My Fair Lady

Friday, Aug. 2, 2002 -
Ap�sl�min ida corbalanyrtne 'ls�o rohl'daathi�m v� nen�a iroyss�rd.

As I was saying, before we were interrupted by art, I have a ton of excuses for why I haven't been writing here lately.

Lessee.... Yesterday I was working my butt off, and Wednesday I was working my butt off (when I wasn't sleeping) because Tuesday I was unexpectedly driving four horses and two cowboys back from Santa Rosa. Which is a ten-hour drive down the length of most of the state of California. And when I got home after nine that night, after unloading the aforementioned equines and equestrians, I discovered that my sister had been using my computer and had fucked it up. Christ. My whole working life is on that computer, invoices, estimates, workorders, phone numbers. And why was she using my computer? Because (no surprise) hers was fucked up. It took me until one in the AM to unfuck my computer (I'm sure I could have fixed it faster if I wasn't such a Luddite) whereupon I fell into bed (don't cringe, I had showered off the stench earlier), pulled my comatose Fiend into my arms, and dropped instantly into the deep end of blissful slumber. For three hours. Up at four. It was my my morning to bake, but luckily I had scheduled one of my faithful minions to make the deliveries that morning, so I was able to drag my draggy ass back to bed as soon as I packed up the Cookiemobile and sent it on its merry way. All I wanted to do was bag the whole day and stay in bed with the Fiend. The Fiend was amenable to the plan, but the rest of my life was not. The phone started ringing at eight, there were pigs and ponies that needed to be driven to Ventura, it was the end of the month, which meant I had end-of-the-month paperwork to do, and then the mater dropped in, insisting with sunny charm and steely resolve that I accompany her to the local farmers market.

The mater cannot shop for produce by herself. She needs somebody to be with her. She's not physically infirm, or mentally impaired, or anything like that. Huh. Not hardly. Last year, when I was putting a new roof on her house, she was scrambling around on the roof with me, gleefully nailing down shingles. 66 years old es mi madre. She won't mind if I tell you that. She doesn't pretend to be younger than she is, she does nothing to hide her age, but she ignores it. Her friends have all had their cuts and tucks and their fat relocated, and have been bleached and peeled and dyed and poisoned (by botulinum toxin, a by-product of the bacteria Clostridium botulinum, which causes botulism food poisoning. I am personally acquainted with this little bug, I nearly died of botulism when I was thirteen. Didn't help that I was recovering from meningitis at the time. Dermatologists use botulinum toxin to paralyze muscles in the face and thus "smooth out" crow's feet, brow lines, and folds in the neck.) But the mater has decided time is a convention that only governs lesser mortals, and simply by force of will, she has become ageless. But she won't shop by herself, not for food. Because she doesn't eat food. Except for Necco wafers. According to the legends surrounding the mater, she is fueled only by coffee and the occasional Necco wafer. So the mater likes to have a true eater with her when she goes to market, to market to buy a fat pig.

Except she won't be buying a pig until next week, when she's off to one of the Southland's premier county fairs, where she'll bid for a porker she's had her eye on, a hunky 240 lb. Hampshire pig named Oscar. The mater keeps alive a tradition started by my grandparents, supporting the swineherds of the local 4-H groups. Oscar is one of three pigs on my property. That's my part in the program. Since I inherited this house and its attending acres from my grandparents, I, like my grandfather before me, help out the 4-H kids by letting them board their animals here for nominal rent, payable after the critters are auctioned. And I build and repair the pens at my own expense. I'd let the animals stay rent-free, but tradition requires the kids to pay something. I guess it�s supposed to teach them about economics and capitalism and shit like that.

Of course, the mater won't eat any of the pork from the animal she buys. (And neither will I. Call me an over-civilized wuss, if you will, but I prefer not to be personally acquainted with my meat before it's butchered.) The mater is in cahoots with a local grocer; she helps by subsidizing his purchases so that he can sell the meat in his market for a reasonable price. They both take a small loss, and the kids gain big.

Anyway, back at the market, the mater was strolling along, happily loading my arms with bags of farm-fresh produce that she wasn't going to eat. Among the things she picked out (and I paid for) were snow peas, red-leaf lettuce, Pink Lady apples, a cauliflower head, white nectarines, and a half-dozen tuberoses (for smelling, not eating.) It's a little early for nectarines; one out of the bag was divine, another one was good, the rest were not entirely ripe but edible. White nectarines are a dramatic fruit when sliced in half: crisp snowy flesh with a deep red center. These were freestones (probably a variety called Silver Mine), the pit can be easily plucked out, leaving a hole that looks like a bloody wound. When they're perfectly ripe, they're one of the most scrumptious things on earth. The mater was destined to take home only the tuberoses and a small bag of plums, which I suspect became a cobbler that was carried to my sister Maritilde. The mater loves to cook, she's a brilliant cook. Go figure.

The mater encountered a friend (the odds always favor this) and while they chatted, I wandered off and found a nurseryman selling well-grown specimens of Brugmansia, aka Angel Trumpets, called that because it has large flowers that look like (you guessed it) angel trumpets. We discussed the pharmaceutical properties of the plant as compared to its more potent cousin, Datura, aka Jimpson weed, which is (in case you didn't already know) a native hallucinogen that grows wild all over the Western US and Mexico. I told the plant man a little of my experiences with Jimpson weed, towering stupidities that are amusing only in retrospect. I always have stupid experiences with drugs. For example, the first and last time I did cocaine, I had a grand mal seizure. Do you know what they told me after I came out of it? "Oh, yeah, man... it affects some people that way."

<~>
Ap�sl�min ida corbalan� 'lse nesgla ugar�-cham sa cru ogrulho bat�oltha al�mv�sde.

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