Grams and the Cherry Bombs

One Christmas, when I was about 15, Grams made brandied cherries. The fact that she didn't quite understand the fermentation process, made it an adventure for one and all.

See, brandied cherries have to be "put up" when cherries are in season, around June or July. So she did, putting them in a jar, filling it halfway with brandy and the rest of the way with water, plus some sugar, then put them in a cool dark place to set. A couple of weeks later, she went back to check on them, and tasted the liquid mixture. She found it to be a little bit strong.

So she added some sugar to sweeten it up.

A few weeks later, she checked again. Again, too strong. Added more sugar to sweeten it.

Now, if you need the fermentation process explained to you... well, then you ain't from the South!! LOL no, seriously, the basic premise is that when you add sugar to alcohol, some natural chemical reaction causes the sugar to become more/stronger alcohol. So basically what happened was, for roughly six months, my grandmother would add sugar every two weeks, thinking she would make the cherries sweeter when in fact she was making the brandy stronger. Come Christmas, when she broke them out for dinner with the family.... oh my HEAVEN!!! only one person could eat more than one, and my little no-drinking teenage self was practically on the floor...

Ya know, I was just thinking... I've told that story a billion times over the years, but... Grams is a pretty smart cookie. I wonder if she knew what she was doing all along?

The Road Warrior

A little background… I got my first driver’s license in California, shortly before my 17th birthday. I drove a beautiful little ’69 Mustang fastback, who was my true first love. But I drove her around a little far-outlying suburb of San Francisco, rarely even went on the highway. A year later, I moved to Texas for college, and really never went back. More to the point, moved to Houston.

Those of you who have ever been to Houston know what I discovered at that point – no matter what conventional wisdom says about the horrible traffic in San Francisco, Los Angeles, NYC, or any other major metropolitan area, Houston has the worst traffic, and the most frightening drivers, of anywhere in the U.S. And I am most assuredly one of them. It’s a matter of survival.

Several years ago, when I was finishing my undergrad, things were a little busy for a while. My two older girls were still preschool age. I had school full time, two part-time jobs, an internship, and various extracurriculars that were part of my certificate program. I lived in a suburb of Houston that was about an hour away in rush-hour traffic, and one of my jobs was there, but school, my other job, and my internship were all in the city. I was literally on the road for 2-4 hours every weekday. One of my teachers was a grad student, and he and a colleague were doing a study for one of their classes. He invited us all to participate for extra credit. It was a study on road rage, and it consisted of monitoring yourself for ten days. Each time you experienced road rage you were supposed to fill out one of the papers, indicating various things such as time of day, traffic conditions, whether you were late to where you were going, how angry you were on a scale of 1-10, how long you remained angry, etc. At the end of 10 days, we were to bring in our little log sheets. Walking into class on the day we were to turn them in, most of my classmates who were participating had a stack of 10-15 sheets.

My stack was literally an inch thick.

The teacher looked at me and said, “I just have two questions for you. Which lot do you park in, and what times are you coming and going from campus?” I laughed and explained to him how much time I spent driving in an average day. He smiled, said he understood… and then repeated his questions. He didn’t want to be anywhere near me when I was on the road!!!

Hot Drive, Part Deux

Okay, here comes the rest of it…

I pulled back into traffic, but soon discovered that my tendency toward road-hypnosis and/or falling asleep at the wheel is alive and well. (Guess I’ll have to go back and explain that in a later post, as well as my road rage issues…) Catching myself nodding off again, I found a better spot to pull over. Throughout the night I would pull over nap for 20-40 minutes, then get back on the road, but I usually only got a mile or two before I had to pull over again.

In their infinite wisdom, The Powers That Be had decided to block of all the ramps of 45 for a big chunk of the road northwest of the city. No entrance, no exit – you were either stuck on the freeway, or stuck on the feeder. At one point, it did cross my mind that the 64 ounce drinks that were keeping me cool, came with their own set of problems. And me without any Depends. No matter; if worse came to worst I had an empty gallon jug in the car. Somewhere late at night, between midnight and 2 as I recall, I was finally able to exit the freeway. Blessedly, a 24 hour McDonald’s (but those are usually only open through drive-thru), a 24 hour Jack-in-the-Box (ditto) and a Kroger that I couldn’t identify as 24 hour or not. I pulled up in front of Kroger and the group of 5 or 6 employees on a smoke break, rolled down my passenger side window, and smiled hopefully. “Any chance I could use your restroom? I’ve been on the road for 12 hours.” One looked a little wary and began stammering about not being open to the public, but another took pity and quickly overrode him. I rushed into that restroom, and if I’d had unlimited funds I would gladly have given each of those dear gentlemen $100 for their kindness. As it was, all I had to offer was undying gratitude and a promise not to send throngs of people in their direction. So thank you, night crew of the Conroe Kroger, I am forever in your debt.

Naturally, I took a quick trip through the JitB drive-thru for eggrolls, the biggest Diet Coke they could give me, and a refill on ice for my 64 ounce water cup. Will I never learn?

The rest of the night passed mostly uneventfully, with naps here and there. With all the nap stops, I was still not that far behind the other cars that had been on the road with me from the start. I don’t know if we all stopped and napped at the same time, or if traffic was just… that… slow. Still. Dawn comes, and with it, renewed energy. Or possibly just abject terror because daylight hours make the car more prone to overheating. The cell has been turned off most of the night to conserve what little battery I have left, but I turn it on periodically to check for messages. One, all the way from Kuwait, brings a smile to my weary face. (Thanks, Jay, you'll never know just how much that meant.)

A few minutes before 1 p.m., I finally pull into the parking lot of the Motel 6, directly in front of the room where my girls are, honking enthusiastically. They tumble out of the room, excited not because their mother is finally there, but because my arrival means they can finally go to Wal-Mart. Their little faces fall when I explain that I need a shower first – right up until they get one good whiff, at which point they agree that their “stinky Mommy” can take a shower right away. So naturally, after the requisite “made it here alive” phone calls to the rest of my family, and the all-too-brief shower, I get to climb right back in the car again.

This time, not my car. This time, working A/C without overheating. And this time, I definitely did not drive.

National Lampoon's Hurricane Evacuation

Okay, all told, things were not nearly as bad as they could have been. First of all, as most of you know by now, the hurricane eased up to a category 3, and made landfall significantly east of the Houston/Galveston region. My mother and I joke that mi abuela (my stepfather's mother) has a direct line to God, and that once He realized that someone related to the Gillettes was in the line of fire, He quickly took steps to divert the storm. Still, it was an interesting trip.

The drive from Houston to Dallas is supposed to be about 4 hours. Well, unless you're camping out under a rock (or, like me, don't get any TV stations to come in) you saw the footage of 45, bumper-to-bumper and at a virtual standstill. But that's just the beginning.

I gave up on work about half an hour after I got back from lunch, when I realized that ALL I was doing was watching my hands shake and wondering how my babies were. I went back to the house, packed up some last-minute things, and (thank GOD) changed into jeans and a tank top. Two hours into the drive, which was only about 8-10 miles from home, the van died for the first time. No panic yet, I pulled off to the side and hyperventilated for a while, then it started up again.

Two miles later, same thing.

Two miles after that, when it died for the third time, I was near hysterics when I called the Motorist Assistance Program. The cop pulled up behind me shortly thereafter and informed me that I was overheating. With the help of a wrecker, I pulled off the road and into a gas station, where I let the car sit in the shade, got myself an ice cold beverage, and waited an hour. Then, back on the road. With no A/C. Yes. In 90+ degree Texas heat, NO AIR CONDITIONING.

Fast forward to right around midnight. By this time I've been on the phone with various members of my family, assuring them that it is slow going but all is well. Meanwhile, I have somehow managed to curb my natural tendency toward road-rage, but now I am exhausted. I was irritated earlier on by three busloads of inmates in TDCJ buses, who were cheering and catcalling as we sat next to each other in traffic- apparently they appreciated the fact that I was blasting the radio, almost as much as they appreciated the aforementioned tank top. There were times I felt like yelling, "Been there, done that, fellas - no more cons for this gal!" but I refrained... So anyway, midnight comes and I finally need to pull over and rest. The freeway is only two lanes wide (I am still around the Woodlands/Conroe area) but the shoulder is also two lanes wide, plus there are construction barrels blocking off the shoulder every couple hundred feet. So I pull over in front of a set of barrels, as far over as I can get, figuring that people won't be approaching my rear at high speeds this way, and I'm far enough over that emergency vehicles can still get safely by.

After the second pair of ambulances comes within six inches of slamming into me, I decide maybe it's not nap time after all. I pull back into traffic...

And there, my story shall end for now... More to come, but I suddenly noticed how much the 20 cents a minute at Kinko's is adding up to. Yes, we are still in Dallas as of late Sunday night. I will probably head back tomorrow evening, Barb and the girls will stay until Tuesday at the earliest. But rest assured, the rest of the tale will come soon.

I'm Scared

I'm trying desperately NOT to be scared, because being scared makes me anxious - if that makes any kind of sense at all. Yesterday, I had a gut feeling that Hurricane Rita wouldn't hit us as hard as everyone fears, and I still pray that I'm right about that. But today, I'm scared.

The kids and my mother-in-law are already on their way to a Motel 6 near Dallas. I will be leaving to join them no later than the end of the work day, though I anticipate that the 3-4 hour drive will take twice that long, as parts of the region will be under mandatory evacuation starting at 6 p.m., and many are leaving much earlier than that. Where I live, I am relatively sertian that I might sustain minor damage, but the house itself ought to be okay, and on the second floor, I doubt I will even get too much water damage. But my mother-in-law lives in a trailer only about 20 miles inland, if that. Everything that hasn't already been packed into her SUV or my van, she is already considering a loss. And that will likely mean her and the kids coming up to live with me... which will be great, for the most part, but she will hate it. Living upstairs, with her bad knees and such, living in a house that right now doesn't have working A/C units, and even when it does, is not well-insulated... Well, we shall see.

But right now, I'm at work. Everyone is buzzing about the hurricane, and I am sitting here, not able to concentrate for sh**, only here to draw the paycheck that will hopefully carry us through this. And tonight, I hit the road. I will have my cell phone with me and that's it. Pray for us.

You're Soaking In It

Sometimes it really sucks to be a sponge.

Let me explain.

My spiritual heritage is a little odd. I was raised Catholic and eventually realized that it didn’t work for me. I spent several years as an agnostic. (One year I decided to give up agnosticism for Lent – everyone could use a little irony in their diet, right?) A few years back I joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Turns out that didn’t work for me either. Imagine that - a liberal/social work student, not being comfortable there. Nevertheless.

My sister is psychic. As in, she has a day job but is also a medium and spiritual advisor, writes columns for a related publication, and is often a presenter or vendor at psychic fairs and the like. She gives readings, tarot and otherwise, and practices several healing arts. And that kind of stuff runs in the family. Which is to say, I have a touch of the psychic in me as well, as have many of our relatives, both still-living and now-passed. My talents come into play more along the lines of the healing arts. With no formal training, I still can give a darn good reiki treatment. I also have a knack for getting people to open up to me, and for figuring out the ways to help them and empower them, that will work best for them. It’s no coincidence that I’ve been called to a helping profession.

However, it has one hell of a side effect. You see, I’m something of an emotional sponge. When things are going wrong, be it a personal conflict, discord within a group, or natural disaster/ worldwide situation… I soak it all up. Right now, I’m in the middle of a period of personal strife; some emotional issues are rising to the surface despite my best efforts to tamp them down. I’m actually starting to become physically ill, in part because I don’t get much sleep… because I stay up until I can’t even keep my eyes open, so that I won’t be able to remember my dreams. I’m afraid of what must be in them. There is also a very painful and angry conflict going on, in a group of which I am a very active member. People are turning against one another, and making hateful and angry, very generalized statements, probably not even realizing how much those comments might be hurting people in addition to the intended target. And then, of course, I live in Houston. Or is it New Orleans II? Working in a social service job, and going to school for social work, I am being flooded (no pun intended) with Katrina information every time I turn around. This effort, that project, people need water, no, food, no, diapers, no, schoolbooks, no, shelter… And then there’s the whole war thing, which oddly enough is related to one of my biggest sources of comfort, my soldiers. My daughters are a huge source of comfort, but they are also a source of anxiety – after all, I have to provide for them. My soldiers don’t expect me to provide for their basic needs. They sure do appreciate anything I do for them, but at the end of the day, if I don’t send snacks or DVDs or a new shirt, I’m not letting them down.

So. There is a lot of strife surrounding me, on all different levels. Very little escape from any of it, and even less escape that is constructive as opposed to potentially self-destructive. And I am taking it in. I am absorbing it. And just like a sponge, I will soon reach a point of saturation, where I can’t take one more bit of it without overflowing.

I just wonder what will happen then.

Venom

*sigh* Y'all will just think I'm a terrible person... to be gone a month, and then when I do post again, to post something negative and unhappy. But what the heck, a blog is a good place to purge stuff, and this one has been simmering for almost 14 years.

It goes back to the days of Bret and everything that surrounded that whole situation. I had a friend, and for our purposes here today I'll call her Patsy. Patsy and I were in classes and clubs together, and we considered ourselves friends. Quite good friends, in fact, along with a few other girls. And I really thought she was a friend, until later on. You see, somehow over a period of less than a year, Patsy betrayed my trust. THREE TIMES. I don't take kindly to that. Patsy is probably the only person, in fact, that I hold this much of a grudge against, and she probably doesn't even know it, or if she does, she doesn't know why.

The first betrayal involved Bret. Basically, since Patsy was one of my best friends, she was also one of the only people who knew what went on between me and him. She may, in fact, have been THE only person, other than the two of us. That is, until she told her boyfriend. Who turned around and blabbed to Bret about it, in the form of asking him things like, "Did you really do that? How can you do that?" (Revealing, BTW, his own embarrassing lack of skills...) That alone put up a wall between Bret and I, and then she fortified the wall after I left for college, by blabbing to him all the details of my... ummm... liberation, shall we say? It took several years and several letters before he and I healed that damage, and we were never able to put it completely right again.

The second betrayal involved the man who wound up being my boyfriend after Bret and I fell apart but before I went away to school. We'll call him Ray. Ray and I were still together when I left for college. I later found out that he, too, had started cheating on me pretty quickly. There is really no defense for my cheating, especially the way I did, other than to say that I was quite emotionally vulnerable at the time, and one man (boy, really) was able to take advantage of that to an extent. Seeing myself as damaged goods after that, I just kinda let go. After a few months, and a proposal from Ray that I studiously ignored, Ray suddenly called me... in the dorm room of the guy I had been, ummm... seeing rather exclusively for several weeks. He confronted me with my cheating, conveniently failing to mention the woman HE was seeing, and gave me an ultimatum. It was a bitter and angry breakup. Months later, when he and I were able to talk about it civilly, he dropped the bomb... Patsy, it seems, went to college near where he was stationed. And it was she who told him about my infidelity. Now, granted, it was wrong of me to be unfaithful. I know that, I acknowledge my responsibility. But what kind of friend tells your secrets?

Third... and this is the one that's stinging right now... there was another guy in high school that I had a crush on. He was a friend, and one that I'm sure had no clue how attracted I was to him. But SHE sure knew. So later on, after I was away at school, WHY did she have to get involved with him? And WHY did she have to brag about it to me? It wasn't really even the bragging itself, as much as the smug tone of voice. That was killer. It must have been, since it still gets me so hard after all these years.

Whew. Thanks for the opportunity to purge. Now if someone can just tell me how to get over it, already...