So a couple weeks ago I put out bait in the form of borax and sweetened catfood... this got a good response from the ants, and we had a reduction of ant presence soon after.
But not enough.
So a few days ago I made up a triple-threat bait, where one puddle is sugar, another is peanut butter, and the third is ordinary catfood -- all of which was heavily mixed with borax. This also got a good response, and there are very few ants visible now in the house. Yayy!
I did note, however, some accursed fire ants living in the back porch. Unacceptable. I mixed up some cat food and boric acid, but I can't put it out because the orange stray is very persistent in trying to GET to the catfood there.
I also poked around a bit, and there are a bunch of patents available on ant bait and poisoning... I may end up doing more research.
On a more upbeat front, I have two stories in at magazines on, waiting for reply... and I have a third waiting for October 1 and the opening of another magazine's review period.
Still editing... I'll get all 8 out at least once this year, I hope, and be writing more. Who knows, maybe one of 'em will stick!
I was sick quite a lot when I was younger. When I was school age, I *wanted* to be sick, to avoid the horror that was school. I actually stopped shitting one time, in order to make myself sick. I don't recall if it worked, but that wasn't my best idea ever.
Once, when I was honestly sick (in the big house in Washington, I think), I remember waking up in the middle of the night with a fever. I couldn't see anything, just blackness and spots of light like stars... and not because it was dark out, either. Blind as a really blind thing.
I felt my way through the house and found the stairs. My parents were up the stairs and I was at their foot.
That's all I remember.
I am, and have always been, a fan of the horror genre. Perhaps it is a reaction to the nightmares I used to have, or perhaps something else.
When I was a kid in Washington, I remember reading these great horror comics, you know the ones. There were only a few back then.
I loved 'em!
But after a while, reading them made me feel sea-sick, kind of woozy like I were reading in the car.
So I had to stop.
I don't know what that was. Sometimes I still get a little bit of it, but these days I can pretty much read anything without ill effect.
I was a stressed kid all through school. One thing stress does is it screws with your mind... or, in my case, my memory. I think certain parts of my brain remain severly underdeveloped because of that stress.
Like the part of my brain that keeps track of maps.
I'm actually really good at reading maps, following maps, and even remembering maps to places. Assuming I've had three trips where I've had to navigate to a place, I'll have it pretty well locked down in my memory for a while. I'm useless, though, as a passenger. We could fly to the moon and I wouldn't notice until we got there.
But that's neither here nor there.
I got lost easily as a kid, and I still have some challenges that way as an adult.
I remember that I could barely find my way to school in Washington except by following the ant-trail of other kids. Today, I have no real concept of the spatial placement of my Washington school (that I went to for two or three years) and my Washinton home.
Some of my unpleasant dreams feature me not being able to find places (my classroom, my locker, whatever), and sadly these dreams are not just anxiety dreams but are anchored in reality.
I walked to a friend's house once, where we sat around and read ghost stories to each other. Walking home (in the dark) I had no idea where I was. I had to give up and use the phone at a stranger's house to call my dad. I don't think I was that far away, either!
Thinking back, I have no memory where things were -- I have no idea how I navigated from place to place as a kid. I'm sure it can't be as bad as I remember it, but truly, I remember the locations in my past as destinations floating in space with no memory of the paths that led between them.
I still have this problem. I can remember the place but not the path. If I visit a place often enough, its context "bleeds" and can connect with the context of another place... creating a path of fuzzy place blobs.
Remember the light spinner mentioned in an earlier post? Yeah, that was a cool thing.
I had a friend who was a girl... and was verging on being a girlfriend. Susie, I think she was, called "Suzie Q" by my great-grandfather. In fact, I think she was the one my Aunt played mind games with... or maybe she was the one who said she was dyslexic and couldn't discern between red lights and green lights but I didn't believe her. Or maybe those are both the same girl. But, does it matter which she was? Not anymore.
Once, we were sitting together on a couch in a darkened room watching the light spinner... yeah, I bet that would have gone somewhere! Woot! But nooooo.... my dad decides that it's somehow inappropriate for me to be sitting alone in the dark with a girl. Spoilsport.
I remain scarred for life, I'm sure.
This one is so real, but I think it was from a dream. I can't tell...
I'm really little, and with my mom. It's sunny and hot, and we are in the city somewhere. There is the street, buildings, grime and broken sidewalks.
I'm in a small playground with a sandy floor, surrounded by chainlink fence. There is a small climbing thing, perhaps a see-saw. One side of the playground is a red brick wall, the side of a building. I'm there with may a few other kids.
My mom comes and gets me and we leave, walking. I have a vague sense of a tricycle here, but that may be unrelated.
For some reason, this memory is paired with another in my mind. In the other one, me and my parents are in a large foyer of a large public space. There is a cafe off to the left and stairs and doors and stuff scattered around. It seems like a museum or some kind of interactive space, where we look at things and poke at things.
It's an interestig place, white with some big colored areas.
Ahhh... it's all a jumble.
When I was in California, probably the second time, I was probably 12? Or maybe it was the first time, when I would be eight or so. I hope to convince more of my family to record their memories, too, so I can fill in my gaps.
Anyway, I had this REALLY COOL TOY! It was WATER and colored SAND. Can you belive it? It was amazing.
The sand, or whatever it was, had the ability to stay dry when under water. Something about the surface tension would cause the sand to clump underwater so you could sculpt nifty underwater landscapes.
When you pulled a blob of sand out of the water, it would still be dry... as soon as it hit air, it transformed from a blob back into loose, dry sand.
That was so cool.
I think I saw this product again, once, on a shelf. It seems so much... smaller.
I was in junior high, so this was probably my 14th birthday party. I actually knew a few people by then, some of which could be considered friends, or at least, acquaintances. Two or three at least.
Somehow, I decided to invite some of 'em over for a birthday party. I knew nothing about birthday parties, or parties of any kind.
Previously, I had built a Lissy... this is a modified television, with the deflection coils driven by a stereo amplifier instead of the tuner. This creates Lissajous curves on the television, created by the differences in the left (vertical) and right (horizontal) signals.
THIS, in turn, was a nifty project that I was inspired to create by a little toy I had when I was twelve or or so. This was a little tower with a light in it and a pair of spinning mirrors. This projected whirling spirograph-like shapes on the wall/ceiling.
Anyway, my idea of a party was to get together, listen to music, and watch the nifty Lissy.
The memory still inspires in me the urge to reach back through time and smack myself for being such a complete and utter loser.
Needless to say, it sucked.
Probably the thing that kept me from turning into a serial killer was my grandmother, my aunt, and my great-grandmother.
I spent a bunch of time with these women.
My mom was mostly a shadow in the background of my life. My dad was great, though many of my memories of him are also murkey. My dad drove me to the electronics store near Long Beach a number of times and was very patient as I drooled over all the parts. We never really ever bought much, but I loved to window shop.
Strangely, I mostly remember Grandma and Dodi. I believe they were properly eclept Doris and Doreena -- two truly horrid names. Oh, and my great grandmother, Ena (Edna).
I like to say that I was raised by women, which is like being raised by wolves, only weirder.
At least, these women were pretty damned weird.
We all lived, for many years both before and after Washington, in a duplex. One half of the duplex housed my great-grandparents. The other half housed my Grandma and Dodi. The entire backyard, though I'm unsure if it was ever a "yard", was a warehouse-like building of about equal size to the duplex. The woodshop, tools, and my Grandfather (William Enis Crouch) lived in one half of this building.
The front half used to house an antique store, back when they sold antiques. When we lived there, it housed myself and my brother. My parents were headquartered in a small-ish room between the storefront (where we kids lived) and my grandfather's space.
I loved it. I can only imagine what kind of horror it represented to my parents, though.
Actually, I don't even know if my folks lived there or not. I barely remember them in that context! Most of life was school, projects in my own space, and the crazy women.
My great grandmother was a cat lady, you know the kind. Her husband, Ed, played saxophone or clarinet or some instrument in the back room. He was mostly just a shadowy presence in the background.
My time with her was spent in her living room with the dark, sticky carpet, watching roller derby on TV. I tried to avoid some places in her house, such as the kitchen... because I really did enjoy the pies that she would make for special events and some things do not bear thinking about too closely.
First Ed died and then, later, Ena. It was then that I learned, from a distance, that she had collected everything. Nothing was thrown away. Every room in the duplex was stacked, essentially, to the ceiling with papers and "stuff", all of which was marinated in cat urine.
My grandmother was endlessly supportive of me. To this day I think that I'm a genius because of her... though an objective test would probably show me to be an ADD hypo-manic enthusiast with little depth. But who am I to contradict my grandmother? To her, I was brilliant.
This was the one solid, neverchanging, predictable affirmation of good in my life. It was my rock.
She died when I was eighteen or nineteen and it was the only death in my family that I grieved. I still miss her. I sometimes feel her presence in my mind when I've done something that would make her proud. I think, yeah, Grandma would be pleased that I've done this great thing.
Grandma always had this goofy little lapdog -- a grandma dog, if there ever was one, called (wait for it...) Girl Dog. I shit you not. This dog lived like a queen.
We also had an illegal desert (or is that dessert?) tortoise in the back lane between the buildings. We sometimes grew tomatoes that were eaten by giant aggressive green tomato worms. I mean, these worms were like something out of a Stephen King movie, or some futuristic thriller where radiation has made all of the insects giant and hostile.
But I digress.
Dodi was also supportive but in a weird way. For a while there, I was her personal dress-up doll... I probably have photos of me at age eleven or twelve in this prince costume. I shudder to think of it now, but then it made me feel special.
I found my first Playboy in the trash after noting my Grandpa throwing it away. That was cool. Some time later, I discovered another one under my aunt's bed. This one I was able to browse by stealth, which was way more fun that having the leisure of the first one.
My aunt herself tended towards the translucent nightgown and, as I later learned as parts of my anatomy started to care about such things, she was also quite shapely.
How many fourteen year olds do YOU know who had the hots for his father's sister? This kind of thing couldn't have been good for me.
Dodi was pretty damn nuts. She was an amazing artist but could never finish anything, because it was never "just right". She would pull an oil painting out of storage and fiddle with it endlessly, until it was ruined. But in fact, they were beautiful. If only she could let it well enough alone.
Whenever she went anywhere, it was proceded by (I swear!) a three or four hour ritual of getting ready... makeup, hair, clothes, sometimes all of the above three or four times.
And then once we got there, usually somewhere GREAT like Disneyland, she would poop out after no time at all. A great trial for a kid with endless energy and a desire to see everything.
She had an Australian boyfriend for a while, and he brought me gifts of cold-power rockets and land racers. Those were cool.
I had a budding friendship with an actual girl that was actually my age.. I don't know how old I was, thirteen is a possibility, but it could have been eleven or fourteen. We were slowly learning how boys and girls can actually get along and then, suddenly, she plays some kind of hard to get game. I don't remember the details, it was probably something like not wanting to talk to me or something like that.
Turns out that Dodi was guiding her along in some headgames that turned out badly for us all. During the process I rejected her completely (I don't do "head games") and even upon learning that it was my Aunt's doing I never reconciled again. I actually regret that. I was a rigid, inflexible, angry kid.
Dodi also loved high drama, and is the reason I dislike it. If there was an emergency to be crafted, a trauma to engineer, she was there for it.
Last I heard, she was the divorced (or possibly re-reconciled) second wife of an Iranian political refugee living on welfare in one of his mansions, covered with Tattoos for Jesus, and warping her three kids. But I haven't heard about her for years, so she could be even weirder now.
Grandma just coasted along through all this madness, a bubble of calm (or, more likely, denial) in this swirling sea of chaos. At one point when I was about fourteen (wild guess) she had a heart attack in the living room.
This room was amazing, a showroom for the best of the antiques that they collected. Chinese foo-dog chairs, old screens, paintings, vases, I don't know what all. And in the center, a giant crystal chandelier hanging down to just four or five feet above the ground.
The paramedic had the misfortune to stand up underneath this monstrosity and bang his head on the large, heavy, HARD crystal ball hanging at its nadir. Darn near knocked him silly.
I heard that Grandma was more concerned for him that for herself!
I don't know where most of that stuff went when she died. I should have gone to California at the time to pay my respects and possibly get a piece of my memories to take home with me. That's another thing I regret, but at the time I still had a burning hatred of California (actually, I still do) and did not want to put foot to soil in that dreaded state.
Yeah, good times.
There's more... lots more. All in good time.
In my dream world, there are two connected areas. The one, a residential area, features in many adventures where I escape from dinosaurs and/or military or police bent on my capture.
This area is extremely hilly in areas, with large green shade trees and pleasant houses behind pleasant fences. Gardens are plentiful here.
North East of this residential area is the industrial zone, of sorts. This includes train yards, fenced areas stacked with machinery and metal, a large lumber mill, and areas of giant mysterious machines. And the surplus store... the joy and wonder of the surplus store, with its electronic instruments, parts, garbage, and hidden bargains.
Go further East and you reach the river. Across the river is a rolling green plain with the giant military/industrial fenced compound that I occasionally get to escape from.
To the West, or perhaps South? Directions in dreams are so arbitrary, the geometry of space nonlinear.
In the other direction there is downtown, an area of large blocks of large square buildings, a profusion of confusion, colors, lights, and signs -- all of which appear to be in a foreign language. Chaos. Chinese perhaps. Reminiscent of Chinatown in San Franscisco.
This downtown area is huge and I'm always worried about getting lost. My first visits were where I was lost, but eventually I learned how to find my way from the downtown back into the residential area, up a particularly steep hill.
I loved this commercial zone, in spite of its threat of geographical confusion. I especially liked the magic stores there. There were several, but most of them were sparse, lame things. One, however, was excellent.
It was next door to a shop that sold... something paper? Streamers? Or perhaps fireworks? I don't know. On the other side was, I think, one of several jewelry and/or art stores from the area. A few blocks down and around the corner was a department store with a giant toy section.
This one magic shop was all black velvet and point lighting. Large tricks abounded, small tricks under the glass case, books on the shelf. The proprieter was well versed in the art and demonstrated things for me.
I bought a bunch of things here over time -- floating match, I'm sure, and cups and balls. Some of the classics. I don't remember all of the items, though.
There were a lot of great stores down there. But those will be stories for another day.
I love hobby stores. The parts and pieces, engines for planes, kits, balsa, glue. I love making things and the hobby store is the mecca for all things crafted.
I even had a hobby store in my dreams. I would go and visit it, browse through the airplane engines trying to decide if I wanted to start with a small cheap one (e.g. a .049) or get a bigger, expensive one.
I would look at the airplane kits and think about making each one. Browsing to decide which one I liked best.
The nice, older people that ran the store were always very helpful.
As I grew older, my brain added a bizarre twist to the old shop. In the back corner there was a stairway to a restricted basement area.
Going down there I would discover a variety of pornography, mostly magazines I think, but also videos. It was a bit sparse, a smallish room, but very exciting. And the cool thing was, it was attached to the hobby store!
Later on I added these salcious details to other locations in my dream worlds. There is the beautiful, twisting, open-plan shopping mall with its tile floors, rich wood, multi-layer construction. The food court, the giant toy store, the department stores... and the book store. The book store of my dreams!
Of course, it also stocked naughty comics.
And scattered here and there, corner stores with the magazines behind the counter, except in MY dreams, they are on a revolving rack near the checkout.
I started life with a dirty mind and, not surprisingly, it hasn't gotten much cleaner with age.
Funny. Last night I had a dream not unlike my old elevator dreams.
I was going to visit my brother-in-law Jharod at a military base. Part of the visit included travelling on a trolley or train-like platform on rails, but it didn't have rails and in fact there were openings in the platform above the wheels.
Later in the visit we had to ride an elevator, but one that didn't travel just up and down, perhaps like the transport tubes in Star Trek? This one, however, had issues. The doors didn't close so we got to travel up and over while being exposed to the dangers of the open spaces and machinery.
I have a photo album that my father put together for me many years ago. I should go through it and dredge up the memories... and attach them to the dates on the pictures.
For now, I remember just one image. Me sitting next to a cardboard "robot head". I was what, eleven? twelve?
I've always wanted to create life, in the form of robots or whatever.
When I was little (and probably not so little, too) my grandmother indulged me in mixing junk from the cupboards (e.g. spices) together as "experiments". Yeah, it was stupid, but I was a kid! And my grandma indulged me a lot. She was great.
Anyway, I never said so, but I always imagined that I was creating life doing this. Primordial soup, as it were.
Also when I was little in Long Beach (damn, I don't know when, don't worry about it) I would play with the metal wind-up robot toys that my great-grandmother had. Just a couple, I think.
I recall that, yeah, they were robots, but not *real* robots. They were single purpose. I wanted to make *real* robots, like people, capable of doing anything.
I played with ideas in cardboard, but these came to nothing as might be expected.
The cardboard robot head was a puppet thing, or at least a fun toy, not a serious attempt at robotics. I did puppets briefly, making a few muppet-like critters and even putting on a show or two. Badly, I'm sure, but the grownups gave me encouragement.
In my pre-teens, eleven and twelve, I would slake the horrible boredom of church by doodling out boolean circuits on some paper. The other kids would complain, saying "we know you are smart, you don't have to go on proving it". Whatever. I was bored, I wanted to keep my brain busy. It had nothing to do with them. It was all about me.
I remember I created an adder circuit. If built, it would probably have timing issues, but it was an interesting exercise.
When I was about eleven I started building a robot. I got a couple of powered wheels from god knows where. I got a motorcycle battery, thanks to an influx of cash from my grandmother. I built a platform to hold these. I think I built that in Orange County, but most of the work actually occured in Long Beach, where we lived with my Grandparents, Aunt, and Great Grandparents. I wish someone could come in here and correct my times and places...
In Long Beach, I needed a brain for this beast. I read and re-read my only book on the subject, something like "How to Build your Own Homegrown Robot" by, I dunno, Heiserman or someone.
(I just looked this up. It was probably the "How to Build your own Working Robot" by David L. Heiserman, 1976.)
But that book was just too much for a twelve-year-old. At least me, at that age. I couldn't wrestle all the details into focus. Remember, I was bright but still suffering from amazing stress, which limited me in many ways.
When I was about twelve, my dad helped me buy (by providing most of the cash) my first computer, a Kim-I. The computer came pre-assembled but I had to build the power supply. The first try, I put in the big electrolytic capacitor backwards. Damn, when that blew I just about shit a brick.
The second time worked much better.
I learned to program on that bad boy, hand assembling opcodes into hex and then punching them into memory on the hex keypad. Most of the programs I took from magazines, such as the asteroids game (played on the display, which was six seven-segment LEDs, I kid you not) and wumpus.
A year later we got an Apple II computer. I transfered my learning to that and eventually put all of my robotic aspirations behind me. Robots were expensive and I had no cash flow. Programming, a vital first step towards brains, was cheap and I had computers.
My fascination with creating life and robots has never left me, and in fact was re-kindled when I discovered Robot Wars in the late '90s.
A tour of Amazon.com will show you where THAT has led me.
But I have not yet built that intelligent machine I've always dreamt of, neither raw AI or robot.
I'm not dead yet, so there is still hope.
Dodgeball has been banished from the schools these days, which is sad. I really liked that game, probably the only team sport that I played and enjoyed. Actually, it's mostly a solo sport... and I was pretty good at it.
Once, we played dodgeball in a circle, the people in the center dodging balls thrown from the outside. Extreme dodgeball! I was doing pretty good, too, until I zigged and another kid zagged and we knocked heads. Interestingly enough, you really do see stars when knocked on the head. I didn't go unconscious, but everything did go black. With stars.
I think I was good at dodgeball because I had a lot of practice dodging. I was always quick and this, coupled with my brother throwing things at me, honed my skills.
The stuff my brother threw was pretty serious, too. He always wanted to play with me, and I never wanted to play with him. That built up a certain level of resentment from him, I'm sure.
So he would throw things at me. Hard things. Metal things. Small metal cars, for example. Or that one day he throw the garden trowel at me.
Yup, it was dodge or die in my household.
This memory was brought to you from Aberdeen Washington.
When we lived in Washington (I'm pretty sure), we had giant plastic tinkertoys. I mean, these thinges were bigger than I was!
I have a couple of disconnected memories linked to these.
Once my brother wanted to play with them/me and I wasn't interested (as usual). Or maybe we were play-fighting. I don't remember the context! Oh well. He hit me on the head with a long stick with a heavy plastic connector on it. Damn that hurt.
This may or may not be related to an incident with my father. There were the tinkertoys all around, and I was having a fit for some reason. I was nine, what do you want?
My dad used to hold me still, restrain me, when I got to be too much to manage. A sensible approach and I usually calmed down eventually.
This time, I didn't want to calm down. I wanted to be free to wreak whatever havoc I was being prevented from. So I head-butted my dad, back of my head to his nose.
I felt bad immediately after that. I think his nose recovered.
My mom sometimes made mincemeat pies. I loved these! I know, you probably think they are horrid disgusting things. No matter. They were good.
I don't know how old I was, or where this was... but it could have been California before Washington.
I was sick this time my mother made the pies, but she promised to put mine up for me later.
I stayed sick a few days and when I got better... no pie! It was getting stale, or some other lame grown-up excuse, and it was eaten by those more healthy than I.
I was very disappointed. I don't think I ever did get that pie.
I think this was the same house where they tried to ween me. I remember that juice from the bottle was SO much more tasty than juice from a cup. I think it was the aeration it got. I wasn't fully weened until a very late age, but I have no idea what that age was.
It's possible this was in Washington, but I think I was younger than that.
We had JUST moved to Aberdeen Washington -- perhaps even that day. For some reason, my parents dropped me and my brother off at the house. To play in the yard, or something.
They then went to a friend's house (Julie, who I named in my own head as "Ghoulie". Or maybe I'm just hallucinating this last part...) and promised to be right back.
The shadows grew long and the air cold as the sun set behind the trees. Still the parents did not return.
My brother and I went onto the enclosed porch, but the door into the house was locked. We stayed there as night fell and yet the parents were still out.
We were scared. It was dark, cold, and we were locked out of our new house.
Eventually the parents returned.
They say that there are three things that distinguish serial killers from other people, plus a fourth common attribute.
Bed wetting, pyromania, animal torture, and a strong sense of isolation.
I hit three of these four. Maybe three and a half.
First, the embarassing one. Yeah, I was a late bed-wetter, and I even had problems during the day because of my fear of the bathrooms at school.
I don't know when I stopped making puddles in my sleep, but it was damned late. We are talking third-grade late, maybe fourth.
When I slept, I slept as if I were dead. I was out. And, as such, muscular control was at a minimum. My parents, in desperation, got one of those rubber sheets with a water alarm in it. The theory was that I would wake up after I made things wet and eventually learn to wake up before the grand event.
Instead, I slept through the process of getting up, getting changed, having sheets reworked, etc. I did the actions and stuff, but I was asleep at the time -- sleep walking.
I remember once, I was going to a sleepover with a bunch of kids... I assume one or more of them were friends even. I was very concerned about the obvious detail of staying dry when sleeping. As it turned out I didn't sleep that deeply away from home and it was all good. A relief!
At school, for roughly the same period of time, I would refuse to go to the bathrooms. They were not safe -- bullies hung out there harassing people, stuffing them into trash cans, and generally making these rooms unacceptably scary for me at the time. So there was more than one time when I leaked in class. Not fun.
Second comes the fascination with fire. Yup, that's me. When I was in California before Washington (recall the sequence, CA for about 7-9 years, WA for about 4, Orange County CA for a brief stint {I started building my first robot then}, Long Beach for another about 4, I moved to Oregon when I was about 17 and moved to Texas in 1999)....
um, CA before WA I had a friend who goaded me into lighting a fire in a garbage can in a back alley. We were in it together up until the point I lit the fire, and then he was all "he did it!" It probably didn't help that the can was plastic. I got a nice tour of the fire station out of THAT one!
But I do love fire, even today. Given a choice of criminal activities, I would choose theft first and arson second. Actually, I would probably combine the two.
The nasty one, animal torture, escaped me entirely. I loved animals far more than people. I could have probably gone for people torture, but my strong sense of isolation (the fourth element) and fear of the world around me prevented this one.
So far as I know, I've only tried to kill three times.
First was in school, I don't know when or where. I was being tormented, as per usual, in some classroom. I'm surrounded by those crappy desk/chair combinations you see in grade school. I decide I've had enough and I launch myself across some desks with the full intention of killing my tormentor. I remember that. I also remember being prevented from doing so by those around me. But I was raving and screaming and kicking... I must have been a mess.
A later time, in Washington, occured on the playground. I was being difficult, I assume, and my friend at the time wrestled me to a standstill. I don't remember the particulars, however I was humiliated...I relented, said I was good, and he let me go. Whereupon I tried to slash his throat out with my fingernails. I figured a sideways slash would work best, using the edge of the fingernails. It almost worked. At least it left a mark.
The third time was when I was nineteen, give or take, in Oregon. I was living in a pleasant apartment, doing programming. I think this was after I quit college and was trying to go it on my own -- before I had to move home for a few months and retry this whole working for a living thing.
However, the angst and frustration and confusion I felt at the world was getting to be too much. I hated it. I didn't want to do it anymore. So I took my giant-ass knife, the one I got in the SCA (I still have it), and set the point between my ribs, pointed at my heart.
I wasn't going to drive it in and I knew I wasn't, but I wanted to see what it felt like, to think about it.
I decided then that I would pretend that I *had* killed myself. To take that moment to make a new start, to kill the concept of who I was and to try to make a better version.
It worked to some extent, but it was not the last time that I would come to hate who I was and try to shift it for the better. I still find myself frustrated with my role in life, and I still try to find ways to make things better.
So, fortunately, my love of animals has saved me from a life of running from the law.
Through much of my childhood I had insomnia. I would not sleep, or could not sleep. I mostly remember this for my time in Washington... third through fifth or sixth grade, I believe.
Most of my positive memories of my mother are of me laying in bed with her stroking my back, helping me relax so I could sleep. Sometimes that was the only way I could sleep. Sadly, that is one of the few pleasant memories I have of my mother. Not to say that I have many unpleasant memories, but that I just don't have very many at all.
If I couldn't sleep in bed I could often sleep in the living room or somewhere else. My father would play a record, which in those days was a large black disk made from vinyl with wavy grooves in it. A physical needle would ride in the grooves and the vibrations of this needle were amplified into actual music! Wow. (Hey you kids, get offa my lawn!).
Judy Collins, Moody Blues, Beatles, Joni Mitchell... so many of the artists of the time were my sleeping companions.
I'm listening to the Moody Blues right now, "A Question of Balance".
I don't fall asleep to music anymore, but if I can't sleep in bed I can still nap on the couch.
Hot weather, though, causes insomnia for me. I cure that by the simple expedient of air conditioning and a fan in the bedroom.
I'm sitting here, avoiding testing for a moment as I sip my water and fight my headache, trying to think up an early cheerful holiday memory for this fine holiday season.
Mmm, the Shadow cat under the tree, got that one.
There is the simple image of my Grandparent's christmas tree, every year pretty much the same. A natural tree caked with white artificial snow top and bottom, inside and out, so it is like a tree in a plastic coating. What a bizarre way to treat a tree!
Later, they graduated to white plastic trees, to save the trouble of coating a real tree.
But really, no specific Christmas holiday memories are coming to me. Maybe I'll think of one later.
I have a Halloween memory, though.
My aunt was putting on a Halloween party. I was thirteen and a bunch of adult-type people I didn't know were milling around outside doing adult party-type stuff. Whatever.
The really neat thing, though, was I got the go-ahead to do stuff to spiff up the decor. I had a gearmotor laying around... and a rubber mold of my hand that I had made earlier that year... hmmm.
I combined the gearmotor with the rubber hand, dug a hole in a quiet corner of the yard, and wired it up. The result? The hand clawing at the earth, trying to escape it's musty grave.
Dodi (my aunt) later told me that, for the people who saw the prop, it was a hit! Yay me!
That prop, the first one I ever built, is now documented in my Animatronics book.
You will find dreams in these notes as well as memories of daytime life. In many cases, my dreams are more vivid, more real, than my daily memories. But this memory is from life. It's a small memory, just a snapshot.
It is the same house where we found Mickey, I think. This was in Pasadena, though possible Covina. No, I think Pasadena.
The house is California stucko, with an arched doorway, perhaps to the porch. There are plants. We owned a basset hound, a lovely, friendly, tenacious beast. I took apart a vaccuum cleaner. I ate books. I was young there, three to six maybe? In this memory I am maybe five or six.
Breathing deeply, the smoggy air hurt my lungs. So I didn't breath deeply. Until I took TaiChi, I continued to barely breath... just enough, not too deeply. Because breathing hurt.
A jolly childhood memory, don't you think?
In the land of dreams there is a marketplace. Quaint stores front the busy cobble street, people going to and fro in their errands.
One building stands tall amongst them. There are stairs on the outside of the building leading to the second floor. This level is empty, a large square room full of boxes. In it, monsters prowl. Somewhere in this room, there is a small doorway, hidden behind the boxes. The trick is to avoid the monsters and find the door. Behind the door there is another world.
In the land of dreams there is a collapsing building in a large lot or field. The wooden floors are rotted, the space of the garage is unstable and tippy. There are tools in the garage, giant bandsaws and mysterious machines. Somehow it is my grandfather's shop with wood and supplies stacked along the walls. In other ways it is a complete machine shop unlike anything we have ever owned.
In the building proper there are children's rooms, empty, full of litter and toys and clothes. Sometimes this house is collapsing, other times it is home to a family that is currently not there. But I am there, exploring.
In one of the rooms, in the back of the closet there is a small opening, like a vent but covered with wood. Opening it there is a narrow passage, and that passage leads to another world. In that other world there is a is a marketplace. Quaint stores front the busy cobble street, people going to and fro in their errands.
Following the street you find that it leads to an ocean, and in that ocean there is a bridge that soars above the land. Driving to the bridge you climb the slender on-ramp up into the clouds and pass through the gateway onto the bridge itself.
The bridge is narrow and without sides. It sways in the wind, high above the water. But you manage to stay in the center, keeping moving with the other traffic. The traffic is always light.
The bridge dips down into the water, skims under the surface, so you have to keep driving along it without seeing it, surrounded by bottomless ocean.
At the end of the bridge, there is an island. In the island there is a beach and happy people. A fair drive inland, along a dirt logging road that winds along hills and has ruts so deep the threaten to capture your vehicle, you can find a peaceful glenn. A hike across the glenn, through some trees and around some campsites, there are large rocks and a river flowing through them. At one point the river dives over a shallow waterfall and into a deep pool, swirling around before skipping under ground.
This is a place of peace and quiet, a place to relax, a safe place. Sometimes there are other people here quietly playing. Sometimes I am alone with the pool. It is always quietly sunny.
In the land of dreams there is a school with many buildings. I go to this school and I have a locker in one of the buildings.
I have to go to class, but I can't find the room. I have to get my books but I barely find my locker and then I don't remember the combination. I have to go to class but don't remember my room, so I go to the office to ask, so I am late. I find my math class but I don't know the math, it is the wrong class. I have to go to class.
In this school there is a massive room of showers and toilets and lockers, perhaps attached to the gym. I seem to be hunted there, so I stay quiet, stay hidden. The toilets are all broken, the showers are wet but still, the halls are empty of visible people.
Near this locker room is a cavernous theater, with catwalks along the top, or perhaps a hallway that looks over the seats. In this theater there are elevators, and these elevators are dangerously broken.
In the land of dreams there is a tall building, broken inside like an abandoned factory. There are machines and offices and rubble. In this building there are elevators, and these elevators are dangerously broken.
In the land of dreams there is an apartment building, tall with narrow crowded halls and shabby small rooms. It is full of people, overcrowded and cluttered, people and clothes and toys spilling out of every door. Some of the rooms have friends in them but most of them hold strangers.
In the building there is a child's room, empty, full of litter and toys and clothes. I am there, exploring. In the back of the closet, behind clothes and piles of plush animals, there is a small door. Opening it there is a narrow passage, and that passage leads to another world.
In this apartment building there are elevators, and these elevators are dangerously broken.
In the land of dreams there is an opera house, grand and sparkling, with well dressed people crowding the entrance room. Tuxedos and dresses and furs and jewels press together and swirl around under glittering chandeliers. A grand stairway leads up to the higher levels.
Above the theater there is a room that looks down over the seats and the stage. In other rooms on that level there are clean bright offices.
In this theater there are elevators, and these elevators are dangerously broken.
I am running from someone, or perhaps I am just exploring, but I need to take the elevator to go up or down. Inside it I push a button and the elevator moves. And stops.
Sometimes it falls, leaving me weightless and wondering how it will feel to be crushed when it hits the ground. I lay down, hoping to survive. There are springs at the bottom that catch it, though, or I think there must be. I never find out, because it eventually stops.
Sometimes the elevator is not a room at all but a platform that shakes and wobbles when you climb onto it. It travels unpredictably, high above the ground. It is unsafe, dangerously unstable.
Sometimes the elevator doesn't have a door but looks out over black emptiness.
But always the elevator frightens me. And always I must take it to get where I am going.
In all the buildings there are elevators, and these elevators are dangerously broken.
But still I survive, and escape. I try to find my way to the city with the market, so I can take the high road to the island, to the rocks and the pool.
Sometimes I can swim and I do so, easily avoiding the whirlpool in the center that would drag me to my death. Other times I simply sit in the trees nearby and listen to the quiet. There is always a way to the island, through the doors and building and elevators and lockers. I don't always find it, but I know it's there.
If death were to release me into this land of dreams I would not fear it, because at least in that land I have the promise of the peaceful island.
There are only three cats that I remember from my childhood. Mickey, shadow, and some siamese that fell off the roof and died. Stupid cat. Oh, and there was an insane persian that we had for a few months when I was sixteen or so.
Shadow was our second great cat, entirely black as his name would suggest. As far as I remember, he was a Christmas cat, appearing under the tree in a box Christmas morning. Or maybe I simply dreamed that part. I have a problem with my older memories in that my dreams have often been as vivid as, if not more vivid, than my "real" sensory memories. So some of my memories are memories of dreams and some of them are memories of events. It's hard to tell which is which.
Shadow was a great hunter. He would bring in mouse and bird guts and leave them as offerings in the house. Ahhh, the joyous sound of my father bellowing as he squished some new cat-created detritus between his toes. Good times.
One day in Washington... I was probably in the fifth grade, but who knows? ... Shadow got run over. Not so much squished by the tires of the steel monsters, but he collided with the spinning wheel of one. The impact broke his face.
I believe a neighbor clued us in, and my dad went and put him in a box. The whole family then travelled to the vet, frightened for the cat as he lay in his box and howled in pain and fear.
I was sick with it all, sitting in the back with the box, unable to do anything except listen. There was no comfort to give, none to receive. Just the sitting and the screaming from the cat.
The vet was able to fix him up, I don't know how or what, but the cat healed.
Shadow was a Burmese, I think -- or so I thought at the time. But instead of the proud nose of the breed, after the accident he had a fairly stubby proboscis. I always figured his face was reshaped by the accident, but it's entirely possible he was simply a mut and had a short face.
I'll probably never know.
My childhood was a time of fear and stress. But there was one place I could go, someplace magical.
The fairy wood.
I didn't call it that at the time. I didn't call it anything. We were living in Aberdeen, Washington at the time. I think we were there from about third to seventh grade, give or take.
We lived in a big house, with a big yard, with big weeds, and my parents had big dreams. Much of my time, sadly, was spent in nightmare. But isn't that often the way of childhood? So many people I meet today say the same thing, that their childhood was a time of horror rather than carefree play. Clearly we are doing something wrong.
Somewhere near our house was a little wood... a patch of trees, perhaps there was a creek there, too. I don't rememeber.
Like everything in Washington, it was soft and green.
Inside of this tree-filled space were fluid wooden shapes, stumps and limbs and benches of mossy wood, sculpted by fire and softened with time.
It was art, created by nature. It was a magic place outside of the rules of daily suffering.
I would go there and sit on one of the forms and just sit. To sit and be alone and away from everyone was the purest joy. To be just me, by myself.
It was a magic space, a capsule of beauty and peace outside of the ordinary world. I miss it.
When I was a kid, I had nightmares. I don't mean sometimes. These are frequent occurances, a constant companion. For years, these nightmares would cause the usual irrational terror, but after years of this torment I took control of the dreams. I turned them into adventures... frightening adventures, mind you, including my phobias and the usual psychological detritus. I mean, how calm can it be running through the underbrush trying to escape the T-Rex that is intent on eating you? But I was able to remove most of the terror.
Eventually, they went away. Sometimes I miss my vivid dreams. Sometimes they come back in various forms.
I had consistent dream worlds that I could visit and re-visit. I learned their layout, their rules, their notable features. It was great, for example, to visit the island, even if it meant the long drive (or worse, walk) across the impossible long, narrow, sometimes underwater bridge.
Did I mention that I like neither heights nor large bodies of water?
But this note is not about these dreams. I had one dream exactly once, but it was so vivid, so real, that it stuck forever in my mind.
In it, I was young. Four or five maybe. I don't know my age when I dreamed it.
We are in front of a large grocery store. It is night and the large glass windows spill light out onto the sidewalk. It is bright inside, glaring. Next to the curb is our VW bug. I think it is green. I'm standing outside of it on the sidewalk.
My mother is coming out of the store. She probably has a bag of groceries. It was a store, after all.
She approaches and we are both standing next to the car. She is opening the door.
I look up and see a meteor, huge, bright, moving at supersonic speed, like a freight train barreling through sky, like looking up the barrel of a gun. That is the last thing I see.
And then we are dead. I wake up.
I don't remember much from my childhood. Or maybe I do, but I just don't know how to access them.
I think that one of my first memories is of finding a cat.
We were living in California at the time... probably Pasadena? If that is the case, I was pretty darned young. I was born in Covina and we lived in Pasadena for... five years there? We lived in Long Beach with my Grandparents after then, I think. We moved to Washington when I was in fourth or fifth grade I think, so I had to be younger than eight or nine? If we were in Pasadena, I had to have been something like four or five. I don't know. I was young.
The image I have is of an empty lot with something in it. I remember it as a broken frame of a car, but it could have been anything. There was a cat there. I entice it out and bring it home. "Mom, I found this, can I keep it?" A classic case. We kept it.
The trouble is -- I don't know if this memory is real, a dream, or a patching together of unrelated memory snippets. But I know the cat. The cat was real.
We called him Mickey and he was the best cat ever. Big and fluffy with bold black and white patterns. He would lay on you and kneed you senseless. If you had a fuzzy blanket he would suckle it and get it all damp, I think... I don't know.
It was always a great honor to have Mickey sit on you and kneed you. I loved that cat.
Eventually, as all things do, he died. Kidney stones, found too late.