I needed this

The sunset tonight was pink for twenty seconds, and then it dissolved into orange and blue. I know because I was outside -- paying attention for once -- my old softball glove on one hand and one of those pitted practice softballs in the other, readying to hurl it toward my brother, who was intent on hitting it over the bales of hay far behind me and into the pasture.

He never did hit it that far, but he did manage to get it stuck underneath the rusty old white car sitting beside the shed on my grandmother's property. It took four of us -- me, Evan, and the nephews -- hunting for that damn ball for ten minutes before it turned up. I can't believe no one got bitten by a snake.

I have successfully consumed three different types of meat today -- four if you count hot dogs as a type of meat all their own -- and I'm pretty sure the combination of meat and running around like a moron, trying to relive my glory days as a softball player, has rendered me very nearly immobile. I can hardly move. I'm doing the old-lady groan every time I get up. Everyone kept warning me: "You better scoot up; you're not as young as you used to be!" But I threw caution to the wind and hurled that ball from amazing distances of twenty -- no, twenty-two! -- feet.

All the aches in the world are worth it.

Anti-suckage

Oh happy day, I actually had a really good weekend. I know that this in no way has any bearing on how the remainder of my week will play out, nor does it indicate that the Universe is going to take it easy on me or anyone else for a while (the Universe don't roll like that, y'all), but I still would like to recount the ways the past few days have not pissed me off.

• The snow Friday was gorgeous, and gave me an excuse to go strolling through the park at midnight and again the next day, taking pictures of strangers building snowmen. I don't stroll in the park nearly often enough, snow or no snow.

• Saturday, Sarah came into town and listened to me pine and bitch and moan and kvetch about everything I normally pine and bitch and moan and kvetch about. She even endured my pleas to her to help me fix my life, all while politely refraining from pointing out that I was at a Circle K at 3 in the morning wearing fuzzy purple socks and red polka-dot shoes. She also introduced me to my new favorite band, Beirut:



• Sunday I woke up fully clothed and on the couch. At noon. Still somewhat drunk, but thankfully not technically hungover. I realized that I was WAY behind schedule — we were having a birthday dinner for my mom, dad, and youngest nephew later that day. I steadied myself and answered my phone. It was my dad, asking if I was on the road yet. Uh, no, I said with horrible wine breath. Well, dad told me, you best hurry up because we eat at 2. (It takes two hours for me to get there.) Turns out my mom had been assigned to call and tell me when we were eating, but never did. I had just assumed it would be late dinner, because I always forget that in the South, "dinner" means "lunch." Duh. So we trucked it and got the eff out of Memphis and I was only two hours late. No one seemed to mind too much, though. We ate at River Heights Café, which has to be the most overpriced piece of crap restaurant in Hardin County — no offense if you Google the place and find this blog, but yeesh: $10 for this? — but it has a killer view of the river and it's birthday tradition to eat there every spring. We Turnered it up for a while, demanding bowls of cheese and condiments out the wazoo, and then retired to Saltillo for an evening of shooting pellet guns and rifling through the bookcases in the hunt for my sister's high school diploma.

• The weather was absolutely gorgeous Monday, so I roamed around Triple T Farms, taking pictures of rusting heaps of scrap metal and decaying farm equipment. My family's land has to be my favorite place to take photographs, even if it's a little bittersweet to find beauty in decay (is that a song lyric?). The horses are great fun (even if the one named, ironically, Lady always, always, always farts in my general direction; this time she did it twice!) and love the attention. Osama bin Llama, not so much. He kind of sucks, even if he's fun to look at. Also, the random crap you can find on the Turner compound fascinates me to no end. I'm sure I wouldn't be so interested in it if it belonged to some random family. But when I step quietly over coils of barbed wire and oil cans and election signs and boxes of video tapes stored haphazardly in the shed behind my grandmother's house, I feel like I'm getting filled in on part of our story that no one might ever think to tell me. And that inspires me. I came home with 700 pictures to sift through.

• The paint on my car from the door that I was so pissed off about? My dad Magic Erasered it off. Seriously. THE ERASER IS NO-SHIT MAGIC, OMFG.

• On the way back to Memphis, I stopped at a gas station a few miles from my parents' house, and some guys in a truck pulled up beside me. The strapping young man on the passenger side got out and did a doubletake and said, "How YOU doin'?" like that gross dude on that commercial for sour mints or whatever. That made me laugh. And then he said, "You from around here?!" Which made me laugh even more. I normally would have shot that guy the dagger eyes, but I was feeling frumptastic and had no makeup on, so it perked me right the fuck up. I'll cop to it: I am a tool of the patriarchy sometimes. But come on, getting hit on by a teenager?! That's like an ego superpowerup.

Just another Friday in Saltillo: My family's neighbors busted for huge pot-growing operation

Who says nothing interesting ever happens in small towns?

From the story (actually, this is the whole story at this time):

TBI officials say an underground marijuana-growing operation was busted in Saltillo, Tennessee on a 600 acre farm.

Investigators say marijuana plants were found inside a metal tank buried in a field in the 1000 block of Five Forks Road. The tank is about 20 feet long and eight feet tall. More than 1,000 marijuana plants were seized, as well as several guns, $4,000 in cash and paperwork related to the operation.

Officials say they are not able to release any more information regarding the drug bust at this time.

Ooooh, I have more information. But it would probably be foolish to be spreading names and background info while the word "alleged" is still in play. What I will say is that this is the third time I believe, this family has gotten busted for their, uh, family business.

Hey, isn't persistence part of the American dream?

Day 241 — I Heart Saltillo

[for Wednesday, Aug. 29]



Sunday was not only my brother's birthday, but it was also the first of the upcoming Sunday family dinners my mom, aunt, and grandmother have decided to resurrect. When I was a kid, we used to go to Granny's on Sundays to eat dinner with the family. The tradition probably got neglected around the time that my great-grandfather and grandfather got so sick and were in and out of the hospital.

That's been something like 17 years or so.

Very cool to be restarting such a tradition.

Project 365