Compensating

If you’ve ever been through my little section of the Great American woods, you’ll have seen a tractor in the front yard of a house in town.  You wouldn’t look twice except to say, “Well, it’s a farming community” in understanding why a big, old tractor is basically a lawn ornament, complete with the patch of clover growing up around it.

Except, it’s not a lawn ornament.  Apparently, it’s a collectible - who knew FULL SIZED tractors were collectibles - and “Him” is determined to fix ‘er up and put ‘er to work in a field.  I’m all for that idea.  With the advent of 3D printing and CNC machines, even the OLDEST antique can be put back into working order and garner another 100 years of use.  “Him” has done all the basics needed, now it’s just a matter of knocking shit loose before he goes to the next step.

So you can imagine my excitement when he says, “I need your help,” while I’m cooking dinner.  I’m thinking, “Sweet!  I gets to drive a tractor today!” as I get my boots on and chase after “Him” out the door, my inner child yelling, “Wait for me!”  He tells me what he’s doing and why he’s doing it (he knows my inner three year old very well), and when I asked him what he wanted me to do, he handed me his truck keys with a cheeky grin.

Butthole knows how excited I am to drive the tractor…

Now, I have to interject another story here.  You see, I drive a tiny car.  It’s a Chevy Spark.  The running joke from the “men-folk” is I have squirrels and hamsters as the engine; or, as “Him” teases, my own legs, as if my car is a Fred Flinstone sedan or something.  I just smile sweetly and remind them all I get 40 miles to a gallon of gas and it only costs me $30 to fill up.  I ask them how much it costs to fill their truck tanks and the conversation topic gets changed really quick.  

I bring that up, because it never fails where I’m parked at, there’s ALWAYS a big ol’ truck that’s got to park riight next to me.  Not like, they pull in straight or anything; oh no, they have to make this grand gesture of turning their tank into the spot next to me with their front end close enough for me to reach out my window and brush the animal guts off of their front bumper.  OR, I park my car with SEVERAL parking spaces available between me and the next car on either side of me.  When I come out of the store, not one, but TWO trucks are parked next to me - usually one preventing me or my passenger from opening our door.  Now, these aren’t just regular sized trucks.  These are GIGANTIC trucks - the kind a country boy would use on the farm.  But these trucks that “pen me in” are sparkling clean and CLEARLY a symbol of the owner having feelings of inadequacies - meaning they’re compensating for having a little dick because every other huge ass truck I’ve ever seen has had mud or muck SOMEWHERE on the truck.  My CAR has more bug guts on the windshield than theirs did in the grill, so…city boys pretending to be country boys equals little dicks.  Especially when I see the driver and passenger getting into them.  No one goes into a Walmart dressed like it’s Sunday unless it IS a Sunday and after church lets out.  Why else would a prissy guy/gal drive a truck that isn’t used for what it’s intended - ripping out stumps, hauling trailers or mudding?  Hence my conclusion of compensation.

Literally turned around in the Dollar General parking lot to park next to my teeny tiny car

When my boyfriend brought his truck home, I looked at it and reassured him he had no reason to feel inadequate.  His deadpan face was what the emoji had to have been based off of...  “Him’s” truck is a monster.  I literally have to climb the side of the truck just to get into the passenger seat, using not only hand grips the manufacturer provided near the roof of the cab, but using the inside door handle “shut the door” thingy, the running board and the middle console.  That’s just getting into the seat.  To close the door, I have to use the hand grip attached to the roof of the cab, swing my torso out to grab and close the door.  The neighbors get a good laugh whenever we use the truck together - I look like a damned spider monkey getting in the thing.  The first time I got inside the truck, “Him” was laughing at me asking if I needed a ladder.  In my defense, I grew up in a household that unless it served more than one purpose, we didn’t own it - that included the vehicles as well.  The family station wagon was able to haul a ton of bricks for the septic tank when I was a child and the Econoline van we had when we moved down to Kansas was able to haul 9 tons of gravel and sand for our concrete project.  I never had to learn how to get into a truck taller than me.

Anyway, getting in the driver’s seat is much easier.  Just grab the steering wheel and haul your ass in.  Then I had to move the seat forward to reach the pedals - “Him” is a good 6-8 inches taller than I - and I heard him say, “Watch the hips” before I started it up.  His truck is a dually - the idiot who thought it was a good idea to put a big ol’ ass on a truck should be shot - and it’s like driving a frigging freighter.  It’s a good thing I have experience driving both boats (station wagons) and gigantic pieces of plywood (vans).  Big hips don’t bother me none.  I navigated the truck into the yard and put her into position behind the tractor.  “Him” chains them together and gestures for me to back up.  I slowly back up until the chain is taut, then I give it some gas…diesel, whatever.  The truck slid more than the tractor.  “Him” tells me to put it into neutral, then pop it in 4 wheel drive.

Say what now?  He wants ME to drive his truck in 4 wheel drive?  With his collectible tractor attached?  ME?  The one who, when I’m driving by myself, thinks the road is my personal race track and I get points for how many “competitors” I pass?  Me?  The one who can fuck up a steel ball with a feather?  That me?

Ohhkay…it’s your baby.

I popped the truck into 4 wheel drive and pressed the accelerator, watching the wheels of the tractor slide.  “Him” gives me a “You can do better than that” look, so I floored it, praying “Him” would forgive the ruts left behind from the tractor tires being dragged.  Him gestured for me to stop and unhooked the chain from the truck.  “Put it back into 2 wheel, drive around to the front to pull.”  I did as I was told and after Him hooked it back up, he mentioned putting it into 4 wheel drive again.  “Already did.”  He nodded with satisfaction and gestured for me to back it up again.  This time, I drove it like I stole it.  Slowly pressed the accelerator until the chain was taut, then slammed it down.

The tractor wheels broke free!  They were turning!  I put the truck into park and “Him” took the chains off.  I leaned out the window and asked if he wanted me to go to the back.  He met me at the window shaking his head.  He had fiddled with stuffs and for the next part, he’d need someone who knew what they were doing.  I didn’t take offense to what he said.  I have often said I know nothing about tractors.  I know absolutely ZERO except how to put my butt in the seat.  As I climbed out of his truck, he said I looked good driving it.  

*ME: I like driving it.  Now I understand why city boys have one.

*HIM (laughing): What are you compensating for?

*ME: I gots a little dick and I ain’t ashamed to say it!

FIRST SQUIRRELS, NOW GECKOS…

So the plan for last weekend was to go fishing.  It was a free pass all weekend - no license required - and even though I am not the biggest fan of fishing, I was looking forward to it.  Mainly because my boyfriend said I could take his kayak out.  Personally, I think he did that just so I wouldn’t talk his ears off - I do not like being idle and if yakking gives me something to do, I’ll do it.  And quite honestly, the bait he was going to use looked absolutely disgusting and smelled worse.  The jar looked like it contained preserved aborted fetuses.  And I was sure if I had to use that to bait the hook, with what it looked like, I would puke right there.  Even typing this I’m getting nauseous.  Anyway, we pull out all his rods, I pick the ones I’d like to use - complete with “Those are for little kids” comment from my boyfriend.  To which I answered, “Have you seen my arms?  I gots little T-Rex arms.  These will be perfect.  Although you’ll have to teach me how to use them.  Last time I used a fishing pole it got tossed into Pott 2 when I cast the line and I was forbidden to go fishing with my father ever again.  Honestly, I don’t know what Dad’s problem was.  The stupid pole only cost $5 and the reel didn’t work very well anyway.  You rotate it forward, right?”

And that was when my boyfriend offered to bring the kayak/canoe boat thing.   Well, I call it a canoe, cuz to me a kayak has a cover with a hole in which the person sits, rolls the kayak over and then it’s a fight for your life when your upside down trapped in a boat.  This “kayak” doesn’t have the death invoking cover.  It’s open and I’m sure I would feel safer in it.

…I just realized why he offered to bring the kayak…

Anyhoo!  Why does a picture of a gecko in the middle of the road have anything to do with fishing?  I could say it was because that’s how rednecks find their bait; or that’s how hill billy’s get their fishing snacks, but it was neither of those.  

We didn’t get to go fishing.

Our area had just gone through some hellacious rain and really high winds.  Nothing bad if you didn’t have dead trees in your yard.  Unfortunately, my boyfriend’s neighbor did and it split in half covering the roadway.  Not a big deal - there’s more than one way in and out of the neighborhood - but the neighbor didn’t know it had fallen (neither did we - it was upright and fine the night before.  It was how we had gotten home from the bar).  It must’ve happened overnight because my boyfriend noticed it when another neighbor had to back up and take a different route out to the main road.  I was inside making sandwiches for our fishing trip when he came inside and told me what happened.  I asked if the neighbor knew and my boyfriend said he knocked, but there was no answer so he was just going to get it chopped up to clear the road.  I finished making our fishing lunch and went outside to help.

Once I got a load of small branches gathered into the trailer, I hauled it off to the dump.  Because it had rained the night before, there were puddles everywhere.  Birds were bathing, squirrels were getting drinks.  Those squirrels were either dying of thirst or they weren’t too afraid of the very loud tractor I was driving, because two of them just stood in the puddle staring at me.  Even when I sped up to go around them, the squirrels did not move.  It was like they were challenging my position as a keystone species or something.  Or maybe they wanted a ride in the trailer - they were eyeballing the branches pretty hard.

That was one trip.  The third trip had me ripping around corners to get some wind blowing on my face, wildlife be damned.  If the squirrels wanted a ride, they were gonna have to grab a branch and hang on for dear life.  We had been going at that damned tree for HOURS and it seemed like it was never ending.  It was getting really muggy and it was getting very hot.  Poor Buddy had to be forced into the house because he wasn’t listening to either one of us.  When my boyfriend came back from a dump run, Buddy made like he was going to run out into the road and I shouted at him.  My boyfriend heard me over the roar of the diesel engine, slammed on his breaks which sent a tool box sailing out onto the road.  And that was the start of us getting pissy because it was just getting gross outside.  We both would have rather gone fishing, but no one else was going to give the older neighbor a hand; if the amount of vehicles trying to go in either direction was any indication (and none offering help or even asking what happened - which is what annoyed me more than the humidity), and the road needed to be cleared.  

On the final run to the dump with the tractor, I saw a gecko dart from the side of the road.  I slowed to give it a chance to scurry on by.

It did not.  If anything, it was doing a gecko impersonation of “deer in the headlights.”  The damn thing froze in the middle of the road.  Like, the LITERAL middle.  There wasn’t enough room to go around behind it without dropping branches from the trailer I was hauling and if I tried to cut him off and he darted…well, it wouldn’t have hurt the vehicle I was driving, but I kinda like geckos and I would be heartbroken if I hit one.  Don’t roll your eyes.  I cry when I hit frogs on the highway during a summer rain at night and I will slam my brakes to prevent running over a squirrel, spilling hot coffee onto my driving instructor. It was ok - he was a critter lover like me, so I was forgiven.

Anyhoo, so this gecko is hogging the road horizontally and I’m hot, sweaty, and just want to get my butt out onto the water rowing until my heart was content while my boyfriend fished.  I wanted to get fried and have him put lotion on my body and if the “lotion” went elsewhere, then oh well.  At least we’ll be having fun.  But as it sat, both of us were pretty irritable so that probably wasn’t going to happen.

“Dude, move your ass,” I yelled at the gecko.  Why I thought yelling at a lizard was going to get it to move when the noise from a BadBoy lawnmower hauling a trailer full of branches didn’t even faze it.  The gecko stared at me and it’s body began changing color.  

“Really?  I can CLEARLY see you.  Changing colors isn’t going to confuse me.  I’m not a color blind donkey.”  No, just an idiot still shouting at a gecko over a lawnmower…  I figured maybe inch forward at a high rpm would get it to move.  I didn’t want to hit the walking wallet, so I turned the mower towards the gecko’s behind, making sure I wouldn’t nip its tail.  I put the mower into rabbit mode and pushed forward for a moment (running with Buddy while driving it, I got good at stopping the mower on a dime).  I was sure that would have scared it - why I don’t know, the squirrels weren’t impressed earlier…

The gecko wasn’t either. By now, it had started to turn blue.  Because, you know, it doesn’t believe me when I tell it I’m NOT a color blind donkey.

…jackass…

I figured since all it was doing was changing its colors, the gecko wasn’t going to be scurrying to the other side of the road any time soon; and since it didn’t change it’s mind at the last second like squirrels do, it was committed to laying claim to the road as it’s own personal domain.  Or the gecko was doing the wildlife version of Robin Hood.  In either case, I didn’t have time for it’s foolishness - besides, what the hell would a gecko want as a toll to use the road?  I wanted to salvage whatever time my boyfriend and I had for getting to a body of water so he can fish and I can throw a pole in the water…I mean, take the kayak out.  I inched around the road pirate and noticed it puffing itself up.

“You do realize, I can crush you, right?  I mean, just an accidental, derpy twist of the handles and “oopsie,” you’re roadkill.  You know this, right?”

The gecko’s response was to puff itself more.  I think it thought it was the Arnold Schwarzenegger of the reptilian world.  Or it thought it was some gangster idiot who thought being all showy was going to intimidate me, like it was saying, “You wanna go?  You wanna go?  Let’s go!  Come on, I ain’t scared of you and your death wagon.  Let’s go!  Come for me, bitch.”

“You are not the least bit scary.  I’ve half a mind to make you my pet.”  The gecko puffed a bit more and widened its stance.   That was when I noticed the hind end of the gecko flexing and something coming out from under its tail.

Initially I thought it was laying an egg, but then logic took over.  Why would a lizard lay an egg in a wide open area where any ol’ predator can get to it?  Seriously?  When I realized it was “taking care of business,” I felt like a heel.  The poor gecko was trying to poop and was having performance anxiety ‘cuz I was hanging around like an idiot.  I apologized to the gecko for interrupting its potty break and continued on my way.  It was an exposed spot to defecate - it clearly could have been eaten by a predator if there was one nearby. Why would it pick the middle of the road to poop?  Even a cat would have been able to pounce on it. I went around it, and was three feet away when it dawned on me why the gecko decided to take a shit.

“Oh you’re GROSS!” I shouted in the direction I had left the pooping gecko.  “I wasn’t trying to eat you!  I don’t even WANT to eat you!”

Idiot…

A Sue-Eating Tree

Y’all remember the kite eating tree from the Charlie Brown comics, right? Well, I now understand his trepidation in retrieving his kite from the tree. Let me tell you a story…

As a child - like 10 years old and onward until I was about 16/17 - I lived on 6.6 acres with my family. I simply LOVED that place; the old house with the adventurous attic and the creepy serial killer basement; the stable and steady yard around the house and the magical wilderness just beyond; it was my favorite place to be. What I loved most about it was the house’s porch. The porch dad to have been 10 feet off of the ground. It was built of brick and stone with stone slab to cap the walls of the porch about waist high on a decently tall adult. Many adventures were had on that porch fighting Klingons, assaulting the Death Star or saving people by taking huge leaps off of the edge, plummeting to the ground and running in any given direction with “wwhawawhawaha” playing in my head (that’s the sound of bionic arms and legs, doncha know). Hell, we even figured out how to get onto the roof from the side of the porch to “rescue” the poor little chipmunk that had “gotten stuck” in the eaves of the roof. At least that was the story I gave my dad when he came home and demanded to know why my younger brother was shimmying up the column and was halfway onto the porch roof. I had to say SOMETHING! There was a clear view from the road to the porch and Dad had to have seen me hoist my brother up as he was driving home. In truth, we both wanted to jump from the roof of the house, land on the porch roof and “fall” onto an old mattress my parents were getting rid of. I was too short to get a good hold to pull myself up, so my brother was going to pull me up until I could.

Dad bought the chipmunk story. However, we were no longer allowed to climb on the house. There were SIX perfectly good full-sized apple trees in the side yard - go climb those. Years later, during a visit with the same brother, he let slip what we were actually doing, knowing that we were full grown adults and Dad couldn’t do anything about it. Joke was on us. Dad knew EXACTLY what we were doing - he saw the mattress and did the math (I didn’t maths well as a child, either). He also knew the mattress had broken springs that would have impaled on of us if we landed on it. I didn’t see the problem. My brother only agreed to haul me up if I let him go first.

Anyhoo, we took to climbing every tree on the property. For the bigger ones I need boosted up since we weren’t allowed to use Dad’s ladder; but for the more “branchy” trees (like the mulberry tree we had) I was able to get into without help. Once I got into a tree, I was a climbing fool. Never did I get stuck, never did I fall out of the tree - I jumped. Highest point I jumped was about 15 feet from the ground. That was Dad’s guestimation right before he banned me from climbing and jumping from trees (which is why I took to jumping off of swings like a ballistic missle). I didn’t see the issue he had with it. I never hurt myself AND, as my mom had said when I complained to her about it, it was my dad’s own fault I liked jumping off of things. He encouraged us kids to jump off of things because the damned floor was a pool of lava and if we got off of the couch we’d burn to death. We figured jumping furniture was the safest way to get to the bathroom. So, no more “Rocky the Squirrel” for me.

Fast forward to last Sunday. There is a mulberry tree in the yard. It’s a “wild” one, meaning it was there when the place was bought and nothing has ever been done with it. Some of the branches are dead. The tree never gets watered outside of what God gives it. The tree never gets fertilized outside of what God gives it. The tree never gets pruned outside of when God does it. The tree is located to the main road in and out of town, so it gets pelted with all the pollution from the trucks, cars and semis that go by, yet it still grows and bears fruit. It still hosts birds and squirrels as if it were a McDonald’s.

And it’s climbable for a shorty like me.

It is also fruiting and I decided I was going to go pick the fruit to make mulberry whatever. I get my bowl and start plucking the lower hanging fruit. Birds screeching and squirrels chittering in angry protest with the tree’s siren song becoming a chorus. I ignored all three. There was plenty of fruit for all of us and I am 47 years old. I do NOT belong in a tree like a 10 year old. “But you COULD do it. You know you could. Besides, up there is where all the ripe berries are.”

I don’t know who said that, but they made a good point. The top branches were littered with spots of purply black berries. Along with a couple of stubborn robins telling me my kind wasn’t welcomed at their tree. Being one to fight discrimination, I went to the shed and got some rope. Walking back to the tree, I heard the robins fly away with a couple of birds screeching at me while I tied my bowl around my waist and looped it over my neck. I’m gonna get me some berries.

Famous last words, I’m sure.

Getting into the tree wasn’t a problem, and it felt GOOD knowing I could still pull myself up without help. Finding hand and foot holds, making sure the branch could take my weight, either breaking dead branches off or dodging them altogether; it all came back to me. I felt like I was a kid again, picking berries and climbing higher. I could only climb about six or eight feet from the ground. Meh, the tree wasn’t very big.

I paused to shift my bowl - which was a rooyal pain in the ass trying to keep myself upright while not spilling the fruits of my labor - and leaned against a limb. The birds were still being prejudicial assholes - flying in close to get something to eat, seeing me and flying back to where they came from as if to say, “Nope. Not eating here. They serve HUMANS.” I ignored them. I was in a tree. At 47 years old. With clicky shoulders and walnuts for knees. In that moment I was at peace. Everything was right in the world.

Until Buddy barked at me to get myself down from there. He was not happy that I was up high without him, I guess.

And that’s when the wheels came off of the wagon.

I didn’t fall. I’m much more careful than that. The way you go up is the way you come back down. Usually. Well, the way I went up, I didn’t have a bowl full of berries to worry about. I wasn’t about to lose any, so I took a different route down. A little riskier, but if I fell, I didn’t have far to fall. Unfortunately the route I chose had a lot of little dead branch spikes and every time I shifted down, my shirt snagged, or my jeans snagged, or my shoe laces snagged. I was getting impatient with the amount of snagging that was going on, so I grabbed a branch with one hand to turn my body while using the other to keep the bowl steady. I shifted. My thigh, who was firmly wedged in a crook decided to cramp. Or complain about the 180 degree turn to the muscle. Whichegver the case, I shifted back in a hurry using both hands. And promplty spilled some of my precious cargo.

Sonofabitch. Oh well, didn’t lose too many. I started clearing the dead spikes so not to get caught up again and continued my descent. HA! Only in an ideal world - of which I most decidely do NOT live in - because I cleared the dead branches, I shifted to relieve the cramp and give my poor thigh some relief not worrying about my ass placement - which is critical if you have wider hips and are climbing in narrow spaces.

I’m going to pause here and tell you, I have no ass. I’ve lost quite a bit of weight in the last three years and although I still have the “Weston Spread” (my mother’s family’s name for the wide butts on the women of the family), I no longer have “da booty.” My ass is flatter than Kansas. My ass is so flat, you could wax my back and butt and go surfing on me. That’s how flat my ass is.

So how in the hell did it get stuck?!?

Because I h ad my phone in one pocket, my cigarettes in the other. Why I had my smokes in my pocket, I don’t know. It’s not like I was gonna climb to the top and have a cigarette because it was so stressful. But my phone - I keep that with me always becasue it gives me peace of mind for when I have an emergency, I can call for help instead of dying from whatever idiocy I do. Apparently, those two things gave me “ass” enough to get stuck in a tree. I am not happy. Mainly because the tree is on the corner of a well traveled road and that was all I needed; some one see me stuck in the tree, tell my boyfriend and him rolling up with a cherry picker to get me out - all the while, the sleepy town suddenly becomes alive and stands around to watch my dumb ass get rescued from a tree and the story lasts for YEARS. It’s a tiny town. It’s what happens.

I looked down wondering how far my descent was. Y’all I was LITERALLY 4 feet from the ground! I’ll be damned if I’m gonna be a spectacle because of four frigging feet. I tried jumping down. I felt a tug on my ankle. My foot was stuck.

Are you frigging KIDDING me?

I hear a truck. A diesel - that’s a no brainer. It’s farm country - EVERYONE has a diesel. But all I thought in my head was that truck was my boyfriend coming down the road and I will NEVER hear the end of it if he has to help me out of a tree. I grabbed a branck with my left hand and pulled my weight off of my foot. look at me go - I can pull 120 pounds with one hand - and jerked my foot free. Unfortunately there was no stable place to put it. By now, I didn’t give a shit about my bowl of berries. I had to get out of the damned tree. Releasing the precious cargo, I grabbed another branch and shifted (see, this is why monkey bars are important to have on the playground), freeing my ass and my foot in one go. All I did was flip myself 180 (technically photo-shopping myeslf in real life) and came face to face with an incoming bird. We both said, “Oh shit!” and the bird - a robin, I think; I didn’t get a good look - veered off course, brushed a bunch of berries in aborting it’s flight path and I pushed myself back to avoid a face to face collision.

And stabbed myself in the back with a dead branch. While massaging my wound, the asshat bird had the gall to sqwak at me - I’m pretty sure he said something bad about my mother - and refused to leave me alone so I could get out of the tree. So, not only did I have to worry about not getting stuck and finding a secent descent route, I now had to worry about a stupid, over-inflated, bigoted avian telling me how awful my species is.

At least the truck that was coming wasn’t my boyfriend, thank God. I was leaning against a branch, yelling back at the robin - which only brought more of his bigoted friends - and tried to figure out a way to get down without losing every single mulberry I picked. Jumping wasn’t going to work - I’d probably land on Buddy because he was directly below me wondering what the hell was going on up there and why didn’t I bring him along. After a few minutes, I finally said fuck it and propped my berries on a branch I could reach from the growon, grabbed another branch and pulled my body up and positioned my legs out.

I was gonna drop. Dropping is different from jumping in the fact its more controlled. I wasn’t worried about hitting dead branches - those were cleared when I decided to drop. I was concerned about landing on my dumb dog, who upon seeing it rain sticks as if they were manna from heaven, decided to park his ass below me to gnaw on one. I swung me feet back onto the crook. The birds perched on the tippy top of the canopy got louder. And that’s when my mind decided to replay the movie in my memory bank. That’s all I fucking needed - a bunch of birds scratching and clawing my eyes out while I’m in a tree.

I turn around. Behind me the space is narrower, but if I turn myself sideways, I could drop. It was more difficult, but since the ideal drop zone wasn’t available and the bigoted birds were coming back in force to lynch me, I was out of options. I put my “butt cheeks” in the bowl with the berries so I wouldn’t get stuck again and grabbed hold of the branch. I slowly made my way over and a robin landed above me to the right just as my feet left their secure footing. I glared at the robin and said, “You shit on me, and I will torch this fucking tree. Do not test me.”

The robin flew away. I did not get shat upon.

Once I was cleared of any further obstructions, I dropped the 4 feet. Buddy looked up from his stick for a nano second, then went back to gnawing on his sticks. His concern for my welfare was palpable…

So, if you ever wondered why Charlie Brown was so terrified to get his kite back from the kite eating tree, now you know why. Its DANGEROUS inside a tree!

My Squirrely Mornings

I can tell you when the squirrels wake up in the morning.  

Well, the ones around here anyway.  They wake up after the big, yellow, death monster swallows the human kits and leaves to find more humans to eat.  Once the monster vacates the vicinity, only then is it safe to venture out to find something to eat for breakfast. The way they go to find breakfast is NOT scampering down the trunk of the tree they called home for the night.  Oh no.  They still have to practice their jumps - you know, since one of them landed like a sack of shit last week and their tutor is putting them through the ringer.

So, before breakfast, the young squirrels are jumping from their tree, onto the house roof.  They are to jump from the roof, back into the home tree - using ALL of the trees surrounding the roof-line.  Now, that’s not too bad.  It’s good training for the young squirrels. However, if you’re the human living inside a METAL roofed house, its not so great.  I heard the first thud of the squirrels landing and Buddy, my vicious monster of a dog, starts to growl.  Now, he’s almost 10 years old and other than peeing when we get out of bed, he’s not a morning dog so I don’t blame him for being grumbly. Then there are subsequent thuds. Buddy starts barking his fool head off (which startles me into spilling some of my coffee - I don’t know why, this has been going on for almost three weeks).  Buddy’s barking, in turn, scares the little squirrels on the roof (if the frantic scratching, thudding and whatever else nonsense they’re doing up there was any indication).  Which makes Buddy bark even more because he thinks the entire planet is imploding on itself and the only thing stopping that is his barking.  Apparently dog barks are have super sonic waves that repel falling objects…

Anyhoo!  Buddy is barking at the back door, so, like an idiot, I open the blinds so he can see there was nothing out there hellbent on destroying him; only to have a kamikaze squirrel miss his jump from the roof to the tree next to the deck by mere millimeters and fall right in front of the window.  Buddy, seeing the damn fool squirrel land on the porch, barks with excitement (he loves chasing squirrels - they are his friends) and runs smack dab into the glass, which prompts the squirrel to understand its in danger and scurried up the tree as if Satan had a hold of his tail.  I opened the door, just to get a moment peace by letting the fool dog out when ANOTHER squirrel takes a ginormous leap of faith and launches itself from the rooftop above the door, over my head and into the tree the first squirrel missed.

Well, that gave me my heart attack for the day.

Words must have been said between the two little squirrels because they got into a tussle, one big mass of fur and tails rolling around in the crook of the branch.  Buddy, needing to get his two cents in, barks firmly as if to say, “ENOUGH!”  Not lying,  both squirrels stopped their foolishness, both looked down at the dog - who thought they wanted to be friends with him so Buddy barks his excited, happy bark and he starts jumping at the tree.  Only then did the youngsters see the danger they were in and both scurried up further then jumped back onto the roof, scampering back in the direction they had come from.  I get Buddy back into the house and sighed with relief as I took a relaxing sip of my coffee and went back to reading.

I should have known better.  It’s not like this hasn’t been a daily occurrence for almost a month.  

Just as I got used to the silence, Buddy barked, startling me and causing me to splutter my coffee (coffee coming out of the nose is not pleasant, in case you were wondering) and the thud happened. Again.

Y’all, this has been going on for two and a half hours, every morning for 21 days.  I’ll tell ya what, the military drill instructors got NUTTIN’ on a squirrel’s drill instructor.

Home on the Range

So I was on my way home from grocery shopping in Manhattan. I decided to take the back way because…well, because the back roads are more peaceful. Besides, I like seeing the calves have the zoomies.

Anyhoo, after seeing pasture upon pasture of cattle (no calves having zoomies unfortunately), I passed what appeared to be a cow with chaps on its head. After a WTF moment, I slowed to get a better view of the bizarre looking creature while thinking, “Poor dipshit underestimated the bull’s land speed record.”

Even as that thought entered my mind another thought popped up (my thoughts interrupt each other all the time), “They can’t be buffalo, it’s got to be some weird hybrid breed of cow.”

“That’s a buffalo. It has to be.”

“Where did these buffalo come from?”

“Are those buffalo?”

“I’m hungry. Does buffalo taste good?”

I was going to dismiss the sight, but the thoughts kept clamoring for me to pay attention to them (I have a head full of children) so to shut them up and appease the curiousity, I decided to get a better look. I couldn’t stop since there was a truck behind me, so I turned around at the earliest turnoff and looped back around.

Yup. Buffalo. Now, how do I tell Fort Riley their “cows” got out? And who do I call to let them know they left the pasture gate open because all three were meandering their way to the opening?

Hill Billy?

So my boyfriend and I were sitting on the front porch, both of us enjoying a beer and the evening watching squirrels, kids and birds play. As we were discussing something to do with one of his cars, there was a loud THUD! The sound was as if someone had dropped a 50 pound bag of feed at our feet. I immediately thought one of the kids had hit one of the cars parked on the street. The moment I turned my head to look, I saw a chubby squirrel bolt around the other side of the tree. I started laughing and asked my boyfriend if that was the squirrel.

He was already chuckling and shaking his head in disbelief by the time I asked the question. “Yep.” By the time he finished describing what had happened, we were both laughing like idiots. Apparently, squirrels learn about gravity the same way humans do. By plummeting to their potential deaths. From extremely high places. AND, since it looked like it had a pretty good winter stash of nuts, the poor squirrel’s center of gravity was not what it once was (I can totally relate…). The squirrel took the kamikaze leap of faith that only squirrels seem to be able to do.

Its faith was lacking. The squirrel missed the branch and landed like a sack of shit at the base of the tree. I commented that the poor thing was lucky it didn’t break its neck.

To which my boyfriend replied, “It’s a shame. Woulda made a good snack.” He scoffed at my look of horror and shook his head in disapproval. “You ain’t a hill billy.”

My shoulders squared. “I never said I was a hill billy. I’m a redneck. We don’t wait for the animals to kill themselves by doing some damn fool thing.” I took a haughty sip of my beer and added, “We scrape them off of the grills of our trucks and load the body into the bed.”

I am NOT ashamed

“You should stop saying you work in retail, no offense.”

Offense has been taken and I’ll be back for the gate later.

I am not ashamed that I chose to make the retail industry as a way to pay the bills. I couldn’t afford to go to college and knew sturdent loans were a honey trap, so I chose to gain my “higher learning” from life. And it taught me well - mainly that people in general are stuck up snobs that have their noses so far up in the air they drown every time it rains.

It reminds me of when I was made to feel ashamed that I grew up “poor” and lived in the country all of my life (there were 6 of 14 kids living in the house at any given time - that’s why we were “poor” and could only afford housing in bumfuck Egypt). I was made to feel ashamed that I knew how to slaughter and butcher chickens. As a joke, it was put in my high school yearbook that my future goals was to “let the chickens run free” (when the shit hits the fan, at least I know I won’t starve to death). I was made to feel ashamed that I had a vocabulary higher than a fourth grader and wasn’t afraid to use it (if I had to learn that shit and have the ability to articulate it in ordinary circumstances, why wouldn’t I expound? It’s not like algebra will ever be utilized in my typical day). I was made to feel ashamed that I like doing all things society deems “not girly” (but it made life easier when there was no on to help me change a tire at 1 a.m.) I was made to feel ashamed that I want a man to want to take care of me (and not in a “man’s work” kind of way, but in the “ooo, that bisch! We should knife her” kind of way - you know, a support system).

I was made to feel ashamed because I didn’t want to get married (marriage is sanctioned slavery). I was made to feel ashamed for not wanting to inject my body with poisons made in laboratories disguised as medicines (God gave us plenty to heal ourselves with). I was made to feel ashamed that I had a child out of wedlock; that I refused to marry the father; that I refused to vaccinate my child after an allergic reaction to the MMR vaccine; I was made to feel ashamed for not taking my child to the ER for every fever, ache and pain he had. But most of all, for the most part and from most people - absolute strangers and from those who were closest to me - I was made to feel ashamed to be me.

I’m not ashamed. I’m proud. And not in the “independent adult woman” kind of way - because I still need someone to open a jar for me. I’m proud of the way I stood my ground, stared the haters in the eye and told them to fuck themselves.

I am sick and goddamned tired of the notion that people work in retail are idiots or morons. I’m tired of the notion that all we do is stock shelves. I’m tired of the notion that working in retail isn’t hard. If it’s not that hard, then how come you people can never find where maple syrup is? If it’s not challenging, then how about you deal with your cranky toddler with nothing but a smile and nice words all day, every day, regardless of how they are acting (because let’s face it, when y’all are getting pissy for being in line for TWO minutes, y’all are acting like toddlers throwing tantrums)? If retail isn’t laborious, then you go on right ahead and lift over 500 pounds per shift, walk over 10 miles per shift, work in sweltering heat and arctic cold, day in and day out for a measly $10 an hour.

Working in retail is NOT something I’m ashamed of doing. Working in retail taught me to see things from another’s viewpoint. It solidified my belief that one should be kind to another because we don’t know what’s going on in their life. It taught me how to adapt like a frigging marine due to the chaotic changes that is the hallmark of retail. It taught me how to prioritize and take the lead when no one else will.

No. I’m not ashamed of working retail and I REFUSE to stop saying it like it’s something to be ashamed of.

…I’ll take that gate now, thank you.