Christmas past...

I am back from Colorado, along with (finally) my luggage. Brief highlights from the trip:

• Driving down the steep grade of I-70 toward Denver, we come upon a horse trailer holding a reindeer. Anna (SIL) says, "Wouldn't it be funny if Santa were driving?" Then we pull abreast of the vehicle towing the trailer, and Santa actually is driving!
• Getting to see Derek and Anna's new house, meet a few of their friends, and hang out with them and their dog, Chief.
• Sleeping on a heated waterbed.
• Visiting the huge Chick-fil-a by my parents' house, where they were so busy they actually had a person outside directing drive-thru and parking lot traffic.
• Seeing my parents; playing Boggle, Taboo and Pictionary with everyone; staying in a cute, rustic, cozy cabin in Estes Park.
• The look on my dad's face when Derek and I ordered Rocky Mountain oysters for an appetizer at Christmas dinner. (Disgusted expression or not, he still had to sample them.)
• Among the suckage that was my trip back yesterday, highlights were getting a free meal coupon from the airline and getting re-booked to a window seat in first class. Less enjoyable was spending four extra hours in DIA after getting about an hour of sleep the previous night, and arriving in JAX to find that my luggage had not. Fortunately, it is here now.
  
• Seeing this critter and her pals again:

• Going to pick up this guy in a few minutes:

update

wow, i haven't blogged since november. guess there isn't much going on outside of work.

bishop's doing okay, learning stuff, responding to training, just not so much when we're at petsmart (where they inevitably say, "is he in puppy class? no? he needs to be."). i've decided to install a screen door between the kitchen and laundry room after the holidays, and puck is going to go live in the laundry room. last night i was trying to train bishop, and he was supposed to be sitting and staying, and puck bolted out of hiding and smacked him really hard in the back, with no provocation whatsoever. so bishop ended up on my lap trying to climb up my head, for which i can't exactly blame him. puck also peed on my pillow friday night, so while i can't bring myself to cast him outside, he does need his own space where he can't attack the dog or wreck my stuff.

fade refused to eat his rat last night, so i let the thing go in the backyard. i haven't seen cleoratra in weeks, but there seems to be digging activity going on near her rubbermaid, so i think she's still around. i guess if she and rattila get together to procreate, i can just set sadie and/or bishop loose for a little while, and they should be able to take care of the problem.

leaving for colorado wednesday. keep your fingers crossed that this year's trip is nothing like last year's debacle. if nothing else, at least i know now to pack my meds in my CARRY-ON.

Why I don't work out

Me: I really do need to start working out. I'm going to put on some music and dance around the house for awhile.
[Cue up song, start dancing]
Bishop: Ooh, she's dancing! I think I'll jump up on her!
Me: OW! Down!
Sebastian: Hey, dance over here so I can climb on your head! Actually, I just want to crawl up and cuddle under your chin. Sit down with a book so I can do that, OK?
Inanna: Oops, what just happened? Oh, I stepped on the keyboard of the laptop and killed the iTunes. Sorry!
Puck: HellOOO! I am supposed to be HBIC! Stop dancing and pet me.
Bishop: Now I am REALLY gonna jump up on her, because she's holding Sebastian too!
Me: OK, fine. Bishop, let's see how well I can dance holding a 30-lb weight.
Bishop: What the heck is she doing?! ...OK, she finally put me down. I'm going to jump up again.
Me: OWWW! OK, I know the vet said he'd clip the toenails next time, but screw that. Sit, Bishop. I'm getting the nail clippers.
[The rest of my workout devolves into a wrestling match with Bishop, who is NOT keen on having his nails clipped.]

Inconvenient truths and convenient oversights

First off, thanks to Stowe for my new design and very cool new header (happy Christmas to me)!
*******

Having never seen the film An Inconvenient Truth, I decided to buy the book when I saw it on a bargain shelf a few weeks ago. And I've had (perhaps not surprisingly) a very mixed reaction to it.

First off, there is no doubt in my mind that people in general and Americans in particular need to seriously curtail our polluting/ trashing everything with chemicals/ clear-cutting forests/ strip-mining for jewelry/ raping the earth in myriad other ways. On the one hand, I'm appalled by how much crap I produce or use in the course of my daily life (chemical shampoo, gasoline, disposable food packaging, cell phone, chemical cleaning products, cranking up the heat, etc., etc., and I don't even want to know how many rain forests have been destroyed to make all the books I own), and on the other hand, I'm amazed that the earth has managed to straggle on without falling to pieces long ago.

Al Gore gave me some good ideas. As mentioned in the previous post, I bought reusable tote bags at Kroger, and I have been using them at other stores as well. If I only buy a few items, I have been asking not to have them bagged. I am sorting my recycling. (My Denver friends tell me they have curbside recycling; they toss everything into a bin and it gets picked up with the trash and they don't even have to sort it themselves! In Savannah, you have to not only sort it, but drive way the hell out to the ghetto to find the one place where you can recycle everything. So that's gonna be the real challenge for me.) I got biodegradable bags for dog poop (provided, of course, that the puppy, whose name is now Bishop, ever decides to poop somewhere outside my house). I've been using post-consumer, non-bleached recycled paper towels and non-chemical cleaners (the problem is many of them are ammonia-based, which isn't so good with cats). I even bought recycled cotton wrapping paper for Christmas gifts.

Surprisingly to me, I already was doing more stuff right than I realized, which is kind of cool.

Gore advocates CFLs (compact fluorescent lightbulbs), but I heard from another reliable source that although CFLs last far longer, they also contain dangerous levels of mercury that we should not be tossing away in landfills. I need to do more research to find out whether this is true. If it is, it's hugely disturbing.

A lot of Gore's suggestions either 1) cost far, far more disposable income than I have (you know, getting new appliances, re-insulating your house, buying a hybrid car), and/or 2) involve taking political action. And while I know laws need to change, I'm very distrustful of politicians and lawmakers. I guess I am more of an advocate of grassroots, personal decisions, so that's where I am right now.

The whole politician problem plays into Gore's book, too. Even though he claims he has retired from public office, he's still a politician. He devotes a disproportionate amount of text to talking about himself, his time in office, all the wonderful things he did, and how he has always been a forward-thinking advocate for the environment. All of that might be true, and some of it is useful background, but it became cloying after awhile. It's definitely overkill.

He's also disgustingly disingenuous about certain things--the most offensive, to me, being his handling of Hurricane Katrina. Katrina may have been caused by global warming, and New Orleans would not have flooded without Katrina. But I think it's a virtual certainty that the worst of the devastation wasn't caused directly by the hurricane; it was because the levees had not been built to standard and broke. And the storm could well have lost a lot of velocity if the wetlands hadn't been constantly eroded for the past century, and had been able to absorb more of the water. Multiple administrations--including Clinton/Gore--lied about the levees and did nothing to stop destruction of the wetlands. So it's a little hard to stomach the way he manipulates images of people on cots in the Superdome and the flooded city to underscore his argument about global warming. He conveniently ignores the role he and his administration played in failing to prevent the crisis.

I noticed in at least one case, too, that his "before" and "after" photos of a vanishing glacier weren't shot at quite the same distance. There's no doubt the glacier had noticeably and significantly shrunk in the second photo, but the lens covered a broader area, too. Barren slopes on the side of the glacier added to the look of desolation. The slopes weren't in the first photo, so you couldn't tell how much had melted and how much hadn't been there in the first place. That subtle manipulation of the perspective wasn't even necessary; the images clearly made the point they were supposed to make, so why manipulate it at all?

In the end, I am glad I read the book, but I'm a little disappointed too.

Saving the planet in the S.A.V.

So I'm at Kroger the other day and I decide to buy a couple of the reusable blue totes in which you can bag your groceries, rather than using paper or plastic. Conscientiously, I put the totes on the conveyer belt before the rest of my groceries, to facilitate ease in bagging. Then, as the cashier begins to ring up my food, I notice the bagger* calmly placing my totes into a plastic bag, along with my other groceries.

"No!" I say. "I don't want plastic. Please just put my groceries in the blue bags."

I have to repeat this because he looks very confused, but then he shrugs and obliges. After the cashier is finished ringing me up, she puts my last item in a plastic bag.

"No, Miz Pat, she wants her groceries in the blue bags!" says the bagger, who then proceeds to take the item from her and place it, STILL in the plastic bag, into the tote. So, feeling like a bitch, I ask him to please take it out of the plastic bag and explain again that I don't want ANY plastic bags. He looks at me like I'm on crack, and the cashier rolls her eyes, but I finally make it out of Kroger sans plastic bags.

And people wonder why recycling is so difficult in Savannah.


* In defense of the bagger, whom I see all the time at Kroger, I have to say that he's a very nice guy, obviously has a strong work ethic, and is all about customer service--invariably he asks if you'll need help loading your groceries into your vehicle. But mentally, he doesn't seem to have the capacity to advance much beyond bagging groceries. So I don't blame him for not getting the recycling bit; I just think the store management should have explained the point of the blue tote bags better. It's great that they have them, but less great if no one knows how to use them. And the cashier has no excuse.

Quote of the week

Aaron on my ex*:

"That guy is like a walking anti-drug commercial. He's all the reasons America needs to stay away from drugs."


Thanks to Aaron and Lisa for driving up to spend the afternoon with me, hit the Crab Shack, watch the Broncos blow a 14-point lead to lose in overtime, etc.

Every day is Halloween

This year I didn't even dress up for Halloween. Having to go to work at 1:30 a.m. that morning and stay until 3 a.m. contributed, because I was seriously exhausted (and seriously annoyed--long story). I also discovered that kids in costume and their parents would walk down the middle of the street, and if you were outside (fortuitous discovery I made thanks to taking Finn out) with candy, they'd trick or treat, but they weren't going up to doors. I heard from one mother that they were on their way to a carnival at the Methodist church nearby, so maybe that was the deal. Anyway, I sat outside on the step until it got dark, wearing all black, reading Stephen King and playing with my black puppy, and waylaid every single child who passed by with my bucket-o-candy. Then I went inside to nap, and of course that's when people started ringing the bell.

Speaking of Finn...everyone who said puppies are a challenge was right. Sunday night he curled up next to Fender on the couch, resting his head against her side, and it was so cute that I went for the camera. Which of course made him jump up to check out this cool new object. Cat breakthrough! I think. Then yesterday morning, I'm in the shower and I hear Sebastian's distinctive squeak. I peek out in time to see his head and front paws, planted on the slippy linoleum behind the toilet but moving rapidly backwards, like a horror film character being dragged away by the evil villain, with Finn on the other end of the toilet tugging at him. Yeah, we're working on "gentle with the cats!" It's hard to tell how much Skittin is okay with the rough play; I don't want him to get hurt, but often when I pry Finn away from him, he stays where he is until I let Finn go, or he gets to a high place and then instigates more chaos by swatting at Finn's tail.

Finn loves most people, but the other night he went to the door and whined. I made the mistake of letting him out off-leash, because I thought he had to pee. Nope, there were two gangbangers walking down the street, and he barked, raced up to them, and started jumping on them. Unlike everyone else Finn has encountered, they did not think this was cute and understandable puppy behavior. We had a little chat about gangbangers when we were back inside, and now Finn always wears the retractable leash when we go outside, even if it's just to carry out the trash.

I am stocking up on dog training manuals. How to get him to be gentle with the cats? How to get him to stop chewing on inappropriate things like my pillows and books (especially when he has rope toys, squeaky balls, a kong, old shoes of mine, old gardening gloves of mine, bones, carrots, etc., etc., to chew on)? How to stop him from playing tug-of-war with my pants every time I use the toilet? How to get him to stop biting me? One sign of progress in that area, though, is that it's been awhile (knock on wood) since he's actually broken the skin.

Ghetto turn signal

Instead of putting on your blinker, just stick your arm out the driver's window and point in the direction you want to go, then change lanes a split second later without checking to see if the coast is clear.

But hey, at least this one tried to signal, right?

Old gray van

(Actually, the title of this post sounds like the name of a not-very-good college band.)

The other day when I came back from lunch, an old gray van was idling, driverless, in the gravel parking lot across the street from my office. I saw it again yesterday as I turned onto the street where I work. Across the back of the van was lettered, "Church of the P.A.W., Savannah, Ga." There obviously had been writing on the driver's door and three lines of writing along the side of the van, but gray paint of a slightly darker (but no less industrially dingy) shade than the rest of the vehicle obscured all but this one line: "Come join us in the house of love."

Doesn't that sound like some creepy backwoods cult whose leader sets himself up as the father figure and makes all the hot young girls have sex with him?

(The creepiness factor is likely increased because I'm reading The Regulators by Stephen King writing as Richard Bachman this week, and gray vans and similar vehicles play a decidedly macabre role.)

Finn-anigans

Finn's settling into the menagerie pretty well. His partial house training was a bit exaggerated, but he learns quickly. At the beginning of the weekend, he had realized that when we go outside, he's supposed to pee, so he would coax out a little something. By yesterday, the volume had increased to the point where it seemed like he was figuring out to hold it until we got outside (inasmuch as he can; I know his puppy muscles aren't quite capable of full control yet, and there are still some messes in the house). Now we have to work on getting him to make the same connection between pooping and outside. Good thing I moved in knowing I would have to replace the carpet. Good thing the carpet is dark blue.

He and Sebastian have become fast friends already. In fact, Finn and I spent a couple of nights on the couch so I could get some sleep, because Thursday night they spent so much time chasing each other and wrestling and running over my face that I didn't rest much. I keep thinking Finn might be playing too rough for the Skittin, but then I see how much of it Sebastian instigates, and how when he runs away from Finn he does this dolphin-like skip so the clumsy puppy can almost keep up. When I take Finn out of my room, Sebastian stands on the dresser by the door with this forlorn look.

The other cats are getting acclimated more slowly, but they've started to venture out and sniff him a little. He thinks this means they want to play. I am hoping eventually they will. Fender decided she was ready to come out of her cabinet (to which she had retreated several days before the advent of the pup; she and Puck had some sort of falling-out), and if Finn wanted to sniff her, well, too bad. She did the classic Fender move of turning around and settling down with her back to him; if she doesn't deign to see you, you don't exist. Kashmir is timid but curious, and Inanna is getting bolder. Even Puck came out briefly Saturday night and woke me up on the couch for some attention.

I had another mishap with the washing machine (long story involving this bright idea to put the washer in the doorway, so it could flood outside, which did not work at all; flooded floors, wet clothes, flooded garage, flooded boxes of books in the garage, me cracking open a fingernail against the back door, me taking the doorknob out of the back door so I could open it, mildew, me being subsequently so tired and annoyed that I accidentally banged my toe against the edge of a wooden crate, splitting it open in two places, and then immediately forgot about it and tracked blood all over the kitchen. Today the toe is swollen enough to hurt when I have a shoe on.). I have fans running but the mildew stench is still strong. When everything is dried out, I am going to pry up the rest of the tiles. I started Friday night around 1 a.m. and quickly realized much of the stink problem in my house is because of standing water and mildew beneath the two layers of floor tiles, and given the raunch of the tiles that I pulled from beneath the stove, I am quite sure the problem pre-dates me. I am hoping the tile removal helps, and the fans help, and I can someday walk into the laundry room without feeling ill.

I am going to see if the Salvation Army will haul the washer away.

I lost more books in this flood. I guess that isn't a bad thing, necessarily; on reflection, I realized I could live without a surprising number of them, and the ones that I can't are mostly salvageable.

Finn

I took the plunge and got a puppy last night.

It was sort of a spur-of-the-moment decision but also one into which I had put a lot of thought. I've wanted a puppy for ages, and I always felt when the time was right, one would show up on my doorstep. I've rescued or sort of rescued a couple of dogs, but none of them worked (one was too hyper to do well with the cats, but ended up going to a really good home; the owners of the other one showed up a few hours after I found him). When I've seen flyers about dogs needing a home, I've called, but they've always either found homes or gone to good rescues. I've held off going to the Humane Society because I know it will break my heart, even though the animals you actually see have made it to the no-kill level. (They euthanize for almost any problem when animals come in, I've heard, but once they're deemed adoptable, it's no-kill.) I saw this flyer at Starbucks a few weeks ago advertising puppies free to a good home. I almost called, then opted not to. Saturday, there was a flyer showing one puppy free to a good home, and it looked like it came from the same litter. I tore off the phone number, tried to talk myself out of calling, but held onto the number anyway.

Lately when I see people with dogs, I get an ache, a sense of loss, this feeling that there's a tangible absence in my life. I used to feel this way about babies; thankfully, that's passed. (I think getting to play with friends' babies and toddlers has helped a lot! It's like being a grandparent--you get the fun, you get to spoil them, and then you get to hand them back to their parents when they have messy diapers or get cranky.) But with dogs, it's increased to the point of being actually painful.

Yesterday at lunch I went to Mellow Mushroom. There were four or five people sitting outside with their dogs, and usually I stop to pet the dogs and chat with the owners, but instead I felt sad and virtually dove inside. On the way back from lunch, I decided to call the number from Starbucks. I figured enough time had elapsed that someone else had already claimed the puppy. Turned out not to be the case.

He's 10 weeks old. His mother was a rescued German shepherd who gave birth to a litter of eight puppies. They think the father is a black lab and/or border collie. He's partially house-trained and has lived with cats his whole life, so he's very good with them. He wants to play but doesn't push it or get aggressive, and as a result, the cats, while wary, are doing much better than I expected they would this early in the game. They're curious and even getting a little bold about approaching him. He's already bigger than they are, and he has enormous paws, so he's going to be a big guy, I think. And he has already proven waaaay easier to train than they are!

After running through every name I could think of, I settled on Finn. I am looking forward to taking him places, to having opportunities to socialize with other pet people. My cats don't like leaving the house, so I've never been able to take them to Petsmart or anywhere else, which is fine, but I've always had that wistful feeling. Plus, there are many activities for dogs and their people in Savannah that I've always wanted to attend, and now I can. I didn't get him to help boost my social life, but I'm hoping that's a side benefit. Finn and I went to Petsmart right after I got him, and these little girls with a Maltese puppy stopped to exchange puppy names and coo over him.

Most of my friends and acquaintances heartily disapprove. Dogs are expensive and need more attention than cats. I already have what most people consider to be too many pets. My sister-in-law, who got a dog in July and adores him, was thrilled, however--can't wait to see pictures, hopes I can bring him home at Christmas (I'm looking into fares already), is totally excited about it. This is one of the many reasons my sister-in-law rocks.

And really--I feel like it's a good time to do this. My friends are wise (perhaps wiser than me) and have valid points of view and concerns, but in the end I have to do what won't leave me with regrets...and I've regretted not having a dog for years....

Skittin adventures

Sebastian "Skittin" "Velcro Kitty" pulled a new one yesterday. So far, he'd been the only cat to actually climb on me while I was in the tub (several of them have put out tentative paws, as if to see if there's enough of me above water for them to perch on, but he's the only one to actually decide he could fit). So yesterday I'm in the shower, shaving my legs, and suddenly there's Sebastian in the far end of the tub! He stared at me for a minute while I laughed, and then he realized he was getting wet, so he tried to leap BACKWARDS out of the tub. It didn't work, and he sort of twirled around frantically trying to get a grip on the wet bottom of the tub. He figured out pretty quickly that if he slipped between the shower liner and the edge of the tub, he wouldn't get wet, and from there it took him about two seconds to jump out. He spent the rest of my shower on his usual perch, the toilet lid, squeaking at me whenever I peeked out to check on him.

days have elapsed

so whiny, whiny me. after all that angst, i got a promotion that i wasn't expecting, at least not right now, and it came with a nice raise.

jury duty turned out to be a breeze: an hour of orientation, more than hour of waiting, during which i got through half a tim dorsey novel (and decided i am definitely a fan of serge a. storms), then a few minutes during which the judge told us that the leverage of our presence as prospective jurors enabled him to settle the FIVE felony cases on the docket without any of them needing to go to trial. so thanks for coming in, here's your ten bucks, wish it was more, go home and have a good rest of the day.

amanda and i went on a road trip a couple weekends ago, to jax (where they have a borders) and st. augustine, because she hadn't been there yet. we hit the jackpot at borders: they were having an educators weekend, and when we walked in, a woman immediately asked us if we were teachers. we told her we work at a college; she said that counted. as a result, when we showed our IDs at checkout, we got 25% off everything. it may be the only time i have ever walked into a bookstore and spent LESS than i budgeted, but i still got 14 books (though let's be honest--i would have spent a lot more if i hadn't taken the precaution of leaving the debit card at home and taking cash instead). i am a glutton. i actually feel sated on book buying, for the moment. amanda liked st. augustine, which i expected she would. we walked around the old spanish fort, took photos, went up and down st. george street, and walked past flagler college. we also got hit on by pirates ("ahoy, ladies! i've lost me booty!").

now i have another sinus infection--i seem to catch a cold, fever or sinus infection every other week lately--and i've been having odd dreams. last night, for example, i dreamt i took my cats on vacation with me to my grandmother's, and lost them all. then i found puck again, in some complicated scenario involving a restaurant on one of the squares.

speaking of the cats, i love them all, and they're all unique, but some of them are really unique: puck, kashmir, and now sebastian. maybe because he was separated from his mom too young, sebastian is velcro kitty. it's mostly endearing, although his tendency to snuggle the second my alarm goes off doesn't help me in my quest to get to work on time. it's awesome for a sick person, however. last night he parked his little butt on the pillow by my ear and flopped across my neck, resting his face against mine. you know how heat can feel really good on swollen sinuses? imagine heat with soft kitten fur and a nice, rumbly purr against your cheek.

I will not be drowned by your thoughtless scheming

(Thanks to Korn, an excerpt of whose song "Thoughtless" is my title for today; more lyrics are included below.)

At least once a month, I hear about a party thrown by someone at work to which most of the office is invited and I am not. I really thought that sort of crap was supposed to end somewhere around high school graduation. I got sick of it after two years of constantly dealing with it when I was a cheerleader (--the one the other cheerleaders hated and ignored and tried to get kicked off so one of their friends could be a cheerleader instead) and pretty much spent my entire senior year in a bitter funk. And then I went through the goth phase and at least I found a scene where some people liked me and wanted to hang out with me and thought I was cool. In State College, thanks mostly to the obsessive crush of someone who barely knew me, I even had a bunch of groupies, most of whom I'd never met. And of course, being me, I was afraid of talking to any of them, because I figured they'd be disappointed by the real me. I both liked and was trapped by the mystique, but it was better than being the weird, moody kid everyone in high school mocked or treated as if she was invisible.

I don't know why not being invited to these parties messes me up so much. In many cases, I wouldn't go anyway. In some cases, I don't even like the person throwing the party any more than they apparently like me. But it still bothers me. I'd rather be hated than invisible, but I'd really prefer neither of those options.

The thing is, though, that it makes me feel like my own attempts, halfhearted and reluctant, to become an adult just aren't worth it. I don't wear goth makeup anymore. I try to dress like a professional person for work, even though I still mostly wear black. My therapist and various other people who I know have my best interest in mind keep trying to convince me that growing up is good, and I can let go of my angry inner adolescent, and hurting myself is "immature" and "unhealthy" and will scare away healthy people. But sometimes I don't feel like the tradeoff is worth it. Socially (because I have no social life outside of work), I feel invisible again, bland and neutral, forgettable. And I hate that. I hate wondering what's wrong with me and why I'm not cool enough and why someone might possibly decide to snub me. I hate that it matters. I hate that I obsess about it.

I don't have the energy to be consistently, existentially angry anymore, or maybe I've just learned to sometimes funnel the energy in other directions. I've been listening to HIM a lot lately (which is sort of like being in high school, except with a melodrama-parodying self-awareness that I lacked back then--I mean the CD is called "Razorblade Romance"; how much more absurdly melancholic can you get?). But some days I feel like I'm 16 again, and that just makes me want to cut myself and listen to Korn and try to put curses on people and hate everyone.

Thumbing through the pages of my fantasies
Pushing all the mercy down, down, down
I wanna see you try to take a swing at me
Come on, gonna put you on the ground, ground, ground

Why are you trying to make fun of me?
You think it's funny?
What the f*** you think it's doing to me?
You take your turn lashing out at me
I want you crying with your dirty a** in front of me

Thumbing through the pages of my fantasies
I'm above you, smiling as you, drown, drown, drown
I wanna kill and rape you the way you raped me
And I'll pull the trigger
And you're down, down, down

All my friends are gone, they died (gonna take you down)
They all screamed, and cried (gonna take you down)

All of my hate cannot be bound
I will not be drowned
by your thoughtless scheming
So you can try to tear me down
Beat me to the ground
I will see you screaming

Waiting

I am on call for jury duty this week. I hate the waiting, not knowing whether I'll be called in and whether I'll make the cut for the jury. I have a dr. appt Thursday, made before I knew this was my week for jury duty. Do I reschedule? And, trivial as this sounds, I really want to watch the "Criminal Minds" season premiere Wednesday, but if I do end up serving, I probably won't be home in time. I feel like a bad American, but I'd be much more willing to serve if there was a way to reschedule or somehow not have to put myr entire life on hold for a week or longer.

I wouldn't want me on a jury anyway.

Also going on: Myriad cranky people sending me e-mails. Overnighted a check to my bank; it was supposed to get there at noon Saturday. At noon today, it still hadn't arrived. Until it does, I have 41 cents in my account. And no food in the fridge. And yeah, I know, I need to budget better. Even the good raises I've sometimes received don't do much to keep up with the exploding costs of gas and electricity.

Someone from the Savannah property maintenance dept was supposed to revisit my house today to see if I had cut my 10+ inch weeds and grass. I spent most of the weekend cutting the darn stuff; I have a blister on my thumb, scratches all over from the blackberry thistles, myriad bug bites, and sunburn. But there was some grass waaaaay at the back of the yard that may or may not even be on my property that I did not get to. The next door neighbor doesn't have hers clipped that far back either. So I am hoping that doesn't net me the potential fine of $1K or up to 30 days in jail (cuz we don't have enough real criminals here clogging up the jail cells). I figure, though, that since I called the inspector twice and left my work and cell numbers in a voicemail, specifically requested more information about my alleged violation, and she never called back, I have valid grounds for a complaint if they do smack some sort of penalty on me.

More than anything else, I am upset about my grandma, who is not doing well. I haven't been emotionally invested much up to this point as she's gone through various surgeries, emergencies, etc. I don't know what's changed; I think until last week, I believed she just wasn't ready to let go, and when she was ready, she would die. But she IS ready to go. She had surgery last week to repair a stress fracture in one of her vertebrae, and she said afterward that she had hoped not to wake up from the anesthesia. She is going to be 90 in less than a month; she had another surgery when we were there in early August; they can only operate so many times on someone that old and frail. Now an old fracture has re-broken, and they don't think they can perform another operation on her. She's in terrible pain. She wants to die. Maybe this is (to my mind) more of that refining cruelty of God. My aunt likened it to Job (Bible book) in an e-mail today. My grandmother has eight children and a constantly growing number of great-grandchildren. She lost my grandfather 18 years ago and believes she will join him in heaven when she dies. So why won't God just take her?

Ratsy

The rat (the one Fade twice refused to eat, earning it a lifetime reprieve from being python fodder) has carved out a nice little burrow beneath the Rubbermaid lid in my backyard, although it seems also to have found quarters elsewhere. During rainstorms, however, it faithfully scurries back under the overturned Rubbermaid to take shelter. Sometimes when I fill the bird feeder, I leave a handful of birdseed for the rat, to whom I variously refer (not being certain of its gender) as Rattila, Cleoratra, Ratricia, Ratsy, or Ratatouille. I'm getting a kick out of having a semi-pet rat in the backyard, although that will quickly end should it 1) try to get into the house, in which case I expect its life will quickly be terminated by the feline posse, or 2) have babies, in which case I am not sure what I'll do (maybe bring them back to the pet store?). Given the nature of rats, I realize one or both of these is likely, of course.

Azrael and Nightshade are being less entertaining. They have become more adept at hunting and usually can be found curled up together under one of the miniature tombstones in their tank.

KERFUFFLE

Means the same thing as clusterf***, but it sounds so funny that it makes you laugh, you can safely say it at work, and it is best when it bursts emphatically from your lips on a great gust of breath, aka is yelled at the top of your lungs.

Things are in (?) a kerfuffle lately. I am popularizing this word.

Weighing (in on) Britney

Since everyone else in the universe has opinions about Britney's disastrous VMA performance, and mine is probably more intelligent and thoughtful than a good number of them, I'm going to air them, and where better than on my blog?

An obvious issue, and the one I find most crucial to explore before critiquing the other elements of the train wreck, is her body. As a woman, a feminist, a former size 2 struggling with birth control-induced weight, a friend of women struggling with post-baby weight--as all those things, I don't want to criticize Britney for donning skimpy clothing when her body is less than toned and svelte. I don't want to criticize her, because I think women should have the freedom to celebrate their bodies, no matter what they look like, and the confidence to wear whatever they want.

That said, however, there was nothing in Spears' attire or performance that bespoke confidence. Delusion, perhaps, but not realistic appraisal, acceptance, and unapologetic enjoyment. Spears is no Beth Ditto. Her performance was a grotesque parody of her former glory primarily because it wasn't intended as a parody, or a statement of defiance about what makes women attractive, or anything that would have implied agency, awareness, and control on Britney's part.

We already knew Britney hadn't come close to regaining her pre-baby body. We knew that dance training and celebrity chefs and liposuction and every other slenderizing force she might have had access to were powerless to withstand the onslaught of constant Cheeto-crunching and boozing. We've seen her "ample bottom" hanging out of shirts she misguidedly repurposed as dresses. We've seen her thighs in torn fishnets. So we weren't surprised by her VMA tummy, but plenty of people are still commenting on it.

And you know what? Her defenders are right about a few things: She did just have back-to-back babies. Compared to most women, she doesn't look bad. Besides, as I've already said, I fully support her right to wear whatever she wants onstage no matter how she looks.

What makes her so tragic, to me, is the level of delusion that seems to be operating in her mind. Britney Spears' success is based on the way she has sold sexiness, starting when she was dancing through high school halls in a plaid Catholic schoolgirl mini almost 10 years ago. And now, in her mid-twenties and with two children, she's still frantically grasping at that look of innocence and seduction. Reportedly, she vetted the more flattering corset MTV had chosen for her to wear at the VMAs because she wanted to look "extra sexy." And she didn't. She looked awkward and uncomfortable and, yeah, flabby, and it didn't work because she was performing a song and a dance routine that called for sleek, svelte, toned. If she was redefining sexuality or expanding it to encompass the body she has now and the person she's become, I would applaud her. But her sexuality seems as out of control as everything else about her; her wardrobe choices smack of the desperate need to be a cute adolescent sex kitten.

In the end, I think it's her own failure to see herself as she is now--compromised by bad weaves and drinking, by her trailer-trash marriage to Kfed, by her public breakdowns, by her genital-baring couture--and move on from that to forge a new identity that is her greatest failure. Tragically, what the current shenanigans are showing us is that apart from the cute pout and the breathy croon and the toned muscles of the teenaged seductress, she is nothing. She has no genuine sense of identity as she struggles to define herself in adulthood. And maybe that's why her VMA attempt at sexiness fell flat: because to endure, sexiness requires substance, ingenuity, creativity--qualities whose absence from Britney Spears' person and work has never been more pitiably, pathetically apparent than it was Sunday night.

A week in my life

Monday, Aug. 27: Our surprise team-building outing at work turned out to be an afternoon at the Five-Star Family Fun Park in Pooler, which I had never visited. We ate pizza, drove go-carts, and played nine holes of mini-golf before we all wilted in the mid-90-degree heat/90% humidity. Loved the go-carts, which I'd never driven before (except mine wouldn't go as fast as some of the others did and I am a bit more competitive than I realized). Enjoyed the mini-golf, but, being me, managed to step in a fire ant hill on hole 7. Noticed nothing until multiple burning pinpricks lit into my foot all at once, at which point I looked down, gasped, and did the ants-on-me dance. Went home and slept. Mildly sunburned.

Tuesday: Woke up with surprisingly no evidence of the fire ant bites. Had a teeth-chatteringly high fever by noon. By evening, the bites were itching, burning welts. Knew work next day was not going to happen so stayed up until 3 a.m. finishing The Ruins by Scott Smith.

Wednesday: Called in sick and stayed home nursing fever. Foot was slightly swollen, even though I had fewer than 10 bites.

Thursday: Back at work, still running low fever, bites starting to subside. Fever finally gone by evening. Go to Target and buy three bookshelves, then have fun cramming them into car.

Friday: Get caught by traffic camera at White Bluff and Abercorn, running red light. %^$#! Go to Savannah Mall, visit bookstore, have lovely experience. Visit very cool store called Soap, which is owned and operated by an Asian woman who mixes all the soaps, candles, and incense herself on the premises. She also has much Asiana, such as fans. Proceed to Target, buy five more bookshelves, decline all offers of assistance because I can do it myself, darn it! Cram them ALL into my Civic. Get home, start pouring a bowl of Frosted MiniWheats. Think, why does it look like there are small bugs running around in my cereal? Why, because there ARE small bugs running around in my cereal! Discover trail of sugar ants from window into cabinet, right into Frosted MiniWheat box. Throw the box into fridge, rinse out bowl, wash tainted cereal down disposal, do the ants-on-me dance.

Saturday: Raining. Put on "Black Celebration" by Depeche Mode, light candles, read, all lovely and relaxing. Eventually decide to be productive, go into garage, see water seeping in, including around the bases of boxes that still contain books. @#$%^! Empty boxes, carry armloads of books into house. Carry six bookshelves upstairs, assemble. Carry books upstairs. Notice sugar ants have adjusted trail from window sill into disposal.

Sunday: Carry futon from garage into house, wrestle upstairs (by MYSELF! YES! I am STRONG!). Air out garage. Clean garage up in anticipation of new stuff.

Monday: Wake up, call Home Depot to reserve truck, go get truck. Crazy woman behind me in line asks if she can "ride with me." She wants to use the truck too; can we share and split the cost? Uh, no. Meet up with college student helper, who turns out to be fabulous. Go pick up new free washer, dryer, sofa, and armchair. Load into truck. Drive to my house, unload W/D in garage and furniture on lawn. Return truck. Wrestle sofa and armchair through front door and into living room BY MYSELF, THANK YOU. (Helper would have helped; I declined. Because I am STRONG and STUBBORN and sometimes NOT VERY BRIGHT.)

Tuesday: Buy Fade his rat before he eats Sadie, because he seems about ready to (if she doesn't get him first, which is the more likely option). Fade decides he doesn't want to eat the rat. So now I have a rat living in a big RubberMaid container. Worried first that it might escape, then decided more accurate worry was that Sadie would figure out how to remove the RubberMaid lid and kill the rat. Rat is now in closet. Azrael and Nightshade are in new, very autumnal looking tank, much taller than their plastic shoebox, meaning I can drop in crickets without danger of them climbing out and/or getting close enough to sting me. I decided care is required. I don't want to die of anaphylactic shock from baby scorpion bites, after all. Move bookshelves around, situate futon.

Wednesday: So far, eat six brownies at work because I CAN because I have gotten so much exercise. Seriously. My face looks skinnier than it has in ages. Anticipate serious sugar crash.

Baby vignettes from my house

Baby scorpions are hilarious! Who knew? They run around waving their little pincers, trying to catch crickets, but they haven't quite gotten the finesse of hunting down completely. They must succeed at times, though, because the other day Azrael had what looked like a whole cricket head (I didn't examine it too closely) hanging out of his mouth while he raced around chasing other crickets. And the prey numbers seem to be diminishing--crickets no longer leap out every time I open the lid--so I guess he and Nightshade do manage to best the little Jiminys some of the time.

Sebastian Dickens K.Itten is at that age where you want to smack him for being obnoxious, except he's so adorable. He can't jump up to the bathroom counter yet, but he's figured how to scramble up, using the drawer edges as a ladder. He likes to take flying leaps at anything that moves, including his Auntie Isis (with whom he shares a suite). Auntie Isis tends to watch warily whenever he's out of view and smack him quite a bit when he is (which isn't as bad as it sounds--an important part of kitten socialization is being around another cat who can let it know when it's behaving inappropriately. That's how they learn not to bite HARD when they're playing, that it hurts to be scratched, etc. And being the most timid of my adult cats, Isis could benefit from having a playmate she has helped raise and therefore isn't afraid of, if it works out that way...). I often worry that she gets the raw end of the deal, but this morning I woke up to see them both stretched out on the mattress beside me, and his tail was over her back, just as if it was an extra arm that he had put around her. It was ever so sweet.

And the other store, too...

I went to that other store last night, the one I've been boycotting for awhile, just to see if I could stand to shop there. The answer is still no.

Apart from the too-bright lights and the cloying Christian music,* the desperate plastering of ads for their discount card on every shelf and the obvious discontent of the staff were not terribly useful in convincing me to shop here. I should become a mystery shopper, huh?

Seriously, though, I have worked in failing bookstores, and this one has all the hallmarks, and because I am a vulture I'll keep watching for sales when and if the store is forced to close. I don't know if it's a problem with the whole chain or with this particular store, although this store has never been terribly busy and doesn't, I think, market or position itself well locally. It has a much better horror selection than its competitor, which quite nearly induced me to spend money. The reason I didn't was because after browsing for a half hour, I'd had enough of the annoying employees.

Example 1: Middle-aged man, clearly demoralized, being comforted by friends? coworkers? who tell him, "You just have to think about it as a temporary job. You're not going to be here forever. That's the only way you can stand it." Fine, I understand this isn't where you wanted to be at this stage, but you don't need to have this conversation with customers around, right? He says something about how he really hates it but he totally sees himself still being there in 20 years. Oy.

Example 2: Middle-aged woman talking to younger woman, both of them Far-Side social reject types. (Kind of me, I know.) "I hate it when people criticize my husband because I have to have this job. He is a good provider! It's not his fault that I have to work right now! But because he is such a good provider, I hand over my entire paycheck to him. It goes in his account and I don't even have access to withdraw that money. Some people have a problem with that, but he is a good provider! He handles money well!"

I interrupt this diatribe to ask about the 3-for-2 sale advertised on the door, because I've walked through the entire store and seen evidence (promo stickers) only on a few books in the art history section. Yeah, they are setting out the sales books now. It's only on art history and Christian fiction. I know lots of my relatives like Christian fiction, but I...don't. Mostly. That's really a subject for a whole 'nother entry. So my face falls. They tell me, trying to be nice but clearly also looking down their noses, that the sale has been going on for three months and it has featured different books at different times. So they're sorry, but it's really mainly Christian fiction now.

I meander around for a little longer, holding my horror paperbacks, listening to the madwoman who thinks it is acceptable that she doesn't have access to her own paycheck. Do I want to spend part of mine here? My mind is made up for me by a group of loud, fat, obnoxious girls giggling over a guy who isn't all that funny, who is reading aloud blurbs on new hardcovers and making fun of them. I do that too, and I don't mind other people doing it, but I really was over the annoying and pathetic people in this store. So I left my little stack of books on the floor and walked out.


*Christian music is fine in its place, but this is the kind I couldn't stand even when I believed I had a moral obligation to listen to Christian music. I don't need music in a bookstore, but if you're going to have it, why not play some soothing classical guitar or piano, something quiet and unobtrusive that isn't likely to annoy anyone?

Boycott renewed?

I worked for a large book chain briefly in college. Then I boycotted said chain for years, because working there not only sucked, but they also cheated me out of an entire paycheck by claiming they had no records of the first two weeks I had worked there.

Then I moved to Savannah, where book retail is bleak, and after a bad experience at another chain store, my book addiction proved stronger than my boycott. I again began to patronize that old nemesis.

Friday night I ended up returning a large purchase to that store, as well as another to an arts-and-crafts store I also frequent. At the book retailer, the cashier was nice enough, but things changed when she summoned a manager to sign off on my return.

"Uh, ALL these books?" snapped the manager, looking at my proffered receipt. "Were they ALL the wrong ones, or something?"

Trying to sound jovial, I said I hadn't budgeted very well and needed that money to pay a bill this month. She glared at me and proceeded to make snappish and rude comments throughout the rest of the transaction. First I thought, Well, it IS a pain for them to take back all these books, but then I thought, Still, I do not deserve this. And then, as she continued to be rude and nasty, I thought, Do you realize who I am? I am a customer who has spent a lot of money in your store. Look up my membership account if you don't believe me. Ask your staff how often I'm in here and how many books I buy. I spend more money here than I do at any other single retailer.

I considered telling her off. Then I thought about the bitchy cashier who had been the reason I stopped going to the other book retailer in town and thought, I've been trying to overcome my book-buying addiction with varying degrees of success for years. This rudeness should be more than sufficient reason for me to enact the boycott again, and maybe that, in turn, will help me curtail the book spending.

I went on to the arts and crafts store, steeling myself for a similar experience, but the cashier was the epitome of graciousness. When I explained that I hadn't budgeted very well, she laughed and said, "Oh, we've all been there"--which is the reaction I would have had if I were on the other side of the counter. And, having spent plenty of time on that side of the counter, having walked many a mile in the retailer's shoes, I can say that with full confidence.

So. We'll see how the bookstore boycott goes. I am already planning a road trip to a certain other book retailer in Jacksonville, a retailer at whom I have never had a bad experience, if the book lust overtakes me too badly.

Scorpions!

Yay, they have arrived! I am now in possession of two young emperor scorpions, approximately an inch long each, just past their third molt. I have named them Azrael Abyss and Circe Nightshade, in honor of the SNL "Goth Talk" characters, although I haven't actually determined which is which yet. They are so cute!

Book review: Natural Selection by Dave Freedman

Although this novel had flaws, I decided to post a review of it because after finishing it, I immediately checked Amazon to see if a sequel was out or forthcoming--which means it was pretty enjoyable and I wasn't quite ready to relinquish its world yet.

Natural Selection is the book's premise as well as its title. A group of scientists conducting research about manta rays comes across a new--to humans--species of ray that recently has migrated from the unexplored depths of the ocean and is quickly evolving and adapting to new circumstances. An apex predator, the ray need only encounter new types of prey once to outsmart them, whether they are sharks or dolphins or humans. And the ray isn't content to remain in the oceans; it takes to the air and then to land. Given its massive size, great hunger, and superior intelligence, it naturally poses a growing threat to people, and our intrepid sextuplet of scientists faces the challenge of defeating a predator that no one else believes exists.
My first gripe about the novel is not the fault of author Dave Freedman and in fact may well be something that bothered him too. I hesitate to mention it because it's a spoiler, but that's the problem: The blurb on the back of the novel gives away plot elements that don't come into play until the last hundred pages or later. I HATE it when publishers do this, and it left me wondering whether the person who wrote the blurb had actually read the novel, or if they were just so stupid that they didn't see a problem with killing most of the suspense.

OK, now that's off my chest.

Natural Selection is Freedman's first novel, and it suffers from many typical first-novel flaws. The characters are cardboard, and the technique with which their personalities and interactions are sketched could aptly be called "tell me, don't show me." He has a fair amount of technical information to present to readers, and he isn't sure how to do it. So he alternates between interspersing authorial comments about how evolution works with the CSI-style tendency to present it in dialogue. And like on CSI, this doesn't work so well, because as a reader, I just don't buy someone with a Ph.D. in ichthyology (cool new vocab word--the study of fish) needing to ask a colleague the significance of this predator having a large brain. If I, a person with one college biology class, can figure out why it's a big deal that the rays outsmarted a dolphin, a scientist shouldn't need to ask another scientist what that means. You know?

Granted, it's hard for me to say what assumptions an author can or should make about the general level of intelligence and education of his or her readers. I know publishers regularly insult authors by insisting their target audiences have an 8th-grade comprehension level. (Frankly, given what publishers define as 8th-grade comprehension, I think this is also an insult to most readers, including the 8th graders who actually choose to read books on their own.) Natural Selection is being marketed as a cross between Jaws! and Jurassic Park, so clearly the publisher wants to appeal to a broad readership that doesn't have much specialized knowledge or education. (Whether Freedman also wants that or whether he was forced to adapt an original manuscript along those lines, I don't know.) It's also obvious that the novel is a hopeful contender for film adaptation.

Despite the sometimes clumsy writing and one-dimensional characters, the book works. It didn't give me nightmares, but it definitely kept me turning pages and wanting more. Freedman's drawing of his predatory rays is consistent enough, and he provides enough background about the deep ocean, to make the existence of this type of creature seem perfectly plausible. He does endow the characters with enough humanity that I cared what happened to them. And that, to me, is what matters most in a novel like this: You have to have a stake in the characters' fates, and/or you have to believe in the monster. A novel that can do both is rare and satisfying, and that's why, despite its flaws, Natural Selection succeeds.

Blasphemous rumors

During the past year, I have gone through some difficult experiences and had to make the single most anguishing decision of my life. I've experienced extremely painful (although arguably necessary) losses. In many ways, I've emerged OK. I now own a house. I have a few good friends and an affordable number of cats. I'm not holding out hope for a relationship with someone who isn't remotely suitable (or interested), and I don't have to wonder why my so-called best friend won't answer or return my calls.

I think I feel less than I did before the events of 8-12 months ago. I think the open, raw place in my psyche that oozed constant pain and confusion finally was stabbed so deeply that it actually scabbed over and started not to hurt so much anymore. This is probably good. Antidepressants are effective unguents only up to a point.

Re-reading, the "open, raw place in my psyche that oozed constant pain and confusion" sounds very melodramatic. But depression, to me, IS melodramatic, or perhaps melodrama is simply the most apt way to express the almost physical pain that penetrates to your bones, your marrow, your soul. And sometimes hyperbole and melodrama even bring you laughter when nothing else does.

Along with the sadness, I've lost some of the joy and the laughter and the sense of unconditional love that I was beginning to equate, tentatively, with God. God's love to me has always been a troubling concept, elusive when I sought it, a threat when I didn't (maybe my mom told me a few too many times, "God is going to do whatever it takes to bring you back, even if that means something really horrible happening to you"). I've always had the sneaking uneasiness that if I ever decide to really trust God, the first thing that will happen is something truly awful, because God will have to test the sincerity of my trust. Because that's how God works, right? the vindictive God of the Old Testament and the Puritans, the God of Colorado Springs Calvinists who scorn the idea of a touchy-feely-loving God and instead make statements like, "We love homosexuals by letting them know that what they do is an abomination in the sight of God and will land them in the fires of hell forever." Love isn't just a feeling, but if what you feel is hatred or condemnation or superiority, no twist of semantics or definitions can make it love.

And, more than the wrong things people told me about God (at least I hope they're wrong), what I keep running up against is my own sense of betrayal: all those very, very bleak times when no one was home to answer my calls, God sent me nothing--no sign, no sense of peace or presence--and I was completely alone with my own damage and a razor or scissors or a piece of broken glass. Even then it was a dare, defiance: Fine, if my body really is a temple of the holy spirit, if you, God, care at all, then stop me from desecrating this temple. Help me, darn it. But maybe that isn't how God works. It certainly wasn't how God worked for me; I have the scars to prove it.

So when I do go to church, when I open the Bible, when I make any sort of tentative attempt to connect with God or develop my spirituality, I run up against that wall. And the events of the past year in some ways make it worse: more unconditional love that's gone from my life; more damage I might have done to beings I loved, in trying to do the right thing. A capacity to care that I don't seem to have anymore, at least right now. A sense of hope, which I've never had in abundance. A belief in anything other than the profound absence of God in my life.

This absence in many ways shapes The Nightmares of Lost Ghosts, my novel in progress. There is a line from a Sisters of Mercy song, "No Time to Cry," that sums it up perfectly: "It's ... just like Jesus never came."

A few weeks ago, I was at my mom's family reunion. I had a good time, but I kept thinking about what would happen if these people--people I care about and who, I am beginning to realize, care far more about me than I ever fathomed--were to read my novel. I think they would be hurt. I doubt most of them would understand, although perhaps I am underestimating them. Mostly, they seem happy; they love Jesus, and it works for them. They are confident enough in their faith that they want to share it with other people. Me? I struggle all the time. I struggle mightily with the idea that God is good and loves me. My experience of faith, of God, of Christians is not such that I want to lead anyone else to it. The most accurate reflection of my theology is the refrain from Stephen King's novel "Desperation": God is cruel, and His cruelty refines. I wish this wasn't my theology, but it absolutely nails the sense I've had since I was a teenager.

Several of my cousins exchanged blog URLs. I am still undecided about whether to share mine. So, if you are a Bierma connection and you are reading this, know the risk I am taking with you. Don't judge me, try not to be offended, and treat me gently.

Serpent is a lovely word

Saturday I went to the Edisto Island Serpentarium in South Carolina. Someday, in about a year, I will get my photos developed (I used disposable cameras with zoom, rather than my digital) and post them. In the meantime, here's the written rundown:

It was a gorgeous afternoon for a drive, although it ended up being a bit longer than I expected. Much of it was on two-lane highways through rural areas with the kind of old, falling-down buildings (everything from houses, trailers, and barns to an ancient packing plant) that I love to photograph, although I didn't stop much to shoot. The serpentarium was mostly cool. I was a little disappointed that in the venomous snake habitat (an outside island with a moat and a wall) there were only rattlesnakes and copperheads. I have a special interest in cottonmouths and would have loved to see some of them swimming. However, I did get to see some gorgeous diamondbacks swimming and also saw one strike at a mouse.

Everyone else in the place rushed to the gator pond for the 4 p.m. feeding, and I felt jaded for not being very interested. I've seen gators surface to gobble up fish in the wild and fed baby gators at the Crab Shack, so watching a bunch of adults catch slices of chicken that someone tosses to them isn't that exciting. (I would never have foreseen myself reacting this way when I first moved to Savannah!)

I am also sort of getting interested in turtles, which I have never found very compelling. I think it's because as I contemplate possible landscape features for my backyard, I keep returning to the idea of a pond, and turtles in an actual pond would be pretty cool. I had planned to feed the turtles and bought a baggie of turtle snacks in the gift shop to do so, but there were some kids at the turtle pond. I thought I was sharing the snacks with them; I guess they thought I was giving them the entire baggie because they made off with it. Oh, well.

Inside, there was an open area with, the gift shop cashier said, eight large constrictors. I spotted seven. It was cool, but they weren't *that* big; the pet store where I buy rats for Fade (my python) has several that are much larger. Outside, the nonvenomous snake habitat included not only snakes, but also baby gators, an iguana, and turtles. There were snakes everywhere--in the grass, in the water, twined through the tree branches. It was seriously cool (and would have given my serpent-phobic father nightmares).

There also were golden silk orb weavers everywhere. They're beautiful, enormous spiders with vast webs, and often if you notice one and then look up, you will see layers of webs and spiders stretching up to the treetops. I have been trying in vain to get a good photo of one since the first time I saw them (on the Sapelo Island trip four summers ago); we'll see if I at least caught a decent silhouette this time.

I stayed for the 5 p.m. snake show, which was given by a man in his late sixties (he said; I thought he was younger) from Guyana. He had the craggy face and longish, greasy hair of a Scooby Doo villain, spoke with a delightful accent, was missing half of his teeth, and presented some information I didn't know (such as that snakes don't actually have scales--their skin is pleated so it can expand when they eat prey larger than they are). Afterward, I got to meet his wife, also from Guyana, also missing teeth, also with the accent, and they started telling venomous-snake stories.

Driving there, I had passed several road-side stands selling fresh peaches. I wanted to buy some but knew I wouldn't eat them. Instead, I stopped on the way back at a country store and bought a few bottles of locally brewed, nonalcoholic cider and various other fun things, including alligator jerky (which made for a slightly surreal snack after just seeing a bunch of gators, but then, how many times have I eaten a hamburger while watching cows and not even made the connection?).

I also drove through downtown Beaufort, which I had never done before, and realized I have to return sometime with black and white film to shoot the many graveyards in the area. After all of which, I rushed back to Savannah and changed clothes just in time to go out with Kate to Lulu's, a chocolate bar downtown, which was also a fun experience.

Gargoyle-icious

So I scored the coup of the year yesterday: gargoyles and tombstones (6 inches high, solid plaster, not cheap crap), at the DOLLAR STORE. I cleared out everything they had (10 goyles and 15 or so tombstones). So I now have more home decor and landscaping material, as well as fun things to beautify the terrarium for the two scorpions I'm getting later this week.

I love the dollar store.

I did a lot of yard work this weekend, including pinning up the blackberry creepers onto two trellises. I scratched my leg walking past one of the rose bushes, and I guess at some point I must have scratched my foot on the blackberries. I didn't even notice until I put my work shoes on this morning and they rubbed the cut wrong. I also have, I think, about two mosquito bites per square inch of skin on my arms and lower legs. This is why I don't do yard work more often. Also, I feel bad about cutting all the long grass because the frogs seem to like it so well. I suppose, however, that the neighbors don't.

Maybe this is why I'm single, Part II

One place I frequent that is supposed to be great for meeting relationship-eligible people is the bookstore.

***
Playboy ranked the Tattered Cover in Denver one of the top 10 spots in the United States for meeting desirable people.

As a customer, I was hit on once that I recall. The guy tried to start a conversation about my coat. My coat, not the book I was reading, about which he asked nothing whatsoever, nor did he make any reference to the stack of other books I had collected. I may have been a bit harsh, but I felt that anyone too stupid to even mention books when we were IN A BOOKSTORE didn't deserve my time.

As an employee, well, there was a bit of an eligible-guy pool of coworkers, some of them even paralleling my "taking a break between 'real jobs' to do something that is fun but pays peanuts" life phase. But mostly, as in the real world, guys who initially appeared eligible turned out not to be (to me), for one reason or another: too twitchy, secretly taken, cute until he opened his mouth to reveal that he was an obnoxious cretin with a superiority complex, slept with my best friend. (Given who my best friend was, that latter category ate up a large and perpetually increasing slice of the available males. It also meant we knew immediately who the man-whores were and which guys had morals/ethics/wanted more than a quick tumble. Also, she was ferociously loyal to me, so if I liked someone, she'd dig around and get all the info she could but wouldn't mess with him.)

So we amused ourselves most Friday and Saturday nights by scoping the people who were obviously at the Tattered Cover only because of its meet/meat-market reputation. The girls all had long, straight hair and tended to wear clingy turtlenecks. The guys had carefully gelled hair and dressed in what a coworker at my previous job called "Lodo style," sort of muted-palette preppy. They all wore leather coats and too much scent, and they tended to congregate in the self-help section, specifically near the relationship books. The girls usually traveled in pairs, the guys solo. They'd show up around 9 p.m. en route to the club or bar. They had conversations that sounded scripted. They seemed pretty much interchangeable with one another.

***
In the bookstore, I'm an addict. I can barely pry my gaze away from all the titles long enough to make eye contact with the cashier. It's the one time I walk out of a shop to my car without being as aware as I probably should of who's around, whether anyone has followed me or taken an undue interest, etc., because I'm too busy immersing myself in the sight and scent of new books. Oh, and I talk to myself, not a lot, but if I find a bargain title I've been waiting for, or something really amazing has just come out in paperback, I'll exclaim softly or mutter. And I laugh at people who are morons (like the teenage guy who loudly told his friend, "This is a lame store. They don't even have a nonfiction section.").

So I doubt that anyone who notices me would perceive me as either particularly sane or very appealing to know. I am not carefully coiffed and scented. I don't hang out in the self-help section. I don't giggle. I am wild-eyed and excessive, carting around large stacks of books or a laden shopping basket, sitting on the floor and reading a few pages of each selection, carefully adding up amounts in my head, dashing off in another direction as I remember that I wanted to check the travel section or the biography section or the nature section as long as I was here...

***
So there it is. I am wild-eyed and excessive, slightly insane, a raving bibliophile.

Why does that (in my head, if nowhere else) translate so often into unlovable, unworthy of being loved, incapable of attracting love?

Maybe this is why I'm single, Part I

So my mother, who (unlike me) is home on many weekday afternoons and (also unlike me) prefers to counter boredom with Dr. Phil rather than, say, sleep or watching Halloween for the 80th time, saw a show recently on how single women and men can meet each other.

This seems to be a popular theme on both Dr. Phil and Oprah, according to my mother. Nice, eligible single men have as much trouble meeting nice, eligible single women as vice versa, from what she sees on these shows. What are these men like? I ask her. Do they have decent jobs? Do they seem cool to hang out with? Are they cute? Well, she doesn't know if I'd find them cute, but sure, they seem clean-cut and nice. (Anyone who knows me can probably imagine the sound of nails being pounded HARD into a coffin lid at those words. And yeah, I know, that could be part of my problem...)

So this most recent show featured a man who has made a study, and apparently a business, out of identifying (cue up Connie Francis) where the boys are, and how the girls can meet them--in places other than bars and online dating services. His approach: Look for the ring. Don't see one? Move in, with a question designed to break the ice and make him feel like an expert. Because men really, really like that.

Number one spot to meet guys, says this man? The farmer's market! Say something like, "How can you tell what makes a really good tomato?" or "Do you know any recipes that require organic rhubarb?"

Hmmm, I think. The farmer's market. I can see it now...well, actually, I can't, because the only way I'd ever be up early enough to hit the farmer's market is if I hadn't gone to bed yet. Crazy, no-sleep, up-all-night girl meets fresh-faced, organic juice, rise-with-the-sun boy. Not seeing it. Besides, no way could I maneuver amongst stalls of fresh produce without having an apocalyptic bout of sneezing. And that just doesn't make for a really positive icebreaker. "Hi, excuse me? Do you have a hanky I can borrow to clean up this glob of green stuff hanging off the end of my nose?" Yeah. Not so much.

I don't remember the number two place, but number three is the hardware store--your local Lowe's or Home Depot. Brave a section other than the paint aisle, find a ringless man, and ask him, "Can you help me decide on the kind of lumber to use for my new gazebo?" or "Do you know how to install a ceiling fan?"

So I'm thinking yeah...the hardware store...then I hear the "approach him with a question" bit and I think, Wait, back it up a minute. If he's some random shopper, I'm not going to ask him a question like that! I'm not going to assume that just because of his gender, he knows how to install a ceiling fan or recommend lumber. And even if he seems knowledgeable, I'm not going to trust his answer. That's why the hardware store has employees; that's why there's an Internet.

Sunday afternoon, however, I found myself in the position of wanting to be out of my house (thanks to a mold issue) and broke. So I figured I'd go price some stuff and check out some other stuff at the hardware stores. And while I was there, I noticed a guy with a shopping cart, which reminded me of the "meeting single men at the hardware store" idea, so I decided to keep half an eye out.

Here's what I observed over the course of 15 minutes or so: Three men without rings. Dressed, you know, unremarkably--you couldn't tell anything about them from their attire. No visible tats. Shopping carts. Very confused expressions on their faces.

And I think how utterly stupid this approach is, at least for me.

First of all, I'm not going to ask someone for advice when he looks even more clueless than I am. Second of all, the single thing I know about any of these men is that they aren't wearing a wedding ring. Could have a fiance. Could have taken off the ring in the course of their home-improvement project and haven't put it back on yet. Could be gay. Could, for that matter, be a serial killer.

Thinking or even knowing a guy is single just isn't enough. It's why I don't go to and don't like the idea of singles groups. It's why I am not particularly open to the idea of trying to meet someone online. Because there has to be more in common for me, at the outset, or the conversation will never advance beyond sharing the name of a good electrician or saying a tomato looks juicy. I've always believed and hoped that I would meet someone, and that it would happen in the course of me doing what I like doing anyway. Sure, I'd probably meet more guys if I went to Sand Gnats games, but I think baseball is really boring.

The problem is that most of the things I like are pretty solitary, or they're things that you do with people you already know. I don't know how to meet people. I suck at getting from the acquaintance-having-an-interesting-conversation to the making-plans-to-ever-see-this-person-again phase. It isn't even necessarily meeting people that's the challenge; it's meeting people that I wish I knew better, or figuring out how to express interest in getting to know someone better without coming off too strongly or coming on like I'm interested when I might not be. I seem to have a problem with all of the above.

So it isn't that I don't know guys. What I keep coming back to is that none of these is the right guy, and somewhere there IS a right guy, and when I meet him things won't be so complicated. But maybe he doesn't exist. Who knows? All I can conclude is that "trying to find someone" is not my cup of tea. Even if that means I'm sipping alone.

Oh, Mylanta

So I'm here in the A.T.L., in a dorm room outfitted as a guest room, which is interesting. There are things I did not expect--sofa, chair, TV with cable, fridge, microwave--and there are not things I did expect--plastic cup, soap. So I am sitting here all grimy and thirsty, watching some gothy cartoon with a skull. Oooh, and a spider girl, which reminds me of this bizarre anime we rented one time in college, in which these geisha-esque chicks turned out to really be robots, and their faces were the backs of these spiders. This is all I remember of the anime, other than the spiders surging up a wall in pursuit of someone. (Alcohol was involved in the watching of this movie, but I swear I'm not making these details up.)

This day has been surreal. I overslept (of course), drove up here in 100-degree heat (the AC works, but I was still sweating it), got a bit lost trying to find the school, hung out there for a few hours, got REALLY lost trying to get to the dorm, did almost the same traffic loop twice, and after an hour, finally made it to the dorm (two blocks from the school, mind). So far, I don't think badly of the much-maligned Atlanta drivers; traffic is heavy, yes, but on the whole, people were surprisingly polite and not dangerously aggressive. However, the way midtown Atlanta is set up is just confusing. There are all these one-way streets, and if you miss the cross street you need (at least, if you're me), you end up on some highway funneling you far, far from where you are trying to be with no chance to exit for several miles. On the plus side, I now know I can successfully find my way around a good chunk of metro Atlanta without a real map and with surprisingly minimal road rage.

Anyway, I'm starving and headachy. Half of me wants to go home, and half of me is in love with this city already.

Only in Savannah

This is why I choose to live in Savannah:

On the way home from work a few weeks ago, I pulled up to a red light and idly checked out the bumper stickers on the shiny red Ford 150 pickup just ahead of me--several renditions of the Confederate flag, as well as the "Don't tread on me" rattlesnake logo. I wasn't paying any attention to the rusted-out, ancient but also red, also a Ford 150 pickup next to him until the door opened and an oldish, grizzled black man jumped out. He was wearing saggy pants that stayed up only by virtue of the fact that they were knotted to his shirttail on one side, and as we all waited at the light, he hefted a five-gallon gasoline can out of his truck bed and proceeded to fuel up. (There are gas stations on both sides of this intersection, mind you.)

He then tossed the empty can back into the truck bed--where it joined various rusted lawn mowers and other ancient gardening equipment--and climbed back into the cab, an operation that involved banging the door shut several times before the latch caught and it stayed. Then someone began honking loudly. Both he and I turned to the vehicle next to me and behind him, which belonged to a very coiffed-looking woman with a permit for The Landings on her rear side window. I think we were both ready to flip her off--the light was still red; why honk?--when she lowered her window enough to call out and gesture to the road somewhere to the side of the truck. The grizzled man hopped out, retrieved a cell phone from the asphalt, where it had apparently flown as he entered or exited the cab, and banged the door shut multiple times until the latch caught (again). He gave the coiffed woman a cheery wave of thanks, and she waved back in gracious acknowledgment. Then the light changed, and we all were off on our merry ways.