Linda was a really terrible barrista at the only coffee place within miles of where I worked. This coffee place was one of a local chain famous for making really excellent and fresh coffee and espresso drinks.

Linda made neither. She let the coffee sit all day, AT THE VERY LEAST. It was really, profoundly…end times awful. Even quickie mart coffee of the 80’s was never so bad.  She half-assed the espresso drinks or tried to talk you into something else,

“How about an Italian soda?”

“You should try some water with a tea bag in it. Do you have a tea bag with you? I’m completely out…”

(Shuffling over to hide the wall of tea behind her)

Linda was really lazy and probably stealing from this place. Prices seemed to come to her in a vision – what she quoted you rarely agreed with the HUGE marquee of drinks and prices looming above her head.  She rarely rang anything up.  She just handed you the drink she coerced you into buying and named it’s price.

One time she sold me a ‘fresh squeezed orange juice’ produced from behind the counter, near the sink, already with a straw in it; a drink which CLEARLY had been, at one time, someone else’s.

“This one has YOUR NAME ON IT!” Linda jeered, “Two dollars…and..fifty cents. Seventy five!”

I could walk to this place from my office. It took ten minutes, tops. It was a nice break.  I’m a Get-Along-stress.

Linda had a scalp only sparsely occupied by hair. She looked like an adolescent chick; one that had outgrown the cute fuzzy stage and was malingering between feathers and being edible. Or some old man’s ball sack.

Did I mention that coffee is the most important meal of the day to me? Also, I’m a huge sucker for bald women. Really. I just FEEL BAD for that much hairless ugly.

Linda was from New York and had yellow snaggle teeth and a harsh accent. She wasn’t just ragingly incompetent at her job – she seemed mean, actually.  No one ever complained about their shitty coffee or half consumed frozen concentrate orange beverage.  Though everything she did and said seemed like an act of aggression, I never saw her challenged – certainly not by me – we all just sort of went along with her.   However, the once popular coffee shop lost business; the numbers dwindled down to an occasional innocent and the diehards, like me, desperate for another cup of mid-morning coffee, just wanting to get out of the office.

Also, I thought she must really need the job because hopefully she was saving up for a hair transplant.

So one day I’m in there and somehow we get on the topic of food and she tells me that she is Italian (EYEtalian, she says) and can cook the best …some sort of pasta dish… that anyone has ever tasted,

“The first time I made it, my husband cried,” she told me, “It’s that good.”

“Really?” I say, being polite, and thinking that might not be why he was crying, thinking I’ll bet he cries a LOT,

“I love good Italian food.”

This was also a lie. I’m pretty ambivalent about Italian food, except pizza, and wine. I like Mexican food better. I actually ABHOR spaghetti. The idea of those long ass cumbersome noodles just pisses me off.

“You should come to my house sometime for dinner and I’ll make it.” Linda says.

“Yeah!” I agree, hoping she’ll hurry and ring up my coffee, or conjure a price, which she does, overcharging me as usual. I tip her, staring into her farm-animal-shit green eyes, waiting for her to take her hand off my coffee so I can leave.

“How about tonight?” she challenges.

“Oh! Uh….hmmm….”

I can’t think of anything. Not a single excuse that doesn’t sound like, “You’re bald and your teeth look like they should be sunk into a rat skull.”

“Okay!” I say. “Yup. That would work.”

She draws me a map on some napkins. Three of them, actually, because she almost makes the map to scale.

“Bring wine!” she tells me. “Bring a couple bottles.”

She does NOT give me her phone number and so I have NO WAY TO BAIL ON THIS THING.

So, I buy two bottles of good wine and follow the three napkins to Linda’s house, which, though pretty filthy, is in a nice upper middle class subdivision. All the windows have glass and she has a lawn. NOT what I’d pictured.

It’s just me and Linda, though I had hoped to get a peak at the man who weeps over Costco lasagna, which is what she serves, without even commenting on the fact.  I can SEE the BOX in her OVERFLOWING garbage,

“The secret is to add your own herbs,” she tells me, shaking a humongous jar of dried Oregano over the top, followed by a generous dose of Western Family brand parmesan cheese, the kind that requires no refrigeration.

She does not open my wine. I stare at the bottles, willing it. Finally, I ask,

“Should we open one of the bottles of wine I brought?”

“No,” she says, moving them to a cupboard.

“Do you want a beer?” she asks, opening her refrigerator and gesturing in to what looks like a battle between old food and new disease. There is no visible sign of anything resembling a beer. Still,

“Yes. Please,” I say, and she ignores. She closes the refrigerator.

“I didn’t make dessert,” she says, seemingly peeved, “I thought you might bring something.”

She gathers the dishes and continues to seem pissed.

Suddenly, finally, I hate her. She is an awful person.

While she has her back to me tossing dishes into her filthy sink, I walk out.

Crazy Crooked Laura Asks:

Going forward over the next six months, what are your goals?

Going forward? Whoa! Not so fast!  I like to swirl around the moment, backpeddle and hunker down somewhere between yesterday and the day after tomorrow, avoiding today, except in small inescapable doses (usually involving food and drink) if possible. 

Typcially I find comfort in things that are months away because ANYTHING can HAPPEN in the interim.  If you ask me to do something that I REALLY HATE>>> LIKE PUBLIC SPEAKING or donating an organ to a science fair project or listening to your friend Pamela read her self-published book of poetry based on the AA BB AA rhyme scheme and feminist things that she googled to her entire EmpowHERment thru PoetSHE…I WILL AGREE TO IT.  Because a part of me really believes that between now and then space junk will hit my part of the planet and annihilate that book of poetry and/or my face and ears; my organs could claw their way out of my polluted body at any time and upon waking I'm constantly surprised that they haven't.

I worry and plan for yesterday and the day after tomorrow.  In that order.

Big goals tend to scare me off.   I have to keep things to the moment or I get nothing done.

Tomorrow I plan to run 6 -9 miles on a beach.  I plan to drink lemondrops with my daughter and her boyfriend to celebrate my mother's birthdate.  I plan to make sure that my son has the best weekend ever. 

When I get back home I will train Jai for the next trial and find the perfect song for my pre-run workup.  I'm leaning toward something by Hank III.  I'm thinking Dick in Dixie. It cracks me up.

 

Good news for those of us who are Urban Stockdog enthusiasts…live in town, SEEMINGLY cannot host livestock?

Maybe not, my friends…

My daughter, who works in Seattle for a hip urban weekly recently covered a 'Furry Rave'… where people who like to dress as giant stuffed animals meet up and mill around, drinking and being social.  It's a furversion (I MADE THAT UP!) that ends in humping.  Really!

Just like in a pasture.

I'm considering inviting a few over (Craigslist!) and letting my dogs test them out.  Set up a course in my house – through a door, around the couch, down the hall, another door, back through the bathroom and into a closet.  

I might have a trial, if all goes well.   I think Scout might actually have found a venue.

The lady at my drive thru coffee place told me today that her dog, who likes dancing with the stars and sweaters, ate an entire raw chicken once.  I like a drive-thru because in theory it saves TIME in getting coffee.  This lady, I believe her name is Rochelle, though I have absolutely no foundation for this belief, stabs my theory through the heart almost each morning.  Still, sometimes there is a moody teenager working and I get my coffee quick, with a sneer, so it's always worth a shot. 

This morning I really wanted my quad-shot Americana to beat back the sleep I didn't get last night worrying about my own dogs, one of whom ate a bottle of chewable Rimadyl.  I had just shared this information with Rochelle.  She asked if my dog could have a treat and I said, No, she was going to the vet because she may have eaten something she shouldn't have. 

"Oh, that's too bad…I'll give you some for later.  My dog ate an entire chicken, raw, one time.  I called my vet and he said, 'Are you sure it was chicken?' and I said, 'Yep, I double checked' and he said that was good because pork would have killed him."

Rochelle always wants to hand me a fist full of really cheap dog treats, the ones that come in fruit loop type colors, shaped like a bone.  The ones with a corgi on the box.  Sometimes – most of the time – I don't even have a dog with me.  Today I did.  She was excited enough to produce the entire box,

"What would your doggie like best? Red is beef and Yellow is Chicken…I'm not sure what green would be…."

"Maybe pork," I said.

She said one day her dog had chewed up her new expensive shoes,

"They were on sale and STILL cost too much! From DILLARDS!" she said as if Dillards were where Good Feet went to their post-mortem Reward.  Hers would be going barefoot.

I held my hand out hopefully for my coffee.  It had $3 in it and I did not need change.   She took the money and gave me about 7 green bones.

Jai just wagged enthusiastically.  She may have eaten fifteen 75 mg pills, or it may have been Zeke or Scout or Annie.  I've narrowed it down to those four.  Jai was the most likely because of when I assume it happened and where I found the bottle.  I gave her all seven green bones knowing that she would be made to hork them up shortly.  Might as well make it interesting.

Chewable toxic pills.  WTF!!?  Never again.

Rochelle doesn't have a dog. 

Last friday night I attended the retirement of a man who was my crew boss for the years I worked in fire.   Jimmy Joe (what we called him, a nickname of his full name that I won't print because I don't want work people landing here and knowing what I do while not paying attention on conference calls…besides eat crunchy foods) is a mild-mannered guy, fatherly type. He ran the crew like I know he runs his family – gently, encouragingly, firmly but only weilding as much control as necessary.  At work he walked the delicate line between manager and friend and was beloved by all. Or most. It can never be more than most.  I don't care who you are.  Jim was so close though….maybe if he had leaked those intoxicating pherimoans out of his pores..or if he shit gold coin when he spoke ….but there is no point thinking about that now, he's retired.

Anyway, I haven't fought fire for a few years, but the dinner brought back memories…and the people I used to work with are really getting OLD! I'm sure 'digging line' means something else entirely to us all now. 

I spent the rest of the weekend with new(er) friends…DD, Susan, Ellie, Jody, Kelsey, and Ann and Mary from Nevada.  We worked dogs, had some Hot Toddies…something I'd never even heard of before DD introduced it to my lexicon,  

"Can you pick up a Hot Toddy mix on your way out?" she texted me first thing Saturday morning.

"Yes, I can!" I replied. Because I'm like that. All about Positive.  It's not the first time I've been errand girl for some twisted quest of DDs….well, okay, it WAS going to be…and I was ready.

Cruising for a mix of Hot Toddies, however, caused me about an hours delay and some uncomfortable moments downtown at the only bar open at 9am, and then, later, finally, at the Paul's IGA store meat department. 

Awkward!  Hot Toddie mix.  Sounds more like some sort of variety pack male stripper show, or some nerdy-sexy-maybe-a-tad-effeminate-escorts doesn't it? Of COURSE IT DOES!!!

"Hot Toddy?" was how I initiated things. I tried to target youngish men with eye glasses and a smattering of acne over good features and clothes a mother would pick out.  At first…

"Uhhh…no… thanks." was exclusively the reply. 

I transitioned to men who were awake and drinking, but had probably been home to bathe. This was looking more promising, yet not as toothsome, maybe even repulsive…

Then DD texted me, "Are you at the store yet?"

WTF? Really?  Well…ok, probably in Caldwell, yes. I could see that. 

So I drove to Paul's IGA, meat department and laid down my line, sultry-like, to a man whose name tag read 'Chuck'.

"You mean a Hot Buttered Rum batter?" he replied.

"Uhhh, sure, if that's what you want to call him… We'd be….catchers, then?"

Imagine my complete letdown when he led me to the wine isle and handed me a 4 ounce plastic tub. HOT BUTTERED RUM MIX.  Does DD fuck with me thusly ON PURPOSE?

I rebuttoned the top 3 buttons of my shirt and headed to her house. To work dogs. Thank god that was just as it sounded.

Everyone was already there and working.  I worked Jai.  We need this sort of practice in front of people as we tend to get a little dicy under scrutiny.

It was a great weekend.  I'm not sure Jai and I are ready for her first trial coming up the weekend after this next, but we'll see.

In the afternoon we had a Hot Toddy, as DD insisted on calling it.  It was fine.  I think overall it worked out better with this mix.  

I've had a few emails asking me about Derek.  Especially since he wasn't at Big Willow this year.  

"Is he OKAY?" Anonymous People ask, "Has he quit TRIALING?"

Well, he certainly hasn't quit shedding, if you know what I mean.  And speaking of trials….

It's not easy making a living in Idaho training and trialing dogs, but its even harder making it as a lanky stripper with a bitchy personality. 

Stripping bachelor parties and republican conventions wasn't keeping Derek's dogs in designer kibble, let alone doggy aveda.  He was having to skimp on hair gel and NOT IRON Jen's coat before taking her to the desert. 

It was too much.  Her collar was last years. Everyone has noticed, he said. It's humiliating. 

"She might as well roll in shit, like your dogs," Derek sniffed.

We all know: you do what you have to do in this sport to stay in it and get ahead. You buy more and better dogs, you get a trailer, you spend big money on entering trials where you don't have a chance…. We've all done it (well, you people have. Yawn. I just work the pens, set-out if I'm lucky; sleep in my car,  and drink.) 

Derek has had to take on Children's Parties. 

I happened to witness one such event, downtown, at a daycare last Thursday. He just needed to do ONE party to raise the money to enter Jen last minute in Big Willow and pay for her new fur extensions.  He just needed a little more cash for entree fees on both days and to have his and her brows waxed to look more humble when they won. A gentle arch.

Little twins Johnny and Lindy Tuttle turned 7 years old on Friday.  Before that neither had ever seen a grown man's waxed bikini line.  Well, Lindy claims that she has, but, as Derek, and Jimmy maintain,

"She's a lying fat little bitch."

Most of the children hadn't seen anything like this….

Shortly after naptime, Derek arrived at the Kids R People Too Day Skool dressed as a cowboy clown. Yesse Yams is what his large business card said.  On his head he wore a 30 gallon hat (with a spiggot and 2 handles – koolaid and vodka); Two large potatoes
were holstered at his side. (Or so I thought that the two
huge fleshy colored things in his holsters…were yams…because of the
name.  No. Nonono.)  He had on oversized boots, with spurs – big ole evil looking things, although he assured everyone that they were edible,

"Like my G-String"

Which he pulled up above the saggy colorful belt-line of his designer cowboy clown jeans. He snapped the G-string, pulled the pants down to his knees and did some sort of gymnastic maneuver that showed all 4 servings. Parent's gasped.

The kids did clap, I have to say.  Except Lindy. 

"You're too skinny," she said, "You look like my uncle Ronny and he goes potty on himself."

That little bitch.

"HIDY, KIDS!" he said through his legs, cowboying up, as they say, despite the birthday girl.

"I hope you don't go potty on yourself," she trilled. He ignored her.

Derek made a balloon Mariah Carey, and a couple of Michael Kors bags.  He tweezed one girls mother with some huge appliance. 

The children were, in general, at first amused, but kids are easily
distracted, and Derek doesn't really like anything that doesn't own an
IPhone and can't drink hard liquor.  Never has. Not even as a toddler,
his grandmother told me. He started getting edgy about the lack of tipping.

In fact, the kids had stopped even paying attention.  They were talking, and laughing, and wrestling…spinning in place…

He tried all his best moves.  The little beasts ignored him.  Took off his clothes, instead of dollar bills, one child handed him a soiled kleenix!

"Mister, I found this..in my nose…"

FINALLY Derek tried to give first Jimmy and then Lindy a lapdance, while juggling …the "yams"…,

"IT WAS TASTEFUL," as he told the officers.  "I kept the holster and the g-string on. I used music from that mermaid cartoon…it was all VERY DISNEY…Like that cowboy from Toy Story, only hung…and with decent legs….and  a yam…"

Turns out in the CLOWN world, a 'yam' is a something else entirely.  Some are peeled, some aren't.  Just like with European men.

It was when Lindy put her gum in Derek's G-string that the yam hit the fan, almost literally enough to be figurative again.

"I thought it was the trash. Yuk."

Soon all the children were shoving garbage in Derek's tiny little g-string…where only dollars, mostly, had gone before. 

All he could do was slap at them with his vibrating tubers.  Until the police came. 

Anyway! Derek is finished with Children's Parties (or being within 200 yards of a school) and promises to be at the Next Trial Near You.  So, it all worked out for the best as everything tends to. 

There wasn't a willow this year, anyway.

I'm sitting at the airport in Reno waiting for my flight. It may be awhile…flights just started taking off again… having been grounded or diverted since 11:00 due to high winds.  People are a bit edgy.  Except me because of my internal goodness and calm easy going nature.  That, and I was up drinking with a few people last night until 2:30 and I'm so tired and burned out that any emotion beyond the most basic survival ones will need at least 48 hours to regenerate.  

It is probably predictable that last night I drank too much, me about 8
others; they came to MY condo because the fireplace in mine was functional.

= (TRAPPED) 

Everyone brought huge 'Growlers' of microbrew from Truckee… thick high alcohol content beer that should need to shave twice a day and be separated from weaker beverages by force….and today I thought that I was probably sorry. Vaguely sorry, for one or more things, or many things;  but that seemed to wear off after I had some coffee. I was so excited to see eggs and hash browns that I decided that maybe it wasn't remorse. I get emotions and appetite confused.

Exception: I did text my good friend K*m because I
made her stay until everyone else left.  It was tedius, for sure.  We were both very tired.  The next to
last guy, B*ll, was driving back to Reno to catch a flight at 3:30.  He seemed to be considering the Stay Up instead of Get 1 Hour Sleep option.  I like B*ll. I just thought our evening needed K*m in it.  I'm not a one-on-one kind of person until I know one for ….oh, a year or about 1000 emails.  Or both. Or sometimes never. 

I just
kept mouthing, "DO NOT LEAVE" to K*m, while berating B*ll for having a
degree in Chinese Sanskrit. (Because…really)

(And philosophy…which even my goddamn dog
has a minor in…Zeke majored in Canine Good Citizen, did his thesis on
Cats: A Study in Leave It).

I work with B*ll and I figured he had some
sort of Berkley degree….everything about him screams Drumming Circle and Natural Fibers….but I assumed that his education was in forestry or something similar.  Ecology, maybe. 
Not Chinese Sanskrit.  

"WTF? What did you plan to do with
that? Unlock the secrets of the General's Chicken? Buy a tattoo gun and
get in on the ground floor of the affectation art boom?"

"It was great to study…"

"I have a degree in Spanish Tagging. Or I will have, as soon as I print it…"

(Yeah. I'm a 6 gun charm boat.)

"K*M>>> DON'T LEAVE."

"We should leave, B*ll," she kept saying. "I'll walk out with you…." 

"I'm pretty tired…B*ll…will you walk me to my room?"

She
seemed like the creepiest lesbian ever, while I studied my shoes, like
a retarded person, nodding slowly so as not to seem …completely
incapable of handling my own social situations.

"I owe you." I texted her at 6 am.

"Yes you do." she texted back.

"Don't ever fucking suggest drinking in MY room again."

"FU"

There should be a symbol for that.

In Seattle, downtown, I think on 2nd street, near Virginia…on a HUGE billboard located several stories up a brick building is a sign that features a woman's left hand with the ring finger aloft and the flashing neon words "VACANCY"  next to it.  That pretty much sums up my friend Allison.  She wants a husband.  She loves Martha Stewart and quilting and cooking….and skulls and sticking pins through the prettiest butterflies so that she can keep them under glass forever.  Now she lives in Florida, where that sort of thing is popular with men, only hookers instead of butterflies and a thin layer of leaves on an old highway spur instead of glass.  Shallow grave/Under glass…prostitutes/pollinators… It's a thin interchangeable line, really, if you are me.

"You should marry a serial killer!" I told her last night.  "Women DO THAT!"

I saw it on Bravo channel during my last travel.  Women Who Love Monsters… I watched it because I was hoping it was about dating rogue grizzlies or men dressed like angry muppets… or something more interesting. 

She rolled her eyes.  "A serial killer can't buy me stuff."

"He could if he were a RICH REALITY SHOW serial killer.   Why not a show that features a death row killer and women who VIE for his LOVE?  Till Death Do Us Part…or Death Row Bride…."

"Those are stupid names," said the woman who calls herself Muffin Girl on marryme.com.  "It would need a better name…."

"You would kick serious ass at the little competitions! You know TAXIDERMY! and YOU CAN RUN A CHAINSAW! You know how to cook…you hate prostitutes!"

"Yeah….Ted Bundy was sort of hot….I don't hate prostitutes!"

"Well, you could learn to…for the Right Man. It's better than having to learn to golf, or spend Christmas with his mother."

"Definitely."

"Then there is the followup show — Conjugal Wives of Dade County!"

"I could have my own show when he finally gets his lethal injection! Like Martha! This might be BETTER than Match.com…." she clapped.

"It will be better," I told her, "Who wants a center piece out of crepe paper when you can have human remains? Think of the grateful families! THE REUNION SHOW!"

Why am I not being paid for this shit?  I WAS BORN TO MAKE PEOPLE HAPPY!

One of the ewes keeps getting out of my pasture.  She's been found on the highway, she's been seen standing in the middle of my lane.  There are 9 others seemingly just like her who are content, plus a ram.  I have plenty of grazing on my 3 acres. Plus a ram.  Everyone says what a handsome ram he is.  Buff little guy with huge horns.  She is not impressed.

I think that little ewe has been eying my neighbor's goats. I think she wants something different.
Goats are the bad boys of the ruminant world.  Often connected with Satan and nasty cheese.  Goats are individuals. They seem more intelligent.  They have this dark side that is irresistible, except in cheese.

I dated a man for years who claimed that my attraction to him was based on him being "an outlaw"…

We had a semi-horrible relationship. It fluctuated from really really intense in a good way…to really really shit.  His theory was that I loved his bad boy image/side.   I never bought it.  I did admire that he lived outside the traditional constricts of society and that he loved what he did for a living. I always admire that.  But, like any addiction, I really just lived for the peaks of the relationship. Eventually I married, twice, men who I could stand to be around more consistently, but far less intensely.  It's a trade off.  

Today I will fix the fence. One of them.