10/24/10 8:40 p.m. Alcatraz

noi liwe vikcki latying on grfrounf a/b  ulnce  xcdoiming       This is how it began,  And when and where.  There are SO many ways it might have begun -  one of which is actually "it was a dark and stormy night".  No shit.  (Ed. note : if you live long enough and pay attention, all of this stuff comes home to roost.  i.e. imagine my childlike delight the first time I was at a big meeting and "proposals" were literally "on the table".  (The meeting ran long, as I recall - I could not stop giggling.)     So, "...it WAS a dark and stormy night."  Or, how about : "The San Francisco Giants had just won a golden ticket to The World Fucking Series : first time since 2002 !"  Or even : "As my sister lay in the haunting shadow of the old penitentiary on the slicky-steep gravelly hill in the dark of the storm, her screams piercing the wetly-striped night sky as the full moon that would never be struggles boldly through to try and look at whatever the hell seemed to be happening  on THIS particular part of earth."    As I pressed "send" on the garbled text message, I had no idea what was happening.  Shocked, appalled, stoned to the chair, gob-smacked.  Nature had me choose 'none of the above'.  I had no blueprint for this.  For any of this.  I actually thought that, somehow, I must have fallen and hit my head.  Hard.  Ouch.    "Unreal" magically became.."de-real" as my sister, Aunt, and I embarked on what was surely to be one of the strangest nights of our lives.  Which is saying a lot, for anyone who knows us.  And is probably just enough to pique the curiosity of those who don't.      It started out as a great birthday gift for me : a night tour of Alcatraz.  We went last October under a full moon.  Epic, it was - in the true sense of the word (not like "..oohh, Blair - your Juicy Couture yoga pants are totally epic !")  Alcatraz at night.  Too many kinds of wonderful for a birthday girl like Trudy.  Beautiful, dark, simultaneously silent as the grave and loud as high tide, creepy, forbidden, imposing, haunting, alive.  (And that was just looking for parking...)      A spooky and storied ex-penitentiary on an island under the full moon.  Dated (as in "old") graffiti from the Indian Occupation (11/20/69 - 6/11/71.  )  Try that today, and they'd nuke the whole state.  A 5 minute occupation...)  Legends, myths, spirits of old-school felons.  Crime was, somehow, cooler 70 years ago.  Fewer high school massacres and random shallow graves - more good old-timey bank robberies.  Stick 'em up, shee ?  Jimmy Cagney types.       Heavenly shit, man.  I have always LOVED Alcatraz, even as a young child.  I made my Grandma Ella buy me Alcatraz books at the Wharf in the early 1960's : I don't want a pink diary with a plastic key, how about this coffee table book on prison riots ?  I even took "The Sociology of Corrections" in college - taught by a lovely ex-con named John Irwin.    (ed. note : great semester - also took "The Sociology of Deviance" - our guest speakers were off the hizzle.)  I stayed after class one day to speak with Professor Irwin.  I tried to convince him that I could be a stand-up kind of a prisoner - a right guy.  People would leave me alone.  Respect me.  Not butt fuck me. (My Prison Plan B is just to act straight up scarycrazy - a good way to earn respect and alienate others.)  I could go to meals happily, shower with impunity, have full run of the exercise yard, work in the prison library.  Stay in my (cozily-decorated) cell and read and nap and write.  Maybe a deck of cards.  The Warden's Pet.  The screws'd have to act mean - but they'd all have my back.  Professor Inmate Irwin humored me and shook his head.  I get that a lot.  He also gave me an "A".       Aunt has a theory that I actually used to live at Alcatraz.  She decided this after watching me wander around the prison grounds with a faraway look in my eye.  Along with being my rock (Alcatraz - 'The Rock' - pun pretty much not intended) - Aunt has long been a kind of a...bridge to the spiritual.  She brought Guadalupe to us when our most excellent brother had the audacity to die.  Missy, my eldest, so young as to have not mastered full speech at the time, referred to her Aunt as "a God person".  If my sister says I used to live in prison, I think there's a pretty good chance I did hard time...      I walked slowly, from cell to cell - touching the "if walls could talk" walls, feeling the greasy scratchy crime-riddled state of California wool blankets.  Grabbing onto the bars, looking through at the others as they filed by, keeping up with the tour.  At one point, I found myself in kind of a nicely-appointed cell, and just stood there with my eyes closed.  So relaxing.  The shuffling mumbling feet of the tourists.  Clusters of penal-system looky-loos wearing what appeared to be prison-issue headsets.  I wore mine down around my neck as I floated through the cell block.   There's more to hear, I think.  The others shift, en masse, from talking point to talking point - listening to canned voices and looking at laminated, sepia-toned posters of sneering wise guys.  Along with the ambient noise of the great tiered room, I hear the taped sounds of slamming doors, clanging gates, shouting "prisoners", and blowing whistles.  I want to just sit on the floor.  (They used to have a leg of the tour that included locking you up with people not of your choosing in total and complete sensory deprivation.  Solitary..The Hole.  Certainly nowhere a model prisoner like me would ever find herself...   I imagine too many people froke, and they cut that activity out of the tour.   Myself, I always spent that time wisely : trying to imagine how I'd keep sane ( talking to myself, singing, exercising, inventing a language)      I continue to straggle behind the group, darting in and out of cells repeatedly, hiding from the guide/ranger so he wouldn't wait for me to catch up.  I continue to touch everything.  I try the "beds".  Not a lot of bounce and/or lumbar support.  I bet even the biggest trusty on Alcatraz couldn't have scored an egg-crate mattress pad in the 1940's.  Maybe if I split my job between the Prison Library and the Prison Laundry, I could wear extra uniforms home from work and pad my cot for the rest of my good time served.  A few care packages from home, the occasional visitor-through-glass - and I'd be as right as rain.  Ridin' that prison train.  Insane in the membrane - what ?       For a hot second, I could have sworn that I shot a man in Reno.  Just to watch him die.  Clearly, I digressed.  It was time to catch up with the tour group, before I found myself using ciggies to buy stuff at the Prison Gift Shoppe.  Early parole for Trudy once again.  Sweet.  A typically invigorating browsing experience.  Dozens and dozens of prison-y items for me to behold.  Everyone seems to want a t-shirt that identifies them as...an escaped psychiatric inmate from Alcatraz.  I feel like taking just one person aside and telling him or her that, if this was ever funny, it was 40 years ago.  Spring for a prison-striped coffee mug instead.      We spend, we tire, we are told that we can catch the first ferryboat back to San Francisco if we hurry.  I'm done, ready to not be on the island anymore,  Cold.  Rainy.  I'm missing the baseball game.  Let's leave our prison memories behind, and scram outta here.  I start to...semi-scram, as some harpy keeps screeching something about "..hurry ! You'll miss the boat !"  Fuck, bitch - it's wet and pissing rain out there !     Sweatshirt hood up, my formerly-felonious face tipped toward the driving rain...down the steep decline toward the dock.  I want to, in this case, avoid one of those...literal things again (aka "missed the boat".)    Then, the scream.  Oh the scream.  My skin, turned inside out.  Hair, on end.  Blood, curdled.  Urine - close to exiting body.       The scream.  Oh the screaming.

A Creature WAS Stirring (9/20/10)

In the dead of night,    Could have been in your town.  Your house.  I was awakened from what I assume was a deep sleep by a hellacious and deafening sound coming from the kitchen : flapping, flopping, clacking, squealing, squawking.   Had Sparky gotten up to use the bathroom...     No, but really, can you guess ? IT WAS A GODDAMNED TRAPPED AND OTHERWISE FUCKED UP MOUSE !!!!    For the constant reader, you know that this has been an unreal struggle in our home : it has literally been months, tens and twenties of dollars spent on every trap known to man, entire doorways lined chock-a-block with sticky death trays.  Still, no death, no end to the horror.  We are mocked by his very presence daily.  We had begun to think we needed to just start treating him as a pet - he goin' nowhere.  Yesterday, we finally broke down and bought actual poison - which we had eschewed up to this point re: he can choose to die anywhere, and then it's a full-on hunt for the dead and reeking carcass.  It has come to that.  I simply cannot live like this for another 30 seconds.    Hide your kids, hide your wife - we gon' find you...homeboy    So, I suspect we finally caught the bitch - and I awaken Chief the Barbarian : "Wake up - I think you caught a mouse !"  He is less than enthused, and mutters something about closing the door and are you sure is isn't my machine (CPAP).  I close the bedroom door, he meant the kitchen door.  No good - the racket is appalling, and my eyes will never close again.  I tell him he has to come with me to the bathroom, then.  It is now on.     I leap down the hall in 2 strides, and find safe haven in the guise of a toilet seat.  (Never would have pegged myself as being agile enough to pee while curled into a ball...)  He (Chief) turns on lights and surveys the damage.  The idiot animal is dancing around partially stuck in a trap (that has been sitting in the same spot for, like, months.  Idiot.)  I call for the fireplace shovel and a bag - and insist that he take it across the street (my favored mouse tools and disposal site) after dispatching it.  I get a look.  Okay, maybe not across the street.  He says he needs a longer handle, so runs down to the basement for  "a real shovel".  I cringe and dry heave while he is in the basement - he comes up the stairs with a dustpan, a spade, and a box of Quaker Oat Squares ("...I need cereal for the morning...")      The Critter continues to flail noisily, and is lurching its way across the kitchen.  Oh God no.  I ball up in the living room, gagging and looking out the window - somehow expecting the police or something.  Mouse has somehow dragged itself behind the kitchen trash can.  Chief is jumpy, but resolute.  After the can is moved, It is exposed and starts to really move.  Chief (BraveHeart) then proceeds to WHACK THE MOUSE WITH THE BUSINESS END OF THE SHOVEL.  BAM BAM.  "Ooh, brutal !"  he exclaims.  I am all but barfing, and very near tears.    What ho !  It takes a licking and (literally) keeps on kicking.  Chief is mad now, and proceeds to whack the shit out of it a SECOND TIME.      Dead mouse, right ?  WRONG-O !  It, miraculously and to our utter terror and disbelief, breaks free of the fucking trap and runs into the dining room under the storage ottoman.  I assume this to be his last gasp, and he has chosen to die in private.  My fear starts to give way to a touch of relief - oh God - this is finally over.  So Chief starts shoving furniture all around, banging the shovel - and ceremoniously emptying and shaking each blanket that is housed in the ottoman.  No dice, no mice.  I urge him (Chief) to flip the thing over, in case he (mouse) is plastered to the bottom, finally dying.  Neither of us saw It go anywhere else.       (Please note that, at no time, did either of us scream...)    So, it seems as if...we still have A Mouse.  Somewhere.  In some form.  Chief warned Sparky as he left this note in the morning : "Look out  - he's slow and he's pissed."  Chief said he (mouse) looked "stunned" after the double-shovel whack.  Best case scenario, The Bitch is dead somewhere and let that be a goddamned lesson to him.  Worst case - he is maimed, crazy, and brimming with vengeance.  The Force is strong in this one.  I hate my life.   We had no recourse but to return to bed.  Sparky has, amazingly, slept through the whole ordeal.  The banging, the scrabbling, the squawking  - it resonates, still, in my addled mind.  As we lay there, shivering and gagging (okay, just me).  Chief (every bit the grizzled Vet - clearly reliving the war and reviewing his battle technique says, quietly : "Maybe he is hanging on the bottom of the kitchen door."    And let us turn our ploughshares into mousetraps.                       The Pocket Monkey Theory :      As the The Battle of the Mouse continued, lo, these many millenia,with 8 to 10 traps of different varieties and strengths spread around the human living space.  Chief has done research as to what baits they prefer, how high they can jump (13 inches, Goddammit !), and other useful stuff.      There is just the one somewhere around here, and Chief has decided that it is "too smart to be just a mouse".  In his infinite wisdom, he is now supposing it is not a mouse, but a...."pocket monkey".        Try finding pocket monkey traps at the Home Depot...

The Thing That Refuses to Die, Already (7/29/10)

It is day whatever,     In the House Mouse Saga.  This is getting to be ri-Goddamned-diculous.  The constant reader knows everything : the area (s) of target, the death methods chosen, the angst and sleepless nights.  I even wear my tennis shoes to the bathroom ion the middle of the night - a moment of gross-out is worth me getting to just stomp his  verminy ass to death.  But then I'd have to toss (or donate !) the shoes...    Still - all that heartless bitch does is somehow (miraculously - there is no possible way) climb /fly/catapult/rappel onto the butcher block and leave threatening "fuck you" mini-turds all around the traps.  We keep adding new morsels to the sticky death traps - how about a  little oatmeal, scarecrow ?  Nothing.  Not a word.     Until yesterday (no, still not dead).  Sparky and I are peacefully acting out an episode of Gray's Anatomy (aside : we have watched all available seasons (5) on an endless loop since 12/09 - Lifetime has 3 a day.  So we mute it and act it out.  She is amazing - knows actual lines - she says them as the actors speak - good times. Chief asks : "is she majoring in Gray's Anatomy ?  What about all of her summer homework ?"  To which I  say : "I'm sorry, you're breaking up - I'm going into a tunnel...")    So, all of a sudden, the muted TV is accompanied by a horrified look on her face : she is stock-still, and mouthing something that looks, to the somewhat trained eye, to be "fucking mouse."  Oh lawsy lawsy : long afternoon unforgivable short : there is a scratching (like a cat clawing itself on the furniture) between Sparky's Chair and the couch.  Then, some scrabbling from behind the chair.  I shit - I am stoned to the Mother Ship ( the chair I favor in the living room).  (I actually heard the bastard in the kitchen last week - and had to call my sister, Aunt, to talk me through the closing of both kitchen doors and the application of about 13 library books -  I had to stack them because I swore I saw a shadow.  Trapped - right ?  Wrong.)     We feverishly call Chief at work, and begin whispering hysterically.  He is appalled : what the hell are you people doing ?  Why whisper ?!  By this time, I have closed the window (to block outside noise) and snuck into the kitchen for traps : if I make it physically impossible for It to escape from back there - we got him.  I had somehow  convinced myself that he never left the kitchen...  He apparently does.  BitCH.    One trap under the chair, one near the most obvious place he'll try to escape.  I up the ante with a  juicy grape stuck to the sticky, and I lay another grape at the door of the one trap that looks like a little chapel.  We wait.  I am hot now, so we have to re-open the windows. Which is dicey, as I keep screaming things like : "WHY DON'T YOU JUST DIE, BITCH ?!" or "I'TS YOU OR ME - ONE OF US AIN'T GOING TO DINNER TONIGHT !"  Chief has said to make noise - but now I worry about CPS coming to call.  So I start saying "BAH !" really loud until Casey tells me that I may be speaking Chinese and what will the neighbors think ?  It's always some damned thing...   Chief comes home, upsets the big chair, finds nothing but me curled in a ball on the Mother Ship.  He scolds : "what - did you leave offerings ?  Sacrifices ?"  No, I reply, those are BAIT !  Him : "It's a mouse - not DiDi (aka Didi The Tree Man from, like, Borneo - he is a tree, but he has such a great disposition.  He even has children !)    My latest plan involves the possible sacrificing of the entire butcher block for all eternity - after all, it is nothing more that a turd holder now.  I say we paint a thick coating of some kind of deadly poison with a brush all over the thing, and see who, if anyone, lives through that.                                  Bah !

Man -vs-Beast (7/14/10)

Eek !

   You know how I hate hate hate a mouse in the house.  There are several documented and ridiculous vignettes that exist as a testimony to this fact.

   Our juxtaposition to the field across the street lays us prey to the occasional tiny shithead that can squeeze under garage doors just to make my life a living heck.  I still employ library books to keep them out of the actual upstairs living space.  (Never mind the time I had to return a library book with (gak) CHEWED PAGES).  Some bitches are desperate to gain entry.  Said bitches sleep with the fishes.

   So we gut the kitchen, stuff the microwave full of packages of foodstuffs, sweep, sanitize, de-turd (gak) and lay fancy-ass traps that act like a revolving door.  Of death.   Everything is moved away from the wall, no cords dangle - it is fecking pristine.  Lo and behold - he is STILL managing to CLIMB up on the the rolling butcher block thing : there is nothing up there - NOTHING.  Nothing except for his ridiculing turds every morning.  Oh my bitch.  I want to die.  I also want to know where he hides during his time off.  BitCH.

   And is there nothing more fascinating (Margaret Mead SO wasted her time in Samoa) than watching the escalating battle between a man and a mouse.  The nightly raving about the turds : "They CAN'T climb !"  (I say maybe they can jump, then - I get a look.)  Each day, Chief adds another decoy thing to the butcher block : last night, it was cups.  Before that, it was a basket of coffee.  Now, I see a loaf of bread delicately balanced on top of a jar.  He hates them meeses to pieces - but the male of the species has such an...almost instinctual way of girding for battle.  He stalks and paces, muttering and changing carefully-placed items just so.  I love instinct.

   I am sent to the hardware store today for sticky traps - the most inhumane device on the planet.  Oh well.  Next time, stay away from the humans.  The gloves are off - die screaming in a pile of glue, missy.  I enter the store stand in the doorway, and loudly state "MOUSE KILLING !"  The clerk looks alarmed and points down the aisle.  As I look at the offerings, I repeatedly say  "EEW !" and "GROSS!"  A deathly pall has fallen over True Value.   (Aside : I recommend this shopping technique : one morning, I broke the coffee pot (zounds !), belly crawled to Walgreen's, entered the store, gave the clerk nearest the door a death glare (not unlike one that scared the nurse when I was in labor with Missy and she told me I was "doing great !") and said, loudly and cleary : "COFFEE POT.")

      I finally grab a packet of "pre-carnada trampas engomadas para ratas y ratones.  They are aromatizado con mateqilla de cachuate.  There goes my dinner plans...  I streak down the aisle, sounding not unlike a mouse myself, carrying the trampas like an actual mouse by the tail.  I arrive at the counter, and throw them down, shivering and gagging.  I bend over, panting, grabbing my knees, and ask can I have some keys made too ?   A line of puzzled looking old men has now formed behind me.  What else is new ?

    Then, I start in, as I simply cannot help myself : can they climb ?  Oh yes they can too, mister !  How about jumping ?  Yep - I heard that they can also jump.  I think they're onto the the peanut butter thing, frankly - do you have any other flavors - like wood ?  I only get them one at a time, so...Is it true they have poor peripheral vision and use their whiskers as they dart around ?  What about the hanta virus ?  Do the turds have to be all dried out for that ?  If there is ever more than one, can they sense if the scout is killed and then they clear out ?  Will letting someone else's cat walk around the house (as if) serve as a caution and keep them away ?  Where do they stay in the daytime ?  You know, the sticky trap doesn't actually kill them - then you are stuck with it half-dead and writhing - gross !!

    The keys are made, the old men are getting antsy, most of my questions/statements have not been so much answered as barely tolerated.  The clerk (no mouse expert, he) rings me up, hands me the new keys, and pushes the trampas across the counter at me. 

 I cringe, push las trampas back toward him with my handbag, and say "I really need these in a bag, please... eew."

         Did I say eek ?

            

Sparky Sanders - Bravest Person Ever (3/18/08)

 Okay,
   So a ...mouse was spotted in the living area yesterday, which was horrible.  Chief placed down the all-too-inhumane sticky traps in the kitchen. Eew.  You mess with the bull, you get the horns.
     So, Sparky and I are watching a videotape of the day she was born, and she hears (I heard nothing) rustling from the kitchen.  She investigates - a tiny
mouse ("..oh, Mom, it's so cute !") has his creepy little mouse hands all up in the death goo, and is thrashing.  Cute.  We call Chief, and I am screaming, shuddering, and gagging.  No shit : dry-heaving  I have closed off the kitchen until further notice - no dinner, no nothing.  Chief suggests we...throw it away.  As if.  I continue gagging.  Mouse now has all 4 hands and a tail in the trap, but doesn't start fussing until we break through the barricaded door (as if for
attention).
   Sparky Sanders, Bravest Person Ever, grabs the fireplace shovel.  I (helping) open a Trader Joe's bag, and set it outside the kitchen door (which has
been barricaded with library books by this time).  She(as I scream and dance around, intermittently falling to my knees, inexplicably shouting "...I done never birthed a baby, Miz Skah-lett !") shovels the now squealing and squirming
thing into the bag, and drops it, because it's moving. Moving.  The bag.  Moves.
     I make an executive decision that the mouse must be removed from the premises immediately.  This is not a drill.  Not only could it get loose and come for us, but it can put out a call to its species-mates with its dying breath and they
will gather and overrun the house in revenge.  I grab keys and a phone, and we head to the parking lot across the street from the house.  We (sick with a
megavirus, and have basically been on the couch for 6 days) are in our pajamas.  We leap and scream and fuss our way across the street, much to the delight of a
neighbor.  We reach the parking lot, and dispose of the dying package in the best way we know how : we place in it in the back of a SF city worker's pickup
truck.  We continue to stake out the parking lot and watch the truck.
    The only thing that would have made it complete was if Missy had gotten  off the bus coming home from school, to see her mother and sister screaming in the
parking lot in their pajamas.

                           Proud.


3/19/08 - Update :


Well,  
   There were two (2) City trucks, both of which were parked in their places as of bedtime last night.
    This morning, one is gone - the Mouse one.  The other truck remains.  I had an appointment this morning, and when I came home, I see, from a half-block away, a dark truck blocking our driveway.
   I immediately became (more) irrational, and had an instant scenario in my head where it was the Mouse Truck, and somehow, the deed had been traced back to us and we now had to answer for ourselves, and poor Super-Sparky is alone inside the house.
   It apparently was just a black truck sitting there for no real reason - he moved away when I honked.  This is after an entire evening of discussing various
scenarios in which the now-called "Vengeance Mice"come and overrun the house and peck and nibble us all to death.                              

Summer School

     My big sister had to go to Summer School the year I was 9 or 10.   In my limited experience, "summer school" (along with just being an abomination, kind of like Saturday Catechism for "publics") was for dumb kids who would be "held back" if they didn't spend their precious vacation getting their shit together.  But my sister ?    No way, man.   I decided that it must be different for high schoolers.  A bunch of her friends were going to Summer School, too, and they all seemed smart enough.  If nothing else, in my family, we were most of us smart and excelled academically.  We weren't much for "trading down".   I still believe that if you can't keep up, move the hell to the perimeter of the pack.  Seriously.
     Backtracking a bit here : there was a period of time during which this particular sister took me out with her.  A lot.  Dates, movies, her boyfriend's house - and now, Summer School.  At the time, I felt pretty cool and somewhat flattered : she was  so...old, and I was a potentially pesky little sister.  But I was smart, had mad observation skills, and, above all, I could keep up.  An alpha-in-training.  As it happened, I was apparently good company.  Who knew ?   In the light of today, I now understand ( which is different from acceptance) that I was being babysat.  Nothing more.  Possible perk for her : I was cute and precocious.  Either way, I got to go out a lot.  An A-Lister at a tender age.
     One of my sister's boyfriends in particular dated us a lot..  He was very nice to me, and we always did interesting things.  Like the time he made a cake at this house and only added water to the mix and I said "hey, what about the eggs and stuff ?"   He said it was some kind of "Army issue" cake mix and the manufacturer only has people add eggs and oil so they feel like they are actually baking.  Wow.  Army issue.    How cool is my life ?
    There was one time when the 3 of us were tooling about town in his VW Bug (Christ - I think all of her friends had a VW bug : one with a Day-Glo painted soup can with a coin slot that said "gas, grass, or ass - nobody rides for free".  Don't rattle that can at me, flower child - I'm a kid.  I ride free.)   Then, without warning,  my dates proceeded to spark up some doobage - and I found myself right smack-dab in the middle of some home-grown reefer madness !  Pot panic !  What the fuck ?!   Had they lost their God-damned minds ?!  Smoking marijuana with me RIGHT THERE ?!    I was speechless, and imagining a life of drug addiction and hard prison time.  Since they were seemingly oblivious to the absolute peril that had dragged me into - I was forced to take matters into my own chubby little hands.  I slammed my eyes shut tight, held my breath, and tried desperately to plug my ears simultaneously.  I'd be Goddamned if one scintilla of pot smoke would infiltrate me and/or kill me dead.   No sir.  War is hell.
     But, oh - did the potheads LAUGH at my well-intentioned attempts to stay off drugs.  They tried to explain that my extreme measures were unnecessary.   I was "safe".   Yeah - safe like a fox.   Fuck that, hippie boy - pop open the sun roof before I start hallucinating and claw my skin off.
     Once again, I find myself automatically and almost unconsciously irritated and exasperated and dismissive with them - as you might be with a fat cousin you see once a year.  The adults around me often have this effect .  What the hell is wrong with these people ?!  I think this a LOT during my formative years - as I sift through all of the intricacies that make adults somehow..grown ups.  Try as I might - I just can't shake my skewed view of people who... know better . Am I grown up ?   Nah - I still sport baby teeth.   Maybe I am a midget.  I roll my eyes, let out a dramatic sigh, and aim for giving them one of my best 'exasperated-beyond-my-years' expression.  One of my time-honored "go to" looks.  Oh, and I believe we DID open the sunroof, thank God.  Score one for the Just Say No crowd...
     Okay - enough of drug-addled boyfriends - we have Summer School still to finish.  It continued on : we had perfect attendance, and we did pretty well on most tests.  I was strategically seated between my sister and...the correct answers.  I insisted upon, and received, a test paper for each exam.  This wasn't so hard - why couldn't these big kids have handled this during the course of the regular school year ?  Jesus Christ.  But then, I might have missed out on some cool and serious fun.  (Never mind that I sat in a math class in this SAME bungalow at the same school 7 years later...not in summer...)
     Finally - last day of Summer School !!  Bittersweet for my social calendar - but all of our hard work finally paid off.  Of course, there would be a celebratory picnic in The Park - it was San Francisco in the 1960's - we had daisy-chain hair wreaths.  Although I don't recall being in on any planning for a pot-luck (pun so not intended) - damned if there wasn't a full spread at the Arboretum that afternoon.  I'm sure Mom would've baked something if we'd asked.  There were a lot of big kids there - some, not even from our class.  Dogs, guitars, flowers - you name it, it was happening.   Maybe even A Happening.
    This part of the Arboretum is like a tiny amphitheater nestled in the woods.  I still like to go there.  It was a little...dell, hidden by 12-foot tight green hedges.  There are rows of benches carved out of big trees, and a podium.   Like a secret church.  A clandestine meting place for weird groups.  A quiet reflective place.   Good for pot parties on a sunny summer afternoon.  
      Yes - something about my mere presence seemed to draw the demon weed to me.  Marijuana ?  Again ?  Still ?   Here we go again.  Sigh.  Only this time, I would freak out quietly.  At least we were outdoors, using God's ventilation.   This drastically reduced my chances of coma and/or hospitalization.
This isn't my first rodeo, guys... I'm getting used to the sweet smoky smell of addiction and death.
     I somehow ended up with some food, and had been forced to eat standing on a bench because someone named Penny's dog was bothering me.   Some party.  And speaking of Penny - here she came with a plate of home-made brownies !   Be still, my picnic-loving heart !   Dessert - that's what this party was missing !!    Maybe it was Army issue brownie mix.   She whirls around in her gauzy hippie skirt - delivering treats and humming some mellow shit.  Lovely.   She approaches the bench (no, not with a sidebar)  - and I reach down to the platter.  In a flash, she snatches them out of my reach  : " None for you !"   I'm sorry - none for me ?!
     She must be high, denying a child a chocolatey treat at a celebratory summer picnic.  Oh, wait - she IS high - and dammit,  I would like a brownie, please.  I hop down off of my dog-free perch and pursue what I feel is rightfully mine.  Then, I see the brownies.  For the love of God - there is what appears to be all manner of greenery : grass seems to be sprouting out of the brownie sides.  Goddammit - these are fecking POT BROWNIES ?!   I look for Candid Camera.   Why me ?!   Uncanny, really.  Give little Trudy strength.
     I guess, points for Penny for keeping the baked heavy drugs away from a child.  Now, if she'd just get her smelly-ass beatnik dog the hell away from me.  Suddenly, I am bone-weary.  From the inside out.  Summer School is over.   I am tired of this party.   I'm tired of a lot of things.  Maybe I'm just  tired.
              But, I'm up for it.  Whatever it is I'll be doing next.  I'm so up for it.

Babies and Gentlemen of the Court

     The actual firstborn is now irretrievably-tethered to society.   She's choking on protocol, coiled in red tape, a slave to her civic duty.  Awash in responsibility.  She was summoned to Jury Duty.  Someone has the temerity to summon my child.

It's like that TV ad where the dad is giving his 20-something daughter last-minute driving instructions, and there is a 4 year old little girl at the wheel.        How very comical Missy will look in a court of law - that is, after someone lifts her up into her chair in the jury box.  Her blindingly-blonde wispy little-girl hair (clipped in place with several colorful plastic barrettes and a headband).  A ponytail of sorts reaches down her back.  The parts of her long hair that hang in front kind of...stick out : I tell her that will happen when she stuffs a bunch of it in her mouth and sucks on it the way she does.  Who eats their hair, Your Honor ?     Feet swinging back and forth in their bright pink plastic jelly sandals.  One sock sticking out the front - it slid down again !  The other sock, sandy and twisted up her tiny leg.  Purple cotton leggings, making her little stems look like popsicle sticks, and a (different shade) purple sweatshirt with white kittens on it.  A flowered dress on over the leggings and under the sweatshirt.  Pink flowers.      Please note (I'm sure the Judge will pick it out right away) the lavender Pocahontas watch with authentic elastic pastel Indian patterned band.  Colorful Lisa Frank backpack (pinks and purples and cute (?) animals.  I hope the D.A.  asks her about the time she joined the Lisa Frank Sticker Club - and was concerned about  how the meetings would work.)  Permission to approach the bench.    Should she opt to eat lunch in the Jury Room, she'll open up her pink Snow White lunchbox and dine on : turkey sandwich - dry.  Apples, sliced and peeled.  Cookies (a 'sweety').  A chip item (a 'salty') Maybe some Barbie Fruit Snax.   Either a juice box, or she can pay for a carton of milk in the cafeteria.  Bedtime's at 8.    I know she'll raise her hand if she needs to.  On her first day of kindergarten, Missy sat in the back of the car in her little booster seat, clearing her tiny angelic little throat.  Over and over.  For blocks and blocks, she did this.  Great, I thought : sick on her very first day of Big School.  "Missy, what are you doing back there ?"  "Mommy, I'm clearing my throat in case I get called on!"    Now, it seems as if the world wants my Missy to be available to help decide someones fate as they  runs afoul of the law.  They want her to see the scales of justice and what they really do.  They want her to pass through a metal detector every day.  Jurisprudence and stuff.    I object.    I hope they break for snack time. This is what the texts looked like this afternoon.  I another time and place, it might have been a phone conversation. Trudy : You got called for Jury Duty ?!  Seems like just yesterday you had solid food (Gerber Rice Cereal) for the first time.... Missy : I did ?  wtf  when. I'm like ten c'mon. Trudy: Dude, lemme open it here... T: Christ.....Monday MAY 9 Missy : Well that doesn't work too well considering that's my last week of class before finals what do i do ? T : Superior Court.  More interesting than Municipal and Civil. T : Looks like there is a postponement number to call.  5 business days ahead of 5/9. Can postpone, but they will nail you after a postponement. M : Actually, exams end that week, and isn't mothers day the 8th?so id be home already T : Actually, yes !  And in this town, it's a "one day, one trial".  You can hope for the one day, but you could just go to court that day.  You can postpone in the courtroom, too - if needs be. T : Unless they allow you to be way specific...like, any time between school move-out and job beginning ?  You could say you live away At College and give a block of time ...? T : Can also postpone with this form, it looks like... M : I should show up drunk.except then I might get a MIP. T : Good plan, overall.  What's a MIP ? M : Minor in possession T : Wow you're so...Dog Chapman and s*it M : I think I'll take it to get it over with. T : You want this summons, or just wait till you home ? T : So, do you want me to mail it to you, or do you mean you'll just show up in court ? M:  Show up. T : Gotcha.  The laugh will be on His or Her Honor when they see that you are 10 years old and/or still teething.  Hah ! Congratulations, Missus Sanders, it's a jurist !

I Can See Clearly Now (3/11)

Johnny Nash, '72 -     The rain is actually gone in some ways -  but that's me in the corner, that's me in the spotlight - losing my religion (REM, 1991)  Which leaves ample room for the fog (Sandburg, 1916) to set in.   Ooohh, life (REM again, '91).    Not only is it a bright, bright sunshiny day (also Johnny Nash, '72), but the sun'll come out tomorrow (Annie,1977) , too !   Asking "have you ever seen the rain ?" (CCR, 1970) seems silly at this point in a long, soggy month.  Last night, after midnight, (JJ Cale - 1966) I heard, once again, the riders on the storm (Doors, 1971).  Our house, in the middle of our street (Madness, 1982) withstood the stormy weather (1933 - Lena Horne). I figured it must be raindrops..so many raindrops (Dee Clarke, 1961).  It seems as if the wise man did build his house upon a rock (1939 - Child Bible Songs), for we didn't have to send out an SOS (Abba, 1975).  Imagine that - Mama mia (also Abba, 1975)  !     We had a few sundrops earlier, making for a true rainbow connection (Kermit The Frog, 1979) as I saw a double rainbow (estd.1976) followed by a third.  As I drove through the park, I remembered the old playground in my mind (Clint Holmes, 1973), and bet if I followed somewhere over (Judy Garland, 1939), I would find it at the end (Doors,1967 and Beatles,1969 ).     I decide to see how the beach has fared, and I first notice that the tide rushes in (Righteous Brothers, 1965).   Kind of like fools (Ricky Nelson, 1963).  I wish I wasn't driving in my car (Madness, 1982), as I want to feel sand between my toes (Peter Frampton, 1975)  I want to be a beach baby there on the sand (First Class, 1974).  Then, I see Surfer Joe (Surfaris, 1963 a-side) off in the distance, and I cringe as I see him wipeout (Surfaris, 1963 b-side).     I can no longer resist the call of the wild (Jack London,1903) so I make a u-turn (Usher, 2001) and pull up alongside the ocean (Led Zeppelin, 1973) where I see what looks like the creature from the black lagoon (Dave Edmunds, 1979) peeling off his skin (Rascal Flatts, 2004) and standing naked (David Sedaris, 1997), like a virgin (Madonna, 1984) - his diamonds sparkling in the sand (Tower of Power, 1976).        For a hot second, I think he is hitchin' a ride (Vanity Fare, 1969 and Green Day, 1997).  It's just my imagination once again (Temptations, 1971) - as he looks to be headin' out on the highway, looking for adventure (Steppenwolf, 1968).  As I eat his dust (New World Pictures, 1976), I ease on down the road (The Wiz, 1978), and begin walking on the sand (Shangri-Las, 1964) - I look up and duck, as here comes a flock of seagulls (1982), and I am afraid they will shit on me (Rehab, mid-1980's). Bird guano on my head will just about ruin my day trip (Beatles, 1965) - so I scamper over to where I see the tide is high, ( The Paragons, 1967, Blondie 1980, and Atomic Kitten, 2002) and knock on wood (Eddie Floyd, 1966).  I am lucky (Jason Mraz and Colbie Caillat, 2009).       Now that I'm on the beach (Nevil Shute, 1957), I feel I can start to relax (Frankie Goes To Hollywood, 1984 and Mika, 2006).  Take a load off (The Band, 1968).  Take it easy (Eagles, 1972 and Mika again, 2006).  I took the ribbon from my hair (Kris Kristofferson, 1970), dropped my pants by the sand (Cat Stevens, 1970), and made footprints (Stevenson, 1936) all the way down to the water's edge (Seven Mary Three, 1997)   Child of nature, friend of man (Sugarloaf, 1970).  That's me.  The seaside always fills up my senses (John Denver,1974).  My life...is the sea. (Looking Glass, 1973)  I have to live by the sea, the beautiful sea. ("For Me and My Gal", 1914) )   Even if I don't see it for a while, I need to know (Tom Petty, 1978, and Marc Anthony, 1999) that it is there.  But I don't really want a hot beach.  No Malibu beach nightmare (Rocks Hanoi, 1983) for me.  I like it best when it is a little cold, maybe windy (The Association, 1967).  Sunshine (Traditional, 1939, Katrina and the Waves, 1983) optional.  Walking on the dust in the wind (Kansas, 1977) in a hazy shade of winter (Simon and Garfunkel, 1966, The Bangles, 1990).  That's life.  (Sinatra, 1966)   If I keep walking, will I end up, like in the South Pacific (1958) ?  The lost horizon (James Hilton, 1933) looks far and flat, but for all we know, (Carpenters, 1970)  we won't fall off.  Nor will we back down. (Tom Petty, 1989)  We'll just go around in circles (Billy Preston, 1972).  Aint that peculiar ? (Marvin Gaye, 1965)    We will save that for another time (Chambers Brothers, 1967)  If I can turn back time (Cher, 1989), I can retrace my steps and get back (Beatles, 1969) to where I once belonged.  I got here in my car (Gary Numan, 1979), and now it's beginning to look a lot like (traditonal Christmas, 1951) I'm on my way home (Beatles, 1970) Home (Simon and Garfunkel) again, naturally (Gilbert O'Sullivan, 1972).  The minute I walked in the room I could tell (Sweet Charity, 1969)  that my feet were on the floor and not the shore. (Dinah, 1916-1994 ).  Sand stipples the carpet, and I am glad not to be among the landlocked (Bright Eyes, 2005).  Ain't that some shit ? (Ceelo, 2010)     To Ocean Beach, I do declare (Smokie, 1975) : I want to thank you for giving me the best days of my life. (Dido, 1998) tsanders, 3/11 ed. note : I wrote this over a period of a few days, inspired by the first sunny day in a month.  Once I had Johnny Nash in my head, I thought : what it it was all lyrics ?  MInd you, I Googled AFTER I wrote...which is to say this all popped up in my head and then I checked for dates).  Not to take away from the United Negro College Fund - but a mind IS a terrible thing to waste.  Word.