The Jury’s Still Out

I don’t know about anyone else, but from time to time I read a book and so relate to the character it feels as if I have found the missing link in our family tree. My long lost twin. You get the idea. So this weekend I started ‘Just Checking ~ scenes from the life of an obsessive compulsive” by Emily Colas and I am starting to have that old familiar feeling.

She:
Worries incessantly about contracting any and every illness.
Won’t eat out for fear someone has slipped drugs into her food.
Drives her husband nuts with her constant worry.

Me:
Have at one time or another believed I have a brain tumor, breast cancer, lung cancer, among other life threatening illnesses.
Will eat out but don’t like my foods to touch on the plate (not one word about "what do you think it does in your stomach?").
Drive Carrie crazy with the fact that if we leave through the front door I MUST click the handle THREE times to make sure it is locked, cannot sleep at night without asking if she has set the alarm (I’ve been really working on this one), and am always touching the tips of my thumbs to each finger's tip then first knuckle. Once the finger tapping has begun it MUST go one full round (all five fingers) then back the opposite direction. Stopping, I am certain, would be fatal.

I am beginning to believe I have OCD but can’t decide if it I really do or if it is just another imagined illness. Hmmm?

Over The Ledge

My father has at last finished his novel. I finished reading it last night. The really fun thing about reading his book is that I recognize so many of the characters. One in particular was almost my stepmother until she went completely nuts. We’re talking about loony bin nuts here. I won’t mention her name but bear with me while I tell you my favorite episode. The three of us, my father, me and Nutso, packed up for a weekend at Aquarina Springs in San Marcos. It is no longer there but if you visited it as a child you remember it well. There was the old west depot with the dusty saloon that housed the tic-tac-toe playing chickens. You would put a quarter in the slot then push the square you wanted for your X on and the chicken would scratch a square in response. I was much too young to suffer the humiliation that should come from losing to a chicken so this was one of my favorite games. You could also dress up in old west style clothes and take a sepia tone photo next to the long bar. I have one of these to this day that shows my father smiling in a confederate soldier uniform with me sitting on a saddle mounted on a saw horse next to him in bar maid garb, my right hand pointing a small pistol to the sky. In addition to the wonders of the old west there was Ralph the swimming pig and glass bottom boats. Ah, the fun.

So we get to Aquarina Springs and I am busting a gut to get to the chicken. First we check into the hotel and that is when all hell broke loose. I was sent to the bathroom and told not to come out until my father told me. I could hear them arguing so I laid my cheek against the cold tile and tried peeking beneath the door. No going. The room had carpet that elevated over the tile bathroom floor. I made an individual pot of coffee since really there isn’t much else to do sitting in a bathroom by oneself. At last my father opened the door and said let’s go glaring at Nutso sitting on the bed crying.

My father and I exited the building hand in hand when we heard our names being called. We turned around to see if it was someone behind us. No, no one there, but why is everyone looking up? Leaning over the ledge yelling our names was Nutso telling us to look so we could see her jump. My father sprinted back into the hotel as I stood there contemplating if I had enough quarters to get in a couple of mean games of tic-tac-toe before anyone noticed I was gone. I ended up waiting in the lobby watching hotel staff run around in a panic. It was my father who pulled her off of the ledge and dragged her straight back to our room to call someone to pick her up. This was not the beginning of the end but the end of the end. It was but one episode in a long line of insanity that my father had put up with for months. We didn’t wait to see her off but she was still waiting for her ride when we returned. There she was in the lobby with a big old shiner covering one eye that she was telling anyone who would listen my father had given her. He didn’t. She gave it to herself with the handset of the phone in the room. At least this time the police didn’t think he had murdered her but that is another story for another time.

Jolly Green Lab

A Musical Collection No Thief Would Bother To Steal

I have found a radio station that plays old rock (well, okay mostly oldies) and have been having a ball while I work. The occupant of the cubicle outside my door must want to throw a stapler at my head but that’s okay because I love some of the songs they play. For instance today I was working on this incredibly boring, long spread sheet that not only doesn’t challenge my brain but I am pretty sure if you took a look inside right now you would find nothing but mush. So, I have my radio at a modest volume listening to my new favorite station when what should come on…… Bad Bad Leroy Brown. I ask you who would be able to resist turning it up and singing along…”Leroy looked like a jig saw puzzle with a couple a pieces gone”! Oh yeah, I was jammin. Then as a follow up they played Cats in the Cradle. What a tear jerker when the dad calls his son who doesn’t have time for him anymore. So, if you are reading this from home be thankful you are not C and married to the biggest musical dork in the world. If you are reading this from work thank your lucky stars you won’t need to use that stapler as an instrument of death.

What would you do?

Reading this article I have a couple of questions:

1) If you were going to die would you want it quick and painless or drawn out?

2) If Dr.'s and nurses who stayed to care for the ill for four days without electricity in over 100 degree heat are being arrested do you think we could arrest the assholes at the top who left them there in the first place (Brownie? Bush? Nagin? Blanco?) and charge them with second degree murder?

Walk Tall, Carry a Big Stick, and Scream Real Loud

Growing up in Baton Rouge, my father and I would go bass fishing at my Maw-Maw’s pond. Her nickname would lead you to believe she was of some relation but Maw-Maw was the mother of a boy my father had mentored in Big Brothers. She and her husband, Doc, welcomed us into the family, sharing their lives including the pond on a piece of land they owned close by.

Dad and I would pack up our tackle box, a bucket of worms, our rods, and a cooler then head off in the green Torino. You had to park quite a ways from the pond and walk through thick, tall grass. My father would gather up all of our gear and begin to head off. It didn’t take long for him to realize I was frozen at the edge of the grass, too afraid to proceed. “Come on, Jacqueline” he would say “walk right where I walk.” Thus began my pleading for him to carry me. I was terrified a cotton mouth would bite me if I walked through that grass. I don’t know why I thought the snake would leave him alone and bite me but it made perfect sense at the time.

Back he would walk to where I was standing and explain that it was impossible to carry me and everything else we brought with us for the outing. I could ride piggyback I argued. It was too hot, I was too big and nothing was going to get me in the grass he said but he did have the answer. Sharing with me a word passed down from generation to generation, he taught me how to say “go away snake” in ancient Indian. “Geeeee ya” I screamed walking through the grass. “Geeeee ya”! We never caught many fish and in hindsight it is easy to see why they fled to the cool waters of the bottom when they heard an insane child approaching screaming gibberish.

That was twenty-seven years ago but when I walk through the woods at the ranch I still mutter “geeeee ya” under my breath. It can’t hurt and its kept me alive this long.

Recently Read

How you see a country depends on whether you are driving through it, or living in it.

How you see a country depends on whether or not you can leave it, if you have to.

I am reading Alexandra Fuller’s “Scribbling the Cat”. The words are hers but I liked them so much and they made me think of really great countryside (here and elsewhere) seen from a car window.