Natasha Fondren

Glenn’s coming home! I’ve been sitting by the phone. I probably won’t know which day until he’s flown to Anchorage, given the difficulty of phoning from Dutch Harbor. It could be any day (or really, any hour) now.

Good news: Bernita has a new Lillie St. Claire story in Weirdly: Volume 3. Lillie rocks, I’m telling you, totally rocks.

 Smart Pop Books has released excerpts of Ardeur, an essay anthology about Laurell K. Hamilton’s Anita Blake series. There are some great essays in there! Mine is “The Domestication of a Vampire Executioner.”

Laurell K. Hamilton guest-edited, and she wrote really awesome and heartfelt intros to each essay. Lots of times, editors write a paragraph, a couple sentences. She wrote a page or two. I have to say, her success is not surprising; the extra mile must be automatic with her.

Speaking of Smart Pop Books, if you’re a fan of Dollhouse, they’re having an essay contest for the Dollhouse anthology.

So I mentioned I’m learning Spanish. The Listen ‘n’ Learn Spanish with the Movies book assigned Eight Below first. Um, YEAH RIGHT. I sobbed the whole way through. And I’m not watching it again, no way no how. I don’t care if I haven’t learned the Spanish I’m supposed to learn from it.

I’m an emotional weakling. The whole time, I knew there was going to be a happy ending for the dogs, but that didn’t help. Nor did the actual happy ending: I sobbed through that, too.

I cry at everything in real life, too. I saw a mean sign a few days ago, and I came home and cried. I was depressed for three days. I felt like running home to a mommy and saying, “He hurt my feelings!”

I have the emotional strength of a five year old. *sigh*

*Addendum: He just called! He’s already to Anchorage; he’ll be here at 11:45 am, Friday morning!

What’s going on with you?

It’s been a busy week. And I have a new flash story up at A Million Monkeys: Lost and Found. Monday I hiked the desert, picked up some trash under a bush, and crumbs from the bush slipped down my pants. I’m still itching on my lower back.

Tuesday, the day disappeared. How does that happen? I think I was gone all morning, but I can’t remember where. Then I taught water aerobics, went to a meeting, and saw The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus. I really wanted to love it. It had the whimsy, the great acting, but… well, in the end, it didn’t make sense. There was no point to me. Or if there was, I didn’t get it, which was equally annoying. I was very disappointed.

And Wednesday I went to the coolest museum ever: The Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum. Totally awesome. It’s an outdoor museum, mostly, that’s more zoo than museum. I kept thinking that I can’t wait until my niece can see it, maybe when she’s a year or two older. She loves nature, and I wonder how she’d react to a completely different environment.

The best museum I’ve ever been to, for sure. I even got a behind-the-scenes tour, and I TOUCHED A SNAKE! I did! I really did! A very pretty one, too. And heard a rattlesnake’s rattle for the first time. We went into a room where they keep all the snakes they’re breeding and stuff, and a couple started rattling like crazy. Way cool.

I’m totally in love with where I’m living now. I’ve never been in love with a place, like a place to live. Could live here forever, not a single drop of restlessness. Which was not the point of me leaving. At the very least, I think this will be my home for at least six months of the year.

How’s your week been?

It’s funny what you get used to. At the campground, half of the showers are in English and half are in Spanish. This means that it’s a coin toss as to whether “C” means cold or hot, and whether “H” means hot or cold.

The funny thing is, the half that are in Spanish are “Mexican-style.” This means that “C” is always first. The thing you have to be careful about, is the cold water isn’t always first; sometimes it’s the hot water first.

Also, while the campground is spotless and clean and wonderful, the toilets are “old and slow.” You’re supposed to flush them twice. No big deal. But I’m in the habit now.

So when I go to Borders, I do my business, then turn around and wait for the toilet to finish flushing so I can flush it a second time, often forgetting I don’t need to. And beside the toilet is a large, kitchen-sized trash can with lots and lots of neatly-folded, used toilet paper.

In Mexico, you mostly don’t flush the toilet paper. In Tucson, only some do.

On the way home, we drive the only interstate in the United states whose exits and markers are in kilometers. (There was a nationwide metric-system push, which eventually failed, when the interstate was completed.)

And let me tell you, it’s a writer’s dream. You can’t drive I-19 and not see story after story after story. Or bits which you inflate into story. More on that in another post.

Also on my way home, I pass orange and lemon trees. For someone who has lived in Ohio all her life, real live orange and lemon trees are absolutely stunning. All that rich green dotted with vivid color. So pretty!

See anything interesting lately? Or normal to you, but not-so-normal to us?

I spent the morning reading through old blogposts for the year. Evidently, I really wanted a more peaceful life. (I got it.) And somehow, I knew change was in the air.

Biggest Disappointment: I really want a baby. Very badly. I’m not feeling much hope on that front, for health reasons, age reasons, private reasons, and health insurance reasons. I cry inside a little (or a lot), every time I see a child. I’m trying not to think about it for a year or so. I’m not succeeding.

I ended my piano studio on a kick-ass note. I decluttered, decluttered, and purged this year.

Number 1 Thing I’m Proud Of: After three (or more) years of contemplation, yearning, and restlessness, I am finally living outside the window. These are my new adventures. I bought, (broke), and fixed a camper.

Campground life in Ohio rocked. Except for Dish Day, which was a lot of work there. But I didn’t want to leave: I was close to my best friend and niece. I miss them daily. Especially my niece, who is turning three today!

Restlessness followed me to my first stop, but not to Arizona. Part of that restlessness was my foot; I’m dying to get back to Tae Kwon Do. The foot’s actually doing better, and I practice my kicks in the pool every day. As soon as I can run, I’m signing up.

I am disappointed I won’t get to Slab City for another year.

The trip across the US was exhilarating. Living in Arizona is like living in the Wild West. Border Patrol is BIG, here.

Number 1 Thing I’m Least Proud Of: On a related note, I’ve been wrangling with writing all year. I felt I was getting worse. I wish my word count had been better. I want writing to be easier and faster in 2010.

ADD has been a big challenge for me, probably because my lungs have been drowning, and lack of oxygen makes thinking even more difficult.

I decided to read 365 books from September 2009-2010. I am about thirty books behind, but I’m thrilled that reading has become a bigger part of my life than Facebook and blogging, LOL. (Although I miss the socializing!)

At the beginning of the year, I was moved to tears at Obama’s inauguration. Near the end of the year, I was heartbroken over the prejudice against same-sex marriage.

And finally, my favorite and most self-inspiring post of the year is There’s No Traffic On the Extra Mile. For the thing that was most hard for me to write this year, I went twenty extra miles to get it done. (Seriously, swear to God, it was so challenging for me that I just went crazy, doing about eighty times the work it called for, and that’s probably an under-estimation.) And I’m tickled pink that it ended really well, being one of the things I’m most proud of.

Overall, it was a year of big changes, probably the biggest of my life thus far. I miss my niece and best friend. I can breathe better here, and I’m learning how to control my asthma. I think it’s a year I can be proud of.

How was your 2009? What are you most proud of? Least? What’s your verdict?

Happy hour at the campground started at 4:30pm. We left at 8:30. Margaritas. I spent the morning in a Christmas card-making class. In the afternoon, we went to the post office.

Four weird things about that. First, the two towns we’re sandwiched between have post offices which are only identifiable by the chalk (I kid you not, CHALK) U S P O above the doorway in very small letters.

Hey, this is the Wild West. The post office doesn’t even have a FLAG.

Second, you can only find it by asking someone. And that someone doesn’t know how to speak English. (And I’m fine with that; I am proud that the United States doesn’t have a national language. It’s part of our freedoms, and I value it.) My Spanish is limited to Uno, Dos, Tres, (don’t know how to spell them) Feliz Navidad, and the lyrics to Rayando el Sol (because I listen to it ten hours a day for the first two months after Glenn goes on a work trip). So getting the directions to said post office was… difficult.

Third, our normal mail goes through one town, while any express mail goes through another town. And… get this, express mail is not DELIVERED here. So you spend $15 for express mail, but unlike a 44-cent stamped envelope, you have to actually drive to the post office to get it.

Four, in order to get to the post office, we have to go through a border patrol/inspection checkpoint. I really tear up at least once every day about border patrol and attitudes toward Mexicans. The way they sell it down here, I’m learning, is it’s not about the Mexicans crossing; it’s about the drugs. (Well, that’s what the NICE people say.)

However, I had one person tell me I should not go hiking without first getting a concealed gun permit, and, as someone else later said, not because of the four-legged cougars. Which is still better than the all-Mexicans-from-Mexico-are-dangerous-criminals attitude. *sigh*

The drugs are not entirely a prejudiced concern. They just discovered a truck with like 1600 pounds of marijuana or something insane like that. I’ve seen border patrol catch people twice, once because of a flat tire, and once because of one headlight being out. And I really don’t see why a forty-five year old woman is so dangerous she has to be kneeling in a ditch with her hands over her head. A bus crossed over, how I don’t know, and we were driving amidst ten or fifteen border patrol cars carting them to Tucson. (I woulda thought they’d be going the other way…)

One thing I didn’t imagine before I got here, is that border patrol stuffs people in the bed of pickup trucks. There’s a top over the bed with a locked door, but it’s short enough that people have to be awkwardly scrunched in there.

Do you know how hard it is to step up into the bed of a pickup truck? (Near impossible if you’re not under thirty.) Okay, now imagine doing that, and then climbing through a three-four foot doorway.

Meanwhile, back in the campground…

Campground living is different. For example, if Glenn walks the 1 minute walk to the office to ask a question, it’ll take him an hour and a half to get back. You stop and chat a lot. And the people are the COOLEST. And most people are retirees, so an “activities director” is coming in a week to entertain the “snowbirds” for the winter.

I can totally get used to this life.

So what are you thinking this weekend? Any plans? What’s your life like?

“Pets: Please don’t feed stray cats, dogs, or illegal humans.” My new campground rocks. I can’t say enough good things about it. Good people, too. It seems to be the theme of my life that a large percentage of good people have some belief I find indigestible.

But it’s a different culture here. I’m pretty close to the border, and I’d guess that there must be a big border crossing nearby, because I have seen one policeman in a week, and about fifty border patrol cars. I see a border patrol helicopter every day.

In fact, there is a border patrol car parked somewhere along my street 24/7. There are signs all over the clubhouse saying, “Illegal’s, call 1-800-USBP-HELP.” (Yes, illegal’s, not illegals.) There are billboards everywhere.

Immigration is complicated. I don’t believe in closed borders, but I do need to do some open-minded research before I start making public judgments about it. I’d be happy for you to help educate me.

In the meantime, I love this campground rule, not because it gives me indigestion, but because it’s so indicative of how humans can be so cruel and insensitive to each other: they dehumanize them.

I hate this sentence, because seriously? If a fellow human being shows up on my doorstep, dying of thirst and hunger, I’m supposed to show them no more respect or mercy than a stray cat? (And it would be incredibly difficult for me to not feed a stray cat, too.)

I am grateful I live in a gated campground, because I will never have to wrestle with breaking or not breaking the rules. I will obey the laws of my country, of course, but I will pray I am never in a position to have to test that obedience.

If everyone loved someone who was gay, saw them in love with someone else firsthand, I’d bet the votes for same-sex marriage would be closer to 95% to 5%, rather than hovering around 48% to 52%. I’ve talked with people who think gay love is disgusting. I’ve watched their lips curl as they mentally made homosexuals less than human. I’ve said before that all love is beautiful. It is, if only you look.

Likewise, if everyone loved someone who wanted to immigrate to the United States, we’d have open borders. It’s easy to vote against immigration, but how easy is it to vote against Karin Bachmeier, your cousin? Or Juan Garcia, the love of your sister’s life? Geeze, we’re only 200 years old. We’re all immigrants, save many Mexicans and Native Americans.

Did you know that they’ve done studies? Remember Gladiator? Do you know why there was a dog in the opening battle? Because we humans react more emotionally to dogs dying than to humans dying.

We make dogs more than human and humans less than dogs.

Why is it that when it comes to fellow humans, a large majority of us close ourselves off to others? We judge them instead of walk in their shoes. We think of them as no better than strays, rather than drum up some compassion and empathy.

Because, at the end of the day, it’s not that complicated. That person is your brother, your sister, your mother, your lover. Every human is someone with hopes, dreams, and fears. Every human laughs; every human cries. Every human is worthy of respect and love and dignity. Certainly of compassion and understanding.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

I can’t get over the sky. Maybe you have to live your whole life in Ohio to understand. Where I come from, the land of hills and trees is bigger than the sky, and there are maybe only three or four completely cloudless days all year long. Even then, when you look up, you see only snatches of blue in between the trees and the next hill or the next building.

Yesterday, I was stunned by the sky in Oklahoma.

Probably someone from Oklahoma thinks nothing of the breadth of the sky. Probably someone who’d lived in Oklahoma all their life would come to Ohio and think the sky small. They’d think it tiny. Microscopic. A two-inch patch in a six-foot painting.

Paul Greci just wrote about perspective in Through Whose Eyes Do We See?

But today I am convinced that Chicken Little was from Texas. The sky is so huge, it’s oppressive. The sky is low to the ground. It makes me claustrophobic. I thought the sky went on forever yesterday, but that was nothing.

In Texas, you can reach up and touch the sky. You have to duck. The horizon is every where you look. You can stand and turn a full circle, and in every direction, the horizon never ends.

Also, there are Taco Buenos. I bit into a Cheesecake Chimichanga and almost died. (No, seriously, I had a big asthma attack from the dairy.) But I bit into it and all this cinnamon-y caramel gushed out next to this hot melted cheesecake and I orgasmed and it was so worth the almost-dying bit.

You think I’m kidding about the orgasm.

The American West is a beautiful place.

I’m having a lousy day. I don’t know why. In the grand scheme of things, this day won’t even register as a blip. I hope. I cannot convey to you how much I want to get to Arizona and how afraid I am something will screw it up. Even now, when we’re only Arizona minus five days.

To give you an idea of how neurotic I am, Glenn made a map to get to Arizona. He wanted to save it as “Arizona or Bust,” and I went beserk. Tears were shed. Voices were shrill. Because if you knew me, knew my life, it would be just my luck if it were bust. I told him to call it “Arizona: Mission Accomplished.”

Today, though, the Jeep went to get fixed, and the guy brought it back saying he can’t do it: it’s too rusted. It’s been rattling but chugging along for months and months, so Glenn thinks it will be fine.

The mechanic says it could be fine. At some point, it will break, and we will be dead in the road. That could happen a week from now or even six months from now.

As you know, I have been neurotic about the Jeep for months. I don’t know why. I just have this fear that it’s going to break down and we’re not going to get to Arizona.

Since I’m being so confessional about my neuroticism, may I point out how nerve-wracking it is to drive with your HOUSE down the highway? I mean, one slip of attention, one slip of anything, and you have no house.

I can’t wait to be in Arizona. It feels so far away…

Is this what cold feet is like? Or is this craziness?

Looks like a sunny, warm, summer day, doesn’t it? Yes. But no. It is cold! We’re talking high-40s cold, mid-30s-at-night cold. We wake up in the middle of the night and four cats are all huddled between Glenn and I. We stay warm. It’s cozy. It’s nice.

Until, that is, we have to go to the bathroom. Because while I never had to wake up and go to the bathroom in the middle of the night when I lived in a house, when I camp, I have to go two or three times before the sun rises.

So on go the sandals, over my shoulders goes a sweatshirt, and off I go running to the showerhouse, freezing my toes and legs and ass off. (Although, come to think of it, if it could freeze my ass off a little quicker, I wouldn’t mind.)

  But it’s such a beautiful day, I hate to spend it inside.

The campfire is cooking our lunch beside me, but because the sun is so bright, I can only see my screen if I stretch a black nightgown over my head and my laptop. I wanted Glenn to take a picture of this setup so I could prove my ingenuity, but he said, “You look ridiculous!”

So here is ridiculous me, happy as a clam, layered in two sweatshirts and a turtleneck. (Translation: My arms aren’t that fat!)

Yes, I could have cropped that better, but I didn’t want to cut out my Jeep. Isn’t she pretty? Yes. I am way too crazy about my Jeep. I dream of three weeks from now, when the top will be off, and we’ll be driving around the 80+ degree desert, the hot sun beating on our skin. Woo-hoo!

How was your weekend? Isn’t fall grand? What plans do you have for this season?

Do you see how ugly this ceiling is? To fully appreciate the “after” picture, make sure you notice the ugly, exposed wires, the peeling contact paper on the ceilings, the vent fan with no vent, and the ugly color.

And now for the “after” picture. I did all the painting. It took us an hour to put a ceiling panel in the spot missing one. We bent and squeezed it up there, but in actuality you’re supposed to take the entire roof off and work from the top down. We just don’t have the tools and means to do that on the road. It worked out, though. Glenn found a vent fan thing, so that made it prettier, big-time.

Isn’t she a pretty ceiling? I’m so proud.

I’m excited to get on the road, but I feel like it’s never going to happen. It will, but tying up loose ends takes FOREVER. And I’m learning that if I go three days without going to a bookstore, I go mad.

Seriously, today I was disappointed because I got up late, which meant I would “only” have ELEVEN HOURS to sit in the bookstore today. ONLY! But seriously, I’d hoped to get here at 9am, which meant I would have 14 hours. Oh well.

And every time Glenn finds a campground, I ask, “How far is the closest bookstore?” At which point he often says, “About two hours.”

That’s unacceptable. As much as I love the wild, I NEED MY BOOKSTORES. I’m going to try and go without for a whole month. So we’ll see how crazy I go.

What about you? Are you addicted to bookstores? And do you think my new ceiling is pretty?