Studio8 - Uniting the Arts

Another excerpt from my journal with inspirations from the late, great Molly Ivins from Texas...I hope it gives you a smile and maybe a laugh. No names are changed because no one is innocent here.


I'll tell you now that I live in a family of clowns, drama queens and exaggerators (liars and most probably thieves!) With that in mind, yesterday was one of the weirdest days of my almost 61 years of life.

It didn't start out all that bad...I did wake up! But things went awry from that moment on and I have no doubt that the Gods Must Be Crazy or at least the Universe has a very sick sense of humor.

Besides losing one of the best, most funny pieces of journal(ism) I have ever written that morning (because I navigated away and clicked the wrong thing and I really was laughing out loud as I wrote it, my dears but alas it disappeared into the ethers of internetdom never to be seen again.) Then as the day proceeded, I got slapped, stung, cut up and stitched!!! No shit. Shoulda' gone back to bed after waking up...BUT NOOOOOOOOOO!

Wild Bill the Wasp Killer, alias Cecil, had previously pissed off a bunch of newly hatched wasps with his trusty WD40 (blasted into the nest on the deck.) and I was totally innocent, I didn't really want to kill them (although they scare me almost as much as math.)

It went like this, after our walk Cactus Mary (resident soap maker) and I were sitting on the deck "tate-ing", meaning we were visiting, drinking coffee and generally having a good ole time (tate a tate.) Killer meanwhile was cooking us a breakfast of oatmeal and toast. We went in and I gave the cook a kiss, pulled back and noticed the look of horror on his face...

Now, really, I don't kiss that bad so I looked down my nose and saw a wasp had landed on my lips and 'bout that time Killer slapped me right in the kisser. (o it gets better.) The offending wasp landed on my wrist and then I slapped it, so it proceeded to sting me. I yelled for some baking soda (thanks to the movie that Viggo was in that we never finished because of the Cecil and SooZen Movie Curse) and that helped neutralize the sting but owwie, that hurt. I wish I could say, that is all that occurred this fine day! (stay tuned, the day is not over.)

I had a doctor's appointment with Doc Martinez after that and I happened to mention that I had a weird growth on my thigh (next to twat?) so she said, "let me look at it" and then "want me to take that off?" to which Killer responded (not me), "would you please! that is ugly...!" O great, now I am gonna have surgery on Docs antique (i kid you not) exam table (her office is full of antiques) which was made for little folks in the 1800's and I am anything but a little folk. "Hop up there", she chirps and I know that my hopping days are over and gone, what with my bad hip Chester (I'm a-coming Mr. Dillon) on one side and my bad knee on the other (who shall remain unnamed.) I clamber onto the little table and when I lay down, nothing fits, my head is hanging where it shouldn't and my legs are off in space somewhere and those stirrups where made for a shetland pony and I am obviously a draft horse... Anywho, after managing to get somewhat comfortable (i am a liar), her nurse walks in and says, "what we cuttin'?" Twat did she say?

In the meantime, it is lunch time and Killer is feeding me a granola bar he found in my purse (try eating while laying flat on your back) because my blood sugar is plunging and my legs are shaking like leaves on an Aspen, my blood pressure has skyrocketed, and I am beginning to think I am in a Quentin Tarantino movie. All the while, Doc Martinez is busy with Twat and the ugly ass growth (been better if it was on my ass) and all the while Nurse Prat-shit is holding my Chester leg up with one hand and helping out Doc with the other and that didn't look easy.

"Gonna have to have some stitches" murmurs Doc (tickets? did she say, she wanted to see some tickets?) By now, I am flashing to TV commercials and a mean old guy on a train. I am rightly out of my head and Doc hurries and sews me up. "you need to go eat something!" (that Doc is a master of understatement...) I figure that Killer owes me a really good lunch somewhere no matter the cost because after all, he slapped me and called my stuff ugly. Twat?

So, my fans and fannies, I shoulda stayed in bed I think and now you may agree. I got home after a goodly lunch at a favorite Thai place and a trip to our fav good foods store, Sun Harvest. I took out a mirror and looked at Doc's handiwork...she ain't no seamstress! I just hope it all stays together until a week from now.

Now I have to sit around in my panties per Doc's orders, and Killer seems happy. Most of the wasps are gone (there are still a few looking for the ranch), the ugly ass growth is gone to the lab, my stitches don't hurt much and the sting is all but gone from my wrist. Now if I can just get this piece published on Livejournal, I will be happy!

My day (yesterday) was off to a beautiful start. It was six fifty five in the morning when the trouble began.

I got a call from my baby sister, she was lost and hungry. Her husband used to be called the Bear by his biker friends because of his friendly disposition. But he always seemed like a big old friendly Texan to me, till he married my sister.

He found himself a she bear when he married my sister (married her twice) I hope they make a go of it this time.

She will always look like this to me even if she is all grown up now.


Well there I was sitting at my computer ready to start work. I work at home answering the phone for those infomercials you see on TV. My sister wakes up hard in the mornings. Always has. But yesterday she was driving around lost looking for a clinic where she was supposed to go in fasting for blood work. So she is not only stressed she is hungry and all she is thinking is breakfast when she gets out of the doctors office. She is calling me for directions. And getting pissed at me and hanging up on me. I keep calling her back while I am on Google looking at maps trying to navigate her to the doctor’s office. She is stressed to the max. Talk about your drama queen. I find the place and she keeps telling me that it isn’t there and keeps hanging up on me when I tell her to look a little harder. “Don't look see” I am thinking but do not say. After about 15 minutes she finally finds the doctors office. By this time my head feels like a Gitmo inmate that has been through CIA interrogation. Like someone was holding an electric drill up to my head. I invite her over for her favorite breakfast of fried matzos and send her home to take care of her husband. When our mother was on her deathbed I promised her I would look out for my sister. My mother gave me such a quizzical look, as if saying "Oh Jacky do you know what you are saying?" But what else is an old childless weirdo supposed to do with his life if not full fill his duties as a brother and maternal uncle. I got to edit this a lot. I am sure there are a million typos. I don't have Firefox installed on this computer yet. But that is another story for another wonderful day. I have been discussing dead computers with your better half on another thread.

Guess you know by now Jack, we all have "those kinda days" and at least I know, I am not alone when I say that... Hope today is a joyful one for us both as I am gonna work in that direction.

It was a good day SooZen. I just did not make any money. Other than that I have no complaint. I picked up a tape at the library used book sale for a quater. It is called Chop Money Carry Water something like that. The fellow said that money is energy.

My wise Dad and clown Spicy always said, "money is only good for what you spend it on..."

I try and have a good time, within reason, with my energy knowing that it is finite and so is my money.

You know what the Zen monk said, don't you?

Before enlightenment, I chopped wood and carried water. After enlightenment, I chopped wood and carried water.

I bet you enjoy that tape and what a bargain. You chopped some money right there!

Ten four Chop Wood. Chop money was a Freudian slip but I liked it so I let it be.

Love that tape SooZen. I listen to it a lot, sometimes when I go to bed I fall asleep to it. It had the bit about the blind turtle on the bottom of the ocean who rises to the surface every thousand years and puts his head through a wooden ring floating on the surface.

I lived for years in dread of being my father's son. Strange thing is my sister forgave him a long time ago. One of those tragic stories, family secretes. You don't want to hear. Strange thing is she was angry at her mother for doing nothing about it. Which was not true. She put him out of the house and for a man like him that was a death sentence.

Another sad story is how some women take out their resentment against men on their sons.

Revenge is a slippery slope I hope never to go down. I think (uh oh) that whatever you put out (because it is energy) comes back to you in spades so eventually, sad and angry folk get their due when they take it out on others...

I also think (there I go again) that our children choose us for a reason and a lesson that they must learn or their parents must be taught, be it good, bad, sad or indifferent. (Energy transferred to a womb where it cogitates and becomes again a new being.) I think that my children chose us and all is as it should be...

Anger, jealousy, revenge all are a waste of energy and only accomplish negative return. Put out some positive vibes and one can rise above the monkey mind and previous conditioning, no matter how cruel. Sadly, some don't have the ability or the understanding or the enlightenment to do this, hence the suffering that they must endure all their lives. Forgiveness is a good first step on the road to wellness individually.

Negative energy is a drain sucking the very life out of us beings. But we need to experience negative energy to recognize positive. One is bound to fall off the horse if you ride but getting back on is the real trick and eventually, you can become a good rider.

Chop wood, carry water...and ride 'em cowboy.