Plumbing, Pictures and Getting a Little Bitchy

It's a bright, sunny morning here in the holler. The Amazon is at work, the sink is full of dirty dishes, the sewer line is still clogged and I could probably use a long, hot shower.

I hear ya'll saying, "But Mahala, how can that be? You're normally such a domestic goddess, well known for having your chit together and perpetually prepared for any emergency!!"

Dang.. I have ya'll fooled.

Seriously, the reason I'm so behind on all things domestic and hygienic (yeah I know, you could have done without that last bit of information... deal with it) is that I've spent the better part of yesterday working on this. I pulled all the photo based products out of TwistedMare and moved the images to a shop where they can be marketed as framed prints. I'm still going through my photo files, looking for suitable images to upload. I just opened my account and set it up yesterday yet, by last night I had already made my first sale.

That's a good sign.

It wasn't without a glitch or two. I can only sell prints in the two smallest sizes available, due to the image size my camera produces. Eventually I'd like to get a better camera, but in the meantime, I think I'll do okay.

Eventually, I'd like to turn twistedmare.com in to a website (right now it's just a domain that redirects surfers to my CafePress site.) That will be somewhere down the road, when I can afford a little more overhead.

Anywho...

I got up yesterday morning with the intention of fixing our plumbing issues myself. I got dressed, put a neon purple bandanna on my my head and headed out to the yard in my flip flops. The little portion of pipe that sticks up out of the ground, which I thought was access to the sewer line.. wasn't. I huffed, cussed a little and came back in. Me and Ma discussed the matter and she informed me that I could probably just shove the snake.. thing (can we PLEASE call it something else? Ya'll know how I feel about snakes,) in the drainage pipe for the washer, seeing how that seemed to be where the problem was.

Made sense to me, so I found our snakey thing and was disappointed when I discovered that it was only three feet long.

That was not going to do at all. Once again I was reminded of that Chattanooga K9 cop and the first time we... well..

ANYWHO...

Ma insisted that I hop in Jolene (my truck) and head out to Scary Hillbilly Town to buy a proper snakey thing but I was so disgusted and frustrated by then, I told her it could wait. Apparently Ma doesn't agree, because this morning she met her sister (Aunt Moses) out in the yard with her debit card. I'm assuming she sent her after the proper supplies.

Or KFC. She's forever sending people to buy her some KFC.

I've been feeling a lot of frustration lately with the other people in my house. I try so hard to get groceries that everyone will like, with limited funds, working my coupon clipping, sale paper wrangling magic to get as much as I can with the money I have available.

But then.. I buy the "wrong" Pop-Tarts. Or they look upon the kitchen table, stacked high with plastic bags and ask, "What? No ice cream?"

My attempts at cooking are ridiculed, snarky comments tossed around with giggles and hurtful intentions, yet no one offers to help. Most of the time I do the clean up afterwards while the other parties both retreat to their bedrooms with full tummies.

It's really starting to piss me the feck off.

I entertain myself by daydreaming about what I'll do when I get innerwebs rich, techno famous and have plenty of money at my disposal (a girl can dream.) I think about giving my two weeks notice at work, explaining to Bossman that I am just so successful at home that I can make way more money there than at the cubicle asylum.. and let's face it.. it wouldn't take that much.

I mentally plan the addition to the back of the trailer, adding three rooms and a small deck out back, having the back half of the lot cleared and fenced in so that my four legged critters can run free and frolic. I'd have a big veggie garden in the front yard, solar panels on the roof and rain barrels to catch water for the garden.

And then I remember someone letting it slip that Ma has promised to leave the land to them and I'm reminded that this place isn't mine, that I have no real home that belongs to me and when Ma is gone, I'll probably have to swallow my pride, tuck my tail between my legs and find somewhere else to go.

My conscience is the only one I'll have to live with for however long the Universe sees fit to allow me to remain here, so I'll continue to do what I feel is right, even when it doesn't always seem fair.

Sometimes that's all we can do.

I hope ya'll are enjoying the heck out of your weekend. We'll talk again real soon. I'm going to go jump in the shower.

Later Taters!