One Bad Mom - ONE BAD MOM BLOG
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One Bad Mom
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Monday, September 28, 2009
"The difference between sex and death is that with death you can do it alone and no one is going to make fun of you."
Woody Allen
I had to get a stupid MRI because a lump had formed on the back of my neck, and after an ultrasound, nobody could tell what the hell it was. Instead of the doctors saying, our equipment is only so good we can’t see everything the way we would like, they said in effect, that thing on your neck is creepy and scary; it is probably nothing, but we want to rule out deadly, slow-killing, unbearably painful cancers that may be curable with invasive, drawn out treatments that leave you bald, sick, weak and ugly.
"Hi I'm here to check-in, when will I get my sedation?" I said the second I arrived at the doctor’s office.
“Not quite yet,” the receptionist said. “You freaky drug addict,” she didn’t say.
Minutes later I asked again, "Okay I have filled out my paperwork, can I have that Valium now?"
She did not look up. She did not answer.
"Now will I get my drugs?" I asked the nurse taking my blood pressure.
“In a little while,” she answered. Do you ever feel like you are missing front teeth, have a grinding jaw and desperate, dilated eyes?
"Are you allergic to any medicines?" the nurse asked later.
"Just penicillin. NOT Valium," I said.
I am so uncourageous it is embarrassing; but brilliantly, I have learned if I take drugs and keep my mouth shut, nobody knows.
Every since I found out I needed an MRI, and I would need a sedative if I was claustrophobic, I have been so excited about getting a Valium Buzz. The excitement over the buzz made all the worrying worth it. My stomach lurched for the entire hour and a half of waiting in the lobby and I sat there thinking that after all these tests and procedures; MRI ($3,300), ultrasound, TB test, doctor's appointments, an impending biopsy, and after crying, fretting, and milking attention, I damn well better have some kind of cancer.
If I don’t have cancer, this has been the biggest scam and waste of time and emotions. What a fucking racket: $3,300 to be told I am healthy? Man I will be pissed. Don’t get me wrong, I definitely don’t want cancer, but after all of these dramatics and fancy machines, expensive procedures and sleepless nights, it better be for a huge, scary disease. Would they do all of this if it were just a kink in my neck?
I haven’t even had the MRI and already I can't wait for the chemo to start so my god-dammed hair will fall out. I will save so much time and money that I will be able to afford a trip to Europe or a Lexus. I spend $150 per month to color and cut my hair, then another $50 per month for hair care products. That is $2,400 per year. Jesus, I can't afford to be cancer-free. I spend hours every week shaving my legs, arms, bikini area, butt crack, nostrils, ear holes, mustache, and chin hairs, having chemo and losing all my hair will save me so much time. I will not like the nausea because it feels like I’m dying when I am nauseous and throwing up, and I am a hulk of a crybaby. I like losing weight though; I'll be skinny but bald. I will have a flat stomach, but a sickly pallor. I’ll be bald but rich. I don't want a damn wig either...they are hot and sweaty. And what, do I super glue it? I will milk my doctor for great anxiety pills, and if I can get a lifetime supply of Valium, it will all be worth it.
And if I do have cancer now, man it feels great. I have had the damn lump for two years and never felt terminally ill. If this is dying of cancer, I can take it.
"Have you ever been sedated before? Were there complications?" the nurse asked me.
"Oh no! I do quite well yes yes quite well with these sorts of things. Yes I am very good with sedatives and sedation in general I assure you, quite well with being sedated indeed,” I replied holding back the urge to wrestle her to the ground and get the drugs I knew she hid in her little white pocket.
The third nurse came into the waiting room and said, "I have your sedative. It is Valium."
"Can I get two more to go please?"
She handed me a gorgeous, little, clear, plastic cup holding three elliptical salmon colored pills. The relief insinuated into my muscles and brain the minute I saw them so you can imagine the ease I experienced once I actually took the pills. Jesus Christ, when they kicked in, I began telling my sister Julie about my epiphany of the Lord that I had never told anyone; I told her about a certain teenage sexual experience that I would rather have remained private, and some various other secrets that I would not like to go into here. After fifteen minutes of thoroughly enjoying my buzz and revealing every embarrassing moment in my past, revelations which my sister Julie did not try to dissuade, the nurse came and said it was time to get the MRI.
"Oh no, but you had a long wait after your sedative. Would you like one more Valium just in case?" the nurse asked me.
"Well yes I would, yes, as a matter of fact, come to think of it, yes, I would thank you very much," I said.
"She won't remember any of this," the Nurse told Julie.
"Oh yes I will. I will never forget any of this," I said.
Nurses shouldn’t tell a patient’s sibling that their sister is so buzzed that she won't remember anything later. Julie could have started poking me with sticks or tripping me with my hospital gown on, or worse making me apologize for the time I flicked boogers all over her door and in repentance make me strip in front of the old people and dance like a freak, even though she knows I dance terribly. She already stripped me of a truckload of private information.
Feeling excellent, I tried not to look too carefully at the MRI machine when I entered the testing room; I didn’t want reality to ruin my buzz. The machine was huge and looked animated. I thought of Dr. Frankenstein’s laboratory and wished its purpose was more along the lines of non-invasive, laser cosmetic alteration; I’ll take a tummy tuck, a toe removal, a designer labiaplasty, and some acid on my face. I lay on my back on the table, and the nurse put a cozy warm blanket on my footsies. The tech said it would be incredibly loud. He really stressed that it would be enormously loud.
"This will be louder than you could possibly expect,” he said.
He stuck earplugs in my ears the size and shape of large gourds.
"Wow, you are serious about this," I said.
They then put a flat tray over my face; about five inches from it, and then the table slid me mechanically into the coffin-like tube while my ear gourds stuck out left and right. I felt like a meat patty on a conveyor belt at Carl’s Jr. Really, who puts a metal tray over your face, it’s so rude. It reminds me of when Luke wants sex and puts a flat screen TV over my face and tunes into The Girl’s Next Door. But it didn't feel coffin-esque because everything was beautiful and I loved the technicians and nurse.
I slammed my eyes shut tight and fell into a blissful sleep. A light beamed and I felt as if I were in a copy machine, then a LOUD LOUD noise happened right around my head. If I didn't have a condition before, I most certainly would after this. It was exactly the sound and decibel level of a jack hammer an inch from your head. The MRI machine would jackhammer for several minutes then copy, jack hammer, copy. There were other noises too. I wondered what incredible fake ass machine I could come up with and tell people it was very special and charge $3,300. I would come up with something far more sophisticated. Surely the noises on my machine wouldn't sound like a jackhammer and it wouldn't seem like a copier. I would at least have an interesting whirring sound and if there must be light it would be blue or red, not plain white.
I was in there for 45 minutes and was thinking about Krista when she said, “If you have only one year to live, then waiting one month since the ultrasound, the doctors have wasted one tenth of your life.”
Even with the Valium, I had a few moments of panic. I wanted to start flailing around like a fish on deck, and bang on the sides while pulling my hair out in massive clumps, frothing at the mouth like Old Yeller and peeing on the table, but I maintained.
Even with earplugs, the noise was deafening. What a circus. What a racket. What a way to make people die earlier. What a way to make money. What a way to make a perfectly good death, miserable. I am not getting anything checked again.
Suddenly bam, the jackhammer would start and stop again. It jolted me and hysteria surfaced through small unguarded holes in my drug induced euphoria, but a couple of deep breaths and I was good again. What would it be like to be brave? With no drugs, I would have needed a straight jacket so that I wouldn’t do involuntary aerobics in that confined space, claw my eyeballs and tongue out, give myself a hemorrhoid, kick the lights and electrocute myself. I would be stuck in the lights and my face and hair would be bloody, the gown burned off leaving my ass bare in an un-sexy way what with the hemorrhoid and all. I’d have been better off dying at home alone with neck cancer.
It took seven long days of waiting before I got the results. The MRI lab said they sent the results to my doctor three days after the MRI, but it took many phone calls and much begging before the doctor called me back. I was crushed that my doctor cared so little that she didn't call sooner. Dumb I know, but I thought this was what I had to look forward to with my future cancer treatment.
I didn’t want to do anything at all during those seven days of waiting, but Krista pushed me out of my mental malaise and said, "Mom let's go to LA tomorrow since your days are numbered; we definitely should not wait."
She had a point.
“Okay, let’s do it, but clean up the dog shit first,” I said.
"Don't worry about the dog shit Mom, soon you'll be dead and it won’t matter.”
Some may not find all of this funny, but it was therapeutic and terribly hilarious to me. And the few times she did say, "Mom I really don't want you to have cancer, it would be awful." I appreciated the genuine feeling and brevity.
There has not been one minute since the ultrasound that I wasn't positive that I had cancer. I can't stress enough how sure of cancer I had been especially after the doctor and ultra-sound lab girl talked about the large and unusual lump on my neck that reminded them of the deformed monster in the basement with the basketball genital growths. I was already planning on things to do with my business, finances, and children. I already relaxed about shit I didn't like doing, like paying taxes, scrubbing the floor around the toilet, and being nice to strangers, knowing soon I would be dead. It was great.
So you can imagine the strange let down I had when my doctor called and said, "Suzie, you are good. It is a fatty tissue. It needs to come off, but it is not cancerous and looks good."
I told her thank you so much as if she cured a terrible thing; as if she were responsible for my good health, as if she revealed a truth that I would have died from had she not examined it. I was disappointed. I had bought Tuesdays with Morrie, Life After Death by Deepak, I had written my eulogy, I wrote down my passwords and User IDs and willed my business to a family member. I planned on the savings of hair products, imagined the Brazilian cut with no stubble. I was pissed that after all that worry, stress, expense and preparations, that there was nothing wrong after all and all of that ridiculous over-zealous testing was for nothing. I felt betrayed. Sure I was glad I wasn’t dying, but dude, does Medicine really need all the theatrics for a piece of fat?
But Krista was as relieved as could be; Mom and TT, who had called several times a day over the last week, were audibly relieved.
They were both choked up and Mom said, "you choose a strange place to grow your fat."
Things like this give you a chance to notice how loved you are, and I see how much I love my family and could care less about my earlier petty complaints about stretch marks, rude bladder infections, and hard mattresses. Luke however was a different story. He was sure nothing was wrong from the beginning, and was therefore not concerned. He didn't ask or call to see how I was doing/feeling.
Before I had even gone in for the MRI he asked, "Oh did you get those results in?"
“Um, I haven’t had the MRI yet,” I said patiently. He can be an airhead.
Later he said, "I have two weeks off now that it is January and the year has started over. I better not get sick or have to take a day off. There is nothing on Earth worse than having to take a day off in January and destroy the clean slate."
"Oh then I guess you won't be going to the doctor's with me," I didn't say.
"Mom don't tell Luke about your results and see how long it takes him to ask. Two years will pass and he'll finally ask, tell him that yes you had cancer and are still being treated for it," Krista said.
This cancer business is powerful stuff. I don't pretend to have never thought of the leverage I could use with this. I am almost disappointed now I can't make Luke feel bad or play on his sympathies.
Luke didn't call the entire day of my MRI even though he had been over the night before and knew I was extremely nervous. (We were not married yet). What can I expect, he wasn't even slightly nervous before either of his own two surgeries, not even a little, so he can't understand my fear.
In some sick way, I wanted Luke to think I was dying of cancer so he would love and appreciate me more. Or at least I wanted him constantly in fear of my contracting some rare disease or in constant worry about someone or something coming and killing me. But he never fears and never worries about me. For that matter, he doesn’t worry about anything. His stable mental health is so annoying it drives me barking mad. Fine Luke, I’m healthy and safe: are you happy now?
So live, that when thy summons comes to join
The innumberable caravan which moves
To that mysterious realm, where each shall take
His chamber in the silent halls of death,
Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night,
Scourged to his dungeon, but sustained and soothed
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams
Thanatopsis, by William Cullen Bryant
I just read that 267,000 women die from heart attack every year, 41,000 from breast cancer. Most women over 65 die from heart attack. That is awesome great news, unless you are a death denier. We are all going to die, it is silly to say beware of heart attacks, they kill more women than anything else. Death, God, Nature kills everyone. What better way to go than a heart attack: quickly, albeit extremely painfully? But it doesn’t drag on and on like stupid cancer. It isn’t so grisly, the treatments aren’t so draconic. BTW Breast cancer is 80% curable. And a healthy diet and exercise can prevent most breast cancer.
Woody Allen
I had to get a stupid MRI because a lump had formed on the back of my neck, and after an ultrasound, nobody could tell what the hell it was. Instead of the doctors saying, our equipment is only so good we can’t see everything the way we would like, they said in effect, that thing on your neck is creepy and scary; it is probably nothing, but we want to rule out deadly, slow-killing, unbearably painful cancers that may be curable with invasive, drawn out treatments that leave you bald, sick, weak and ugly.
"Hi I'm here to check-in, when will I get my sedation?" I said the second I arrived at the doctor’s office.
“Not quite yet,” the receptionist said. “You freaky drug addict,” she didn’t say.
Minutes later I asked again, "Okay I have filled out my paperwork, can I have that Valium now?"
She did not look up. She did not answer.
"Now will I get my drugs?" I asked the nurse taking my blood pressure.
“In a little while,” she answered. Do you ever feel like you are missing front teeth, have a grinding jaw and desperate, dilated eyes?
"Are you allergic to any medicines?" the nurse asked later.
"Just penicillin. NOT Valium," I said.
I am so uncourageous it is embarrassing; but brilliantly, I have learned if I take drugs and keep my mouth shut, nobody knows.
Every since I found out I needed an MRI, and I would need a sedative if I was claustrophobic, I have been so excited about getting a Valium Buzz. The excitement over the buzz made all the worrying worth it. My stomach lurched for the entire hour and a half of waiting in the lobby and I sat there thinking that after all these tests and procedures; MRI ($3,300), ultrasound, TB test, doctor's appointments, an impending biopsy, and after crying, fretting, and milking attention, I damn well better have some kind of cancer.
If I don’t have cancer, this has been the biggest scam and waste of time and emotions. What a fucking racket: $3,300 to be told I am healthy? Man I will be pissed. Don’t get me wrong, I definitely don’t want cancer, but after all of these dramatics and fancy machines, expensive procedures and sleepless nights, it better be for a huge, scary disease. Would they do all of this if it were just a kink in my neck?
I haven’t even had the MRI and already I can't wait for the chemo to start so my god-dammed hair will fall out. I will save so much time and money that I will be able to afford a trip to Europe or a Lexus. I spend $150 per month to color and cut my hair, then another $50 per month for hair care products. That is $2,400 per year. Jesus, I can't afford to be cancer-free. I spend hours every week shaving my legs, arms, bikini area, butt crack, nostrils, ear holes, mustache, and chin hairs, having chemo and losing all my hair will save me so much time. I will not like the nausea because it feels like I’m dying when I am nauseous and throwing up, and I am a hulk of a crybaby. I like losing weight though; I'll be skinny but bald. I will have a flat stomach, but a sickly pallor. I’ll be bald but rich. I don't want a damn wig either...they are hot and sweaty. And what, do I super glue it? I will milk my doctor for great anxiety pills, and if I can get a lifetime supply of Valium, it will all be worth it.
And if I do have cancer now, man it feels great. I have had the damn lump for two years and never felt terminally ill. If this is dying of cancer, I can take it.
"Have you ever been sedated before? Were there complications?" the nurse asked me.
"Oh no! I do quite well yes yes quite well with these sorts of things. Yes I am very good with sedatives and sedation in general I assure you, quite well with being sedated indeed,” I replied holding back the urge to wrestle her to the ground and get the drugs I knew she hid in her little white pocket.
The third nurse came into the waiting room and said, "I have your sedative. It is Valium."
"Can I get two more to go please?"
She handed me a gorgeous, little, clear, plastic cup holding three elliptical salmon colored pills. The relief insinuated into my muscles and brain the minute I saw them so you can imagine the ease I experienced once I actually took the pills. Jesus Christ, when they kicked in, I began telling my sister Julie about my epiphany of the Lord that I had never told anyone; I told her about a certain teenage sexual experience that I would rather have remained private, and some various other secrets that I would not like to go into here. After fifteen minutes of thoroughly enjoying my buzz and revealing every embarrassing moment in my past, revelations which my sister Julie did not try to dissuade, the nurse came and said it was time to get the MRI.
"Oh no, but you had a long wait after your sedative. Would you like one more Valium just in case?" the nurse asked me.
"Well yes I would, yes, as a matter of fact, come to think of it, yes, I would thank you very much," I said.
"She won't remember any of this," the Nurse told Julie.
"Oh yes I will. I will never forget any of this," I said.
Nurses shouldn’t tell a patient’s sibling that their sister is so buzzed that she won't remember anything later. Julie could have started poking me with sticks or tripping me with my hospital gown on, or worse making me apologize for the time I flicked boogers all over her door and in repentance make me strip in front of the old people and dance like a freak, even though she knows I dance terribly. She already stripped me of a truckload of private information.
Feeling excellent, I tried not to look too carefully at the MRI machine when I entered the testing room; I didn’t want reality to ruin my buzz. The machine was huge and looked animated. I thought of Dr. Frankenstein’s laboratory and wished its purpose was more along the lines of non-invasive, laser cosmetic alteration; I’ll take a tummy tuck, a toe removal, a designer labiaplasty, and some acid on my face. I lay on my back on the table, and the nurse put a cozy warm blanket on my footsies. The tech said it would be incredibly loud. He really stressed that it would be enormously loud.
"This will be louder than you could possibly expect,” he said.
He stuck earplugs in my ears the size and shape of large gourds.
"Wow, you are serious about this," I said.
They then put a flat tray over my face; about five inches from it, and then the table slid me mechanically into the coffin-like tube while my ear gourds stuck out left and right. I felt like a meat patty on a conveyor belt at Carl’s Jr. Really, who puts a metal tray over your face, it’s so rude. It reminds me of when Luke wants sex and puts a flat screen TV over my face and tunes into The Girl’s Next Door. But it didn't feel coffin-esque because everything was beautiful and I loved the technicians and nurse.
I slammed my eyes shut tight and fell into a blissful sleep. A light beamed and I felt as if I were in a copy machine, then a LOUD LOUD noise happened right around my head. If I didn't have a condition before, I most certainly would after this. It was exactly the sound and decibel level of a jack hammer an inch from your head. The MRI machine would jackhammer for several minutes then copy, jack hammer, copy. There were other noises too. I wondered what incredible fake ass machine I could come up with and tell people it was very special and charge $3,300. I would come up with something far more sophisticated. Surely the noises on my machine wouldn't sound like a jackhammer and it wouldn't seem like a copier. I would at least have an interesting whirring sound and if there must be light it would be blue or red, not plain white.
I was in there for 45 minutes and was thinking about Krista when she said, “If you have only one year to live, then waiting one month since the ultrasound, the doctors have wasted one tenth of your life.”
Even with the Valium, I had a few moments of panic. I wanted to start flailing around like a fish on deck, and bang on the sides while pulling my hair out in massive clumps, frothing at the mouth like Old Yeller and peeing on the table, but I maintained.
Even with earplugs, the noise was deafening. What a circus. What a racket. What a way to make people die earlier. What a way to make money. What a way to make a perfectly good death, miserable. I am not getting anything checked again.
Suddenly bam, the jackhammer would start and stop again. It jolted me and hysteria surfaced through small unguarded holes in my drug induced euphoria, but a couple of deep breaths and I was good again. What would it be like to be brave? With no drugs, I would have needed a straight jacket so that I wouldn’t do involuntary aerobics in that confined space, claw my eyeballs and tongue out, give myself a hemorrhoid, kick the lights and electrocute myself. I would be stuck in the lights and my face and hair would be bloody, the gown burned off leaving my ass bare in an un-sexy way what with the hemorrhoid and all. I’d have been better off dying at home alone with neck cancer.
It took seven long days of waiting before I got the results. The MRI lab said they sent the results to my doctor three days after the MRI, but it took many phone calls and much begging before the doctor called me back. I was crushed that my doctor cared so little that she didn't call sooner. Dumb I know, but I thought this was what I had to look forward to with my future cancer treatment.
I didn’t want to do anything at all during those seven days of waiting, but Krista pushed me out of my mental malaise and said, "Mom let's go to LA tomorrow since your days are numbered; we definitely should not wait."
She had a point.
“Okay, let’s do it, but clean up the dog shit first,” I said.
"Don't worry about the dog shit Mom, soon you'll be dead and it won’t matter.”
Some may not find all of this funny, but it was therapeutic and terribly hilarious to me. And the few times she did say, "Mom I really don't want you to have cancer, it would be awful." I appreciated the genuine feeling and brevity.
There has not been one minute since the ultrasound that I wasn't positive that I had cancer. I can't stress enough how sure of cancer I had been especially after the doctor and ultra-sound lab girl talked about the large and unusual lump on my neck that reminded them of the deformed monster in the basement with the basketball genital growths. I was already planning on things to do with my business, finances, and children. I already relaxed about shit I didn't like doing, like paying taxes, scrubbing the floor around the toilet, and being nice to strangers, knowing soon I would be dead. It was great.
So you can imagine the strange let down I had when my doctor called and said, "Suzie, you are good. It is a fatty tissue. It needs to come off, but it is not cancerous and looks good."
I told her thank you so much as if she cured a terrible thing; as if she were responsible for my good health, as if she revealed a truth that I would have died from had she not examined it. I was disappointed. I had bought Tuesdays with Morrie, Life After Death by Deepak, I had written my eulogy, I wrote down my passwords and User IDs and willed my business to a family member. I planned on the savings of hair products, imagined the Brazilian cut with no stubble. I was pissed that after all that worry, stress, expense and preparations, that there was nothing wrong after all and all of that ridiculous over-zealous testing was for nothing. I felt betrayed. Sure I was glad I wasn’t dying, but dude, does Medicine really need all the theatrics for a piece of fat?
But Krista was as relieved as could be; Mom and TT, who had called several times a day over the last week, were audibly relieved.
They were both choked up and Mom said, "you choose a strange place to grow your fat."
Things like this give you a chance to notice how loved you are, and I see how much I love my family and could care less about my earlier petty complaints about stretch marks, rude bladder infections, and hard mattresses. Luke however was a different story. He was sure nothing was wrong from the beginning, and was therefore not concerned. He didn't ask or call to see how I was doing/feeling.
Before I had even gone in for the MRI he asked, "Oh did you get those results in?"
“Um, I haven’t had the MRI yet,” I said patiently. He can be an airhead.
Later he said, "I have two weeks off now that it is January and the year has started over. I better not get sick or have to take a day off. There is nothing on Earth worse than having to take a day off in January and destroy the clean slate."
"Oh then I guess you won't be going to the doctor's with me," I didn't say.
"Mom don't tell Luke about your results and see how long it takes him to ask. Two years will pass and he'll finally ask, tell him that yes you had cancer and are still being treated for it," Krista said.
This cancer business is powerful stuff. I don't pretend to have never thought of the leverage I could use with this. I am almost disappointed now I can't make Luke feel bad or play on his sympathies.
Luke didn't call the entire day of my MRI even though he had been over the night before and knew I was extremely nervous. (We were not married yet). What can I expect, he wasn't even slightly nervous before either of his own two surgeries, not even a little, so he can't understand my fear.
In some sick way, I wanted Luke to think I was dying of cancer so he would love and appreciate me more. Or at least I wanted him constantly in fear of my contracting some rare disease or in constant worry about someone or something coming and killing me. But he never fears and never worries about me. For that matter, he doesn’t worry about anything. His stable mental health is so annoying it drives me barking mad. Fine Luke, I’m healthy and safe: are you happy now?
So live, that when thy summons comes to join
The innumberable caravan which moves
To that mysterious realm, where each shall take
His chamber in the silent halls of death,
Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night,
Scourged to his dungeon, but sustained and soothed
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams
Thanatopsis, by William Cullen Bryant
I just read that 267,000 women die from heart attack every year, 41,000 from breast cancer. Most women over 65 die from heart attack. That is awesome great news, unless you are a death denier. We are all going to die, it is silly to say beware of heart attacks, they kill more women than anything else. Death, God, Nature kills everyone. What better way to go than a heart attack: quickly, albeit extremely painfully? But it doesn’t drag on and on like stupid cancer. It isn’t so grisly, the treatments aren’t so draconic. BTW Breast cancer is 80% curable. And a healthy diet and exercise can prevent most breast cancer.
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
"A lake is the landscape's most beautiful and expressive feature. It is earth's eye; looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature."
- Henry David Thoreau
Luke, Brook, her friend Leila and I drove the Prius 14 hours to Idaho while listening to Twilight on CD: a recipe for insanity for the adults, but pure ecstasy for the teenage girls. We all, but especially Luke, fell in love with Edward Cullen’s “liquid topaz eyes”, his “velvety voice” and his “hard, marble smooth body”. Finally in Idaho, we visited Luke’s friends Nathan and his wife Colleen. They are super cool people and a lot of fun to hang out with, but they are also huge polluters and I almost went mad trying to enjoy my stay and assuage my guilty conscience. Nathan is fun oriented: everything in his life is fun. He lives near a gorgeous lake that we went boating on. We took his wakeboarding boat out on the lake and camped on an island in the middle. We also had a jet ski, and it was a blast. Before we arrived, the water in the lake was clean and beautiful; I’m not sure it could still be said after we left. There were rocky crags, cliffs and huge colorful rocky canyons that were separated by the blue waters and had swallowtails and Elk, Canada Geese, Mergansers with twenty (yes 20) baby chicks. I saw hundreds of barn and cliff swallows that nested in the craggy volcanic sides of the canyons; they coughed through their tiny beaks and implored us to leave when we chugged by in the boat.
“You aren’t a very good environmentalist Suzie,” I thought I heard one bird say. And the bird was right. Try as I might, I always end up polluting against my will.
We guzzled fifty gallons of gas and emitted tons of dirty, smelly emissions in one weekend on that clean lake. It was awful because I enjoyed it all so much. I kept thinking, some Environmentalist I am. The Jet Ski was my favorite, and I drove it so fast and jumped wakes and absolutely had a blast which I rarely have. Then Brook (fourteen) and her friend Leila went on the inner tube behind the boat for hours and hours, their faces alternating between joy and horror as Nathan sadistically spun the boat and drove fast as hell and flipped, spun, and slung the girls, there little bodies flopping up and down on the inner tube, barely able to hold on, their knuckles clung like death to the handles in front of them. They flipped off several times, but were loathe to give it up. They reminded me of two penguins being dragged behind the Exxon Valdez.
Oh the ridiculous hypocrisies of trying to do live an eco-friendly life. What was I supposed to do? “Excuse me, but we can’t take the boat out because I am an environmentalist,” I could have said. What a freak.
Or:
“I’ll just sit on the beach in protest to your Arab enriching, oil-sucking tendencies.”
How effing rude, it would simply look fanatical anyway.
It made me think of W.C. Fields when he said, “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. Then quit. There’s no point in being a damn fool about it."
After the lake, Luke, Leila, Brook and I went camping in the lovely and secret Boise National Park, 2.1 million acres of pristine wilderness, home to eagles, bears, grey wolves, but very few campers. It was SO gorgeous and there were no people. We hiked, fished, ate. Then one afternoon in the hot part of the day, giant persistent flies stalked us and stared while rubbing their little straight hands together evilly; they landed on us then wouldn’t go away. Luke was killing them violently, knocking over tables and chairs, his hair askew, and looking like a madman. I wanted to write, but my battery was going dead on my laptop. What, now that I have a laptop I can’t write with a pen and paper? The trailer had a generator and only a few lights work with the battery. I swore I wouldn’t use the generator while there, but I was sweating and my mosquito bites were killing me, the fucking flies wouldn’t stop harassing me.
Then Brook walked by and said like a spoiled princess, “I wish we were back at Nathan’s house where it was cool.”
That pissed me off mostly because it was the thought I had been trying to fend off for an hour or so. “Not one negative word from you; do you hear me? Not one.” I retorted angrily.
She stomped off somewhere, and I sat swatting at the beetle size flies and sweated in my Hollister shirt while watching my battery life die slowly on my laptop.
Then, the thing that always happens when things get too rough happened. Against my will I gave in to the luxuries at my fingertips.
“Luke, screw it, hook up the generator and let’s go in and turn on the air conditioner so I can plug in my laptop and Brook will be happy dammit.”
Great: I was one of those people in the middle of nature, sitting in my motor home, using the a/c, a laptop and a stereo, and barely able to look out the small windows at the scenery: and I was happy.
It was so frustrating; I was having imaginary conversations with people I know (right then Nathan and Colleen) about keeping our air and water clean, about how Idaho will end up concreted in, all land grabbed up, traffic, people and stinky dirty water with dirty air like Southern California if things aren’t changed. I importantly explained to them in my mind how to go green; limit boating on the lake, maybe try sailing or canoeing, try organic food, put in water savers in the showers at the house, go to city planning meeting to staunch urban sprawl. I had elaborate speeches formed in my head with carefully chosen words. Then when a little fly landed on me and a bead of sweat a fraction of the size of a strawberry picker’s, appeared under my armpit, I caved and ran for the nearest gallon of gasoline.
What use is it to go ten miles out of the way to the (super awesome) Co Op Market in downtown Boise and buy the organic turkey slices, organic fruits and vegetables, local milk with no hormones, free range chicken, toilet paper from recycled paper, eucalyptus bug spray without deet, all costing 25% more than the junk at a regular store? What use is it to drive fourteen hours in the cramped Prius instead of taking the roomy, more practical truck or an airplane, if I sit in the trailer in the middle of the pristine forest with the air conditioner and laptop on and the generator outside sucking gallons of gas and spewing dirty, billowing clouds of smoke into the pure air?
I always wonder if I am doing enough at home. My house is too big, and I use too much water on my lawn and sometimes I let my compost in the kitchen go too long and throw it in the trash because I am too disgusted to open the container and put it in my compost container; I forget to pick my zucchini once in a while and they grow too big and gross and I throw them away. Some days I’m too lazy to recycle my water from washing dishes or warming up the water in the bathroom. In the amount of time it takes for the water to heat up in my bathroom I could birth a small fetus. Or I’ll decadently eat a piece of steak Luke brings home. But after spending a week with Luke’s friend Nathan, I realize that I am doing way more than some. He has motorcycles for each person in his family; there was not one CFL in their entire 4,000 square foot house in which they run the air conditioning all summer even when they are at work because it supposedly takes more energy to cool it down after a whole day of heat than it does to run it the entire day. Right. We drove that damn boat endlessly all weekend and I could see the slick colorful sheen of oil on the top of the water near their boat. The whole time there, in my mind I picked apart their entire lifestyle like some grotesque Green Police. They have a front loading energy efficient washer and dryer, and energy efficient dishwasher, and they have no lawn in back. Their yard is small which is good. But they gobble down pounds of high protein animal groceries on their Suzanne Somers: This is Not Your Mother’s Atkins Diet. Not one organic product graced their fridge, and in fact when their son David mentioned an organic apple he ate, Nathan said, “What the hell is an organic apple.” In that don’t talk to me about stupid eco enviro shit tone of voice. It was excruciating not to say a thing. Really the last thing I want to do is look like the Enviro-Freak that I have become. It did make me think of Bill Maher when he said on Real Time,
"But when it comes to bad for the environment, nothing--literally--compares with eating meat. The business of raising animals for food causes about 40 percent more global warming than cars, trucks, and planes combined. If you care about the planet, it's actually better to eat a salad in a Hummer than a cheeseburger in a Prius."
I have been feeding finches for years. But our house has huge picture windows that give me a gorgeous view. Problem is the birds keep running into the damn shiny windows. I found a gorgeous male Costas hummingbird on the concrete beneath the window. Costas hummingbirds are small even by hummingbird standards; about 3 inches. The male hummingbird’s head and gorget, the area at the throat, is iridescent purple. The poor little guy was in perfect shape aside from being dead. Not a scratch or drop of blood. His wings and tail looked as if they were still in motion. Then I found over a period of about three months, three dead American and Lesser Goldfinches. I feed them Niger Seed every day and attract twenty to a hundred a day; I swear to God. And the worse thing is that they are smacking into my windows. I spent a fortune on special stickers that has helped prevent much of the problem, but there is still that occasional thump I will hear as one hits my window, and for some reason reminds me of the song, “Let the Bodies Hit the Floor”. The Costas Hummingbird was in such perfect shape that I put it in a clear Starbucks cup and studied it as much as I could before it disintegrated. It lasted a long time, weeks, and any visitor would get a viewing. I would say open your eyes at your home and you will see this. And I would shove the poor sacrificial hummer in their face. It affected everyone who saw in a way that made them quit their jobs and join Eco Terrorists for Birds and kill anyone who had a window that birds flew into. Not really. They just thought I was nuts and rolled their eyes swearing to never pay attention to birds again. The little guy with his shiny green back lay in the Starbucks cup which was placed carefully in a 15x11x7 cardboard box. Albert, Brook, and Krista thought I was nuts, and so too did Luke and he accidentally threw my poor baby in the trash, not even the compost or the green yard waste recycling can, but the regular, cruel and impersonal dump trash can.
“Hey honey, have you seen my hummingbird?” I asked Luke one day when I couldn’t find the bird or the box in the garage.
“What hummingbird? Oh you mean the dead one? No, of course not.”
“I had it out in the garage in a small box on the work table and now I can’t find it,” I said.
For some ungodly reason, he thought this was terribly funny and laughed too much. I was not amused.
“I threw that box away; I don’t think it had your bird in it though. There was just an old Starbucks cup in there,” he said.
Brook told me, in the form of a funny story at a family gathering, that she found several dead goldfinches and threw them over the fence to spare my feelings. But I know her well enough to know she threw them over to spare herself the chore of watching me and my over reaction to the death of my little babies. Somehow, she thinks throwing things over the back fence is a good way to handle things, because she threw the cookies I made with applesauce instead of oil and agave sweetener instead of sugar, over the back fence much to Albert and Krista’s utmost delight. Apparently partially hydrogenated free cookies are as useless as are dead yellow birds.
The difficult thing about having close relationships with people, like marriage and children for instance, is that while you may be fanatically dedicated to non polluting endeavors, your children and/or spouse may not be. Sure they may be interested and try a little, but how can one expect them to be fanatics. It is unusual. Luke loves to watch the Animal Planet shows on nature and he understands and is concerned about climate change and animals. But not so much so that he is willing to sell everything, build a cob or straw bale house in the woods and grow all of our own food while becoming Eco Terrorists and chasing evil developers on our mopeds and suing them for building in our precious canyons and rare open spaces. He also isn’t into using a composting toilet, abstaining from all air travel, riding a bicycle to get our produce at the Farmers Market on a 105 degree day, or carrying the way too feminine re-usable grocery bags, much less give up dirt bikes, boats, jet skis and fishing with his brothers. My only consolation is that while I may not have married or raised Grizzly Adams or Rachel Carson, at least they do keep me balanced and prevent me from shaving my head bald, growing my unwashed leg hairs long enough to braid, and move to the woods to live in a teepee, and write bad nature poems. Oh and wear a deerskin Pocahontas dress with moccasins.
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Saturday, September 12, 2009
SOAPBOX
“Healing the wounds of the earth and its people does not require saintliness or a political party, only gumption and persistence. It is not a liberal or conservative activity; it is a sacred act.” Blessed Unrest, Paul Hawken
Writing is tricky business, especially when you want to say something that really matters to you. You don’t want to sound too mad, or too passionate about a thing, or heaven forbid condescending; and you certainly don’t want to sound like a total idiot.
I once wrote grandly, “In a world as troubled as ours, we must always take heart and forge on.” Uhm. Stupid. Acid just refluxed into my mouth.
The other bad thing about writing is that I grow out of things. I may write about my passionate desire to save the planet now, but in twenty years I may cringe at my naïveté or unrealistic utopian leanings. I may one day hate the stupid Earth and dumb polar bears and Eagles, the stinky things. I may be driving a bulldozer for the pleasure of destroying large swaths of pristine endangered species habitat for all I know. I may develop bad habits like drowning baby kittens and eating horse meat. I can’t tell you how often I read something I wrote a long time ago and gag. Thank God I was not published. Hopefully I never will be; what a horrific reminder of earlier stupidities. Not long enough ago I was writing about how much I loved designer purses, sunglasses and shopping at Nordstrom’s.
“I bought a new Coach purse, a pair of Bulgari sunglasses and a timeshare in Mexico today,” I wrote. How embarrassing.
TT said, “Whenever you are on a new kick, I just roll my eyes and ignore you instead of getting super annoyed; and I know that you will be over it soon enough and onto something else.”
So now TT, I would like to talk about my present annoying stuff: Environmentalism and Feminism. Seriously does it get any worse? But why is it that environmentalism has such a tainted sound to it? Why is it degraded, reduced, lessened, and treated like a nonsensical silliness? Whereas, tough, loud, aggressive endeavors are cool (like pounding a man in the face for five rounds, or clearing a hundred acres of wooded forest to build twenty lawned houses); things like caring, nurturing and loving Nature are often considered silly.
Caring, nurturing and loving animals, plants and Nature is silly. Even as I write this, I think it sounds super dumb. It sounds girlie and whining. Why? TV, (which shapes our nation’s very being), and many men idolize women when they are skinny, young, hot, physically mutilated to maximum endowment, cutesy and without an important thing in their tiny, white heads. Hot, half-naked young bodies are splattered all over the television like soft porn to entice and lure people into buying shit. The large-fake-breasted, not very smart, not very old kind of girl is acceptable. But women who care, nurture and love Nature are ridiculous.
It is a Man’s World any way you slice it where the Girl’s Next Door, Pamela Andersons, and Jessica Simpsons of the world are how guys like it. And guys will laugh and talk about how stupid those hot girls are all the while imagining fornicating with them, which is all part of the degradation. The message: Be Hot, Be Dumb, Be Naked, Be Quiet. So when a woman comes along and doesn’t want to be hot, or dumb or quiet, the rut of ridiculing, reducing and demeaning occurs. Therefore, when I say I care about Nature and I want you stupid fucking assholes to stop killing whales and wolves, and stop polluting, and stop cutting down old growth forests and stop messing with Spotted Owls, I am easily dismissed.
“Oh now, isn’t that cute, she loves whales,” I hear.
Or worse, “What a dumb bitch, fuck those stupid dumb whales and wolves, all that matters is me, my dick, my dually truck, and my hunting license.”
Women and their fluffy ideas and their voices are silenced, ridiculed by those who would rather you look like a Barbie and sound like a mute while they sit with a half-hard-on watching hot cheerleaders, football or boxing because men running into each other super hard and punching one another until blood spurts from their heads is a superior endeavor compared with women who don’t want Japan to kill all the whales in the ocean, or loggers to raze trees that stood before the Greeks were the Greeks.
Oh and then those dumb Barbie Girls do get up and say, don’t wear minks it is mean, we love animals….and since they have put themselves in a position to be ridiculed and ignored and only to be stared at, then the things they say, even if they may be important, sound totally stupid and bring down their cause.
Why is it a feminist issue? Because it is a Man’s World and the attitudes today are trained and bent on aggression and destruction. Aggression and destruction is all good and natural, but there must be a balance. The aggressive agenda has been pursued and forced down our throats long enough, time to Man Up and speak out about the destruction of nature by those who feel that whales, wolves and polar bears are the fluffy stuff of a stupider gender.
As individualistic as we Americans mean to be, we are pack animals, social in nature, and we need each other to form ourselves and our ideas. In Medieval prisons, the isolated prisoners craved human contact so much that he would scribble notes on small chips of stone with his blood, and pass the notes through the cracks to communicate. The Internet and the social networks remind me of those isolated prisoners. We 21st century citizens are so isolated from one another that we desperately communicate via FaceBook.com and MySpace.com.
Corporations and the TV programming they control, and plug-in to our brains understand our pack mentality, our drive to be like each other and fit in.
"Television is the literature for the illiterate, the culture of the low-brow, the wealth of the poor, the privelage of the underprivelaged, the exclusive club for the excluded masses." Lee Loevinger
If the people on TV are our friends and enemies, and the TV is our society; then the television is our pack that can shape our most intimate feelings and ideas. The McDonalds and Walmarts of the Corporate World have a direct feeding tube, an IV drip as it were, from their bottom line offices directly to your brain; they tell you how to think. Exxon funds “think tanks” that are formed specifically to counter climate change efforts and put false but seemingly reasonable information on the tube and in our newspapers.
Exxon's contributions are as follows:
Action Institute for the Study of Religious Liberty $155,000
American Council of Capital Formation $250,000
The American Council on Science and Health $90,000
The American Enterprise Institue $960,000
The American Legislative Exchange Council $712,000
Citizens for a Sound Economy$302,150
Reason Public Policy Institute $230,000
Competitive Enterprise Institute $1.74 million
Cold Earth Society $8 million.
The corporations have the money, the tube to your brain, the genius minds to make it all sound reasonable, and our willingness if we sit by stupidly. And they have the capacity and desire to devour our natural settings so they can regurgitate it and feed it back to us. This is why it is so vital for you to speak up and put your ideas out there to counterbalance that unnatural force. The internet is like that scribbled blood note that keeps we desperately separated individuals in a pack. It is not the healthiest, but we do what we can. It is our microphone that can transmit our voices, it can give we little people the voice and power that television has given Coca Cola. We can post info on our Facebook that concerns us like the ad for the movie, The Cove that I saw my friend Carol Schill post. It is about the dolphin harvesting trade in Japan. My Mom posted an excellent link about Reinstating Protection for the Northern Rockies Wolves. I have posted different things on my Facebook that you just click to send a message to your representative or sign a petition that is directed to the relevant authority. The internet can make these small powerful steps quite simple.
Why is it important? Corporations are powerful; they will not let up…they are relentless. You don’t have to move the entire human race to effect change. If the town hall meetings have proved one thing, it is that the loud, annoying, obnoxious idiots get shit going. Act like those idiots only with a more correct and educated purpose. But do not stand down, do not step aside, do not cringe, do not tolerate your opinion being denigrated or reduced by the burping, heinous fools who have shaped opinions for too long. The Powers That Be or The White Male Establishment or whatever you want to call it starts with corporate CEO’s and trickles down to the farting man on the couch. The same people who will Kitty Kat your issues and tell you to go sit on your frilly sofa, also would love to have you shut up so they can watch the bimbos on Brett Michaels Rock of Love Remember who is criticizing you with his stupid beer belly and bad breath.
Some of this commentary is brought about because I watched The Sea Shepherd episode where the whalers outran and then harpooned a whale that took twenty five minutes to die. I read the stupidest rude remarks on Facebook about the unimportance of whales and those who care but in quite different terms. I usually ignore that crap because then I write long tirades about the White Male Establishment and the Oppression of Everyone. It is a few voices that make a huge difference. It only takes a hundred letters to each senator in every state to kick some ass. You could generate ten yourself by just asking a few friends to point and click on a website that makes it easy.
One of the biggest arguments for whaling, polluting, and/or ignoring climate change is that “Saving whales” or “Saving Trees” or “Saving the Planet” is economically unsound. That it will hurt our beloved economy. Are we not fat enough? When will we be? When will the decadence and horror of our Economy First Mentality become apparent to more? By the way, I don’t think hunting is wrong or immoral in and of itself. But an overpopulated species hunting an under-populated species isn’t going to last. And it isn’t hunting that is being done, it is mass harvesting for a 6.784 billion human population and that is different.
When you get to the second half of your life, and you have pretty much raised your kids, you want to make the rest count. I don’t want to just work hard to accumulate more shit. I want to work hard so that in the end, my life counted. What is this blog then? It is a rally cry. It is cheerleading in a higher, evolved form; it is a question and an encouragement. It is a plea to those who can and to those who will to take a stand and draw a line in the sand with me.
“Polite conservationists leave no mark save the scars upon the Earth that could have been prevented had they stood their ground.” David Brower
How to be a 21st c. Activist
1. Use the internet. Sign up for Action Alerts so you can point and click letter write/send.
2. Grow a garden. I wish somebody would have told me how easy it is to grow food. I have lettuce, tomatoes and carrots for a salad everyday, and zucchini by the armloads for zucchini muffins.
3. Compost. Don’t take it too seriously. Do it wrong if you must…just throw your food in a barrel that closes tight. Toss some dirt and/or leaves on top to keep the smell down. Or do it right, read: http://Composting101.com .
4. Buy eco-friendly products. Research. Use plant based soaps, detergents and make-up. The stuff they sell at the normal stores is oil-based which is well, oil-based. Think about it.
5. Buy organic. That way food and flowers are grown without using herbicides and pesticides. Don’t let the spin prevent you from buying right. It does make a difference.
Whale oil is little used today and modern commercial whaling is for food. The primary species hunted are the Common Minke Whale and Antarctic Minke Whale, two of the smallest species of baleen whales. Recent scientific surveys estimate a population of 103,000 in the northeast Atlantic and 665,074 around Antarctica. Brazil, Argentina and South Africa argue that whale watching is a growing billion-dollar industry that provides more revenue and more equitable distribution of profits than commercial whaling from far-away developed countries. Peru, Uruguay, Australia, and New Zealand also support proposals to permanently forbid whaling South of the Equator, as Indonesia is the only country in the Southern Hemisphere with a whaling industry.
NUMBER OF WHALES KILLED BY WHALERS:
Whaling Season:
200-2001 1,015
2001-2002 1,151
2002-2003 1,322
2003-2004 1,388
2004-2005 1,324
Friday, September 11, 2009
~A Pack of Big Bears - ONE BAD MOM BLOGS - ONE BAD MOM BLOG
~A Pack of Big Bears - ONE BAD MOM BLOGS - ONE BAD MOM BLOG"Those who dwell, as scientists or laymen, among the beauties and mysteries of the earth are never alone or weary of life." Rachel Carson
Luke, Brook (fourteen) and I went with my sis TT and her daughter Sara to South Fork near Big Bear, California to camp. It was gorgeous. We were in the very back of the campground and had to hike in a bit to get right up next to Lost Creek. The campsite was huge and you couldn’t see the parking lot, and the neighboring campsites were quite far. It was dark when we got there and I felt like an eyeless worm accidentally above ground, tripping and dropping stuff while my stupid underwear rode up my butt.
We could hike to the bubbling Santa Ana River. The Santa Ana River in Orange County, CA, where it meanders through to get to the Pacific Ocean and spurts out in between Huntington Beach and Newport Beach Ca, is disgusting.
Orange County (OC) cemented it all in so there is not a tree to be seen. Nice work Orange County. Some cormorants loiter on the telephone lines that cross the river in Orange County, and a few Egrets and Herons trespass on the clean concrete occasionally to get a toxic fish or two, but that is about it for bird species much less mammals.
I suppose it would be a revelation for Orange County city planners to understand that most rivers have trees and animals and not concrete and graffiti.
However, in the mountains, the Santa Ana River is an absolutely beautiful, clean brook. It is treed, cool, and shaded, with a lightly trodden trail alongside. . As the river goes through Riverside California on its way to the OC, treated sewage water is dumped into it, but at least the river is wild and not concreted. Actual live birds and animals frequent the river.
The first night, at about 2 a.m., TT woke us all up yelling, “BEAR” and after several long minutes of struggling to get out of my North Face mummy bag, I managed to unzip the tent, while Luke fumbled around with his shorts and the brand new three-layered Eddie Bauer sleeping contraption, and I saw the damn bear. It was surreal and he was beautiful and big. I yelled “HEY” and the bear trotted off a few feet as if to mock my weakness. We all have seen bears while camping in Sequoia and Yosemite. We have all needed to chase them away and been super careful with our food, keeping it in bear boxes. But the camp host told us “Eh there aren’t any bears here.” I should clarify. It wasn’t the Camp Host but her slow and inbred son whose eyes were one inch apart. Why we listened to him I don’t know, but we did.
“There haven’t been any reports of bears in this area for ten years. We have never had an incident here in this campground. We don’t have bear boxes because we don’t need them,” he said.
Note to self, never take advice from the mentally challenged if your life depends upon it. This same guy later told us if a bear confronts us, you should get down on all fours and turn your butt to it, and he pantomimed what he meant. Starlight, TT’s sweet loving Labrador almost attacked him in that position. We chased the bear off, but Brook and Sara, then 14 and 10, were fucking terrified. Especially Sara of course because she was only ten and sensed that we adults may not protect the children if it came down to it because we would be running away too fast. I mean I had a mini heart attack myself, especially when the darn bear came right up to us to get the marshmallows off the table. Then he just chilled out around the perimeter of our campsite while we shined the light on him for about fifteen minutes, marveling and shitting bricks. I banged some pans together and he ran off, but that made it worse because then we didn’t know where he was. Now what? We took all of our food and put it in the car with visions of bears tearing cars apart to get buns and chips. I’ve seen it in Sequoia with my own eyes.
We moved our tents into a semi-circle about 2 inches from each other and went to bed. Sara and Brook shared a tent and Brook knew Sara would feel more comfortable with her mom.
“You better not ditch me Mckenzie, you better not,” Brook threatened. She had a metal pan with a spoon that she would clang regularly from inside her tent.
“I heard something behind our tent. Something just brushed the back of our tent. I heard a snuffling noise in front of our tent. A bear just walked by the door of our tent,” McKenzie would say throughout the night.
It was freaking me out. Instead of trying to calm her and say, you’re imagining things, we hopped up and shone three lights around, but didn’t find anything. We stayed up for 3 and a half hours, jumping at every silent sound, until exhausted, we fell asleep. Then in the morning, at 6 am, we hear some squirrels chipping the hell out of the morning air, and some Stellar’s Jays squawking like mad, and then a few loud thumps, I opened my back window in my tent expecting to see some cute little birdies and a view of the trees, but instead saw a huge fucking black bear, knocking the tackle box around. When he heard me, he sauntered off casually.
Everyone else got up, but being the eldest, I was too tired and felt as an elder I should sleep in and have pancakes ready for me when I got up. The trouble with that is that TT kept talking about how frightened she was by the bear and how heroically I behaved when I yelled at the bear. She put her chair right next to my open back window to talk more about my bravery. Then she left her chair to build a roaring camp-fire and designed it in such a careful way that the smoke made a trail directly to my nose. Coughing and with red eyes, me and my bravery got up and made the pancakes myself.
We had only one neighboring camper who was 200 yards off; an old guy in a hammock. He regularly hiked the Sierras and was used to this kind of thing, but at the time we didn’t know it. We kept imaging him with some Chips Ahoy on his tummy, fallen asleep after munching half the bag, and the bear peering over to get at them and accidentally cutting him in half with his thick sharp nails as he went for said delicious cookies. So we shone our multiple flash-lights on him every three minutes, but he never got up. In the morning we apologized for all of the noise and made up elaborate stories of two and three bears coming in packs throughout the night which was why we kept banging pots together repeatedly.
“No worries, tonight my grandkids will be here. I’m sure they will get you back.” And boy did they.
He was a super cool old man but his daughter was an OC gross dumb bitch that sang instead of spoke to her toddler.
“Oh she is speaking Chinese, isn’t it adorable,” she oozed.
We told her about the bear from the night before and she said, “When we went to the Caribbean, they told us there were no sharks. Duh we knew better, just like I would have known better than to believe there were no bears here. My dad taught me all about camping when I was growing up,” she said while I bit her neck with my fangs and removed her of all of her life-affirming blood. She was so campy and nature-based that she had her shiny black, brand new Mercedes detailed before she came to the dirty mountains and later washed a gallon of oil based dishwashing liquid into the stream.
Next night we ship-shaped the place and then crashed and didn’t hear a thing. I slept like a rock, but several babies cried through the night, making Luke appreciate my old and barren womb.
“I never ever want babies, they are fucked up.” he said.
“GO TO SLEEP NOW” I heard the dad say before I fell asleep.
The beastly boy delighted in the night “La la la, everything is fun,” he laughed and laughed. The Dad was getting SO pissed. “Go to sleep you little asshole.” I know he wanted to say. And the kid was having a brilliantly fun time.
The next night TT said she heard a toddler crying half the night, and then she thought she heard the muffled sound of a hand over the mouth. We laughed about that because our toddler days are over and we take great pleasure in other parents’ great misery.
It was such a great time. Brook chopped ten piles of wood and made the best fire. Luke fished on the creek and Brook Sara and I hiked along it. Without MySpace, texting, One Tree Hill or her BFFs, Brook did not expire or implode, in fact she was human and not an automaton like at home. She made eye contact and spoke full sentences. It made me wonder why we lived in the smothering suburbs. Why not live closer to nature? But my question was answered when the OC Lady walked by with neon-colored camp chairs, carrying a Nordstrom’s bag and smiling her big fake smile and I realized that you can’t leave The OC behind even when you leave The OC.
Santa Ana River: Due to Southern California's dry climate, dam control, and confiscation by local water agencies, very little water flows throughout the year. Wikipedia
OC: Orange County and all its trappings.
All four pictures above are of the Santa Ana River which is 110 miles long.
Picture 1: Santa Ana River at South Fork, RaphaelMazor on Flickr
Picture 2: Santa Ana River somewhere in Orange County, CA
Picture 3: Santa Ana River where it enters the Pacific Ocean
Picture 4: Santa Ana River at South Fork, RaphaelMazor on Flickr
Picture 5: Santa Ana River at South Fork, property for sale
Shared via AddThis
Luke, Brook (fourteen) and I went with my sis TT and her daughter Sara to South Fork near Big Bear, California to camp. It was gorgeous. We were in the very back of the campground and had to hike in a bit to get right up next to Lost Creek. The campsite was huge and you couldn’t see the parking lot, and the neighboring campsites were quite far. It was dark when we got there and I felt like an eyeless worm accidentally above ground, tripping and dropping stuff while my stupid underwear rode up my butt.
We could hike to the bubbling Santa Ana River. The Santa Ana River in Orange County, CA, where it meanders through to get to the Pacific Ocean and spurts out in between Huntington Beach and Newport Beach Ca, is disgusting.
Orange County (OC) cemented it all in so there is not a tree to be seen. Nice work Orange County. Some cormorants loiter on the telephone lines that cross the river in Orange County, and a few Egrets and Herons trespass on the clean concrete occasionally to get a toxic fish or two, but that is about it for bird species much less mammals.
I suppose it would be a revelation for Orange County city planners to understand that most rivers have trees and animals and not concrete and graffiti.
However, in the mountains, the Santa Ana River is an absolutely beautiful, clean brook. It is treed, cool, and shaded, with a lightly trodden trail alongside. . As the river goes through Riverside California on its way to the OC, treated sewage water is dumped into it, but at least the river is wild and not concreted. Actual live birds and animals frequent the river.
The first night, at about 2 a.m., TT woke us all up yelling, “BEAR” and after several long minutes of struggling to get out of my North Face mummy bag, I managed to unzip the tent, while Luke fumbled around with his shorts and the brand new three-layered Eddie Bauer sleeping contraption, and I saw the damn bear. It was surreal and he was beautiful and big. I yelled “HEY” and the bear trotted off a few feet as if to mock my weakness. We all have seen bears while camping in Sequoia and Yosemite. We have all needed to chase them away and been super careful with our food, keeping it in bear boxes. But the camp host told us “Eh there aren’t any bears here.” I should clarify. It wasn’t the Camp Host but her slow and inbred son whose eyes were one inch apart. Why we listened to him I don’t know, but we did.
“There haven’t been any reports of bears in this area for ten years. We have never had an incident here in this campground. We don’t have bear boxes because we don’t need them,” he said.
Note to self, never take advice from the mentally challenged if your life depends upon it. This same guy later told us if a bear confronts us, you should get down on all fours and turn your butt to it, and he pantomimed what he meant. Starlight, TT’s sweet loving Labrador almost attacked him in that position. We chased the bear off, but Brook and Sara, then 14 and 10, were fucking terrified. Especially Sara of course because she was only ten and sensed that we adults may not protect the children if it came down to it because we would be running away too fast. I mean I had a mini heart attack myself, especially when the darn bear came right up to us to get the marshmallows off the table. Then he just chilled out around the perimeter of our campsite while we shined the light on him for about fifteen minutes, marveling and shitting bricks. I banged some pans together and he ran off, but that made it worse because then we didn’t know where he was. Now what? We took all of our food and put it in the car with visions of bears tearing cars apart to get buns and chips. I’ve seen it in Sequoia with my own eyes.
We moved our tents into a semi-circle about 2 inches from each other and went to bed. Sara and Brook shared a tent and Brook knew Sara would feel more comfortable with her mom.
“You better not ditch me Mckenzie, you better not,” Brook threatened. She had a metal pan with a spoon that she would clang regularly from inside her tent.
“I heard something behind our tent. Something just brushed the back of our tent. I heard a snuffling noise in front of our tent. A bear just walked by the door of our tent,” McKenzie would say throughout the night.
It was freaking me out. Instead of trying to calm her and say, you’re imagining things, we hopped up and shone three lights around, but didn’t find anything. We stayed up for 3 and a half hours, jumping at every silent sound, until exhausted, we fell asleep. Then in the morning, at 6 am, we hear some squirrels chipping the hell out of the morning air, and some Stellar’s Jays squawking like mad, and then a few loud thumps, I opened my back window in my tent expecting to see some cute little birdies and a view of the trees, but instead saw a huge fucking black bear, knocking the tackle box around. When he heard me, he sauntered off casually.
Everyone else got up, but being the eldest, I was too tired and felt as an elder I should sleep in and have pancakes ready for me when I got up. The trouble with that is that TT kept talking about how frightened she was by the bear and how heroically I behaved when I yelled at the bear. She put her chair right next to my open back window to talk more about my bravery. Then she left her chair to build a roaring camp-fire and designed it in such a careful way that the smoke made a trail directly to my nose. Coughing and with red eyes, me and my bravery got up and made the pancakes myself.
We had only one neighboring camper who was 200 yards off; an old guy in a hammock. He regularly hiked the Sierras and was used to this kind of thing, but at the time we didn’t know it. We kept imaging him with some Chips Ahoy on his tummy, fallen asleep after munching half the bag, and the bear peering over to get at them and accidentally cutting him in half with his thick sharp nails as he went for said delicious cookies. So we shone our multiple flash-lights on him every three minutes, but he never got up. In the morning we apologized for all of the noise and made up elaborate stories of two and three bears coming in packs throughout the night which was why we kept banging pots together repeatedly.
“No worries, tonight my grandkids will be here. I’m sure they will get you back.” And boy did they.
He was a super cool old man but his daughter was an OC gross dumb bitch that sang instead of spoke to her toddler.
“Oh she is speaking Chinese, isn’t it adorable,” she oozed.
We told her about the bear from the night before and she said, “When we went to the Caribbean, they told us there were no sharks. Duh we knew better, just like I would have known better than to believe there were no bears here. My dad taught me all about camping when I was growing up,” she said while I bit her neck with my fangs and removed her of all of her life-affirming blood. She was so campy and nature-based that she had her shiny black, brand new Mercedes detailed before she came to the dirty mountains and later washed a gallon of oil based dishwashing liquid into the stream.
Next night we ship-shaped the place and then crashed and didn’t hear a thing. I slept like a rock, but several babies cried through the night, making Luke appreciate my old and barren womb.
“I never ever want babies, they are fucked up.” he said.
“GO TO SLEEP NOW” I heard the dad say before I fell asleep.
The beastly boy delighted in the night “La la la, everything is fun,” he laughed and laughed. The Dad was getting SO pissed. “Go to sleep you little asshole.” I know he wanted to say. And the kid was having a brilliantly fun time.
The next night TT said she heard a toddler crying half the night, and then she thought she heard the muffled sound of a hand over the mouth. We laughed about that because our toddler days are over and we take great pleasure in other parents’ great misery.
It was such a great time. Brook chopped ten piles of wood and made the best fire. Luke fished on the creek and Brook Sara and I hiked along it. Without MySpace, texting, One Tree Hill or her BFFs, Brook did not expire or implode, in fact she was human and not an automaton like at home. She made eye contact and spoke full sentences. It made me wonder why we lived in the smothering suburbs. Why not live closer to nature? But my question was answered when the OC Lady walked by with neon-colored camp chairs, carrying a Nordstrom’s bag and smiling her big fake smile and I realized that you can’t leave The OC behind even when you leave The OC.
Santa Ana River: Due to Southern California's dry climate, dam control, and confiscation by local water agencies, very little water flows throughout the year. Wikipedia
OC: Orange County and all its trappings.
All four pictures above are of the Santa Ana River which is 110 miles long.
Picture 1: Santa Ana River at South Fork, RaphaelMazor on Flickr
Picture 2: Santa Ana River somewhere in Orange County, CA
Picture 3: Santa Ana River where it enters the Pacific Ocean
Picture 4: Santa Ana River at South Fork, RaphaelMazor on Flickr
Picture 5: Santa Ana River at South Fork, property for sale
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