Semi-Precious, Partially-Rare

Gathered at the Freshwater Pearl Museum Camden, TN

The free tour of the Freshwater Pearl Museum included a short video of a CBS Evening News program circa 1987 that featured entirely too many close-ups of freshwater pearls being extracted from snotty mussel innards. It was nauseating. I don’t even like to accidently see people eat shrimp on a Red Lobster commercial.

We didn’t get to go on a tour of the pearl farm. The woman working the museum (and gift shop) gave us the rundown on the tours, the next one was in six days and she asked if we were interested in signing up. Well no m’am we weren’t planning on sleeping in the Freshwater Pearl Museum 1986 video viewing room for the next week, but thank you. You can’t fault her for being enthusiastic. Like any good tourist attraction, the tours had special names - one of them was called a “tweener” – meaning if you couldn’t afford the real deal you could be humiliated in front of your friends and family by being forced to say “we’ll just take the tweener tour.”

I think she was happy to have us in the shop because it validated her belief in the mysterious beauty and magical draw of the pearl farm and Tennessee River. “I came here on vacation and stayed here!” She said she wasn’t the only one – same thing happened to three other people in the area including the guy who runs the marina. I was beginning to think this is where people went on the lamb. Our gal at the jewelry counter looked like she was on her fifth life at thirty two. 

Before we left she told us we looked like Katie Perry and that every woman wanted a Tahitian (pearl). I’ve been trying to figure out the hidden messages ever since. I’m sure they are buried somewhere in the slimy mussel meat underwater in the pearl farms of the Tennessee River.

Been Gone

 

Our of touch and on the road. Back with tales of Tennessee trails quite soon.

It is Not Necessary…

…to say “I love to laugh".

Have I Told You This Story Before?

I’ve been having a mild to moderately hard time getting things blogged out because I’ve been writing so many letters lately. I see that in my students as well. Since they spend so much time away from them, they write elaborate letters to their friends and families (and maybe even to their enemies – those letters/vows of revenge can take a lot out of a person) so by the time they have to write in class they are spent. I guess they feel like they have already done all the telling that needs to be told. Not everyone is a performer or a standup comedienne or preacher or amnesiac or some other kind of person who takes pleasure in re-telling and re-telling and re-telling. 

So we must learn to compartmentalize and save certain stories for certain audiences. For example, I thought it would be a great idea to save a mention of the Subway Sandwich Artist, that loves to put just one black olive on the center of my sandwich when I say “extra olives,” just for this blog. It’s visual – just imagine a lone chopped black olive on a bed of shredded Subway lettuce - quirky, right? What if I told you the Sandwich Artist does not speak english very well? Now we are talking about how sandwiches and humor transcend language. What if you knew that the owner of this Subway was a mean ol tyrant who re-uses paper cups and times his Sandwich Assembly line? Now it’s a story about transgression and the mini-revolts of a disempowered wage worker.

I can’t put that in a letter now.

Arkansas Ankle Bracelets

The fields of Arkansas, hereby deemed Smokansas, are still burning. Outdoors has turned to indoors as the entire sky, corner to corner, looks like the inside of a breakroom in a tobacco factory. I keep the windows up but by the end of my 45 minute drive, my throat feels like I’ve been sitting on the wrong side of a campfire for about that long – and it’s not fabulous to lose your voice when you still have to lecture for a couple hours. By that time, the only cure for the scratch attack in my throat is whiskey or fritos - so I’ve been stopping off at the Exxon an exit or so before the compound to get something, anything for relief.

I prefer the Exxon because the Shell is too close to the exit and has a depressing layout and the guys that work there are always on their laptops or cell phones (completely destroys my image of gas station workers). The ladies that work at the Exxon have style (glitter nails and funky angel and jesus pins on their uniforms) and always something to say to me when I buy “Mad Housewife” merlot like, “I saw this in a magazine… makes a great gift,” and there was that time I heard one call the other “Big Booty Judy.”

Perhaps the greatest feature of the Exxon is that it has a very clean bathroom featuring one of those Xxxxcelerator high-powered hand dryers. You know the kind that nearly blow off the epidermal layer of your skin – very extreme hygiene.

So, anyway, yesterday I nearly toppled over a small skinny, skinny man with a long, long pony-tail and teeny, wiry mustache. He was just standing around like a creepy little troll with a bunch of larger ogre dudes waiting for the guys restroom. I started to say “Exscuuuu-uuse you…” when I noticed that his ankles were hand – or I guess in this case it would be - ankle-cuffed together. I looked out the window and saw the white US Extradition van, and the armed officer (sporting a gold hoop earring which made me think; private company) by the door, and I thought, I really hope there aren’t chickconvicts in the ladies room, I’m in no mood for a lipstick riot, but I decided to take a chance knowing Big Booty Judy would have my back.

The second I opened the door a woman screamed. (Yes, this is a recurring but very true theme – screaming in restrooms) I thought she was reacting to the mob of barely supervised prisoners just a few feet away, but apparently she was just startled because she’d put her hands under the Xxcelerator Dryer and was completely unprepared for not only the unmistakable powerful burst of air, but for an air dryer all together. She looked at me and said, “God dang! I expected paper towels to come out of here.”

I laughed. Travel amateur. So I told her, “I’m sure one of the guys out there will let you dry your hands on their pants.”

Welcome to Smokansas.

The Most Creative and Fun Blog Post on Earth

B got me a new yellow wallet. My money is much happier.

The retractable antennae is stuck on my car but the motor for it still goes for about 45 seconds after I turn my car off. It sounds awful, like the bones of a small - but tough - animal (like a hamster or squirrel) being crushed in the gears of a meat grinder. At least that is what I see on the faces of people walking by.

We went this place the other night on a suburban recon mission:

But it was not the most creative and fun restaurant on earth. There is already a place in Chicago where you can go and the wait staff is mean to you (but for fun, right, because that is fun – the most fun on earth) and draws on your tablecloth. That is creative. At this place they sat us at a crummy table, slapped down some greasy menus, and left us for fifteen minutes. Maybe our waitress could tell that I, myself was creative and would just take it from there.

It was not been my intention but my collection of  photographs of dead birds on sidewalks is growing. I usually just use my phone camera to capture the peaceful post-mortem of these poor sweet reckless creatures. I imagine that they thought just beyond the window was just another funky fly-able space – maybe even another galaxy – it is an easy mistake, sometimes I can’t even be bothered with trying to open the door to my office and I just bash my face into the glass with excitement. That might explain why there have been more than a few outside of my office building, though the most recent birdacide was outside of the gap. In this case, I blame the store’s attractive fall stripe collection and sale posters.

Who will take pictures of us on the sidewalk?

It’s a Metaphor

(taken at the Clanfamry the other weekend)

This Town

We saw that bank heist movie last night. The one starring Ben Afflick’s jaw and Jeremy Renner’s twitchy small town mug. A few hours after the movie I found myself in a strip mall parking lot waiting around while all the shops were closing up… the Whole Foods workers bundled up their green aprons and came out with brown paper sacks of groceries and got on bicycles and into metro rideshares and foreign cars. Perfectly normal. But the Office Depot crew came out like they were the original inspiration for Reservoir Dogs. The glass doors parted and light beamed through the forms of seven workers staggered in a majestic reverse-V - all of them dressed in workslacks and white polo shirts, looking uniform, clean, and purposeful – maybe even paper-cutter-dangerous. Their leader had red fuck-you-conditioner hair and a manager’s cell phone belt clip and she motioned for the OD Crew to pile in a white armored van featuring the Office Depot logo (modified slightly with a ammo clip in place of a printer cartridge). One of them did a reverse backflip into the rear of the truck and another kept one foot on the footbed of the passenger side so he could stand up as the driver, the shortest and oldest one of them all, drove them away. I am pretty sure I heard a couple of them barking and loading up their tech-9s in time to pick off a few Whole Foods workers waiting for their rides. You never know where professional take-down crews are assembling. Be nice to your retail worker.

The Traveling Woman

This photo could have been submitted to my other blog but I actually bought the book so it doesn’t technically qualify. I wanted to see if the weather guide was still accurate and to find out if the author is still alive because if not I would like to steal her name as my pen name.  I’ll report my findings soon.  - Dena Kaye II

Cement Rooms, Snot Floors: Dinner Convo

My sister sent me a letter from Basic Training with detailed drawings of her chemical warfare/gasmask training:

(All drawings 2010 copyright KML, Soldier, USA Army, America the Beautiful)

Now, nearly my entire family has gone through basic training except for me (and my mother, but I’m quite sure they wouldn’t let her in because she would scare the drill sergeants and say such passive aggressive things to the cooks they would be forced to secretly poison the entire battalion in a mass suicide attempt) and I have heard about this day in basic from my brothers and mostly - my dad, who suffered through it probably in ‘68 when they made gas masks out of bandanas and band-aides. It was and still is one of his more animated story presentations – he used to tell us stuff like that over dinner - “You think mom’s burnt Bisquick and tuna casserole smells bad – let me tell you about when I had to hold my breath for forty minutes while a bunch of pansies puked and cried all over themselves…”

According to K, getting tear-gassed is of course, extremely uncomfortable, and produces a LOT of snot.  So there’s just crowds of recruits doubled-over, choking, with eyes watering like supersoakers and strings of snot falling from their nose to the floor. And when they come out – the sadistic trainers (drill sergeants, captains, whoever) are all there to take pictures of people gasping for fresh air through their snot-covered faces. I think the photos are the modern twist to the old tradition. The image that stays with me (and one that I gathered from her letter, not a photo) is of my little sister standing in a pool of other people’s snot and barf waiting for her turn to suffah – suffah for our freedom! For Jersey Shore and blue jeans and automobiles and rock shows and corn mazes and liposuction and Linsay Lohan and booster seats and low airfare and genetically modified fruit and iPhone aps. 

Shine sweet freedom. Shine your light on me. (But keep it away from the floor of that cement room chamber thing – I mean who cleans that up?!)

Feet First

My drive across Old Muddy is becoming more dangerous every day. The bridges are crowded with impatient semi-trucks and everything is down to one lane while being earthquake-proofed and other things that spell commute disaster. Yesterday I was greeted with a doom cloud of smoke as soon as I crossed West Memphis. They (the farmers, the faceless industrial farmers) were burning the fields. Cotton is over. It’s been scooped and combed and sent to China for a chemical bath before being handed over to small children to make my Forever 21 clothes and now it is time to set the past on fire. Driving through the endless cloud of dead field particles with strips of fire at my side made me feel like I was plunging into unknown dimension, and I was, I was in Arkansas dimension.

The smoke lingered even after nightfall, I could still smell charred dirt when I stopped at the Exxon after class. As I was getting out of my car I noticed a young mom holding a lil toddler (the size of your typical novice walker) on her hip. The mom came around to the passenger side of an older mid-sized SUV and plopped the little girl in the front seat and put the seatbelt on her, shut the door and headed for the ice machine and nearly knocked me over because I was busy staring at her kid who was sitting in the front seat with the shoulder strap actually covering half of her chubby face. Just one eye and a babycheek looking back at me. She looked surprisingly comfortable so I could only imagine that she rode this way quite often. And although I am not a daily caretaker of small children, I know that breaks at minimum four known rules, three legislative and one moral, of transporting children in vehicles. In fact it might have been safer to tie her stroller to the trailer hitch. I’m sure if it wasn’t so smoky I would have seen a set up like that. I’m only telling you the things I COULD see in Arkansas.

In other doom observations:

Just yesterday during a productive lunch break, I found a great hand-crocheted black sweater dress at my favorite almost-scabies-free thrift store. I threw it on over my clothes to look in the mirror (I prefer not to go in the dressing room at this particular place because it also doubles as a toilet) and it fit! I turned to the side and thought, “This would be good for a funeral.” That’s what came to mind and then I bought it. If I show up to a holiday party wearing a black sweater dress that will tell you what I think of your party.

Darker still: I have developed a fear/fascination of death by black hole after listening to Neil deGrasse Tyson’s description of falling into one. He was on the last few minutes of the most recent RadioLab.

When your feet are being pulled at a gravitational velocity so intense that your body snaps in half and then half again and again and again until you are scattered particles of space, that’s when you know you are falling into a black hole (or Arkansas).

All Apologies

B’s Apple Cake went moldy:

 

What I know about this Jewish Holiday season (aka: The Days of Awe) is only what I have gathered from an episode of Entourage, some absences from students in my class, and an article about 10Q – that happened to inspire this awesome reader comment:

“What is something you would have done differently over the past year?”
I never would have answered a blogger on the internet whom I met once years ago who turned out to be a mentally ill obsessive stalker, harasser, and would be black mailer.
People are seldom what they represent themselves to be.
I vow not to make the same gruesome mistake in both the upcoming New Year or the next Lifetime.

— Perley J. Thibodeau

Perely, Perley! Are you calling me out? I’m not a would-be black mailer son, I’m the real deal!! Now send me your extra Bed, Bath, and Beyond coupons or the world will know your full name!!

Note: I would reclaim about 30% of my waking life if I could stay away from the filth and profundity that make up online reader comments, but I can’t stay away – the draw is stronger than all of the real housewives put together.

I only bring up the apple cake and the holidays because I like the idea of asking forgiveness – Catholics are into it, but you have to go through a messenger (usually an old man in a robe). I think I might prefer the ol’ once-a-year approach.

So I apologize to anyone I have wronged – especially those of you that count on this blog for exciting stories and fun photos – I apologize for all of those times you came to check for a new entry and there was the same old entry about my officemate. I’m sorry to all the Starbucks baristas that haven’t gotten a tip from me ever since I started to use the drive-through. I’m very sorry to both the Pistons and the Dodgers because I feel like I gave up on you when times got tough. But really it feels like we are headed into even tougher times and if you don’t pull your shit together I probably will just not pay attention until you get in the playoffs again (or when the Pistons play Miami). I’m sorry that I had to take a hiatus from my short-story chain. I’m sorry I didn’t get to visit with everybody in New York. I’m really sorry to myself that I didn’t get to touch a single Great Lake this whole summer. Sorry to my car for pushing that 3,000 – 5,000 mile oil change. Sorry to the guy at the drive-in movies that we told we didn’t have jumper cables. Sorry to the Department of Education for not having any intention of ever paying more than fifty dollars a month on my student loan. Sorry to the weddings and baby showers I missed this year. Sorry for giving up Diet Coke and Chick-Fil-A. Sorry to the several museums and docent-led tours where I took picture when I wasn’t supposed to. Sorry to my boyfriend for pretending I don’t know how to cook or wash dishes. I’m sorry I think that I have a psychological diagnosis for everyone.

And finally, in the spirit of forgiveness and healing, I also apologize for those of you who use, have used or plan to use in the future, the phrase: “I’m sorry you feel that way.” Because it is a phrase that makes me want to make you actually, really, and truly sorry, in the I’ll-give-you-something-to-cry-about sense of the way you can be sorry.

G-d. I feel much better.

In Dreams

Nylon for the War

I bought two pairs of knee-high nylons at the drugstore. Twenty cents a pair. I’ll probably wear them with a pair of slacks or something careerish, but there really is only one right way to wear knee-high reinforced toe nylons : with a skirt or over an ace bandage. It reminds me of gals in borrowed clothes at choir concerts and middle school award ceremonies and everything else I adore. Knee-high in good company.

Goat Cheese

Goat Chariot Races at the Millington Goat Days.

• Excitement Factor: 5
• Kitsch Factor: 9
• Speed of goat: Varied from 0mph to 3mph
• Crashes: 1 (at finish line)
• PETA Factor: – 75
• Pita Factor: + 50

The best part about the race was the local soldiers keeping people off the bales of hay. Homeland security indeed.

I immediately wrote my sister a letter at basic training and suggested she change her detail request to Millington.

Where Were You A Weekend Ago Today?

We took a tour of one of the several antebellum homes in Natchez and our tour guide, who looked put together in a blue checkered short-sleeved button-up shirt and khakis (the outfit of choice for preservationists and docents I suppose), scratched his belly a lot, was rather kind when a grown woman asked “how did they bathe in those days?”, dropped southern gems like “we don’t call it the Civil War down here,” and told me not to take pictures on the first floor after I had already taken a few.

We ate a one of the oldest buildings in the city, an English Pub that is supposedly haunted (you can buy t-shirts). They tell you that you can go ghost hunting upstairs if you dare. The six year old boy at the table next to us came running back down stairs with his brother and sister completely ruined. We were much tougher on our own ghost hunt. Or at least B was, I am not into haunted houses and it isn’t because of my fear of the undead. I just don’t like being surprised and frightened by items from Spencer’s Gifts.

We drove out to Ferriday, LA to tour the childhood home of Jerry Lee Lewis. I’ve read different reviews of the tour experience – so I expected something between Graceland Too and the Hank Williams Jr Museum. Jerry Lee’s nephew gave us the tour and unlike other tourists, we didn’t get to see the short video (too bad, I love short orientation videos) but he did let us take one picture inside. The place is packed full of some rare photos and clothing and also some completely random things like Brillo pad boxes from 1956. His nephew was a swell guy, he made sure to point out a humorous George W. Bush pin and mentioned several times that Connie Chung had been to the house. Not a whole lotta of additional Jerry Lee info but you could say the tour was atmospherically valuable anyway.

We also got a peek at the Jerry Clower Museum near Liberty, MS.  Lots of southern football paraphernalia and several impressive taxidermy items. I passed out when I saw a license plate for The Fowlerville Fair, my old hometown county fair where I battled for 4H ribbons and risked my life riding midway rides put together with carny spit. Clower’s son gave us the tour and I gotta say you can tell he was bornt of a master storyteller. His stories made the whole trip.

80 miles from home and on a busy highway, we got a flat tire, changed that, and the spare went flat. The truck from AAA showed up in 90 short minutes and it was actually just a guy in a truck. Like a standard pick-up truck with an extended cab. He stepped out smoking a cigarette, took a look at the situation, grabbed a giant hydraulic jack from his truck, jacked the car up, ripped the lug nuts off the spare, said “that ain’t gonna work”, threw the tire iron and the lug nuts on the dirt on the side of the highway, and told us to get in the truck and that he was taking us back to the Deer Lake or Deer Pond or Deer Guts service station. I could tell we were both thinking “you can’t just leave items out like that!” and he could tell we were thinking that so he said “I don’t think anybodys gonna take that" and we got in the truck. I got in the tiny seat in the extended cab and right away noticed a handicap hang tag on the rearview mirror with the name Rory McGurrery* and a small hatchet sticking out of a dollar store style gift bag. Handwritten on the handle: Attitude Adjuster. We pulled straight cross the highway and he gunned it for the median. “Shortcut?” I asked him. “Yes m’am” he responded in heavy deadpan. Not much of a joker this guy. B said something about how we were coming back from spending the weekend in Natchez and the dude gave B a once-over look like he’d said we had just come from maypole practice. He took us back to the service station, filled the spare up and hammered out the rim. We were back to our car in a few minutes. All of the lugnuts were still there. Rory was right. No one took them. “Should getchu to Walmart – if she goes flat again I’d just keep er running on that rim – you got nothing to lose.” We were going to ask him to follow us the two miles to WalMart but figured we wouldn’t risk showing any bad attitude for fear that it would get adjusted. We made it traveling 40mph for a few miles, praised WalMart and the southern states in general for not giving a flying rats ass about Labor Day or labor laws or driving with an open hatchet, and got a new tire (and some toothpaste – they have good deals there).

*name changed a bit

The Fabric of Our Lives

The older you get, the louder you breathe, chew, and open plastic packages. Old being over 70 if you’re average, over 50 if you look like you stepped out of Menopause the Musical and have spiky red hair and brightly colored reading glasses, and over 40 if you share an office with me and sing-song “Theeerre she iiis!” every time I come in the room. I am around a decent amount of old people on a daily basis. That’s probably why I was totally comfortable with us taking a little weekend vacation down in Natchez, where the mature crowd goes to have little buttered biscuits and Mint Juleps on the grounds of historically preserved antebellum plantations.

I used to know this girl named Amy back in my JC days who only had fat (not chubby) girlfriends because, and this is something she told me as if she was straight common-sensing about the right motor oil to put in a high-mileage four-cylinder, that way she is the best looking one of them all. Of course I saw many problems with her strategy but I must have adopted it because now we frequent places where we appear to be the youngest and hippest people around. But what is life or vacation without sweet, sweet self-delusion?

AAA Driver Comes With Hatchet

Made it home.  Barely.


S Kaye

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Pairings

Two Ladies, Across Town

One works in an abandoned office park. Never leaves for lunch, sometimes eats Chex Mix, always spends over half her work days cleaning up the office kitchen or rearranging the office furniture or rewriting the office calendar on the dry erase board. Always backs into her parking spot.

One lives in the historic Evergreen District in a lovely historic apartment building. Has stringy hair and a small dog, thinks everyone should be ok with the small dog running up to them, waters the plants around the historic apartment building at least four times a day wearing plant-watering clothes (in the morning; a robe, after work; sweat pants). Always backs into her parking spot.

I imagine them meeting at a museum/music/drink tasting event. I imagine theirs cars parked side by side, both facing front, under the car port, the dishrags in the office kitchen growing mold, and the plants around the historic apartment building drying up.

BTS (Back to School) TCB (duh)

Oh look – it became September. I was in the thick of the Great Grannie Caper so I didn’t notice. Y’all have no clue what kind of under-the-rock and over-the-river type of characters non-profit people have to deal with – in my case all of them disguised as Grandparents. Let’s just say of all the wisdom and colloquialisms and prayers and life lessons I’ve learned from them, the thing I know for sure, the opening line to my This I Believe NPR listeners, is that everyone turns Narc, Criminal, or Certified Saint if they live long enough.  ‘Course babbling curmudgeon is what I am aiming for but only time will tell what category that fits in.

I’m glad to see the change to September though. In Michigan I loved September, in Memphis (which is in Tennessee, but really it is not Tennessee like the rest of Tennessee is - you'd understand if you lived here) I don’t have the same love just yet. So far it has all of the trappings of a early fall month  - back to school and football games and Halloween Candy in Walgreens. But the heat says not really.

My classes on Tuesday and Wednesday nights are in rooms without any air conditioning. This past Wednesday night they were kind enough to bring in a fan that was five inches in diameter. I really could have put it on a headband and made a personal cooling system but I chose not to be selfish. While the prison won’t deal with the air conditioning (a student told me it had been broken since 1999) they do have a dress code, no sleeveless shirts, no sandals. It wouldn’t really be comfy wearing a tube top and flipflops in front of a room full of inmates anyway and usually I double up on the modesty but modesty is hot. As in temperature sweaty forehead, forearms, and armpits hot.

So for all of September and maybe even into October I will be sweating it out, losing my grip on the dry erase marker, wiping my brow with a zeroxed copy of a David Foster Wallace essay (that I have no permission to distribute) and walking out of class looking like I was trapped in the jade steam room at a Korean Spa with all of my dress-code clothes on. Anyone that has had to pretend like they know what they are talking about for three hours (anyone that isn’t my boyfriend) knows, it’s pretty similar.

Hello fall y’all.

Where Have I Been?

I’ll tell you later.

Follow Closely

I am, as they say, on the mend. Just about done being sick. Right after I finish watching “Demon Seed” starring Julie Christie (if you haven’t seen it, by all means get your queue in order)  I should be feeling good enough to get outside and maybe even try out my new Reebok Ankle Weights. They seem easy enough to set up don’t they?

I finally got my little sisters mailing address at basic training. They put the recruits on a news black out for two weeks and it is up to me to send her informative, encouraging messages in plain envelopes (no cards or unicorn stickers or glitter) and on plain paper. I wonder if it is a true news black out or if they just give them army news or fake news? I seem to recall her telling me that her friend who went through basic training for the Marines told her that his platoon was told that JLo had died during their news black out.  What a mean trick, eh? That’s how they break you down and make you a killer! JLo? She’s dead. You’ve got nothing to loose, nothing to live for now son! Hang on to this gun and shoot anything that reminds you of JLo.

Cold Prancing

I’m watching the part in “Working Girl” where Melanie Griffith has to quick get her sh*t out of Sigourney Weaver’s fancy apartment. Melanie doesn’t have time to cover up her strapless bra and high-waisted undies, she has to vacuum, NOW! There was a lot of panty prancing in 80s cinema, remember?

I myself am not prancing anywhere for the rest of the night. I’m suffering from a serious head cold brought on by the sneeze of a small child on Sunday, lack of sleep on Monday and Tuesday, and the general stress of starting two new classes in vastly different and dangerously unstable environments, oh and – I’m pretty sure I’m suffering from noise pollution from the row the couple downstairs has been having for the past two days and I think I’ve developed an allergy to the air conditioning vents in my company car, and maybe the cotton harvest is getting to me, and then there is the drop in temperature, and the irritation I feel towards Gretchen on Project Runway, and according to my wise coworker, I need to eat more beets.

I do have a box of Vicks-laced Kleenex. I wonder what Secret-of-My-Success go-getting mail-room clerk put those two ideas together and snuck it past the boss, was discovered by the CEO, got a giant promotion, and then married Harrison Ford.  In the movies it only takes one good smart business idea.

Half Pretty

From a garden in Tucscumbia, AL and part of my Rotting Flowers series.

The Key to (Murder) Getting By

I work in a nearly abandoned one-story office building in a nearly abandoned office park on the edge of the city where things get shipped to and fro.  In between all of the bustle of the shipping industry, people who work at and/or are trying to fly out of the airport are woven in the mix. It makes for bad street traffic and a stream of cargo trucks that are always spewing chunks of scrappy loads off at my windshield on my drive to work – they have signs on the back of them that say “Stay 200 feet back – not responsible for broken windshields” and I have a sign that I try to put in my windshield that says “Trying to get to work – not responsible for being forced to call that 1-800 number to report your inconsiderate driving! Sir! (or Ma’m!)”  But I might have to revise the wording because it hasn’t been that effective.

Our parking lot is really what I call a “picking lot” for people looking to pop a lock and grab a few items. My car remains untouched for some reason (maybe because the thieves can see the strongly worded sign mentioned above? I don’t know) but everyone else has had luggage, and license plates, and ipods stolen right in broad daylight. That leads me to believe it is our secretary or the sixty-year-old director of the non-profit looking for kicks (did you all hear that This American Life about Senior Citizens that  steal because the world has forgotten about them?), but the police have other theories.

Anyway – up until a few months ago we were the only business in the building. Times were tuff and no one could afford to rent office space even in the broken windshield side of town. Every once in a while we would get real life grifters coming in trying to run something like a fake UPS pick-up or purse repair scam. One of my coworkers had her pocketbook stolen while everyone sat at their desks.

Our safety and security expert came in from DC (we are an international non-profit) and determined that we should lock our doors at all times, including the doors to the lobby and to the bathrooms in the lobby.  He also told us, an office full of ladies, that we should not hang out at our cars after dark or wait outside of the office, in the abandoned office park after dark.

“Buddy system?” I asked and he said, “Exactly.” And I said, “Covered that in ‘82  -- got anything else new developing in DC?”

I mean we already have the office-park security guy in the blue and white 1994 Ford Ranger coming around every five hours with a cell phone flashlight and a rolled-up newspaper – we don’t need some fancy guy trained in security systems and three-button suits coming in and telling us we don’t know how to look out for each other.

So, even though I’m not sure how it cuts down on petty vehicle theft, everything is locked now from the front to the back, if you leave the office you take your keys. To use the restroom, we have two choices, both of them are out in the lobby. The lobby to this place is actually quite incredible and must have been something in the seventies (or any other time there was more than one building occupant): Wide open walkway, big, square terra-cotta colored tiles, palms and ferns, square couches, skylights – the whole thing.  One bathroom is the regular one-user bathroom and looks like your standard every-one-accessible situation. The other bathroom is tucked back in the far corner of the lobby near an ‘exit’ and across from a janitorial closet/wash basin and has a heavy wood door, a large old-fashioned sitting area with a dusty rose love seat and brown easy chair, and three miniature beige stalls. I titled this the Murder Bathroom for obvious reasons (isolation and proximity to exit, multiple hiding places, and industrial washbasin).

The title caught on and soon all of my professional colleagues were saying, “Hey – do you have the key to the murder bathroom?” “I need the key to the murder bathroom” and we would laugh and say “oh we could totally get murdered in that bathroom.” and “if I was going to murder someone I would murder them in that bathroom” and “look out so-and-so might come in there and murder you”. And that is how we dealt with our uncertainty about our safety and the economy and our job performance (and how I dealt with my authority/boss-murder fantasies – but I digress) but nevertheless we were dealing! Us, standing alone in this nearly abandoned office building in a nearly abandoned office park.

And then someone moved in next door. A Charter School (just the offices – not that actual school). Before you think “oh god, I can’t think of anything worse.” I have to tell you – you probably can’t think of anything worse. So this charter school moves in and they bring a decent sized-staff. We watched them move in and every time another woman came up to the door with her pencil and paper and desk trinkets we’d think “they better stay away from the murder bathroom” and out secretary/operations coordinator says, “We are the only ones with keys to that bathroom” – and we believe her.

The principal comes next door and introduces himself and tells us that the school is “all technological – no paper!” and that on weekends real professionals come “from the entertainment industry to teach filmmaking skills!” and I think “oh gawd – filmschool is the new beauty school” and two of us are impressed that they don’t have any paper but the rest of us are like, “We are too old for that shit – you know who isn’t using paper either? The fools that keep jacking our cars out in the parking lot!!”

So we don’t get too friendly with the Charter School people. They drop by every once in a while saying that they would like to work with us and we are all like, “We are an internationally recognized non-profit with proven results-based outcome-driven performance measures blahdittyblah - why would we want to work with you and your two-bit cover for free production equipment?”

Day by day the sheer amount of females using the regular rest room starts to take its toll. The toilet seat gets loose, the door gets locked from the inside for no reason, the sink overflows, and there are never any paper towels. We determine that the Charter School women are fat-ass toilet-seat-breaking-heathens and we start to exclusively use the murder bathroom. From time to time one of us tries the other bathroom and comes back with a horror story. So for the most part we stick with what is rightfully ours and things are ok.

And then yesterday, as I was leaving the murder bathroom, and I mean right as my hand went to touch the knob, I hear a key in the lock, I am speechless, dumbfounded, I don’t know if it is actually the person that has been observing us and somehow, at night when no one else was there, broke into our offices and made an imprint of the key, and was waiting for the right moment – the late afternoon when everyone is sleepy from Arby’s and work –to come and finally commit murder – I mean OF COURSE the murderer would have a key – because he could let himself in and get busy murdering while the only known keys to the place are locked inside with the victim and the murderer – so he could remain there until everyone left for the day and then dispose of the body probably with a very strong acid from the janitors closet - it is perfect! So that’s where my head is at so I don’t quite say anything but I push the door open and I immediately see that it is one of the Charter School women! The same one that I have seen standing outside talking on her cell phone with her thong tangled up in the back belt-loops of her jeans. I say, rather meekly, “oh – sorry” even though she is the one that should be explaining howtheF she got a key to our private sanctuary – but she doesn’t hear me because she is on her cell phone but she looks up, sees me and SCREAMS. A Bloooooodyblood screeeeeeech completely out of proportion to any kind of danger any human has ever been in. In fact I am sure there have been people that haven’t screamed as loud after being pushed off a skyscraper. And it scared the piss out of me and I got super mad about it because my heart nearly exploded.

When I got back to the office the secretary asked me “Are you alright? I actually thought you were getting murdered in the murder bathroom.” and I asked her if she heard that and she is like “uh yeah” and I asked her how one of the charter school people got a key and she said “I don’t know. I thought we were the only ones with the key.” And then I realized that our secretary is one of those people that makes stuff up and presents it as fact. And I realized that I can’t trust anyone. Not the people driving the cargo trucks on Airways Blvd, not the DC security, not my officemate, not the people pretending to trim the bushes out side, or the kids making sandwiches in the officepark Subway sandwich shop, and certainly not that secretary. She belongs with the liars and the screamers next door, she belongs in one of their movies.

Don’t Forget:

General Admission

 

From the outside, Joe Davis Stadium in Hunstville looks a lot like a roller rink. It seats nearly ten thousand people in general seating – nearly half of those seats are bleacher style. There is no video jumbotron. No loud batting songs. No “stand up and make some noise” cheerleaders.

It was Thirst-Aid Thursday (Thirst-Aid Thursday claims to be the hottest singles night in the city by the way) when we walked in and the plainclothesed usher, an older gal, asked us “You with Charlotte?” (meaning the other team from Charlotte, not a lady named charlotte) and we said no we are from out of town and would be happy to cheer for the home team and she said “Oh I was wondering because I haven’t seen you two around here before.” 

And then we watched shopping cart races and it reminded me of living in the Cass Corridor.

Regreta Carbo

So I got around to reading the side effects of the medication my nerve doctor “put me on” (I get grossed out when people say that so I use the quotes to let you know I know that no body puts me on anything without my consent – unless we are talking ‘bout Ferris wheels) and the list includes everything from your usual dizziness, tiredness, homicidal feelings, leg tingling and whatnot but I was shocked, just shocked to see carbohydrate intolerance and a feeling of being mistreated on the list. I think I have been taking this medication my whole life! Just a mis-treated chip-eater!! That’s what it all boils down to. Ever. 

Needless to say I jumped off that med train. I only like pills that party. Who would I be without pain to complain about? Just a person with a job to complain about?  All of this recent trouble makes me think about how I got in this mix in the first place (the big C) and how annoying it is that there is a TV show called The Big C.  But, I’ll leave that alone cuz there are plenty of blogs that rant about tv  - although there aren’t many that could do it with the wit, insight, and academic qualifications that I have, I choose to let the chasers chase and I will continue with my important work here. With you. Right here.

Let me tell you about the skateboarder I saw in Overton Park. The one leaning over a picnic table not far from the veterans memorial wearing a dark t-shirt and full blue jeans. Sweaty and hunched over, concentrating on something - when I got closer to him I saw that he had blood coming from both of his ears – so he was probably concentrating on not falling the f*ck over.  Concrete intolerance. Maybe I had just missed an explosion.  I was looking at him super hard, like turned off my ipod, staring, might have even opened my mouth to say something. And I walked right by - not actually saying anything even though human decency would dictate a person should acknowledge if someone is bleeding from their head, maybe even offer help.  But maybe you have never seen someone in a park with blood coming out of their ears.

Let me tell you about how older people far removed from child-rearing talk to kids. Kids that are ten or eleven – a good three years into cussing and secrets from their parents. They say “Ooooh look at you in that school uniform! What did you think when they said you were going to have to wear a jacket and tie?” and “Maybe if you are good I will let you use my automatic key lock!”  and “I’ll let you make paper airplanes if you promise not to take them to school tomorrow.”

Let me tell you about how the weather broke open and the air finally moved – transformed from a six-month old kitchen sink sponge to swiffer duster sheet and we easy-breezed it all up for 14 innings of a 16 inning game. I’ll tell you about that later. I’ve got some leftover dizziness and carbohydrate intolerance to take care of.

The Dogs of Tuscumbia

Found on truck near fire and police station:

 

Admired in special display at Ivy Green (Birthplace of Helen Keller):

Comeuppance

I see no reason why it’s wrong to wish bad things on other people.  Thousands of perfectly kind and productive humans get murdered, maimed, and cancerfied every day. Why can’t I try to suggest some better options for the Fairy of Horrible Fate?

You know why? Because many people are afraid of their thoughts and foolishly believe in karma.  My legitimate suggestions for disbursing harm and bad-luck put  giant cracks in their wall of repressed desire and bring reason to their retarded, avoidance-based interpretations of eastern religion.

You know who I respect? The pre-teens that called B up and told him that his Justin Bieber review was stupid, that he was old, probably couldn’t dance, and that he should get hit by a truck. That’s the kind of healthy, albeit not really in proportion to the offense, expression we all need to return to.

So, to the nurse who not only made me suffer through two ridiculously base conversations over the course of three hours, but never called me back to help me out with my migraine meds while I paced, suffered, and watched the zags go by – I hope your dinner tonight includes a parasite that toils inside your small intestine for six months, six months that you spend in the bathroom while your first born child learns to walk and you can’t see it even though you are only a room away, but your face is in the toilet, and you get a sore on your face (probably in the shape of a toilet) that never heals and is extremely painful and you run out of pain meds and no one ever, ever helps you and your husband never comes home from going to the store to buy butt salve for your ugly face. 

Even though the answering service is closed for the night (that’s how I know you aren’t going to call back), I hope you get this message because I am thinking it. All powerful thinking!!

The Bench Warmer

Huntsville, AL

Home from the Rickyard

This is how they make the charcoal for the Jack Daniel’s Tennessee Whiskey mellowing process. Do you see the metaphor? A mile-high flame later contributes to a mellow experience.

I’ve been out of town. Before I went out of town I saw the transformer (as in the power supply box thing) blow up like a thousand dollar spree at an Arkansas fireworks outlet and all of the power go out on our block a few minutes before midnight. Seems everyone can’t be running air conditioners full throttle in hundred degree temperatures in 2010 – we should have had a block meeting and formed a cooling station in one our carports. It got crazy nutso hot in here. But that is enough about that – see my alternate blog titled “Hotter than the Hottest Sin” if you want to talk about Memphis heat.

While I was out of town I saw many things but the only thing sticking with me right now in the moments before sleep, aside from the Lynchburg Rickyards, is an overheard conversation between a Cracker Barrel waitress and the uglier half of an old couple. The woman (who did not appear to be of discerning taste - at least about fashion or hair-combing) asked the waitress several times how the baked potatoes were that evening and insisted that she was really, really picky about baked potatoes and could not, in good health, tolerate the sight of a grayed baked potato.

I would not order anything that I was that fearful of myself, but I guess age gives you that kind of courage.

I hope I can sleep. I hope I can get it out of my mind; grey baked potato, grey baked potato, grey baked potato, grey baked potato what color should you really be?

Wet Air Hot Heat What?

It might have been the moistest hottest day in Memphis yet. I wrote that sentence yesterday and I am glad I didn’t publish it until today because today might have been the hottest moistest day ever. This blog is about accuracy and this week is about a heatwave of tsunamic sweat proportions.

Last night I saw a (hilarious) comedy show in a bar with no air conditioning and that wasn’t even the funny part. I believe it is too hot for air conditioning to work anywhere there are more than four people gathered. So far, MAC-Donalds (that’s how they say it here so don’t trip), the post office, and my office are proving me right.

I talked with people all day about the weather because it is so interesting how more of us aren’t dropping dead.  One of my sweet senior citizen volunteers called me and when I asked her how she was handling the heat down there in the Delta she said “oooh Sara, I was out at my grandbaby’s school and it was so hot I got angry with myself – don’t you know I’m about to put myself in heaven!” Lord above I could listen to her read the numbers on a thermometer and be entertained for hours.

Hot and Busy

Nothing new.

• I haven’t decided yet if I am going to try and see these g-d racing boats on the river today. We went yesterday and boiled in our pants and saw a trickling of jet skis and two people wearing life jackets setting up a giant bouquet of American flags on a little corner of Mud Island.
• Makedas Butter Cookies
• I’m following this minor league moniker madness contest. Hawkins Gebbers has my vote. But I do love Sharlon Schoop and Sequoyah Stonecipher (both in the same tough bracket).

Witness This

Michigan people do not speak like people from Minnesota and Michigan people, NOT Wisconsin people, own the right to use their hands as a map.

My mom scanned this and sent it to me.

My Crew in Overton Park

I won’t be walking the Old Forest Trail alone in Overton (again) if only to avoid a contact high from the other people (that don’t much look like they are out for their constitutionals – the hand-rolled cigarettes being a tip off).  I also want to avoid snakes, men with golf clubs, women in high-heels, giant trees hovering overhead on quite seriously - their last limbs, mosquitoes, and dive-bombing dragonflies (all present on the trail).

Of course, there is the option of forming my own vigilante crew, a dream I have had since childhood (not Overton Park specific – just the Vigilante Crew part).  We would be the Park Patrol Posse or the Old Forest Trail Blazers and probably wear green satin jackets emboridered with a map of the trail and green kerchiefs to blend (but also shine) amongst the trees and bags of grass. We’d carry nets to catch mosquitoes or offer to walk alongside walkers/joggers while holding torches of citronella. Maybe we’d walk a few yards ahead of em to throw rocks into the trails to scare of the snakes. And no doubt we would specialize in hooker/John mediation.  Because our motto would be; No one has to get bugged out in the woods.

Counters, Waiting, Watermelon, and Lucy’s

1) When we got off the Staten Island Ferry, there was a guy in a jean jacket repeating “lucy’s, lucy’s, lucy’s” over and over (that’s what repeating means I guess) and I thought, How interesting, selling acid (my interpretation was some kind of bastardized Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds code) right off the Ferry – is there that much of a demand for psychedelics on the commute?

Then my friend told me, They are loosies. Like a loose cigarette. And I was like oh, yeah, LOOSIES. I get it. Excuse me if they didn’t have a big loosie market when I was a smoker. I would have been buying loosies all the time.

And then she bought one. It was a Newport. She needed to it help her think where we should go before we went home.  Cigarettes fire up the synapses.

While she smoked, E and I watched a a toddler in (only) a pajama top play with a rat while his mother sat on an overturned bucket and I thought, that loosie is already working.

2) I was buying my standard grocery list at Schnucks:  bananas, apples, miniature ice cream drumsticks (the brand with the Chilly Willy looking character on the front), some La Croix, and some frozen pizza (this should also explain my malnutrition-chic look to those that know me) well anyway, unbeknownst to me, the pizza rang up at the wrong price. I didn't know this until I had been standing there re-swiping my debit card for about ten minutes.

“Naw, I gotta change the price. I need a manager.” The clerk tells me.

And I said, “Oh silly me – I thought it was my card – because I had been swiping it. Like a hundred times. But I am sure you saw me because we have been standing here for ten minutes which is a unusually long time for one customer in the express lane, no?”

And instead of answering she pulled out a Womans Day from the side of her register and opened it flat out on the scanner. Opened the magazine and started to read.  Just reading a magazine while I held my wallet, waiting. I thought about taking off or packing up my stuff and going over to the register next to us – they seemed to be moving well enough. But maybe I was flattered that she was comfortable enough with me to sneak in a break with me. Maybe I was impressed  that she was prepared with reading material (something I pride myself in, even though I left my book in the car that day).

After a few page turns she called the manager again. And a several more pages after that the manager showed up with the urgency of a crock pot meal. She punched in a few numbers. The magazine was returned to the side of the register and my debit card was approved.

I saved three dollars on that frozen pizza.

3) I was in the drugstore (the one I always stop at on my way home from work if I need Bud Light Lime or Raisinettes or Advil or Calamine Lotion) and there was a line out to West Virginia so I used my old trick – check out in “Cosmetics” where it doesn’t smell as much like an adult diaper as the rest of the place.

There were already two old ladies in line helping each other buy bottles of Eucerine and they were being hounded by a crazed sunburnt hippy girl wearing cutoffs and a blue floral spaghetti strap tanktop asking them to tap her watermelon. I didn’t even know this place had fruit so I was deeply confused, but still determined to ring up and get out without falling for any fruit scams. 

It was a miniature round watermelon and she kept tapping it and saying: “It’s on clearance, I hope its good. How do you know if it’s good?” As soon as I got in line she started in with me, “Do you think this is good?”  Shake shake tap tap.

“Watermelon on clearance at a drugstore is always good.” I told her. I could barely look in her direction, her skin looked like the dark end in a pack of those florescent Crayola crayons. I was getting radiated just standing next to her.

“I hope it’s good.” she said and then told us that she was “On the road.” Code for adult runaway. I know it well.

The other item she was buying was a can of cooling spray for sunburns. She told the woman ringing her up, “Oh I hope it’s the kind that sizzles down when you spray it on” and as soon as the clerk set it down Sunburnt Lady Kerouac open the bottle and sprayed it on her shoulders right there in the store. I saw smoke come up off her scalding skin and she sighed a bit of relief.  But not as big of a sigh of relief we all had when she recapped her purchase, bagged the watermelon, and left without further commentary.

Two to one that woman had a mangy dog waiting out side for that her. My only question was whether or not her dog would like watermelon.

The River, Two Ways

My parents were in town this weekend. First we went to Mud Island to walk the Riverwalk (a map and miniature lovers dream destination – it’s a wading pool style scaled replica of the lower Mississippi from a bit above Cairo on down to the Gulf) and then, after getting the big (miniature) picture of Old Man River we hopped on a riverboat in Tunica with some other tourists that were fine with being out in the 105 degree wet hot weather.

Just look at that finicky shoreline. There isn’t one. Reminds me of the video we watched in the River Museum – in an exhibit called “Theater of Disasters” where they play a video that lists all of the deadly disasters on the Mississippi and at the end of it the narrator says “Don’t go looking for trouble on the Mississippi, it is already lookin for you.” *

A metaphor for my parents visit perhaps?

*Or something like that.

My International Fans

I’ve decided to change my comments settings. Especially if these people aren’t going to at least give me a free pass to their skank sites.

Maps of Sweet Miss

Found this weekend. The second one is more abstract but I’m counting it towards my postcard map collection.

Warming the Bench at the Orpheum

I sat outside for a good portion of the Robert Plant show the other night. Many people took note of my performance art - I had three fellas in various states of intoxication and in varying degrees of being earlytwenty try to school me about music and rock concerts.

I assumed the guy with the soaked shirt was rolling or perhaps he had simply taken off his shirt, placed it on the ground, peed on it and put it back on, or maybe someone holding 12 overpriced ounces of beer in a plastic cup jumped up at the sound of Misty Mountain Hop and dumped it all over him, or it was possible he had been roofing all day, or crying backwards.

Whatever the reason for his soaked state and crazed blackball eyes, he wasn’t embarrassed to approach me and tell me that “Plants voice isn’t was it used to be, but if I opened myself up to the music I would see…see the beauty of the music.”  I told him I’ve already had that conversation – a lot. And I think it freaked him out.

Ruler Road Show

One of my favorite recent thrift purchases was this VINTAGE presidential ruler:

I used my expert appraisal skills to determine that this piece is from the mid-to-late 90s and worth ten times what I paid for it.

Coming Off the Tracks

The crowning moment to my birthday weekend was our visit to the Holly Springs Dragway. The smell of burning petroleum sent me back to my “Use Your Illusion I” days.  Forget the face-melting, eye-blinking, leg-spazzing, hand-jazzing aesthetics of Detroit Steel for a minute and just recognize - racing does not get old, ever.

In fact just last week I witnessed an old fashioned foot race down a street right off Airways Boulevard. Three pre-teens running down a road wearing jeans, t-shirts, and untied sports shoes for real. One guy called it using the ol arms up/arms down (probably short a hanky or checkered flag) to signal “go time” – I hadn’t seen such a thing in awhile, I waited through a whole stoplight to witness it. All of this racing and competition are certainly premonitions of interesting times ahead.

My take-away message from the Dragway? Corn dogs for now, coupons for next time, and this vision always:

The Renegade Age

Back around (in a sort of way) after my birthday weekend. I am now old enough to only have a couple of candles on my cake. I am old enough to check a different box on retail surveys and sweepstakes entries. And I am now the age of the women that used to fascinate me when I was just a young sh*t-job worker. They were in their thirties but young I guess, young because they were single or single moms, or young because they had nearly the same job I did in my teens and early twenties. I liked hearing their detailed stories about frightening things like chest hair and cheating ex-husbands during our lunch breaks. They seemed liked outlaws, complaining about things (like their children) that people too afraid of god would never mention. 

A big blonde ex-hippy used to work across from me at a small parts factory and tell me about the tv she watched the night before and the Led Zeppelin concerts she used to go to and the twenty-five cent raise that the manager promised her months ago. And then there’s the crew of partying smoked-out waitresses at the highway restaurant (where I worked hours that later got the manager cited for child labor infractions) that constantly talked about putting their lazy children to work on house and car repairs. So many repairs!

But my favorite was the twitchy bar-weathered hairdresser at the mom-and-pop salon where I answered phones and stocked shampoo. I think the owner hired her because they needed another pair of hands for back-to-school cuts. After overhearing a few of the stylist-to-client conversations, I knew she was not a good fit for our salon culture. This was a place where gentle senior ladies from the surrounding towns came in on Thursdays and Fridays to get their hair set. Teresa, actually her real name now that I think about it (and I have to use it because it might be the most descriptive detail I have about her) anyway- Teresa would slip kids a bit of Manic Panic on the way out the door even though their parents brought them in specifically to look as conformed as possible because there were SCHOOL PICTURES coming up and everyone knows school pictures are meant to document the influence your mother had on your style over the years. Teresa came to work late every day – like clockwork, had a boyfriend that never called her, didn’t particularly know how to cut hair (I saw more than a few botched Rachel cuts), wore faded black cotton clothing, and got these facial peels (more exotic than you can possibly imagine for the area) that would make her look like she was on fire in the face nearly all the time. Truly. Like she had been pulling pizzas out of a 800 degree oven and using her cheeks for oven mitts. Skin would hang off her face and she would pick the bits off between clients and tell me about her “newer, fresher skin” that was about to appear. She called me at home one day and said that the salon owner had fired her. She wanted to talk about it and I was so shocked and flattered that I did. I don’t remember exactly what we talked about but looking back I am appalled and embarrassed (for her) that she used me for information. It was no different than the kind of endless repetitive gossip-tinged analysis that I’ve been participating in since kindergarten, so I count that moment as one of many. I never got to see her newer, fresher skin because she never showed up again. And that is what I was fascinated by, being someone who grew up in a town where people stayed and stayed the same - these chicks were ghosts, shapeshifters, renegades.

I can only hope I am old enough now to impress someone with a life as unglued as my face.