Memorial Day 1993

It had been less than a year since Me, Ma and the Rugrat Amazon had moved to Frog Pond Holler. We'd found a house out in the country, a single wide trailer with some DIY rooms added to the front. It was cozy enough, with a wood stove for heat and two bedrooms. Ma and little TA shared the big bedroom, with the walk-in closet that housed TA's Billy Ray Cyrus poster, and I slept on the trailer side, in the back, with no heat.

I'm not complaining... but I could see my breath on most mornings.

We were down in a holler we shared with our landlord, some cows and a hen house full of chickens. The area was called Blood River because of the slaughter house that still stood by the creek opposite our house.

Uncle Clarence used to tell me you could still hear them at night. Uncle Clarence is an a-hole.

Our landlady would come get TA so she could join her when it was time gather the cackleberries. My little city-girl child would announce it was time to go "pick eggs," which tickled the landlady to death.

I was glad to move to the country, away from town. I still didn't know many people, but everyone knew who I was. It was hard to get used to.

I was working in Scary Hillbilly Town, about 45 minutes away over in Tennessee. My thoughtful kinfolk waited until I started working there before they told me Scary Hillbilly Town was well known as the home of the hillbilly crime syndicate, where they still had cock fights, ran moonshine and burned bars down for insurance money.

So of course I worked in a friggen bank. I think they were trying to get me killed.

Anywho...

On Memorial Day weekend, 1993, Aunt Moses called Ma to share the excitement she was listening to on the police scanner. The annual celebration in town had gotten out of hand and the one, barely certified town cop, was getting his ass kicked.

This was before I got a scanner of my own.

Ma handed me the phone and hopped in her car to go check it out.

Aunt Moses gave me the details while we listened. Little Barney had arrested someone who had exceeded the amount of alcohol he was capable of consuming without losing his damned fool mind.

He would later become known as "that guy who started all that shit on Memorial Day."

As he was being put in the back of the police car, his mama, all 4'11" of her, who was also quite impressively intoxicated, started telling little Barney what she thought of him, his family and any livestock that he may have owned. Barney told Mama she needed to shut up, or she was going to jail too.

Her daughter didn't appreciate Barney talking to her mother that way and took a swing at his head with a beer bottle, sending his glasses flying in to the street and leaving a nice sized battle wound on his noggin. Barney had called for backup and there were some deputies from the sheriff's office heading across the mountain. In the mean time,  the guy who started it all was trying to kick out the back window of the squad car.

Some of the locals jumped in to assist Barney, which caused the rest of that guy's family to jump in and fight for his drunken honor.

Because around here, "the rest of his family" was probably half of town. We're all kin.

Back at the trailer, I was on the edge of my seat. We only got two t.v. channels down in the cow pasture and this was the most excitement I'd had since we'd moved here. I forbade Aunt Moses to hang up the phone. I wondered where Ma was, she should have been back by then.

The sheriff's deputies from the next town were chit chatting over the radio as they made their way down the mountain. You could tell they didn't have a lot of respect for little Barney and were being kind of assholey about having to come help him.

"We're crossing the bridge now, I'll have an update for you," we heard as Main Street came in to view, then, "SEND MORE BACKUP! IT'S A RIOT."

I rolled with laughter as they called in police from three more departments in Tennessee. State Highway Patrolmen, Wildlife Officers.. I wish I'd had the nerve to drive the five minutes to town to check it out.

Frog Pond Holler's summer population is only about 600, but put up a flier that says "live music" or "street dance" and all the hill folk from the surrounding communities come trickling down off the mountain totin' the youngins, the grand youngins and any other stragglers they pick up along the way. Add fireworks and it's like Dollywood on Fourth of July weekend. You literally can not drive through town. There are people, hippies, hillbillies, bikers and hikers, everywhere you look. It happens on Memorial Day, the fourth and Labor Day, all days when the VFD sets off fireworks down on the spa grounds.  They sell wieners and have games for the kids, all to raise money for their operating expenses throughout the year. When I was an EMT-I, I always got stuck working in the wienie wagon.

It was sweaty work. And.. the wienies got sweaty too. Never eat wienie wagon wieners.

The effects of the great Memorial Day riot in Frog Pond Holler were massive for such a tiny town. The squad car had to have a new back window. Barney had to have new glasses and a few stitches. Town had to hire a new police officer.

Ma made it back home unscathed. She reported that they'd had the road into town blocked. She'd sat up at the elementary school and watched from a safe distance.

That Christmas I got my own police scanner. On a pretty spring day, when everyone's got their windows open, you can hear the tones coming from everyone's house. It's how we know when the road is closed, school is letting out early or a member of the VFD has lost a family member. They still announce the funeral arrangements on the radio. On Christmas Eve, they track Santa Claus and when the power's out, you panic because you have no way of knowing what the hell is going on.

Memorial Day is just around the corner and this year? I'll be right down there in it, with my camera in hand. Hopefully there won't be another riot, but at least something juicy enough to keep them talking down at the Grab n' Go (and go and go) until the next summer holiday rolls around.

Ya'll take care and we'll talk again soon.

Later Taters!

Looking for a police scanner so you can keep up with what's really going on? Check out the Whistler WS1065 Digital Desktop Scanner (Black)

Craig Ferguson: The Rest Of The Story

Over the years, I've shared just about every detail of my life on Hidden Mahala. I've even been accused of over sharing on occasion, but as you know, that hasn't stopped me. However, there have been times when I've had to sanitize my posts to protect myself from the prying eyes of The Holler folk.. and to fulfill promises I've made to other individuals involved.

This post is about one of those times. 

Most of ya'll remember the Fergburger days, when I wrote some funny ass posts about stalking Craig Ferguson. I imagine, some of you even got sick of reading his name.. but I was getting a shit ton of page views as a result and it became sort of addictive. 

I use Statcounter here, an awesome tool if you're interested in where your traffic comes from (not an affiliate link, I just happen to love the product, and it's free!) Statcounter gives you details about where your traffic comes from, search words that were used and ip addresses. Usually, I just use it to make sure I still have traffic, but back in 2006, it came in handy when I began getting a lot of traffic from CBS in Los Angeles.

Eventually, all those goofy posts lead to my receiving this email:

You can click to embiggen, then use zoom in your browser. It may be easier to read.

After I read the email.. and changed my drawers because.. Good Gawd.. I called Roxie for a 10 minute pep talk. Once I got my anxiety ridden head together, this was before meds, I called Michael Naidus at CBS.

That's right. I picked up the phone and dialed up CBS studios just like I thought I was somebody.

The conversation was a bit weird.

First of all, this dude didn't seem to know the first thing about where I was from, what my blog was called or anything about me. If he'd been responsible for all that traffic from their offices, he would have at least had some basic knowledge about what I had written.

You would think, wouldn't you?

Another odd bit, I never said I was planning a visit to Las Vegas. I just said I'd love to be able to see Ferguson there. This all took place on my old blog, the one I had to delete because I stupidly shared it with Bubbles, who then distributed it to all EMS employees in the county.

Also, it just so happened that the post I'd written that morning was about TA and I taking a drive through Maggie Valley. During the conversation, this guy asked me where I lived. When I told him, he asked what it was near, so I explained how far it was to Big City, etc. Then he was all... "Is that anywhere near Maggie Valley? I was just there on vacation, we took a long drive through Cherokee.."

I'm sorry, but did his email not say he'd just read my blog? It was a huge coinkidink, if you believe in coinkidinks, seemingly happening to show me that this man was lying.

The Universe works in mysterious ways.

Throughout the conversation, during which I'll admit I was terminally starstruck, he asked how much I'd traveled, advised me on rental cars and shuttles, assured me that The Orleans was a safe hotel, and continued to coddle the country bumpkin he thought he was talking to. He also advised me that I couldn't mention it to anyone, because they didn't want a bunch of bloggers calling them for tickets.

Obviously, I no longer give two shits.

Before I continue, I feel the need to explain a few things. When I was contacted by the producer, I was extremely excited. Excited to the point that I drove Lulu crazy for weeks with "what ifs." I honestly thought this all had something to do with my writing. Maybe this was going to be like one of those rags to riches stories and I was fixin' to move to L.A. to write for television.

My need to get away from Ma and The Holler was intense at that time.

Sure, I was an idiot, with my pie in the sky assumptions, but never.. and I mean NEVER, did I ever think this was going to be some kind of booty call. I am a cosmetically challenged heifer, always have been, always will be, and by no stretch of the imagination did I ever think that I was going to show up at The Orleans and wow any Hollywood comedian into wanting a slice of my ample booty.

Sometime between receiving the email and going to Vegas, I bought Ferguson's book. This was about a month after my conversation with Naidus. I sent him email and asked if there would be any way possible to have my copy autographed. I had even suggested that perhaps I could leave it with a member of Ferguson's staff, then pick it up later. When he responded, he said, "I don't see any way that's going to happen," or something to that effect. I don't remember the exact phrase, but I do remember that it sounded kind of pissy.

Imagine my surprise when I walked through the lobby of The Orleans that weekend and saw a giant poster, advertising the BOOK SIGNING after the show.

From start to finish, this whole situation was full of WTFs.

Most of what I wrote about my trip to Vegas was true. The only difference, I think, being the experience at the ticket counter. There was no record of my name anywhere. After that long conversation with the producer, giving him all my information and remember, HE emailed ME, it wasn't like I was trying to get something for nothing, after my putting my one credit card on life support to get there and thinking my life was somehow going to change... nothing. The kid at the desk even compared me to a crazed Donny Osmond fan who'd tried to repeatedly sneak into one of his performances.

One of the managers left the office, then returned and asked for my driver's license. Now, my driver's license picture looked like Mama Cass with a hangover after a partying for three days. The LAST thing I wanted to do was hand it over to someone, other than a traffic cop. But I gave it to him and he wandered off with it. I imagined the Fergburger standing back there with his PA and Gawd knows who else, laughing their asses off over my ugly mug.

I wanted to give up, but I'd come all that way... and as Ferguson used to say, when opportunities arise, "Always show up."

The manager eventually returned and acted like he was doing me a favor by giving me a seat. Hell the theater was barely half full.

What a clusterfuck that weekend was.

Obviously the email had nothing to do with a future writing opportunity. I'm still not absolutely sure what the hell it was all about.

But whatever. We live and learn. It made for a great story.,

The blog hits kept coming, but I couldn't help being a little pissed off. I mean.. I can take a lot. Growing up the fat kid, you develop a thick skin. But if you embarrass me? I will smite you with the evil eye of a thousand Gypsy ancestors.

After that, I did become obsessed. Now, before I go any further, I know what I'm about to tell you sounds like crazy talk. It's actually a well known symptom of mental illness. I think the reason I WAS so obsessive was more to convince myself that I wasn't crazy, than to convince anyone else.

Okay, I am a nutbar, but not THAT flavor of crazy.

I knew that someone, presumably Ferguson, was reading my blog posts. I knew, because aside from the blog stats, if I mentioned granny panties in a post, he mentioned them in his monologue. Okay, not only granny panties, there were things repeated all the time, to the point that I started making TA read my blog and watch my taping of the show. I also drug one of my old chat buddies in to it, sending her screen shots of the Statcounter logs. She was a webmaster by profession, and helped me dig even deeper into the addresses.

I hadn't gone so deep, internet stalking someone, since the Lyin' Assed Canadian pissed me off.. and I haven't since.

Don't anger the fat chick. We have a whole 'nother level of crazy.

I don't have the actual screen shots of the stats anymore, they're saved on my old computer, but I do have the spreadsheets I created to sort the information. Following are links to them on Google Docs.

Statcounter Los Angeles 3/2006 through 10/15/206

Statcounter Los Angeles IP Sort 

Take a look, if you care about such things, and keep in mind the following tidbits:

Hits from CBS studios are from the office.
Hits from someone's home came from ID Rback30d.irvnca 
Ferguson, at the time, had a Mac computer.
While Ferguson was on vacation in Scotland, I received hits from Dundee.

There are a lot more details, but dang, that's enough for now.

So yeah, there was a lot of weird crap going on behind the scenes of that whole story. Crap I was DYING to write about.

Anywho... ya'll can draw your own conclusions. Let me know what you think. We'll talk again real soon.

Regards,

Shy Little Panda

Mad Stalker Skills and a Trip Down Memory Lane

It's about forty-ish in Frog Pond Holler today. My little corner is still covered with a layer of white, while everything is a lovely muddy brown across the road. 40° feels like a heat wave after the hellish cold that we had last week. I've got water, power and innerwebs. It's all good.

My drugs got here from India last week and as far as I can tell, they're the real deal. I ordered from safemeds4all.com  for those of you who might be faced with a similar situation. That's not a paid link, just sharing. I felt much better after a few days back on the C. I guess it took a while for it to build back up in my system. There's hope for this ol' nag after all.

The past week at work was rough, I get more quote requests than I can get to, but Kat's been awesome keeping up with returns and Thelma's been running interference on the phone. As much as I hate to admit it, they've been a lot of help.

I guess Twatwaffle could sense I was having a lousy one because she slipped me a bottle of homemade hooch the other day. One of the welders makes wine that'll make you wanna slap your grandma. It's a sipper. You feel that chit going down. Good stuff. Carlos supplies TW with a bottle with every new batch he whips up, but TW being the high falootin' snot she is, only drinks the stuff they brew over at the Biltmore House. She always quietly passes her Vino de Carlos to me after everyone else leaves.

I guess she's not ALL bad.

I took a drive by Mamaw's house on the way to the grocery store last night. We were out of everything and spending way too much money eating from the DG, so I forced myself to go. As I turned down the old road, down to the holler where Mamaw and Papaw's dairy farm once thrived, for a moment I could still hear the crunch of gravel beneath the tires. When I was little, we used to come down here for vacations and whenever someone died. It was always the middle of the night when we arrived and I was usually asleep in the back seat of our 1968 Plymouth Sport Fury. I could still feel the vinyl seat peel away from my cheek as I'd slowly sit up, hearing that crunch and Ma telling me to "sit up and gitcher shoes on." The car would slow to a crawl, the fog so thick you could barely see beyond the headlights. There was a tiny one room church on the right, with an outhouse a few feet up the bank. I used to tell Ma I was going to get married in that church, but it's since burned down. The outhouse was left standing for years, but it eventually toppled over and disappeared. I still remember exactly where it was though.

I crept up the road, the creek rushing by on the left side of the road, as it always has, and Cousin Miguel's house on the right, next to the old barn where I used to stand, horrified as I listened to my dad and my uncle inside "breaking" horses. I'd hear kicking and that awful scream horses make when they're terrified, the two men laughing and hollering, lashes delivered with an old rope. They used to brag about punching them in the face to teach them a lesson.

I hate that fucking barn.

The Fucking Barn
Originally it was built with rocks where cinder blocks are now.

Cousin Miguel keeps his derpy little horse there now, along with a few calves. I'm pretty sure he's raising them to sell to slaughter. I guess someone has to. Apparently the nut doesn't fall far from the tree because it was only about a year ago that Cousin Miguel lost his coaching job at the high school after having a "relationship" with one of the students.

A couple of weeks ago, the police scanner fired up with a call involving two children who'd dialed 911 while hiding in their bedroom. Their parents were divorced but Daddy had showed up and they were screaming and fighting. They said he'd threatened Mama with a knife.

Turns out it was Cousin Miguel.

Hen House
I'm pretty sure Cousin Miguel added the steer skull.

Next to Cousin Miguel's house, stood Mamaw's farm house. The last renters painted it pink for some ungodly reason, adding to the dilapidated state.

The Old Farm House

I could make it pretty again.

Across the road (and the creek) another house barely stands. My uncle lived there when he first got married. I used to sit at Mamaw's kitchen table and watch his horses on the hillside beside it. There's another old barn there too. I think it's still part of the property. The old bridge has seen better days, but we always drove across the creek anyway. Amazingly, that house's old outhouse still stands. You don't see many of those anymore. It amazes me how far the outhouses were from the house. I can barely make it to the bathroom on the other side of the trailer when nature calls in the wee hours of the morning. I can't imagine hiking through the weeds to pee. I guess that's why Ma always kept an old paint can in the hallway at night when we stayed at Mamaw's house. She did eventually get indoor plumbing, but I can remember when she still had an outdoor potty.

Uncle Mike's Old House
You can see the bridge in the background on the right and the trench where we drove across the creek.

When I was about 13, I spent a couple of summer weeks with Mamaw. This strange old lady with long white hair, layered skirts and work boots came to visit. It was one of Mamaw's sisters who'd moved in to my uncles old house. At 13 I was all angsty and uninterested. I kick myself now.

The Hillside Across the Creek
I used to spend hours on the front porch watching Uncle Mike's horses grazing. If  you look closely, you can see the other old barn, on the far right kind of in the background. It's a few yards behind the old house Uncle Mike lived in.

As I drove by, I got to thinking. There's plenty of flat land beside the old house across the creek. There's an old barn. There's pasture.. access to the creek. If ya know.. unfortunate things happen to my dad and I become part owner of the property, I could move my trailer beside the old house. It's almost paid for. I'd have to get a septic tank dug and get power lines run over there... No one's using that part of the land for anything...

Just a thought.

Anywho... well THAT turned in to a long rambling trip down memory lane.

I'm more wore out from grocery shopping than I should be and I'm nursing a headache.. sinus/allergy junk. I got up this morning and drug about half the unnecessary bullcrap out of the cabinets, so I've got that to finish when the ibuprofen kicks in. Laundry's piled up to heavens gate and I'm still drinking coffee out of a Styrofoam cup, so there are dishes to wash. My weekend is planned. At least I've got everything I need, I won't have to venture out in to public and I'm moving around better than I have since Christmas.

It's all good.

Ya'll have an awesome weekend. We'll talk again soon.

Later Taters!!!!!

P.S. All photos are courtesy of Google Earth and my mad stalker skills. My dad lives somewhere down in that holler and I'm pretty sure if Cousin Miguel saw a strange old fat lady stopped in the road taking pictures I'd meet the business end of a shotgun. 

It Can Never Be Real If They Never See Your Face

I'm in a funk. I need to vent, but there's no one to talk to, no one I can dump it all on, yet I feel perfectly comfortable baring my soul to the entirety of the innerwebs.. so here goes:

So, there was this man. It always starts that way doesn't it?

Anywho...

I met him a few years ago, sort of, in Second Life, a virtual world where I was beautiful and brave. He sang in pixelated nightclubs, mimicking Sinatra, Buble, rat packy cool with snapping fingers and witty chatter between songs, all broadcast from his tiny home office in a spare bedroom in his Dallas home.

We got to know each other over time and eventually became a "thing." He sent me an email every morning, we talked about his kids, his wife (yes, wife,) our jobs, our moms.. everything. At night, we'd meet in that other world, he'd call me his kitten and make me feel loved.

It went on for three years. His was the shoulder I'd cry on when Ma would go nuts, when Bossholio was being a jerk face, when the truck ran out of gas and when I had horrible revelations in therapy. I'd send him a text and he was there, even though we never really met. As long as I had my phone, I knew I wasn't alone. He vented to me when his daughter moved back home, bringing his new grandson with her, when they called from his mother's nursing home and when his sweet little dog passed away.

That first winter, we had a horrible snow storm in the holler. The power was out for days. When it really started getting to me, being cut off from everyone, all the batteries going dead, running out of lamp oil and Ma having a crazy spell, he sent me texts that night, making up a story as he went, keeping my mind occupied until I fell asleep. No one had ever treated me like he did.

I told myself that it was okay that he was married, I was providing something in his life that she couldn't. I knew, with my warped and broken past, I could never be everything to anyone. This was all I could provide.   Which, looking back, I realize is the same bullshit I've fed myself over the years whenever I get involved with someone who belongs to someone else.

I'm never The One. I've always been The Other One.

My therapist pointed out that it probably goes back to my childhood. I associated relationships with men with secrets, lies.. don't tell anyone, they wouldn't understand.. blah blah blah.

Our second Christmas, I made him a card with my picture. My real picture. I was over confident, thought everything else would over ride my hideous face. I spent an entire Saturday in the RV taking pictures of myself, something I never do, trying to get an angle that didn't make me look like a nasty old hag. I nearly had a full blown anxiety attack when he accepted it.

He was kind about it, but things changed. The following year was spent with my trying desperately to hang on to something that wasn't there anymore. He started acting distant, our conversations got weird, a result of his trying to keep up a conversation with someone else at the same time. He'd type in the wrong window, answering someone else's questions when he was talking to me.

It was Santino (without the Mafia bullshit) all over again.

I looked the other way, pretended not to notice. Deep down I knew what did it. The picture. The face. It happens every time.

Maybe it was his insecurity that made him back away. Maybe it was his fear that I'd insist he share the same. He didn't know I have mad stalking skills (if you knew me back in the dolphie days, you understand.) He didn't know that just a couple of months after we met, I'd found his daughter's MySpace page, I'd seen pictures of his whole family, including his much-prettier-than-me wife, taken at his beautiful girl's wedding. I'd seen his twinkling eyes, his smile, his receding hairline and his pudgy tummy. I'd already seen him in a kilt and combat boots, taken at an Irish fest and shoving a piece of cake in his mouth.

It was then that I really fell for him.

The last time I heard from him was December 29th. I never answered the email. I figured.. he'll think about it and he'll miss me. He'll realize that behind my hideous face, my disgusting body, was still the person he'd said he loved.

But I've not heard a world. I thought maybe he'd wonder how I was, visit hiddenmahala. I watched my Statcounter for hits from his isp.

Nothing.

I don't know why now, nearly five months later, it's finally hit me. It's the first time I've cried. I feel stupid, embarrassed and ridiculous. I miss listening to him sing, turning the computer speakers up all the way, catterwallin' along while I work on jewelry. Maybe it's because it seems like everything keeps breaking, the sewer line messing up, the tv cut off.. you know.. life.. and there's no one to tell.

I dunno.

I haven't been back to the virtual world. I've considered deleting my account.

I know what some of ya'll are thinking. I should have known. Shouldn't have been chasing a married man to begin with. It's wrong. I got what I deserve. And maybe you're right.

Later Taters.

High School and A Drama Queen in Training

After much anticipation, the big Frog Pond Holler hiker extravaganza was a wash.

Literally.

It came a gullywasher of a storm and rained through alot of the activities. The weather didn't keep the hikers away though, the one time I ventured out towards town, the sidewalks were wall-to-wall covered with drippy, hairy people. I didn't attempt to get out of the truck and take any pictures. I just can't rock the wet t-shirt look like I once could.

Did you catch the Barbara Streisand concert on the boob tube last night? I know.. I'm usually going on and on about spandex clad, eyeliner wearing headbangers, but I have an appreciation for show tunes too. When she sang "Memories" I was immediately taken back to the 9th grade, when I massacred the hell out of sang a watered down version for my chorus class audition at Maury High School.

I didn't get very far into my rendition before the chorus director cut me off, having determined that he knew everything he needed to know about my singing ability.. or lack thereof.

"But Mahala," I hear you ask (because publicly acknowledging the voices in my head could be dangerous,) "I thought you said you went to Booker T. Washington High School?"

Well, yes but after my private school career came to an end, I first attended Maury and was asked to transfer to Booker T after one semester. Apparently my class skipping, bathroom smoking, armed security guard harassing skizzles weren't the lessons they had in mind for me and the powers that be decided I'd be better off at a rougher school, with more armed guards and regular city police patrols.

Anywho...

So I sat in the dark and watched Miss Streisand, whose voice is still amazing, and remembered those days. Ma was working as an office manager at the small Roses store on 21st Street in downtown Norfolk. The drama professor from Old Dominion University would shop there for props and clothing for costumes whenever there was a new play opening and he'd have to see Ma for all the tax exempt form.. thingies. Ma was a little sweet on the drama professor, newly divorced and finding her inner wild child.. she'd bat her eyes and fawn and eventually it became a regular occurrence for him to get us tickets to every new production.

Ma always amazed me with her ability to use her baby blues to get just about anything. It must not be hereditary because on the few occasions I've tried it, I just end up looking stupid.. or offered a bottle of Visine.

The university theater was just off campus downtown, not far from Roses. During a time when we'd gone from "comfortable" to dirt poor, seemingly over night, proudly announcing we were on the guest list before moving through the ornate theater doors made me feel almost normal again.

I must have been around 14, trying desperately to be one of the cool kids, while hopelessly trapped in eternal dorkatude. Walking through those doors transported me to another time with the aroma of fresh, hot popcorn served in tiny paper bags, red carpet, velvet ropes and thick, heavy hanging drapes with gold tassels. Like much of the downtown area, the decor had a strong art deco influence with rich, black marble tile. I remember telling Ma that the bathroom was real fancy.. it even had a chair where you could sit to powder your nose.

After I moved to Booker T. and had been there for nearly an entire school year, someone somewhere realized that something must be wrong for me to have gone from being a lifelong honor student, band geek, basketball player and student council member to one who spent an entire semester in in-school suspension and on the rare occasion that I did show up for class, I was chemically altered in some way.

Gee.. ya think?

So anyway, whoever that was, teacher, councilor.. I'm not sure.. started getting me tested, pushing me to get involved in things and eventually lead me to the office of Hugh Copeland, the head of the Booker T drama department.

I ended up taking some drama classes which only drove the final nail in any hopes of a show biz career in my lifetime. I so sucked. I was fabulous backstage, but the second I walked out on stage in front of the class, I could barely spit, mumble and spew my own name. But Mr. Copeland found me something to do, he allowed me to run the tape player at the next big production. It was such a small thing, but when I told all my slacker, druggie friends, you would have thought I was directing the entire production.

I was a proud puppy.

Eventually, my fascination with musicals and theater came full circle when, after I had finally given up and dropped out of high school, I saw an article in the paper that Hugh Copeland would be starring as George M. Cohan with the ODU theater group's production of "Yankee Doodle Dandy."

I tried to hide the tears that rolled quietly down my cheeks as I sat in the theater for the last time. I wanted to be a part of the glitter, the beautiful music, the rousing applause. Ma wasn't with me that time, by then she'd taken up drinking and carousing most weekends and I didn't see her much. I'd dropped out of high school, working at a department store during the week and trying to keep Ma's latest too young, too drunk boyfriends from "accidentally" sneaking in to my bedroom in the middle of the night.

Isn't it funny how many memories can be churned up just by sitting in the dark, watching Barbara Streisand on television in a tiny trailer, in a tiny town, in the middle of nowhere, 30 years later?

Eventually, the Amazon came wandering in to the room, griped at me for sitting in the dark and turned the lamp on. As Barbara spoke of "Romeo and Juliet" and how hatred can cause such tragedy, the Amazon said, "Well, love didn't work out so great for Romeo and Juliet. They both ended up dead. And besides... Romeo was really in love with someone else and.."

I interrupted, "Do you mind? I'm watching this."

"I'm just sayin'..." she continued. She went on for a couple minutes about the real meaning behind the play and on and on... and I smiled. I thought.. she's a pretty good kid. Maybe it wasn't all for nothing. Maybe.. I have done something right.

Everything happens for a reason.

Ya'll have a good week.

Later Taters!

Around Town and Around the Trailer

My visit to the eye doctor at the Big City mall was chock full of surprises. First, one would assume that a walk-in optometrist office situated in the mall, adjacent to a large vision correction chain store would be wall-to-wall people on a Saturday afternoon. When I commented to the staff that I was surprised at how I barely had to wait at all, the sweet little girl behind the counter said, "Hmmm, yes it is strange. We've been crazy busy all day. You had perfect timing, an unusual Saturday for sure."

I would go in to how that statement verified what I already knew had been a two day lesson in synchronicity, but I don't want to cause a snoozefest with the details. Just take my word that sometimes, life is a wondrous thing.

As for the actual visit, I went in expecting to hear what I've always been told by eye doctors, that my vision is passable, that a weak prescription would be helpful while driving or watching t.v. and maybe to ease computer eye strain. Sure.. I know as you get older, things tend to go downhill a bit, but when the good doc smiled and told me I could use bifocals I nearly fell out of the chair.

I reckon going 15 years between eye exams isn't an advisable thing to do.

He said I could get by with the distance adjusting prescription for maybe another year, but he was confident I wouldn't make it any longer than that. He wrote it both ways, I got the "so I won't see monkeys while driving" glasses for now, but I can go back and get the "pass me the Geritol and pull up a rocker" set with the same prescription. He said it like... when I'm ready to accept the fact that I can't see and need them.

I'm seriously reconsidering my decision to stop coloring my hair. Suddenly I'm not feeling so spry and perky.

I know.. I should stop whining. Most of my family have had to wear corrective lenses since childhood and one or two cousins have had to endure eye surgery when they were just wee little things. I'm just a little surprised is all.

I got the $99 frames, but I'm not going to say how much I ended up walking out of there spending. When I discovered that these weren't going to be "once in a while" glasses, I splurged a little and got something I could live with long term.

Thank goodness for tax refunds.

Enough of my whining, in other news...

The big news around town is the deconstruction of the pub. Ya'll may remember that the pub owner died in a car accident, coming back from Big City on election night. There's been alot of assumptions and speculation about what was going to happen to the property, the building has stood for a long, long time. I can remember walking back through town from the old movie theater with Ma, after seeing "The Frogs" and having to leave in the middle 'cuz Ma got freaked out. We stopped at the cafe that used to be housed in the same building where the pub later opened for business.

I was six years old at the time and had already developed an unrestrained mouth. I announced to the entire cafe that we had to leave 'cuz Ma got scared, leading to roars of laughter and the first of many firm talking tos on learning not to be quite so quick to share information with the masses.

I've never really gotten the hang of that.

Anywho... the old building is being torn down and rebuilt, but because it sits in a flood plain, it's taking some redneck ingenuity to git r' done. According to town gossip, if the whole structure ever comes down, it can't be rebuilt, so rumor has it that the new owners are taking down the roof and three walls and rebuilding them before replacing the remaining wall, effectively tiptoeing all around the whole "flood plain" problem.

That's how we roll down here in the holler.

Here around the trailer...

Me and the Amazon have decided to have a veggie garden this year. Ya'll may remember last year when we attempted to grow some stuff in containers. After buying pots, potting soil and seeds, that little investment ended up yielding one, tiny, premie lookin' cucumber... which we fed to the wild bunnies.

Not to be out done, this year we're having a big chunk of the yard tilled up, where we'll attempt to grow something edible. I'm hoping that by putting the garden in the same spot where Granny used to have hers, there might be a little spiritual intervention, maybe a little ancestral nudge, to help things along.

I'll take any help I can get.



This is the future home of the garden project. I'll keep ya'll posted on the progress. If I never mention it again, you'll know it turned in to a giant clusterfuck.

I have to admit, I'm almost as excited to get the ground tilled up as I am to attempt to grow a garden. The area you see is also the area where our most treasured ancient tribal artifact was found, a large, arrowhead shaped tool, first thought to be a dirt clod. I have a few odds and ends I've picked up around the yard and I'm positively giddy at the thoughts of getting in there with a hoe and playing archaeologist.

Yes, I'm weird. Just accept it.

I guess that's all for today. If you need me, I'll be walking around the house admiring all the newly discovered cobwebs and dustbunnies.

The house seemed alot cleaner when it was all a blur.

Ya'll enjoy your day and I'll be back when I can grab a minute or two in my suddenly, hectic schedule.

Later Taters!

Gypsies, Goats and Drama Llamas

Before I begin, I need to thank Marilyn over at The Parks Farm for this award:


I loves me some barnyard critters and coincidentally, the Amazon has suddenly decided she's going to buy a farm and raise goats and chickens, so I see this as a sign from the Universe that I need buy some mud boots and a straw hat.

I could totally rock that look.

In lieu of picking five funny blogs from my list, I encourage all ya'll to browse the sidebar linky list and check out a few... cuz seriously... some of ya'll need to take your act on the road.

And now... on to my senseless blather...

Back when I was barely a teenager, my first taste of real responsibility came when I was offered the job of babysitting my Aunt Rhonda's two girls on Saturday nights. She was the younger, cooler, married-into-the-family aunt, the one who supplemented her waitress job by belly dancing at parties and Parents Without Partners events. She waited tables at the Thalheimers department store restaurant, The Sword and Kilt where.. oddly.. she had to dress as a serving wench, complete with little white bonnet and laced up blouse.. to show off her bosoms... which she was seriously lacking. Now that I think about it, Aunt Rhonda always seemed to be dressed up in some kind of costume.

Anywho.. Aunt Rhonda had that new, wondrous entertainment luxury: cable television. I think we were the last people in the city of Norfolk to get cable, Ma just couldn't wrap her head around having to pay for t.v. I quickly began to look forward to those Saturday nights alone, unsupervised, with HBO and... nekkidness! (and an unprotected cabinet over flowing with liquor, but that's a story for another day.)

I've never forgotten the very first R rated movie I watched on her big, color t.v., with the lights off and a glass of something I wasn't supposed to be drinking. It was "King of the Gypsies," released in 1978, staring Eric Roberts with Brooke Shields, Susan Sarandon, Shelley Winters and just GOBS of other huge stars. I loved that movie and developed a whopper of a crush on Eric Roberts.

My favorite scenes are at the beginning, with dancing in tents, swirling skirts in jewel tones to mandolins and violins... I love that stuff.

I never saw the movie again but I always kept an eye out for it. I don't think it ever came on t.v. and I'm pretty sure no one ever mentioned it. Then... when the Amazon got Netflix, I asked her to look it up. It arrived in our mailbox the other day. I came straight home from work and we sat down to watch it together.

And I still love it.

Ah well.. I'm so glad this week is almost over. I'm fighting the good fight here at the Asylum, trying to keep my fingers in my ears and my head down. We've gotten to the point where the floozy who owns the Grab n' Go (and go and go) is calling up here trying to find out who's getting laid off so she can collect what they owe her and Thelma is blatantly making up shit to tell her, which is getting all over town and putting a wad in everyone's Fruit of the Looms.

Also, it doesn't seem to matter how many times a day I kindly mention to Lulu that I'd really just rather be left out of the loop when the rumors start flying, I was trying to keep a positive outlook, stir up some new business and have faith, she still calls me the minute she hits the door and tells me everything that was said by the gossip mongers across the hall the day before, after I leave for the day.

This morning, after thirty minutes of her talking as hard and as fast as she could, I sort of rudely changed the subject, eventually ending the call, only to have her come over to my cube, lay the daily report on my desk (a report that I RAN by the way.. I already knew what it said) and proceed to tell me how low the numbers were, etc.

Funny how I'm the only one in this whole place that doesn't go to church, yet it seems like I'm the only one trying to hold on to a thread of faith. Maybe I should jump on the bandwagon and go spreading gloom and doom up and down the hall. Is that what they're preachin' these days?

Hmph. It's going to get to a point where I'm going to have to piss people off in order for them to understand that I don't want to follow the herd and wallow in self pity. If that's what it takes, that's what's going to happen.

I'm tired of everyone trying to fart on my happy place.

So there.

It's almost Friday ya'll. Hang in there. We've almost got this one licked.

Later Taters!

Eddie Izzard & Graham Norton: When Baboons Attack

After about an hour of walking around looking at crafts and being screamed at from across the fairgrounds by greasy, snaggle toothed carnies the Amazon and I got bored at the big Hee-Haw county fair. By the time Preacher Bob jumped in front of me for the third time, trying to save my soul, waving his pretty little pink copies of the New Testament in my face, I'd decided I needed to get home anyway.

County fair or not, Eddie Izzard was going to be on The Graham Norton Show at ten and I needed to get situated in front of the boob tube.

I have my priorities.

Of course it was hilarious.. with Izzard and Norton (and Harry Shearer) how could it be anything else? Somehow though.. the conversation turned to the evilness of baboons. Apparently Norton witnessed some sort of chaotic picnic lunch devastation by a wild baboon while vacationing amongst the wild things (Dude.. seriously? Next time.. just go to Miami.. or come back to Dollywood, we'll do lunch.)

When a disagreement erupted between Izzard and Norton over whether or not baboons were consciously, deceptively evil or perhaps, simply wanting a nice picnic lunch, the Amazon and I both laughed so hard we had tears streaming down our cheeks.

You see, the Amazon and I often have the same argument. It all stemmed from an incident at the zoo, one I wrote about a couple of years ago on my old blog.

Here's a re-post of the incident:

"Tuesday, March 08, 2005

The Girl Child and the Angry Baboon

I took a vacation day Friday to go gather the Girl Child from college. I left early Friday morning, picked her up around noonish and took a side trip to the zoo. Anyone who's read my posts in the past understands that I'm a critter freak. I love zoos, I even worked as a volunteer at the zoo back home when I was thirteen. I guess I should make myself clear, I don't love all zoos. There are some pretty crappy ones out there, especially the roadside monstrosities with big animals in tiny cages pacing and panting. I have a problem with circus' as well, I stopped going to them years ago.

Sorry, didn't mean to go off on an animal rights rant. Back to the story.

The Girl Child and I started off in the "North America" exhibit, making a bee line for the polar bears. Seems we got there just in time for their afternoon nap, huge hairy critters sprawled out on rocks looking like a bunch of frat brothers on the morning after an endless night of chemically altering their consciousness and assorted acrobatic mating rituals.

We moved on to the other exhibits, which were spaced kinda far apart. The African section of the park was really nice. There was this huge dome.. thing, that you walked through which had inside and outside areas for some of the animals on display. Most of the baboons had gone inside where it was warmer and there was a sort of deck area outside where you could get a much better view. The Girl Child and I ventured outside away from the small crowd and watched the baboon "children" rough housing and pushing each other off of rocks and trying to get their mother to put the baby down and pay attention to them instead. Every once in a while the big male baboon would run over and try to establish order over the youngsters, mostly ignored, kinda like human parents.

At one point the big male looked over at us standing on the deck and came bounding over towards us. He sat down close to the glass right in front of the Girl Child. We were like.. awwwww.. a Jane Goodall moment!! She sat down on the deck in front of him and he reached forward and grabbed his toes and rocked back and forth on his lil baboon butt.. lookin' all cute. Then he pushed his nose against the glass and made faces at her, it was so cool.

I was half expecting him to start doin' something perverted, because it's been my experience that all male primates seem to do that if you get too close.. again.. much like humans.

Then.. suddenly..he jumps up making that psycho-rabid "I'm gonna eat your eyeballs" kinda face...smackin' the shit out of the glass, screeching like the soundtrack of a bad Tarzan remake. I do believe the Girl Child came closer to crapping her pants than she has since her Pampers days. Of course, all of the zoo patrons inside the dome thingie watching us, were pointing and laughing hysterically. I was laughing pretty hard myself.

I should make the Girl Child a nice t-shirt with a baboon on the front. Or a pillow for her bed.. yeah that's it. I'm so not going to let her live this one down."

And.. I haven't. She still gets this look of sheer terror on her face whenever someone mentions baboons.. the exact same look Graham Norton had as he told the tale of his primate encounter.

Personally I think the poor things are just misunderstood and appreciate a nice picnic.

I hope ya'll are enjoying your weekend. We'll talk again soon.

Later Taters!

Short, Sticky People Invade and Using the Past to Live the Present

Ohhhh I can't wait until I make enough money to pay off this trailer and move far, far away. My trashy, big boobed, lazy eyed cousin's youngin is here, running in and out the door every whipstitch, leaving me to drop everything and corral dogs at everyone else's whim.

I want to live alone. Away from all my relatives. I don't care how hateful it makes me sound, that's what I want.

I'd want the Amazon to come with me, but she probably wouldn't.

Moving on...

I was originally scheduled to be off tomorrow. I get paid for the holiday anyway, so I was going to have to take an extra day off, but Bossman approached me Friday and said, "Bubbles is coming in for four hours today because I need her to work on something, so in order to keep everything "fair" (he actually did finger air quotes and rolled his eyes while saying "fair") I'm offering you the option of working four hours on Tuesday."

I told him I would, that I'd work any hours he'd let me. I'll go in tomorrow morning and work 'til lunch. He repeated, with finger air quotes and eye roll, "Well we just have to make sure we keep everything "fair."

I don't know what's brought this whole "fairness" thing on, I haven't said a word. I've been trying, and by the way, it ain't easy folks, to keep my head down and mind my own business. Bubbles and I are the only two people in the sales department, so I'm assuming she's been complaining again. It probably happened when I did those three days out on the floor for that Super Samauri, Spaghetti Monster thingie, the "training meetings" that I agreed to in order to get forty hours, which turned out to be machine maintenance in 100° heat. She probably went to him and informed him that it wasn't fair for me to get to work a whole week when she wasn't. I suspect this because Louise, a double agent type friend of Bubbles, cornered Lulu and interrogated her the whole time I was working out on the floor. I'm certain that Bubbles put her up to it.

I'll know for sure tomorrow. If that's the case, she'll be super pissy when she sees me in the morning.

Saran Wrap ain't got nothing on her when it comes to transparency.

I'll get there first (she's always late) so she'll see Jolene (my truck) sitting in the parking lot. If she's addled, she'll sashay in the door with that mouth going wide open. That's how she responds to any and all stressors. She'll hoot and holler and put the Shirley Temple-esque voice on, dripping arsenic laced honey up and down the hall. She'll be waiting for Louise (who is also always late) so that she can give her an earful about my being there. I mean.. how dare Bossman let me have four hours just because he let her!

She will have almost calmed down by her lunch break at 11:30, but she'll get pissed off all over again when she returns from lunch at 12:30, enjoying being there alone for an hour, then realizing I'm not coming back.

Oh yes.. victory is sweet.

In other news..

I've been venturing out in to internet advertising for Twistedmare, starting small with a $10 investment and playing around with it to see what happens. The other day, I dug out all the papers from the small business management course I took at the vocational college a few years ago and went through them. It reminded me of when I was at Booker T. Washington high school, in a special program for "problem" students, after I did an entire semester of in school suspension. Yes.. I was a problem child. The program was to expose us to different types of business opportunities, to try to get us excited about something besides being in trouble.

I remembered that I aced the marketing part of that class.

I was in Junior Achievement too at some point. We glued baby blocks to picture frames and sold them. I was in charge of the advertising/marketing part of that class too.

Maybe all those seemingly unrelated events in my past were actually preparing me for right now. If you believe, as I do, that everything happens for a reason, it would make sense. Maybe that explanation is a little too "head in the clouds" for practicality, but it sounds good to me.

Wait.. do you hear that? "Maaaaaaaaaahaaaaaaalaaaa... "

That's the sound of laundry calling my name. I'd better get to it.

Ya'll enjoy your holiday. If you're working today, take it easy when the boss isn't looking. You deserve it. If you get caught, tell them to see me.

Later Taters!

When Mahala Loved Rick

Dinner was a little later than usual tonight. It would have been done on time, but I was distracted watching Def Leppard on "Live at Abbey Road." It was the third time I've watched it this week... and I've cried every time.

When the Amazon was a tiny baby and I was still a kid myself, I struggled.. straddling that line between motherhood and hard partying headbanger. It was a period in my life when I felt so emotionally misplaced and alone. I didn't have a job or a car so I spent most of my days at home, passing the time sitting in the floor with crossword puzzle books I'd bought at the dime store and looking up anything I didn't know in our worn, old encyclopedias.

I was Googling before Google existed.

It was the heyday of MTV, when hair metal ruled the scene and boys with long perms and eyeliner were every girls dream. I had a huge crush on Rick Savage, the bass player for Def Leppard. Back then I had one friend, a girl who worked for Ma down at the Family Dollar. A girl Ma had said had an "attitude problem."

Me and Deneene became friends right away.

Deneene wasn't into the headbanging scene, but I lead her down the Aquanet path, introducing her to the wonders of torn net tanks and black lace pantyhose. It wasn't long before I'd turned her on to my favorite addiction... Def Leppard.

Deneene fell hard, she had the hots for both Steve and Joe. We talked about "them" all the time, we lived and breathed Joe, Rick and the boys.

Sometimes, fantasy is the only way you can deal with your reality.

See, back then Ma was dating a violent drunkard who would show up all hours of the night. I lived in constant fear of him. She was working two jobs, but the lights kept getting cut off and the rent was always late. I was getting welfare, all my aunts and uncles, who used to treat me like a little princess, now looked down their crooked noses at me, at the filth I'd become.

My life sucked.

But no one could see inside my head. It was safe there. I'd learned from an early age how to escape to that place where no one could touch me, hurt me. To get by, I obsessed about this band, these guys from far off places with beautiful accents and used it to survive.

So now when I watch them perform, totally oblivious to me and my life back then, I can't help but shed a tear or two... because I don't know how I would have gotten through those years if I hadn't had those silly childhood fantasies to focus on.

For that I am grateful.

Me and Deneene had some good times back then. Once, when we found out that Def Leppard was recording in Denmark, I found the name of the recording studio in one of those teen magazines. I called information, got the phone number, then me and Deneene loaded the Amazon in her stroller, walked down to the pay phone and called the recording studio.. person to person collect to Joe Elliot.

Oh I had the cajones of a redneck at a Monster Truck Rally back in the day.

My plan didn't work, but you have to admit, I was pretty effin' crafty. We didn't have the internet back then, there was no Google Earth or MySpace, you had to have actual skills to stalk productively.

There was also the night we went to see the boys in concert, then hung out at the hotel bar where we thought they'd be staying until we got totally shit faced, climbing on the elevator and going up on every floor, with the bright idea that we'd quietly listen at each door until we heard English accents.

That plan didn't work either. An over achieving security guard escorted us out when we'd only made it to the fifth floor. The whole, elaborate escapade would have stood a much better chance if we'd at least been at the right hotel.

Deneene and I lost touch shortly after I moved to Chattanooga. She and her mother helped me escape from an abusive boyfriend when living in a car became more than I could handle and put me on a bus to Tennessee. I've tried to hunt her down, the last I heard she was living in Memphis. If ya'll happen to run into Deneene White, tell her I said hi.

Anywho.. the picture at the head of this post was taken at a Def Leppard concert in Richmond, Virginia, around 1988. I took it with a cheap little drug store camera and had it enlarged. It hung in my cubicle at the asylum until a few years ago when I started to feel like I was too old to be hanging pictures of headbanging bass players on the wall.

I watched Def Leppard perform on "Live at Abbey Road" tonight and although I noticed they were a little older and maybe didn't move quite as fast, that quickly passed and all I could see were the faces that got me through a really shitty time in my life. I remembered how Deneene and I mourned Steve's passing, how shattered we were over Rick Allen's accident, worrying about the future of the band.

And they never even knew.

Weird huh?

On that note, I'm going to find something to do. Maybe dust off some old cassettes and remember how things used to be.

Ya'll have a good one.

Later Taters!

Real Men Wear Eyeliner

There wasn't alot of activity in the ol' trailer this weekend. It's mid June in the south and single wide mobile homes are about as cool as the inside of a baked tater wrapped in aluminum foil.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that we had access to all the movie channels on Direct TV this weekend, so while I worked on Twisted Mare, I was able to catch a few movies I'd not seen before, like Ocean's 12 and 13. In addition to the movie channels, we had all the other channels that aren't normally included in our programing package, including VH1 Classic.

Oh lawsy.. the drippy eyeliner.. the pouty lips.. the sweaty spandexed goodness.. and that's just the men!

I spent the better part of Saturday watching old videos from those days I fondly refer to as "back when I had a life." There was one band, Apprentiss (you had to misspell band names in the eighties, there was a law.. or somechit,) that I used to go see every time they played the tiny, hole-in-the-wall bar down by the Ocean View strip. Bryan Davids was the kind of bar where everyone was welcome, bikers, sailors and strippers on break from their dancing job at the Pirate's Cove just across the street. The Pirate's Cove was well known by the ladies who hung out at BD's for their nickel draft specials, an attempt to attract more T and A through the doors. It didn't work, we'd run over there and get loaded on a dollar while the band was on break, then stagger back through traffic to BD's for more head banging goodness.

One of the waitresses at BD's used to have a little "gathering" at her apartment whenever Apprentiss came to town. These little parties always took place after closing when most of us already had a few hours of drinking under our belt. I was usually pretty well on my way to trashed by the time we got there, where I'd spend most of the evening standing in the corner of the kitchen gazing at the "oh-my-damness" of the lead guitarist.

Tall, not too thin, long, curly black hair and eyes that twinkled in that come hither way when he was just starting to get a buzz. He usually wore black leather pants, the requisite 80's studded belt and open chested shirts with long, poofy poets sleeves. Oh and he could make a guitar do anything.

I devised a plan, back in the day, to find out as much as I could about the guitarist. I borrowed my cousin's 35mm Canon and told the boys in the band that I was doing a freelance article for a local rag that focused on the music scene. None of it was true.. but I was on a mission.

Just for the record, I still have the mad stalking skizzles, I just choose to use my powers for good now.

Heh.

Anywho, somewhere in my closet there's a an envelope filled with pictures of Apprentiss, along with Polaroids with their full names listed on each one. Before I knew, I imagined his name was like.. Blackie or Rock.. something tough and uber rocker like. I was only momentarily disapointed when I learned that the rocker o' my dreams was named Larry Cunningham.

But.. that was ages ago and although my tastes may have matured... just a smidge.. there's still something about a man in eyeliner that makes my heart skip a half a beat.

P.S. You ask, Mahala delivers!! Designs featuring original photography at Twisted Mare are now available on t-shirts and active wear.

Banjo Pickers, Bluegrass and Gorilla Suits

Since the day he started here at the Cubicle Asylum, I've had a hard time learning to "read" Bossman. He doesn't often show positive emotion and on the rare occasion that you can get him to crack a smile, it seems forced. Often I've felt as though he laughs at my desperate attempts at humor in hopes that I'll just go away and leave him be.

Because of his usual lack of merriment, I was a little shocked yesterday when he confided that he'd always wanted a gorilla suit, to rent a spotlight and to play the banjo.

No.. really.

It started when I threatened offered to sing to him, which lead to his fleeing down the hallway at a pace not previously witnessed. Who knew he could move that fast?

When cornered, he admitted he had no desire at all to hear me sing, but if I could play the banjo, by gawd he'd be impressed. This lead to my admission to having taken banjo lessons as a child, which then lead to a small crowd forming to hear the story. No one could believe that the Ozzy lovin', Def Leppard stalkin' head banger once spent her Saturday afternoons a pickin' and a grinnin.'

They oooed and ahhhed when they learned that I once knew how to play "Cripple Creek" and "Dueling Banjos." I went on to add that I'd taken guitar lessons, piano lessons and that I'd been a trumpet toting band geek, second chair thankyouverymuch. The two years I'd spent in the middle school chorus didn't suprise them, but when they discovered that I'd sang in a church choir, even given a solo performance or two, there was some serious shock and awe.

Ya'll know they consider me to be the flaming heathern of Frog Pond Holler.

Nowadays I can barely play a radio. I still haven't figured out how to program the pre-set buttons on the one in Jolene. My phone doubles as an MP3 player, but I don't have any music on it.

But I still sing.

I can be heard a catterwallin' for miles and miles when I take Jolene (that's my truck, just to clarify for the newcomers) out for a drive across the mountain. There's such a sense of freedom to riding fast with the windows down, singing at the top of your lungs. It's usually rock that I'm torturing the hell out of, but occcasionally you'll hear me wailing along with Loretta Lynn or The Carter Family, because as much as I hate to admit it sometimes, those are the songs that are a part of me. Sort of like the relatives you don't spend much time with, but still hold dear.

Ya'll have a good one.

Later Taters.

Why Peter Frampton was Never the Same to Me (Remix)

The following is a repost from my old, recently deleted blog. There were a handful of posts there that I couldn't bear to lose, so I'm reviving a few of them here.

One life changing day when I was in high school, my friend Trisha and I decided to walk home to my house for some lunch. Trish told her boyfriend where she was going and off we went. Walking home meant following the railroad tracks from the inner city area of downtown Norfolk, Virginia, behind the pool halls, through the middle of the housing projects, the kind of place you'd half expect to find a body or two tossed in the ditch. Being the young (and looking back, seriously ignorant) teenaged girls that we were, we set out on our journey. The tracks we followed were strewn with MD 20/20 bottles, the occasional shoe and from time to time we crossed the path of a few of those whopper sized wharf rats. To us, these things were common place, nothing to be concerned about. It wasn't a short trip, we hoofed it for a good 40 minutes before we found ourselves in my neighborhood.

We approached my block slowly, being careful to not be seen by a nosey neighbor who might tell Ma they'd seen us there during school hours. My aunt Gail and her family lived in the house directly across the street from us, but I knew they would all be at work. After the divorce and looking for a way to make the house payment, Ma had had the upstairs renovated to accommodate two borders. The people who rented the rooms upstairs had a separate entrance through the back, which we could block off by locking the door between the dining room and the kitchen. The neighbors were accustomed to seeing people walk around to the back of the house, so Trish went in the back and I went through the front, thinking it would be less suspicious. In retrospect, I realize how stupid we must have looked to anyone watching.

We settled in front of the t.v., pigging out on instant mac and cheese and watching soaps, when there was a knock at the front door. I peeked out the curtain sheer which covered the door and saw four more of my friends, Linda, her boyfriend Kenny, our friend Mike and his brother Nicky. It seems Trisha's boyfriend had told his buddy Mike that we were there. Unlike us, they'd driven over and left the Chevelle parked down the road. If I'd known, it would have been nice to have gotten a ride instead of walking through all of creation. I invited them in, but I was already a little nervous about having this many people at the house during the day.It wasn't long before Mike's girlfriend, Kelly showed up. This made me even more nervous because although she could have passed for much older, she was only 14, and she had a big mouth. It's all kind of a blur after that, people kept showing up, there were cases of beer being brought in the back door. There were rumors, later, that someone had pot. It wasn't long before we were all pretty drunk, stereo blasting, I didn't even know half the people there, the final tally was somewhere around thirty drunken teenagers strewn about our house in various stages of moral corruption. Oh but, by God, for the first time in my life.. I was the coolest kid at Booker T. Washington High School.

There was, however, a small kink in our master plan. I was in the bathroom, sitting on the toilet because, ya know, when you drink vast quantities of cheap beer you have to tinkle ALOT, when Trisha came in, totally dismissing my obvious need for some privacy, looking as concerned as one can look when they're falling down drunk. "Hey.. Mama.. (everyone called me Mama in high school, don't ask), some crazy woman just pulled up in a red car and she's got Bubba Washlager in a headlock holding a can of mace to his face. You might wanna come check it out."

Red car.

Crazy Woman.

With mace.

It could only mean one thing. Ma was home and the proverbial shit was about to hit the fan. While Trisha and I were checking the neighborhood for the "all clear" I forgot one tiny, tiny detail. Ma's uncle Tom was visiting from North Carolina and was staying over at my aunt Gail's house. He'd seen the copious amounts of alcoholic beverage being carted to the back door and was concerned that our borders were having a free for all. Uncle Tom had been one of Podunk County's most decorated sheriff's deputies, taking part in the biggest marijuana bust in their history. I guess he was feeling nostalgic for the good old days and saw the opportunity to bust some youngins for old time's sake.

If it hadn't been for all the alcohol in my system, I most likely would have had a seizure of some kind when I exited the bathroom just in time to see Ma karate kick my bedroom door open, smashing her petite little foot squarely in the middle of the Peter Frampton poster I had hanging on my door. As the door flew open, there were screams of the F word, people crying out to God and I think I peed a little, because there, in their half nekkid glory were Mike and Kelly, doing the horizontal bop right there in my bed! Ma's face was blood red, her lips pursed together like the business end of an uptight poodle. There was ranting, yelling and the scrambling for clothes by the poor couple, still shocked by the sudden humpus interuptus. I must have uttered something because that's when Ma's head spun around and our eyes met. I thought for sure that this would be the instant I would go to meet our Lord and Saviour. Her eyes became slits, shooting fire and brimstone into my very soul. Teeth clenched and tomato faced she looked at me and said, "Git yer ass in that livin' room and sit down and I swar to God if you move I'll keel you." I didn't DARE argue. I had never seen her so.. psychotic. I sat on the couch and glanced out the window to see Kenny's light blue pick-up pulling out of the driveway, people clamoring to pile in the back and escape. Ma had put the fear in them. She came back into the living room and stopped the people who hadn't made it out and, making full use of her mace, forced them all to sit down. Then she looked at me and said, "Call the police."

"Huh?"

"You heard me, call the police and tell them there's a crazy-assed woman here fixin' to kill a house full of teenagers."

So, well, that's exactly what I did. I didn't want to get maced. You should have seen the police cars in my driveway, in the yard, along the street in front of the house. Linda was really upset when the first cop to walk in the door was none other that her older brother. After Ma told the cops what was going on, Linda's brother looked at her and just said, "Little lady, you're dead. I'm tellin' Mom." An older police lieutenant took Ma out on the porch and sweet talked her until she finally stopped using words like "kill," "maim" and "beat the living shit out of every damned one of them."

Most of the rest of the officers disbanded once they realized there wasn't going to be an actual killing. The ones who remained started checking I.D.'s and questioning people. At the time, I hadn't realized that Mike had just turned 18, which further complicated the little act he was performing with his fourteen year old girlfriend. They threatened to charge him with about ten counts of contributing to the delinquency of a minor, plus statutory rape.

It wasn't pretty.

I don't think there were actually any charges ever filed. It was shortly after that when Ma agreed to let me just drop out of school. I agreed to go for one full semester and actually attend class, do my work and then we'd talk about it, which I did and got straight A's too I might add, but I just didn't want to try any more after that. In my juvenile mind, I didn't see what was wrong with what had just happened at our house. It was the same thing Ma was doing every weekend. One of my favorite quotes, heard from a guest on Oprah once, "When I didn't know any better, I did the best that I could. Now that I know better, I can do better." Kinda sums it up for me.

Although it was over twenty years ago when the legendary party took place, every once in a while I look over at Ma and say, "Remember that time you put Bubba Washlager in a headlock?" and she grins a little and giggles and answers, "You don't know how close you came to dying that day."

Ya'll be blessed :)

Pray for the Child at Big Lots (Remix from July 2005)

The Amazon and I headed to Big City Friday to shop. We both desperately need clothes and there are things we need around the house. Before we left, I fixed my hair, donned earrings and a necklace, even put on makeup. I thought I was hot shit stuff. The first place we stopped was a little shop downtown, I can't remember the name but it's a Scottish/Celtic place. This area was settled by alot of Scottish immigrants so the whole clan thing is big business. We parked in the parking garage and made our way down the stone lined streets. It was really hot and being the woman of ample form that I am, I was perspiring like a large farm animal and my new happenin' hairstyle was plastered to my head by the time we reached the store. It was cooler inside, but, once I start sweating, I can't stop. The stuff just rolls down my face like Niagara. It's embarrassing. I don't even have to be hot. I don't really think it has anything to do with my weight, the same thing used to happen when I was considerably thinner. So anyway, inside we met a very refined, well educated, bordering on snooty, yet surprisingly friendly, little old woman. She was tiny, yet spoke with such conviction, I was certain that she took no crap off of anyone. Not a single white, perfectly coiffed hair was out of place. I'm usually intimidated by ladies such as this, but yet we stood in that store and talked to her for a long time. It was a little annoying, she wouldn't hush long enough for us to really get a good look at everything she had in the store. She inquired about our clan, the McPhersons and went on to tell us stories about the 40 years she worked in D.C., how she'd drive home to visit her family when she could and how frightened she was to have to drive through the remote mountain area my father's family was from. Still to this day, stories abound about the oddity of the people who live there, the hauntings, the great massacre that occurred during the civil war. The Amazon was completely taken with her and her stories. I imagine we'll have to venture back to her store before summer's end.We left there without buying anything, although there were plenty of mugs, pins and necklaces bearing the McPherson name and insignia. They were all a bit too expensive for us. We totally forgot to ask her about the De Glenn clan, another Scottish line in our family.

We found a cool little store just down the way that sold imported, handmade items from less fortunate countries at VERY reasonable prices. They had literature all over the store telling the percentage of the selling price which made it's way back to the artisan. There were these dolls (no body, just a head and a long dress) hanging from the ceiling with saris, I really wanted one and the price was right, but I didn't buy one. I needed mixing bowls and rope to fix the dog lot cover more than I needed a doll. It would be a nice birthday or Christmas pressie though (<-------HUGE HINT HERE Amazon).

As we left there, the thunder began rumbling with a bit more force and it began sprinkling. The picture in my sidebar of the girl with the accordion was taken seconds before the heavens opened up in biblical proportions releasing a gully washer of a storm. It wasn't simply raining, the drops were huge, you couldn't see across the road and, of course, neither of us had an umbrella. We tried to make our way back to the parking garage, the cobblestone street already becoming flooded and me in my rubber Nike flip flops, trying to keep them from sliding off my big Flintstone like feet. We sprinted for the cover of each awning, few and far between, dodging the pointy extensions of other people's umbrellas, nearly losing an eye. As we spotted the entrance to the parking garage in the distance and plodded our way in that direction, there stood under the protective cover of a store front, an older man, white hair and beard, sipping his coffee and grinning at us like the Cheshire cat, obviously seeing the humor in our situation. He nodded, smiling in a comforting, somehow familiar way as we went by. It made me smile a bit, it was only water after all. I often think Spirit puts people like this in our path to help us realize that things aren't as dire as we sometimes make them in our own minds.Finally, we reached my car, sitting down in squishy jeans and drenched shirts. I looked in the mirror to assess the damage. Eyeliner mixed with a torrential rainfall results in raccoon eyes. Any other trace of makeup was long gone. I reached up to adjust my necklace, one I had made when I first began doing bead work, only to have it come apart in my hand. Green, blue and silver beads went everywhere. As we made our way towards a more conventional and dryer shopping center, the Amazon picked off the beads that were stuck to my neck, giggling at my luck.

We stopped at J&S cafeteria for lunch, one of those places where you go through a line and happy little line workers slop your requests on a plate so you can carefully carry it all on a tray back to your table. I had to make two emergency potty runs while there, not that ya'll need to know that, but it was a clue of what was yet to come. It must have been senior citizen dinner time, I think we were the only people there under 70. There was, however, a nice little fella who came around to fill our tea (asking the Amazon if she wanted a refill but not me) who was quite obviously flirting. Her face turned a lovely cherry red as she hunkered down in her seat whispering to me, "shut up.. just shut up."After that we headed to Catherines, the fat clothing store. They didn't have anything I'd be caught dead in nor that I could afford. I usually attack the clearance racks there, but being a new location, they didn't have much that was marked down. It was all old lady, schoolmarm clothes. I have enough insecurities without dressing like a dork wad. Then it was off to Office Depot where I bought a cleaning cloth for the screen on my spiffy new camera. After that it was Target where I got a pack of rope in the dollar bin and a new set of Anchor Hocking mixing bowls. We were down to one that Ma'd had before I was born. I treated myself to some new eyeshadow as well, for which there were coupons in this Sunday's paper.. just my luck.

We hit Big Lots next, I bought some much needed cereal bowls for 99 cents. Nice deep ones, since we tend to eat in the living room. While standing in line, I felt a familiar urge creeping around my backside and hurriedly shoved some cash in the Amazon's hand saying, "Here, pay for this, I'll be in the potty." I prayed no one would be in there and that it would be at least reasonably clean. I hate public bathrooms, I spend alot of time in them as you're slowly finding out. Just as I reached the door, a little girl, about 10 or 11 ran in in front of me. Bless her heart, I wanted to apologize in advance. She was in the stall right next to me so, as a public service, I tried to make things as quiet as possible. As a result, the process was quite drawn out and I sat pleading silently for her to complete her mission and be on her merry way. No such luck. She must have eaten at J&S too. After a couple of very embarrassing minutes, I just couldn't stand it anymore. Giving myself a pep talk, I convinced myself to just go for the gold, let it fly, do what needed to be done. The result was the loudest, wall vibrating, weapons of mass destruction type sound ever known to mankind. The next sound I heard, as the echo settled, was the fleeing of little feet as my stall neighbor went flying out the door, no doubt seeking the comfort of her mother's arms. I wanted to DIE. But, mission completed, I did the required tidying up and walked casually out of the bathroom, as if nothing out of the ordinary had occurred. At the entrance to the lengthy hall where the potty is housed stood the Amazon, waiting patiently with our little bag of goodies, by now used to my frequent if not inconvenient shopping interruptions. When we got to the car, I felt the need to share my traumatic experience and the resulting unrelenting assault on the tender senses of the sweet child. When I got to the previously mentioned "weapons of mass destruction type sound" which was violently released from my embarrassingly huge backside, she stopped me and said, "I know, I heard it."

Excuse me? She HEARD IT???

The door was closed and she was nowhere near it, if she heard it, it must have been heard by others. The offices for the store were located at the other end of the long hall, employees coming and going, presumably taking their MEAL BREAKS for Gods sake. Could someone just SHOOT ME NOW??????After that, needless to say, I made a beeline for Frog Pond Holler where I can unleash the unsavory emissions which regularly release themselves from my body, surrounded only by my immediate family who I assume are now accustomed to it.

The preceding story is a reprint from my old blog. I finally bit the bullet the other day and deleted it, but not before I went through and found a few posts I couldn't bear to lose forever. After a bit of editing, I've deemed it safe to share them with ya'll here.

How I Nearly Lost My Coochie (The Remix)

This is a reprint from my former incarnation, just in case you've been around for a while and thought you were having a case of Deja Vu.

That's right. Coochie. Use your imagination. I abhor "proper" words for those unmentionable areas of the anatomy, I think it sounds perverted. So yeah, I'm posting about the near death experience of my coochie. I worried a bit about people being offended, but I couldn't let this pass without sharing it. Not my coochie, but the story. I think maybe all of the testicle talk on t.v. from the tapes of Craig Ferguson over breakfast every morning is adversely affecting my morals.

The telling of this story requires a little background. Lets rewind back to a couple of weeks ago, shall we? Lulu came bopping into my little corner of hell, the dreaded cubicle, all smiles and grinning. "I have found JUST the man for you!!! He's at the front desk applying for a job. I went to school with him, so he's the right age and I just asked if he was still single and he said he was!!!"

To this I replied, "No."

"Oh COME ON.. he'd be perfect!! He's got his own computer graphics company, so he's got his own business, he's not BAD looking and he's really funny!!"

"Back up... he's got his own company, but he's up here APPLYING for a JOB, HELLO???"

"Well, to be honest, I don't really remember him ever having an actual job anywhere. He says he's an "entrepreneur" but I've always just figured he was too triflin' to work."

I just glared at her while she giggled. Then I said, "The last time you tried to hook me up with someone, if I remember correctly, you began by saying, 'I wouldn't call him slow exactly, I mean, it's not like he had to take special classes or gets a check or anything.' I think I'll just hold out for that strapping dude to ride up on his great white steed, thank you very much."

Yeah...that last one still drives by my trailer daily in his pick up truck with his three heathern youngins, all under 10 years old. I can just imagine him saying, "Look over yonder, someday that thar's gonna be yer new maw!!" He even went up to where Ma was working at the time to ask her if I was "courtable" or if I was "one of them Lebanese wimmen's what don't take to the menfolk." But he's got nothing to do with this story.. so..

About a week passed after me and Lulu's conversation and as I made my way up the hall towards the fax machine one day, I saw a man waiting to talk to the personnel manager. I stopped at Lulu's office (she has an actual office, with a door, walls and windows, not fair) and peeked in. "There's some guy up front who looks JUST like Stephen King!!" Well, Lulu was beside herself. She's read every Stephen King novel at least twice and watches every one of those "made for t.v." movies they do based on the books. She started to get up and come look then she stopped. Then.. she smiled.

"Let me go look," she said as she made her way quickly out of her office and down the hall. I just sat in her spare chair and made myself comfortable. Then, here she came flying back in there, trying to contain the laughter.

"WHAT??" I asked.

"Thats yer man!!! They must be hiring him. I never really thought about it.. but he DOES look like Stephen King!!"

"I really don't like you right now," I quipped. Of course, she was too busy laughing and wiping away the tears of joy from her eyes to care.

There's one other person, another potential suitor, if you will, who is important to the story. We'll call him Jasper (no reason, other than he kinda looks like a Jasper.) Jasper's wife passed away several years ago leaving him to raise his sons alone. He's always been a bit overly friendly with me around the office, but there was always something about him that put me off. He'll come in and look at the pictures I have hanging on the wall from my trip to Canada, he always asks me where I took them, I always tell him, he always tells me he'd like to go there on vacation and wouldn't I like to go, then suggesting that we go together because he'd love for me to show him around. I always blow him off, but he's a trooper!! Jasper is good buddies with a certain male in my family (related by marriage only) and they often go hunting together, swapping tales of this and that. This particular male family member can NOT keep his mouth shut about anything and after one of their hunting trips a few years ago, he circulated a story that Jasper had told him about this woman he'd dated that enjoyed erm.. the rough stuff. Ya know, curse me, beat me, make me feel cheap. Apparently, during a particularly um.. active sexual encounter, the two of them, being overcome with passion, got a little carried away, which resulted in Jasper giving her a right hook to the jaw and knocking out one of her teeth. He said it was the best sex he'd ever had.

Really.. it's OKAY that I'm single.

Anyway, so when Jasper comes to my office and asks me to print his monthly reports for him, then stands behind me and rubs the back of my neck, I half expect to get cold cocked upside the head at any moment. Welcome to the single life of the chubby girl.

Phew!! That's a lot of background for one little story, but it'll be worth it. Maybe. I hope. We'll see...

Last Friday, Jasper appeared in my office and laid some papers in my tray, winked and went on. I was afraid to look. It turns out, he was teaching the class I'd been scheduled to participate in today. He'd left me a four page syllabus for a one hour class on how to read blueprints. This was not looking promising at all. I had tried to get out of it, but apparently that entire year that I suffered through drafting classes back in high school meant nothing to these people. Oh don't look at me that way, I didn't want to take drafting in high school. I had signed up for commercial art but it was full and they stuck me in drafting. I didn't even know what the hell drafting was back then.

So today, promptly at 2:30, the boss, Babs and I headed back to the training room for our class. We went in and there was Jasper, with that come hither look in his eye when he saw me. Argh. There were three seats left, Babs getting the only good one, leaving the boss and I to sit at opposite ends of the table that Japser's teaching materials were sitting on. As it ended up, I had to sit six inches from the white board on it's tripod, between Jasper and.. yeah, you guessed it.. Stephenfreakin King. I began questioning my decision this morning to fix my hair and pile on extra makeup. I seriously regretted that little spritz of Haiku perfume I'd applied to my neck. Thank Gawd I'm a heifer. I'm just sayin.

What followed were yawn inducing explanations of symbols and dotted lines versus solid lines.. you get the idea. Jasper struggled with the white board. It teetered on it's tripod, threatening to come crashing to the floor every time he tried to wipe it off. Keep in mind, I'm about 5'7" and I was sitting directly in front of the board, so I felt obligated to slink down in my chair, feet propped up on the legs of the folding table, looking very carefree and attractively disinterested in the whole affair, I'm sure. I was only trying to keep my freshly colored and cropped crowning glory from blocking anyone's view. Honest.

As I answered Jasper's questions, he seemed a little too pleased with my knowledge of blueprints. He'd grin at me with a twinkle in his eye each time. I decided I'd be better off playing dumb, but the damage was done. As he wiped the white board roughly, irritated at his inability to get it cleaned off, he got a little too rough with it. He has a history of such things ya know. That's when it happened. The tripod beneath the white board had become unstable. With one swipe, Jasper managed to flip the 4' x 3' board off it's base, flipping it over and airborne at such an angle as if its metal trimmed corner were going to pierce me directly in the coochie !!!! In my sprawled out position, there was no way to protect my precious nether regions from impending doom and I nearly broke my leg trying to get my foot unhooked from the legs of the table, scrambling to protect myself, as the whole gathering of hillbillies let out a collective, "WHOA THERE!!!" which, for you fine folks of the northern persuasion or from far off lands, is hillbilly for "GIT OUT OF THE WAY, QUICK!!!

Stephenfreakin' King's hands were doing what looked like a juggling act, with nothing to juggle, as if he wanted to come to my rescue and catch something, be it the board, the table which I had nearly flipped on it's end, my leg or perhaps even my coochie itself. His eyes were as big as semi-tires, there was a lot of scrambling about, crap falling and chairs scraping. I really can't explain how the entire affair didn't end with at least a trip to the emergency room. I bet they never had anyone show up with a white board impaled in their crotch before.

When it was all over, people were fanning themselves, Jasper was perspiring greatly upon his balding head, trying to replace the board with shaking hands. Bossman just sat there across the table from me, giving me that "My GAWD I can't take you anywhere" look. Babs looked like she needed a pill. Stephenfreakin' King never uttered another word. He may never speak again. I think he was traumatized by the whole ordeal.

At the end of the class, Jasper gave me a wink and a sly grin as I handed in my paper. Yes, they made us take a test afterwards. Of course I had to tell "L" all about it when I got back to the office. There were tears, snorts and I think some snot going on from all the laughing. For the remainder of the day, each time I passed her door I'd stop and get her attention and silently mouth the words, "They tried to kill my coochie!!" while motioning towards the general area of my nether regions. Some days, making her laugh is the only thing that gets me through.

Ya'll be blessed. And if you have to go to any blueprint classes, wear a cup or something.