I'm Baaaack

Sometime ago, I announced my intention to blog once a week. Crap happened, but I'm back. And this time I have an iPad.

My friends and family will know that last year, I asked for an iPad for my birthday, and he gave me a divorce instead. Or, as Mom says, "Instead, he gave you something really wonderful." This year, with my student loan, I got my own iPad. Even better: I was patient and pre-ordered an iPad2.

(For concerned tax payers out there, this was not a frivolous use of my student loan. I desperately needed a new laptop for school. I wanted an iPad. Therefore, my iPad is my new laptop for school. Totally within the guidelines of responsible student loan spending.)

I love my iPad. I have used it for schoolwork. I'm outside with it in the late mornings (after vineyard work) when I write and the evenings when I don't, so it's filled with video of my constant companions: Moon, Baba Wawa, Penny and the Booman. I've used it to edit and post some of those videos on YouTube. I am using it to write one of my novels, which happens to be set on a ranch, so the setting where I set myself and my iPad in the morning is conducive to the creative process.

We're all out here right now in the shade of a 150 year-old oak tree:

My Outdoor Office

One of my favorite aps is 2Do. It's a handy to-do list that can be used to set up repeating actions on certain days. It comes with pretty colored category tabs, fun buttons and prioritizing. I have made the priorities my own though, and so they are not a matter of priority at all. High priority is what I use for one-time things that need doing. Medium is for weekly chores that automatically pop up on their day of the week. Low is for monthly chores. None is for the daily stuff like dishes and litterboxes. (If I could figure out how, I'd change the titles from "None" to "Daily," etc., but that's not a high enough priority for me to take the time to figure it out.) Starred items are tricky little boogers. They never go away. You can touch the box on the screen to indicate it's done, and the line gets drawn, but then it stays there. I like things to disappear from the Today tab. So I only used the star for writing. Weekdays are for the novels (I'm writing two at the moment--it was five, but I've narrowed it down to two--one on the iPad, and one on my office computer in the afternoons.)  And as of yesterday, the weekends are for blogging.  As soon as I push "Publish Post," I get to check it off my 2Do list.

And even though this one has been mostly about nothing, I do have a lot on my mind. It has been quite a year for me, and I have a bunch of topics coming soon, like "Being Catty" and "Stop Telling Me to Build My Barn" and "Oops! I Inhaled. A Lot."  And of course, there are Penny stories and Booman tales, along with the escapades of my border collie, Moon, and my lamb, Baba Wawa.

I had some folks tell me recently that they missed my stories on the Bengals-L Yahoo list. I'm still kind of there, but mostly you'll find me on FaceBook or right here. Uncensored.

A Life of Service

A Life of Service

            Robert Eugene Fickle of Blanco, Texas passed away peacefully on January 27 2001 .  He is survived by his wife, Erika Hermean Jurgens Fickle, his children Erich Brent Fickle and wife Luella Martin Fickle, Bobbi Jean Fickle and Susan Victoria Fickle Jones and husband Charles Michael Jones, his grandchildren Justin Rodney Jones and wife Veronica Salazar Jones, Travis Dale Jones, Victoria Anne Jones and Robert Michael Jones, and great-grandchildren Grant Jones and Scout Justin Jones, sons of Justin and Veronica.

Robert Eugene Fickle was born in Burwell, Nebraska on May 25, 1930.  His family moved to California during the Dust Bowl Migration.  He was raised by his mother, Flossie (Florence Brown Wheatley)  and grandmother, Eva Knobel Long.  He graduated from Compton High School and proudly served his country in the Navy during the Korean War.  Following the war, he attended Compton College where he was president of Alpha Sigma Chi fraternity.  There he met the bright and beautiful Erika Hermean Jurgens, with whom he fell in love.  They were married on June 9, 1956.  Bob and Erika had 3 children, Erich Brent Fickle, BobbiJean Fickle and Susan Victoria Fickle Jones, who are forever grateful to have been raised by the best dad ever.  He taught his children the values of always learning new things, working hard, having a generous heart and living and laughing well.  He loved hosting amazing parties for friends and family, travel, the outdoors, photography, theater, agriculture and genealogy.

Bob was a police officer in Compton, CA and Huntington Beach, CA during the unrest of the Sixties.  During the 1970s he was instrumental in developing a modern, computerized communications system with Motorola Corporation for the HBPD.  After he retired from the police department in 1980, he worked for Southern California Edison company and helped develop security systems for the San Onofre Nuclear Power Plant. 

Bob and Erika retired in 1994, moving to Blanco to be near their grandchildren, Justin, Travis, Victoria and Robert Jones, and fulfilling a lifelong dream to own a ranch.  Totally missing the point of retirement, they worked hard to clear mesquite for pastures and plant a vineyard on their River Ridge Ranch east of Blanco.  They also traveled throughout Texas, enjoying all the wonders of their new home.

Continuing his lifelong tradition of service, Bob was active with both the VFW and American Legion in Blanco, TX , even after a stroke in 2002.  He and Erika supported the Blanco County Youth Livestock Show for many years and were Top Individual Buyers in 2004 and 2005. 

Robert Eugene Fickle lived a good life and the ripples of his influence will continue to shape the future.  We will miss you, Daddy, until we meet again in heaven.

Research

I have a new goal for my blog:  write every Sunday after lunch with Mom.  I think I can do this.  I really do.  Here I am today doing it after making the decision this morning.  That's a promising beginning, eh?

I have had the most enlightening couple of weeks.  Last Thursday, when I woke up early already deep in thought...Well, let me qualify that.  The thoughts were not deep, I was just tangled up in them like hot sweaty sheets.  Except that it wasn't hot.  Gotta love fall.  I do at least; it's my favorite season.  Anyway, instead of lying there allowing said shallow...well, not so much shallow as not deep...thoughts torture me, I got up, made a pot of coffee and went to work on my article/video on Marbled Bengal patterns.  About three in the afternoon, realizing what I had could only be called an "article" with tons of editing but would be okay as a blog one day AND that I hadn't had lunch yet, I was flattened by an epiphany.  I got up at 6:30 in the morning and wrote, ergo, I can write in the morning.

Huh.  And all this time, I thought I had to write at night because I've always been somewhat of a night owl and not a morning person at all.

Seriously.  Not at all.  Talk to me before I've had my coffee, and you take your life in your hands.  At the very least, I could make you cry.  There was that time I was camping at Bow Willow in Anza Borrego with my brother and sister-in-law.  Luella wakes up talking.  Make that chattering.  I tried to hint with no effect at all.  Waiting with little patience for the percolator on the Coleman stove to perk, I flat out said, "Luella, please don't talk to me until after I've had my coffee."  The silence lasted just long enough to take the edge off my nerves before she again launched into her narrative of her life.  "Erich," I let loose in my crankiest voice, "do you have any duct tape?"

So, conversation and morning are definitely out.  And unless your name is Joyce Meyer and you're on my television, I'm not interested in your monologue, either.

The thought that I might be able to write in the morning never even occurred to me.  But there it was that day.  I had.  So on Friday, I tried it out and started a novel.

Okay, so "started" might not be precisely what I did, since I started the thing eleven years ago, but the point is I got up, made my coffee and worked on it for four hours.  Really and truly worked on it.  I was so darned proud of myself, I had to tell Mom all about it.  And post it on Facebook and tell all my friends after they already had read it on Facebook.  I told Mom, "I have a new schedule."

And she replied, "Don't bother you until noon because you're writing."

I beamed with double pleasure.  That was about the most supportive thing Mom has ever said about my writing.


And I've kept to my new schedule every day I've been home since the epiphany with somewhat varying degrees of success.  As some FB friends may have deduced, what I'm writing currently involves billiards, since I keep playing "Pool Master" and calling it research.  I don't want to say too much to give it way, but I will tell y'all that the main character is a speed freak.  So, in the interest of research....

I made TWO pots of coffee this morning.  Living on the edge.

Shit Happens

I was going to spray the vineyard with fungicide.  I got on the lawn mower to drive it to the sprayer in the shed.  It went ten feet and quit.  I checked the gas tank.  It had over a half-tank of fuel sloshing around.  I started it again and went two feet. It started and died without moving.  Crap.  I went into the house to report to Mom that the spraying wouldn't happen today, either.

"This has been a frustrating couple of days mechanically," I told Mom.

"Well, let's face it," she said, "it has been a frustrating couple of weeks or three."

I waved my hand at her.  "Yeah, but that's you.  We're talking about me now."

She snorted and waved her hand, "Oh, okay, that's just me."

"Focus, Mom.  It's all about me right now."  Hands were waving, fingers were pointing to me.  "Focus."

"Okay," she breathed, recovering from laughing and wiping her tears.  She tucked her hands between her knees and leaned forward.  "I'm focused.  Go."

Mom got the Reader's Digest synopsis.  Not here.

First I had trouble getting the spear off the tractor.  It's a nifty little 3-speared jousting device (weighing way more than I can pick up) that is attached to the tractor's bucket with a bolt and nut through a hole. The spear stabs those big round hay bales so you can move them.  My nephew puts it on because he is a strong young man, and he usually takes it off for me so I can use the tractor.  He had left it on the night before because they needed to get to his nephew's soccer game.  No biggy as long as it's just finger tightened.  I can get it off.  Usually. 

The trickiest part is figuring out lefty-loosey with a wrench on an upside-down nut you can't see.  You can't see it because the bucket is low enough that it won't accidentally fall on your head.  This is important for me.  I know that there are some people who think all those mishaps over the married years were because of the drinking, you know: the concussion in the bathtub, the trip over the cat and through the sliding glass door, the death-by-toilet episode, the cell-phone debacle.  But I have proven over the past six months of sobriety that this is actually a finely honed talent of mine.  Who else can get a concussion while feeding a cat?  I think the step of keeping the spear low is vital for me.

So I would figure out lefty-loosey with my hands (my fingers know) and then try to duplicate it with the wrenches.  There are two wrenches: one for the nut and one for the bolt.  The wrench on the bolt kept slipping.  I switched wrenches, letting the shorter handled monkey-wrench wedge itself against the bucket, and concentrating on the nut I can't see.  This takes a bit of positioning of the body between the spears to reach it. The wrench on the nut fell to the ground.  I un-positioned myself and scooted it out from under the tractor with the other wrench.  Then I repositioned the monkey wrench, figured out lefty-loosey with my fingers, and tried again.  (Have I mentioned that my nephew is a strong young man?)  The wrench clattered to the ground.

"This is unacceptable!" I yelled, throwing in a few cuss words that I very seldom use anymore.  I stomped to the tractor, climbed up, turned it on, and raised the bucket.  I would just leave the tractor running which would decrease the chance of hydraulic failure and death by tractor-spear.  I didn't even need my fingers to figure out lefty-loosey: I could see it.  One good tug to counter the super-strength of my nephew, and the nut was free to spin, and the bolt was removed. I marched to the seat, lowered the bucket, and left that spear in the dust.

I entered the vineyard in triumph, lowered the shredder to a nice low height, and turned it on.  Within 10 feet, I had snagged a roll of wire hidden in the grass (it was in front of the bigger roll of wire that I could see and so went around). I turned off the shredder. Cuss, cuss, cuss.  People just leave things lying all over this ranch, and by golly, why can't they pick them up?  I'm going to pick up every darned stray object on this ranch all at once on purpose so I don't continue picking them up one at a time accidentally with the shredder.  By golly.  Cuss, cuss.

I backed the tractor up and the wire nearly came loose.  Hmmm.  Maybe this wasn't as bad as I thought; the wire didn't seem to be wrapped tightly around the blades.  I got down and tugged on it.  No movement.  Back on the tractor I went forward, and the wire moved.  I backed up, went forward, backed up, went forward.  I got down and tugged.  No movement. I bent over, ass in the air, head by my knees, trying to see under the shredder.  I knelt down and tried again to look under the shredder.  I'd have to get it out of the grass so I could see. I left the vineyard and drove back to the shed where the tools are, dragging that wire all the way.  On the driveway to the barn, I could see that the bundle was stuck on the bent corner of the shredder's frame by just one wire.  I got wire cutters even though I know that I can't cut fence wire with wire cutters, but the bolt cutters were in Robert's truck last I knew.  I got a hammer and tried pounding it down.  I went to put the hammer away, and TADA!!!! There, hanging on hooks in all their vibrant red glory were the bolt cutters.  I grabbed them.

As I turned around, I saw dog shit on the floor of the shed with a distinctive Teva print smooshed through it.  Some dog (obviously not my dog, because she is a good girl) had shit in the shed.  Naturally I stepped in it.  I sighed and went about the business of snipping the wire and tossing the smashed-up bundle in the bucket to put in the trash trailer.  I wiped my foot on the grass, got on the tractor, dumped the wire and shredded the darned vineyard.  Without further incident.  Except for the rebar from the removed row 13 which is now lying next to row 12 which caused a ruckus but didn't get caught.

"Okay," I said to Mom, "I'm done.  That's it.  This fall I'm picking up all the crap around the ranch.  But first I have to go move the lawn mower because it's sitting behind your van."

"Okay," she said.

I left the room, but turned and came right back.  She put her head down on the desk.  "What now?"

I told her about my Facebook status.  I thought it would make a dandy t-shirt, or an awesome first line for a novel, but I used it on Facebook: "Shit happens.  I just never see it until after I step in it."

I'm going to go shred now.  Wish me luck.

Harvest

Glossary of Vineyard Tending Terms:

bird netting: a net which is placed over the grapevines in a continuous feed without cutting it to fit the rows (penalty for cutting: the Wrath of Mom) for the purpose of trapping birds for the cats and border collie to chase and catch.  (Incidental benefit is that the netting prevents the birds from eating  3/4 of the grape.)

hedging: a) daily stroll up and down the aisles dressed in Easter finery and strappy high heels, waving hedge trimmers at the vines (source:  commercial for Saks--or was it Macy's?)  b) drudge work of trimming back rampant grapevines which seek daily to recreate that gut-wrenching final hand-holding scene in the old black and white film "Last of the Mohicans" across the aisles.

actual attire with live grasshopper (not jewelry)

netting platform: a metal contraption that attaches to the back of the tractor with a flat place for standing, a hoop to hold the bag containing the bird netting, and a boom or arm with two hoops for feeding the netting out over the rows of grapevines.  Along with netting for one acre of vineyard, the platform costs the equivalent of two years' profit.


verizon: when the grapes start turning purple indicating that "The Birds" are about to do a Hitchcock on the vineyard.

verizon

                                                                            

So what They said about bird netting was that once it was on, you were done with everything except spraying and praying until harvest.  A few weeks of relief from the daily grind during the height of summer.  Hallelujah.  That's what they said, and by golly, that's what Mom and I were determined to believe.

While we were finishing the hedging so we could get the net on, I said, "That net's going to be tough to get off."

Mom said, "The vines stopped growing sooner last year."

"What?" I was confounded.  Cabernet vines stop growing?  Maybe in October.  Mom and Dad planted the damned cabernet because they were a "vigorous" vine.  The reason the no work in the vineyard from verizon to harvest sounded so good to me was because of the vigor of those vines.  Vigorous is now one of my favorite cuss words meaning something akin to "royal pain in the ass."

"They always slow down after verizon, and we stop hedging in early August."

"We stop hedging when they harvest, Mom."

"At least it will give us a break."

Putting up the netting was a snap.  (Ha.)  It only took four of us: me to drive the tractor, Victoria to stand on the platform and feed the netting out of the bag and through the loops on the boom and Susan and Robert to walk behind, spreading the net out and draping it over the vines.  Snap.  Four hours of snap, and I was doubly determined to be done until harvest, when we'd take the net off the day before the pickers came.

A week later, Susan told Mom, "The wind blew the netting off the vineyard."

Mom looked out the window and said, "No.  The vines are just growing through it."

"Oh.  That's going to be fun to take off."

Every day, I walked by the vineyard on the way to help Mom take care of Dad, and thought, "Oh, that's going to be a bitch."

So what did we do about it?  Mom sprayed.  We prayed.  That's what they said to do.  I was praying that the vines really would stop growing.  Soon.  Before it was impossible to take the net off.

Robert

Grape harvest always, always, always takes place in August, usually the same weekend as the TICA South Central Regional Show and Banquet.  I usually miss the show because of the harvest.  When the Regional was in Austin, I did both harvest and banquet!  This year I actually planned to miss the harvest and go to the Regional in LaFayette, Louisiana.  Well, the grapes couldn't have me missing it, so harvest was about 2 weeks late.

Susan

When I got home from Louisiana, Mom told me that now They said that we were supposed to go through the vineyard daily fluffing up the netting so the vines didn't grow through the holes and entangle the net.  She would pay me $10 an hour (my going rate for shredding the fields) to help trim the vines off the top of the net before harvest for three or four hours a day.  Mind you, one hour in the vineyard is plenty of work for me, let alone for my 75 year old mother with her bad knees.  But we did the time.

"Why do I always make mistakes?" Mom said.  "I make new ones every year, but there's always something.  In another twenty years, I should have this down."

"Oh, I can just see us out here in twenty years, Mom.  I'll be the one in my seventies needing a walker.  You'll be 95."

We finished with a day to spare.  Well, of course we just thought it was a spare day.  Turned out to be the day we should have put the platform on the tractor because naturally that fifteen minute job took over an hour.

Even though Mom and I had put in the grueling hours it took to get it ready, taking the netting off was still not a snap.  I have decided that the only snap around here would be if we changed the name of the place from River Ridge Ranch and Vineyard to Murphy's Law Happens.  Now that would be a snap.  Snap.

Below, the bored tractor driver tries to entertain herself which draws a chorus of objection from the rest of the crew: "No texting while driving!"   She replies, "I'm not texting!  I'm posting on FaceBook." 

Next year's warning label:  "Do not read warning labels while operating tractor."

Patrick

It took five of us this time, with Victoria's boyfriend Patrick helping on the platform to pull the netting through the hoops.  We were supposed to have the netting off the day before harvest, but Susan's husband had an auction (Charlie is an auctioneer) on Saturday, and their projected arrival time of 3:00 to help with the netting turned into twice later than the usual two hour tardniess.  By the time the shredder was off the tractor and the platform was on, we had about a half hour of daylight left.





We worked through dusk.  "Do you want flashlights?" I hinted to Susan.

"Do you have one?"  She asked with a definite note of hope in her voice.

"Yeah, they're in the house."

Victoria

"Oh."  We worked through full dark.   Susan and Robert had to stop about every five feet to untangle the net from the rebar ties.  I could see because the tractor had lights, but they couldn't.  So I went to the house and got flashlights.  We were going so slow that we quit after another two rows, hoping that we could keep ahead of the pickers in the morning.

That didn't happen either.  Harvest time was set for 6:30 in the morning, when the earliest hint of light allows limited vision.  The pickers showed up at five.  They were only a row behind by the time we got back to it, and they caught up with us, and passed us.  They lifted the net and draped it on the top of the vines to pick underneath.  This made it a heck of a lot easier to take the netting off--definitely the reason we finished at the same time as the pickers (as opposed to an hour later).  Susan said, "Next year, we're taking the net off after they pick."

The harvest is in.  The grapes are done.  Until it all starts over again.

Achey-Breaky Tractor of Tears

At Uptown Blanco’s Sunday brunch in July, I was walking back from the buffet with my omelet, and our waitress Bonnie asked, “Are you shrinking?”

“Yes, I am,” I beamed.  “I’ve lost over 200 pounds.”

“No!”

“Yep.  My husband and some off of me, too.”  (My family loves that joke.  I surely didn’t invent it, but I have made good use of it, beginning at my birthday brunch one week after the Divorce announcement.  On that day, I sighed contentedly over my last Mimosas, and said, “Marriage is fattening.  I’ve already lost 175 pounds.”)

She laughed.  “Well it all looks good on you!” 

Everyone comments on how good I look, how happy I look.  I do look happy.  I am happier.  I like my life better these days.  I like the energy and sheer joyfulness of being sober.  I like being able to get things done.   (If you feel a “but” coming on, you may know me well.)

With all the rain this spring, the wildflowers and weeds are rampant. Wildflowers are the heart and soul of my favorite form of gardening, and I made good use of them in my yard this year.  Weeds are wildflowers where Mom doesn’t want them.  I’ve been working on round three of field shredding, and the beggar lice plants are already four feet high in the lower eastern pasture.  Before I could get back to it, I had to finish the coastal field.  In the process of shredding the coastal field, I developed an aversion to the tractor.

It wasn’t the heat or the dust that had me looking for any little spit of water from the sky as an excuse not to shred.  “Oh, darn; it’s raining.  Can’t shred.”  I mean, granted it’s hot as heck out there, and after three hours of being coated with dust, I resemble a golem, a very itchy golem in dire need of a shower, but that wasn’t the aversion.  It was more of an emotional nature.
When I work on the tractor, I wear noise-cancelling ear buds attached to my i-Pod Nano and listen to books.  Otherwise, the sheer boredom would pretty much guarantee that Mom would have to hire someone else to shred, and I would lose the little income I actually have to spend on frivolities like paint for the porch, food, birthday presents and, well, books to listen to on the tractor. 

The other day, I’d only been out there for an hour when my book ended.  Without the enchantment of a narrative pumped directly into my brain, I was left alone with my own thoughts.
And the first thought was, “I don’t remember marrying an asshole.”

Relatively harmless thought, eh?  I could easily take that in a humorous direction.  Yep.  I don’t remember saying, “Hey, this guy’s a jerk; I think I’ll marry him.”  Wahaha.

But no!  I guess I’ve had it too easy lately, wrapped up in the sheer joy of being unchained, free from daily degradation and hang-overs.  I got hit instead with a wallop of melancholy at thought number two. “I remember marrying a kind, thoughtful, funny guy who seemed to give a shit about me.”  Within seconds, my face was covered in muddy rivulets as I went from feeling like I’d won the lotto to realizing that this was Divorce, that the man I’d thought was my best friend wasn’t a friend at all, that my heart has been blown to smithereens.  Ouch.

Okay, so I didn’t marry an asshole, but by golly I’m divorcing one, thank God.  I came to terms with these thoughts and was able to reclaim my emotional equilibrium within a few hours.  It took two days to recover from the swelling of all that eye-leaking.  I am too old to cry without severe poofing of the eyelids.

The next time I went out on the tractor, I was well-armed with seven hours of book and a back-up.  Fat lot of good it did me.  I kept having to rewind the book as my own thoughts pirated my brain.  Within moments, I was bowed down by the weight of the loss and crying again.  The loss of my babies, the loss of my sobriety, the loss of my spiritual life, the loss of my teaching career, the loss of ten years of my life.  By the time I made it to the shower that day, I had renamed the John Deere my “Achy-Breaky Tractor of Tears.”

It was with intense trepidation that I returned to the pasture the next day.  Most of the beggar lice was down, but I had a good six hours of shredding left.  The swollen folds of skin around my eyes still resembled bruised bloodhound eyes.  I didn’t think I could take another round of tractor therapy, so I was hoping that Alice Hoffman would have my undivided attention.  For the most part, she did. 

That part of my attention that wandered was caught up in the daily glories of living on a ranch.  The weather was a little cooler (Texas summer cold front: high in the mid nineties), a little less humid.  Yummy whipped cumulous clouds floated across a vivid blue sky.  I was able to avoid most of the dust as a cool breeze wafted across the river and up the slope to my side.  Dragonflies flew beside the tractor, and purple martins swooped around me feasting on grasshoppers.  A fox bounded out of the weeds in front of me to escape in the abundant greenery lining the banks of the tank.

Thank God for a day of reprieve from the grief.  I want so much to be able to just build a bridge and get over this, to not have to go through it.  I know better, I really do.  So thank God, also, for that Achy-Breaky Tractor of Tears.  At least I’m not breaking down in the middle of the bank or grocery store.

Emotional Tiggers

One Saturday morning in late May, I had a few quick errands to run on the northern outskirts of San Antonio.  Borrowing Mom's van was not an option since one of those errands was picking up the 5' x 8' trailer I'd bought for Mom yesterday from Tractor Supply.  With a forecasted high around 95, I had to plan a suitable strategy for surviving the trip in my '95 Jeep Wrangler sans air-conditioning.

First I would hit HEB Plus, the Disneyland of grocery stores, where I could leave the windows down;  an empty Heap, oh, I mean Jeep, meant no temptation.  From there, I would head over to PetSmart for a rapid dash to swoop up cat litter and food.  Such a quick errand would allow me to leave the windows open, fragile groceries chilling in blue insulated grocery bags.  Tractor Supply would be next.  The trailer was already paid for, the title done, so it would be all ready for me to slap on the Jeep and head for home.  I could be home by noon.  It could happen.

Saturday is not my day of choice for running any errands, let alone wading through the crowds of a popular grocery store.  My agoraphobia may be mild, but shopping is one of the main triggers.  At least it's not a mall.  At least I've been there before with my sister.  I was bolstering my already mopey self with heavy walls of Zen denial and lists of "at leasts,"  when the first notes of Paul Simon's "Kodachrome" played on the stereo.  With an eager grin, walls shed, I cranked it up and belted it out.  Oh yeah.  I do indeed "got a Nikon camera."  Two in fact:  one D-80 for the digital world and one N-90S for Kodachrome.  That's right.  I am a photographer, a poet, a mighty woman worthy of great things.  Oh yeah.  "Mama don't take my Kodachrome away!"

Still grinning, I parked my beloved at the back of the parking lot, grabbed my canvas bags, put them in a cart and trekked off to the store.  I calmly navigated through oodles of produce picking humanity, intent on my list.  Weaving through home goods to pick up the ever important toilet paper and baggies led me to the far side of the cavernous grocery park for some health and beauty.  Dad needed bed pads.  I needed body powder.  Body powder.  He didn't like my body powder.  Bleak thoughts threatened to pull my mood back down.

I passed two women, mother and daughter, examining sun screens.  "I don't know," the mother said, "I just don't believe it could be 100%."  I caught myself mumbling, "That's not what it means."  Shit howdy.  What was I doing?  I stopped my cart, backed up and said, "Excuse me, but it's doesn't mean 100%.  The SPF number means you can stay out in the sun that much longer than without sunscreen."  Of course, there is debate as to whether anything over 15 is worth it and the whole broad spectrum issue to consider, but at least I could share a little bit of knowledge.  I knew the product they were considering protected against both UVA and UVB rays, because I'd already checked.  I gave an apologetic shrug and smile.  "Sorry.  I was passing, and I just overheard."

"Oh, no," they replied, "thank you.  You look like you would know."  We laughed.  Yeah.  I'm a fair skinned farming fool, and I do wear the SPF 100.  And a hat.  The sunglasses that protect my ultra sensitive blue eyes still work better than any sunscreen, turning me into an anti-raccoon.

Good mood restored by a very minor good deed, I continued shopping.  I was almost done when I saw OFF! still on my list.  I had brought my laptop out to the porch the evening before only to be chased back to my office by mosquitoes.  I scanned the aisle signs and decided to check by insecticides.  Bingo!  There they were right by another perplexed shopper.  I reached for my favorite compromise to 100% DEET (which melts nylon and may not be that great for your skin but is a camping must-have, especially in Canada where the mosquito is the national bird):  Deep Woods Off!  The lady asked me, "Is that good?  Does it work?  My dad was mowing the lawn last night, and he was eaten up by mosquitoes."

"It works well enough.  It has more DEET than the regular one, and DEET is the active ingredient."  When she thanked me,  I laughed, and joked "Maybe I could have a new career helping people shop."    I felt pretty good.  I was interacting like I thought a normal person would; a person not crippled with fear and self-doubt.  Huh.  Come to think about it, I've been doing that a lot lately: actually interacting with strangers and smiling.  I guess that's one of the benefits of not facing daily scorn and disdain.

PetSmart and TSC were also positive people experiences, even though picking up the trailer was not as quick as it should have been because the ball on my Jeep was too big for the hitch.  An hour later, after much discussion  and fumbling, (I said, "Is the ball too big?"  He said, "No, the spare tire is in the way."  Off came the spare--a real chore--to reveal that the ball was too big.), I was finally on my way home, reflecting on my morning.

They say that when one door closes, another opens.  I tend to stay in that room until God gives me a good swift kick through the other door, like I stayed in my marriage because I made those vows and meant them.  I am going through a divorce not of my choosing, so my days are filled with emotional triggers that can pull me back down.  Even a simple task like washing the dishes or scooping a litterbox brings back his voice in my head, telling me that I don't do it right, that I'm not good enough.  Sometimes I just need to tell that voice to "Shut the fuck up" and let me enjoy a bubble bath!  I need those little emotional triggers that help to build me back up with bubbling, buoyant happiness, like a great song on the radio or a small act of kindness that remind me that life is wonderful and getting better every day.   Emotional Tiggers.