Fungus patties is good.

We found the two buck chuck goes well with fungus patties.

Nutritionally complete.

Half the calories and a third less fat than skinless chicken breast.

Almost as much protien as an egg.

Twice the fiber of fresh broccoli.

Globalization has its benefits.

Chicken and tastes-like-chicken is everywhere.

Contains sulfites.

God bless America.

Government warning: according to the surgeon general, women should not drink alcoholic beverages.

Zero cholesterol.

... wow it really does taste like chicken.

In honor of the busblog I wish to write about the bus I took for a year here in Eugene.
It's the 40 line.

The 40 line reminds me of once when in Davis, I went with a girlfriend to Safeway to get ice cream, and the scrawny fellow in front of us had three 40s and a bottle of baby oil, and we giggling sang that 1970s Hot Chocolate song "I believe in miracles since you came along you sexy thang..." for the rest of the night.

Except Eugene is not Davis, and so the 40 I'm talking about is the one that carries all the stinky bums from their daily panhandling jobs downtown to the Eugene Mission, not so they can stay there and take a shower and sleep in a bed and get fed and pray and maybe get a job, no.

So they can meet the other bums and exchange contraband goods and get together with their "friends" who would steal from them and leave them for dead but together they can buy more booze and go drown their sorrows in a bottle.

Probably in a couple of 40s.

Not that I have a problem with contraband goods or drowning sorrows.

Hold those bastard sorrows' heads under until they stop kicking.

But the bus, the bus the bus.

Standin on a corner, waitin for the bus
Hey Mister Driverman don't be slow
I got somewhere I gotta go
and thank you Violent Femmes for making that song a daily part of my life. Morning and evening,
you got the mother and the kid you got the guy and his date
we all get mad we all get late

You got the stinky old hippie bum in the seat next to you trying to find one thing just one reason to talk to the cute girl and then
*gasp*
he spies a beaded necklace. It's in cahoots with him, no doubt, as it spills out over my collar and he pokes-points at it, exhaling a great rush of booze-flavored breath and the obvious absence of deoderant, and with a lurch of the bus comes dangerously close to my eye, which I am still trying to avert because to look is to smile and to smile is to invite conversation and pretty soon there's a stalker who follows you to your stop, who wants to walk half a mile oh no it's not out of the way, I need the exercise, and now I know where you live...

No I'm not as young and naive as I was in Davis when I rode the P and Q lines. And I sure wish sometimes I weren't as cute. I honestly considered affecting a limp and getting some Billy Bob teeth. Instead I started reading everything, just under my breath, like in that Billy Crystal movie Forget Paris when her father repeats in lazy old man mindless speak, "You want it, you got it, Toyota."

Drove them away like a bullwhip to cattle. Especially effective was the vacuous stare and letting my tongue rest between my teeth.

Tony, if my car weren't on its last legs I would share it with you. You could have it six months, I could have it six months. But it's got nearly 200,000 miles on it and I doubt it would make it over the Siskiyous, much less the Tehachapis and the San Gabriels.

I once drove the Grapevine with a frayed fan belt and failing brakes, and I swear if I thought my 12 year-old Mitsu Mirage (no you can't see it and neither can the semis) would make it I'd donate it just so you don't have to ride the bus no more.

Last time it broke down was very convenient.
It was on the bus line.

I've had some time to think about it
And watch the sun sink like a stone
I've had some time to think about you

On the long ride home

There have been two Stellar's jays sunning themselves on the deck here at the office all day.
I've never seen birds act like this.

They're ridiculous.

One at a time they'll alight from the purple beech tree's branches and hop to the brightest, sunniest spot on the deck, where they puff all their feathers out, spread out their wings, tilt their heads back, open their beaks, and close their eyes!

At first we were alarmed, we thought maybe they had been poisoned or something, because they lie there, comatose, body all puffed up, wings out, eyes rolled back in their heads.
But sometimes they change positions, to better feel the sun's rays on their tummies or backs, and they make soft little sounds to eachother, little clicky whistles, as they lounge, wingtips touching.

After a few minutes it's as though they wake up, then jump to the top of the balcony, and disappear into the beech trees, only to return in about an hour for another round of sunbathing.

Jay bird sunbathing at its finest.
I have heard the term "naked as a jay bird" but until today I never thought about what it meant.

Another corvid friend

Momma wants a helicopter when she retires.
All the easier to go shopping, she says. Easier to come visit me, too.
She had me in stitches on the phone last night, until S & I had to go to our musician friends' house for dinner.

Sometimes you meet people who understand what you know. It’s as though something clicks internally, and you can be comfortable around them, and you don’t have to explain your reasoning or your core beliefs, you can just talk about whatever and actually talk, not argue, not try to compete, not get flustered if you don’t get a comment in edgewise.

Our friends JJ and Tebone are like that.

We met them as musicians; JJ has a voice from heaven, and Tebone is a wonderful songwriter. They’re from Austin, Texas, and drove all over the country before deciding to make a home in Eugene, Oregon.

They live in this rusty crusty old house in the “bad” part of town, which just means there are apartments and junky cars and people leave their trash cans by the curb all the time. Not much crime in Eugene anyway, and in that neighborhood maybe a bike gets stolen because it wasn’t locked up.

They want a home in the country. I said well yes.

JJ said she wants a place where she can open the door & let the dog go running, not have to worry about cars or animal control or fences, and I said S wants a place where he can pee off the porch. JJ said Tebone does that here and we all had a fit of giggles at his expense while he was outside bbqing some corn on the cob.

We drank too much wine and talked about where we’ve been since we saw them last, and where we’re going. Tebone was anxious about heading to Austin today for his brother’s wedding. Said he hasn’t seen his brother in five years, and in that time there have been more divorces and marriages and babies than he can count. We made him jealous by inviting JJ over for dinner while he’s gone. She said she’d sing for her supper, and I said, sold.

My Grandma died.

I am not going to delve into it here other than to say she was the sweetest and most honest person I have ever known, and I will miss her terribly.
The memorial service was Saturday the 21st, and given how she often wished there were more hours in the day, I found it appropriate that we celebrate her life on the longest day of the year.

Despite the sad circumstances, it was good to see people I have not seen in years.
My aunt and cousin from Georgia came for the funeral...

My Mom's sister is certifiably crazy. She wasn't all that nice a person before her three strokes, and now she just has no restraint in demanding things she thinks she needs.
An hour after we had gotten home from the service she asked me to give her a pedicure.

I shit you not.

She really needed one and S called me a saint for the rest of the day.

My cousin, her son, who is a year younger than I, is the biggest shaved-head redneck I have ever encountered, and I have certainly seen my share. He "lays it on pretty thick," as my very patient Dad said, in terms of making up stories so people might think he's an interesting person.

The thing is, he probably is a very interesting person, but I couldn't separate the fantasy babble from the actual life events. I know we all have our problems, and some of us deal with things in different ways, but when I'm driving my Mom to the mortuary on the day after the funeral I don't want to hear about all the stunt driving he's learned how to do in his Dodge Neon. Nor do I want to know all the practical jokes he's pulled on his fiancee, nor do I want to hear him explain how he's been "electrocuted" at least five times because he sometimes works on the air conditioning vents at the hospital in Augusta.

Oh yes, the mortuary.
Unbelievable experience in the mortuary.

Grandma had requested cremation, but we had not received her urn prior to the funeral service. The woman at the mortuary showed us the small brown plastic box both my Mom and my Aunt would receive, and explained how my Aunt would take hers with her on the airplane with the letter from the mortician. Three times she explained the procedure. I think my cousin had given his mom even more valium to go to the mortuary than he had given her for the funeral. "She has blood pressure, you know."

Once my aunt saw the brown plastic box, and noticed the price of the ceramic urns or the cedar boxes, she decided since the box will be in her bedroom anyway there's "no need to get fancy," she'll "just leave Ma in the box she comes in, maybe put a photograph in a nice frame next to it." Cousin chimes in with his lazy drawl, "You could get a hot glue gun and put some plastic flowers or a little bronze name tag or something, make it nice and personalized."

I thought my Mom was going to choke, I thought I was going to faint, and then my Aunt asked the poor mortuary attendant again, "The box will be okay in my luggage, it won't make a mess, right?"

Oh, God. It was a little too close to Faulkner's As I Lay Dying, in which the survivors of the matron put her into her cobbed-together pine box with her head at the narrow part so the skirt of her dress wouldn't get smooshed, and then take her body by wagon for a week to the town in which the father's mistress lives, where he gets a new set of teeth and gets married and his deceased wife gets buried on the same day. Worth reading, or you could just stay tuned for the next time I encounter those relatives, but God willing that'll be another 10 years from now.

Anyway.
I'm glad I was able to spend my childhood with Grandma, and visit her this last Mother's Day. I'm glad she is no longer in pain. Next month I'm headed back to visit Mom and Dad, and then we will be able to talk about the things we censored due to the presence of, as my Dad said, "the Southerners."

I have a photo on my desk of Grandma, standing in bright red shorts & a white blouse under a tree with Mt Shasta behind her. It's from the trip she and my Mom made when I first moved to Oregon. She's smiling with her head tilted just a bit to the left, and she is holding something I can't quite see. I love her smile. I love those hands. That's my Grandma.

I am going far away.

Wednesday I will be back at this.... thing. This thing that limits me but lets me loose, that gives me freedom and curbs hard.


For my soul is blown wild,
My heart is wind-tossed,
And my sweetheart rides a ship
on the sea...

I can hardly walk today.
Maybe I should explain that statement. It's summertime, and half the people who normally attend dance class have better things to do with their summer evenings, so the class was only half full last night. In the wintertime the advanced class has about 15 people in it. Last night there were only 5 of us, and we're all the gluttons for punishment who keep coming back for more. She worked us hard, and then she worked us some more, and when I looked at the clock there was still an hour to go.

My thighs & feet feel like I ran a mile up hill carrying a 20 lb pack, barefoot. The dance studio hasn't cleaned the floor in a while, and we were doing lots of arabesque turns & quick step moves. I'll have sufficient callouses on my feet for when summer finally gets to Oregon... Ah but it feels wonderful.

Funny thing about dance, and about all art to some extent: there needs to be, obviously, a level of quality, some sort of agreed-upon standard, otherwise you end up with boring crap, exhibitionist sex, or gladiator games. Technique is essential-- I once had an art instructor tell me it's necessary to learn the anatomy of your subject and then forget it & simply draw it. Technique cannot stand alone; without a soul there's just a hollow shell. Which is why I think art entered into contests, or dancers competing for a title, is a poor manner of determining quality because art & art appreciation relies so heavily on personal interpretation.

I'm railing about this because there's a bellydance competition next weekend & it has been suggested I compete.

Let's take an art form and turn it into a cat show.

What does it profit a person to win or lose a competition if it's at the expense of passion, creativity, beauty, and soul?

My thanks to Doobs for explaining to this computer illiterate dumbass how to set up links in the side bar.

Happy Friday the 13th.
I just had a very surreal phone conversation.

My washing machine still needs fixing, so I called Don's Maytag. Two years ago when my washer got tricky on me I called Don's, and they sent me this handsome repairman who smelled like good aftershave and had clean fingernails and looked just fine in that little Maytag uniform. Oh yes, send him again. But the soonest they have time available is next week.

In the interest of having clean clothes and avoiding country music hell at the Speed Queen laundromat this weekend (since I need clean underwear and socks), I called Fix It For Less, which I found in the yellow pages.

The fellow who answered was quite pleasant, asked what was the problem with the washer, got pertinent info about location etc. & then asked how I'd pay for the repair, cash or check.
A legitimate question.
I replied, "I can write you a check."

He said, "Uh-huh, and... what bank?"

Not a usual question but whatever, so I said, "B of A."

"Yeah, sorry, we don't accept checks from Bank of America."

I laughed.

"No really," he said, "We don't take checks from Bank of America. We've had problems with that bank in the past."

I still thought he was joking, like it was April Fools's Day except Friday the 13th, so I said, "What? You don't take checks from Bank of America?"

"No. You probably should call someone else."

"You don't take checks from Bank of America?"

He started getting snotty and defensive and said, "No, we've had problems in the past, and I think you should call someone else. I don't really know what's wrong with your appliance and I don't know how much the charges will be, so I can foresee problems here. You should probably find a different repair service."

So I said with utter incredulity, "This is the most absurd thing I've heard."

He replied, "Well, you're entitled to your own opinion, but..."
I cut him off and said, "What the hell?"

His voice got all high pitched and defensive and he said, "Now there's no need to get nasty..."
I hung up on him.

I figure either he owes Bank of America money from some bad account or other, which would explain why he's had problems with "that bank," or else he's a wacko, in which case I don't want him in my house.

I'll wait a week for the Maytag man.

I was girl in the middle last night, walking downtown with two philosophers. It was dusk and swallows flitted between the buildings, no traffic, a black cat crossed our path.

At one point I grabbed both big hands and said hang on and let them swing me from their arms like young children do. Later I got called a monkey. I took it as a compliment.

Being small has its benefits. I can always cajole a piggy-back ride. I can fit inside a suitcase.
It gets me into trouble sometimes.

We went to the Asian bistro on 5th St where the effeminate lazy-handed I-have-good-posture and a pencil-thin zig-zag beard waiter ignored the big hairy apes who accompanied me and kindly told me sorry, pot-stickers are a specialty order now and no we don't make them on Thursday nights.
No pot stickers? At an Asian restaurant? Sounds like suicide. Whatever. Give me some sushi.

I got my Pearl sake fix. S grimaced at his vodka-mix drink called "The Longest Day." B slurped his whiskey sour and got another.

We talked about picnics and revolutions and birds, and the alcohol-tempered conversation devolved into "I saw a big bird one time..."

S trumped us all with his story of life on a big cattle ranch in Montana where his Dad was foreman. When he was eleven and old enough to help his Dad with chores, he went with his Dad to take some dead calves to the dump. There was a pair of golden eagles feasting on the cow they had taken last week. S said the birds were bigger than him, and they fanned out their wings and hissed at him. His Dad told him to stay close.

B joked about how this dead cow and eagle experience has made S so radical in his politics & we all drank to that.

It's raining. Sweet summer rain. Ah, June.

Just got an invitation from an old college friend, you know the kind I mean, the ones you get together with once a month & share outrageous stories & drink cheap red wine, & you are free & easy with them because you've all acted like an ass at some point, and now it's just silliness, and you all feel giddy and giggly and sleepy and look at the clock and it's one in the morning, and tomorrow is Monday...
because time flies when you're having fun.

As I said, I just got an invitation for dinner. Seems they've been jet-setting, first to Colorado to see his folks, then to Delaware to visit her bio-dad. In the invitation, she states, "While in Delaware, family members taught us how to play gin rummy. It is my new favorite thing. Maybe you two want to come over on Sunday and play gin rummy. We will make something yummy to eat. We've quit our drunken ways, so no need to worry about a hang-over on Monday."

Whoa, the world just left its axis... play gin rummy, quit drinking? What? What happened in Delaware, that's what I want to know-- did their minds suffer some strange metamorphosis during their stay on the East Coast?

They are going to get teased on Sunday for this drastic life change! Hee hee!

post script:
After a million questions, she responded that it's nice having a longer attention span and not being tipsy most mornings, and they're saving mucho money by not going to bars every night. I guess I didn't realize they went to bars every night... in that case, more power to them.
They're still going to get teased.

We as humans are created to create.
I sure am creating a lot of snot these days.
Who would possibly guess so much goop could fit inside my head?

I read once that urban planning may be causing problems with allergies. You see, female trees are usually very messy, with seed pods etc., so most city landscapers plant male trees. The problem is that male trees produce insane amounts of pollen, and when the conditions are right, they get all happy and spew this pollen into the air in an attempt to impregnate the seed pods on female trees.

But the trees are mostly done with their bad selves at this point, and now it's the grass, especially the grass & alfalfa being mowed up the valley.

The Willamette Valley is arguably some of the best farmland in the world, and it's used to grow grass seed so people & golf courses can have nice lawns. Heaven forbid the state that leads the nation in child hunger and poverty should compromise its business interests in order to grow more food for people... much more lucrative to grow grass.

Which is why my head is full of snot.
Call me Snot Girl! Amazing mucus powers! Sneeze propulsions faster than a speeding bullet, more slime than 100 slugs, able to leap for the box of kleenex in a single bound...


RUN! escape! it's reaching critical snot mass!
Go see Dave, or Doobs, or Bubu, or Leah, or Muna,
or Don, or Joe, but escape the snot blog before she blows!

Papercuts.
Never do I have fewer than 10 on my hands at any given time. Most are superficial, just a few layers of derma, and sting only if I rinse my hands with astringent. Some, however, are quite nasty. I sliced the top of my right index finger's knuckle yesterday with file cardstock, and by trying to compensate for that minor irritating injury, I sliced the soft skin between my pinkie and ring fingers on my left hand this morning. It was such a sharp slice I didn't notice until I saw the blood on the file. Yeah, I know. Yuck.

Ever notice how people who deliver the mail always wear a ton of perfume or cologne? UPS deliverers, FedEx guys, your friendly neighborhood mailman. Well, it's because mail smells.

One of my duties is to open the mail, which on a busy day can include 300 envelopes. Not really high volume, but enough to occupy an hour at least. An hour of smelling strangers. Sometimes, but only very rarely, does a piece of mail smell good, like cinnamon, or baby powder, or pipe tobacco. An hour of smelling fried chicken, or dogs, or rot, or cigarette smoke, or mildew, or fish, or shit, or cloying, cheap perfume. I have learned to breathe softly.
I have learned to wash my hands 20 times a day.
Papercuts.

I read somewhere that when the economy takes a dump, movie studios release lots of sequels.
And it's been a while since I saw a movie that bugged me this much, but, well, it did. What follows is something of a rant because I was sort of disappointed, and mostly because I was unimpressed. Then there's another part of me that grimaces and snorts and says, it's just a fucking movie, who the hell cares?

Apologies if you haven't seen the movie.

The Matrix was a really cool movie. The Matrix: Reloaded was a disturbing movie. I had no problems with the first Matrix-- it had character development, it had bad guys, it had a mission, it had action, it had love, it had humor, and especially, it had philosophy.
Reloaded had philosophy, too, although I question its motives.

We got to see Zion in Reloaded... Zion was described in the first movie as Paradise, and if that's Paradise, then please sign me up for Hell. Gyrating half-nekked intoxicated barefoot stinky sweaty people, like at the Oregon Country Faire? Oh God no... and the stupid mindless drums...

Plus I certainly didn't appreciate the Leni Riefenstahl-esque cathedral cave worship of Morpheus.
Scary shit. Achtung.

The worry about the difference between using machines and succumbing to the machines was bothersome, as was the constant suggestion that maybe it's all just for nothing, maybe, in fact, it's still all in Neo's head.

Neo. Right. Keanu Reeves is not a very good actor, let's be honest. There were about three times when I thought it would be suitable if he cracked a big grin and played an air guitar like in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure. He was allowed to be something of a geek, something less than Superman, in the first Matrix. In Reloaded, his character didn't develop at all. Even after he ceases to believe he is "the One" he never struggles with his ego.
Bah.

And bah, too, for the stupid kiss-demand scene with that hottie in white latex, Persephone with the sexy accent. With a jealous Trinity looking on, Neo gives Persephone a stupid smooch, she says sorry, no good, and he totally lacks conviction that he's struggling with having to kiss her again. I would have loved to see, at that point after Neo fails with the first kiss, for Trinity to push his scrawny ass out of the way and grab Persephone, plant one hell of a kiss on her lips and make her flutter her lovely long eyelashes.

Aside from this, it looked too much like a video game to me. The multiplying Agent Smith fighting Neo was too much to watch, too fast, no sense of action-reaction or actual impact of physical bodies, like there was in the first Matrix. All the fight & chase scenes were too long, too, if judged by the ass-o-meter. That system of measurement is based on how tired my ass feels at the end of the movie, and it is directly proportionate to the length of the scenes in any given movie.

I would have liked more philosophizing-- there are a couple of questionable elements running around in this Reloaded movie. We must all get along? What? We got here by rebelling but now we must become part of Control? We're all dreaming if we think we're free... We're only free if we're safe... Choice is an illusion... Hmmm.

Will I see it again? Maybe once it gets to the $1.50 theatre. Will I see the third Matrix movie this coming November? Of course. And I hope it answers some of my questions about the propoganda bullshit.


Bah.

As of June 7th I am officially old. The big three-oh. I have survived 30 winters. Go me.

I woke up Saturday morning to sunshine & birds singing. S took me with him to a former co-workers' farm; she has asked him to come work a few hours a week while she & her husband go fishing in Alaska. S is excited; being inside the cafe all the time has been hard after working outside for years-- he goes stir crazy sometimes.

The farm is a lovely secluded place at the base of a rocky hill, with creek frontage. It was cool in the morning when we got there, swallows flitting over the hay field that had just been mowed. The word aftermath indicates a field that has just been mowed. "Math" means "mowing" or "mowed"-- philomath means love of mowing. Anyway.

We stayed long enough for her to explain all that needs doing, then took a back road towards town, enjoyed the cool morning air after a week of intense record-breaking heat.

Since we hadn't eaten breakfast, and it was getting close to noon, I suggested the buffet at Taste of India, which is one of our favorite restaurants in Eugene. Lunch is cheap; they always serve chicken korma, sag paneer, basmati rice with raisins in it, tandoori grilled chicken, nan. We drank chai tea, and talked about the movie Frida, which we had seen on Friday & had found to be a very good movie on many levels. S & I don't watch tv and we don't see movies very often, so we tend to be ruthless critics, but Frida was good.

When we returned home, it was nearly time for me to go to a dance workshop with Astryd at the Eugene School of Ballet.

She. Kicked. Our. Asses.

It was two and a half hours long, and I was able to keep up, but she showed us some hip isolation moves that I know the beginning students in the workshop had never seen, much less tried to do.
It was hard, and it was hot. There were puddles of sweat on the floor. Two of the older students sat down halfway through the workshop, and by the time it was over, we were all ready to collapse except for Astryd. Felt great though, and I can still feel it in my hips and thighs from the quick steps and level changes. Makes me want to bare my teeth in a wicked grin.

After the workshop, S took me for a quick meal of shrimp kebab at the little downtown market, and at 8 we went to the coffeehouse, because Astryd was scheduled to perform at 9. We moved tables, set up lighting, got the rug in place, cleaned glasses & mugs, made sure we had change for the register.

Astryd came and danced at our coffeehouse; it's been a while since I've seen her dance outside of class. She is mesmerizing. She wore this peridot green bejewelled costume that was custom-made for her when she was performing in Cairo, and she didn't stop moving for 20 minutes. She doesn't ever look awkward or unpractised-- all her moves are so smoothe, so clear. I once had a music teacher who told us he wanted to see daylight between the notes, and that is how Astryd dances; there is an energy, a focused clarity to her movements that I have never seen another dancer acheive. She enchanted us, played with us, flirted with us, and even after 20 minutes she left us wanting more.

Once she exited, J came up to me and said, "You need to go up front now." I went walking out the front door and there was nobody there, so I turned around & J was laughing, gesturing for me to sit in a chair where Astryd had just performed. No, uh-uh. My aunt finally got me up there, and announced that it was my birthday, so there I was, sitting all by myself in a chair on the rug, lights shining on me.

I sat.

I sat some more.

I pretended to look at my watch while everyone looked at me.

I wagged my eyebrows, crossed and uncrossed my legs, held up three fingers and said, "I'm this many."
Some giggles, and then (finally) in the alley by the cafe came the sound of drums, zills, riq, and mizmar, boom boom boom boom they all came marching in, Astryd leading the pack of musicians, and following them was my husband with an enormous cake, ablaze with 30 candles.

Oh, heavens.

The musicians & dancer surrounded me, & S knelt in front of me and indicated I should blow out the candles. I made a wish and I blew out every last one, and sat uncomfortably for a few moments, then made the decision to get up & dance. I sought out all those girls I've known & danced with for years from the little audience, and they joined me in dancing to the loud live music, up there on the rug with Astryd and her band.

It was truly a surprise. It was the first surprise party I have ever had, and I teased everyone involved about it being a conspiracy. Sneaky people.

Sneaky people who wanted to make a spectacle out of me.
Sneaky, conspiratorial people who love me.

Life is good.
Remember to make a wish.
Remember to dance.

Called my cousin last night. I grew up with her; we're about a year apart in age. She came to live with my parents for 2 years & it was like having a sister. She's a fiery beastie with an active imagination and used to have a severe inferiority complex. Puberty does wicked things to some people.

Anyway she left home for Phoenix, met & married her knight in shining armor, bought a house, & is now expecting their first child. She was so excited about it, she actually gushed. She has never been given to gushing, but she did. She said, "We saw it on ultrasound yesterday and... it has a HEAD!?"

I had no choice but to giggle at her. Silly girl thinkin she'd have a headless baby or something.


Odobea

Coyote

Smile at Me

The washing machine started screaming at me last weekend. Not entirely certain what's wrong with it, but maybe the pump or the belt (oh yeah like I know what the hell I'm talking about-- sounds good, though, huh?) needs replacing. After 3 house guests, all of them big hairy mens, I had mucho towels, sheets and blankets to wash in addition to our usual weekly work wear.

We took our five (5 very full) laundry baskets to the local "Speed Queen," which is a really appropriate name for that neighborhood.
It was nice & clean & empty, so we monopolized all the big double load washers.

S sat reading his Spanish Civil War history book while I looked at all the five-year old Newsweeks and Reader's Digests, read the bulletins, watched the clothes go tumbling. The local country western station was playing oldies, like Hank Williams Sr., Patsy Cline, Willie Nelson, Dolly Parton, some old Randy Travis. I don't prefer country music but some of the old stuff is cool.

At six o'clock the "new country" dj came on with her trying-to-be-sexy voice, all Ooooh and Aaahhhh and fakey fake giggles like some lousy porn star, and she commenced to play the most godawful dreck I have heard in years.

Country western music has not improved in the past ten years.

At one point I asked an eye-rolling S how he was doing while we were folding the umpteenth sheet & he said, "Fine, other than this splitting headache I'm getting from the music. People actually listen to this stuff?"

We folded socks in silence & he leaned towards me & said, "My mind is going..."
I snorted.

The best part was when some super cheesey repetitive song came on & we started making up words for it.
"Let me take you back home to my rv
we can sit on the couch and watch tv"

He even got poetic or something on me & busted out with,
"Dontcha bitch at me even though you should
I know I ain't no good
Rap your knuckles, bust my knee
But honeysuckle don't you bitch at me"

An evening at the Speed Queen.
Gotta get my washer fixed.

Very sweet treat on Sunday after langorous laziness in bed until ten and a long breakfast. S counted his quarters from jeans and jackets and found some dimes on his dresser, and when we went to the store he requested I walk with him around the corner "for a surprise." There, and I don't know when it got there, was a Baskin Robbins. It tickled me that he was so sneaky and so sticky sweet. I had a scoop of black cherries and he ate his espresso peanut-butter crunch or whatever it was. Perfect for the first day of June!

R & J came over last night to play with swirling skirts and noisy coin belts. We worked on choreography for the first quarter of the song. The easiest way to create a choreographed dance routine is to count each measure of the music and determine which motion fits within the phrase. Not exactly as easy as it sounds... we eventually enlisted S to help us, and during the music we would call out the name of the move. We had all had a glass of wine, and S had had a few more than that, so this morning when I looked at the legal pad he used to record the words we said it looked something like this:

snakey intro with cross step
J turkish shimmy in place R & M hip drop side
8 to front
spinny cross shoulder shimmy
line up snake arms
maya out turn to left
dangling 8
undulate

At some point after dinner, after J left, I had used the same page as a doodle pad, drew a stick bull taking a crap on a stick man's head. Don't ask.

I also recall R tossing me S's PSEA cap & she grabbed his fishing hat & we goofed it up good to a Brazilian bellydance cd she brought. We decided to add a short drum solo to the choreography, & she's been dying to work with a particular song. Halfway through the music, a scratchy deep-voiced man says, "Aruga la camisa!" (sp! apologies--no habla espanol!) which means, according to R, "wrinkle up your shirt!" Also, about ten measures from the end of the song, the music stops & the same voice laughs, "Hah! Hah! Hah!"

Very silly.

S took KJ's daughters in our big old pickup to go get a freezer for the cafe. The two girls are 3 and 8 years old, very adorable. The little one, Yausi, had her car seat on the pickup's bench seat, and proclaimed herself to be "higher than both of you" to S & her sister. S was tickled, but Naier took great umbrage & insisted in 8 year old logical fashion to explain how no, Yausi's head was not any higher than hers, that in fact it was Yausi's butt that was higher. S said it was all he could do to keep from laughing. Yausi, being 3, didn't care for the reasoning. She only cared that she was able to see out the windows.
S said, "You can see everything, can't you, Yausi?"
"Yes, I have a great view."
"The big windows make it easy to see."
Yausi looked at him and said, "Yes, the only way I could see more is if you had a monster truck."
She got mad at him for laughing.