Friday, June 25, 2004 :::
 

Ding DongIt's Not Avon Calling

When a close friend dies the deathknell takes root inside of you and you not only mourn their passing, the brash slap in the face, but in your sorrow you begin to think of your own end.
So today, 4 months after M flew away, I am contacting Lance, the graveyard man. I need to have him stake out my exact plot so on Saturday, with the help of three strong men, I can place the Infinity bench, the one I made with M (we were concretegirls together!).
I love my spot. I picked it for many reasons. It is on the highest part of the cemetery, up on the edge of the woods. Turn in one direction and you can see all of the way to the Catholic Church that dominates Hallmill Heights. In the spring when the leaves are not yet on the trees, you can see all of the way to the lake, my beloved lake. Whew! I have a plot with a view!
I will be at the front of one of the little pathways so no one can block me with some colossal gravestone. I do want to be easy to find.
And there I will be nestled between two massive oaks. I will be cremated and am leaving instructions to be scattered all sorts of places so I won’t actually have an urn stuck in a concrete box under the ground. Good God I’ve had claustrophobia all of my life and I certainly don’t want eternity one loooong suffocation too.
Some of my ashes will be scattered at the bases of the two trees. Rain will fall and snow will come and I will be absorbed into the tree roots and become part of the trees. I LOVE THAT! When the tree shimmies in the wind I will be dancing and when the wind whistles through the limbs I will be singing my song. Beautiful.
I like this cemetery too because it is one that allows you to decorate the graves anyway you like. The graves have baskets of flowers swinging on shepherd’s hooks and fancy urns and wind chimes and mobiles and special rocks and pictures and right near me is the grave of a little boy 3 years old and he has two big Tonka toys on his grave, another couple have a separate brass plate for their dog Trixie. It is a marvelous place with beautiful ancient crypts and professional sculptures and war dead and a whole section of children who died of smallpox and a more modern baby section for still borns and people who lived past 100 years, couples forever, and townies I have known. It is all on tickle-belly rolling hills, verdant, neatly trimmed with narrow asphalt roadways snaking throughout. And water taps jutting out of the ground here and there so you can take care of the flowers and whatever else you want to plant.
I’m doing this now because I want to doodad mine up. The bench will be the hardscaping with periwinkle that blooms purple stars in the early spring and I do like wind chimes. I have a lot of blue glass in my garden and would like to take rebar and stake out my corners with blue bottles dangling in the wind so I don’t encroach in my enthusiasm for décor.
I don’t know what the actual “stone” with name and dates will be yet. Maybe something I make in the future or perhaps one of those small brass plates that they give to veterans. I rather like those.
So for now, while still sucking oxygen, I will plan for the inevitable end, and I probably won’t think of it again until someone stuck in my heart gives up the ghost.

::: posted by bite me, kick me, make me scream at 12:33 PM

 

"I want ecstasy of my mind all of the time...if I can't have that, shit...and I only have it when I write or when I'm high or when I'm drunk or when I'm coming."

::: posted by bite me, kick me, make me scream at 8:28 AM

Wednesday, June 23, 2004 :::
 

Ticked Off

It was huge, about the size of an M & M peanut, and blue, actually a bluish gray like designer’s call Federal Blue, and had tiny legs, six of them so it had to be an insect, not an arachnid. It lay there on it’s back unable to upright itself no matter how fast those teeny dirty yellow legs churned. It did get the rear up, still not enough hydraulics.
My brother had spilled it out of an old prescription bottle onto a bench. He asked, “Now what kind of bug is that that it can’t even upright itself? Why would God create such a thing? How could the species survive?, he paused, Do you know what it is?”
It looked impossible, but there are many impossible-looking animals like dashhounds that often get broken backs from the too long body on little stumpy legs, a daddy longlegs walking on stilts, and how does a walrus eat with those tusks?
I have read Darwin’s book on plants and have first-hand experience with the magic of hydraulics.
I didn’t have a clue.
It’s a tick, an engorged tick.
Oh god, my stomach flip-flopped.
So that is what started my investigation into tickworld.
Ticks do not, as commonly believed, live in trees. They are only on the ground, hanging out in leaves. They can’t fly either. They do walk a lot though, so you can find three of them wandering around on the screen door as I did out at the Mississippi bluff house.
Watch out here he comes>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
First the tick emits a cement so she will stay attached, then she adds an anticoagulant so the blood flows freely, and a spritz of antihistimine so it doesn’t itch or you would know she is there and scratch her off. There was one other ingredient but it slipped my mind.
Now she sits there attached to you, a parasite. She’s just hanging out.
Two days later comes the BIG SIP.
Now the tick is fully engorged. Realize the original tick could be no bigger than a pinpoint and now it’s HUGE. Then it falls off.
Now it prepares to produce LOTS of baby ticks waiting for your next walk in the woods.
So basically my brother wore that ugly tick for 2 days! EEK! It fell off on the carpet in the bedroom.
Ticks are not only grimy little parasites, they are dangerous. They carry disease. Wood ticks aren’t too bad (those are the large brown ones.) But deer ticks (the pinpoints) carry Lyme disease. I think they were first discovered in Lyme, Connecticut hence the name.
Basically they can kill you. You can have the disease for a long time before you know it. Look for a red circle, that’s a clue. But there may be no clues beyond muscle ache and then one day you can walk.
If you find a tick attached to your flesh, take a fine tweezers, grab the head and pull out slowly and precisely.
If you have a deer tick engorged and laying on your bedroom carpet, get antibiotics.
If you are a morel hunter like me, you need to take precautions. Wear camo clothes, they are thick, and pull your socks up over the pant bottoms. Spray with tick spray.
Happy hunting!

::: posted by bite me, kick me, make me scream at 1:29 PM

 

Ticked Off

It was huge, about the size of an M & M peanut, and blue, actually a bluish gray like designer’s call Federal Blue, and had tiny legs, six of them so it had to be an insect, not an arachnid. It lay there on it’s back unable to upright itself no matter how fast those teeny dirty yellow legs churned. It did get the rear up, still not enough hydraulics.
My brother had spilled it out of an old prescription bottle onto a bench. He asked, “Now what kind of bug is that that it can’t even upright itself? Why would God create such a thing? How could the species survive?, he paused, Do you know what it is?”
It looked impossible, but there are many impossible-looking animals like dashhounds that often get broken backs from the too long body on little stumpy legs, a daddy longlegs walking on stilts, and how does a walrus eat with those tusks?
I have read Darwin’s book on plants and have first-hand experience with the magic of hydraulics.
I didn’t have a clue.
It’s a tick, an engorged tick.
Oh god, my stomach flip-flopped.
So that is what started my investigation into tickworld.
Ticks do not, as commonly believed, live in trees. They are only on the ground, hanging out in leaves. They can’t fly either. They do walk a lot though, so you can find three of them wandering around on the screen door as I did out at the Mississippi bluff house.
Watch out here he comes>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
First the tick emits a cement so she will stay attached, then she adds an anticoagulant so the blood flows freely, and a spritz of antihistimine so it doesn’t itch or you would know she is there and scratch her off. There was one other ingredient but it slipped my mind.
Now she sits there attached to you, a parasite. She’s just hanging out.
Two days later comes the BIG SIP.
Now the tick is fully engorged. Realize the original tick could be no bigger than a pinpoint and now it’s HUGE. Then it falls off.
Now it prepares to produce LOTS of baby ticks waiting for your next walk in the woods.
So basically my brother wore that ugly tick for 2 days! EEK! It fell off on the carpet in the bedroom.
Ticks are not only grimy little parasites, they are dangerous. They carry disease. Wood ticks aren’t too bad (those are the large brown ones.) But deer ticks (the pinpoints) carry Lyme disease. I think they were first discovered in Lyme, Connecticut hence the name.
Basically they can kill you. You can have the disease for a long time before you know it. Look for a red circle, that’s a clue. But there may be no clues beyond muscle ache and then one day you can walk.
If you find a tick attached to your flesh, take a fine tweezers, grab the head and pull out slowly and precisely.
If you have a deer tick engorged and laying on your bedroom carpet, get antibiotics.
If you are a morel hunter like me, you need to take precautions. Wear camo clothes, they are thick, and pull your socks up over the pant bottoms. Spray with tick spray.
Happy hunting!

::: posted by bite me, kick me, make me scream at 1:29 PM

Monday, June 21, 2004 :::
 

Today I am 64 just like in the Beatles song "will you still love me when I'm 64?"
That means I was born in 1940, smack-dab in the beginning of WWII. Hitler invaded Poland in '39. My family lived on war rations, coupons for every little thing and my glamourous mother could no longer buy silk stockings.
While father patroled the border of Texas along the Rio Grande, under General Pershing, mother took work at the shot factory in central Wisconsin. We children tore cloth into strips to be send to the troops for the war effort.
Wait if I was just born I couldn't be tearing cloth. I love the Internet, you get to be whoever, whenever.
Tomorrow I will be 15 and I will do better.
Later.

::: posted by bite me, kick me, make me scream at 12:26 PM

 

Thievery is stoopid. The Internet is full of side-swipers. 1+1=6 Try to be original. Go back to school. Read a book. Stink is stink.

::: posted by bite me, kick me, make me scream at 12:08 PM

 

Topsy-turvy World

We've gone upside down...almost the exact opposite of the revolutionary glittery get-real 60s. Cops were called PIGS and were the enemy (as was anyone over 30), now we are a virtual copland and growing worse daily...new jobs markets now being touted as the thing to become...cop/homeland security (Did you watch "V"?)or healthcare (to take care of the aging Boomers). Capitalist Pig was a derogatory term. Now it's respected. During the 60s people cared about the world, now people only care about themselves. I live in an upscale area and the people voted down a request for funding for the elderly state-sponsored rest home. (It would have added $38.00 to the annual property tax bill.) No more empathy. "Brother can you spare a dime." no but I can be rude and spit on you in a metaphorical way, of course.
SAT's and school was stern and strict. No touchy-feely California crap. Today I just heard that analogies have been taken out of the SAT test, and WOW, now it's only simple math. Dumbing down.
But haha, everyone parades around in jeans. The hippies took to wearing jeans as a sign of revolt and pro-socialism. Jeans were the clothing of farmers and hoodlums. Reg people wouldn't be caught wearing them and now all the capitalist wear them. He he. Boo! on all of you. Of course they do sport a designer label, right?
Save the World.

::: posted by bite me, kick me, make me scream at 11:27 AM