Careful

I had a small accident Saturday.

I'm okay, but it was a close one.

I was going home and when I was about 1/2 a mile from the house a truck came flying around the curve. It was towing a trailer which was loaded down with junk and pieces of trash were flying everywhere. I saw a chunk of metal sail off and bounce across the road.

Really there wasn't anything to do. It was a curve with a deep ditch on either side and trees lining the bank. The roads are narrow. I was going too fast to stop and the truck was still going past in his lane. I tried to dodge it, but the metal struck my tire and cut the tire almost in half.

I pulled over immediately. The truck towing the trailer kept going with trash still flying off. I couldn't budge the lug nuts so I started walking home. It was hot. I checked my cell every few feet, but alas, no signal.

One car stopped but it was two older ladies and I didn't think they could change the tire either. They didn't seem inclined to give me a ride and I don't blame them really, I don't pick up people walking on the road either.

I finally had a signal- when I got home. I called my landlord b/c Kevin was at work. My landlord sent a mechanic. My father brought me a new tire. And on the summer solstice I renewed my car protection spell.

The Store

http://www.zazzle.com/FreeDragon

This is a link to a store I created on Zazzle, just in case I get fired, laid off, suffer another take-over, or the company goes under since we spend more then we make. I am adding stuff every few days. My right now my shirts just have sayings, no designs- yet. Go check it out. Please.

Creepy Crawly Things

There seems to be an abundance of pygmy rattlesnakes around my new home. Pygmies are every bit as venomous as the larger rattlesnakes. The problem with pygmies is first they are hard to see; they look like little piles of dirt or innocent sticks. Second, although they do rattle, they can't really be heard. The rattle sounds like an insect's buzz and one has to be dangerously close to hear it.

I've been seeing the snakes on the road. They show up very well on asphalt. I've run over a few. Running over a snake does not guarantee it's demise- snakes aren't so much hard bone as cartilage meaning that a tire traveling 60mph just pisses 'em off. To kill a snake with a car spin the wheels- this tears flesh from their bodies.

Before anyone accuses me of animal cruelty let me just say that adult rattlesnakes have no natural pr editors. I'm talking about the large variety, the Timber Rattler and the Diamond Back. If a juvenile rattlesnake survives to maturity it is at the top of the food chain. Babies get picked off by hawks, and foxes, and the like. But the bigger the snake the harder it is to kill. I think humans are supposed to be the balance. We're supposed to keep them in check and that's why it's hardwired into our DNA to be afraid of snakes.

I don't know what natural predator keeps pygmy rattlesnakes in check but it isn't doing a very good job. Each evening as I drive home from work I see at least one. Sometimes I see as many as FIVE. All these snakes make me damn nervous about walking around my yard. I mean they're hard to see, they can't be heard over the drone of the ten thousand bugs ruling Tallapoosa County and they're freakin' everywhere. I don't go out hunting snakes but if I see one near the house it must die. I simply cannot share my living space with them.

Heron vs Turtle

I used to write a lot. I wrote long narratives that didn't really go anywhere. I had evolved characters with no plot. I wrote poetry and actually got a little of it published in small press magazines. Words tumbled over themselves in a frantic effort to get to paper so I decided I must be a writer and I majored in English. At college there is naught to do but write which was great at first. I was learning, stretching, honing my craft. Then I got tired, but still I was required to write. And read. And analyze to goddamned death what I just wrote/read.

I'm heron person. I like to dabble. I fly to a lake, wander around the shore, go dip my toes in another pond. After I learn how something works it loses all its magick. I am content to just turn the key and drive. I don't want to know how many revolutions the engine makes or how exactly gas is combusted into fuel. I just click and surf. I don't want to study Hyper Text Markup Language. Save that for the otter, the catfish, the turtle, those deep divers who devote their lives to one little pond and can't imagine the big winding river.

I suck at writing now. I know this. I barely even dabble. My vocabulary has dried up to nothing. To make it worse I blog on a time limit and in my hurried efforts to post words are left out, sentence structure collapses and sometimes I don't even know what I'm talking about because I forgot what I wanted to say. I no longer have the luxury of sitting before the home computer, sipping coffee, recording the day's events as they transpire.

But...

For 2 weeks I will be on vacation (I have 2 days left!) Suddenly I will have time for both reflection AND to drive to the library. So maybe I can actually take a crumpled pathetic structure and turn it into, dare I say, a sentence. Heck, it might even lead somewhere. Maybe.

Now that I've gotten my prose out of the way, I can tell you I TRIED to post pics of AJ. I have the disk and everything, but the computer won't read it. I think the drive is turned off so people can't download viruses onto a library computer. Smart for the library, kind of a bummer for me.
I finished the roll of film. Now I have to get it developed. Fortunately that doesn't take as long as trying to take 25 photographs.

I am out of Polaroid film. But I did get out the camera and library does have scanners, so one problem should be solved soon. Also, and I might have posted this already, I can't remember, the whole town is supposed to be getting high speed Internet service. Yay.

Some updates and cool stuff

Okay, gotta write fast b/c the library is crowded today and I had to put my name on a waiting list to use a computer.
First- cool stuff. I held a hummingbird! Know anybody else that's done such a thing?! I have a feeder on my porch and one female is very territorial about it. I guess that includes me, b/c when I took the feeder in the house to clean and refill it, she followed me in, then got trapped in the window between the blinds and the glass. I kept reaching for her, and finally she perched on my finger, so I grabbed her really quick and took her out. That's the second time I'm caught a wild bird with my bare hands.
Second- this is a duh moment (Sadly I am prone to a good many of those) I have a Polaroid camera, which means I don't have to use up a whole roll of film (which I still haven't done) before I can show you pictures. I totally forgot all about that camera. I am sorry.
Third- speaking of pics M finally sent the box, so now I can show you what AJ looked like. I didn't bring the disk today, stopping at the library was a spur of the moment thing, but next post for sure.
I'm a little upset with M b/c instead of sending what AJ wanted me to have, he sent a wooden box that I gave her for x-mas many years ago. I don't know if he was clueless that the box was from me or if he knew and didn't want anything I gave his mother around the house. I'm NOT calling him to find out.
But since he did send me something of hers, I feel like I have closure. It's starting to sink in that's she's gone- before I would miss her and think, I really should call AJ. I stopped dreaming about her. In all the dreams she was alive and well and I'd try to tell her that she was dead and she'd just sort of wave me off- no big deal. I'd wake up feeling guilty and depressed. Now I think she might be telling me something along the lines of I'm in a better place, let it go.