A little sun

I had a nice day today-drove to Dennison to meet Mom and Dad for lunch. That's my first road trip in what seems like forever. I stopped by the Tractor Supply Store on my way back to pick up some hardware/critter things and was worn out by the time I made it home. Stamina is still a problem.

I was listening to tunes and "Hotel California" came on and I began to wonder why everyone loves that song. Like most good music, I think it just captured a point in time we all share at one time or another-the feeling of not belonging in your own life. My brother lives in Oxnard, near where the real "Hotel California" was-it's now a junior college.

I had my own insanity trips-that movie, Girl Interupted, wasn't too far off. In the 70's if you were a girl and acted up, you ended up in the looney bin. For a long time I was quite pissed off about that, but it's just what was happening at the time. It sucked, but it really wasn't anything personal.

I remember some of my fellow inmates were a Nun, who was on electorshock treatments and a middle aged woman suffering from post partum depression. We didn't have a lot in common. I did run into an aquaintance from High School, apparently Jean Shelhammer's new nose job did not stop her from slitting her wrists. Don't tell the producers of The Swan. The Nun was a virgin (I asked) but she had a boyfriend when she was younger and she loved to play basketball. The post partum lady didn't talk much but she did cry alot.

I drank straight on full sugar Dr. Pepper in those days. I signed myself out quite a bit, walked around downtown and learned the lay of the land. A few years later I went to business school not too far from the hospital, and then worked at a jewelry store in the area-so I would nip over to the cafeteria and pretend to be a nursing student to eat for a reduced rate.

The clients of the jewelry store included a mafia guy, a brothel owner and a S&L Crook. I didn't tell my parents because I think they thought that job was perhaps a turning point in my life.

The hospital is still there, the jewelry store went under, I think the Business School (secretarial school not a college) went out of business. Timothy McVie bombed the Murrough building and now there are a bunch of empty chairs outside in a plaza. Not to be irreverant, but that is the second stupidest memorial I have seen, the first being the Kennedy memorial here in Dallas. I think the city felt like they had to outdo the memorial at the Edmond Post office (I lived near there too for awhile) commemorating the worst postal massacre in history.

Rednecks in general are obsessed with scars and death. I showed two guys at work the screws they took out of my foot. I'll do anything to fit in. As the song says "there's plenty of room at the Hotel California....."