I had no business leaving, and nobody would be grieving if I went on back to Tulsa time

Well, I did get that dress from the thrift, and it cost a whopping 55 cents. The best part is that I did not have to pay for it, so it cost me nothing. All, I had was a 100 dollar bill and zero change so, some generous soul, pulled out her change purse and fronted me two quarters and a nickel. That was so nice of a complete stranger. The dress, itself, is not what I was looking for, but it was cheap, really nice and very suitable for court. I felt like I looked like a school marm.

I really lucked out in the jury duty realm too. All the defendants plead guilty, and I was excused about 11:00 a.m.! YAY!

That yucky contractor still has not fixed my yard, but it has rained everyday but two since I have been home. I supoose I should call him tommorrow, pending the weather, since the yard appears to be drying out. It just makes no sense to call them as of yet since the yard was still pretty muddy. It totally looks like shit and my new neighbors who were building the house next door, and are now moving in, and whose sewer clean-out is on my property, sticking out of the ground about a foot high, have not even tried to communicate with me since I have returned. I am not happy about that, and my husband is rather disgruntled about the whole situation. It's like they don't even care that they messed up somebody else's property! Hello?! What the hell is their problem! If I needed access to their property for the placing of my utilities, I would be trying to communicate with those people and attemping keep my neighbors happy instead of grabbing up my kid and hopping in my truck to leave immediately in the offended one's presence. COWARDS! I sense the building of bad fences.

This is down in the swampland, anything goes. It's alligator bait and the bars don't close. It's the real thing down in Louisiana.

Well, here i am back in the land of my humble roots, back from my vacation to Baltimore and Northrn Virginia. I had a lot of fun, but in a way I am happy to be back home. Louisiana has always had a way to keep me grounded.

After my husband came home from taking me to the airport last week, he was welcomed by a backhoe sitting in our driveway, digging up our yard! Will someone please explain to me why anyone needs to employ a backhoe with a 24" bucket to bury a 4" sewer line? Is this not what ditch witches are for? Even if the contractor did not own a ditch witch, I still think that it would have been much less expensive to rent one versus the cost of hauling that huge monster across town and burning all that diesel fuel operating it, resulting in destroying half of my yard.

It has rained 2 of the 3 days that I have been back so, it would be pretty fruitless to call the contractor at this point and remind him of the agreement that he made with my rather handy right-of-way agent extrordinare father and my husband about re-leveling the ground, cleaning up the tree roots and broken limbs, planting grass seed and powerwashing the spot of hydraulic fluid that the backhoe leaked on the surface the driveway.

I guess I will be spending a portion of my day tommorow at the thrift, shopping for a dress, so that I will not be in comtempt of court. As I have the grand honor of reporting for jury duty Monday morning. yuk. (lip curl) Maybe I will get lucky like my co-worker who had to report last week. Every case was dropped or settled before noon. All that happened last week with the jury duty folks last week, was film watching and a questionaire to fill out. Nobody was even selected to be questioned by the attorneys. The judge just sent everyone home, just like that. What a fluke!

With my luck, it will be some public interest trial like last time I was subpoenaed for jury duty for a trial dealing with a boy who jumped a fence surrounding a closed public pool and drowned and said boy's family was filing suit against the city. That day was a mess. Many potenial jurors were quickly dismissed as they were voicing their opinions about parent responsibility during the interview process. I can relate enitrely to that opinion, but I can not fairly voice one without hearing the entire story. This is why is sucks being a Libra, ladies and gentlemen.

I did check the civil docket for Monday on-line, where apparently a former co-worker of mine, who is now retired, is being sued for whatever reason and he will be there for a motion. We will just call him "big guy". "Big guy" stands about 6'-8" and probably weighs around 280 lbs. Anyway, "big guy" is a real character with somewhat shady ways that always lend him to great conversation. I doubt he will even remember my name. Perhaps I shall be remembered simply as "the girl with the big knockers" that he used to wear a big grin around while employed at the former workplace over 10 years ago. Maybe, I will run into "big guy" at the newsstand and have a laugh. As one can tell, I am really grabbing at opportunities to making a potenially most dreadful day in court a little more fun.

Its bulls and blood. Its dust and mud. Its the roar of a sunday crowd.

Well, I am in the process of making plans to make my yearly Christmas shopping journey! This year my in-laws are going with us. Boy, won't they will be SO surprised to find out how fun going to prison really is!

Like a virgin, touched for the very first time.

After a long night of NO sleep, I opted for the Red Bull this morning and WOW! That stuff is pungent! Makes me gassy-mama! All is not lost, I did get to catch the old movie, Lucas about 3:00 this morning. Remember when Wynona Ryder played a band nerd?! And Corey Haim grooved on bugs and slippery things and almost got killed playing football?!

Shock the Monkey.

A couple of weeks ago, a new McDonalds opened near the house. I am not going to lie and say that I haven't been because I have. It was one of those nights when I was working late. I got the Quarter Pounder combo and found myself mixing baking soda and water together about a hour later. BLEH!

This particular McDonalds is on the left side of the highway, at an intersection with a traffic signal. There is not a left turn lane. There is not even a left turn signal. In fact, there is a big sign with a left turn arrow with a fft thing over it, so even the iliterate can figure out NOT TO TURN LEFT HERE!

What happens today? Guess. Several cars including myself have to come to a screaming halt from a velocity of 60 mph for some junk food jerk off trying to make a left hand turn to enter Mc Donalds. I was returning from my father's house where I fetched my train case and said luggage almost knocked me out from flying across the car. Then I was coming come from an interfaith meeting a couple of hours later, and what's happening? Another idiot is trying to make a left hand turn into Mc Donalds. I swear, unobservant dumbasses like those are going to kill somebody one day.

There are no empty calories worth causing fatilies over, people!

I will not speak all negatively about the Mc Donalds, however. It does have very nice landscaping with a couple of water features. There is a fountain in the front and a pleasant waterfall in the rear for viewing while waiting at one of the two squawk boxes for your order to be taken. I would be lying if I did not say that this almost looks like a mini-putt Mc Donalds. You know something? I really would not be surprised if it was. Hmm, now that I think about it, that would be a paradise for stoners. Soooo, that might explain all those careless drivers.

I dream of fire. Those dreams are tied to a horse that will never tire. And in the flames, her shadows play in the shape of a man's desire.

I tried out a recipe of my imagination last night. It was supposed to be like a vegetable primavera. I took a baggie of frozen broccoli and carrots and boiled it with some multi-colored whole grain rotini. Then, I prepared a roux like sauce of flour, olive oil and soy milk. I mixed it all togother and topped it with shreaded velveeta and matzo meal. I baked this concoction at a medium tempurature for about 30 minutes in the oven. The kids loved it. The husband loved it. I didn't love it. I mean it was okay, if the meaning of okay is like blowing like a jazz band in a New Orleans funeral procession.

It was something different coming from the four prison walls of my oven and it was certainly a colorful casserole, even pretty. It sat heavy on my stomach, even though my husband celebrates it's success. He even wants me to cook it again.

Well, I went down to the Grundy County auction, where I saw something I just had to have.

I am so glad that the parcels were delivered to VA. I was a little bit afraid that they would not arrive on in time for the party. I am happy to hear about a estatic Renae with her black Jesus. I was surprised that she did not mention that Jesus seems to be a bit in drag with his rougy cheeks and red lips.

Fred will not ever guess what his gift is. (heh heh) He still might be a bit perplexed as what to do with it once it's opened, but I couldn't resist. It just seemed so Fred-like - awesome, functional and even decorative.

I showed it to Jean before I mailed it and she grooved on it so much, that she even went to the same store to find one for herself. She didn't see one at first, but she did find a matching counterpart that she thought was just as cool. She wandered around for a while longer and finally found the same thing that I got Fred for his birthday. It was the last one in the store and was being used to support a display. She was somewhat discouraged because of it's filthy condition. Then she remembered that I had commented that the one I got for Fred was pretty nasty, but how I thought it had such great potenial and how easly it had cleaned up. She could not believe that I had bought something like that and revived it to the brand new looking one I showed her in her bedroom the night before it was shipped. It's strange, because even though they were both brand new, they both looked horrible. She bought it and put a little TLC and elbow grease on it, and it came out looking great also.

For in this world, I'm bound to ramble. I have no friends to help me now.

Friday night, I realized just how old I really am. My husband and I decided that we wanted to go out. The first place, Coconuts was a little joint down the road from the house that had a live band playing. Before their first set was over I was very bored. We left and rode around before arriving at a rather redneck joint called the Foxhole. The Foxhole was getting interesting watching drunk chicks that could not sing and being blown away by a couple of black dudes performing The Sorry Bottom Boys "Man of Constant Sorrow". I spun around on my stool to find a very old friend sitting next to me. We studied each other for a moment and hugged.

It was my friend from Tampico that came to the states via under a backseat of a car. I had met her after she had been here for a few months and spent a bit of time with her teaching her English. We still speak a secret language which is a combination of broken English and Spanish. For some reason we have always managed to understand each other. My Spanish is so-so, and her English is not quite all there yet, but she has learned much since I stopped tutoring her.

She wanted for my husband and I to go over to another place where a Karioke contest going on. We went and shut that place down. We had fun. Then she wanted us to go to the after hours club with her. We said ok.

Now, this is where the night took a turn. We arrived at the Western Club and I wondered if that was a place that I really wanted to be. In my childhood, The Western Club building was a fried catfish house that my parents and I would go to eat. It sort of tripped me out a little to think I was at the place that I used to eat catfish tails and think they were the best things ever.

The general decor had not changed much in the 30 years since my last visit. The wood paneled walls were scarred up from many a brawl and weird little colored glass hurricane type chandeliers remained. There was still no air-conditioning there. A couple of places on the walls had since been airbrushed with murials of horses and a stagecoach in the desert scene. The same old tables and chairs were there, now decorated with pyramids of spent beer cans. There was a cow skull centered on the buttress wall by the dance floor. The worst underground hip-hop music blared from the worst PA system in the history of afterhours clubs. The worst dancing was being done to this worst music played on the worst PA in the worst club by the worst looking people, and they smelled like pure ass.

Usually at clubs, people have a tendancy to look halfway attractive because of the dark lighting. This was not the case. Those folks just had a bad case of the uglies. My husband and I decided that it would just be best to dance and look like we belonged. Clearly we didn't.

A few songs had played after I had took a good look around to see what was really going on. A circle of dancing people, like a love train begin to from around us. An orgy chain of whites, black, hispanics and midgets had no regard to race or sexual orientation to their nether regions was circling us in a humping fashion.

My old days in punk/goth bars intutition told me that this was not a good situtation. In fear of being old person fresh meat in the middle of a potenial mosh, I snatched up my husband and told him, "Let's see what's going on over here!" before the circle of doom entirely surrounded us.

Then we arrived at some sort of dance contest with sumo wresting rules. There were men in circle attempting to dance their competition out of the circle by forces of attitude. I decided that was just simply an old Micheal Jackson video gone terribly wrong.

I was wearing my pink paisley glittery hippy shirt and felt like the biggest sparkle pony jack-ass in that world of tweaking toothless young women and Bawcomite boys who were all younger than me. I could not have been happier when the lights came on at 4 a.m. and hearing the lovely words, "GET THE @#$% OUT!" My friend had already left without saying bye. I never EVER want to go to that place again!

I want to ride like a Tulsa Queen.

I decided that I shall never be the raving beauty or the talented goddess that is Emmylou Harris even though my natural hair is mocking hers as depicted here on this album art. Sigh, I can't compete with that or even with my cool friend that used to swallow swords and eat fire! So, what's a girl to do? Learn how to make blue frosting roses in a cake decorating night class or something?

Baby, You're no good.

That does it. I have posponed it as long as possible. I really need to purchase some Linda Ronstadt tracks. Pronto! Not just any ol' Ronstadt will do. It must be 70's Ronstadt. I've been offically sucked into the California Country Rock likings of Parsons, The Eagles and The Flying Burrito Brothers, again. It's always been vicious cycle of what's really my very, very favorite when choosing between Bluegrass, The Outlaw movement, Bakersfield sound, Texas Roadhouse or that great stuff that came out of So-Cal when I was just a babe. Dammit, I LOVE IT ALL!