Saturday, August 27, 2011

A Brief Journey… I’m Absolutely Unsure


     It’s a bitch to dump 3 cups of coffee on any given morning.  
The action rubs me the wrong way on so many levels… 
First off, I buy over-priced Peet’s as it is, and prepare it the same way I have for over 17 years; individual cone filter.  I had to dump it not once, not twice but three times yesterday morning because the taste was quite wrong and I was both incoherent and baffled.  
Dumping my Major Dickason is like dumping glasses of Tangueray… 
My pocketbook says, “Ouch!”  So you know damn well, it wasn’t workin for me.  
Secondly, this action hits hard on my psyche.  Let’s just say various mood swings hit with a vengeance.  You see, my first thought when I open these baby blues each morning is “Coffee.”   It happens to be my second thought also.  When it doesn’t happen, I become a female Godzilla on the loose in Monterey County in a matter of seconds. 
     The first dump, I blamed my partner for leaving the bag of Peet’s opened and unsealed for a couple of days.  The second dump, I blamed Safeway for selling me possibly old and most likely rancid sugar and the third dumping…I blamed the entire Peet’s corporation.   
By the time I was ready to crawl out of my skin, I noticed the label on the Half n Half carton: 
Fat Free.
Guilty.  I'M the a@*#!hole who purchased the f@#*!ing Fat Free Half n Half the day before.
This may appear minor to most of you; especially you green tea drinkers or purists who are satisfied mixing hot water with lemon in the morning to start your day with a smile, but for me, a day without Peet’s Major Dic and REAL Half n Half is like a day without sunshine.
     I decided to do some investigating... just how do they make Half n Half  “fat free"?
Yawn. Yawn. It’s pretty pathetic actually…
Well, it seems they substitute the fat from cream with nonfat milk and corn syrup solids for thickening.  And here’s the real scam-it’s NOT less calories than the real McCoy!  Drinking this crap fills your mouth with a chemical-like flavor that’s hard to forget.  You’re still getting the same number of calories; just sugar calories not fat calories and you get to become "Bitch For A Day"  because you end up drinking  absolutely no coffee.
Fat Free Half n Half is an oxymoron.  End of story.
The word, Oxymoron, by the way, is a Greek term derived from oxy ("sharp") and moros ("dull"). Thus, the word oxymoron is itself an oxymoron.
Like you, I tend to have my personal favorites…
Decent trailer park
Or this phrase:
“Let's just be honest, you've got as much of a chance as opportunity trailer park.”

And when you live in a park, you speak in daily oxymoron-tongue…

This thing builds steam like a run away train!

“This is a fine mess you’ve got me into.” Or “he dun got himself flat busted last night.”
“When Kimmie goes out to listen to country music, she wears her dress pants and gets herself dead drunk.”
“Hey, hun, we got any more of that dry gin?” or “Fred’s neighbor is a jailbird and used to belong to the Hell’s Angels…’course his cousin’s a functioning alcoholic who freeloads in the park and poses as a guest resident.”
“Ya know, Space 21, that horribly decent one with all them kids… she’s goin on a Fresno Vacation if the kids all behave and she don’t have to give ‘em a good beating first.”

Mean Mary…Dang she's purty too.

A few more…

Meaningful overnight relationship, extra large shrimp and Vacation Bible School.

And of course, deliver me from evil, but I must mention these:
Sanitary landfill, slightly pregnant, Bipartisan cooperation, Democratic Party, and Peace Keeper Missile.

     I’ve been exhausted all day without my caffeine.  Walking around in some daze that can’t even be cured with 3 generic Advil.  Some days are just like that,
I suppose.   But rather than fight it, I decided to just go with it, and for most of us, that means, staying in jammies all day and reading some good shit online.
Speaking of good shit,  may I suggest you check out the one and only, very talented Pamela Ribon.  Pamela is a TV writer and best-selling novelist who I am wishin and hopin I get the chance to meet at the Austin Film Festival in October. 


www.pamie.com


Yep, I’m heading to Austin in October and I am so ‘effin excited I can barely stay in my saddle!  I’ve been reading ‘til my eyes feel like sheets of medium-coarse sandpaper.
I already purchased an AFF hat.  Here’s the cool digs I’ll be staying at.

Looks a little phallic, I know, but check out the ‘50’s pool!  It’s located in downtown Austin in the eclectic, quirky part (Are there any parts of Austin that aren’t eclectic and quirky?) I’m in walking distance of the greenbelt, museums, music halls, coffeehouses that use real Half n Half, and of course, the festival.

I’ll keep y’all abreast of what’s to come.  I’ll be daily blogging from Austin for your reading pleasure.

While planning Austin and my unique approach while there, I’ve also been working on various entrepreneur-type plans, since that seems the best course for a girl like me right now... Many frown at my resume’s employment history which states Trailer Park Manager under my professional experience but I have some very impressive credentials. So, I‘ve decided to venture out and be my own boss.  Why the hell not?!
In looking at various newspapers and publications that I might want to advertise my upcoming workshops and events in, I came across this classified ad.    It isn’t exactly an oxymoron, but it is somewhat disturbing.  I wonder if the dude gets much business.  I also wonder what The Sierra Club and Surfrider Foundation would have to say about it…

TRASH IT BY THE SEA
Hauling is my calling.  Yard Waste and household debris.  Garage and total house cleanouts.  Gardeners welcome. Call Michael anytime.

Have a cautiously optimistic weekday!
~tpg

Monday, August 22, 2011

Room 3016A


     There are many ‘treats’ on highway 505 and “The 5.”  Treats like gross, 
bare-bellied men 
driving semi-trucks who stare down at female drivers as they pass on their left.  
A particular one I passed had a painted message on the back of his rig: 
“Ladies It’s a long road and I get lonely.  Give me a look.”
I know he was compensating for his small cock with that big-ass truck, 
but I did in fact
give him a look anyway… Just as I passed him, and as his tongue was wagging, 
I gave him the most ‘deliberate bird’ that’s flied off these hands in years.
     Other ‘treats’ include miles and miles and more extended miles of dead rolling hillsides the color of wheat, too many cattle crammed into not enough tiny stalls, and litter. The cars that speed by have bumper stickers that make my eyelashes curl but I don’t give a damn I just turn up the volume and keep on driving.  The song on the radio is one of my favs: “It’s the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine…”
     I headed to Redding CA last week, which is a lot like Prunedale CA, 
only bigger. 
The folks that reside in “Reddin” are most likely 'kin' to the folks that reside at the trailer park…
every damn one of them.  The hospital lobby is proof. It’s reminiscent of the park ‘club house’ where there are a bunch of donated books and magazines; 
like Gun World and the Jehovah’s Witness Watchtowers.  
(Do you all remember when our part-time worker at the park was cleaning the laundry room/club house and found the toilet clogged with pages from a paperback novel because the facility out of toilet paper?)
Once inside Shasta Regional Medical Center lobby, I head straight for the elevator.


Edweirdo before the Hospital Escapades
     My third-removed-twice-baked-step-father-in-law, who we lovingly call “Edweirdo” has been in and out of the hospital 3 times in the past 14 days and as of the time of this writing, he's home.
But while there, we were easily able to detect his recovering when he finally returned to his old self: bossing us around, directing us on hundred things including, but not limited to, how to fold a sheet, fluff a pillow, clear a table, pour him water and turn on a television.  He ‘directs’ in a voice that needs to be brought down a volume or two, and he somehow misplaced words like ”please” 
and “thank you.”
We do love Ed, though. We just prayed regularly that, in times like these, he could have more Vicodin.
     When he was in the 1st time, he gave us all quite a scare.  He was out of it, so he was pretty unaware of the person having a fit in the bed next to him…
Softly the man began,
“Help… help… Somebody help me…Bathroom…bathroom…I have to go to the
bathroom…help…”
Then the crescendo,
“BATHROOM!...BATHROOM!...HELP!... SOMEBODY HELP ME!...HELP!...
PEE!... PEE!...
I HAVE TO GO TO THE FUCKING BATHROOM!”
Then, he put his right thumb and middle finger in his mouth and whistled a SCREECH that would make a bird stop and take notice…
3 nurses came running. 
“BITCH… BITCH… BITCH.” He said pointing at each one individually.
     Then there was the 2nd time Edweirdo went in.  His roommate that time was just as special.  His name was Benjamin Wolff…W O L F F and he spelled it for us in the same sentence that he told us he had just had his toes cut off.  He was extremely disgruntled by the service he was receiving and gave a blow by blow detailed account of the letter to the editor that he was going to write the minute he got home.  He wanted out, there was no denying, but they couldn’t release him until Medicare approved the vibrator machine for his feet.  After he finished abusing all the nurses, he started in on his wife, who of course, like in a fairy tale, was as sweet as molasses.
Screaming at all of them, “YOU’RE NOT LISTENING TO ME!”
Finally my aunt-in-law couldn’t stand it any more and basically lost it.  She whipped back the curtain divide and told him to “KNOCK IT OFF!” then without a breath, “If I was your wife I'd divorce your ass.” Then she whipped back the curtain and stormed out of the room.
     Ed ended up in the same room the 3rd time as the 2nd:  Room 3016A.  Seems one of the things he’d acquired is Gout and they sent in the dietician to talk nutrition with him.
You need to stay away from organ meats.” She began.  My mother-in-law interjected, “He doesn’t really like them; never has eaten any liver, heart, kidney.” 
Ed’s face seemed perplexed. 
The dietician continued...“Good.  He can’t have any organ meats; also bacon, shellfish, cod, gravies…”
Ed still looked perplexed and finally, “Now, why can’t I eat meats from Oregon?” 
he asked.
True story.  And really it kind of sums up his whole personality in a nutshell.
     Lots of activity in Room 3016A…felt like Barnum Bailey without the animals; conversations that led to nowhere, nervous laughter, screaming dudes with untied hospital gowns.  Even my partner’s mom, out of the blue, in kind of an understandable delirium recited, “Peter Piper Picked a Peck of Pickled Peppers…” 
which gave us all reason for pause, including Ed.
The day Ed was released to go home, my aunt-in-law came in wearing a tee-shirt that had a logo of an over-sized Martini glass and the motto for 
Dick’s Bar and Grill:
       Dick’s
So Few Richards
So Many Dicks
I knew at that point it was going to be a long week.
But the good news is he’s home and on the mend!  Ed’s sole motivation to recover is so that he can return to Win River Casino located 5 minutes from his house. 
Praise the Lord and praise the home health care nurse that calls him “Eddy” and tells him “What a good boy he is.”
You can see why cocktail hour began at noon last week.

Well, as they say, “It’s 5:00 o’clock somewhere.”
~tpg

Sunday, August 14, 2011

Express Yourself!


I lost my blog virginity October 15, 2010.  
For years I would send out these weekly “friendship emails” to about 100 “lucky” friends; most of whom, to this day, I have no idea if they read or deleted.  Then someone said to me, “Why do you blog instead of write these sweet little emails…it’s 2010 for god’s sake!” 
Friendship emails felt safe.  The term exudes safety, connection, peace, love, daisies and all that good stuff.  It sings out in a Jackie Deshannon kinda way, “What the World Needs Now is Love Sweet Love…


Who can forget Jackie’s “Put a little Love in your Heart” and “Reason to Believe” If you think about it, you and I have a lot in common with Jackie in that we are still blogging our hearts out, singing our hearts out and waving those anti-war signs, Bring Our Troops Home signs, and Peace signs every chance we get. 



I guess, though, it saddens me to think that indeed it takes more than “every chance we get.” It takes more than plastering our cars with bumper stickers or hanging a sign in our trailer windows to let the residents know who we really are and how we really feel.  It’s takes courage.  Plain and simple; undiluted courage and sometimes it’s difficult to find.
That’s why Jackie sang about it.  That’s why Diego painted about it.  That’s why Gwendolyn Brooks, the first black author to win the Pulitzer Prize, wrote about it.
Each of us, in our own comfortable art forms or personal methods, putting it out there in each other’s face, lest we not forget the uncomfortable subjects of the day.  This is one of Gwendolyn Brooks’ most unforgettable poems and one of my favorites:

The Mother
Abortions will not let you forget.
You remember the children you got that you did not get,   
The damp small pulps with a little or with no hair,   
The singers and workers that never handled the air.   
You will never neglect or beat
Them, or silence or buy with a sweet.
You will never wind up the sucking-thumb
Or scuttle off ghosts that come.
You will never leave them, controlling your luscious sigh,   
Return for a snack of them, with gobbling mother-eye.

I have heard in the voices of the wind the voices of my dim killed children.
I have contracted. I have eased
My dim dears at the breasts they could never suck.
I have said, Sweets, if I sinned, if I seized
Your luck
And your lives from your unfinished reach,
If I stole your births and your names,
Your straight baby tears and your games,
Your stilted or lovely loves, your tumults, your marriages, aches, and your deaths,
If I poisoned the beginnings of your breaths,
Believe that even in my deliberateness I was not deliberate.   
Though why should I whine,
Whine that the crime was other than mine? —
Since anyhow you are dead.
Or rather, or instead,
You were never made.
But that too, I am afraid,
Is faulty: oh, what shall I say, how is the truth to be said?   
You were born, you had body, you died.
It is just that you never giggled or planned or cried.

Believe me, I loved you all.
Believe me, I knew you, though faintly, and I loved, I loved you
All.



The bottom line for me is two-fold:  Blogging, writing poetry, shorts, memoir, friendship emails provides me a tool of expression like no other. Equally, it helps me stay connected to other human beings. 
And then, of course, there are the endless paragraphs about the trailer park. 
Those always get the most response.  Well, actually it was about fifty-fifty;
half the recipients dig the antics of an overlooked community of misfits, and the other half of my willing readers want to be showered with warm, hopeful fuzzies like Deshannon sang about.  I have to believe there is also a small handful that wants to be shaked, rattled and slapped into thinking about the state of our government, the political climate of our nation and of our world and the imbalance of justice there in. 
Perhaps that’s a figment of my crazy imagination.
I blog because I blog…because I have an unexplainable need to and there’s no paycheck waiting for me at the end of the day. There’s no award, certificate or medal with the inscription “Trailer Park Girl Blogger 2011 Award.  I blog because the world is vast, complicated and comical.  I write because I am small, but not so small that I don’t take notice.  I write because my smallness and my own surroundings are valuable.
And I now read other blogs and there are some damn good ones out there!
I’ve also recently become a member of Red Room.  It’s a very cool place where writers meet; big name writers and small girls like me.  You can find my link to the left of this blog and there it will stay. You can also check it out right now! 

Better yet, just wander at www.redroom.com a bit.  You’ll be glad you did.  I have posted a couple of my own poems which I think might surprise some of you…a trailer park girl who 
is “in the closet” about her poet title. 

No one should be in any closet now should they?  I mean if we can find that undiluted courage, then we can find the strength and nothing can stop any of us!  As a distant pal once said, 
"Burn all closets down to the ground!" (But what about my trousseaux?)
Gustave Courbet, never in any closet with regard to his paintings and though not always welcomed by his peeps, found courage to paint his truths; the good, the bad, and the ugly truths as he saw them.
This is what he said in the fifth decade of his life…


     I am fifty years old and I have always lived in freedom; let me end my life free; when I am dead let this be said of me:  He belonged to no school, to no church, to no institution, to no academy, least of all to any régime except the régime of liberty.”  ~Gustave Courbet

I hear you Gustave…across the sky and over the years that are now between us, and I thank you for your expressions, which are gifts to humanity…gifts that each of us possess and attempt to express daily using our own personal methods.
~tpg

Friday, August 12, 2011

A Hodgepodge Sprinkled With Moral Cohones


Hi my name is Valerie, I’m a pistachio addict and my life has become unmanageable.  
My girl has to actually hide them behind the jars of curry sauce and cans of minced chicken so that I don’t inhale them and eventually turn into one.  My partner’s a real keeper.  
For kicks we watch HGTV House Hunters International because it’s cheaper than two plane tickets. We get excited when Netflix arrives with the latest DVD of Six Feet Under;
She and I make money by buying trash and “upcycling” it to treasures.
It’s becoming a real money maker; a regular “Sanford and Son” ‘cept it’s
“Girl and Girlfriend” and we get a thrill when we find a dresser for 5 bucks and sell it for 20, 
or a pair of Banana Republic Jeans, slim-straightleg, for fifty cents and upcycle them to 4 bucks.  
It’s added income and in today’s world, it’s an addition that equates eat out on Fridays…
This morning my partner was spray painting an aluminum patio table, which led to quite the hiccup.
Here’s Wen after a minor entanglement with a can of black spray paint:



At first I thought she was impersonating Brian Wilson, but no.
She was screaming for my assistance but all I could do was fumble around for my camera, 
all the while laughing my ass off.  Now I know that’s lacking big time in sensitivity, but the girl is always playing around and I thought this time was no different.  

Here’s Wen teaching an alternative dive class; one that doesn’t incorporate the solid techniques and practices that have stood the test of time like putting your arms together above your head in an arrow formation, bend at the waist, dart smoothly forward and out into the water.   
All traditional methods of instruction are thrown out the window for the simple 
“F^&*!#@ -It- Just-Jump-In Approach: 



Of course who could forget the 2011 Hula Hoop Competition:




…Or the talent show at the 4th Annual Women’s Weekend in Yosemite where my partner, 
wearing mascara, lip gloss and cotton dress, entered alongside her “Been Making Memories Since the Eighties Pal” and the two played a mean badminton while singing I Love Rock-n-Roll because Wen couldn’t remember Joan Jett lyrics:





We’re  quite a pair, she and I, especially when a camera is involved.  The difference, and you will see it right away, is that I’m NOT joking around:


 Ahh yes… remember them? Those bastards who have yet to substantially pay for the Deepwater Horizon oil spill that continually poured into the gulf for 3 months non-stop, uninterrupted by any of the national or international powers that be. 
Yesiree, 3 months and it’s the spill that just keeps on giving… 
thousands of fishermen and their families still out of work, thousands of animals and sea life dead or dying from the black gold and zero media coverage today.  Zilch.  
Where are NBC, ABC, CNN and dare I say FOX with a friendly update?


It takes cohones of steel to speak up to the big money testosteronites at BP.   
It takes moral cohones to not kick a tax-paying gay man when he's down; a man who has been the sole caregiver to his partner of almost 20 years who’s battling AIDS...kick him out of the USA because their partnership isn’t recognized; though, the men married in Massachusetts 7 years ago.    


This man has neither steel nor moral cohones:



I’ll drink to that and to this too:

Gopher Killing Machine Elston 400 - $1500 (Carmel Valley)

I love these kinds of ads on Craigslist.  They keep me smiling and keep things in perspective.  And I need it.  Perspective.  Here’s the machine in case you doubted its beauty:



In conclusion, I want to talk about Marie Antoinette.  No special reason and definitely no flow, but hey, it’s a hodgepodge tonight.  I must confess I have a weird, historical crush on her 
and have for years.  We know she's got a shaky reputation, but Marie had a point with the whole "Let them eat cake" idea.  I mean, if someone was like,  "You have a choice of this piece of bread or this piece of double-layer pumpkin cheesecake," what peasant in their right mind would choose the bread?  Now, obviously I’m not saying that one could live on double-layer pumpkin cheesecake. You would need to balance it out. Maybe mix in some German chocolate cake, along with some caramel cream gateau, and possibly a lemon Bundt with raspberry rhubarb glaze and of course, pistachios.  But you get the idea. 
But truthfully, Marie didn’t say it.  Well, not exactly.  It’s mere rumor that Antoinette on the eve of the revolution upon hearing her people were starving and had no bread responded, "Let them eat cake!”  The misunderstood issue is this:
qu’ils mangent de la brioche” does not translate to “Let them eat cake,” but rather brioche is a type of sweet bun.  Secondly, it wasn’t Marie but in fact, Maria Therese of Spain, wife of Louis XIV, who said it 100 years prior! 
But who gives a damn at this point?
Don't viva la revolucion. Viva la cake! 
And for Christ sake, hold steadfast to your moral cohones this week!


 ~tpg  ;) wink 

Sunday, August 7, 2011

Everyday People


So a couple weekends ago, I visited a coffeehouse off the beaten path,
next to old, broken docks that were covered in tattered nets and rusting buoys.  There the fishermen get up before the rooster crows and head out
into a thick fog blanket to trap crab.
Inside the coffeehouse, there was this man, obviously “a local” shooting the breeze with the young woman behind the counter.
I’m retired so I don’t give a goddamn hoot about anything...”   
I was eavesdropping and heard him say.
     “…Wake up in the morning and shoot doves for the helluva it…Man, it’s crowded in here this morning…no parking spaces left…had to drive my truck, 
but next time I’ll ride the motorcycle.”  From his babble, it became crystal clear that he wasn’t. 
     “You the boss?” he barked out at the young twig who had now planted herself behind the espresso machine patiently hoping he’d just order a damn latte.
When she replies in a soft-spoken tongue,  “No, my dad is.” He starts in on a litany about his own dad being the boss of his life…
     ”…Made me work for a living, unlike most of the indigent, illegitimates running around California these days…”   Twiggy smiles politely and continues steaming the 2% milk.


The coffeehouse scene is a lot like the trailer park scene.  I know them both well.
I know this because I managed and owned 2 coffeehouses in my lifetime and I’m probably crazy enough to own another if the opportunity presented itself.  I spent about the same number of years grinding beans and slinging mochas as I did collecting rent checks and cleaning up sewage from the front of mobiles.
The characters that enter through the front door of a coffeehouse are almost as memorable as their stories; told and untold.

There’s the man with the size 52-waist wearing a blue toucan print shirt the size of Canada. His hair is slicked back pompadour style and his jeans are rolled to slightly below his knees.  He orders 4 Bear Claws and a medium milk.  He sings Van Morrison out loud, off-key.

Elaine is perfectly happy as the greeter; “official” only to herself.
She knows about the owner, the owner’s daughter, the pastries, the caramelized onion quiche, and the apple pie, which are her favorites and both “to die for.”
She tells me her life story, in complete detail and rapid runonsentences,
as if she’s reading me the first draft of her memoir. 
She doesn’t miss a beat, saying “Good morning” to every single person who stumbles in the little shop.   As she talks, she arranges the chairs and offers to mop up some spilt half-n-half.  
Elaine is proud to tell me she’s read every single one of Janet Evanovich’s books,
in order, calling it her “addiction.”  She is a fantastic “multi-tasker” as she continues telling me about her mother, her daughter and her years while traveling cross-country with her “ex”, while doing a crossword puzzle, greeting customers and skimming the last paragraph of Chapter 13.


Every morning, Elaine arrives at 5:30.  It’s her routine, and although she says she’s happy and her life’s perfect, there is a certain sadness in Elaine’s eyes.

Space 28’s “addiction” was Judge Judy, Dr. Phil and America’s Most Wanted; a trio that went well with Hot Cheetos and a Dr. Pepper.   I know this because her set was so damn loud I had to turn up Pandora just to ease my mind and fill my head with the Goddess music of Tina Malia. 
Space 28 shared with me the many painful details of her divorce, her doctor putting her on Paxil, then Zoloft, and finally Elavil which seemed to work, her kid getting an abortion before she turned 17, losing her own virginity at a “God-forsaken age”… all in the first 15 minutes of our introduction while the moving company was still unloading her belongings in her carport.
As she grew comfortable to trailer living, she’d make Costco runs with space 30; buying ground beef and frozen hash browns in bulk and splitting
the cost “down the middle.

I ran into Mrs. Beane, space 9, at the library the other morning.  She seemed distant and her face had that look of “I know I know you from somewhere but…” 
I asked her how she and her husband were getting along and she informed me he was “declining rapidly and some days are better than others…”

That got me thinking…Some days ARE better than others; for Mr. Beane, 
for Elaine, for Space 28 and for the man who gets up early to shoot doves.  
Some days are better than others for you and me too. 
And don’t ya know it, but today’s a pretty good one! 
In each of us (no matter where we take off our boots) there is the capacity to recognize all that we have, and all that we are, at any given moment.  
I follow Yoko Ono on Twitter and I suppose the reason is clear:
I hunger for her simplicity.  I never gave her a second look years back;
she, always riding in the shadow of her husband, yet now, every morning I go to yokono on Twitter, rather than Quote Garden, for my morning inspiration. 
She’s always there, never failing me,
with words like:               dream             grow           dance

And addictive mantras like:
   
"Don't be afraid to go out on a limb, for that's where the fruit is..."

I get the sense, she’s just everyday people.
I get the sense, we are all just swimming to the other side together.
May today’s writing, inspire you to take notice, to go out on that limb, to taste all the fruit.
~tpg










Tuesday, August 2, 2011

Bless Her Heart

I actually wish I could take credit for founding the organization called 
Ladies United for the Preservation of Endangered Cocktails, but low and behold, I cannot.  Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, all of you know damn well, I’m a “house-gin” kinda girl; 
give me a bottle of Gordon’s or Booth and a detailed septic story and Ima (Texas talk for the contraction I’m a) happy girl, but tonight’s the night and it’s something special.
Something Old, Something New
I just told my partner I was looking to have two cocktails; something classic and something newfangled.  For the classic, I choose an Old Cuban, a rum refresco with lightly muddled mint in the base of shaker (just to bruise) and for the newfangled, an Old Brazilian, a sugary pleasure with cachaca that will knocka your socks off, which in my “lengua de cocktail” poetic verbiage, leads to pompous, erratic babbling… which then takes a sharp turn to the corner of Blender and Ice… at which moment the ingredients knocka my trailer park girly ass down flat on the linoleum.  Speaking of asses…

I broke the 55-mph law to catch a side-view glimpse of a bumper sticker plastered on the rear window of a Dodge Dakota today.  Next to the words, I saw Obama’s face smiling like a cat that just got lucky in the Koi pond. The sticker read:
Does this Ass make my truck look too fat  
Of course, my sticker would only contain one small edit:



Oh, for the love of language!
Language is a cool, refreshing lemon-lime popsicle and I can’t lick it enough, especially when it’s hot outside.  This past week we had a friend visit from the Land of Hot: the country that borders the United States and Mexico…
the country known as Texas.
I learned a thing or two from my pal that y’all gotta realize is significant and forever and ever ever-lasting, and Ima gunna tell ya, there’s an entirely different language; an entirely different spoken word down thar and it grows on ya when ya spend a week with such a lovely Yellow Rose whose knowledge of history and cultures, and her love of language, is stronger than the toughest, biggest steer or the darkest, Shiner Bock Beer whose slogan is COME AND TAKE IT.  
Both steer and brewery(Officially known as Spoetzl Brewery or the little brewery down thar) are within spittin distance of her little yellow hobbit house on Rural Lane.   Shiner Bock is Texas beer...hands down.   Ima  gunna shoot my wad at the brewery and Ima not goin home until I say so.  No soap.

“the little brewery in Shiner”









So my friend brought me a Shiner Bock wind chime:



…and a Shiner Blonde tee-shirt:



With a pal like her, who needs Friends Anonymous?  The population in Shiner is 2,007 and the Shiner Brewery is their claim to fame; that and the fact that Shiner is only 178 miles from Crawford. 



yelp reviews



“…Second stop, Shiner Brewery.  It was spring.  We drank with 5 older guys there, some in cowboy hats, then ate our sandwiches on a grassy hill overlooking the brewery…

We sang songs on the way back.”


In Tejas, as mis amigos across the border call it, if you gossip about your neighbor, simply make sure you insert “Bless her heart” at the appropriate time in the gossip sentence:  “Y’all know Leslie, who had the affair with the mechanic down in Huntsville, bless her heart, well, 
she's such a controlling, vindictive woman, especially when it comes to her kids, but bless her heart, can you blame her?” 

I learned so many damn sayings that I can use both in the park and out in the real world. Things like:
That dog don’t hunt” and “ No soap.” and “First rattle out of the box.” And let me just say 
these are sure to come in handy.

When I was 9 years old, my mother and I would shop at the market on Fifth and South A which is now called La Reina Mercado but I can’t recall the name in the ‘60’s, but anyway, when we got to the checkout stand she’d say, “Well, we’d better get out of here because we’ve shot our wad.”  I went to the fourth grade repeating that and the first time I said it to the group of popular kids, they laughed in my face so hard.  It was then and there I had my first anatomy lesson about the male penis.

Here's an example of Texasisms and Slangs  out of Rice University…

coke 

This may be confusing, but in Texas "coke" can be a general term to refer to any kind of soft drink.  It doesn't just refer to Coca-Cola (which is also called "Coke" here).  Here is a sample conversation at a restaurant:

Waitress: What would you like to drink?
Person: I'd like a coke please
Waitress: What kind would you like?  We have Coke, Sprite, Dr. Pepper, 
7-Up, Orange Crush, Pepsi… 
Person: I'll have a Pepsi.


I have to say, when I began writing this blog, I had a plan and that plan included a beginning, middle and end; complete with details but first rattle out of the box, I have no damn idea 
what happened!
I think the moral of the story is this:
To be sitting and doing nothing, you must be sitting very high up.

 Appreshate y'all from high in the saddle and loving every one of you rascals!

~tpg