2 posts tagged “neighborhood stuff”

I realized that I started this blog so that people could know what I was up to, but I haven't really posted anything about my life.  So, here you go.

I've been rocking out to Wanda Jackson all day long, mostly Fujiyama Mama with a couple repeats of Let's Have a Party and Riot in Cell Block #9 just for variety's sake.

Well, you can talk about me, say that I'm mean,
I'll blow your head off, baby, with nitroglicerine
'cause I'm a Fujiyama Mama and I'm just about to blow my top
Fujiyama-yama, Fujiyama
And when I start erupting ain't nobody gonna make me stop
 --Wanda Jackson, Fujiyama Mama

This morning I filled out more applications and sent out more resumes--one for RV sales, which lets you know just how desperate I am.

I'm wearing denim capris and a striped green tank-top with an old-school tattoo detail near the hem.  It's a rose surrounded by two swallows, with a banner that says "Serenity."  I really like the look of traditional tattoos and think I'll maybe do something like that for my next one.

I smell very fruity, wearing Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab's "Jester."  It's huckleberry, red currant, and neroli.  I don't think it's one that I'll buy a 5ml of, but the imp is nice to have around when it's hot and I want to smell kinda sweet and refreshing.

I had a doctor's appointment (read therapy) around 11, then went through the McDonald's drive-thru for lunch.  Their Asian chicken salad is OK, but it's overpriced, and I didn't really like the chicken.  The large Diet Coke hit the spot, though.

When I got home, I did some more research on WWI for that 1930s story I'm working on.  Of course the war stuff is just background, but I'm fascinated with and horrified by life in the trenches.  I got a great book from the library called A Wild Kind of Boldness.  I love doing all this research on Chicago.  It's a city I could definitely live in, except for that whole "winter" thing.

Unexpectedly, one of my very best sources of research material has been my neighbor, Ruth (she's also part of the Sunday morning bagel group).  She grew up in Minnesota, but went to Chicago a lot to visit relatives--she even remembers going to the World's Fair of '33, which is the year my story's set.  I think she's kind of amused when I ask her to describe things like the trolly that took you up to the Avenue of Flags and what kind of hats the women were wearing.

I got a few paragraphs written, and was kind of stuck when I heard Ghita going absolutely insane at the back patio door.  I got up, thinking one of my neighbors would be there, but no--it was a tree trimmer.  I tried to get Ghita to calm down, even doing the whole "stand in front of her with your back to her" thing that Cesar Milan, the Dog Whisperer says will stop a barking dog.  Well, that usually works, but Ghita hates anyone who works in the yard and was throwing herself against the sliding glass door, trying to get out and chew on the poor tree man's ankles.

I've heard that the breeds who are the most naturally aggressive and need patient, consistent training to overcome that are Rottweilers, Pit Bulls, Presa Canarios, and Chihuahuas.  People think because they're little that they'll also be sweet.  It's not true.  If a Chihuahua were even as big as the average spaniel, they'd be on every "dangerous dog" list right along with the Rotties.  Although, the only Rottie I've ever known was the sweetest, most gentle, snuggly lap dog ever.

Ghita likes attention, she just likes it on her terms.  She'll come up to you and sniff you, and usually she'll let you pet her, but if she doesn't know you, she won't let you pick her up, and if you grab at her she'll growl and snap.  Think about it--would you run over to a strange Pit Bull and put your face in its face and try to pick it up?  No.  That would be stupid.

Anyway, Ghita was mightly affronted that the tree man dared to be in her territory without her permission, so we went for a ride.  She likes car rides a lot now that she can see what's going on in her booster/car seat.  She usually spends the first ten or fifteen minutes staring out the window, then she gets bored and curls up to nap, sometimes resting her head on the side of the car seat so she can stare at me.

We went to visit Lola over at The Uptown Pup.  She really is just as cute in real life as she is in all the pictures.  While normally Ghita hates walking on a leash, she loves to trot around Plaza Palamino, darting in and out of the misters like she can't decide if she loves them or is scared of them.

I thought about sitting out on the patio of Firecracker, since they're pet friendly, but I was still really full from the mediocre McDonald's salad.  Maybe I'll take Ghita some time later this week and just have a drink and some appetizers.  Ooooh, I could invite the girls.  We haven't had a girls' night out in a very long time, and while we're probably going out to Sabino Canyon on the 9th for the moonlight walk, we could totally have drinks first.  Although, I don't know if they allow pets in Sabino Canyon, plus I'd probably have to carry her since she can only walk about half a mile before she's exhausted.

Anyway, we got back from our car trip and the tree man was gone, so we ran around in the back for a while, then visited Ruth, who gave Ghita treats and me iced tea and grapes.  She spoils us both.  And, no, I didn't press her for more Chicago details.  I think we talked about...hmm.  I don't know what we talked about.  We just chatted, probably about how everybody in the neighborhood's doing.

I complimented her pink flamingos.  Last week, the church youth group flamingo'd Ruth's yard.  It wasn't vandalism, they were paid to do it by Ruth's daughter, Jennifer.  It's one of their fundraising activities--you can pay $20 to flamingo someone's house, or $10 for flamingo insurance so you don't get flamingo'd.  I haven't done either, but I've enjoyed everybody else waking up to a yard full of pink flamingos.

The flamingos only last a week, then they fly away.  Ruth liked them so much that she got four of her own to put into her yard permanently.  They're very cute.  You think of plastic flamingos as kind of tacky or kitschy, but they look perfect in her garden, along with her sky blue wall and pink bench and pastel rainbow umbrella and fuschia bouganvilla.  Kind of whimsical.

After we visited Ruth, we came home.  Ghita is now curled up in her dog bed and I'm writing this because I'm nothing if not amazing when I want something to distract me from writing.  I have to get back to my story, I know, but now you know what a typical day in my life is like.  Very exciting, no?

I went to church this morning, despite myself.  I overslept, so I came in late and missed the first hymn (which I'm told was horrible), but I made it.  I enjoy the services, but what I really look forward to are the bagels afterwards, or, rather, the company in which I get to enjoy the bagels.

I don't get a lot of chances just to sit around and chat with people, and there are some of the most interesting people I've ever met in our bagel group.  Today, I discovered that several of them share my obsession with interest in the history of Arctic and Antarctic exploration.

We talk a lot about dogs, so maybe that's how we got onto the topic--you need good dogs to get you through the snow, since motors freeze and crack and horses get stuck and die.  My interest in the Arctic started with the story of Sir John Franklin, who was determined to find a Northwest Passage through the straits of the Arctic ocean above Canada.  He captained two ships, the Erebus and the Terror, both of which disappeared along with their captain and crew.

Now, we have a pretty good idea of what happened to them--they got lead poisoning, and then ran out of food and, after turning to cannibalism, they froze to death.  What intrigues me the most, though, is how thoroughly unprepared they were.  They didn't take skis with them, or parkas, or warm boots.  They didn't learn how to handle dogs for sleds.  They didn't pay any attention to the ways the Inuit survived in such unending darkness and cold.

No, they just loaded up their ships like they were sailing to France, instead of through a sea so cold it was often frozen solid.  They wore English naval uniforms, not seal or caribou parkas lined with fur.  They didn't go out and hunt for their food, even when they were trapped in the ice.  Instead, they ate from tins suffused with lead and bacteria.

We know from historical accounts that when their ships became trapped in the ice, they did have contact with the local Inuit populations.  They didn't barter with them, though.  They didn't ask for help, they didn't try to learn the things that allowed the Inuit to survive in a land that was always frozen.  They were so very arrogant.  Why should they bother with what the savages knew?  They were English, damnit, and they'd make their own way, thank you very much.

There are graves on King William Island in Nunavut that attest to the fact that, no, they didn't make their own way.  I doubt we'll ever find traces of the Erebus or the Terror.  I think they're at the bottom of the Arctic Ocean, along with the bodies of the men who weren't scavenged by wild animals before the ships sunk.

What we talked about this morning, though, was the Scott expedition of 1912.  Robert Falcon Scott was leading a crew, racing against another crew led by Roald Amundsen to be the first to reach the South Pole.

Scott made a lot of the same mistakes that Franklin made.  They didn't know how to lead dogs (though, unlike Franklin, Scott had thought to bring some), they instead used tractors (which froze) and Siberian ponies (which died).  He didn't have a ship strong enough to withstand the dangerous Antarctic waters.  He was trying to do too much at once--make it to the pole and conduct scientific experiments.  I'm not saying Scott was an idiot, he just wasn't as prepared, focused, or organized as Amundsen.

Amundsen, after all, had been the one to make it through the Northwest Passage, largely because he, unlike Franklin, understood the importance of things like a high-fat diet, proper clothing, and sled dog handling.  He even gave his men a daily ration of chocolate in order to ensure they got sufficient calories and fat.  He also knew how to ski, a skill that would have served Scott and his men well--instead the members of the Scott expedition went on foot when their tractors broke, their ponies died, and their dogs were insufficiently trained to pull the sleds.  They went on foot, dragging the rock-laden sleds behind them.  If only they had left the rocks behind and gone on skis, instead, they may have actually made it off the Ross Ice Shelf.

OK, so that's depressing.  If you want to read a fantastic book about the arctic that's also hilarious, you have to read Farley Mowat's Never Cry Wolf.  The movie came out when I was a little girl, and I thought it was a horror movie because in the previews, they showed Mowat eating mice on a cracker.  Once I finally read the book, I couldn't believe how funny it was.

One of my favorite episodes in the book is Mowat's (successful) attempt to mark his territory by, um, marking his territory.  He was in a tent close enough to see the wolf dens, but far enough away to keep the wolves from getting nervous because of his presence.  To keep them away from him (because, you know, he still didn't know whether or not they'd try to eat him while he slept), he drank a lot of coffee and went around in a circle, peeing on rocks and weeds.  His description of this, not to mention the alpha wolf's reaction, is one one of my favorite non-fiction passages of all time.

Ramona and I have been trying to get some of the men in our neighborhood to do this--to mark our territory along the fence line in order to keep the coyotes out.  We have, as of yet, been unsuccessful in our convincing, though Nettie's son intimated that he might be willing to mark the property if we first buy him a six-pack of beer.

Wouldn't that be fun, though?  We could have a neighborhood marking party, with beer and margaritas and lots and lots of ice water.  The women could barbecue while the men, um, marked.  And then the coyotes would stay out and not eat our dogs.

What?  It could totally work.