The Pipes, The Pipes are Calling

So Bird has watched this video on YouTube at least once a day for the past couple of weeks.



She's the only twenty-month old obsessed with Danny Boy. She approaches anyone who will listen, saying "Beaker sad. Beaker so sad. Blows a noses. Danny Boy. Sad." She's so empathetic and serious that she made my mom cry over her sincerity and sweetness.

God bless YouTube and God bless the muppets.

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Funny massage school story: At the completion of a massage, many instructors will suggest that you end with a peaceful message to your client as you take your leave of the body, something as simple as "thank you" or "namaste."

After being on the receiving end of a massage in class last weekend, my partner leaned over me and whispered, "como estas." I think she meant "namaste."

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I'm reading again. I know! Books and everything! I've been off TV for several weeks now, and I settled up with the library months ago on my long-standing fine in order to shake up our board book variety. I'm back on the reading rainbow. Hi LeVar! I'm almost finished with Ayun Halliday's The Big Rumpus, which I highly recommend to any mama tired of hearing about the need for more bedrooms, bigger cars, and expensive, hideous children's clothing.

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Yesterday I made a 2+ hour drive to visit a patient. I got lost, again.* And my contact lenses seem to not be fitting so great these days, and I ended up behind a massive semi in the rain that I thought said "Shit Fuck" on the back, but it said "Ship by Truck." How disappointing. I also ended up listening to Dave Ramsey, which has happened on more than one occasion on these drives. Me? Dave Ramsey? I don't know how that happens. How is it that ten years ago I wouldn't have set out for the one-hour drive from college to home without a carefully planned stack of mix tapes, and now I'll gladly hop in the car for a five-hour round trip with nothing more than the new Modest Mouse (which I am loving, but which I have listened into the ground) and the naive hope of finding something on the radio in the middle of fucking nowhere?

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I am often so fed up with Southern stereotypes, the idea that we're all crawling out from under rocks and what have you with our ragged clothing, clutching a hit Country tune scrawled on a napkin, flocking to the city to make it big. Or throwing our fanny packs and Brooks and Dunn T-shirts over our big hair and big asses and running out to vote for the GOP. Or maybe sitting on a broken down rocking chair on a broken down porch facing a broken down Ford and talking about Nascar with our old and deaf grandmas drinking dusty lemonade. It isn't always like that down here.

But.

My unbiased research (meaning my trips to visit patients for work) tells me that if you drive anywhere over an hour outside of a metropolitan area in Tennessee-- and for no reason in particular, you will find stronger results traveling East-- and enter any gas station or truck stop or drive-thru and you are sure to see the most fucked up looking bunch of people you've ever encountered. The drive thru girl looks normal until you see the fraction of a stub of a lone tooth and the fingers without fingernails. Or the guy with an honest-to-baby-Jesus pig nose talking a blue streak to the guy of normal weight with sixteen chins and a wonky eye at the gas station-slash-Pizza Hut- slash Dairy Queen-slash-video store- slash- smoky den of smoke. I'm sure they're all lovely people worth knowing, but It's just fucked up out there. The landscape is beautiful, but yeesh. The vibe isn't always pastoral and simple-- sometimes it's just plain spooky and inbred.


*The visit before this one included miles and miles of deserted highway, more miles and miles of no cell phone service, driving through two creek beds and receiving multiple stern warnings to stay on the "main road" so as not to "end up in a baaaaaad holler." It was straight out of a movie. A movie where an old blind witch lives in an abandoned house and an inbred aggressor-- her son, maybe-- stands on a dilapidated front porch shooting a shotgun in the air and shouting, "Friend or Foe?!?" at the man in the business suit who has just pulled up, lost, in a shiny black car. The businessman who will soon end up in some kind of stew cooking over an open fire in the bad holler.