Nutty

My son brought home a stuffed animal last night in a bag with a composition notebook. He excitedly pulled the animal out, cradled it, and introduced me to it ceremoniously, as if meeting a newborn for the first time.

"Mom, this is nutty, nutty, this is my mom."

His eyes didn't leave the plush squirrel. He was smiling as he gazed. Immediately his little sister lunged for the toy, sparking in him such rage that I feared the thing would be destroyed. Finding another toy to balance out the scene, my daughter sat plotting while my son explained;

"You see mom, everyone in the WHOLE class takes a turn taking nutty home with them and then bringing it back the next day!!! Isn't that cool?!"

The first thing that popped into my mind was the rampant flu virus that has been gripping the county; runny noses, younger siblings, bathrooms, toilets, vomit, diarrhea, cooties, and general, unfamiliar filth.

The amber fur was the same color and texture as the floorboards of my 4 runner, underneath the matts.

After washing my hands, I asked for the rest of the story with this nutty squirrel. My son looked at me, confused. He started to explain the "everyone in the whole class" thing again, and I interrupted him by asking what the significance was. What's the point? Just spreading germs or is there something else?

"OHYEAH! And nutty has a journal!!!!! Everyone gets to write about their visit with him in the journal and draw a picture! It's soooo cool! C'mon!!! LET"S GO"

I took the notebook and scanned through the scrawled graphite script. Most of the kids mentioned snacking, video gaming, and watching TV with nutty. There were some pictures; mostly of stick people sitting on a couch. One girl wrote about going to her mom's work and taking nutty. Below she drew a picture of the local gas station with a gigantic squirrel in the window. One boy said that he climbed a tree with nutty, then he fell out and had to go to the doctor's office for an X-ray, and the following day his mother had to get nutty out of the tree. He described the squirrel's fur as "cold and crusty" when his mother brought it back inside. His picture was of himself with a cast, and nutty with a diabolical, furrowed brow.

I asked my son what he wanted to do with nutty. His eyes glazed over and he sat perfectly still.

"We could go to the park" I suggested. "We could ride bikes. Nutty could ride on your handlebars".

"Uhhhhhhhhhhhh gaaaahhh!!!!!! I don't want to do that. Do I have to?" He groaned. "I'm so tired and kinda hungry" he said as he made himself as flat as he could, his face buried in a pillow.

"I was just trying to think of some things that might make a good story for the journal, and that you could talk about to your friends. What would you like to do? Cause it really doesn't matter to me" I insisted.

As soon as I had said it, I realized it wasn't true. That toy needed to be shown a good time. Not video games, crap TV, risky tree climbing, but something fun.

My son looked at me pleadingly. "Please don't make me go to the park or ride bikes. All I wanna do is pop popcorn and play with leggos" he lamented.

Ok. We went to the kitchen and chairs were immediately scooted up to the counter in *precisely* the spot I needed to be. The children got as close to the gas stove as they could get as I ignited the burner, set the oily pot on top of it, and dropped three kernels into it.

Nutty was positioned leaning against one of my canisters. My son was speaking to him about hot oil and the importance of jiggling the pot constantly.

The kernels popped, and I added the rest of the corn, covered and shook the pot. The kids were elbowing each other in attempts to dominate the chair closest to the burner. They were both in between me and the stove. It was like something out of a bad parenting magazine.

My two year old started cry/screaming, and my 6 year old pushed her face, knocking her off the chair and onto the floor.

Popping kernels hit the lid of the pot three at a time, rolling in the steam and oil.

I made no attempt at consoling my 2 year old; mishaps such as these usually resulted in a drastic, transitionary device, such as a bath, a walk, a nap or the like, and since there was a steaming pot of oil and corn on the stove, I knew none such diversions were possible.

Her wails became louder and more bitter. She stood back up, grabbed the chair my son was standing in, and shoved it sideways towards the stove. My son fell towards the wall and started yelling at his sister.

Sensing a similar story as the tree-climber, I raised my voice level to "pissed" and directed the children to "leave the damn room, NOW", and I threw nutty through the doorway to the dining room, clear into the living room.

They yelled and bickered for a while, then became quiet. I could hear the familiar crackling sound of falling leggos as I salted and seasoned the popcorn. I lingered in the kitchen for a few moments munching popcorn and listening to All Things Considered.

After an impossibly long quiet stretch, my son came sprinting into the kitchen with nutty.

"Mom! LOOK WHAT WE MADE NUTTY!! LEGGO SHOES!! HE REALLY NEEDED SOME SHOES!!"

Two large boxes hung from the toy's legs. They were made using gray, blue and white blocks, and they had a "new wave" style about them. I was impressed with the craftsmanship.

"That is awesome!" I declared as I herded the kids back into the dining room. I set the bowl of popcorn on the table and my son began digging in it. My daughter was holding nutty above the wooden table, bouncing it, making him tap dance.

"Mom I love nutty." My son uttered. "I don't know how I'll be able to take him back tomorrow. I wish I could just keep him forever"

"What about all of your stuffed animals? You have froggy, piggy, beary, foxy, spot, stimpy, kenny, wally and daddy bear. What about them? Don't you love them?" I asked.

"No" He replied pitifully. "I hate all those toys" He whispered, looking down at the table, slowly chewing popcorn, one piece at a time.

THIS place

When we moved 500 miles north this January, we packed all of our earthly belongings onto two 18 foot moving trucks, then unpacked them in our new, bizarre house in our new, bizarre town.

During a move like this, it is typical for people to toss all kinds of useful stuff. I had a large box in our front room for a month, and I added things to it daily; things I hadn't used in a while or didn't expect to ever really need. The wine and cheese picnic basket, maternity clothes, baby clothes, fifteen extra bed pillows.. Then there were things that I simply didn't want to decide on, clean, pack or otherwise handle. These things live as the careless disposals in my memory. My huge, blank canvas, my ice cream maker, my garment rack, a gigantic planter; things that I am positive that I would use if I had them right now.

Despite my attempts to be methodical about assessing our belongings, I became careless.

After settling in to our new home in Illinois, I returned focus to my craft instead of the arrangement of our belongings. With my fabric cataloged in the largish closet and iron plugged in, I began to think about what project I was going to begin. That's when I remembered that my machine had broken back in Knoxville, just before our move. I had intended to take it to a local store in K town that I had experience with, and I had even put it in the back of my truck and drove it around for a couple of weeks before the move. It never made it to the fix it place, instead it made it from the back of my truck straight into the back of the moving truck, without having been fixed.

I HAD attempted to fix the machine myself. I took the top off, one of the inner plates, and could see that one of the gears looked suspiciously asymmetrical. That's as far as I got, and I didn't even put the thing back together again. I put all the plates and bolts and screws into a zip lock bag, then duct taped it to the base of the machine. I put the machine into a plastic pepsi crate, and put it into the truck.

Since I do have a couple back up machines, I located the better one and proceeded to get my sew on. I put the busted machine in my car, and somewhere between a month and six weeks later, I took the thing to the sew n vac place in Champaign.

I had seen the place in my exploration of the town and made a mental note of it's location. I recalled there being something "strange" about the place, but I had forgotten what till the day I took the machine in.

While I appreciate salvaging anything that can be, I had never associated the action with that of the lord Jesus Christ. My attitude was "I might as well at least try and repair this thing; what is the worst that could happen? It would wind up in the shit heap anyway. Maybe I'll learn something about these things in the process."

Comparing a man's salvation to that of a vacuum cleaner is hard for me to comprehend. The analogy gets confusing; if Jesus is to mankind as what this guy is to vacuum cleaners and sewing machines, then I have a few questions. First of all, does God direct you in your work on vacuum and sewing machines? Are you a martyr, or do you symbolize a sacrifice to small machines on God's behalf?

Jesus:Mankind

This guy:Vacuum and sewing machines

I decided against asking the man these questions, instead I explained the problem with my machine, and he fiddled around with the baggie of parts.

"Seems like the casing is missing. Do you have any more parts?" He asked.

I blanked, and looked in my pockets and purse for no reason. I went out and looked in the trunk of my car, knowing it wasn't there. If the part wasn't in the baggie, there was no telling where it was. I went back in and explained that we had moved, and that the part was likely in my sewing room. He said that I could leave the machine there and bring the part by when I found it.

In the back of mind I knew there was no way I would ever find that part, but I destroyed my craft room anyway. Every box emptied, every corner swept, every cabinet searched. No part.

When I finally gave up looking, I decided I would take my better back up machine in and get him to spruce it up a little. The tension plates were never very sensitive; it is a Kenmore domestic machine from the early 1990s which has been used and abused, so it could use a thorough once over.

After calling the proprietor of the shop and letting him know the piece was gone with the wind, I drove the other machine there to swap out.

The proprietor's son works in the shop along side him and there's clearly a dominant/submissive type relationship between the two.

When I dropped my Singer off, a man was there purchasing three bags of vacuum cleaner bags and a bottle of cleaning solution. When he was checking out, the son, in an attempt at being James Bond radical, said "That's $14.95, those two are $15.40 each, and the solution is $12.65, so that would be.. ummm let's see, $58.40 plus tax, and for that I'll have to..."
Interrupting, his father said in a low voice "Sixty two oh five. With tax", as he slowly turned his head and torso away from helping me to meet the pleading gaze of his son.

The expression on his face when he turned back to me was one of bitter disgust accented by embarrassment.. He was shaking his head very subtly. Bearing a striking resemblance to Lyndon B Johnson, but less healthy, this man didn't possess a certain je ne sais quoi .

These situations used to embarrass me, but for some reason, now-a-days it is just amusing.

Junior had the same demeanor and style as Napoleon Dynamite's brother.

Last time I had the Kenmore machine serviced was over 10 years ago in Boone, NC where I went to college. I recall the shop in Boone charging me $80 for a routine tune up and cleaning, and they removed all my super cool stickers. After a decade the machine accumulated lots of new stickers, one of them being a radical "What Would Wesley Do" sticker designed by my friend, Brad Pope. It is an image of Wesley Willis with "What Would Wesley Do" superimposed across it. I couldn't help but wonder if he considered that sticker; it is ripped and half worn off, but I think the message is clear.

Three weeks after getting the message that the machine was repaired, I went to Champaign to pick it up. The proprietor made a point of bringing up the record of the transaction while both of my children climbed and stood on the same stool. I paraphrased the situation and the transfer of machines, and told him that I already had a check in the amount he quoted on the message. He continued reading from the computer and when he got to the note he had left himself about the message left, he recited it, then turned and looked at me, repeating, "Yes. That message was left September 18th. A full 23 days ago"

I apologized and tried to explain that weekends are better for me to go places without my kids, and that since his store isn't open weekends I had put it off over and over.

He took the check and looked at it at an extreme angle accessing just the right spot on his spectacles. Setting the check back on the counter, the man turned and shuffled into a back room returning with my machine, stickers intact. As intact as they were when I brought the thing in, at least.

The volume of my children was increasing, and with the combination of that and the man's attitude I was starting to loose it.

Sliding the check towards him, I grabbed the machine, and wrangled my kids to the door. He asked if I could manage, and I said that I could.

Settled back in the car, the kids and I pulled out of the parking lot and onto the street.

"That is a really weird store Mom." Fox declared.

"Why do you say so?" I asked

"That grumpy man has a bunch of signs and crazy stuff hung up everywhere and the store looks like it should be shut down"

I agreed with him and we giggled about that guy and his son.

I guess spreading the good word with a "repair shop" metaphor is as good as any evangelical approach.

the writing on the wall

As soon as I saw the graffiti on the ceiling of the picnic shelter at our local park, I knew my six year old son would see and be able to read it. Miraculously, he did not see it that sunny day, and we played on the monkey bars, then went home. Three more trips to the park came and went without notice of the scribbled "fuck you" inscription on the structure.

Last week we were at the park. The kids were at the swings begging me to come push them; something "fun" for the pusher for about five minutes in 100 degree heat, then it becomes an expectation leading to angry fits when not realized by the pushed. Rainer is never satisfied with my swing pushing; she constantly screams "higher, HIGHER", so her rear end leaves the seat for a moment, then she jerks the slack and wiggles back and forth till equilibrium is reached. It's horrendous! She's only two years old and 25 pounds at most. She isn't gratified with the swing set unless she nearly falls off, then catches herself, body dragging the ground as her seat dangles at her back as she clings, white knuckled, to the chains. After these experiences she doesn't enjoy simply swinging. She wants to have a "close call". Thrill seeker already, I guess.

So I was avoiding responding to the children's calls by sitting at the picnic table working a crossword puzzle and drinking ice water. They eventually gave up, and decided to throw rocks in the creek instead. Fox, red-faced and sweating, came running to me to take a drink of water. He sat on the top of the table and drank the rest, then laid back and stared at the raftered ceilings.

I knew what was coming next.

"Fuck You" he said slowly and clearly, then again, "Fuck You, Mom, what does Fuck You mean? It says it there", pointing upward.

Maintaining focus on my puzzle, I nonchalantly glanced at him, and tried very hard not to sound effected.

"Well; have you ever heard anyone say the F word, or F you?"

He said he had, and asked what it meant.

"The F word is a cuss word like damn, hell or ass, but it's much worse. People might ignore the other words, but NOT the F word. And if you say that to any of your friends and they repeat it in front of their parents, or if they get in trouble at school for saying it, they will tell their teachers and moms YOU taught it to them, then their moms won't let them play with you anymore and the teachers will think you're a bad kid."

Fox thought about it for a while mouthing the word silently to himself.

"Do you understand? You can't get away with saying the F word."

"Yes. I understand", he replied. "It would be really crappy not to get to play with my friends, and I don't think I'm a bad kid."

"Good, you aren't a bad kid, and you shouldn't even think about that word because the more you think about it the more likely it might slip."

"That would be really bad. Like a million bad. I would never say that, and that person didn't know how to spell the word you, so they just put the letter u. See?" Fox pointed again at the writing and lingered there for a moment before hopping down and scooping up a shirt tail full of rocks to throw in the creek. '

the hunt

AAAhhhhh! Spring. Everything looks good again and my lease on life is renewed. I'm slowly becoming convinced that it is, in fact, spring. Cautiously, I remove myself from beneath the rimy ice anvil that has been hanging above my head since moving to Illinois and stare at the blooms in disbelief. The calendar peeled from March to April, and suddenly it's time to file my tax extension again. It's official.

So often my perception of time is like this; my birthday is here, then christmas, suddenly it's three days after Jason's birthday and no one said anything, then Rainer turned 2, and it's going to blow my mind how fast July comes, bringing with it Fox's 6th birthday. Like a rock skimming the rippled surface of water, time careens onward. Oh wait; maybe it's me careening through time. No, then what would represent my experiences? Maybe my I am the rock, time is the pool, and the ripples are my experiences. But if that's the case shouldn't the pool be my life, the ripples my experiences, and the rock time? No. So what, I'm a rock skimming over my own life?

Anyway, the bottom line is this: Time flies in retrospect. Pausing and recollecting memories forces a person to not only abbreviate the extent of the situation, but to minimize "unremarkable" periods of time, which can account for the skimming sensation.

Spring makes me evaluate these ideas. It just seems to come so often, and each spring my family and I set out on search of morel mushrooms. It's something we all enjoy enough to have fun, and it gives us an imperative to spend lots of time outside in the emerging forest. Those of you with families know how tricky it is to find things to do that everyone enjoys. Spending time together can become another job if there aren't common interests and passions.

Morel mushroom hunting is an antidote to the cruel, skimming rock of life. Searching for morels involves lots of patience, attention, and stamina. Spending three hours in the woods just looking around you; silently searching and noticing, remembering a tree, a creek, following a bird, straining to hear voices whisper in the wind... These activities do not fly by, but command a level of experience that actually communes with time face to face; the unchanging changing, the things which remain constant, yet change,that aren't relative to age or dates, unparalleled with any human construct.

We began hunting very early, despite our assessment that Illinois would be at least three or four weeks behind what we were used to. There were five or six trips before we found the first mushroom. As an adult I am able to enjoy these fruitless searches, but as you can imagine the children didn't share my attitude. The second trip was the hardest for my 5 year old son. He remembers the gleamingly abundant times in our past hunting trips at the mention of the word 'morel', so he compares every trip with those embellished times. Looking for hours and finding nothing is a paradoxical torment for a child. We can only hope that these are exercises in patience and stick-to-itedness for the kids, otherwise I expect to have two future city dwellers on our hands.

Hunting in Illinois was such a change from Tennessee and North Carolina. Granted, we had patches in the southernmost states which we knew well; close in proximity to our homes so we could check them in a matter of minutes and know if it would be worthwhile to drag the kids out. As new residents we started looking in the only public forests we knew of. Homer Lake, Crystal Lake Park, Kickapoo state park, and other urban parks. We searched and found so many interesting things that weren't mushrooms. While searching the littered woods of Chief Shemauger park we came across the East Lawn Cemetery; a large garden which was evidently established in 1927. We found very old markers that had eroded to the lowest trenches of the yard and were being used as retaining walls in some sections. There were many gravestones that were overturned and smooth with age and abrasion. There were stones from the early 1800s. Much of the trash in the wooded area of Chief Shemauger park consisted of gravesite decor blown over from the cemetery. The wind makes a dump of any wooded or brushy area up here. People help, but it is amazing at the number of plastic bags and bud light boxes out in the middle of a prairie.

Since Homer Lake is the closest to our residence we checked it most. The most remarkable thing about this place was the number and variety of condom wrappers in the parking lot. I noticed one the first time I ever went there. The next visit just a few weeks later I noticed another, then yesterday when we went there was another, different condom wrapper. We ended up finding about 10 or 12 morels on the river bank above the lake, then another 10 in the meadowy forest above the banks. We were thrilled. The first place we found morels in Illinois was at the Kickapoo State park in Vermilion County. As we approached the park from the west we noticed a huge wind farm was being built on the prairie. The parking area was a small gravel lot set off of a county road, and the place really reminded me of East Tennessee. Especially this place on the corner of Hank and Bocephious:

The parking area was littered, as seems to be the norm, but this time with surgical gloves. An entire box of them had blown out and were all knotted up in the grasses. The area we explored was established as horse trails and the path lead through apple trees around a ridge, then went steeply into the river ravine. It was really lovely. We searched the area meticulously and found nothing. Rainer and I were heading towards the river since she was tired of being lugged around, and as I set her down on the clearing at the river's edge I saw the first crummy morel.

We found 15 or 20 there. That was our third trip to Kickapoo this season, and the first two visits we parked in other places; with 2,842 acres of reclaimed strip mines there is lots to explore and see there.All the pits have been filled with water by the river and springs and are now big recreation areas. One of our prior visits Fox found a near complete deer skeleton. He was entranced. We hiked down the hill and found a few more large bones and blades that had been dragged off by animals. Fox became obsessed with reconnecting the remains. He ran up and down the steep bank with his arms full of bones. Yelling directions to the rest of us, speculating on the animal's death... He is a little science nerd.We didn't find any morels that time. We did see some guys fishing with a radical homemade slayer decal made using electrical tape, though.

We didn't hit it big till we came home to Asheville for Easter. My husband (that's Dr. Jason Robinson PhD to you)had to be in Knoxville the week before to defend his dissertation at the University, so we decided to blur the appointment with the Easter holiday and go straight from Knoxville to Asheville. He had planned his defense according to last year's morel calendar, so we were expecting to hit our old spots just in time. After striking out in our "sure thing" patch, we proceeded to our neighborhood spot and looked there, also unsuccessfully. We went to another place and found some shitty remnants of morels that looked to be a couple of weeks old. Morels bloomed 2-3 weeks early this year almost everywhere. My typical gauge is to start looking when the dogwood flowers open, but with the early heat, all notions went out the window. One of our patches in Knoxville is in the woods beside the house our friends used to rent, so when we go we are trespassing. There is a close-knit community who rented the house to our friends, and they reside on down the gravel road beyond the rental. There are many children between the houses, and when we used to hunt we would run into their hideouts and secret, creek places. This is their newest instillation:

I was impressed not just with their resourcefulness, but their workmanship. As I recall there were two smallish girls, probably 8 and 10 years old now. They did some heavy lifting and over-head hammering to construct the roof on their shanty.

After striking out all over Knoxville, we were feeling defeated. During our brief spell in Knox we did, however, get to spend some quality time with our friend Lee, and his sidekick, Terry.

Had I realized how much I would miss Lee after our move I would have savored those last few weeks living next to the guy. As we pulled up, I saw Lee in his yard with his friend Terry, who has dialysis three times a week nearby and usually comes to Lee's house afterwards and sits on his porch swing. Lee looked up and recognized my truck, and he started laughing and tore the hat off his head. I hopped out, momentarily leaving the kids strapped in their safety seats, and met Lee in an embrace in his driveway. It was so great to see him.

The next day, after Jason's defense, he and I went to see Lee again and to talk to the guy renting our house. It was as if nothing had changed, and no time had passed. His cousin came over and visited with us for a while, another friend, Duncan came by. Lee had a fire and moonshine in the middle of the damn day. As we were standing around talking Jason (naturally) noticed a ton of bees in Lee's yard, and realized that there was a rogue queen bee in the grass. She was huge, and all the other bees were swarming around her, just 10 feet from where we were hanging out. Lee has everything, even a swarm of bees. Lee's bees. Lee's cousins keep bees, so he called them and told them to get them suits an come over here quick! They weren't able to come immediately, since it was in the middle of a workday, but they said they would come out after work if they were still swarming.

We went to Asheville and spent lots of time with our awesome family and ate ham and chocolate. After getting an Easter basket from my mom, Fox opened a hollow chocolate bunny and broke it in half. Inhaling deeply, he stuck his nose inside the hollow bunny head and said "Mmmmmm it smells so good in there".

Jason's Aunt hosted an easter egg hunt for all her sister's grandchildren in Burnsville at her home, and we went a little bit early so we could look around there. We went up in the woods on the mountain side where an old lumber road was cut, zig zagging across the steepest parts. Hunting for morels became just picking morels! We dragged the kids around for an hour or so till Jason's parents arrived and the egg hunt started. They took the kids back down to the house and Jason and I stayed on the mountain, raking in morels as fast as we could. As I would spot one and kneel to pick it, I would spot five more! Careful attention to footing was necessary not to step on them. In two and a half hours we picked 650 morels. Two Ingles bags full. We have never seen such an abundance, and I think it was the high point of the break for Jason, outranking hustling a Jamaican pool shark AND earning a PhD.

After a trip like that it will be very difficult for Fox to simply enjoy the hunt in the future.

know it all

As we were sitting at the dining room table coloring yesterday afternoon my son, Fox looked at me and said "Mom, did you know that Jupiter has 63 moons and Earth has just one?"
"Doesn't Jupiter have 66 moons?" I asked.
"Nope. FALSE.", he replied, just as annoyingly poised as Donald Trump on Celebrity Apprentice.

"Where did you hear that?" I asked, referring to his Dwight Schrute-esque usage of the word FALSE, as that of an impartial critic.
"From my placemat you silly!" he chirped, wearing the proud smirk of condescension. I glanced at the placemat and noticed the publication date; MCMXCVII. Ah. Therein lies the answer to that problem.

Certainly you know that I didn't sign in tonight to dispute the alleged discoveries of Jupiter's moons, but to call attention to the phenomenon that is know-it-all-ism among 4-6 year olds.

Not too long ago, my son thought I was the end all of greatness. Every word that escaped my mouth was like the sound of breaking glass to him. He carefully considered conversation and remained silent. Only later would he recall and repeat the dialogue; questions emerging from the fertile soil of his mind, recently tilled with the induction of new ideas and concepts. Nestled within his wide eyes was a wonder so immense; so incredibly hungry for all things new. So pristine that notions of cynicism and pride would have arrived as cloaked strangers; unrecognizable as the child comprehends.

His desires were innocent; Learning, experiencing, loving, pleasing and helping. His expectations were surpassed by reality. Nothing was as wonderful and amazing as the process.

That being said, I am now grappling with the next phase in Fox's process which is much less endearing and sweet. My child behaves like a know-it-all 99% of the time. He asks a question, and 7 seconds into my response, he rolls his eyes and attempts to change the subject by way of a restroom visit or an outburst of noise. Righteousness is a constant motivator for him, but the method is lazy and he comes across as a turd.

Life has become a contest, all of the sudden. It's as if Fox woke up late one day and has been sprinting from one thing to the next ever since. The process has little meaning to him; the conquest and the domination seem to be at the forefront of his mind.

This weekend I tried to accomplish a few tasks I had been putting off, and Fox was climbing the walls. He came to me every five minutes with another crucial problem or desperate question to be addressed, completely indifferent of my activities. The last 30 minutes of my vacuuming the stairs was peppered with interruptions. Fox stood on the step I was vacuuming mouthing, "I NEED TO ASK YOU SOMETHING for an eternity. My expectation of impermeability by means of vacuum were squelched.

His eyes dramatically widened, he waited until I shut off the machine and addressed him.

"What's the problem?" I asked as impatiently as a woman vacuuming stairs would.
"Could you make a collage with me now?" Fox asked, sweetly.

"As soon as I'm done cleaning up I would love to make a collage with you." I honestly replied. (It's true! I would always rather be making a collage)

He shifted around on the step, clearly dissatisfied and I turned the machine off again and looked at him.

"I mean now now, Mommy. I want you to make a collage now.

This time I did the eye rolling and switched the vacuum machine back on and finished the horrible job at hand. An hour later I was finished, and I joined Fox at the dining room table.

"So what are we going to collage today?" I asked.

"I'm going to make question blocks and fire flowers and thwamps on this side, and you are going to make kupas on that side", he explained. I began cutting and hole-punching and gluing and before I knew it I had started a really awesome blue fish swimming over an earwig/eel.

"Mommy?" Fox warbled, "You aren't supposed to be making snakes right now. And don't put those on that side; I said to put them here" he said, pointing to a blank spot on his side of the page.

"Well what are you working on anyway? You haven't made any pictures since we sat down" I asked, genuinely miffed. Fox set down the hole punch he was stress testing with seven sheets of construction paper and sighed.

In his most "frustrated" voice he groaned; "Oh I don't know what to say! I'm done!", grabbed the pinking shears, then overly-gesturally crossed his arms.

I tried to engage him with another pinching bug, and he seemed excited momentarily. He made a few snips with the shears, then took a thumb loop in each hand and started manically snipping the scissors and making a machine gun noise.

"Please stop" I said firmly. "You are either going to hurt yourself or the scissors".

Fox tossed the scissors across the table, crossed his arms again and acted like I had just asked him to respirate without breathing. Time elapsed. I continued crafting. He continued sulking and complaining.

"What's wrong Fox? You were practically dragging me in here to craft with you and now you say you're finished and you haven't even made anything. What's up with that?"

"Exasperated and evidently fatigued, he shrugged and asked if we could get out the play-dough.

Looking around at the shreds and dots of paper, I expressed to Fox that I would rather he continued collaging since I had to start supper. He groaned and complained with reddened eyes saying "But I don't want to collage anymore! I'm through doing this!"

I said, "OK. Well let's just clean this mess up so we can start on another mess..." Before I even finished with my bullshit quip, he was out of his chair, emoting his utter powerlessness, his inability to help me (help him) clean up. It was distressing for him, obviously, but for me to see him so overwhelmed; so powerless in the face of challenge, it was devastating.

I tried convincing him that the hardest part was starting, and after a few minutes of tears and whining, he began picking up the paper.

After we were finished and the floor was "clean"* Fox remarked "It's true. Starting was harder than just picking all that stuff up. Picking it up was just kinda blah, blah, blah."

"Yeah", I agreed, "Not too many people love cleaning, but it's something that every single person is able to do. And the sooner you start the sooner you're finished".

He was quiet for the first time in hours.

* The floor wasn't technically clean, and it never is.

We moved far away

Things are changing. It's springtime, it costs a bajillion dollars to fill up my gas tank, and we have moved to central Illinois. From the casual reader's end I guess this sounds sudden; brash maybe, but it was planned, sorta. And we weighed our options, briefly. It was in our favor to move and get on with the damn show, we decided during the course of the six weeks prior to the move. Opportunities like this one have been in short supply the past few years, and when a reasonable one presented itself to my husband, he had no trouble seizing it, punching it in the face repeatedly, then dragging it back to his cave where he feasted upon it's meaty carcass.

Other than the obvious inconveniences, our move has been bucolic. We found a picturesque rental property that's dignified without being overly imposing; nothing beyond the realm of what we could repair, erase, or otherwise reverse. Our children behave as if they had always lived in Illinois; discussions of Abraham Lincoln's superior leadership and the disappearing prairie landscape are as natural as the rising sun. Our son arrived into his new school and immediately had new friends, new mentors, and a new bus number. There were virtually no glitches.

The home we own in Knoxville was successfully rented to a professional couple. A couple who had hosted a departmental party a number of years ago at their previous residence, which my family and I attended. The home was tidy and their furnishings were thoughtful. We were thrilled to have them in our home and hoped they would be comfortable there, comfortable even after they inevitably met their new neighbor, Lee. We weren't close friends with the pair; Jason was acquainted with them through the university, so we don't communicate with them outside of rental details and queries. We are both consumed with curiosity regarding their unavoidable relationship with Lee.

Life in the midwest is contrastive by function. Living in a town of 1200 people 15 miles from the metropolis dictates much of our daily activity. Our village has the absolute bottom line of commercial enterprise, including an insurance sales office, a local bank branch, a hair salon, a saloon which serves bar fare, a tanning salon, a furniture refinishing place that doesn't have store hours, a store that sells random items that doesn't have regular hours, a local post office, a small library*, a gas/ convenience station, and finally, during the months of April through September, a homemade ice cream stand. Each day I walk to the post office to check my mail, go to the park, then go on a long walk from one end of the town to the other. Generally I walk south and cross the railroad track, then turn left until I get to the next county road, then turn left again to Main street as it turns back in to a county road at the east end of town. This is where the corn fields begin to the east. My daughter in a stroller, I then walk west on Main a mile till the sidewalk ends at more cornfields. Sometimes we then walk north to a stream where there are trees and reeds, sometimes we walk south past the corn processing place and water processing plant. The water tower bearing the town's name overhead, we watch the trains fly by.

Having neither friends nor options to recreate in a social, non-church environment has created a strange and unfamiliar dynamic in my life. The acquaintances I have made have been through these few establishments; the postmistress, the librarian, the young woman who owns the tanning salon... We are all somehow busy in this trace of a town. Even if I actively took the opportunity to make friends out of these casual encounters, I'm not sure it would be possible to contrive. The librarian has three children ranging in age from 2 to 19. The postmistress is retired, then gone back to work. The neighbor immediately next to me has 9 children with another on the way AND she home schools, AND they are bible translators. Across the street is a lady who has a home day care and her house is crammed with children of all ages, and cars come in and out so much her lawn looks like a parking lot. Anyone can see that these people are busy, and none of them want any more kids around, I speculate. All of this makes me think of my old neighbor, Lee, and I remember how annoying he was. Annoying, but friendly, and almost always available to chat. When we left Knoxville and said goodbye to Lee, I cried like an exhausted baby. Here is his goodbye letter.

Anyway. I'm certain this place will eventually feel like home. Sometimes I'll see a fat man in overalls cruise by on a moped, or a man pushing a wheelbarrow full of garbage and I think I wonder if there is another "Lee" in this town?.

*Library Hours Monday, 9:00 a.m. - 12 noon, 4:00 p.m. - 7:00 p.m. Tuesday, 9:00 a.m. - 12 noon, 4:00 p.m. - 7:00 p.m. Wednesday, 9:00 a.m. - 12:00 noon, 4:00 p.m. - 7:00 p.m. Thursday, 9:00 a.m. - 12 noon, 4:00 p.m. - 7:00 p.m. Friday, 9:00 a.m. - 12 noon, 4:00 p.m. - 7:00 p.m. Saturday, 9:00 a.m. - 12:00 noon

Displaced at the YMCA

I am a devoted Y patron and am usually there everyday during the week. Child watch is between 10am and 1pm, so I fall in with the lunch break crowd; those bad asses who choose to work out instead of eating. Most faces are familiar, but occasionally I see someone new who impresses me in such a way that I have to wonder;
What the hell brought you to the Y today?

The first encounter I had with the "twins" was early last spring. The two women looked somewhere between 40 and 50 years old and they were identical twins. The same round figure, moon face palmed by thin, dark hair, sloped shoulders, arms hanging by their sides. Both women seemed to have dressed with neither regard to their appearance nor their activity for the day. Polyester slacks, panty hoes, grasshopper type shoes, one in a Travis Tritt shirt with a lacy cardigan on top, the other with a large, spotty sweatshirt. The two of them were on tread mills side by side. Neither of them were going more than 2 mph, and the slow pace seemed to match up with their natural gaits. One disappeared and returned with a bag of Fritos and a Mountain Dew. She returned to the tread mill, snacking through the remaining quarter mile. It had never occurred to me to eat on a tread mill, but there are television sets everywhere and I completely understand the merit of snacking while watching TV.

The twins didn't return for some time. The next time was in August during a really hot week. They found their places a couple rows in front of me and set their bags down beside the tread mills. One had a fountain drink in a Pilot Travel center cup. Once I saw a woman drinking a huge frappuccino-looking drink from Starbucks while using the elliptical machine, complete with whipped cream, so the fountain drink didn't strike me as too strange. Her sister was wearing a pair of cut off sweat pants that seemed to flair out from the hip, and a white v neck undershirt. They were both well into their snail's pace walks when I noticed the one wearing sweat pants was holding an unlit cigarette.

The downtown YMCA is great for a number of reasons. My favorite reason is that the workout room overlooks the major intersection of Henley Street and Clinch Ave, right across the street form the Sunsphere and World's Fair Park. A steady stream of foot and vehicle traffic files through the concrete corridor and there's always something interesting to witness. Yesterday I was using one of the resistance machines close to the window so I could see the parking area and sidewalk. A man crossed the south intersection of clinch, then continued traveling north on the Henley Street sidewalk, stopping periodically to examine the ground. As he approached the area immediately in front of the resistance machines I saw him stop and stoop to his knee. He picked up a few cigarette buts from the ground, pulled a plastic sandwich baggie from his breast pocket, put two inside the baggie, and after rolling the other between his fingers a few times he lit it and continued on his way. I was on the phone with my mom the entire time and gave her a play by play. I had been there the Saturday prior and that parking area was being used for tailgating purposes, so I suppose it would be a good scavenging spot.

There's plenty of other amazing things to see at the downtown Y. A large, musclebound man putting a dip of tobacco in before lifting 400 pounds, a pre-teen walking into the cardio room in short shorts and a string bikini top, a farmer in overalls and muddy boots doing curls with three pound weights, a downtown lawyer cussing her daughter out on the phone after hearing of her latest speeding ticket, two businessmen playing a heated game of ping pong that ended with an injury, a woman with the sweetest helper dog I've ever seen that sits patently beside her elliptical machine till she's done, an 87 year old man who can outlast most of the 20 year olds... It is an amazing place full of wonderful and interesting people. I hope the YMCA in Champaign Illinois is half as awesome as the downtown Knoxville location.

I'm venting

Lee has been 100% reflective of these trying times. A few weeks ago his buddy, T for short, came by and told Lee that his wife was in the hospital for a chronic breathing problem and she had to quit smoking. T is an undaunted, life smoker, and at anytime he has a cigarette in his hand and at least one unopened pack in his breast pocket. He carries a pistol, uses only cash, and went to jail for his involvement in a cock fighting ring. A tough type of man who I was shocked to discover was married.

Lee was upset by the news and vowed to T that he was going to quit smoking. When he was recounting this tale to me he explained that she wasn't going to make it if she couldn't quit smoking, and that the doctors wouldn't even treat her if she continued. I asked if the doc had prescribed patches to help her quit, and Lee said; "Oh yeah, T said he give'er th' reel strong wuns an put 'em all over her back" He motioned helplessly towards the sky, then put his hand to his forehead, shaking his head. Lamenting about how though he had only met her once, she seemed like a nice person and she had a really nice car that she made payments on "ever'month on time" and was real good to T. Then in a defeated kind of voice he said, "so Jill since I'm quittin an'all lemme get a few uh them Camels" I said "But you are quitting, right?" Angrily he boomed back in a condescending draw, "Yeah that's what I'm a'sayin! I'm tryin' t'quit but I've been smoking since I was a kid probably forty years so's I can't just stop! Ya can't just stop when you been smokin that long Jill!"

I reluctantly gave him one cigarette and told him he could get some patches. He tried to be appreciative of the single I had given him and chuckling said "I figure I can get me one [cigarette] here er there an use 'at cigarette money tuh get an extra bag uh gange an uh pint more uh t'at moo moo ever'month!"

The next evening he came over while we were eating dinner. We were having spaghetti and meatballs and I was having a glass of wine. Lee entered carrying a paper package like a pizza and he had a huge knife in his back pocket. The first thing that he said (yelled) was "Oh hell! Jill's already on the alcohol! DAYYAM!" Laughing loudly as his eyes darted around the kitchen, I told him that he could have a glass of it if he wanted and aimed him toward the box that it came in. "naw thanks you know I can't drink 'at red wine. I gotta have my moo moo! (laughter) At'stuff gives me heartburnacid'n'digestion. Caint drink it. What I'gotta have is that good, clean moonshine my cussins make" Lee then brought the paper bag carefully up to face level and said "All right now guess what I've brought chall! Don't chall never say I don't bring yuh nuthin cuz I do. You know I've been helpin' feed them kids" With a Vanna White-esque motion he waved his hand over the package, then inserted it into the bag. With a shaky hand he removed a frozen key lime pie and honked a noise alerting us of a prize being won. Fox immediately asked if it was chocolate, and after learning it wasn't he said; "you can have that icy pie cause I like chocolate pie".

Never being a big fan of non-chocolate desserts myself either, I said "hmm. Thanks Lee" Very animatedly Lee pulled the butcher knife from his back pocket, put the pie on the table in the middle of our supper, and hacked it in two, returning part into the mystical paper bag. Glancing down at my children Lee asked "Hey Jill where you keeping those things?" He then started feeling around above the hutch to the secret place I stash my smokes. I shot him a dirty look as he took a handful of cigarettes and stuffed them into his pocket. Fox said "what was that Lee??? What did you take??" Lee laughed and acted like he was some sort of magician and said something like "Oh hell Foxy you can't get by old Lee, hehehe!! You ain't seen nothin did'ge? You'll NEVER get one by me son!"

I didn't try to hide my annoyance with him; Lee is well aware that I hide my smoking from my children, and that I usually have a pack for a month, smoking only if they're not around. He smokes the shittiest, dirtiest, hand-rolling tobacco available, and he smokes constantly. He has zero tact about taking other people's cigarettes and I've watched him smoke twelve out of a woman's pack while she wasn't paying attention, then take the remaining one when he left. Jason admitted that he had given Lee cigarettes a few times over the past week. He said that the first few times he offered him one which he immediately smoked as he and Jason were talking, then asked for "one more for th'road", which Jason obliged, for some reason. Then later when Lee outright insisted on his giving him 2 Jason refused and tried to explaining that he was smoking more of my stash than I was. Jason said Lee was indignant and insinuated that we were being stingy then tried to recount all of the blessings he had bestowed upon us. Jason stopped him and told him that he had bought that pack two weeks prior for almost six bucks and that I had only smoked three of the whole pack. He then held the pack to show Lee that there were four or five left and clarified that Lee had smoked them all. Then reminded him that he was supposed to be quitting. In honor of T's wife.

A few days ago Lee walked across the street and threw a filthy laundry basket into my yard. "Here ye go Jill! I thought you cud'use a basket for warshin' all them clothes. I had sum bike motor parts in'thar an that's what that is. Oil. Jus needs tuh be warshed out"

I told him that I owned four (non-oily) laundry baskets and I didn't need that one. He ignored me and walked off so I put it into my recycling bin so the kids didn't touch it and get even oilier. A few days later I noticed Lee had removed the basket from the recycling bin, fashioned it into a basketball goal and attached it to a tree in his yard. He had also taken a few loads of gravel from our parking area and leveled the area beneath the goal, and taken a few loads of mulch from our mulch pile for the surrounding area. When I returned from the YMCA he had dragged an old piece of linoleum to cover the mulch and gravel, and was standing there bouncing a ball, proud as hell.

We got out of the car and Lee said "Look'et whut I done! This is whar' th'NBAs is gonna be yall!" The kids looked at Lee bouncing the ball and shooting for a while. Fox retrieved the ball for Lee a couple of times before it rolled down our road, then said "Look Lee! The ball will roll all the way down the road when you miss"

Later that day Lee had gathered some cable left in the ditch by the telephone company and made a zig-zagged barrier just behind the goal post. When Fox saw it he was thrilled. "Nice halloween decoration Lee!! It needs a big black spider in the middle of it and a mummy!", Fox yelled. By this time Lee had begun to think he was being made fun of by a child and started for the ball. Fox was singing "spider man, spi-der man" to the tune of the A-Team song, and climbing on the cord mesh, tight rope style. "Foxy git'off thare! Aat's all th'wire I could find down thar an if you break it AIT'S IT" At that moment the volleyball sized knot Lee had tied slipped and Fox tumbled onto the cushy linoleum pad. The tension in the web was lost, shitty cords draped lifelessly around the trees.

Lee had began yelling and continued through the course of the spectacle; total devastation crusted on his face, and seemed ruined as Fox pulled his shoe off to free himself of the cable. "Say you're sorry Fox" I ordered. "Sorry Lee. I can help you fix it cause I've got seven bungee cords and some of mom's yarn", Fox offered, then sprinted away. Lee couldn't remain angry.

Here's a super spooky picture:

Creepiest ever

It seemed like a normal estate sale on paper. A "Years of collecting...H&H items....depression glass...vintage hats" type of affair, but upon arrival I knew it was different than all the others.

The neighborhood was a typical suburban microcosm with winding, ranch house lined avenues. There were a number of vehicles in the shady driveway and even more parked along the sides of the road. We stopped the car and pulled our children from their child restraints, then walked toward the house.

My initial impression of the house was the same as the others in that neighborhood. They all appeared to have been built between the late 40s and early 60s and had a minimalist tidiness about them with sparsely landscaped lawns. As I approached the teetering, doorless mailbox I glanced at the ground and stepped over a large, dead blacksnake. The snake was in the level area of the edge of the yard where people were trailing in; smack in the middle of the walkway. I momentarily considered it odd that neither the owners nor the estate liquidation company bothered moving the carcass before customers arrived.
Jason and I figured the snake was hibernating in the house and then got unpacked, and then got dead.
It was freezing cold so we hurried up the slick, moss covered and railing-less front steps and into the house.
Every surface was covered with relics and dust. The floor was spongy beneath my feet and the olive colored carpet was emitting the musty odor of moist decay. Old people were sitting in filthy wingback chairs eating Krispy Kreme doughnuts and wiping their finger tips on the threadbare damask. Discussions of blood sugar and cholesterol levels weighed heavily in the cramped livingroom. For fear of something in that environment mingling into my person I was scarcely breathing through mouth; How the hell were these people eating in that place?
The contents of most estate sales I go to are "mid-century vintage" heavy; probably people who married in the 1960s, started families in the 70s. Lot's of Herb Alpert albums, melamine and golden amber tones. This sale could best be described as "post war". Everything was a wavering hue of brown, and there wasn't a single plastic item anywhere. Crocks, churns, enameled pots, dippers, wooden pipes, a ventriloquist's dummy, an art deco cash register that must of weighed two hundred pounds, four fire place bellows, two cases of flatware, dishes, furniture..
The house was was absolutely packed before any customers showed up, so the scene was a crammed spectrum of all sorts of uncomfortable people.

It was soon obvious that there was nothing we needed in this house. Fox and I were looking at the oldest vacuum cleaner I had ever seen when Jason and Rainer popped into the back bedroom. We were crammed in there with a dozen other people and when they arrived Fox and I were attempting to exit the room. I picked Fox up to facilitate our retreat and as I glanced over at my husband he exclaimed,

"NO SHIT! Look at that!! Crows picking a dead deer carcass RIGHT THERE in this creepy-ass place!! This place is TOO WEIRD!!"

His expression was one of rejoice and pure satisfaction; as if he had won a long sought contest of wits. Just outside the picture window of that bedroom was, in fact a large buck, collapsed in the initial stages of decomposition, covered in crows. A murder of crows, tugging, jerking, slinging, and flapping in the frenzy of feeding.




People tend to behave as if they were in a library while at estate sales. Whispering and tip-toeing, careful foot wiping upon entry, and appreciative courtesies when leaving are not uncommon. When Jason saw the biology in action outside, he forgot these conditions and his words were j-u-s-t short of yelling. Every person in the room stopped perusing and focused on Jason, then looked to the subject of his declaration outside, then looked back at him in utter disgust.

"THAT IS AWESOME! Let's go look at it! Come on Fox!!"
Jason exclaimed as he hustled our 10 month old daughter through the crowd and gestured at my son and I by tossing his head. Eyes rolled. Heads shook. Old ladies sent disapproving looks of pity towards my little family as we rushed out.
As we burst out the front door, Fox reeled as he stumbled towards the edge of the landing and yelled something about there not being a "handle slide thing", and I pulled him to safety before he fell into a murky mound of leaf litter.

Slipping between a moldy mini van and a holly bush we found our way around the side of the house. Passing an open cellar door we continued through a thicket, and climbed up a small bank to the back yard.
We approached the broken carcass and the black birds reluctantly relocated. Fox was quiet (for once) while Jason and I pondered the scenario.

Perhaps the deer had been hit on the busy highway on the other side of the subdivision then finally collapsed here. Or maybe it starved in this thinning, once wooded area. One thing is certain, and that is that something had eaten the deer's hind quarters, and someone had sawed off it's antlers.
Fox made a circle around the body and quietly asked where the deer was. We asked him why he didn't think the deer was lying in front of us, and he mumbled something about the hunter and the deer's eyes. Jason asked Fox if he was ready to go deer hunting, shoot, kill then clean a deer, and Fox smiled and shook his head. We turned to check out the Saw-esque basement and Fox sang a farewell over his shoulder.

This bag wants to party

A couple of weeks ago Lee came over to my house, boisterous and jovial, bearing a pint jar of moonshine and some odd, food pantry items. His cousins had finished another batch of liquor, and life was good again.

After insisting that I try a sip, he explained that he was afraid that Jason was going to poison me with the muscadine wine "he'd mixed up" and that he wanted me to have "sumthin' good-n-safe t'drank on"

As it happened, Jason and I were bottling the wine that very night, and had a few people over to try it in it's youth. We had a total of 10 liters of wine in the house, and no one was interested in mixing wine and moonshine. (again)

Pretending to sip the moonshine, I expressed my approval and thanked Lee for the pantry gifts. (instant mashed potatoes, powdered milk, gravy mix, rice, THREE POUNDS of dried cherries). I was not surprised to find out later that all of the food had been donated by the Methodist church's food pantry to Lee's friend, who then brought it to Lee in exchange for some substance.. and after Lee took the items he was interested in ("sum lederhosen sausages, a couple'uh'em corn cake mixes, an sum beefaroni cans") he passed the rest to us in a care package. Oh yeah, there was also a new dish towel in the box. ?

Lee crossed the street to his house where his friends had arrived, and we heard every elevated word exchanged between them for the rest of the night.

The next day, Lee didn't emerge till sometime after 3:30pm when he was seen rinsing something in the faucet outside of his house. Fox and I were working in the yard while Rainer napped, and I was glad Lee didn't come explain what was going on. Every time he comes within 10 feet of the house while Rainer is sleeping she wakes up, and most of his "morning-after" stories include an assessment of last night's libations based on his morning bowel movement. Information I could do without.

A few hours later Lee knocked on the door and was clearly drunk. He asked to borrow a can of tomatoes, told me he loved me, then went back to his house where there were four or five cars parked.

Jason and I had dinner, got the kids to bed, and were preparing to go to bed ourselves when I heard noises on the porch and Lee's trademark knock.

Lee bounded into the house as if one Leg was longer than the other, and started speaking in a tongue similar to that of an auctioneer at a barnyard auction. I cringed, imagining the kids were fearing the end of the world, and gestured for Lee to lower his voice.

"Five dollars! Here, take it, take this!!"

Lee was waving a ten dollar bill at me, aiming it towards my hand and jerking his head in the direction of the kitchen.

"Listen! Listen Jeel. Here's five dollar, YOU give ME a five an that moo moo I give yee. Y'hear me? I give you five, YOU give ME five, an at's for the moo moo"

His instructions became more frantic and quantitative; involving on the spot estimates about the cost of a pint of moonshine (based on the $25/a jar figures) and his level of intoxication became evident.

Still unclear about his intentions, I was able to determine that it was the moonshine he had given me in the care package that he wanted. Still untouched, I retrieved it from the freezer and gave it to him, refusing the "five" ten dollar bill in his hand.

His demeanor shifted, and his hands met each other as if in prayer.

"Thank ye Jeel! Man, I dropped my lass jar uh moo moo an I'm in the middle uh partyin! I thought I'd killed it then membered bout th pint I give ye. I giv'ye five dollars for it, but I jus got a ten."

Ah. The $5/$10 conundrum became clear to me. I told him that I didn't have cash and to just keep it, that he had given it to me so it was mine to give away, but he refused. He left the ten on the mantle and returned to his party.

The next day Lee was full of apologies, and I insisted that it was perfectly fine, but he felt guilty about taking the gift back.

"I'll make it up to you Jeel. Somehow".

Sunday Lee came to the door with a huge smile on his face and a wadded bag in his hand. Unable to contain his excitement, he pulled a jar of maraschino cherries from the wad, and handed it to me in the manor of handling the holy grail.
In a hilarious, sarcastic tone Lee exclaimed;

"Check it out Asian Ninenine! I tole you I'd get cha'back! These'll be ready to eat in three days. They'll be RIGHT!"

I thanked him for the moonshine cherries and asked if they go in the fridge or the freezer, and he thanked me again for "spottin him that pint", then headed for the door. Before he left he said;

"One more thing; could'ja do me another favor an write me a letter to the lectric company. I's $29.19 short this month on the light bill cuz I was sick lass month an had to spend money on cough'n cold medicine an I need to tell em I'll pay it back next time. You know, for January's bill. See really I's jus drinkin on that moo moo an spent all my money on it. I can't hardly see or spell to write somethin like at. I don't need it till tomorrow."

I told him that I would.

The letter went something like this:

To Whom it may concern,


Due to sickness and the associated expenses this payment is incomplete by the sum of $29.19. This amount will be paid along with the January 2011 bill as a past due amount.


Regretfully,

The next day he came over for the note. Clearly impressed with the typed letter, Lee said

"Thanks Jeel. Printed an all. Jew eat some uh them cherries?"

I told him that I hadn't since he said they wouldn't be "cured" for another day or so, and he said;

"Well hell, Jeel! You never do what I say till now! I'd been into'em already"

my summer, or summerlee

Thinking back over the past few months is a sweet, hot, quick blur of a memory. My gorgeous daughter was born in March, and that's when everything got crazy. It was actually crazy before that, but having a newborn baby makes every little thing seem like a scene from a movie; a movie you have a major, non-acting role in. Like "Key Grip" or "Best Boy" or "Director" or some crap like that.


After my little girl was born it took forever for me to get back on my feet. Following her surgical birth, I got mastitis in both breasts. TMI, I know, but mastitis is no joke! I was on serious pain meds, plus 800mg of motrin every 6 hours, so the fever and pain didn't appear until the middle of the night when I would wake up in a cold sweat. I chalked it up to the healing process and didn't get treated till a month after the horrid bacteria had set up shop in my junk. It was awful. Luckily the antibiotics worked their moldy magic and it cleared up within 10 days. When I began feeling better it was like having a new lease on life. Everything was fun and exciting after looking at the inside of my house for a month. We collected morels and went to gigs; Rainer went on her first camping trip when she was just 2 months old. I was up for anything.


Fox had his 4th birthday in July and we had a last minute party for him. Little kid birthdays are great because you can do whatever you want, invite whomsoever you want, and prepare whatever you want. Later birthdays will likely be full of the weird parents of children your kid happens to know. No kegs. No BB guns. No carnitas with lime and cilantro. We set up the baby pool and let the kids run wild. Lee showed up and decided to take a dip.



Jason's band "CATFISH MERCURY LOAD" played tons: Ijams Fest, Amp Fest, First Friday at Oodles, Bethfest, Kemmer's Annual BBQ Bluegrass Jam... It was great! Every weekend was busy. Amp Fest was a benefit for Mountain Justice in downtown Knoxville. The festival was in the parking lot of a block of bars, nothing but pavement and broken beer bottles. We told Lee about it and he promised that he would come. After a few hours he showed up on his bike with a crumpled paper bag shoved in his pants-pockets. From my face painting table I watched him arrive, take the bag out, open it and start eating M and Ms by the handful. I was relieved that it was chocolate and not pot.

In no time Fox had sensed the presence of candy and found Lee. Fox had been playing in a dusty parking lot at 90 degrees for hours and was filthy. When Lee saw Fox the look on his face was priceless. Pure disgust mixed with disappointment. He wouldn't give Fox any candy and wrapped it back up in the paper bag and put it back in his shorts, scolding him all the way. He forced Fox over to the outdoor bar and removed his bandanna. He flooded it with ice water from the cooler on the bar and proceeded to give Fox a whores bath right there in front of the crowd. I didn't get a picture of the bathing, but I did get this one of Lee's arrival which I thought was artful, what with the satellite dish on the side.





The entire summer was smattered with events like this one. Parties, gigs, weddings, visits; very little work got done, but it was too hot to work outside anyway. The only real work that went on occurred after each of the appliance disasters we experienced. First the TV went, then the heat pump, then the washing machine, then the ice maker, then the hot water heater.. It was a remarkable chronology of bad luck. We fixed the A/C, replaced the heat pump and the washer, and shit-canned the ice maker and the TV. No one got sick or arrested, so we were able to chalk our bad fortune up to poor quality consumer products.





I did manage to do a little sewing last month. Before then I hadn't sewn since early in my pregnancy; probably last October. Except for a little project I did for Lee. He came over one day with his favorite Superman T-shirt, and his "over-hauls". As he walked in the house was filled with the warm aroma of a smoldering cigarette butt.

Lee explained his idea for modifying his garments and asked if I could do it for him. This entailed cutting the "S" Superman emblem from the T-shirt and sewing it onto the bib of his "over-hauls". I told him that I would do it.

He said "Thanks a lot Jill, you know I'll make it up to you somehow. I just need tuh get it done b'fore tonight. I'm gonna ride my bike downtown an go see 'at show"

I wasn't sure what show he was referring to, but I figured an outfit like that is appropriate for any event or occasion.





Fox thought it was the coolest thing he had ever seen and immediately wanted to change his overalls to match Lee's. I said no. Not till he fully outgrew his Superman tank.

Don't Fuck with the Natives, or Lee's Rant about 'nam

My Music Media Box

Indo Music Code Generator by musik-live.net

Brace yourselves. This is a bizarre monologue by Lee. Don't read any farther, just listen.


Here's what happened:

Jason walked over to Lee's house the other night to return some plates he had left at our house, and realized he had his his voice recorder in his breast pocket. As soon as he walked in Lee began this explanation of why he never received the millions of dollars which he told everyone about. Those of you who have followed this blog know all about this, those who haven't might enjoy the recording for the sheer drama. Any archived blogs tagged with "wacky neighbor", "crazy neighbor", "lee" or any combination might provide an informed backdrop for those interested, but I'll admit that no amount of information will make this make sense.


The general idea is that while on missions in Afganistan and Vietnam, Lee killed an unstated number of people in a lagoon of some sort, blinded a man-eating, Taliban owned lion with an explosive hen carcass crammed full of "red oak saw dust and broken glass", and was able to manage with the help and direction of an Arapaho Indian Chief.


Because he was committed to the Natives for blessing him with his powers and abilities, he was unable to confront the government regarding the money they owed him for completing this mission. After participating in a Sundance ritual, Lee received a Native Blessing of the "Blue Lights", which have followed him around ever since. Lee has hundreds of these "mystical orb" photographs, and believes them to be Native Spirits protecting him, but when he sees them in photographs of other people, he believes they are negative or otherwise unclean spirits.

He believes that the government has began to realize his connection with the Natives, and that the Native's philosophy of the "circle of life" is preventing the completion of the agreement between the NSA and himself.

Finally, since three of the bodies in the lagoon have been discovered, the success of the mission is clear, prompting the government to finally pay up. Lee mentions that he knows the money is coming since he saw one of the government agents responsible for accounts payable featured in an Olive Garden commercial.

Lee has been biding his time "being secluded and white" and thirty years have passed while he has waited. He is relieved that it's finally over after "[putting] everything on the line for it"

After Lee finished speaking, Jason set down the dishes he was returning, and opened his mouth to speak, but could think of nothing appropriate. Luckily, Lee's ramble continued, and moved on to other matters. Hopefully Jason will edit the rest of it so I can publish it soon.

"Estate Sale", directed by David Lynch

I've gotten into going to estate sales.

Each weekend Jason and I check the paper and look for interesting, local sales and make a morning of it. We find excitement and wonder in rummaging through the belongings of the recently departed, and there's typically older living folks around to occupy Fox, my three year old son.

Last month on one such morning, Fox, Jason and I set out with a list of addresses of estate sales. We woke up early and wanted to get out as soon as we could because it had snowed a few inches and driving in the snow is so fun, but so rare.

The first sale was really crummy, and the next two didn't seem to be happening due to the snow. The last sale was in an area neither of us were very familiar with. I was navigating with the map, and when we arrived at the address it was a muddy, gravel drive ascending a small hill, topped with a broad, aging barn, surrounded by machinery, ladders and golf cart parts.

We figured it was the right place, though there were no other vehicles in the driveway, and the three of us approached the windowless door.

In an attempt to prevent a gust of cold air, we rushed in through the cracked door and pulled it shut in a single, fluid motion. A moment passed as our eyes adjusted to the dim lighting, and we realized that we were in a small corridor, not a vacuous expanse as we had all silently imagined.

The sound of muffled conversation and a fading, clinking noise was coming from the dark corner. Before us was a small, folding table covered with cups and statuettes with price tags attached. An old barrel-turned-wood stove blazed just inches away from the backs of our legs, so Fox naturally gravitated towards it. Jason and I exchanged looks of doubt, and we assessed the items on the table, as there were no other tables or display areas in sight. The objects were bizarre and obtusely overpriced; a leather bottle for eighty five bucks, two elephant bookends for forty five dollars each. Gourd drinking vessels painted with mineral paints, hand blown glass bottles shaped like a rainbow.... It was more like an exhibit of worldly artifacts than a Knoxville estate sale.

Suddenly, a woman with thin, white hair pulled onto the top of her head was upon us, and she greeted us in a mechanically high-pitched German accent.

"Good day to you, and this small boy who loves the fire" she said as she gestured towards Fox, quickly repositioning her hand behind the small of her back.

We said hello and introduced ourselves, then commended her table of antiques for their authenticity and quality. She willed her face to rearrange itself into a smile formation, then asked "What is it that interests you"?

Jason and I looked at each other blankly, and he blindly picked up something from the table and began asking questions about it's origins. I pretended to be concerned with Fox's proximity to the stove, and pardoned myself from the sales pitch.

As I knelt down to Fox's level I realized that there were two middle aged men sitting behind a plywood table, drinking whiskey. I smiled up at the men and asked how they were doing, Fox fully hypnotized by the dancing flames in the stove. The men smiled and asked about the roads, and I told them that they were fine and that no one much was out.

I heard the old German lady describing the Italian leather bottle to Jason, expressing her belief in it's superiority to any other vessel due to it's durability, unbreakability, and that it "WILL not leak, not EVER"

Awkwardly, I praised the strange stove's great dimensions, complaining about my own stove's size and it's need for short, little stumps of wood to feed it, while this stove could accommodate huge log sections.

As if an animation button was pressed, the younger man rose and joined Fox and I on the small rug in front of the stove and began describing how he constructed the stove from the interior of an old water heater. He showed us the door mechanism, and the tubes and dampers he inserted into the base of the barrel for air. The man was absolutely thrilled to be discussing the stove, so we continued on topic for what seemed like forever.

Jason and the old woman had made their way through all of the items on the table and had began chatting with the other drinking man, who abruptly disappeared through a back door, then reappeared carrying a small, wooden truck. The man presented it to Fox who was quickly tiring of the fire, and I took a moment to explain to Fox that he wasn't to burn the truck, no matter what.

The man smiled and pointed towards the truck with his sweating, amber-toned drink and said "Old Ricky Melton's daddy used to make them trucks. He give me two or three an they jus been out here since".

His accent was so East Tennessee that I was almost pulled from the strange, German spell cast by the woman. The woman carefully made her way over to the man, stepping gingerly around Fox and I, and putting her arm around him murmured sternly into his ear, "Did you give that truck to the boy? That your friend has made?"

The man drunkenly shrugged and turned his face away from the woman. She continued pressing the question until it became louder and unavoidable to the rest of us.

Feeling an uncomfortable escalation in emotion, I nervously blurted, "Hey! We'll leave the truck here when we leave! We don't want to take it from you"

The two pairs of eyes seemed to snap up at me at the same moment, and the man said, "waail. I'll take five dollar for it", as if he were doing me a great favor.

There was no part of me that wanted to buy the truck. Not that there was anything wrong with it, but I knew that we would bring it home, then Fox would put it with the other million trucks he had and it would soon be forgotten.

"No, I couldn't! It's an heirloom from a family friend! I couldn't take it" I attempted.

"Five dollar's fine" He said without any trace of a smile.

I knew for a fact that we didn't have any money. Typically when you go to an estate sale it is held by an estate-handling company, and they are A-OK with accepting checks. We just don't take cash around much.

The more time elapsed the more I wanted to grab Fox and bolt, leaving the truck on the rug in front of the stove, but Jason began fishing around in his pocket. At that exact moment the barn door swung open and three college students sauntered in carrying suspicious-looking, "go vols orange" insulated cups.

The younger man stood up and welcomed the trio in, and one of the college kids asked about the golf carts he saw out front. Jovially, the man directed the student through the back door and I caught a glimpse of a john boat on a trailer, and another intact golf cart. The drunk man engaged the other two students, one male, one female about the game and who was winning.

I wanted to leave that place so badly. Jason knew it and he bent down to parley with Fox and I. He held out his hand showcasing three one dollar bills, three quarters, two dimes and four nickles. Hmmmmm. Will this be seen as an affront? I wondered. Will this be the gesture that turns this intoxicated man into a kidnapping, killing machine?

Jason sensed my concern, and as he squatted in the cramped area the seam in the seat of his pants tore. Loudly. Alarmed, I looked at him, then casually reclined myself to access the damage, then narrowly avoided a panic attack by visualizing myself back in my car, driving away, eating chocolate.

The two men burst forth through the back door, and Fox got a better look at the boat, then started harping about wanting to go look at it. Hoping for a distracted exit, I said no, but the younger man heard him and said "Aww! He can go take a look at that boat! Come on!" He reached over to direct Fox towards the door and I glanced at Jason, who simultaneously rose and followed, discreetly pulling his sweatshirt over the seat of his pants.

The college threesome were laughing riotously as they left the building, expressing thanks about something unknown.

Fox, Jason and the younger man reemerged from the back room where Fox was running and squealing, clearly over the scene and ready to move on. Jason had a few bills in his hand and explained our lack of funding to the man. The younger man smiled and looked at the other man and the old woman and said "He wants that wooden truck but all he's got is four dollars an fifteen cents"

The drunker man looked at the old woman with a thoughtful look, and she nodded with closed eyes and her lips pressed firmly together. Neither seemed pleased with the deal.

We gave them the wad of money, Fox grabbed the truck, and we got the hell out of that place.