Plug Your Nose And Pull The Lever

FOR-E-VER. 

(cue The Sandlot echo)

That's how long it's been since we've talked.  What have I been up to, you ask?  Buckle up and strap on your hockey helmet, friends.

I've been...

• scooping cat litter
• eating vast quantities of Gifford's ice cream (Strawberry Cheesecake, Rainforest Nut and Vanilla with Grape-Nuts, should you ever be interested in purchasing some before I come visit you, the hubs, and your exotic animal menagerie, dear sister)
• maneuvering canoe trailers

Let's dwell on the subject of creative trailer parking for a second.  It's like ice-dancing, minus the ice, plus a whole lot of herky-jerky movement and an exhaust system. Like ice-dancing between a big rig and a glass chandelier - birthing a kind of triple salchow that has a mind of it's own.

Or, you could instead imagine having to "drive" a Chinese New Year lion costume.  Then, imagine you're directing it while facing the wrong direction.  And you're going backwards (Which backwards, you ask?  Yours or theirs?  Yeah, now you're getting my point).  Some things in life are just plain harder than they look.

And they look hard.

A two-person lion performing mui fa jong, for example.  

This is no hopscotch exhibition, ladies.  Human acrobatics are not unlike trailer acrobatics, which I could probably write you a book about at this point, titled My Trailer Diaries.  Lesson #1 (and this is a complete tangent, mind you): Never forget to dump the black-water.  If you don't know what black-water is, this is especially true for you, because if you forget to dump it, you are going to find out in some very nasty ways.

But back to the list.  I've been...

• doing laundry.  Like 25 loads in one day.  In a room that registers 85 degrees on a -25 degree February morning, without the dryers running
• finding us a place to live 
• offering dancing lessons at a friend's wedding

I'm the one on the left, showing Abbie my spirit fingers.  Who dances like that?  How embarrassing.

• dropping metal canoes on my friend Sarah (There she goes!!  Sorry, Sarah.)
• changing cocktail dresses in the back of a pick-up truck (My license plate doesn't say "BAKWUDS", but then again, it doesn't need to.)
• scooping cat litter

Yeah, we're living the high life up here, dumping poop into the outhouse toilet behind the camper and parking unwieldy vehicles in tight spaces.  

I bet you're glad I'm back.

You're Invited to a Pity Party

This blog thing is harder than it looks. 

As you’re reading this statement, I assume that you’re picturing me as a whiny and pretentious 4-year old with pigtails and an astonishingly upturned nose, shoving expensive chocolates and Petrossian special-reserve caviar down her pie-hole, a la Augustus Gloop.  That’s what I’m imagining, anyway.

source

Really, M, grow a set.  It can’t be that bad.  It was your idea, after all.  

But seriously, for someone like me who is perilously underequipped in all things will-related, committing to a rigid (or not-so-rigid if you consider my track record) schedule of intelligent and thought-provoking scrawlings is a heavy burden to carry.  I understand now why authors tend to rent out wooded cabins and spend months alone with their typewriter or laptop after running their smart phone over with a riding lawnmower.  Life gets in the way.

On the other hand though, the flavor of life is what really makes the cake worth eating, now isn’t it?  Though I would venture to guess that such deliberate isolation must breed tremendous creativity [and serial killers], I don’t think that I could ever fully commit to a life entirely powered by my mind and an electric typewriter.  

I know I wasn’t born with an imagination like Lewis Carroll, which I do think is really too bad, but my disappointment is tempered by the threat of what would possibly happen if my dreams became scripted reality.  A chiropractor that uses a power drill to correct your T4/T5 spinal misalignment is still pretty scary, even on paper (especially at age 11, which was when this sickening brainchild came to me in the night – my sister can confirm that the next 3 years were full of dreams and mental snapshots that were quite alarming but simultaneously had the potential to make me a cool million in slasher film royalties).  It's a good thing I haven't written all of them down.  That is, unless you consider that as a result, I didn't make a cool million in slasher film royalties.  Then it seems less good.

And all of this creativity happened without the massive opiate supply that Lewis Carroll must have been employing – we are agreed on that fact, right?

I guess what I’m saying is that finishing each of these little posts is like taking a good nap.  For the experience to be sufficiently gratifying, I need to expend a fair amount of energy in preparation and do some rigorous carbo-loading in advance.   It’s not as easy as it seems.  Please, feel for me.

And can you hand me a napkin?  I've dribbled a little caviar down my front.