Lord. Have. Mercy.
The past few weeks have been erm... eventful. First, we suffered our annual shitastrophy with raw sewage bubbling up out of places it shouldn't be. It was fixed faster than usual, due to my being tired of this shit every damn year leading to my meeting the town maintenance bubba in the middle of the street, before he could even get out of his truck, in my crocks, sleeveless tee and clam diggers. He tried to tell me it was on "our side," that it was because of my Locust tree, etc. I told him I was done having this conversation every damn time and to fix the feckin' thing.
So he did.
That episode was followed by the deep freeze, which lead to the pipe geyser from the back of the house and several days with the water cut off as T.A. drove back and forth to Lowe's. She eventually got it fixed, after much spewing of profanity and several attempted interventions from Mrs. Kravitz. We had water for about 12 hours before it froze again.
Such is winter in The Holler.
In the meantime, Aunt Moses' Impala is on the fritz. She's threatened to take it back, let them come get it and blow it up. She'd let it slip that she could just give me gas money to cart her and her house full of youngins all over North Carolina and East Tennessee. I gently informed her that maybe it wasn't the best idea.
At some point, she's going to have to put her foot down. Aunt Moses works in maintenance at the elementary school. She wants to retire, but she can barely afford to get by with a job. Her daughter, DeeDee (formerly known as my Trashy Big Boobed Cousin with the Lazy Eye) lives with her. DeeDee has never had a job, other than a week at Subway 20 years ago. I don't think she can work, she's not developmentally disabled but... she ain't right. When she's okay, she sleeps late, takes care of her giant, poisonous centipede and collection of tarantulas and looks for love on dating apps. When she's not okay, she's passing out drunk in a booth down at the pub or inviting random men off the internet to the house for dinner.
DeeDee's adult children live there too. Cindy, who recently graduated from high school, worked about four months with her Mamaw at the school. She has a dog and an ever rotating collection of reptiles. At one time, she had about 8 snakes. I think she's down to 2 lizards and a hamster.
Cousin Mahala didn't go in their house for a couple of years. But I'm cool with lizards.
Cindy's older brother, Damien, moved in about two years ago with his wife Tabitha. Damien plays video games, smokes weed, goes fishing and hunting. He used to work in a garage. I don't know why he can't fix the Impala. Tabitha cleans cabins during tourist season, about two a month, and they have a chihuahua. Basically, Aunt Moses is feeding and housing all these people and their assorted critters.
(By the way, I fully realize I'm sitting here on my fat ass without a job while T.A. works two to pay the bills. The hypocrisy is not lost on me.)
Moses has a little dog, Buddy, a cousin of our little Yoda who passed away last year. She also has a pig. Moses got Elvis about six months ago when he was small enough to sit in her lap on the ride home. She refused to listen to those of us who encouraged her to stick to his feeding schedule and now Elvis is almost too fat to walk.
The last time I went over there, Elvis got pissed off when I got too close to his rug and barked at me. He sounded like an angry German Shepard trained to eat off someone's leg.
That pig ain't right.
Anywho...
On the day T.A. was trying to cap the geyser, Aunt Moses asked me to run DeeDee to the grocery store over in Scary Hillbilly Town, a forty five minute ride across the state line to Tennessee. Since I was pretty sure T.A. working on the leak was going to mean lots of screaming, cussing, crying, pouting and eventually anger, I jumped at the chance to flee the state.
I pulled up in front of the house and was met by Cindy and Tabitha. They hopped in the truck and asked if I'd run them to town to pick up lunch first.
"Sure!" I said, assuming that they'd called their order in.
I ended up sitting in front of the tiny grocery/deli/propane/firewood store for a half an hour. I started to think they'd slipped out the back door. Of course the store is slap damn in the middle of town, so I had to deal with Bubbles' bubbahubby, my asshole neighbor and assorted other people I try to avoid like the plague. Cindy and Tabitha emerged with three bags of food at about the time I'd decided to go in after them.
I smiled and carted them back home because I'm trying really hard to be a good person.
It shouldn't be this hard.
I dropped Tabitha off and waited for DeeDee to climb in. They all bitch about having to climb in my truck. Is it my fault they're all vertically challenged? I mean.... THEY COULD WALK.
We were about halfway there when I asked DeeDee where all we were stopping. "Cindy wants to go to the Dollar Tree and I need to get groceries."
Cool. We had a plan. All the way there, DeeDee sat in the back seat, squished up against the door and taking pictures with her phone. I don't know what she was taking pictures of. She's been to Scary Hillbilly Town a gazillion times and for the most part, nothing has changed in all of her forty some odd years.
I waited in the truck while they bought four bags packed with stuff. "Can we run by Wallyworld real quick?" asked Cindy.
"Why sure!!!" I said, smiling.
Real quick? Was not. My ass was getting numb from sitting in the truck.
"So now groceries, right?" I said, thankful that we were almost done.
DeeDee pipes up from the back, "Cindy wants to go by the pet store and I need to run to the tobacco store."
"Okie dokie!!!"
I did not even know there was a pet store. Now I do. It was almost empty, other than a few fish and giant mutha feckin' snake. I went back out to wait in the truck. Cindy emerged with a tiny hamster. I hope she wasn't planning on feeding it to anything.
I went back to the other side of town to the drive thru tobacco store so they could stock up, and finally to the grocery store.
Hallafreakinlooyah.
I picked up a few things while we were there, it was food stamp day after all and after this ass cheek numbing adventure, I wouldn't be going shopping anytime soon.
By the way, they paid $20 in gas for me to cart them all the way to Sav-A-Wad because Moses says she can't afford to buy groceries at the local chain store 20 minutes away. But Sav-A-Wad isn't any cheaper. It should be called RipOff-A-Wad.
DeeDee and Cindy had two carts full of groceries. The bed of my truck was a sea of white plastic bags. This whole time, Aunt Moses had been texting them both, asking them prices, telling them what to buy. She doesn't let them make any decisions on their own.
It drives me nuts.
So when Cindy told me that her Mamaw said for us to stop at the ATM on the way home, I just sighed. We had to get money for the car payment.... and then? WE HAD TO GO MAKE THE CAR PAYMENT.
I didn't think I was ever coming home.
Since that day, I've been faking phone problems when they text me.
Anyhooter, that's most of the latest from Frog Pond Holler. Oh wait, somewhere in the middle of all that, my computer tried to commit suicide. It took me a few days to shift my brain back in to tech mode after honoring my inner Domestic Goddess for some months, but I managed. I had to wipe it clean and reinstall all the crap from scratch.
But I did it.
Ya'll take it easy. I'll hold down the fort here in The Holler. We'll talk again soon.
Later Taters.
P.S. Comments are temporarily disabled. It's an anxiety thing. Feel free to email me using the contact form at the left. For the time being, conversations are hard. Please don't think I'm being standoffish if you message me on any of the various social networks and I'm not very talkative. It's getting better but... ya know... I'll get there.
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