My demo was for managers and RETIRED employees.  Some were so old that I swear they had no idea where they were or why. Throwing NEW TECHNOLOGY at them seemed cruel when they needed help opening their styrofoam lunch containers, as did the chewy cookie dessert.   One of the old guys has our biggest building at the fire center named after him.  Every time the current director tossed a question at the old dude, he ignored it and continued chewing, which was fun because I never saw him actually take a bite of anything.  He just sat there looking straight ahead, angrily.

"JACK! I asked if the FIRE SEASON IN TEXAS and NORTH CAROLINA USED TO BE AS LONG AND EARLY AS IT IS NOW?!!"  Tim yelled.

"WHAT!?" he finally responded, "Idon'tgiveagoddamnedaboutthatstuffnowcripes…Ithoughweweregoingtoarestaurant….!" mumble mumble…

He was the size of a biggish toddler. A biggish grumpy toddler.  His wife looked to be a youthful 87.  She kept patting his hand, both of which he had positioned on the table like crude utensils.  Like you might if someone insisted that you keep your hands where they could be seen at all times.  They were a cute couple. I'd love to have them in matching jars on my mantel.  Floating in their little suits…

The MINUTE no one asked a question of me for 5 breaths, I unplugged my laptop and ran out the door, got in my car, drove home, loaded dogs, and drove to GL.  Ran in the desert. Home for beer and my chips and salsa dinner.  I have 5 messages about leaving my coat in the conference room. Dammit.   I just bought that coat, BUT I hate the JW building because it represents meetings and TIME LOST to me.  Even though its only about 100 steps from my office I know I will not be back to get my coat until I have to be…which will be awhile, I'm on travel status 3 out of the next 6 weeks.  It's just not worth it.  Maybe they can keep it and name a building after it someday.  The Katy's Northface Knockoff Prefab Technology Demo Closet.  

Relief.  I needed that run. I need this beer. I may stay up all night just enjoying …nothing. 

My mother for years would regularly ask me just what it was that I did for a living.  GIS, GPS and the technology involved were just acronyms that confused her. I'd simplify it by saying I made maps.

""You use a computer to do this?  What do you make your maps OF?" she would ask. 

This was a woman who didn't want to know what was meant by "clicking" a "mouse."

I would explain fire risk analysis, resource benefit, fuels modeling. Blink blink blink. 

"I make maps of fire related stuff. Sometimes of the fires themselves."

Months would pass, my aunt would visit.

"Katy, what is it that you DO again? Tell Auntie Ruth…she's a nurse, she might understand…"

One day about 2 years ago I was taking my mom on a vacation and I had my computer out, planning the route in Google Earth so that we would stay in decent hotels that were near places where my mother could get her beloved Senior Discount Breakfasts…and I could run.  She was watching me over my shoulder.

"OH MY GOODNESS! THIS IS SO IMPRESSIVE!" she gushed as Google gave distances to Starbucks and trails and her Shari's restaurants.  "IS THIS WHAT YOU DO FOR WORK?"

Google earth is a nice display for geographic information.  It's like a Playskool front for GIS. It's easy, its fast and its brainless.

"Yes. It is." I answered.  Why not?  She nodded, happy at last to understand.

Months later we were at some huge family/firend function and she asked me across the room, at top volume,

"Katy! Do you still GOOGLE THE EARTH? Is that what it is you are DOING?"

Somehow I felt like a pervert. My brother smirked.  "While she fondles the moon…."

My demo today is on advanced capabilities in GE with fire information.  I'm going to leave my fly open.  I'll need a shower afterward. 

I just realized that I already wrote about my mother not understanding my job….so now I'm being redundant. Again.  Screw it. I'd delete this post but it would show up on other people's links so…whatever.

When my nasty little demo is finished or tonight I'll post something new and exciting. It's GL night and I'll be relieved.  I'll post on every blog I've ever created and then some, just to purge my techie demons. To BITCH SLAP my left brain.

I have 5 dogs now.  Annie was my parent's dog. A rescue; she is a huge ass hunting dog cross. No manners, she'll rush past you out a door or through a gate and keep going at top speed until you get in a car and catch her.  She slept with my mom. She sang with my mom.  Trix was always saying that she didn't know what she would have done, after my dad died, without Annie.  So, I owe that dog a good life, but its hard because she is the first dog ever that I don't like.  Pushy, clumsy, seemingly….stupid? An eating, humping, escaping machine.  Now that she's an orphan, though, I'm finding that I don't dislike her as much as when she was an 80 pound threat to my mother's safety. I want to rename her Judy, but I won't.

Scout and I went out to Dianne's on New Years and celebrated on sheep.  I think Scout is like a child who can't concentrate on instructions, jumps ahead based on a pattern of past expectations and where she assumes it will lead.  I was a kid like that.  Still can't read a manual. I look at the pictures of the finished product.  Scout has pictures of a finished product in her head. I need to make sure we have the same picture. I love her.

I am a poor housekeeper. I hate that sort of thing.  I'm not good at it.  I appreciate other people's neat and orderly living conditions…but I just can't get there from here.  I'll do anything to avoid the actual work.  A few years ago, I bought a BOOK on housekeeping…it is as big as a convection oven, NO PICTURES, all text on organizing and cleaning your home.  I have never been able to make myself even glance at the index.  I think i hoped it would do more than just sit there and expect to be read.  I hired housekeepers for awhile, through a 'service', but it made me feel so evil inside to have other women  cleaning my shit that I started staying home to help them…giving them stuff. Our washer…our dryer…clothing.  Pretty soon they didn't clean.  They'd just hang out and smoke.  Seriously.  THEN I got ANGRY.  I'm irrational like that.  Here I was wearing the same old wet hand washed clothing and the housekeepers didn't even dust anymore.   I fired them.  Now I have 5 dogs.  When the breeze flows through my house, the dog hair clouds create their own weather.

Today, instead of cleaning my house, I signed up for an expensive online writing class through Stanford.  Creative non-fiction.  Maybe I'll write my own housekeeping manual. It will be only slightly smaller and nothing in the book will actually get around to pertaining to housekeeping. 

I am hoping to get Zeke out to Jodi's today and work him on sheep.  He hasn't been regularly worked since last spring/early summer.   He's my best friend dog.  He's not great on stock, and he argues constantly with me, but because he thinks its for my own good. Everything Zeke does, except eating the cat food, is for the Good of Family.   He sleeps with his head on my shoulder, gently licking my chin in the morning. He's pure sweetness and light. 
Fucking biggest shedder I've got, though. 

On Christmas eve my beloved Trix took a nap in her chair and never woke up. It was the perfect death.

She liked to read my blog, and other writing; she was always a favorite subject; she'd laugh and say, "My GOD, you make me look like an idiot, Judy!"
Our family was big on showing affection through teasing and humor. 

Despite the fact that most of my subject matter tends to be completely unsuitable for children and nursing or pregnant mothers, she always thought I should be a children's writer, "like Dr. Suess." I have no idea why she thought this.  I stopped rhyming shit in 7th grade after my epic Poetry Tome entitled, "Ireland- A Savage Beauty" completely ripping off not only Leon Uris but Ireland in general. I'm Scottish/Hillbilly and it was probably the worst collection of poetry ever written.  I was an IRA supporter and a complete social outcast, but Trix claimed that I didn't have friends because the other girls were jealous of my beauty.  Yes.  I had zits the size of dinner plates and teeth that could open cans.

She was, and is, one of my role models. She lived a hard, rough, wild life as a young woman, and a varied and interesting life later, but she never lost her optimism or love of people.  She judged NO ONE.  She was one of the only Christians I've ever known who truly lived up to the term.

I'm just sort of stream of consciousness writing this, so I apologize, I have half an hour at a closing downtown coffee shop. I'll end with a favorite story of mine:

Trix left home at 17 to marry my sister's father, Roscoe.  He was a violent mean drunk and abused her for a few years before she finally left him.  One night towards the end of their marriage he came home drunk and mean; he railed insults and injury upon her, and my sister, a toddler,  for a period of time before passing out, at which time Trix took a hair brush and beat him until he had millions of tiny little bleeding red holes all over his face.  She said she didn't know what came over her and she just sort of did it until she stopped doing it and then was horrified at what she'd done.  She worried the next day about what would happen when he saw his face, but he never figured it out. So then she was glad she did it.   

Trix was not a violent person. I can't remember her losing her temper. She was a loving kind woman.  But she was NOT to be messed with; worse still was messing with her loved ones. You always knew she was tough AND good. It's a rare combination.

I love her and I miss her and I hope I can be more like her every day.

…And Zeke greets the moose

I miss Cienna. Carlos and I are too much alike to be productive. We're a sinister combination, Auld Lang Syne-speaking.

We have all our Christmas shopping to do and instead yesterday Carlos and I drove around, eating candy and joking about what we could buy The Relatives.

“I'm know what I'm going to get Aunt Judy….”

“What?”

“A cornsnake.”

“Why a cornsnake?”

“She can't regift it.”

Every year we see someone else in the family receive what we got the previous year for Judy or her husband, Spence. Last year I got them a calendar. I can hardly wait to see who gets it this year.

Judy and Spence are wealthy beyond common sense, but usually mad at some or all of the rest of the family for some odd infraction.

A couple years ago, they each came to me, separately and apologized for being mad at me, apparently for years.

“I'm sorry I've been so mean to you,” Spence said, trapping me in the kitchen where I was mixing lemon drops for everyone. “I'm not mad at you anymore.”

I do make a mean lemon drop.

“I didn't even notice…” I said, laughing. I truly hadn't. I had no idea what he was talking about. I assumed he was drunk.

“Yes. You did. I was awful to you and now I see how good you are, to your Mom and Chris…how you took care of your Dad…..and I'm sorry.”

“Okay,” I shrugged, “Sure. All is forgiven.”

A little while later, in comes Judy, again, while I'm mixing drinks.

“Katy, I want to put the past behind us. I'm sorry. I've forgiven you and I want you to forgive me.”

“Why are you sorry? I HAVE NO IDEA what you are talking about!”

“Yes you do. I know you do. I don't want to get into it, let's just move on.”

“Judy, seriously, what are you talking about?”

“Katy, let's not rehash it. I know you know, how could you not, only a monster could be so callous…” she stopped to shudder visably, while I studied my reflection in the window behind her. My eyebrows, which I'd attempted to tweeze, were horribly uneven. I'd only finished part of one before getting bored. Maybe I should wax, I considered.

“Anyway,” she continued. “Clean slate! Are we good? Can we move on from the terrible past?”

“Absolutely. Finally I can drink with a clear conscious.”

I still have no idea what either of them was talking about. Neither does my Mother or anyone else in the family. I don't know what I did or what I was forgiven for. I never noticed anyone being unkind to me.

That year I got martini glasses and the little polish pottery dish I'd given them two years previous. To forgive is divine, alright.

Occasionally Carlos and I would pull into a parking lot, leave the engine running, and sigh.

“Too crowded,” I'd pronounce. “I don't want to go here.”

“Me either. Let's go down town. Let's drive to Kellogg or something. Stop and get me another Mountain Dew….”

This is the sort of behavior Cienna would never allow. She would insist that we go into shops and make purchases. We'd get the shopping done and have plenty of time for other holiday-themed things. Cienna would also know why someone had forgiven her. This is our first Christmas without her. We'll end up doing something wildly inappropriate at the last minute.

“I'm getting everyone nametags.” I decide. I pull in to Office Depot. There are pictures of red and green Hello! My Name is:  tags.  Santa and Rudolph are written in gold script. 

“That say 'Judy'?” Carlos asks. “You should! I'd wear one!”

I buy one of those gold pens, too.

At least next year I'll know who I pissed off and why. I like the clarity of this decision.

“What about you?" I ask Carlos, "What will you give everyone?”

“Forgiveness….and a baby shark for Aunt Judy.”

We laugh and laugh. All the way to Kellogg.

I told the Trix that Eric was getting me a boob job for Christmas. I didn't actually MEAN to, but that's what she heard and I decided to go with it. My mother loves Eric. In her eyes he can do no wrong. His job is the most dangerous, he is the nicest and the hardest working….He's a walking superlative. At the moment, he was out shoveling paths in her yard for the dogs. I was eating my 5^th cookie, which she'd made for Eric. She often thinks I should cook more. She brings up the time, over 20 years ago, when she visited my house and had to rake the carpet, because I didn't own a vacuum cleaner. Or a broom. (I was poor. Too poor to afford beer AND clean floors).

When she asked what I was getting Eric for Christmas, I said I didn't know yet. Which is true. I haven't done ANY SHOPPING. I'm a lazy bad wife procrastinator.

She then wondered aloud what he was getting me, I told her,

“Ooohhhh, a new mop…”

“What? A BOOB job? He wouldn't….”

We could both see Eric out the front window, shoveling her sidewalk, and the neighbors. Nine degrees and snowing, he had been out there for over an hour. When he came in the house, eventually, he would tell her he enjoyed hard work. Fucker.

“Yup. A boob job. I don't really want a boob job, but he said my boobs aren't just about me, they reflect on him, too, and his success. My flat wilty chest makes him look like a proletariat. He said he might as well be driving a Kia or some sort of Dodge sedan.”

“ERIC SAID THAT?”

“Oh yes. You'd be surprised,” I said, watching Eric gently dust the snow off my mother's bird houses.

“Well, I'm shocked. I guess you never know…” Trix said, “Don't get a boob job. To hell with that. Do you want another cookie, dear?”

“It's the last one, Mom,” I said sadly, taking it anyway. I'll tell her I was kidding later.

A little while ago I took Zeke and Scout for a walk down the street to Tubb's Hill. Dogs are so easy to make happy. Scout didn't like the moose statue at the trail head, and she disapproved of all the activity downtown, but then so did I…. She loved the snow. She enjoyed waylaying Zeke.

Zeke loved every minute of our walk. Zeke is a joy-filled dog. He woo-woo'd all the way to the hill, and he and Scout chased each other and played. He circled and twirled and bowed at my feet all the way home.

Tomorrow we will drive 400 miles through snow and ice to spend Christmas with my family.  We're bringing probably only 3 of our 4 dogs, which is ALMOST more traumatic for me than the prospect of hearing more stories about my mother's sexuality. (I shit you not.  The Trix somehow feels the need to unload, so to speak. It's positively gruesome.)  I was sure this morning and this afternoon and part of this evening that I would without a doubt be leaving Scout with Dianne, for the good of All.  Now, I'm not so certain.  I'm stressing.
What if I get trapped up there? SNOWED IN??? My dogs calm me.  They get me out of my mother's house to run. Alone.  Scout barks at my brother. Or will if I click and treat her into it.

My brother, Cienna and I are training for a 30K run that happens in Oregon in March.  My brother, Chris, has been training, anyway.  Every time he calls me, he asks, "So, you're running, right?" and usually I have to finish chewing something before I can take a swig of beer and clear my mouth enough to answer unconvincingly,

"Uh-huh….Yup….  Hey, so what else is new? Have you ever tried cheese on poptarts? It's gross at first, but after a few chews the cheese and the frosting sort of compliment each other…"

I got Chris into running two years ago, as an alternative to divorce and living in his car. LIke most everything my brother has ever done, he is good at it. He's fast and he's piling up the miles.  The last time I ran with him, a few months ago, I had to lie to get him to stop occasionally so that I could breathe. 

"My shoes untied."

"What sort of PLANT is this?"

"My uterus fell out."

He's lost 20 pounds. I have food stains on all my running stuff.  I used to be the healthy one. 

A few years ago Chris decided to quit drinking, which was a good thing.  The last time we'd seen him he'd taken me and our older brother, Matt, to a skanky north Idaho shithole called something clever like "The Shack" because that's what it was, and nearly got us all beat up when we had to physically peel him off an aged lot lizard. (It's not a judgment, that's what her stained t-shirt said.) 

Chris was hitting on this woman, who was old enough to be our mother, not probably QUITE chronologically, but certainly mileage-wise.  (Her crusty old odometer was stuck on 9999999)  She had a tattoo of a snake with dice for eyes.  She spoke thru a perpetually clenched cigarette, her lips moving like a muppet's.  Chris was entranced; wouldn't leave her alone.  She was sitting at the bar on an end stool, and he just kept orbiting her and whispering in her ear, buying her drinks….She laughed periodically, low and guttural, ending in a long coughing fit. 

At home, Mary, Chris' wife, was decorating for flag day. Ironing table clothes and setting the children's clothes out for school. She is perfect.  She would never have imagined this scene.

I'd sort of seen it before, Chris wasn't happy, a new phase of unhappiness; over-40-and-I'm-not-what-I-thought-I'd-be-unhappy.  I have always thought of him as successful. He's the funniest person I know. The quickest.  There isn't anything he can't do; he'd almost got a democrat elected to office in North Idaho.  I think we looked at that 'almost' differently.

I'd gone to bars with him on a number of occasions.  That last year, instead of just joking and/or bitching about our lives, having a *few* drinks, Chris would reach an intoxication level where he'd just become someone else. Someone mean, or crazy.  It was clear that he had a problem.  He was not the rotary club catholic family man who did everything right that some of the rest of the family was used to. 

Our oldest brother, Matt, sitting on a broken stool near the unisex "shitter" at The Shack just wasn't processing the New Chris. 

"What is he doing?" he kept asking me. "This can't be happening…Not Chris…I don't get this…"

Matt just kept sipping his one Bud Lite and sadly watching his younger brother, the Family Hopeful, nibble the wattle of his boozy beloved.

If one would have taken bets on which one of us kids would grow up to frequent beer shantys on "the old highway" and get sloppy drunk and make out with the mother figure from someone else's bad childhood…I think I can say all the smart money would have been on me.  

The night wore on and Matt finally insisted we were going.  Chris didn't want to leave. We're leaving, Matt said. I did a lot of nodding. No matter who was talking. I'm like that. Neutral in a pinch.

"Fine. Go. I'm staying here with Charlotte." Chris said, his sudden hand on her shoulder releasing a new coughing fit. We waited for her to finish.

"My name is Helen," the woman snapped.

"Whatever," Chris said. "Doesn't matter."

It went down hill from there. Helen, turned out, was a mean drunk.  That snake meant something. The other patrons sided with her.   In North Idaho, when push comes to shove, literally, you can't win wearing a rayon shirt and tasseled loafers, in any bar that features Hamm's art and has a dog turd under the pool table.   It was a low point for Chris having to face that turd up close.  Helen's orthopedic shoes marking up his tan dockers.  She didn't even spill her drink.

So bottom line is that now Chris doesn't drink and runs every day. He's back to being perfect and respectable. 

"Bring your shoes!" he called tonight to remind me. 

Yipe yipe yipe. All this to say I just don't think I can leave Scout.

Today I travel to Northern Idaho for a weekend of Old Lady.  My mother is so excited that she made *2* jello salads.  (Brief aside: What twisted soul damaging part of the Great Depression gave birth to the idea of VEGETABLES and MAYONNAISE in a candy like sauce?  It makes my spleen twitch to see celery floating around, suspended as it were, in a milky green sea of sugar and hooves.  Jello is made from hooves, or so I was told once, and given the company it keeps, I believe it.  Throw it all into a FISH SHAPED MOLD and —- SWEET JIGGLY JESUS ON A TOENAIL – HOW DID WE GET HERE?) 

Anyway, Cienna is also driving over with her dogs, Rio and Wyatt, to spend the weekend. That's good because we have *2* jello salads.  I'll spike one of them with Vodka and we'll spend the weekend playing cards and repeating ourselves,
"I SAID, 'No, that is NOT THE PHONE!'"
"NOT THE PHONE! NO! "
"I'm NOT JUDY! I'm KATY (or CIENNA) (or The MAILMAN)"
"NO! PLEASE SIT DOWN! WE ARE NOT RUNNING LOW ON JELLO SALAD!"

The Trix is a fun lady, though.  She's got a wonderful sense of humor and, despite her Judy fixation, a very keen mind, outside of cuisine and driving.  The winters are long on her since she lost her night time license for running into some asshole in a Porsche.   Long story ending with the Elderly Trix standing before a judge and telling him off for keeping her waiting.  Though he found this tirade amusing (she gets away with the most amazing stuff), as did the rest of the court, the judge took her night time driving privileges. He dropped the charge from reckless driving to inattentive and gave her a lecture on the seriousness of the charge and how next time she would lose her license altogether.  The Trix then reminded him that next time if he tells her to be there at 9:00 he'd better not make her aged bones sit on his goddamn hard benches until 10:30.  More laughter. 

"Well, Mrs. Stewart, I hope that you've learned something sitting here today, listening to some of the consequences of disobeying our traffic laws, as well as your own." says the judge, attempting to wrap things up in a benevolent way.

"Your honor, I didn't hear shit. I am as deaf as a post.  I do promise to be more careful with my driving in the future though, and I'm sorry for the accident."

At least she didn't call him Judy.  And truthfully, my mom has been an inattentive driver since the 1930's.  She drives so slowly I'd almost say charge the other driver with inattentive driving, too.  He should have seen her hunched grey-headed form cruising at 15 miles per hour in a perfect arc toward his fancy sports car. 

Anyway, I'm looking forward to the weekend, and then Cienna (and Rio and Wyatt) is driving back with me for the week.  (I'll drive because she drives like my mother.  Like she's hunting sports cars.)  Then I can drive HER crazy in MY natural habitat.   We'll shop and I will appall her with my taste,

"Oh, please god, no, Mother…that isn't a shirt it's a TABLECLOTH for toddlers!"

I'll offer to cook a family meal and she'll assure me that I'm insane,

"A Family Meal is not eaten out of a BAG, Mother…nor is it delivered in a box."

And I'll reach for the jello and whatever is in my vegetable drawer just to shut her up.