOLY SHIT WHAT THE HELL IS HAPPENING WHERE IS THE WHISKEY AND ICE CREAM moments that have overwhelmingly overlapped like evil bubbles.
Yeah, evil bubbles.
Cheetolini was impeached by the House. Now the Senate gets to decide what or if anything happens after that. He doesn’t stop being impeached if the Senate caves and tries to rush this through. Where senators snipe at each other for a couple days without any witnesses or evidence of any kind examined or so forth. Which is what McConnell wants instead of…oh, letting witnesses and evidence exonerate his orange baby.
It’s almost like Cheetolini is, um, guilty. That Cheetolini had admitted to strong-arming Ukraine and others for info on political rivals and made quid pro quo a public business dealing of his…yep. Yep.
My eyeballs and earballs must be, like, lyin’ to me.
And we have the major players arraigned like characters in a weird reality show.
Big Congress featuring Nasty Nancy, Adam Schitt and the Turtle Man!
See them argue over coffee and witnesses and what reality is, tra la!
Tune in for White Male Rage fits that would embarrass toddlers in the candy section of a grocery store.
Watch speechifying to end all speechifying!
Who will get voted off the island??
How hard will Nasty Nancy bitchslap the boys?
Follow us on social media! Hashtag impeachment gaslit catfishing shouty shouters who shout.
Brought to you by the Koch Brothers and Sinclair Media.
I have to turn to satire and feeble jabs. I also actually called my senators. Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley. Twice now. To put in my four cents toward calling witnesses to testify. Namely John fucking Bolton. How can you have a trial without evidence, witnesses or…? Yeah, that’s not a trial, that’s an actual farce.
I could snarl onward with real despair and eyes so wide they hurt for days on end but hey…considering doing chapter blog posts for my Jordan Valley novel. That way I’d finish it. I mapped out about ten or so chapters. I notice others do this with their novels or projects.
The kitten, to end this Evil Bubble blurb, is doing well. Healing up. It’s been raining constantly or I’d let her go outside. She really wants to go outside. Like. Totally. She is fixed now, with shots. Jaws, spring seems early so you could be outside chasing the local birds [oh dear!] real super soon.
All right, January. Let’s hope February leans toward less batshittery from the Senate and all that. I doubt it will. But hey, I can always start and then abandon political rants by the boatload. Yay!
I find that I don’t wish to write. At all. Opening a file is just a damn chore, let alone trying to string words together into some sort of coherent whole. Advancing dementia, perhaps? Getting old? Tired of trying to ignore the world’s indifference to anything I produce? Eh, ugh, bruh.
I have nothing to say. My rage seems oddly absent. I’m just tired. Do I need rage to write cute stories about cats? No, but it helps. Anger gets shit done, to quote from American Gods over on Starz.
I’m still in end of the year mode, maybe?
Where you just want to clean out closets and boxes, throw stuff away, in preparation for spring cleaning. Where you clean out closets and boxes, throw stuff away…I have a real need right now to just toss whatever I have left in the nearest burn barrel and light a match. Then take a picture of that. To post on social media. Proclaiming I am done now. I am done with all this.
That can’t be healthy.
I can’t cash my final check anyway. I have a cat. She just got fixed and had her shots. I can’t burn everything of mine just yet. Right? That’s why we have pets. They keep us from succumbing. To whatever. Which is entirely selfish.
I can’t keep my mind on anything I actually need to get done more than three seconds.
Write a list, pin it where I can see it. You can do X when you get Y amount of pages done or edited.
Simple goals. Make it five pages. Five good pages. The bestest pages ever!
So, the cat is now fixed, with her shots. My brain seems to be made of pudding.
It’s only January.
If I ignore American politics right now, I can…huh. I can’t pretend that hard. Probably why I have pudding brain. I suspect there’s a bit of a link there.
Okay, just hold on until it’s time to pick out herbs for the garden this year. If I try pumpkins…I can’t. It breaks my heart when the bugs arrive to turn my plants into a cholera ward. Basil and dill and lavender and oregano and thyme! Chives? Parsley?
By November it will all be [over]. Right? Sort of? Political stumping never ends in America…it never ends. Pudding brain!
So! Must force self to focus a bit to get some pages done. That’s it. That’s my life goal right now.
The kitten plays. She’s lively, endearing, clearly on stimulants such as crack or triple expressos. Her broken jaw has not held her up much. The stitches were removed, the vet declared Jaws doing well. It’s her nickname. Jaws. Probably, eventually, her name. She enjoys attacking the dog’s tails. We have three dogs, all with long wavy tempting tails. Jaws stalks each one, sneaks up on it, does the wrap all four paws around tail, kick with rhythmic precision until whatever dog has been enduring this decides enough is enough. Jaws like to hide beneath the loveseat, bat at the nearest dog waiting for food to fall into his or her mouth from the indulgent humans nearby.
The kitten also wakes up in the middle of the night. Wet cat nose. Murder mittens about my foot. Plaintive meows. Are you up yet, giant inept cat? I read where cats regard humans as other giant ‘very bad at being cats’ cat. It’s why they bring us gifts of dead mice or a dead bird, often not so dead. Our pet cats are trying to feed us.
So, the state of American politics at present. I feel like pouring a giant glass of whiskey, with some Coke thrown in it, and watching it all burn to the ground. Maybe that would finally satisfy everyone. We can all enjoy the flames, roast some marshmallows, blame it all on the DNC, Nancy Pelosi, millennials and those who lack civility.
People will vote straight R because the ‘other side’ uses curse words. Okay, sure.
I also notice that the Dems do not play offense. Ever. It’s always a bewildered ‘here are the facts, why don’t you get it?’ blinky sort of ingrained trained door mat niceness.
As the Republican PR propaganda machine churns out 24/7, every minute, whatever reality they wish pushed and believed.
Ukraine interfered in our elections in 2016! Investigate the Bidens! Hillary sold uranium! The polls are rising in favor of Trump!
And so many more, over and over and over, repeated, over and over and over, repeated, over and over and over. Relentless.
There does not seem to be a counter to that, other than a timid ‘that’s not true, here’s the truth, m’kay, you guys.’ Any actual fiery response or push back seemingly gets shot down. By the other Democrats.
Calm down. Calm down, be polite, don’t upset the apple cart, take the high road.
Until that one actually fighting back gets silenced or even shoved out. It doesn’t seem a coincidence that the fighters and loud mouths all seem absent, missing or gone altogether. Or those speaking out don’t get supported or defended that much as the right, with a gleeful savagery, goes after that person with lies, more lies and damn lies. Hello, AOC.
Adam Schiff practically has to be a robot, speaking without much passion or anger. Pelosi has to remain preternaturally calm in the face of rabid hyenas snapping their foamy jaws in her face.
Any show of anger or outrage from the left gets met with how nuts they are, how ANGRY all the time, how they hate America and Americans, how…oh sure. Until the Dems get so trained to be calm apologists you tend to…ignore whatever they might say. Which is the whole fucking point of training them so.
And I find myself wishing a Dem would snap, and just go to town on the R’s. That other Dems start repeating talking points in counter to the talking points we always hear–
That Dems are weak on family values. That Dems are into spending. That Dems are blah blah blah.
Boil down a few very simple talking points that counter the message that Dems are unAmerican fringe weirdos intent on turning everyone gay after handing out free abortions to middle schoolers.
Dems fix the economy after Republicans wreck it. Dems stand for human rights when Republicans don’t. Dems want immigration reformed, not some free for all whoever wants to enter can bullshit. That fucking wall needs to be shoved up the nearest MAGA asshole sans lubricant. Protect the environment. Wrecking the land, water and air will not make America great. It will just make America uninhabitable.
Just some thoughts.
The kitten has slipped off somewhere. She likes to look out the windows. I need to get her fixed before she can return outside a bit. I have made myself her caretaker and servant. I have no wish to lose her as she seeks out mates or take care of more cats as she churns out unwanted kittens.
Brigit and the new fast-moving not-mouse having a bit of a snuggle.
Stacks of straw made from the wheat stalks. The Malheur Butte.
Okay. It’s close to midnight. And something evil…no. No, I won’t go into Thriller. But I did open a can of worms. They are wriggling about on two different fronts. I made a comment. I checked who was following me on Twitter and discovered a flat earther/young earther idiot of idiotic proportions. Damn.
Yep.
And with those lurking about lookin’ for trouble right here in River City!
Now!! I made the mistake, I admit it, of commenting about feminism with someone who called themselves an equalist because the ‘f’ word is so toxic…which was the subject of the youtube video, by the way. Not. Even. Kidding.
So the first interaction with the guy who made the comment went fine. It was polite and measured, we both had fun. I kept myself polite and respectful. Which if you know me is sort of a miracle on the order of loaves and fishes.
Am I being snarky and sarcastic? Uh huh. Was I actually polite? Yes, I was.
So another jumps in…a foaming at the mouth sort typing angrily away about how his daughter isn’t going to pee alongside men because of them equality laws.
Just checked. He left a new comment. I’ll ignore it for now. Cause I’m mature and grown up!
Yeah, I did that tilt the head, what the hell? expression, face palm, huh? what are you talking about? reaction…before delving into all that.
Which I should have IGNORED SUPER HARD. Or posted pictures of Janet Mock and directed that guy to watch Pose.
He then tried to pretend I was the crazy, hysterical one…as happens in such ‘conversations’. Men are logical and LOL types, women are hysterical ranters. [That’s the polite term/s. Uh huh.]
After I posted two links to myths about transgender folks, including the bathroom stuff. And linked the hysteria now over LGTBQ gaining rights to the Civil Rights fight to gain rights and even to women trying to get the right to vote. The same fears get trotted out over and over, you notice, you hear/read the same stuff…okay, whatever. Yeah, I’m the crazy loony feminazi, m’kay. He’s the cool-headed, trying to save the kids stalwart!
Talk about a meet-cute!
I, of course, am ‘projecting’ onto this…person. This ranting, hysterical, triggered by a word that has been turned into something worse than ‘cunt’ and almost as bad as the N word.
I get that. I get that ‘feminism’ is a demonized set of syllables. You have to scrape up words that mean the same thing as feminism rather than just use that word. Or you get told you hate men, that you’re for the rape of children in bathrooms and that you hate men and…yeah. I could turn this into a whole novel-length bit.
I will refrain as hard as possible from continuing that rabbit hole of whatever that is. I’ve seen that conversation repeated so many times. It’s so tiresome. I get tired of trying to placate and soothe. Fuck.
Of course. I can play with that poor trout and see how long he can continue that thread.
Now, the science denier chick. That was a head-scratcher as well. Suddenly, on the Twitter feed, between rants about Trumpie the KKKruel KKKlown and vague quotes about writing and animal rescue vids, there appeared…this wild, has to be parody, account touting what got Galileo in trouble for calling out. The earth is the center of it all cause God made the earth for us and…yeah, um, no. With some weird quote from a 60’s book. Which, yes, linked God with creating the planet. Ugh.
I can find it later, splice it in or not.
Mistake, I admit– I commented what the hell was this, was this a parody account. No, she responded and then threw out some science words, mashing them together to “prove” the existence of magic! Holy catnip, Batwoman!
I just went to town on that poor schmuck. I doubt she’ll interact with me again. I did refrain from throwing in swear words. I’m an adult, for fuck’s sake! I’ll ignore her, because I’d rather watch the rescue of a moose calf. It had a hoof caught, at the edge of a lake. In big boulders. These guys got it freed and back to solid ground.
I might just cut down my Twitter to Animal Rescue and Cute Animals Doing Cute Things.
So, basically, the Dodo, Hope for Paws and anything with manta rays. Or manatees. Or moose calves. I’ll keep the writerly stuff and the art stuff. But writers and artists notice when shit goes off the rails, then writes or paints things…damn it.
And yet another shooting, in Odessa, Texas. On the evening before Texas loosens its already loose gun laws…Not even kidding. People seem a lot angrier about all this lately. Anger gets shit done, as Mr. Nancy said on American Gods. Maybe America is finally losing her temper.
Well, I did promise to just promote my writing and arty art all September. Not dissolve into some political rabbit warren [cause it seems every rabbit is digging holes lately and they all live together in some endless fucked up underground Matrix-like hellscape…!] that swerves into ‘why feminists want all men dead and children assaulted in bathrooms’ and ‘Noah’s Ark is, like, totally real cause here’s some super-serious science words thrown out so we now have the same evidence which should make you believe in whatever I can twist out next, m’kay…’
No, this isn’t about my delusions about my garden statuary. Just a cutesy title. Click-bait-ish, even.
That’s what counts these days, clicks. Right? Not content or accuracy or sense or anything remotely with any merit. Quantity of clicks! A bit cynical? No!
The bugs slowly eat my poor pumpkin alive. They’ve killed one plant, are working on the other one which persists in sending out a long arm with blossoms on it. No round small greenish balls forming…not one. Just leaves, blossoms and bugs.
Poor punkins! But still trying.
Is there anything better than watching a pumpkin grow, mature, turn orange? No! There isn’t. My pumpkins rather mirror my life at present. All efforts consumed slowly by bugs that don’t seem to notice whatever is thrown at them. Or even care when you flick them off or smush them. There’s more bugs alive than bugs smushed. I can do some sort of math. Is it entirely sad I am comparing my life to how my pumpkins are doing? Probably.
But, bright spot. The herbs thrive. Sage, thyme, dill, lemon balm, oregano. Rosemary! I mean doing well and having a ball. A bumblebee even visited my lemon balm. I remember my mother petting one, how she told me you can pet them, they get so mad! But they don’t turn and sting you. You just stroke their furry, fuzzy backs, they grumble and lumber to the next bloom. There used to be more of them. And not one hummingbird. They used to show up, even though I don’t have that feeder out so many have out to tempt the teensy birds. It seems the winged wonders had become legends and myths in my yard.
Go, zukes, go!
Another bright spot. A dear friend of mine from way back when has a wedding to attend in Beaverton. Ah, she can spare an hour or two for lunch as she buzzes through. She’s got kids, a tiny dog, a husband with her and it’s good. It’s so good to see her again. We talk as if we lived next door to each other, not several states apart. The wedding is for her son, a son I used to babysit when he was very very small. Yeah. I’m an elderly dog lady, it’s official. Maybe an elderly garden lady? An elderly pumpkin sadsack?
I also combined my watching of Bohemian Rhapsody and not even getting an interview for an on-call job. Freddy Mercury’s Sister. It blurted out of me, I tidied it up and have sent it off to…well, see what happens.
Because gardening and writing are pretty much the same thing.
Stop, wait.
It’s a lot of waiting and bugs eating your work. Sometimes there’s a grand harvest of two zukes! Sometimes the stuff you ignored and didn’t think was that good just thrives away among the weeds and rocks. [I’m looking at you directly, thyme patch.]
Sometimes the yard bunnies munch your veggies to nubs–That’s when submissions get lost or you didn’t read the rules which stated, in six point font, that your story has to be 800 words on dino-human love triangles and you sent them a four thousand word opus on rodeos in space.
I tried to keep to one subject or at least link a bunch of ramblings to a single image/thing. Plus plug my writing.
I plan to spend September plugging my writing. As considering the garbage-y cowering state of my country right now fills me with actual road rage. If that makes sense.
That surge of DIE MOTHERFUCKER DIE to the granny who wobbles into the road ahead of you, then drives twenty miles below the speed limit. As you test to see if your brakes actually work or not. Good thing you weren’t bopping away to throbbing bubble gum music or distracted because you just spilled your pumpkin spice latte all over your dog. Yeah, that kinda WTF R U STOOOPID insta-rage.
Oh don’t worry. Political rants will explode here like the whitebro outrage over some MeToo thread. Don’t even worry about that, dearies.
My single dill plant, what a champion. Extreme closeup of rocks!
Three dogs, one river. Miz Bridge, Jake in the middle and Molly the Chocolate Lab. Owyhee River.
Hello, various readers and passers stopping by on a snowy evening. Some Bob Frost to start us all on the road to hilarity and good cheer.
I’ve lost count of the rejections this week but it’s a LOT. I either need to write up a new batch of stories, poems and plays or keep sending out the same old crappola. Hoping this time. That time. This time over here.
That it will be different.
Except right now, truth is so much goddamn stranger than any fiction I could fart out or compose while munching French pastry and sipping Italian wine. While seated outside at a sunny cafe in Athens, Greece. I’d write longhand, of course. Using my own blood as ink.
Cause I’m a writer, dangnabbit! That’s a word you hear in old timey cowboy movies as they were not allowed to say ‘god damn it’.
Yes, the American political and all other scenes are just rife with WTF, then topped with Is That An Actual Tweet? followed by Don’t Read the Comments Section, ended with I Am So Done With Social Media, I’m Off To Raise Sunflowers To Help Third World Scarf Herders. Then the cycle starts all over again. With variations.
It’s the downward spiral. It’s the we’re imploding and prolly gonna take the entire world with us. It’s…it’s fucking hot right now.
So my thoughts are roughly—it’s hot. I should write something. About. Something. It’s hot.
Being poor, air conditioning is one of those unheard of, rich people inventions that exist in movies. Sort of kidding. I have a tiny fan. It helps. I go outside, throw water on my squash. I dig out weeds. I hear the hawks raising their kids down the road. Noisy bastards. Shut up, hawks! The corn hides the ditch bank road so the dogs have to listen real hard instead of watching to see who drives to and fro on what they obviously consider their bit of territory. Any engine gets them still and holding their breath. It’s rather creepy-cute.
What to write about. My hot take on politics? Nah, that’s just solid cuss words at this point. Eve Carlin, from hell, shouts out, hey, throw in some other words there. Feminist issues that affect us all? Golly, I’m either too much or too little here or…eh?
Oh!! Sidetrack. Here we go.
Saw the Spy Who Dumped Me. We have free Epix, whatever. So, the plot, eh. Some international whatever, been done a gazillion billion times. However, what’s fresh, you ask? Or haven’t asked at all though you’ve made it this far?
The relationship between the two best friends. Played by Mila Kunis and Kate McKinnon. It rang every true bell. How they support each other, are there for each other, their acceptance of each other’s faults yet the irritation over those faults…it’s all there. I especially found my bell rang over Kate’s character being called ‘too much’ by a lot of people, including the secret spy/boyfriend of Mila’s character. And Mila’s character siding with Kate’s character, then telling her she’s not too much. Ah!! I almost teared up.
As someone who’s been repeatedly called ‘too much’, which I ALWAYS took as—
there’s something very very wrong with me; nobody likes me unless I act quiet and not myself. I am a monster!—
That moment reminded me of what great friends I have.
I could write about my own experiences with people trying to whittle me down to acceptable size.
And never show that writing to anyone because it would be like ripping my face off and gluing a salted strip of razor blades in its place.
How I have the self-esteem of a dead rock and yes, have let other people define me because 99% of those people tell me I’m ‘too much’…!
And when I try to not be a monster, I find that I am silent and limp as moldy lettuce stuck to the gunk under the veggie drawer in the fridge. And that I am angry. Then I explode and people walk about me as if on the most delicate eggshells and…yeah, pattern.
Pattern! Yep. Pattern detected.
So I’ll stick to making up monsters or writing about sexual encounters between dinosaurs and women. Is that still a thing?? What about man’s inhumanity to man?
Oooh! I smell a Nobel outta that one!
I’ll call it Man Being Mean to Men. It will feature no women characters whatsoever. It will just be two white straight guys on a beach arguing over who’s the bigger victim of post-post modern society as the world literally burns. I will use a thesaurus a lot. I will describe their inner penis. A lot.
I suspect if I actually did write something like that, it would probably actually sell.
I’m not bitter.
Nope.
I am. I am so bitter I’m a walking moldy lemon at this point. Okay.
Rejections fast and furious this week. I’ll not buck up at all. I’ll stew in my own sweat until autumn shows up and it’s STILL FUCKING HOT GOD DAMN IT FUCK FUCK FUCK. But hey, the nights are cooler. I should move to the Artic. Except it’s on fire where they’re not drilling gleefully for oil. Where else is cold?
Minnesota? Maine? Montana? It would have to be within walking distance. How much can I stuff in a backpack? I’ll have to dig up my jars of pennies I buried for a rainy day. Some jars only have one or two pennies in them but hey, that first step, amirite? Amen! A cave, some berries.
I can be the Unibomber without all the baggage.
Holy moley, what a scattershot post. But I felt it important to not write yet another political scream that is only heard by some wide-eyed mice in a deserted choir room.
I managed to capture an actual bumblebee sampling my lemon balm plant. Isn’t it gorgeous???
Brigit, Jake in the middle and Molly to the right. The Oywhee River.
I took the three dogs out to the Owyhees, which is the mountain range about forty minutes away. I loaded them into the Jimmy or the GMC, took some water, three dog bones, a towel. The old dirty blanket got placed across the back seat because there’s a small river up that way. And the three dogs love to fling themselves into the waters, whether pond, mud puddle, ocean, lake, trickle, stream, or river.
The wind a bit gusty but the sun out, the day beautiful otherwise. June day, not too hot but hot enough.
It seemed my mood lifted the second I crossed the tiny bridge over the Malheur as I drove toward the state park area. There’s a road carved into the rocks and sagebrush that leads up to the big reservoir where you can boat or swim or just hang. I don’t go up there cause…people are there and my entire goal in life right now is to avoid all human contact. That’s not sarcasm or being cutesy. That’s my depression, which has won and is just waiting for me to cut my wrists already so it can move on to someone else who at least poses a challenge to it…
Medication? Other than whatever’s in the fridge? No.
The three dogs whine and whimper. When they get to go anywhere, their other ends spew. They get excited, they have to empty the chambers. So I pull over, as there are little roads cut into the hills, as well as free range cattle and places to shoot off mortar rounds and…it’s Eastern Oregon. You can also see where the wagons cut grooves into the earth for all time, seemingly. Oregon Trail tracks. No kidding. Come see the permanent damage people have done to the earth, y’all!
I slow down when I see a ‘road closed’ sign, and a traffic cone. One of my favorite little spots to hunt rocks. This part of Oregon is rock hound heaven, in case I have not mentioned that. There’s a Thunderegg Festival in Nyssa, Oregon. That’s where people bring rocks to sell, along with other things. A thunderegg is another name for a geode.
The bridge, a tiny stone and wood structure you can drive across, had been swept away by a spring flood. The litter of that bridge in the river yet, which rushed past it importantly. Now. This is a narrow little river but it packs a powerful current with a strength more suited to the Mississippi at times. Same with the Snake River. It’s deceptively narrow but treacherous as the current regime of Gross Old Perverts. Crossing it on a covered wagon, in the days before dams and crumbling bridges, shudder. There’s a couple of famous crossing places that have been preserved in Idaho and Oregon. Farewell Bend, for instance. It’s where you left the river and went up into the Blues. By this time in your Oregon Trail adventure, you were just happy you were still alive.
Up the badly maintained road, often with rocks tumbled across it from the stony outcroppings that lean over it like something from a LOTR movie, I discover one of my favorite spots has no camper or group of scrubbed tourists lounging there like ticks on a hound. The dogs explode out of the back of the Jimmy, I notice I’ve left my bucket at home. I did bring a small ice cream bucket and a sack but nothing to put any or all the rocks I was sure to find. Hope is always eternal when I rouse myself enough to sneak off to hunt the elusive stationary rock. Some trips I find agates or chunks of crystal this or that almost at my feet when I park. I make sure I can get back on the road again as getting stuck out there with no phone is not a goal of mine. I can’t afford minutes at the moment.
The current at this peaceful little spot, with a small ranch next to it with actual livestock wandering through now and then, seems relentlessly evil. The dogs have trouble swimming against it and I worry I might have to rescue either of the two big Labs or the young Kewpie. Or cow dog as I think of Miz Bridge.
However, they enjoy being out of the yard and I trudge about. I am happy enough as well to be out of the yard, so to speak. But there’s no real joy in me at being in what has always seemed a spiritual place that renews what little I have left in my life’s batteries. It’s my big birthday. I turned fifty. Is that it? I am just down over how old I am?
Yes, to be frankly honest as hell. That is a small part of that yesterday. I expected. I expected a life beyond failing over and over and over, with nothing to show for my writing efforts but two books nobody’s even read. Including people in my own immediate family. My own fault for not becoming a teacher way back when, a real one, with certificates and such. As I pushed to do by my mother and others, and I did see myself teaching English to high schoolers or even, gasp, my little dream of teaching theatre in a college. And if I go into any of my abject wrong turns here or actual dead end blunders, I really will give in despair. More than usual, anyway.
I am not writing this for sympathy or thrills. I am attempting to sort everything out before I can’t. Or am not able to anymore.
Yes, it’s that bad. All the time. That little trip yesterday was my birthday treat. That was it. My family didn’t do anything special for me and I was grateful to even have my dad remember it was my birthday on the actual day of my birthday. I am grateful for a scrap of ‘hey, birthday, whatever’. Grateful. I have never mattered to my family…that’s how I feel.
And we’re not supposed to have feelings anymore. Or ever?
Once my mother brought a German Chocolate cake for my birthday. From the bakery markdown selection. The frosting had cracks in it, as it was old. Cheap old cake. I realize now that during June farmers don’t have a ready supply of cash and that I should be happy she bothered to get me a town cake at all. I just…want to feel that I matter to my own flesh and blood a bit.
And every birthday, it seems, I am faced with the evidence that I don’t.
The lifelong depression is going to win. I’m not going to magically defeat this thing in my head. I can barely concentrate enough to write this. I want to give in so badly and just end it. There it is. If I can look that in the face a bit, maybe I can…
take the dogs for little jaunt somewhere else that’s strange and new to me. Where I have no memories to remember. And I make it through another day.
Not the bridge I mentioned, obviously. You can see the river doesn’t look formidable or anything else.Already dry as a bone. Sagebrush and rocks.Happy Jake after he emptied the chambers.
ANN WUEHLER 