This tiny house was at the bottom of a very steep hill. A slim paved road ran in front of it, in to the empty streets of a ghost town that would soon be consumed by the larger towns on either side of it. At the top of the hill was the house that the husband’s father lived in. It seemed impossibly huge and grand to us, looming there under the shade of towering oak trees, presiding over the vast verdant expanse of field leading to our humble abode.

The first day that we lived in the white house at the bottom of the hill, our mother took us to meet her husband’s father. She tore great hunks of hair out, pulling a snaggle-toothed comb over our heads, straightening our play-dirtied clothing with muttered expletives and sighs of exasperation. When she finally deemed us presentable, she set off up the dusty gravel road and we wend our way after her, quickly mussing our hair and further dirtying our clothing.

We were presented to the husband’s father with a voice full of tender affection, her hands tight and painful on our shoulders as she brought us forward one by one to meet him. He was an old farmer, rolling a cigarette with tobacco stained fingers, squinting at us from across the scarred kitchen table like the dirty ill-mannered specimens we were.

“Call me Pee Wee.” He declared, dropping the crooked concoction he had finished rolling with a lick and a flourish into his lips. His given name was Herman or Howard or something like that. I, being the curious and incautious child that I was, immediately asked why we should call him Pee Wee when Pee Wee wasn’t his name.

“Well, then, why should I call you Betty, when Betty isn’t your name?” He replied, squinting even more so he could take measure of the impudent child who’d dare to question him. Point taken, I dropped my eyes to my shoes and traced the faded linoleum pattern. Satisfied, he pushed himself back from the table with much groaning and grunting and said, “C’mon, I guess you should meet Mother.”

We followed his shuffling steps into the next room, which turned out to be the living room. There, on a hospital bed raised up in the middle of the room, surrounded by what seemed like thousands of tubes and machines, lay a fossil of a woman. It was one of the most terrifying spectacles I had seen thus far in life. I immediately dug my heels into the carpet and tried to resist the pressure of my mother’s hands pushing me forward. For a moment, the only sound in the room was the clicking and hissing of the machines and then the old woman opened her mouth and she rasped, “P. I. E.”.

“Yes, Mother, these are the new grandchildren.” Pee Wee replied, as if the three letters she had managed to pronounce meant something. He looked at us and managed the first fascimilie of a smile we’d seen on his face. “She had a stroke some years ago, ” he explained, puffing on his smoke the entire time he spoke, “ever since her speech has been impaired.”

When my mother’s hand released its vise on my shoulder, I turned and fled the room and the terrifying old woman in the bed, screeching “P. I. E.” after me, her voice audible almost all of the way down the hill. I received a spanking with a belt that night for running from the room but I didn’t care.

We stayed in that tiny house the entire summer….or maybe it was only for a few weeks. Time has a way of flowing and melding, starting and stopping with jerks and jars, blending and disappearing when you are young. Pee Wee, despite his hoary appearance, turned out to be an ally – one who always offered stale cookies and jokes that were beyond our understanding, as well as letting us tromp in and out of his house during those long golden summer days that our mother and her husband slept it off at the bottom of the hill.

Every day, however, we would be required to circuit past the hospital bed of the old woman and listen to her garbled yells of “P. I. E.” before rushing outside in horror and relieved laughter. My mother didn’t help us to understand the woman’s situation – she had a cruel ability to find humor in awful situations and to make fun of everything she didn’t like. She was endlessly disgusted with the new husband, Pee Wee, and the grandmother in the hospital bed. She began to mock the old woman’s way of speaking out of the left side of her mouth, laughing uproariously as she called for “KEY LIME P.I.E.! Apple P.I.E.!”, sloshing her drink as she gestured and mimicked the old woman’s motions. When my sister and I woke covered in the scratchy red bumps of poison ivy, she started calling us the “P. I. girls”, chortling harshly as she swabbed us down with calamine lotion and sent us out, pink and itchy, into the hot sunshine.

One summer afternoon, as we were drinking kool-aid on the sagging front porch of Pee Wee’s house, he pulled out his wallet and showed us the four-leaf clover he had carefully pressed and saved in it. “I got it from that field o’er there.” He said, indicating with the glowing tip of his cigarette the wide expanse of green field before us. “It’s brought me nuthin’ but good luck.” He returned it to his wallet gingerly and smiled with some satisfaction as we abandoned our seats and descended on the field to find clovers of our own.

This hunt would occupy most of the remainder of our summer days that we spent there. We would spend long hours combing through the tangles of grass, dandelions, and clovers, in search of our own bit of four-leafed good luck. My mother watched us from the darkened doorway of our little house, shaking her head with disgust. “You ain’t gonna find one!” She’d call and slam the door to shut out the sight of us.

Within a few days we were pretty sure our mother was right and that we would never find one. My brother and sister slowly lost interest and returned to building a makeshift treehouse in the biggest tree in Pee Wee’s yard out of an old pile of cardboard boxes he’d let us pilfer from his garage. I, however, was a stubborn little thing and I stayed out until my nose was red and peeling, laying on my belly in the grass while I carefully searched for the clover and day dreamed about all of the wonderful things that would come my way once I found one.

I found it late one afternoon, as the sun was starting its slow descent and my brother and sister were hiding from the worst of the summer heat under the fort they had decided to erect once they had given up on a treehouse. At first I couldn’t believe my eyes and my hands trembled a little as I plucked the mystical four-leaf clover from among it’s nearly identical brothers. I counted the appendages over and over again, to be sure there were four before I gave a triumphant shout and leaped up to share my prize.

My siblings were unimpressed, so I skipped into Pee Wee’s house, I knew he at least would understand my excitement. I careened through the kitchen and into the living room, expecting to find Pee Wee asleep in the threadbare Laz-boy in front of the fan. The living room was empty except for Pee Wee’s mother in her hospital bed in the middle of the room. Instantly, my mouth was dry and my heart was pounding loudly in my head as all of my earlier fear of the old woman clamped down on my spine and froze me in my tracks.

Through the large metal bars, our eyes met and I realized that she was looking at me and knew that I was in the room. Usually, she only looked at Pee Wee or gazed unseeingly at the ceiling. Her hand twitched and her fingers moved subtly in a beckoning motion. She wanted me to come closer to her. I did, walking on tip-toe for some reason, creeping silently across the shadowed gloom of the room. The machines around her clicked, whirred, and hissed and as I got closer I saw that she was trying to speak. As her hands opened and closed, her mouth also opened and closed much like the goldfish we used to keep at our old house, before we moved to the tiny house at the bottom of the hill.

I reached her side and looked down at her face, fully looked at her for the first time. Her sparse white hair glowed like a halo, a comma against the pink pillow under her head. Her skin was translucent and thin, I could see the map of veins along her temple. Her fingers were still beckoning and, unsure of what to do, I reached out and took her cold hand in mine. It instantly warmed, as if I had carried the sunshine in from the field and infused her with it. She opened her mouth again and I watched her struggle for a moment before she closed it once more without making a sound. I leaned my head close, within a few inches of hers, straining to pick up her words. What was she trying to tell me? Should I find Pee Wee? What could I do?

Now, up close, listening for words she couldn’t say, our eyes met again and I saw within her pale blue watery eyes a spark of something – an intelligence, a recognition, a humanity I had been unable to see before because of my age, my inexperience, my fear. She had always seemed like just another object in the room and I realized with a start that she was indeed a person. I looked up then, at the rows of dusty pictures in gilded frames on the walls around her and saw, really saw, that it was HER in them: raising Pee Wee as a young man, holding my mother’s husband’s hand when he was just a baby, getting married to Pee Wee’s father in yards of lace and tulle, beautiful and vibrant and smiling. I moved my eyes from the pictures on the wall and back to hers. I gave her hand a squeeze and whispered, “You can tell me, what is it you’re trying to say?”

Her lips parted and she whispered back, “P. I. E.”.

I would like to say that I spent the rest of the day with her, holding her hand and keeping her company. I didn’t. I was five, or maybe it was six or seven. I did what, at the time, seemed like my only recourse. I slipped my coveted four-leaf clover into the palm of her hand and closed her fingers over it. “I hope it brings you luck.” I told her, still whispering, still not breaking the sepulcher like silence of the house, before running back outside to find my brother and sister.
Pee Wee’s mother died that summer. We were dressed in second-hand black clothing and taken to the funeral home where we sat next to Pee Wee, the only other mourner present. He gave my shoulder a hearty squeeze and through his tears thanked us for coming. We lay under the chairs in the back and played tic-tac-toe on discarded pamphlets for the rest of the night, while Mother, Pee Wee, and the husband with no name drank moonshine from Pee Wee’s flask and morosely contemplated life. On the way home, my mother started her “P. I. E.” routine, with a drunken cackle and for once, I didn’t laugh. I told her to stop it, it was mean. Her mouth clamped shut with surprise and she regarded me over her shoulder with distaste, but she kept quiet for the rest of the ride home and I was grateful for it. I knew that it wasn’t the end of my mother’s cruel humor (it wasn’t, she called me P. I. girl from that day on), but I was happy for the reprieve.

My mother’s marriage didn’t last past the summer either and we were soon packing up to move out. I broke away from the car and ran up the hill to where Pee Wee stood on the porch, watching over the comings and goings of the rest of the world as he had for many years and would continue to. I flung myself at him and hugged him, hard. Even his gruff reticence had been a welcome friendship to me. He put me away from him with a flustered “Well, well..” and told me to get on back down the hill before my mom got mad.

I turned to go, but he called after me. When I looked back, he had his wallet open and was pointing with one yellowed finger at the slot where his ID should have been. It now contained two four-leaf clovers, pressed and arranged side-by-side in the plastic window. I choked back tears and nodded. I’m not sure why, but I nodded to him and he nodded back and I ran down the hill, tripping a little and crying even more, back to where my mother waited impatiently beside the car. I watched from the dusty back window of the car as we drove out of sight and Pee Wee dwindled to a dot on the porch; until we rounded a curve and couldn’t see the house, the hill, or the tiny cottage at the bottom any more.

Go for a hot air balloon ride
Cut my hair off & donate it to locks of love. Then grow it out and do it all over again. *half way done with this one*
Get a job I love, really really love, to go to every day
Have a candlelight dinner with someone I adore *this has happened in the past, but would like to actually enjoy such an experience in the future rather than being all embarrassed about it and totally unromantic as I was when much younger*
Own Chanel No. perfume
Have a complete stranger tell me I’m beautiful *out of my hands, I know, but it’s from a list of “things every woman should have happen in her life, written by Audrey Hepburn*
Learn to play an instrument again
Get a pedicure *this one is scheduled for a few weeks from now, thanks to my friend Emily*
Make a quilt
Own a home of my own
Learn to dance. Then actually dance with someone.
Own a vintage Hasselblad camera
Complete epic tattoo of joy & love
Road trip across the United States
Quentin Tarentino movie fest with Liz, because she’s never seen all of “Reservoir Dogs” and that’s a crying shame
Hire a personal stylist for a day
Volunteer at a soup kitchen on Thanksgiving
Rent a convertible and drive somewhere sunny – top down, scarf in hair, sunglasses on
Grow a garden
Bet on a horse. If he wins, bonus points.
Inner-tube down a river
Foster puppies for an animal shelter
Have a past life regression
Attend a Catholic mass
Have my fortune told
Read the entire Bible
Read the Koran
Learn to meditate *um, build that forrest Betty!*
Help build a Habitat for Humanity home
Participate in a Big Brothers/Big Sisters Program
Sell something I made
Own a bookstore *yes yes yes yes*
Attend a Broadway play
Attend a Cirque du Soleil show
Go to the Kentucky Derby. Wear a big hat.
Eat a whole bunch stuff I’ve never tried *this list is pretty massive, and includes huevos rancheros, baba ganoush, and sushi*
Eat at a cupcake bar
Go ice skating
Eat a hog dog at a baseball stadium (preferrably in Chicago or St. Louis)
Reupholster a chair (or couch)
Go to a jazz club in New Orleans’ French quarter
Go to the opera
See Monet’s Water Lilies *this one is happening soon!*
Go on a cruise.
Bake a cake from scratch.
Try bangs again.
Camp riverside.
Find the perfect pair of brown boots. Because the 30 something pairs I have aren’t the “perfect” ones.
Pay for a stranger’s lunch or dinner. *tried this. Would like a redo without getting flipped off*
Send a birthday card ON TIME to everyone in my life for one full year. *maybe next year, haha*
Plant a tree.
Sleep
Sleep on an overnight train
Walk through a corn maze.
Drive down Route 66
Swim with dolphins *okay so this one sounds cheesy…but really, I wanna do it*
Visit the San Diego Zoo
See the Grand Canyon.
Travel to a whole crap ton of places. *it doesn’t say crap ton on the list, it is just a HUGE list of places I want to see and experience*
Live in a foreign country for six months (at least)
Watch a sumo wrestling match
Ride a steamboat down the Mississippi River
Visit all of the States
Attend Mardi Gras in New Orleans
Learn to play chess
Learn to play bridge
Grow orchids
Learn to make pottery. Make myself a coffee cup and drink out of it every morning.
See a meteor shower.
Make a kite and fly it
Own a classic car (late 60′s Mustang perhaps)
Learn calligraphy *oooh got a kit to learn this for Christmas*
Read every book by Flannery O’Connor
Watch “Citizen Cane”
Get a Masters degree
Get a PhD
Win a scholarship. Actually get to go to school and use it. *I won a few scholarships but didn’t utilize them when I was younger…sigh*
Invest money
Get out of debt (umm, before investing, obviously)
Sleep in a castle
Own a vintage Chanel suit
Fly first class
Be a foster parent.
Get my palms read
Sleep in a haunted house
Win over $1000 in a lottery or raffle *totally out of my hands, I know
Be an audience member of a TV show
Get a henna tattoo
Visit a planetarium
Get a massage *gotta get over my being touched phobia*
Travel solo *inspired by Laura Hunter Johnson
Have a tiny cottage office in my backyard *inspired by Aunt Julie
Create my own perfume *I know the base note and that I need some pure vodka*
Go backstage at a concert *umm the Drive-by Truckers thing doesn’t count*
Attend a Murder Mystery Dinner
Meditate for 20 minutes a day for a year (after I learn how to haha)
Learn a new word every day for a year *grow vocab, grow*
Finish a book a fortnight for a year
Go sans television for a year (eek)
Be a maid of honor in someone’s wedding
Hold someone’s hand while they give birth
Be a good parent *is this measurable???*
Get married in Las Vegas
Ride a horse
Go on a blind date
Teach a class
Wear red, red lipstick..in public
Wear a ballgown
Catch a fish
Go vegetarian for a month
Sleep outside under the stars
Make moonshine. Drink moonshine.
Let my childhood crush know how I felt
Join a bookclub and actually stick with it.
Date someone that’s not my “type”
See a musical
See the ballet
Write a letter to my future grandchildren
get CPR certified
Walk a marathon. I would say run, but that’s probably never going to happen
Kiss a total stranger
Send a message in a bottle
Attend a music festival
Have really really blue hair *maybe when I’m 80
Send a letter a week for a year
Take a self-defense class
Learn sign language
Get my conceal and carry license and a little pearl handled handgun for my boot
Watch a foreign film at the theater *will be hard to do around here
Own chickens. Make an omelet from my chicken’s eggs.
Donate to charity instead of giving Christmas gifts one year *umm, judging from this year I don’t think that’s going to go over well haha*
Give only handmade gifts one year
Throw a cocktail party
Buy myself a diamond ring
Attend a ComicCon
Stay at a bed and breakfast
Create a book of favorite recipes to give to Analise when she gets married. Leave room for her to add recipes to give to her daughter.
Visit Graceland.
Watch the complete “Twin Peaks” series
Try contacts
Pick up trash at a park
Tell a joke in an elevator and make everyone laugh *tried this two days ago…..no laughter*
Sail on a sailboat
Swim in the ocean *it scares the bejeebus out of me*
Register to vote. Then – vote!
Learn to sew. Make a dress and wear it.
Overcome fear of heights and jump off of the high dive at a pool (a waterfall would be even better)
Take Analise on a roadtrip to anywhere she wants to go *Chicago, we’ll be seeing you this summer*
Take my pup on a roadtrip *she obviously doesn’t get to pick the destination
Be a mentor or a tutor
Put flowers on Edgar Allan Poe’s grave
Own pearl earrings
Find the perfect little black dress
Visit Lizzie Bordon’s house
Visit Ernest Hemingway’s home in Key West and adopt one of his six-toed cats
Go to a hockey match
Learn to drive a stick shift
See a movie at a drive-in movie theater *I so miss the one in Energy
Take Jay to dinner and don’t let him pay!!
Give up caffeine for a month
Pet a giraffe
Take a cooking class
Go on the Kentucky Bourbon Trail
Donate at least 1% of my income to charity for a year *in progress*
Teach Ani to make lasagna
Have a professional Katharine Hepburn inspired photoshoot *possibly in progress*
Hold a lamb. Don’t laugh.
Finish an entire crossword puzzle without googling the answers, looking at a dictionary, or cheating. *uh, was working on this, got stuck on one, went back to it and it had been thrown away*
Bowl a strike
Get a hole-in-one (mini golf would work)
Kiss someone under mistletoe *does anyone do that anymore?*
Own a piece of original artwork
Break in a brand new pair of cowboy boots
Join a wine of the month club and actually try all of the wine I receive, even the yucky dry red wine
Own a floppy eared giant bunny
Play paintball
Watch a demolition derby
Start a fire without matches
Get something named after me
Buy a Burberry trench coat
Wear high heels…in public (maybe with the red lipstick ha)
Plan a roadtrip entirely around weird roadside attractions
Watch a scary movie while home alone – without turning on all of the lights in the house
Pick wild berries. Make a cobbler.
Win a trophy or a plaque.
Graffiti something
Start a food fight
Go on a winery tour
Buy personalized stationary
Read all of the books on my “To Read” list. It’s huuuuuge.
Kiss on a ferris wheel while stuck at the top. <–this will require that I get over my fear of heights, as well.
Climb a tree
Own a pair of Frye boots
Join in a scavenger hunt
Be a human guinea pig.
Play matchmaker and set two friends up on a date.
Finish a 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle.
Own the perfect leather jacket
Visit the Pez museum
Raise a Bernese Mountain Dog from babydom to very old age
Learn to say thank you to compliments
Be published *I don't count my angsty teen junk*

Welp, there you have it. What do you think? Some of it's silly, I know, but still…yup, that's my list. What's on your list?
Also, anyone want to help me achieve these and/or do these things with me – let me know!

We were asked, during my lecture course today, to think about our first time falling in love. And I thought of you. Well, not you, but the time I spent with you, the summer that I turned 14. I fell in love for the first time that year. I spent the summer at your house. I had never even spent a night away from my siblings before and I felt so grown up and special; packing my bag with a new unmarred journal and my Judy Blume books, my hypercolor tee-shirts, and my new bikini. That first night we arrived in town, we went straight to your favorite Mexican restaurant after our six-hour car trip. You ordered me a virgin Bloody Mary and I pretended I liked it for the sake of ordering another – “a vah-gin Marrrry, please”, trying to emulate your way of saying it. You and Uncle M got progressively more wasted and laughed uproariously at your own jokes, as I slowly wilted in the corner and eventually laid my head on my hands and dozed. By the time we arrived at your house, I was too exhausted to pay attention to the tour of the house and the introduction of your housemates, the woman and her nephew who were renting the front half. It wasn’t until the next morning, when I emerged blinking into the bright July sun to discover him sitting poolside, that I realized we would be sharing the house with a Leonardo Dicaprio look-alike. At least, that’s the attributes my memory have awarded him in the years since we last met. Now that I think about it, I’m pretty sure he was a ginger and heavily freckled.

His name was Kenny. He was probably 15 or 16 and was so kind to the awkward plain 13-year-old that I was, mooning over him with unabashed adoration. He played cards with me and we spent hours sitting poolside with our feet dangling over, talking about absolutely nothing all summer long. We’d sneak beers and sip them with giggled rebellious glee as the adults argued over the barbecue grill or planned ostentatious dinners that always burned, fizzled, or flopped. Sure, it wasn’t real “love” but it was my first real experience with a crush and there was so much anticipation and joy to those first loves. Sexuality was almost void in our interactions because it was so foreign to us. We didn’t acknowledge sex and yet…it was there in the tingling of fingers that accidentally brushed, play fighting that ended with shaking knees and burning red faces and mutual avoidance for days after. I was in love with his clumsy guitar strumming and his chortles of laughter when I told carefully purloined dirty jokes (usually, though, I’d screw them up or forget the punchline).

I confessed my crush to you, Aunt M, late one night as you were dressing to go out for dinner. You were trying on pearls from your jewelry box as I told you, it struck me as unbelievably elegant. You, too, were kind and only smiled your knowledge of my schoolgirl crush and chose not to tease me for it. “How can I tell if he likes me? How can I get him to like me?” I asked, with all of the earnestness I could muster. As it turns out, a teenager in the first throes of love, can muster quite a bit.

You immediately cancelled your dinner plans, plopped yourself down beside me on the bed, and taught me about feminine wiles. Oh, not the swishing of skirts and fluttering of lashes type of wiles. These were the mechanizations of my mother and women like my mother – good-looking, sexual women that didn’t have to try to gain attention but for some reason did try, too hard almost. You taught me your ways – the flirtations of the long brown-haired older sister that met her husband when my mother stood him up for a date. You taught me the importance of laughter. You tapped my head, hard, with your index finger with its nail chewed to a stub, and advised, “Use your brain, Betty”. You taught me about all of the secret conversations that can occur between a man and a woman that can mean so much and say so little. You taught me about holding on, fighting for what you want, and being strong and proud of that strength.

Maybe I’ve forgotten everything you taught me. Or, maybe I never really learned it. I never did confess my feelings to Kenny that summer and I guess, in a way, I’m glad I didn’t. As it was, I packed my bag in August and left my address for him with the faint fluttering in my stomach that assured me that he just MIGHT write (he didn’t). I never met my “Uncle M”, with whom I could hop on the back of his bike and ride off into the sunset with. And I never really became the type of woman that you were….nor have I become my mother’s type. I’m still figuring out just what type of woman I am. I haven’t, however, forgotten your smile, your warm hand on mine, your earthy smell and long brown bare feet under your cocktail dress. I haven’t forgotten you, Aunt M. I miss you.

Love,
B

This book bag

This tank

These vegan flats

This dress

This tunic

This oversized shirt

This dress

This linen tunic

This top

Oh, and I totally love this backpack too

Which backpack do you prefer?

What I’m looking for: clothing that can easily go from work to school, WITHOUT looking like I’m a pudgy middle-aged dumpy desk jockey (which I totally am but I don’t want to look it!!). All of these I can wear with flats and a cardigan to work and then throw moccasins or cowboy boots on for school.

Any other suggestions are welcome!

Also, obviously, I *heart* etsy.

I have three or four recipes that I cook well. Uh, lasagna being the only one I can even think of right now. Luckily, Billiam and Ani will eat whatever I put in front of them and don’t complain about my lack of culinary skills.

With my recent pledge to “get healthy or be damned”, I’ve been trying to get away from the processed food habit. We’ve got a tiny garden going in our tiny tiny yard and have reaped green peppers, tomatoes, and basil from it. By we, I mean billiam. Like most household duties I am sadly lacking in interest and skill where gardening is concerned. My dad and KJ came to the house to drop Ani off a week ago and instantly KJ guessed that the beautiful flowers and herbs and veggies were not being tended by me. I killed a cactus once. And two pine trees. And most living creatures that have ever been entrusted to my care. I’m that good.

Okay, moving on to the Awesome fresh veggie pasta…..

I don’t want our wonderful fresh goodies to go to waste and this recipe was born from that. What I LOVE about this is that you can change it up in so many ways and still end up with a delicious and (somewhat) healthy dinner.

Ingredients

This is the fun part. You can add pretty much any fresh veggies and make this yumminess.

What I started with the first time:
pico de gallo – this is where my laziness and lack of culinary skills realllly shows itself. What I like to do is get the ready to use pico de gallo from the grocery store. ‘Cauz I is too lazy to make it myself. But, for those of you who are more enterprising then I, here’s a good recipe.
diced onions
diced tomatoes Yes, on top of the pico de gallo. I use the canned Italian style tomatoes for that extra bit of flavor. Don’t drain these, you want all of the good juices in there.
This is where you can get creative with what you add. What I have added to it in the past:
diced green bell peppers
diced yellow squash
diced zuchini
garden rotini pasta
shredded parmesan cheese. Mozzarella cheese works as well.
dash Worcestershire sauce
1 lb ground beef or ground turkey

Quantities of veggies really depends on how much you want to make and how much veggies you like in yours. I usually just dice on squash, one bell pepper, etc.

Instructions

Ground your beef or turkey. We’ve switched to ground turkey recently and it has a slightly different flavor but is still good with it.

Remove the meat from the pan but leave the juices in. You can drain these somewhat if you want but I use it to cook the veggies in. Saute the veggies for 2-5 minutes depending on how you like them. I like mine to retain their crispness so I usually only saute them for about two minutes. Add your can of diced tomatoes and meat after you get your veggies cooked how you like them. Add a dash of Worcestershire sauce. Let simmer for a few minutes while your noodles cook.

While your meat and veggies are doing their thing, cook your pasta. Leave slightly al dente.

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.

Add meat and veggies mix to pasta sprinkle with cheese and cook about ten minutes.

Enjoy your awesome summer veggie pasta.

Then, she talked. And talked. And talked. For three hours straight. Through a mommy-daughter dinner of pasta and pizza, a two hour car ride, bathing suit shopping, and finally she just followed me around the house jabbering. When I shooed her to bed, she dropped one last line on me: “Thanks for listening while I poured out my heart and soul.”

Topics of conversation:

Dylan, the boy she has a crush on, and how he looks like Justin Beiber, but in a “less gay way”
Favorite boy names, and the misconception that all Gabe’s will be cute when really they aren’t
School (and trepidation about it)
Friendship and how sometimes other girls will keep ugly girls around just to feel better about themselves
How I pick out the most awesome stuff ever (her words, not mine)
How she wishes she could be with her dad and me at the same time but that’s never going to happen
Swimming and how awesome it is
Sammy and how much she misses her
Diamonds and why don’t I have any? (good question, Ani)

And lots more boy talk.

I dreamed last night that the boy cheated on me with a friend of his and I woke up angry, angry, angry at him. I wish I could say that never happens. Oh, it happens too much. My imagination getting the better (the best) of me.

I woke and the sun wasn’t up yet. I watched shadows crawl across the ceiling. A few muted garbled shapes. Our whole house is so dark all of the time, windows shuttered least the too-close-neighbors get a glimpse in to our little world. I want big open windows. I want sunshine streaming in. I want vast acres of greenery beyond those windows.

When it became obvious that I wasn’t going to sleep any more, that my bad dream had rustled me from slumber so early, I crept from the bed and joined the hounds on the living room couch for an early morning cuddle party. I felt instantly better and returned to bed to doze some more.

I like sleep now more than I ever have.

Gettin’ old. Older. Older still.

Not too old to let my nightmares influence me. Just old enough to keep me strapped to a desk nine hours a day. *sigh*

The answer is NO. Believe it or not, I wasn’t exactly excited to relive my high school years. They weren’t happy times for me, as I’ve mentioned before. Here’s the thing about high school: I didn’t fit in. I know that was a pretty common feeling to have at that age. However, mine went beyond just a feeling, I really and truly didn’t fit in. My family life was somewhat horrific, my sister’s mental disability was starting to show itself, we were dealing with post-traumatic stress syndrome from childhood abuse, and no one cared and no one wanted to help. I think that is what troubles me the most. I wish that someone had taken interest in me, taken me under their wing and helped me see potential in myself. I wish that someone had done the RIGHT THING – that they had gotten counseling for my sister and myself, that they had used the resources out there to get us the help we needed so we could be fully functioning adults rather than fucked up kids that never grow up.

I was out of control. I was arrested multiple times. I was promiscuous. I was violent. I was being exposed to things that no girl my age should have been. I was sixteen when a friend overdosed at a party. I showed up at the tail end of the debacle, in time to see her naked and foaming at the mouth. Another friend was decapitated in a drunk driving accident, leaving the party I was still drinking at. I was 17, when a 50-year-old man tried to talk me in to smoking crack (unsuccessfully, despite my raging drinking problem I never did drugs in high school). I lost my virginity to a drug dealer who was seven years older than me (whom my mom later tried to force me to marry). I didn’t come home for two weeks once because my mom dropped me off at a friend’s house with a bottle of whiskey, a keg of beer, and told me not to. During that two weeks, I learned how to load a hypodermic needle, got alcohol poisoning, and watched (but didn’t participate in, because I’ve always been sort of prude) a full-blown orgy on the front lawn of my friend’s house. This was when I was 17. Seriously.

I’m not blaming my high school for all of this. Because, honestly, it wasn’t that kind of school. Other kids weren’t involved in these activities. I think most other kids actually enjoyed school, learned, participated in musicals and debate club, actually had the lives that our “Leave It To Beaver” fucking town taught us to believe we were supposed to live. Me? I was troubled. I was mentally unstable. I hated myself because I was told I was ugly and worthless by my mother and treated like a pariah by the teachers at school. I wanted to be loved and I thought sex and drinking would help me forget my childhood and forget my loneliness. I was exhibiting the first signs of bipolar disorder and had no tools to recognize it, much less treat it. I was socially cut off from the rest of the kids my age and had to befriend the girls that were like me – high school drop-outs, druggies, and drunks. Like I said, my school couldn’t have known FULLY the extent of my lifestyle outside of school.

Did they know I needed help? Yes. I was practically a poster child for school counseling.

Did I get help?

Of fucking course not.

As a matter of fact, I overheard a member of the staff once say (in reference to my sister and myself), “They won’t crawl far from that white trash gene pool”. Really? Really.

I was accused and disciplined for “smoking” at school many times. I’ve never smoked a cigarette – ever. When I applied for scholarships the school counselor wrote a scathing review of my family and my sister’s mental illness without once saying anything about whether I was intellectually capable of handling college. When invited to an English event by the one teacher that didn’t treat me like a total freak of nature (the very same teacher who helped write the book that came out last weekend), one of her prize pupils (to this day), asked why on earth I was coming with??

So, yes, I’m still a little mad at my school. They didn’t just not help me, they made it worse. They hindered me. Why was no one trained to spot child abuse? All those times I went in to the nurse’s office (every day for SIX MONTHS) to get gauze and antibiotic ointment for my sister’s leg where she had been branded by her boyfriend – why did NO ONE ask what I needed it for and if I needed help? Why didn’t anyone MAKE me pay attention to my school work? If I had done better in school THEN I wouldn’t be struggling to get back to college NOW. Why didn’t the principal ever sit me down and ask what was wrong? Simply that – what was wrong? Instead of punishing me unnecessarily, instead of treating me like a criminal. Because, in the end, despite my rebellion, my blue hair, my potty mouth, my constant whiskey glazed eyes – I was still just a child. Do you understand that? I was playing at being an adult. I WAS A CHILD. I was not capable of making good decisions for myself. I was not mature enough to realize the impact of my behavior. I needed adults to guide me, to teach me, to help me. My parents weren’t doing it. The school sure as hell didn’t try to. I was a child struggling to stay afloat in a sea of degenerates.

I could spend the rest of my life asking why. I could waste away wishing that it had been different, that I would have reached a place of personal well-being earlier instead of wasting years and years drinking and dating abusive assholes, in denial that I had a mental disorder and needed help.

I won’t do that anymore. I promised myself – no more “if onlys”, it is time for “will dos”. I will do for myself. I will do for Ani. I will not focus on my past.

Which is why I was so surprised by the nostalgia that nearly choked me as Liz and I toured the old school and walked the street we once rode our purple bikes down, paused in front of our childhood homes with giggles and fond memories. Not so much for the building I was forced to waste four years in without actually learning anything or enjoying a single fucking moment of it. More for the street that Liz and P-cilla once lived on. We spent every day of summer skating in the parking lot by Liz’s house, playing flashlight tag, eating brownies her mom had baked. And later, practicing baton moves in P-cilla’s front yard, plotting about boys, braiding our hair and tight rolling our jeans. Those were the moments, just before I hit sixteen and left those friends behind for the before mentioned orgy-participating-drug-overdosing cohorts of my teen years.

It truly did turn out to be a beautiful day, despite my trepidation the night before and on the car ride there. We caught the tail end of the hometown celebration parade (complete with monster trucks yeehaw). We stopped in at our old lockers, Liz’s still has her name on the inside of it and I can still fit inside mine. I didn’t have to interact with any assholes (even more yeehaw).

Even better, afterward, we went swimming in Liz’s friend’s pond. My first swim of the year. I showed up back home sunburnt, itchy with poison ivy, and missing my cowboy boots (I made it all the way home before I realized I had left them behind). Basically, I got back to my roots (insert wink and knowing grin here).

Liz’s mom Patsy.  She was in the parade with her sorority sisters.  Her husband told her that her hat was crooked and I piped up, “Nah, it’s just at a rakish angle.”

Patsy replied, “Oh this isn’t even my hat!  Rakish?  Oh no.”

My childhood home.  Minus the white picket fence which will always be the picket fence of suburban denial in my mind.  Also missing – the little willow tree that I lovingly planted and named “Bertha” in the front yard.

Where Liz’s childhood home once was.  It was torn down.  To make a parking lot.  That (above) is the parking lot.  They tore down her childhood home and didn’t even put in a PAVED parking lot.

Liz’s family. I do love her family.

I didn’t originally intend for this post to be such a ranting accusation against the educational institution I attended. It just turned in to that. I suppose I’m still angry. When does that go away?

I have good news about school and work and oh you know, life things. The bosslady decided to keep me on at 30 hours a week (even if she isn’t completely happy with it), financial aide came through for school. Things are working out for me?! Yes indeedy.

There is sunshine after a few days of gloom. There is prickly heat. The fields are still flooded around the town and the water is licking the edges of the road. It excites me – the sexuality of the rippling water inches deep on farm fields. It also creeps me out in an undefinable way.

We have figured out that a vacation is not financially possible this year. Again. I can’t remember my last vacation. Four years ago? Yes, I think. I NEED a break. I deserve one. The same ole song and dance, eh?

One thing at a time, Betty dear. One thing at a time.

This weekend I’m going to enjoy picking up new school supplies. Way in advance. Just because I love pencils and paper and the surge of terror and giddy joy that goes through me every time I think about returning to school.

What are you going to enjoy the most this weekend?

This book is perfect for those days when you just want to feel depressed and helpless in a cruel world that you can’t do anything to make a difference.

When I bought the book, I was influenced to do so by a blurb that said, “the ending completely saves this book – will surprise and delight you.” Say what? No surprise and delight for me, only a depressing ending to a depressing theme. Don’t get me wrong – I’m all about the depressing books. Billiam is constantly hiding books after I burst into tears while reading the first chapter. But this book? No redemption at the end. Sometimes, redemption is crucial to save my little heart from breaking after reading a story.

From another review of the book:
“Honestly I don’t know what people are thinking when they market books anymore. The blurb on this book would have you believe that it’s not only a laugh riot — except for the beach scene which is “horrific” — but that it’s so remarkably written and in some way so easy to spoil that it all but swears the reader to a code of silence. And in fact, it’s none of those things. All those marketing ploys actually do a disservice to an excellent book and if I were the author, I’d hate it that my work was being so misrepresented.”

Yup, pretty much my feeling about it.

A quote from the book:
“On the girl’s brown legs there were many small white scars. I was thinking, Do those scars cover the whole of you, like the stars and the moons on your dress? I thought that would be pretty too, and I ask you right here please to agree with me that a scar is never ugly. That is what the scar makers want us to think. But you and I, we must make an agreement to defy them. We must see all scars as beauty. Okay? This will be our secret. Because take it from me, a scar does not form on the dying. A scar means, I survived.”

Bear With Me Vintage Necklace

Brass In Pocket Vintage Necklace

Sunny Days Are To Stay Vintage Enamel Brooch

Bow Me Away Vintage Necklace

I Believe In Pink Vintage Enamel Brooch

Leafing On a Jet Plane Necklace

Onyx-ly, You’re All I Need Vintage Necklace

Rose To The Occasion Vintage Necklace

A Stow-n Away Vintage 1970′s Belt



Favorite Feature Alert!!!: Expandable Waist!

PLUS SHOES & PURSES!!

Garden of Eat’n Apron

Red-y, Steady, Go Vintage Shoes

Bowled Over Vintage Shoes

Bowtiful Vintage Low Heel Shoes

Shoe-Be-Do Vintage Saddle Shoes

Mustard The Courage To Go On Vintage Shoes

Favorite Feature Alert!: Unique color

Wicker Me Away Vintage Handbag

Stripe Lightly Vintage Handbag

She Pursed Her Tulips Purse

Ain’t No Honkey Without The Tonk

Favorite Feature Alert: Western details!

All items available on my etsy shop

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