Holy Crap!

I creaked open the dusty box to create a new blog for myself, and discovered that I now have 45 followers over here, where I only had like eleven when I left. So hey! You 45! Thanks for playing! Please to come play with me over here now!

http://barkingattheuniverse.blogspot.com

Shouldn't Ought To Let No Stranger Do It

Wow.

Where to start?

I’m a little rusty at this, so I’ll have to ask you to bear with me while I get my legs back. But here’s a short list of the things I’ve done in the month or so this blog has been a gaping hole in cyberspace:

· Got my motorcycle license (but not a motorcycle).

· Continued seeing The Kid (but realized I’m not ready for A Man).

· Finished my book (but it’s about 75% wrong and I’m starting over).

· Become a diehard regular at Hawg Heaven (but they’re probably closing soon).

· Joined a pool team (but I suck on match nights).

· Saw my first moose (but did not crash the car, thanks very much).

· Received a Terminal Prognosis for Boy Cat (but he’s hanging in for now).

· Been to the Fryeburg Fair (but I lost my favorite pendant there, boo hoo).

· Ridden bitch on a Road King (but that was with The Man, and I don’t blame him if he doesn’t let me do it anymore).
· Got a new tattoo (but I'm not showing it to you. Yet.).

· And transferred my legal residency to Maine (but—

That’s right.

You heard me:

I’m not moving to New York.

I’m staying here.

I know.

I know!

I know I know I know. I was all “I am moving to New York City by the end of the year.” Blah blah blah. You know what I’ve learned? That was just a plan for the sake of a plan, and sometimes you don’t have to follow through on things just ’cause you said. And it turns out I don’t need a faster pace, I need a slow one. I need peace and quiet. I need trees. Cows. I need long walks and fresh air and full moons and stars. Oh, my lord, the stars. And I need people. People who might get an apostrophe wrong once in a while but whom you can take at face value and who’ll come to your house and shoot your dog for you when he can’t walk or hold his water anymore.

Not my dog. Jeez! Charlie’s still walking and barking and burping and farting and holding his just fine – sorry to scare you. But when Boy Cat’s time comes let’s just say I’ll know who I can call. They’re good people here. Good, honest, genuine, hard-workin’ folks. And I like ’em. Even if they do all vote Republican.

So I’m staying. In a month or so I’ll get some kind of job I don’t have to think about or take home with me – pumping gas, maybe, or stocking shelves, or wiping sweat off benches in a gym – and I’ll fill you in on that and everything in that short list above in the coming days and weeks and months and maybe years…

No matter how long I wind up staying here, though – even if I really do stay on forever, until I'm old and fat and toothless and skinning beavers with the three teeth left in my head – I promise you all this right here and now:

I will always heart Obama.

Hard.

There is, however, a tiny little chance I might decide to learn to shoot a gun.

I Miss This Place...

...maybe I'll come back pretty soon.

Hey, Kids!

Sorry, guys, I seem to have forgotten all about you.

I'm writing on a self-imposed drop-deadline, see. Eight or ten or twelve hours a day (okay, maybe not twelve...). And while I do have energy to spare, I simply don't have time to do it all. A very wise woman recently told me to "decide what's important and just do it!" -- so I guess I sort of maybe kind of sort of did.

The book will be done (not really done-done, but as far as spending every waking, non-Down-Easty moment on it goes) in a couple weeks. I'll tell you all about my motorcycle lessons then.

I'm Wilder

Well, I'm off.

Not yet, actually, but it's that twiddly-thumb time I hate, where all I'm doing is sitting around waiting for it to be time to go. And I can't even leave early, like I usually give up and do, because the cat is going to need his fucking shot at 3:00. (Actually, he needs it at fucking 4:00 but I'm giving it to him early so I can fucking leave.)

Anyway, my motorcycle lessons are finally here. I'm not done the book yet, like I said I would be or I wouldn't go, but I'm so almost-done I can taste it and besides, none of you really believed me when I said that, did you? Pshaw.

Turns out there's a hurricane blowing in, too, just in time. And not only did I decide not to waste money on riding rain gear on the just-in-case scenario of a little water falling from the sky (after all, what am I made of, salt?), so I'm probably going to get soaked clear to the bone, but also, you know...

HURRICANE!

So there's that.

I do have to assume they'll cancel it if the weather's too severe. But I also do have to sort of assume it won't be. In honor of it, though, and me, here's a little song by Fred J. Eaglesmith that ought to hold you over until Monday or so, when I might be dried off and have time to check back in.



He's Canadian.

Ain't no way he's wilder than me.

Getting To No

I have a hard time turning people down.

It's why I was the Asperger kid's best (and only) friend in elementary school. Why I learned to drink hard at an early age. Why I wound up going to graduate school, sort of, and why providence alone kept me from catching something gross or getting killed.in the Looking for Mr. Goodbar blur when I dropped out. It's also why I wound up marrying my Richard Gere.

2010, though, was going to be my Selfish Summer. Of the two old ladies whose beck-and-call I've been at for thirteen years, one went round the bend; the other died. I had no job, an easy book to write, and Richard "Goodbar" Gere kicked to the curb. I would disappear into the woods of Maine and come out a published author, all psychically rested and rejubified.

(It's not a word. Don't bother googling. I made it up.)

But then Things started to Happen.

And no matter how Selfish you're intent on being, you can't say no to one of your best friends when they tell her that she has to have her tits off. You can't say no to Richard Gere when he asks you to participate in your divorce. You can't say no to the summer camp that raised you (or, actually, taught you how to raise yourself), or to the now-diabetic cat who's been your friend for sixteen years (he was there through all the Goodbar years; he just might talk). You can't say no to your dead mother's dog whose ear's infected, or to your car that shit the bed on 95. You can't say no to family that comes to visit. And you sure as shit can't say no to one of your best friends when she goes back to work with her new, smaller tits and gets laid off.

Now here's a pop quiz for you: It's the end of August. All you've done for yourself all summer is shoot pool. The book's only 3/4 written, you're risking your last chance to be a published author, and you are feeling neither rested nor rejubified. (Still not a word. But go ahead and look it up. I bet it brings you right back meta-here...) When your sister and brother-in-law remind you of your promise back in April that you'd babysit while they go to Foxboro for opening-day -- as you've done for every home game since your niece was born six years ago (which is how she earned the nickname Football Buddy), but somehow managed to forget about till now -- do you:

A.  Immediately begin making arrangements to kennel the stank-ear dog and diabetic cat for that weekend, so they can both get the care they need while you go down and tend to Football Buddy.

B. Immediately offer to jet down there to pick up Football Buddy between cat-shots and dog-ear-cleanings, and have her as your guest in Maine for the weekend.

C. Immediately figure out a stepped-up work schedule to start making up for soon-to-be-lost time.

or...

D. Burst into tears and wail "Writing is really hard, and I never get any time to do it, and if I don't sell this book I'm going to have to work at Wal-Mart, so why won't everyone leave me alone?"

I, personally, think B. is the most selfless option.

But nobody said this was supposed to be a selfless summer, after all.

I think Mrs. Reagan would be proud. 

P.S. I really am knuckling down on the bookwork. I really don't want to work at Wal-Mart, after all. It's why I haven't been around here much these days. I'll be done by mid-September -- October 1st at the drop-dead latest -- and when it's done I've got a couple yeses lined up as rewards. One I promise to tell you about when it happens... 

But the Hershey's Miniature is just for me.

Four Nuns Die And Go To...

This week, I realized anew just how crucial it is for me to get the new book in the can, like, yesterday. Meaning literally a week and a half ago. Which naturally sent me into such a tailspin of writer's block that I actually slept. And cleaned the bathroom. And went to Wal-Mart. And mended my fine-booty Ralph Lauren jeans that finally tore.

I like the way those jeans came out, though. Wanna see?

I've really got to get the camera set up on this computer. 

The BlackBerry may be very useful for many things, 

but every picture I take with it looks like ass. 

And not fine-booty Ralph Lauren ass, either. 

Just ass.

The jeans tore because I shot pool in them, which I knew would happen if I did, which is why I was taking care not to wear them to shoot pool. But I didn't plan on shooting pool that night, it just kind of happened. I was on my way to the grocery store (see above, re: writer's block. I've found an excuse to go to the grocery store every day this week as well. Desperate shaving cream emergencies, you see. And dishwashing-detergent ones. And beer. This time I think I may have been after a Kit Kat bar), and then suddenly I was in the parking lot of my new local.

Oh! I finally found a local! Found it about a month ago, actually, but it only really became my local just this week.

It's a real one, too. Not one of these pussy-party bars for horny 20-somethings and middle-aged folks who are (as they say around here) "upta camp," but a real, live, honest-to-god local bar. With one pool table (in the front, thanks very much), a jukebox (it's digital, but they all are these days, so I forgive it), Sam Adams on draft (not my first choice of beer if I've got one -- which I do: they have about a billion more kinds in the fridge -- but at $4 for a 20 oz draft, I'm not complaining), and a full menu to boot (this is a novelty for me, and all I've tried so far are the brownies, but let me tell you, after five or six Sam Adams drafts, they fucking rock).

It's called Hawg Heaven.

It's one of these places that feels like it's been there forever, but it turns out to be just eighteen months old. Owned and run by a married couple (it's the second marriage for them both) whose names are Don and Kathy, but they'd like it if you'd call them Mom and Pop. Kathy tends bar and makes brownies and mothers everyone; Don cooks food and smokes cigarettes (not in the kitchen, don't worry) and shoots a killer stick. He says I'm good enough to beat him, if only I'd get the idea that I can't out of my head. I think he's just being nice 'cause he's the owner, but I appreciate that he's not shy to kick my ass.

I actually did beat him last time I was in there, but only because I got fed up banking the eight. Which we'd gentlemen-agreed to do. So that was Chelsea of me. Doesn't count. And Kathy was there for me the night the jeans tore. She offered to go get the duct tape, but I like the jeans too much to do that to them. Besides, the place was dead that night, so there was no one to bear witness to my ass.

The only problem is that for a local, it's really not so very. I found it because I was driving around looking for a place, decided I had gone too far, and it was where I pulled in to turn around. It is literally as far as I am willing to go for a drink. It takes me a half an hour just to get there. Which also means it takes a half an hour to get home. So now that I've officially established myself as a regular, I'm going to have to be not so very regular myself. Until the book's done, anyway, I've decided to go there just one night a week. On Fridays. Like I hear real people with real jobs often do.

Maybe also Wednesday, though. If I've been very good. Because there's a nice bunch of people who are always there on Wednesday nights, and a girl can never have too many friends.

And, well, every other Monday is free pool...


Oh! P.S. Plus also! I finally got an answer as to why everyone up here assumes I ride a bike! Because everyone up here does. Simple as that. Everyone at Hawg Heaven thinks it's weird that I'm only getting my M-Class now, at 41. I sure as shit hope I pass the test...