Over the fence

I got an e-mail early week-before-last letting me know my pasture needed mowing (which was plenty obvious). In same message W***** suggested a few times she could come over & do it. & then she did it. That Saturday I was making quiche. I made two & left one on her kitchen counter.

That same week-end, I cleared aloe "pups" from the bed along the house & under the banana trees. I packed them in newly cut grass & left a bucket of them near W*****'s truck. I also put some aside for V** & her parents (a handful each: V** likes plants her dogs cannot kill too quickly & her parents like hummingbird attractors). This coming month V** will help me take the old wallpaper off the bathroom wall (I am still unsteady on a ladder). When she goes home, she will take a dozen fresh eggs for her parents.

Friday morning I got feed for all the horses & was looking at the shelf of tick-sprays. I told D** I did not like the strong smells but what could you do? I was ready to plonk down $10+ for a small spray bottle. She suggested I use the horse spray instead. It has a milder smell & was 1/2 the price.

I like it here.

"It's all happening at the zoo"

Yesterday, after 10+ years in this town, we went to the local zoo. I do not mean a zoo-zoo, I mean the local teaching zoo where they teach wanna-be zookeepers to be, well zookeepers.

Because it is a teaching zoo it is not staffed the way a public zoo is & you have to go with a group. Tours run every ???; we waited 20 minutes, which seemed reasonable. We were in a group of one other couple like us (grown-ups, no kids) & three couples with kids. Well kind of. Two couple with two kids each & one family of...

Maybe I should just tell the story.

So there we were those of us I have described & THEM. When we went in to buy our tickets ($4 for adults, such a bargain) the father asked me if I wanted one of his daughters. Then he asked if I wanted another. Then he asked if I wanted the third. I am from Connecticut & I know how to lower the temperature about 10F with body language alone(it is our super-power, how do you think we survive sandwiched between NYC & Boston) ; I said "no" the first time, never made eye contact & was ignoring him by the third. & HE KEPT TALKING. The guy was so obnoxious, A tuned out completely, missed crucial information (like we had to go with a group) & was agitated enough to leave an air-conditioned building with chairs to go stand in the parking lot.

Fast forward to actually entering the zoo. Ideal father was telling the story (not sure to who) of how each of his daughters had been a 'son' on the ultra-sound & how that was the only thing he really cared about & did anyone want a daughter. He entered the zoo with said daughters, his wife & his mother.

We all went to the first exhibit which was a building with snakes & lizards & such in the windows. We walked around the of the building, looking in at the windows while an inexperienced tour guide (a student, perhaps) read from her crib-notes what was what. His mother would not go near the building, she does not like snakes. Tour guide says something along the lines of "No one can be in the zoo unsupervised, I will get someone to stay with you" & Grandmother has a meltdown. No really, in two easy steps. The whole group waits while Grandmother has a hissy, tries to stalk off & is stopped from doing so because, well they cannot have anyone unsupervised in the zoo. Then she really ignites.

Soooooo, now there are multiple people joining us, including what is clearly a supervisor, that whole family unit gets pulled to one side & they decide that Grandmother will be escorted to the car. & apparently her son has to go with her....? They were given the option of a tour to themselves skipping the snake house but that was unacceptable. The rest of us are still waiting. Grandmother & Father leave.

The tour continues with all of us as above & Mother with three daughters, two of whom would rather be in the one stroller. The kids (all of them) were actually pretty good. Excellent when you consider they spent at least 10 minutes each at five 'groupings' of snakes et al. that should not have taken 15 minutes for the whole thing.

We move on & see some other animals: not the otters there was tree-work happening in their cage) & not the tree kangaroos (they just would not leave their air-conditioned bungalow), but others like the Galapagos tortoises. We get to the black swan (the swan bites) & our guide is radioed that someone will be rejoining our group. & we wait. & we wait. & we wait. On a boardwalk in the sun. Finally THEM father reappears & the tour resumes.

We go through the rest of the zoo, THEM father tries to give away his daughters a few more times. At one point he asks us (me & A) what something (either the crown cranes or the springbok; they share an exhibit) might be like grilled. We ignore him completely & he seems surprised, briefly & then asks the other people standing next to us if they want one of his daughters.

The tour continues, with this family dropping further & further behind. We occasionally overhear snippets of conversation. Apparently some of us are snobs (that would be me& A, or maybe the other couple a statistics professor at the same school as the zoo & a biologist, or maybe all four of us; none of us was very friendly) & then there are the family the THEM referred to as 'those people': a white father, a black mother & their two daughters.

SIDEBAR: at one point the younger of this couple's girls was trying to squeeze between A & the railing & the mother said very strongly "say excuse me!" A turned around, startled, & I thought he was going to say it; I do not think he had even noticed the little girl. I laughed, he laughed, mother laughed & the girl got a good view of whatever she was trying to see.

The tour moves on, we see other animals. Our emus are more fun. The blind bald eagle was kind of spooky. The kookaburra was indeed in the old gum tree. At each exhibit we have to wait for THEM to catch up as all their girls are tired & have to be carried & or strollered & they keep changing places.

As we get to the gate to leave one of the THEM daughters (who really were well behaved when they were not lagging behind) turns to her mother & asks "which one is your favorite, Mommy?".

Mommy says "I think my favorite was the ocelot".

Her daughter says "no, mommy, which one of US is your favorite".

Mommy says " I love all my girls the same".

It was sad.

Symbionese Liberation Quilt Guild

I used to be a member of one of the local quilt guilds, a very active member. Things changed, some burn out/some bitch out & I left the guild in the ball-park of ?two? years ago. But somehow I cannot get off their radar. Things (e-mails, phone calls) had finally started to quiet down & then I was suddenly being contacted about the every-other-year quilt show.

Previously I had been on the committee to blah-blah-blah but I certainly was not this go-round. But via these message I learned it had been somehow understood that I had agreed to help with this same committee again this year. I had not. When I was approached abut helping my exact words were "I am going to decline". In part because I reasoned it might be confusing if I did this but did not want to rejoin the guild. I actually stated this because, well I did not want to rejoin the guild.

Before you think poor poor pitiful Useless biotching about being popular, let me clarify: all the calls I got up to & including the quilt show ones were complaints. Every d*mn one. The e-mails were mostly questions about the logistics of blah-blah-blah, which of course I did not have. So I ignored them. & one person actually called to complain about that.

That was April. The show was the first week of May. I did not go; I had planned to go but was so turned off on so many people I decided it was not worth the effort of rearranging my time to be there when A could go with me. But when six weeks went by & there were no more messages, I began to think it might be safe to appear locally in a semi-quilty capacity. I was wrong. At the end of July I got a letter telling me an anonymous person (or persons) had PAID MY GUILD DUES & now I was a member of the quilt guild again.

I was irked. Quite irked. I showed the letter to A (while visibly huffing, me not him). He thought it was very funny. His exact words were "Don't they KNOW you are Irish?" & then he said something along the lines of maybe this was their way of guaranteeing I never went back. I do not know what my being Irish has to do with anything, but I have heard him tell people this is why he will not keep a gun in the house. I do not think I should take this crap from a Romanian, but I digress.

The short version is I handled it & I think I am out. I refrained from sending any messages that began "F*uck You, You F*cking F*cktards", which is how I usually address disparaging correspondence. Since the person I contacted was 1)a friend of mine -yes I still have friends & 2)almost certainly not the person who thought this would be a good idea, cussing her out did seem excessive. Completely over the top, even. This is the same reason I have abandoned my plan to find out who did this & make a sizable donation to the charity not-of-her-choice in her name.

As I reread this, I think I might know what A means by "Irish".

How much wood would a botanist log if a botanist would log wood?

I am no botanist. But I am a logger, a data logger. For a few years I have spent a few days/weeks in the Herbarium doing general herbaria chores. Initially I went so I could learn the proper way to collect & record botanical specimens. In return for this training, I was also taught how to mount these specimens & then I was let loose on a decades-old pile of specimens improperly documented that now makes up a good portion of the local synoptic collection.

As I was working my way through the pile, I learned that there was no one, No One in a position to enter this information into a database, thereby making the synoptic collection more available. My new career was born.

More recently I have undertaken the digital recording of the existing wood collections (yes, plural) that have been merged and carefully cross-referenced....on index cards.

Last semester I finished the Acanthaceae. They made up about an inch & a half of index cards. I have now been working on the Anacardiaceae for what seems like a lifetime. I have recently arrived at poison ivy. Guess what still has toxic oils even after 60+ years in a cabinet? At five to nine months or so a drawer, I am looking at job security for the next several years. If only they were paying me, but you cannot have everything.

I have talked with a few friends who used to have paid work & now have no work but eschew volunteer work & I admit it leaves me stumped. How can it possible be better (for your resume, for your psyche, I would say for your self esteem except I do not actually believe in self esteem as defined by our culture), how can it possible be better to just wait; maybe you could reconsider? Why not do something while you are waiting? & you never know, you might meet your future employer while volunteering.- your volunteer job might become paid. This happened to one of the herbarium volunteers & could have happened to me but I would rather...set my own schedule. Yeah, that's it.

Sooooo if you have been not getting in touch with your local volunteer center because: you need to be available (if only cell phones had been invented), you do not want to make a commitment you cannot keep (no one ever heard of a temporary volunteer job), you want to use this time to catch up on things around the house (it can take weeks to dust behind the fridge; it takes me years), please take some of your busy, full day & think about doing something that does not remind you of what you are not doing.

Turn signals

So the other day this thing that happens to me more often than it should happened again. I used to think it was always the other guy's fault but, well, when the same problem keeps repeating a reasonable person starts to wonder if it might not not be the other guy, but instead... Several months ago V** suggested it was probably me.

I am driving down the road. I am coming upon a light. I plan to turn right at the light. There is an emerging right turn only lane before the light. I put on my turn signal & slide into this lane. I am nearly sideswiped by the guy pulling out of the parking lot who apparently thought my turn signal meant I was turning into same lot.

So I am asking: is it me?

I get a lot of signals crossed when I drive. The most frequent is the ubiquitous (down here) confederate flag. I guess some people see it as a way to identify comrades-in-arms...? I find it is a useful way to spot the stoopid people. That's right: if you have a confederate flag anywhere on your vehicle I take whatever I thought your intelligence might have been & cut it right in half. & like it or not, other measures of applied intelligence (high school diplomas for example) are bearing me out. I have lived well below the Mason-Dixon line for 15+ years & I have never, NEVER met a college graduate with such a sticker. On the flip side, the high school dropouts are leading the pack by a margin of 3:1. Yes, I do live in a rural community but the fact it backs up to the largest university in the state should balance that out, right?

In another example, I have a Vote No on 2 sticker on the back of my truck. For those of you who do not know, Florida voted Yes on 2 & it passed, but the sticker is still there. I would take it down, after all when the next campaign comes it will be repeal 2 or whatever, but I am having too much fun watching other people respond to it. At least once a month someone points to my sticker & says the votes are counted, my side lost & I should just get over it. Often these people have McCain/Palin stickers on their own vehicles.

My favorite 'turn signal' though will always be the giant testicles that some men hang from their trailer hitches; I have no hard data but I am pretty sure women do not do this. Usually these charming 'little dick' indicators are made of metal, but there was a ?rubber?plastic? very lifelike anyway pair that was always parked in our local grocery store lot. It was there so often I had kind of figured the truck belonged to an employee & so, apparently did some other people.

I do not spend a lot of my time worrying about how children are impacted by well, anything at all, but I know a lot of people do. I learned that some parents (I am guessing mothers) had complained to the grocery store about this truck (why naked girl silhouettes on mud flaps-another local favorite- were not equally objectionable I never did figure out, but people-&-their-objections are often a mystery to me).

The short version is that despite complaints the store said there was not anything they could do about it, really. So someone took those balls into (her) own hands. I walked out of the store, past same truck & the offending appendages had been neatly sliced from the hitch. Yup, that truck done got hisself gelded.

I seem to have run myself to the end of this particular line & I am still no closer to answering my original questions (is it me?) & now I have another: is it OKay for someone to remove an offending "message" from another persons car?