Wildfire Season

So I heard it was going to be 108 degrees in Nashville sometime this week.

!!!!!!

The above sentence is a swear-word. You pick which one. 

Glad I'm no longer living there. Yes, I'm a true desert-lover. This is where I belong, where wildfires ravage through the scrub from the merest evil glare or fiery glance. That seems to be the case, anyway. All it takes is a tiny spark and whoosh! The entire place has gone up in flames. I forgot that summers were considered wildfire season out here until this summer.

Smoke from the fire across the valley hovering ominously above my house. Was it the end of the world? Almost

There was a small fire across the street from my house last weekend. I don't know how it started. The houses are brand new there, and the fire department came out and extinguished it. Thankfully.

Our neighbor was like, "Yeah, no idea how it started. Just a little blaze in the mulch. Spontaneous combustion, I guess. The fire department couldn't tell us how it started."

Yeah right. I'm sure he was out there, hiding between the houses–which are these very narrow alleyways–sneaking a smoke, when his wife came out looking for him, "Honey! Honey!"

And he threw down the cigarette and ran inside.

That's what I was thinking, anyway. They're new in the neighborhood, so I don't know them. Maybe he doesn't have to sneak a smoke when he wants one.

Though he did blame the construction workers down the street as a possible source for the fire. "Could have been one of the construction workers, or landscapers, smoking, who knows?"

That's more believable than spontaneous combustion. Right?

Then a few days later, the entire mountain across the valley from us went up in flames. I tweeted about it, because Corbet and I drove over there to get an up-close view. So we took some pictures and put them up.

We weren't really in danger from that one, although, after the Colorado Springs fire, anything is possible. Also, there was a huge fire in central Utah that burned over 39,000 acres, so, I suppose the dump fire, as it was called, COULD have crossed the valley and reached the Thanksgiving Point area.

Watching the dump-fire from a relatively safe distance.

Despite the wildfires, nearly every day, I look outside and think, "Man, I love Utah."

But I'm sure everyone else hates it and if you can't tolerate a religious majority or the dry heat, you would hate it here too. That encompasses, what, ninety-nine percent of the world's population? So don't move here, unless you get a personal OK from me, and then you can come. That's how it works here.

Lemon sunsets. Every night, almost. When I lived in Nashville, I really missed those. Sunsets in the south were these sultry, hazy affairs that blurred against the trees or rolling hills. In Utah they're always colorful and sharp, defined in dark lines against the mountainous horizon.

The sunrises are probably the same, but I'm usually sleeping.

And the temperatures. What a dream! If it got to 108 here, it would be far more tolerable than a 108 in Nashville, where the humidity would push it up to a 120 or something murderous like that.

I've gotten sunburned and stuff living here again because I forget what it's like to spend time outside, because in Nashville, I never wanted to be outside in the summer. So I stayed in.

Another thing, no cicadas. None. Just the sweet symphony of the crickets and grasshoppers. Also, no human-sized insects to torment you.

Monstrous bugs are very common in the South.

So anyway, if I had to choose the west with all the wildfires or the south with the humidity and temperatures ranging +105 degrees (F), which would I pick?

Really, not a tough choice. 

Baby screaming at me. Must go....

Ten Things I Loved About Nashville. Eleven Things. Er. Twelve. Twelve Things.

Occasionally I will think, "Holy crapola. It's so sweet to be back in Utah." And then I smile indulgently and look at the snowy peaks to the east and the deep blue sky and do the success baby meme move, without the sand.

Really, I have no regrets about leaving Nashville. Sometimes I remember it fondly as a period of my life that I'll never get back. I think of how naive I was back then. How untried and untested. I laugh to remember. "Ha ha ha! Ha ha ha ha!" This is known as my Lydia moment. Lydia from Pride and Prejudice? Right? The Colin Firth version. Stupid, naive, egocentric Lydia . . . oh Lydia. 

Anyway. It's great being in Utah. Nashville was great. I loved it until it was time to move on. And now I'm here and I can look back and think, "That was an awesome time." There are things I will miss. Let me number them.

1. Fireflies. Probably the most amazing insect out there, fireflies never get boring. They don't. You can have seen ten thousand fireflies and still, that first one of the warm season and bam! You're transported to the woods where the sprites and nymphs dance in a magical circle to a tune supplied by a lute playing satyr. Something like that. Or, you know, you just feel like a kid again when you see them. I love you fireflies.

2. Cardinals. A perfect burst of color. Gorgeous. Lovable. Cuddly cardinals. No, kidding. If ONLY birds were cuddly, that would be phenomenal. Like a cat with wings. Who doesn't want to hug a bird? That's MY question. So anyway, I don't know every bird of the continental United States, but the cardinal is one of those that just kind of surprises you. Their plumage is this brilliant shade of red, and so often you see it against a backdrop of green and it's surprising, fresh, and beautiful. I'm sure it feels exactly like spotting a toucan in the jungle. Exactly.

3. Billions of trees. I did love the forests and trees of the south. But I don't think you can have that sheer number without the humidity. Maybe I'm wrong? I don't know. I didn't deal with humidity well, so if that's the case—no trees without the humid climate—then I'll go for fewer trees. I appreciated the green. But you know what? It didn't last. The middle of summer and lots of stuff died and turned brown, just like Utah, but you got the drab brown AND the humidity. Unfair. Anyway. So, loved the forests.

4. La Hacienda Taqueria. So, apparently my friend Emily's FAVORITE Mexican restaurant in Salt Lake just got busted for smuggling drugs on the side. They were THAT authentic. And my favorite Mexican restaurant is in Nashville, and I'm wondering if that "tortilla factory" in the back is really, well, you know? Because it's THAT authentic. Truly amazing. It's on Nolensville Pike by Thompson Lane. So if you're visiting Nashville and you think, "Hey, I'll sample the local fare," of course the logical choice is La Hacienda, or La Hac (with an S sound) as Stoker and I called it. It's A-MAZ-ING. Really. Stoker loved the molcajete and I loved the bistec ranchero or bistec la Mexicana. But EVERYTHING on the menu is superb. If you go, say hello to Maria, Chava (his nickname), and Gloria from me. I miss them. Really. They were like family.

5. Tornado warnings/watches. Kidding. I don't miss them. They happened too often and I sincerely had lots of nightmares about tornadoes. And we had some pretty bad storms and floods while living in Nashville. I keep thinking that it would be ironic to have sort of escaped the south without a bad tornado only to have one here. We live in a very windy area of the Salt Lake Valley (I can see a huge windmill by Camp Williams from my window) and I curse the wind. All my life I looked at that windmill on the way to grandma's, but it never hit me the way it has living here, that the windmill is there because this part of the valley is a veritable wind tunnel. Yeah, and there's that huge paragliding/hang-gliding cliff right over there. Duh. Stupid wind.

6. Being "in the South." It was kind of cool. The culture there is different from that of Utah and I enjoyed the experience of the region. I could go into it more, but I won't. Maybe another time. Suffice it to say, it was cool.

7. I never really mentioned this, I think, but I worked for the Methodists while living there and that was also great. Religions and their history are super interesting to me, so that was a very cool thing to work for one of the major American religions and learn about it. I don't miss MISS it, it was just cool and good for the time I was there.

8. I sorta miss a few people. But it's good to move on too. I hope I can keep in touch with some of them, though I have no serious expectations. Well, I mean, there's always Facebook and Google+, right?

9. Vanderbilt. Corbet was born at the hospital there, through a midwife group, and they were great. If I have another kid, it would have been cool to go there again.

10. Owl Hollow. Charlie's shooting range. I don't miss it as much as Stoker, but I figured I'd include it on his behalf because he keeps mentioning how much he misses it. It was truly a fantastic place to go waste some .22 ammo. And sometimes I'd see cardinals in the trees.

That's it. I suppose I could come up with more, but ten is such a nice number. No, I don't miss the music industry even though I had a LOT of celebrity sightings there. And right as we were leaving Nashville, Colin Firth was coming to town to do a film there called Stoker's something or other. Yeah, it sucked that I missed that. I'm sure I could have gotten him to sign my copy of Pride and Prejudice or something. Right? Ha.

I just thought of another.

11. The really old plantation style houses and all the moss-covered low, stone walls. They were beautiful. There are a number of roads that take you through some extremely gorgeous, wealthy, and old areas. The road that takes you out to Loveless Cafe, to name one without actually naming it.

12. Oh yeah, and the Meetup group. There was this quirky, lovely Nashville Writer's Meetup group. I adored it. I met a load of fascinating people who I hope to never forget.

The End. For reals this time.

About the Fair (or: A Post that Degenerated, But at First Was Promising)

Sometimes don't you just want to tell a person you've only just met, "At first I was into talking to you, but while the tip of the iceberg promised so much, now I realize THAT was the whole iceberg?"

Take Saturday night, for example. I went to the fair with Stoker because he wanted to get footage of neat bright lights and colorful objects with his new Canon Eos SLR camera that also does video. What I really wanted to do was stay at home and play World of Warcraft because I'm sick and twisted inside, but I adore Stoker and want to make him happy (and deep down I somehow manage to  be awesome), so I went along.

For the most part, it was a very strange environment. The fair in Utah and the fair in Tennessee are somehow, inexplicably very different. Or perhaps my memory is all screwed up (it probably is, let's be honest). I don't want to start throwing labels out, but I DID feel like I was in gang territory and to be fair (to me and my label) the Metro Police GANG UNIT was there milling about in their SWAT vests and jeans and stuff. It was odd.

Anyway, once Stoker ran out of memory card space (something that happened very quickly, because as I am told, HD video adds up fast, and a 4 gig card cost $50, which is why he only has one so far), we tried to get into the actual fairness of the fair itself. 

Perhaps it was because it was the opening day. Or perhaps it's the way the fair in TN just . . . is . . . but there were quite a lot of rides and ridiculously stupid games with outrageously lame prizes, and practically NO neat trinkets to buy. 

This may surprise you, but aside from spousal support, I was there for the trinkets, the funnel cake and corn dogs, and IF there happened to be any neat animals, I wouldn't have minded seeing them. 

As I remember the Utah State Fair, there are always lots of stupid trinkets.

Perhaps it's the idiot in me, but I love buying trinkets. I'm a sucker for China Town in any big city, the fair (if there are trinkets), arts festivals (if there are also trinkets), street festivals that feature trinkets, book fairs that have trinkets, farmer's markets with booths selling trinkets, and any sundry trinket booth/cart that pops up anywhere with trinkets on display. Pretty much any kind of event where I can peruse and purchase trinkets I will endorse. And by trinkets I mean little rings, lighters, wallets, swords (I bought a sword at the Renaissance festival this year. Oh yes I did), fake tattoos, earrings, knives, throwing stars, you name it. 

When I began to realize there were no trinkets at the fair, I started to feel creeped out. A little worried. The lights and carousel music took on an eerie Twilight-Zone-Something-Wicked-this-Way-Comes tone*. The laughing people and joyful children suddenly seemed sinister. "Where the crap am I?" I wondered. "THIS is NO FAIR." 

But it was. It's just that I'm used to one thing and Tennesseans are used to another. 

I guess. And I'm getting to the opening quote, don't worry. 

So in my search for trinkets, I found where they keep the animals.There were only a few cows and a couple sheep. Which was also weird. Rows and rows of pens and only two pens were full. Eerie.

Then I found out that Saturday was the first full day of the fair. "But then, how do all those jars of preserves and honey have ribbons on them already?" 

That was a question I never had answered.

But I did have the chance to talk to the Bee-man and the Sheep-woman. From the names, you might imagine they're super-heroes. They are not. They were just two people having a discussion that I (impolitely, most likely) interrupted in the room with the pen of sheep. Fifty pens and only five sheep.

Still, it was like a dream come true. The only thing that could have improved it was if Chicken-man had been there. Or woman.

I want to have bees and sheep. And some chickens. And runner ducks. And geese to protect the ducks. And a little farm with some horses, and maybe a few rug-rats running around in cowboy boots and hats. 

Moronic dreams, I know. Sounds like Oklahoma! or something. 

So anyway, the Bee-man. I talked to him for just a bit and I quickly ascertained that he judged me to be a moron. My argument isn't that I'm not. My argument is that I didn't really want to talk to him after just a few quick exchanges, but I was forced to out of politeness and that's probably why I started to seem like a moron. When I saw that his main goal was to impress me with the knowledge that having bees in the city is A) easy; B) cheaper than I expect; and C) if I don't get the bees right now, he's going to force me to get bees, so help him; I just didn't want to talk to him any more. I wanted to go back to talking to Sheep-woman, who was friendly, interesting, and my new hero. 

And I'm not a moron, really. I DID want to be an entomologist at one time, and I think I really AM truly allergic to bee-stings, and I HAVE seen people wearing those kinds of black boots with the ring on the side while they ride their Harley. 

Basically, I guess, the problem was that Bee-man didn't live up to my romanticized notions about beekeeping and beekeepers. I LIKE living in a fantasy world that assumes that "getting back to the land" will actually be fulfilling and that beekeepers commune with bees in a way that's kind of magical and the relationship is mutually beneficial between the bees and the beekeeper, and not only that, the bees somehow LOVE their keeper. I want to be the queen of bees. 

Sheep-woman DID live up to my romanticized notions, although I hope that should I ever get a herd of sheep, I will not also have to begin wearing shirts with sheep on them. On her they are rather adorable. On me a shirt of that sort would only accentuate how inept I am at being adorable and cute. 

*There's a carnival in Something Wicked this Way Comes, isn't there? I can't remember. Been too long. 

Titans Game

I went to a Titan's game last night. With Stoker, of course. 

The verdict? Interesting and fun, but I won't be feeling pressure in the future to attend another.

At first it was surreal to see the field all lit up and the players running around like little blue clowns and I thought, "Ahhh, this is magical! I can't believe I'm really here!!!!! What a night! What a night! Perfect night for a game!"

But after a while, I realized I kept missing important plays because I was distracted by the nighthawks flying around in the stadium catching moths. Or I was noticing how dumb the cheerleaders look in their ridiculous thigh-high white boots (and how unskillful their dancing REALLY is. Seriously, they're basically strippers except that they never actually undress entirely in public. But close enough), or I was looking at the line for the Logan's Roadhouse stand. And when you're at the game, there's no announcer narrating the action for you. Those guys are extremely necessary. 

When you watch a game on TV they say things like, "Collins to Johnson, ooohhhhhhh a ten yard gain," or "INTERCEPTION!!!!!!" and so you know when to keep your eyes glued to the TV. While I was at the game in person, turnovers were happening faster than the wink of an eye. It would be first down for the Titans, I'd look away to eat a nacho, look back at the field and the offensive guys would be running off the field as the defense took up their positions.

It was INSANE. 

And there wouldn't have been any crowd indicators that a crazy play had happened, so I had no reason to feel I'd missed something (except that another turnover had happened). Mind you. 

Because that is, apparently, the only cue that something earth-shattering has taken place at a live game. The crowd going wild. And they go wild. Believe me. It's actually surprising that they even know what's going on. As far as I could tell, most people around me were busy eating, drinking, and gabbing with their neighbors. I have no idea how they did all three while still being able to interpret what was happening on the field, but somehow they did. Every time something exciting happened, BOOM! Food everywhere.

Probably the best part of the experience was the mass migration across the Shelby street footbridge. It was a tide of blue. And really, it felt strange to be on a bridge of that size with that many people also on it, spanning a rather large river. People were everywhere! Selling tickets, selling water, selling ice cream, selling their bodies. No kidding. There were some really unsavory characters around. 

Still. I found all of it extremely entertaining.

Oh, and the South loves football. I'm telling you. During half-time, these little kids came out on the field all done up in serious football gear, helmets four times the size of their actual bodies, and did some scrimmaging. For entertainment. Each team had three chances to score, I guess. The kid sitting behind me really got into it. "Get 'em, boys!" he'd yell. And then when one of the teams scored, THE CROWD WENT WILD.

Over third graders playing football. 

That's an addiction.

I didn't even know anyone was paying attention.   

The clowns line up for a kick off. I love these clowns, I really do.

Stoker figures out that watching the game from home is WAAAAAAAY better. For us.

Me and my nose watching the game. 

Utah in Summer and Nashville Humidity

Returning to Nashville was rough. We went from nighttime temperatures of 47 degrees with low humidity to a hellish 99 with eighty percent humidity. The first thing I did when I stepped off the plane was fall to my knees and scream, "Noooooooo!" like Calculon when he ad-libs for his role in "All My Circuits."  

I have been saying for years and years that I hate humidity. Can I just add one more? I. Hate. Humidity. 

Seriously, and I don't mean to be a complete jerk, but why would anyone settle here? I mean the early settlers of French Lick, which is what Nashville was once called. French Lick. I know. What? 

It's true. A long time ago, before Fort Nashborough, the area was known as French Lick by fur trappers. Before that, a mysterious race of native Americans built some mounds and then mysteriously disappeared. 

I'd like to mysteriously disappear, from Nashville. And magically reappear in Richmond, Utah, aka Cache Valley. Also, if I'm going to have that wish come true, I would add some chickens, a couple sheep, maybe a dairy cow, some ducks (runner ducks), and a decent house when I do my reappearing. 

Greedy, greedy. That's why my wishes are never granted. Ha.  

Anyway, Nashville looks especially bad because I was just in Utah where the summers are perfect and not hot and humid. When I was growing up and complained of the heat, people who had experience with humid summers would kindly inform me that I didn't know a whit of what heat felt like. I thought they were rude and insufferable.

But now I'm one of those insufferable jerks who, while in Utah where the dry heat feels like breezes off a glacier, informs ignorant family members that they have no idea what hot feels like. 

Anji (my sister, who smugly lives in Utah): "Boy it's hot today."

Me (laughing derisively): "Ha! Anji, THIS is not HOT. You have NO IDEA what HOT feels like until you've spent the day languishing in a pool of your own sweat unable to lift a finger to fan yourself."

Stoker (who is always relatively diplomatic): "It's true. This isn't hot, Anji. This is like heaven. I feel like I could fly away on a wispy gust it's so dry and perfect and cool."

Anji: "Well I don't live in Nashville. I don't know any other hot and this is hot to me. So there. It's hot. Leave me alone."

Poor Anji. I'm still such a jerk to her*. But she beatifically puts up with me. Even when I attack her opinion on perfect Utah days being hot when they're clearly not hot. :) 

I cringe to realize I've become a stereotype that's always annoyed me. Such as the humid-climate person versus the desert-climate person, and believe me, while living in the desert, you hear it from the jerks who think they know what hot really is.

Also, I caught myself pulling another humid-climate-person stereotype while in Utah.

My friend Shannon scored recently when she landed a fantastic house on a geologic feature in Cache Valley called The Island. For hardly anything. Yes, she pays very little for the perfect house located on the Island, but not only that, it has a creek running through the backyard.

See that? The CREEK is the obnoxious part of that paragraph. When you live in a place like Nashville where a river is huge and can provide real estate for river boats and barges, you go west and call western rivers creeks, much to the chagrin of the people living there.

The house is on the Logan River and I had the audacity to call it a creek.  Shannon turned to me and said, "Nik, it's the Logan River."  Ha ha, I said. I'm sorry. I forgot. Yes, the river. River. 

I think Shannon forgave me, but do I forgive myself? I'm not sure. I never wanted to become this monster who doesn't understand the desert climate that is her home. I need to be rehabilitated. Help me. 

*As children, Anji always wanted my attention and me, the ogre older sister, ignored her, or, when not ignoring her, made her drink horrific concoctions of Worcestershire sauce, A1 sauce, mustard, and any other sauces found in the sauce section of the refrigerator. I know. I was terrible.  [Anji, if you're reading this, I love you. Forgive me for being a bull in a china shop around you! :)]

___________________________

Related posts:

I Really AM Thrilled About the House in Nashville

A Live Update From Nashville, TN

The South Is Killing Me

Pretty Crappy.

I should be working on a short story right now, but I'm feeling pretty crappy.

Lately Stoker has been teasing me about the phrase, "I feel pretty crappy." I guess I've been saying it a lot the past few days. Why not? I DO. I FEEL PRETTY CRAPPY.

For all intents and purposes, the weather here is akin to a bear the size of the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man with paws as large as thirteen cows, and I might as well be the fish between the bear's paws. I'm not sure if those measurements are proportionate--the point is, the weather tosses me back and forth between its meaty paws with no apparent concern for how I FEEL about it.

I feel pretty crappy about it.

It's not just the flooding and the wind storms we just had, which were really unfortunate. In general, the environment is toxic to me. Do you realize I didn't have ANY gray hair before I moved to Tennessee? No wrinkles either.

Now, you're probably thinking something like, "Well, be serious. You were also four years younger when you moved to Nashville. Wrinkles and gray hair CAN appear in that amount of time."

And I'll give you that. Wrinkles and gray hair are quite stealthy when it comes to choosing their victims.

However, my teeth ALSO started falling out once I got to Nashville. Coincidence? Hardly!

The problem is the humid sub-tropical climate. That's right. SUB-TROPICAL. I'm from the desert. I was miserable there due to allergies. At least--I fancied that the desert made me miserable. From my current perspective, in the arms of this bastardly bear, the desert looks like heaven.

From Wikipedia, the final authority on all knowledge:

Nashville's long springs and autumns combined with a diverse array of trees and grasses can often make it uncomfortable for allergy sufferers.^[14] In 2008, Nashville was ranked as the 18th-worst spring allergy city in the U.S. by the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America.^[15]

Translated, this quote explains that Nashville is the 10th circle of hell. Apparently it is a place reserved for those who sinned against mother nature in some way, however innocent or ignorant the sin(s) may have been.

I also enjoy the mild phrase "make it uncomfortable." Mild. Ha ha.

During late summer, autumn, and winter, I forget how the spring attacks me with its clumsy paws and batters me around like a shuttlecock. I think, "Hey, it's not so bad here. Though I pine for the great basin desert and its thin atmosphere, majestic highlands, and icy, clear streams and wildflower meadows, I could also just stay here. I've made a few friends, established a couple haunts. No big deal. Plus my job's not too bad. And most of my cats were born here--I'd hate to tear them from their birthplace."

There are even a few days in the spring when I think I'll be OK if I have to stay here forever.

Then the bear rears its ugly muzzle. It typically comes in from the Gulf, occasionally across the plains, but always it carves a swath of hell before it, a low pressure or a high pressure system that strangles me. And then the bear arrives and I become its rag doll.

So anyway, that's why I'm having a hard time writing. Simply because I feel pretty crappy.

Bzzzzzz

We had a tornado. Then a flood. Then our basement filled with water. Then we lost our air conditioner. And power. Then there was a trampoline on my truck. Then I rescued a baby starling from the flood and the rain. Then my sister had a baby. Then they said don't use the water. Then they said, "We're going to cut the water supply." Then they said, "We're not. Just use fifty percent less." Then the water receded and the electric company came in the middle of the night and reconnected our power two days later. Then someone said, "There's going to be a gas shortage, get your gas." Then someone else said, "Don't drink the water. Three people have died from drinking it." Then someone else said, "That's a lie, I contacted the water company." Then I went back to work and the toilets keep flushing for no reason. Then I said, "Hey, does someone want to STOP these toilets from flushing for no reason? We're supposed to conserve water!" And no one listened. Then some people were WASHING their cars at the car wash and they said, "Hey, I paid for it. The truck needs to be clean. Gotta be seen in a clean truck." Then I couldn't concentrate. Then I drank too much caffeine and began to emit a high frequency buzz as my nerves vibrated.

That brings us today. I'm still buzzing. Those events didn't happen in that order. They're sort of out of order, but I like the order in which I wrote them.

Looking again, the order is pretty accurate.

It's been pretty crazy. Someone said to me that they didn't want to rub it in that they haven't suffered, that their house is nice and dry, that they had electricity the whole time, that Nothing Really Happened to them. But I'm glad. See, then they can help out. We can all help out. But if we were all without homes after the flood and the wind, then we'd all just lie there in the mud like mud beetles, helpless, and drowning or burrowing. There is such a thing as a mud beetle, isn't there?

Anyway, a bunch of ants were coming into my house Monday night, and I felt kind of bad for them. Did the water get them too? But the ants come out every spring, sending out their little soldiers looking for food sources. So I killed them. Sorry ants. But if I don't kill them and they find a crumb or something that I somehow missed under the couch, then they keep coming in. The way they know to not go back to That Spot is if the soldiers don't return. Ask E. O. Wilson.

To balance out my ant genocide, I saved a baby bird. The bird will live and grow up and eat the ants. It's the circle of life. The girl at Walden's Puddle told me the featherless hatchling was a starling. I thought it was a robin, but either way, I don't discriminate against which birds I'll help.

Initially I put the bird in the dove nest in my barn. It snuggled up to the dove babies and I had such high hopes that it would be one of those amazing stories about some inter-species triumph a la ugly duckling and all that. I think it worked for one day. The next day the baby was on the ground and the mother pigeon gave me a really dirty look, as though to say, "Ha. You really think I'm that naive? I don't take care of interlopers, my dear. I've got my hands full with these two. Next time I'll peck its eyes out!"

I returned the dove's stare as though to say, "Listen, where do you think that bird seed comes from that you munch on every day? Bird seed doesn't grow on trees*?" Still, her steady, unblinking stare made me a feel a twinge of guilt.

But try as I might, I can't be as heartless and unfeeling as Mother Nature. I tried to leave the bird alone, hoping it would just die and go on to loftier things in heaven, but it was too rough on my heart and mind. Like killing a part of myself.

So I fooled my neighbor into taking care of it. Ok, that sounds terrible. I didn't really FOOL her. She's not a dummy. But she's got a terrier rescue already, so I kind of knew she had a big heart for animals.

Plus she had electricity. And time. And I had neither. So we worked it out and she fed the bird Monday night, then I took it to Walden's Puddle the next morning.



*I realize that many seeds DO come from trees. But bird seed doesn't just drop into a nice pile of food for a bunch of doves hanging out next to the bird bath. I admit I've trained the doves to think it does. And I know they'd survive without the seed I put out for them. I help them through the winter, that's all.

The South Is Killing Me

You think this is an exaggeration, but it's not.  It's particularly bad in the spring, summer, and fall.  So three quarters of the year I'm on death's doorstep.  Or death is on my doorstep.  I'm not sure who's more aggressive here--death or me.  Probably me.  I've been told I'm intimidating.  A lot.  I don't even have any tattoos or crazy piercings and yet I'm still intimidating.  

Death doesn't know my secret--that the brusque exterior is a facade meant to protect the gooey inside.  I'm softer than a Cadbury Creme Egg beneath the fragile shell.  All it takes is one tiny crack and the rest explodes (that's the worst part about the Cadbury Creme Eggs).  But three quarters of the year I guess I find myself knocking on deaths' door.  Because I'm aggressive.

You know how you think you're one way, but everyone else tells you a different story?  I know you know what I'm talking about.  How you go your entire life thinking things like, "People scare me.  I don't think I'm EVER going to make any friends.  Starting the school year at a NEW school bites.  I'll be an outcast.  Moving is hard.  I look fat in this shirt.  Do I look fat?  Don't call on me, don't call on me I don't know the answer."

But somehow everyone thinks this about you, "She's going to punch me.  Nothing scares her.  Holy crap that was a close one, I thought she was going to punch me.  She just bit my head off, why'd she do that? All I said was 'you look nice today.'  I'm never complimenting her again. She just accused me of not knowing what I'm talking about . . . she's obviously done her research.  Whoa I thought she was going to punch me . . . again."

I'm not making that up.  I have seen into the minds of people around me.  

Joke.  I haven't.  However, over the years, a picture emerges.  Themes crop up and after enough people tell you certain things about their initial impressions of you, it dawns on you:  you portray a completely different image of yourself than you realize.

I could go into a few personal examples, but they would start to sound like accusations.  Also, it starts to sound like I'm bragging about how I amazing I am.  Because we all know that a bullying demeanor is highly desirable in today's corporate dog-eat-dog world. 

Plus the real point of this meandering post is that the south has a personal vendetta against me.  It would be no big deal if I could just get a doctor to put tubes in my ears or something like that, like a baby (because I'm such a baby, with malfunctioning eustachian tubes).  No idea if that would help, but the problem is the insane amount of allergens in Nashville. 

Medicine's answer?  "Allergy shots."  I put that ridiculous phrase in quotation marks to illustrate how dubious I am about that program.  It's a racket.  No proof it would help.

During the winter I forget and think, "Ah, Nashville's not so bad.  I kind of like it.  Why did I want to move again?"  I still have allergies during the winter, but it's manageable.  

Then spring strikes with a teasing, big-pawed swipe to my head.  The weird, unstable pressure systems that stir up tornadoes sweep through the area and my head implodes.  Then it explodes. At the same time.  That's not enough.  It gets worse.  My ears don't work properly and I die.  

Yep.  I die.     

Then I remember that I wanted to move back to the desert where there are fewer allergens.  But by then it's too late.  The market has crashed and selling my house would put me upside down on my mortgage.

I don't really know if the ear issues will ever go away, even if I move back to Utah.  I went out there for Christmas, and when I came back, I got some weird altitude sickness thing that lasted for a month.  It consisted of sudden bouts of nausea and vomiting.  It was damn weird.  

Thus far the south is winning.  Who can really fight an entire landmass, when you come right down to it? 

Gaile Owens, Death Row, and Abuse

Abuse is a weird thing.  It's hard to understand it if it's never happened to you, it's hard to imagine that people you know and love might be experiencing it, and it's even more difficult to assess a situation where abuse is happening and make a judgment on it.  

I come from a line of strong women.  Frontier women, pioneer women who dealt with hostile natives (not to pass judgment on native peoples, but you know what I mean), survivors who did what they had to do.  So of course I look at a situation where a woman has been abused and has stayed in the situation and think, "What? Why would she put up with that?  Why wouldn't she stand up for herself?  She must be weak."  

I'm not going to share the details of the situations in my family where it came to light that there was abuse happening, but it did, and it was shocking and upsetting, and I experienced rage like I've never known before. The women in my family, my sisters and my mother, are tough.  They eat nails for breakfast and pick their teeth with machetes.  But they're also the kind of women who stick to their guns, which would explain why a bad situation could escalate.  

All I know is that after my experience with abusive husbands, I feel compelled to rush to the defense of Gaile Owens.  This is a woman in Tennessee who is on death row for arranging the murder of her abusive husband in 1985.  She's 57 now and has been in prison since then.  The state attorney general's office is asking the Tennessee Supreme Court to set a date for her execution.  There are many details about this, but I won't list them all here.  To read more about it, visit the Friends of Gaile website, read about it, sign the petition if you disagree, write about it, share it with your friends, and do all this even if you don't live in Tennessee.  

It's unjust, as I see it.  I'm not opposed to the death sentence and there are times when I feel that it may be the most merciful thing for a criminal for various reasons I don't care to go into right now.  I don't think murder is justified, but as her defense points out, what kind of escape existed for an abused woman in Memphis in 1985?  Was there somewhere she could run to for protection?  Things like that exist now.  But I don't think they did then.  And what about Mary Winkler?  Remember Mary Winkler?  She murdered her husband, ran away, and eventually was acquitted of the murder.  

What I'm saying is that the justice is not equal.  Gaile Owens pled guilty to the charges after accepting a prosecutor's offer to do so in exchange for a life sentence.  I can hear you, yes, you're saying, "What's that?  You mean, they did the old bait and switcheroo?"  Yeah, they did.  Sounds like dirty politics to me.  It's just shameful.  

Well anyway, all her defense is asking for is that Gaile's sentence be commuted to a life sentence and not death.  I hope for the best.  I hope Tennessee doesn't end up with Gaile's death on its hands, because I don't want it and I live here too.  

A Narrow Miss

Some people on Facebook were teasing me about hiding in the basement when the tornado sirens are going. And I admit it, I felt a little silly. But later on, when I was watching the news, I saw that a tornado had touched down uncomfortably close to my neighborhood.

I'm posting this here to show just HOW close. I've blacked out all the street names for my protection (of course). It took me hours to do this because I don't know much about Photoshop. I thought a funny and clever thing to do would be to change everything to Candyland names, but that would have taken me days to figure out, so forget about it.

Summer Is Just Another Word for Torture

The heat is ruining my life. I may have said something similar when I was living in Arizona, but only because it was. And it is now. At least in Arizona we had central air conditioning. Right now we're keeping our house cool with electric window units and fans. It's very ineffective and very trashy. The house we bought was built in the forties and none of the previous owners had felt inspired to get central air. We're inspired to, but first there are other pressing matters, like the roof.

Anyway, the heat is killing me. Each day that brings me both high temperatures and high levels of humidity wipe me out. The only thing I can do is swear, curse Tennessee, long for Utah and sometimes cry in frustration. Not to give you the wrong idea, I don't really cry. We have this air conditioner the previous owners left us and it sucks. Something is broken about it, I'm not sure what, probably the temperature gauge because it fluctuates so drastically, one minute it's 54 degrees and the next it's 83. When it thinks it's 54 it turns off and I swear at it and cut the power to it and then restart it. Stoker thinks it doesn't help, but I know it does.

Another thing that's killing me is the hills of Tennessee. Oft cited as beautiful in song, these hills are a bane and a curse and I curse them. The extreme heat and humidity and the hills have put the brakes on exercise. Last year I could tolerate it because I ran by the river amidst the trees and that lowered the temperature a little. Plus I ran home to the central air conditioner. This summer I run home and never cool down and I want to die. And there's no river and very few trees and everything is a hill. Stoker thinks I overdo it, but I assure you I do not. If you came to my house and we took a run on a day at 92 degrees and 65% humidity, or even 40%, you'd melt with me. And it wouldn't resemble a romantic song. It would be like a house of wax. There would be weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. And swearing at Tennessee.

Stoker says there are lots of hills in Utah, but there aren't. There are mountains. When there's a sort of hill, it looks like a hill and feels like a hill. In Tennessee, there's some kind of weird optical illusion going on and you can't tell it's a hill with teeth until you're running up it and dying in the extreme humidity and heat.

Long ago my pioneer ancestors tried to settle in Missouri and then Illinois, but things didn't work out. So they moved on and eventually set up camp in the Utah territory. It was hard for them and stuff, but after living in a humid climate and having been to some of the places that didn't work out for them, I thank my lucky stars things didn't workout in the Midwest. The desert is a superior climate. So maybe water was scarce and harder to come by and maybe it was grueling to drag those rocks out of the quarries to build with because there weren't a lot of trees, those things worked out, right? Once you live in a swamp, it's always a swamp and it breeds swamp creatures. The desert breeds hearty stock. Tall, lean, strong people. I can't decide for sure if this holds merit, it's just my perception, I'm sure.

I'm telling you, the heat is killing me. I'm very depressed right now. That's probably not super obvious because I'm being so hilarious at the moment. But I am. I'm wilting like a flower in a damn car out in the sun.

I tried to find scientific proof that extreme temperatures cause depression and other problems in people. I don't have time to rummage through all the studies, so I let the BBC do it for me. They came up with this article on the effects of extreme heat on moods. So I'm right, then. Thanks for playing. Now I'm going to go cry and melt in the pointless heat.



p.s. Recently I read this line from a short story by Chekhov ("He Understood"): "It was a stifling June morning; the air was sultry, the leaves drooped, the dry ground cracked." And I finally understood the power of that word sultry. Sultry only has power if you've been exposed to extreme humidity. I hadn't until Tennessee. Do I obsess? I do, I know I do.

The Simpsons. Tonight!

We're going to see the Simpsons movie tonight. Stoker wanted to go to a midnight showing, but since I had to work today (he did not), I thought that would be unwise. I guess I'm at the age where I think things like, "that would be unwise." Three years ago I would have thought it more important to be one of the first to see the new Simpsons movie. And I would have done anything to hang out with a hottie like Stoker. And then after the movie I would have stayed up until 3 a.m. talking to him, and then risen at 7:45 the next morning to make it to work at 8.

Oh wait, I'm doing that now. I guess I should have just gone to the midnight showing.

It still irks me that Springfield, Tennessee didn't get the world premier. Vermont? C'mon! It doesn't even make any sense, unless their criteria wasn't based on a feasible location for where the Simspons' Springfield is. I'm not sure what their criteria was based on, some homemade video contest or something. But think of all the episodes where they almost reveal where Springfield is. It's the midwest! (Or even midsouth, as in Tennessee.) Vermont?

Remember the episode where Bart's class goes on a field trip to a Civil War site? It's the episode where the PTA disbands. Were ANY Civil War battles fought in Vermont? I'm not one hundred percent sure, but I'm going to have to say, NO.

Remember the episode where Bart, Milhouse, Nelson, and Martin rent a car and go to Knoxville to see the World's Fair? Ok, how long would it take to drive to Knoxville from Vermont? Fifteen hours! Can you imagine four little kids driving for fifteen hours straight, and that's not counting all their stops -- don' t they stop in Branson to see Andy Williams? That's an additional ten hours! A total trip of 1614 miles! I mean, you have to work up to those kinds of distances . . . you don't just drive 26 hours straight the first time you get behind the wheel.

Springfield, Tennessee to Knoxville, Tennessee is about three hours. AND, we have a Shelbyville! FYI, Vermont doesn't have a Shelbyville.

Anyway, Springfield, Tennessee may not have been the BIG, WORLD PREMIER spot, but they had a premier. Or two. I don't know, I didn't really pay attention. I looked into getting tickets, but you had to go up to Springfield last Monday to get them. You couldn't buy them, as far as I know. So, we'll be seeing it tonight.

And unlike SOME people who couldn't help but SPOIL the big Harry Potter surprise (Terry, I mean you), I won't accidentally explain the entire Simpsons movie in detail on my blog. I won't assume that everyone has already seen it, just because I happen to be one of the first to read it. I mean see it. But I will mention whether it's good, crappy, or life-altering. I'm expecting life-altering. Is that too much to hope for?