Celebration Preps

It looks like things are well under way around the T-Park.  I've seen microwaves being loaded into cars, mowers being topped off and shined up and a lot of social drinking out in the yards.  It's looking pretty festive.  It's a beautiful day out too!  This should be fun.  Sadly, I DID see an update on the bulletin board at the mailbox hut that Betty Sue Whitley won't be in attendance tonight as planned.  She evidently ended up in jail early this morning after driving her car into her next door neighbors yard, completely wiping out their scale replica windmill collection.  A significant number of plastic bird baths and maybe even a urinating Yorkie also fell victim to her ill-timed careening.  She was reportedly intoxicated as well as despondent returning from an evidently less than well-received appearance in a truck stop gift shop up the highway.  She should be out sometime on Tuesday.  The other events planned for tonight will hopefully go off without a hitch though.  I can't wait!

Survived It, Good Night!

I’m going to bed.  I’m coming down from a flat champagne and terror-induced adrenaline high, my right hand is still frozen in a claw-like cramp from a 3 hour death grip on the bottle, and I am starving since I never could relax enough to eat my now rancid talapia.  But I still see ceiling above me when I look up, floor when I look down and only a few passed out neighbors, happy children and some dizzy cats when I look out the window. Happy New Year everyone.

Cat Chase 2012!

Well folks, its past midnight, and the cats have been released.  I could hear the barrels being pounded promptly at midnight and all kinds of hollering and kids screaming.  Within a few minutes I also started to hear some muffled thumps outside around the trailer, almost like knocks at the door.  I checked a few times only to see an occasional shoeless pre-teen chasing some terrified streak of fur through the darkness of my yard.  After a few of these thumps slipped outside to a defensive position on back deck to wait and discover the culprits.  I was totally disheartened to find out that it was cats, occasionally hurling themselves head-first into my trailer skirting in vain attempts to find sanctuary beneath my home.  Luckily a skirt is nothing more than a ridged single layer of PVC or vinyl, so the poor things would simply bounce off; knock themselves silly for a second or two then once again take flight into the night.

The Junkyard Awakens

There was an impromptu mass-starting of all of the rotting cars in driveways a few minutes ago that seems to have taken the attention away from any trailer tipping.  For the ones that could find their way in to gear there was also a subsequent burnout contest.  Not since the Exxon Valdez has such an oil spill been witnessed, I swear to you.  The oil slicks actually help make for some impressively smoky burnouts.  Unfortunately, there are also quite a few puddles of urine and vomit which don’t mix as gracefully with the smell of burning rubber.  What’s more, when the vehicles deplete their years old gas, break down or can no longer be manipulated by their drunken operators, they are being abandoned randomly wherever they come to rest.  I fear that my chances of a vehicular retreat or rescue later are quickly dwindling as the streets get more and more littered with abandoned project cars and trucks.  I am in genuine fear for my little import sitting helplessly in the driveway.  I’ve so far been able to ward off any would be car pirates by telling them that it’s a hybrid that hasn’t been plugged in all day so it couldn’t run anyway.  After some perplexed looks and an occasional questioning of my sexuality, they are so far wandering off and resuming their searches for a more domestic build of candidate for their felonious urges.

Trailer Tipping?

I’ve returned safely to TKT.  On my way back I was pointed out to be “that fish eater that broke Helen” or "Tater Hater!" and I was actually hissed at by toddlers!   I was also barraged with threats of log chains and 4x4’s that could easily tip my trailer.  There were energetic recountings of some poor woman’s ceramic owl collection that was spilled into the streets “the LAST time there was a good tippin’ round here”.  “Better pack up them owls fish eater!”, I heard as I hastened my retreat back here.  While I have absolutely no doubt that it could and possibly will be tipped over tonight, I am still feeling a certain security being back on my turf.  I went ahead and popped the cork on a bottle of Mousseux that was intended to toast to the New Year, using it instead for the nerve-calming liquid courage that it contained.  I’ve poured it all into a pitcher so that I can have the bottle handy to use as a club should a last ditch effort to protect myself be necessary.  I poured it far too quickly in my haste to arm myself and it fizzed out completely to a flatness basically rendering it to the quality of a screw-top gas station Pinot Noir.  I’m gulping it down anyway and thankful to have it as I prepare myself to keep the floor of my home beneath me at whatever cost necessary.

Annual Cat Harassment

I was totally wrong about the live traps I saw recently.  They weren’t for catching critters to blow up after all.  They were put out in order to catch neighborhood cats.  There is a tradition here to collect as many cats as possible for the final 2 weeks of December, regardless of supposed ownership, then deposit them into a 55 gallon drums (not trash cans at all, as I had so naively deduced earlier).  The cats are collected there until midnight when they will be released so that the children that were able to stay up that late can chase and keep what they can catch until NEXT year.  Most barrels were about half full from the sounds of the howling and hissing as I walked by.  Now and then they get a shake or a beer bottle is broken against them, in order to “keep the cats in the spirit of things” according to a cigarette smoking 3^rd grader named Malakai who was kind enough to educate me on the particulars.  It’s bad, but I actually think it could be much worse.  I’m not going to judge anyone for this.  So a cat spends a little time in a barrel.  They’ll all have homes tonight.  These people are just having some harmless fun.  Just the same, I think I’m heading back towards The Kahler Trailer.  More updates from there.

Disturbing Observances

All of the stop signs in the neighborhood have been ripped down and are now being used in a very dangerous sort of Frisbee fighting.  I fully expect a fleet of ambulances to be here within the hour.  Every other porch is occupied by men that could easily hold the most stunning Charlie Daniels look-a-like contest ever seen if they wanted to.  None of them wave either.  They just glare at me as I make my way down the street, passing their fixed stare at me to one another like a baton in a “what the hell is Nancy-boy doin’ here” relay.  It’s creepy.  They pick me out of quite a few people now celebrating in the streets.  Speaking of, I’m amazed that so many David Duke For President t-shirts still exist.  It will be a miracle if they aren’t ruined by blood and vomit stains tonight though.

Warm-N-Swap, another foul.

The Warm-N-Swap was a disaster.  It started out as quite something to behold.  A bank of 10 microwaves stood ready at the community center with an elderly buy spy woman named Helen accepting and warming the meals.  She had it down to a carefully choreographed routine that could only come from having had this responsibility for many years.  The synchronization was flawless with timers beeping sequentially down the row as meals finished and the microwaves emptied, ready for the next entrée.  I watched with sincere admiration for 10 minutes or so as meals were served at impressively regular intervals.  Then I placed my meal on the table.  Almost immediately there were murmurs and I swear even a few gasps.  As soon as Helen caught sight of my meal she broke stride for what I’m sure was the first time in many years, and a microwave anxiously beeped behind her.  It was very noticeable as she hadn’t let one get beyond a single beep up to this point.  She shot me a quick glance that in an instant asked me “why are you doing this to me?”  I knew I had done something wrong and reached to take my meal back.  Helen, wanting to save face, beat me to it and thanked me in an obviously shaken tone.  I saw beads of sweat begin to appear on her upper lip.  She had the meal out of the box and added it to the pre-microwave staging row.  She mercifully quieted the beeping microwave (which by this time had company) and attempted regain her composure.  I’m sorry to report that she never quite did, and it was entirely my fault.  Once again I had inadvertently committed a somewhat serious faux pas rivaling my bringing PBR to my first tire fire.  I had chosen a meal that I thought was worthy of swapping.  It was a tilapia filet with white wine sauce and capers, long-grain rice and vegetable medley, and a chocolate soufflé …and the only way to serve it properly was to warm it on 50% power for 3 minutes with only the fish uncovered, stir the medley, another minute on 50%, uncover the soufflé completely then cook for the whole meal for another 2 minutes on high.  And yes, then we (and I mean the whole T-Park) were supposed to wait and “Let stand in microwave for an additional 2 minutes”.  As if the Warm-N-Swap routine weren’t sabotaged enough by the directions, it was also repeatedly pointed out that my meal “ain’t even got no damned taters in it”.  Helen followed the directions precisely, at the cost of serving countless under-warmed pot pies and at one time having only the microwave containing my contribution running at all.  Though I had technically participated in the Swap, I didn’t dare help myself to any of the standard 4-minutes-on-high meals that were churned out, but instead waited until everyone was gone.  Only then did I pick up the last meal on the table:  a very cold, very lonely, holiday ruining, crowd quieting tilapia meal.  The evening just HAS to look up, doesn’t it?  I’m going to wander a bit more.