Change Management

I told Uncle John and I told my parents and their reaction was confirmation enough that I did the right thing. It is the thing that is needed right now.

My friends Jay and Sue are moving to Florida in about the same time period-we're all about the same age and we love to navel gaze and second guess ourselves. And underlying all our angast is Is this the right decision? Am I screwing up?

But I got some good thoughts on my 4 hour medidiation (drive along I 35 to Oklahoma City). First a rebellious thought-So what if we screwed up? It's our screw up and we'll fix it. Then a flash of reality-this is just another in a series of "final answers". We always think our current decision is going to be our last one-probably something we tell ourselves to keep us from freaking out completely.

This morning, whilst heating my burrito-came an even bigger insight. For both of us, if Oklahoma and Florida are wrong, we wouldn't come back HERE. Maybe that's how you know where home is-home is the place you'd go back to if your current location turned out to be a bust.

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.

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....."