One Turd At A Time.

Oh, the bullshit just keeps rolling in...one turd at a time! 

I'm sure if you know anything at all about the Owens bunch, you're familiar with "The Saga of Tesla Nicole". For two weeks, I've been fighting a raging internal battle over her: pessimistic & realistic vs. optimistic & supportive. Last week I kept hearing that I should be supportive and proud and text her and tell her that I love her and all that jazz because she was going through such a hard time...and I really had trouble doing that. For one, her hard times are self inflicted and could've easily been avoided had she the ability to make a good decision every now and then. Two, she's been steadily treating our grandmother like shit for a very long time, and I'm not exactly over that yet. Three, her plight to better herself wasn't because she had pulled her head out of her ass an decided that she needed to...it was because one of her bad decisions finally jumped up and bit her right in the same ass where her head resides, and she was court ordered to do something about herself. None-the-less, even though I doubted that she would even stick around long enough to make her grand appearance in rehab, she surprised me and went last Thursday. Once I knew she was indeed there, I had hope that maybe she would do what she had to do and come home as the Tesla I know and love. At that point, I was okay with supporting her and putting myself out there for her. I was even proud of her, not for ending up in rehab of course, but for being woman enough to not duck and run this time.

So, you can only imagine how big of a slap in the face it was for me to get the news on Saturday that she had cowered and skipped out of rehab after 2 days. It actually spun me into a level of pissed off that I've never seen before. I knew that I should follow my gut and not get my hopes up, but I did anyway and that's nobody's fault but mine. But to make it all better, she conjured herself up a story that might've actually made sense, you know...had it made sense. But in her defense, "someone stole her money and when she confronted them about it, they threw her out". Cough, bullshit.

And then yesterday, the next turd rolled my way. After I'd found the kindness in my heart to allow two women and SIX rescued poodles move into my house and struggled while allowing them to jerk me around on rent money for three months, I get the last part of June's rent in the mail. Fashionably late, $50 short, and accompanied by a letter that said they would be moving out of my house by July 13th, and would only pay me half the rent for July. That struck me as inconvenient, but gave me enough time to work on getting someone else in there. Wasn't that big of a deal until she text me and told me the REAL story: they're moving out on SATURDAY, and won't be paying me ANYTHING for July. You really just can't fuckin' beat a 4 day notice, can ya?! I just hope that when I get there to get the keys back, those SIX ankle biters I so graciously allowed in my house haven't done much damage...I may not be able to resist pushing one of those ladies off the porch if they have. I'm not feeling exactly stable these days. 

And this morning, guess what? THIRD TURD! I get a message from my beloved cousin, informing me that three little snot nose punks walked up on my Papaw Gus' deck, pushed him down, and stole his wallet on Friday. The poor man does good to walk, no way he could've even put up a fight...and honestly, the fact that they knocked him down hurts my feelings more than they fact that they fuckin' stole from him. I sure hope that there is special place in hell for people like these little rotten fuck-wads. I also hope that one day before they make it to hell, when they're still old men that can barely get around, that karma comes along and knocks them the fuck down somewhere, and then I hope that some little snot nose punk walks up and takes a big shit in their face.

I feel like the world is testing me this month, and the amount of shit coming at me is starting to weigh me down. I know that the simple answer is to just flush it away and not worry about it, but I'm starting think what I need to do is start throwing shit back at the world. With that being said, if y'all happen to see me in a monkey suit any time soon, you may wanna stay the hell back...I feel like if I don't start firing back this life will be the death of me. 

River Rats & River Days.

...hey now girl, hop inside. me and you gonna take a little
ride to the river...let's ride...

Now, I'm not sure how it all began...but I remember that Jdale and Jbark lived in Louisville, and that she worked 17 jobs, and only had one night a week off....and I remember that one super hot Tuesday she was coming to Henry County for Jess time, and we had the brilliant idea to go to the river since, you know...we had Andy and we could.

...the clouds are partin', the summer sun's startin' to burn
down on that river. Jdale's waitin', I've got the Chevy
shakin', I'm blazin' a trail to get her...there she is... 

I'd never been a big fan of the river, due to being traumatized at a young age by some guys drowning at the dam in Lockport while I watched out the back window of Madre's S10. I didn't so much hate the river, I definitely had respect for it and the damage it could do (and it thoroughly creeped me out)...but like I said, it was a hot day and I had a truck...so we went and picked up Clay, got called a few unmentionables, and off to the river we went. 

Jdale:  "Clay, are you pissing?"
Clay:  "No! I fell over."

We hadn't actually planned on swimming in the river the first day because of my prior issues, so we didn't even wear our bathing suits. We were just gonna bank it and have a big time in the sun. But then, shortly after our arrival, somehow our minds changed and into the water we went...in shorts & tank tops. To my surprise the only time I nearly drowned was when Clay tried to save us from the horsefly by splashing us relentlessly in the face with river water. Blech!

...caught up in a southern summer
barefoot blue-jean night... 

That day I decided that I could do the whole river thing, and we made a pact to come back to the river....every Tuesday. River Tuesdays quickly became our favorite day of the week. We rocked on all summer, pissing behind trees, blowing out flip-flops...you know, just acting like a regular bunch of river rats. :) 

Now that summer has come back around and graced us with it's presence, we're happy to announce that we've dug out our river shoes and commenced River Days 2013...Tonight, we're going for River Day, Round 3. Round 1 left us floating in the shade, Round 2 left us in the middle of a thunderstorm...Round 3 is going to cooperate though, I can feel it in my river rat bones.

Happy River Days, y'all! 

Happy Friday, Y'all!

Most normal people try to get a good nights rest so that they can get up and have the energy to work hard the next day. Not me. I try to get a good nights rest so that I can come to work and sit here and not do anything and manage to stay awake. I mean damn, can a girl get a project? Do a spreadsheet? Color a picture? Something? Anyone? Meh. Blog it is. 

I have absolutely no reason for a blog today. It's just that you can only read so much news in one day before you start second guessing your sanity, so I have to do something. Did y'all know that there was a dude in Slovakia that would target suicidal people online, convince them to let him drug them and then stab them heart to put them out of their misery? And then, he would coat their remains with pepper so they wouldn't stink real bad, and then he'd eat them slowly? Yep, that's a true story. I get caught up in this crazy shit daily, and then I doubt the integrity of the general population of the world even more than I already did. 

A couple of weeks ago, I stumbled upon a short story about Jonestown in an online crime library. How crazy was that shit y'all? If you aren't familiar with the story, you should google it. In a nutshell, back in the 70s, this nut-job convinced a shit-ton of people that he was something like a magical god, had them sell all their shit and move out into the damn jungle in South America, where he held them captive and worked them like slaves and starved them and all that. Then when the government started investigating the whole deal, he made his people drink cyanide mixed in koolaid and something like 900 people died. I immediately had to buy a Kindle book on this ignorance because 1) I like to be educated, and 2) I needed ALL the details on how this man managed to convince that many people that ANY of this was a good idea. I got the one that was written by the chick that actually escaped from Jonestown and tried to help the others. Cover to cover, I stayed baffled. I guess maybe because I had the previous knowledge that it was some cult business, that Jim Jones was bullshit, and how it ended, etc. But I'm tellin' ya what, if some creepy old fuck like Jim Jones ever came at me with some ol' shit like that, I'd tell him a little something about himself that he didn't know and he would've probably felt pretty bad about himself when I was done. Pshit, you better get out of here with that jungle juice, Jim Jones! ....I'm surprised I don't have nightmares about this, for real. Somebody should have karate chopped that chode in the throat before he even got out of the gate. 

In less than a month, I'm going to hit a big milestone! On 7/6, it will be 5 years since I smoked a cigarette! (and just for the sake of Duran's argument, I will mention the one time on my 28th birthday when I decided to try and smoke a cigarette and in turn almost choked to death. I'm definitely not a smoker anymore!) But anyhow, the other day I offered to light a cigarette for Christopher since he was elbow deep in gear oil...let me just tell ya, that even having 5 years under my belt, it almost got me by the balls. I thought about smoking for 3 days. Total filthy rotten bullshit! I'm better now though...no worries. :) 

Tomorrow, Scotty is having his annual birthday Fish Fry. Which makes me super happy! It's always one of my favorite days of the year, and I'm excited to see all the kick ass people that normally show up to help celebrate. Too bad I had to go and grow up and move out on my own...it was very convenient to live across the street and stagger home after these shin-digs. 

And to follow up on my last blog, I still hate my hair...but I'm going to see Dana tomorrow morning. Pretty excited about that as well! Tomorrow is just going to be a big day all around.

The last thing on my mind today...is my mind. I just realized that you can call me and ask me for a person here at work and I can rattle off the extension without even thinking, all day long. But for some reason, I can't do it the other way....people can call and say connect me to 1139 and for the life of me I can't conjure up the person associated with the number. Isn't that weird? It's probably just some right brain left brain shit that I'll never understand, but it's troubling. Hmph!

I guess that's enough rambling for one day. I just killed an hour, got three more to go! 

...Happy Friday, y'all! 

Pony Tales.

"Short hair removes obvious femininity and replaces it with style."

Just a little insight into my hair history: I once had super long, straight, blonde, pretty hair. As long as I blow-dried it and curled the ends under, it was pretty darn smokin'. My trouble with super long, straight, blonde, blow dried & curled hair...was that after spending all the time every day styling it, it ended up limp and in a pony tail. Tsk Tsk.


One day several years ago, I decided that what my hair needed was a body perm. I was convinced that was going to magically cure all of my hair woes, and I went to have a stylist make it so...and she made it something, alright! She made something like a fried ass hay field that broke off at my scalp and left me looking like an idiot with wild sprigs sticking up everywhere...and she did all of this with a spiral perm, not a body perm. (That was not a good time.)


Shortly after, I decided that I was tired of conditioning and straightening and fighting with the mess that she had turned my head into. The only option I was left with was to cut it off and start over. (This was not a good time either.) But once my hair had been cut and started growing again and looking better, I decided that I actually liked my hair short. It was so very easy to fix, it would actually hold a style all day, it was cute...I dyed it just about every color you can imagine, from pink to blue to brown to both blonde and brown...but no matter how I had it cut or styled or colored...it always looked good. And if I somehow ended up with a hair style that wasn't exactly my favorite, it wasn't long until it was growing out and changeable. I got used to having what I call "good hair"...and I now feel like "good hair" is something I need...it's just part of who I am.  

There have been a couple of times when I've become envious of other girls, with their big messy buns on top of their heads, especially since my "good" short hair required me to fix it everyday and their "good" long hair didn't. A couple of times I've decided that I need a ponytail back in my life, but no matter how long I've waited on it to grow, I've never made it. It starts looking crappy, and then I get to feeling like the "good hair" part of me is gone...and I call Dana. 

I've been in a desperate plight to a ponytail for sometime now, and depending on which person you ask, I may or may not be there. It looks like an uneven knob on the back of my head, gives me a headache, requires bobby pins and clips and an ridiculous amount of hairspray, but if I play my cards right...I can get it to stay. 


But here's the trouble with this barely there ponytail: Now that it's long enough, it looks like SHIT if it's NOT in the ponytail, and it doesn't really look that great IN the ponytail. And now that I know it's long enough for the ponytail, it's been up for the majority of two weeks. I've maybe fixed the shit once, only to grab it and hold it...and say, "damn, I wish I had a ponytail holder". 



This is not what I want. I do not want bad, unfixed, dumb hair, and I know for a fact that if I have an easy way out I'm gonna take it every time. So, with all this being said... I think I've given it a good run, I wanted a ponytail and now I've got one. And being a woman makes it perfectly acceptable to change my mind and NOT want a ponytail anymore, right? 

Well, I'm convinced. Now, the task I'm faced with is convincing my gorgeous boyfriend (who's been super supportive along the way) to allow me to give up. I've already started on my speech during which I will bat my eyes and be pitiful...this is what I've come up with:

...I totally understand that hair doesn't make a woman, but good hair definitely helps. I know that my life isn't perfect, but my hair can be and I don't want my worst mistake in life to be a haircut...

...y'all wish me luck now, alright?

This Damn Truck.

"Babe, let's buy a mud truck...and name it Still Balls." 

That's probably the best idea I've ever had. Because honestly, what awesome person doesn't love a big truck? With big tires? Making big noises? In big mud? Especially with a guy as handsome as my Christopher behind the wheel slamming gears? I mean, for real....is that not the greatest combination of fantastic that ever existed? Who could really resist such an idea?

And, then...something even more awesome than my idea happened: he agreed with me!(Not so much on the name, but sometimes in life you have to compromise.) Within days, he had a few lined up and the mud truck shopping commenced. The first couple we looked at didn't pan out...but in the midst of the search for the perfect truck, Christopher got to meet Andy. Famous Andy, that our Tahoe (Andy Norris) is named after. Andy, who sold me Andy, is a definite character of his own sort. Christopher meeting him shed a whole new light on the Tahoe's name that he would have never seen...and for that, I am grateful. 

"I think we'll call him Roger."

A day or so later, Christopher found Ricky's old mud truck on Craigslist...just chillen in Maysville, looking like it looks. Sitting there like it was destined to make it's way back into the hands of the boys 'round here. 

So on Sunday of Memorial Day weekend we took us a a road trip to Maysville. A little look at this and a gander at that later, we we're bringing Roger home. And praying to 6 pound 8 ounce sweet baby Jesus, in his little baby Jesus manger, that Roger didn't completely destroy and/or take the life of our precious Andy in the process. 

"Go Andy, Go. Stop Andy, Stop."

Now, Andy is a lot of things, mostly a race truck but other things too...one thing he is NOT, is meant to haul a mud truck bigger than him. And his brakes aren't meant to stop a trailer that's carrying a mud truck bigger than him. And Christopher's nerves weren't prepared to drive Andy, who was more dragging than hauling a mud truck bigger than him on a trailer that the brakes wouldn't stop. What a long strange 3 hours that was. 

Once Roger was home safely, he made a few trips around the yard, and down the road. Some of his extended family came to meet him, and then he went to Ricky's to undergo mechanical surgeries and fixes and such. First things first...

...this spacer plate thingy, or should I say this DISCONTINUED spacer plate thingy, that was attached to the transfer case via boogered up bolt, was broken. And I don't mean slighty broken, I mean fuckin' broken. 

"What about the black one? Why are there two black ones? Waynie!"

...two damn trips to Franklinton, one hour with an Old Timer, $100 & several laboring hours later...that's fixed. Fantastic.




Then we were on to the fun stuff. MSD ignition box, coil, wires, males & females, zip ties and...well, just one big abundant hot mess of fun...that no one knew a damn thing about. 

"Oh, that module should've came out of the distrubutor?"

One thing I learned during this installation process, is that you just can't stop a batch of geniuses in a garage, especially when they have phones and access to Tech Support and Google.

Shit. Will. Get. Done. 




After a couple of days of tantrums, chucking dipsticks, and threats to "sell the junky fuckin' thing".....Roger roared again. Now, when I say he roared, I don't mean that lightly.  He's also got new plugs, a new carb, new fuel pump, lines & filter, and an oil change. He even got a new rubber floor liner & carpet, and a new super cool hood & grille. :) Still not perfect, but he's come a long way!

At this point, Roger is lookin' snazzy...if nothing else. :)

"Sometimes, he's Roger. But sometimes, he's HONKYKONG."

Saturday, we took him out into the wild unknown for the first time. He died once. Flooded once. Ran out of gas once. But he crossed the creek, climbed a small hill, slung gravel, provided fun for a few awesome little boys, and managed to get home. (He totally won't start now that he's home, but we won't hate him for that.)



Now, I'm not sure if a bunch of mechanical talk about a mud truck interests you or not, but this has been about the only thing we've managed to get done for two weeks, and in turn - it's all I have to write about. I'm sure there will be more updates to come, and at some point the pictures will change from Christopher under the hood, to Christopher slinging mud with the Jolly Roger flying. 

I'd also like to give a shout out to those who have helped us thus far, we really appreciate all the volunteered elbow grease & expertise. I'd also like to wave a big middle finger at those who have been dicks, it must really suck to be so lame that you can't appreciate a good time. I'll be thinking about all of you when we're kicking ass & taking names. :)

....and all I have left to say today is: Vroom Vroom, Mafuckas!