country in the night.

from a coupla days ago. you gotta watch out because if you start editing yourself you wanna fix all those run on sentences and incomplete sentences and rambling thoughts. well i fixed a few and decided that what the hell, just write like you talk and don't sweat it, so here is is fairly unedited.

Monday Evening -Labor Day
9.1.08
4:59am

I just got home an hour ago from work. Well a little more than an hour ago, we had extra help tonight cleaning up. Believe it or not, I get home much later working at a bar in Athens than in Chicago. Anywho, just finished listening to a CD the cheerleaders recorded at the hideout (shout out: miss ya peeps- www.hideoutchicago.com ). Now, I’m listening to Black Altamant String Bands. I’m telling you this, of course, because I’m feeling the urge to reveal my “stereo” difficulties.

All right, so no electricity, ya know. I’ve got this tape player I’ve had forever. Someone left it at the Old Town School of Folk Music when I worked there. Scavenging gone well. Lost and founds are your friends. The best winter coat I have of recent years is from the Charleston when I worked there. How do you leave your winter coat in the middle of snowy Chicago winter weather at a bar, I will never understand. I digress.

Okay so, I’ve got a great handheld 4 AA tape player. I even left it out in the rain this year at Clifftop and it still works. So there’s the tape listening. I also got this little radio with a wind up thing at Reuse thrift store here for $1.50. It doesn’t get very good reception and unfortunately the rechargeable battery doesn’t hold much of a charge, so you have to keep winding it up all the time. Lately, I can barely get it to work because the handle has broken off so many times and the crappy plastic thing-ma-jig holding it together is shot. Even though I can locate about everything in my super anally labeled boxes, believe it or not, periodically I can’t seem to find an item I need, no matter how long I look. Thus I can’t seem to locate my battery sucking but really awesome AM/FM/Short wave radio. Okay, so tape and radio are sorta covered.

CD, that’s another thing. I’ve got this crappy portable CD player that is super finicky and sometimes just won’t play a CD but will play another. It hooks up to these five dollar speakers I got from the evil empire (I refuse to name the store). Evil empire speakers are carp too. I meant to say crap but kinda like carp. So these speakers, I think I’ve figured out, sound really crappy when it is raining. It’s a trailer. It gets hot. No electricity = no fans, no air, you get it. So, I’m relying on the good earth for a little airflow & have all the windows that are working now screened OPEN. So, sometimes it gets kinda humid in here. I know y’all think it gets humid in Chi-town but spend some time four or more hours south and you’ll feel a big change. Sweating is the name of the game.

Anywho in addition to my stereo gripes, tonight I got home and couldn’t sleep. Things on the mind. I thought it might be nice to type up a little bit when I’m actually here and not at the coffee shop or bar. So, I’m drinking a left hand milk stout (that has been unrefridgerated for a good few weeks, think hot and cold several times, and I’m gonna try to paint a picture of the late, late evening (or if you prefer the way early morning) out here at the trawler, but first I have to run out and pee. Of course, the cd player just crapped out again when I was outside. Argh.

The picture
Tonight is dark. It’s great because it’s clear too. You can see tons of stars but no moonlight. Sometimes you here screech owls out here, but not tonight. Tonight I hear a hoot owl for about the last hour and a half. Every few minutes. It’s hard to tell sometimes, exactly where you are hearing something from. It’s foothills, so it could be from the ridge behind or maybe a ridge over, in the valley below. I suppose I’ll get better at figuring it out. There is a humming of bugs. Crickets, far off Cicadas, not so loud as it has been. Earlier in the summer, the frogs were really loud. I can’t even imagine how many it takes for that sound. All the frogs I’ve seen were so little for such a big sound in the night.

I need to brush up on my nature. I’m not sure it’s a hoot owl, but it’s definitely hooting. Shit, is there such thing as a hoot owl? I can’t help but think about all the tree identifying I did as a child. I kinda need to find a few books on bugs and animals and the like in southeastern ohio. Oh, I saw a ground hog on the road the other day, no silly not road kill. It was just sitting there in the early evening along the side of the highway, trying to figure out if it was gonna cross, I suppose. Ground hogs are fucking cute. I’d feel so bad killing one for a banjo hide. Once again, I digress.

Oh yeah, where was I anyway. Yes, the evening is cool, quite cool. I had to shut the windows by the bed and close the front door when I got home. Oh yeah, get this peeps, I leave my keys in the car, actually in the ignition when I get home. When it’s hot, I leave the screen door closed on the trawler. When it’s raining or cooler, I shut the front door. Actually, a few times it’s rained in a bit, not good for my painted floor. No locks on the trawler either. My cargo trailer is sitting out there with the locks hanging in place but clicked shut. I do, however, lock my car in town when I am at work, but not at the post office, but usually when my computer is in the car. It’s pretty damn nice.

The ticks are down, probably seasonally, but also because of all the weed whacking I’ve done. The sweat bees are up. Don’t cha hate getting stung right in the back of your left knee. I haven’t had any more swarms of little black ants or little black flying ants indoors (cross your fingers) since I’ve ripped all the crazy cabinets and closets out of here. Cats are keeping the snakes and mice at bay, thus far. I get an occasional wasp (of several varieties- and for awhile not so occasional), other stinging bee like creatures, occasional flies, even once a gigantic horse fly in the middle of the dark night. Note to mom: I don’t think I even need those fly strips, besides it’s close quarters and I’m sure I’d be knocking my head into them. Yuck! I get some wolf spiders which I immediately evict when I find them and of course many different kinds of smaller spiders.

Gradually, I am trying to better bug proof the place. Which pretty much consists of me using gorilla tape and fed ex boxes to “seal” up random holes in the floor and walls. I just put some bead board up on the walls to seal up some cracks in the weird laminate trawler wood. Still have more to do though.
The sky is getting that lovely dark blue hue, which tells me, I have been up far too long. So, off to bed I go, lanterns extinguished.

Bon nuit.
Keep New Orleans in your hearts, in hurricane times.

peeing in the gravel...

Thursday Evening
9.4.08

Well I should be typing up a damn resume right now but I’m not really feelin’ it. Go figure. It’s not ever a particularly exciting task to take on. I am officially beyond broke. I love the job I got down here and could go on about the virtues of it, but I really don’t know how folks do it here financially. I was well aware that I was moving into a depressed job economy down here, but really how are you supposed to pays the bills? I’m not paying rent and don’t have utilities. It’s just the cell phone, gas, and the credit card debt. Yep, I’m yer typical American with debt- these days at least. Anywho, enough of that.

I had the day off today. Slept in, then sweat like crazy doing nothing at all when I got up (the usual in this heat). Eventually went into town for some food & libation. I don’t really have my kitchen set up yet. So, it’s easy foods, snacks and then in town for food. I get a great deal on delicious (primarily local & organic) food though where I work, so that is where I frequent. Chatted with some folks in town then went over to Tony’s. Tony’s got the Athens News award this year for the best thirties-somethings bar. Remember this is a college town. Probably close to half of the population is in their early twenties. Anywho, Tony’s is my new Internet spot, since I’m a much slower beer drinker than coffee drinker. Remind me to tell you sometime about how folks talk about their DUIs all the time here.

So I stayed out a little longer than I expected I would, screwing around on the Internet (gotta love those social networks). It definitely makes me feel more connected to all my peeps. But alas, I am once again home.

It’s cool and the stars are out en masse. You can see the Milky Way. The other day at Tony’s, I met a gal who called me a hippy living off the grid after we chatted for a bit. I told her that I think of myself as a lot more punk rock than hippy. In any case, I will have you all know, even though I like peeing out in the driveway, (I kind of like to think of it as my visible septic tank) I also really like toilet paper (second to a bidet- which of course I can’t have here). That seems so NOT hippy. Anyway, the tp goes in the burnable trash not the driveway septic tank, in case you were wondering! So, while I was peeing with my fab led flashlight, I noticed a giant horsefly dead in the gravel with a ton of ants going at it. I met one of these horseflies in the trawler a few weeks ago. For the most part, I would say that the things I remember as a child seemed much bigger than they do as an adult, except in this case. When I first met one down here I thought it was bigger than any horsefly I ever seen in my life.

Okay, so I was sound asleep and all of sudden I woke to all three cats running like a herd with a crazy buzzing and zipping around the trawler. It was pitch black and I had no idea how long I had been sleeping or what time it was. So I just pulled the sheet over my head and went back to sleep hoping the cats would catch the buzzing beast. The next day I awoke wondering what it was and if they had caught it. I figured it was taken care of. They catch every moth in here let alone any other moving creature they find. So far they seem to stay away from the wasps but they see me go after them with something fierce. Okay, so after several hours, all of a sudden, I heard a big buzzing by the woodstove. When I went to explore it I found the biggest fucking horsefly I had ever seen. It was definitely intimidating enough that I figured I couldn’t just swat it with my little plastic fly swatter. So I went for a jar and caught it live. There was no way I wanted that thing coming for a bite on me. Poor guy died in the jar because I didn’t want to let it out anywhere near the trailer but before it’s demise, I did go up the road to show my friend who I’ve had conversations with about what bugs gross us out the most (and the same gal that caught a snake climbing up her couch- actually that snake incident was later that same day).

So, normally death is not something that pleases me, but tonight when I saw the dead horsefly with ants crawling all over it, I rooted for the ants’ victory. Now, when I had a mini invasion of small black ants and then a couple days later had another invasion of small black flying ants in the trawler, I was not rooting for the ants. Those invasions occurred when I was tearing cabinets and such out of the trawler and in part why I was tearing all the innards out.

Slowly but surely, I have been eradicating all the bugs and former mice nests out of the trawler. There is still a bird’s nest I haven’t tackled but it’s on this sort of shelf area up by the ceiling around what I would call the living room and I’m leaving that cleaning project for last. Bigger fish to fry first.

In the last coupla weeks, I’ve fixed some of the walls with some scrap bead board. The walls were splitting and full of cracks and seams for bugs to crawl in. Still have more walls to fix but kind of want to get the useless fridge and furnace out before. It kind of looks like a boxcar in here with a bunch of my shit spread around- stacks of tools, a shelf of clothes and a tabletop full of all kinds of shit that tends to collect on such furniture.

I just got a late night visit from boyfriend & brown, my friends’ dogs. They like to run back and forth between their two homes (several miles apart). Brown dog is why the kitties remain indoors (besides their own hesitation and fear of outside- after all they are city cats). The last few nights, late, I’ve heard coyotes a little closer but still way off. If you haven’t ever heard coyotes howling in the night, I invite you to come hear them. It’s so great. They yip and all together it sounds fantastic. Last night, before retiring quite late but still in the dark, I heard a single rooster crowing. Anywho, lots of good sounds of nature out here and some that raise the hair on yer neck and make you pull the sheets over yer head.

Goodnight, don’t let the bedbugs bite.

snake poop in a wet box... joy!

so many of you already heard about the snake that decided to shed a skin my trawler after i moved in but before my cats were here yet. anywho, all those wet boxes from the other day, got unpacked, dried out, and mostly repacked last week. didn't think anything about reaching down in the wet boxes and pulling stuff out packed in newspaper and such until i reached down in a box and found snake poop. then all of a sudden, i took great caution with unpacking the rest. lucky for me i didn't find any snakes in a box. i've seen several out around the driveway and found another, much bigger, snake skin when i was weed whacking behind the trawler.

when i was growing up in southern indiana out on kerr creek & gettys creek roads, we often found ourselves stepping over copperheads in the yard. they were always little guys but of course, they are also quite poisonous. we also had cottonmouths, another poisonous but water snake, down there. well, there are copperheads round these parts as well, but where i am living black snakes seem to take up the slack. just a few weeks ago, up the road at my friend's place, a huge black snake decided to lounge on the back of the couch and she spotted him when he started climbing up the window. he was successfully evicted. the fellow who helped evict mr. snake, just told me this crazy story about getting bit by a copperhead and his leg swelling up the size of a telephone pole. yikes.

anywho, no real fear of snakes here, but a healthy dose of respect for them, particularly the poisonous ones. since the cats are indoors, i don't have to worry about snakes inside any longer, nor mice, just the occasional wasp or wolf spider.

scavenging is not always the bomb!

current mishap:
well, it's been raining pretty consistently for the last 24 hours. so when i went to bed last night, everything was fine and dandy. but let's give you some back ground before i tell you about this morning's less than dandy discovery.

i had scavenged this easy up (well an off brand with plastic parts joining the various poles) at the hideout. it had two seemingly little things that were broken on it which is why the hideout was throwing it out. in fact, that baby sat on my couch for i think two months prior to my move. anywho, i was delighted that i had successfully fixed it by simply drilling three holes and putting bolts in. i'd say it's been fixed and up for probably about 2 weeks, maybe 2 and a half. underneath it are several pallets with boxes stacked up, as I am arranging what i will unpack and what shall remain packed. the other day, i smelled rain (who listens to the weather reports anyway) so i thought it best to place a tarp over everything. i made sure to get the tarp around the edges that were close to the outside of the tent but not on the side that was right under the middle of the tent.

anywho, i woke up this am to find that while i was sleeping (obviously quite soundly) apparently the storm got a bit windy and more rainy and completely ripped apart the easy-up. tons of the plastic parts were just snapped and several metal poles had wrenched over entirely. the whole thing was actually blown over and my pile of boxes was half wet (well, really sopping) since the tent was no longer protecting that inside row of boxes. it looks like a giant white mechanical spider with legs going every which way.

pretty impressive, but completely changed my plans prior to work. now i am trying to find some clean dry boxes. unfortunately & fortunately, everything gets recycled here, so everyone keeps their boxes for that purpose.

and in case you were wondering, the parts that i fixed were about the only parts that didn't break in the end and it is still raining.

so here is the deal... why i moved to athens, ohio...

why did she move to ohio...
1. the opportunity to live in the country again.
2. the trawler is free.
3. it puts me closer to old time festivals & friends that i keep wanting to spend more time at & with.
4. it's only an hour further from home (bloomington, indiana).
5. it's still a manageable distance from chicago (which feels like home).
6. i know a few great peeps down here that play old time music (the reason that athens is even on the map for me).
7. i wanna make old time banjos (athens is 4 hours from a friend of mine's who is a burgeoning banjo maker vs. 12 or so hours... & there is a luthier supply company here called, stewart macdonald).
8. it's gorgeous country in the foothills of the appalachians.
9. i love depressed work ecomonies (opps, just kidding. please, oh gawd, let the money flow from elsewhere).
well, anyway you get the idea. it seemed like a pretty good place to re-settle to me. ya'll will just have to come on down here and check it out, yerselves.

turkey vultures are so cool.

this is a dead hickory tree that is just up the road from me. i love turkey vultures. if they barf on your car, it eats the paint off (unless you can wash it off right away). long live the scavengers!

outside of the trawler after weed whacking, a lot.