Category Archives: My True Life

Jun1

Step Back

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I was in a suburb of a large metro area, at a gas station in the parking lot of a supermarket that is part of a big chain. I walked up the the booth to pay rather than run my debit card through the reader and risk identify theft or a drained bank account. One person was already standing at the window, waiting for the attendant to return.

The person was presenting a female gender identity. She was younger than I am, and dressed in tight clothes. She didn’t mind showing off her body.

I took my place in line behind the woman. I was standing the normal distance I would stand behind a person in a line in front of me. I don’t like people all up in my business, so I try to avoid  getting all up in the business of others. My desire for space means other people have space too. However, my definition of enough space was different from this woman’s.

She turned around, quickly looked me up and down and said, Could you take a step back? I don’t like people too close to me.

What could I do? I took a step back.

I didn’t feel like I was excessively close, but she used her words (if not quite politely, not exactly rudely either) and made a not unreasonable request. It was a strange request, maybe, but not an ureasonable one.

I did wonder if my underarms were particularly smelly that day or my clothes particularly dirty. (I usually dress decently and deodorize my underarms before I go to the big city, I swear.) Maybe the woman likes space in any situation, but I did worry that somehow I specifically was offensive to her.

She seemed satisfied with my one step back and went about her business with nothing more to say to me.

 

May28

Hard Headed Woman

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Cat Stevens sang of looking for a hard-headed woman. He certainly would have found such a woman in me. What can I say? It’s got to be genetic. I inhereted my tete dure (as we Cajuns say) from my mawmaw.

My father’s mother was the most stubborn person I’ve ever known. (Lest you think being hard headed passed only to the females of the family, my dad was the second most stubborn person I’ve ever known.) My grandmother was born in the early days of the 20th century and lived through the Great Depression, which is maybe what made her so careful with money. She’s so tight, my dad would say about his mother, she’ll squeeze a nickel until the buffalo moans. (The joke’s not so funny now that Thomas Jefferson is on most U.S. nickels.) In addition to being what might be called hyper-frugal, my grandmother did not easily let go of an idea once she made up her mind.

My grandma had four husbands before she died at nearly 90 years of age. I never knew my grandfather, and I was an oblivious child during her marriages to #2 and #3. (The woman was a good Catholic and never divorced anyone; all of her marriages ended in death. She was a good Catholic, but not a perfect one; I learned as a teenager that marriage #2 was of the common-law variety.) I was a teenager during her last marriage and more interested in what the adults were talking about.

During one of our family visits, my grandma and her husband were discussing their disagreements. Whenever they had an argument, my grandmother said, and she couldn’t sway her husband to her thinking, she eventually just walked off and finished the argument by herself! My whole family thought that was hilarious! (I don’t remember if her husband was amused.) It wasn’t difficult to imagine my mawmaw going off on her own to finish an argument in her head, in her favor, of course. Her husband wasn’t going to change her mind, so why keep talking when she could wrap things up on her own? Tete dure indeed!

My grandmother’s funniest case of stubbornness involved the use of her air conditioner.

She lived in Louisiana, always had. She knew the summers were hot and humid and difficult to get through. She also knew cooling her house with one small window unit cost precious money, money she’d sooner not part with. She knew once she turned on the air conditioner, she wouldn’t want to turn it off, so she tried to last as long as possible without it.

At some point, she set a date for turning on the air conditioner. Her arbitrary date for using the air conditioner was June 1. Before June 1, she would not use the air conditioner, no matter what. She didn’t care if it was May 28, the temperature was 96 degrees and humidity was at 98%–the air conditioner was not coming on. Mawmaw had made up her mind and there was nothing that could change it.

My grandmother’s stubborn refusal to use the air conditioner before June 1 was a family joke, but it was no joke if we had to pay her a visit late in May. For all intents and purposes, it was summer, but no way was she turning on the air conditioner early. She wasn’t going to change her mind and waste precious pennies simply because she had company. No amount of begging or complaining was going to soften her hard head.

Visiting once it got hot but before the air conditioner came on was miserable, but having to spend the night there was torture. It’s hard to sleep through hot and sweaty nights even with a ceiling fan blowing overhead. Why my parents even went there in those in-between days, I’ll never know. I suppose there were adult reasons why it couldn’t be avoided.

Sometimes while passing through her town, my family would stop at my grandmother’s house and discover she wasn’t home. My dad had a key to the side door, so we were able to go inside to use the bathroom and get a drink of cold water from the glass jug in the refrigerator. At least once we stopped late in May to find my grandma gone. My dad unlocked the door and made a beeline to the air conditioner, which he not only turned on, but cranked to the coldest setting. My sibling and I were scandalized, but exhilarated too. It wasn’t June 1st yet! Dad was clearly breaking the rules, but that cold air sure felt good.

We didn’t stay long enough for the cold air to cool down the whole house, but I wonder if my grandmother returned  home soon after our departure and wondered why the house didn’t feel as hot as it should have. I wonder if she came home so many hours later that all the cool air had dissipated completely and she was absolutely unaware of my father’s transgression. I wonder if she looked at May’s electric bill and thought it seemed higher than it should have been. Maybe she was confused. How could it have been so high? she might have wondered. I didn’t even turn on the air conditioner until the first of June.

Apr23

In Praise of a Toothbrush

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The student hygienist at the dental hygiene clinic told me I should use an electric toothbrush. I told her I often had no access to electricity because I work part of the year in a remote location in the mountains. She didn’t tell me about battery operated toothbrushes, but I figured it out on my own.

I was in a Wal-Mart a few weeks before Christmas. I was just doing my normal shopping when I remembered the dental hygience student telling me about electric toothbrushes. I decided to see what the store had to offer. I walked over to the toothbrush aisle, and there was an entire endcap of Arm & Hammer Spinbrushes priced at just $5 each. Oh! That wasn’t too expensive.

[amazon template=image&asin=B0012E0REM]In addition to the Arm & Hammer battery operated brushes, I saw some made by Oral B, and a few from the Wal-Mart Equate brand. Unsurprisingly, the Equate brushes were the least expensive, but I wondered if they ware made as well or would work as well as the name-brand brushes. Even after reading the packages of the different brushes, I couldn’t determine any significant differences. I decided to splurge a little and go for a $5 brush. I grabbed an Arm & Hammer Spinbrush in a color I liked (hot pink) and called it good.

That night I brushed my teeth with the new brush. My teeth felt clearner, slicker, but perhaps I was imagining the difference. Maybe I was experienceing some sort of toothbrush placebo effect.

One night The Man was at my van as I brushed my teeth with my new, powerful brush. I guess I’d been brushing a while because he told me, You’re going to wear your teeth to nubs if you keep at it with that thing. I had to laugh through my toothpaste.

I knew the real proof of the brush’s success would be the plaque score assigned to my teeth when I returned to the dental hygience clinic.

After the preliminaries (checking my blood pressure, checking my neck and face for lumps and bumps, asking about any changes in my medical history in the last month), the student hygienist smeared the substance on my teeth that would make the plaque show pink. Then she counted the pink surfaces of my teeth and used a mathematical formula to calculate my plaque score. After using the Spinbrush for about two weeks, my plaque score dropped from 39% to 16%. (At a subsequent visit after using the Spinbrush for three months, my plaque score was 20.5%)

Before I brought the Spinbrush, I wondered how often I would have to replace the batteries. The batteries that were included with the brush when I purchased it did not last very long, maybe two weeks of brushing twice a day. I replaced those batteries with super cheap batteries from Dollar Tree, and they lasted slightly longer. When I had to replace the batteries a third time, I splurged on Duracells and have gotten much better (longer lasting) results. Many less-expensive items really are as good as their more expensive counterpoints, but I’ve learned with batteries you really do get what you pay for.

If I lived somewhere year round with electricity, I would get an electric toothbrush I could plug in and charge, thus eliminating the waste of dead batteries. Maybe I’ll eventually get a plug-in toothbrush for when I do have access to electricity and just use the battery powered one when I’m in the woods. For now, I’ll continue to buy batteries for my Arm & Hammer Spinbrush.

Apr20

You Got This

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When I’m in the right city, I have my teeth cleaned–for free–at a school for dental hygienists. The students are well supervised, and I feel like I’m getting complete and thorough dental care. Once a year x-rays are taken of my teeth, and there’s a dentist on staff who examines my mouth and consults with the student whenever necessary throughout the process.

I hadn’t been in the city for quite a while, and the last dental appointment I’d paid for had left me feeling traumatized, so my teeth hadn’t been cleaned in over a year. As soon as I was close to the city, I made an apppointment for a cleaning at the dental hygiene school.

One of the drawbacks of getting my teeth cleaned at the school is never being able to form a relationship with my health care provider. Ove the last six years, probably as many students have worked on my mouth, and I’ve never seen any of them more than twice. I don’t remember the names of any of them.

The skills of students vary. I’ve had my teeth cleaned by students just weeks away from graduation; as expected, folks who’ve been at it a while do a better job and by better job, I mean, cause less pain.The most recent student who worked on my mouth must have just started her training when I met her in December 2017.

Her name (not her real name) was Pansy. She seemed very young, like teenager young, which I guess she could have been if she had started training to be a dental hygienist the moment she graduated from high school. More likely, she was in her early 20s. She was pleasant as our first visit got under way, but I was a nervous wreck.

Dental appointments make me very anxious. I’ve had a string of dental problems in the last several years, so I worry about what’s going to be found when someone starts poking around in my mouth. Will I have a cavity? Is a tooth rotting away? Will I need a root canal? Is someone going to freak out about my impacted wisdom teeth or the cyst around the roots of the one tooth or the evidence of my once fractured jaw? Will someone recommend a treatment I can’t afford?

As our first session played out, I learned Pansy was slow and not very gentle. The x-ray process was painful because she shoved large equipment into my small mouth. (In the past, an instructor had come around to give my student hygienist tips on making me more comfortable during x-rays, but that day no one came by to give Pansy advice.) Once back in our cubicle, Pansy used the tiny handheld mirror to reach into my mouth and pull my soft mouthparts away from my teeth. She did the pulling with gusto; it felt decidedly unpleasant. When she had my mouth adequately opened, she rested the mirror on my upper gums, which caused additional discomfort. As to be expected, the pain increased when she started poking at my gums with pointy instruments. To make it all worse, Pansy was excruciatingly slow in her every process. I was in her chair for more than three hours during my initial appointment with her. Despite being on time for my 8am appointment, I wasn’t sure if she’d be finished with me when her class was dismissed at 11:45.

One of the steps Pansy had to complete was calculating my plaque score. She stained my teeth so the plaque showed up red, then documented on a paper chart every tooth surface with plaque on it. I peeked at the chart and saw there was a mathematical formula used to calculate the patient’s plaque score. Pansy crunched the numbers and gave me my result: 39%. This score was higher than the dental powers-that-be thought it should be, so Pansy began interrogating me.

Did I floss?

Yes.

How often?

At least once a day.

Could I show her my technique?

Sure.

She handed me a length of dental floss, and I demonstrated my flossing technique.

Your technique is pretty good, she conceeded. She seemed perplexed about how to solve this plaque problem.

Have you ever thought about using an electric toothbrush? she asked.

I said no.

Why not? she demanded.

I should have said, because no one ever suggested it to me, which was the truth. Instead I said, because I spend a lot of my time in places with no electricity, which was also the truth.

Have you ever thought about getting a power generator? Pansy asked me.

I busted out laughing. I thought she was joking. I looked over at her and she was looking at me expectantly, completely serious.

(Later, when I discovered battery powered spin brushes, I wondered why she hadn’t suggested one of those instead of going directly to a noisy, costly solution.)

When it came time to make our next appointment, Pansy offered me a date, recanted her offer, then offered me a different date. When I said that date was fine (although a month away), she didn’t have an appointment card to give to me after writing down the date and time. She ended up using the school’s regular business card and writing the date of my appoitment on the back.

Tilt Photography of Calendar Schedule Number 18The next day the clinic’s office manager called me saying Pansy had not given me an appointment and tried to give me one on the date Pansy had first mentioned. When I explained Pansy had already given me an appointment for a different date, the office manager said the student hadn’t put any information about my appointment in the system. I assured her I did have an appointment and we said goodbye. She called me later and left a message saying she’d tracked down the student and confirmed the appointment. Now I was in the system.

I spent the next month dreading my upcoming appointment with Pansy. It was going to hurt, and it was going to take forever, I knew. On several occasions I considered canceling the appointment. In the end I stuck with it becasue free trumped painful and inconvenient.

On the mornig of my second appointment with Pansy, I arrived at the appointed hour. I was not happy to see her. I couldn’t tell how she felt about seeing me.

She did seem glad when she calculated my plaque score and found it had dropped a whopping 23%! I told her I’d gotten a battery powered toothbrush and it really seemed to be making a difference. Thanks for the good advice, Pansy!

At on point in the procedure, I thought I detected Pansy shaking. I figured I must have imagined it until I heard her whisper, You got this. My heart melted for the woman. Here she was, trying to get schooling so she could get a decent job, and she was nervous enough to shake. I don’t know if she even realized the pep talk she was giving herself was audible to me. Maybe she thought she’d whispered You got this in the privacy of her own brain. In any case, I bucked up and tried not to complain so she could do what needed to be done. I knew we both wanted to get out of there.

I saw Pansy once more. She had me on an every-three-month cleaning schedule, which was ok with me since I wasn’t paying for anything. What a difference three months of practice had made for Pansy! She appeared much less nervous and much more confident. When her instructor asked questions about her work, Pansy answered immediately and confidentally instead of thinking for a long time then answering softly. She worked at a brisker pace, and I would have been out of there in under three hours if the instructor hadn’t been delayed when Pansy was ready for the woman to check her work. She did still wield the mirror like a pry bar, but I guess no one is perfect.

Pansy told me she graduates in December 2018. I think with another nine months of practice, she’s certain to make a fine hygienest.

 

Images courtesy of https://pixabay.com/en/dentist-space-treat-teeth-3069416/, https://pixabay.com/en/floss-oral-dental-hygiene-care-668215/, https://www.pexels.com/photo/tilt-photography-of-calendar-schedule-number-18-60032/, and https://pixabay.com/en/graduation-graduation-cap-2394130/.

 

 

Apr6

Dancing with the Lights

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Nolagirl and I were out and about at night in Phoenix, off to see the art of Aileen Frick at a locally owned hotel called FOUND:RE.

We’d discovered Aileen Frick at the Grand Avenue Festival. Actually, Nolagirl discovered her.

She called me over quietly but urgently. You’ve got to see this, she said with excitement in her voice. I joined her in front of a large-scale painting…but wait! It wasn’t just a painting…it was a collage too, but collage in a way I’d never seen done before. Say the artist wanted a tree in her scene. She wouldn’t go through magazines, find an image of a tree, cut it out, and stick it to her canvan. Oh no, not this artist. This artist found different shades of green in magazines, ripped out green bits by hand, then reassembled the paper into a tree! By reading her bio, we learned that later in the process, she painted over and around the images made of paper to tie together all of the elements of her creation. Her finished results were amazing! It was from the bio that we learned the name of the person who created this collage magic: Aileen Frick.

Frick creates large-scale beautiful cityscapes through which featureless people walk while living their ordinary lives. The cities are recognizable to those in the know, and it’s fun to identify places you’re been, but there’s something dream-like about the landscapes too. They’re based in reality, but they’re not quite real.

Image of A Fresh Spin used with permission of Aileen Frick.

From a distance Frick’s pieces look misleadingly like photographs, but upon closer inspection, the viewer can appreciate the time-consuming tearing and matching of colors that went into the work. In some of her creations, words that match the theme of the piece have been discretely included in the scene.

It may be cliché to say I was moved by Frick’s art, but it’s an easy way to explain how I felt. My heart was moved. My brain was moved. My spirit of creativity was moved. Frick’s technique and her end results left me feeling breathless and giddy. Frick’s art inspired me to create, not by copying her but by getting in touch with my own style. I think I had an immdiate crush on Frick’s collage/painting hybrids.

We came around a corner and there was Aileen Frick in the flesh! She was working on a new creation right there in the gallery.

When we walked up, she was talking with another fan. We waited patiently for our turn.

The other woman walked away, and we stood there with Frick and her easel. I tried to stay coherant as I gushed about how much I was enjoying and appreciating her work. She was so friendly and personable and gracious! I wanted to take her and her art home with me. (Of course, I lived in a van, so I had no room for her or her large-scale art. She probably had her own place anyway.)

A few weeks later, Frick posted on her Facebook page information about an upcoming showing of her work at the FOUND:RE hotel in Phoenix. Can we go? Can we go? I asked Nolagirl. She said we could.

FOUND:RE was full of art that night. We saw a lot of good work, inclduing at least a half dozen pieces by Aileen Frick. As a special treat, we got the see the recently completed piece we’d seen her workig on during the Grand Street Festival.

Frick was there too, and she recognized me and Nolagirl. Maybe she didn’t remember when and where we’d met, but she did remember we were fans. She stopped to talk to us and thank us for coming out on opening night. Once again, she was very gracious and kind. Aileen Frick is not just a fantastic artist; she’s also a friendly and sweet person.

A highlight of the evening (in addition to seeing Frick’s art and telling her hello) was when an art dealer tried to sell me and Nolagirl some art. We were looking at some pop art pieces near the bar when a slick-looking man came up to us and started talking about prices. We expressed scant interest, and he wandered away. We agreed we appreciated being mistaken for people who could afford to buy art.

I think we were on our way out when we walked across the lobby and noticed the colorful patterns projected onto the floor. What are those? I wondered. That’s when the lights moved.

We realized quickly that the patterns were motion activated. Our movements made the light patterns move across the floor, then we reacted to the movment of the lights. Soon Nolagirl and I were dancing, skipping, swooping, whirling, and twilrling across the lobby as we played with the lights. It was interactive fun.

Nolagirls says, “This one would drop confetti when you walked/ran/danced through.” That’s me in the upper left of the photo in my red boots and elephant skirt.

I think the guy at the front desk who controlled the projector was amused by us. I’m sure it’s not every day that a couple of middle aged ladies dance through his lobby and play with the lights on the floor like cats going after the red dot of a lazer pointer. Several times he changed the patterns, telling us each time that we would like the new one. He was never wrong.

Nolagirl says this pattern reminds her of Charlie’s Angels. I’m twirling right out of the photo.

A couple of times, tipsy peoiple leaving the bar saw us having fun and joined in our play. They seemed to enjoy themselves too, but soon wandered off to the next stop of the night. Nolagirl and I must have played with those light patterns for twenty or thirty minutes. Finally, we thanked the front desk worker for indulging us, then we too walked out into the night.

As we exited the building, we took the time to take photos of the neon message on the front of the building. “Find Yourself” it commanded. I think we already had.

Thanks to a kind friend who–when Nolagirl and I told her this story–asked why I hadn’t shared it in a blog post. Also, endless gratitude to Nolagirl who’s always up for an adventure and can talk to anyone from the Queen of England to a dirty trainhopper kid with interest and respect. Nolagirl’s friendship makes me brave.

First two photos courtesy of Nolagirl. The last photo was taken by me. Nolagirl also contributed to some of the writing about Aileen Frick’s art.

 

 

 

Apr2

Kindness of Strangers

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I was driving in Las Vegas, NV on my way to the Goodwill Clearance Center in North Las Vegas. As I approached a traffic signal, I could tell there was a problem. The light was green, but the traffic was not flowing.

The car in my lane that should have rolled when the light turned green was not moving. The pickup truck second in line zipped into the left lane and zoomed away. I didn’t have time to follow the truck before other cars were blocking my entrance into the left lane. I had to stop behind the stalled car. The light turned red again, and cars stopped in the left lane.

A man got out of the car at the front of the left lane line. I’m going to help you, bro, he called out to the guy blocking the right lane.

I ran out of gas, the man in the stalled vehicle said.

I’m going to pull into the gas station across the street, the good Samaritan said. Then I’ll come back over and help you.

At first I thought the men probably knew each other. I figured a dude saw his homie in trouble and stopped to help him. However, as I stayed stuck behind the stopped car through several light changes, I wasn’t so sure. When the helpful man trotted over from the gas station, the men didn’t embrace or shake hands or chitchat or ask about each other’s mammas. Neither man indicated in any way that they were friends or even friendly. They just got to work figuring out how to move the car across the street to the gas station.

I was touched when I thought the one guy had stopped to help his friend, but I teared up when I realized the guy had stopped to help a stranger. Sometimes we think only people in small towns will help people they don’t know. It’s good to remember that people in big cities help each other too.

Sometimes strangers are kind. Sometimes we are a beautiful species.

Apr1

Easter Eggs

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I was a very tiny child, so young, I don’t even remember the events of this story happening to me. I only know what happened because my parents repeated the story throughout my childhood until it became part of our family folklore.

bright, colorful, colourfulIt was Easter. My sibling either hadn’t been born or was too little to play with the gang of cousins, which means I couldn’t have been more than four. We were at the home of my godmother, my mother’s eldest sister. My godmother had six children, and her home was one of my favorite places in my small world. The house was full of kids and excitement. There was always someone around to play with or at least give me some attention. I particularly enjoyed being with my girl cousins who are a year and a half and three years older than I am. The three of us rocked girl power before the media gave the phenomenon a name.

My dad didn’t much like for me to visit at my godmother’s house. I suppose being there gave me what he considered a bad attitude. My cousins were living a rather free-range childhood; they have no supervision, my dad once said. I suppose after being unsupervised with my cousins, I desired less supervision when I went home, but my parents weren’t standing for that. I was an over-supervised child, and my parents had no intention of loosening their hold.

So it was Easter. The kids were going in and out of the house to hide Easter eggs in the large yard. My mom had added the brightly colored eggs she and I had dyed together to the pile of brightly colored eggs her sister had dyed with my cousins. There were a lot of eggs to hide and seek.

Long after the other kids had grown bored with Easter eggs and moved on to other activities, my cousin Sherry and I were still at it. Sherry was the cousin closest to me in age, just a year and a few months my senior, so she was often stuck playing with me. I think I was probably a little too young to hide eggs, so that task fell on Sherry. After she hid all the eggs, we went outside to together so I could find them. Sherry had to stay with me to make sure I didn’t hurt myself and to provide clues on where to find the eggs she had hidden a little too well.

The adults must have noticed the lapse of time between my going out to find the eggs and coming inside to announce they had all been found was growing increasingly shorter. When my mom peeked into my Easter basket, she noticed the supply of eggs had also diminished.

Sherry, go outside and help Blaize find the rest of the eggs, my cousin was encouraged.

I suppose the adults wanted to be alone so they could gossip about other family members and the state of the world outside the earshot of children who might repeat what had been said.

Sherry and I went outside, but it wasn’t long before we were inside again with no additional eggs in the basket. In fact, we now seemed to possess fewer eggs than we’d had the last time we’d come inside.

Sherry, why didn’t y’all find all the eggs? one of the adults complained.

We did find them all, Sherry burst our miserably. Blaize ate most of the eggs she found!

Mystery solved. I was a tiny girl who loved hard boiled eggs, and I’d eaten most of our bounty. My cousin either couldn’t stop me or (more likely) hadn’t even bothered to try. Thankfully, neither salmonella nor high cholesterol took me out on that holiest of days.

Photo courtesy of https://www.pexels.com/photo/bright-colorful-colourful-decorate-356339/.

Mar26

A Day of Miracles and Wonder

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Postbox, British, Red, Monday, Post, LetterIt was Monday morning. I left my friend’s house at 7:30, when she left to drop her kid off at school. I ate breakfast at Taco Bell and drank a cup of coffee while I wrote in my notebook. I left when I needed to so I’d get to my tire rotation appointment right on time, even with delays for traffic and road construction, but the Discount Tire wasn’t where it was supposed to be. I drove in circles for a while, but couldn’t locate the tire shop.

I was in one of those cities where the main street turns numbered avenues into numbered streets, and east or west in an address is important,. I hadn’t paid attention to east and west, and now I was screwed. I was going to miss my appointment.

I know there’s one around here somewhere, I muttered to myself, and there it was up ahead. I was on the right street but at the wrong number. I parked and went into the customer service area anyway.

I think I’m in the wrong place, I said apologetically to the guy behind the counter. He checked his computer. I was definitely in the wrong place.

He told me not to worry about it. It happens all the time, he said. People go there looking for us–people come here looking for them. He could take care of me right where I was. He’d text the other store and let them know what had happened., I should be out of there in about an hour.

Not only did I get my tires rotated even though I ended up in the wrong place, I didn’t receive any bad news. I wasn’t told I neeed new tires or an alignment. There was no talk of tires wearing unevenly or unusually fast. Nothing was amiss, and I got out of there in 45 minutes.

The second miracle involved money. I’d been super stressed about money the past few days. I’d received the lastCoins, Currency, Investment, Insurance, Cash, Banking of my unemployment benefits, and I was about two months away from the start of my seasonal work. I had money saved, but would it last? Also, I was planning to take a long-anticipated road trip with my sibling, but maybe the financially responsible thing to do would be to sit in one place and conserve until it was time to report to work.

I pulled into the supermarket parking lot and stopped the van in a designated space. I grabbed an old flyer so I could jot down my grocery list. When I unfolded the flyer, I noticed somehting flutter. I looked down and saw money! A one dollar bill and a five were on the floor. Where did that come from? I wondered as I reached down to grab the bills. I figured The Man had given me cash for his share of something I’d paid for, and I’d tucked the money in the catchall box I keep on the console above the dog house. It was good to have a $6 surprise.

I finished writing my list, grabbed my bag, and climbed out of the van. When I turned around to close the door, I saw more bills on the floor. I picked up three fives. My bounty of $6 had turned into a bounty of $21.

I chuckled and shook my head. The miracle wasn’t finding $21 I’d forgotten I had. The miracle was the message from the Univers advising me to stop worrying about money. I had all I needed. Money would come. I felt all  my money worries disapate, and I walked inot the supermarket with a light heart.

As many miracles are, my third miracle was born of potential disaster.

Tyre, Burst, Karoo, Flat, Road, Rubber, Car, VehicleI was on the interstate, headed home. There was a lot of tire debris on the road. Vehicles attached to tow trucks and the remains of blownout tires always make me think, There but for the grace of God go I. Tire pieces strewn about the road also trigger me to make a mental sign of the cross. I haven’t been a practicing Catholic in nearly 30 years, but I hope the mental sign of the cross will ward off evil spirits of tire destruction.

I was following a dump truck. The Man always tell me not to follow trucks too closely because they’re prone to throwing rocks. What was thrown at me wasn’t a rock and it wasn’t thrown by the dumptruck. A chunk of tire came flying from one, maybe two, lanes on my right, thrown by a car. It hit my windshild with a loud thunk, then ricocheted off to my left.

I scanned the windshield for a ding. Sure enough, I now had an imperfection in the glass, but it looked more like a chip than a ding.

Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! I shouted while pounding my steering wheel before calming down and trying to figure out how to solve my problem. When I’d had the windshield replaced a little more than a year ago, the company I’d bought it from said they’d repair dings for free as long as I was in the county of purchase. I decided I’d stop two exits before my turn-off towards home and investigate getting the windshield repaired.

Problem #1 I didn’t know the name of the company I’d bought the windshield from.

Problem #2 I didn’t know if I’d still be inthe county of purchase when I got off the interstate.

Problem #3 My receipt for the windshipd was in an email. I didn’t have a paper copy.

Problem #4 I didn’t have my phone to access my email account.

I did have my laptop, and I decided my best option was to stop somewhere with WiFi and use my laptop to find the receipt. If I found the name and  phone number of the seller, I could call to find out if they would send a mobile unit to deterime if the problem could be fixed.

I exited the interstate and headed to a supermarket I knew offered free WiFi. I turned too soon and ended up in the wrong parking lot. I decided to stop there and assess the situation. I pulled into a parking spot and hopped out of the van. From the outside, what had looked like a chip from the inside looked more like paper stuck to the glass. I reached up and–miracle #3–wiped my problem away.

I hopped back in my van, disaster averted, and continued on my way.

I need a miracle every day, but that Monday morning, I was blessed with three.

 

Images courtesy of https://pixabay.com/en/postbox-british-red-monday-post-15502/, https://pixabay.com/en/coins-currency-investment-insurance-1523383/, and https://pixabay.com/en/tyre-burst-karoo-flat-road-rubber-1614265/,
Mar12

Strays

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Dog on Concrete RoadI was on my way home from a festival where I’d sold my handicrafts and shiny rocks. I’d just turned my van into my neighborhood when I saw a dog racing down the street ahead of me.

The people where I live take the county leash law very seriously, and I never see dogs running loose around here. As I drove very slowly behind the dog, I looked around for its person. There were no humans in sight.

I stopped the van and got out. Hey dog! I called. The dog whirled around and looked at me.

Here doggie! I called calmly, and it ran right up to me and let me pet her. What a sweetie!

She wore a collar, so I checked for a tag. She had a county registration tag, but nothing wih a name or phone number on it. She was obviously somebody’s dog and I didn’t want her to get hit by a car on the nearby highway or be torn up by the neighborhood pack of coyotes, so I decided to try to help her find her people.

I opened the van’s side door and moved some things around. As soon as there was space, the dog jumped right in.

I called the office of the place where I live. The manager answered the phone, and I asked her if she knew of anyone whose dog was missing. She said the dog had been running around for a while and other folks had called to notify her.

I’ve got the dog in my van, I told her, then asked if there was a nearby animal shelter where I should take it.

She gave me a phone number, which I called. I talked to a woman whose position I still don’t know. Was she an animal control officer? Was she a local pet rescue volunteer? I still have no idea.

I told the woman on the phone my location and described the dog I’d just ushered into my van. She said other people had called about the dog, whose name was Milly. Her person hadn’t answered his phone earlier, but the woman knew where he lived. (I suppose this information was found via the county registration on the dog’s tag.) The women on the phone gave me the dog’s address, and I said I’d drive Milly home.

As I pulled out onto the main highway, I saw a most unusual sight. Two travelers were walking on the side of the road. The guy had long salt and pepper hair pulled back into a low ponytail, and the woman had dread locks in a neat bun on the top of her head. Each carried a big backpack and held a leash hooked to a big dog. Both wore clothes made drab by long wear and road dirt. These were traveling kids, although I could see in their faces that these folks were well out of their 20s.

Seeing them there was strange because my winter home is truly in the middle of nowhere. It’s 10 miles from the nearest small town, 50 miles from the next small town, and ninety miles from the nearest Wal-Mart. These folks were over 100 miles from the next city in the direction they were headed, with practically nothing but tribal land between their current location and the city. Of course, they could have been headed somewhere on the tribal land; surely there are Native American traveling kids on the highways and back roads of the U.S. Maybe these two were almost home.

In any case, I didn’t have time to stop for them. I was trying to get the stray dog home, and the travelers and I were headed in opposite directions. I decided I’d look for them upon my return and continued on my dog rescue mission.

I found the street where Milly supposedly lived and a mailbox with the correct house number. I had a leash in my van, so I hooked it to Holly’s collar, and we went together to find her people. The houses were laid out in an odd configuration, and I had trouble finding the right one. I knocked on a door without a number and an elderly woman with thin hair and unfortunate eyeliner answered. I politely asked her if this dog was hers. She said it was not. I told her the address I was looking for. She was unsure of the location, but told me where she thought it was.

From inside the house, an unseen man hollered, She’s looking for Marv!

Marv doesn’t have a dog! she called back impatiently.

I thanked her for her help, and Milly and I were on our way.

I drove just a little ways down the street and found the number I was looking for. It was Marv’s house, if the painted rock labeled Marv and Betty was to be believed. Maybe Marv had gotten a dog without alerting the neighbors.

I leashed Milly again, and we walked up to the door. I knocked. The door was opened by an elderly woman I presume was Betty. Like the woman I’d just spoken to, she wore jeans and a sweatshirt, but Betty’s hair was a perfectly white frizzy poof surrounding her head like the nimbus of a saint in a Renaissance painting.

I politely asked her if this was her dog. She said it was not. She said she currently didn’t have any dogs. I explained I’d been given her address as the home of the dog, but she firmly maintained that Milly did not live there. I thanked her and took Milly back to the van.

I called the woman who’d given me the (mis)information about where Milly lived and told her the dog’s person didn’t live where she thought he did. She asked me if I could meet her ten miles away at the animal shelter. I agreed.

When I arrived at the county complex housing the shelter, I leashed Milly yet again and walked over to the entrance. The woman I’d been talking to was waiting for us. She was middle age, blonde, and dressed Saturday afternoon casual. She told me she’d called Milly’s person again, and he’d answered this time.

He’d been drinking, and I woke him up, she told me.

Apparently, when she asked for his address, he couldn’t tell her. Get up and wash your face, she’d told him, and figure out where you live!

I felt bad about leaving Milly in the dark concrete kennel, but she did have the company of a fuzzy white dog named Buddy.

I don’t want anything bad to happen to her here, I told the woman, meaning please don’t euthanize this sweet dog just because her person is a dumbass and lets her run around.

Nothing bad’s going to happen to her here, the woman said. If you leave her running around out there, she might run onto the highway…The woman shuddered and didn’t spell out what might happen if Milly were to run onto the highway. She didn’t need to spell it out; I know cars and animals can be a dangerous combination.

I left Milly, trusting the woman to get her home. I suspected the woman would also give Milly’s person a stern lecture on the dangers of letting her run free.

Gray Concrete Road Beside Brown Mountain during Golden HourI was almost home when I thought about the traveling couple again. I wonder what happened to them, I thought moments before I saw them sitting on the side of the road just past my turn. I purposefully missed the turn and stopped my van near them.

Where in the world are y’all going? I asked as I approached them on foot.

As I suspected he would, the guy named the city 100+ miles away, then asked hopefully, Where are you going?

I live over there, I pointed. I could tell they were disappointed.

We heard there’s a truck stop about a mile down the road, the woman said hopefully. Do you think you could drive us there?

I don’t think it’s a truck stop, I told them. I think it’s just a gas station. But yes, I can drive you there.

They loaded in their packs and their dogs, all the while tickled that a Grateful Dead rendition of “Scarlet Begonias” was coming through the speaker attached to my phone.

What are y’all doing out here? I asked as soon as the van was rolling.

That’s a long story, the guy said. I’ll let you tell it, he said to the woman.

She kept it short. They were looking to settle down, she said, and they had friends in the nearby small town. They’d come to stay with the friends who had immediately started acting weird, so now they were heading back to the city.

I pulled int the gas station’s parking lot and handed the woman a few bucks. She was very thankful, as was her guy, who lifted his shirt to show me the word “LOVE” amateurishly tattooed high on his stomach. (Yes, that part of the encounter was as awkward as it sounds.)

I briefly toyed with the idea of offering to drive them to the city, but I really didn’t want to make a 200+ mile round trip that overcast afternoon, especially the part where I’d have to come back alone. Besides, they were old enough to have been around the block a time or two. I think they’d been on the road a while and (hopefully) knew how to handle themselves.

They unloaded their packs and their dogs, and they thanked me again before I drove off.

I hope all the strays I picked up that day eventually made it home safely.

Images courtesy of https://www.pexels.com/photo/dog-on-concrete-road-688835/ and https://www.pexels.com/photo/gray-concrete-road-beside-brown-mountain-during-golden-hour-163848/.
Mar11

My Girl Scout Career

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girl scout trifoil with outline by barnheartowlMy Girl Scout career lasted six years. I started in first grade as a Brownie and continued in the organization until the end of sixth grade, my last year as a Junior. I sold a lot of cookies, earned some patches, and never went camping.

My mom was the leader or assistant leader for the first five troops I was in. In fifth grade, no one wanted to lead a Junior troop, so I got to be the helper in my mom’s Brownie troop. I don’t remember in what ways I helped. Mostly I remember participating in activities with the younger girls during meetings and working on projects for my badges alone, at home, on my own time.

By sixth grade, while I was still interested in Girl Scouts, my mom was burned out. She was done being a Girl Scout leader. By the beginning of the school year, another mom had stepped up to lead a Junior troop.

I don’t remember much about that troop. We met in the same building where Catholic kids (including me and my sibling) received weekly indoctrination in church policy. My overall memory of my troop is of a bunch of almost teenage girls running around a small classroom screaming. Our troop leader did not have control of the situation.

The Christmas season rolled around. (This was the early 80s in a medium size, predominately Catholic town. No one I knew spoke of the “holiday season.” I’d never heard of Hanukah or Kwanza.) At a meeting after Thanksgiving, our leader told us we’d make Christmas tree ornaments the next time we met.

On the appointed evening, after we ate our snack (cheap cookies and super sweet Kool-Aid), the leader gave each girl a metal circle that had been removed from a can of food. The edges were jagged and sharp, and a crude hole had been punched to facilitate hanging. The leader said we could decorate our circles any way we wanted, then turned us loose with glitter and glue. Badges, Cartoon, Comic, Comic Characters, Cookies

It wasn’t my finest art project, but I hadn’t been given much to work with. I don’t recall the ornament ever hanging from the family Christmas tree. In fact, when my parents divorced and I took the box of family Christmas tree decorations, I didn’t find the ornament among the tinsel, lights, and other school art project decorations. I suspect my mother trashed the can lid ornament moments after it arrived in our house.

My mother was trying not to badmouth this new leader. After all, the woman had taken on a job my mother didn’t want. It wouldn’t be fair to criticize her for doing the best she could. Beside, since I was in the woman’s troop, I should respect her, which might be difficult if my mom was badmouthing her within my hearing. Somehow, I still knew my mom didn’t approve of the rowdy chaos of the meetings, and even I could see the Christmas tree ornament was a substandard art project. My Girl Scout troop didn’t meet during the Christmas holidays, and whenever it came up as a topic of conversation, my mom pressed her lips into a thin line of disapproval, but didn’t say much.

Soon after we went back to school, it was Girl Scout cookie time. Some years back, the people governing the Girl Scout organization decided girls should take preorders for cookies. Each girl received a large, glossy card printed in color with a list of all the cookies available. The chart included a place to write the name and phone number of each customer and a row to fill in how many boxes of each variety of cookie the customer wanted. I dutifully carried my order card around with me for the next few weeks so I could take orders from friends, family, and family friends.

When the cookies were finally delivered, my mom went with me into our troop’s meeting room to pick up what my customers had ordered, as well as the extras I’d sell door-to-door. My parents spent the following weeks driving me around so I could drop off cookies and collect money owed.

I don’t clearly remember the next part of my story, but my mom told me all about it when I was in my 20s. Of course, my sibling says, Mom lies about everything! and Mother’s track record is spotty at best. However, since I have no recollection of the following events and only Mom’s side of the story to go by, I can only report what she told me.

Throughout cookie delivery time, the troop leader wanted the girls to give her cash as we collected it. I think she even called my mom and asked for the cookie cash we had on hand. My mom explained that in years past, as I collected cookie money, she deposited it in the family checking account, then at the end of cookie sales, she wrote one check for the full amount owed. I don’t think the leader was very happy with this arrangement, but there was nothing she could do if my mother refused to turn in the money until the very end.

The day came to turn in the cookie money. Mom sent me in to the troop’s meeting room to hand it over, but I don’t remember if it was in the form of a check or a wad of cash. She made me bring in the order card too, on which there was a spot for the leader to initial to indicate all money had been received. My mother told me not to come back to the car until I had the leader’s initials in the proper spot.

I was gone for a long time, Mom told me years later. I’m not sure if I told my mom that the leader hadn’t wanted to initial the card, of if that’s a detail one of us has added in. In any case, the cookie money was turned in, and my mom had one less thing to worry about.

I don’t know if it was weeks or months later when a representative of the local Girl Scout council called my mom to let her know our family still owed money for all the boxes of cookies we’d taken. Mom said I’d given the money to my troop leader. The person from the Girl Scout council told my mom the leader said she’d never received any money from me. My mom countered with the leader’s initials on my order card indicating she had received full payment. The Girl Scout council representative thought that was very interesting as the leader had not initialed any of the other girls’ cards.

More details came to light as my mother talked to the parents of other girls in the troop, as well as people she knew who worked for the local Girl Scout council. The leader had been asking everyone for cash during cookie delivery time, and apparently, lots of families had handed it right over. There was even some indication the woman had ordered way more boxes of cookies than the girls in the troop could possibly sell, but I don’t know if she planned to go into the black market cookie business during the summer or if she planned to feed her kids cookies when she didn’t have grocery money. I imagine her driving down to Mexico to start a new life, a thick stack of cash in her purse, her kids buckled in, and the back of the station wagon stacked with boxes of Thin Mints and Peanut Butter Patties.

The last my mother heard, the sheriff was looking for the troop leader.

I understand times were tough for the troop leader. I think she was a single mother with a couple of kids in addition to the skinny daughter who was in the troop. However, one can’t get much lower than stealing from Girl Scouts, except maybe by stealing from nuns. The leader probably didn’t think what she did was stealing from 5th and 6th graders, but some portion of that money was supposed to go back to our troop for fun activities and projects. She really had stolen from us.

That year was my last in Girl Scouts. I would have moved on to a troop of Cadets in 7th grade, but no one wanted to lead the troop, and maybe no other girls wanted to be part of it. After the leader embezzled the cookie money, my mom decided my time in Girl Scouts was over.

Images courtesy of https://openclipart.org/detail/215146/girl-scout-trifoil-with-outline and https://pixabay.com/en/badges-cartoon-comic-1300127/.