Smoking Wet

My favorite bad guys were the ones in the movie ‘Waterworld’. Their base was the oil tanker Exxon Valdez, and they all smoked cigarettes and rode jet skis. I have never been able to decide which I despise more, jet skis or cigarettes. I used to joke about welding a big steel grill on the front of my van, because whenever I would see a jet ski trailing behind a car, I had a strong urge to flatten it. My hero was a fictional character in one of Jimmy Buffet’s books, who blew up a raft of jet skis because they were ruining his quiet fishing grounds. I used to live on a boat that was located inside a ‘no jet ski, no wake zone.’ That, of course, meant that on both weekend days, jet skis sped around my boat the live long day. I’m not a violent person, but with all that noise and those wakes for hours on end, the only thoughts I could entertain were pretty destructive. Had I carried out any of them, I’d probably be facing life in prison. “But your honor, they were jet skiers.”
Then there is the smoking thing. This, beyond anything else, makes me want to barf. If there’s a pile of cat puke on the floor, I’ll sigh and clean it up. If there’s a heap of cigarette ash in the same location, I’ll walk way around the coffee table for days to avoid it. I can’t bear the thought of going near it. Disgusting. Even standing in line in the grocery store next to someone who has just smoked a cigarette makes me want to grab a hose and wash them off. But this won’t help. Pores ooze nicotine. My sense of smell is mediocre at best, but I can smell stale cigarette on someone who has just come out of the shower freshly washed. Ewwww. Gross. Go away.
For years I have managed to live among peaceful non-smokers, and have been quite content. Recently, my life has taken a downturn. At the moment, not only do I cohabitate with a heavy smoker, but my new boss also smokes copiously on the job in my face. And this morning when I got up, there on the counter was a pile of ash. And in a few minutes, I’ll have to go off to work to wade through ashes all day long.
I suspect I won’t last long. I love the new job, but to come home to the same thing as well, forget that. It’s akin to jet skis speeding around the boat 24/7. I’m not sure what to do about this recent addition of such a large amount of gruesomeness in my life, but drastic action may be called for.
How did Keven Costner get rid of the bad guys in the movie Waterworld?

Chasing my tail

The car shook and vibrated down the road. It sounded as though it had a sore throat. But I made it, all the way to the west coast of Florida, in one long day, running from the north before it got too frigid, and before I had to witness that horror of white stuff falling out of the sky. News leaked out that I had escaped south, and I was offered a job on the east coast, which is not where I was or where I was planning to be. Well, okay, it was instant, fun work, a little more than a three hour drive away, and I could stay aboard the rather luxurious boat I would be working on. Good deal, except that foolishly, I didn’t check the weather before driving east across the state in my still wheezing jalopy. I arrived at the coast at the same time as screaming winds and drowning downpours, all spinning off from that tropical thingy blowing up the Bahamas. After two days of trying to keep my balance as the boat bounced up and down in the slip, I gave up and fled back to the calm west coast. While waiting for the east coast weather to clear, I decided to start the job hunting process on the west coast. About 8 seconds after I started looking for work, I had a job that I could start right away, just around the corner! Well great, except that I still had to meet my east coast work commitment. So I tried out the new west coast job for a day, sticking my finger into the moving parts of a sewing machine to impress my new boss. Duh, maybe I’d better head back east now. I spent a week on the boat on the east coast, trying to keep the neighbor’s boat cat away while I painted. White 2-part epoxy cat foot prints look really flash on a nicely varnished rail.
And here I am again, back on the west coast of FL. Are you with me so far? Me neither. I still don’t know whether I’m coming or going, where I’m supposed to be living or working or what I’m supposed to be doing. So today, to clear my head, I spent my day off unbolting and unfastening bits of a dead marine diesel engine scheduled for removal and replacement. Do I know how to have a good time or what?
Sometimes I wonder. I never was a normal girl.
Salon? Pedicure? You must be kidding. Pass the tool box and get out of my way.

The Way It Was

Life is fluid. That doesn’t mean it’s all wet, leaky or suffering from water retention. Okay, maybe sometimes that’s true. But what I mean is that life moves, changes, flows. Life is not supposed to remain the same forever and always. How boring would that be?

So saying, and having lived in the natural cycle of life for quite a while, I am a bit surprised at returning to the ‘real’ world and discovering that society seems to think that everything should remain the same for all eternity. Is it only my perception, having been out of touch for so long, or is this actually true?

I noticed that while touring state parks awhile back, questioning certain rules, each and every ranger said, state to state, “we’re trying to keep it the way it was when the first Europeans arrived.” Huh? If that’s the case, why are there parking lots? Marked trails? Public bathrooms? Vending machines? And where are the Indians? In coastal parks, I bet the first Europeans would have been thrilled to land in a rugged, foreign environment and find a concession stand on the beach to refresh themselves after their long, arduous journey across the sea. Imagine their joy when they discovered the bathrooms and showers right there in the parking lot, after weeks of being aboard a salt encrusted boat. And as they traveled inland, traveling down roads filled with the same chain stores repeated unendingly through small town after town, how wonderful it would have been to pull into a nicely paved campground after sitting in traffic all day. Oh, the joy of that hot shower after which they could have a pizza delivered to the campsite. But no, when the first Europeans landed, they had to shoot their own food, pee on the ground, sleep there too, and defend themselves against attacks from the soon-to-be previous tenants of the land.

While I can appreciate trying to preserve some of our heritage, how about if we keep it the way it was when the dinosaurs were around? Or when life was nothing but tiny organisms crawling around in the muck? I’d like to see that. This whole ‘life began with Columbus’ crap gets on my nerves something fierce. But then maybe that’s just my vanquished Cherokee side talking.

Chocolate Sucks

Am I the only person on the entire planet, and maybe beings from other planets too that we don’t know about who jet down in their space ships in the dark of night to sneak into the Hershey’s factory and nip kisses when no one is looking, who doesn’t like chocolate?

At a recent social gathering, I was offered a piece of chocolate cake, and said “no thank you, I don’t like chocolate”. I have learned over the years that I have to explain why I don’t want dessert, or I get a lecture about how ‘you’re so thin you can afford it and a little won’t kill you and are you sure you won’t have some yadda yadda yadda.’ Why does everyone do that? If I don’t want to eat crap, why do people feel they have to talk me into it? Anyway, having given my explanation for not wanting a piece of cake, all conversation in the room stopped, and every head swiveled in my direction. If I had run into the house all bloody, wielding a large ax, screaming, “I just chopped up five people”, I don’t think the looks I got would have been any more horrified than they were by my simply saying that chocolate was not for me.

So now I am wondering, am I alone in this universe? Is there anyone else out there who doesn’t drool when passing brown mounds of sugary goo?

Heavenly Crap

Just when you think it’s safe to come out, another illusion is shattered all to heck. Discovering the truth about falling stars is even more traumatic than finding that Santa doesn’t exist. I think back, recalling all those years of long night watches, lying out on deck, the boat sailing merrily along on autopilot. I spent hours gazing up at the heavens, wishing upon shooting stars. No wonder life is s**t. Wishing on the stuff would probably have that trickle down effect, wouldn’t it?