The Midnight Rabbit

Did you ever have a real live honest-to-God hallucination?

I did once.

It happened as I was walking around the track one night.  The high school track is always open to the less than adventuresome perambulator, but the lighting is generally non-existent.  There are two security lights, one at each end, but both are about to burn out, so they only wink on and off, mostly off.

As I rounded a curve and entered the far side straightaway, I saw a black house cat come tearing out of the darkness and down the tarmac, headed straight for me.  It ran full tilt then suddenly launched itself at me.  As it flew for my throat it changed in mid-air into a snarling beast, baring a maw of razor-sharp teeth dripping hot slime.

Then it disappeared.

The whole incident lasted less than a second, but it was really sort of amazing.  The right side of my brain screamed for me to make peace with the creator because I was so going to die.  At the same time, the left side of my brain was completely cognizant of the fact that this was a hallucination - a complete fabrication of my very own mind.

I can't think of another time when two sides of my head have been working completely independently of each other like that.  Now I understand the allure of a good LSD trip.

A couple of months went by before I mentioned this to anyone.  It's not the sort of thing you can tell someone without them suspecting that you've lost at least a wee bit of your ever-lovin' mind.  I wracked my brain, trying to think of a reason why I'd suddenly start seeing things and wondering if it would happen again.  I finally did some research and found out that none of the medications I was taking caused hallucination.  However, if you took a combo of two medicines that I was briefly on, hallucination was a reported side effect.

This disappointingly plebeian discovery admittedly granted a bit of relief.  It's generally good to learn that you are not a bit nuttier than you originally thought.

I remain hopeful, however, that I can still see things that aren't really there.  I've had a little plaque in my office for years that says "Only those who can see the invisible can do the impossible."  I want to see invisible  things.

So, when I first saw the Midnight Rabbit, I thought maybe he wasn't real.

Two things you should know:  First, when it's dark outside my house, then it's dark inside my house.   Secondly,  I never close the curtains.

A few weeks ago I couldn't sleep.  I'd like you to think it was because my mind was churning with the possibilities for a final denouement to some epic murder  mystery I was writing or perhaps I'd been dreaming of the exact chemical compound that would cure cancer, only to have the details stripped from my mind by dawning consciousness.  Unfortunately, I couldn't sleep because my hip hurt.  Like some old woman.  So I got up to take some Advil.

The sliding glass door in the den gives one a full view of the back yard.  As I walked past, the gawd-awful orange security light that the electric company repaired last month more or less illuminated the yard and alley.  I noticed a big rock sitting exactly in the middle of the open space.  I wondered - fleetingly - how it got there.

I took my drugs and trudged back towards the bedroom.  I glanced out again.  It wasn't a rock!  It was a rabbit.

That hip gave me a lot of problems for a week or so.  Each time I walked past the door, deep in the night, I could see the rabbit sitting in the same spot.  Each time he ignored me and pretended to be a rock so I wouldn't be able to see him.

He was just an over-sized cotton tail, but he really started to creep me out because every night he sat in the same exact same spot, all through the wee hours.  If he was a raven, I'd be worrying about the future of my immortal soul.  If he was a wolf, I would've followed him into the great adventure beyond.  If he was a unicorn, I'd lay off the Fruity Pebbles, for good.  But a rabbit?  What the hell does a rabbit portend?  Bounciness?

It's like having a pair of fuzzy slippers for a patronus.  Why is this rabbit appearing every night?  And if he's got some sort of larger meaning for my life, why can't he at least be a bad-ass jack rabbit?

I saw him again a couple of days ago.  For the last time it seems.  I was walking around the track in the dark again.  This time he was sitting in the grass on the inside curve.  Still perfectly still.  I watched him as I rounded the corner.  When I made the turn and was facing away from him, he bolted.  I kept turning and was walking backwards down the straightaway to watch him.  He caught me staring and stopped in mid-mad-dash on the fourth lane of the track.  I stopped as well.

We both waited - silent, wary, stationary.

Steadfast, torpid, somewhat petrified.




Then nothing happened.




The End.

It's a Small, Spooky World

I have a thing for disaster.  I'm a catastrophile.

Not just any old tragedy will do.  Instead, I'm all agog about cataclysm on a truly epic scale - hurricanes and earthquakes and such. Sappy 'how I survived' movies on the Hallmark Channel and that sort of ilk are not my thing, but I love to learn about the actual history of big bad stuff and how people and cultures endured and rebuilt.

The first time I became aware of my inclination towards mishap, misfortune and misadventure was on my very first visit to Galveston.  The 1900 hurricane and resulting super-human recovery effort absolutely fascinated me.  Immediately upon returning home, I went to the library and read everything I could about it.  (The notes from the weather service employee the night the storm hit are really cool.)

This past weekend I got to indulge the allure of the macabre once again while hanging out with Janet, my best friend from college.  (Now you have totally the wrong picture in your head and you'd never, ever be able to pick us out in a crowd.)  Curiosity in tow, we took a mini road trip to New London, Texas.

Anyone know why?  Know what happened there?

New London was the richest school district in America in 1937 due to a massive influx of oil company tax money.  They built an immense stone and steel Elizabethan school building.  The county was populated by depression-era immigrants from all over the US, coming in search of oil field work. They lived in company camps and sent their children to the local school.

At that time, natural gas was odorless, colorless and free for the taking.  The rotten-egg smell is an additive, which wasn't used until later, to make leaks easier to detect.  Oil companies gave the gas away for free to anyone that would run a pipe for it.  The school and most every other building in town was heated with gas radiators.

You can see where this is going, right?  March 18, 1937 was the occasion of the largest school disaster in the history of the United States.  Between 400 and 600 people died, wiping out an entire generation of children.  To this day they don't have an accurate count of the dead because parents were the ones wrenching the bodies out of the rubble.  When they found their children, they often put the bodies in the back of the family truck and took them, along with the rest of the family, back home - wherever that was - for burial.  Many never returned to East Texas.  When school eventually reconvened, it was unknown how many of the missing were siblings of the dead who'd left the area with their family.

Janet and I spent a couple of hours on a private tour of the museum.  Judy, a spit-fire volunteer, (whose picture on the website does not begin to do her justice) told us the story.  (Janet calls her my new BFF, which is probably true.  She'd be a hoot to hang out with.)

What really hooked me in this story is the fact that the parents and townspeople completed the super-human task of clearing away 4 millions tons of debris, much of it by hand and peach basket, and processed 500 or so bits and pieces of dead children in only a few days.  Then, they closed the book.

On the first anniversary of the explosion, a memorial service was planned.  It was cancelled because the grief was still too fresh - the families weren't ready for to reopen the wounds.  They closed the book more tightly.

It stayed closed for 40 years.

I could go on and on about this.  In the 1970's, when the long-delayed memorial service was finally held, the survivors began to tell their stories.  The stories - the coincidences that saved lives and took them - will suck you in.  That's what I love about these events.  The real stories of how people cope just fascinated the hell out of me.  Sometimes they react just like they would in the Lifetime movie of the week.  Sometimes they don't.

Real people aren't movie characters, but they are always amazing.

Did I mention that you should read the website?  You should.  Then pack your bags and go.  See with your own eyes and listen to real people tell you the stories.

And then eat lunch in the museum's "tea room".

Oh my god, was that ever a misnomer.  The "tea room" is a bad-ass soda fountain with a killer soup and sandwich menu.  The only paid employee is the cook.  Even the tips are donated back to running the museum.  The tea room's main customers are the kids from the rebuilt school who cross the street every day for lunch, and the elderly citizens who are there for the memories.  And there are a few folks like Janet and I who never pass up a good chunk of the macabre or a ham sandwich.  Seriously - eat there.  It was so good I thought long and hard about licking my bowl.  I'm salivating while writing this.

And that wasn't the most interesting part of my weekend.

Neither was going to "Storage Wars: Texas" star Victor Rjesnjansky's store in Tyler and buying an itty-bitty Wonder Woman.  (He gave me the autographed 8 x 10 for free.)

No, the really interesting part involved going to First Monday Trade Days in Canton.  Perhaps you've heard of it?  With the 28 miles of aisles?  I bought stuff - a big, metal, scowl-y vulture, a huge (big, big, big) metal bat, an alligator topiary frame and some other stuff.  Cool stuff, but we found the real prize when we went searching for lunch again.

Lunch was good to us on this trip.

While I stood in an interminable line at one of the food booths, Janet saved us a couple of chairs at a communal dining table.  She struck up a conversation with the guy sitting across from her.  His wife was in line and he was warming the seats.  Janet asked where they were from.

Antlers, Oklahoma.

When I returned with the comestibles, she introduced us.  Being a good southerner, I immediately began to think of people we might know in common.  We can't help it - it's all about who you know around here and we are taught from birth to find mutual acquaintances with strangers.

"My brother used to live in Antlers," was my opening gambit in the I-know-people-you-might-know game.  "He was the newspaper editor there for a couple of years."

We determined that although they didn't remember my brother, they were friends with the paper's publisher, my brother's boss, whom I'd met while visiting there.  Connection achieved!

Then I had to tell them about my all time favorite photo.  It was my very first Christmas card photo.

While visiting said same brother and newly acquired sister-in-law in the eastern Oklahoma mountain town of Antlers (Yes.  Mountains.  And gorgeous mountains they are, too.) my brother's scanner erupted with news of a fire.  We grabbed our cameras and headed to the scene - he to get pictures for the newspaper and me to just mess around.

The burning building turned out to be an old two-story Victorian mansion converted into an antique store and it was enraged with flames when we got there.  We stood a half block away and could still feel the heat.  As I watched, the roof of the lower floor fell in and the resulting flash illuminated something in the window.  I snapped a photo.  My all-time favorite photo as it turned out.

While I told this story, tears started to form in the woman's eyes.  I quit talking, wondering at the intensity of her reaction and thinking maybe she wouldn't appreciate that the Christmas card caption was "Keep the Home Fires Burning".

Turns out, she was the store's owner.

She and her husband sold real estate and the antique business was her hobby.  She told me about the fabulous treasures that were lost, including the beautiful porcelain stove that melted in the blaze.  She'd been there that afternoon to drop off a new load of inventory and then left to spend the rest of the day with family.   The call from the fire department came late that evening and she made it the eight miles into town in less than five minutes.  A neighbor had to physically restrain her from running inside the burning building to try to salvage those things she loved so dearly.

I worried that she would be appalled by my picture taking, but I needn't have.  She thought the idea was fabulous and by the time we finished lunch we'd exchanged addresses and a promise for me to send her a copy of the photo.

I took that photo sixteen years ago.  It was another of those amazing coincidences that make life so interesting.

"Coincidence is logical." - Johan Cruijff

"I am not Spock."  - Leonard Nimoy

To bad this week's verb wasn't "surreal".

After chomping my way through the lunch special at the Turn Around Cafe in Spur last week, I drove down a road not yet taken and found the abandoned prison.  (Here are a couple of articles about how the prison came to be abandoned.  The first one gets really interesting towards the end.  The second one explains some of the reasons why the first one got so interesting.)  I expected to drive up to a fence, a hundred or so yards from the facility and stare at it briefly before turning around to leave.

Not so.

This week when I went back, I packed my camera.

The privately run prison, which closed in late 2010, sits atop a vague knoll, not really a hill, about two miles south of town, hiding behind a field of mesquite.  The low-profile sign, simple even by prison standards, announced the presence of the facility in plain block letters.  The prison itself lies at the end of a half-mile paved driveway.  There are no fences.  No barriers. Nothing but the sign by the side of the road.

Nothing had changed from last week as I entered the main parking lot at the end of the driveway.  I debated whether or not to park in the empty warden's spot, as if I owned the freakin' place and had every right to be there.  Sneakiness trumped brashness and I parked along the far side of the lot, hoping the electric blue Dodge Avenger I was driving would blend in with, well, the sky and not be quite so obvious should anyone venture down the driveway from the highway.

The seasonably cold air put a sharp edge on the wind.  I didn't have a jacket, but hoped that walking around the place might keep me warm.

Reaching over the back of the seat, I grabbed the camera from the back and got out of the car.    I looked around for No Trespassing signs.  There weren't any. The gravel crunching under my boots sounded unnaturally loud as I crossed the deserted parking lot.

The place was abandoned, but not forsaken, if that makes sense.  It's like some sort of Satanic rapture had occurred, maybe ten minutes earlier, taking only the bad guys.  Whoosh!  At first glance, everything appeared exactly the same as it must have at the close of business on the last day of operation, two years previously.  At second glance, I noticed the tumbleweeds.  At third - the unlocked gate.


One of the main gates to the prison yard was unlocked and open.  Just a foot or so.  Just wide enough for me to slide through sideways or to grasp the edge and pull it wide.  If I wanted too.  No one was around... No one would see...

Through a feat of super-human resistance that King David himself would have been jealous of, I bested the temptation and managed not to go through the gate to the interior spaces.

This prison - a privately run, for-profit, institution - was big into razor wire.  It's everywhere - roll upon roll of it.  The state prisons I've visited use the same concertina-type stuff, but sparingly.  This place looked cheap -like an over-sized dog run, home to really bad dogs.  Low tech security with all the soft, pleasing architecture of Auschwitz.

The main buildings up front are painted in a vague flag motif.  Blocks of blue with bits of red and white striping at the edges.  It lends a concentration camp carnival feel to the place.  The administration buildings at the front of the unit were bright and clean.  In the back a long row of barracks type buildings comprised the inmate housing.  They were  dingy, low slung cinder block buildings - chalky white with tiny windows.

An omnipresent, continual high pitched whine permeated the area. As I circled the property, I finally located the source - a large metal box, about the size on an industrial refrigerator.  Or two.  The hunk of metal was painted orange and black with no markings that would identify it to the uninitiated.  It sat on a concrete pad next to the electric meters.  And whined - a single toneless note, on and on and on to extremely creepy effect.  It reminded me of something...

(Anyone else watch The Avengers?  Anyone remember this episode?)

I continued my circuit around the property.  Past the electric meters,  I saw that the gas meters were gone.  But the sewage grinder remained.

More than once as I swept my camera lens past the guard towers, I thought I caught a glimpse of men inside.    Only a trick of the light and closer inspection revealed nothing, of course, but it remained disconcerting.  I seldom see men who aren't there.

Still I didn't see any "No Trespassing" signs.  No, not one.  I was surprised by this, but I supposed no one really wants to break INTO prison, so trespassing isn't really an issue.  There were, however, a couple of "STOP - Entering Restricted Area" signs.  As they were obviously left-overs from the facility's functioning days, and since they barely made any effort with them - small signs tacked to telephone poles on the sides of the path/road leading to the back of the location - I ignored them with impunity and no small amount of disdain.
   

I didn't spend much time in the back of the prison.  The wind blew harder there and my shirt, albeit long-sleeved, was woefully inadequate.

As I made my way back around to the front I stopped.  Dead.

The gates were still open.  But now they were open wide.  Beckoning.  Yawning.  Tempting.

It was dodgy for a bit.  I reeeeaallly wanted to go inside.  They were practically begging me to enter!  I texted the Judge's assistant and asked her what the district's policy is on posting bail for employees.  She didn't answer.  I decided not to chance it.  Besides, it was damn creepy.  The wind wasn't blowing hard enough to move those chain-link monstrosities. And it almost certainly wouldn't have moved the gates in opposite directions!

I made my way back to the car, glancing back over my shoulder a time or two.  The only sign, other than the empty parking lot, that this place wasn't ready and waiting for business, were the few small tumble weeds gathered at the main entrance.

That, and the open, viciously welcoming, prison gate.

As I drove back towards the highway, I was startled to see a FedEx van turn onto the short road and head out towards the prison parking lot.  I made a half-hearted attempt to stop him - to tell him his GPS was obviously misguided.  He didn't see me.  I was sort of glad.  I felt sure that if I did see him up close, he'd have no eyeballs.  Or maybe vampire fangs.  Or stink of death like a zombie.  Yep, pretty sure.

(Do you see 'em?  The guards that aren't there?)

Spur is one of numerous small towns in West Texas that attempted urban renewal via the prison-industrial complex, profit-driven or governmental.  For a few short years it seemed to be a real economic savior.  But we're all learning we can't sustain, economically or otherwise, a prison system that has a higher incarceration rate than China.  

This month it was reported that the Texas Association of Business, one of the most powerful lobbies in the state, is making reform of criminal justice funding a priority.  Why?  

Bill Hammond, president of the Texas Association of Business, said the group plans to push to expand successful rehabilitation and community-based corrections programs; to change Texas’ drug-sentencing laws to put more low-level offenders in local treatment programs and reduce penalties for small amounts of drugs; and to modify state licensing laws that keep some ex-convicts from ever becoming certified for various trades.

“We’re sending too many people to the slammer,” Hammond said. “The taxpayers and the business community are both being harmed.”

I think this is a good thing.  But then, I would, what with being all "community-based corrections program"-y and stuff.

All I really know is those damn gates didn't open by themselves.

I Swear It’s True. But you knew that…

My friend C is a church secretary.  That means she sees some of the same people I do on a regular basis.  Unfortunately, she has the added burden of being diplomatic  in her dealings with them.  She sent me an email today that made me laugh so hard I cried.  Cried, I tells ya!  Here is the story:

This morning C and her co-conspirators were buzzing around the office doing churchy things.  Their offices are at the top of a little flight of stairs that bottoms out at a street door.   A gawd-awful buzzer attached to that door blasts like a chainsaw with a chest cold every time it’s opened.  It’s just like going to visit the inmates at the prison.  (If this were a prison, C would be in charge of “the picket”.  And she would be wearing a seriously unattractive uniform which would match the seriously unattractive personality adopted by your average prison guard.  Thankfully, this is a church not a prison and C has a great personality to match her outfits.)

Anyway, late this morning, the buzzer went off and annoyingly heralded the arrival of a visitor.  The visitor was a woman who requested help with gas money.  The request was passed on to one of the ministers, Rick.  I’m sure those of you in the ecumenical industry all have your policies for dealing with these requests and I’m betting very few of you hand over cash.  This church doesn’t either.  So Rick told the woman that he would meet her at the convenience store a couple of blocks away and see that her car was filled with fuel. 

As he left, he had the strangest feeling that he was not alone. 

The woman drove along behind him in her car.  Behind her was a long line of cars, all seemingly following their every move.  It was decidedly odd. 

They made the short trip to the gas pumps.  It was there that Rick noticed the hearse and a police car waiting at the intersection.  The funeral director was “pitching a fit” and the police officer was pacing the intersection, shaking his head. 

Rick took another look at the line of cars. 

The woman who needed gas turned out to be the first car following the hearse in a funeral procession.  They had been on the way out of town to a cemetery 15 miles down the road when she evidently rethought the fuel efficiency versus length of trip and decided she needed gas money.  She made a quick and admittedly resourceful detour and managed to drag the rest of the mourners along with her. 

Rick got the car gassed up and sent them on their way, all the while convinced he was being punk’d and no doubt scanning the surroundings for Alan Funt or Ashton Kutcher.

I think C is still laughing.

NOT a Bucket List:

There are some things I’d like to learn.  I’ve kept a list of these semi-essential skills for years.  So far, it consists of:

Eating with chopsticks – Learned!

Karate – Learned!  (With somewhat mixed results.)

Fencing -

Riding a Unicycle  -

And this week I’ve added something new:  Reading Tea Leaves.  I mean, they’re there – why not do something with them?  And they do sorta look like they would know stuff.  

So.  I’ve known Ester for SIXTEEN years.  Sixteen years! Longer than I’ve known Jackson, the kid or most of you.  I thought I knew her well.  But it turns out she’s been keeping a dark secret from me. 

Well, not necessarily a dark secret, but a secret nonetheless. 

Ester owns a unicycle!

Can you believe it?  And can you believe that she never, ever mentioned this in casual conversation?  We have some odd conversations, y’all – you’d think it would have come up.  For example, at lunch today we had a communal recital of the lyric poem “Copacabana” by B. Manilow.  It wasn’t anything out of the ordinary and no one batted an eyelash.  You’d think that in this sort of environment there would have been a point in the last sixteen years that the phrase “I have a unicycle” would have been the perfect segue.  But no.  Not until now. 

She’s letting me borrow it!

I told Jackson and Katie I was going to learn the unicycle.  There reply, in unison, was “"NOOOOO!”  Katie said “You’re so going to end up in the hospital, Rachel!”  Jackson said he would be glad to take me to the emergency room because he wants to the see the look on the doctor’s face when I tell him that all my broken bones are due to “a unicycle accident”. 

Unbelievers!

I looked it up on the internet – googled “how to ride a unicycle”.  All the sites seem to encourage “recruiting a couple of friends” for help.  I told Ester and Mindy they were elected.  They have agreed, but say their involvement will be limited to dialing 9-1-1.  They fully expect me to be unable to operate a cell phone following my first riding attempt. 

Doubting Thomases!

Ester’s son brought the unicycle to work today.  HE didn’t make any wise cracks.  I’ve always liked that kid.

Rose and M2 just rolled their eyes and refused to have any part of the coming apocalypse.

The boss kept walking down the hallway and laughing uncontrollably whenever he passed the unicycle. 

Bebo stopped by the office to see Mindy while I was in court.  Rumor has it that he pointed at his mother and said “YOU are gonna get hurt,” then pointed at Ester “and YOU are gonna get hurt and SOMEONE is going to be mad!” 

I have no idea what he’s talking about. 

I’ve decided to that the office hallway is the best spot for my initial unicycling lesson - which will commence tomorrow at 5:00 p.m.  (Mindy claims she’s bringing her camera.)

...or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Recession.

Saturday morning I drove into Quitaque.

(It's pronounced "kitty-quay". There's a sign on the edge of town that verifies this for the uninitiated. It's supposed to be an Indian word meaning "end of the trail".)

We were camping again, and the state park is just four miles north of town. My brother and I were hungry, so we decided to cook. I opened up the brand new box of pancake mix proceeded to stir it up. The more I stirred, the more I thought something wasn't right.

"Eew! This stuff is full of weevils!"

Jonboy peered into the bowl. "Either that or this is a rice flour mix."

Ick. So I hopped in the truck and headed for town.

Quitaque has one itty bitty grocery store, which appeared to be deserted. To my surprise, the door was open. It's a grimy little store, not unlike the one I worked in all through high school. The elderly linoleum is peeling away from the floor in huge asbestos-y chunks. The lone freezer case chugs loudly and a "Caution: Wet Floor" sign marks - permanently - the puddle of its lifeblood that they have stopped trying to squeegee away.

I heard some scrumbling at the back and by the time I pushed the creaky basket down the second aisle, I was approached by what I wasn't sure was an employee. He smiled and asked, "How's it going?"

"So far, so good," I lied, not sure if he was someone I could inquire of as to the whereabouts of rice-free pancake mix. However, given the limited number of aisles - four - and my temerity in mercantile exploration - 'It's gotta be around here somewhere' - I knew I could find it one my own.

And I did. Aisle three. I headed towards the meat case in search of more bacon. You always need more bacon. It was there I was assured of my little friend's employment status while I pretended not to notice him leaning into the case and waving away any flies that might have congregated there.

He was a small wiry man, a little shorter than me, and probably in his late 50's. He wore a red bandanna wrapped tightly around his head and a mostly grey handlebar moustache. Pale blue eyes crinkled behind his little square Ben Franklin specs.

Scraggly blond ringlets hung out of the back of the doo-rag, reaching to just below his shoulders. I'd almost guarantee you that he was bald under the doo-rag. He also wore the ubiquitous Harley Davidson t-shirt.

When I got to the front, we both paused while he chose which of the two checker stands to use. I asked him if they sold firewood. He grinned and said "I'll give you the same spiel my boss does." He proceeded to tell me to drive south and find a two-story brick house. Turn east and look for the barn. When I find the barn, I have to go around behind it and find a big pile of junk wood. There is all kinds of wood there - logs, boards, junk of all kinds. After taking whatever I want, I was to return to the store and pay him what I thought it was worth. "My boss has some P.T. Barnum in him," he confessed.

"And I won't get shot?" I asked.

"No," he laughed. "That's just small town living for you."

"I know about small towns. That's why I asked."

He laughed again. "Yeah, I know what you mean. I was a bit culture shocked when I first came out here."

"Where are you from, originally?"

"Big Sur, California."

I put down my grocery bag, knowing I had to ask. "How the hell did you end up out here?"

He dropped his gaze and said sheepishly, "I was a minister. My wife and I came out here with another couple to work with the congregation here." With very little prompting, he told me his story.

Upon arriving in town he was ready to do some hard work to get the local congregation back on track. What he didn't know was that this group had problems that were more deep seated than he'd been led to believe. He said the assembly had been a dynasty.

"Ah," I said knowingly. "A one family show?"

"Yeah, same family had been running it since the congregation was founded in the 1930's." Despite their best efforts, they couldn't help the group and things fell apart. "I traveled 650,000 miles in a three county area over a 10-year period," he said. "I went down every dirt road, every driveway and knocked on every door in these three counties. Needless to say, everybody knows me." His sheepishness returned. "I was a Jehovah's Witness."

I took an involuntary step towards the door.

"But I'm not a minister any more!" he was quick to assure me. "Not after I got divorced."

His wife got fed up and left him. After that, he picked up the guitar that had sat unplayed for the past 18 years. He started playing with bands and making the rounds of the bars and clubs. He did that for three years until he'd worked out all his anger and frustration. The music "probably saved me from killing some people," he said. He grinned again. "The sheriff knew me real well at that time."

After his stint as a honky-tonk maestro, he settled down on his piece of property near Flomont. "I have two acres of land that I paid for by selling the land all around it. I live in an 85 year old wood frame and stucco house with almost non-existent plumbing and a wood stove for heat. I have about 30 cats and there are probably 85 rabbits living around the house. A few years ago I bought a Harley. I still have my guitar and everything I need and now I'm perfectly happy."

"And I bet you couldn't care less about what's happening on Wall Street," I said.

"I pay $11.00 a year in taxes." He smiled even wider, if possible. "A lot of people tell you there's nothing to do in a place like this, but those people could live at Disneyland and still be bored."



Sometimes weevils are not a bad thing. Not bad at all.

In which the author comes clean about today's mode of transportation.

When I woke up this morning, my eyes were all crusty and red. My nose was all stuffy and my throat was scratchy. Even my hair was crusty. I got in the shower and thoroughly de-crustified.

When I emerged, rather drippily, a few minutes later, I felt better. However, my ocular orbs totally balked at the idea of wearing contacts today. (I wear hard contacts and sometimes there just ain't no way of getting your eyes to cooperate with that type of intrusion.) I put on some war paint and smacked some gel in my freshly decrustified hair.

Then I threw on some shorts and a t-shirt and had breakfast. I dutifully packed my little backpack full of semi-professional clothing (casual Friday, dontcha know) and trudged out the front door.

That's when I was hit in the face with the wind. It is freakin' June and the wind was coming straight out of the north. It was only about 15 miles an hour - maybe 20 - but I was going to have to ride straight into it. And it was cold. Cold, I tell ya!

My steely resolve melted totally at that point and I turned on my miserable heel and went right back in the house. I changed into my semi-professional clothing and then drove Earl the Truck to work.

I've been sitting at my desk all morning, sneezing and wheezing. I tried whining to Mindy but she gave me some bullshit about suckin' it up and getting to work and how I would feel better and if not she'd just kick my butt or something. I told her to get the hell out of my office. She laughed, (laughed!) and said that is the speech I always give her when she shows up in a whiny mood.

I hate her.

But, I'm still here. My eyes are still crusty and my nose is all runny. I can't go home, 'cause this is a child free weekend and I really want to go out and play tonight. My mom always said if you're too sick to go to school, you're too sick to go out and play. Geeze. So now I have to stay here all damn day so I can go out and play tonight. (Jackson and I are going camping this weekend!!! Yay!)

Dammit!

And now for something completely different:



Here's a photo just for beth. Took this one the same day as the god-forsaken cow/windmill landscape. We do have a few pockets of beauty around here. ha ha!

Friday Cemetery Blogging

"If I've swept this place once, I've swept it a thousand times! If those rotten zombies don't stop traipsing through here, leaving their slime everywhere, heads are gonna roll!"

Have y'all noticed how eternally bored the angels are in cemeteries? You never see a happy one. I guess that would be considered bad form.

They remind me of the poor highway patrolman who gets stuck working in the driver's license office for the entirety of his career. Some of 'em, both the angels and the driver testers, are downright surly.

The Voice Mail Lady hates me.

I have a new phone at work.

I am not happy about this.

This phone is nice. It’s black and matches my décor much better than the old one. (To be honest, I don’t really have a “décor”. If I do, it would probably called Graveyard Eclectic. I should totally post some pictures of all the junk I have in here…) The phone blends well with the gargoyle pens. I am a total button geek and the new phone has many, many buttons for me to push, which is cool.

This phone is totally freaking me out, though. It has a huge display of the day and date. The number 7 is mysteriously blacked out anywhere it appears in the display. It’s odd. I reported it to the phone guy, but I’m sure he thought I was a total loony. I wasted a lot of time on Friday, the 27th, staring at the screen, waiting for the time to change to some sort of variant of seven, just to make sure I wasn’t nuts. I wasn’t, as I discovered at 7:35, 8:57 and 9:17.

The 7 thing is weird. Also weird is the fact that the computer-generated operator-voice is the same exact voice our old system had. Makes me think maybe there is some well modulated, out of work switchboard operator living in the storeroom next to my office.

But what really freaks me out is the fact that the phone displays my name. Not my full legal name, like in my signature, which would give it sort of a professional, impersonal feel. It simply says my name. My Name. It’s way too personal for a damn phone.

It’s sitting right in front of me, staring at me and making unauthorized use of my name. Every time it catches my eye, I can hear Anthony Hopkins’ voice.

“Clarice…”

I don't even like Steven Seagal.

Last night I wandered into the living room. Jackson was watching TV.

"Whatcha watchin'?"
"Rent and the Weather Channel."
"At the same time?! I'd really like to see Rent, but preferably in its entirity."
"Ok." He switched the channel to CSI-New York. "Let's watch this and you can live vicariously through them and pretend you're an FBI agent."
"Why the heck would I wanna do that?"
"Ok, fine. You can live vicariously through Steven Seagal, then."
"Steven Seagal?? What the hell!?"
"Well," he said, then switched into his best Hannibal Lector impersonation. "How about Clarisssse?"

At that point, I got up and left. He went back to watching whatever he wanted.

Which was probably exactly what he had in mind.