What love does is to arm. It arms the worth of life in spite of the life.

-Archibald Macleich

the zombie squirrel

I was driving yesterday and out of the corner of my eye I saw a squirrel. It was running parallel with the car, but on the other side of a fence, and I was on a fairly big road. For you city people, it would be a country road, for us it would be fairly big. A big road would be one that you'd not let your child fetch a beach ball out of, I guess. I'm off topic again.
So I spied this squirrel running. I suppose it was running after something. Probably another squirrel. I thought of how sometimes dogs chase cars. Then my kooky brain remembered that I'd just watched Ahh, Zombies! the other night and thought of that. And I'd thought of rabid squirrels before, and what people would do if there were some sort of rabid squirrel outbreak- like swine flu, only squirrel flu...but people wouldn't get it, they just couldn't go in their yards without squirrels pouncing down from trees. With teeth. But that was a thought from along time ago while watching them out the window. So my brain combined the old train of thought with the new one and then I thought, what if instead of human zombies, it was squirrel zombies, because then you couldn't kill them. And you could try, but their little deattached squirrelly hands would crawl and find you. You'd be getting ready to shower and your back would itch, and there'd be that squirrelly hand. Tiny little squirrelly hand.
And then I thought of this thing we do when we see a squirrel, how the kids will shout, "I call it!" and the person who calls the squirrel names it. How did that all start?
I think alot while driving. & I drive alot.

What am I supposed to be doing?

And I'm sorry about unloading on my last post. It's been attached to me like an anchor, those words, and there's that part of me that must just be completely insecure to allow them power. If you have concerns about your worth and someone tells you you are worthless it just reaffirms those negative feelings. And I don't want to feed that part of myself. My mother mentioned that perhaps we could go once a month. My stance on that would be that if I am 'worthless to the people I live with, what good would I be too someone 6 hours away, and only for a few hours at that?' Maybe next spring; By then I'll have forgotten. :)

I'm grateful you stopped in. I hope you have a Squirrelly Day...

bah.

I decided on a whim that I'd do something kind for Mother's Day weekend, so I opted to go to Lexington to visit the Grinch, who now lives in a hospital there. It's a 6 hour drive, of which I only drove half- my mother drove the other 3 and we took her Camry (better gas mileage!).
Halfway there on 75, we experienced a flat tire. A big rig pulled up behind us and changed it. Sitting on the side of the road I was thankful we had a cellphone in case we needed it. It reminded me of another time riding back with my mother from Kentucky. Our old car broke down around the same stretch of nowhere, and I watched my mother walk down the interstate. I was twelve, and I laid in the car waiting for hours. Night came and I thought of walking to find her. A big rig driver brought my mother back that night and fixed our car. While I don't like riding beside those things, I know that there's always going to be that random truck driver that'll change your tire or a belt on your engine. I'm off the subject?
So I spent my weekend half driving, half in a hospital room. I made small talk while the old man berated me, telling me that my husband should leave me, that I was biding my time, and each phrase begat one worse. I just sat, forced to listen. I knew it was one day. One day to be nice. So I talked about my garden. And so he shouted and told me how I was making excuses. The deer had eaten our little garden to the ground. Even a couple tomato plants had been topped. "NO SUCH THING!" he shouted. "Deer KNOW TOMATO PLANTS ARE TOXIC! EXCUSES EXCUSES!" he raised his arms up like great wings and flapped his hands in unison, "EXCUSES EXCUSES! EXCUSES EXCUSES!"
And though I'd seen hoofprints in my raises garden beds, and watched the herd pass through my drive each morning, I sat. One day to be nice. but really I was sad.
And I listened as he shouted at my mother on our mothers day, and I watched my daughters faces and watched the clock and I counted the hours. And about midnight I pulled into my drive, thankful. ...emotionally drained. & I never know when i'll make that trip again.

I internally wonder about it all and want to lay in the moss til the me is safe from its cellular recession and my spirit eases out of my stomach and reaches my outer pores again. And then an inch or more beyond that even.

Cold Coffee, Warm Toiletseat

A few months ago, back when it was cooler, I was thinking. (I did think back then, a little)
I was thinking about how often I get to thinking about stuff and forget I have a cup of hot coffee.
Then when I remember I have a cup of lukewarm or cold coffee. Which I don't like as much as I enjoy beautiful, beautiful hot coffee. Then later, When I went to the bathroom, the seat was cold. And I thought about the cold coffee, and that I like neither cold coffee nor cold Toilet Seat.

And then, I thought, I don't like warm toilet seat either.

Because that means someone sat on it. With their ass.

So I'm thinking about all this complex stuff, and then I realized that I'm admitting that I sit on toiletseats, & not just at home, but at the mall too. And that's just not something you tell folks. :P

But of course I never sit on toilet seats anywhere other than home, always squatting over them, and while using the toilet seat doily the entire time. Squatting over the doily. Of course.

And in airports and concert arenas, where you have to wait on a stall, I never sit on those either. But if I had, in a public place where everyone squats over the seat and uses the proper doily, I would mention that the seats at those places are warm, like they have been heated, perhaps. With someone's ass? Or maybe I did that once by accident.

So it goes Hot Coffee,

Cold toilet seat.

Unless I become one of those rich folk who get an electric toilet and the seat warms up for me. But then I may fear having water and electricity in the same sort of thing. Probably I'm too afraid of ass electrocution to own one of those.

And this reminds me of this time in middle school where some girls were sitting at lunch, and talking about stuff, and the conversation starting leaning towards the sinus canals. One girl stated, "I pick my nose." The others, me included, were aghast. The twelve years olds admission of nose picking was shocking, then leading to,

"Well, with a tissue. Not like with my finger."

That girl died a few years ago. But I never forgot that moment. Here's to you.

I pick my nose too.

The Curry Pot

After thinking that my husband was taking me to lunch today (he's not) & this was our designated place of preference, I clicked on their website. To my surprise, there were some reviews that I didn't agree with. I decided to write my own. Yup. It's that good.

http://http//currypotcuisine.com/

The Curry Pot on Lee Highway is the stuff. We drive an hour one way to eat there, and they have some items that have scorched such a memory into my foodbrain that I just have a hard time eating other Indian food, always comparing. Within a 2-3 miles radius, there are 3 Indian Restaurants on this same highway, all with lunch buffets. I'd been to India Mahal, but it's not Curry Pot. Reading the fuss about Sitar, we decided to see. It wasn't the Curry Pot either.

This is where I discovered the subtle things that make the Curry Pot stand apart.

Mint Chutney.

I could drink this stuff. I could devour gallons. It's magically minty and thick, green and spicy at the same time. (Sitar's chutney had a watery texture and a sweet onion taste).

Rice Pudding. Yeah, you probably had rice pudding, and it seems nothing to write home about, right? WRONG. The Curry Pot's rice pudding has a very noticeable essence of rose water. (Yeah, that's right. I not only plant roses- I want to eat them too. For reals).

And I want dal, chickpeas, paneer, tandoori chicken, Curry Chicken, Chicken Makini(?) & all the other spicy veg that's on the buffet. Even if I don't eat them, I'm comforted by their familiar faces. (The two things I might add to this already perfect buffet would be the sweet carrot dish, and changing out one of the daily soups to Mulligatawny. Then, it would be more than perfect.)

The buffet is big, and cheap. I read complaints on the decor, and can say that I like it. It feels cosy & swell. I prefer booths to chairs. It's well lit. Strip mall? So what. You'd pay more for someone else's high rent, then get food that was less inviting. And the other places are dark. And dank.

Joe. Always smiling, the kindest guy ever, Joe. He knows my table & he knows how far I drive. This is my place, and my food.

I'm a big fan of the Idea of Energy and how it carries through, and I sincerely feel it's a tangible force here. It's a happy place full of comforting Curry.

It makes me joyful; and it makes me sad that I'm not going today. Instead, I'll be pouring a bowl of Koala Krispies dreaming of my Go To lunch spot. :P

Four cow carcasses. Gutted, damn mess.
I'd been sitting across the farmer, the stoic farmers wife, and their son, a thirteen year old with a white boy fro who could play bass like he'd come out of the womb with it and a mad obsession with the Beatles catalog. For awhile, the kid and mine shared a guitar teacher, and when my daughter, eleven at the time, decided she wanted to learn Stairway to Heaven, the teacher figured it would be good to teach it to that kid too.
We switched teachers, and I heard all about it when my angel would lament, "I have to go in the band room in the morning and there he is! Playing my song!"
She hasn't gotten it yet, but seriously, she's twelve, and that kid practices daily for hours. My child maybe practices two of three times a week. Practice makes perfect?
But I'm off the subject. The subject was cow carcasses? So we were sitting across at a Cross Country gathering held at Ryan's with parents of Cross Country kids, which of course was awkward for me because 1. I am not a fan of Ryans, and 2. I'm not so much a fan of being crammed elbow to elbow with people you don't know while eating at an all-you-can-eat country buffet. I'm just not that good with people. Craziness.
So the farmer is talking about the thunderstorms that weekend, and how lightning struck an old oak, killed the oak, and spewed four cows that stood seeking shelter beneath it. And I marveled, as that was a revelation and perhaps the most enlightening thing I'd heard that day.
And this was months and months ago. But this morning while driving I passed thousands of cow filled acres, and as that question I often asked prior to the meal I shared with the farmer popped into my head-
Why don't they plants some trees in the fields and give the cows some shade?
I remembered the four cow carcasses. Gutted, damn mess.

have a really cool day :)

Brandi Carlile - The Story