Oh Gooooooood Not The Fuckin' House Again

 Well that turned out to be a big ol' fussy fit over nothing.  As usual, we were so busy being RIGHT at each other we didn't hear the other person agreeing.

1. So we get a Class C, probably used.  We take long trips.  We return home.

2. I have to contact a bunch of city employees about what it would take to demolish this house and put a singlewide or a Tiny House in it's place.  So far it's looking grim - and the city just updated our planning maps.  We are at 100% danger for a. A Mt. Baker Lahaar event  b. A huge seismic event, with massive areas of liquifaction   c. A total flood every single winter, with only four tiny little places in town that are naturally above the flood area.  We're used to this, though - it's a shallow flood and doesn't reach our foundations.  d.  Totally being wiped out by flaming lava if Mt. Baker becomes fully active   e. Attack by pterodactyls. Probably.  And all those things have to be taken into consideration when any new construction takes place here - which means massive honkin' fees.

I'll tell you right now:  It's the devil you know.  We'll stay here.  We'll probably even stay in the same house and just let it kind of sag around us over the years.  Make friends with entropy.  Embrace change.

I'll make the calls, but I'm pretty certain that we'll choose to stay in this house and just try and keep ahead of the major stuff.  Otherwise we're looking at putting in a special kind of foundation made for clay-base seismic conditions prone to flooding, which means that it would be five freakin' feet tall and cost one metric bajillion dollars before we even get to the part where the singlewide gets plopped on top. It would look ridiculous standing five feet up in the air like a boxcar on a plinth, and it would also have to have Hurricane Alley tiedowns because of the high winds here; plus it would be utterly exposed to the full force of the wind.  By the time all that effort and money has been spent; naaaaaaah, fuck it.

So yeah.  That's all I got.

Are You On The Bus Or Off The Bus?

 The School bus dream has been punctured.  I feel bad for my husband, who was really caught up in the whole romance of the nomadic retirement lifestyle.  Shit, it's something I've dreamed about doing for years.  But the thing is - this is no longer 1968.

The State and Federal government, not to mention the insurance companies, are all up in this whole nomadic lifestyle situation nowadays.  You cannot just jump into a bus, hang up a few posters of Krishna, fire off the incense and head out,  staying in supermarket parking lots and on abandoned beaches.  Those days are LONG FUCKING GONE.  And it was such a buzzkill to find out.  

The least part of your worries is the actual conversion process. The monster is Insurance, Licensing, Certification, Inspections, and how far off the grid you expect to live.  The further off, the more intimate you are going to get with the end results of digestion, and your tolerance of extremes in temperature and your companions' moods.  Not a good recipe for two old intrepid individualists with ADHD, OCD, PTSD and the rest of the fuckin' alphabet.

Then there's the fact that those old rust-buckets break down A Lot.  Oh, the Internet has been an enlightening and ultimately helpful place.  Look up 'Schoolies' and you'll find gazillions of sites.  These things will just shit the bed and there you are at the side of the road.  Fucked.  Imagine that tow bill.  Imagine that engine replacement, shit. 

When we used to nomad on a  motorcycle, it was pretty sweet.  You were in the wide open, just you, your comrade, and your credit cards.  You had the whole world, you could park anywhere, you could tent it if your back could take that hard ground (my husbands, sadly, cannot. And yes, chillun, that's my fault.  Oh hell yes it is and I am not sorry.) and if you did not wish to experience nature from within the confines of a nylon dodecahederon, surrounded by predators, you could sleep in a super cheap, shitty motel - hell, all you need is a place to lock up your stuff, catch some Z's and bathe, and then you're off on the road agin. That's why there's a book called Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, and not Zen and the Art of Keeping A Giant Tube of Steel From Blowing Over In A Windstorm.  Motorcycling really is spiritual.  You are In It.  It cleans out your mind and refreshes your soul.  You meet amazing people, not just average citizens, but folks with a story to tell, people with beliefs and experiences and things to say that are worth hearing.

So now we're thinking about maybe getting our house demolished and putting up a Tiny House, or a Single Wide in it's place.  Just staying right here, but in a reliable, up to code space that gives us room to be solitary when we need solitude and companionable when we have to watch the second season of The Umbrella Academy or videos of cats falling off the back of couches.  

We have always lived simply.  Even now that we do not have to live simply, we choose to continue to do so, because we are fundamentally flower children who agree that thinking globally while acting locally is a responsible way for humans to live on this planet.  But we also want to travel and do the whole 'See America First' thing too.  It's been our dream all along.

It seems like the ideal solution would be to purchase a reasonably sized motor home, a smaller one, like a Chinook, and use that to travel in.  Most parks will turn down a school bus, or anything older than ten years - fact! but they'll accept a well-kept vintage vacation wagon no problem.  It's the perfect compromise between simple living and cheap travel - our costs would be low, and we could take a motel room when we got to feeling grubby. 

Unfortunately it also means that your home, for the duration of your trip, is also your sole means of transport.  The Biker can no longer spend much time on a motorcycle, and I have a huge chunk out of my leg from the first and last time I tried to ride one (A tale for another day.)  I suppose a scooter would work, like a Vespa.  Two people's worth of groceries will fit nicely in the little storage panniers.  We've stripped out campers and carried a motorcycle, and that works just fine.  You really do not need most of the stuff they put in those things, like the cabinets and sinks and ovens and shit. That's why the Baby Jesus invented soft frame luggage.  It works like a charm.  All you need out of the space is a place to sleep and change clothes, a place to take a private shit out of the weather, and a way to keep the thing warm/cool.  You need to keep weight down to keep gas costs down. You have a little dorm room fridge, and you eat a lot of sandwiches and drink a lot of beer and buy bricks of bottled water.  That credit card gets used for restaurants, gas, repairs, fees and entertainment.  You've got your laptop, you've got a solar panel or two, and you don't stay on the road for interminable amounts of time.

This really works.  It worked when we had a little kid, and we've got it down to a science.  So we'll see.  

But damn, those dreams just...to be too old to do something, that's a bitch.  Back in the beginning we were going to buy a wooded lot, mill our own lumber, age it while we lived in a yurt for four years, then build ourselves an open plan cabin and live up on Highway 9. (Lest you think we dreamed, the Biker used to build cabins precisely this way up in Alaska for people.  Dude knows his construction.  He's badass.)  We'd sell the yurt, and be money ahead. Yes, there is a swingin' market for yurts here in Puget Sound. Imagine that!

Plan 2 was to live on the RiverFarm Commune, until we actually visited the RiverFarm Commune and saw how squalid life was for the communards; illiterate peopled with some really, really peculiar ideas about things all living off the income from illegal dope grows and meth production who had no electricity and were taking their water from the river in buckets, and shitting in three-sided outhouses. Nope. Full Nope. Nopeity nope nope.

So we bought the lot, which had a single wide on it already.  And that worked.  We didn't even have to mill any lumber!  We lived on a wooded lot up on Mt. Baker in a very nice single wide, and I had the whole place landscaped and looking gorgeous, and there we were, living our dream.  After all, a Tiny House is basically a singlewide.  I'd go back to it in a minute.  

Unfortunately, the school system sucked, so we had to move into the flatlands to get our daughter into a decent educational environment that didn't have quite so many meth heads and people living in bunkers preparing for the Y2K virus,  KKK sympathizers, religious nuts and violent rednecks.  That's the tradeoff.  You are living in the boonies.  The boonies are full of freaky people.  Whole extended families who lived in compounds deep in the woods and cranked out inbred babies.  And the cult-type religious communities.  Lots of those up off Highway Nine.  A leader who'd been given a message and gathered a group of believers, fire and brimstone, arranged marriages - you think that shit only happens in the Ozarks?  Oh no no no.  

So we moved into our little house here in our little dot on the map, and enrolled our daughter in a school where she was actually made to do her schoolwork and attend classes, and we were actually encouraged to be part of the process;  and most of the teachers could read, so we were ahead on that score.  She went on to do very well in life.  That wouldn't have happened had we stayed upmountain.

Now the effort of trying to talk to The Biker about this begins.  It will be difficult.  He gets caught up in his plans and cannot be swayed, and digs in his heels and...yeah.  I'm just as bad.  I skim the essentials, make up my mind, and everything else is just 'details'.  Also not conducive to rational decision making.  I mean, this is how things are going to end up.  We've been skirting this outcome for years, although why it should be a matter of unpleasantness or hesitation eludes me.  I dread the emotional turmoil that's going to take place during the next five years, as it goes from being my idea to it's being HIS idea. If that sounds unfair, listen.  The dude is German.  Now you understand, dontcha.

I wish we could just skip the bullshit and make the plan and just fucking Do It.  Now.  While we can still walk, and drive, and don't have to shit in a diaper.  You see these tremulous, ninety year old men clutching the steering wheels of their Unfeasibly Large Motor Yachts going up a grade, pallid with terror, and you know that old guy is not having a good time and that trip has not been planned out very carefully.  I don't want to be in my dotage out on the road in some behemoth vehicle freaking out hoping the brakes don't fail, on my way to a place I don't particularly want to visit.  I don't want to pay the criminally high insurance on one of those things, and I don't want to deal with the fees, the inspections and all the other shit.  I just want a little mobile...shed.  With a scooter.  I want to see the redwoods, and the Sur, and the less freaky parts of Montana and Idaho.  I want to have a destination and a plan and just be rational about this whole thing.  It doesn't need to be unpleasant or fraught.  

It just needs the ability of two people (who are never wrong) to find a way to plan a fun future worth looking forward to.  Oy.  Please God, just give me that much.  Please.

Bitches, busses, birdies

 A lovely soft spring rain, a soft grey evening falling, and the sound of jazz in the background.  I am feeling happy and content.

It struck me yesterday as I navigated a couple of touchy social dilemmas that I really do have my shit down, and that it really is just chemical imbalance with me.  And I'm sorry to keep on banging away at the subject of my malfunctioning brain, but you'll take it and like it.  So there.

I was at the Senior Center Donation/Sale yesterday and a couple of women who have been less than my very best buddies in the past were there, and I felt nothing.  No nervousness, no aversion, no anxiety.  I was able to engage in conversation and be kind and polite, even when the one baited me about my difficult relationship with my daughter.  Numerous times.  Really trying to get my goat.  And I knew this, and it didn't matter a damn.

This would have fucking devastated me some years back.  Deliberate meanness for the sheer sake of being a bitch, choosing me as a target and using my personal life like that - that shit, even so small and so petty would have bit deep.  As it stood, I came home and the Biker and I laughed about it.  And that laughter, my friends, is a blessing.

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The Biker is really on the 'Schoolie' bandwagon.  See, that's what 'The Kids' are calling school bus conversions, and what the hippies used to call 'a bus full of hippies'.  He has all these different shows he subscribes to and follows the progress of each conversion avidly.

Now children, I do not see my Biker doing a full on Bluebird School Bus conversion in this lifetime, period.  He is 61.  Neither do I see myself living in a confined space where I not only do not have a separate room to retreat to, but where I cannot stand fully upright.  We live in Recreational Vehicle Purgatory here, Vacationland USA, where old RV's go to be refurbished and re-sold.  I would so much rather get an actual, purpose built RV - nothing obscenely huge, just, say, Divco sized. 

Just right.

 And it would have to be something that I could drive too, because...he's 61.  So I'm just keeping my eye on the situation and ready to forestall any rash purchases.

I swear to God some of these things are being fitted out like luxury tanks, with marble counters and full 2x4 construction.  How would you move down the road?  One good side wind and you'd be looking at dirt!  Not to mention gas mileage.  Now of course some of these are going to be parked for good, I know that.  But some of these people, usually young couples, are building for the fuckin' ages, man, expecting to roam the roads of this great nation of ours, and it just doesn't work that way.  We see a lot of these conversion units up in our neck of the woods, and there is nothing sadder than two hipsters trying to back a school bus into a campsite, and then get it levelled.  Or trying to make it up Mt. Baker to one of the snowline camps.  Mr. School bus was never meant to go up large mountains.  Particularly not a damn school bus with  marble countertops and stainless steel full sized appliances.

One thing an old school bus is really good for is growing dope.  Of course that's legal here now, so those dank smelling old busses are being hauled out of the undergrowth with 'For Sale' signs in the algae covered windshields.  And they are being snapped up as soon as they get hauled to the side of the road.  People are buying them to live in permanently, parked, home sweet home.

The tiny house thing is growing here.  And I blame that on the housing boom and Covid.  The Biker works with people who actually live in retrofitted garden sheds.  Yeah, it's cheap, your bills are low, you sneak in under a lot of rules, regulations and taxes, but damn, a single dude coming home to a garden shed...that's grim.  And as you know, I lived in a garden shed for awhile.  I can attest to the fact that it is in reality a very grim lifestyle, except when it hails, and then it's loud, but kinda neat.

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The robin is back.  Come to find out the instant these little shits fledge a nest full of chicks they go right on and start another family.  Some robins have three different families going with three different hens, which means that robins have somewhat elastic morals, but really have that 'cranking out the offspring' thing down pat.  Unfortunately it means that cock robin is spending 90% of his time super jacked up on testosterone, which causes him to attack his own reflection because he is being a dude with way too many things going on in his little birdy life.  Someone should do something. That's what I think.

Tra La! It's Spring! Plants Are Using Bees To Have Sexytime! Beer!

 The last couple of days have been pretty wonderful. The weather has been prime, my garden is saWEEET,  I am now the block Grandma, and all the kids know me, and I know them.  There is Raler, Um yeah him, Oh Yeah Uh, See That Kid? and Him.

'Um Yeah Him' is kind of displeased because he was given a bright metallic fuschia bike, and I can't blame the little dude.  Yes, it's brand new and it was abandoned in a rental garage in his building, but he's all boy, this one, about two steps up from eating dirt and bare-ass crapping in the great outdoors, and he doesn't want a bright fuschia bike, that's sissy!  He told me "Here, you're a girl, you ride this girl bike."

I have not ridden a bike in a few years, but oh, in my heyday, I was a daredevil.  This was just before stunt bikes, so I cannot say that I did flips and tricks, but I could stand on the center rail and glide standing up with my arms out, which is pretty damn cool.  Anyway, I jumped on Um Yeah Hims little bike, your standard dirt tracker, and surprised myself and all the kids in the neighborhood by flying around the block, through the field, doing scrapes and tight turns and all that goofy crap. (All the exercise I did this winter totally paid off!)  I had a line of five little kids running and laughing fit to bust after  me as I zigzagged around the field, and then I had to stop and laugh too.  It was pretty cool.

See That Kid loves sedums.  He has one at his house, as he has told me, and he pulls all the dead leaves off it and keeps it in the brightest window. He likes it because it's dinosaury.  He is one of those little grade school boys you can tell is already 40 years old minus the vocabulary and experience, just a sweet, mild, sensible soul.  I have got a pot of sedums that I started for him so that he can maybe catch the spark of gardening.

Grandiose?  Moi?

Oh Yeah Uh See That Kids' name is actually Memphis.  He's a 'Third shepherd from the left' kind of kid, always in the middle of the pack but kind of shy.  His mother is a beautician and he frequently shows up with gleaming magenta or peacock blue hair.  I don't know if he likes it or not, but at least he stands out.  He also likes to sneak into my back yard and hang out under a salix contorta I have and play with his different action figures and cars.  

Ida killed for this tuff little fort, right?

I see the sag in my wire fence, and I've seen his little hind end booking across the field as soon as I came out into the back yard, so yeah, I know it's him.  I'm not enraged or anything.  I will have to put up a taller fence.  But oh my heart... I found a little hollow that he made under an evergreen tree I have out back, like the kinds of little nest-forts I used to make when I was a kid, to smell the foliage and play with my toy cars, and  my grandma-heart just goes out to this little guy.  I get it, Oh Yeah Uh See That Kid.  I'll put up a taller fence, but I've left a lot of branches and things sneak off over the property line and through the fence so you'll always have a little fort to hang out in, just outside the fence in the shade and tall iris. Because I'm fuckin' totally awesome.

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The Biker and I spent today going to garage sales (for the first time in 13 months!!!!!!!) and doing a little recreational spending. It felt really good.  In fact, it felt like a return to something fun and important that's been missing in our lives, without our even realizing it was missing. 

 We have been talking about going back into the Swap Meet game for years now, getting a recreational vehicle with a lot of storage space and just hitting swap meets with our table and stock, caravanning around the PNW, getting in to the meets early and partying with the other dealers, bullshitting, wheeling and dealing in the sellers parking lot before and after hours, when the best stuff comes out and the amazing deals get done.  

We did that quite a bit while The Stainless Steel Amazon was a teenager. We made a chunk of change and a lot of business contacts that have lasted over the years.  Now that it's a viable full time option, we've been watching all these 'Schoolbus Makeovers' and 'Vintage Motorhome Resto's' on YouTube.  

See, we have a metric shitpile of vintage stock left over from those days, well boxed and just waiting to be dispersed among the populace.  We used to do a bangin' business every meet, cars, motorcycles and antiques, and interestingly enough, it's something that The Biker and I can do together, as a team, a natural Good Cop Bad Cop team - it just comes naturally to us. 

Sexxxy, armed, devious.  My marriage in three words.  

We felt some of that magic come back to us at an estate sale we went to today.  As a team we are unbeatable.  This was a sale being run by an estate liquidation company, and we had that whole property dicked and down after five minutes. Shee-it.   We had the money mapped and our contacts uppermost in our thoughts and we just kept looking at one another with that 'We still got it!" grin.  And that's the thing - the sum is greater than the parts with us.  It's the best feeling in the world scouting around like a couple of spies and reporting back to each other, tempting people back to our lot, swapping, raiding, talking the trade - and it's all 'our' people!

I am super stoked.  I feel like there's hope for the future in this, for us as an active team out in the world doing something interesting that we both really enjoy, that has history and travel, dead peoples' belongings and lots of partying and bullshit mixed in with it.  It would be bomb ass if we spent this next winter down a couple of USDA zones, going to swaps, hanging out, seeing old friends, following the Rust Trail.  Those sparks of hope, man, you gotta keep them alive.  Meanwhile, I have a glow-in-the-dark garden turtle figurine, and the Biker has a hand-forged sledge hammer and a tractor pull trophy, dammit.  

One mans trash...

Lucky Pennies Actually Work. Fact.

 I could not get it right this morning!  Wasn't going to happen!  

Drove all the way in to town only to find out that my insurance company lied to me about where I can and cannot get glasses.  

Drove aaaaaaaall the way back home, went back online and then drove aaaall the way to town again to another place where the woman did not speak English with any great show of confidence and somehow managed to get  my message across, only to find out that the optician was not in.  

Drove aaaaallll the way home and laid down in my AIR CONDITIONED bedroom and stared into the darkness, wondering what it all means.  

Went back out and drove aaaalll the way to the post office to find that I'd gotten a t-shirt!  And I found a lucky penny!  Yay!  

Then I drove aaaaall the way to the pharmacy only to find out that they no longer carry one of my inhalers because it costs $287546792734.00  SHIIIIIIIIIIIIT but found another lucky penny YAY!

Well, this was enough damn nonsense for one day.  So I drove aaaaaallll the way to the next town over and bought myself a rose.  Yes I did.  Right off the truck, perky and beautiful, Weeks Rose 'Oranges and Lemons' which went right in pride of place next to 'Improved Josephs' Coat' YAY.  I get rewards for surviving days like this.

Then I gardened, and it was evening, and all the neighborhood children stopped and told me various confusing things, and I nodded a lot and went 'Oh really?'  

Then Neighborhood Crackheads dog Chica, a very solidly built Staffie, came barreling into the yard, did three laps around the house with NC in full pursuit,  and then decided that I would be fun to bash into and wrestle with while I was kneeling there pulling weeds.  This occurred.  It was not planned.  I was not expecting this. So I had a conversation with Neighborhood Crackhead while I was upside down lying on the grass with his big ol' dog sitting on my chest. He just leaned over and talked down to my face about Portugeuse dogs for awhile.  OK then.  The Biker came up and they got talking about Portugeuse dogs, and meanwhile I was rolled across the lawn by Chica and generally treated like a big ol' dog toy.

I can think of worst ways to end an evening. 

Kum Ba Yah

 I don't know how this keeps happening to me, but I now have a new Pet Teenager, and four little Pet Kids, and all of the want a damn botany  lesson every time I go outside.  I am going to set one little boy up with a potted cactus garden - well, sedums - because they're easy and he thinks they're cool and dinosaury-looking.

Aren't little kids supposed to...I dunno, do graffitti and break into abandoned houses and shit?  Or was that just me?

I'm a reasonably pleasant woman, even to Suspected Chimo/Neighborhood Crackhead; I'll stop and chat with folks, I give dogs face woogies, I say 'Hi' to Clinically Depressed Black Kitty, and it's nice.  But the kids...aren't they supposed to be playing video games and watching porn online?  Why are they outdoors?  Why are they talking to old ladies?  WHY ARE THEY INTERESTED IN THE HISTORY OF THE TULIP?    

I mean it!  I grow speciosas, and they were fascinated when I told them 'those are wild tulips.' 

RAWR.

They wanted to see how a little starry flower that grows wild in the mountains of Turkey went from being a tiny thing to a tall, colorful Darwin - and I'm dork enough that I do in fact have all the selections in-between - and they were interested!  Then they wanted to know the name of every single flower, and I told them.  Still not bored.  Still full of questions.  They wanted to know about the difference between roots and bulbs, and I showed them that!  Still not bored, actually kind of jazzed, running around guessing which plant had a root and which had a bulb.  I was...bemused.  And then they wanted to know why some plants have bulbs and others have roots, and at that point I was just about botany-d out.

New Pet Teenager is coming over tomorrow to help me pull up weeds and do edging.  She's the kid who had her own Gay Pride coming out Birthday Parade a couple of weeks ago.  Kid is 13. Far be it from me to turn down exploitable teenage labor.

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I have a new best friend.  It stands three feet tall and has cute little wheels.  It is AN AIR CONDITIONER and it is in my bedroom and I LOVE IT.  My room stayed a steady 65 degrees all night, I slept like a log, the air was moving; and like Wynonas Big Brown Beaver, I wish I did have a pair.  I am astounded how efficient this thing is.  Five minutes, room is nicely chilled.  And my room faces SSW.  The hottest room in the house.  Not anymore!

You want cool?  I got cool. I got aaaallll the cool, baby.

We ARE getting insulation, by the way.  I keep dropping reminders, The Biker keeps sighing and the message is working its way into his brain: Insulation.  Heat tape.  NE winds that last 14 days and nights at a crack. Age = sucks.  Warmth = good.  Comfort = good.  Old bitchy chilly whiny wife = Not Good. Very persistent, though. 

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Two weeks ago it was snowing in the foothills two miles away.  This week we're going to be hitting 80f.  This is as extreme a seasonal change as I've ever seen.  Being able to go outside in a t-shirt and sandals is like a blessing.  Leaving the windows and doors open and living the indoor-outdoor life just feels so right, like being let out of prison.  This past winter really drove home for me and the Biker as well just how indoor-outdoor 'whole property'  we live. There's always something to do, the garage is open, the sheds are open, various power tools are being used, projects are being constructed...we are cozy homebodies and super house-proud. The barbecue is always at our crib. We invented the staycation. 

"Wow Dad, we can fit two whole puppies on our new grill!  That's keen!"

So of course when the Biker told me that he had a birthday party planned for me with guests that he'd already invited, I had a spaz fit and a panic attack.  It was not beautiful or appropriate. 

AAAAAAAA NOT GUESTS OMG PEOPLE HUMANS SPAZ TRIP FREAK NO GOD NO

God I hate being this way.  Two days later I'm like 'what the fuck was I thinking?  Where the fuck did that come from?  Why did I freak out like that?'  I know these people.  They're our friends.  I feel totally fine about the idea today.  

But that's a sign I'm going in the right direction, anyway.  Two more days of adjusted dosage under my belt is duct-taping my synapes back together in friendly configurations. It's a process.  I wish it were a faster process, but at least I'm seeing positive progress, so there's that.

And TULIPS!!

Shit Back Together, No More Robins

Life is good!   My little feathered tormentor has finally decided that Reflection Robin is just a fact of life and he can't do anything about it.  

"Screw Reflection Robin. Yeah, fuck you, Reflection Robin, I'm ignoring you!  Yeah!  Stick that up your ass! Ha!" 

And in another week I can take all the plastic bottles down from the shrubs and trees...that look demented...and recycle those.  I'm looking forward to it.

Getting my new medications adjusted has been quite the interesting trip.  It's ongoing.  Upside:  I'm mildly high until about 1:00 in the afternoon, when the heebie jeebies start knocking at the back of my brain. "What if you have cancer and you don't know it? What if someone has been watching you through binoculars for years here in town and they're going to kill you?  What if your husband is in the hospital with a heart attack right now and it's just nobody has called you yet? What if we get shitty insulation and next winter - no I can't face another winter - OH GOD NOOOOOOOOOOO" aaaaand FirstNations takes herself a Valium and a couple of mood stabilizers. 

And I chew them.  

Like candy.

They do not taste good. 

But they hit my system fully deployed and ready to cross that blood-brain barrier, God bless 'em; and ten, fifteen minutes go by?  Life is normal.  It stays normal until just before bed, when I take a handful of pills and ten, fifteen minutes later BOOM out like a light for eight blessed, unbroken hours of sleep.

And no weird horse dreams.  That's key.

Just thinking of you makes my nipples tingle, baby.   

I was having dreams so jam-packed with activity and people and shifting storylines that it was waking me up. Remember those rooms in electronics stores where there were twenty-five televisions all tuned to the same channel?  Imagine that room, but every television is on a completely different channel, and the sound is cranking.  Yeah, sleep  through that shit.

Another strange thing that happened was that I was waking up and not being quite sure where I was - the house I grew up in, or the house I live in now, or the house I was just dreaming about.  Or waking up not knowing which direction I was facing, which is hard to explain so just take that one on faith; it's weird. 

That's a mild form of hypnogogic hallucination.  And that disorder is common on the ground. Ten percent of the population have it.  Stephen King has it.  (Explains a lot, right?)  In fact Stephen King has a subtype called 'Old Hag Syndrome'.

                                       It's 2:A.M. and you got some 'splainin to do, Stephen.  

  

You wake up paralyzed with a horrible old woman sitting on your chest, trying to strangle you, or just generally being a scary bitch.  Whole towns in Africa have this form of HH.  It runs in families.  Now why so specific?  Why not...a small cow?  

 I'M PISSED OOOOFF!  I'M REALLY PISSED OOOOFF! 

Right? That would be fucked up. You wake up paralyzed and there's a small angry cow standing on your chest looking at you? Why not a cow?  I do not have the answer to that question. 

Anyway.   You know what I did to celebrate getting my shit together?  I took all that free money that Mr. Biden sent me, went online and I spent $214.00 on clothes.  Thank you Uncle Joe.  Now the world will know that I love Jimi Hendrix. They will goggle in wonder at H.R. Gigers image 'Alien - In Space No One Can Hear You Scream' plastered all over my tits. The will know that I work in the Science Department of the USS Enterprise. They will know that I am an alumnus of Miskatonic University. People will see that I like John Lee Hooker.  They will be exposed to the idea that I hope that they will 'Live Long And Prosper' but they won't be able to read the message as such because it's written in the Vulcan ceremonial script tanaf-kitaun.  Not Gotavlu zukitaun; pfft. Tanaf-kitaun. Yeah that's right.

                                                             Dif tor heh smusa, y'all.
 

 I was looking at my clothes a couple days ago while I was folding laundry, and realized 'Shit, my stuff is seriously beat!  That will not do!' (This is the kind of everyday thing you miss when you're working on a case of depressive psychosis.) So Uncle Joe bought me some killer dorklord t-shirts, paid for some new pairs of pants, and a lot of socks.  

Tell ya what, I'm hooked.  Buying clothes online is The Shiz.   And I completely replaced all my shit for $214.00!!!  But the best part is not having to go to a store full of icky freaky germy people, spend my gas money, and probably not find what I want.  You can't go into, say, Penny's, and grab an H.R. Giger t-shirt.  Nope. 

"Can't you go check in back? What do you mean you don't sell those here?  I've bought them here before.  No, I'm upset.  I'm really upset.  I want to talk to a manager.  No H.R. Giger T-shirts in stock like you expect me to believe that? Ha, you're just too lazy and ugly and stupid to go check. I'll stand right here.  Everybody?  Everybody?  I want you to look at the laziest excuse for a clerk in America right here.  She won't go in back and check and see if they have my shirt in stock.  It's ridiculous.  Why is the manager taking so long?  I'm going to sue you and this company for my time.  I mean it.  My time is valuable.  I'll do it."  
 

Go online, you find nothing BUT H.R. Giger T-shirts, man, you just type that shit in!  I want grey, straight-leg women's trousers? With pockets?  Type it in. Order it. At your house in two days. Boom.  No screaming children.  No internal combustion combusted.  No lines, no waiting, no droplets. Aaaand I have a new H.R. Giger t-shirt! Hell yeah!

WHY GOD WHY

  

7:A.M.

IT'S BACK.  

AND IT'S ATTACKING MY BEDROOM WINDOW.  

MY. BEDROOM. WINDOW.  

Psycho Doom Robin Of Hatred 5000  

   See, this is shaping up to be a damn vendetta, is what this is.  I had to go out at Cold O'clock this morning and stick a bunch of Sunny D bottles on the branches of the buddleia outside my bedroom window because this ^^^ fucking moron refuses to differentiate between a reflection and a real bird.  It's even squaring off against the rear view mirrors of our cars!

Me, I'm done.  Done!  Let the little fucker break his neck.  There's other robins around.  His widow won't be lonely for long. I'm just gonna stand back and let Darwin take care of this situation.

GO AWAY BIRD

"For I say unto you - The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men!! Blessed is he who, in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the valley of the darkness. For he is truly his brother’s keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know I am the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon you!!!!"

 

I have had it with this Robin.  Four days of this fucking robin bashing itself against my windows, and the fucker just moves to another window until I make another mobile out of random plastic bottles or stacked containers. My garden has just come into it's Springtime colors, and what do people see?  Weird dangling strings of plastic containers hung in random places, swaying in the wind.  I imagine they're saying "That poor woman. Someone should say something."

This morning, bright and early, the stupid little fucker was bashing itself into my kitchen window.  There is nothing remotely attractive, nest building locale-wise, about the area around my kitchen window!  But no, Dumbass Robin caught sight of that sneaky bastard Reflection Robin and it was ON!!!!  I mean, I woke up to this shit!  My kitchen window looks like someone did a texture coat on it with dirty margarine and used a dead robin as a swab, blat, blat, blat, all over the thing. 

Maybe this robin just plain hates my house.  Or maybe it sees my house as a refuge for dastardly robin invaders who cannot be defeated.  I don't know.  What I do know is that this is one durable fucking robin.

I mean it.  I cannot believe that this thing can fly after what he puts himself through, but he does.  I'll rap the glass sharply, and he'll peel off, and then sit there at his distant perch all aggro and glare at me.

"Imma bust a cap. I ain't playin."

I wish I had a camera so I could show you how gooned out on testosterone this animal is.  I stood in the window and made shooing motions, rapping on the glass, and the little fucker just glared at me from the roof of my shed. Every dominance display you'd see your average barnyard rooster put on, this robin is doing. Puffing out his chest.  Flaring his wings. Holding an upright stance and giving me the side-eye the whole time. Leaning in like he's going for my throat. 

"I am beaming pure hatred at you with the power of my MIND!"  

  

You see?  This is the kind of shit I have to put up with.  That right there ^^.   Listen. I own this house, motherfucker, don't come around all...menacing me, or...whatever, you idiot.  You're the size of an orange.

And all while this was going on, a little chickadee had caught sight, and was so - I'm guessing - fascinated, that it began to creep closer to Dumbass Robin just to check him out.  Hop, hop, pause.  Hop, hop, closer, pause.  

No bigger than a spool of thread, but fully capable of appreciating stupidity when he sees it.

This chickadee (also a male, also in fresh mating plumage) eventually made it to within three inches! of Dumbass Robin, while Dumbass Robin is wholly focusing the rage of one thousand suns on the elderly woman in the kitchen window beating on the glass with a spatula.  That chickadee just watched. Right overhead Dumbass Robin is calling me a butthole, and a poophead and telling me I'm ugly and stupid and a fatty fatty two by four or whatever curses robins use, and this little, tiny bird is just considering it, like, 'Damn.  I've seen some stupid in my time, but...damn."

Here's the punchline.  After all this chest-beating and name calling? This robin is going to nest in my Arizona Spruce just like it does every year.  

Every. Single. Year.

Like, Whoa, Dude

 Got my medications adjusted and the difference between one day and the next is absolutely dramatic!  I am feeling normal again, or as normal as I get, and I've got my motivation and span of attention back too!

What kind of freaks me out is that everything I'm taking now is an antipsychotic.  It's a new noun for my ongoing mental drama. Psychosis.  Not just another pretty word.  

 Well, here I am.  Hello space.  Hello mushrooms.

Frankly I am having a grand old time.  Some times a medication change can feel like immanent destruction of all life on earth.  This?  Well, I feel, um...different, and this will go on until I get adjusted to the new chemicals in my brain.  I'm a little woozy (read: baked.)  You know what; after the past couple of weeks?  I'll take legally baked.  Yes I will.  I deserve it.  I weeded the living Hell out of my garden beds today, and didn't think about death, suicide, avian flu or anything negative whatsoever!

Mr. Swanky Oyster approves of them legal pharms, yo.

_________________________

I have a robin that is bound and determined to beat it's brains out on my windows.  It's the male robin (a thrush here, not a cute tiny birdie like in the UK) and he's jacked up on testosterone and territoriality.

"Are you talking to me?  Are YOU?  Talking to ME?"

  He sees his reflection in the window and long story short, I had to construct a thing out of plastic jugs and set it next to the window in hope that he gets freaked out by this plastic golem and quits bashing into my fucking front picture window.  He sits on my front railing, squaring up for his next sally, and opens the pod bay doors just as he launches himself glass-ward. Like bashing into my window starting at 7 A.M. isn't bad enough, he's got to shit up my front porch.  And smear up my window!

All birds are greasy.  I don't know why a songbird would be greasy, but they are, and this goes for any bird that might smack into your window.  They leave your window looking like someone threw an order of french fries at it, which is, frankly, icky.  I had to clean the railing, the porch, and both huge windows, and the glass was top to bottom bird smears - the greasy prints of wings, feet, beak, tiny feathers.  

Oh, but he thought he'd be sly and change sides.  Soon I hear him bouncing himself off my husbands big bedroom windows in the back of the house.  Just bash fluster, bash fluster, bash fluster, like a metronome.  I had to tie shiny bottles onto a nearby branch; and that took care of his self-destructive tendencies.  After a couple of hours of quiet?  Right back to the front room windows again.  

One arts and crafts project later, and a lot of water and a squeegee, and I hope like hell he gets the message.  This doofus is hitting that window full tilt boogie.  It sounds like someone is literally throwing this poor bird at the window as hard as they can, over and over.  Maybe he's given himself brain damage or something.  I have noted a distinctly crazed look in his eye - and he's a big, bright, shiny male with all his mating characteristics super prominent, like a caricature. Like a 'hood robin.  Like a 'Just got out of two years in prison' robin.

One of us is going down, boy, and it ain't gonna be me, reflection robin!

   See how pronounced all the white markings around the neck and particularly the eyes are on these robins?  That's what happens to you when you are crazed on testosterone and you are a robin.  

The females are distinctly more muted in coloration, and they stick to the shrubs and lower branches, or pluck at worms nearby, and are probably kind of embarrassed by this behavior.  His job is supposed to be making a nest, not smacking himself into his own reflection.  

If I left this go on long enough she'd eventually come up onto the porch with a gleam in her eye, and they'd have a flustering, midair disagreement, he'd get his head pecked, and he'd get over himself and go out and gather nesting materials.  And be perfectly happy to do so, until he catches a glance of what he thinks is another male robin trespassing on HIS territory.  THIS MEANS WAR. Male robins will tear big old chunks of feathers out of one another in the springtime and crash in midair and fall to the ground and fight; they're in it to win it.  

 In this idiots' case, it's his reflection.  Man, he hates that bastard.