Tuesday, April 17, 2007

Getting the Chair and Relocating Bertha Butt

I am alternately struck by complete angst over all the decisions big and small that need to be made concerning my life and complete disdain for what a spoiled brat I am by not recognizing how lucky I am to HAVE choices.

Last night I hobbled through another fabric store and found IT-the perfect fabric that wasn’t what I imagined it to be at all-but when I saw it, I knew it. A 70’s green background with purple and blue chenille stripes. As soon as I saw it I knew it belonged with the Scotty and the Polyperk and the Tupperware. I also found some interlock knit that will have to be made into a lounger or something to lounge outside the Scotty in. Mom is set for her projects, and I think she was feeling a bit left out.

Then I went to Target, caught a ride on the electric chair and bagged an exercise ball for my dog’s therapy, sterlite and some melamine dishes for the snakes, and some cheap weights to weight the tanks down. Now a few days ago I ranted about nosey retailers, and sometimes I rant about indifferent retailers, but I was tired and very glad that the check out girl didn’t ask me what I was going to do with all that stuff. I think she assumed I was just another fat lady starting an exercise program-and I was happy my true, sinister purposes were not revealed.

With the new sterlite I was able to make a temporary double tank for the smaller snakes and separate the Butt sisters who are too big to share a tank. Bertha, the bigger of the Butts, has already settled down. I really meant to name them Janis Joplin and Cass Elliot, but when I brought them home and was putting them away, out of my mouth came, unbidden “Her name was Bertha, Bertha Butt....one of the Butt sisters.....she was a biiiiiiiiig woman.” (Troglodyte-one hit wonder from the 60’s or 70’s).

I was actually planning to blog and try to explain why I like the snakes, but that’s like explaining why you like chocolate or pate-you either do or you don’t. When people are at my home, and if they are interested and willing, I do enjoy showing the snakes and sometimes opinions change. But telling someone we’d be over run with vermin if it weren’t for snakes doesn’t seem to make the non-snake people feel any better about them.

I feel the same way about my tattoos. The funniest thing I ever hear is if I am in shorts around someone I’ve know for awhile. They always say “Wow, you never TOLD me you had some big tattoos.” The idea of of doing that always creeps me out-like saying “come up and see my etchings”... Lately, people have been quite shocked about my deformed feet-because again, they do not show.

Is the “mask” idea in reverse? I’m going to hide by not telling you every single detail about me? I don’t think so, it’s more that the time and context never was right.

I’m waxing philosophical because one of the things I thought about on my trip was -did I leave Oklahoma to be who I am, and if I had stayed, would I be different, and if I went back, would I change? (Multipart thoughts are commonplace in my brain-keep up). I even looked at houses for sale, trying to find one on my old street-I really have the urge to go back (even further back than the original Scotty it seems).

Some of it is continuing guilt over not living near my parents now that they are getting older. Me and an entire generation. But there is an aspect of the quest that infuses some of the decisions I am making-and it would sure as hell be helpful if I knew what it was I was looking for.

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