Dr. Tiller

I don’t have anything to add, really. I wish the same thing I wished after the Knoxville shooting–that these media personalities would stop to consider that, while they’re using their culture war rhetoric to drive up ratings, there are people who listen to them and take them seriously.  If you’re going to accuse someone of being a baby-killer, you don’t get to act shocked or surprised when the folks you tell and who believe in you take you seriously.

The idea that folks are coming into churches to shoot people…

I don’t know.  I keep seeing all these people talking about how this is not what the pro-life movement is about and I just want to ask them what rock they’ve been living under.  This is exactly what the pro-life movement boils down to.  That’s why so many anti-abortion folks AREN’T involved with the pro-life movement, because it’s always been a bunch of religious extremists who egg each other on to more stupid and evil ends.

I don’t know.  That’s what I think, anyway.

Sorry, I just can’t get my head around the idea that we’re being gunned down in our churches now.

Sara Robinson points out that this is the anniversary of Eric Rudolph’s capture.

Southern Beale urges people to stop acting like assholes.

I’m going to bed.

It’s Quite Hot in My Yard

The shore is littered with tiny white shells, to mark the burial place above.

Sunday Gardening

My plan still remains for the vining things to vine away in the big plot.  And I cannot wait for pumpkin blooms, which I consider to be one of the most beautiful things a person can witness in public.  I believe there’s still more than enough room for that all to happen successfully.  But I didn’t put the cucumbers in the big bed.  So, I’m at a loss.  If I grow them up, the Butcher can mow with ease.  But then they’ll block out whatever’s in the bed with them.

If I let them grow into the yard, the Butcher will not have such an easy time of mowing back there.  On the other hand, the cucumbers sending out curling tendrils that twine around things in the yard and choke them and deprive them of life feels a little like revenge for what the weeds are doing.

It’s like the things in my garden are finally big enough to fight back.  Take that, yard!

Also, I think my spinach is ready, but I don’t know for sure how to tell.

But I’m going to try to remember two things for next year.  One, we’re going to put in two new beds on the front of the shed with lattices and that’s where we’re going to grow our peas.  It’s the perfect spot for them.  But two, I think I’d like to get some pots and do lettuces and spinach in containers up by the house–save the beds for things that need a lot of time.

Anyway, I will try to remember to get you some pictures of the tomatos all staked up.  It’s hard to believe that these are the same spindly almost dead things that were on the porch.

And can I just say that, while I’m enjoying growing the tomatos and the peppers, that there’s something really awe-inspiring about the beans and pumpkins.  They’re just so big that it kind of takes me back a little bit when I see them.  I mean, I held those seeds in my hand, and now they’re these massive, hoss plants.

I know that’s how nature works, but damn. I’m still in awe.

Wasted Days and Wasted Niiiights

I would like to complain, once more, that weeding the garden with the dog is virtually impossible, unless one loves watching all your awesome plants get trampled.  In which case, I have the garden helper for you.

I did, however, find two watermelon plants I previously was unaware of.  So, that was nice.

This morning we took the dog to the vet to get her stitches out, as the vet instructed.  Turns out she wasn’t supposed to come back for two weeks.  I was angry, but at least they didn’t charge us.  They did repack her ear and she was pissed, so she tried to take on all five people in the room, so the Butcher had to go in and muzzle her for them.

And then she and I went on a May Town Center exploration.  We discovered a few interesting things.  One is that there are no pr-May Town Center signs, but tons of anti-.  Two is that it’s unclear where the new bridge could go.  If it goes at the end of Tidwell Hollow Road, you should be aware that what you see on Google maps is not the truth of the matter.  The road becomes private far before it gets close to the river.  If these properties have not already been acquired, I have to imagine that the emminent domain issues that would come from the city forcing land owners to sell for a privately funded bridge are going to be enormous, and based on the size of the houses and the yards, these folks have the money to fight that fight.

Also, Tidwell Hollow is even more of a country road than Old Hickory.  It’s unlined and very rural.  It will have to be substantially widened to accomodate a six lane bridge.  And there are people who live along it.

If it’s not Tidwell Hollow, then it will have to be a road that does not exist yet.

Which brings us to the other side of the river.

It is a lie that the bridge will be at the end of Centennial Boulevard for two reasons.  One, because Centennial Boulevard does not end at the west side of Cockrill Bend.  It ends at the north side.  A bridge from the end of Centennial Boulevard does not cross the river unless it is a bridge the length of which we’ve never seen.  Second, because Centennial Boulevard ends at a prison.

(Also, I should hope it would go without saying that, though Centennial Boulevard is indeed five lanes, it’s not five lanes clear to the prison.  Neither is Cockrill Bend Boulevard, which we shall discuss in a second.  And both roads are not in great shape.)

So, one must presume that the bridge will be off of Cockrill Bend Boulevard.  And again the question of location is key.  You can’t go from Cockrill Bend Boulevard to Tidwell Hollow Road without reckoning with Riverbend State Prison.  But hey! Maybe the future is full of people who want to bike past a maximum security prison.  What do I know?

From the maps at WPLN, it looks as if the bridge is going to go straight west before Cockrill Bend Boulevard turns north.  That makes the most sense, but then, I have to tell you that these pictures of a massive bridge that ends up in farm land don’t show you the Cockrill Bend side of the river for a reason.  Because it is butt-ugly and industrial.  And again one wonders about emminent domaining land for a privately built bridge.

And I saw the most beautiful prickly pear out on the side of the road in Bellevue.  I was just telling someone about how some kinds of prickly pears can grow outside here and there was one!

The More You Know, The More You Wish You Didn’t, Sometimes

I have found that trying to get a sense of the Native American history of Davidson County is not that easy.  For starters, there’s the “dark and bloody ground” myth which has developed into a story about how no Native Americans lived here–though many groups hunted here–because it was cursed, so they were happy to hand their problems over to the white folks.

Let me say up front that this is pantently and demonstrably untrue.  But I think it’s an important story to tell, with that caveat, because it gets at the heart of the matter–that somehow we can tell a story in which people were here (the people white settlers warred with for this land) and not here (thus making it “okay” that we took the land, since it was empty and evil anyway).

I had heard a rumor that Bell’s Bend is covered in Native American sites, and I set out to discover if that’s true, as much as you can discover from a couch with a dog hopped up on pain killers trying, often unsuccessfully, to turn around without falling.  I’m going to talk about this over at Pith, because it’s now my goal to bore the shit out of folks, but it appears that there are over 50 significant archaeological sites in Bell’s Bend, the location of which are closely guarded by the state to prevent grave robbing.  One of the more interesting things is that it appears that there were ‘Portuguese’ Indians living in Bell’s Bend in the early 1900s and, hell, may still be living there.

For those of you wondering what a ‘Portuguese’ Indian is, it appears that those are Melungeon people, in one of their farthese west settlements (if we’re using the term ‘Melungeon’ to mean “families descended from and identified as known Melungeons” and not “any tri-racial people living in the lower Appalachians”).  Even as late as 1950, there were an estimated forty Melungeons in Davidson County, who were identifying their race as ‘white.’

Not to get too side-tracked by Melungeon history, but god damn, that’s some fascinating stuff.  It both seems that there may be a good chunck of truth to the family stories that (some of) the Melungeons are descended from Portuguese sailors who shipwrecked and went to live with the Indians AND that they called themselves ‘Portuguese’ in some cases as a defense against being considered black, especially in matters of inheritence and marriage, since the laws about what black people could inheret and who they could marry was much more harshly regulated than was the case for non-blacks.  Of course, in other cases, where their not-quite-whiteness and their not-quite-blackness was well established, they faced discrimination from both groups and I read stories about children who, during the era of segregation, were not allowed to attend either white or black schools, because they were considered “neither.”

As for how Native American they were understood to be or understood themselves to be, that also seems to greatly depend.  They obviously weren’t rounded up and marched off on the Trail of Tears, and yet I encountered some folks who were doing geneological research who found that their Melungeon ancesters headed out to Oklahoma, later.

So, since the archaeological sites are kept secret by the state, I could find next to no information about them, which meant that I couldn’t evaluate for myself if the sites they consider to be from within recorded history date from the time period when white settlers entered the area and found Native Americans here (in which case, we could presume that the sites are like many of the sites around Davidson county–hunting camps, graveyards, ceremonial sites, trading posts, and maybe some permanent settlements) or if the sites include sites where the “Portuguese” Indians lived (in which case the sites would presumably include, again, graves, but also farmsteads).

But holy shit did I find some gruesome stuff about Native Americans in Davidson County.

I want to put this in context for you, some, but I lack the ability to.  Hopefully Bridgett will come by and give us some guidance.  I just want to tell you this story in some way that both respects that, when you settle on land that isn’t yours and you shoot at folks who have a problem with it, it’s unsurprising that they will murder you back, and acknowledges that the white settlers in Davidson County were scared shitless of the Indians and their callous treatment of important Indian sites (at least early on) has got to be understood, I think, in the context of trying, psychologically, to reaffirm for yourself that you are indeed better and more worthy than your enemies.

I’m going to assume that we can keep both of those ideas in mind.

So, yes, did you know that the rise Traveller’s Rest was built on came to be known by the people who built Traveller’s Rest as “Golgotha” because there were so many skulls there, because Traveller’s Rest was built on a cemetery?

Or, for instance, did you know that there was an enormous, elaborate ceremonial site about where Bicentennial Park is and that folks used to go to Sulpher Springs to enjoy the healing power of the springs, picnic, and grave rob?  Also that they found more bones when they put in the Jefferson Street bridge?

Or that there used to be a large village down Granny White Pike about where 440 crosses it?

Native American sites in this county have been desecrated, paved over, dismantled, built on, ignored, etc.  On and on and so forth.

And it’s been virtually impossible in many cases for Native Americans now living in Oklahoma to get the State to recognize them as the descendants of these people in order to protect these sites. Lately, they seem to be allowed to act in the “Friends of the Court” capacity but legally, all these remains at all these sites, many of which were not prehistoric sites then abandoned by people who left no known descendants, but still working sites being used as what they were by people whose descendants we can identify when white people got here, are still being treated as if they are somehow in the way of Nashville, instead of being a vital part of Nashville.

Well, so that’s what I know now. And I dreamed about houses built on piles of skulls and I wish I hadn’t.

In Which I Say a Nice Thing about John Rich

He looks very handsome and interesting in his mug shot.  There’s finally a little of that cornered dog look in his eyes.

Well, There’s No Way THIS Could Go Wrong

Did y’all see SB1141? I got an email from TIRRC about it this morning and I’m embarrassed to say that my very first thought was that they must be mistaken.  But no.  SB1141 says:

When a person is arrested for any offense and is confined, for any period, in the jail of the county or any municipality, a reasonable effort to review documents in the possession of the prisoner shall be made to assess the citizenship status of the person so confined. If the keeper of the jail or other officer cannot determine the lawful status of the prisoner from the documents in the possession of the prisoner or if it is determined that the person is not lawfully present in the United States, pursuant to the federal Immigration and Naturalization Act, compiled in 8 U.S.C. § 1101 et seq., the keeper of the jail or other officer shall notify the United States department of homeland security by facsimile transmission or other appropriate means.

Oh, I know y’all are dying at that last sentence, so let’s just laugh at it and get it out of the way.  Yes, if a police officer cannot tell if a person is here legally or if he determines a person is not here legally, he will then SEND A FAX to the DHS.  Yes, a fax. Because it is apparently 1985.  I can only assume that the Department of Homeland Security will then dispatch the Pony Express to let the local jailer know if he should keep the person detained.

Could you imagine how much that would suck if you couldn’t prove you were a U.S. citizen, you were stuck in jail, and the Department of Homeland Security’s fax got a paper jam?  Would you ever get let go?

And I bet ICE is going to just love this.  “What’s on the roster today chief?  Well, we’ve got another 100 faxes from Tennessee to go through.” “Is someone going to get that state the internet at some point?” “Oh, look, here’s an email they’ve printed out and faxed to us.” “Jesus.”

As the email from TIRCC points out, “Before the Davidson County Sheriff could engage in these immigration enforcement activities, deputies were required to receive 5 weeks of federal training on immigration documents, civil rights, and racial profiling.”  But this will let every police officer in the state become defacto ICE agents.

Didn’t the Republicans just pass a resolution demanding that the Federal Government respect the sovereignty of the State?  And then the Republicans are going to turn right around and pass a law making our law enforcement agents responsible for enforcing Federal immigration statutes?  So, were we just sovereign last week?  This week it doesn’t count?

Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.

Anyway, the best part–and by best I mean “most disturbing”–is that just like that the Republicans are demanding that we all carry paper on us that establish our U.S. citizenship–with no guidance in the bill about what will be acceptable proof of citizenship.

Gosh, that won’t be abused, I’m sure.

Bone-Chilling Sound of Doom

I had been more than happy to believe that the $4,000 the dog is going to cost me this year would count as the “one major thing that will make you vomit it will cost so much” that would go wrong with the house in the first year that everyone warned me about.  I had to believe that because to spend what will end up being about $4,000 on the dog while knowing that there’s something else looming would have made me stay up all night staring at the ceiling.

As I did last night.

Why, you might ask, did you think that Fate would somehow conflate dog and house?  I don’t know.  The rumor going around town is that I’m a moron.

Oh, wait, no what actually you might ask is why I fretted all night long.

I will tell you.  Because when I went to go to the bathroom before going to bed last night, I could hear the sound of water running, like the hose was on.  I went outside.  The hose was off.   I came back inside.  I turned all the water on and it all seemed to work.  I looked in the garage and there was no water on the garage floor so it doesn’t seem that the washer or water heater has sprung a leak.  And, of course, no one was going under the house at 10:30 at night.

So, I laid awake imagining the possibilities.

And just this morning, when I went to get the cereal out of the pantry, I noticed that the sound of running water is loudest in the pantry.  I might add that our pantry does not have a wet bar.  Still, I don’t see any water.  I can hear it, but I don’t see it.

Here’s my hope, America, and please, please keep your fingers crossed for me.  My hope is that when the Butcher goes down into the crawlspace this morning, he sees that the way our other brother tapped the line to run the water for the fridge has come loose or something, that it is a soggy gross thing to fix, but something he can fix himself.  Because we have water, so I don’t think it can be a huge leak.  And yet I can hear running water, so clearly water is running.

The only drawback to this theory is that you can still get water out of the fridge.

So, yes, this is worrisome.

Update: So, I was right.  It is the line to the fridge!  And “Arthur the Plumber” thinks it’ll run me about $150 to fix, if that.  I told him what the plumbing brother told me–that he’d put in a self-tapping line, but that it really needed a half-t and a regular cut off–and he said that sounded about right.  And then he said, and I quote, that “the self-tapping lines suck.”

If I can’t get Grant, the ghost hunting plumber, who is always “what the frick?” I will indeed go for the plumber who will flat out tell you when thinks suck.

Who Did This?

Which ever one of you put Tiny Cat Pants up as a reference for the Wikipedia entry for “Pencil Skirt,” you have made my whole day.

Thanks.

On Another Note

I thought this post was one of the nicest things I’ve read on the internet in a long time.  I know “nice” is a strange word for it, but I like posts that are, at heart, about how the sausage gets made and who, in fact, is making the sausage and how they think about what they’re doing.

And this is like that, and brave, so that’s that.

You Laugh and Cry at the Same Time

It’s gotten so bad at Fort Campbell that the senior officer yesterday ordered his soldiers to stop committing suicide.

Who knows?  Maybe it will work.  Something sure needs to.

I have said it before, but I’ll say it again.  We cannot treat the men and women in our armed forces this way.  If the general public won’t support a draft, then don’t go to war.  Putting it on a small group of volunteers isn’t right.  If we’re, as a country, at war, the risks should be spread out over the whole country, not borne alone by a small group of volunteers.

Quick Things

1. You know I’m right so stop fighting with me.  A party like the TNGOP can only for so long manage to make every racial faux pas known to human kind before a person starts to believe that they aren’t faux pas-es, but actual real pas. At this point, I’m just hoping that they break down and run through the streets screaming “There are black people!  Oh, dear god, there are black people everywhere!” and finally get it out of their systems.

2. It’s hard work single-handedly ruining The Nashville Scene.  But I hope to set my sights higher.  First by ruining the whole city and then by ruining the whole state.

3. There are two things I don’t understand about May Town. One, everyone knows this idea that people will drive to May Town by getting off I-40, rolling through three traffic lights, going up Briley, getting off at an exit, meandering past the prison complex, and then over a bridge into our second downtown is a farce, right?  For May Town to work, there has to be an I-40 exit and a bridge where the ferry used to be.  That’s part of what makes Cool Springs work–easy interstate access. Without easy interstate access, we’re looking at a disaster of a ghost town. And two, and this is something everyone may know and I may have missed it, is the May family saying that they’re going to sell that land, period?  Because if the question is May Town or farms, I pick farms.  But if the question is May Town or giant unweildy subdivisions or dump or whatever, I pick May Town.  But it’s not clear to me what we’re talking about as the alternative.

The Prison

So, my newest post is up at Pith.  Blake Wylie helped me a shit-ton.  I meant to ask him, too, on an unrelated note, if he felt my other brother had made an appropriate choice for a fishing gun, but I couldn’t remember what kind of gun the other brother was using as his fishing gun.  So, that remains a mystery.

But the post turned out pretty good.

Really. Really?

Via Twitter:

The TNGOP is really running around calling a black man “Uncle”?

In public?

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.

Sweet Jesus, you couldn’t make shit like that up.

Three Sisters

So, yeah, the whole “three sisters” planting concept is not going so hot, basically because the corn finked out.  In the future, if I do it again, I’ll plant the corn first and get it above ground before I plant the beans and squash, because right now my beans are ready to wrap and the corn’s not high enough for it to wrap around, what little corn there is.  I had to suppliment with bamboo poles.

In the future, I don’t think I’ll separate it into three different plots.  Instead, I think I’ll make a big oval full of a bunch of corn and then do beans around it and then my squash.  And I’ll stagger the planting of them.

Anyway, it turns out that we cannot wait to get the dog’s ear fixed, so I’ll have to call and schedule that.  And I need to call and schedule her getting her stitches out.  Ugh.  I just feel so bad because I know she’s in pain and uncomfortable and you can’t explain to her what’s going on or why.

This is the other reason that I don’t understand how people can fight dogs.  I am upset about causing my dog discomfort that I know is for her own good.  She had to get the ear fixed and I know from experience that she’s going to be much better off after she gets her leg fixed.  It’s for her own good and it makes me feel so bad.

How can you hurt a dog for no reason and not be devistated by it?

I just don’t get it?

At This Point, I Could Get Behind an “Eyes on your Own Paper” Party

The “Eyes on Your Own Paper” party would be like the Libertarians but with less “I am a Rock, I am an Island” sing-alongs.  Ha, can Libertarians even have sing-alongs?

Probably not.  Okay, let’s say “I am a rock; I am an island” sing-alones.

Anyway, I tease because I love.

The one thing I’ve been mulling over after my trip to Memphis and my discussions with various folks is that there is a loose consensus on the ground about what Democrats should be focusing on (see LWC for more).  I have talked to folks from all over the state and they want more jobs, better education, accurate health information, lower infant mortality, safer neighborhoods, etc.  And they want Democrats to run as Democrats, to know what we are and what we stand for and to run strong on that.  And for politicians who consider themselves Democrats but don’t subscribe to some of our core beliefs to be able to articulate why and for that “why” to be something other than “Because if I was for blah, blah, blah, I couldn’t get elected.”

I don’t know how many more Come-to-Jesus meetings we can try to have in this state when it comes to the Democrats.

But let me try one more time.

If you read a lot of across-the-board bloggers (which I do) and you talk to a lot of women in this state (which I do), you know that there are a core group of concerns that most women in this state have–how is food getting on my family’s table? Is my family safe where we live?  Are my kids and/or the kids in my community getting the best education they can?  Are people getting a chance for the best life they can or are they getting screwed over by forces much larger than them?

If the Democrats aren’t better on on issues that liberal women care about than Republicans, what argument do I have to insist that liberal women keep voting Democrat?  If both sides think the State owns us, then why stay loyal to Democrats?

I mention this because I don’t want you to miss the other implication of they cyberbullying bill–this is a bill that should have been researched and proposed by Democrats.  Which party is all about trying to take intent into account?  Which party is supposed to be concerned with sticking up for children?  Which party in the rest of the country is clued into the internet?

It’s not the Republicans.

But here’s what’s going to happen.  Republicans have elected powerful women to the State Legislature.  And they have signalled to the hard-core Right their willingness to fight against the basic rights of women, so it’s very difficult to attach to them that pesky feminist label.  And now you see them starting to write and pass legislation that appeals to women.  That, frankly, seems targetted to appeal to women.

If neither party is going to stand up for the fundimental rights of women to control their own bodies, why shouldn’t women voters drift to the party that puts forth legislation that addresses our concerns?

Don’t get me wrong.  I don’t like it.

But it doesn’t take a genius to see what’s going on and to wonder whether the State Democrats are going to clue in.  If the Republicans woo the votes of most of Tennessee’s women, there will be a wilderness so wild I don’t see how the Democrats come back from it.

Two Points Worth Considering

1.  Michael Silence points out that while the state legislature is busy supporting homeschoolers in Germany who they feel might have some vague kind of trouble that they haven’t bothered to learn too much about, more state employees are looking at losing their jobs.

2.  The Ghost of Midwesterners Past made such a good point about the cyber-bullying bill that I almost didn’t believe him.  Could Republicans really have put forward this thing?  But yes, apparently it was Black and Harwell who crafted and sponsored it.  Dang.

Oh, right, so what was Pete’s point?

Free speech advocates will rightly cry foul over the broad language. Much of web discourse would seem to fit this description. But think of it as a Republican version of a hate crime bill. Malicious intent is fairly difficult to prove.

I’m not sure I have to even think of it as such.  It pretty clearly is a Republican version of a hate crime bill.  All the stuff they grouch about when it comes to hate crime bills on the Left–that it’s impossible to discern “intent” because you can’t know what’s in a person’s heart, that it’s so vague and nebulous that even perfectly legal actions could be construed as being in violation of the law, that a person has a first-amendment right to be a hateful jerk, etc.–is a problem with this law, but they trotted it right out and passed it.

One wonders why this type of hate crime bill is okay but others not.

Oh, Poor Puppy

Ooo Ooo

I forgot to link to my last Pith thing, which is about this awesome conversation I had this weekend at the International Country Music Conference.

And here’s my second to the last thing.  It’s me sticking up for Robin Smith.

Shoot, for a day off, we’ve been busy.  We took the dog to the vet.  Left the dog at the vet.  Went to Home Depot.  Went to Kroger.  Put up poles for my beans to climb because my corn didn’t come up.  Staked tomatoes.  Deadheaded flowers.  And watched the Butcher pull a tick off the orange cat’s lower eyelid.

Seriously.  That’s a damn brave man there.

Those Darlins

If you knew about this band–and I’m looking at you, Murfreesboro–and you didn’t tell me, I’m not talking to you, ever again.

Okay, maybe not not ever again, but I will give you dirty looks.

I’d like to declare “Wild One” Mrs. Wigglebottom’s theme song.

Mrs. Wigglebottom

We had to leave her at the vet so that they could fix her ear.  She has a subdermal hemotoma, which I think means that House will have to come in and kill her three times only to figure out at the last second that she has a tick on her she got from misbehaving outside and thus he will revive her and save her and it will be wonderful.

Or that’s already been an episode of House and they will just do some minor surgery on her ear and we will go get her this afternoon.

Poor puppy.

They did say, however, that she was very friendly and a good dog.  So, that made me feel a little better.

When You Dream of What You’re Doing

I dreamed I was taking Mrs. Wigglebottom to the vet.  I then got up to take Mrs. Wigglebottom to the vet.  While she’s getting her yearly stuff, she’s getting her ear checked out.  I’m hoping there will be no need for gruesome details, but you know, if there are gruesome details to be shared, I will share them here.

Weekend Images

Home, Home on the Couch, Where the Dog and the Brother Slouch

Y’all, we had such a nice time today, even though we got terribly lost and could never find places to pee when we wanted and got terribly lost some more and then, just when we thought we couldn’t be any more lost, got more lost again.  We almost got into two accidents and drove through neighborhoods where the answer to “Teenage girl whose mother doesn’t know what she’s walked out of the house wearing or prostitute” was always prostitute.  We drove through parts of town so sketchy that the middle brother (more on this in a second) said that he felt like he understood something about the blues he never had before.  And we teased each other and talked and talked and talked and talked.  And he loved Newscoma and the Squirrel Queen.

I don’t even know what to tell you about how full my heart is.  I went to Memphis with my brother and I found him to be deeply kind and funny and thoughtful, which I already knew, but not really, and I’m sorry about that.

I feel like calling him the recalcitrant brother is not fair to both of us.

I don’t know.  This weekend has been eye-opening for me in a way I’m almost embarrassed to admit.  It’s like when I realized that the Butcher was not ditching me to go hang out with his friends when my parents were in town in order to stick me with them, but in order to make their intensity managable.  And I felt embarrassed for being so mad at him about that.

And that’s kind of how I feel about my other brother, like all the time thinking of him as the recalcitrant brother has made it hard for me to see him as the man he is.

Anyway, that has to change.  He’s not some guy who’s deliberately refusing to get with the program.  He’s just a guy.  He’s just our brother.

I’m glad to know that, with my whole heart.

Road Trip!

The recalcitrant brother and I are going on a road trip, just as soon as we get up and around and moving.  We’ve never been stuck in a car together alone, so hopefully it will be fun.  I’m looking forward to it, anyway.  And it’s raining!  So the lavendar I planted is set and the garden gets by another week without me having to buy eight million feet of hose.

Score!

Listen, I know some of you like the sun, so I will work you a deal.  Three days of sun, half an inch of rain.  Repeat all summer long.  Let me know if we can work that.

Ha.

World, life is weird.  Things you think are solid crumble.  Things you think will never be okay sometimes work their way out.