Juliet Johnson

Ridin Really Wide

2012-01-24T11:56:00.001-08:00

Got a new saddle with some of my Christmas money, my first new saddle ever in my life. It's not a real saddle, it's like a bareback pad, squishier, called a treeless saddle.

It's so WIDE on already WIDE Maggie that after about half an hour in the saddle there is actually no way I could get off. My legs are stuck straight out that way.

So I have to do some stretching, throwing my legs to the sky and having someone shove them out in the splits. And hold them that way. Til I break, or they loosen up.

Frenemies

2012-01-20T18:18:00.000-08:00

After that disastrous day out with Maggie where I decided turning her into a bag of dog food would be the kindest thing I could do with her - the next day I went out with Nigel on the trail.

Except for spooking at a parked boat (seems boats are the most TERRIFYING SHAPE, and I'm thinking she had a terrible boating accident when she was Agent 91, Super Spy), she did excellently well - she does so well with a friend horse along. It wasn't until 45 minutes into the ride, when we were heading back in from a new trail, that I could relax, I could feel my legs come down from up in my shoulders and actually touch the sides of Maggie's stomach. I believed in her instead of being scared. Alot of my problems are me. She's just being a horse that never did anything or saw anything before these last 5 months. She's just being honest. And honestly, all she needs is a buddy for trail rides to get her comfortable (she keeps telling me with body language, pretty specifically) and on days I don't have Nigel or someone to ride with, I can just do circles in the street near my house, where she's comfortable. You know, read her signs and do what she can do, and build up our connection. But I have to believe in her and tell her so by being relaxed. Believe in me. Too.

So lying in bed that night I realize, oh, wait, she's my 4-H project. My 45-H project, since I'm way old to be in 4-H. Like my friend Chris said, just pretend you're taking a class in things you're scared of, and your mind will open up. So she's a 4-H project, and that gives me some balls.

Also, she's been having some fungus that is making her rub all the hair off her face so I've had to rub her down with Listerine twice a day, which I don't know, gives her really fresh breath. So my hands smell like an old man Hebrew Choir, seriously, old man fresh.

Love hate relationship, I'm just going to try and stick with my project. Why is worrying so ample and buxom??

Brother, Would You Sell a Friend?

2012-01-18T16:15:00.000-08:00

I don't know what to do about Big Fat Maggie. Mostly, if I sell her, I'd want to name the new horse Maggie. If there was a new horse.

She's just big and difficult and I'm old and senile-ish. I have no right being up on a green horse. I should be up on an old senile horse. Definitely.

The problem is, I've spent MONTHS with this horse. And she needs maybe another 5 months of me not being afraid. It's like she's reached giant toddler stage, so she knows SOME rules, but she doesn't want to really listen to those rules all the time. And she's 1400 pounds.

I don't know, gentle reader. I just got a used bareback pad to fit her huge gut off ebay. Of course, in the week that I decide I probably should find an easier horse to ride. So I have to wait at least til it comes so I can use it once. Before I get a smaller horse. Anyway. Luckily there are plenty of horses out there, and two friends are interested in taking my horse. So no money would be lost or spent. But it's hard to sell a friend. Especially, what if she's destined for greatness? But she is a really pushy horse. I wouldn't mind a less pushy horse.

Okay, more later.

52 New Things

2012-01-10T11:52:00.000-08:00

My friend Spew is going to do 52 Meet Ups this year. I decided I'm going to try 52 New Things. One new thing a week.

I'm behind a few weeks cause the year already started. But I can count meeting a new friend - I did that today.

The next thing is going to be ice cream. I'm almost sure. I want to try unicycling. Anything out there you're going to try??

Right now I'm going to try and be on time picking up Lilly. That's a new thing.

Friends for Mags

2012-01-10T11:23:00.000-08:00

Maggie has a new friend. Well, two new friends. It's been 5 months since she got here - and yesterday we went out on the trail with another horse and my friend Nigel. He borrowed the horse from a neigh bor. (Get it "neigh" bor?) Anyway, he came and picked me up on horseback, just like in Sense and Sensibility. I'm hoping he brings a carriage next time and then changes the neighborhood into a scenic valley with a Lake of Shining Waters, and has fresh sandwiches packed in a basket. I will then disappear completely into my imagination. But as Anne says, that's all we need. My trail rides will still be full of shining lakes and verdant valleys. Who cares if we live next to the dump.

I was nervous to take her out with Nigel, who I thought as a boy and an ex-jockey, wouldn't baby us but would instead make us do dangerous stunts, but of course he hasn't BEEN a jockey in several thousand years, and we just walked along the trail. Also, I was afraid that Maggie might somehow cause a scene, fight, freak out, I had never seen her really with other horses, and what she did was very funny, all she did was hurry up to follow the other horse with her nose almost imbedded in the other horse's butt, and that's where she wanted to stay. Goodyou'rehereI'lljustfollowyoudon'tmindmynoseIloveyourbuttit'sgreat. Thank god that horse wasn't a kicker, Maggie would currently have no face.

I should mention that Maggie was extremely oily because I had freaked out thinking she had chicken lice (a great soup if you're sick, by the way) because she was rubbing all her fur off, and so I went out the night before and dusted her with this white powder until she looked like a Ghost Horse, and then she was still itchy the next day and I looked up lice and I looked up itchy horse butt (as I'm sure you all have) and then I found some sane person online that said um, dandruff anyone? So I checked her mane and tail and she had a ton of dandruff, which I had kind of thought but who listens to intuition these days - since she had come from a wet environment (CO and N. Dakota) and ended up in weirdly hot January in California - yes, I think scratching all your dry skin off until you push the fence off it's brackets is in order.

So I washed her with Head and Shoulders and then doused her with mineral oil on the itchy spots, and now I could fry an egg on her and it wouldn't stick (very hard to get her over the stove). So that's how we went on our trail ride, me on the greasy fat horse and Nigel on the refined ex-polo pony who didn't mind my horse's face in her ass. Noble, it turns out, was not only her name.

But it was the first trail ride with company, and it helps to have reinforcements, why have I forgotten that? Because I couldn't afford reinforcements. But it is so much better. Except for one dog who charged the fence so much as we passed that Maggie, who was patient patient patient until finally just flipped out and bucked and stormed forward but I had the One-Rein Emergency stop in my new bag of tricks that I've learned as Scared Rider, so I ripped her head to the left and aimed her at the opposite fence (which was coming at us rapidly) and she contained herself. She is a very mellow mare most of the time, she only has these momentary explosions and leaps forward or some very exciting nonsense for about three strides, enough to outdistance her panic, and then she stops, panic-free, the panic is now three strides back, and I'm now choking on my own panic, but she's fine, ready to keep going now. Thanks. And I keep thinking, thank god the kids aren't on her, but duh, of course the kids aren't on her. This is WHY you're on her. She'll be good at kid riding when you're done at training. In time.

So we'll work on that. It's only been a few months. The more exposure, the more it's eh, that's just a stupid dog.

And then 2nd friend, today I met Lottie, who is looking to do some horse bonding and responded to my craigslist ad for horse help. I wanted someone who wanted to come out once a week and play with Maggie in exchange for a bale of hay, to help with her costs. I couldn't have found a better person - she's a sweet girl/mom, college student, just wants to braid Maggie's hair and put ribbons in it. Time away from her kids and work, to relax. Maybe eventually to ride, but for now, she just wants to bring a bale of hay and play for a little while and get to know her. Perfect arrangement. Perhaps later, she and her kids can move into the tiny apartment being built onto our house, and marry Tim, the construction worker who already lives there. Heheh

Could Fear Wait Over There, Please?

2012-01-06T20:29:00.000-08:00

I took a bunch of kids ice skating today. We also went Monday, and it seemed like Monday was more fun maybe because it was Monday and not today, where everything is fresher and we had to compare it to Monday, the better day.

This time there were six pairs of skates to tie on six different people, and I'm not kidding, a half hour later I finally finished. Leaving only and hour and a half to skate the 50 bucks I spent to get everybody in. There was one kid that should never, EVER have soda because he talks so fast anyway, having him talk while hyped up on soda was like traveling on the Millenium Falcon on hyperdrive. It was kind of amazing to behold.

But I didn't get into this blog to talk about the skating, this is my Maggie blog. I didn't get to ride or work with the Mag today because the kids were home and there wasn't that hole in the day that I could jam a 1400 pound cowhorse into. I did manage to lay on the diving board face down in the sun with Lilly wearing SpongeBob pajamas at like 1 in the afternoon. While Emma was in the treehouse, and Nathan was riding around the neighborhood collecting Christmas trees to bring home and cut up with a chainsaw. (The urban boy's firewood gathering.)

Maggie has been here almost five months, and getting on her everyday, whether I want to or not, just being a robot and doing the same things over and over so it becomes routine, has helped to shape her into a riding horse. She's 80% there. She still has maybe 19% I Want to Do Things My Way in her mind. But she's learning. I ride with about 20% fear. I'm trying to reduce that. I took Hank with us to give her some company, and I spent so much time yelling at the dog who kept wrapping himself around poles and stepping all over his leash, that I forgot to be scared, I was too busy being angry and yelling at him. It was kind of refreshing, to have the immediacy of anger to focus me away from the internal dread of getting bucked off. I might take Hank more often, it made an hilarious circus train of a ride, I'm sure all the people passing in cars on the street were amusing by Cussing Girl with Dog and Pony Trailside Show.

I should maybe designate a recepticle that I could place my fear in as I head out to ride, and retrieve it later, because it sure takes over everything. Maybe I'll put it all in the mailbox. Maybe I can accidentally mail it in with my Netflix and never have to see it again. Until I rent it next week. Dammit.

Aside from Maggie having an itchy neck and butt and scraping all the hair off those places, she's a healthy and fat individual. So far.

Merry Timsmas

2011-12-27T10:11:00.003-08:00

So I didn't know we'd be spending Christmas with Tim. Tim's the worker that is helping fix the back side of our guesthouse. He lives by the beach, so the only way to get him here to work on time has been I guess to have him live over there, sleeping in the backless guest house, covered in plastic, in I hope a thermal sleeping bag.

It's weird enough to have a dude sleeping in an open air house, but then on Christmas?? So of course Tim got some slippers and then we invited him in for turkey and then somehow he was doing bike jumps with Nathan and Bruce in the backyard and going on the family walk and then playing a ripping game of Monopoly with all the kids. Nandy said Tim seems like a satyr, which I just like because it has a "y" in a weird place and it sounds like he'd have pointy ears and hide in secret dells in grassy knolls in Ireland.

He is actually a nice guy, just didn't know I was going to be having a Timsmas this year. I'm guessing that when the house is finished he'll just be living there. On Christmas day he did make some huge additions to the treehouse Nathan's building. It was actually the best day of Nathan's life, to have a builder be his friend. They nail gunned things and later rode bikes.

A Merry Christmas for all.

Maggie the Bolter

2011-12-19T09:26:00.000-08:00

I don't know what I wrote about Maggie last, but I've figured out that she's in training, and I'm the one training her, so everything has to be taken with a grain of salt. Yesterday we rode over to Katie's house with Nathan way ahead of us on the bike, and aside from bolting forward once from a terrifying dog behind a fence, she did okay.

Getting her used to neighborhood dogs is the same as getting her used to the bridle, which she's now excellent at. It's just scarier cause I'm on her back and have to bolt along with her and pray I don't fall off. She'll get better at it, I just have to hang on. Literally.

I rode with spurs for the first time yesterday and she does listen a bit better, barely had to use them. She's doing better in general, listening - not wanting to go forward all the time, but still doing it. I figure what's right past that is resignation, the OKAY, I'll GO your way with no thinking of turning around. She's halfway there, and I only wanted to quit on her EVERY TIME. For some reason she's still here.

My Brain is An Empty Vessel

2011-12-10T09:31:00.000-08:00

Too much going on and I don't think I'm actually doing that much that is visible to the naked eye. Just trying to maintain. Make a happy Christmas for kids at school, take care of kids, and the horse in the backyard. My friend Julie might take this horse, if she's not right for me.

The lady I used to ride for wants to give me her stallion. The sweetest horse if you can ride in an arena, he's nutty on the trail. And of course all I have is trail here, I don't have an arena. Maybe I should demolish the garage, instant arena.

I don't know, I'm not doing anything. I'm going to go recover from being out late with kids last night. Kids past 9 pm, never a good thing. I need to see the end of a night, without voices, to know that the day went well, and to feel satisfied. I'm only good for a limited number of hours, then my brain fries.

So I'll go sit in the sun and ruminate.

Big Fat Asshole

2011-12-06T09:14:00.000-08:00

Yeah, so maybe it's the big crazy wind, but when I take the horse out she acts like an asshole. My friend Katie says not to give up, but I say you know what, life is too short. I just want to get on and ride on the trail, come back, and feel refreshed. I've been doing all the training, but I don't like when the horse turns at me and looks like she wants to stomp my brains out. She gets this look when I ask her to trot and she definitely wants to squelch that request from me. Like, by crushing my skull. So she can then eat grass around my body.

I decided if I become a big reality tv star on NickMoms, I'll have a little extra money so I can send this horse to someone else and then get a decent horse that is already trained.

As soon as I decided this, I took Maggie back inside and pulled all the trash cans in around her. She didn't mind all the clattering at all. In fact, I had to go back to get more trash cans (my life is trash) and I left her in the driveway and she just stood there like an excellent carriage horse. Damn her. Waiting while I pulled all the trash cans around her, she waited til I said Walk On, and then she just walked on like she was in the Rose Parade. I'll work more on ground driving her, she seems to like that. Katie says to wait til after the holidays to do anything. Stupid Katie.

Fat Cowboy is Changing my Life

2011-11-30T20:18:00.000-08:00

This fat cowboy is amazing. I'm learning all this stuff on his dvds about riding that I never knew, like first never wear a tight cowboy shirt if you're like 30 pounds overweight. He looks like Yoda. But really, I'm learning mostly that everything I do is my fault. The horse is just this lazy blinking, big eyed animal that basically wants what you want - an easy time. You just have to find the connection. And nurture it.

So much of it is the same as mothering - you're teaching behavior that works for you, and you can do it gently, you just have to be consistent.

I worked with Maggie out on the street yesterday and the backyard today for about 5 minutes that I had free - and it's really amazing what happens when you have a handful of new skills to toss out there and try. It takes away fear, and instead you have purpose. And the horse seems to respond to purpose - it's like she wants to do what I'm asking her - she's actually not being an asshole because she wishes she lived at a better barn and that her owner was Justin Timberlake or something (I don't even know who that is, is that like a shoe, or something?). Really, the horse isn't harboring some grudge, has no other agenda. She just wants active guidance so she can relax and carry out your plan, and then celebrate later with a giant pile of hay and maybe a butt scratch.

The riding is a different feel - it's active. The more active I am with my seat, legs, hands, the more she responds and listens, she's glad for the guidance. I'll be glad when she knows all the cues better and I can just ride and daydream, but this new section where we're both learning to understand each other - it's pretty interesting.

Jerry the Life Coach

2011-11-29T00:18:00.000-08:00

My new love is this dude Jerry Tindell. He's some fat old cowboy who is like magic on horseback. Some neighbor (I'll call her cussing hairdresser from New York)gave me his dvds and I've been watching them on the treadmill and learning how to get into the mind of Maggie.

I have to watch everything like 20 times to understand what the hell he's talking about, and then I run out and try it out on Maggie. It's a good thing I have the discs, because Katie moved to her new house yesterday and without her here I decided I better get rid of this impossible horse. But then the dvds give me inspiration so I go out, get on her back and try all this bending and flexing and teaching her the leg cues, and it's kind of fascinating. She actually DOES the stuff he says it's possible to teach.

All I want is for her to be able to go out on the trail and be a regular and safe horse. But what he said that was most interesting is that horses don't respond to the pull on the rein, it's not the pull they're going for, it's the release. So you think you're pulling them, but really, when you pull them, they go with it because at the end of the pull is the release. They're looking for the release. I thought that said alot about pretty much everything in life. The horse will try anything for you because at the end you're letting go. That's a pretty nice promise.

Learning horses is just like learning music or learning any other invisible thing. It's all about finding balance and figuring out how to float along with something as seamlessly as possible so you can hear its own silent song. Hopefully you can match up with it for a few strides where you dissolve together. That seems like beauty to me.

Enjoy Your Meal

2011-11-20T22:34:00.000-08:00

I guess Maggie's been with us three months now. I've been working with her out in the barn area because it said online to make her life a living hell in the barnyard, so that when you go on trail rides, she won't be in a hurry to turn around anymore and go home. So she's getting lunged outin our little back paddock area and she challenges me sometimes but mostly she does exactly what I say. She's a quick learner. Smart, but strong. So I have to be firm.

She's also just a big fat pile of brown playdough. She'd much rather just stand there and stare at you and perhaps fall asleep. So maybe when I'm done and I've built the perfect horse, then we'll both just stand there and fall asleep.

I was having a bad day the other day and I went out to see her while she was eating. I laid my head on her fat side and told her whatever problem it was that I was having. Probably about how life is speeding by and how does anyone figure out what they're doing, or who they are or what's important or what makes sense.

And she lifted her head up from her hay to look back at me, chewing contentedly.

You should really try the food here, was her message. There's nothing else, Jule. It's simple. Enjoy it.

Tiny Steps

2011-11-15T22:27:00.001-08:00

I know this has become the Maggie blog, but I haven't had much time to ride lately. I mean, we ride a bit every day - Monday Nathan stayed home sick from school, so of course I made him ride his bike while I took Maggie up the trail. Only when you're trying to keep up with a bike do you realize how incredibly slow this horse actually is. Much better to have your head in the clouds than in real time when riding her. And today I got on for ten minutes doing bending and circling in the street in front of our house and then I had to run pick up Lilly for school and on the way shovel a pile of horse poop in a bucket and stick it in the trunk so it wouldn't be in front of the neighbor's house where she had deposited it. Then I forgot it was in the car so when I went to get the kids at carpool, I actually had to REMOVE a bucket of manure from the trunk so as not to gag the 11 year olds.

Today was one of those really hard days - packing my mom (again) this time in smaller and smaller suitcases, getting her plane stuff worked out, getting her dog into the vet so she can fly on the plane, hoping she even gets on the plane since she's going standby, trying not to feel guilty for all the things we didn't do while she was here, everything rush rush rushing because we have 3 busy kids all the time around. Then Lilly saying (when I had to go to the vet), "Is she going to die?" because the last time we were there we had to take in old Maisie. Then I had to run to the gyno for a look under the hood, and all evening was spent in the garage and helping Nathan do an earthquake project for science. As well as cooking. And still I'm mad I didn't get on the treadmill because then I could eat more banana cream pie.

And life moves too fast and there's too much going on, and I'm not even rich or famous. And sure, maybe I spend too much time helping my mom because I'm hoping that she'll actually love me if I do it. That she'll find happiness. It is truly a ridiculous life.

I'm sure if she does get on the plane, I'm going to have a very strange adjustment period after all these years of trying to make her happy and content, and helping her, and now she'll just be gone. I hope I can think of ways to spend the time. Relaxing might be good. I was just starting to go crazy, too much togetherness and not enough nurturing. But I love her, but man, it's hard because I am passionate about things, and I can get really angry when people are stupid and don't do things my way. I may have some faults. Today at carpool I stopped to let Nathan out to buy some awful fatty snack from a street ice cream vendor and I didn't pull up enough and some lady (I hesitate to call her that) had to pull her car around me and yelled out her window, mad "White people!" Wow man, that hurt. Am I bad driver because I'm white? Or because I'm a bad driver? When I see all the Mexicans and South Americans dropping their kids off in all sorts of terrible areas around the school in the morning, do I think racist slurs? I think I do. It's a base instinct, easy to access. Then I realized the Armenian kid I like was blocking traffic as he got dropped off the other day too. So it isn't just white vs hispanic. We're all against each other. All nations, all skin colors - we are all bad drivers. I can celebrate that unity. And when I think racist slurs, I can realize, I, too, am a bad Mexican driver. It's love, man. Humanity.

Maggie is very, very fat. I sometimes sit on her while she's eating. Because she's the cushioniest chair.

The hay guy Sal dropped off the hay while I was having my ten minute ride this morning, and he stopped to say hi. I told him I was working on bending her because she was a little barn sour lately (feeling desparate, I can't keep going). I always hang on anything anyone says, so as not to give up. And Sal said, "She's doing great." So that bolstered me up. Sal says she's great, I'll keep going. Tiny steps, big swaying belly.

Limp Away, Jog Home

2011-11-10T10:04:00.001-08:00

So Mags and I did the trail yesterday after a few days of bending and turning and getting her used to listening to the rider. And she was better about being barn sour - she did still try to turn around and go home, but I could win the battle easier than last time. I figure I'll work with her a few days on bending, then go on the trail, then more days on bending. Eventually she'll quit, and be the big dope I'm hoping for, where you get on, aim her at the trail and ride.

Our little work area is out in front of the house on the street, in front of God and everyone. We're the weird little couple who just go in circles and never get anywhere. But it is so nice to be on a horse's back, especially her fat back, it's like riding a couch. Everything is peaceful up there because there I can't do anything for anybody, I just shrink back to my actual size. I think that's relaxation. Of sorts.

Yesterday we managed to open and shut the gate without me having to get off - it's like a comedy act trying to wiggle her the right way so I can close the gate without hitting her. But she was patient and helpful. Oh and she even fakes limping when going OUT away from the barn, and walks as slow as she can. Then you turn her around and she walks happily back, suddenly all better. I think I do that too, when I have to go get the kids at carpool.

Now that she can open gates, I think I may invite her in and do everything from horseback. Fry eggs, pack lunches and talk on the phone. It'd be so much more relaxing except our floors would be ripped to shit.

Day 81

2011-11-03T12:18:00.000-07:00

I haven't blogged in here lately because Maggie had become a gigantic fat asshole and it didn't seem inspiring. In fact, I mentally quit, like I do immediately, so as to remain consistent.

She had decided that after a month of riding, she was going to turn around and go home everyime we went out. And she's got a really strong head. It's like trying to turn the Titanic away from the iceberg. Except without the big budget effects.

Every time she does something that seems insurmountable I think, time to make her into dog food. This was a mistake. She's a terrible individual. I will surely be killed. But then today I went out again because I had time off and I'd rather do that than write or clean. And I worked with her on turning and bending. Stepping back a step, since I realized that it's only been a month since we started riding everyday, which means that out of 10 years of her life, she's only had 30 days of someone pulling her around with a bit in her mouth. Maybe I should go back and get her really good at turning and listening to cues, respecting her rider and driver.

So we went out and slowly worked on the street, just turning circles, not getting anywhere, and she slowly got used to it - I just had to realize she can't just be pointed and aimed up the trail and expected to be a seasoned trail horse when she's still just learning and wanting to figure out the rider/horse connection. She's going to test everything, and wait to see who emerges as the leader.

I am learning today, as I drove her on long lines in the driveway, that it's actually an illusion that riding or driving is mellow and easy. You are always in contact with the horse's mouth, and you can't let the reins slack because then the horse is actually just floating out ahead with no leader. No matter where you're standing or walking as the rider/driver, you have to have contact and be the gentle but firm leader. A horse needs a leader. Later on, when we have a pretty solid connection, and she's a seasoned trail horse, then we can have moments of daydreaming and she'll know who's in charge. But I can't slack off now in the formulative years/days.

So thirty days is not enough it is just the beginning. But it's better than no days.

On the way home from our short ride we kept turning and bending, stopping and starting and turning and getting her used to listening to me no matter if that squirrel over there looks more interesting, or if going back to the barn for a nap seems like a good idea. She did improve - and the three Friends Of Maggie who keep telling me to not give up - they keep saying picture the horse you want to have, don't be afraid of every bad moment is the ACTUAL horse, the terrible horse. She's just a big doofy dog, and she's trying to learn. She likes her people.

When I got off her yesterday at the intersection by our house because one my friends stopped in her car to talk, and I was complaining about how she had turned into a gigantic piece of doo doo, we kept talking and talking and as we were talking, Maggie just stood there innocently and then slowly stepped closer to me until she was almost leaning on my shoulder, with her head hanging there like um, I don't wanna miss anything. She wants to belong.

That's why I kept going today. I'm going to focus on the idea that she will be an excellent, giving and gentle horse - just as she is now, I'll just school her in the cues I want her to follow, so she can be confident, and pliable.

And we've been calling her Agent 91 because of her brand on her butt. She's a retired spy (or is she retired?), and in the witness protection program.

Family Therapy Horse

2011-10-28T08:37:00.001-07:00

I usually write about the Mags and her progress, and she's doing great. Katie and I took her to the park yesterday and let her run free in the arena where she rolled and I got her to walk and trot on a lunge line, by voice command. She's still not always sure what I want her to do, and she'd much rather be sitting in a big fat hammock drinking a drink with a flower in it, but she does try for me.

The biggest lesson with this horse is learning to trust that just because one stupid mean pony bucks you off and breaks your hand and costs alot in hand surgery, doesn't mean that every horse is mean. In fact, most horses are just mosey-ing along. I don't like things that break my already tenuous confidence. That pony needs a few firecrackers in her horseshoes, as payback.

I have learned that Maggie doesn't buck or rear when she gets scared, she just leaps forward for a few strides. As long as I can hang on to that, I won't fall off. She usually does that when a dog startles her by charging a fence. That seems like her only pet peeve so far. She always leaps forward but then stops, because ultimately she is extremely lazy. She has no interest in running off with me. She is really strong, though, so I have to make her very supple in the bridle for the kids, so she won't manhandle them into going her way with her strong mouth.

Otherwise, she's the most excellent family horse, and it's only been 2 1/2 mos. I figure safely by Valentine's Day, anybody could ride her. At this rate. Even Barry likes her, and doesn't mind that hay costs too much right now. She's like the family therapy horse. Each night we go on a walk in the neighborhood and all the kids get on bareback for a little ride. We talk about our day.

Couldn't have done all this work without Katie, who has helped on the ground and in the saddle. Building my confidence and also being a strong, capable adult who could be another set of hands when training. She also loves horses. Really lucky how it all worked out.

Nascar in a Dumptruck

2011-10-26T21:35:00.000-07:00

Mags learned to trot in the last few days! She's really comfy to ride too. She is stubborn, when she wants to come home, you have to have the arms of Hercules to get her to turn the way you want (back on the trail). I took her out in the rain, and she got used to splashing trucks, walking through puddles - the noises sound differently in the rain. I also rode in a bareback pad with stirrups, and since it was cold her nice fat body kept my legs warm. (bareback is the best, but I'm too chicken to ride without stirrups yet, my leftover fear from pony-that-broke-my-hand years ago).

So now we'll work on canter, which for her is like Indy 500 fast. Like driving a dumptruck at Nascar. And we'll keep taking her on the trail and getting her used to going out. Just repetition, and positive reinforcement. And lots of hay. (I love my dumptruck horse, though. Did I tell you we passed a house on our trail where a guy was standing out front putting up Halloween decorations, and he said "That horse needs alot of exercise. She's too chunky." I just stared at him, 5'4 tops, with the gut of sumo wrestler hanging over his belt. So many things came to mind to say back to him. She's supposed to fat, dorkus. She's a draft. YOU, on the other hand. Too many quesadillas, pal, and it shows.)

Wagons Ho

2011-10-21T19:49:00.000-07:00

Our first wagon...

Maggie the Milk Maid

2011-10-18T12:52:00.000-07:00

Katie and I have been working with Maggie everyday. It's day 65 today, and we borrowed a driving collar and some harness pieces from my neighbor and we suited her up in all the heavy equipment, complete with bridle with blinders on. She ended up looking like a little old man horse, off to make milk deliveries in the neighborhood.

She is the most amazing horse, because not only did she let us dude her up in all this heavy stuff around her neck and on her back, she also let us tie a big fat heavy tire to some string behind her and she pulled it scraping around behind her like a man-eating tire monster in the driveway, without any fuss.

I realized the dreams of a young Amish boy by hearing the clinking of the harness as she walked, I just erased all the cement and city noises and replaced them with rolling green fields and women in the kitchens making pies in long dresses. That's how it is in my mind when I work with tubby Maggie. I sweat out there with the tons of fun horse, but I know that after work there's going to be a fresh pie in the kitchen. (Except there isn't.)

After our little tire drag exercise, we unharnessed her and then took a little trail ride up the mountain, to get her used to going out. It's only her 4th time up the mountain and she's getting used to dogs rushing the fence and barking, and cement trucks with air brakes. And I (who walked half the way, Katie and I switch halfway) saw a bug on the trail that was flailing around on his back and I righted him with my shoe cause he looked so in need. I was later repaid for this good deed by finding a eucalyptus leaf laying on the trail that was the perfect shape of a heart. (Picture of that later.)

Who says there's no treasure in them thar hills?

When I put Maggie away to eat her hay in the barn, I peeked in the hay bin to make sure she had enough and there was a perfect green egg, nestled there. Lovely, lovely surprises.

Farm life in the city.

My goal - to have an old wagon that Maggie can pull. I'm only missing one piece of harness. And the wagon.

61 Days

2011-10-14T08:16:00.000-07:00

Rode the Mags out on the street yesterday without anybody on the ground (Katie) helping. We only went about 1 block. All she wants to do is see if she can eat every lawn along the way. So I had to steer her into the middle of the street where alas there is no grass. The challenge now is getting her focused on steering the way I need her to go, not stopping at every In and Out for a shake and some fries. (Hey wait, chocolate shake? Why aren't we stopping again?)

Cause I read a trainer that said "there's only going to be two ways of doing things, your way or your horse's way, and it always has to be your way. Cause with horses there's no 'meeting of the minds.' They want a leader."

It's been 61 days, and Maggie is rusty at steering, but better at bridling. Bridling seemed impossible about a week ago. Now she's just getting it without a fight. She turned a corner. I figure her steering gently like glass is a few weeks away too. I am very close to being able to get on and just go on up the trail, and relax.

Now I'm slowly going to borrow all my neighbor's driving equipment and teach her to drive. She does like to go out. She's an adventurer.

Also her feet have to be trimmed and her teeth might have to be floated. Since her teeth were probably never bothered with when she was on the pee line. They can get sharp and have to be filed down with this huge file. Doesn't take long for the vet, but like the DMV, it isn't a chore you love to do.

All I know is, when the kids are demanding things, or homework swallows me whole and I'm lost in a vast wasteland of Nathan's middle school experience, I slip out into the barn and there's that fat Maggie looking for a pet or a scratch or goddamn it how bout a freaking apple once in awhile?? She loves apples now. She has big quiet brown eyes and she's grateful for everything.

Mom's therapy. At the cost of hay. Love the smell of hay too, smells better than money.

2011-10-06T14:46:00.001-07:00

That old Maggie is doing great. Today, it's been 7 1/2 weeks since she came here, and today I was ground driving her out in our back driveway (me walking way behind her with long ropes up to her bridle, steering her), and she was actually kind of figuring it out, to keep walking, turning and stopping when I said. She doesn't always understand, sometimes she turns all the way around to look at me like "Hey why are you back there, all the scratching happens when you're up here by my face." But then she'll turn back around. There isn't a fast speed on this horse. Nothing is important enough to get to in a rush. I think she's Southern. I perhaps should have named her Georgia.

What I'm liking today is learning that (I keep learning this) repetition of the basic things actually works. Doing the smallest things, gently and over and over, actually gets you a compliant horse. Mostly. I should try this in other areas of my life. Shooting for 2%, instead of 100%. Score everytime. But for now I'm building a mellow carriage horse. Very fun.

What I also like is that when I go out to her paddock to clean up her poops (which she lines up neatly against the back wall), she comes over and stands directly behind me, like a giant shadow. I don't even hear her, she's just suddenly there, and she just waits there.

She isn't even looking for food, she'll actually leave her hay (a very big deal for her, hay's all she's got, she has no pockets) and come over to stand behind me like hey, how bout a scratch.

Love that.

Safe and Steady

2011-10-01T23:18:00.000-07:00

Well let's see, it's been 7 weeks since we got the Mags, big fat horse in the backyard.

I've been working in the garage (cleaning it out), and sometimes we let her out to wander in the driveway - she likes to pick through boxes like she's shopping, and then go over to Moose's door and take a big poop.

I haven't had time to work with her except at night like 9 pm, I go out and saddle her up and ride for about 5 minutes in the back paddock. Just to get her used to the basics of saddling, bridling, mounting, steering and stopping. I say it's for her, but I'm figuring out that maybe it's for me. Routine and the basics, getting us used to each other, making it boring so that when we get out on the trail she knows what I want and there are the least amount of surprises, most amount of control.

Last night it seemed like she finally was understanding steering (yay!), then tonight she was more heavy at turning (boo). Last night she was worse at bridling, tonight she finally figured out what I wanted - that she didn't have to lift her head up, that nothing bad was going to happen with the bridle. My friend Nigel said, she's just not used to it, that's all. So she's not evading to be mean, she's just learning it all.

I'm going to try and do 30 days in a row under saddle so she expects to be worked with. Tonight when she wasn't steering so well from the saddle, I got down and put long lines on her and tried ground driving her, and she did really well. So she is learning - our back area is a little confined, so it's hard to manuever. It is amazing to build the horse, doing all the training. I have the little bits of time, and I'm learning her as she's learning me.

She'll do anything if you scratch all her itches - her stomach, her chest and the back of her back legs - she sticks her nose out and quivers with happiness when you scratch her.

She does like to work - when I come out at 9 I expect to see her sleeping, but she comes right over like hey, allright, bring on the molasses. I can see her pulling a cart for us, all the kids piled in back, not really getting anywhere, maybe just around the park and back. But who needs to get anywhere, it'll just be fun. But first things first, I'm still going to keep making her safe and steady.

Sweetness and Love

2011-09-25T22:33:00.000-07:00

Day 42 with Maggie the Wonder Horse. It's been a month and a half today. I gave up a few days ago (you may recall), then read up a little bit more about how to gain control of a dominant horse and decided, well hell, might as well try waving a little plastic bag on the end of a stick. Supposed to gain you some respect in horse body language.

So I went out there tonight and darn it if it isn't true that she did not like the waving of the plastic bag on the stick. She liked doing whatever she had to do to have me put that stick down. Then we worked a little slow and easy with the bit, to try and get her to keep her head lowered when the bit goes in. It's me, shoving it up there too fast that causes her to raise her head. So I have to relax, and act like I have nothing better to do than stand there with molasses dripping down my arm while I get her used to me approaching and taking away, approaching and taking away with the bit near her mouth. The long way is the short way, they say. Tiny steps. Once you get her happily taking the bit, it will be easy to do forever.

She has gotten (at least today) really good about letting me have all four of her feet to clean out. This is a major accomplishment in 6 weeks.

She has also learned Whoa, and is learning to turn right and left. This is helpful when there is a big firetruck coming down the road and you want to get out of the way in the future. So I'll make sure we have these cues pretty well established.

All in all a good training day. After our little work session I then scratched her entire body because she likes that. I think that is really why she lets me clean all her feet. Because I scratch her huge stomach, and this is bonding. Molasses and belly scratching, it could stop all wars in the world if we tried it. Works for her anyway, sweetness and love. Kinda love that. Pretty great journey if you look at success in small increments.

I'll Never Quit You

2011-09-22T00:27:00.000-07:00

Isn't that from Brokeback Mountain?

I decided the other day that this horse was a big mistake and I should take my midlife crisis wrapped in fur and trade her in for I don't know, some Icees at Target or something.

But then two of my friends said, wait, aren't you expecting a little too much? Yes. If you slowed down a little bit, wouldn't you be happier with the small steps and results? Yes. Slow down? What's that? If I slow down I'll fall down. That's why I never sit a watch tv with the kids. I'd just be asleep in seconds.

So then my one friend bought the mare a bale of extra hay, the sweet alfalfa kind that I can't afford, and my other friend brought her a little fly mask to keep her eyes nice and protected, and there is this tiny group of people that are really interested in how she turns out. So the next morning I once again dipped my hand in the jar of molasses and rubbed it all over the bit and she loves Molasses Hands, she would put the bit in herself if she had hands. And she lets me pick up and clean all her feet each day, which she hadn't done a month ago.

The more I work with her, the more she knows what to expect, the more the work becomes routine and boring, the more settled and predictable horse she becomes. She just needs to be allowed to learn the routine. She will be first in line to see the outcome.

So we continue to work toward boring. Something I've achieved with my all my personal goals. And what am I really losing, spending all this time in increments with this cow of a horse? Molasses makes your hands smell pretty good.

Dissolve Yourself

2011-09-16T23:30:00.000-07:00

There was a point, outside with our big horse today, where I did something right. Or I don't even know if it was right, but this huge, 1400 pound lump of motherly love was balanced between my outstretched arms, going in the circle I was trying to teach her (to lunge) around me.

I wasn't forcing her forward, I was encouraging her and then letting her go forward. And when I stepped in closer to her tremendous girth instead of being afraid, at a safe distance, when I moved in that's when, magically, she just started moving around me, like with me closer to her, she felt supported instead of attacked. Picture me standing in the middle of our back dirt paddock, barefoot, at 10 at night, and I decide to step closer to the giant mare, and hold my arms straight out from my sides, crucifix style, and jiggle the leadrope in my left hand to encourage her forward, and wiggle my right hand at her rear to let her know that this is where I end, that she's in a safe little pocket of me, and then magically, she trusts me. I'm so close to her that it's like she's a half ton ballerina and I'm supporting her weight, even though she's not touching me, she is leaning on me, the air is heavy and we are doing a little dance, where everything is moving the right way. We're in sync, and we are connected. And it's easy.

It's like the one time I was a good actor. For one moment in a play we did back in Maryland at our little coffeehouse theater, it was me and Paul, my friend, doing a scene from "Burn This," (no doubt badly) and in the play he storms out of the room and my character is supposed to crumple to the floor and want him back, and when Paul stormed out of the room I actually forgot that I was in a play and I felt my body say "Is he coming back?" And I cried for real, I crumpled down to the floor because I felt the loss, and that's the one time acting was real, when I forgot, and it was like crossing over to some other place, where I wasn't OUT HERE and everyone else was OVER THERE. I was THERE. I wasn't even I. The moment was everything, and I was dissolved into it.

That's what it was like tonight, out in the misty dirt, with the beautiful horse, balancing on my outstretched arms like she was floating. Lasted maybe four whole seconds. Because perfect only lasts that long. Then I scratched her way under her tummy and she stretched her neck out with her lip quivering because it's really hard to reach your itcy bellybutton when you're a horse. And I thought maybe it is worth it to have our little barn and family, even though she had to give up 30 gorgeous rolling green acres in Colorado. All the food she wanted, but none of this glorious dancing with barefoot humans.

Connection is something.

Everybody Call 911

2011-09-12T17:16:00.000-07:00

I got on! Exactly one month after working every day with her. On 9/11, and the tatoo on her butt says 911. It was destiny.

And look how highly dangerous she looks.

Tale of the Horsey Continued

2011-09-11T13:15:00.000-07:00

I have no idea where we're going with this horse, if we're even keeping this horse. But for now, I guess we're just trying to see if I'm not too chicken to keep moving forward.

We took Meg to the park yesterday, first time, me and Nathan on his bike and Katie our friend, and Hank and Owen, doggies.

She is the slowest horse ever. But when we got to the arena and let her free in that thick sand, she just ran around with her head straight up in the air. She was checking out the green grass, the kids playing in the park (she'd never seen a park, never seen a baseball field, never seen anything.) Of course I was scared seeing she could go fast and was huge. It just looked like death on horseback to me. I think I'm fixated.

But on the walk home she did finally relax and get back in her laid back mellow surfer state. So I have to realize that with each new step and experience, it is all new and all scary, for her and for me. But that new things are supposed to be nerve-wracking and scary, that's how it starts. That's hopefully the worst of it. Then it morphs into routine, normal, everyday. I just love boring. But I'm having to take all the scary steps to get to boring.

So maybe next time she'll be a little bit less excited, and then I'm building into things being reliable. It's all just time, and experience.

Horsework

2011-09-05T21:21:00.000-07:00

Day 22 with our new horsie - I hate to sound optimistic, but I think she's kind of great. I mean, she's really slow - I'll probably never make it more than 10 minutes from the house before I have to turn around for the hour ride back...this is if I ever actually ride her... But she seems level headed. Just inexperienced. So we're going slowly. It's only been 3 weeks now.

Today I got the saddle on her, got her used to the feel of that, and leaned on her back while standing on a chair. I also got her to pick up all four feet without kicking me. And she is starting to like the bit - it's going farther in her mouth each time we try. So no rush, this seems to work. Tiny bit at a time, and we might end up with a sweet horse. I think she eats about a bale and a half a week - which is about $30 at our high hay prices of the moment. But if I get a boarder in here, or get my horse job going again, she'd be covered.

Well, it's a good experiment. Everything seems like the first time, like I don't know anything about horses. All I know is to be scared. But we're building something. I'm building confidence.

Believe in Yourself

2011-08-30T23:26:00.000-07:00

So I'm covered in molasses but very excited because tonight, day 16, the horse did everything right. She did everything I asked. She slurped molasses off the bit and let me fiddle with it without yanking her head away (or maybe I learned not to be so forceful). She let me pick up her feet with a rope using light pressure. She let me put a bareback pad on her back and cinch it up gently, and then walk around.

Hmm, so slow and gentle, with a sense of humor... it does seem to work. All I did was stop trying to get somewhere, and remember that this mare is new to everything, and then there ya go. We're working out our relationship. So today was good.

2011-08-29T13:32:00.001-07:00

There's this horse. She's been at our house for two weeks now. I've been working with her every day, at night when the kids are asleep, and I'm sure the horse wishes she was asleep.

On day 13 (2 days ago) I decided this is too much for me. This takes too long. I don't know how to train a 1400 pound animal. My kids don't even put their dishes away, and they're a waifish 80 pounds.

So I started looking on the internet for how to work with horses like her and then I started reading about life as a PMU mare, which is what she is. She stood pregnant, tied in a stall starting every September until May. She had a little pee bag strapped to her pee area (that's the professional term) that collected her pee so it could be used for hormone replacement in humans. She was just a pee machine. She couldn't lay down, or wander over to smell flowers. No one gave her a carrot. In May, she'd have her baby and be out to pasture to loll free for three months. Then they take her baby away, get her knocked up again and stick her back in the stall for the long winter in snowy North Dakota.

I went back out there this morning to feed her. She was rolling in the dirt, free. She got up, shook off and stood there looking at the sky. She saw me and she came ambling over, sticking her nose out for a pet.

I can't believe I expect this horse to do anything except take deep breaths and enjoy her freedom. I don't need to rush to shove a saddle on her and bit in her mouth. I'm just getting to know her, and asking her to do small things to get her used to working kindly with me. Of course I want to ride, like yesterday. I want a horse that knows everything and is just easy. But my small amount of money buys this horse, the one that needs help and guidance. I have the space, and little bits of time. She is wide, fat and hilarious looking. And she loves molasses. Maybe sometimes you get what needs you, not what you need. Or somewhere along the line it works out, if you commit to it. And in the meantime maybe I can learn patience, and empathy here. Start gently, and fresh. With understanding of where she's been, the way she's been standing for years. It's only been TWO WEEKS.

I did just spend two years working with a filly doing exactly what I'm doing with her. I do know a little bit. I could do it.

One lady trainer I read said Slow and Easy. Throw away your watch. She'll learn everything, just go slow and easy.

I have hay for awhile longer.

A Swell Summer

2011-08-17T22:30:00.001-07:00

Sold our doggie door today to a strange guy in a truck. He was a big guy, who looked too old to be driving a truck. He made lots of jokes that were a little bit weird - you know when someone is trying to be casual and it just doesn't fit on them, they're just not good at it.

So he took the doggie door which is good because we're getting a new one put in the wall. But he wasn't someone we'd want over for tea, even Nathan agreed he was a little odd.

There's alot going on at our house - guys outside builing a deck that seems much bigger than the feeble one Barry and I had in our tiny minds. Things seem to take longer when power saws are involved, and they main guy who's working seems to pump up his muscles every day. By the end of the job he's going to be all arms, you won't even be able to see his face. Tina and I like to ogle him, big stong man. It is a construction site, so someone has to ogle. It's in his contract.

People come to swim, so the house kind of expands in the summer, friends come and go, food comes and goes, (mostly goes), the day always starts out with the usual Oppers and then there's this big middle day where people jump in and then it winds down to just us Oppers again. That middle part is swell. Like, full, swell, it swells. There never seems like they'll be enough food. There are always many stomachs. Luckily the stomachs usually bring extra - but the sheer amount of food preparation, have I mentioned this?? How do other people do this??

Okay, well anyway, a swell summer.

I'm in the Money

2011-08-17T22:29:00.001-07:00

I'm only writing in here because Nigel said he'd pay me $50 bucks for every blog I write. Cha ching, look this one's only two sentences.

Big Fat Horse

2011-08-15T23:10:00.000-07:00

There is a big fat horse at our house right now, and dammit I'm too tired to get the camera and plug it all in for a picture on here. If only Nathan was running my downloads or uploads or whatever, this would be a way cooler blog. Filled with pix and games and things you click on and whoosiwhatsits. That's not even a word I'm comfortable with.

This mare got here 1 day ago. She looks like a cow. A cow who swallowed a barrel. She has big cow eyes. She has never seen so much action in her life. She's been on 30acres in Colorado for a year, and before that at a PMU farm where she stood in a stall and had her urine collected for 7 years.

Now she watches kids riding bikes over ramps in the yard, and airplanes flying overhead. Her eyes get wide when she hears something she's never heard before. I'm sure she's sitting out back thinking "wow, I really drew the short straw on this one. Where's all the grass??"

But she is having something she's never had in her life. A family. Kids feeding her hay. Pats on the shoulder. Someone sitting with her. Putting fly spray around her eyes and face. So she's still adjusting to this new life.

The good thing is, she can always go live with my neighbor and be a trail horse for a living. But for now, we're just seeing what it's like to have a horse here, and giving her some love.

The weird part is, when you get something you think you want so bad, it doesn't feel like what you think. It makes you realize that the wanting something is a great thing - the getting it just makes you realize you were already perfect before - my life is already so wonderful. I didn't need anything else. I see that. Just having these kids, and a car that works, and living indoors, and occasionally pizza and books to read - this is much. Huge.

Nathan on The Workers at Our House

2011-08-12T22:07:00.001-07:00

Nathan says tonight, "You know you like someone alot and then you find out something about them...like they smoke or they have a tatoo... and you don't like them as much?"

Home Improvement

2011-08-08T13:39:00.000-07:00

Whoever said that opening new doors is a good idea has never gone door shopping with Barry.

It could be me, it might not be Barry, it might just be that you can't take two people with little sense of home style and put them in front a million doors. Will this one open in and clutter the room? Is this a bad choice, the boring sliding glass door? Who pays $800 dollars for a door?

Lilly lays on the bottom of the Lowe's cart and is so bored that she invents a new game with two gold screws she found behind the cabinet section. I think the screws are both dogs and there is something about napping going on. Either way, it's more interesting than Barry and I standing around on concrete floors with big drooling Lowe's employees trying to figure out which frigging door should lead out of our bedroom.

Then we get home and we have to move the broken diving board to make room for the new thrift store diving board, and somehow Barry ends up knocked off into the pool. Barry is now not allowed to do anything involving the OUTDOORS. Since his phone (which was in his pocket) is now sitting in a bag of dry rice in the kitchen. Praying for a miracle.

Stealth Chicken

2011-08-08T12:50:00.000-07:00

Our white chicken did not like that we moved her nest. Since the chickens have been moved over into the barn while the millions of chicken mites die tragic deaths alone in the chicken house, the white chicken has been holding out laying. In protest. I knew she had to lay, too, cause she kept going in and out of boxes, looking for the right spot, not able to focus on anything else, she obviously had a worry on her mind.

I could NOT find the nest. For days, I knew she had laid, just couldn't figure out where the heck she found a place that I couldn't see.

Yesterday morning when I went out, no white chicken. Uh oh, that usually means that overnight, chicken has become possum's Sunday dinner. But later when I went out again with some treats (who doesn't like old watermelon and stale crackers heaved over a fence?) I SAW the white chicken fly down from a tree. Eh heh, okay, I got you.

While she was eating I pushed my way past the foliage (sorry) and on TOP of the rabbit hutch, in the midst of a bunch of leaves I find a MILLION white eggs, all organized into her secret nest. Okay, 13 eggs. So it had been exactly 13 days she had kept her nest hideaway a secret.

I've checked the hideaway the last two days now and NO eggs. Craft hen. I believe she is building an underground railroad. If you see her, do offer her shelter and solace. But grab the eggs.

My House Has Me By the Balls

2011-07-27T23:18:00.000-07:00

I'm pretty good at looking competant at a lot of things. Mothering, cooking, animal husbandry. (wifery?) But with the house, forget it, it all leaks out, I cannot hide the fakery, it all comes sloshing around the corners as I run to try and pose, and block the landslide. All day, I could spend all day trying to organize as my three little destroyers unhinge all I have done with a simple bathing suit thrown on the floor or a spill of macaroni or a broken tooth or some other wild act where some limb waits to be broken.

I am always in the middle of something, usually involving my hands and a great deal of worry about all the other things I'm NOT getting to while my hands are busy doing this one VERY dumb task. I need multiple heads to manage all the worry - in fact, good idea, I should look into that on Craigslist, my true husband. If I had more heads, I could feel bad in more minds than just one, and that would feel pretty good, at least the space would be useful. Set up some lawn chairs and serve up the worry in a more relaxed fashion.

I snarl at the kids to help and basically let them know how they have FAILED me by not jumping up to help at each squawk I make so that now, deep in the summer (although it only feels like a few weeks) I have shown them how Mommy Cancels Fun because there's so much boring work to be done. I make them vacuum and mow the lawn and pull back the pool cover and feed the chickens and make their bed and fold the couch blankets and stop watching tv. I say things like Don't watch teenage shows because they're badly written and I don't want you to think buying shoes and wearing lipstick is what's Really Important.

I guess the house is always secondary, looming around us, a squalid shimmering mass of Undone, Unaccomplished, a gnarled, pointy finger shivering at me You Lose. I am adrift in this file-less ocean, an unalphabetized mess, piled underneath broken toys and lost library books. Someday I WILL climb to the top of the heap. I will build the bonfire and enjoy the burning of the stuff, I will be able to see the other side of my garage. Which I think is still there.

I am SORRY, house, that I've been so busy making quesadillas. Trust me, may I never see another corndog. It's that I have to manage things from the heart on down, so the building of the kids is more important than the wiping of your walls or the brooming of your sidewalk. My house will never be the palace of virtue that my prim grandmother's house was - it was always silent in her house, and undisturbed white like the inside of a starched leather shoe.

Our house is lived in like my (other, more relaxed) Arkansas Gramma Yvonne's hairstyle. She was tan and had big boobs and in her kitchen all the lemon drops stuck together in the glass jar from humidity. So you could take the whole glob of them out and just suck on the giant dome of lemondrops.

It was a beautiful world, there. I have, yes, successfully achieved the glob of lemondrops. In every corner of my house. She is chuckling in approval up there, in Heaven, jiggling her foot and flicking her ashes absently down on us. Those lemondrops taste pretty dern good, don't they? She's saying, taking a long drag.

Now go find some playing cards. (She had them stashed in every drawer of her house.) Like leprechaun gold.

Shock, Terror Mixed with Hooray

2011-07-26T23:16:00.000-07:00

Lilly learned how to jump off the diving board today. In her blue bathing suit that matches Emma, that she got for 9 dollars at Target. With Lilly, baby #3, I am always IN the pool when she does something great, and I have no camera built into my hands cause I'm swimming, so I keep saying I better remember this because there is going to be no picture.

This summer, where she went down the slide for the first time and it was so fast, the look on her face, shock, terror mixed with hooray in a split second. Her nice fat little legs getting her in and out of the pool, running off the board, spinning, jumping, not afraid of the wind or the cold air as sunset approached, so happy to be doing something new that it required no less then 300 tries in a row. Aiming for 3000.

I said to my mom, hey, I remember when things were so exciting I had to try them all, and weather couldn't stop me. Nothing mattered except trying that new thing, cause joy was in that new thing. I had a pang like, oh no, I'm past that point in my life. My mom pointed out that you just learn to pace yourself - Lilly can get out, jump in, get out, jump in and then at the end be exhausted and wrapped in a towel and loved the rest of the night. But the mom has to take the joy in small bits, because she has to get the towel, make the late night snack, brush the teeth, put away the clothes, find the pajamas. It's all there, all the little acts of maintaining joy. When you grow up you learn to stretch out all your joy of new experiences so you can make it to the end of the day. You sort of store it all up and savor it slowly. So it's the same - but different.

So I watched Lilly jump, right there, floating in her waves. I get to see all the joy, the whole pool, while she masters the diving board. She's building her own whole pool with these bold acts of bravery. My joy gets to be watching her as she does it.

Coyote Ugly

2011-07-15T00:47:00.000-07:00

A coyote was jumping our fence and getting in the yard, eating his way through all our animals. I thought it was a possum (cause I hadn't SEEN him in the yard, I do know the difference between rodent and wild dog).

Anyway, after losing two bunnies and two chickens, I did finally see the coyote. Started building the fence up in a really redneck, haphazard way. He still got over and tried to go shopping again in the chicken yard. One of our chickens started hiding in the hen house, which I thought was fear related, but turned out she was just brooding (ready to set on the nest and wait for babies). But alas, us with no rooster. So I called our neighbor behind us who had a rooster, and told her about the hen and mentioned the coyote and my neighbor went into hyper drive saying oh we are going to set this coyote straight.

I hadn't wanted to figure out how to hot wire our fence, it all seemed too hard, the fencing, the wire, the hot - even she said "oh we'll get your husband out here and he'll figure out how to wire it to our hot wire.." and I'm thinking, Barry? Outside with an electrified wire? It didn't look likely. In fact, that's why I was so tired even THINKING about it because I kept having to substitute "Julie" with "husband." Barry's not the out riding fences type. It was going to have to be me. And Nathan, 10year old superhelper.

But this neighbor, it's rare you find a woman that you hope you turn out to be. She's got to be 70 years old. And she just hops up on her fence and is telling me how to put the wire here, and attach this thing there, she is not afraid of ladders or hard work or getting it done. Nathan just stood there in awe as she handed over a pellet gun which looked like a giant shotgun, still new in a box. She's against guns, she said, but she's more against coyotes.

She made hard work look like some sort of town hall dance - happy, facing the crushing waves head on. That's the kind of person Shakespeare wrote plays about - these dastardly people that dammit, have this great attitude. I'm just hoping that some of that wears off on me and doesn't get zinged away with every singed coyotes that comes to meet our fence. We did do the fence, excellently.

And putting up that fence in the hot sun was a big big drag. Because I had to supply popsicles to small people and get sunblock on and entertain - my life did not stop so I could put up the fence. My life continued on hectically right alongside my crushing need to put up a coyote ugly fence. That is the draggish part that sucks out my happy ability to face life like an agile 70 year old. Maybe it's something to look forward to. From down here in the foxhole. Deep. How I get time to do even ONE thing like write this blog - let alone build and wire a fence without electrocuting myself while simultaneaously making spaghetti and watching kids in the pool.

It's been two days. So far all chickens accounted for.

Summer Lovin

2011-06-27T23:19:00.000-07:00

Summer hit us. The pool is our old, watery friend. Why have we been ignoring him for months when we could have been floating in his glorious waters? The kids are red already, maybe I shouldn't have gotten those marked-down sunblocks last winter. I gather chicken eggs (6 today), I make more food than I want to make, I wear pajamas all day, we don't rush, we are just here. I listen to my friends, I watch their faces as we watch our kids, I am just glad to be here.

Sets on the Brain

2011-06-22T22:59:00.000-07:00

Visited Barry's set and remembered the time I used to use sets as my own personal bar. It's dark, it's vast, everyone is whispering like we're all in on some huge, important secret, it's cold and everyone is like 25. Ahh, I miss the old days. I never had any ambition, I should have been in the writer's offices all along, developing skills, making important contacts, shaping the stories, growing my writing career.

But the SET, man, the set had all the love, drama, action. There's a large group of undulating people, the guys are so cute big and strong, there's laughter and things are happening and changing in moments. And there's craft service, huge amounts of snack food that keeps refililng magically. I was always more flirt than work, I spent a great many years making sure my flirt skills were highly honed. In fact, they're now sadly lacking, rusting, broken off in places. I've had to vacuum seal them and place them in a gold box in my garage rafters. I keep them up there couched between my sighs and longing.

I had alot of fun on the set in my 20's. Let's just say that. And what good would a few writing contacts do me now, I've spent 11 years wiping vomit off my shirt, pulling up tiny pants and breaking up fights. The set wasn't all that different, actually. So I'm better prepared.

Anyway, the little crew and the big dark stage made me wry. Wry me? Just kidding. The tribe of a set, those drumbeats, you can still hear them, even when they basically took me nowhere. My dad, he flew straight through like an arrow. He knew he wanted to be over there, in charge. Me, I just wanted to smell every flower.

Towel Wonderland

2011-06-19T11:12:00.000-07:00

After I don't know, 400 years, I decided to buy new towels. On Ebay. Huge towels, like you could circle the Earth in these towels, and still have some leftover for Jupiter or Uranus. Heh heh. At least that's what they said. And they're soft.

So I get them and yeah they're big, but more like Mercury big. And they're soft, but more like cheese shredder soft.

But I love these towels because they are fresh new faces in our bathroom and at our pool, and they don't mind if you wrap them around your freezing, wet body. They encourage it, in fact. It's what they do.

I Have a Chickness

2011-05-21T22:49:00.001-07:00

Can't stop buying chickens. I have a chickness.

Don't Hold In Your Grunties

2011-04-11T22:06:00.001-07:00

Been having this weird fight with my boarder-girl who keeps her animals at our house. She's been here 2 years, she's been really great, and then one day I suddenly can't take it anymore, all the chaining up of the fences, she overprotects her goats, and then suddenly we're in this fight through texting and I'm telling her to find another barn where someone might actually like goats. So then I feel terrible for like a week because she decides okay, I'll leave. And I didn't want her to leave, really, I wanted her to stop chaining every door.

At the same time, for months (inside the house drama) I'm battling Lilly the 3 year old because she holds in her poop. I gave her every high fiber thing in the world, finally had to use Miralax which is definitely true to it's name. Had to like rebuild her poop psyche to get her to realize that letting go is a good thing. Things are flowing like, well, logs now. Lately. So far.

And after weeks I finally TALKED to the boarder girl, now that she's leaving in five days, and said, hey, I was only kidding. I just got frustrated. Sorry I took it out on you. Wish I was a better communicator. No one should hand me a texting thing again. At night. When I'm sick, and tired. I text anger. Apparently. I need an anger detexter.

Just kept thinking of Will, my dead ex husband. How he said as a kid his mom would tell him, in a singsong voice, "Don't hold in your grunties," when he didn't want to poop.

I coulda used that advice. And here the 3 year old is so good at it.

Down Under

2011-02-08T21:36:00.000-08:00

An old friend of mine tracked me down from high school. She was the foreign exchange student from Australis, wild and fun. Haven't talked to her in 20 yrs. She said we saw each other in London last - ohhh yeah, god, did I see her there? She had just gotten off a cruise ship where she'd been a chef and I was in Europe with my tall lanky ex-boyfriend. We met at a bar/restaurant/cafe and when he went to the bathroom I told her I was in love with two other people, a boy and a girl. I was 25. She was more interested in the boy in the bathroom - what was wrong with this one, the one right under your nose? He was a beautiful boy. I never really wanted the one right under my nose.

So 20 yrs, I had to try and rethink - did she know me before my dead ex-husband? Where was I living, what was I doing? Why did I map my life by my love affairs? While she was trekking around Zimbabwe with no electricity and using words like bloke and safari, I was living in a tiny house on a huge river in Maryland. While she was having a baby in Perth, I was in LA working on horror movies and meeting my husband. Now she's in Canada teaching art and theater to kids at her kids' school, and I'll be teaching playwriting to kids at MY kids' school. Hmm.

I never really organized my life, I better do that, huh. I just sort of followed its crazy path. And now with three kids running around, I just look for moments in the day where I can breathe, and see an ocean of silence. I am lost in it, committed. These are the busy years. I guess up there in Canade, she's breathing in a breath of cold air and doing the same thing.

Chickens are the New Crack

2011-02-05T22:01:00.000-08:00

Can't stop buying chickens. They cost like 2 bucks. They fit in your pocket. They're fluffy. If you could coat them in chocolate, I might marry them.

My hands are all torn up from building the chicken house. It was just an old shed out on the corner of the property, cobwebby, hidden by branches, ignored. Nathan and I went in and chop chopped, then Nathan wandered off and it was just me, for the last few weeks, just chopping, shredding my hands, making piles of mean thorny branches, adding sawdust and then, just like in The Secret Garden, my bit of land is so - tranquil. Clean. Serene.

Chickens were laying eggs in there while Moose and I sat on the diving board of the pool and let the sun soak into us for a second today - glorious sun in February, no small feat. And standing in that shed with her, watching the chickens, it's funny how a place that meant nothing is now a place that is someplace, had a purpose. Is full of life. You can stand in it and feel it's worth.

During the day after I serve people food and clean up and play and work, I head out there to just stand and look at the chickens and give them a handful of food or pick up a stray throny branch. Because it's quiet out there, and there's peeping.

Thoughts on Jane

2011-01-06T22:30:00.001-08:00

I've been spending time with the Miss Dashwoods, reading Sense and Sensibility. The woman sat writing her stories in freezing England, well-read, well educated, loved by her family, hilarious, biting, and apparently not all that attractive. (Hence all the writing.) I know she was creating the world as she wanted to see it. Building relationships and dashing them, enjoying and wielding the power of the writer. Entertaining herself, because all the books she read were so boring. Depth, insight and power.

Anyway. Writing gives hope for other writing.

2010-12-08T13:34:00.001-08:00

"Then we began to ride. My soul smoothed itself out,
a long-cramped scroll freshening and fluttering in the wind....
Sing, riding's a joy! For me, I ride."
Robert Browning

Craigslist is My Whore

2010-11-15T21:05:00.000-08:00

First of all, it's been really hard to spend time writing on my blog because of the many hours I spend on craigslist looking for the perfect horse I can't afford. I don't think I actually WANT the horse, I mean yeah I want the horse, but mostly I want the Vegas action of the horse. I like talking to the people. I like seeing the pictures. I like trying to see if I can get the horse for free. I like feeling the drama of a horse coming in. Then it all falls apart, because ultimately I have no money and yes I love the heartbreak. It's keeping me alive. It's the saddest form of addiction I can muster.d.

The Everyday

2010-11-02T21:51:00.000-07:00

Why have I stopped writing so much? Everything that happens is funny, if it wasn't happening to me. Like Lilly cleaning a bowl for me in the sink today, actually scrubbing it sparkling clean, and when she held it up I said wait, let me get the camera (because I never take pictures of her because I'm so tired) and so I got the camera and when she held it up, clean bowl and dirty chocolate face, funny - she dropped the bowl before I can get the picture, and it shatters in a million pieces in the sink.

I don't want to clean that up so much that it's silent, I can't even express my bummerness, but it's not her fault. I go to put the camera away, dejected. Lilly says, "sorry mom." Like she's 45 years old.

I have got to start carrying the camera around. She's so beautiful, really, and I'm sucking it all in but not preserving the moment for anyone else, namely her.

In her fairy dress on Halloween. Emma is the genie, freezing while trick or treating because she's basically wrapped in plastic wrap and it's like 14 degrees. Nathan winning the most original costume at the little park costume contest. He has never won anything. He was so proud, the aviator.

Everything is so small, the small things just overwhelm you, our little boat and these three big lives full of small huge every day events.

2010-10-24T23:35:00.000-07:00

There's a horse in Idaho that I want. Why is there always a horse, and why am I always wanting it? I tried to tell Barry about it while we ate Japanese food at a strip mall in the hazing rain with the kids. Lilly would not eat anything. She hates Japan. I have to say the noodles were like snot covered worms. It's true.

I just need another focus, I need a project, I need something that brings me peace, that broadens me. I can't go to school, I mean I can, but what am I going for? What do I want? At least with a horse, I can still stay home, I can resell the horse, I can make money on the horse. It might be fun. Want the kids to learn to ride. Want safe. Want sweet, want a new dimension. Want time travel. Want prarie skirts. Want to write but don't want to do any of the actual WRITING. Want someone else to do it.

Then I looked at Nathan cause I had a few minutes of time not doing something else like worrying about how dirty the house is or something, and I thought about his rash that he's worried about and I thought as a MOM I could just disappear into these 3 kids. They have tremendous needs, they have huge lives, they need huge guidance, they need tumble, they need love, they need brains, they need heart, they need food, they need focus. They are a huge project.

And there's this horse.

Anyway. Love is a beautiful thing. It makes you so big, it's impossible, it's laughable. And you can't stop yourself from wanting more. More everything.

What I've Been Doing

2010-09-27T23:20:00.000-07:00

Furry Language

2010-09-18T21:39:00.000-07:00

I'm training this 2 year old filly at my horse job in Sylmar that I do twice a week. This is because I have totally given up writing at the moment. Writing is dumb. Horses are furry.

Anyway, this has been an insane little horse. No one had handled her much, so she was alot like our dog Owen. Scared of everything, hiding under a couch.

So this lady I ride for (I ride her stallion) she said, go ahead, work with the filly. The filly is palomino, had a matted mane, just looked ratty and wild. I've worked with lots of kinds of horses, in lots of disciplines, but not young horses at all. I looked up how to work with young horses and watched some videos on YouTube. Then I set to work.

I won't go into all the boring details (and also I won't reveal my magic secrets). Plus, I'll pretend that when I drive to work I go over green hills, and out into a wide open pasture, dressed like Jane Austen, with horses nickering at me. In my mind, it is so. In reality, it's a dirt lot. But there is a frosty Diet Coke in the garage fridge, waiting for me at the end of every session.

I worked first with the filly just getting used to me approaching her. This is a strange thing to do, have to alter your normal human behavior in accordance to the body language of the horse, but it's amazing and makes you a better rider. More in tune with the horse, even on the ground. The key is not rushing up to the horse, but training the horse to stand still while you approach her. You want the front end of the horse facing you at all times. You don't want the butt end with the kicking hooves aimed at you ever.

So I would approach the filly and only go as far as I could while she stood her ground. If she started to move off, I would move her off faster by waving my arms around, making scary motions. She'd run around and circle me a few times, and I'd step backwards, giving her more room. When you step backwards, the horse feels less threatened and slows down. When she slows down to a stop, you step backwards, and slightly behind her so she has to turn her head backwards to see what you're doing. Eventually, the horse will move their whole body around to see what you're doing. You have succeeded in making the horse keep her safe face-end of her body toward you. It's a real lesson in when you FEEL like rushing forward is when you don't. You stop, and even step backwards. Then everything, somehow, pulls toward YOU.

Once she was facing me and still, slowly I would take steps forward until I finally got up to her nose. I would just stand there, make no movements. I would walk away. Then approach again. Once she got used to me walking up and back, up and back, with no movement of my arms, she relaxed. She learned, oh. This person is just walking up to me. Then I could pet her on her head.

Then you do the whole thing with a rope in your hand. Then you pet her with a rope in your hand. Then she runs off again and you start all over.

This horse was always nervous, though. Took forever. Pulling away, head up, scared of what I was going to do.

Then, last week. The miracle.

We're out in the big arena, and instead of running away from me, she has lots of room to run, she starts running in circles around me. I couldn't figure out what she was doing. She never stays near me. Then I saw - she's got her ear turned in, listening for me to talk to her. So I talk to her. She stays nearby me. She finally stops, and lets me approach her. She lets me hook her rope on. She lets me brush and pet her. She is scared, but she is 10% scared. She lets me stick my finger in her mouth where a bit will eventually go. She lowers her head so I can scratch her ears. I brush her neck. I untangle her mane, slowly, carefully.

Then she does it. She leans her whole giant dinosaur head on my stomach. She just leans there.

She trusts me.

She wants love. Having me dote on her - she decided. It felt good.

It's this amazing thing. I didn't even do anything. All I did was recognize her way of speaking and moving, and tailor my approach to what she needed and understood, as a horse. I spoke her language, and then she spoke mine. She surrendered to me.

I came home and thought, wow, that was a fluke. I'm sure it was just a really good day. It will probably start all over again when I get back the next time, she'll be nuts, I'll be nuts for trying to be a horse trainer with as much education as I've had and so many good teeth.

But I went back the next time, and there she was. I stood in her paddock, climbed through the fence and then leaned back against it and just waited, far away, to see what she would do. I decided it wasn't up to me. It took her about 5 whole minutes. She stood with her back to me. I called to her and said come on over, girl. She stood there, looking sideways, then glancing at me, but not coming. I waited. Then she shifted her feet. Then she smelled a giant pile of poo like this was waaaay more interesting than me. I still waited. Talked to her. Then I could see it in her, she was curious. She HAD to know why I was standing ALL the way over there. That's that person that is nice, she thinks. So she came over. Right over to me.

I've been back about three times since then, and this horse wants to learn. She wants to be affectionate. She wants to see what we're going to do next. She doesn't always understand what I'm trying to show her, but she isn't trying to get away or kill me. She wants to be in my club.

Love, patience, trust. These have got to be universal truths, because there they are, silent and spoken in other languages. Furry languages.

So maybe I am still writing after all. Manipulating language, in a whole other, tactile sphere.

Hitting the Trail

2010-09-06T22:51:00.000-07:00

So at dusk we went riding with our boarder Karen. Karen has been on a horse maybe a dozen times, and now she owns Charlie, the huge Thoroughbred ex racehorse. Charlie needs a forklift just to get on his back. Charlie is what they call Death on Spindley Legs.

I didn't used to be this safety conscious. Until a dumpy pony dumped me off and broke my hand last year. Now... the tall Charlies of the world hold no interest to me. Love horses. Obsess about horses. But I don't want to ride nutty horses anymore.

So I packed all the kids on bikes. Lilly had her fake camera, a chicken sandwich and a granola bar. Emma had her new short haircut and Nathan had just recovered from 103 temperature. Ron, the tall asian dude that Karen hangs with, joined us on another bike. And Karen climbed aboard the massive Charlie.

So riding down the street with huge Charlie, I am now Worried Instructor. My kids are riding bikes in the street, but all I'm thinking is Don't Kill the Boarder. We need the income. Plus she's nice and I don't like emergency rooms.

I kept hammering it into her head to be firm. Be Woman of Steel. You must LEAD Charlie. Charlie has ADD. He must be constantly told to pay attention. He wants to try everything. If we passed a water slide, he would want to get on. If he could fit in a gopher hole, he would gopher it. heh.

We did ride up the trail without incident, and the kids and I ditched our bikes to walk up the dirt path to the new house they're building up there. Big Armenian arches. The kids ran through the house, picking their rooms, finding their closets. Lilly wanted to be in Emma's room, and even though it was just make believe, Lilly kept looking up at Emma in her "closet," saying "You share with me, Emma? I be here too?" That kind of heartbreaking loyalty, that little blonde face. Ay, killer.

Then it isn't all about the killer horse, where no one died, but instead about the killer mom, who gets to go on adventures, and gets to be there with these explorers, who find joy in everything.

I keep thinking the horse, the horse will keep me sane, just watching him, the way he moves, the silence of the horse...because my life is so loud and so not mine, and it's hard to grab onto, everyone growing up up and away... I don't want any of it to go, so if I just look the other way...find a distraction...

There is so much peace right underfoot. It's obnoxious, huh.

Car Trip Babble

2010-08-31T21:33:00.000-07:00

Brain is fried from car trip with the family. The little people I can handle and understand, for the most part. When you're gone you realize how much food you eat and passes through your life. We ate, like, all the time. And none of it was really satisfying and yet I continued to eat and then sit in hot tubs.

Also passed lots of farm land which made me nostalgic for farmland except my mind is this vast green field and I am the shephard and I'm really bad at managing the dogs and the wolves have eaten almost all my sheep. I have no idea what is next, or where I'm going, and then there's my mom and she has no idea where she is is where she's going, and everything feels very unsteady. I do think it is all slowly spiraling downward and this coupled with all the pie I have eaten lately is unsettling.

And then we're back from vacation and the house looks bigger and the kids ate KFC and I thought relief, we're back, and then sad, oh, we're back. There's the same view. I'm stuck, how do you get unstuck? Life speeding by at 80 mph makes you want life to speed by at 80 mph, and a nice clean hotel room at the end of the journey. Life here in my real life is hard.

Family is wonderful, though. Loud, lovely and wonderful. Got to see my brother, and had all my parents together and this was good. A guy whittling sticks in the park gave me some religion, he had sticks and feathers on his hat, sitting in this rainy, bright green field by a stream and he told me to look at stuff. Love the stuff you're looking at. He whittled a magic wand, gave us wild blackberries just picked and even Nathan knew that this guy was the best part of our trip.

I guess I feel like whem you're yelling at your mom to get up and stop having a breakdown because you're scared she's going to die, and you just want her to get up and start acting like your mother again, and then you see her through all these other relatives eyes and the reflection is scary, you see how she looks, she looks terrible, selfish, mean, angry, annoying, self-serving, uninteresting - but then to me she is all those things, but underneath it all she brought me soup when I was sick. She held my hair when I threw up. She stayed with me.

When I was having an argument with her because she didn't want to sleep on a fold out couch at the hotel because when we opened it up there was an old tissue inside it, and then Barry was flipping out because we drove for hours and now my mom wants to sleep in the car... I just thought, wow, we're fighting so much. Wow, I have to break up with my mother.

She's saying she's leaving, moving really far away to the house where she wants to live, where she'll have her own washer/dryer (way better than having a daughter), my best friend says "hang on, my friend, you're about to be liberated" and I see that. But I also see from this long drive, staring at the back of my mom's neck, that she's old and that kills me, that she's been sick and it messed her up, and I've had to watch it all. I don't get to just glide along with these unresolved things from some woman who raised me long ago and I never see anymore - she's right here, and I watch it all, we are always evolving. Or devolving in most cases. No wonder I had a yeast infection and couldn't stop eating sugar and kept wanting to buy horses. It's this need to cover the wound with something that used to feel good.

More than that, it's having deep feelings, feeling it all, seeing all these people and being rich in people, and feeling like I had a family. I just don't get life, on the most basic level. I don't get how to be successful, or fruitful.

I know how to love people. I ate a really good tomato out of my garden, that I grew from watering and watching it, slowly, slowly turn red. It took FOREVER.

I know how to do that. Watch, love, wait. I guess I should be honest. This is all I know how to do.

Earth Mother

2010-08-18T23:16:00.000-07:00

Gotta figure out a way to unite moms around the planet. A small goal. Also, I'd like to go Amish. Not full blown religious, just the farming and the pies. Momish.

Pee Serious

2010-07-05T14:17:00.000-07:00

We were at the store and Nathan saw a jug of stuff that takes the smell of dog pee out fo the rug. I told him you pour it on the rug and it takes the dog pee smell out. He looked at the bottle, then he said, "What takes the smell of this stuff out?"

Count Your Bessings

2010-06-14T21:46:00.000-07:00

Lilly turned 3 today. I remember when Emma turned 3. We were in Tahoe. I remember when Nathan turned 3. He loved fire trucks. Now Lilly Bess's turn.

I should have videotaped her walk home from school this morning after we dropped the kids off. She slid down dirt piles. She peeked into holes in fences. She squatted down and told the ants in the anthill we pass "Ants, did you know it's my birthday?" When we got closer to home, she took a bow. I thought this was a nice life. An entire life lived to the fullest from school to home. All you really need is a baby in your life to see that everything is going to be allright. It already is allright. It's bursting, in fact, just on a regular dirt road, hanging out with someone who can't read or drive. She just follows along, and everywhere - adventure.

We played with her little friend Luke. They played fishing while I tried not to fall asleep in the chair at their house. Ate a really good salad. Went home and she wouldn't take a nap (I missed the nap window, hate that). So I made her feel bad until she came out looking for me saying "I sad. I want Mommy."

We played with kitties, went swimming. Then we went to get a microwave for 8 dollars from a guy name Slav from Bulgaria. He was moving to DC. Moose played with Lilly in the backseat, so she didn't mind sitting in there for an hour on her birthday. "Where we goin, Mom?" she asks.

When we came in from the microwave adventure, Moose and I pushed her high on the swing. We don't usually stop to do the swing, because we're rushing here or there. But today is her birthday. Right after we got off the swing, the sprinklers went off. Can you believe that?? She took off all her clothes and ran around in them. The sun going down, the air hot, the sprinklers misting a rainbow. Emma came home from baseball practice and ran around with her in her baseball hat. When sprinklers go on, you pretty much have to run in them.

Lilly Bess, the littlest shipmate on our wayward vessel. She loves bandaids, and mermaids. Swordfighting. Peter Pan. Baseball. I Peen (ice cream). She loves to wrap kittens in rope. She loves Emma and Nathan, like the sun rising right in front of her, each day. She knows she is a wonder.

I came into the bathroom tonight and Emma had forgotten to put the tub drain up to keep the water in. Lilly was laying in the empty bathtub and said "Mommy! The bathtub melted!"

Count your (Lilly) Bessings.

Like Chicken, Like Chris

2010-06-12T14:36:00.001-07:00

I know people like to get Oscars, but once you've had a chicken named after you, your life has been truly recognized.

My friend Chris who lives across the country is now embodied by a black and white chick at our house. The chick was born on her birthday, so of course, it's Chris. This chick used to be tiny and nervous, and now it's more ballsy and nervous, which is sort of how Chris is herself. She's almost 2 months old, and a 2 month old chick is like a man-chick, with a little peeping voice, also like Chris.

The chick at this age really doesn't know what it is - too small for a fryer, too big for the baby Lilly to carry around in one hand. All I know is, the chicks love the horse. Chris Chick and her friend Gigi Chick (named after a dead beloved chicken eaten by racoons) follow the horse around. The giant, dinosaur horse with huge fat hooves who could stomp them. They think it's their mother. Peep peep. Run after him. Gather at his feet. Peep. Take a dust bath. Peep peep. Whoa, there's some corn. Run over to it. The other huge chickens peck them away. They circle away, bummer. No corn when you're the little guy. Wait, there's a piece.

Chris runs and gets it.

Against all odds.

Animal House

2010-05-23T14:30:00.000-07:00

We figured out yesterday that we have 33 animals at our house. Even to me, that sounds like some of these animals need to be made into meals. Here's the breakdown.

1 horse
5 goats
3 sheep
3 bunnies
1 cat
7 kittens
4 dogs
4 fish
6 chickens

Wait, that's 34. I think. Technically, the horse/sheep/goats are paying customers. 7 kittens will be gone in two more months. 1 dog belongs to my mom. 1 bunny is a foster bunny, looking for a home. (Are you available?) So that takes us down to: 16

That's still too many.

Carpe Diem

2010-05-14T13:25:00.001-07:00

Lilly fell on her head off the coffee table. I was right there, too, I saw her tipping and in the second it took her to fall I had a million thoughts, like I can get her, she's right there, she can't be falling, she never falls, wait, why aren't my arms working fast enough, why am I still sitting here like I don't care, it's happening.

Then there she is, scooped up in my arms, crying, that thump her head made sounding fake, echoing in my mind. Then there's the big purple lump, like a hunk of meat, rising off her forehead. Ice, Tylenol, she's healing, but how come I can't be The Flash, how come I can't make things Not Happen?

Ever since I fell off the horse, or watched the marble egg get dropped into the pool line, I have realized that things are going along SO well when nothing bad is happening. You don't realize how well things are going, right at this minute. You aren't on fire? You aren't chasing someone who stole your wallet? You aren't en route to the emergency room? Things are fucking great, man. This is your day.

Disclaimer

2010-04-30T11:39:00.000-07:00

I perhaps shouldn't blog about people I'm working with. This is how I got fired from "Pensacola: Rings of Mold," the last tv job I had. Even though everyone in the office loved the manuscript that preceeded my prompt firing (okay not EVERYONE, it was slightly brutal to some), it seems when you have possibly ongoing relationships with new people, you perhaps shouldn't insult them in blog form. Assuming they may read this.

So I apologize in advance, and will take out a secret blog where I may write freely, and later make it into a television show. Or maybe I'll just keep writing here since I think I know the only two people who read me regularly. What Would Ricky Gervais Do? I look forward to your suggestions.

Work Horses

2010-04-27T13:16:00.000-07:00

The new PTA is so badly organized, it's like a beautiful yet tragic ballet. I go to help out with the book fair and the lady who's supposed to be running it just never shows up. So it's me and the brain-fried PTA president (the fireman), who actually is alot of help. We do all the work, and the lady finally shows up later, and has one of those personalities like she's really efficient while in effect getting no actual work done whatsoever. Like, she looks clean and clear and yet her hands are not moving to set anything up. And she has no remorse. Like, wow, maybe I should've been here to help. It's more like we're an interesting movie going on that has nothing to do with her. In fact, she's going to leave now.

So anyway, me and Firestarter set everything up yesterday. Spent the whole morning in there while the baby wandered around taking down books and opening packages and destroying what we were doing. The In Charge Chick stopped by and wavered by the door, although seemed to take no interest in coming in and helping out with the project she was CHAIRING. Then just left. We stood staring. Then we laughed. Since the baby was tuckered out, I decided I wouldn't come back for the afternoon, but would instead leave a list of things they could do, like put up posters and make price labels and stuff.

I go this morning and we have Donuts for Dads morning where kids come in with their dad and have a donut and buy books. We sold 500 dollars worth of stuff in an hour. Me and the other PTA chief, the ex-cop. These guys are the most unlikely guys. They both look like they might have been recently run over by cars. These guys are actually wonderful. They should have their own stuffed animal likeness. Ex-cop is shaped sort of like my older brother, short, squat, comes in smelling of stale cigarettes and apologizing for being late, looking showered and asleep. He's like the way your gramma's house feels. Used, smoked, bright and dim at the same time,nothing challenging is going to happen here. He's an early in the week newspaper crossword.

So turns out Coppy can't read up close, so he keeps holding the books out at arms length to read them, so we take over the cash register, me reading the book prices, he punching the numbers into the register. Taking money. We work together like we've been touring the country for years.

After the Fair closes for the morning, I manage to see the In Charge Chick again and tell her the books I'm going to re-order. I also notice that no one put any of the posters up. Again, she seems interested, but takes no action. I see the pile of posters and say I'll do it. (The piece of me that is my dad, just nicely shove everyone out of the way and do it yourself. Make a joke while you're doing it, too. Then cross it off your list and have a donut.) Also there was supposed to be a poster for the 4th and 5th graders to sign up to volunteer at the Fair. Where is that, I ask In Charge Chick. Big Boobed girl-mom says "Oh, I made the poster." "Great!" I say. Then she says: "But it looked bad so I threw it away."

Hmmm. "Wow," I say. It's like I'm running a company with a handful of assistants that don't actually do ANYTHING. And they don't see the irony.

So I reach a new level of humor. Nothing, in effect, will get done.

Fireman and Coppy and I go outside to hang up posters. They trail me as I go from place to place, holding up the tape, playing with the baby, joking about stuff, and I realize this is the greatest experience of my morning. I belong here to these limping, haphazard fellows. These guys, these are the President and the Vice-President, dude. And they are mellow, slow, and they actually DO stuff. Best of all, they show up, with a sense of irony. Diluted, of course, by the sucking hole where education should be. Peppered with redneck, but still, they freaking show up and enjoy the work. Work horses. Like the carriage horses at my other job - huge, friendly, lethargic, but they're not quitters. They'll stay with you all day, and crack a beer with you when the work is done.

There's something to that.

Carnival Boobs I mean Booths

2010-04-25T11:33:00.000-07:00

I ran back to the school because I had left something behind at the PTA meeting. The only people left inside the empty auditorium were the two dudes running the PTA (a firefighter with skin intact but most of his brain burned away) and an ex-cop who kept calling me "Cathy," and a new-ish mom with giant boobs sitting across the long table from them.

I picked up my water jug I had left and then couldn't resist going over to check out this newly formed threesome. One side of the table I knew was into firearms and women, and the other side of the table, more than ample woman. It was an adult movie set up.

The ex-cop asked me how my broken hand was healing after being dumped off of a mean pony a few months back. Then he launched into his story about breaking his foot by falling into a hole. The cast had hurt so much he sawed it off when he got home, stuck his deformed foot into the door and wrenched his foot back into place himself. Home medic - cost of surgery? Priceless.

I talked to large boobed mom, who looked about 14. She was a single mom who had three kids under seven, and none of them were in sight. Under the boobs maybe? I saw why she was sitting at the table with the two gentlemen in the long, empty wake after the PTA meeting. Better than going home to needy kids. And man, that shirt did not cover much. Her boobs looked like a giant boob swimming pool.

"Anyway, just here to get my water," I said, backing out as the conversation turned from broken bones to stun guns.

Can't wait to start those carnival planning meetings. I hope to man the stun gun booth.

Facebook Has Stolen My Friend

2010-04-15T22:44:00.000-07:00

My friend from far away came to visit. He stayed three weeks. He's the ideal houseguest, quietly he rolls along, gentle to the kids, great at Legos, very smart, using interesting language, amazing artist, likes to study people. He can usually pinpoint the most interesting thing going on, and talk about it. Or sometimes we just watch "Extreme Loggers."

But something has changed in the 4 years since I saw him last. He's grown up maybe. We don't have the luxury of the daily or weekly friendship, where you hang out, grow up with the person. We have the accelerated version, so we have to injest our friendship in loaves. Starve until we meet again.

I guess the last time we knew each other he was more mine. Like, secretly. We were closer, we threw ourselves on each other. This time, 3 kids climbing on me. He has Russian girlfriend. We were more Jane Austen polite. So I missed that stir-fried love, take-out style that we once had. Although I'll take somewhat stiff parlor-room. I'll take anything, he's that worth it.

Since he's been gone (Nathan cried when he left), I've heard two sentences from him on Facebook. Facebook has become the dropped handkerchief that one catches and returns to the lady. Hoping for a connection.

I guess I'm old fashioned. Miss the gloves, the glint in the eye, the hope.

The Root of the Problem

2010-04-09T15:47:00.000-07:00

I put off having a root canal for 2 years. Then, just like a miracle, yesterday was my lucky day. I could put it off no longer.

I put myself into the hands of some able Russians in Studio City. The dude gave me the first shot in the side of my face with, I'm pretty sure, a machete. Then he decided I needed a second shot, right in the roof of my mouth. You know, the spot where there's no skin. It's mostly bone. Needles LOVE to go into this area without pain. He pulled out a shot the size of his leg. You get the picture.

Okay so now he's numbed an area the size of Madagascar. All the natives are sleeping. Except for me, the one in my head. My mind is zinging, and he's assembling a whole mini-trampoline in my mouth. Some rings here, a stretched tarpolin there, it's all very complicated and that half a Vicodin I took from my recent hand surgery doesn't appear to be easing my nerves.

Then I have to keep my mouth open for one and a half hours. It's not so bad for the first hour, but then I unclench my feet and hands and start waiting for him to tell me I'm a good girl, it's almost done, but I get nothing. And the little sucker thing keeps sucking my breath away, I'm battling that thing to keep myself alive. My mom told me to picture my best vacation ever, to try and block out the whole experience of drills and noise and tooth packing material, and I can't think of one vacation I've ever had. Then I remember three things. Nathan born. Emma born. Lilly born. Those were some great vacations. Staying in my pajamas. People bringing me food. Little tiny babies that were mine. I see those moments, and I would smile, if things weren't hanging from my lips.

When my jaw has reached pain level 1000, they tag team and the other dentist comes in to finish the job. They sit me up. She tells me to tap tap tap my teeth. Easy for her to say. My jaw has the flexibility of a haunted house, boarded up for 30 years. I manage to look like I'm still coherent but life has a swirly look, with the white walls and the metal poles and alien lights hanging down. Then I slowly realize I AM done. It's done.

I stand up to go to the bathroom. "Thank you," I say kind of warbled to the tall Russian man-child who did my tooth. "My pleasure," he says with a kind of bow. I stare at him crazily then head to the bathroom. "My PLEASURE???" I mutter under my breath. "You have got some serious issues."

I then pay for what would have been a nice trip to Hawaii, and head out into the sunshine with my sunshiney 2 year old and Barry, who had spent a lovely two hours in the park with a dozen nannies and their charges.

I can eat and drink without cringing. It is a kind of miracle.

Tweak it, Baby

2010-02-25T12:00:00.001-08:00

Do something different. This is what I learned from my friend Victor. Each day try to do something a little bit different. So you don't get rusty.

Don't Poke the One Eyed Pony

2010-01-25T14:15:00.000-08:00

Don’t Poke the One Eyed Pony on the Side that She Can’t See

The day is blooming
The pony is moving
Grass is on our path
Fur is thick, riding a blanket
It’s okay that she can’t see

Who needs to see everything
One side fits all
I can see for us both
I can’t see ahead
Where she leaves me for dead
My finger bent wrong from the fall

All I wanted was to go faster
A little bit faster
She’s only the size of a dwarf
Retarded kids ride her
Kids with no leg muscles ride her
She’s safe, she’s a thousand years old

I kick the pony and she doesn’t go
Then she goes
Then I make a mistake
I poke her back there
Through the fat and the hair
And she doesn’t like poking
I think

The pony goes up
My brain starts to swirl
What’s happening
Why is this carnival Under me today
Time slows down
I can see there’s no way out
I’m up up and then down down down

The ground is hard
Not like in the movies
My air is scattered all on the ground
I can’t reach it , I can’t breathe
I’m dead but still breathing no breath
My lungs are pounded, stalled from the shock

The pony ambles nearby
Without me on top
Naked of me
I have to get up
Naked of me too
No more ponies I think as I walk

I look down at my hand
My fingers stuck together
That looks like it’s gonna hurt later
I get the pony back
Her eye still sealed shut
Something has sealed me apart
from myself

I lay in my bed my hand swelling
I made a mistake not just laying here
With my sleeping baby
Getting a pony, the safest pony
And now a fresh order of hand surgery

I go get an xray, I go to a doctor,
I spend bent handfuls and handfuls of cash
This wasn’t the way it was supposed to be
I know how everything works out
I make sure everything works out
I’m the mom, can’t you see?

I’m on a gurney, the kids are up til 11
Coloring at the abandoned clinic
Cars rush by, the black doctor sticks pins in my hand
For 5000 dollars, I’m cured, he says

Heavy cast on my arm
For thanksgiving turkey and Christmas
I heave it around
I’m lucky I’m here
I’m lucky I’m HERE
I think as my hand starts to heal

Cast off amongst poor people
I go to County
The doctors are better, they’re 12
My hand is stuck in it’s cast curl
It can’t stop remembering
How to hurt and not to heal

I can’t make a fist, I can’t grab a tissue
I can’t clap or scratch or carry
I bend my hand, I have to bend where it hurts
I have to bend and stretch where I least want to

Don’t poke the one-eyed pony on the side that she can’t see
She has reasons she’s blind
A pirate battle, on a ship
Defending her honor, got a sword in the eye
Or in her corral she ran into a stick

I’m imperfect
I’m broken
I’m healing
I’m not
I’m bent
And I’m angry
I’m broke
Wait I’m loved

I hate you
I love you
You hurt me
I failed
I get up
I’m angry
You broke me
I’m here

I didn’t leave
I didn’t lose
I cracked just by accident
Can anyone see
That I’m fragile
More broken than whole

The picture
Is perfect
I’m standing up tall
I walk talk and laugh
The layers all mesh
My brain works
My heart works
Pretend you don’t see the mess

Uhh

2009-11-29T11:20:00.000-08:00

So before I was doing everything around the house, and couldn't keep up. Now I do it all one-handed. For 6 to 8 weeks.

Can I Have a Pony?

2009-11-09T22:50:00.000-08:00

So instead of buying a Ferrari, I buy farm animals. Nice midlife crisis I'm having.

The Breakdown World Tour

2009-10-19T00:50:00.000-07:00

My mom scheduled her psychotic break for this weekend. Not her usual psychotic breaks, you know the casual ones. This is a real one. I noticed it on Saturday, I woke up with a few sick kids, and realized I was getting sick too. Heavy chest. Runny nose. Still, we decided to hang out over at Moose's house. I could sew some Halloween costumes (I scored at the thrift store, a king outfit and a princess outfit, and a bunny outfit) I just needed to add a few homemade touches to make it feel more substantial.

I noticed my mom would not stop talking. Not in her normal way. She seemed, um, nuts. I felt that annoying mom feeling coming on and just let it fill me up like usual. But by the end of the day, I noticed she was not sleeping. She was slurring her speech a little bit. Did she have a stroke? She was taking these hardcore antibiotics to fight a bad chest cold, maybe pneumonia. A father at our school had died of pneumonia/swine flu a few weeks ago. So the antibiotics were good.

But they were not good. She was completely confused. Speaking but not stringing her sentences together, stumbling for words. Like my gramma after her stroke. I kept calling the doctor. Finally got to him Sunday night. Speakerphone. He tells me he thinks my mom need a psych evaluation.

My mom has needed a psych evaluation for decades. But no, this is a real, scary, possibly manic depressive psychotic break. The doctor says calmly. In his thin, gentle way. Like she's twisted a pinky finger. Except much worse.

So we get her some medicine so she can sleep, but we don't tell her it's antipsychotic. The word itself freaks me out. You don't want your mom and psychotic to be in the same sentence. I feed her the little pill every half hour like he says. I put the baby to bed and go over to her room and she's half on the bed, legs hanging off, asleep. I put her in bed. She wakes up and I make her eat some chicken and drink some lemonade. She talks with her eyes closed, or open but she's not really seeing me. If she saw me, she'd see I was crying. She talks about alcoholism. About her mother. About the kids. About how much she loves me.

I don't understand why we get involved with people, with love, like this. Why do people have to care about other people? It's a trap, you're stuck, you love people, it hurts. To see your mom lost, fragile, vulnerable, it's awful. There's no words.

I see why I'm home with the kids. A mother matters more than anyone in the whole world. I'm old, and my mother matters to me. Her being well, and functioning, and being back the way she was, ordering stuff off of QVC and being annoying, I want it all back.

I am lucky enough, depressingly enough, to have been there for all of her breakdowns. We're on the world tour. It's been a long time between stops. This poor woman - and yet I see all the things I love about her. Things only I would care about. The shape of her face. Her fingers in my hair, scratching my head. Her crazy laugh. The way she has kept going in spite of feeling crippling loss inside. She is my mother. These are things that can't be replaced by anyone else.

We're going to the doctor in the morning. I whispered to him on the phone, "Do people come back from this?" afraid of his answer. "They do," he said.

She's laying over there, frail as broken crackers. Her brain all in tatters. I hope there's a chance.

Got Goats?

2009-09-25T00:03:00.000-07:00

Yes, I'm crazy. No, I did not videotape the goats coming to our house. Because on the last boat ride we took (the first and last for now), I stood up and dropped the video camera into a few drops of water enjoying the bottom of the boat. That baptism which the camera decided was a good enough reason to give up on living.

A lady, a nice lady, who looked more like a girl, but 40 means lady, she came and brought us the goats. She's renting out a stall in the barn. We stood in the driveway while the big truck backed up and then the big white door - we could see shapes through the crack in the door, but the suspense was tremendous. Then after an eternity the door was whooshed open, and there was the smallest herd of goats and sheep, standing silently inside. Looking cornfused. The kids breathed in a collective oohhhh.

The goats figured out to walk out, and as we stood aside a lady named Wendy who looked more like let's call her haggard, not a friend to sunscreen or its benefits, anyway, she was a goat expert, and sort of waved them the right direction, which worked for them. They managed to trot up the driveway and into the kingdom of the barn, which they have now dominated with large amounts of tiny poops. Spread around so you can't gather them very well. By the way.

We hang on the fence and watch the goats. The sheep hang in a set of three - white, brown and black. (I identify with the black sheep.) (heh heh). They look more intelligent than their country goat brothers and sisters who look like hicks. Something about the skinny goat faces, tiny teeth and beards. They look like they spend alot of time laid off work in bars in Alabama low country. The sheep look like concert pianists.

Goats and sheep don't do a helluva lot. Chickens are working for you. They squeeze you out something you can eat, once a day. The goats and sheep - they're furry. They have the weird slanted eyeball pupils that is a little like satan. You can see why the devil likes goats.

Anyway, it's nice to have something living in the barn. The bunnies are fun but they don't say baaa. They're so busy with their typing. (Bunnies look like stenographers.)

Hank the big sheepherding dog thinks God has answered his call. His own herd of sheep. He just sits there loveglazed, looking at them with the adoration of a betrothed on his wedding day. Hank is a lumberjack.

Owen, our scared dog, is a priest. Maisie, our old dog, is a former showgirl.

The Ice Cream Man Scares Me

2009-08-09T00:27:00.000-07:00

The ice cream man started coming by the house everyday. It was cute at first but after awhile, give it a rest man. We don't have that much money for ice cream, already.

I made the mistake of befriending the guy. Chris. His ice cream truck looks like typical ice cream trucks. A slightly beaten up white van with peeling ice cream stickers on the side. It looks seedy, like maybe he sleeps on the floor next to the Blow Pops.

Chris is from Armenia which I think is an actual country, not just in Glendale. My mom thinks he's Italian, which is more romantic, so I haven't broken it to her. The first time we chatted it was exciting, the kids had their dollars clutched in their hands, every ice cream looked so good, no one could decide anything. Chris told me he was thinking of getting an incubator, to raise baby chickens. We spent about 3000 dollars on ice cream and the visit ended.

The next time we saw him (the very next day), I struggled out there with three wet kids from the pool. (The kids go into a frenzy when they hear the truck's warbled music. 'I peen puck' Lilly says.) As the kids pick their ice creams, and I say hi to Chris, he reaches out to shake my hand. I shake it gratefully, and then pull my hand back at the appropriate time. He does not let go of my hand. There is the moment of ick. He is holding my hand because he wants to hold my hand because he wants - what does he want? How bout Awkward? I wonder how much awkward costs, and here I am getting it for free. I finally get my hand back, but now I can no longer look Chris in the eye. Why did he do that? Why couldn't we be friends with a regular handshake? Did he have to ruin ice cream??

The last time I saw Chris (I believe it was the next day after that), he wanted me to make a phone call for him. Something about wanting a dozen eggs delivered to a liquor store at 7 pm. I had been watching too much true crime on tv - was he negotiating a drug deal? Why did I have to call for him? Couldn't he call on his ice cream phone? Of course I said I would call, although I went inside with knit brows, and made the half-hearted call to some guy named Kevin who had no idea what I was talking about: "um, my ice cream man wants some eggs or something?"

I don't go out when the ice cream man comes anymore. Since the weird egg phone call and the handshake, I send someone else out with the kids - husband, visiting mom friend, aunt. Anyone but me. The ice cream truck music sounds like a horror movie in general, but now it really gets me.

Summer is almost over. I promise to venture forth and visit Chris in one last brave act before the last day winds down. I will wave from a respectful distance. If he tries to get me to engage in some kind of strange other conversation, I will wave and pretend I've undergone a lobotomy. It's not that I don't want to be friends, or to help people get their eggs or drugs, for god's sake. I didn't want to cross over the line with the guy in the white van with the music. I just wanted to float.

The root beer float. I just wanted the ice cream.

Following the Leader

2009-07-25T22:45:00.001-07:00

I can't stop watching the Dog Whisperer. I think I'm in love with Cesar Millan. He has such dark brown eyes. Big, soft dog eyes. I want to go to his dog camp and live in the herd. He'd mix my food with his own hands. I would learn to work in a pack. I would submit.
Seriously, the guy is a genius. He just whips into these people's lives and points out that they have the problem, not the dog. They have to be leaders. The dog is content to follow a strong leader.
I think I have always confused leading with Knowing Everything. Even the writing I'm doing on Ehow, it contributes to this I Know Everything problem. I KNOW I will get in trouble for stealing stuff from the thrift store, and yet I do it. Sometimes.
I think I need a leader, and all these years, I keep looking for that outside leader. I think Cesar is saying TO ME - YOU ARE THE LEADER. But Cesar, can't I come live in your dog camp? Even though you're from Mexico can I still follow you? Wait, he's saying. YOU can do it. YOU are the leader. Not the one who knows everything. But the one who can lead.
I've been really good at being haphazard my whole life. I've perfected it. But I think this is a whole new level I can reach. Staying haphazard (which means never filing anything on my desk) and at the same time, finding diamond-like clarity within my heart. Tight, pure, beautiful silence. Acceptance. Love.
Like the stretched out Hank by the front door, on the cool tile, sleeping. Expecting nothing, happy for everything. Happy just to see your face.
Being the leader doesn't mean you know what you're doing. It just means you are at peace with your own power, and that your weaknesses are what make you shiny, and loveable.

Bad Dog Update

2009-06-22T00:18:00.001-07:00

My mom's dog and our dog have been kept separated. Turns out they only bust out of the house and go crazy when they're together. So far Hank is acting like he's never even thought of eating small rabbit-like dogs. He even puts himself into the kitchen when we head for the front door, like he knows it's time to go behind the babygate. He must've heard me calling all the rescue people and saying they could come take him.

He's on probation. We'll see.

Hank Eats Neighbor's Dog

2009-06-10T13:48:00.001-07:00

When is it time to give up a bad dog?

I'm not sure it's the dog that's bad, although running out the door and over to a tiny dog and grabbing it by the neck is pretty bad. But the circumstances of the household are bad. Doors get left open by kids (especially babies) who have just learned how to use doors, dogs run out - unless the dog is tied to me, I can't watch him 24 hours a day. And aren't the kids more important?

The hell that insued because I took twenty minutes to sit out back with the chickens and talk to Chris long distance on the telephone while the kids watched Sponge Bob. The front door got opened, the dogs ran out. The dogs when they are together, decide sometimes to pick on other small animals. It's freaky. Then I had to deal with Barry yelling at the kid who left the door open, the 8 year old who stands dejected on one foot, then the neighbor who looks like a walking, two hundred pound, once-hearty tumor that has sagged and gathered all around her waistline. I had to take her and her tiny dog who was completely fine to the vet, and listen to her rail at me about my terrible kids, my terrible parenting and my terrible dog, and I took it all because I knew she was scared. I tried to let it just wash past me, even though it hurt, because I know it's awful to have your dog attacked. But I couldn't help feeling angry that the insults she hurled weren't more intelligent, instead everything was base because she is an uneducated racist, anti-gay, child-hating white woman. But I felt terrible about the trauma, and her dog. She was right about that.

The vet pronounced the dog in excellent health, and gave me a bill for a hundred dollars, which I paid quietly. I held the door open for the lady. I helped her into the van. I apologized and agreed with everything she said. I petted the dog.

At her house, she told me she was sorry for all the mean things she said. I told her it was okay. I got home and locked the dogs out back. The dogs may never get out of the house again. I wrote emails to people about adopting out my big dog Hank.

The next day, the whole day I had a crippling headache.

A woman I talked to last year said she could foster Hank until we found him a home. Nathan wants to keep Hank. Keeping Hank would mean every time the door is opened, I have to panic. Every time the door is opened for the next four to six years. It means gates up all the time. I have three kids. Climbing in and out, over and around gates.

I hate what he did, but I still love Hank. That's the sad part. I'm sure we'll figure it out, and do what's right. We're still thinking about it.

2009-06-03T01:38:00.000-07:00

I feel like I'm not enjoying my life enough. I noticed this after my second hour in the PTA closet with Kathy.

I know, it sounds more interesting than it was. It was actually just a closet with a bunch of junk in it, and me ignoring the baby who was wandering the auditorium, folding all the wooden seats up.

I can't seem to have fun unless I'm over-responsible. Lots of chickens, lots of dogs, lots of kids, lots of work, lots of laundry, lots of yard work. Then I wonder why I don't know how to relax. I think if I relaxed, I might just fall over. No wonder I can't stop watching TLC. All the shows appeal to my zoned out, underused laugh section. The Lady with Giant Legs. That was an actual show. People with Obsessive disorders. Midget couples. Am I actually creating this channel out of my innermost brain desires? Families with 18 children. Fat people. Alcoholics. What's with the religion? Religion is everywhere, and people who are religious dress really badly.

I think the raising of these kids and the worry and the pressure and the love and the cooking just makes me into a giant wad of wad by 11 at night. I sit there sucking in the shows about real people who kill each other. I know why they kill each other. It's the cooking.

Anyway. You wonder why I haven't been writing. I did spend time with Nathan today buying carnival stuff at Smart and Final. And the baby is waiting for me to come snuggle with her, way late at night, even though she's asleep. And Emma in her blue gymnastics outfit, crying because her back hurt, and she's got a new tooth coming in. These kids just keep going. I better get to bed. They're already ahead of me.

Hope in a Messy World

2009-04-20T21:43:00.001-07:00

My brother is having surgery to have a large tumor removed, along with his kidney. This is the brother I haven't spoken to in years, the one I was closest to growing up, and the one who seemed to be headed down the most troubled road. Dealing with his emergency, and my mom flying back there to deal with his emergency, and my parents trying to talk and get along after all these years...

And then the dog keeps eating the chickens we got to lay eggs, so every night I'd hear that squawking and run out usually too late to save the chicken. Then I'd be picking up chicken pieces and see that the insides of something alive isn't really all that complicated. A few chunky pieces here, connected with some string. We really are all little earth machines, fully functioned, designed to keep going. Until a dog takes us out.

My connections to the people in my family, even the connections that are dusty and look like they are not functioning - are intense. After dealing with my brother for the first time in years, I went home and chopped some bushes out back. I was making a home for the chickens, trying to chop away a huge bush that had overgrown and then died, leaving a wall of dead sticks that needed a chainsaw. All I had was a pair of hand choppers. I found out that you can chop down almost an entire bush by slowly chopping the pieces you can reach until you get to the deep parts, the core. I kept thinking about my brother's guts, and how some doctor was going to be doing the same thing with smaller instruments. I thought about my mom's eye having a bleed, and all those little veins and branches that make up the blood supply to the eye. I chopped while the chickens watched me, poking around, and the dog sat nearby, watching the chickens. A comedic circle of life. Interior and exterior hacking.

All those sticks, the hacking seemed impossible. No way little old me could chop down an entire country of a bush. It would take hours. Days. Lots of scratches. But there was no one else to do it. So I had to keep going.

The kids and I had been trying to make a place for these chickens, even though they hadn't laid us one egg. Apparently I had the loser chickens, the ones that couldn't figure out what they were good for, and yet here I am hacking, just in case. We kept checking, every few hours, every day for that egg.

Today, not in the nest boxes we built, or on the hay we piled neatly, but in the pile of chopped bush, I accidentally saw the egg the new chicken laid for us. In the middle of the haphazard briars and branches. That perfect, huge brown egg. I left it there for the kids to see when we got home from school. By the time the kids got out there, the egg had a white egg next to - our other chicken had laid one right next to it.

There is hope in a messy world.

Anyone Got the Time?

2009-02-21T21:22:00.000-08:00

I should save up money and go on trips more. Going to the snow with the kids and Barry had us out someplace new, white and exhausted. Felt so good to see woods, to breathe air without chunks in it. To enjoy playing. Flinging ourselves into the snow.

These kids are the greatest things. The only bad thing is that they keep growing. There is this terrible feeling that everything is temporary, and I know it because I see the marks on the wall getting higher and higher when we measure them. I need a magic potion to keep everything just as it is. Except keep the good, new parts that I like. I guess I just don't want to be left behind. I like me, I just like this family so much. The family feeling is so much bigger than I anticipated. When you have something great, you tend to want to duplicate it. Look at the guy who invented toilets. Now everyone has one, and it's true, they are great. I'm glad he shared.

I guess we only have this minute, speeding by. I have these three comets, trying grab a few shards of their dusty tails. I don't want much. I only want to stop time. I can see that these three tiny people are the greatest things that ever happened to me.

So There's This Horse

2009-02-11T23:31:00.000-08:00

I am a rational person. Except I don't pay the bills right now, Barry does it, which frees me up to thinking and believing that we are rich, buoyant, soaring ahead and above any woes. Not paying the bills is maybe the only thing keeping me sane.

So I ride all these horses for people right now. Riding horses just makes me want to be Amish. I would like to drive a cart to school to drop off the kids. I would like to wear prairie dresses. I would like to sit outside all day and look for Indians.

This is what living in Los Angeles in 2009 is doing to me.

Perhaps I need to start my own living museum. We do have Barry's dad, who is 93. He is a living museum. But I mean more of an interactive one, where you could ride on stuff. Watch candles being made and actual cows give actual milk.

There's a horse this guy is giving away nearby that is maybe the slowest horse I have ever ridden. He is not interested in going anywhere. I don't have time to ride, I have three little kids whom I mostly ignore. But this guy keeps coming back to me. The kids are growing up too fast. Maybe if I get on a very slow horse I can stop time. I think this is my dilemma. My kid life crisis.

Anyway that's all love Jule

BiblioFiles - New Ezine Publication

2009-01-21T10:26:00.000-08:00

Hey, I'm published again. Check out my story "The Big K" in Bibliofiles. It's not bible-y, if that's what you're thinking. Far from it, man.

Full Speed, Iceberg Dead Ahead

2009-01-03T23:13:00.000-08:00

I spent part of Christmas Eve in a McDonald's with Greg. Our kids played in the tubey plaything that looped above our heads, and I listened to Greg talk while occasionally berating him, and this is the extent of our relationship. In the past, I would have been sleeping with both Greg AND his lovely wife, but now this is it, Happy Meals and I'll have an order of We Don't Talk About That, please.

I'm not sure where my life went. Well, I mean, I see it, running around in fresh new bodies that I constantly pump full of food, some of the food coming directly fresh from my own body. Okay, so there's where my life went. But my life also kept happening, like an ongoing process, a book flipping past while I was tied up in the corner unable to move or participate, and every other part of me began to rust and break off. I used to be creative. I used to write and get fired for writing about people at my jobs. Now I troll Craig's List for horses. I think I'm looking for a fast ride out of here. The furrier the better. I think I don't want to go very far. But I definitely want to go out cowboy style.

I live in this horse neighborhood (neigh borhood, get it?) and it's like being in a candy store with no money. These people with horses are just RIDING them, right in my face. Where do they get their money? Most of these people can't even conjugate a verb, and yet they're THRIVING in the horse ownership.

And there's this script I started ten years ago about past lives, also tied to my tremendous need to be Amish without the religion, to move back to a simpler time, to drive a living animal not an engine. I'm kind of dying to write it again, to solve it. It's still there waiting for me to finish with all these kids and get back to it. Maybe I have to wait until Barry and I move to some rural town in Tennessee where we can actually afford to live, and then he and I can actually work out a story beginning to end. Oh, and also have a conversation. Just in time for our tragic deaths of old age.

I guess these are New Year's Resolutions. Simplified as this:

Horse
Write
Talk to Husband
of course love those kids

It's all love. Just getting to all these things takes some kind of genius.

"Out of the Fire," short story

2008-12-19T00:19:00.000-08:00

Out of the Fire

Leaving is the word that hung most in the curtains. I'm leaving - he said it, he felt it. He was going off to occupy space someplace where I was not. Because I was not.
The couch groaned for no reason. I hadn't moved. Like a deer, if I froze maybe the world would freeze with me. Maybe for one second that frightening ripping sound reality makes when it's moving in - maybe the room will melt into a pocket of milk. Maybe.
His jean jacket had the heart pinned on the front from when he was helping my brother fix his truck. I had found it in the dirt and pinned it on him. It was tiny like an ant's brain.
He could take that shirt. It filled me with sadness and empathy for the next girl, lone¬some on the bus bench who lent him a quarter for a phone call. Now I just need to know your number, he'd cock his head, hair falling in his easy chair eyes.
That shirt stained his body. It was tattered like something a fireman rescued out of the fire only to realize in the light that it wasn't really worth it.
"I'm not taking anything," were his words.
What happened to the sleigh rides like on the backs of magazines and snowy nights and friends we could've met and lost together, communal defeat at opening up to other similarly wretched human beings, leaving parties alone, but together alone.
Ache, then, is the salad wilting on the wooden bowl, against the silent onion. Sighing, the dinner in fragments of finished, and me there mixed in with some flies and him in motion, leaving.
I erased him from where he stood in the doorway, or maybe he did that. My heart dripped to chalk dust all around my feet.
I sat at the table for years. My sister came to help clean up the mess. I hadn't seen the part where all the things I liked in him would go off packed in a denim jacket and one pair of jeans and the wallet with the picture of Wayne Newton on it. How could he carry so much of me in there, so much of me willingly went along with him.
Don't go.
My sister murmured and touched my shoulder and I smelled the dishsoap and saw the sparkly wooden bowls and silverware clean in her eyes.
What about that little orange kitten, and Christmas, and our voices in small town supermarkets, and the idiocy of it all, the void void that wasn't as deep as it is now, cracked leather and the hay we fed the horses, your smell when you passed me running and those two cowboys hitchhiking in the sunset and our babies with their gurgling promising spittle.
You said you weren't taking anything.

Fun Takes Too Long

2008-11-22T21:44:00.000-08:00

Yes, I've stopped having fun. I just don't have time for it. I have to only do things that make money, and do them all in the two hours the baby sleeps at naptime. I used to nap WITH the babies. Things have devolved.

Craig's List, my mistress, has set me up with some cool things, though. I write articles for a company I found on CL, I've gotten countless family bunnies off the site, and now I'm exercising horses from people I've met on the site. I can't believe people are paying me to ride, it's the greatest thing. It's almost as good as getting paid to travel, and this is the closest to traveling I can do in two hours at naptime.

I sneak out when Lilly is asleep in old, dirty pants and boots and meet a big old stallion called Art, who is out of shape and needs someone to ride him. I hadn't ridden regularly since I had the kids, and my confidence was pretty low, but the lady was PAYING me to ride. Luckily he's been nice to me. We sweat and I haven't fallen off even though I'm old and would probably break a hip or something. Horse people are strange, horses are always better than their people. People usually have horses to try and get away from something - to ride off. To kick off the modern dust that collects and causes anxiety.

This week I start riding with a lady up some trails nearby. Should be fun, if I can manage to jam all my relaxation into an hour. I love it all, the juggling is difficult. But horses are taking me somewhere, maybe like writing, I don't know where, but I just can't stop.

Leftovers

2008-07-20T23:54:00.000-07:00

I decided to try and figure out my relationship with my dad, after thirty years of awkwardness. Awkwardness on my part. He's always been great to me, but there's been this overhanging shadow, yeah he's great, but he left, man. Don't trust him.

I guess now that my life is crowded with kids, I have huge bills, and a husband I couldn't pay to leave me, I felt comfortable enough to tentatively poke at this long relationship with a very long stick. I had nothing to lose.

When your dad leaves when you're nine years old, you spend alot of time wondering how your dad could leave someone as great as you. You figure you must not be that great. You figure you weren't trying hard enough, you weren't grateful enough, you weren't smart enough. There was something you were not doing. The mind at nine years old is pretty straightforward. There's no adult romantic life to take into consideration. You could give a rat's ass about what he actually was doing, what his actual adult reasons were for leaving one relationship for another. All you figure is that, for whatever reason, you weren't good enough. Something else was better.

And the truth is, you weren't good enough. Cause a nine year old doesn't have any power over a thirty year old, even if it is your dad. He loves you, but not like you love him. You love him like he is the only man in the universe. Cause he IS, the only one that belongs to you. My dad was still shopping. In the cruelest sense, he had already bought everything, but he was a grown up and he was still shopping for a better fit. I happened to be one of the packages from the first shopping trip. So he could move on, but to me, he was the whole store. There wasn't the possibility of any other situation. I didn't want anything else. Why would I? I was just living in the wilds of my childhood, expecting everything to stay cozy, predictable, warm.

They say you have nothing to do with the relationship between your parents, but you are a product of the relationship. You are a vital piece of that puzzle. So when one parent decides to leave, even if they are responsible (visits, overnights, financial support), there's still a huge hole. The hole is their familiar face who isn't there anymore, who belongs to you and your house. Who stays and gets your pajamas out, and tells you to brush your teeth. It's not the same in a new house, in His house. He belongs to you, the everyday you. Your parents are the cement of your young life. When my mom became the only one left, things were suddenly shaky. I had to fiercely protect her, because what if she decided to leave?

So, back to 1976. My dad started a new family and had my sister. My brothers and I felt like the loser first family, dumped by the wayside. My mom was devastated, and her sadness leaked all over us. She had no ability to shield us from her emotional upheaval. Even though her sadness hurt us, we learned that love was powerful, and that loving someone totally meant being a mess when they left. Because you feel the loss. That people, and connections, have meaning. It gave me a sense that love was completely scary, and that being vulnerable was worthwhile if you were willing to risk losing everything.

Tragedy, but beautiful from an adult perspective. Of course I spent most of my twenties trashing every relationship I got in. No way would anyone get that close to me. Yet I longed for connection. Barry was the only person who said, "Hey, what the hell are you doing." He thought my heart was all scarred over, but that underneath was a clean, pure, loving person. He talked to me until that person would slide inches out into the light. I'm two inches out so far. It's been seventeen years since I met Barry.

I sort of came at my dad sideways, a few weeks ago, to talk about everything. I wasn't sure how we would even talk about it. But he said some pretty wonderful stuff. He said he needed to apologize to the nine year old, and to the adult me. He said he probably couldn't make it up to the nine year old. He said a bunch of stuff that made me cry, but mostly he said he wanted to keep talking. It's hard to not feel pathetic, because it's like the dog that's been kicked, going back avidly to the dangerous person that kicked him, looking for love. Not stupidly, just vulnerably.

I'm not sure how much I want to know about those times, I don't actually want to know much about why my parents split up, or how they felt. I just want to not feel bad about it anymore. I want to help the little kid who got hurt, and I want to move forward. I'm tired of carrying around that person who is scared of everyone and of every conflict. I have so much joy in my real, true life that I want to blaze forward and drop the garageful of leftovers I don't need.

The scariest part, though, is feeling all the pain of being nine years old, and having my heart cracked. What I'm trying to learn is that it WAS worth it to love my dad, then and now. It was worth it to be broken, because my heart is still big. Somewhere in me, buried, I knew that I was worth every minute of my dad's time. So I sort through the wreckage and find his hand.

I have my mom's, and I can have his too.

From "Open Wider," my short story collection "The Big K"

2008-07-02T23:19:00.000-07:00

The Big K

I rushed there late, some shirt thrown on, a jacket he had given me. A girl I didn't know was making blue¬berry blintzes on the stove wearing only a long Japanese pajama top.
I thought of the party at this place months back where he had stood on the balcony with his new girlfriend, and I left because I couldn't imagine him fucking her while I was still alive. And he had grown a moustache and he hadn't let me know.
The mystery girl said: "You know the only other person who brought fruit salad was--" My heart squirmed shut like a baby's screaming eyelid.
He appeared with that harmless look. Not the true him. The truce him. He smiled and suddenly there was a Cape Cod house with a wooden swing and Campbell's soup steam coating the windows.
"You look beautiful," he said casually. I know he could see the blood, pouring out of my face. He stood close to my leg. "I see the moustache," I mentioned. " - you like it?"
I paused. "You look like Jackie Gleason." "I think I look like a young Howard Hughes." "Smokey and The Bandit. 1976."
He picked at my fruit salad, pulling out a coconut-covered strawberry. He pushed between my knees and nuzzled my cheek with his nose.
He kissed me, deep, and I bit him and he pulled away and said "Jesus" admirably, and we drifted apart. After many beers, we ended up fighting like convicts at a prison riot. I didn't see him for awhile after that. Once briefly when I was dating that guy he referred to as "The Cuban Crisis." And then again when his grandmother died, and he told me he was rich. Two years dribbled by and I heard he was living ten minutes from me, serving a sentence with some girl named Nina he met at a U2 concert. I called and hung up on their machine enough to cause a disturbance in their relationship. Then he called me. "They're putting the big 'K' up." "So?" "I thought there'd be some sort of ritual you'd want to start." We met in the K-Mart parking lot equal distance from both of our houses. I got in his car. We watched human-size men lift a superhuman-sized red letter. The old, parched-orange "K" lay shattered and emaciated against the building, begging for change.
"You can't just call me," I said finally. "I dumped Nina. She's gone." He picked his shoes. I felt like my bobbed hair matched my bobbed teeth. "Let's move away." "Nobody moves away." "Let's move someplace that has plant sales at the church parking lot on Saturdays. Lots of cheap baked goods, maybe a girl scout for extra zest." He picked a flake off his tarnished tennis shoe. Placed it on my leg. “I don't want that." "I don't either."
I moved away to a place featuring seasons. I started writing a book I titled "I Reached Paradise But My Emotional Luggage Was Forwarded to The Nether World." I drove around in what I considered my pajamas, seeing trees and deer signs. Nothing in Spanish spray painted on the back of a van. No train tracks splitting angry cement. I called him. "The world here bursts with light and life." "I'll have what you're having, with a twist." "Life here is unreal. In Los Angeles, life was unreal in the crack addict way. Wake up in the backseat of an abandoned car under a bridge you don't know with your cracked teeth in your hand way. All those sirens blaring, no one could hear a word I was saying, not even me."
"I gotta go," he said.
"But you're not really living," I said.
"Some of us open whole new K-marts," he said wisely, "Some of us only replace the Big K on the outside."
I could hear his latest conquest giggling at cartoons in the background.
"She's of legal age," he added, reassuringly.
I wondered how much his hair had changed in my absence.

I moved back. I saw him at a tennis club, months later. He had on little green socks. He twirled the racket around on its string.
"Where's your girlfriend?" I asked.
"Daycare."
He toted a phony tan.
"I don't really miss you," he added.

He sent me pictures of his wedding. She wore a great big puffed veil, globbed like frosting on top of bad cupcakes.
"That's to hide the scar," he scrawled on the back.

A few years later they were thinking of having a baby. It was a Saturday and he was walking down Fairfax and caught sight of their reflections in a black bank window near Farmer's Market.
"I knew by the end of the block," he told me on the phone from Tahoe. "I couldn't have a baby with her, she was an IDIOT."

He paid for my train trip to Tahoe, where we spent six days hurling ice cubes from the third floor balcony onto tourists below.

“I could never marry you," he said after three days without a shower and killing a bottle of tequila in the hotel bar. "You're not serious enough."
"And besides you're married," I added.
"She was a phase."

I moved to Prague. He called from his car phone.
"You can't stay there," he whined.
"I certainly can."
"No one's in Prague anymore."
I looked out the window at people on the street.
"Are you working with orphans?" He interrogated. His voice via satellite.
"Maybe."
"I bought a Porsche."

When I got back from Prague he called me every day. I ran into him at a discount department store in Studio City. I was buying wood. He was buying a huge can of beans.

He cried.
We moved in together. He cried quite a bit as I took over drawers previously assigned to me the last time.
"I don't think it'll work," he cried nervously.
I rubbed his arm, consolingly. "I don't care what you think."

Years later we watched the Big "K" come down because of earthquake damage. We drank champagne out of Dixie cups on the hood of my car.
"That's never gonna happen to us," he said, and watched a woman pass us in spandex.
"Not ever."

"A Guy Named Red Doesn't Like Me" (Published in Connections Magazine!)

2008-06-09T11:38:00.000-07:00

A Guy Named Red Doesn't Like Me

“My husband left me,” she spoke breathlessly. “I’m free to be with you now.”
Sally looked at him with blond ambition.
Red paused, hovering over the ’69 Pinto engine he was fixing as ardently as a succulent picnic. Red twisted a greasy fingernail.
“…I wasn’t waiting for you.”
Sally Swift stared at him. She was pretty, and safe, and almost fifty. Red’s shop continued on in the background like it had since he started there in the fourth grade.
She didn’t feel too Swift. She was stripped. Standing there next to the car like a giant question mark. There were no words. The words about her had fled and she was a hanging sentence of abandoned punctuation.
A guy they called Monkey was getting a huge tool off the rack in the background, and paused to pull the jumpsuit out of the crack in his ass.
The noise of the shop engulfed her.
“Christ, Sally,” Red looked at her, frazzled. He had a freckled face and freckled eyes. His mom said he got them in his eyes from staring in the sun too long. His brother Philip said the spots indicated the rot in Red’s brain seeping through. Philip was a doctor.
Sally stammered. “Well. What did you think I’d be doing in Elkton? Nobody comes to Elkton. Why else did you think I’d be here?”
Red looked hopefully strained. He shrugged.
“That’s it?” Her voice rose.
“I thought maybe you got sick of Miami. Came home.”
“Miami is home. Fourteen years does that to a person.”
“You lived here more ‘n fourteen years.” He adjusted a nut.
“Not fourteen adult years.”
“Where’d you buy those,” he muttered.
She was experiencing feeling returning to her face, and it was all angry.
“What happened to Whitney,” he looked at her steadily, holding a dripping oil funnel.
The image of Whitney flashed in both their heads. A dyed-blond five foot Cuban who owned several successful car washes. Sally had married him for the drugs. He was Cuban. It was Miami. It was the ‘70’s.
“He goes by the name Swifty now,” she said. He had changed his name from Jerry Whitney to Whitney Swift when he married her. He said it was a Cuban tradition. Turned out it was a Jerry Whitney tradition. God knows how many wives he’d had before her that he ended up with the name Jerry Whitney by the time they hooked up.
“He changed his name to Whitney Swift for tax reasons,” Sally said to the carburetor. Red looked at her sorrowfully. It didn’t matter that he had recently gone by Swift, she thought. What mattered was that he had recently gone.
“Why’d he leave?” Red was wiping his hands on the filthy front of his bib apron. Underneath the grime was “Kiss the Cook” but only the “ook” was visible.
For tax reasons, she felt like saying.

Sally wandered downtown Elkton. The streets were small and cramped, like Napoleon’s corpse. Nothing looked familiar.
A Korean man sprayed off the sidewalk in front of his overpriced fruit stand and deli.
She looked at the sun and thought of Red. She never considered Red wouldn’t want her. How could he not be waiting for her? Everyone was waiting for her. Herself included. Hanging in the balance until she decided to pick them up again.
She bought a loaf of bread and a small container of real orange juice. The Korean complained about breaking a fifty at nine o’clock in the morning. She focused on his five hundred-dollar shoes.
She sat on the bus bench and ate the heel of the bread. It’s all I’m worth, she thought.
The Korean resumed hosing and the fallout from the water was misting around her head.
Her mother would say this was an opportunity, not a crisis. Whenever you don’t know what you’re doing, something miraculous is about to happen, she’d said.
Her mother’s miracle turned out to be renal failure, and she had died like a lawn dart falling to Earth.
Sally dug to the bottom of the bread and got the other heel. She ate it without the aid of the orange juice. It was stale and mealy. Now I only have the good part left, she thought, drunk on starch.
She washed down the last of it. The orange juice tasted baptismal. As she sat looking at traffic, this feeling passed. She was surrounded by exhaust and the sound of skinny city trees trying to grow fenced in in cement. Real life background music.
There’s nothing here for me, she thought. My life is bleak.
She thought about Red and what a stupid name that was. No wonder he worked in a garage. What other job could he get. When Philip was six and Red was three, Philip’s teeth were so bucked he couldn’t say “Fred” so he called his brother “’Red” and it stayed that way. Now Philip was a doctor in the East Indies and Red fixed cars two miles from where he had first jerked off. Names could entrap people. This is what my life has come to – a guy named Red doesn’t like me? I’ve gotta be destined for more, she thought.
Sally tossed the empty o.j. container in the wire trash basket. At the moment, her trash was on top.
Lots of people had sat on this bus bench, she thought. Unhappy with where they were, or they wouldn’t be waiting to pay someone to drive them someplace else. Being desperate is how it felt right now. Being driven is how it would seem from the future, looking back.

She sat on the bus bench with her whole loaf of good bread and waited for a miracle.

Angels Among Us

2008-05-11T21:42:00.000-07:00

Being broke, we made baskets for the teachers filled with cookies.

My Right Breast is a Lesbian

2008-05-09T13:46:00.001-07:00

I keep having trouble with my right boob. I'm nursing, and all throughout all my nursinghoods, all three babies, this boob is the one who works the hardest. It's also the one that has been the quitter. Loves to get things like mastitis, clogged ducts, milk blisters, you name it, this boob will take it on.

I was reading this "Eat, Pray, Love" book about finding true self and being responsible for the things and paths in your life. One of those books you want to throw through the wall and can't stop reading cause you hope it has all the answers. Once I was done with it, I was thinking (during the witch doctor section and voo doo reasons for things) that my right boob must represent all the things I've stuffed down since having kids. Things that have broken down. Things I don't get to use. You know, like bad words, relationships with other adults, going to the movies, being a lesbian. I was never full-fledged, there was no pinning ceremony or committee decision, but I teetered on the brink. So I think my boob clings barbarically to those lifestyle choices left behind. Here's a little blister to remind you of what you're not. Don't forget, chickie. There's so much more out there.

I try to nurse the boob back to health. Heh heh. Get it. There's so much more in the actual life that I'm actually having that it's hard to get a moment to mourn the life and pieces that aren't getting used. I appear to really be using the mothering section. When you're a mom, you're still all the other things (wife, lover, daughter, sister, friend, reader, writer, rider). But the balance is out of whack, and everything is clinging to the sides of the ship in the storm. Some things blow across the decks occasionally.

So my boob reminds me of that. I am a great forest of overgrown trees. Nurture every section, or the whole ship goes down. So I hear you, enough already. I accept all the pieces of who I am. I'm currently loose in the family wilderness. Let me be able to nurse freely and get to all that later. The first sections I will visit upon reaching Free Time will be getting a good night's sleep, and having an intelligent conversation.

Kind of a Public Place for a Breakdown

2008-05-06T10:13:00.000-07:00

Driving home from the pharmacy I noticed a guy halfway into the intersection, fixing a flat tire. I had the baby in the carseat, and I was looking at this guy just sitting there in the intersection in a place no one normally sits, right there where everything usually rushes by. Kind of a public place for a breakdown, I thought.

Weird how we usually choose a quieter, more off-road place for our personal breakdowns, and how life (or cars) blow a hole right through that nice, neat theory. Sometimes a breakdown is waiting to happen, out of our control, right there, for everyone to see.

To ease the horror of that thought, the guy looked pretty relaxed in the middle of the road. I think once you get over the fear of being run down, of almost crashing, and being stared at, that you just get down on the ground and deal with the problem at hand, the flat tire. You hope someone comes along to help, and before you know it it's all over. Maybe the view from the cement, in the middle of the road, cars rushing by, your tire a shriveled mess - maybe the view isn't so bad from there. Maybe, in fact, it's more interesting than regular life.

It'd be nice to realize that that natural resistance we have to having anything go wrong is futile. I thought of that when watching a squirrel crawl off into our roses as he was breathing his last breaths in our yard the other day. (I think he was a smoker.) He was moving so slowly, it was sad, he wasn't trying to get away so badly, as much as trying to just be someplace safe. I tried to encourage him off to the side. He crawled right into the pink and white rose bush, roses in bright, vibrant bloom, rose petals on the ground around him everywhere. With no dogs trying to eat him, and his days balancing on phone wires coming to an end, I felt like saying to him, "Look up. Look up and see where you got yourself. You're surrounded by roses."

Peace in the breakdown.

The Hapless Parent

2008-05-01T12:36:00.000-07:00

I had to talk to Australia to interview for my new book. Very weird to talk to a country that's floating somewhere on the other side of the planet. I'm pretty sure the guy was faking his accent. To do the interview while hoping the baby doesn't wake up is another thing. Let's talk about Lilly. Lilly is so busy, especially getting bumps and scrapes as she figures out how to stand and sit back down again. Her favorite toy is the screen door. She loves to open and shut the door. Don't even try to take her away from it, she'll scream like she's covered in leeches. I think that she loves that there is something she can move that is huge.

She gets her head bumped so much 'cause we're always on the run, that she's started holding in her crying which scares me. It's an adult thing to do, to "suck it up," as they say, and she's only TEN MONTHS OLD. She shouldn't be sucking anything up except breastmilk. She'll bonk her head on the door frame, her face will screw up to cry, she'll choke out a few cries, and then I see her iron will kicking in. She starts to refuse to let it get her. Is this a future Olympic athelete? Running with a broken leg? A woman who will land a plane using her feet and her underwear as a parachute? Or will she grow up so repressed that she can't open a door without counting to a hundred and turning in three circles? Ahh, the crapshoot of psychosis you might be contributing to as the hapless parent. I know she will already have nightmares or be strangely comforted by the sound of a keyboard clicking, since she takes all her naps on my chest as I type around her. Comforted by a Smith-Corona. Lulled by Dell. Sleep by Microsoft.

As I type she has trashed the office by flinging around a stack of a hundred blue plastic cups. Now she's moved on to remove all the magnets off the fridge while simultaneously filling her diaper. I think it's time to refill her from the top. Lunch.

This is all after the morning I had to stay in Emma's class 'cause she was crying, so I volunteered and had the kids read books to me (Emma read EIGHT, she's up to a hundred and eight books in kindergarten!). Emma recovered, and then I checked on Nathan in the room next door, who has two big teeth with a gap in between them and all he wants to do is see his friend Daniel. They are indeed, in love. I supply the food, and all the love goes to Daniel. Ahh well. Daniel is really cute, like an elf.

This blogsite was supposed to be about Things Not Mom. But I'm too afraid to step over and blather about that untapped area of my life. I'd need a shotgun and I will only enter at night, with commando gear. Luckily I'll be asleep at that time. Someday I'll become fully human again. Until then, it's time to eat.

Shoes on a Baby

2008-04-07T10:54:00.000-07:00

I saw a mom at an easter party at the park that seemed like a normal mom, and she was holding a newborn. At first I just looked at her forlornly because I thought Lilly was still little and then I saw how little little could really be and I had to realize that Lilly is nine months old and counting. That was a really LITTLE baby. But I looked at the mom and saw that she had her newborn (actually, a three month old, but tiny) dressed in jeans, and wearing little socks and shoes.

I knew we could never be friends. She had shoes on her baby. Who has shoes on a baby? Who has TIME to put shoes on a baby? I could barely get shoes on myself. And to make sure the kids had their shoes on, and sweaters and did they bring water, and do we have diapers with us and hair brushed etc etc. The sheer amount of time and thought it takes to wrestle tiny infantile feet into shoes is insane. And jeans aren't the easiest thing to put on babies either, since they have no natural waist.I'm figuring you have time for shoes, you have time for a conversation with your husband, time to read, time to mow the lawn, plant a garden, build a bomb, stage a governmental rebellion.

I look at little Lilly who will hopefully never wear shoes, and watch her crawling away, sprinting away, those bare soles sleek and white. I don't have the time to cover them up, I'm too busy trying to slave off the future. Circle my wagons and keep everyone trapped in the right now.

Emma Takes A Dive

2008-03-10T23:02:00.000-07:00

The week I had the flu, Emma fell in the toilet at school. She had to sit in a wet dress in the nurse's office while I put the baby to sleep, shoved the hair out of my face, put on some slippers and hobbled up to school taking my ripping sinus infection headache with me.

It took me a half hour from the time the office called to when I could get up to the school with her dry clothes. The school is a 30 second drive from the house, a seven minute walk.

When I got into the office looking like ten bucks, they motioned me behind the counter and when I came around I saw Emma sitting forlornly in a single lone chair by the bathroom in the little nurse's area, hands in her lap. She had been sitting there for a half an hour, in a wet dress waiting for me. She never does anything wrong. She was slightly horrified to be in the nurse's office instead of running her kindergarten class as its official hero.

I shrank to the nurse's cot next to her, holding her clothes out like a sad beacon of hope. "I'm sorry it took me so long," I said and she looked a little more hopeful. "I had to get the baby to sleep, and it took me so long, and you're sitting here all wet, I'm sorry baby," I said. Sorry I never practiced her words with her each week when I had religiously studied with Nathan in kindergarten. Sorry I had the new baby and not as much time to be prompt with the older baby (her), sorry she was the middle child and therefore potentially overlooked (I was the middle child) sorry I'm a bad mom, I love you but I left you sitting here.

She smiled at me. "I fell in the toilet by mistake." I guess the janitor had left the seat up after cleaning during the night. I helped her out of her dress and tights and undies. Helped her into some shorts and a t-shirt. She stopped being so quiet and became her more ruggedly Emmalike self. She had just felt strange sitting here in the adult area, all alone, for an ETERNITY.

I told her next time I would be there faster. Next time I would try not to have the flu, or a baby. I told her it does feel weird to sit in the office because it's not a place you usually sit. I told her I had fallen in the toilet plenty of times.

I held her hand and walked her back to class. She will always wait for me and hold my hand. She likes to do that. Her little cheerful fingers in mine.

I release her back into the wild of her classroom. Even though she's here for much of the day, I am glad she comes home and spends the rest of the time with me. Even sick and neglectful (me), and soggy (her), she's the best thing I've got going.

Mamazine!

2008-02-22T18:33:00.000-08:00

Come see my essay "Free Lunch" on Mamazine right now!

All I Want To Do is Get Rid of the Dog

2008-02-18T17:48:00.000-08:00

I spend a great deal of time wanting a fresh new puppy. I think every time I have a baby (okay, three times) I have this need to get a new black puppy. I hide this from Barry because he would rather we had less dogs, in fact, he would rather there were no dogs, and possibly less children. But I can't stop myself. This black dog we've had for five years is a bust, he's a loner, a rebel. I almost gave him to two gay guys and they backed out at the last minute because I was too honest and told them the truth. The dog is WEIRD. He may jump out of your yard, he may take days before he lets you pet him, he may bite your neighbor. But, well, he's ours. Five years from now he'll be a great dog. I'm hoping he'll be somebody else's great dog. But then we go on the trail and he's polite, comes when he's called, stands right next to you, acts normal. He's no trouble in the house, sleeps at the foot of the bed, just like a cat. We'll see what happens.

Christmas Eve with Clyde and the Babies

2008-01-10T22:30:00.000-08:00

I drove the carriage on Christmas Eve. It was an engagement, I forget their names, let's just call them Young, and Rich.

It was in Los Feliz. I felt kinda bad taking the kids and Barry out on Christmas Eve, but then I realized I 1. didn't have a choice, there's no other driver and 2. it's only an hour, and there's money at the end. Plus we ended at 7:30 so we could get home in time to do cookies for Santa and a decent bedtime.

It was a blustery night, big full moon and the wind made it almost feel like a winter's Christmas. We unloaded the carriage, it turns out, right at the back entrance of the building where Barry and I used to live when we were carefree and childless. I had to do this drive because the idea that someone would propose on Christmas Eve with a horse drawn carriage, it was too pretty to pass up.

A big wrapped box was waiting on the carriage seat for the unsuspecting girlfriend. I guess inside somewhere was the ring.

Barry took the kids (baby sleeping) in the minivan to drive around for an hour to keep the baby asleep, using up as much gas as I would probably make that evening in salary. Ahh well.

The young couple got in my carriage, he wanted me to head to the park but there was a holiday light show that had Griffith Park clogged. He was out of ideas. I said I'd just take neighborhood streets.

Since it was Christmas time, every street we went down was celebrating. Lights, decorations out front. People going into houses carrying big wrapped presents, the people opening the doors to Christmas parties greeting the guests happily, fires going, music playing. It was like driving through nostalgia. The streets were pretty much empty of cars, and the couple opened some champagne and the engagement got under way. She opened the box and I guess she said yes because all she did was cry. Kiss and cry.

Big white Clyde and I dawdled up and down one street after another, the wind blowing back our hair, as the couple cemented their relationship. Being out with Clyde on Christmas was like driving a big white furry ghost -- he and I had cemented our relationship over apples each time we saw each other. His big white mysterious face and cushy grey lips gently devouring every piece of apple from my flat hand. His face was so huge, he could easily suck in an entire apple like it was a tiny piece of Trident gum. But he was a gentleman in every aspect. A two ton gentleman in a white fur coat.

As we drove up and down streets at our slow pace while I knew Barry was driving up and down similar streets, probably at the same pace, killing time with the kids, and we both looked at Christmas lights, him with the kids, and Santa was only hours away, and here we were in our old neighborhood with two aspects of my life happening simultaneously -- the horse connection and the thick family. Both experiences crawling along with me just hanging on to the reins.

I thought about my newly engaged couple and I thought sometimes you're the driver, and sometimes you're in the carriage, having the big event. Most of the time, though, you're the driver. Just a piece of something else, something bigger than you.

I enjoy every minute of their hour rental and then drop them off at the old apartment building. I unhook Clyde, unassemble the harness off his the massive white warm body. The white minivan shows back up, the floating raft with my Christmas family in it. Clyde's neck curves up higher than my shoulder, his head higher than my head. He nuzzles my arm for apples. I stroke his calm, whale face.

Merry Christmas, I think, and look over, seeing my babies faces in the car window.

To Live and Drive in L.A.

2007-12-24T14:02:00.000-08:00

Click above and check out my story about carriage driving at the "Get Satisfied" website. Click on my name in the lefthand column. Or read below!

It's all about simplifying your life. And Merry Christmas!

To Live and Drive in L.A.
By Juliet Johnson

I drive a horse-drawn carriage in Los Angeles, for my newly-started wedding carriage business. Today someone has rented the carriage to propose to his girlfriend in Pasadena. I angle the huge white horse Clyde out into traffic, pulling our decorated white carriage. It’s a Sunday afternoon. We’re picking up the groom around the corner from where he’s going to surprise his girlfriend and ask her to marry him.

Old people always smile at the carriage and big old Clyde’s head. They’re in the crosswalk, or on the sidewalk, bent over, they look up at me like elves or trolls, smiling. Look, the ice man is here.

The groom appears. He’s Chinese.
“Hi, I’m David,” he offers his hand. “My sister arranged all this.” He looks rushed. “This is a nice carriage.” He’s carrying a large bundle of exotic white flowers. His cell phone rings. It looks expensive. He talks in Chinese. I know he’s not faking it, but it still seems like showing off. He covers the receiver.
“I flew in from Asia last night just for this. I was in Singapore. I was going to rent a helicopter.”
Wow.
“I thought, you know, fly in on a helicopter. But my sister said horse drawn carriage.”
Yeah. You are proposing to a GIRL. Nine year old boy, I’d go with the helicopter. Maybe shooting people as you come flying down, nice touch.
He looks at the carriage. “This is a great business. Where’s the most popular place you go for weddings?”
I’ve only done three other jobs.
“People get married everywhere. Anywhere they call, we go.”
He’s nervous. Now I’m nervous. I’m thinking what I’ve been thinking since his sister Kwan first emailed me and booked this job. What if she says no? I have to know the details.
“Do you live in Singapore?”
He nods.
“What do you do?”
“Telecommunications.” He then says some vague business stuff to hide the fact that he’s actually a huge Chinese porn star.
“That must keep you busy,” I say.
“Very. We’re going to get married, and live in Shanghai.”
God, I hope she says yes.
“How long have you been dating?” I ask hopefully.
“Nine months.”
Yikes.
His cell phone rings again. He’s gotten the go ahead. He gets into the carriage.
We go around the corner.
I realize on this job that I get to intimately witness pivotal points in people’s lives. We turn the corner and this guy is going to be getting married. Or tragically rebuffed in front of all his friends and me and Clyde.
We get to the busy corner where the restaurant is, and a bunch of Chinese people are standing in the courtyard. Suddenly everyone’s looking toward us and screaming. David looks at me, clutching the flowers. Scared.
The girl I identify as the girlfriend Jenny comes from between people, sees the carriage and David and her hand goes to her mouth. Her face squeezes up and she starts to cry. It’s so beautiful that I almost start to cry. David leaps down to her, she’s paralyzed as he sweeps in, hands her the flowers and hugs her.
I’m guessing Jenny has said yes, she had to say yes.

People stop to look at Clyde, in cars and in the crosswalk, especially guys in groups, in their late teens and early twenties, with scruffy beards and bad hair. Their favorite phrase is “That is one BIG ASS horse.” Clyde takes it all in, eyes half-lidded, leaning on three legs, one hip loose, resting. His ears are alert. He flicks them back every few minutes, scouting to see if I have any information for him. When I don’t, he sighs.
The groom waves me around front and I pull Clyde around.
David gets back in. A lady from the curb says, “Hi, I’m Kwan” – her husband rushes out and hands me a hundred dollar bill. I wish there were more guys like this. Jenny gets in, holding her flowers.
We trot toward the park for a short ride.
David and Jenny are speaking entirely in Chinese, nonstop. Except for the words “email” and “birthday” for which I guess there is no Chinese alternative. Jenny talks so much that I wonder if David is having second thoughts. I know I am. He just committed to her forever. Is he sitting back there realizing, as I am, that she’s never going to shut up, the entire rest of his life?
I decide to just drive. Enjoy my brief loyalty to David and his helicopter dream, and his new Shanghai bride. It’s getting dark. Back at the restaurant, I say goodbye and congratulations to David. I won’t be seeing him again. I pull back into traffic and head back to the trailer. My favorite part of the ride. The carriage empty, just the sound of the clip clop of Clyde’s heavy feet as the 21st century cars shoot past all around us. Going somewhere, not very fast, completely out of sync with the rest of the world. In the midst of the cement and hurtling metal on wheels around us, I see Clyde’s furry ear flick back to me. I’m listening, he says. He’s why I drive a carriage in the big bad city of Los Angeles. Maybe someone will see what I see.

On a side street, an old lady smiles at me. Fresh milk delivery.

"The Prison of Preschool" in Los Angeles Family Magazine

2007-11-16T12:02:00.000-08:00

"Pete Fix It" in Los Angeles Family Magazine

2007-11-16T11:57:00.001-08:00