I think everyone around here knows who I’m pulling for to win the Superbowl this weekend.

I wish I could beat my chest right now and go all hog-wild about my favorite team. But I can’t. Not here, not on Facebook, not on Twitter. Every time I do that, without fail, my team loses.

A couple of weeks ago, just before the last game started, I made a quick trip to the store to pick up a few things. I had on my -bleep-’s jersey and while I was picking up a pack of wood outside the store, a tall man in a Vikings jersey sneered at me as he passed. I’d been quiet all day. Didn’t ask anything about who said what about who would beat whom. Or change any words ending in “o” to “eaux.”

So when the guy sneered at me, I just looked down at the pack of wood until he passed. Had I sneered back at him, I might not have seen that lucky penny sitting on the pack of wood. Had he not been making faces at me, he might have seen the penny, picked it up, and changed the outcome of the game.

Damned right I picked up that penny and all during the game I rubbed it for luck.

Stupid thing, I know it is, but the -bleep-s did win the game.

Speaking of pinching pennies, my (cheap bastard) husband finally bought a new TV in time for the game. When I opened the door for the delivery man yesterday, this is what I saw next door:

Some kid from down the street dropped a book on the floorboard of his car while driving and leaned over to pick it up. After mowing down two brick mailboxes, he learned a car doesn’t drive itself.

Back to the lucky penny. I can’t say whether I still have it or not. Not until after the game.

I hate it that everyone in this town has tall wooden fences and I’d prefer not to have one, but if I didn’t, I’d have nothing to look at but the outside of a bunch of fences. So I have an extra tall fence. Eight feet of wood and a retaining wall that is three feet in some spots. Fucking fortress, it is.

Back in September and October I took on the great fence restoration project. For eight weeks, rain or shine, I was out there in my hobo clothes and hat getting that thing up to HOA standards:

That’s the outside of the fence that runs along the side of my yard, the stretch my neighbors see. The side that is the most important today. The part of that big job I can’t stop thinking about for the last two days.

I don’t like these wooden fences for several reasons. They section off each yard and make the lots seem smaller than they actually are. They’re built for privacy, but since most people around here have two story houses, there’s always neighbor’s windows overlooking a yard. The fence then provides a visual framing for your neighbor’s viewing pleasure.

Like living in a fishbowl.

Even worse than that, it discourages friendship and contact with neighbors.

So while I was out there working on the perimeter of the fence (the outside of the fishbowl), I met a lot of my neighbors I’d never seen before. They’d drive by in the access alley on their way to their rear drive-up garages. Many would roll down the window to tell me I was doing a great job, to ask questions about how I was doing it, or stop and ask if I’d seen their lost dog. Neighbor talk that I’m not used to since there is hardly ever a occasion to see them in our self-exiled worlds.

After a while I had to ignore these people. I wanted to get this big job done before the winter set in, so I had my music and kept my earphones on most of the time.

Dan, the man whose garage lined up perfectly with that view of the fence in the photo above was always in his garage. I never could figure out what he was doing in there. It looked like he might be rearranging things, but nothing ever changed. Every day that garage looked just as messy as the day before.

I didn’t wonder if he was unemployed or if he might not feel comfortable inside his home with his family, or if he was lonely as fuck.

I didn’t jump to conclusions that he might be in there so he could stare at the ass crack hanging out my hobo jeans. No, I never caught him leering at me, but I still felt self-conscious about the way I was dressed, and how craptastic I look in a hat. I was also up a ladder most of the time and most likely grunting to reach tight spots.

I didn’t realize how lucky I was to have him there right over my shoulder in case I fell off that ladder. It never crossed my mind. What I thought back then was why won’t this guy just go away so I can stain my fence in peace?

I didn’t know until a couple of days ago that those were Dan’s last days. A month or two after the fence thing, he committed suicide.

How or why, I don’t know, but just before Christmas I was in the backyard and heard a shotgun go off in the neighborhood. I came inside and told everyone, but they thought maybe it was firecrackers since it was so close to Christmas and New Years. I know what a shotgun blast sounds like, though. So I sat in the backyard and waited for the sirens. All I heard was silence.

I’m convinced I heard Dan kill himself. Probably did it while no one else was home, thus the lack of sirens. In that garage.

It sucks that I didn’t know about my neighbor’s death until a month after the fact. It sucks that I didn’t talk to him more when I had the chance, while I was out there, of all things, working on a man-made border designed to keep people out.

I hate fences.

A friend of mine shared a short video on Vimeo that he found. I think he sent it to me because I have a similar camera to the one this was shot on. I do think it is amazing that anyone with talent (and a few acting friends) can grab a camera these days and make a movie with very little money.

The video is the first chapter that is part of an HD video contest, The Story Beyond the Still sponsored by Canon. Director/photographer Vincent Laforet was asked to interpret a still which is of a teddy bear lying on a sidewalk at nighttime, and to make a video short of it. His short also ends with a still, and that is where the contest begins. Anyone with an HD camera can interpret it, make a video of that interpretation and enter to win the next chapter. There will be seven chapters in all.

Grrr. I can’t embed Vimeo, but please click here to see the short:

The Story Beyond The Still: The Cabbie from Vincent Laforet on Vimeo.

Official rules are :::here:::

When Blane told me he’d be gone for a week in January, I could barely contain my joy. Husbandless for a week and I can get a lot of things done. Catch up on my reading, writing, find some chick tv shows to watch, read all the manuals to all the electronic devices I have, whatever. Really, I thought it would be a relaxing week. Except for Thursday, I knew Scrappy had to have surgery on her leg that day.

Scrappy’s been limping with a bad left leg for a couple of weeks. An xray showed a torn ligament.

So besides have a dog with a bad leg, the week started off badly with the pool freezing over on the night he left. I think I managed quite well despite the circumstances.

Monday was great, I can’t remember what I did, so that’s how I know. After that, the house and I were at war with each other and I think I lost.

Tuesday, the day of the big earthquake, I turned on the tv to see what was going on because I’m a gawker. This is the big tv in the living room which I call Blane’s because he is the one watching it 90% of the time. Well, Blane’s tv turned itself off after about ten minutes and refused to come back on. Under normal circumstances, I’d have been frustrated because I have to watch that tragic stuff on the news. But that night I had something to go to and it was time to go anyway, deal with it later. Then I thought about how it was best for me not to watch all that sad because my heart gets ragged on image after image of suffering. I tend to get upset because I want to put my cape on and do something about it. Of course I sent money, but I want to help by being there.

My head and heart needed to be here for Scraps. For Thursday.

So on Wednesday I had to go to bed early for her surgery at 7:30 AM the next mornig. I’m never in bed early, so I had a plan. Workout on the treadmill until I completely tire myself out. I stayed on that thing for three hours and never got tired. I am a freak of nature because I have absolutely no concept of fatigue. This is bad because I feel it the next day.

Maybe it’s not that I can’t feel fatigue but that I won’t allow myself to admit I am tired and need to stop. Something was definitely wrong with my head after I got off that thing. I ran the bath water and went to see if the tv was still broken. Fooled around with some wires back there. Forgot about the water. I don’t know how much time passed when I went back and saw it rushing under the door, barreling down the hallway with its strong current and waterfalling into the home office.

You know that line of dialogue in APOCOLYSPSE NOW, Brando’s echoing whisper, “The horror, the horror, the horror…”?

That is what I hear when I see shit like that. Over and over again as I empty each load of water from the carpet cleaner (at least 50 trips).

The office had about three inches of water in there. I had stacks of books and boxes of photo albums, printers, and various other electronics just sitting on the floor by the outlets getting charged. Had to grab that stuff quickly. After i got most of the water up, I had to move two heavy book cases to vacuum up the water under there and keep them from getting ruined. The closet with some metal file cabinets had water in there too. It was the worst room in the house to have flooded. It also seeped under the wall and into the dining room. Had to move that furniture too. All this while still salty from the three hour workout.

It took me until five AM to finish sorting out that mess and the wood floor in the hallway by the bathroom began to warp by morning.

So I got no sleep before bringing little Scrappy for her surgery. The poor dog, I don’t know how she knew something painful was about to happen, she’s usually so happy to ride in the car, but that morning she cried all the way there. It made me cry. Hard.

All went well and she got a new ligament sewed in. She’s got an incision about five inches long and she’s managing well without having to wear that lamp shade-looking “cone of shame.” It’s three days post op and she is beginning to use the leg a little. That is one tough pup.

Friday I was a bit worried about how Blane would react to all the damage when he got home. I didn’t tell him about the tv or the flood over the phone because I didn’t want him to worry while he was gone. Nothing he could have done about it anyway. Why ruin his trip? I wanted to laugh when he called to tell me he was taking an earlier flight. Poor bastard, if he only knew what he was coming home to.

So he walks through the door and immediately sees the damage. I tell him briefly what happened and then tell him about the tv too. He didn’t seem to care about that. Asked where Scrappy was.

When he saw the dog, she spread out on the sofa with her bad leg out and shook it as if to say, “Look what they did to my leg while you were gone.”

And you know what? That’s the only thing he was concerned about, Scrappy and her leg. I’m so glad to have him back home.

Did you ever want to build your own swimming pool when you were a kid? I bet you did because every kid I ever knew who didn’t have a pool not only wanted to make their own, they had the plans for it in their heads. Some even tried.

Like me. Now, I’m not much of an engineer but more of a dreamer and way too optimistic with a pinch of idealism. We didn’t have a shovel, but I had a ton of patience. I’d sneak a cereal spoon from the kitchen and go dig my pool in the crawl space under the house. Oh yeah, see, my pool was going to have shade all day long and no one was going to stop me from building that thing or tell me I’d fail because no one was going to find it.

To hell with naysayers.

Except for my dog, she could come with me. I worked on it all summer and by the time fall came around I had what looked like a shallow grave. My dog loved it. Lots of times when we couldn’t find her anywhere, I’d go look in that spot and there she was curled up in that hole. One day I went out there and found her with a litter of puppies! I loved being the first to know about that and was happy to give up my swimming pool dream so she could nurse her pups in peace.

Blane’s pool plans were way more elaborate. He had a shovel, he had 2×4’s to frame it, and he had Visqueen to line it. Maybe he was a little older, I don’t know. But he got his homemade pool to work.

The house we had before this one, we built it on a pool-sized lot and planned to put one in once the kids were old enough not to fall in and drown. Years passed and more kids were born. We never got to the level of comfort to have a pool until our youngest was twelve. By that time we decided to just move to another place and build a pool there.

I watched every step of the pool construction with the wonder and amazement of that seven year-old dreamer still in me. They dug the hole with a backhoe, reinforced it with rebar, and the next day they blew in the cement/pebble mixture with this gigantic hose. There were about five men in rubber boots smoothing it all down with trowels. Quickly, because it dries almost instantly. Big strong ox-looking men. This is hard work that takes muscle and craftsmanship. By the end of the day, they began filling it with water.

That is Spanky reading her book in the pool on that day.

It’s been almost five years and although we don’t use it every day during the summer or even every other day or have big pool parties, it does help me keep my sanity. I grew up by the water and being so far from the coast, well, I get lonesome for it.

For the first time, part of the pool has been freezing over during the night. A few mornings ago Blane had to go out there and break up the ice, it was blocking the intake vents and causing the pump to whine. He was afraid the pump would burn out with no water in the system. He was complaining about how cold it was and I was thinking to myself how terrible it sounded, cold like it is complaining about his pool when some people are homeless. (I really should quit thinking that way and cut the dude some slack)

Around midnight last night, the pool froze over completely for the first time. I heard the pump whining and, damn, no Blane. He’s out of town on a business trip.

Begin Arctic Adventure

You know how sometimes nothing seems to work and everything you touch breaks? It was a night like that. No moonlight, and the patio lights are just shamelessly dim. I can’t see shit. I see the pool is frozen and hear the pump screaming. I put my earphones on and turned it up so I wouldn’t have to hear the pump. Put on U2’s “Where the Streets Have No Name.”

Grabbed a PIPE and thrashed away into the ice. I felt like a juvie breaking all the school windows.

THUMP
Screw you winter.

CRACK
Shut up whiney pump.

SLAM
Screw you water bill.

BASH
Leaves. Fuck off.

Then I realized I could actually fall in and no one would find my frozen corpse until morning. The kids were sleeping, they couldn’t spot me. Everyone is sleeping, of course, it’s midnight.

So I called Blane to stay on the phone with me while I scooped the broken ice out of the pool, just in case. That I must admit was fun, the sound of broken ice hitting the cement.

Some of the carnage.

I almost didn’t want it to end, but I had to check the pump which is on the side of the house. In a very dark spot. Near where my dogs use the bathroom. But hey, frozen turds don’t stick to your shoes.

We have a light switch back there with a tiny swing door coverlet. I lift the hinge, put my finger in there but it felt strange. Like a magnetic field. Flipped the switch. No light. Got a new bulb, put my finger back into the magnetic field and still, no light. Something is very wrong with this fixture, it might electrocute me.

Tore the house apart looking for a flashlight. None. Blane says things into the phone such as “No flashlight? We have a million of them.” Note, he is always talking me out of buying more flashlights, so I totally hold him responsible for this.

He also says, “It can’t be that cold.”

Of course it can’t be that cold, it’s 65 degrees where he is. How can it be 27 degrees in Texas, that same Texas he left just hours earlier when it was 30? How, when it is 65 degrees in California, how?

So I got a light from the toolbox, one of those orange cage things people use to look under a car hood. Plug it in an electrical outlet by the pump. Light, beautiful light. I can see! Being curious, I first had to check what was up with that magnetic light switch. Lift the cover and scream, there’s a wad of spider nest and I had been poking it with my finger in the dark. Even though I know spiders can’t survive such harsh temps, I am convinced spider babies are crawling all over me. And my sleeves and feet are wet from messing with all the ice in the pool. But I have to bleed the air from the pump. My fingers are so numb I can’t feel shit anymore. Or turn tiny cold metal valves.

Back to the toolbox. Come back with a pair of pliers, and this is the fun part, the pump sprays me down with ice cold water.

I could never have imagined this as a seven-year old pool architect. Never. And I’m so glad I’m not homeless ’cause I really needed that hot bath.

On my birthday I found myself driving to a town just north of here to get fingerprinted. There’s a new law in Texas that nurses have to turn in fingerprints within the next ten years. Licensees are chosen at random, so there are some nurses who won’t have to get theirs done until the deadline.

The universe is usually aware that I am quite the slacker and I never get picked for audits or jury duty (knock on wood) or anything, as long as there’s someone else who could go first.

Not this time.

I could have gone to the police station or the FBI (gasp), but as the nursing board states on their website, these fingerprints are often unacceptable and have to be redone. They recommend an identity specialist.

So our cops and FBI are incompetent when it comes to collecting prints? That’s like Crime 101, right?

Okay, I go up to this town and it’s a shitty winter day. The sky looks as if someone removed it in Photoshop and completely forgot to add anything back in. It’s just white and empty. I pass through their historic district and see houses that look like birthday cakes. I’ll go back and take photos one day when there is a sky.

I drive up to the address of the ID place and it’s this ancient brick building that looks like a mental institution in a Stephen King made for tv movie. Great. I get to the front door and I’m still unsure this is the right place, I’m waiting any minute for something scary to jump out at me and hack me with a hatchet or an axe. There’s a plaque near the door stating its historical significance. It was indeed a hospital at one time.

I knew that shit. Knew IT!

Then I think to myself that I have the ability to pick up waves of historical suffering. It’s the strangest thing, I can walk into a house or building and feel good or bad vibes. Maybe it’s just the way a place looks, and I’m imagining things. Don’t care. Whatever it is, real or not, it moves me. Which is great, because I don’t like feeling nothing about something. Indifference leads to boredom, which is, eventually, painful to me.

I mosey down a creaky hallway that has pipes running along the ceiling, ones that groan. There’s a few old mirrors on the wall that when I catch a glimpse of myself, I wonder if it’s really me. That’s how bad those old mirrors are, there’s no clarity in them and there seems to be a halo around every object in them. Then I wonder if it’s just me and the attitude I brought in there. Skittish. Skeptical. Or just the simple fact that I hate antiques and the mirrors know it.

There are several offices in this building. I pass a door for a child psychologist. I’m startled when that door swings open and a woman with a short blonde Kate Gosslin cut looks left, right, then shuts the door.

Pass a local magazine editing office. It’s dead in there. Lights out.

Get to the ID place and go inside. My bedroom is larger than this entire office. All of the artwork on the walls are not prints, but puzzles of Native American scenes. About twenty of them in this tiny space. Someone here likes solving things. That someone is a young black woman who takes mug shots and runs each finger over a glass scanner.

Also in this cramped room are four teachers and a fireman, all waiting their turn. They don’t seem to be bothered by all this. Me? I’m fuming. This thing will completely ruin my option of living a life of crime. Bankers, engineers, maybe even cops, they have a choice, they can commit crimes until they get stupid and caught doing something wrong that leads to their first set of fingerprints. Not us.

I look at the fireman. He probably entered the field so he could learn how to commit the perfect arson. ‘Cause there is nothing as satisfying as burning shit down.

The schoolteachers. Evil milk money thieves. Get them!

A nurse from the local nursing home walks in. Her too, and her kind demeanor doesn’t fool me. I wonder how many patients she’s snuffed out with a pillow for having the audacity to use the call bell?

Millions of unsolved crimes will finally be put to rest after they run all these prints. Those Texas legislators are absolutely brilliant for coming up with this new law. Oh, and this is at no cost to the state. Uh un. I had to shell out $10 for this service. I bet murderers get theirs done for free. Just a hunch.

Later that afternoon…

I came home to a heartwarming sight. Kara made me a birthday cake before she left for work.

All is right in the world again.

Here I am dragging my ass to the finish line of my fourth year of Holidailies, the thing where we promise to blog every day for 31 days straight. This year was very different than the others in that I didn’t feel as pressured to blog.

Over the last four years, I’ve learned there are no Holidailies police, and it is okay to play catch up with posting, for example, post twice in one day because you missed yesterday.

I’ve also learned being behind on posting does not make one ineligible from having a post of theirs selected for “Best of Holidailies.“

Someone asked me once if I knew any of the judges. I have no idea who judges the posts or how many of them there are. I do know they read a ton of posts every day, probably about a hundred. I don’t have a sitemeter to stalk down who reads what or how long they stay here, but I do have the WordPress admin panel that tells me I’ve got hits coming from “reader’s pick.” Without fail for every single post, even if it’s a crappy one.

So I’d like to thank you nameless, faceless Holidailies Judges out there, whoever you are. Just for coming here and reading.

I’d also like to thank Jette and Chip for organizing and hosting Holidailies. This project is not only an amazing way to meet new bloggers and get back to reading some old favs, it also keeps my mind on writing. I’ve been really slack about that in the last year and although I never intended to give up blogging, I’ve been so neglectful toward something that has given me so much joy and gotten me through some very rough days.

With Holidailies2009, I fell in love with my blog again.

Thanks to everyone who participated in Holidailies and those who watched from the sidelines. Maybe next year you will join us?

Thanks also to Jennifer at Whispers of Fairydust for creating the above Holidailies badge.

Nobody is driving me nuts. They keep sending me blank emails and it’s gotten to where my inbox is so clogged up with these blank emails that I exceed my quota and emails are bouncing.

At first it wasn’t so bad. Just a few a day. Then the damn thing went hog crazy and started shooting me emails about every three minutes of the day that the sender has his/her computer on. There are days when I get 400 of them. Four hundred!

I can view the raw source code and see that it is coming from one email address, a person/entity I do not know. Nothing I have filters this thing. It’s not a virus on my computer, rather a virus on theirs. So I call my webmaster and ask him to block the ip address, but the problem with that is it blocks a chunk of people with the same ip.

I’ve sent this person emails asking them to remove me from their address book and informing them that they have a virus, but have gotten no response. Figures, huh?

Anyway, just want to put the word out that my business email is flaky right now. If anyone needs to email me, use the address on the about me page of this blog.

I’ve been knee deep in a class for my nursing Continuing Education Units (CEUs) or hours so I’m screeching in here to make a Holidailies post and have no idea what to write because I’ve been studying diabetes all day.

Photos! There’s always something rat-holed in iPhoto, just waiting to be posted. This one stood out.

An xray of my mother-in-law’s fractured fibula (broken leg).

Can you see the break? It is that long lateral dark line in that thin bone to the right.

How I got this from an 11×14 film (hard copy) to a jpg image is the story.

The ER doctor discharged my mother-in-law and said she would not need surgery. I was worried the sharp point on one of the fractured pieces was puncturing the other bone. The gap between the two broken ends seemed a bit wide too. So I called a friend of mine, a radiologist who lives in Louisiana (where my mother-in-law lives) and asked her to look at the xray. She asked me to email it to her. All I had was the hard copy, not a digital image.

I tried to scan the film with my scanner. Didn’t work.

I have a couple of halogen lights on the vent hood above my stove that are crazy bright. So I taped the films to the vent hood in front of the lights, put a plain white sheet of paper behind the light, and took a photo of the film.

Voila.

Digital x ray. My friend was quite impressed, she didn’t think I’d be able to really email that image to her where she could actually see anything. And she thought it was funny.

Ghetto medicine. We do stuff like that every week at the free clinic where I work, we make do with what we have. Gives the mind a good challenge and that’s just one of the reasons I like it so much.

Back to my CEUs.

I hardly ever go back and read old posts. Never think about it. Except when I’m looking for a recipe I’ve put up here. I’ll use the search bar (upper right column) to find it. It’s much easier than pulling out my battered recipe scrapbook which has pages falling out all over the place. I know a lot of cooks have recipes memorized or they make things up as they go. I do that too, but I also post recipes of things I don’t make often and have to look up measurements. Or other people’s recipes.

A recipe page on here would be great, I can find them all in one click…

A little while later…

Okay, I’ve made the page and it is toward the top, in the right-hand column. Or you can go click the link The Circus Kitchen to get there.