Photography Excursion Pt. 2 - Gatewood Cemetery est. 1806

To even out my life of day to day madness with three children, two dogs and a husband, yesterday I decided to go on another photography excursion. To put it bluntly, I needed some "me" time. I needed to go on a little creative adventure. So, I found this old cemetery in town that promised interesting pictures. I'm no expert at photography but there's nothing wrong with experimenting, right?

I love all things old and there's just something haunting about dilapidated tombstones. They speak volumes about grief and no matter how sturdy and permanent something may seem, time will eventually destroy it.

"Safe From All Evil...Infant Daughters"

I love the atmosphere of a cemetery. So peaceful and quiet and on this day, it was cool and a little foggy.

It was amazing to me to see Deer grazing here so peacefully. They kept checking me out to make sure I wasn't a threat.

Mushrooms

Juniper Berries

Beautiful Houses of My Town

Where I come from there are mainly tract housing projects so everything looks boringly the same. When I moved up here I was shocked by the diversity and beauty and sheer age of the houses here. So, I went on a little photography excursion today and took pictures of all the beautiful houses in my town. I threw in a couple of the old sidewalks that are still brick.

 These first three are of the same house. It's so beautiful! There's even a huge pond with a waterfall in the backyard. The people who live here are old and rich, lol.

 I love the sidewalks here even if they are uneven.

 I don't know if you can see it, but this house has a stained-glass section on the front bottom window.

 I love the white and green wooden poles on this one.

The next three remind me of something out of Hansel & Gretel.

I just love the straight lines and neatness of this one.

There is an ornate diamond pattern on the windows in this one. Circa 1873

Some of these houses were built in the 1800's!

Notice anything funny about this picture?

This Cypress is a good example of all the lovely trees here.

I think this one is considered a "Bungalow." Not really old but still cute.

I love the siding on the roof on this one. It reminds me of dragon scales.

Why Do I Live In Crackville?

This is a small town. I mean really small. No mall, no Target, not many restaurants. We have an Applebee's and that's our "fine dining" restaurant. It's not super-country Boondocks though. There is a strip mall, Target and a large selection of expensive sit-down restaurants about thirty minutes away. It is a notorious military town yet I hardly ever see enlisted. In this type of town I would not expect to have run-ins with crazy/drug-addict people on a regular basis. I thought that was restricted to inner-cities. Unfortunately, this has not been the case.

Story #1: My three year old son and I were sitting in our gated backyard, minding our own business when this twitchy, strange woman wonders into the backyard from the front and says, "I'm going to go now," like I knew who she was and why she was there. I said, "Okaaaay," and she walked back up front. Sadly, I'm pretty familiar with the symptoms of Meth use. The craggy face, bad teeth, low weight and just a general twitchyness. Plus, she just seemed out of it. I think it's really sad that so many people jump willingly into this evil drug's cruel embrace. There's all this information about it out there about its effects and the awful ingredients used to make it. Why are we humans so dumb?

The devastating effects of meth. This is what happens in just two and a half years of using.

Story #2: I went to Wal-Mart about three weeks ago and the cashier had a perfectly lovely, young girl face but when I looked down at her arms, they were covered in scars and scabs and she had even been playing in the blood of one open sore. She had made it into a star burst pattern. Needless to say, this grossed me the fuck out because she was handling my groceries with her bloody fingers! Ugh!

Story #3: Tonight I was sitting on my front porch with my three year old son when this guy wonders up. At first I seriously thought he was mentally retarded because of the way he was moving his hands (please, don't be offended by this, I mean no disrespect to the mentally handicapped. It was just my impression of his body language). Turns out he was just completely drunk. He was missing his top four front teeth but he couldn't have even been out of his 20's yet. He sat down in my porch chair and started talking to me and my outgoing little boy. The whole time I'm thinking, "How the hell am I going to grab my son and run inside without this guy either possibly chasing us or doing some other crazy random thing." I just didn't want to piss him off. So, we sit with him for a few minutes while he rambles on about needing some wood because he's going camping soon. He wanted to know if my neighbor across the way was "okay." My husband recently chopped a tree down for him so he has a whole bunch of wood sitting in his front yard. I told him to go ask him. He kept saying that he was an alright guy, an okay guy that didn't want any trouble.

He asked me if I had a man inside. Alarms were going off in my head. Like OH MY GOD, he's going to try to rape me! My son kept talking to him so I finally just said, "Okay, bath time!" and picked his screaming self up and took him inside. He had a huge fit because he wanted to talk to the new guy. My poor baby is way too trusting of strangers. We have to work on that.

So, we're inside and I tell my hubby all about it. He thought the guy would leave. Turns out, he went and harassed my neighbor. He told her he would go inside with her if her son wasn't awake. Like she suggested they go fuck or something. She finally told him she had to get her son in bed and he said, "Oh he can stay up a little longer. The other little kid was crying to play with me." So, she went inside and said the guy sat there for another ten minutes and then finally left. He told her he was going to wait for her to come back!

And then, we find out he was chasing our 13 year old neighbor down the street and harassing her and her friend. Total fucking creep!

As I was hearing this, I was thinking I should have ran inside and called the cops but you know what, by the time those fuckers got here he would have been gone. Plus, it's just shocking. I never would have expected that to happen. I don't know if it's because we live down the road from a liquor store or this town is just full of freaks but I've just about had it!

Faces Of Meth

"You Need To Watch Your Kids!"

I have two small boys, 3 and 5 years old. As a mother, I feel very judged by society. I feel like I can't take them anywhere without someone having a snarky comment for me.

Case in point: We went to the library the other day, because reading to them is good for them right? So, I was picking out story books to read to them. We are signed up for the reading program and we had to catch up on our goal for the summer so I had to get a few extra from what I normally get. It hadn't been two minutes and they had taken off on me. I thought they were right there but there were a lot of kids there that day. They had also closed the play room because some genius thought business hours would be a good time to mop.

Anyways, I was looking for them and thought they hadn't gone far when this Librarian comes over with them. She said, "You need to watch your kids. They were running up and down the isles in the non-fiction section." I said, "They took off on me." She replied, "Well, they were over there for quite a while! You need to watch your kids!" and she said it so rude and condescending like why God allowed me to have children, she'll never know. This was after the story time lady yelled at them because they tried to go in the play room. There was no sign up, the door was open and they had put a table in front of the door like little kids are supposed to know what that means. The story time lady had yelled at them saying, "There's a table there for a reason!"

I don't understand one, why a story time Librarian that's supposed to be good with kids is going to be such a bitch to them and two, why another Librarian is going to yell at me like that.

I do make my children mind to the best of my ability. I can't spank them in public without getting the dirty stink eye or threats of someone calling child services on me. Time out doesn't work, talking to them doesn't work, swatting their behinds doesn't work. What am I doing wrong? And do bitches like this really think they are helping by giving me shit and making me feel like I should hide my children away in the house never to see the light of day again because they won't behave? Is that the right thing to do? I don't fucking think so.

I just don't understand what the fuck society wants from me. I am so tired, so fucking fed up with the stares, the rude comments and I feel like there's nothing I can do about it because I don't want to go off on these people in front of my kids. I'm sick of judgment. Trying walking in my shoes you fucking high and mighty pricks! You have no idea what it's like to have to say, "No. Don't do that. This and that is wrong." fifteen fucking thousand times a day to no avail. They don't listen to me.

I guess what it really boils down to is I need a damned break. I don't get those. My husband works all the time and when he is home, he's tired. We don't have a baby sitter and for some reason my kids instantly wake up when I do. I tried getting up at six this morning to have an hour to myself. It didn't work. I don't get to go anywhere by myself and they are hell on wheels in stores or anywhere that isn't home.

I can't even take them to the park without someone hurting them. I took them to the park about a month ago and a little boy that was about five pushed my five year old off the slide. From the top. He landed on his face. I thought he had fallen and didn't find out the truth until we were home.

I feel like a prisoner. I wish I could just whisk us away to some remote, unknown tropical paradise island (with internet, lol) and raise them away from all this crap.

Walking In My Shoes - Depeche Mode

Trashin' Finds - Projector Slides - NSFW/K

In this economy it seems everyone is struggling to get by. My husband is a master mind at coming up with ways to make extra money. For about the past six months he has been collecting old electronics that people were throwing away, tearing them apart for their metals like copper, aluminum, bronze, electronic motors, et cetera and taking them to a scrap yard in the city. We made a lot of money on his last haul and it really saved us in a big way.

He is always finding something interesting in someone's trash. Tonight he found an old projector with slides in it from the 1970's. These slides are slightly pornographic in nature but the worst of it was a frontal nude shot. I'm not going to post any of those kind but I wanted to show a couple just because for one I think it's intensely interesting how our standard of beauty has changed so drastically over the last 30 years and two I will always support actual examples of what a real female body looks like. These are not glossed over, air brushed or surgically altered women. They are true blue real honest to goodness humans, god bless 'em. And they were considered SEXY in their time. I wish we could go back to this standard. It seems impossible in this day to feel attractive unless you're plasticy barbie pretty.

 Gotta love the hokey pose here. What's with the back shot? LOL Are they having a conversation?

 "My shoes are killing my feet! Gah! I hate heels!!" Notice the date? May 1977

Introductions

Let me introduce you to my zoo, er um, I mean my family.

This is one of our Uromstyx. We have three.

This is one of our Leopard Geckos. We have three I think. One of them recently laid eggs so we hope some babies will come of that.

We have a male and female Frilled Dragon. These are really cool because they have this frill that they put up when threatened. It makes them look like lizardy flowers and they run on their hind legs!

YouTube Video of Frilled in action!

Four Bearded Dragons who will be of breeding age soon.

Two Clown Fish in our salt water aquarium so far.

A crap-ton of fresh water fish like African Cyclids.

And our puppies, Ghengis the Pitbull and Tesla the Doberman Pincer.

So, yup that's all our pets. We're trying to start breeding programs for the lizards to get some babies going so we can sell them for extra money. Apparently, there's a huge market for exotic pets.

This morning, the kids put Ghengis' leash on the broken part of his harness. He broke it the other day when he saw another dog loose and wanted to go play with her. He is a major spaz. So, he got loose again and we had to chase him all around the block. A nice lady one street over was having a yard sale and she tried to help me catch him. I'm thankful for people like this who realize Ghengis is not a viscous beast but just a hyper lunk head. I wish more people would give him a chance instead of calling the cops on us when he gets loose. He's a sweet dog, he just needs Ridallin or something.

Inflation

So, apparently the government is saying there's not any inflation going on but this morning I went to Wal-Mart to get some odds and ends...

Paper Towels (Brawny)
Laundry Soap (Tide Free & Gentle HE)
2x Comet
Shampoo & Conditioner (Garnier Fructis because they don't sell the generic anymore, or at least I can never find it)
Bananas
3 loaves of bread
a package of sliced american cheese product
frozen sausage patties

Tell me how this came to $63? My jaw dropped when the cashier told me the total. I looked at the total and down to the cart a couple of times. It's sad when you can't afford the basics. I need to be able to clean my laundry and house. I guess I need to improve my non-existent five-finger-discount skills.

The worst part about this is we are trying to save up $800 for the closing costs, etc on the house we hope to buy. Everything seems so impossible. Every last cent of our check went to bills. It's so sad to be working for nothing but paying the bills. Where's the fun in life?

To make matters worse, I got a collection letter in the mail today under my maiden name. I think my ex used my name to turn on the electricity at our old apartment back in 2003. How am I just now being notified of this $818.41 bill? I called the collection agency and disputed it, then called the electric company and they're "investigating" it. I know I'll probably be screwed.

On the bright side of this day, I reconnected with a very good old friend on FB. It was so completely awesome to get to talk to him again. I've missed that friendship very much. It's good to know that he's happy and doing well and still pursuing his dreams.

I was directed to this website from a parenting forum. It looks promising so far!

http://www.hillbillyhousewife.com/