Tagged......

Lizard Princess tagged me a while ago, bless her heart, and patience…she said there was no time limit, and I think I made this part up, no rules! “Six weird things about me”….

Sweet Spado Man Meme’d me and now it’s in the bag.

That’s the tag, so here goes….

Because it’s me, I don’t really think it’s weird (or I wouldn’t do it), but maybe the neighbors do…..

1. I don’t open my mail. I don’t even bug-eye it. I barely even take it out of the mailbox. I wait until it’s totally stuffed full and the mailman, the nice mailman, starts flinging it on my screen porch and then I walk down the gravel drive-way and shimmy it out of it’s cocoon. I walk straight to the car and toss it on the passenger’s floorboard. I don’t ride on that side so it never gets in the way of my feet. I hate bills, letters from attorney’s, collection Agencies, and chain letters. I don’t throw it out because you never know when you’ll get pulled over and need something important and at least I can “act” like I’m digging for it…

2. I "tink". I believe in it.

3. I wear love beads. Don’t take ‘em off. Love beads and borrowed and found charms. Just keep adding to the leather love around my neck. Joe’s peace charm, a trinket lost and then found from Skinny’s wedding, a cross found in the sand, an Italian horn, blessed, and borrowed from a neighbor, the MOM charm my babies saved for……and the love beads Skinny and I made a million years ago. I don’t take ‘em off for weddings, funerals, work. I don’t take them off to match my costume. I wear them. Touch them. Feel them. Love them.

4. I fly in my sleep. Not casually. Really fly. Kind of like Jet Blue Naked.

5. I have rules. I make them up as I go along. Social rules, road rules, house rules, blogging rules, work rules, love rules, peace rules….. The “I’m never ever gonna do this again….” kinda rules. Or “from now on” this kinda rule. “That aint right” kinda rule….. All kinds of rules….

6. I break them.

Now I have to “tag” six other souls to this chain….hmmmmm……

It’s all good, There’s no time limit………

May the circle be unbroken....

Sticks and Stones and all that magic.....or in other words......

Out first house was imminent. We had saved for the down payment , trading Smirnoff for ABC brand vodka on Friday nights and buying ground chuck instead of sirloin. Clink! We cheered! “We’ll buy a house” “With two cats in the yard” “And a garden” “And a fireplace for marshmellow roasts” Blah! Blah! Blah! Blah! About three week-ends into house-shopping we were fighting. What I though was adorable, he thought was a money pit. What I thought was water front, he thought was built on a retention pond… God, the man had no imagination!

So, it was perfect! The week-end of our anniversary he went boating and Kimbies and I went house shopping. Actually, we just looked at one house. Through kaleidoscope eyes. We were in awe at the designer refrigerator in the matching pantry. The “French windows throughout” were so romantic….. 13 giant oak trees danced in the sky, their petticoats shading the double lot. “This is it!”

He pulled the boat in just after dusk. His neck and cheeks red with the twelve-pack flush and a little sun! He was smiling. Better be. It was our anniversary! “Baby Cakes, I’m sorry we’re so late….there was a barge on the river and……” “Just sign here, We found the house, the perfect house, you are so gonna love it!”

And he did.

Drinking on your anniversary does strange things to you. Anything to make her happy.

The designer fridge was a rust bucket covered in wood grain contact paper. It hummed and churned and belched for a few months and then croaked. The fireplace draped in the vintage mantel was our only source of heat that winter and the “French windows throughout”, that depended on 80 year old rope pullies to move up and down, our only source of air conditioning that summer. The floors dipped, the walls creaked, the oak trees tossed 10,000 wet leaves on the tar paper roof. We had parties there, babies there, love there.

And then one day, it was over.

My second house was perfect. The Stepford Wife thing. Only there was no Stepford Husband. Skinny and I and the babies made love beads there, and peace sign wreaths out of stolen grapevines. Jonah threw up on the perfect Berber carpet, we scorched the ceiling of the perfect screened room grilling hotdogs at midnight, we packed the perfect garage full of hot wheels and seashells, driftwood and trash from the neighbor’s garbage…. "surely, we can use this for something”, we used the perfect dishwasher for our bar, stacking martini and shot glasses on the top rack, Nana’s vintage stirrers and straws in the silverware bucket, and bottles on the bottom rack, we used the perfect disposal to shred love letters and rant letters to less than perfect lovers…We hated it…..

We fertilized the yard and mowed it twice a week. Planted bulbs in the spring time. From the road, we were happy campers……..

My third house was an accident. Waiting to happen. Waiting a zillion years for just the right person, just the right vibes, just the right karma. Waiting for me.

Sometimes, when you least expect it, in places you’ve never looked before…..you find that you’ve wandered aimlessly forever…

and simply fall into the arms you’ve known all along…..

Home……



Tree fort courtesy of unknown Magpie Fairies.....
Discovered on the perfect Sunday.....

And then.....there was Disco....

And the silver glittered shoes....

We didn't trade our tattered levi's and Rolling Stones for anything, but we snatched a little "oooooooooooh, ahhhhhhhhhhhhh" "do the bump" and melded it into our week-ends. We added sparkled belts and wore blue mascara. We hit the clubs.

On Friday nights, we'd pile into Million's van and do the drive-in thing, cheap wine or expensive beer on ice....B-rated movies on the screen. We'd wander from car to car, an open air party. Admission: $2.00 a car. In our world we were hippies.

On Saturday night, we'd trade in our flip flops for platforms, and join Christian and his boys at The Palace. In Christian's world, we were movie stars.... The dance floor was an ever changing Twister game, smoke seeping from it's edges. The disco lights flooded our late night faces with pelting prisms. It was a bottle club. Bring your own. Buy the cup, the ice, the mixers. Tip the pretend bartender well......

"Riunite on ice. That's nice" I loved the commercials. The color of the wine. And the sound the ice made clanking in the glass. We tipped the bartender well......

Last night, we danced in the kitchen....

Turned the disco light on....

Traveled.....

We danced through my 8th grade birthday party, an all nighter at Peace Creek.....We swayed through my Senior Prom, and went low for Bob Segar.....held up our lighters and waited for more.....

We swished the Riunite (yep, they still make it!) and prayed we wouldn't have headaches today....

I wore the silver shoes....

Jonah crashed the party. "Guess what I got, Ma?" "A tattoo".......He made fried egg sandwiches and drank beer in the kitchen.....John Travolted across the vinyl floor. We laughed. And he did it again.

We lowered the music and lull-a-byed him to sleep.....

And danced in the kitchen.....

Once upon a time.....

It was 1975. Hot. The highway melted, woven like a braided leather belt and in the rear view mirror, the trails of where we were yet to travel streamed behind us endlessly...... like those fluorescent tassels Skinny had on her new bike. We were piled into Christian's Impala, blazing down the interstate, Jethro Tull on the 8 track, and I can't count how many of us piled onto the shiney blue bench seats. I picked at the cotton peeking from a burn mark on the seat under my knees. Mesmerized by the sheer endless quantity of it. Sure that if I was really quiet, I could syphon it all out of the seat and the driver's side would slowly deflate, leaving Christian sitting on the floorboards. I giggled to myself. I could wad it all up at my feet, take it home on Sunday and put it on the spinning wheel. Yup........

My Mom had given me the dime. Not the nickel-dime bag, but the customary, traditional, "put it in your shoe" dime. We were headed to Tampa for the 24 hour fest.....KISS, and I wish I could remember all the others, but....it's hazy....24 hours of nonstop music, towel tents pitched in the sun, beer and Strawberry Hill, naked babies, peace......

The dime was to call home if I needed to.

I didn't .

The temperature rocked 100 by Saturday afternoon. The port-a-lets were full, the beer was gone. We were hot. The sun gave up and began to fade, giving in to the pyromaniacs on the stage. And then.....the water main broke. A giant upside down waterfall in the middle of thousands of sweaty, stoned, day-drunk hippies. We charged it. Bodies everywhere dancing in the make-shift rain. Lapping up the miracle falling from a hundred feet above our heads.....

It made the11:00 news...

"Throngs of youth out of control as heat and drugs, rock and roll, descend on Tampa Fairgrounds....." My Mother sat on the vinyl leopard skin couch, scooching closer.... "She's there"....

She watched as Eddie-wanna-be-newscaster-live-on-the-scene-in-his-three-piece-suit spelled it out for the audiences at home, as channel 9 flashed pictures of bare chested chics and bare bottomed guys with the tutorial black rectangle emblazoned on their privates danced across the screen....

She cringed.....

The 3 minute "Live from Tampa Fairgrounds" ended with a frozen shot of the ambulances..... dozens of them.....parked in the dirt......

She waited.

I had a dime, afterall....

She finally fell into a fitless sweaty sleep on the vinyl couch......"My God, they're naked....doing all those things" "What if someone put something in her drink?" "How many babies were born after Woodstock?" "Maybe they had enough sense to leave, but then.....why aren't they home, did they get in a wreck?" "Surely,the sheriff would have called me".........waking on Sunday morning to the Preacher on channel 9..... "You can be saved....."

We stopped at IHOP on the way home and laughed. "It's all good"..... We rolled in on Sunday night, sunburnt and kind of dirty actually, but fine.

I saw her face the minute I fell through the kitchen door.....

"You could've called".....

Don't pack lighters in your Suitcase....

Chey has a lot of luggage. She has stories and nightmares, family trees with hanging moss and empty nests, credit cards in other names….She has a lot of luggage. She smiles easily and hugs heartily. Welcomes you into her world and as you take that first tenuous step onto the other side, you trip…..everyone does. Dozens of half empty suitcases are scattered everywhere, their Samsonite security codes busted wide open, their latches pried apart. Contents of a chaotic life flung haphazardly across her living room floor. And still she smiles. Throws a few beloved trinkets in an overnight bag and faces another day….

Amazing woman….What you don't know won't hurt you...

We all tote our weight. Histories we’d rather not share. Blood lines we can’t trace. Moments we can’t forget, and those we can’t remember that haunt us in the night.

It makes us who we are. And why.

It’s how laugh lines are painted on our faces, and scrowls scribbled on our foreheads. Why we develop silly little ticks like hair twirling, foot tapping, gum chomping. Why we smoke so much, drink so much, stutter once in a while. Sometimes, why we smile....

Why some of us choose our paths, and some fall fatefully forward…

Suitcases. Secrets. We all have them. Stuffed full of all we are and all we’ve been.

Some are neatly packed briefcases, organized and alphabetized, bar-coded for a rainy day or a funeral parade. Some are rancid garbage cans left out in the sun for the neighbors to puke over and stray dogs to rummage through. Some are designer labeled, lined with potpourri…..all haughty-taughtied up. Some are nothing more than a tattered levi pocket, it’s contents so comfortable and at home, a pencil rubbing on our back hip…

There are really really big suitcases and really really little ones. But we all tote ‘em.

I just stuffed a lifetime in a really really tiny one.

I can take it anywhere…




to be continued...

Confessions.....

I tell. That’s what I do. Kiss and tell. Sin and tell. Check out of Winn Dixie with an unscanned roll of cinnamon rolls, hike back into the store in the pouring rain, plunk my buck 35 down on the counter, and tell.

“I don’t think I paid for this”…..

I was 12 when we stole my Mother’s little red Ford Fairlane. It had already been stolen once and returned none the worse... so…. we all piled in, sweaty little thighs on naugahyde seats, and grinned. Crank that baby up. She purred. That’s why Mama loved her, she always purred. I grinned, cradled the giant Mr. Peanut shaped gear shift knob in my right hand, used both feet to tap the brakes and accelerator simultaneously (that’s how they did it on the Mod Squad!) and we lurched forward. “Here we go, baby!” We all squealed! And hmphrrrrgggh! She stalled. “Do it again!” Kimbies yelped from the passenger's seat, stretching a long-long 8 year old arm across the vinyl seat and shoving the gear shift further into the PRNDL position. Noise. Smoke. We’re going nowhere.

Kimbies shoved and shifted and I stomped my feet at the same time. We shot out of the “drive -right-through” garage and barely missed Mrs. Napoleon’s greenhouse…. banged a hard turn to the right….furiously cranking the “too hot to touch” maroon steering wheel with virgin fingers….and fish-tailed down the dirty alley! Whoooooshhhh. Yeah, baby! Black clouds! Another hard turn to the right and we’re on pavement, Skinny and Curty bouncing, bobbing, laughing in the back seat….

And then I saw it. The intersection. Traffic.

DAMN!

The guardian angel took over. I don’t remember if she stole the keys or body-slammed the brakes. I really have no idea. I just remember lugging the little ones out of the back seat, laughing, and leaving the little Ford Fairlane at the intersection of Barcelona and Blount Street. We hiked home. Skipping over the sidewalk cracks and eventually, Kimbies and I taking turns toting our grimey, sweaty, octopus armed and legged baby siblings home....

Of course the babysitter reported the car stolen. It wasn’t found until the next day…..still sitting at the stop sign, keys in the ignition. The cops drove it home.

Eventually someone else stole it. Drove it all the way to California and wrecked it. Our Mama mourned. She loved that little red Ford Fairlane and obviously so did a lot of other people… “they were forever stealing it” she used to say……

About five years ago, I popped off with the “Do you want to know a secret, Mom?” story at Christmas time. Everyone scooched in closer…..

And I told.

I saw the disappointment in her eyes. The reflection. She was quiet for a moment and then lifted her beer in holiday cheer and the night went on.

She’s like that.

She would never say out loud that it was o.k. that we stole the car. That we laughed. That we were risky. That she thanked God we survived it. And lived to tell about it.

Really, the only thing that probably disappointed her was that not that many people really wanted her little Red Ford Fairlane….

to be continued.....

"I'll worry about it tomorrow....

It’s not spontaneity, in my world. It’s suddenaity. That’s just me. To the world at large (well, this is a really small town, which makes it a really small world, but)…I’m settled. Snuggled into the ordinary. Comfy Cozy in my couchless house. Predictable really. I drive the same way to work every morning, blasting the same music in the same way….LOUD! My hair has hung in the same direction since I was fourteen, the way it grows. Straight, and trimmed every once in a while at the bathroom sink. I still flip the peace sign at passers-by, toss the mail in the trash, and believe.

And then BAM! The butterfly breeze blows a little lower, and I’m just sitting there minding my own business. And everything
changes. Just like that. Swoooshing in a thousand new directions.

Suddenaity.

An unintentional hurricane. Flipping everything ordinary over onto it’s underbelly. Exposing the pale protected safeness of my every day world to… the scorching sun. And it’s so hot in the aftermath, that the dirt is steamy and fog is rising and for a moment, or maybe forever, I don’t think I can see beyond now. I’m standing in the middle of madness and I can’t blink. Terrified to close my eyes for fear of never waking up again. And I can’t breathe. If I suck this steamy heated air into my lungs, how will I ever exhale hard enough to take the next breath. And I can’t move. I don’t know where the earth ends and I’m afraid, or not afraid, that I’ll just fall off and tumble eternally, floating through the bottom skies…. Weightless. Pieces of life as I knew it, careening past, bumping into me occasionally, close enough to touch, but no longer within my reach…..

Butterfly breeze…..
The tiniest flutter…
And
There’s no turning back.