I Ain't Afraid of No Daleks

Okay, lunch break, have to schlep back up the street to the office by quarter to five and want to have a bit of a quiet read (reading a western/mystery with a Holmesian theme--interesting, but gross, sometimes--screworm decscription I could have lived without, having seen them before anyway.) Was too tired/depressed to read much, this week, but maybe on the upswing, never know with this dang-blasted thing I got.

So, I actally made some sales today, no many, but better than the zero I batted on my last 10 hour hitch in front of a computer screen with a phone virturally glued to my ear. Did get some lu-lu's though--one guy just couldn't seem to figure out the phone number I was reciting him--poor fella, think he was getting on a bit--I kept saying, "seven-five-oh" and he kept writing it down as "seventy-five-fifty." I kept saying "No," etc...he kept insisting on making four digits out of three. I was patient with him naturally, but it was a bit trying to my patience after the timer (the length of each call shows up on a little timer on the side of my screen) reached 4 minutes! I believe we finally communicated though. I think.

So, read where George Bush and company slashed the history budgets (archives and research) in the USA to virtually nothing. No exaggeration. Okay, here's the deal: guns and bombs may help preserve "democracy," for the short term--but the real founder and saviour of democracy is knowlege. How the hell can we prevent history from repeating itself, when we have no knowlege of our past history to begin with? And how can we truly value and respect and honour our nation, when we essential give the two-finger salute to the records and deeds of the people, places and events that made our nation what it is today? How can we forge ahead towards a better future, if we deliberately make ourselves ignorant of the past? They call him Geroge "dubyah" Bush--I just call him "Duh."

So, a short (thank goodness) e-mail from my young David Tennant fan friend--just a few loose pieces of trivia: "Do you know what Billie calls David?" Oh yeah, I'm waiting with baited breath---you're not gonna' beleive this one: "David Ten-inch!" she writes.

OMG. You've got to be joking? I hope she's not serious. Am I the only woman who likes David Tennant, who's NOT attracted by him? I mean, good gravy! With a nick-name like that, the man's ego must be bigger than his...well, you know. Geeeezzzz. Why doesn't he just flip it out, and wave it around, for pity's sake?

Okay, was sort of hoping we'd finally actually get a blizzard. Nope, missed us yet again. This is starting to be a bit unsettling. I mean, we should have at least, at minimum, this time of year, a half a foot of snow--if not 2 or 3 feet--on the ground. Not happening, this year. Weird. All we have--have had--is about an inch or so, with maybe another inch or two--maybe, late this afternoon. In 46 years of living in northeastern NY state, I can safely tell you, that's never happened--not ever.

And it's weird, I'm telling you. It did finally get cold--although we still haven't had anything like 20 or 30 below zero farenheight. The coldest it's been all winter is about 12 below zero--I think that's about minus 20 C but not sure. This is the warmest winter we've ever had here.

Funny, and we just had one of the rainiest summer's on record--hardly hot at all, this summer, and all the autumn leaves turned early, and the geese started migrating south early--and we all said, "oh dear, going to be a cold snowy winter." And, no. It's not helping the local economies, either, let me tell you. Many towns here depend on tourism--what with the 40 million acre Adirondack state park, and big ol' Lake Champlain and the Hudson and other rivers, and 32 mile long Lake George (AKa: "Queen of the American Lakes") Okay, there's something: why do they call Lake George "Queen of the American Lakes," when it's named after a king?

Anyhow, no snowmobilers, no ice fishermen, no dog sled and outhouse (outdoor privvy) races, or 4x4 truck and motorcycle races on the ice, no snowshoe races, no cross-country skiiers. The downhillers and snowboarders are okay--they can make snow at West and Gore Mountain ski areas--but the little towns are really up a creek, this year, mostly.

And the rainy cold summer didn't help Lake George tourism, either--businesses that have been around for decades are selling out--yet, they are building more hotels--what gives? There's not been enough business for the long-established hotels that are already here, yet major hotel chains are building even more! One wonders if either they (the corporatinons building the hotels) know something we don't--or if they are just looking for tax write-off's--or if they are just plain stupid.

LAKE GEORGE NARROWS

Anyway, enough babbling on about the weather...

It's Friday morning, just a bit before 9am. My workday starts at 10 today, goes to 3pm, I walk home, have lunch, putter about until 4:45, walk back to my office building down the street and work until 10 pm.

Yes, another day at a job I totally suck at, comepletely destest (don't mind doing the surveys, the collections, the pledge drives--hate selling life memberships to people who absolutely don't want them and hate the club mostly--no fun. Another day of "no's" and "Who is this!" instead of a simple "hello," people hating my guts just for trying to do my damn job--that I suck at. It's amazing how many Americans don't even have the slightest clue how to answer a telepnone properly--which seems to be most. I find that a bit scary.

I actually had a guy yesterday--the second I POLITELY said "hello?" Start to lecture me on telephone etiquette! Me! Me, whose mum made her learn how to correctly answer a telephone when I was in the second flippin' grade! Me, who's been answering phones at businesses in professional manner, since I was blinkin' 14 years old! And, ironically, it was he who needed a lesson in etiquete--he was screaming at me the split second I said hello--and that's all I ever got to say, because he was too busy foaming at the mouth like a mad dog about something--bit of irony there, ey? I never did find out what he was on about--just hung up on him and coded out the call as a "do not call."

I don't have much of anything in my life anymore. No physical contact as far as friends and family go. I do have a few friends--just, strangely enough, never met most of them, in the physical sense. My sister hasn't called me (I don't have long distance on my phone) since around Christmas, no one's called me at all--excepting two wrong numbers and, again, ironically, a telemarketer, in the last month) I supppose the phone not ringing may be a bit of a blessing, to some people. I sometimes wonder why I bother shelling out 35 dollars a month for the privilege--except then I'd have to walk four blocks in the daytime--and 7 blocks at night--to the nearest pay telephone. I hate mobiles, got no use for 'em. And they're expensive, mostly. Really, don't think my telephone here has rang more than four times, in the last 30 days.And that's okay, who would I talk to, anywhow?

I've never got much to say, anyway--sadly, I tend to yak my head off, when someone actually deems to engage me in conversation--and then feel like an idiot afterwards, because I talked too much and didn't have anything much important to say. Think I liked myself better when I was a quiet little wallflower all the time, and people were always saying to me, "you're so quiet." I liked being quiet...it's been hard adjusting to being outgoing..but didn't have a choice, did I? Between those cheezy acting cleasses at my community college, and having to give in-class lectures, and poetry readings and the like---it was either sink or swim, and I learned how to dogpaddle rather nicely, I think.

I feel a little less tired and sad today--but not by much. Chatting with two friends last night, and watching some comedy on YouTube (my young Tennant fan that I mentioned several posts ago, sent me some YouTube links--one was rather good, something called the Friday Night Project, had me in tears and stitches and gales of laughter--just what I needed). But I am still down. I'm looking at yet another weekend of nothing more exciting than a trip to the bank, the grocers, the post office and the Dix Avenue Laundromat.

Can't spare the cash for any extras, this week, sorry to say, so I'm pretty much stuck at home. There's nothing going on in the city, and the musuem down the street--well, if they're anything like the Hyde Collection on the other side of town, they're probably too expensive. My spending money this week: 5 dollars (about 2 pounds 50). Can't even see a second-rate movie for that. Need to cram money aside to pay the electric, cable and phone bills in the next three weeks, not to mention pet food and groceries and stuff. No extras.

So, yeah, stuck in a rut, going nowhere, doing nothing, in a nothing job with a nothing life and a nothing future...if I have a headstone when I die--which is unlikely, couldn't even afford one for mum--mine should just be blank. That's honestly the way I feel, right now. Like my life has been for nought, and will continue to be for nothing. It won't matter that I've been here, and won't matter when I'm gone. If I said otherwise, I'd be lying. I know the truth, and my truth, right now looking backwards and forwards in my life, is an ugly, ugly thing.

But, in the here and now, I do have loads of Doctor Who--well, lots for me, considering my income and geographic location. I loaned the Feast of the Drowned audio to a fellow Whovian at the office--you should have seen her eyes light up with glee. "I can't wait to get home tonghit! I'm sure I'm going to love it!" She whipspered to me as she walked past. Doctor Who does seem to have that effect on people.

So, yeah, still sad and miserable and lonely--but, better, sort of. I suppose this must sound pathetic, but Doctor Who has literally been a lifesaver for me. I may not be one of those drooling David Tennant fan girls, but I sure am glad he took on the role. Doctor Who has sometimes made quite a difference in my life--and the laughter, and fun and, most importantly, the friendship, is far more valuable to me than anything else I can imagine.

Sometimes, in the late hours, I miss my old life. The one I left behind me, more than twenty years ago, the one I can never have again.

Nowadays, as I get older, it gets harder and harder to get up in the morning...well, not being thrilled with my job, and sometimes bouts with insomnia and/or manic-depression, have a bit to do with that, I suppose. Sometimes, I make the night stretch into the pocket-sized hours of the morning, for no other reason, than I don't want it to be tommorrow, not quite yet, anyway.

There are times, when I use the gifts life gave me so generously, when I was younger, in my elder years.

When I was in my late teens, in exploring this big old ravene near our house--back in the ice age, gigantic glaciers moved through our area, carving out these huge ravenes all through the Upper Hudson Valley of New York. They made mountains and hills and valleys. Many of the smaller ravenes were filled in, but several in my neck of the woods were left au natural, and, small as they really were, in my elder hindsight, they proved to be wonderful places to explore. I used to find the most wonderful things in the old dumping grounds. But, I'll save that story for another time.

But one thing I did find, once, were old bricks. Lovely bricks--I called them "Dorothy's bricks." Why? Becasue they were yellow! (Oz reference) When two of the neighbourhood boys had stupidly demolished the Depression-era tea house in the Japanese gardens of the old Sage estate (this was the Episcopal biship of Albany's estate when I was there, but was orginally in the Russell Sage family, a famous late Victorian American industrialist, who has a college named for him). The old Japenese gardens were directly behind our house, and I spend many an hour there, so I knew right off where the bricks were from.

Anyway, I puzzled what to do with my little "find." Then I had this scathingly brilliant idea. So, fetching the June Marie--our family's wheel barrow (a very small joke on my part, I told my mum, one year when I had no money for a Mother's Day prezzie, that I painted her name on our wheelbarrow, and she woould have to pretend that it was a yacht. very lame, I admit, but, hey, I was only 14 or so, I think--mum just rolled her eyes, but took it pretty well, I think.)

So I fetched the bricks home, and dumped 'em by the garage. Then, I dug a pit in the ground, and lay the bricks in a square around it, stuck a metal rack from our old fridge (dad never threw anything away) over it, and called it a "fireplace." I was chuffed. I'd always wanted a fireplace.

I got a lot of use out of it, too. I'd set a fire in it (had help frequently from a tin of charcoal lighter fluid and loads of matches).

But it was those frosty late autumn nights, that I remember (seldom lit a fire in summer--the misquitoes were wicked fierce due to one of those smaller ravenes being next to the house--it was a breeding ground for them)..anyway...on crisp cold autumn nights, on Fridays most frequently, I'd light the fire, turn on the radio, make myself a cup of tea or flavoured coffee, and just sit out by the fire, with the dogs and cat for company--mum was usually working at the library nights, and dad was off playing gin rummy at the volunteer firehouse's bar, with his buddies. I had the house to myself.

So I'd play some music--country or pop (hate to admit, but yes, I did listen to country music up until my early 20's--now I can't stand country music, no clue why).

I'd sit there, sipping my drink, listening to the music from the old AM radio plugged in in the garage, listen to the wind in the trees, rustling the leaves around my feet, the whoosh of a car going up the highway on the hill. I'd stare at the clouds meanering through the crystal clear skies, the diamond sharpness of the stars, the way the bushy needles of the eastern white pines swayed and rocked gently in the wind, the dimly seen clouds, chasing across the skies, the bright white-blue brillance of the moon, the flames dancing, the wood snapping and crackling, the smoke and my breath--both spriling towards infinity, in the cold night air...and I would feel such peace...it's like time itself was standing still..that the world was holding it's breath, like there was this dance of life slowly going on, inside my heart--a part of everything, and everything a part of me. And there was peace in the landscape and in the moment--and there was a serene contentment inside of me.

I realize that I can never be in a place like that again. Not ever. My valley has been plundered by developers, the house long since sold and redesigned, the actual moments like that, in the only place in this life, where I ever truly felt I belonged--are gone. Forever.

But...not enitrely lost. Some nights, when the apartment building is quiet, the street below deserted, I make myself some tea or cocoa or coffee, put on some quiet music or light jazz, stand and look out the windows, sipping and and feeling content in the moment.

The nights of being around my woods and fields are lost forever, but somewhere inside me, that special feeling of quietness, of contentment and true serenity, it's still there. It's the legecy of my valley, my sad grey hills and the nights I spent there.

I was present, the other day, when some of my co-workers started in with some rather, ummm--crude, humor. That was okay, but I just wasn't into it, so left...not in a huff or anything, mind...just quietly slipped away--or so I thought.

One of the girl's said to me later--"What? Didn't you think it (a fart joke complete with sound effects, followed by some rather graphic bathroom jokes) was funny?" In a tone that clearly said she thought I was being, at best, a prude, or at worst, a stuck up snob.

No, neither. I've laughed at crude jokes, once in a while. It's just that I've grown out of them...a long time ago.

when we were kids--bathroom humor was all the rage. I remember the first auction I ever went to--it was, I think '1967 or '68--a charity do at Bethany Presbyterian Church in our village, we were in the hall, they were auctioning off a doll--mum bought it for me--and to my utter delight, it was a genuine Betsy-Wetsy doll! (See photo above). Mum got a red step ladder, I got a doll that wet her nappies. Mum was pleased--especially since my ever-cheap dad refused to buy her a new one--and me, I was estatic.

(Ours was black)

Mum did one more nice thing--right after the auction, she drove the family's old '63 chevy station wagon down to the Esquire Drug store (the local chemists and where I later would, in the 70's, forever be pestering her once a month to buy me my Western Horseman magazine) Anyway, she bought me (drum roll please); a toy baby bottle! OOOOOhhh! Neat! Now I could make my doll pee whenever I wanted! Do you know how facinating that was to a 7 or 8 year old?

I mean, I had other dolls before and after that--Mrs. Beasly from the TV show Family Affair, and I was in love with my "Drowsey" doll (with lines like "I'm sleepy." "I want a drink of water.") Barbie and skipper, Johnny West etc., But that Betsy-wetsy really stands out, you know? What kid could resist a doll where you could control it's bodily fuctions,ey?

And, I clearly remember us my siter and me and a few others, out on our neighbours glassed in porch, sitting in front of a roar woodstove on a winter day, listening--over and over and over again--to the toilet flushing at the end of a certain Chicago song, (Chicago III album, if I recall correctly) and giggling our respective arses off. It was 71 or 72--I was about 10, at the time--and it was a really cool thing to listen to, I suppose--hey, it was the 70's, we didn't have video games, had to amuse ourselves somehow, yeah?

There were the usual crude jokes, "Did you know the song "Yellow River" was written by I.P. Daily?" And other things like that. But never anything "dirty"...just, you know, crude.

So, you know, I sort of grew out of that, by the time I hit my mid-to late teens...now...it's just not that funny to me, anymore, ya'know? But, that said, I don't care that much if other people want to laugh at stuff like that--just not into it, anymore, really.

But, it's a bit like when I was a teen and in my 20's--my peers trying to get me to try pot or get drunk. I didn't want to. Had no desire to. Just wasn't...me, you know? NMS. Not MY Style. And the awful thing is, when you don't want to do something that's part of the crowd--for no other reason than you simply completely lack the desire or motivation--people take offence. It's almost like they feel you are passing judgement on them, or they maybe feel unconscicious gulit? I don't know. But it's very tiring, after decade of "just saying no" to have to keep putting up with the attitudes you get, when you don't want to follow the herd.

So, when it was drugs, I lied: "Oh I tried it (never have, actually), but it makes me sick to my stomach." And they left me alone. So, with the crude humor: "Oh, it's not that, I just have a bit of a headache, that's all." I don't like lying about it--but I like people thinking I think I'm better than them, or, judging them--when I'm absolutely not--even less.

I can, thankfully, be more truthful with alcohol, most of the time. For some reason, people seem to accept that, more. "I just don't like the taste of alcohol"--although, my sister for years has been bound and determinded to get my to try some fancy liquors (acutally, I had peach brandy over some popenjees--little Dutch pancakes--once, and liked that), but mostly people are okay these days with my not preferring to drink. And really, it's the truth, for once, I really don't like the taste of alcohol. (When I was 19 and living in Wyoming, I did try real chewing tobaaco once--on a dare--and instantly regretted it).