The Great Carlisle Bird War

So let's just say that despite--deee-spite--the fact that I went to actual school to become an actual writer doing writer things--like, say, writing--I am the laziest writer I know.  Here is is the beginning of April, and I am just now adding the biggest running event in my life to my blog. It's known as The Great Carlisle Bird War.  Here I am back in--um--February--birding down in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi.  (I don't have any idea how many birds I saw that day.) 

First, The Back Story.

I got married when I was 25 years and six days old.  Eighteen years and three weeks later, I found myself stranded in a strange town and thought, you know, if he's not willing to give me grocery money, then maybe I should vamoose.  Easier said than done, for sure.  Devastated and suffering from what would be months upon months of chronic anxiety, I vacated to the Mississippi Gulf Coast, where my mother was living. 

I didn't want to live in Southern Mississippi, per se, and I certainly didn't want to do it in the way I did.  But here I was, and in the beginning (and the middle, even) there were days that I just couldn't pull myself together:  the shock had been too great, the reset almost too much to process.  

The back back story is that a wonderful man re-emerged in my life, someone I had gone out with almost twenty-five years previously.  Things progressed, and one weekend when I was up at his house I suggested that he watch The Big Year with Steve Martin, Jack Black, and Owen Wilson. It's about a bird watching contest that is held every year by the American Birding Association, and boy, is it cutthroat competitive.  It's based on a seriously competitive year, 1997, where three guys (hence the three leads) vied for the top spot of America's best birder.  It works like this:

Spot as many species in North America as you possibly can.  

Have a metric ton of money to do so.

Give up all hope of having an actual life while you do so, cause it's hard to romance life with a $2,000 spotting scope constantly stuck up to your eye. 

It sounds dumb, but it's actually a Really Big Deal to spot the most species in North America.  You have everything from the Mexican border up, but no on Hawaii. You've got the Aleutians, and you should be satisfied with that.  From my understanding (and yes, feel free to correct me) there are 914 birds found in North America.  The record--according to the book the film is based on by Mark Obmascik--was 732 by a charismatic guy named Sandy Komito, a contractor out of New Jersey (See aforementioned Owen Wilson).  

After seeing the film, I get a phone call from The Man saying, "I got an idea."  He wants me, my mother, his brother (who looks spookily like Matt Damon) and himself to Big Year.  

Now I'm like, "So you have thirty years of birding, and Brian's got God Knows How Many, and mom's got at least twenty, but me, twenty minutes.  Sure." 

"What are you worried about?"  He says.  "You're on the coast."

Suddenly, it was like a whole layer of the world opened up for me. Birds were, I discovered, everywhere, and they presented not only a physical but intellectual challenge.  It gave me a great deal of comfort to distract myself with birding, and it still does.  

Still, I wasn't so sure about getting involved in a big year, even among the family because darn it, those two brothers and my mother collectively had about sixty years of birding on me. It could have been intimidating, but you know what?  Whatever. 

And, I am on the coast.  The Brothers Carlisle are inland 70 and 100 miles, respectively.  So I've got the drop, well, we've got the drop, meaning me and my mother, but that's a bit longer of a story. There are about 250 species that migrate through my neck of the woods, plus all those dadgum shorebirds.  (Guy at the gym this morning:  "Birding, huh?  Gulls are mean."  Me:  "Finding Nemo, man.")

So I proceed (with a pair of binocs he gave me) to bird.  I cruise around Barnes and Nobel looking for guides.  I smart up and get the Audobon app on my phone.  (Um, sorry, Green Mountain Digital, but I like Merlin better, but you know, only iPhone, and dudes, it's Cornell).  I start racking up the birds, despite seeing, "Unforutnately, Birds has stopped working" at least a half-dozen times on my phone every week. Still, worth every penny of $4.  It allows me to keep track of each species and has a very nifty sorting feature where you can choose from "Duck-like birds", "perching birds", etc., etc. 

ANYWAY--here's what you can see if you go birding here... herons perched in sunsets like this: 

SO MY MOTHER IS NUTS.  She won't appreciate me blogging this fact, but that be's the truth.  She is a family nurse practitioner and last year, sadly, she was widowed.  He was an awesome guy, and we miss him.  She's currently kept company by my teenage daughter who lives with her about a mile from the beach.  She's got a fine backyard and, um, the beach.  How many birds has she counted this year?

Zero.  Zeeeero.  She won't do it.  It's a lot of talk, including some real smack talk with the brother insomuch that she sent him this picture: 

She tortise, brother hare.

She said, "I've got 42 birds" or some such, and he said, "Her name is liar, for she is a liar."  To which she replied:  

Looking all innocent-like. It makes it hard being in a three-man race, so if you want to chastise her for her inability to write down bird names on a piece of paper, please do.  There were other people willing to take her place but nope.  "I'll do it!"

So anyway, there you have it.  I can blog a bit about what's occurred in between now and January, and it's all good... but as it stands (until this morning) I was in the lead at 84.  I'm tied with the brother and my man is catching up to me as well. I haven't seen him in about three weeks and we have a day trip planned on Friday to the National Mississippi Sand Hill Crane Wildlife Refuge where my guy--who has the quickest damn eyes in the freaking world (I drove with him over four days to Virginia. I would not be surprised if one day he pulls over, gets out, bends down, and comes back to the truck and says, "Roosevelt dime, 1954.") is going to hand my list to me on a plate with that cocky look he gets when he bests me--which he does quite a bit (or I wouldn't bother with him).

Meanwhile, I see that Green Mountain has updated their app.  Here is their selection on their website--they've expanded exponentially.  Before, they only had three apps available, now they even have selections such as "Central Park Birds" and "Rocky Mountain Nature" available.  

  I've downloaded the new app and will be checking it out when I go to bed tonight.  It has had its malfunctions, but it should be interesting to see the changes they've made.  If you use eBird, then you should give it a whir. 

So after a text this morning from the brother at 7 freaking 30 in the morning, it stands that we're all at about 84.  Stay tuned. 

Tiny Things

It has been almost two weeks without anxiety, something new to me.  I thought that the grief and the trauma of last year would never subside.  I thought it would rule me forever, such was its power.  We talked about grief today in the truck:  he is being invited by family to attend fall-related festivals and the like, and he wants nothing of it.  He's not trying to be rude, it's just that so much goes on in the aftermath of a divorce or separation, that it is inordinately lonely in its execution. Your child has left, and even the absence of your spouse, can leave you with such uncertain feelings that it is hard to share your time, especially that time that is supposed to be entertaining with others and feel even remotely part of the whole. It is those times I believe, that you have to make the decision to be on your own for your own sake.  You're not being selfish, you're within your own. 

I have always said that no one can ever see inside someone else's marriage. And there comes a time when only you know what happened within the marriage. If your soon to be ex had a clue, you wouldn't be getting divorced in the first place. Divorce can be about infidelity, addictions, abuse, but in my case is in many others, it was about a lack of understanding. I know that I would have stayed if I had felt I was understood on any level, most importantly, the essentialness of the domestic to the life of our family and the fundamental principle that building a home, with furniture, sheets , clean windows, decorated walls, nesting bowls that measure out milk for oatmeal, salt for bread , handled cups just right for bowls of chili and soup and even the arrangement of plastic containers in a cabinet (although most of the time severely cattywampus)  was one's life work and not to be discounted but to be understood as an accomplishment and the height of craft. It was truly hard work to assemble a household with sparse funds through hand me downs, curbside luck, clever bargaining, trades, goodwill finds, saving and scrambling to make sure that me and my children didn't take a single piece of clothing out of a plastic drawer.  To have discounted this effort, to have sent us packing off to Richmond with less than we started with was sheer madness. It cost my ex's children, his wife and loathing that he has trouble comprehending.  I too, like John, was in no mood to face congenial events in the light of my losses.

And no one understood.

If no one understands where you are and what you have lost, and you feel the need  to just not join in, well then... I'd say come sit by me but the truth is you really need to sit by yourself.

And when you do, take whatever comforts you no matter how silly it seems. This does not include alcohol of course or recreational drugs, but tiny momentos you can carry around in your pocket that bring you comfort. Mine is a clothespin.  when I first came to Gulfport, I had a uncomfortable job as a secretary at a construction company where the boss refuse to send out any invoices that were completed. It made me nervous, and I was was in such a state battling the feelings that I had for my man and trying to deal with the persistent belief that I had lost every single bit of value in this life that truly wasn't fit to be employed.  Hell-- I didn't even have enough clothes to show up decently dressed. It was a Friday and at the end of a particularly rough week when I pulled up in front of the double wide to find a beautiful set of chrysanthemums with a postcard attached to them with a clothespin. The Man had driven 200 miles on his day off to leave me flowers on my front porch. I carried that clothespin with me everywhere until I lost it after too many beers at a friends house.  The Man replaced it carving into the tip the ellipses that had come to symbolize our relationship...   it represented the silence that could pass between us and yet we both knew what the other was thinking.  I have it still. Its been chewed by dogs, and slicked smooth by the oil of my hands. It is proven time and again to be the thing that I needed to allay my anxieties and my fears whenever necessary and believe you me-- that was a lot.

If its a folder that picture of a child's drawing, the petals from a flower you received in love , a tiny Buddha or ceramic frog that fits in your pocket, take it with you. Hold on tight to the physical evidence of love. And come sit by me but only if you feel like it.

Enormously Sad

Queen Latifa had a well-timed guest on this morning:  Liza Manelli.  If anyone in this world knows what it's like to lose someone famous and well-loved to drug addiction, it's Liza.  If anyone knows what it's like to struggle with fame and addiction, it's Liza.  She sat on that big white couch and moved quite a bit.  Was she anxious, was she just getting older?  What could she make of this tragedy of Hoffman?  It must be bitter for her every time this happens.  Leger and Hoffman.  Gone.  And not good talents, great ones.  Great ones, like Bulushi and Winehouse.  Towering, staggering talents.  Captivating and extraordinary.  I will always think of Leger blazing across the bleachers like a madman in Ten Things I Hate About You, that lovely take on The Taming of the Shrew. How I enjoyed Heath, each and every time.

Hoffman.  Hoffman even more.

The six actors who stopped me in my tracks the first time I saw them:  Daniel Day-Lewis (back in 1984 in A Room With A View), Wes Studi (as Magwa in The Last of the Mohicans), James McAvoy (in White Teeth and again in Dune), Romany Malco (in Baby Mama), Sam Rockwell (The Green Mile) and Philip Seymour Hoffman in a very small part in Twister, of all things.  (I am only including modern actors.  Toshiro Mifune in Roshomon is beyond compare.  He was the best of actors, like Scofield--my very favorite--and Day-Lewis).  I just stood there and gaped, captivated, even though he was just being loud and obnoxious in a group scene at the close of the third act of a silly movie that only needed to tidy up to an ending.  I wasn't surprised when he started getting role after role.  The way he affected my heart--I knew he'd be a big deal. I have had the privilege of talking with two of these actors (one is a personal friend), and I know how difficult fame can be (trust me, hanging out with a famous person will blow your mind--people gape, literally, mouths ajar.  Photographers wait for you at the airport, paying off chauffeurs. People you don't know hand you drugs because you played a dealer on t.v.).  Going through New Orleans today I turned on NPR.  Fresh Air was playing all past interviews with Philip Seymour Hoffman.  It was almost too sad to listen to him.  By God, he did some great work.  Just his voice for Capote (which wasn't even my favorite take on Capote--I thought Toby Jones and Infamous were far better--the script was much more accurate) just his voice was an astonishing study.

Why did we love him so?  There are and were better actors.  There's DeNiro, there's Day-Lewis, there is Hugh Jackman in Prisoners, which was a brilliant performance.

Because he seemed related to us.  Because he was, like us, utterly accessible.  You could so see yourself taking a road trip with him and him not making a big deal of you farting.  Or maybe--the first time he meets you--taking a fry from your tray without asking and even if he wasn't famous or you didn't know who he was, pushing it towards him so he could take another.

My prayers for his poor family, his three children, his co-workers who admired him and have said very kind things about him, and his more devoted fans who must be devastated. I hope his children are shielded, somehow, from the truth and for God's sake, given their privacy.  Please, please... don't buy People.  They are going to feature photos they shouldn't.  They always do.

It all holds for me my ultimate conviction that besides child sexual abuse, the greatest evil on this earth may be heroin, it is what runs in Satan's veins and he gives it freely to those who are hurting.  I cannot watch Trainspotting twice.  I can't bring myself to read the book.  I can only remember those addicts in Victoria station begging--inches from businessmen's faces--for shillings.  They were totally gone to another realm. Art, love, gestation of affection had long since vanished for them.

We are all reeling because we loved his work.  Many families, though, lost someone to heroin yesterday. I doubt the beggars I saw in 2002 are still with us.  Hopefully this public loss will do some private good in the form of a dialogue about this most insidious form of addiction. Hopefully we will take the time to care for someone who has chosen this path, even though it seems to be a waste.  Hopefully we will buy them a meal. Hopefully we will see them and ardently pray for better, less they lay on the bathroom floor, shorts and t-shirt, needle in arm, laid bare for all the masses to gape and admittedly, to grieve.

Sockes, ye bane of my existant

I don't know what it is. I really really don't know what it is about socks. I have the absolute worst time coping with socks. In The Land of the Last Marraige  where all occupants were mildly unhappy, my then congenial (at least as far as housework) ex husband did all of the laundry. I think that's why the marriage lasted so damn long despite all the things he did such as gamble mortgage payments, fraud on ebay,  16 jobs in 18 years, in several other infractions it here because yes we do not want this to be a bitter blog.  Who was perfect in that union, anyway?  Not me. 

Anyway he was terribly funny is he did all the laundry (all the laundry) and he did not understand why I had such a damn problem with socks.  I couldn't bring my ADHD self to go to the tedium of actually matching the damn things one to the other. In this vein, I also do not believe in folding pajamas.  Why would you fold pajamas? Who's going to see them?  No one's going to see them... you are going to get them out when you go to bed.

All the same, ex husband or no husband doing laundry, I find myself afronted with the problem of sockage.  If you haven't heard by now, about a year and a half ago let's say April of 2012, my ex-husband said he had the dream jobjob to end all jobs. We were moving to Richmond. 

Needless to say, job didn't work out, financing of said trip unacceptable, stuff put in storage as I left for my mother's with my children.  I had five laundry hampers, a stereo (daughter's), two pets and two kids. When I finally got my things from Richmond (a full year and a half later) I brought home all my clothes and then proceeded--with not a few tears--to put them away.  I was so damn grateful for my sock monkey pajamas and all sorts of things I'd been missing, including decent winter clothes which I had not been able to replace. 

The problem started when I got down to the socks.  See picture above.  I ignored them best I could for over two months, letting them nest and mock me from a corner of my bedroom in a large Sam's Club sack--the big 'uns you get two for $3.50 at the register in either tasteful black and white Damask or Zebra stripe.  Well, here's the existing sock drawer: 

Here's the secondary sock drawer, made for influx of Richmond Socks.  It is strictly Fuzzy Sock drawer, a necessity of living in Memphis with hardwood floors.  It is also evidence of way too many impulse sock buys at the ever-present Memphis Cadre of Walgreens.  Those two for seven buck socks add up. 

Now here's the sad bit.  There were so many socks that there is a third full drawer of them, mixed bag, mostly white.  I always bought white socks because I didn't want to match them.  The ex rightfully called them The Great White Horde, although he should have said The Great White Hoard, which would have also been accurate but indiscernible in pronunciation.  There are a pair of socks in there--the pink ones--that I wore in labor with Tucie which someone gave me when I was 21.  They have Holsteins on them. 

I mean, when we were coming back from Richmond, everything got rained on one night while we were staying at a Motel 6 somewhere in Georgia.  So my other mother Vickie had to wash all my stuff and dry it so it wouldn't mold when I got back home.  She said, "Susanne--there's bags of socks and panties!  Two!"  And I thought she was exaggerating. 

This qualifies as most embarrassing set of socks.  

And STILL I had to stop myself in Walgreens Saturday night from buying yet another pair of fuzzies.  

There is an inevitable weeding out on the way, I'm sure of it.  But when, I don't know.  I just can't cope with them right now. 

My divorce put too much passive in my life.  Insane amounts.

I have always tuned out when I couldn't cope with something, and admittedly, I have lousy coping skills.  I'm a lot like my dad who couldn't handle stress at all.  I have a mother who... Lord.  I just can't even go there.  Since I left my soon-to-be-ex, I've not been able to find decent work and I'm in a horrific bind because I haven't any child care where I am.  I haven't been able to get a job interview since the end of my last job, which was a miserable gig waiting tables at a restaurant where I'd make $25 and pay the babysitter $18.

My mom has been helping me out;  paying the rent, and now I am headed this weekend to Virginia to get everything I had to leave behind.  The end of my marriage was sudden, it seemed to happen in a matter of weeks but in retrospect, I see that it happened over a matter of forever:  he was always the person who flew by the seat of his pants with his hand out to my mother.  He never availed and never moved forward.

Today I talked with my mother who tells me she's clinically depressed and just can't take the strain of supporting me any more.  I'm currently working on a movie deal (with a set amount of pay in mind) and I'm also working for a great client out of Texas for whom I do media management.  I get the occasional job on Fiverr that leads to a bit more cash and I do a lot of reading about new media and managing Twitter feeds, etc.  I start next week looking in earnest again for a writing job--some sort of content gig--that will help me feel a bit more free.  I do not like having to depend on anyone for money, and my mother is laying pressure on me to move in with my boyfriend.

I don't like that.  She's been doing it for months and it makes things difficult.  He and I have other considerations--like the fact that both of our divorces are not final and that's complicated.I'm growing very sick of every bit of my situation.  I feel beat over in every single way possible.

All I'd like out of life is to show up to a small job every day, do it, and go home.  I'd like my child to be cared for and not have to go over to the babysitter who constantly yells at her grandkids and nitpicks my child.  I'd like to scream a long, long time and not have anyone complain or worry about it.

I avoided them when I went into the Dollar General today.  I saw them coming out, and being a social person, I had every reason to talk to them, but I couldn't.  I couldn't handle the way they are living their life.  I find that after the adversities of the past year and a half--where I left my husband after eighteen years of marriage and started with nothing--leaves me with little patience with people.  The friend who has reckless sex with three men a week--the co-workers who cause unnecessary drama--anything other than true and genuine gets left alone.  So why do I ignore this couple I know--friendly and at the time my next-door neighbors when I moved into my little grey double wide on the corner of Short Cut and Lizana School Road?

Because they won't get food stamps.  They won't bother.  They won't even go to the office.  "He makes too much money one week and not enough the next."  They have yard sales to "buy milk and bread."  They've even gone with me to buy food with me.  I have enough food stamps to cover ourselves and occasionally, if I know someone is hard up, I'll spend $25 or $30 of my foodstamps helping them... or I used to.  No more.

After months of not seeing said couple, I went over to their house because my son wanted to play with her daughter.  Friend has various maladies and so does the daughter--mysterious fainting spells.  "The school says she's not getting enough to eat."  Know what's for lunch?  Six to eight link sausages.  "She eats more than anyone in this house." says her very dedicated but visibly obese mom.

I ask her again about food stamps.  "We're not elligible."

"That's not possible. I qualify.  I make very little, and I qualify.  And I don't understand that if you aren't making $2016 a month, why you don't qualify."

She explains to me that she just can't go back into that building again.

I have an IQ over 150.  I have an honors degree in English Literature (Creative non-fiction track) with a minor in history and education and I wound up broke and nearly homeless after I left my abusive ex-husband.  I had to leave behind a $1,000 a week offer because of the situation he put us in;  ensconced in an apartment for which he had written bad checks--in my name.  I am a good writer, with tons of experience.  And yet here I am--situation, circumstances, location... in extremely rural South Mississippi with little hope of finding work in my field.  Somehow, I'm piecing it all back together.  In the meantime, I take food stamps and although I'm not very proud of it, I don't apologize.

To let your child do without--to hold garage sales to "afford milk and bread" because you just "can't face the food stamps office" is inexcusable in my sight.  Seven or eight link sausages for lunch is not a meal.  Trading babysitting for a Mountain Dew and a candy bar is not an even exchange.  And yes, you didn't have ANY problem getting a few items when I was with you at Wal-Mart last year.

I have no patience for those who won't ask for help when they can receive it.  Especially those who are paying Rent-A-Center $100 a month for a laptop.  A laptop that will cost them $2,100 when it is all said and done but won't go see about the assistance that their taxes go to support.

I have finished with the friendship.  I have no patience with it anymore.  I have swallowed my pride--crying for a half hour when I realized that I would have to buy groceries vis a vis the state--and come out holding my head high because my son and I have enough.  You should go through the trouble to get your child enough, too.  Pride be damned.

5 1/2 Reasons You Should Kill a Draft Blog Post | Copyblogger

If you write at all, you should read this.  It makes perfect sense for writers.

5 1/2 Reasons You Should Kill a Draft Blog Post | Copyblogger:

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