Appendix

Strange title to put with a protest picture. Makes sense when I tell you that I protest having an enlarged appendix in my Crone years. Cat scan says it's enlarged like the rest of me. Baffled appendixes are usually an adolescent things. What does this mean? Are the Goddesses trying to tell me that my second childhood is coming soon? If so, I'm ready to start playing.

The photo is one taken by the Move On folks at the war protest the other evening. I'm the dumpling on the right standing behind one of our vets and his flag. I'm hoping to show you less of myself in upcoming months. Martha and I are on a diet to pound of some pounds of flesh. We'll see if my non-existant thyroid cooperates.

I gave up meat a while back after having seen some video on how the meat industry treats animals. Before you write that off as bleeding heart shit, take a look at it. There's enough toxins, hormones and just plain wrongness to this to make you refuse to even look at a burger commercial. I seem to be turning into a late age hippie with social conciousness.

Sat with Shirley again this past week. Her open wound and the fistulas are actually looking better. You can no longer see into her inner workings like an ant farm but the yeast infection in her system has given her more blisters. I'm going to try to pick up another shift or two with my recalcitrant appendix in mind. I'll be closer to Brandon Hospital from her house.

Give Peace A Chance

I've got bidness today. Lots of it. Had to get myself up at 8:30 which is insane for me with my diurnal rhythms set to night owl. Got an MRI on my brain to see if they can spot the reason for the tremors and jerks I've developed and take drugs for and for the muscle weakness on my left side. Hell. I don't care if I wave spontaneously at strangers. I'm gregarious, after all. Those who love me take it all in stride. They're very used to my various quirks and eccentricities.

Some epilepsy is in my mother's paternal Drury genome but I don't think it's that. Having been very much active around horses and having several car wrecks (and a sky diving incident that almost made the papers), have pounded my collection of appendages, including my head. Picking and singing in bars and bartending while drinking my share of whatever altered grain, fruits and nuts, and my continued admiration for a good bottle of wine have also probably added to neuron dysfunction. Ain't life fun?

So. After getting bombarded with photons for my tremors, I had a cat scan to find out if I'm trying to pass kidney stones - also probably due to the gallons of wine must I have imbibed over the course of years. I've switched to whites. Easier on the head and your poop has a more natural shade to it.

Took costumes over to Cindy. Yes. I'm retired, but agreed to do this special one thing for her. 1880s Appalachian don't you know, complete with drawers, brogans and petticoats. Took care of some chores here at home and will try to slip in a nap before I go off to protest tonight during rush hour.

This is not some of my normal daily bitching. I'm attending a Move On protest in Brandon for a Peace Vigil to stop the war. As if it will do any good. I'm tired. And frustrated. I was taught that you always fight against inequity and engage yourself in local politics and bigger issues. This is also a genetic thing I think. But I will go out on US 60 with the rest of the peace marchers and wave my signs. I will dress in sensible Florida weather clothing and wave my sign at rush hour traffic. I'm as hopeful about this bringing about the end of the Iraq invasion as I was about sending off 9 letters demanding that Congress and the Senate impeach the remaining idiots left on duty at the White House on 8/18/2007.

But, I'm my mother's daughter and will go out to brave the crowds and the heat. She and my dad always said to open your mouth and never let bullies get away with their crimes. I want those good young men and women home. I want them to be treated well and compensated for their wounds. I want them to have their benefits upped instead of cut into. I want them to get the mental care they'll need to cope with life after war. I want them to know that I don't blame them for the shit of a mess in Mesopotamia. My reward will be one of Alexander's dirty martinis to add to the calcificaiton in my kidneys afterwards.

March on.

Burn, Baby, Burn

I got a letter from my mortgage company that sufficient funds had been received to pay off my mortgage. Since I've worked toward this goal for the last fifteen years, it really was no surprise. But. I gotta tell you, it's an amazing feeling unlike any other.

I am a woman of substance! A true property owner in all senses of the word. Okay. I own a couple of lots of bare land and some cemetery plots, but just knowing that I'll never make another mortgage payment on my house and dirt is liberating!

I took some advice to heart about paying extra on your principle and put every extra dime into it. When a bonus or windfall happened, it went toward the house. I've put off projects, purchases and have learned to live well within my means and very much under what the pundits call 'the poverty line'. And I feel rich!

There's something to say for simplifying, whether by virtue or by circumstance. You find that you can do without so many things - especially those 'necessities'. You develop a sense of ingenuity and creativity and the grace and beauty that come with things hand made and vistas that are free for the looking.

It's also taught me to laugh up my sleeve at pretencion. I've been pitied for my state of particular poverty - I prefer the word Spartan. I've had those with higher incomes than mine tell me that I needed to buy this or that because it would make a better impression, or sell my home to move 'up' to something more swanky. Bullshit.

Same said apostles of spending are struggling with debt overload, credit card interest rates that make the balances impossible to pay off in their lifetimes. Me? I don't care if my shoes of choice are comfy Florida Ballet Slippers - the ubiquitous flip-flops or zories. I'm wearing clothes so long out of fashion that they're about to come back IN again. But the best thing is the lack of detritus related to my day to day needs. I look around and there's very little that has to do with my daily doings.

Yes. I have the world's biggest clutter of fabrics, trims, mannequins and machines from my business of 20 years in costuming and design, but those are rapidly becoming liquidated and gone because I've retired from that. Once all the business is out of the house, I'll truly have very little me. Then I can create, build, buy just ONE good piece at a time, invest in art and pay for a redux on my 100 year old Victorian girl splinter and nail at a time!

I don't do credit cards. I have debit cards so I can deal with robotic banking and business concerns that don't recognize cash as tinder. So. Here I sit on this end of life and I'm free and clear! And it feels that way in my spirit as well.

My 60th b'day was kind of a magical touchstone of sorts. I haven't quite wrapped my mind about what happened, but it has something to do with TRUE freedom. The mortgage being paid off is just gravy!

I've heard people talk about having a mortgage burning party. You really don't get one in this state, just a satisfaction of mortgage and a note at the credit bureaus that you're done. Don't know that I'd burn it anyway. It represents a road map that got me here. So. I'll have a bonfire out in back by the river later on in the Fall when we can all sit outside without the mosquitoes carrying us off. I'll burn logs instead.

Wet On Both Ends Of It

So. I sat the afternoon with Shirley Monday. I apologized for being a chicken shit bad friend. She assured me that I was the best of friends. Her living room has been transformed into an ersatz hospital with shelving holding an incredible array of dressings, tubes, syringes, sponges, glues, unguents and salves.



Her husband Ray was there when I first came. I brought him a hot lunch and he went out to run errands while I stayed with Shirley. Ray is being forcefully bright - cutting jokes and cracking wise to cover a panic that's so close to the surface that it crackles.



Even Cookie the doberman is stressed out. She looked skinny and fitfully runs in and out of the room looking at Shirley. I need to have a sit-down with the dog and tell her what's going on. I shared part of my 7-layer burrito with her. She looked like she needed the food and the distraction.



Shirley's very thin because she's on a straight liquid diet because of this enormous hole with a hip width open scar below it in her abdomen with liquid chime sloshing out of it and another fistula that is out of the skin and won't heal. I changed her gown a number of times after cleaning her bottom and legs from the leakage. The big crease is so deep the ostomy glue won't hold the bag to incase her wound. You can very clearly see what's left of her intestines and the bottom of her stomach. This last slash and burn was a surgery of errors. Barbaric if you ask me.



The RN came at the end of the afternoon. I helped the home nurse change her ostomy bags out for a dry dressing since the bags were leaking. Her skin is so raw and ulcerated from the leakage that it'll be a good thing for a few days without the bags to let it air out.



We didn't talk much. I told her about the project I have and she said she'd like to do it. We'll wait until next week when she's not so exhausted. She's so weak and tired that I read a National Geo while she napped much of the time. She said how disgusting it was, her condition when she woke up.



"It's wet and slimy coming in and just the same going out", I answered.



I did not bring my cards. There is no need. We both know her future.

Eclipse

Hard to believe almost two months have passed since I last logged on. Wheels are turning and I've gotten another whole decade under my belt. I spent my 60th birthday on the road back home from Michigan. It was a side trip. Kind of like the ones I did back in the 60s and 70s.

Carol and I went to Augusta to watch Sally Jo die a little more in mid-July. Did I tell you that she has this ugly disease called Progressive Supranuclear Palsy? It's like Lou Gherigs Disease on speed. She was in a hospital bed that was too short for her long old frame. Me and Carol plopped her into a wheel chair and deposited the goods in her big Queen Sized Bed between us for the night. I scandalized the Christian nurses telling them that we were going to feel her up. Sally just giggled with what little breath she had left.

Peaceful, blissful night for Sally Jo although me and Carol hardly slept. Both of us were accutely aware of Sally's fitful breathing and waiting for the spasms that would send her into a convulsive cough. They never came. With whatever grace we brought with us, she was allowed to sleep like a baby through the night. We held her hands, snuggled up to her, and let her scratch and work her feet with the red toenail polish I'd decorated with hologram sparkles. Carol bitched good-naturedly about the tiny piece of bed she was squizzled into. Served her right for being skinny.

I told Sal I would be there for her when she got ready to go so she wouldn't be alone. We used to joke about shooting each other if we ever got in that state many, many years ago when she was still a cop. She even told me to use her service revolver on her and she'd use my Ruger Sarah Jane on me! We really had a laugh at that one never thinking that that day really might come. But I can't shoot Sally. Not even with her pistol. Not even with the promises.

We watched her talk to her mother in asides like her mom was in the room in moments between lucidity. She picked threads out of the air, balled them up and handed them to us. We laughed and told stories about Sally and the baloney - you'll never get the details on that one from me. Just let me say that she almost shut down the local K-Mart with a whole baloney.

So. Me and Carol left, drove to Atlanta. There we stopped, got gas and made a choice - North to Detroit or South to Tampa Bay. Carol's brother was selling his house there in Michigan. Men being the creatures they are, Carol was worried about the state of cleanliness and show-ability it was in given the current market. She asked if I wanted to go. Free spirit that I am, I said, "Sure". Buckled in and enjoyed the trip all the way there and back.

It was like the old days when we used to go on the road to some art show or another, Carol selling her art glass and me showing my Dream Coats. We slept on the floor of the house just as we'd done so many times in floors, cars, in the backs of trailers and under E Z Up tents during and before shows.

The house wasn't quite as desparate as we had thought. Bob is a clean creature, his only downfall being the male choice of shades of brown for everything - including the kitchen sink and all the appliances. Bob flew up and met us. We spent two days painting, sprucing and doing that femme thing that women know how to do and then drove back non-stop. Carol and Bob took turns sleeping and we lived off of the most dire of junk snack foods until I demanded a meal.

Mental note for future ref: Pack more than one pair of underpants and one change of clothes when you get into the car with Carol.

Came home to find a crisis looming close at hand. A friend was depressed and took the opportunity of my trip to pull an Industrial Sized Drunk the week I got back. No details here. It's over and won't happen again on my shift since I don't respond too well to addicts of any shade.

There were other phone calls, too. I told you earlier in the year that I had another friend dying. Add one more of my doyennes to that list. I've been chicken shit about seeing Shirley when she went in hospital in mid April. I knew she was starting the check out proceedure and had no desire to be the one to tell her. She knew I would so my one visit to her was brief, scattered...me wearing the plastic bag suit and rubber gloves everyone who went into her isolation room had to wear and her just itching to get me to read her cards for her so I could "see" what condition her condition was in.

Just didn't have the ovaries to tell her that I knew she was dying. She was in a state of denial at the time. Now, three months later, she's jiggy with it, is in the hands of hospice and I finally can face her as the frank and honest friend she expects of me. I'm to be on her sitting team giving the nurses a break. I have a special project planned for her. I'll divulge it later on.

So. Now there are three pending deaths and one pending life. Mine. I've finally decided that I need to be proactive about my mental health and want to see a counselor to talk to and a psych to optimize my medication. I'm a generally happy clam despite all this going on around me, but really think I need my oil changed and a tune-up.

I have many more stories, poetry and articles for you from the old Deepwater Journal that I truly will get around to putting here. Just expect the participation from me to be somewhat patchy during this time for reasons mentioned above. It's busy work, dying. It's busy work living, too.

Pam commented on the Blue Moon post:

Hi. I have been trying to think of what to say but can't think of anything except, I am so sorry about your friends and I can't imagine what they (and you) are going through. Do you believe that our spirits live on (in other dimensions)? I struggle with it; it seems impossible but at the same time I've heard and read stories from people that makes me ponder. - Pam

Little Beauty, I have already wept, wailed, wallowed, and cursed for them all many times over enough to fulfill any lamenting custom in several lands. I know I'm being selfish about it, especially in Sally Jo's case because I just want them HERE, not THERE. When I wah for them, it's the blindered side of my Inner Child having a temper tantrum because some really fun playmates are leaving my party.

Death IS life! It's SIDS for Seniors. We Americans have a tendency to overlook that. I'd like to thank the predominant cultural religions for that: You die, you go before your god, get judged pretty harshly for your worldly stupidities, and depending on whether you ascribe to the Vatican, Yaweh, Mohammed, or to Dante Alighieri, you're sent to various hotspots around the universe with varying degrees of unpleasantries.

I personally think all this is an opague attempt at trying to control the masses and whip them into shape. Support the church, pay the tithes, follow the leader, even if the leader is telling you to believe some really stupid and irrational things. Crowd control. Think Jim Jones, the Inquisition, the 'Holy Wars', Jihad.

I lean towards taking the responsibility of my own actions while here and cutting out the middleman or priest to intercede for me as best I can. I know what kind of Didoes I pull that I shouldn't have - I was THERE when I did it. It cuts down on the coin, lets you sleep late on holy days, but more importantly, the guilt is incised right out of the mix.

So. We're scared to death of death and it's consequences, which I believe makes us bale on life, too. We don't want to face the big D so we live as if there will be no tomorrow wasting our time on piddling shit and overlooking the fact that this is a really good theme park here with lots to see and do.

As for our spirits living on, I've had this proven to me a number of times. I wrote about one physical manifestation of this in 'The Afterlife of Sam, The Dog' in January 2007. I've also talked to the dead on many occaisions. Before you reach for the Straight 8 - the jacket with eight formal ties, try asking the 'out there' for some help on an everyday project. It's fun and informative. I 'talk' to my dad all the time to ask for help with things mechanical or carpentry because he was a worldly ace with it. I more often than not get an amazingly quick solution on how to do something that I've not done before, something totally not in the vein I was thinking. Ascribe this to spiritism or Psychology 101. I don't really care as long as it works.

I wrote almost every single college paper on autodrive using the same approach. Whether you want to call this savantism or that I possibly could have been given the ideas, and sometimes, footnotes to support them from an outside source is up to you. I've quit trying to persuade folk around to my view of living.

Can I give you some directions on where to start your query on why I think psychism and 6th sense issues are real? Read " I am Psychic", also from January of this year. Read some of the new books out on fuzzy and quantum physics.

So, young Padowan, let Yoda be your guide on this matter. Remember the training of Luke. Listen, you should. Buy or rent the entire set of philosopher George Lucas' works and watch them.

When it comes right down to it, each of us has to believe in our own theories. I just offer mine. But one thing I know as utter, unmitigatable truth is that when Death happens, it won't matter what your beliefs or theories are. What awaits us (or not) will be there.

It is what it is.

You know now that it was the blue moon in May, as in ‘Once in a blue moon’ - two full moons in the same month? Well. Yes. Annie, Teresa and I used this to go on a Red Eye Turnaround to Augusta, Georgia to see Sally Jo.

You’ll also guess if you’re a reader that I tend to pidge around when I have something serious to write about. Just one tiny bitty bit of chicken shit to my nature of balls out, hair afire, Mach 10, 60 MPH in one spot. So. Sally’s dying, don’t you know.

She has this shit ass illness called Progressive Supranuclear Palsy, as I've told you. It’s a wicked bad disease that mimics Parkinson’s and Lou Gerhigs Disease. She’ll die by choking. I watched her suffer through several of these spasms as she tried to eat orally on our visit. She refuses to give up the taste of food even though she’s intubated for direct meals and medications through a tube in her abdomen.

Sally always was stubborn like that. She refused to give up on me when I was a non-responsive basket case drooling on the sofa and contemplating a trip to the woods with Sara Jane, my Rueger. She and Carol Gray saw to it that I went on holiday to the hospital.

She refused to give up on her kids, too, her sisters, and any of the cases she ever worked as a deputy sheriff. Murderers confessed to her and showed her where they hid the bodies when they talked to no one else. Loonies told her about ‘Wonderment Sticks’ and I made one for her to shake at the most reprobate of speeders complete with grape root windy-ness and jewels to get them to slow down. She keeps it under the pix of me and her and Carol.

And she’s refusing this goddamn awful disease that will eat her nerve responses until every neuron in her tall ass ole body just shuts down and quits.

I told Katy and Sue to fly me up and we’ll see her out together. None of us want her to choke to death (a horrid way to go) and we hope that she’ll fall into a peaceful coma and sleep herself into the afterlife. If not, I hope the medicoes have the cajones to help her out.

I’ve thought much about the Three Norns with all this illness and dying. The Three Norns or Fates, the Great Wyrd Sisters who card and spin the skein of our life, then weave us into being, determine the length of our days, and then cut us from the weft of experience and age when we have wended our way to the other side ever recycling,

I read my mama the Book Of Fates by Z. Budapest on the stages of life – one that I was reviewing for the International newspaper, Goddessing championed and published by friend Willow Lamont - as she was dying under the aegis of Hospice in 1999. I read the last pages and squeezed the book Z wrote – something you do when a read has been so good and you could find no other words than The End or the copyright page. Ma looked up from the bed and said, ‘Just in time’. And it was. She passed very shortly afterward. I will love anything Z Budapest writes from here on out because of that book.

Now. Besides Sally Jo, I have my mentor Shirley DesRochers in a pickle in Tampa General Hospital with a hell of a hack and whack job on her colon for diverticulitis. This is the latest in several of them and she’s been fighting fistulas, infections, and you put on plastic when you go in to see her. She left me a fatalistic message on my machine before she went in over a month ago. I save it because she tells me what a good, good friend I’ve been to her. They told her there would be no more surgeries. She doesn't have enough colon yet to digest a taco, let alone take a shit.

I promised her tonight when I trudged up huffing to the 8^thfloor from a parking lot that was built in the back forty that I’d bring my cards and play straight with her when I read to say what I see. She asked me. I will. No matter how grim the news. She can take it. She has gonads, too.

Death doesn’t scare me personally. I just hate to leave a mess. And. I hate to be left behind by all the enormous Goddess women and men my life has wrapped around. Doesn’t seem quite right, although the sidekicks and good guys always get whacked in the movies.

When I gack, I hope some friend will write a line or two about me saying that they missed whatever quality about me that struck them as worthy. I know that I shall miss my girls and their faces.

Leaving....Losing

I'm losing friends. By attrition, mostly. But a few by death.

You see. I've come to what the French call un femme de certain age - a woman, mature. There's a point where we all start to watch the obituaries to see if there are familiar names. Sometimes, we hit the jackpot by attention. Other times, if we keep our friends close, we know when their bans to the Pearly Gates will appear in the paper.

I have three of my girls on the edge of check out at this time. Oh. There is always the occasional surprise where one of us 'young chicks' will phase out before our time in a sudden accident. Like SIDS, the mature can go too, unannounced, unexpected, and unwarranted.

I have one in hospital. Critical care unit in town. I'm too chicken shit to call and find out her status because I've promised her that if she dies, I'll kill her. Afraid I'll have to follow through because her son, a NASA scientist, tells me she's fatalistic. Another is in full term adult care, wasting away of a disease that struck her down. Like the Gaelic Boddicia of old, Sally is six foot tall. She was a cop - twenty years worth of manhandling the bad side of life. I have her marked on the doorpost on the archway in my living room to the dining room of my old house along with my child; his friends, my friends, and whoever made enough impact or asked to be tallied up to stature here.

So. Sally Jo was part of the conversation at the whenever number next get-together of The Committee. This is a group of us women that have been meeting since we all gathered for the first meeting of a Codependents Anonymous group I put together back in the 80s. We all bonded. Only one of us dropped the ball for a spiritual quest at Ba'hai. The rest of us have more or less kept covenant with each other since.

Sally has an incurable disease called Supranuclear Progressive Palsy. It will end up choking her as her throat muscles give up the ability to clamp down and loosen. Sal is sixty something. Awful shitting young to have to say adieu. I have told her sister Katy that I did not want her to strangle. Katy agreed. I will be second in the duel if needed. You understand what I'm saying.

Shirley, on the other hand, is as hard as rocks and as fragile as a lotus in her seventies. She's spiritual leader and divine hag and crone for at least three hundred seeking individuals she guides from her quaint book and herb store where there are resident spirits. She has worked hard all her life. She is integrity exemplified. She has taught me how to use my mean bones so that I wouldn't get stepped on. In her seventy-somethings, she still has the best gams around left over from a modeling career where she sported Russian Wolfhounds down a runway. She's had the umpty-umphth operation on a recalcitrant colon in ex many years. All leave scar tissue, a little less colon, and this time, fistulas.

Fistula. Sounds like a Roman Emperor, a Caesar that rampages through the good land of a body that was once brave and strong and beautiful. She is the one that I can't seem to bring myself to follow up on. I've talked to her son. He gives me news that isn't welcome. There is something in his reports that tell me she has given up. Fatalistic. Or almost. Either way. Almost is too close.

The third chasing Death is Miz Miriam down the street. She walked up to the house here about two months ago to tell me in person that she has CML - some kind of chronic leukemia that strikes later in life. Miriam is 82. She has raised her children. She's raised her grandchildren. She's also raised her GREAT grand children. She gardens. She curses. I've seen her dive in the creek to rescue a child overboard on a bike like she was 16 years old. She asked me to try to help her find some cannibus to treat the awful pain that she cannot take opiates for. She gets ill on pain meds. I am a friend. The mission was unsucessful. That's all I have to say about that.

So. What do I have to say to you tonight? Wisdom? I don't have any. I am wallowing in my own insecurities and skitters at being left with three less good women. I will be losing these very special people from my life. I don't know how to do anything other than honor them by kicking my own ass in gear and getting on with the Cosmic Cotillion that we sign onto when we check onto Planet Earth.

I believe in an afterlife. I must. Neither the purported rapture nor glory calms my soul as much as believing that I will have the chance to touch the ones I love, have loved again. Or that I will have the chance to come back and make it a little better the next time. I hope to see Miriam, Sally Jo and Shirley on the next taxi back to planet Earth. They are good company.

I volunteered to answer Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi's question on Global Warming legislation. She asked, "Congress is working on legislation to address global warming - what would you like to see included?" My answer follows:

Spend the billions flowing into the war in Iraq on research and development. Set up wind farms whereever possible. Give rebates to homeowners who retrofit or build in solar hooked to grid. There's a new peel-n'-stick in town already - cheap and very efficient.

Use the new New Jersey technology to turn waste into oil in a day in a really nifty high compression heat machine that could fit in every garage and stop putting the trash in landfills. Dismantle the oilrigs and use them to rebuild the reefs which are dying from bleaching.

Mandate the end of the incandesent lightbulb and the total use of compact neon or LED lighting in all public buildings and rebate the switch in homes by 2010.

Order carmakers to dust off technology to expand mileage in all new model cars starting in 2010 and outlaw any non-commercial vehicle that gets less than 10 mpg. Retro-fit all diesels to burn bio fuel made with waste fryer oil from fast food restaurants.

Build all new homes green with ambient light and passive heating and cooling. Explore sources of ambient energy coming from the ground. Teach a grade school level class in every American school about recycling, planetary weather changes and train them from birth about living green. Create a new graduate level degree in everything listed here, a Masters or Doctorate of Ecology.

Educate the public about overpopulation and the severe impact it has on our planet and each other. Encourage 2 children per family. It would really make a statement if you could make families who have litters of children wear tee shirts that say, "My family is helping to kill the planet".

Outlaw disposable razors, plastic diapers, plastic containers, disposable anything. Make packaging slim down with new engineering techniques. Encourage bulk food bins in grocery stores with refillable/reusable containers.

Recycle existing plastics into durable playgrounds, sidewalks and furniture then don't make any more. Mine land fills for methane gas, plastic and foder for the New Jersey oil mill machine.

Create a new cabinet position for an Energy and Global Warming. Give it some teeth and law enforcement ability, mandate it to educate as well, then put Al Gore in charge. Restructure the EPA to be totally independent of any political influence and let it be staffed by publically elected officials subject to impeachment and firing if they belly under the influence of corporate officials or their lobbyists.

Put the emphasis of government back on the people and take away the influence and sacred-cow status of corporations. Make it a felony offense for any public official from the White House on down to accept money or gifts in order to by-pass green standards or carbon emissions.

Make it a felony to illegally dump any hazardous waste for any individual and company. Make littering a misdemeanor with heavy fines of $1,000.00.

Outlaw any war. They are not eco-friendly and waste money that could be spent on education, cleaning up the planet, and a better life for all of us.

And please...Sign the dang Kyoto Accord already!!

Source(s):
Mother Earth News - Peel and Stick PV panels, living green, alternative energy.Nikolai Tesla - The Father of alternative energy sources-just read his books.

The Apollo Project-named after Kennedy's push for landing a man on the moon, this non-profit group encourages all forms of energy independence from oil and is a clearing house for new ideas.

New York Times just had an article on new engineering designs for containers that can hold the same amount of product with less plastic

I'm #2693 if you want to see the question on Yahoo's Answers. Vote for me and add your own.

Coffee Bean Man

I've been so serious lately that I thought I'd try to lighten up just a bit. Pissed off Cat was one, now here's another.

Supposedly, doctors (which ones, I wonder) have concluded that if you find the man in the coffee beans in 3 seconds, your right half of your brain is better developed than most people. If you find the man between 3 seconds and 1 minute, your right half of the brain is developed normally. If you find the man between 1 minute and 3 minutes, then the right half of your brain is functioning slowly and you need to eat more protein. If you have not found the man after 3 minutes, the advice is to look for more of this type of exercise to make that part of the brain stronger!!! And, yes, the man is really there!!!

Once you see him, it's impossible NOT to see him! Have fun and exercise your brain!

Pissed Off Cat

I just had to share this with you. Granted. The language is more than graphic, but it spoke to my heart. I had a drive and did close to the same thing at every car rolling by, innocent or not. When I realized what I was doing, I started laughing at myself. Talk about Road Rage!

I watch people in cars. I know that's unusual. We're set up to just watch the car as if IT was alone and making decisions to accelerate, brake, turn, hesitate or just cruise. It's a little like being in Christine, the movie about the maelific car who deliberately tries to kill folk.

So. I open the mailbox and here sits Pissed Off Cat sent to me by Martha. M says she got a note from her sister, Celia in Alabama who was tempted to do a genealogy search to see if their family was related to the cat in any way. M allowed that it could be the case.

Cars are our last bastion of privacy. We can pick our nose, sing, curse, think and even scream (ahem) on occaision - all with impugnity. That is, until Homeland Security figures out how to listen in by building bugging and homing devices in every Detroit model.

Mother's Day

There will be no cards, no call, no declaration of love from my one and only child. I am a scourge to him. The beautiful child who was a miracle to my life has me as anathema to his as he became a man.

He has just cause for many psychoses we all bequeath our children, even if we try our damndest not too. After all. How many couches would go bare in psychiatrist’s office if we didn't have someone to blame all the pestilence and ill luck that burgeons in our lives as we grow up. Someone to blame like our mothers. He could claim that I wasn't there a good bit of his growing up time and he'd be right. I was not there. I was dealing with juggling three different hats just trying to put food on the table and a roof over our heads.

And, don't you know that his father and I played the eternal tug of war many single mothers and divorced fathers play - a begrudging fight for every dime of the paltry sum the courts awarded me monthly to raise a boy to a man without one. I went five years without any payment whatsoever as my ex moved on to wife number two and then number three, had other children and declared that he indeed had a family to worry about and couldn't understand why I nagged him about paying money for his first born on my first call to him in five years.

I had requested a pair of shoes from my ex because I noticed my son running funny and asked him what was wrong. He told me that he folded his toes under in his old shoes because he knew that I didn't have money to buy him any for his growing feet and that it was okay. He understood. So.

I located the ex and asked for a new pair of sneakers. This is when I got the sentence about being a nag. This is after five years of no calls and just hope that he'd find a conscience and pay up. This is when I got pissed and contacted the state to help intervene. This is just one of the setups some of us mothers get from the 'system'.

He may also blame me for his father's absence and failure to pick him up on scheduled visits. I don't now how to convince him that his dad really did want to be with another woman and was sorry about getting all obligated by impregnating me. I don't know how to convince him that there was nothing I could have done to make his father continue to love and treasure us both and to stay. I don't know how to convince him that my best friend of the time was much more appealing than a dowdy housewive with a two year old. It's the system.

Now. When I speak of the system, I am talking the whole stink, soup to nuts. You see. We do not really honor motherhood. Ah yes, you say. There's mother's day, the whole American charm bracelet with mom, home and apple pie on it. There is this patriarchal meringue we're fed about how mothers and children are important. Not really. And then there is this outer system and society that sets up dodgy sitches for us if we do become mothers: Where was/is the health care system so we don't have to beg for school shots and treatment for recurrent earaches? Where was/is the judicial system that really makes sure that child support really supports a child instead of throwing pocket change at an already really skinny situation like groceries being on a wish list? Where was/is the community that helps with child care, psychological services, help with a damn day off? Where was/are the wages that honestly allow a woman on her own to afford a decent life for her offspring?

Am I bitter? No. Simply older, wiser and disgusted by the crumbs that are thrown at women one day a year in this country. Elsewhere on the globe, women are chattel - much like mules. Women endure wars, rape as part of the psychology of warfare, early death from multiple pregnancies, fistulas when they are forced to bear children at eleven and twelve years old and their tiny wombs burst. Women are sold as sex slaves, forced into prostitution for the animals that connive to get them there and then live off of the income from those female bodies like fat ticks. Women are aborted in India, China and many other countries because women are not as valuable to society as males. They are killed or abandoned at birth in some countries so that the natural population ratio is skewed towards males making it difficult to find them wives when they grow up. Women have little or no control over the birth and rearing that their bodies are subjected too. It's all decided elsewhere by men and religions and governments who will never have the experience and never understand the risks.

We women are set up from birth to endure all this as our lot. Forget the fact that it is women that give birth and nurture life. Several centuries of male dominated religions, government and HISstory have left us this legacy. We. Women. The unclean. The unable to handle public office or education or jobs that we very damn well did when necessity was on us - thank you Rosie the Riveter. It wasn't all that long ago that we were given the vote in good ole U S of A.

So our jobs as mothers are set up double hard against us by our society, our religions and especially by the male children that we bear. Do you know that women do more than 90% of the work and labor on this planet? Do you understand why we're molested and beaten? We're the only species that I know of who give birth to our own predators.

So I secretaried, read cards, sold stuff at flea markets and craft shows - anything legal to earn enough for us to live. Of course, those long days and seven days a week often left little time for the real mothering I would have liked to have done. Could I have done better? You bet your ass. But I did the best that I could with the material I had on hand and the time allotted to me in the days.

I hope at some point he does see a counselor. I hope he curses me and squalls and rolls around on the floor in front of that counselor. I hope he's given some tools to cope with and take responsibility for his addictions and shortcomings. I hope that he can clear his eyes and see that the people he replaced me with sold him out, including his friend, the drug dealer. I hope at some point he will man up and see that I am not the cause of his financial problems, his drug exploits, his sex life and the inner unhappiness he may feel. I hope he sees that I never abandoned him, never gave up on him, even when he gave up on me. I hope he sees at some point that I really, truly do love him regardless and that he is the one that has seen fit to cut something wonderful out of his life. That was the last thing I said to him when I saw him the end of 2004.

Oh. I have others who do call and wish me a good day each year. They are surrogate children who come to me to talk over their problems or when they need my help or just to enjoy my company. Imagine that. I welcome them. Buddy calls and comes over to install an air conditioner in the spare room. He also just calls to see how I am. He was a best friend to my son growing up and spent a majority of his time here. He calls me mom. Vanessa calls from Naples where she is running with the jet set and busy being beautiful and a wonderful success. She calls me mama. Demetria calls and we exchange wishes for each other. She calls me honey. Darla calls to let me know that she's thinking of me, too. She calls me Other Mother or Shamanamama. My girlfriends all call and we exchange wishes too. We call each other Love You at the end of a conversation.

I really want everyone to start practicing the lofty ideals today is held up for. It really would be Mother's Day if the whole planet practiced the Law of the Mother - nurture, no wars, no putting more burdens on any person or system than it was meant to handle, true support for women in all that they do to rear young and produce good people. If we truly supported mothers, we’d be thinking about the rape and exploitation of our planet – the one really Big Mother we all depend on. We’d quit digging, blasting, boring, deforesting, overpopulating, polluting, bombing, genetically altering, testing nukes, strip mining and dumping our shit all over her.

Forget one day a year to drag out the accolades. Want to impress me? Let me see Mothers being appreciated the other 364 days of the year.

Swimming In The Big Creek

So. Linda Conner and I sat on the deck outside the room she's living in at Dogpatch this evening and talked about the heat. It is a matter of fact here in Florida. We are the Northernmost Caribbean Colony, don't you know. Listed temperate wise as Subtropical, having palms, beaches, and many of the denizens of the tropics flying by and nesting, we also have subtropical weather. It's hot in the summer. And sticky like sex.

Linda mentioned that she brought her bathing suit from Maryland and allowed as how she had swam in the Potomac. She said she remembered to pack the suit thinking that she'd go to the YMCA or the beach. "Posh. Tish. There's a 300 foot wide and three to four hundred foot deep channel cut right off the back of Dogpatch", I says. Adding that all she need be on the lookout for is water snakes and amorous gators during season. SWFTMUD (SwiftMud - the local water management authority in Southwest Florida) keeps them culled out.

The water is clear and cool and serves as the reservoir for drinking water here in the Tampa Bay area and points south. Okay. Hopefully, I won't pee in it. Fish are abundant and mostly left unmolested except by a few local fishers and water birds like Heron, Grey and Brown Pelicans, Eagles, Falcons, Cormorants, Seagulls and Terns. The fish grow so big that the big birds often drop them on lawns - instant cerviche.

The neighborhood kids across the canal know what kids have known for Millennia - that the water was made for swimming. Indeed. I swam these very same shores as a young girl when it was Six Mile Creek and before the Army Corps of Engineers came in to better it. There were small waterfalls then. And palms, palmettos, magnolias, vines big enough to hold a full-grown man. Gators, Florida Panther and Brown Bear thrived alongside Gopher Tortoises. They are all gone from the bed of that once lush and mystical place of my youth. They were bulldozed and bermed against the natural flooding that made sure this land was fertile and welcome for many species.

Instead of the meandering zees of the natural creek bed, the Army Engineers made sure that it was tamed into a nice, straight line. The Army likes everything straight, including their soldiers. They blasted the natural blowholes of springs, which fed the Creek. Those springs turned the water a lily blue and the underwater sand landscape lunar white. Water in Florida only gets brown when the leaves from oak and other indigenous trees tincturate it with tannins from the leaves when they fall in.

I swam in it then. One of a long succession of Florida denizens behind Temuccuans, Seminole, Florida Crackers who gathered wild Spanish cattle out of the underbrush to build their ranch herds. I'll swim in it now that it has lost all but a whisper of its original beauty and majesty. Maybe it will wash off some of the years I've accumulated since then. But, I'm sure the waters will do the same thing to me now as they did then. Chill.

Left Finger Up

This entry may be fraught with mistakes because I have my left pointer finger bandadged up. So. What Spellcheck doesn't catch, we're stuck with.

Typing with a disconfibulated diget is interesting. The affected digit is wrapped so stoically as to preclude any movement other than that which avails concentration up front.

At this point, there is nothing stellar to report : I have fed the coon and the possum, petted both and assured the coon that there is no interstellar plot for his demise; Took digital pix of him with my big toe decorated in latex and hollogtraphic dit shit; Let the cat out of doors so she can pretend to be offended at having her environs encroached upon by wild guys.

I've watched the coon and the possom dining on oposite ends of the pile of Special Kitty 100% complete formula with crab, lobster, tuna, chicken and goose. One wonders how the manufacturers managed to get the various denizens to hold still for the coup de gras and flavors.

I did not go to Martha's today to photograph more flotsam and jetsam left from the years of Deepwater Trading Company and The Blue Goddess. I am selling fabric and trims off. I need to be rid of the heavy weight of years of detritus that mark me as seamstress, costumer. Hell. Sell it all to the walls!! I have items here that would turn a collector pea green with envy! My back is screwed up. Martha told me to try Alleve. I did. It worked. Moreso than the heavy duty Darvocet I'm proscribed for pain.

Laces. Silks. Period fabrics and trims. All of them are going on my eBay account. I'm running across old costume pieces packed up in boxes. Trims to make a period piece stand up and roar! All of them need to go. I want my home to be bare to the walls as it was when I moved in here in 1989. It has to be.

There can be now new bathroom or kitchen, no central air, no deck, no patio, no glass that hasn't seen the sag of 100 years.

Pray for me.

Computers. And Balls.

Lonesome. Not in the big, drafted, and bluesy sense of the word. Just lonesome. Think allopathy here - not heroic medicine. Over to Martha's for the second of two days to photograph detritis that I've accumulated and now stands like money in a piggy bank. Or not. Savings Bonds, Treasury Notes and Fabric all have their expiration dates.

I photographed fabrics and trims at Martha's. Two days worth of running them through Corel Draw to be sure I'd have the supplements to list on eBay. Bugger. My computer (current copy running on a crutch) doesn't have a working CD/DVD Rom writer. When I grow up. I depend on the Alabamian Artist Extraordinaire Girl to hep me up.

There's no lexicon for fucked up computer. I keep programming for a NEW COMPUTER, but I forget to program the words NEW and never USED behind it. So. I am given the castoffs with good and loving intentions. The "I've left the country and will not need this system", setups. Balls. Martha Marshall fills in the blanks.

To let you know how incredible this is, consider that she awakes at 3:00 a.m. and writes on her blog - An Artist's Journal. Then she paints big or little canvases depending on what is in her want list that day. Intermingle the fact that she is mother to 3 rescued dogs with SPECIAL NEEDS and you'll get an idea of the enormity of the grace I recieved from her for using her 'puter and equipment. Ab Shalom and 'N Shallah, girlfrin!!

I'm supposed to blush now at the fact that I'm looking a gift horse in the mouth. Not. I just need to be more specific in my requests: I need a NEW, never used computer, built in the last six months, with updated software, t6hat has a slim LCD screen, a CDRom and DVD writer and a disk reader that does not fart upon insertion, all of which costs less than 600.00. Did I mention that all software would be included??

Tagged

I've been Blog Tagged. As an old heifer, I'm not really sure of the nuances of this form of social diplomacy. So. I will respondez via instructions:

samate said...
Hello, I am every day on your blog and so I want to tag you.The rules Start with 7 random facts/habits about yourselfPeople who are tagged have to write their 7 things on their blogThen choose another 7 people to get tagged and list their namesDon't forget to leave them a comment to tell them they have been tagged and to read your blogGreetings from Samatesamate.blogspot.com
7:00 AM

Seven random habits and facts about me. Jeez. Should I mention that I know how to drive a big truck - a five and a four - brownie and a main- 48 feet of intimidation, a race car and a motorcycle - which every woman on the face of the Earth needs to know how to use? (One) Should I let you know that I am the only one left standing in my birth family of four and that my extended family doesn't know where I fit in even when it goes back over to 1300? (Two) Do I tell you that I am a fiercely loyal friend that will guard your back until the bitter end or until you disrespect me so much that I drop you like a hot potato? (Three) Can I let it be known that I can track you when you head into woods or rock or swamp if you need to be found? (Four) Would you think me combatative if I told you that I can build my own bullets, figure the PSI when fired, and can fancy twirl, build my own leather rig and quick draw a gun so I could sub for a Wild West movie and yet believe that no thing needs to die without defense? (Five) I summon and thank the four quarters of energy every single day because I believe that the Earth as a planet is a living being. I try to make every step count, count on talking to every critter and plant that is put in my path, feed them where I can, and thank the Divine that I am given such oppulence where I live and try to spread it around. (Six) Could I admit to you all that I am clueless about being tagged, what it means and what I'm supposed to do next?? (Seven)

So. I am choosing the ones closest to home. The blogs I've enjoyed and their sprouts. You know who you are. Tag. You're it! And Samate - you opened Pandora's box.

Her Left Foot

No Cristy Brown here. Just a cat. My cat George. She came in from her early morning jaunt outside with a left hind foot dragging. Broken? Snakebit? Sprained? Worrisome because it was obvious to ignore and worrisome because I had $1.65 in checking. Did I mention I wrote a bad check for $56.00 at the vets???? This is the reality at the end o' the month for me here at DogPatch.

Ah. Well. Circumstances rolled in and allowed me to cover the debt with a few tuppence overboard. Not enough to entertain a bottle of wine, salad and a steak on an evening out, mind you. But one of the three post mentioned were to be had and uncorked.

Two shots for infection and inflamation. Aggravation at having to upset her on the jaunt. A smile from Dr. Marks. I would like to bill the despot cat next door for her med bills, or his owners who pay little enough attention to him that he feels he has to fight for rights here at Dogpatch. He beats the paen shit out of George on my very doorstep in his bid for dominance and I can only scare him away with insults and threats. I don't want to do physical harm you see. I'm not that kind of person.

I feed strays. Coons. Possums. Let outs on the roads for people who haven't heard that there is an ASPCA.

So. George endures shots of antibiotics, antinflamatories, and the bastard cat sashays across the fenceline. I am hoping that when the Vadamparampil's build their home on the lot between his and mine, the interloper will view the intercession as a foreign country and stay home.

Courthouse

Signed papers at the County Courthouse today. I'd rather have a root canal. Parking. Really? Is there anyplace that will allow a citizen due justice and the ability to get to IT without paying astronomical parking, a walk of a thousand leagues, or a convoluted journey three blocks over and one East? No.

My miasma started in 1996 when I was a struggling single mother of one trying to make ends meet in any fashion I could. I did arts and crafts shows. I worked a 9 to 5. I read cards. Let me explain. I displayed 90 percent extraordinaire fashions coupled with fabric art items. It was a good mix encouraged by my friend, Carol Gray.

I had just missed a sale that would have meant the difference between a pair of shoes and grocery money for the week for my still growing son. A man popped into my booth and offered me an out - accept credit cards, do it online and smile all the way to the bank. Trouble was, the company he represented had their heritage in the carpetbaggers of the post Civil War diaspora.

They leased me a machine that did not work, refused to fix it and sued me when I threatened to discontinue payments. I had a lien put against my old house.

Fast forward to last year - 2006. I'm trying to settle some realty issues and the lien comes up. I go online and find that the buggers are the worst of the worst! Their M.O. - to scoop in the stupid, sue their arses seven states away and then register a lien, knowing that the majority of the gullible will realize that money is of the essence.

Arrive the State Attorneys General from several states - the same embattled foes of today - who say that the company LEASECOMM has and had practiced unfair business miens. They were nasty and at fault. You can find the RICO findings online. I'm too tired to give them. So.

I disputed the lien. Filed for a Motion to Dismiss, and had to go to the Courthouse to sign papers. I call back Monday. I fought traffic. I got a parking spot. I'm hopefull.

On the way home, I passed one of those skeletons of businesses that open on a bad corner with high hopes. No one came. You know what I'm talking here. There are places on the Earth that no one needs to develop, put money into, dream and hope or strive. There are places that just need to be left fallow.

They can be fantasmagorically interesting in their decor. They can have money dumped into them from whatever source. There can be kleig lights and promotion campaigns and people putting flyers all over the city. But. Whatever starts there dies. And withers. No matter the involment or the enthusiasm.

I've seen these spots in many cities in every state of the Union (and some foreign) that I've visited. They are dead. Decapitated. gone from the cellular on down. I don't know what it would take to ennervate these spots. Maybe there's not enough energy on the face of the Earth. Maybe they are born dead.

So, Sign your papers and struggle with the nomenclature of law, the buggaboos and aggravati0ons of somehting else. But never bet on a dead horse that grows on a lot where weeds struggle. You know the ones.

Spring Fever

I have it. Both ways - figuratively and literally.

Went to see sweet old Dr. Torro Friday. He clucked and fussed and gave me a Z-Pack for my rampant throat infection and earache, along with the Sea Spray to rinse out my swollen sinus cavities. I've had a fever off and on over the weekend. Now I just feel like dick with fatigue and what the medicoes euphemistically term 'malaise'.

Malaise. Sounds like something to put on a sandwich between two slices of bread. Or something that could be cured with penicillan. Or the first part of a phrase which reads, 'Zee arse doesn't feel like moving off this couch.' But I did.

I went and snipped, and pulled Spanish Moss, and dead branches, and spoke to my front door plants who haven't seen much of me for at least a year. Depression and health have kept me indoors like a mole, or one of those recluses that live their entire life in a home with Reynolds Wrap over the windows and looking with fear from a peephole at the insanity of the world outside.

The day was one of those miraculous ones we have in Florida where the humidity forgets to roll in coating everything with hot, soggy moisture. It was balmy with the wind coming off the canal cooling the breeze. It was my first foray out. I'd hoped to go out a bit today but found my constitutioned cooled by the fatigue I'm feeling on my chest like a weight. My paranoid and hypochondriac side is whispering 'pneumonia', while my inner child yells, 'bullshit'.

I suppose I'll just have to give in to the fact that I cannot recoup the way that I did in my younger years. That means 'Yeild' just like the sign says, not 'Give Up' like I want to yell at those intersection hesitators who fear to enter that merge lane like a virgin holding onto her panties. Get out there and live, for hell's sake!

But before I give in, I think I'll go out and water the begonias and the daturas.

(The image above is by silk artist Leondard Thompson. His works just ripples with sensuality.)

Goodbye Mary Jane, Goodbye Heart

I’m changing the title of Rick Nelson’s song. Get over it.

You know the color of sun reflecting on water (fresh) about 6:30 on a June late afternoon? Yeah. That color. Goldy yellow. Imagine that color on near one hundred plus pounds of being, drenched in sun – nay, baking in it, sniffling the wind, guarding from terror that appears at the front door in the guise of a Zorro masked. A four-legged marauder or ratty tailed invader can’t get past her pest control at the door. Now. Amp it up to joy.

Joy at being able to go balls-out-to nothing, running with the wind at the park, loving the water so much that you have your own swimming pool where daily dips are de rigueur, in which you don’t so much swim as wallow in the cool – a necessity and nicety all wrapped into one – where you see your ancestry plying the currents before you in your mind’s eye.

Imagine that your Beginning Mother visits you ever so often in a benevolent sort of way, that you never lose sight of your roots, you know wherefrom you sprang. You great her with glee before she comes to the door. Think of loving. Think of routines so rota that they become ritual – cleaning out the cans before they go into the recycle bin, saying hello to Mr. Frogel next door, keeping the neigborhood dogs in check, paying special attention to the members of your extended family that you keep in your grace and help steer with your presence. You are, after all, a Rock.

Be reminded that you too have a child – wrinkled, wary, and foreign, a love child of mixed Continents. She is not to blame for the admix of a foreign daddy and further Eastern mother in her birth. She had no say in her begetting, her getting here. You just know that you love her as your own, your cub, and your offspring not gotten by pain, but by a red-haired woman, who absconded with her from a condemned life to bring her safely to you. Home. Like a loaf of bread tucked up under the arm and close to the heart. Home.

Blessed with many mothers, it was the wisest of these that let you know that this small outcast was your own. Not by heart, not by birth, does one become a Mother. It is in the doing of the thing. She told you that.

You waited for us to be to home from our jaunts. You collected us all together- the tawny haired woman who hugged you and gave you unbridled rides in the convertible, the doting and caring mothers who saw that your aging aches and pains were answered, the man next door that showed up in the nick of time as if called. All of us. You went on to check out the territory for all the rest, as always, our guide. Our greeter.

So. I will never forget your young and hopeful face that appeared at my door those fourteen or so years hence. I will never regret that I handed you over to two good and righteous and loving friends who had been on the lookout for you to come and came to retrieve you with biscuits and collars and without a doubt when I called and told them that I had their dog.

Goodbye, Mary Jane, Janie Marie, and all the other loving names that we’ve given you, lo, these years. I will miss your driveway greetings and the smiles you always had for me. We will ALL miss you.

May there be fields to run in, squirrels to chase, and no arthritis or strokes in heaven.

(Note: Janie was a huge and majestic Golden Labrador who found her way to my door almost fifteen years ago. I took her in and networked her to her new parents – Tary and Karole Peace. We spent yesterday and last night mourning her passing. If you don’t understand the bond between human and animal, go away. There’s no hope for you in the backlog of humanity.)

Panther

I was ten years old the first time I saw God. This huge canal I live on was then just a creek that meandered for six or so miles draining into the Alafia River, then into Cockroach Bay which shelters fish nurseries and scallop beds.

I spent many hours there in defiance of my mother who extolled the dangers of those wild woods . She warned me about escaped prisoners who sometimes ran from the county jail downstream and hid there amid the palmettos. To her mind, those men were more to fear than the gators and snakes that she had come upon there when she defied her mother to go visit the creek in her youth.

Never saw any escaped prisoners. Me and the neighborhood kids once saw a body floating down under the train trestle when we'd gone down there to swim. We found out later that it was a drunk that stumbled into the creek and drowned out behind the Six Mile Creek tavern upstream. But nothing live ever appeared moving on two feet with steely eyes the color of stones bent on murder and mayhem to a child . So I continued to go. Mostly by myself.

There were small springs and pools surrounded with Louisiana irises, elephant ears big enough to use as an umbrella when brief, angry summer storms came up. Paths wound their way around stands of palmetto and water oaks, the sand sparkled in the sun from quartz or mica flecks like diamonds beckoning you on. Huge woody liana vines were a favored pastime to play a wannabe Tarzan. One of my favorite trees was a huge magnolia growing formally in the midst of all the gangly oaks. I loved the glossy leaves and would fashion a crown out of the dinner plate sized blossoms. I sniffed in the heady fragrance of them until my face was yellow with pollen and I was almost drugged from the rich smell.

Sometimes, I would just sit on the banks of the stream watching fish or making stick villages on the sandy paths. I knew how to pull young palmetto shoots to chew off the tender pink-white flesh on the root end and there were huckleberrys and fox grapes aplenty. Whenever things at home got out of control, I sought the comfort of that swamp.

My sister Lynda and me once went to cross the creek at Masaro's cattle crossing - normally just shin deep. But there'd been a hurricane three days before and we were swept away by the clawing current that had undercut the sandy bottom. We swan diagonally to the bank, catching a branch and then quickly letting go when the current occupant - a cotton mouth mocassin - objected with a hiss. We finally made the other side at a steep curve in the creek path, me pulling Lynn out of the water behind me.

She laughed the whole escapade through. I was a bit more sober for my three years on her and knew that we had been very lucky not to have been pulled into a gator hole or an undertow. I'd had my share of stupid living playing chicken on the train trestle that spanned the creek as it blew a frantic warning to my skinny, small form. I would dive into the waters when I could feel the rails vibrate and see the dust snake up from the heavy ties sitting on their bed of quartz rip-rap. I only did it a couple of times. News of a neighborhood boy who lost a leg while trying to jump onto a box car and ride down to his road somehow sunk home. I used to wonder if they ever found the rest of his leg and what they did with it.

Crossing Masaro's Dairy pasture was another wag at danger. If you timed it just right, you could cut off a good bit of leg work by cutting through the back corner. You had to ease yourself through the strands of barb wire and mind you didn't tear your shirt or your skin, both of which assured a march to the switch tree in the back yard. Mr. Masaro kept Brahma bulls in his herd for beef and they policed the pasture with a vigor to be admired by any Green Beret unit looking on any intruder as a threat to their territory and dominance over the few heifers peaceably grazing .

The trick was to time it so that the bulls were on the other side of the big pasture with their asses to you. You had to get through the barb wire fence on the quick and silent, high tail it the long block to the other fence, then skinny your way through that one before you were spotted. I once spent a miserable afternoon in a live oak with Brahma's grazing and farting below until their simple cow minds wandered them off to the far side of the pasture and it was safe to shinny down the tree and out through the fence to home again.

It was on one of these successful shortcuts that I saw Him. I was slowly and silently picking my way through the late morning sun along my favorite path. On both sides, palmetto fans waved in the dappled sun filtering through Spanish Moss beards in the trees above. He came out of a palmetto stand on the path before me, all dusky gold and brown and shining. His eyes glowed like amber. A long, pink tongue panted out his rhythm between sparkling white teeth that looked about a foot long.

He was a big cat, fully grown, sleek and fat. We both stood stock still, regarding each other. Six steps would have carried me to him, so close I could smell the musky fur, but I was still, quiet. I do not remember being afraid. I remember being in a place of awe. The wind stopped. The trees and branches absolutely fixed. The air danced with an energy I've seen so very few times since. I don't know how long we stood looking at each other, but it seemed like forever and a second.

A blink, then two, he just melted into the palmetto stand across the path from me and didn't move a branch or crack a twig under His big feet. After all, I was nothing to concern Himself over. Aware that something very special had happened to me, I felt privaledged. Knowing it was special and had not happened to very many people, I knew I could tell no one. I was also positive that despite my knowing that I'd spent a moment in utter holiness and divinity, an ass whipping would have awaited the disclosure and would surely have spoiled that moment.

I became obsessed with religion, God, divinity, the spiritual path. Sometimes my reading was uplifting. Other times, it was dark and morose. Mostly, religion was confusing.

I asked to go to the Methodist church next to my elementary school with Patty Brian and was allowed. I found disappointment there when I would here the message of brotherhood extolled at the pulpit and the petty sniping and gosip aimed at a poor family from my neighborhood. I went a second time to be sure that this confusion of Christian message, Hades behavior was indeed not a fluke and quit.

I am also saddened that such a majestic creature should be in the twilight of their lives with diminishing numbers hovering around 100 of them. Texas cougars have been introduced into the gene pool in hopes of replenishing the species. The offspring are lighter in color and much smaller than the big male I remember. Maybe it is because I was so small and thin.

Over the years, this sacred and special moment when I was indeed in the presence of something both graceful and divine has become incorporated into my spirituality. I don't think I've ever told the tale whole to anyone. It is my miracle, my introduction to sacredness. Now you have it. Trying to explain how and why I was so affected at such an early age would also somehow sadden the colors of it. Perhaps it will recall your first discovery of something sacred outside of yourself. So I'll leave it to you.

The art above is by Edward Bierly and can be puchased from the National Wildlife Federation.

Waiting Room

I had a wonderful thing happen the day that I went for my laser surgery. Amazing that in the midst of all the angst about loosing half my eyesight that wonderfulness could happen, but it did. See. I'm taking you back to make up for the things that happened in February that I should have posted if I could.

The torn retina was diagnosed in Brandon and my Opthomologist sent me to Lakeland Regional Hospital eye clinic for the laser process. I called Phyllis McEwen to drive me. If you've had your eyes examined, you know the 10-4 on waiting around with the eye drops to dilate, or numb or both. So. There we were in the waiting room with me dilating away. We were in the waiting room with three middle aged women and one ancient charmer.

Miss Connie was 83 years old, she informed us. Her still dark hair was done up in huge Marcelle waves plastered close to the scalp making her look like Josephine Baker from the 1920s. Phyllis began it all by asking Miss Connie what she liked to do.

"Why, I cook, baby!" Miss Connie said. "But not just cook, I like to fix it up, make it look special, decorate it with apples, celery sprigs, and parsely and radishes!"

"Can you cook greens?" Phyllis asked as culinary explorer and emcee. "I've been craving me some greens. How 'bout sweet potato pie?"

"Absolutely! The secret's in the washin' and the seasonin' and what you use for it." A note here to the Northern Provinces - 'seasoning' in the South when greens are in the same paragraph bespeaks meat and fat - ham hocks, pork butt roast or shoulder, streak-o-lean, bacon.

"I'm hungry for soul food, Southern food. What you gonna cook me?" Phyllis pressed on.

"Well, let's see now. 'Sides greens - and what kind of greens you want, baby - mustard, collards, or turnip?"

"Oh, collards, of course, please ma'am!" Phyllis was really getting us all into this now. We Southerners are truly mindful of our manners and respect for our elders.

"Well, 'sides greens, you got to have you a good old ham baked up right so's the crust is dark brown and crunchy and the insides are just juicy as you carve off the slices."

"Deviled eggs!", chimed in one of our group. "I want some potato salad!" , chirped another.

"Corn bread made in a black iron skillet on the top of the stove before you pour in the batter to make a good crust!", I offered for my contribution.

The third woman added, "Buttermilk biscuits, big and flaky and loaded with real butter!"

"Speaking of butter, how 'bout corn on the cob!"
"Baby limas with some of the ham!"
"Field peas with snaps!"
"Or zipper peas!"
"Fried chicken with a good scald on it!"
"Fried green tomatoes!"
"Fried okra!"
"Fried anything without a commercial telling you it will clog your arteries!"

We were all running with it and laughing. We discussed fried catfish and hush puppies with grits, the merits of sweet potato pie, the perfect pecan pie, and other mouth watering morsels women have been cooking in Southern kitchens for centuries.

I asked Miss Connie how she fried her chicken. She stuck out a bony hand, palm up and said, "It'll cost you, honey." Then she proceeded to tell us how she fixed gator tail, "And you do chicken the same way!"

"I sew. What kind of dress you want, ma'am?", I asked Miss Connie.

"Baby, I want a pink frock that fits with an A-line skirt! And a jacket."

"You want sweetheart pink, or bubble gum pink?", I'm getting my details in order, don't you know.

"A good pink, not pastel or baby, not hot and all neon. A good pink."

A design is emerging. "How long do you want the skirt, mid-calf?"

"Laws, no, honey! I want it to come just to the middle of my knee cap. I got some good legs and I like to show them off!" And she did show off extending a still shapely calf. "And I want pretty work on the cuffs of the jacket."

I designed two more dresses for other women and discovered we had a racy sex goddess sitting with us in the guise of a 50 something housefrau dressed in the most sensible shoes you've ever seen.

We all joined in with comments about shoes, hose, girdles, how we never used to leave the house without a pair of gloves or a hat.

"I wear me some hats! I spray paint them ole straws and glue decorations on them. If it ain't tacky enough, why I just glue on some more stuff until it is. Then I wear it to church." Miss Connie animated all of this in mime and finished with a flourish, hand on hip, a remarkably spry and flirty sashay as she walked down the aisle to her imaginary pew.

Then we continued designing dresses in our minds until we were gotten to continue the process, one by one.

This is a familiar phenomenon I've observed throughout my life: Women get together as strangers in a laundromat, at the doctor's office, the hospital waiting for news of a loved one's surgery, and we talk. We seem to know from some long entrenched gene that we group together and pull the wagons in. The chatter helps entertain us, passes the time, let's us know we're not alone in this Cosmic Cottilion. We usually touch topics that tribe us up - cooking, kids, the drill.

And Phyllis did exactly what she'd set out to do with this ancient custom. She distracted me from the worry I was feeling with a baked ham, fried gator, and a hat.

Brushing Starz

Wearing sunglasses a lot while recuperating from this eye business makes me feel a bit like a movie star, going incognito among the nameless people who haven't a clue who I am, and could flatly give a damn. And sometimes, I wear them inside trying to disguise myself from my cat, who knows who I am and doesn't give a damn either. Movie Star.

I've brushed up against a few in my years. Some of them were before your time or just names barely recognizable except to the few aficionados of Hollywood hoopla and hype. When I say I brushed against them, I'm talking close encounters of the third kind without much interaction for the most part.

I spent the night talking to Fran Allison of Kukla, Fran and Ollie fame telling her story about how she lost most of her face on the windshield of a car when she was younger and how she became the doyenne of the toddler set during the 1950s with her puppet cohorts. She talked about radio and mourned it's passing. We talked about how radio made the listener being entertained use their imagination. She said it was often more inventive than anything that t.v. had to offer by showing you the action. I was a make up artist in Las Vegas at the time, living in a house on the Sahara-Nevada golf course owned by the president of the company I worked for. Buddy Hackett was the next door neighbor. Jerry Lewis hit errant golf balls out of the back yard by the pool, there were stacks of painted canvases by Leroy Neiman, Chris Rosamond, signed Norman Rockwell prints. My boss who owned the house, had a wife who was a serious art dealer and atelier back in New York. Various celebrities would stay at the house in one of the many bedrooms.

Rock Hudson was perfectly groomed, very polite, generous when he tipped and surrounded by a bevy of the most beautiful men you ever saw when I was a cocktail waitress in Atlanta during the late 1960s. The Midnight Sun restaurant was a posh and exclusive restaurant with a Scandinavian theme, since closed. When I served drinks to Forrest Tucker , he was flirty, funny and stood up next to me so the restaurant owner could take his picture to add to the celebrities wall. I remember how big and tall Tucker was.

When I was a make up artist based in Las Vegas in 1976, I was invited to do a demonstration of chiaroscuro makeup for a local T.V. show. The guest was Bob Crane, best known for his role in Hogan's Heroes. I 'aged' Bob, 'broke' his nose, turned him slightly femme and then stuck a makeup brush in his eye for a finale. He was murdered a few years later.

I got to go back stage to the Green Room and hang with Tom and Dick Smothers. Tommy bit my bosom in a bit of vaudeville shtick. I got to meet their father - a rather rakish ancient specimen with a girlfriend a fifth his age.

Bill Cosby stuck his nose in my face at a Las Vegas hotel lobby. My ex-boss thought it would be funny to get me stoned on some hallucinogenic drug mixed into a cocktail to see if I'd 'relax' a little. He didn't bother telling me what was done. It wasn't funny and it wasn't relaxing to watch pancakes in the restaurant get up and dance on the plates to Camelot music.

I also met Jimmy Carter before he was President of the United States at a barbecue fund raiser in Marietta Georgia. He tapped me on the shoulder and I turned around. I had to look down a few inches because I was a bit taller back then and had on ridiculously high platform heels. He looks you straight in the eye when he talks to you and his face becomes mostly teeth when he smiles.

There have been others, minor and major names I've brushed against - some literally, like peeing in Hillary Clinton's toilet at a local political rally during an early 2000s visit. Having asked staff for directions to the ladies room in a maze of sectioned off corridors and locked doors, I saw the sign for the women's restroom and went in. Didn't realize it had been specifically set aside, gussied up, and secured for Mrs. Clinton until I was stopped on my way out by three Secret Service men who told me that I couldn't be in that part of the hotel and who let me go when I explained my errand was to search for a restroom. I didn't have the heart to tell them that I had already been there and done that when they told me I couldn't use THAT one.

I haven't had any celebrity's love child, nor have I had rendezvous, my pictures taken with them on the cover of the National Inquirer, intense friendships and communications on a daily basis with them. No one has asked for my DNA in connection with a movie star or celeb. I'm actually not sure of the reason that I've met so many of these people. I believe everything in our lives is put there for a reason. But what I can tell you honestly is that I've never been agog about them. I like to think it's due to my observer mentality.

We're tempted by the siren's song of being entertained by celebrities as a substitute for experiencing life ourselves. What I think is that we really are all somebody already. We're asked by our culture to live outside ourselves in a fantasy of entertainment and media mania where we get to live someone else's lives as voyeurs while hardly ever living out our own. Life by proxy.

Being truly engaged in your own life is something really stellar. When we give up that engagement with life and ourselves for the plastic and ephemeral glamour and allure of the famous, fame and near fame, I believe we are giving up on ourselves. Not dealing with one's own shit while being distracted by the famous may be easy, but in the end it's a paltry substitute for personal growth. And unlike crying at the movies, real tears brought on by real crisis is a 3-D, Panavision and Technicolor experience.

Shine at what you do and do who you are well. Even if you never get to see your name up in lights or win an Oscar for it.

Seeing Things

I've had a torn retina since mid-February. Not much fun. A torn retina is when the viscous gel inside your eyeball shrinks and the retina pulls away from the back of the eyeball. A tear sometimes happens and if this tear lets some of the fluid out between your retina and your eyeball, the retina detaches and you're seriously screwed in the vision works department unless it's caught early enough for surgery.

Symptoms are bright flashes of light that may appear as a line, a curve or dots. And floaters of blood that are released into the gel from the tear. Mine was very dramatic, accompanied by pain in the eye, and what appeared to be tiny flakes of pepper between a load of filaments of blood. It's all blood actually.

I called the optometrist the next day and they got me right in, diagnosed the tear and sent me for laser surgery. Not much fun either. I was assured by the doctor that it wouldn't hurt. He had that on heresay and not as a first person experience. The laser welds the tear back together. I've had two followup visits and another one this week. I will tell him that I'm still light sensitive and seeing flashes. The good news is that I can see again and the floaters seem to have settled to the bottom of my eye.

So. Computer was out. Outside was out. OUT was truly IN unless I wore my total wrap-around shades using my hands as goggles. But there are many things that you can see in the dark. Like the raccoon that has become so bold with me that he pulls the dish out of my hands if I try to move it back from the edge of the steps and gets impatient until I fill a bowl with cat food. I do this so that the old outside tomcat, Skitty can eat his evening meal in peace. If I don't feed the coon, he'll take the old man's food.

Skitty is recuperating, too. He borrowed the car and snatched ten bucks to go court some cat woman. Another suitor had the same idea and Skitty came home with a cauliflower ear that was terribly infected and required stitches. I got him stoned on catnip and put him in the cage. Catnip in the cage is a good trick, by the way. My cats really don't care much about the travel to the vet if they're sufficiently stoned on kitty nip.

Anyway. Skitty had a bunch of stitches and a super-douche clean out along with a drain. And several shots. I watched the whole thing. His ear. My eye.

The above brief on retinal tears/detachment is a public service announcement. If you see disco lights and you aren't in a nightclub, see about it immediately.