Traiteur
When I was about four, my grandparents down Bayou Lafourche took me to a traiteur to “treat” a wart I had on my finger. It’s not that I’d complained about it, they just busted me trying to bite it off.
The traiteur had a wooden shack that was half on land and half over the bayou. He also knitted fishnets. I don’t know which one he did the most. So, I go in this old place and the man takes a string and does this “flossing” motion around my wart. Said some prayers in French. The string was green and to this day I have an aversion to green minty floss because it reminds me of warts.
The next day I was disappointed. The wart was still there. And the next, and the next, and the next. Then one day when I was no longer thinking about it, the wart was gone.
I never did think the traiteur’s thing worked. If something was to work, it had to be a bit more instant.
Years later, when I was about twelve, I read something about studies about warts, how if you believe they will go away, they will.
I thought I must not have believed it would go away. I didn’t like being tricked by my own mind or my belief system.
No wonder science appealed to me.
More years later the traiteur stuff came into play. As a nurse in Louisiana I had countless patients with strings tied around their ankles, many tiny knots tied into them. I had to dig through puffy and swollen ankles to get to these strings… The thing is, this particular treatment was to ward off swelling.
Those same patients had no trouble with the Lasix injections (for swelling), but try to get the circulation cutting string off them?
Forget that.
You don’t mess with people’s beliefs.
Animal Friends
I kept hearing my dogs bark like crazy after letting them out into the back yard Saturday. Not the regular barking they do, but fierce protests, as if an intruder was back there. I went out to check on it and saw this duck swimming in the pool. She wasn’t quacking or anything, but she seemed to know the dogs weren’t going to jump in after her.
I got the dogs back into the house, grabbed the camera and didn’t really think she’d still be there by the time I got back out, but she was.
I wondered if she was injured because she wouldn’t fly away.
Since I’d never seen a duck in the pool before I rounded up everyone to come see but she was gone by the time they came. Spanky said she had seen one a few days before, a male one swimming in the pool, but she was in a rush to get to school and forgot to tell us.
Sunday, I go out to see what the dogs are barking at again. This time they are barking at a shrub. I pull the foilage back and guess what? That same duck, sitting on three eggs.
Awwwwww.
There’s no way I can fence off this area as it is behind the pool and the dogs would just be able to walk around the coping. So I just keep telling the dogs,”That’s our friend.”
That’s what I tell them when our human friends come over to get them to be nice. They know that word, somehow, and are leaving the duck and her nest alone.
Of course, you know, I keep thinking… of all the places that duck could’ve made a nest and she chooses a Cajun’s yard. That is one lucky duck, I tell ya.
Uh oh crawish
Uh oh crawish
Originally uploaded by cinemagypsy
I wonder if they know the trouble they’re in.
Would You Rather…
Spanky got a board game from her brother for her birthday called “Would you Rather…”
It comes with a box of cards that has these crazy hypotheticals.
Such as:
Would you rather spend two weeks with your head stuck in a metal bucket -OR- six days with your entire body stuck between the rails of a wrought iron fence?
Whoevers turn it is has to guess which answer the rest of the group (as a majority) will choose. The group has 90 seconds to debate which one is better.
For me it was a no brainer. Bucket head. The others, who outnumbered me said it didn’t matter what I thought. I said, “Wait, stuck in the fence, how are you going to go to the toilet?”
Blane Jr. said he’d crap in a bucket and someone else would cart it off. He said he would not like being “blinded” with a bucket over his head for two weeks. That six days was less harsh than two weeks.
I couldn’t imagine anyone being there to cart anything for me. I don’t think that way. I could actually imagine myself being the poor bastard putting up a shower curtain for him to have his privacy and doing his dirty work while he’s stuck in a fence.
There’s a “challenge” part to the game where we have to make up our own hypotheticals and mix them up with hypotheticals in the game and the other players have to guess which one came from the game.
That part was what was the most interesting. Blane Sr. made up one that involved having to hang by your sideburns all day. Another, “Would you rather have someone dig in your ear with a long needle -or- up your sinus cavity with a needle. Blane Jr. had one involving getting farted on. Boys…
Mine had something about being stranded in a Venezuelan train station. Or up in the Andes mountains with a fine bottle of Chilean wine.
“The wine one,” they all said without hesitation. Ha. There is so little oxygen up there wine would only help them freeze to death faster!
So, let me pull a random question for you. There are the four categories:
A) pain, fear, or discomfort
B) Appearance, Embarrassment
C) Ethics, Intellect
D) Random
By the roll of the die, we land on appearance, embarrassment.
Your turn to answer this and tell me why:
Would you rather be forced to look at yourself in every reflective surface you pass for at least 20 seconds -OR- never see your reflection again?
I’d chose the latter. It wouldn’t be so bad to know whether or not I’m getting wrinkles. Or whether I’ve got any bags under my eyes. Or if I my ass looked too big. Hell yeah.
Honda Civic Tour 2008 (Concert-Dallas)
One of Sweetpea’s friends came over last week saying she had to offload two Honda Civic Tour (Dallas concert) tickets due to a scheduling conflict.
Spanky and I just looked at each other, quite surprised at our good fortune. Headlining that tour was Panic At The Disco, one of her favorite bands. I never liked them until a few weeks ago, with the release of their “Pretty. Odd.” CD.
Spank and I dropped everything and went, of course. She says she feels she must to do a review of the show so people will open their minds to this band. I don’t know if she’ll get to it though, she has a pretty bad cold right now.
I’ll give you a run down of what it was like for me.
First, the cool factor. There is nothing about being at a concert that makes me feel cool or hip, especially one such as this where most of the fans are teenaged girls and I am one of the oldest persons in the place. I keep in mind that all the teenagers at these concerts probably don’t feel cool, either (it comes with being that age), AND I don’t think a single person notices me, anyway.
Is it horrifying? Maybe for a hip music reviewer who can’t stop thinking about how out of place he/she is for being there at the age of over 25. I find it taints their work and the reviews are not usually well thought out but a hit job on the talent because of who their audience is. They should actually pay attention to these acts because they grow with their audiences and change styles as these kids get older.
Panic At The Disco (PATD) is a perfect example of this. Spanky started listening to them when she was about twelve. I wasn’t too crazy about their music then, it was a bit on the whiney side. Three years later, this band has a new CD, “Pretty. Odd.” and it is exceptional. I’d think if one likes the Beatles, they’d like some of these songs. Maybe. Beatles fans can be a bit possessive about a music style and shout, “That’s a rip-off!” I don’t feel this way since I’m not happy with a finite set of tunes.
Now, about the show.
Starter bands usually suck because they’re new and trying to make a name for themselves. We were downright shocked with the first band, Phantom Planet (here’s their MySpace page). They’re not new, but I think they’ve recently become “quite good.” I don’t even know how to categorize them, it’s like classic and new rock rolled into one package. Their live performance was spectacular and missing their set because they are the first band would be a big mistake for anyone with a Honda Civic Tour ticket. Trust me on that. It’s forty-five minutes of pure music bliss.
The second band, The Hush Sound was excellent, if you like breeezy California rock. The front-woman, Greta Salpeter’s voice is pristine, but sounds a bit too much like other popular front women vocalists such as Hayley Williams of Paramore, Avril Lavigne, and Lacey Mosley of Flyleaf. After about three songs, Spank and I were hoping they’d hush their sound as it got into Brady Bunch territory.
Third in the lineup, Motion City Soundtrack, another of Spanky’s favorite pop-rock bands. I don’t like their music, but they performed well. I was fixated on Jesse Johnson’s (synthesizer) dramatic emo bang. One of the things I like to do at these concerts is get at least one great photo of something unusual. That was my challenge of the night, to capture this thing. The guy has this chunk of hair in the front that is about a foot long while the rest of his hair is buzz cut length. The entire time he plays, he rocks his head back and forth really fast and this hair thing is an act of its own.
Come on, emo bang, cooperate.
Yes, you.
It’s hard enough fighting the lights and fog.
Don’t get all smug. you haven’t won, yet.
Ha ha, Gotcha!
Now for the headliner, Panic At The Disco, which started at about 10 PM. Their lead vocalist, Brendon Urie pulled off his part with perfection. I usually find that about half the time at any given show of any given band the vocals are not en forme. All four bands on this tour did surprisingly well as far as vocals go. It could be that this is the first week of the tour and voices are still fresh.
Okay, Spanky just passed by and said to save her some space for her forthcoming review. Yay, Spank saved the day. It won’t be in this post as she hasn’t started it yet.
In the meantime, I’ve uploaded a few photos here, if you’re interested.
Here’s a YouTube I uploaded of one of my favorite songs from their current CD. What’s funny about this video is what’s happening at the beginning, left of screen. A security guard struggles to heave a kid out of the pit. Reminds me of birthing. From my perspective, a mom bringing her kid to a concert… well you get the metaphor.
Maybe it’s just me, but I can hear Spanky’s voice singing in there. Funny thing.
Oh, and about the venue. What’s odd is how the name of the venue changes with the type of music… They call it the Palladium Ballroom for rock concerts, but Gilley’s the rest of the time.
Gilley’s as in Urban Cowboy. Mechanical bulls. Country music. Small place. Small crowd.
This was a great show. Go see it if it comes to your city.
Beautiful Lighted Glass Pipes
In a hotel lobby near here I saw this lighted glass pipe sculpture and was stunned by the beauty of it. It reminds me of fireworks, Silly String, Twizzlers, bad and good hair days, Christmas trees, peace pipes… but mostly it makes me think of taking photos of lights at night without a tripod. Those beautiful goof-ups that I don’t like to delete from the camera.
It’s about 16 feet high. Maybe 20.
I wish I could create something like this.
Here is a close up shot:
What do you think about it?
Purity of Heart
One of the things I like best about my mom is her abiltiy to make friends with anyone. She never seemed to have that part in her personality… how to explain… that part that tells us, this person is too high class or low class, or too smart, too stupid, not enough like her… Whatever.
She just never felt uncomfortable talking to people and within 30 seconds she could find something she and any other person had a common interest in.
She was especially gifted with loners. Often my mom was their only friend. She met a lot of them through her work at the movie theater. Many times they needed a ride home. Sometimes she would bring them over to visit and we’d all gather around the kitchen table and talk away half the night.
One of these guys, Roscoe (name changed to protect his identity) was a bit slow. He’d been raised under horrible circumstances. Maybe not really raised at all. He was horribly poor and couldn’t work because he was just that slow. He had a pure heart and was brave. He didn’t know he was slow, I don’t think. If he was upset about the way things were, he’d call the all the way up to the White House to voice his complaint. I’m not kidding.
A lot of our table talks included Roscoe’s tales of his calls about some injustice he saw in society and how he did something about it. How he believed he made a difference. His walking adventures were amazing, too. The absurd situations this guy would find himself in and how he got out of them were the most outrageous tales. True stories, as Roscoe didn’t know how to tell lies, much less keep up with them.
He was a thoughtful person. One time my mom was telling him about how she wished she had one of those things you plug into an outlet that turns it into three outlets. (Not an extension cord, I can’t think of the name of this thing right now). This was twenty years ago. Anyway, years go by. They lose contact.
One day, out of the blue, Roscoe shows up at her door with blistered and bloody feet, carrying a suitcase. His skull was bandaged and he had a wad of gauze on his ear. There he was, with an enormous smile of accomplishment as he produced for her, one of those wall outlet things.
He said he’d just gotten out of the hospital, well, it had been days, but it was a long and twisted journey. A week or so earlier, he’d rode a Greyhound bus to New Orleans Charity Hospital (3 hour drive) for surgery on his ear.
Upon his release from the hospital, a stranger offered him a ride back home. So Roscoe gets in the car and about an hour into the drive, the driver pulls over, steals his money and his shoes and leaves him on the side of the road with his suitcase.
Turns out the guy drove him an hour in the wrong direction. So now Roscoe was in another state with no money and no shoes.
He walked all day and that first night he found an abandoned train station to sleep. When he stretched out on a bench, he noticed the wall outlet thing. He grabbed it for my mom and said he didn’t think it was stealing because this was an abandoned building.
I don’t know how many days it took him to walk home. He tried to hitchhike, but not a single person stopped to pick him up. I guess him having his head all bandaged like that and not wearing shoes had a little to do with it.
When he got back into town, he didn’t go straight home, he walked all the way to my mom’s first. Just to give her that thing he finally found for her.
As much as this guy had been let down in life by others, by society, he never lost his ability to put others before himself. Even in desperate times.
A few years later, Roscoe was jailed for a crime he didn’t commit. He spent five years behind bars for that. When he got out, he made his whacky calls and ended up with a huge settlement for wrongful imprisonment. Enough to live out the rest of his life on his own land, in his own house with the option to go to right there to the hospital in his own town.
Rail
Originally uploaded by cinemagypsy
Just wanted to share one of my favorite photos I took of the railroad track behind my mom’s house while there in March.
I like the way the sky and its reflection on the rail look like a warped hourglass.
Say “List” Again
Blane and I got in a big fight last night over household duties. If he does a couple of batches of clothes he convinces himself he has done all the laundry AND all of the housework, too. (Meals cook themselves, bathrooms stay clean, dust dare not settle in this house, dishes find their way back into the cupboards and I do absolutely NO work. Lucky me.)
I usually just laugh it off even while we’re arguing. When I’m laughing, he’s safe. If I stop laughing, everyone should run for the hills.
I didn’t get the childhood nickname “gueppe” (wasp) for nothing.
When I get like that, Blane usually eyes the kitchen knife drawer. Not that I’ve ever pulled a knife on him, but it is so rare that I do actually get mad, he just has no idea of what I’m capable of. He knows I can fight, I was raised with four tough boys. I’ve also told him he better never lay a hand on me because that is when all rules are out the door and he could get cut.
What set me off last night was him saying he was going to make a list of chores for me to do. Him. Make a list. Of housework. For me. A list.
First sign of danger: Kitty goes quiet.
Second sign of danger: Kitty’s eyes narrow.
Third sign of danger: Kitty also eyes the knife drawer.
I was enraged. As any mother knows, this is damn near slave labor. That I do it, when I do it, how I want to do it makes it feel just “damn near.” I went Samuel L. Jackson on him:
Me: Say “List” again. I dare you. I DOUBLE dare you.
Him: What’s wrong with a list?
Me: Say “LIST” one more gotdamn time.
He punched the wall and ran off to his little cave.
This morning I put on my warrior shirt:
They cracked up when I showed up in that shirt at the dentist. I laughed too, I usually don’t leave the house with that on. Then I got stoned on laughing gas. Found magical solutions to all the world’s problems. Forgot them as soon as that stuff wore off.
List. What nerve.
Where Am I?
.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; }
.flickr-yourcomment { }
.flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; }
.flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; }
I set up this thing with my Flickr account where I can send a photo
from my mobile and type up a blog entry all in one go.
So. I want to see if it’s true.
While I’m at it, guess where I am? Winning answers get free praise.
So Glad It’s Not Me
I’m happy the person I was rooting for won the “Make Me A Supermodel” show. I was happy with the outcome of Project Runway as well. The winner, whose name I won’t mention just in case you are yet to see the finale should have his/her own show. What a character!
So now I have fashion reality show withdrawals. Here’s something I found today regarding supermodels. And wipeouts.
Hazardous Runways:
The Effect of Wind on Angels
I was at my mom’s in Louisiana a couple of weeks ago. This is the house where my brother lost his life. I try not to think too much about that, even when I pass the spot where they found him. The first time I go through there, yeah, I can see him on the floor, dead. After that, the room goes back to being just a bedroom.
I’m not afraid of ghosts or anything like that, but I prefer to sleep in my rv. It has all my stuff and it’s like my own little house. My mom also lives in a rough area of town, so I feel a bit safer with the alarms and locks of the rv.
My oldest brother was also staying there while I was in. One of the first things I noticed when I saw him was that each of his toes was wrapped in a bandage. He showed me one of his toenails and said he had some sort of fungus on it. That it started with one and over a couple of years had spread to all of his toes. He had heard from an old “traiteur” (similar to voodoo woman) to put Vick’s Salve on the nails and bandage them. They looked ratty, those nails. I called them “pickle toes.”
There was no way I was going to step foot in that tub/shower at mom’s and catch some crazy toenail infection. Glad I have my own shower in my rv.
The weather was strange that first night. It was a wind storm like I’d never heard before. I’d seen and heard hurricane force winds, but that came with rain. This storm had no rain. It was just loud and it sounded like the house was going to fall apart. It got late and I needed to shower and hit the sack. So I went out to the rv and noticed my water pump was not working.
This rv of mine, a Westfalia, is a lemon. We call it the “West-failure” because things break every time I take it out.
Okay, plan B. Connect the water hose to the rv and just use water pressure. This has happened before.
So here I am standing outside in the dark and I’m hearing sirens all over town. This is a rough little town, rougher than I can remember. My hair is straight up in the air because the wind won’t let up. The spigot is practically on the ground. My tiny hand can barely disconnect my mom’s hose so I can attach mine to it. Also, I can’t see. It is pitch black dark.
I’m thinking maybe there is an angel somewhere in this yard watching over.
Maybe.
I finally get the hose connected to the spigot and try to attach it to the rv. By now I have a flashlight in my mouth as I try to screw the thing on. More sirens, more wind, and I completely go brain dead on which way to turn it. It should be as simple as screwing on a bottle cap but I can’t figure it out. All I can think is I do not want pickle toes.
The thing just won’t screw on. I get a wrench and finally get it connected. By now, my hands are full of little cuts because the connection is in a tight spot. But it’s connected.
I go in the rv. No water. Go check outside, water is spraying everywhere. The wind picks it up and sprays me down.
I’m thinking maybe there are no angels. Then I think that maybe the wind blows those whispy figures back into heaven. Or maybe, angels just have a sense of humor.
Soaking wet, I give in. Go in my mom’s house and shower while wearing my flip-flops. No pickle toes for me. And I flop onto the couch for the night. I’m too tired to worry about crack-heads breaking into the place. I hadn’t slept inside my mom’s house in over fifteen years.
Sacked out on the sofa, I noticed sounds in the attic. Sounds like children crawling around up there. I’ve heard rats and mice crawl around in attics and this wasn’t the same. It wasn’t the wind. It was a creature. And I wasn’t scared.
Pickle toes, I am afraid of. Ghosts, scary attic sounds, no. Mom told me the next day it was a family of squirrels making that noise. Good thing I didn’t lose any sleep over it.
Here’s an interesting photo I took on my drive home. An interesting rainbow.
Wait, look closer, I’ll zoom in:
I know, man, I KNOW.
Fox in the Hen House
At times I give my mother money to get by. This is usually unconditional. She needs something, I give. Simple as that. About four years ago I did have a request. It was a sizable gift, so I asked her not to do something for me. I asked her not to watch Fox News and to spread the word to all her friends. No Fox News.
So there I was in her living room a couple of weeks ago and she walks in and busts me cold. Watching Fox. “I thought we weren’t supposed to be watching Fox?”
I cracked up. She cracked up. I told her “You can’t watch Fox, but I can because I have to keep an eye on what the other side is up to during the election.” I also told her Fox happens to be the only station right now that isn’t bashing Clinton around the clock, but that will change once we have a democratic nominee.
She did keep our deal from four years ago, she hasn’t been watching Fox since she doesn’t know the commentators by name. I’m proud of my mom for staying off Fox.
In other matters, I got punked today by one of the kids. Don’t know who. When I hit my bookmark to my own blog, I got sent here.
