A CRYING SHAME

I have ignored my poor blog site for so long I'm surprised it's still here.

Life has taken me by the horns and tossed me around.  I like to fool myself and say that I perform better under pressure but I have decided that that's one of those little lies I tell myself to feel better.  Sort of like the lie I believed when I pretended to the other mother's at my son's school that I could go camping just like they could.  Less than 24 hours after I pretended that, the car was packed and the mountains were left in the dust.  The only version of camping I can do is from a hotel with indoor plumbing, electricity and a bed sans black widow spiders.  Nature and I have trouble getting along.

So I convinced myself that I must get on with nature so I don't have to repeat the problem in my next incarnation.  Yep, learn it in this life so I won't have to do a do-over.  Take note, with other personal challenges, I haven't felt the drive to fix it this time around. 

I left the big city for the slower life.  I enjoy the ideals of living closer to nature.  The picture of country living that I carry in the mind's wallet is glorious...sun setting over the grape vineyards, corn stalks gently blowing in the winds.  Kids able to run and play and ride bikes without a maniac barreling down the road and flattening them.  All this holds firm in my mind.

So when the opportunity arose that I could leave the big city, I did.  Then the opportunity arose for me to leave town and actually take up residence in the country.  Real country.  Walnut groves.  No sewers....septic tanks.  Wells, not city water.  Coyotes, eagles, hawks live close by rather than the teenagers who had a bomb lab in their mom's garage.  At night, the concept of light pollution was miles away.

The country house....oh, the house!  The previous owners took the time to research the style of old adobe homes in the Presidio of old Santa Barbara, I think.   Done in that exact style, the house has 16" thick walls, radiant -heated floors, and a gorgeous hacienda-style patio with a compass rose stained into the floor.  The whole east side of the house is floor-to-ceiling windows where you can sit and watch the sun rise over the Sierra Nevada mountain range.  What better place to get over my nature problem than this!!!!

Three weeks later, we're moved in and country-living has introduced itself to us in all it's glory and fervor.  Death hit the farm on move-in day. As I approached the previously-mentioned row of windows, box in arms, there on the patio lay a bird, dead.  Broken neck.  A ring of feathers stuck on the glass door where it crashed.  I know blue jays and robins but this looked like a kingfisher.  I don't think there are kingfisher's in my neck of the woods but from my memory of looking through bird books when I was a child, that's what I thought.

I don't like dead things.  I get the creeps at the idea of touching them.  I asked the guy helping me move to get rid of it.  Like throw it into the neighboring field or somewhere far away like that.  He told me that I was going to have to get over being a wimp if I wanted to live out in the country.  He said this as he was picking the bird up with his bare hands.

Gulp!

Bare hands.  What if he got the bird flu?  I made him wash his hands with anti-bacterial soap and made a mental note to re-scrub the sink where he washed his hands.  My editor for CHORE WHORE made me cut out parts of the book where I seemed too wrapped up in cleanliness....said I seemed paranoid.  I had never thought that I seemed too OCD about not wanting ickyness hanging around.   Maybe I was, a little.

Since moving out here I have become a little more involved with nature than I had intended.  But that's yet another blog entry.  I'll get on with these a bit more.  Now, I need to return approximately 165 emails I haven't answered. I wonder if I have any friends left.