Flash Back Friday/Bye Bye Birdie

A long long time ago in a land called Facebook, I stuck my big toe into the blog pool. I wanted to test the waters amongst my friends so that they could critique me and give me confidence or a big thumbs down. So I wrote stuff and then actually sent it to them until I gained the courage to go big or go home.
Lately I've been very busy with my art, kid and everything else and honestly, I'm experiencing Blog Block. So just to keep you people involved with me and to keep the Blog Gods happy, I've decided to create "Flash Back Friday's" and take from my fb archive blog and enter them here...because I can....it's my blog..and if I have time, I will write an updated commentary on it...enjoy or not~

Bye Bye Birdie


Those Freakin' Mockingbirds are at it again!

Why do the neighborhood mockingbirds sing at 4:30 am? I guess Eric had enough of the symphony in the wee hours of the morning. This morning when I came down stairs, I walked into the den and Eric was sitting in the recliner with a smug smile on his face. He asked me,
"how'd you sleep'? He has asked me that almost everyday for years so I thought nothing of it until.. he started laughing. Puzzled I asked "OK, what did you do"? He responded, "I shot the bird and I'm going to Hell." What Happened I asked. Well, apparently at dawn he was awaken by our little feathered friend and couldn't go back to sleep, so what does he do....he throws on his robe, finds the Bebe gun(I don't even want to know where it is) and steps outside into the patio. He scopes the skies and there it is. This singing mockingbird is perched on a wire above our storage shed in the back right hand corner of our yard. He sneaks around the shed ( I'm imagining a ninja) positions himself right under it and "BAM", the first shot hit and the bird went down into the neighbors Ivy.

Let me tell you how much I hated these birds. Honestly, I don't care for birds to begin with, but mockingbirds that are out of control are the worst. We have lived here for a bout 14 years and in all that time those damn birds have been out of sync 2 or 3 times. Singing and whistling and carrying on at all hours of the night. It drove us crazy and yes, Eric has sworn to avenge the birds from time to time.

But I was shocked. When he told me, part of me couldn't believe it. I was mortified. The other part was glad....now we can sleep. I still don't know what to think. . It's kinda creepy thinking that a dead bird is in the neighbors bushed because we ( yes I said we, cause I kinda feel part of this too) were selfish and thought that snuffing out a life, although a little birdie life, would make our life a little more comfy. We have Mockingbird blood on our hands! Am I thinking too much? Magnifying it? It's just a bird...one of a gazillion for christ sake! But what if this bird was a mommy bird and had babies? OK, now the babies are gonna die and the thought of that....well, I will try not to think of that. I don't know....Eric has hunted down crickets in the middle of the night too because of lack of sleep. When I questioned him more, he tells me that when he was a kid and at his Uncle's Farm, they shot at birds all the time. Seeing this little scenario kinda makes it clear on how important we value our sleep. It's all about sleep , but then, a bird is dead....sleeping with the fishes so to speak.




Later on I ask him "do you feel bad because you killed a bird? His response...No, why...do you? Well, yes, even though I personally didn't pull the trigger. He laughed thinking this was funny. I believe in Karma I tell him. If I do good, if I help people and make good choices and if I give off good positive energy, then good energy will come to me. I truly believe that....but I think I just took 2 large steps back.

Five hours later, I get in my car on this gorgeous day, ready to run a few errands, I reach for my slammin jam CD that Raquel burned for me and put it in my CD player. Well, it's not workin'. Maybe it's the CD it's self. I reach for my other slammin CD that was purchased from Best Buy....doesn't work. Oh man..my CD player worked yesterday....what happened? .Karma, right? Tomorrow I going to help old ladies cross the street and do whatever else it takes, cuz I am NOT going to Hell.



Update....I didn't go to hell unless you count sitting through Hell Boy II Hell and the Mockingbirds haven't been off since but we expect them to be any time now. Now we are dealing with stray cats....spraying and singing love songs...Uggg!!!

Earthquake Country

Yep! It happened again...another Earthquake. I can't really say I'm used to them. You'd think I would be having experienced my first one at the age of 15. I'm not really afraid of them but I do have a healthy respect for good ol' Mother Nature. When you grow up with something that is out of the ordinary or strange and your family and friends talk about it like it's an everyday occurrence, then it becomes part of your being, part of the dichotomy of your life. Us Californians can be woken from a dead sleep or at least I can, and determine by the amount of shake rattle and roll whether to even get out of bed. I've actually laid there once and thought to my self..."Nawh, it's only about a 4. something"...only later to find out I was right. Now, I don't want to make it sound like it's a party, because people here have been hurt, killed and have lost everything during one of these shakers, but most people I come in contact with are very nonchalant about the whole thing. Again, these are native Californians, born and raised. If I was visiting Oklahoma and there was a tornado warning, believe me, I'd be the first one heading to the whatever I'm suppose to be heading to area.
We are picky here or at least that's what some people call it...I like to call it Earthquake Tolerant...we only duck and cover for a 5. or above....maybe. We pick and choose our Earthquakes. In 1987 I lived near the epicenter of a very big one and I just happened to be sitting on the couch brushing my then 9 year olds hair getting her ready for school when it hit. It hit so hard, it threw me off the couch and I couldn't get up due to the magnitude of it, but on the other hand...this last one I was home alone and just stood in the middle of den waiting for it to end, talking out loud to myself..."Come on already, end!" So again I want to reiterate that by no means do I take Earthquakes lightly and I know that people around the world have been devastated by them, but here in Earthquake Country, it's normal and it's become a "let's see and wait" situation. Come on people, do we need a house to fall on us? I'm just sayin'

Hippie Chick

My daughter asked me the other day if I was a hippie when I was younger having just looked at some very old pics of me.... No, but yes. I tried to explain. Waaay back in the summer of 1969, I was 14 and 1/2. When your young like that you always state the half or quarter or three quarter mark because you just can't wait to get older. The summer of 69 was a memorable one for me because it was the summer I was to travel to upstate New York and partake in a little know rock concert by the name of Woodstock. No, I didn't have a ticket or even an invitation, heck I didn't even know how I was gonna get there living all the way on this side of the country, but, we planned it. My girlfriend Diane and I actually talked, very matter of factually I might add, about going. Oh man, we were excited. We were gonna perhaps hitchhike or maybe one of our relatives could take us, you know, because they took us everywhere anyways, so why not? We just assumed we were gonna go and that was it. We talked about the people who were to perform and their music and the more we talked about it the more excited we got. Remember, I was 14 and Diane was 15 already...we were practically grown up. I don't know what the heck we were thinking. Did we seriously think that was gonna happen? In 1969 not only were there "hippies", but the "hippie" culture found it's way into the main stream of USA, especially young teens, like us. So, it's no wonder we assimilated into that way of life or at least tried. The clothes we wore, the words we said, how we carried ourselves and most importantly the music. I remember being in the back of a truck going down the highway (that's when you could do that, now it's against the law) with Diane and her family on the way to Ensenada Mexico and a group of Hell's Angles were coming up behind us. Needless to say, us two girls in the back were ecstatic to see such a sight...there must of been 25 or 30 of them coming up all around us with all those wonderful shiny motorcycles totally chopped. What did we do? We thrust our right hands out of the back of the truck, held them high in the air and flashed them the peace sign and most of them flashed it back. That gesture was a direct influence from that era and that event will stay with me for the rest of my life.

We never did get to Woodstock, I guess reality hit us and we decided paper dresses and window pane stockings were as far as we would go in terms of living on the edge, but you can say a lot about the 60's, good and bad, but when I threw them guys the peace sign, I meant it and I still do. Peace Out ~