Category Archives: My True Life

Jun4

Pregnant Lady

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Mr. Carolina, Lil C, the Okie, and I were traveling on I-40, trying to get Lil C home to Kansas City in time for his mamma’s birthday. Crossing into New Mexico felt like a homecoming to me, even though I wouldn’t see my friends in Taos for several months.

We pulled into Gallup needing gas for the van. We started our money-making endeavors at a gas station. While we were there, we talked to some other travelers. They were from Oklahoma I think, and they gave us a handful of change. The boys took turns sitting with me on the brick planter near the doors to the convenience store; we held our cardboard sign saying we were going home and out of gas.

The going home part was true for half of us. Lil C was going home to his mamma, and now that we were on the 40, Mr. Carolina was heading to his family for the holidays. The Okie didn’t seem to have anywhere particular in mind, and my plans were nebulous at best. But some of us were going home, so the sign was true. As for the out of gas part, if we weren’t currently totally out of gas, we would be soon.

So we held our sign, and kind people blessed us with some dollars, until the manager told us we had to leave. That’s typically how it happened, so we weren’t surprised or upset. We decided to try our luck at Wal-Mart and headed that way.

Pregnant PhotoshootAt the shopping center housing the Wal-Mart, I found the most promising exit and positioned myself there. It was a weekend afternoon, so there was a lot of traffic. I’d been standing there a while and had made some money for our cause when an obviously pregnant woman with two little kids in tow approached me.  She was upbeat and friendly and told me she was the girlfriend of one of the travelers we’d met at the gas station. (The boyfriend had described us to her, I guess.) She wondered how much longer I planned to stand there at the Wal-Mart because she was hoping to get a chance to stand there with her sign and try to bring in some funds for her family. I allowed I’d be willing to give up the spot at two o’clock, which was about 40 minutes away. She said she and the kids would hang around until then.

Are you on your way home to Oklahoma? I asked her.

Honey, she replied, I’m nine months pregnant and four centimeters dilated. I ain’t going nowhere!

I was impressed. Nine months pregnant is one thing, but four centimeters dilated is serious.

I stood there with my sign for a while more, but my heart wasn’t in it. If that pregnant woman was four centimeters dilated and ready to stand outside Wal-Mart flying a sign, she must really, really need the money. I’d gotten some dollars, enough to get some gas in the van and get us down the road, probably enough to get me and the boys each a hamburger for dinner too. I was ready to go.

When Mr. Carolina came to check on me, I told him about the pregnant woman, told him I was ready to relinquish my spot to her.

As we drove away from Wal-Mart, we saw the pregnant woman and the two little kids standing at the exit. The woman was holding a big sign that said family in need She held the sign in such a way that her pregnantness clearly showed. The little kids jumped up and down and waved at each passing car.

Personally, if I had kids, I’d be nervous to have them with me while flying a sign admitting I wasn’t able to provide for them. I’d be afraid CPS might come along and ask questions. But maybe CPS in New Mexico is too busy for such inquiries.

In any case, what they were doing seemed to be working for them, and I hope they’re all ok, wherever they are now.

Photo courtesy of https://www.pexels.com/photo/pregnant-photoshoot-161485/.

May16

On the Road (Again)

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I said good-bye to the saguaros and hit the road again.

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I stopped at the Circle K on the way out of town, and in addition to gasoline for the van, I got one of those huge styrofoam cups (sorry Mother Nature) and filled it with icy cold slushy frozen red sugar water. I never suffer from ice cream headaches/brain freezes (even though they run in my family), but I repeatedly suffered from esophageal freezes as I drove through the desert evening.

I’m getting pretty good at this driving thing. I only had to make one pit stop (as my dad always called potty breaks during family trips) in the 157 miles between my starting point and the city where I spent the night.

I’ve also improved in the changing lane department. I no longer shriek in terror when I pass another vehicle. Everything I know about passing, I learned from observing Mr. Carolina.

I was going to sleep in the Wal-Mart parking lot, but was happy to see a Flying J sign on my way into town. I’ll take a truck stop over a Wal-Mart any day. I did go to Wal-Mart to pick up some supplies. After shopping, I sat in the parking lot for a long while with the side doors open, trying to cool off the inside of the van before bedtime.

I was surprised when I got to the Flying J and discovered it was a tiny little truck stop. It was more like a convenience store with a gas station for cars, a gas station for big rigs, and a little bit of parking for both. There were maybe ten parking spots for regular vehicles. I was too tire to go back to Wal-Mart, so I parked, hung my side curtain, and crawled into bed. The night passed uneventfully, but I hardly slept.

I was out of bed before 5:30 and driving by six o’clock.

I’m proud of the fact that I made the trip without GPS and without getting directions online before I started. I used maps, road signs, and my previous experience to get where I was going. I did ok.

I’m tired. I am going to plan my route for tomorrow because I have several errands to run in the city I will arrive in. After my errands, I am going to head halfway up the mountain to stay with my friend before training on Tuesday.

I’ll soon be saying hello again to the sequoias.

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May8

This Summer

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I’ll be heading to my summer job pretty soon.

Of course, as I learned last year, when a summer job starts, the actual weather of summer may still be weeks away, especially in the mountains. There’s no way to tell what sort of weather I’ll encounter this year. I’m worried it will be too hot, even at over 6,000 feet.

I’m worried about mosquitoes too. Last summer mosquitoes bit me a few times, probably less than ten. Apparently it’s quite unusual to see so few mosquitoes at my campground. I think the lack of the little bloodsuckers was due to the dry conditions. While I’m no fan of drought, a minimally itchy summer was nice, and I’d like to have another one.

My plan for this summer is to spend more time on the mountain. Last year I went to civilization nearly every week. That used up a lot of gas, and when I was out and about, I bought things I could have probably done without, such as restaurant food and books and yarn and postcards from thrift stores. This year I want to use less gas and explore more of the area near my campground.

Last year my weekly excursions were necessary to shower and use the internet. This summer I am going to try a different plan.

My co-worker lives about 15 miles from my campground. Last summer he invited me several times to come over to his place and shower and do laundry; I never took him up on his offer. He doesn’t know it yet, but I do plan to take him up on his offer now.

In the community where my co-worker lives (the word “town” is too grandiose for the place), there is a small grocery store (more like a convenience store, really, but with no gas pumps) with an shaded outdoor patio. The store has internet access, and the owner told me last year that I am welcome there any time, even when the store is closed.

To tie it all together, the post office were I plan to set up general delivery is just down the road from my co-worker’s little community.

This means if I go to the small community, I will only have to drive 30 mile round trip to do the things I need to do, instead of the nearly 100 mile round trip I would have to drive to go to civilization. This new plan should save a lot of gas.So if three weeks a month I can shower and do laundry at my co-worker’s house, pick up my mail, and use the internet at the store, I can spend less money than if I go to the closest big town, even if I have to buy something at the store in order to support the people who are letting me use their internet.

I’m not sure what less trips to civilization is going to mean for this blog. I don’t know if I am going to be able to write and schedule a week’s worth of posts in one day. I may have to go to an every-other-day or three-times-a-week schedule. Please know that even if a new post doesn’t come up every day, I’m still out there, I’m still writing, and something new will appear eventually.

The best way to stay abreast of my writing is to subscribe to this blog. If you aren’t already a subscriber, it’s easy to sign up. Look to the right of where you are reading right now. You’ll see a button labeled Subscribe. Right above that button is a box where you can type in your email address. Once your email address is in the box, click on the Subscribe button. Once you are a subscriber, you will receive an email notification whenever a new post is available for your reading pleasure.

Have a great summer. I plan to do the same.

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I took this photo.

May4

Bike Theives

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During my 20s, I lived in a dangerous city. Almost everyone I knew had been mugged at least once, sometimes at gunpoint. Homes (and by “homes,” I mean the substandard housing that nearly everyone I knew lived in) were burglarized. Wheels were stolen from bicycles. Entire bicycles were stolen. The murder rate was through the roof.

As I walked or biked around the city (I didn’t have a car), in the back of my mind was always the worry I’d accidentally witness a drug deal or a murder and get shot because of my wandering eyes. I learned to navigate through the city by moving briskly with my head up, alert, paying attention to my surroundings, but not showing any interest in what illegal things other people might be doing.

One night I was walking with my male friend. It wasn’t too late–maybe 10pm. I can’t remember where we’d just left (maybe work, maybe a bar) or where we were going (probably a bar). We’d left the busy tourist area and were walking through a residential neighborhood, but we were only a couple of blocks away from a cluster of bars where people were likely partying.

My friend was pushing his bicycle. Normally, he would have been riding it, but since I was on foot, he was walking too.

I don’t remember how it happened–if they stepped out of the shadows or approached us on the sidewalk from the opposite direction–but two men we didn’t know were suddenly right there with us. Before my friend could walk past, one put his hands on the bike’s handlebars and said he was taking the bike.

As is so often the case in this type of situation, it all happened so fast.

I didn’t see a gun or a knife or a weapon of any kind. I just saw two guys–one with his hands on the bike, saying he was taking it; the other silent, acting almost as if he didn’t really want to be involved.

I started yelling. I probably screamed Help! I think I screamed Fire! (My mom had told me to scream Fire! if anyone ever tried to kidnap or rape or otherwise hurt me.) I started running in the direction of the bars where I knew there would likely be people.

While I was screaming, but before I ran, I saw my friend had his hands on the handlebars too, fighting for possession.

(For years, whenever I remembered this incident, the image I saw in my mind was that of my friend swinging the entire bicycle up and over his head. My friend says it didn’t happen quite that way. Memory is a fascinating and untrustworthy phenomenon.)

So I ran screaming away from my friend and the would-be bike thieves. I ran a couple of blocks, right up to some guys standing outside a bar. My friend is being robbed, I told them. Two guys are trying to steal his bike. I asked them to please come with me and help my friend.

The guys were slow to react. Maybe the alcohol that was surely in their systems had slowed down neural connections, making what I was saying difficult to comprehend. Maybe they feared I was trying to lure them into the dark where I had friends waiting to rob them.

Before they could decide if or how they should help, my friend came around the corner pushing his bike. He’d gotten away from the would-be thieves. He’d escaped transportation disaster.

I can’t remember now (so many years later) what made the would-be thieves leave, but I’m going to believe my screaming and running for help discouraged them.

We were so cavalier back then. As we continued on our way, we critiqued the technique of the men who’d just tried to rob us. How silly of them to try that without a gun, we laughed. They didn’t even have a knife, we jeered. The second guy should not have let me scream, much less run, I marveled. He should have had me on the ground with his hand over my mouth, I strategized.

We decided we could could be much better robbers than those guys were. They didn’t even know how to do what they were trying to do.

In my naiveté, I thought everyone lived more or less in fear. I didn’t realize until I moved away that I’d spent almost all of my adult life always feeling afraid. Some events were scarier than others, but I always felt some degree of fear. Being afraid was so normal, we laughed at scary situations.

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I took this (only marginally related) photo.

Apr29

Tires (A Cautionary Tale)

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In April 2015, I went to Discount Tire and bought four new tires for my van. I was so excited. I’d never had four new tires before. Heck, I’d never even had one new tire before. Any time I’d replaced a tire on any vehicle in the past, I’d bought a used one.

The four new tires cost around $400 out the door (which is tire sales speak for including installation, balancing, and tax). My host family paid for a warranty for each tire. The Discount Tire website says,

This warranty, called the Certificate for Repair, Refund or Replacement…cover[s] the tire problems that really frustrate people-road hazards and defects-from the moment they bought the tires to the final mile of legal tread depth (3/32″).

In October, I proudly took my four new tires in for their first rotation. My good mood was shattered when I was told the front tires were wearing unevenly because the van needed a front end alignment. When I took the van in for the alignment, I was further disappointed to find out the van needed $300+ dollars worth of work on the front end before it even made sense to do an alignment. I worked, worked, worked, saved my pennies, and within a week had enough money to pay for the repairs and the alignment.

Fast forward to April 2016. I stopped at a Wal-Mart and noticed a Discount Tire location across the street. I’d been meaning to find out if I were due for a rotation, so I decided to pull in. I thought if I did need a rotation, maybe the shop could take care of it right then and there.

I told the guy working the counter what was up. We walked out to my van to look at the tires. The salesman showed me the silver metal threads showing on the back passenger side tire. WHAT!?!?!?!?! I told him the tires weren’t even a year old. He said the tire (and the one on the back driver’s side too) were prematurely worn because of the time they’d spent on the front when the van was out of alignment. (Yes, I told him about the alignment problem and the uneven wear. I figured it was in my permanent Discount Tire record anyway.) He said driving the tire in the condition it was in was REALLY dangerous. He said I needed two new tires back there.

I asked about the certificate on the tire. He told me it didn’t cover wear, only road hazards and defects.

I asked him if it would be ok if I only bought new tires for the back wheels and kept the two that were on the front. Well, as a matter of fact, he told me, the tires on the front were worn way more than they should be, dangerously worn, and if I were going to buy two new tires, I really needed to buy four new tires.

By this point, my head was spinning. I thought I was just going to deal with a tire rotation, but suddenly I needed to replace four tires that were barely a year old.

He’d do me a favor, the salesman said, because he wanted me to be safe. If I bought three new tires, he would throw in the fourth one for free. I explained to him that I didn’t currently have the money to buy four new tires. He tried to tell me about the Discount Tire credit plan. I shook my head while laughing ruefully. Discount Tire was not going to approve me for any credit, I told him. Perhaps I could get a co-signer, he countered. When I told him that wasn’t going to happen either, he said I should at the very least let them (free of charge, thankfully) replace the badly worn tire on the back passenger’s side with the spare. I thanked him for the offer and handed him my keys.

While waiting, I called a couple of friends and ranted and cried. While I was ranting and crying, the service technician came out and asked me what tire needed to be changed. I probably sounded like an asshole when I told him he should change the tire the service order he was holding in his hand specified. He told me the salesman had written two different things on the service order. So I stopped ranting and crying long enough to walk over to the van with the guy and show him which tire was in the worst shape. After the guy got the van into the repair bay, he walked back over to where I was sitting on the sidewalk (once again ranting and crying) to ask me if he could get me into four new tires today. It took all of my self-restraint not to yell, ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME? I explained (while trying to refrain from laughing maniacally) that I didn’t have money for four new tires. Then he tried to suggest I use the Discount Tire credit plan. So I explained I had already told the other guy that wasn’t going to happen, and he finally left me alone.

I cried all the way to my house sitting job. Just when I thought I’d have a couple of hundred dollars (the extent of my savings left after paying for transmission work in February and a new fuel pump in March) to live on until my temp job scoring standardized tests started, I needed more money than I had for tires. I’m tired of being a burden, I thought. My life is not sustainable.

But also, I was really mad. What’s the point of buying new tires if they’re just going to wear out in a year?

Once again, what I thought was a short story has turned into a saga, so it is to be continued.

Apr28

I Get by with a Whole Lot of Help From My Friends

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I think I’ve been coming off as independent and self-sufficient.

Well, I am independent. I don’t want anyone telling me what to do. I want to make my own decisions. I want to follow my own path while listening to my own drummer. But self-sufficient? That’s not really been happening. Since I started this journey of unusual living, I’ve been helped by strangers and friends.

After I left my not-very-nice boyfriend in the middle of the night, I ended up homeless for three months. I was spending my nights outside in a sleeping bag given to me by someone I’d just met, carrying everything I owned in a backpack from the same fellow. I mostly ate food given to me at a food bank, and I brushed my teeth in a rest stop restroom. But even with such a simple existence, I didn’t make it alone. A couple of new friends took me into their homes once or twice a week to feed me dinner and let me shower or bathe. Vendors at the outdoor arts and crafts market where I sold sage sticks (and later hemp jewelry) slipped me granola bars or leftovers or (on a very few occasions) a five or ten dollar bill, which I used to buy supplies. One grizzled old horse trader bought me a sandwich one day and gave me a pep talk about how he liked me because I showed up every day and did what I had to do to earn my own way while not asking for nothing from nobody.

When I was lost (meaning after I left the boyfriend and dropped off the face of the earth) friends from my past lives sent out a search party to find me. I was found, and so many people from my past offered love and support in the form of dollars and open invitations to sleep on their couches and in their spare rooms. I used those dollars (and dollars I had earned myself in long days of selling my handiwork in the wind and the sun and the heat) to buy myself a van and go on a fantastic, epic journey where I met new people who became friends and offered me new and appreciated love and (mental and physical) support.

From Mt. Shasta, California, I ended up North Carolina. A wonderful housed-up road sister I’d just met invited me into her home to share Thanksgiving dinner with her family. A couple I’d met at the Bridge on Labor Day weekend welcomed me at the inn they own on the Tuckasegee River. These folks put me up in a suite, fed me, gave me clothes to wear. In both instances, these people barely knew me but treated me like family.

From North Carolina, I ended up in a major Texas city where old friends turned over their spare room to me, fed me, entertained me, gave me access to their laundry room and their internet service, AND gave me a pair of beloved cowgirl boots. Beginning to see a pattern here?

I could go on and on. I could tell you about my Computer Guy who’s helped me out financially several times, as well as making this very website possible. I could tell you about the walk-the-talk young Christian couple who rescued me (and a mentally unstable young man friend, his dog, the woman he was in love with, and her six-month-old baby) in Hot Springs, Arkansas; drove us all to their home in Southern Louisiana; then with the help of their church paid for my bus ticket back to Texas (at my request) and sent me off with a new purple backpack and a few dollars in my pocket. I could tell you about a different set of friends (college buddies) in Texas who took me in, gave me the guest room, fed me, included me in their Friday night extended-family time, loaned me a car when I was without a van, bought me a piece of memory foam for my new (to me) van, and helped me with my insurance payment. I could tell you about the kind and generous people who gave me gas money so I could get to my job in California last summer.

In the comments to my March spending report one of my readers said,

your expenses were close to $600 for the month. Were you able to earn at least $600 during the month?

My response was

No, I didn’t earn $600 in March. I have been living off the money I saved from working last summer and fall. That money is just about gone…

Anyone who has been paying attention is going to wonder what’s going on when they see my April report in a few days. At the end of March, I said I was almost out of money, but the spending report is going to show that I spent a bundle of money on tires (that is a saga for another day) as well as a bunch on insurance. And how did I afford to stay in a room I found through Airbnb while I worked scoring standardized tests? The answer is that I’ve been making it through with money I’ve earned through house sitting and Craigslist jobs, as well as with gifts and loans from people who care about me.

I don’t know how long this way of life is going to last for me. Right now, it doesn’t feel sustainable. I’m tired of being a burden on people, and I worry that people are getting tired of taking care of me. I’ve been stressed a lot about money in 2016. I know money is just a social construct. It doesn’t even matter and it’s not even real (right?) until transmission fluid is leaking or the fuel pump goes out or the metal threads are showing on the back tires (all of which have happened to my van since February).

I think I’ll have to save $2,000 (of an estimated $5,000 gross income) this summer to make it through the fall and winter of 2016 and the first part of 2017 while being able to take care of any van emergencies. Of course, I when I’m not work camping, I’ll fill in with side jobs if I can get them.

I can’t think of any clever, upbeat way to end this post except to say I’m so grateful to everyone who has assisted me, ever, but especially in the last four years. (And if I you have helped me, and I failed to mention you specifically in this post, please don’t think that means I don’t feel gratitude for everything you’ve done for me.) My life would be impossible without so much help.

Apr27

Good Night, Sweet Prince

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I’d just been thinking about Prince, too.

Not two weeks before, a video of Prince singing “Starfish and Coffee” on the Muppet Show popped up on my Facebook feed. I don’t know why. It hadn’t been posted by anyone I know. It was really random, the posting of a friend of a “friend,” I suppose. But I stopped and watched it. It’s kinda magical.

On Facebook, I wrote,’

I’d forgotten how much I love this song. And Prince. And Muppets.

Listening to the song made me think of a friend of mine, so I asked her if she’d turned me on to it way back in the day. She said,

Oh yea! This was one of my faves on that album.

And I said,

It is so good! Gives me goosebumps and tears. Thanks for sharing it with me way back when.

I love how everything is the song’s video is in black and white except for vivid, full-color Cynthia Rose. I love the line If you set your mind free, baby Maybe you’d understand. I love the part where Prince and the Cynthia Rose Muppet are dancing, and I loved how much fun Prince seemed to be having with the whole thing.

And then less than two weeks later, I talked to my Computer Guy on the phone before we went in to do our respective jobs. We were just shooting the shit, because neither of us knew yet.

Two hours later I went out to my van for my break and turned on my phone to check my messages. Nolagirl and I texted our usual good mornings, then she wrote to me,

FYI Prince died. 57 years old.

I wrote back,

WHAT??????? How? Fuck! Fuck! Fuck. That is fucking tragic. Goodbye my youth.

I was just watching the Muppet Show video the other day and remembering how brilliant he was.

Part of me is not sure I should even be mourning. It’s not as if I listened to Prince’s music all the time or bought any of his albums since the last century or even had any idea what the man was up to, musically or otherwise. But honestly, I felt like there was suddenly an emptiness in my heart.

I went to the grand opening of a 10,000 square foot international grocery store with a friend. It was a Sunday afternoon and the place was packed. The soundtrack? A tribute to Prince. On a loop. It kept playing over and over again. We heard it four times before we got out of there.

The shocking part was when “Darling Nikki” was pumped out over the noise of a couple hundred people shopping. I gasped, honestly shocked. You remember “Darling Nikki,” right?

I knew a girl named Nikki
I guess you could say she was a sex fiend
I met her in a hotel lobby
Masturbating with a magazine

Let me tell you, circa 1984 when a girl name Desiree told me about the song while we stood in the junior high lunch line, I NEVER thought I would hear that song in public, much less in a supermarket crowded with Asian people of all ages. I was glad I was not on drugs because then I’d have to spend the rest of my life wondering if it had really happened. But yeah, it really happened. Prince was dead, and I was hearing “Darling Nikki” played in a supermarket.

(Side note: For years, I thought the magazine was the actual instrument of masturbation. Only embarrassingly recently did it occur to me that Nikki was simply looking at the magazine while masturbating, only using it as visual stimulation.)

I just kept getting sadder and sadder.

Of course, as I believe is often (usually) the case with death, it wasn’t Prince I was feeling sorry for as much as I was feeling sorry for myself. I believe wherever Prince is, he’s feeling no pain. I’m not sure if he’s in Heaven, although Prince in Heaven does lead to some delicious scenarios.

Prince in Heaven scenario #1: Prince and Jimi Hendrix and Jerry Garcia are jamming for eternity and they never get tired, and they never get sad, and they never even have to stop the music to do drugs because who needs drugs anymore because they’re in Heaven and Dude, the MUSIC!

Prince in Heaven scenario #2: My grandmother who was a racist on earth is now up in Heaven listening to Prince and Michael Jackson and Ray Charles and Whitney Houston and Jimi Hendrix and Otis Redding and Marvin Gaye sing to her, and she is digging it.

But I digress.

I feel like losing Prince is really the loss of my youth.

I didn’t feel that way when Michael Jackson died, although his death was a shock too. I never felt as if Michael Jackson belonged to me. My parents liked Micheal Jackson, for Christ’s sake. They bought the Thriller LP. It sat in the stereo case with the Jan and Dean record given to my mom by an old suitor, the Footloose soundtrack, and my dad’s Cajun music records.

When I was in junior high and on into high school, Prince was dirty and sexual and naughty and exciting and everything my stupid, boring life in a small Southern town was not. And he had great clothes. All that velvet. All that lace.

Prince was hope, to this small town Southern girl who didn’t fit in, who was never going to fit in. Prince was hope that there was a big world out there with parties and fun, a world where it was ok if I was weird, a world where sex wasn’t terrifying, but fun.

And now he’s gone, and so is my hope.

I’m right in the middle of my middle age, fat and unattractive, and it’s all downhill from here.

I should have drunk more beer and taken more drugs and fucked more while I could, because it’s all downhill from here. Prince is gone, and I’m not getting any younger.

Is this how our mothers felt when Elvis died?

I made the tribute to Prince in the photo. I took the photo too. I got the “Prince of Peace” Christmas tree ornament from the free pile at the 2017 RTR. I also found the photo of Prince in a tabloid-style magazine in the free pile. The peace sign is a bead from my hemp jewelry days.

 

Apr27

Free Yoga

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Around the beginning of each new year, I feel more open to trying new things. This will be the year I say yes to every opportunity offered to me, I tell myself. So when Lou asked me if I wanted to go to yoga class with her, I quickly agreed.

I didn’t have much yoga experience.

In the 90s, when I had a real job and pretensions of respectability, I belonged to a fancy, expensive gym. I joined primarily to participate in the popular boxing workout class, but one night I wandered into a yoga class for reason now obscured by my foggy memory. The class was fine, until we were told to curl our tongues and breathe through those curled tongues in order to detoxify our livers. I was skeptical then, and I’m skeptical now. How is that even possible? How does breath moving through a curled tongue detoxify? How does the liver know the detoxification is for it? If the breath passing through a curled tongue led to detoxification, wouldn’t it be a general, overall, full body, every organ detox?

I never went back to yoga there, partially because I was turned off by the woo-woo liver detox method, but mostly because I was busy being 25 years old.

Several years later, I tried yoga a couple more times when I met a grad student who was also a trained yoga instructor. She was trying to spread the word of yoga and make some extra bucks by holding yoga classes in her living room a few times a week. One problem was that the living room in her small house couldn’t accommodate many stretching students; if there were more than two people in attendance, we all felt cramped and constrained. The other problem for me was that the yoga classes were held across town from my home, and I often didn’t want to bike there (and home again) in the cold or the dark or after several hours of doing my job as a dishwasher.

I did enjoy the few classes I attended. The grad student was a patient yoga teacher. She didn’t throw around lingo I didn’t understand, she helped me get my body into the correct positions, and at the end of class, we always got to close our eyes and relax.

So when Lou invited me to join her for a yoga class, I wasn’t an absolute beginner.

One giant perk of the yoga class was that it was free for first time students. I’d rolled into town with no more than $10 to my name. I’d made some money dog sitting and house cleaning for a woman I’d found on a Craigslist ad, so I wasn’t totally without funds, but I didn’t have much disposable income. Free entertainment was good entertainment as far as I was concerned.

Upon arrival at the studio, Lou checked us in as first time students. We took off our shoes, went into the big empty room with all the mirrors, and laid out our mats.

abdomen, active, activityAmidst the hubbub of setup, a hugely pregnant woman in workout clothes came into the room. She announced herself as the teacher. She was about 9 and 1/2 months pregnant she told us, liable to go into labor at any moment. She was going to take it easy during the class, she told us, and not bounce around too much. However, she said, she was going to work the class hard because she knew people in lunchtime classes were looking for really good workouts.

Oh shit! How had I gotten confused for someone who wanted a really good workout? I mostly wanted to do some gentle stretches and relax.

(A few weeks later, I went to a free [of course] lecture on tantra at the same yoga studio. The guy giving the talk mentioned as a side note that yoga developed as a spiritual practice and the idea of yoga as a workout was quite an American [although he may have said Western] phenomenon. I didn’t [and don’t] know much about how and/or why yoga developed, but I wasn’t surprised by what the man said. I wouldn’t be shocked to find out some enterprising American has turned the stand, sit, stand, kneel, stand routine of a Catholic mass into a workout.)

Lou is a trained yoga instructor herself, and when we left the studio, she told me the yoga class had been hard. If she thought it was difficult, imagine how I felt.

The instructor did say at the beginning of the class that we should each do our own workout and not compete with anyone there. I tried to do as she instructed. I didn’t bounce from one pose to another. (Although the instructor said she wasn’t going to bounce, due to her delicate condition, by the end of the class she was certainly bouncing out of one pose into another.) I tried to gauge my abilities so I could push myself a little further, but not far enough to injure myself. I was trying to concentrate on my own practice, but if I already felt like a loser because I could barely keep up with other members of the class, the hugely pregnant woman kicking ass at the front of the room did not make me feel more competent or capable.

It didn’t help that I don’t speak the language of yoga. Oh sure, I know the downward dog and the child’s pose, but this instructor was using lots of terms I’d never encountered: The eagle? The spread eagle? The split beaver? Most of her references meant nothing to me.

Finally, the workout part of the class ended, and we all lay on our backs with our eyes closed and relaxed. I don’t know what that pose was called, but it was my favorite part of the day.

The last few times I saw Lou, she suggested we go together to a hot (bikram) yoga class. It was April or May by then and my beginning-of-the-year enthusiasm had waned. She liked to go before work, she said, around six o’clock in the morning, to get her day started with physical activity. (Lou and I are very different. I like to start my day after the sun has risen, with breakfast tacos and a good book to linger over. Well, Lou does like breakfast tacos, so I guess we are not totally different.) I was already leaning towards declining, but then Lou told me sometimes people vomit during hot yoga class. At that point I said, Forget it! Throwing up is never fun, even for free!

Image courtesy of https://www.pexels.com/photo/abdomen-active-activity-belly-button-396133/.

 

Apr23

Ohio State and Marijuana Leaves

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The woman who sits directly behind me seems to be in her 60s. She has the sort of hair I see on “respectable” older woman with money: curled, by not necessarily naturally so, sort of sculpted, and definitely maintained. I don’t think any of it is gray, although at her age, I think it would be, think it probably is, under the very tasteful dye job she has going on. She wears glasses, and on her feet sandals that say “casual, but still put together” to women of her age-group and socioeconomic class. I’m making a lot of assumptions of a person I’ve never spoken to, but that’s my assessment of her at a glance.

HOWEVER.

This woman has a travel cup that sits next to her computer screen. I see it every time I’m walking back to my desk. It’s a tall, black travel cup, upon which is emblazoned “Ohio State.”

But that’s not all that’s on the cup. There are also multiple white circles on the black cup. In each white circle is a green leaf.

For two weeks, every time I saw those leaves on that travel cup, I thought why does that lady have marijuana leaves on her mug?

These were some of my ideas:

The woman is a stoner and she doesn’t care who knows it.

The woman is a proud supporter of medical marijuana.

The woman’s kids (or grandkids) gave her the cup as a joke, and she thinks it’s hilarious.

The woman’s kids (or grandkids) gave her the cup as a joke, and she has no idea why they giggle whenever they see her sipping her coffee from it.

Today I saw the cup and the mysterious leaves right before break, and it occurred to tell my friend about them. My friend is from Ohio and knows one or possibly two things about marijuana. I thought my friend would think the whole situation was really funny.

This is what I texted to my friend:

A woman sits in the row behind me. I’d say she’s in her 60s. She has an Ohio State mug. The mug is black, with white circles. In the white circles are–I Swear–pot leaves! I am so curious, but what if I ask her and they are not pot leaves or her kids gave it to her as a joke and she doesn’t know?

My friend texted back:

Ha!! It’s the buckeye leaf but it totally looks like weed!!!!

Apparently, I am not the only person who’s been confused by the buckeye leaf.

I stumbled across a 2013 article titled “Marijuana vs. Ohio State Buckeyes leaf: Jonas-Boggionis pulled over after decal confused for pot.” You can read the (short) article, but basically a 65 year-old woman was driving down South (the website belongs to a West Palm Beach news station, but the article references Memphis and Shelby County) and after being pulled over,

[t]he deputy asked her why she had a marijuana sticker on the back of her car.

The woman

looked back at her car, dumbfounded, and wondered if someone had stuck something on there when she wasn’t looking.

What she saw was an Ohio State Buckeyes football helmet, which is traditionally decorated with the buckeye leaf to signify gridiron success.

When this was pointed out to the officer, the situation came to an end and the couple got back on the road, without receiving any sort of citation…

The article continues,

…the buckeye leaf bears little resemblance to a marijuana leaf. The Buckeye has five points while marijuana leaves generally have seven.

For folks like me, with little knowledge of the public plant life of Ohio, I’ll leave you with this image of a buckeye leaf and a marijuana leaf for the sake of comparison:

Shallow Focus Photography of Cannabis Plant

Marijuana leaf or Ohio buckeye leaf?

I have little knowledge of the flora of Ohio. I’ve seen some marijuana leaves, but I don’t know if I’ve ever seen the leaf of a buckeye.

Image courtesy of https://www.pexels.com/photo/shallow-focus-photography-of-cannabis-plant-606506/.

Apr11

New Old Job

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Tomorrow I start a temp job. I’ve done this sort of work before, so even though I’m starting tomorrow, it’s not like I’m starting from scratch.

Here’s what I said about the job last year (http://www.rubbertrampartist.com/2015/04/05/starting-a-new-job/),

Tomorrow I start my new temp job scoring student [responses]. Because I’ve worked this job twice before, I know that although it it is not a physically challenging job, it is mentally exhausting. I’ll spend 99% of my day sitting down, so my body won’t be worn out at the end of the day.

In the past, I’ve scored writing and reading responses. For these tests, students were given prompts, then had to write either an essay or a short answer. This year I will be scoring middle school science responses. At this point, I have no idea what that will even look like.

As I said last year, I do know that after eight hours (with 15 minute breaks in the morning and afternoon and half an hour for lunch) of reading student responses and

trying to give each one the proper score, my brain will pretty much be mush.

Work starts at 8am.  That  means I need to arrive by 7:45 so I can find a parking space (close parking is quite limited and having to park in the far parking lot means a bit of a hike to the building), put the sunblocks on the windshield, and get myself to my computer on time. Arriving at 7:45 means I should leave the house no later than 7:20, allowing myself plenty of time to get through traffic.Leaving at 7:20 means getting out of bed no later than 6:20, but 6 o’clock is probably a better idea. (I move slow in the mornings, especially if I have to cook myself some breakfast.) Out of bed by 6am and functioning well means I need to be asleep by 10pm.

However,

Sometimes when I’m working all day, I’m in bed with a book by 8pm, asleep by 9 o’clock.

I may not be able to keep up with daily blog posts. The good news (for my sanity, if not my pocketbook) is that this job is scheduled to last only 25 days. (I may or may not have the option to work on the weekends.) Also, I already have four posts scheduled.

If I miss a day, I plan to be back.

Note: This job requires a confidentiality agreement, so you won’t be reading about it here.

IMG_5470

I took this photo.