Natasha Fondren

A year ago, I completely changed my life. This year has somehow managed to be the happiest, most relaxing, tumultuous, and terrifying year of my adult life. If I had known how hard the changes were going to be, I’m not sure I would have been brave enough to make them. I changed my life, and not in a shy way.

Leaving Music

In becoming a writer, I lost a lot of self-confidence. Giving up something you’re good at, something you’ve rooted your identity and self-worth and self-confidence in, is incredibly difficult. Since grade school, I was a pianist. For nearly thirty years I actively improved my musical skills every day, and a whole lot of my confidence was built on that foundation of skill and knowledge and training. And fifteen years of teaching piano: I knew exactly what to do and exactly how to teach certain things. It makes one feel good, to do something well, day after day.

Leaving all that was HARD, and I was totally unprepared for what a drastic blow it would be to my self-esteem.

I’m in a good place now, so I can admit that there were periods in this last year when I was depressed and felt like a complete failure and utterly worthless. I was terrified. I felt like I was drowning, like I was trying grab the buoy of music and teaching that had once been my confidence, but I’d thrown it away.

And there was nothing there.

Oh yes, I don’t know if I mentioned it, but I was freaked.

Becoming a Writer

Part of me will always be a musician. I miss it. When I watch my music friends in their careers, my fingers itch to get at the piano. I mourn it often, and it’s still a sore spot that aches, even though I am certain that writing is where my heart truly is.

With writing, I never have to manufacture motivation. Whether I’m motivated or not, I find myself writing. It just happens. I don’t want a life; I never want to “escape” writing or even take a break, unless it’s to go to a movie. Even then, try to get me to a matinee—it won’t happen. I can’t go to a movie until I’ve written.

I love volunteering and hiking the desert once a week, but as much as I love it, I have to “force” myself away from writing. In theory, I want to travel and I want to explore Arizona more, but in reality, I can’t bear to give up the writing days.

Even when I swear-to-God really don’t want to write, I don’t want to do anything else.

No Half-Measures

Up until this last year, I had an absolute, no-idea-where-it-came-from confidence in the fact that I “should” write, that the “universe wants me to write.” This certainty did not come from any belief in my writing abilities; it was just there. And I am not given to faith; I’m really not. But there it was.

That confidence was shaken and tried this year.

(Yay! I finally get to join the club!)

I knew, going into this writing thing, that I wanted to be a very good writer. And I’ve seen what it takes for musicians to be very good musicians. I put zero stock in talent, so I’ve never wondered if I had writing talent. I do, however, know how to learn. I know how to make a living in the arts. I know how to become good at something, and I particularly know how to become good at something creative.

Line up all the best musicians, and I bet not one of them ever had a fall-back career. I knew if I gave myself the luxury of one, I’d never be as good as I want to be. Believe it or not, I’m a security freak, and if I gave myself the option, I’d get comfortable.

I maneuvered myself into the position of having nothing to fall back on; I do realize that. And for me, it was the right decision.

But damn, it was frightening as hell.

It Was a Very Good Year

Yes. Yes, it was. It doesn’t sound it so far, does it? In spite of it all, I wouldn’t change a thing. I don’t regret my regrets for a second.

And now look, I’ve written a whole blog post and I haven’t even gotten to the good bits! And there were more good bits than scary bits, I promise. So I suppose I’m going to have to finish this up in a day or two… after I finish my writing.

Ever have regrets? Or regrets you don’t regret? Ever choose one thing above another, and mourn the loss of it, even while you know you’d make the exact same decision a thousand times over?

I have a new plugin! Fotobook with Lightbox (only works with Lightbox version 2.2.6.1 at the moment). Which means that if you click “Photos” up there… yeah… up there, between “About Natasha Fondren” and “My Website,” then you’ll be able to see all my Facebook Albums here.

Or you can click here.

If you hover over the right side of the photo, in the middle, an arrow will appear which will take you to the next photo.

You can see my adventures at Montezuma Castle with Mark Terry, a Horned Lizard, some cool Arizona Critters, a bunch of toads, including a huge-ass one, and my Adventurous Night, where I took a pic of a black widow spider, a few lizards, a gecko without its tail, a tail without its gecko, and two centipedes!

Enjoy!

Are you going? Have you ever gone? What’s it like? Should I go? Would I have fun, even though I don’t know anyone and would probably have to get a hotel twenty miles away?

Looks like it’d be hard not to learn something. Any tips?

Please tell all!

I went on a road trip! On Thursday, I drove up to Phoenix to meet Mark Terry, which was cool. We drove up to Montezuma Castle National Monument.

Montezuma Castle looks tiny here, but it’s really five stories high. It was phenomenal to see in person.

The cutaway, scaled model helps give some perspective.

I saw FOUR lizards there! Two in the grass, one on the tree, and one on the sidewalk. I’m fascinated by lizards, since up until now, I’ve only ever seen them in aquariums or museums.

And I met Mark Terry!

Of course, I had to take a shot of a teensy-tiny flower with little fuzzy balls on it:

If you go to the full Montezuma Castle album, you can see better pics of the lizards and more pics of the stuff we saw. I’m pretty sure I set it up so even if you aren’t on Facebook, you can see the photos. Let me know how that works, ‘cause I don’t know.

Are you doing vacation this summer? Where’re you going?

Right after Glenn left, the Wednesday before last, my phone stopped working. I could hear people talk, but they couldn’t hear me. Luckily I had equipment protection, so they gave me a brand, shiny new one, free and clear.

That was nice. And it relates to the wonderful day I had on Friday.

I got up early, excited to buy an air conditioner. My cat broke my favorite (and only) real-glass glass, but I was too excited to care.

I’d been forgetting to put our new plates on. That was bad. I was told this could negate my insurance, should I get into an accident, and that if I got pulled over, they could impound the car.

Those might have been exaggerations to inspire me to finally put the plates on the car. Which I did.

While I was wrangling with the rusted screws, Sprint Customer Survey called me for the fiftieth time to ask how my service was when I replaced my phone. (See? I told you it related!) I’d tried ignoring their rings, as you all know I only talk to my best friend, my niece and Glenn on the phone. But if I wanted them to stop calling me, it was clear the only way would be to accept the phone call.

So I grabbed my phone from the Jeep and replaced the license plates as I took the survey. I have short patience for these things, so after five questions I hung up and put the phone on the taillight while I worked a really tough screw.

Ohio license plates are made of metal, but South Dakota license plates, the new ones, are made of this bendy-plastic. Cheap, but shinier. Didn’t like, though.

Then I went to get my AC. $50 off! Woo-hoo! It’s portable, because that’s all that will work with our setup.

When I came home again, (two hours later because it’s 40 miles away) I realized I didn’t have my phone.

Yeah.

The taillight.

Not still there.

Go figure.

I installed and turned on my AC, then hit the road to retrace my steps to find my lost phone. I was shocked that I actually did find it. It was in the middle of the road, overheated in the sun, run over and warped.

It won’t close, now that it’s warped:

And you can totally tell it was run over several times and ground into the gravel road:

But it works!

So I drove on to find a health food store in Tucson that has all the fixings for the macrobiotic diet I did pre-Glenn. I’m trying to get the body here in shape for “The Back-up Plan,” so I need to avoid all the foods I’m allergic to, which is basically all the yummy food in the whole world.

By that time, it was mid-afternoon and 100 degrees out. I was soooooo happy to get home to my camper with AC.

Except my camper was 100 degrees, too. I futzed and sorta fixed it. By the time it finally cooled the camper down to 78 degrees, it was 80 degrees outside.

I was hot and bothered, and not in a good way.

Didn’t my dinner look great, though?

Um, yeah. If you mention ice cream, I’m not sure I’ll be able to forgive you.

I was glad to call it a day. As I was getting changed into my nightgown—would you believe it?—I stepped on a glass shard I’d missed that morning. Couldn’t get it out. Couldn’t find my tweezers. Had to hop to a neighboring RV to borrow tweezers. After bleeding and crying and soaking and pulling and tweezing for thirty minutes, I got it out and successfully made it to bed. (About the only successful thing I did that day.)

So what do you think? Don’t you think it’s Sprint’s fault that my phone is broken again? If they hadn’t been spamming me with phone calls I never asked for, I wouldn’t be in this situation!

And how was your weekend? Don’t you think it’s so weird to say, “Happy Memorial Day!”? How about “An Honorable Memorial Day!” instead?

(Something I do so often, I now sigh inwardly when I hear myself say something, resigned that the words will later be stuffed down my throat.)

It’s hot, here. Remember how I’ve been saying that it only gets hot for a few hours in the afternoon and cold at night so there’s no point in me getting an air conditioner?

Yeah, no.

I about died today, it was so hot. I jumped in the pool, but long story short, it was too freezing to stay in, even though I was boiling hot. So in my wet swimsuit, I sprawled in my bed, poured a glass of water on myself, and sat there comatose.

(Don’t worry about all that water in my bed. It evaporated in ten minutes.)

I’d read about homemade air conditioners, but I didn’t have the copper tubing. So I did this:

Oh? Those black blobs? I was too hot to redd up the camper, so I cleaned it with black paint in Gimp, to make you think my countertop was all clean and organized and I didn’t have clothes hanging all clutterly from a hook over the window.

The ice water stayed cold for several hours, surprisingly, and it did actually cool it down about fifteen degrees, I believe. Down to where I could think again, at least.

It didn’t help that I’d been in the sun for eight hours, driving with the top off the Jeep and hiking in the desert. It was 100. 100!

My cats, shall we say, were not at all pleased:

The other two were hidden somewhere, away from the heat.

So I called Mr. Moneymaker.

He reminded me that I’d said it was only a few hours of unbearable every day, and that I’d said I loved the heat, that it was no problem.

I said f*ck that.

So this afternoon I’m buying an AC. This camper will be a nice 68 degrees. Maybe 65 degrees. Maybe 60 degrees. I’m so hot, I want to be an ice cube.

I’m hoping the cool air will increase my productivity, which has been extremely sluggish. And I have to eat my words one more time, because I am DYING for three days of rain and cloudy skies and thunderstorms.

No rain until the monsoons in July, I hear.

Are you staying cool? I heard there was a hot spell out east, too!

I went hiking on the De Anza Trail on Thursday. The De Anza Trail is 1,210 miles long and goes from Nogales, Arizona all the way to San Francisco. Juan Bautista De Anza, apparently, led 300 people along this route in the 1775-1776 Spanish Expedition. He also founded a Mission and Presidio in San Francisco, a Mission in Santa Clara and the Pueblo of San José. The group ended by settling in the San Francisco Bay area.

The full trail is not yet restored. They worked a bit on one section last fall, but I think we started at the end of the finished part, because the trail completely disappeared. Luckily, we were in a portion of desert where it’s almost impossible to get lost. We trekked southward, hoping to get to a little town, but at some point we were stuck hiking in washes and dried riverbeds.

An owl swooped by us here, but I didn’t have my camera out.

We (a bit stupidly, I admit) decided to leave at two in the afternoon to make it to Tubac in time for friends to meet us for dinner. Hiking in 96 degree heat in the sun is tough. I had my reservations, but my hiking partner was an Arizonan, so I was thinking that maybe Arizonans are used to this weather, and that I should get used to it too, LOL.

We saw a beautiful golden coyote here. Why do I never have my camera up when I want a shot?

Most of the time we were hiking in sand. I think I sunk four inches every step, then I had to lift my leg out. My hips are still sore, LOL. Good exercise, though.

I found the dried and cracked mud of the wash fascinating.

Near the end of our trip, we hiked for the freeway so we could be picked up. We’d hiked four hours, and we were starved. We saw this little guy on a log. What’s fascinating to me is that this lizard appeared like it was coated with fuzzy, black velour.

Not so in the picture. Weird.

So that was my adventure for the week.

How was your week?

I cry if I accidentally kill an ant. I get upset when Glenn kills a spider instead of carrying it outside. I don’t want to live with bugs, but I don’t want them dead.

However.

Last night, I walk into the bathroom, and the WORLD’S FREAKING LARGEST BUG is racing around the floor. After some screaming and crying, I go and get my camera. It’s HUGE.

(I had to show it to you.)

When I return, it’s running at speeds of ten miles per hour. I’m bouncing on my tiptoes, poised to dash away at any second, should the bug come toward my feet.

(You’ll understand why the pictures are blurry.)

The picture has been enlarged so the bug is at ACTUAL SIZE. Really. THIS IS HOW BIG THIS BUG WAS. Exactly. Precisely. No exaggeration. (The pic may be on the small side, actually.)

Is it three or four inches long on your screen? AS BIG AS YOUR HAND? Yes, that’s how big it was. Here’s another picture:

Do you SEE how long those LEGS ARE?! Arizona bugs are FREAKING HUGE. If one of those things gets in my camper I am packing up and leaving for Ohio.

You think I’m kidding.

I run and grab the owner, and he comes back with two brooms. I stand and cringe and cry and squeal in the hallway, and I hear about twenty bangs. TWENTY BANGS! Over and over! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!

It’s finally dead.

The toilet flushes.

The shower turns on. He has to run the shower for FIVE MINUTES to get rid of the bug goo. Five minutes!

When I return to my camper and tell Glenn, he says, “You killed Elmer! I can’t believe you killed Elmer!”

“Elmer?” I shriek. “You know this bug? Are you teasing me?”

“Yeah, he was in the men’s bathroom for a while, then the women’s, and back to the men’s. You haven’t seen Elmer before?”

I stare at him. I am speechless. It takes me fifty-seven seconds to say, “No. No. No, I have not seen Elmer before.”

“I can’t believe you killed Elmer,” he says.

I am still speechless. He thinks I am done with the conversation and rolls back over in bed.

He says again, “I can’t believe you killed Elmer.”

I finally cry, “I can’t believe you named a giant bug!” I’m thinking, Where is my protector? Isn’t he supposed to be the noble remover of all icky things? What happened to the code of chivalry?

“I didn’t name it,” he says. “Mr. and Mrs. X named it. You killed their Elmer. It’s been hanging out in the bathrooms for months.”

Okay, I’m a little sorry. Okay, I’m really sorry. Please forgive me. I don’t want to be a killer. It’s against my religion. But did you see the size of that thing? It was him or me!

Would you have killed Elmer? Do you know what Elmer is? AND WHY THE FRICK-FRACK WOULD SOMEONE NAME A GIANT BUG?????????????

Postscript: I’m told it might be a Palo Verde Borer Beetle. They can get up to six inches long and THEY FLY.

What do you think? Here’s a picture with some perspective, so you can see how HUGE it is:

Even though I live in a camper, I feel like I’m living outside. I love that it’s permeable, most of the time. It’s a pop-up with hard sides, so it’s just like a regular trailer, but it folds down and is towable by my Jeep.

Because of that, air seeps through. They say that indoor air is unhealthy, but there are so many cracks for air to get in, that even if I have all the windows closed, I still have fresh air.

Sunshine also seeps in. The walls are an off-white (very hard) plastic material, and even if the windows were covered with black curtains, light comes through the walls. So now that it’s spring, the sun wakes me up at 5:30ish. And it being Arizona sun, it is BRIGHT. It’s like trying to sleep while laying out in a beach with no shade.

It’s not long after the sun sets that I start to fall asleep. Last night, I didn’t make it past 9:30. I am not a morning person, but I think when you’re practically living outside, nature takes over.

The other nice thing about this lifestyle is that you have neighbors, the old-fashioned kind—the kind that jump to and offer you a helping hand.

Yesterday, I went on a hike and Glenn ran errands, and wind gusts lifted my back wall (a pop-up likes to pop-down with any wind gusts over 40mph) and blew in my side wall. One neighbor moved their truck to block the wind, another duck-taped my back wall down, and a third rescued Caesar.

Living mostly outside is pretty cool. Even the bad parts, like walking to the bathroom in the middle of the night (getting to see the stars) and the camper rocking wildly in the wind (learning one has neighbors) are pretty darn awesome.

What not-so-great thing has happened to you, lately, that had a great upside?

One of the most stunning things about southern Arizona is that nature is so diverse. If you tire of it, just drive ten minutes for an entirely new landscape. (The area is also GREAT for birding.)

Sunday, with great nervousness, I actually took a whole day off! It was wonderful, and it was so nice to get away from my computer for a day. I’m thinking of making this a weekly habit. We drove to Madera Canyon, in the Coronado National Forest.

I wish I’d taken pictures a couple weeks ago, but you can still see the snow in the mountains, even though it’s regularly in the mid 80s. Temperatures drop to the low 40s at night, so I generally start out my writing day while shivering next to the heater, and then, as the day wears on, I’ll suddenly realize I’m way overheated, and have to throw open the windows and turn on all the fans.

The names of mountains fascinate me. The peak on the right is Mt. Wrighton, aka Old Baldy, and the dip in the middle of the two peaks is called “Baldy Saddle.” The left peak is Mt. Ian.

At the desert museum, I learned that taking a walk up some of these mountains is like walking from Mexico to Canada, nature-wise. It was mostly pine forest with a creek where we hiked, which blew my mind, LOL.

When we left, ten minutes later we drove through an area filled with Jumping Cholla Cacti. Little pods with two inch needles “jump” and stick in you. (Ouch!) They say they don’t actually jump, and that you really brush up against them, but I don’t believe it. I was five feet away, and my foot got stuck with two. (Painful, as I had sandals on.)

One came out easily with a stick, the other felt like barbed fish hooks. I wish I had taken a picture of the first time I was stuck with a cactus, but I was preoccupied. They are pretty cacti, though, aren’t they? They look like fuzzy little trees.

I’ll leave you with a few more pictures of the cacti blooming and some wildflowers. It’s Spring, here! I don’t know what they’re called, but aren’t they pretty?