Opening a Memory Box in My Brain.

Yesterday I visited the house I grew up in for the first time in a decade. Ten years ago, my parents moved to California for work adventures and rented out the 40-some acre hobby farm. Now, they're getting it ready to sell and I had a chance to poke around rooms I lived in from nine to nineteen. None of these memories are related - they all struck in random pictures from the dusty trunks in the attic of my head.

And as I drove down the back-roads in the country from my grandma's house to my old place, memories bounced around behind my eyeballs - some sort of washing over in a quick flash, some giving a hard Junebug-on-the-windshield smack to my brain.

The house my best friend lived in on Martin road, where I spent long Friday nights with her plotting futures. We went to prom with our boyfriends as a double date - that was the time I lost the $100 bill down the front of my dress (people, this is the shit that happens when I foolishly attempt to be sexy or flirtatious, seriously) and royally pissed off my boyfriend. Rightly so, really. She and I are friends on Facebook now, and it seems like life went a lot like the intended plan for her, which is awesome. My path has twisted and turned so often I can't even remember what I wanted during those long conversations. Funny how that works.

I passed that spot on the two lane road in the country where my little Mazda 323 hit a patch of slush on my way to work in the mall. I was seventeen. I think I spun a total of three and a half times that day, somehow managed to stay in the center of the road instead of flying off into the ditch, and ended up facing the right way in the wrong lane. I remember the exhilaration and fear, and giggling as I moved over into my own lane and went off to work. Pretty sure I never told my parents THAT one.

My high school boyfriend's house, still standing back in the trees behind the wooden privacy fence, although the bar across the road is gone and a new stop sign has been added on the corner. His parents were always home when I spent time there.

His parents had very different rules for their son than mine had for their daughter, and some kisses will never be told.

I had a 10:30 curfew in high school. I'd leave his house frantically at 10:20 for the fifteen minute drive home and speed the whole way, usually getting there a minute or two late.

I can still be made late by a romantic relationship. I'm still not sorry.

The road I lived on clearly hasn't been resurfaced since long before I moved away. The houses along the way are the same. The eagles still hang out in the treeline fifty yards back from the road, watching for anything hit by the speeders going over fifty-five. The one on the road as I passed gave me a distinct LOOK before lazily spreading an impressively terrifying wingspan and flying out of the way of my truck. I'm glad I wasn't on a bike.

The fence is down. The front pastures where first Kalli, then later Shadow, met me at the corner when the bus dropped me off after school are mostly gone. Only the line of mowed lawn versus thigh-high grasses marks the place the fence once kept our horses contained. The river, once easily visible where it splits one of the pastures, is lined by tall bushes and overgrowth without the herd keeping the space cleaned out. I used to drop my bookbag, duck under the fence, and jump on for a quick ride before going in the house, or go stick my feet in the cold water where it ran fast enough over the rocks to discourage leeches, and hang out with the herd for a while. Some days I'd just race Shadow from the end of the driveway to the gate. I always lost, but he's do an extra lap just for fun, and I could watch him run in joy forever. My big grey gelding who hated to walk when dancing or galloping was so much more fun. I wonder if he was happy with the three little girls who took over his care when I moved to the city and sold him to another family. I hope they spoiled him rotten while he lived.

The big wooden fence along the road is down, too. Even the area in the other pasture, where I watched a moose step over the five foot fence like it was a minor bump in the road.

The back was no different - fencing all down, burrs growing where no herds keep the overgrowth under control.

The arena where Shadow and I practiced dressage, the bit of barbed wire where I got the scar on my thigh when I was eleven, the gates I could open from horseback...they're all down, hidden in the tall grass as traps for the unwary.

I didn't even bother with the barn. Judging by the state of the garage and house, I think seeing the place I spent the most time outside of my own room in the same condition would just make me sad.

The house is...well, let's say a decade of renters has not been kind to the house, who now looks more like a decrepit, sad, toothless creature too far gone to help. I remember working with Dad to put the addition on the back, the room where we celebrated Christmas for years before they moved. I remember the spring I graduated from high school was when we renovated the bedrooms, the bathrooms, and the kitchen. I lived for a couple of months in a old camper in the driveway while my room was under construction. I used to bitch that I'd only get a fancy new room with NEW CARPET for a little while (turned out to be a year before I moved out), and that my parents installed a dishwasher right as I'd be leaving so my sisters wouldn't have to hand-wash on their chore night. Oh the unfairness of it all!

The carpet in my old room is the same deep blue, underneath all the stains. I used to sleep under the once-new window and have nightmares that Freddy Kruger could get into my room through that first floor slider. I probably shouldn't have watched late night tv back when Friday the 13th was an actual show...good imagination.

I don't remember my bedroom being quite so small, but then I was smaller when I lived in it, so I suppose time and distance play tricks on spatial relations.

I miss being able to smell horses and river when I slept with the window open. I miss going out in the cold dark winter nights to look for northern lights above the hill. I miss how quiet it is, living where there is no major freeway or busy city street or airport flight patterns all within earshot.

Part of me is sickly happy the house and buildings are in their current condition - I think it might be harder to imagine selling the place to a new family if it looked as it did when my parents moved out. And maybe someday I'll be lucky enough to again live where I don't share walls or yard-visibility with my neighbors, where I don't have to leash my dog and I can have horses in a pasture. We'll see.

If Those Who Forget History are Doomed to Repeat It, What Happens to Those Who Destroy It?

This is not a funny post.  I'm so goddamned angry* and sad, and so helpless to do anything it becomes a terrible, self-sustaining circle if I'm not careful. I recognize there is truly nothing I can do about this, and so I'm venting here because...well, because it's a place I can vent I suppose.

CNN is reporting today that ISIS has entered the Syrian city Tadmur; the modern overlay of the ancient city Palmyra. I got teary eyed reading it. Palmyra is one of my favorite historical sites. Yeah yeah, I know, most people have no idea what that means.On the heels of bulldozing Nimrud into dust (which also made me tear up), ISIS is continuing their apparent goal of wiping all historically significant evidence of life before their own disgustingly evil culture off of the world. 

I had goals, once upon a time, to visit those places "someday when I'm less likely to die there." I wanted to see the great Assyrian ruins, to be surrounded by some of the oldest walls made by humans. As of this post, Archaeology magazine has confirmed that Palmyra has fallen. I imagine it won't be long before bulldozers come out. I  know, it's a standard of war to destroy monuments. The Parthanon was used as target practice in WWII, after all. It just makes me terribly sad to watch the fall of some of my favorite historical sites from a world away.

I did a paper or two in college on Palmyra. I desperately wanted to visit the seat of the Palmyrene empire, the empire Queen Zenobia ruthlessly expanded into Roman territory in the late 200's, conquering modern day Syria, Turkey, Palestine, Libya, and eventually ruling Egypt. In 271 she was defeated and taken captive by Roman Emperor Aurelian. She was a cool lady. A badass. 

I think I've been fairly clear on this blog that I often root for the underdog, and I'm feminist in general...I'm a huge fan of Boudicca and the Iceni revolt against Nero in 69AD. She's one of my favorite tragic historical figures. I'm a fan of Cleopatra, although for different reasons (I recognize her talent for working within the Roman political system, using all assets available to her to gain and maintain her power for as long as she had it). I think Queen Zenobia is greater than both Boudicca and Cleopatra in her resistance against (and conquest of) Rome barring one detail: she allowed herself to be captured and was paraded through the streets of Rome in chains (albeit golden chains, if legend is to be believed) in front of the populace.

The Queen of an empire encroaching upon Rome was publicly defeated and cowed. Some legends say she was so beautiful and proud the Emperor secretly moved her to a private villa away from the city where she eventually married a Senator and lived out her days as a wealthy Roman matron with successful descendants. It's possible. It's equally as possible that she rotted in a cell and was quietly forgotten so she couldn't become a martyr to her people, the way Boudicca, Cleopatra, and Vercingetorix (people, you should be concerned that I can spell that correctly from memory) had become after their deaths. 

Obscurity, after all, is the ultimate punishment, and in Zenobia's case it worked to a large extent: if you ask someone on the street who Cleopatra was they'll likely have heard the name, at least. 

I wanted to see Palmyra someday. I still want to walk the canyon in Petra. I want to visit Jerusalem, and Babylon, see the pyramids, visit the Colosseum and Forum in Rome... all the ancient seats of civilization. I want to LEARN from our past as human beings.

I suppose I want a Zenobia or Vercingetorix to successfully rise against this force intent upon destroying everything in their path as "unholy" including women, knowledge, education, and history.
Because once they're finished enslaving Syria people and blowing up history, ISIS will move on into Israel, or Egypt. 

What happens when they try to bulldoze one of the Pyramids at Giza? 

*I'm focused on historical destruction here, because ISIS's systematic destruction and repression of women is something about which I cannot coherently blog, yet.

Nighmares At The Museum...Or, Ways To Feel Lucky I'm Still Alive

This isn't a real post: it's a bunch of pics from our trip to the Houston Museum of Natural Science for my birthday (because the MAGNA CARTA was there, people, and nothing makes my geeky medieval heart beat quite as fast as a piece of parchment that was written in 1217).

 

After I stopped drooling on the glass attempting to read tiny scribblings I'm told are supposedly in  Latin but were written on really old skin, in fading ink, in a different language, by some sort of hobbit sized scribe erm... blind monks thrifty people trying to save messenger fees...

 

Anyway, after we finished geeking out over the Magna Carta we spent some time in the Paleontology exhibit.

 

Wherein I met monsters that I'm afraid are digging holes in my front yard and some unfortunate fellows had...incidents.

 

First, there were bugs. LOTS OF GIANT SNAKEPIDER BUGS.

If THIS is what's making a goddamned hole in my front garden, FUCK NO.

FUCKETY FUCK FUCK NO!!!!

Then, there were super awesome giant cross sections of huge trees that lived about a zillion years before man was even a blip on the cosmic radar. And they're pretty.

 

I'm 6' tall. This cross section of a fossilized tree is taller than me...just how many rings IS that?

Then Husband unfortunately lost his hand to some sort of giant sailing lizard. Sad. (It's possible he's attempting to choke said sailing lizard, which seems foolish considering the HUGE FUCKING TEETH, but it all turned out ok in the end.)

 

His new hook is on backorder. 



Then we discovered Syfy channel has failed utterly in their monster movie motifs. I mean, come ON: in the Hall of Monsters in the museum these dudes just hung out, waiting to stalk you and eat your brains. Except they were literally 15 to 20 feet tall, and looked fully large enough to carry off a Clydesdale. Syfy, their NAME is Gigantodactyl. YOUR WORK HAS BEEN DONE FOR YOU HERE.

We do not eat worms.
Unless it's a sandworm from Dune...those might be tasty, and we're definitely early.
And terrifying.
 

And then we discovered this unfortunate scene, in which a skeletal zombie mammoth is fighting skeletal human hunters. As you can see, the mammoth is CLEARLY winning here.

Or, prehistoric humans could fly. It's rather difficult to tell.

See the skeleton? Natural Selection at it's best.



Nope, this dude DEFINTELY looks like he's having a piss-poor hunting day. Maybe the Mammoth learned to appreciate human flight deaths from Robin Arryn? (Yes, that's a Game of Thrones reference. What? This could be the brother of the sad mammoths that died at the Wall)

 



You win this round, Mammoth.



And thus our trip to the museum ended. And I'm reminded that even though I'm closer to 40 today, I still have a longer life span than people who tried to fly around mammoths. And that's enough for me.



Mammoth Butt. The End.

Things Are Weird Right Now, So: DISTRACTIONS!

There are some bigass changes in the works in my house, and the next couple of months are probably going to drive me to baldness. This should not be confused with big ASS changes, which implies something is changing about my big ass. It is not currently, as I greatly enjoy Thin Mints and the season is upon us.

So today I'm practicing the time-honored cowardly technique of dealing with stress: Avoidance. PS: did you know my calendar at home is STILL on the January picture so I remember to finish that little scene and go on to February's picture? Yeah. Avoidance.

As such, I'm reviewing the top three non-traditional pets of my past. These are in addition to the myriad of kittens, horses, calves, chickens, and Canadian geese we housed on the farm where I grew up. 

1) Petey the Precocious Pygmy Goat. 

If you've never seen a pygmy goat (or a goat in general, I suppose) it may be hard to envision the cuteness, so the internets provided a fabulous representation. Petey lived most of his short life on a lunge line in our front yard during the day, bleating and frolicking between deck of our house, the grass, and his little pen with a shelter which he rarely slept IN but often stood on. 

Did you know that goats, even kid goats the size of a gangly-legged puppy, have the jumping and climbing power to get on top of cars?

 Did you know that hoof prints the size of a quarter all over the car is (probably damaging) cute as hell? Unless of course you consider goats (and the associated tiny prints) to be signs of the devil...in which case I suspect you found my blog by a horrible horrible mistake and I apologize for the nightmares).

Petey, unfortunately, didn't last terribly long. He got sick and died pretty suddenly. He was followed by Precious (who was a MASTER at jumping out of her "pen" (a laundry basket) in the house as a baby and had a fabulous time frolicking in our yard when spring hit.

No, I was not responsible for naming either goat. 

2) Guinea Hens 

Speaking of Satan, I fully support the idea that the horrendous noise Guinea Hens make could wake the dead and annoy the fuck out of demons. They certainly annoy the fuck out of me. But they eat woodticks so they're handy to have roaming the yard. Also, their diet is the #1 reason I REFUSE to eat them even though people swear they're tasty. But if you are what you eat and they eat ticks I'd just be eating tick-by-association and THAT'S GODDAMNED GROSS. 

3) The UnStud Pony

I don't count him as one of the horses. Mostly because he hated me. Sigh. When I was in high school we adopted a local little by stud Shetland cross pony by accident. Yes. By accident. He'd gotten away from his house and the owners said "hey, you already have horses, why don't you just keep him?"

Because a small, fat pony was EXACTLY what a house full of tall Scandahoovians (who could probably step over him) needed. But he was cute as hell and nobody wanted him to be sent away, so there you go. We took him.

Anyway, if you know horses at all you probably know that studs can be a little...hmm...unmanageable. Even when they're short. In order for us to get him adopted by a nice family, our boy had to get the snip-snipperoo. I imagine the same people who won't get their dogs neutered are currently crossing their legs, but that's the way of life on a farm, people.

So the process for these ball removing shenanigans is for the vet to come do the actual procedure (which takes all of 15 minutes, if I remember correctly) in his vet-like manner, and for the next two weeks or so SOMEONE has to make that poor nutless pony walk for at least 15 minutes twice a day. As I'm sure you can imagine, there's some soreness involved in the healing process, so walking isn't really the best loved exercise for a stiff-legged sore-crotch pony.

That pony hated the fucking sight of me after two days. I coaxed him with treats, I was immensely gentle and walked really slow. I brushed and attended to him. He loathed me: I was the bitch who made him hurt for two weeks while he healed. Sigh. I've had horses since I was born. I remember all their names. I remember all their quirks. I remember all their favorite treats.

I CANNOT REMEMBER THIS PONY'S NAME. I remember how cute he was. I remember him staring at me with one baleful eye from under a thick forelock. I remember him stiffly shuffling away when I tried to catch him in the pen every morning. To this day I can't remember his name. As a pet he was pretty much an epic fail. But he WAS ridiculously cute.

What was (or is) your oddest pet? 

Renaissance Festival and Alcohol: A Perfect Storm of Fools.

Last year at this time I found amusement in the various hospital oddities that I focused on while husband was in the ICU. It's really weird to think that today, one year ago, I was hanging out in a hospital room with a broken, unconscious spouse and no idea what the hell was going to happen next. But I had some faith that eventually things would work out. And ultimately, they have. And things in our life they are a-changin...hopefully for the better.

So, enough sappy digression. Let's move along to the dark humor portion of this post, because the worst things are SO DAMN FUNNY (see my previous post). One of the big steps he wanted to accomplish was to become security at the Renaissance Festival again, and he succeeded in that goal last weekend. I worked at the First Aid gate for most of the three days, and OH MY GODS the stupid shit people do at the Ren Fest is...well, it's just hilarious.

• Drunk college dude's buddies came to First Aid hoping we had something to "help" their friend, who'd apparently decided sitting in a PRIVY (porta-potty) would be a fabulous place to rest. He'd been in there for over an hour, just hanging out (fully clothed with the seat down...just resting. He was not passed out or horking). That boy has some seriously kind friends, that's all I can really say. Also, of ALL the places to avoid in any outside faire, the smelly cesspools of poop boxes is NOT where'd I'd personally hang out to feel better. Ugh.

FYI: our advice was to feed the dude water and bring his drunk ass home. Banana bags (aka electrolyte IV bags seen on ER...if you're old enough to have seen ER) didn't exist in the Renaissance, people.

• Middle aged man insisted, for five hours of moaning and crying on a cot, that the Festival had made him drunk. He'd apparently never been drunk before (yeah, sure), and repeatedly wailed "WhyEEEEEEE did you DO this to me? OH LORD WHYEEEEEEE?" He likely spent about $100 just for the big dinner ticket and entrance to the festival, only to spend 90% of his day crying and blaming everyone but himself for drinking himself into a vomitous stupor. Sigh.
• It's utterly astounding how many women "forget" their tampons at home and have to come to First Aid looking for an emergency plug. Really? Are you SO out of touch with your own cycle that you don't just carry one with you just in case? What the HELL? These are not teenagers: grown women who've presumably had the joyous experience of monthly "I wish I was a dude" cramps and mess should know better.  
• YET ANOTHER foolish male drunk patron (it's a theme, people. A recurring theme) decided it'd be a fantastic idea to untie the costume sword at his side and swing it around. He'd had more wine than prudence demands when flailing about with an edged weapon, even when said weapon is duller than a butter knife. He managed to thwack himself upside his head. Did you know head cuts, even the ones that don't need stitches, bleed A FUCKING LOT? They do. It's even better when the wife at his side has ALSO had far too little food and water to go with her allotment of wine (do not light a match around that woman. Seriously.) and is busy yelling at him for being upset...because our attempted-self-scalper was more concerned that he'd lost his wallet and belt than he was about the blood all over his head and shirt. His wife, understandably, was significantly more concerned about the blood.

I'm sure there are more shenanigans I could report, but what could possibly follow a self-scalper with an irate drunk wife?

Nothing...and so I'm ending this post in an awkward, inconclusive manner.

Freedom isn't free.

This is not a funny post, and honestly, it shouldn't be. I posted a bit of this on facebook the other day, but a momentary rant made me really start thinking about what's going on in today's political climate. This will be my only post on politics in this season (unless, of course, I "misspoke" in which case a PR person will shrug and comment somewhere on my blog that I didn't mean what I said. Even though I do, indeed, mean it).

Know what happens when you give away your rights over and over to government entities for "protection"? YOU GIVE UP YOUR RIGHTS. Know why we have the first and second amendments? Because when the US was a colony we didn't have the right to protest or stand up for ourselves. That's what the founding fathers intended with the Bill of Rights, with the Constitution, and with the freedoms we TOOK for ourselves in this country.

I resent that the political party originally valuing personal responsibility, financial independence, and small government influence/interference has become a Christian Coalition front-man pushing EXACTLY THE OPPOSITE sorts of controls on US citizens. Guess what? Religion has no place in government, and it BURNS me that the same party that bitched and moaned about a Catholic taking office (Kennedy, hello) is the SAME party pushing for more and more religion-driven-morality laws in the current government. Yes, Republican uber-conservative-religious-fanatics, I'm talking to YOU.

I resent that the political party originally valuing civic duty, taking care of the less fortunate, and ensuring the welfare of many over the wealth of the few has become a fucking nanny party determined to erode common sense and ANY sense of responsibility in favor of taking away my personal rights, particularly the right I have to protect myself with a gun, if necessary. That's right, uber-liberal-do-gooder-busybodies: I'm talking to YOU.

What the hell happened to all the MODERATES? You know, the ones who have common sense and can agree with some basic principles on both sides?

Seriously, what happens when we give up our rights? We lose them, and it takes a goddamn revolution to get them back. I'm not interested in a revolution: in a war people suffer on all sides. I'm interested in the government pulling their heads out of their ASSES and making some sense, because right now the Right is alienating any female citizen who has ever been assaulted, victimized, harassed, or is terrified of someone else forcing her to make health decisions without her consent. The Left is alienating honorable men and women who feel strongly in their right and ability to protect their own lives and loved ones, and who understand that NO GOVERNMENT SHOULD EVER be in a position of absolute power over its citizens. Know why?

Absolute power corrupts. Absolutely. (Thanks, Spiderman!)

See what I mean? Democrats and Republicans are EXACTLY THE SAME. They both want to take all the personal control of our lives, (Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness, anyone??) our forefathers and -mothers fought and died to take back from a colonizing empire that held us hostage.

Ever since 9/11 we've been giving away our freedoms and our rights in the name of "safety" and "protecting life."

But freedom isn't safe: it never has been.

You want to give up your rights, fine. I think you're fucking stupid, but it's YOUR choice to do so. However, you don't get to give up mine for me in the name of "keeping me safe" or "for my own good" or because you want to control my body and my choices.

Government busybodies don't belong in my bedroom, in my gun cabinet, in my phone/email/facebook/twitter/etc, in my diary, in my bank accounts, my medical records and decisions, or in my marriage.

I value my freedom. I respect the men and women who, over CENTURIES, have given their lives for that freedom. I would like to see this election result in protecting our hard-won rights and freedoms, not either fanatical agenda.

Sigh. End rant.

Poking the Bear

I started a bit of a snark war on the Huffington Post yesterday. I read this: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/barbara-hannah-grufferman/mommy-wars_b_1584446.html and saw a comment from a fool basically saying women need to stay home and make babies because that's the way it's always been.

Well, the historian in me couldn't take THAT, so I had to respond to the jackass's comment. As of this morning I've gotten FOUR replies from him, all in a very condescending, chauvinistic tone. I'm pretty amused: sometimes it's worth the effort to poke at insecure bullies just to see what happens. Snort.

I'm debating responding to his response, but since he essentially outed himself as a fool I don't think it's necessarily worth the effort. Therefore, I'm blogging about it instead.

UPDATE:

Yeah. I couldn't keep my mouth shut, so I DID end up responding. Sigh. Smart isn't always my strong suit, I guess, but sexist intimidation is so irritating.

Archaeology Smarchaeology!

My nerdy passions don't involve iPhones, droids, space travel, or computer technology: I'm fascinated by the way people lived thousands of years ago, before the industrial revolution, before TV and Internet (yes, Virginia, I indeed grew up when not everyone had cable TV and almost no one had cell phones).

There's a reason I didn't go the archaeology professor route in my life, however: in my experience, some professional academics have a really difficult time admitting they're wrong, and hold on to theories as facts. Theories are theories, not facts. A friend of mine told me once that archaeologists don't say "I don't know what this was or what it was for" when an obscure object is discovered. it likely had ceremonial or religious significance" when the scholar has NO IDEA what it is Also, there's an overwhelming attitude that people from 100 years ago, 500 years, 1000, 5000 years ago were ignorant, less advanced in their thinking, or just downright childish and stupid compared to people living today. I find that condescending and, well, rude, and therefore I'm entertained when articles like this one about ancient sailors hit the news.

Amazingly enough, people were able to navigate without a compass, sextant, radar, or GPS: technology is supposed to help make knowledge easier to access. It doesn't replace the knowledge itself. I wonder just how much of the knowledge humanity had collected over millenia that burned in the Library of Alexandria has never been re-learned?
In 1000 years, people watching history shows will look back on our way of life and shake their heads too, amazed at how horrible our lives were compared to theirs.

I wonder if Internet porn will survive for future generations to label us as perverted deviants? I think so: porn is universal, after all, and at least future archaeologists won't be able to lop off offending body parts if the porn is all digital. If you got that reference you, reader, are just as nerdy as I.

Excellent.

If not: 19th century "archaeologists" excavating in Egypt, Greece and Rome decided all artwork/statues/mosaics/friezes featuring genitalia was "indecent" and systematically chopped off/carved out all penises they could. Why? Because they couldn't offend modern sensibilities with ancient porn, of course. Sad but true.