Bramble Patch

Playing the Virgin

2010-10-27T21:49:00.004-07:00

This morning I was reminded of my one and only venture into acting showbiz.

When I was in first grade, I attended a Catholic school. The church was right across the parking lot, and we would all be herded over there daily for Mass. My teacher, Mrs. Williams, wasn't a nun, but she still made sure we did all the religious-y stuff.

As Christmas approached, she told us that the first grade classes would be doing a play about Baby Jesus…and it would be on Sunday in the church when everyone was there for Mass! How exciting, right?

I instantly knew I wanted to play Mary. No way did I want to be relegated to one of the boring roles as one of the stable animals (there ended up being a LOT of donkeys and sheep in that stable). When Mrs. Williams asked who wanted to play Mary, I sprang out of my seat shouting, “ME-ME-ME!” before any of the other girls could.

Apparently, this was a sufficient audition and I got the role. I was so happy! My elation was to be short lived, though.

When Mrs. Williams asked the boys about playing the role of Joseph, a boy named Alexander volunteered. I was filled with dread and horror…Please, no! ANYONE but Alexander!

Alexander was the class nerdy kid that smelled funny and looked even funnier. He had glasses with thick black frames, and an elastic band that went around the back of his head to hold them on. He was always up in my grill, wanting to hang around me and follow me everywhere. I couldn’t stand him.

I immediately tried to withdraw my offer to play Mary, but Mrs. Williams told me it was too late. I was going to have to pretend to be married to Alexander.

Over the next few weeks, we rehearsed and got ready. The first grade teachers showed us the props we would be using in the play. Jesus’ manger was going to be a wooden orange crate filled with straw, which seemed good enough to me...but then they showed me the doll that would be playing Baby Jesus. I was once again mortified.

The doll was one of those hard plastic ones, where even the hair is just painted on to the doll’s head. It had those creepy eyes that close when the doll is lying down, but snap open when you stand it up. It didn’t even have a dress or any clothes on it at all. The real problem, though, was that it was filthy. I mean, really gross, like they had found it in a dumpster someplace (probably, they’d dug it out of the kindergarten’s toy box).

The teacher put the doll in the orange-manger, and I soon learned that at one point in the play, I was supposed to lean down and kiss the doll.

I clearly remember looking at Mrs. Williams and saying, “I’m not kissing that.”

“Oh, we’ll clean it up and it will be nice for the play,” she promised.

I rationalized that this doll was going to represent Baby Jesus...and surely they wouldn’t want a disgustingly filthy doll to play the role of our Lord and Savior. Right? It would be okay, I assured myself.

In spite of the indignity of being “married” to that awful Alexander in front of the whole congregation, and the prospect of having to smooch a crusty baby doll, I was pretty excited about the play. My mom sewed me a very pretty, long blue dress, and even a blue and white veil. When I put on the costume, I thought that I looked Extremely Holy. I couldn’t wait for my moment in the spotlight.

Finally, after weeks of practicing and waiting, it was show time! The church was packed. Alexander and I took our places on the steps below the altar, with Baby Jesus in his orange crate between us. All the other kids with ridiculous construction paper donkey ears stuck on top of their heads stood behind us.

I looked down at the doll, and was appalled to discover that Mrs. Williams had lied! No one had cleaned up Baby Jesus. He was still just as icky as the first day I saw him. The only thing they’d done was put a cloth diaper on Him.

There was absolutely no way I was putting my lips anywhere near that doll.

This part of the play was narrated. I listened, dreading the moment that the narrator would say, “...and then Mary kissed the baby.”

When it came, I sat there staring at it. It got really quiet as everyone in the church waited for me to lean down and plant one on that repulsive doll.

“Kiss the baby!” Alexander whispered.

I shook my head no.

“Can I kiss it?”

YES! Problem solved!

“Yeah, you kiss it,” I whispered back. Ha-ha! Alexander could get cooties on his lips instead of me.

So, Joseph kissed the baby instead of Mary. People in the audience chuckled, but it was sort of a nervous chuckle.

We got through the rest of the play without any other difficulties. I was a little bit worried I was going to be in trouble for refusing to kiss the doll, but after it was all over, Mrs. Williams came over to me and said she was sorry. I think she probably meant it, but I’m not sure.

That was my one flirtation with fame. Alexander followed me around for the rest of the school year, bugging the crap out of me and smelling weird. When I changed schools in second grade, guess who also did, ending up right back in my class again? Yep. Alexander.

I wonder where he is, now? I bet he’s obscenely rich, wildly successful and wickedly handsome.

I’m sorry for behaving so badly towards you, and being such a creep when we were little, Alexander! I was a real jerk, and now, as an adult, I’m pretty ashamed of the way I treated you. You were a really nice kid. I don’t think I ever thanked you for kissing dirty Baby Jesus for me, either. If we ever meet again, I owe you one, man.

Bullwinkle's

2010-02-17T09:18:00.001-07:00

I decided today that I wanted to write about a nightclub I used to frequent in my early twenties when I was living back in Bloomington, IN. I Googled it, to see if I could find a photo or something to include…only to learn that it closed down in 2006! I’m so bummed! I loved that place.

From 1992 to 1994, I worked at a one-hour optical in Bloomington. It is easily the nuttiest place I’ve ever been employed. We were a small office, with maybe 8 or so employees. There was Doc (the optometrist of course), the office manager, assistant manager, a couple of guys in the lab that would grind lenses and put glasses together, and a few of us opticians. We’d do shit like preliminary eye exams, teach people how to put in contact lenses, and sell glasses and frames.

Working there was a little bit like existing in a real-live sitcom. When we had patients in the office, we acted professionally…but whenever there was a lull, we did everything from spitball fights to shopping cart races in the back alley (we were in a strip mall) to playing ridiculous practical jokes on each other.

Everyone was a character. It was the most fun place I’ve ever worked.

There was one employee, D, who was a flaming drag queen. He was fucking hysterical. He had actually worked there a little before my time, but he would still come in to visit and hang out a lot.

D loved to make his own fabulous, sequined, feathered, strappy dresses…Bullwinkle’s often had drag shows where D and his fellow Queens would perform (basically lip-synch) routines. It was a competition. He would always beg us to come to watch.

I had never been to Bullwinkle’s before, but of course I knew it was a gay bar. It was in the basement of the former Loyal Order of Moose Hall…hence the name. :) So, the first time I went, it was to watch D’s show. He was one ugly dude, but when he came out on stage in full showgirl drag, I was stunned. He was totally glamorous…it was hysterical, and a little scary. If I didn’t know it was him, I would have never known it was him.

I sat at a table with a bunch of coworkers, and we had a great time. Back in those days, my hair was really long, long enough for me to sit on it. A gaggle of drag queens descended on me, oooh-ing and ah-ing over my hair. It was pretty funny.

Anyway, that was the night that I found out Bullwinkle’s was the best nightclub/bar in town. They had a great dance floor that lit up just like the one in Saturday Night Fever. I started going there pretty frequently with my friends. Now I can’t dance to save my soul, but I have fun anyway…and when I was drunk (which was pretty much always) I thought that I was *the* Bad-Ass Dancer out there. Bwahaha…thank the good lord that was back in the days before cell phone cameras and Flip videos!

One night in February after a few hours of Bullwinkle’s fun, my friends took my car keys and wouldn’t let me drive home because I was too drunk. It was like two a.m., and they drove me back to my aunt’s house (where I was staying) and dropped me off. Well, it was her car I had driven into town, and in my drunken state I was convinced that someone would steal it or something. So as soon as my friends dropped me off, I went inside, put a leash on my dog, Sundae, and I walked all the way back downtown. It was FUCKING COLD, probably in the ‘teens, temperature wise, and snow everywhere. By the time I got to the parking garage where the car was, I was sober. Trust me.

Another time (it must have been summer) I remember leaving Bullwinkle’s because I was so drunk I thought I was going to be sick. I decided I’d go to my friend’s car, crawl in the back seat, and pass out. Well when I got to the car it was locked (duh). I didn’t have the ability to stagger all the way back to the bar to get the keys (and no cell phones in those days), so I just sat down on the sidewalk and proceeded to vomit into the gutter. Then I must have passed out, because the next thing I remember is waking up on the sidewalk with my friend Sean nudging me in the ribs with his foot. I guess he was checking to see if I was dead or alive.

I was pretty lucky Sean found me first instead of a dirty copper. Haha.

I had way too much fun there. I am stunned that the place closed a few years ago…it was easily one of the most popular nightclubs in town with both gay and straight crowds…and kind of a Bloomington landmark.

Ah well…like Bryan Adams said, nothing lasts forever.

RIP, Bullwinkle’s.

Another ill-Spent Youth Story

2010-01-23T11:43:00.002-07:00

Yes, I have lots of them. So?

OK this one takes place…early fall of ‘92. This would be after I fled from AZ to try and escape from myself after an emotional breakup. (I tend to flee whenever things get uncomfortable for me. It's a bad habit.)

When I first called my friend A. back in IN and told her I was getting ready to move back, she helped me find a place to live. She knew a couple of gals going to IU, who needed a third roommate for their townhouse. I talked to them on the phone, and we agreed on rent and stuff. I’d have my own room of course, and share a bathroom and the rest of the place.

So, I moved, it was the very beginning of June…I lasted in that townhouse for only a couple of months. I got along with one of the roomies, but the other one…well, we didn’t. I wanted to kill her. (My life with these girls is worthy of its own post…so I won’t go into detail).

I started looking for another place to live.

In the paper, I found an ad to rent a room in a house for cheap. I made an appointment, and went there. It was in the next town over, but not a long drive to work.

It was in a sort-of run down area. The owner of the house was a hillbilly. She’d walled off the living room and family room, turning them into bedrooms….so the result was a house with 5 bedrooms, two bathrooms, a kitchen and a laundry.

I found out I’d be sharing the house with three guys. Two were sort of red-necky hillbillies, and the other one was this huge black guy…and by huge, I don’t mean fat. I mean, he was a body builder, and he was like cut glass. Yummy.

So…my friend A and her boyfriend helped me move all my shit from the townhouse to my new place. I got to know my new roommates around the kitchen table, since that was really the only common area to hang out in, there. We would actually cook meals, and sit down to eat together when everyone was “home”.

Sharing a bathroom with a couple of guys isn’t that fun though…haha. There was always some kind of nuclear waste accumulated around the shower drain, and I don’t even want to think about what it really was. I was always screaming at them to go clean their nasty shit out of the tub so I could take a shower without vomiting.
Other than that, though, it was pretty fun.

Of course we were all pretty young, so we’d drink and smoke pot and listen to loud music and all the normal things you’re supposed to do when you’re that age.

I got along with the gorgeous black guy (We’ll call him Rocko) and one of the redneck-y guys (we’ll call him Gordon) and I did NOT get along with the second redneck, though we “tolerated” each other (we’ll call him Douche-bag). Douchebag and I mostly ignored each other.

So Rocko liked his alcohol. Gordon liked his weed…and I reaped the rewards of their individual addictions, there was always some substance in the house to alter my mood with. We had fun hanging out.

Eventually, of course, because I was a slut in those days, Rocko and I started hanging out in his room or my room. He was very pretty to look at, especially without a shirt on, haha. We’d get drunk, and then mess around.

This was a little bit risky, because he had a girlfriend. She was maybe even a little taller than me, and out-weighed me by a good 40 pounds…I was stick-thin in those days. She was not, lol. She could have easily kicked my ass…but she was living in Chicago, and I figured she wouldn’t come to see him without giving him advance notice.

So anyway, Rocko and I were not boyfriend/girlfriend…just friends with benefits, and that was totally fine with me. I was dating a couple of other guys (slut, I told you) and I had no interest in anything serious.

One night, Rocko and Gordon were out, and I was just hanging out alone in my room watching TV or whatever. Douchebag was also home, and getting drunk all by himself. When I went into the kitchen, he was sitting at the table with his whiskey, looking shitfaced and mean. I just ignored him, got my snack, and went back to my room.

A few minutes later, he knocked on my bedroom door.

Douchebag: “Hey, let me in.”

Me: “Go away.”

Douchebag: “Let me in, you stupid bitch!”

Me: “Fuck OFF, Douchebag! Leave me alone!”

I’m also getting very scared right now, because it’s just a shitty bedroom door between me and him, and he could easily kick it in.

Then he started calling me every name he could think of, banging on the door. I had my dog, Sundae, with me, but she was no protection at all. So I grabbed my purse and keys, put her leash on, and we climbed out my bedroom window. Got in my truck, and drove to my aunt’s in Bloomington to spend the night.

The next day, I went home. Rocko was there and I told him what happened. He didn’t like Douchebag anyway, so this really pissed him off. We were in the kitchen when Rocko confronted him and told him that if he ever pulled that shit again, he would kick Douchebag’s ass.

“Oooh, I’m soooo scared,” said Douchebag.

“I didn’t say you had to be scared. You can be brave the whole time if you want to, but I’m still going to beat the shit out of you, you stupid hillbilly,” Rocko replied calmly.

Hahaha. Douchebag didn’t say much more, because it was abundantly clear that Rocko was more than capable of tearing him in half.

After that, Douchebag stayed away from me. I still had fun with Rocko and Gordon. Eventually, the day came where Rocko said he was moving out…well I didn’t want to live there without him to keep Douchebag in line, so I started looking for a new living situation immediately.

Luckily (luckily for me, anyway, haha), my friend A. was kicking her live-in boyfriend to the curb…so that meant I could move in there, which I did.

And that’s a whole other story…LOL.

Anyway…I found a photo of Rocko while I was going through and scanning bunches of old pix. It was taken with him standing in my bedroom doorway. He’s got his shirt in his hand, so I’m sure I must have demanded that he take it off so I could photo him. Hahaha!

Last I’d heard, he moved to Chicago, but that was like, 17 years ago (he's pushing 50 now...he was 30 when I knew him)…and of course, I wonder what he’s doing now…like Kiersten...like Chris…like Kirsi…and about a million other people from the past.

A nice plug for my SIL's soon-to-be-released book!

2010-01-21T18:40:00.004-07:00

My sister-in-law is one of the most intelligent, savvy, creative, and awesome people I've ever had the pleasure of knowing. I'm kind of in awe of her, and I want to be like her when I grow up. She's a writer. She writes fantastic poetry and prose...and she is soon to be an official Published Author!

I'm so happy for her, I just wanted to give her book a little plug. Her book is due to be on bookshelves this June! It's a romance (just in case you couldn't tell from the cover art, ahaha)...here's the blurb:

"Will Creighton always does what Victorian society expects of a gentleman. But after he returns home to London from the horrors of war to find his fiancée married to someone else, he decides he’s played by the rules long enough. He intends to enjoy illicit pleasure with a mistress before marrying a proper wife.

Genevieve Bell is anything but proper. She struggles to be taken seriously as a female artist, and when she was very young, a brief affair ruined her chances for a good marriage. Now painting is her only passion--until she meets Will.

When Will mistakes Genevieve for an experienced mistress, Genevieve finds herself unable to resist playing along. But will he discover she’s far from an expert in the art of love?"

So if any of you folks are romance fans, make sure you look for her book this summer!

I Was a Stupid Teenaged Girl

2010-01-20T18:29:00.003-07:00

Teen-aged girls do a lot of stupid shit, and I was no exception.

In the mid-to-late 80's, I was a high school student down in Phoenix, AZ. Back in those days, AZ didn't have a MLB team. We had the Phoenix Firebirds minor league team. I've always kind of liked baseball, especially if I get to see the game at the park. I've also always kind of like baseball *players*. Ahem.

Anyway...I'm guessing this was the summer between my Jr. and Sr. year.

My friends and I would frequently go to Firebirds games. Usually we sat around/near first base, where the visiting team's dugout was. One evening, I decided that one of the players for the visiting team was pretty cute. His name was Tim.

So, being a stupid teen-aged girl, I managed to catch his eye. Or at least, he caught me staring at him a couple of times. One of the times he smiled at me, and waved. I waved back, thrilled. A little later, he called some little boys down to the rail that separated the stands from the field. He talked to them, handed them something, and then the kids ran over to me.

"That baseball player wants your phone number!" one of the boys said, and he shoved a torn off piece of paper in my hand, along with a pen.

So, being a stupid teen-aged girl, I was tickled pink, and happily scribbled my number on the paper, along with my name. The boys (who were also excited to be messengers) ran it back over to Tim and handed it to him.

I was BEYOND excited. Ugh.

Sure enough later that night, he called and asked me if I wanted to go out (keep in mind, I had *just* turned 17, and he was probably at least 26 or 27. Maybe older.). We decided that I would pick him up from the hotel his team was staying at the next night...he said he had to have dinner with some family that lived in town, but that we could go out after that. He gave me the room number.

So, being a stupid teen-aged girl, I actually went to this hotel. All. By. Myself.

I go up to the room at the appointed time, and knock on the door. There are four or five baseball players in there, and none of them are Tim. Of course I got invited in anyway, and being a stupid teen-aged girl, I went in. They all told me that Tim had said I was coming, and that he was just running a little late, and that I was welcome to wait for him.

Thankfully, these guys were great. We had a fun time, and nothing inappropriate happened. They ordered food for me, and we all sat around laughing and talking. Tim was running really, really late...in fact I recall watching Letterman with those guys. They kept saying, "If *I* was taking you out, *I* wouldn't have been late" etc. I remember one of them was enthralled with how tall I am...that really seemed to make him happy.
Finally...I decided Tim had blown me off, so I said goodbye to my new friends and left.

As I walked across the parking lot to my car, another vehicle came in and stopped in front of me. Tim got out of the back seat, and came up to me, apologizing profusely. His family had kept him out later than he wanted, blah blah blah.

He looked really, really good. Yummy.

So, because I was a stupid teen-aged girl, I let him get in my car with me. We ended up parked out on South Mountain, where there was a beautiful view of the city all lit up. We got out, and sat on the hood of my car. It took about ten seconds before we started making out hot and heavy.

At some point during the fun (and it *was* fun), a small voice of reason entered my brain, and suggested that maybe losing my virginity to a minor league pitcher on the hood of my Mustang was maybe not such a good idea.

Poor Tim. I ended up taking him back to his hotel, without him getting what he wanted, and thankfully he didn't try to force the issue.

I tell you...teenagers do some stupid shit. When I think about going to a hotel to meet a total stranger, ending up in a hotel room full of strange men, then going to a secluded place in the desert with one, all at the tender age of seventeen...I was really, really lucky that didn't end up badly.

I hope my daughter has more brains that I did at that age!

The Adventures of K.

2010-01-13T12:49:00.003-07:00

When I was a junior in high school, one of my best friends was a girl I'll just call "K". She was a foreign exchange student from Finland, and she opened my eyes to all kinds of interesting ideas about sex and life in general.

K. was beautiful, and highly boinkable. She had long, pretty red hair, gorgeous green eyes, a bright smile, and an incredible rack. I was pretty jealous.

She was a free spirit, and she got stuck living with an up-tight Mormon family who ended up being completely appalled by her. So…once we became friends, she ended up spending a lot of nights at my house, just to get away from them.

K’s favorite things to do: get drunk, fuck, smoke weed, fuck, and then maybe drink some more, followed by a bit of fucking. I was sixteen years old, and while I’d drank plenty of alcohol and smoked plenty of weed by that age, I was still an innocent virgin…so K’s insatiable sexual appetites were a source of fascination for me.

This was when I was living in a (different) small town in AZ. One of the times I went to Phoenix to visit some friends down there, I took K with me. It was hot enough to go swimming, and my friends had a pool. We all changed into our bathing suits, and K was the first one out to the pool…the rest of us were talking in the kitchen about whatever, when my friend’s dad came up to me looking a little wild around the eyes.

“You better go check on your friend outside,” he told me.

I ran to the sliding glass door, and there was K., topless, (her bikini top was lying on the concrete beside the pool) doing the back stroke. Did I mention she had stupendous hooters? She seemed genuinely surprised that it was a problem to swim naked, and told me that basically everyone does that in Finland.

“Okay, but we’re in Arizona. Put your top back on, before my friend's dad has a fucking heart attack.”

Another time, K. and I left the high school campus for lunch. We were at some fast food joint, and we ran into a couple of good-looking black guys from out of town, who had to be at least in at least their mid-twenties. K. was fascinated by them...I guess they don’t have a lot of black dudes in Finland…and really, they were a novelty in that small town, as well. Plus, she had heard that black guys are well endowed, and she wanted to find out for herself.

She LEFT with them. I will never forget it…they were driving a black Trans-Am. I couldn’t talk her in to going back to school with me, and she tried talking me into going with them. I thought she was insane, and told her hell no.

So I went back to school, but she leaves with them, goes back to their hotel, and boinks both of them.

But that’s not all…she took photos, so she could show all her Finnish friends back home that she had finally gotten to fuck a couple of genuine black guys. I saw the pix, she brought them over to my house after she got them developed (I bet the guys at Fotomat made an extra set for themselves).

She was so proud of that…and very excited to inform me that the rumors about the size of their dicks were true (and she held her hands apart to show me just how big). When I saw the photos (all three of them were buck naked in every shot) I had to agree. Hahaha.

K. was always appalled at my virginity. “You need to fuck someone,” she would say. “It’s fun, and it feels good.”

She told me about her travels (she’d been through most of Europe). Her favorite country was Spain, she LOVED their beaches.

Me: “Do you speak Spanish?”

K: “No! All I need to know how to say when I go there is ‘fuck you, fuck me.’ ”

Me: “Oh.”

She informed me in detail about all the things I was still ignorant about at that age: everything from blow jobs to gang bangs*. And I never doubted a word, because I knew that she definitely walked her talk.

I was really sad when she went home to Finland. She was an exciting person to be around, and I was able to live vicariously through her. I was never, never bored when I was with her.

We were pen pals for a few years, and then lost touch. Gosh, she was only 17 then. Weird to think that now she’s 41, if she’s still around. Not to be morbid, but she did lead a pretty risky lifestyle.

I wonder what she’s doing now…

*I just want to clarify...I'm still ignorant about gang-bangs. Gosh, what did you guys think? :)

Happy 2010!

2010-01-01T09:27:00.002-07:00

May the new year and the new decade bring us all good health, happiness, prosperity, and peace.

Hope you all had a safe and happy NYE!

Pamela

Adventures With a Cable Guy (A True Story)

2009-11-18T17:07:00.003-07:00

When I lived in New Albany, IN, I worked across the river in Louisville, KY for Insight Communications. Insight supplies (or did, I don’t know if they are still there) everyone with their cable, high speed interwebz, and phone service.

I was one of the girls you call when your cable goes kaput, or if you want cable installed, or you want HBO, or you want to complain that there’s a whole bunch of pay-per-view porn on your bill that you *swear* you never ordered.

Anyway, when I got hired on there, part of the call center training was, we had to go on a ride along with one of the guys from the cable installation/repair department. I don’t know why.

I can’t remember my Cable Guy’s name, it was too long ago. But he was nice. I rode shotgun in his cable van, and we drove around Louisville putting in cable, drinking coffee, answering repair calls and eating donuts.

One house that had called in for a repair issue was in a sort of…questionable neighborhood. We went to the front door and rang the bell. A creepy looking guy let us in, and we stepped into the living room.

The first thing that hit me was the stench. It smelled horrible...like, rotting meat horrible. It was dark in there too…the blinds were turned, and there were no lamps on. There was just enough light to see, but not well. As I stood there trying not to retch my donuts and coffee up (it’s rude to barf in the customer’s living room) I looked around.

There was something all over the walls…and after a moment of scrutiny, I realized it looked like blood. It was sprayed fucking everywhere.

Working in my current field, I’ve seen a lot of crime scene photos, and I am sure that is exactly what I was standing in. I looked at Cable Guy, who was listening to Mr. Creepy Murderer Guy explain what the cable was doing wrong, just as if we were standing in a perfectly normal, tastefully furnished home in the suburbs.

Cable Guy looked back at me, and kind of jerked his head toward the door.

I didn’t wait for him to ask twice, I went right outside and climbed back into the truck to wait for him. He came out about twenty minutes later, having fixed whatever issue he needed to.

Cable Guy and I discussed Mr. Creepy, and he told me he was going to report it. I don’t know if he ever did or not, though. No one ever asked me any questions about it, and I never heard anything on the news about the coppers finding murder victims at that house.

I took “Being a Cable Install/Repair Girl” off of my list of possible careers after that.

The Haunted Apartment

2009-10-04T21:46:00.000-07:00

When I was five years old, we lived in a ground floor apartment in Bloomington, Indiana. The apartment building was quite small compared to the conglomo-ville complexes built today. There were about twenty apartments, ten upstairs, and ten downstairs, in a long row. It was a red brick building, on Pine Wood Drive; it's still there today. At least it was in 2003.

Our apartment was two small bedrooms, a tiny bathroom, a living room and a kitchen. The kitchen had accordion-style doors on one wall, that hid the washer and dryer from view. There was a back door in the kitchen, but it led to nowhere since the apartments did not have patios or back yards.

It's the kitchen that was haunted.

My mom is a borderline neat freak. Everything had to be just-so before going to bed, everything straightened and tidied up. This included pushing all the chairs under the kitchen table.

One morning, mom was surprised to find all the chairs pulled out when she went in to make her morning tea. She asked my dad and me if we had been up during the night. Nope, we hadn't.

After that, the chairs were never under the table in the morning. She'd push them in at night, go to bed, and upon waking find them pulled all the way out, as far as they could get before coming up against a wall or the refrigerator.

I remember my parents joking about the haunted kitchen. Of course, when your five years old, discussion of any kind about haunted anything is a little alarming. I remember asking my dad nervously if the kitchen was really haunted. He laughed and said no, that big trucks driving by on road were probably causing vibrations that pushed the chairs across the floor.

I wondered why the trucks didn't move the chairs when the sun was out.

One night I awoke in the wee smalls of the morning, I don't know why. I've always been a little afraid of the dark, and when I was small, I was super afraid of the dark. I had a night light (it was a large ceramic grinning clown whose eyes, nose and smile lit up, I shit you not) that my grandmother had made for me, and I could see the darkened shapes of my toys and shelves in my room.

It was quiet...and then I heard it: the unmistakable sound of chairs being slowly dragged across the linoleum floor of the kitchen.

Skrrrrreeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeek...

Sure enough, in the morning, all the chairs were against the walls, the fridge, the cabinets.

I think we only lived there for a year. Nothing else spooky ever happened there, just the creepy kitchen incidents.

Years later, I saw the movie "Poltergeist" in the theater. There's a scene where the mom knows she pushed all the table chairs in, and a few minutes later, they're all out again. She pushes them all back in, exasperated, scolding her kids. She turns her back for a few seconds, and suddenly all the chairs are balanced atop the table in a pyramid. That never happened to us, thank heavens...but that scene in the movie always gives me the heebie jeebies, and reminds me of our haunted apartment.

Demon Creature: Another True Spooky Story

2009-10-01T08:45:00.000-07:00

In honor of the First Day of Halloween (as far as I'm concerned, Halloween is a month-long holiday!) I'm posting one of my dad's stories. I was probably around 11 years old or so the first time he told it, and it raised the hairs up on the back of my neck. Dad swore that this tale is true...but you will of course have to judge for yourself.

Dad grew up in Madison, Indiana, a beautiful and historic little town on the Ohio River. Madison has a reputation of being haunted, of course. It has a rich history dating back to the Civil War and beyond. This story would have taken place in the mid-1940's, probably within a few years after WWII ended. Dad was about 9 years old.

They lived in an old shot-gun style house in the poor section of town. It was a tiny home, housing my dad and a whole bunch of brothers. Normally the house was full of people and noise but on this day, my dad had a chance for five minutes peace, while his brothers were out playing, and his mom and dad were working.

He decided to stay in his room and read a book, a real luxury for him. They couldn't really afford books, so it was a real treat to get his hands on one.

It was broad daylight, in the afternoon. He was sitting on his bed, reading, when he heard a thump in the hallway. He thought it was one of his brothers coming in the house, but after a moment or two of silence, he realized he was still alone. He continued reading.

He heard another thump, quite a bit louder. He looked over at the open bedroom door, and saw something that scared the hell out of him.

Standing right in the middle of the doorway was a creature. Not an animal, and not a human...it was about three feet tall, and had shiny, coal black skin that hung in folds on it's oddly misshapen body. It wore no clothing of any kind. It's face was inhuman, and it had frightening bright yellow eyes. It didn't do anything other stare at my dad, but gave off an unmistakable air of evil.

Terrified, my dad said he screamed, "GET OUT OF HERE!" at the creature. Instead of leaving, it grinned at him, and simply leaned against the doorjamb, as if it planned to stay awhile.

Dad grabbed the only thing he could lay his hands on, a mason jar full of water he was drinking, and hurled it at the thing. The jar struck the doorjamb right beside the creature, and *poof*, the thing vanished into thin air.

He said that was one of the most terrifying things that ever happened to him in his life, and to the day he died, he had no explanation for it. He knows he wasn't sleeping, because it was daylight, and he was wide awake reading...and also he managed to dump the water in the jar all over himself when he went to throw it at the creature.

That was the one and only time he saw it. He made sure to never be alone in the house again.

What was it? I don't know. Dad thought it was some kind of little demon or other-worldly monster.

All I do know, is that I hope to never see it myself...

Homeland

2009-08-17T09:28:00.002-07:00

I stand on the well-worn floorboards of the front porch, looking out. The sky is a deep and cloudless blue. The air is cool and crisp. I smell the familiar scents of woodsmoke and sweetly decaying autumn leaves. A breeze touches my face, and carries the soft sound of our horses whinnying in the pasture.

Behind me, I feel the weight and hulking mass of the log cabin my father built. I sense the soul of this home. I know that if I turn and look in the windows, I will see my Childhood Self wearing my favorite flannel pajamas, playing with Barbie Dolls, Matchbox cars or Legos on the living room floor while the television drones Saturday morning cartoons in the background. I will see my mother working in the kitchen, where the homey, cozy scent of fresh coffee and frying bacon fills the air. A fire will be crackling in the fireplace, merry and comforting.

Before me, I see the beautiful rolling vista afforded by living high on a hill. I see our nicely mowed yard where our dog, Spike, lies in the middle of the grass, sleeping in the sun. The yard is separated from the pasture by a split-rail fence, also built by my father. The meadow is more overgrown with wild grasses, yellowed by the season, gently rippling in the breeze. Beyond that I see the tree line where our woods begin, brightly hued in fall colors. Far in the distance, tiny, I can barely see the town of Bedford.

I know my father is in the barn, working on one thing or another. I know when he comes in for breakfast he will hug the Me who is watching cartoons and playing before the fireplace, and he will be whole, and strong and healthy. A source of love, comfort and protection. I know that in the evening after supper, we will sit within the glow of the hearth, and he will tell some wonderfully eerie ghost stories in the spirit of the season.

I inhale deeply the scents of my childhood, listening to the calling of crows and the skittering of fallen leaves across the gravel driveway. This place is a source of strength and comfort to me, though I can only reach it in memory.

This is my Homeland.

Do You Speak English...or American?

2009-07-29T18:22:00.006-07:00

On another blog site, I read a post someone wrote about dealing with a McDonald’s employee in Arizona with what I presume was a heavy Spanish accent. This person was quite annoyed that he had to contend with someone in the customer service industry in America who had difficulty with speaking English. He was downright outraged.

His post reminded me of some of my own incidents of dealing with accented speech, or people who don’t understand English very well. My problem isn't with people from other countries, it's with good ol' red blooded Americans...specifically: Hillbillies.

I’m not referring to a nice southern drawl here…when I say “hillbilly”, that’s exactly what I mean.

I used to work at JC Penney, in the “home decor” department. When I had to order curtains for someone, it involved calling the company who makes the curtains.

One time, a total hayseed answered the phone, and I gave her the window measurements. She then asked me for the “seal hot”.

I said…"Um…what?"

She said, “The seal hot. I need the seal hot.”

“Seal hot?” I repeated back, just to make sure I had heard her correctly.

“Yes.” she said.

I had NO clue WTF she was talking about. I had to go find someone else in the store that speaks Hillbilly to talk to her. Turns out, she needed to know the sill height, as in, the height of the window sill.

Are the words “sill” and “height” really that difficult to pronounce? “Sill” has a short “i”, not a long “e”. “Height” has a long “i” and there is no short “o” sound in it.

Speak English, people!

Another hillbilly I dealt with at a UPS shipping center kept insisting that my “pitcher” got broken while being shipped. Of course, a normal person that understands and speaks English either thinks of a pitcher from which you pour liquids, or a pitcher in a baseball game.

I argued with him for a good five minutes that I had not packed a pitcher into the box I had shipped…until it dawned on me that he meant PICTURE. The picture frame I’d shipped must have cracked.

“Oh! You mean my PIK-CHUR.” I pronounced carefully, because I’m a bitch. “Picture, not pitcher.”

He looked at me like I was crazy.

To be fair, New England Yankee accents often stupefy me too. I had a good friend from Boston, and she was talking to me one day about the “rum” she’d had at a hotel.

Now, we were only 14 years old, and I found it unlikely that hotel personnel would have given her alcohol. “How did you get them to give you rum?!?” I asked, shocked.

“No! Not rum...rum! R-O-O-M…rum!” she said as if she was talking to an imbecile.

I’ve also struggled with the vernacular of various parts of the U.S.A. For example, I learned that in Indiana, “Ah’m gonna run the sweeper,” means, “I’m going to vacuum the floor.”

So...I guess to those Americans who become outraged when they encounter immigrants or visitors to our country that don't speak perfect English, I say...YOU FIRST.

Ghost Story: Lady in the Blue Nighty

2009-07-18T14:24:00.001-07:00

The first true haunting/ghost story I posted here was about Chester.

This one is about a lady ghost that I never named.

We lived in Phoenix, AZ for four years when I was growing up, from my 5th through 8th grade years. That was the age when my parents decided I was old enough to stay home alone after school or while they ran errands and what not (I am an only child, so this was a big deal for me).

The house was a typical, cracker-box, cookie-cutter, single-level, three bedroom, two bath on a corner lot in a shitty neighborhood. When my parents were home, I’d usually hang out in my room listening to music, reading, or writing stories (I was a nerd. Still am, I guess). Sometimes I would watch tv with mom and dad in the living room (we only had one television).

The ghost would only appear when I was home alone, and only when I was sitting on the left side of the sofa. It could be any time of day, or night, it didn’t matter. I would lounge on the couch in front of our crappy little 13-inch tv, and watch the usual tripe that kids enjoy. She would approach from my left, walking toward me from the kitchen. She always walked in slow motion.

The lady always looked exactly the same: Black hair, in rollers on top of her head. Pasty, white skin. She was over weight, but not fat…more pudgy than anything. She wore black rimmed glasses, of a style probably from the 60’s. She wore a flannel-type night gown, light blue with darker blue flowers printed on it…and I kid you not, big fuzzy slippers (also blue).

So she would be walking towards me slowly, from the kitchen, and I could see her as long as I didn’t look directly at her. As soon as I would turn to look at her full-on, she would of course vanish.

I was always scared that one day I’d look and she would remain, walking closer and closer…

When we moved from that house, I never saw her again. I’ve always wondered if subsequent families in that house ever saw her. I’ve driven past that house several times since we moved away, and the neighborhood is even scarier and more dangerous than when we lived there, so I doubt I’ll be stopping to ask.

No Rain...

2009-07-18T08:34:00.002-07:00

It's supposed to be monsoon season here in AZ, and I guess other parts of the state are benefitting from drenching down pours...but here in Flaggy, nada.

I love big thundering rain storms. I love to sit on the front porch, and feel the temperature plummet as the wind kicks up, whipping the trees back and forth. I love how the bright sunny day quickly becomes dark and ominous. I love the blinding, beautiful, deadly flashes of blue lightening arcing across the skies and touching the earth in scorching blasts. I love the really loud, deafening thunder that vibrates through the ground and up through my bones. I love the smell of the rain, and the feel of the damp mist as it blows in to my sheltered place under the porch roof.

So come on, rain! Come on, storms! Bring it, Mother Nature! Please pay a visit to my little neighborhood, and give us the much-needed rain of the summer monsoons.

Who Says Arizona Isn't Green?

2009-06-18T08:37:00.000-07:00

Yes…it’s true that large portions of AZ look like the surface of the moon (if the moon was 120 in the shade during the summer).

However, in the higher elevations, Arizona has some really beautiful scenery, like colorful gems scattered across a sand box.

I snapped these photos around the area of Alpine, AZ. The elevation is approximately 8,500 ft. above sea level. It’s coniferous forest…almost all various types of pine trees, with a smattering of aspen and oak to break things up. The Ponderosa pine trees can grow quite large, soaring dozens of feet into the sky, their trunks big enough around that a grown man would have difficulty wrapping his arms around it.

This is an area of our country that is far more wild than my home in the Midwest. Out here, you can jump on horseback and ride through millions of acres of national forest without ever encountering a fence. We have bears, wolves, and mountain lions. The air is crisp, clean, and scented with a sweet pine scent. The skies are a clear, deep shade of blue that I never saw when I lived east of the Mississippi.

No, it’s not the beautiful emerald green found in Indiana and Kentucky, but I have to take what I can get out here. Fortunately, what I can get is pretty darn gorgeous, itself!

Brought To You By the Letters WTF!

2009-05-19T08:57:00.004-07:00

So for Boo’s first bday, I ordered her the dvd sets of Old School Sesame Street (sets 1 & 2) which has episodes that aired between 1969 and 1979, plus a bunch of extra clips.

I ordered these because I utterly and completely detest the current incarnation of Sesame Street, which hardly touches on letters and numbers, and is way more focused on stupid crap like “getting along” and Elmo’s World. Elmo and Baby Bear and Sully are SO ANNOYING!!! There’s no more Kermit, barely any Grover, barely any Erne and Bert…they have Cookie Monster eating fruit and vegetables and saying that “cookies are a sometimes snack” now, for crying out loud! WTF!

Anyway, there’s a disclaimer on the dvd sets that the old Sesame Streets “may not be appropriate for today’s toddlers” or some such.

I am outraged by this. They can take their Politically Correct new version of Sesame Street and shove it! I love Sesame, and they ruined it. Cookie Monster eating vegetables. Bah!

So…we’ve been watching a disk of old-school Sesame each morning, and Boo loves it. Now are there some peculiar things by today’s standards? Yes, for sure. In these old episodes, they have kids talking to strangers and doing things like wandering around junk yards, LOL! There is a skit where a guy in a WWII German military helmet and uniform is standing in the forest, speaking in a German accent…we basically have a Nazi telling us that the letter Q is lazy because it can’t work without a U. ROFLMAO! Hysterical!

Luckily, baby Boo has me to teach her not to talk to strangers, and to make sure she doesn’t wander around in junk yards. Other than that, I haven’t seen a damn thing that could be construed as “inappropriate for today’s toddlers”.

Next I’m getting the dvd sets of the old Electric Company. Nothing like having Morgan Freeman teaching you to read whilst wearing some groovy bell-bottoms!

Oh well. If you are a parent of little kids, I do recommend these dvds. My daughter loves them, and they are worth their weight just for the nostalgia factor alone.

A Ghost Story: Chester

2009-05-11T10:50:00.003-07:00

So I have some ghost stories. Here is one of them...I'll post the others later.

A little background, first.

This story is about a ranch that we lived at when I was about 14 years old. My parents had taken a job there as caretakers. The family that owned the ranch lived down in the Phoenix area, and only came up now and then for a vacation.

At the time, it went by the unoriginal name of "Hidden Valley Ranch"...I have no idea if the current owners stuck with that ridiculous title or not. HVR is located on the eastern slope of Escudilla mountain, which straddles the Arizona/New Mexico border. It is roughly 13 miles north of the tiny little town of Luna, NM. The road from Luna to the ranch is dirt and cinder, and the nearest neighbors to the ranch (at the time I lived there) was about 6 miles. It was truly situated in the middle of the wilderness.

The main house was brand new, and probably 6,000 sq. feet. It had been built on the same site where an old cabin had once been...in fact, the stone fireplace from the cabin that had been torn down was still standing out in the middle of the parking area for the new house.

Although the new log home was brand new, it did not have electricity. At least, not what we are accustomed to...there was a "battery room" at the end of the hall in the basement, that contained maybe a dozen car batteries that were charged by a couple of solar panels on the roof, and a tiny little windmill on the roof. These batteries were enough to power a few small flourescent lights around the house for a short period of time. You could not plug in lamps or electric appliances; our fridge and stove were gas powered. Our heat came from a woodstove. For light at night, they had put gas lamps in the house. They were mounted on the wall and had gaslines running to them...you had to use a lighter and turn a lever to light them. They would light with a small "whoosh" and a flash of blue. They didn't provide a ton of light but at least you could see well enough to read a book at night (you sure weren't going to be watching t.v. without electricity!).

Our water was pumped out of the ground by a windmill into a tank on a hill, and the water came down into our house by the power of gravity. Once a week, my dad would run a gasoline powered generator for a few hours so that we could do laundry. I use that time to pop a movie into the vcr to watch.

We lived in the basement of this gigantic house. It wasn't a scary, dark basement. It was a walkout basement, and was fully finished into an two-bedroom, one bathroom apartment. Also on the property, was a huge (new) barn, and also a second, smaller house that I am guessing was probably built in the 50s or 60s.

As you can imagine, that was not the ideal living situation for a 14 year old girl! I did not want to be out in the middle of nowhere with no electricity, I wanted to be with my friends, going to the mall, hanging out. I was not a happy camper.

Anyway, shortly after moving to the ranch, we started noticing strange things. It started out with the usual reports...we'd hear heavy boot steps walking across the ceiling, as if someone was on the first floor of the house above us. Dad would go check it out, and of course no one was there. On other occasions, we would hear a loud bang right over our heads, as if someone dropped something heavy. One afternoon, I was sitting on the livingroom couch reading a book. Mom was down the hall, and dad was working outside somewhere. Suddenly there was a LOUD crash right above me. LOUD. It was so loud it scared the bejesus out of my parakeet, who's cage was suspended from the celing right where the sound was centralized. It startled me so bad, I swear it sounded like someone had dropped a bowling ball right over my head. I screamed for my mom, but she said she hadn't heard a thing. I got my dad and made him go up and check, but nothing was there, nothing was out of order or knocked over.

Dad of course wore work boots to do all his outdoors stuff. He always took them off outside the front door so that he wouldn't track mud across my mother's pristine floors. One morning, he went out to put on his boots and start his day, but the boots were gone. He was pretty ticked off, and we all assumed one of our dogs had dragged them off somewhere. A couple of weeks went by, when dad found them. They had some how managed to make their way back to the battery room, at the back of our house. They were in the exact center of the floor, together, with the toes pointing towards the back corner.

By this time, we had taken to calling our resident ghost "Chester". I don't know why, just a silly name.

Chester loved to steal things. Items of clothing were a favorite. You'd lie out your clothes on the bed to put on after a shower, only to find them missing when you got out. One time, we awoke in the morning to find that all the glass globes surrounding the wall-mounted gas lights were gone. Just...gone. No broken glass on the floors. No nothing. We had to order new globes.

Once we went out for a horseback ride, and when we got back, all the cabinet doors in our kitchen were standing wide open. Nothing was stolen or out of place...dad went through the house with a baseball bat! No sign of anyone.

Another time, all the clocks were turned backwards a couple of hours. Remember, we didn't have electricity, so it wasn't that the power had gone out for a time...all our clocks ran on batteries, and they were all turned back the same amount of time.

Chester was never really malicious or mean...other than somewhat of a prankster who stole things. In fact, he could be kind! My dad told me once that while my mom and I were gone on a trip to visit family and he was at the ranch alone, he went out to tend the horses or whatever, and when he got back a cold glass of milk and a stack of cookies were waiting for him. Again, he went through the house with a ball bat, although by now we were pretty used to Chester.

Mom mom is the only one to have seen Chester. She said it was at night, and she and my dad were in bed. My dad had already fallen asleep, and she had just turned out her reading light to go to sleep. In the darkened room, she saw a greenish-glowing figure walk in, walk to the end of the bed where our dog, Bear, was sleeping, pat the dog on the head and then vanish. During this event, she kept shaking my dad, telling him to wake up, wake up, there was a ghost in the room...but he mumbled that she was dreaming and to go back to sleep.

So, that is the story of Chester the Ghost. I have no idea what was really going on there, but I can tell you whatever it was, it was very strange. The ghostly activity did not follow us when we moved from there. Some other family owns that ranch now, and I think someone still lives out there in the same basement apartment to keep an eye on things. I've always wanted to ask if anyone else experienced strange happenings. I wonder if Chester is still there, lurking around, playing pranks out there at that lonely outpost in the mountains.

Ghost Town

2009-04-20T21:48:00.005-07:00

So, as I was saying...we are having magnificent spring weather right now. We decided to take advantage of it, and went on a family road trip on Sunday. I suggested we make a trip down to Jerome, an old mining town. Founded in 1876, Jerome was a typical boom town, which nearly faded into oblivion when the mines petered out. Luckily it survived, and is undergoing a lot of renovation and revival. I'd been through there once before, and always wanted to go back for a closer look.

Jerome isn't technically a real ghost town...people still live there...but it definitely has that "stuck in time" feel to it. The Wild West lives on there...it has numerous old, old homes and buildings. It perches precariously on the side of Cleopatra Hill, and it's amazing to me that any of the homes are still standing.

Of course, like any old West town worth its salt, Jerome has a reputation of being haunted. I've always been a fan of "true" ghost stories and hauntings, so I was excited to find out about The Jerome Grand Hotel, pictured here in a photo I snapped through the windshield while we were driving.

Isn't it spooky? Apparently, it started out as the local hospital, and now it is an operational hotel with a full compliment of ghosties to keep the guests entertained. I told my husband to book us a weekend there for our next anniversary. Maybe I'll get lucky and catch a photo of the ghost nurse, or the ghost of the little boy who roams the halls...or of their most famous ghost, the maintenance worker who met an unfortunate end in 1935 when he was mysteriously crushed by the elevator...

Here is another photo I took on our trip...this one is also in Jerome, about half way up the switchbacks to the town. It is an old abandoned gas station, apparently called the "Mohawk Mini-Mart" in its last life. I wonder how long it's been since it was open, and what it was called in its first life.

Unfortunately, we didn't get to park and walk around on this trip. The town was jam-packed with tourists, and a whole bunch of bikers, lol. We literally couldn't find a reasonable place to park! I can't wait to go back though, with my walking shoes on and camera in tow. Hopefully I'll have a lot more photos to post next time!

The Payoff

2009-04-18T08:36:00.006-07:00

Spring is back (again)! I just looked at the extended forecast for the week ahead here in Flagstaff, and WOW! Spring weather all week! Starting today!

I had to come here and post about it, that is how excited I am...maybe a little ridiculous, but I can't express how tired of winter weather I am! Why live in Flagstaff then? Winter comes early and stays late in these mountains. Well...there are times I feel like moving, for sure. But...then Spring finally arrives in earnest, once She gets past Her mood-swing stage, and then you know Summer isn't far behind.

We live in a coniferous forest, and when the sun warms up all those Ponderosa pine trees, the air is scented with pine. Not like C'mas trees smell...but an almost butterscotch-y scent with pine undertones. It's hard to describe, but if you've ever been to the AZ mountains in the summer, you know what I'm talking about. I am sure it will be warm enough this week to have that delicious scent in the air!

I think we'll put out a couple more bird feeders this spring, too. Maybe the suet kind. We are lucky enough have a duck preserve a short walk from our house, which of course is home to many kinds of birds, not just ducks! So, we have a large variety of birds near by that will visit our yard if we tempt them with some goodies.

It's almost time to dust off the humming bird feeders too...maybe one more month. I like to put them out a little early, because it seems to attract a bigger crowd by mid-summer. One year we had what my husband jokingly referred to as a hummingbird "infestation"...I had so many! Clouds of them! I am not exaggerating when I say there were 40 or 50 of the zippy little birds flying around my front porch one year. I loved it!

I'm also looking forward to monsoon season. That's another one of my favorite things to do...my husband and I like to sit on the front porch during the big thunder and lightening storms, and watch the rain pour down in sheets. We don't even need to talk...we just sit together quietly, enjoying the cool mist from the rain, feeling the vibration from the great crashes of thunder, and watching the spectacular lightning arc across the sky.

Down in the Pumphouse Wash meadow, the elk will start showing up soon. There's usually a big bachelor herd that spends a lot of time there, munching on the tall grass. You can always tell whenever they are out there, because cars pull over and line the road as people stop to watch them. I'm often one of them, out there with my paparazzi lens, snapping photos. The elk will be frequent visitors there all summer and in to fall.

So...yes, I am excited about a whole week of warm weather. The windows will be open, baby Boo and I will be out there strolling, my camera will get a work out. The payoff for enduring the mountain winter is right around the corner!

P.

First Sunday, After the First Full Moon, After the Equinox

2009-04-16T18:32:00.006-07:00

Easter weekend, 2009 has come and gone.

I really enjoy Easter, because it is one of those Christian holidays that is just chock-full of Pagan traditions...and let's face it, no one knows how to put on a fun-filled holiday celebration like the Pagans!

We spent the weekend in Phoenix with my husband's family, and had a great time. I absolutely LOVE my husband's family. I am one of those rare, extremely lucky individuals who has wonderful in-laws. DH has a large family, too...he's one of 7 kids. When there is a family holiday get-together, it comes along with a whole bunch of cute nieces and nephews. All the girls were dressed up in their pretty Easter dresses, looking like cheerful spring flowers. I tried to get a group photo of all of them together, but the littlest ones had the wiggles. Those two on the right end are my girls, aren't they cute?

The day before Easter we drove down the mountain to the desert. It was essentially blizzarding when we started out, the wind whipping up the snow and icy pellets. Down in Phoenix, the precipitation continued, but to us it was warm! Bug set up her egg dying shop on the back patio, and we painted brightly colored eggs while the sky was heavy and grey. The rain poured down, the thunder cracked. It was great! My MIL and FIL kept trying to get us to put on jackets, but to us the temperature was quite comfortable.

Easter dinner was delicious, with all the traditional dishes. The ham was especially good.

Our dog, Luna, created the only drama on Easter day. My little two-year-old niece had a lovely cookie in her hand, and was toddling along with it. Luna, of course, thought that since the cookie was right about doggie-eye-level, it must be being offered to her, right? Luna ever so gently took the cookie right out of my niece's hand and dashed off with it. It took about 5 full seconds for my niece to fully grasp what had just occured, and then the tears came. She was SO upset. My FIL found this quite amusing, and was still chuckling about it the next day. Luna the dog says she feels terrible about the misunderstanding, but that the cookie was quite good.

So...another Easter is in the books. I do love being part of this big family. I am an only child, and although being around such a huge crowd at family gatherings can feel a little overwhelming at times, I always end up enjoying myself, and wishing we lived closer. Or rather, that they lived closer to us!

Homesick

2009-04-01T08:04:00.004-07:00

Spring is a favorite season of mine, nearly tied with autumn...I guess I like the transitional seasons. The big difference between Spring and Autumn for me is that in Spring, I become terribly, terribly homesick for my home state of Indiana.

Northern Arizona is undeniably beautiful with its vast coniferous forests, snowy mountain peaks, and shadowed canyons. Nature is certainly more wild and primitive here. In Arizona, you can get on horseback in one of our National Forests and ride for 4o miles without ever encountering a fence (or even another human!), and we have bears, wolves, and mountain lions among our pantheon of wildlife. I once asked my dad why he preferred the Southwest to Indiana, and he said, "There are no bears in Indiana." LOL. I miss my dad.

In comparison, Indiana has been tamed by Man. It has a much higher population contained in a smaller area. Its state and national forests are tiny compared to Arizona's. It has been criss-crossed and tied down by fences. Much of the wildlife that was native to the area has been hunted to extinction (there are no big predators left there, unless you count Coyotes, which I personally don't, LOL). They have to conduct mass-murder hunts to keep the deer population under control, because there are no natural predators left to take care of the job.

But...in spite of all the unspoiled, beautiful wilderness I live around here in the mountains, I just don't feel as connected to the Earth as I do when in Indiana. I think it has to do with the fact that here in the Southwest, everything about life is a struggle. Plant life has to be tough and wiry to find purchase in the thin, rocky soil, and to be able to survive in such an arid environment. Animal life also has to be able endure drought conditions and extreme temperatures of heat in the desert and cold in the mountains. Life is not easy for our flora and fauna friends in the Southwest, and as a consequence, Spring does not carry with it the same joyful renewal of life as it does in my homeland of Indiana.

Indiana is lush and fertile, and that is why I miss it so much in the Spring. Everything is budding, ready to burst into new life. I miss the faint green tinge the branches of trees turn right before new leaves spring forth. I miss the joy of finding the first crocus and daffodils pushing through the damp soil to find the sun. I miss the whirligig Sugar Maple seeds spinning down from above. I miss April showers and May flowers. I miss the absolute riot of birdsong outside my bedroom window every morning...a sure sign that spring has arrived.

Spring comes late to the mountains...and is always accompanied by howling winds that seem like they will never die down. Even in late May we can get sudden snow storms. Hard to feel Spring-y when your driveway needs to be shoveled.

So today I feel homesick. I miss my Indiana...even with all its fences (and lack of bears).

P.

Sweet Baby Boo

2009-03-11T22:56:00.002-07:00

So, my baby Boo usually wakes up crying about 5:00 in the morning, every morning. I bring her in to bed with me, and I lie on my side so she can nurse. It's nice, quiet cuddle time. Usually after she drifts to sleep I carefully move her back to her crib, but last night we both fell asleep that way.

I was wakened at sunrise, when I felt something gently patting my cheek. I opened my eyes, and there was Boo, three inches from my face, with her little hand reached out touching my face. When I looked at her she gave me a giant ear-to-ear smile. My heart just melted into a puddle of butter.

Is there a better way to start one's day?

I say, no.

Beauty

2009-02-28T10:32:00.004-07:00

I have never felt pretty, at least not by society's high standards. I don't think I'm hideous or anything...I mean, it's not like you have to shudder when you look at me, but I will never be considered a beauty queen. Ha.

I saw this video on YouTube and found it eye-opening and sort of sad at the same time. What do you think?

Heart House

2009-02-24T08:38:00.011-07:00

This is the Heart House of Valley Mission Road, near Lake Monroe in south-central Indiana.

I snapped these photos on April 22, 1994. It was early enough in the spring that you could still see through the woods, before Indiana's verdant undergrowth took over.

I started calling it the Heart House the first time I saw it. I know it's difficult to see in this photo, but if you look closely, you can see some gingerbread decoration running along the peak of the roof. Those are tiny hearts punched out of metal, and they extend all the way along the roof.

The first time I saw the house was when I was about 8 years old, probably the summer of 1977. It was on a large tract of 100+ acres that adjoined our own 20 acres. We used to saddle up the horses and go riding there. My dad told me about an old abandoned house that had hearts along the roof, and my child's imagination immediately fired up. I couldn't wait to see it!

Of course, being a kid, it became a favorite stop on our weekend horseback rides. I remember that the house only had three rooms. It must have been built around the turn of the century, surely no later than the 1920's. It didn't have indoor plumbing, that's for sure. It didn't have a proper second floor, but there was a wooden ladder thing built inside that led to a big, dark, rectangular hole in the ceiling. I have no idea if it was just an attic, or maybe sleeping rooms. I remember that one room in the back had been swept clean, and a small table with a couple of chairs were set up. Dad speculated that perhaps transients occasionally camped there.

Another room I remember was what I thought of as the "newspaper room". One room of the house was completely littered with ancient newspapers...not just random pages, but entire newspapers, most still folded up. I snagged one once...I really wish I could remember the year on it. I want to say the 1940s, but I am not sure. I probably still have it packed away somewhere. This is a pic of the newspaper room...the papers were in much worse condition in 1994 than the were in 1977. The ladder to the ceiling hole is in the right side of the photo.

In 1994, I decided to hike back to the abandoned home, to see if it was still there, to see if I would still be able to find it after so many years. It was a special place to me, full of mystery (Who had lived there? Where did they go? What were their lives like?) and cherished memories of summer horseback rides with my mom and dad. I wanted to reconnect with a part of my childhood.

My dog, Sunday, and I parked the truck at the side of the road, and equipped with my point-and-shoot 35mm camera, started off into the woods. I remembered roughly how far back it was, and that you had to turn right off the main trail. I spotted an unusually-shaped tree that I remembered as a landmark from childhood and headed toward it. After about an hour, I still hadn't found the house.

About that time, an older gentleman appeared silently out of the woods. He was probably in his early seventies. He wore a wide-brimmed hat, and faded overalls. He carried a cloth sack in one hand. He called out a halloo, and asked me if I was lost. I told him that I was looking for the abandoned farmhouse.

"Oh, I can show you where it is. It's just right over there," he said, gesturing with his cloth sack. He started off through the woods, and I followed him. I'd literally been within a stone's throw distance, and just hadn't been able to see it through all the saplings that had sprouted up around it over the last 17 years.

The gentleman told me that the people that lived there had raised hogs, and he showed me the ancient remains of the pig pens, which were really just rotted boards barely visible under the dead leaves on the ground. Apparently he had known the family when he was a little boy.

I explained to him who I was, that I had lived on the property bordering this place in a log home my parents had built. His eyes lit up and he said, "Oh, I remember your dad! David was his name?" and I felt quite pleased that he still remembered dad after all those years. He told me what a fine person dad was, which I thought was pretty nice.

I asked him what was in the cloth sack, and he told me that he was out collecting Morel mushrooms. These are a popular delicacy in Indiana (and several other places as well).

After a bit more friendly conversation, the gentleman sort of just silently and mysteriously melted back into the woods. Literally, he was there one moment, and then he was gone...it was a bit spooky. I was grateful to him for helping me find the house, and for his friendly words about my dad. I wished him happy mushroom hunting.

This is where you accessed the trail back to the Heart House from Valley Mission Road. If you were to see this entrance today, you wouldn't recognize it from this photo. It's been turned into a gated community for the obscenely wealthy, divided up and covered in McMansions. The beauty and wildness of the place has been destroyed, paved over and manicured into golf-courses and pristine lawns in front of unaffordable homes.

The Heart House is long gone. I still don't know much more about it than I did when I was 8 years old. I am so glad that I took the time to hike out there and snap a few photos of it. At least there is some kind of record of it, and even if no one else remembers it, I do. I still wonder who built it, who lived there, what they did. How long did they live in their little home in the woods?

The Heart House will always have a special place...in my heart.

P.

Snow.

2009-02-08T15:38:00.001-07:00

OK so I already posted this on FB, but I thought I'd throw it up here, too :)

I'm sitting here watching it snow outside. Again. We've had enough snow this winter and would be quite pleased if it would just rain instead.

I remember when I was a little kid, and I would absolutely PRAY for it to snow. It must have worked, because in the mid-1970's, we had a couple of winters with tons of snow.

We lived in a log home that my parents had built, on about 20 acres in south-central Indiana. My bedroom was upstairs, sort of at the back of the house, and often it would remain a bit chilly during the winter since the heat from the giant fireplace never quite made it all the way down the hall to my room.

The fireplace was the centerpiece of the house, rising right up through the middle, separating the living room from the kitchen. It was built of field stone that my parents had collected from around our property. I would often sleep in the loft during the winter, because the chimney came up through the loft and the stone would radiate heat, keeping it nice and toasty up there.

When snow was predicted, I would go to bed at night listening to the howling storm with high hopes of waking up to twenty feet of sparkling, pristine snow, so that school would be canceled and I could play all day. In the morning, my parents would have the radio on down stairs listening to the news report. I would lie awake in the darkened loft, fingers crossed, my ears straining to hear those magic words: "Monroe County Community Schools are closed."

We never got twenty feet of snow over night like I hoped for, but we would get two to three feet. When that happened, none of us were going anywhere...our driveway was a good 1/4 mile long up a fairly steep hill. No way our little 1973 VW Beetle would make it. Dad, Mom and I were all snowed in together. It was great!

Today, snow doesn't thrill me quite as much, to put it mildly. It is still pretty, and as my friend pointed out the other day, it quickly fixes any landscaping problems you might have, since your yard is magically transformed into looking as good as your neighbors'!

Unfortunately the reality of shoveling, digging, getting stuck, tracking mud, driving on icy roads, and worrying about ice dams ruining your roof or walls has ruined the thrill of the big snowstorm for me.

My daughter on the other hand, instead of listening to the news report on the radio waits with baited breath as we check school status on the internet. She is just as excited as I was when I was a kid, when she reads those magic words: "Flagstaff Unified School District is closed"... :)