Monday, May 31, 2010

Outhouse

I closed the door behind me, securing the rope to the protruding nail to keep it shut, and surveyed my options.

Jens’ grandfather, presumably in one of his rare displays of humor, had built a 2-seater outhouse.  Just in case you wanted company.

In hindsight, I thought, I probably should have made some more noise on my way to the outhouse, just in case an unsuspecting bear was wandering around.  Instead, I had made a beeline toward the only threat on my mind, determined to spend as little time on this unpleasant task as possible.

The seat on the right had a detached cover that might require extra maneuvering.  Extra maneuvering meant touching it longer than absolutely necessary.  I chose the seat to the left.  I lifted the cover and peered inside.

I always peer inside.  I don’t know why.  It’s a terrible idea.  Perhaps I’m just checking to be sure there aren’t any dead bodies floating on the surface (thanks, Bones).

Instead, I’m always greeting with the same unsettling sight: a juicy pit full of human excrement.

In Texas, they’re called “latrines.”  A more gentile word, but once you lift the lid you’re still greeted by a steaming pile of poo floating in fly-infested piss.

I was first introduced to the latrine as a Girl Scout.  In addition to hawking as many boxes of overpriced cookies as we could, we were periodically forced to attend these Girl Scout Camps for several days at a time - periods of my life of which I have no fond memories. 

I’m pretty sure Girl Scouts defines “camp” in roughly the same way that Hitler did.  It was more or less a torture facility for the socially awkward.

The retreats, as they were sometimes termed, were supposed to be educational.  We made crafts and played games that we could have done just as easily at home.  We were forced to spend days and nights with people we didn’t like and got in trouble for fighting.  We hardly slept for being overrun by spiders and ambushed by mosquitoes.  The bathing facilities were questionable if they existed at all.  We got to go horseback riding in the freezing rain, then had to wear our soaking wet clothing on the several-hour drive home. 

And we got to use latrines.  Then we got to clean them.

I always peered inside.  I don’t know why.  After baking for months in the hot Texas heat, the stench was enough to suffocate you, so you had to get in and out in the amount of time you could hold your breath.  Harder to do when you were tasked with sanitizing the facility.  Try as I might, I wasn’t able to get out of latrine duty EVERY time.

And God forbid you had to pee in the middle of the night.  Everything comes out at night.  As you forged your way through the brush with a flashlight, you could feel the spider webs cling to your legs and arms. You prayed their occupants were not currently crawling up your neck to seek revenge.  Your inadequate flashlight could not illuminate enough of the latrine’s interior to show you the things flying around inside, and you prayed that it was just moths that kept running into your head.  As you rushed back to the camp cabin, you tried to take stock of how many mosquitoes were still attached to your body, and laid in bed awake for hours fighting the sensation that you were being bitten by invisible insects.

I finished my business in the outhouse as quickly as possible and marched back to the Seldovia cabin to vigorously wash my hands. 

And to tell Kaelin that she was never joining the Girl Scouts.

Saturday, February 06, 2010

Dad’s 65th Birthday

Toward the end of January, we celebrated my dad’s 65th Birthday.  As a tribute, I (with the help of my mom) put together a slideshow of his 65 years to run in the background at the party.  Here is that slideshow. 

Warning: It’s about a 20 minute slideshow, so grab a cup of coffee.

Happy birthday, Dad!  I hope I look that good at 65!  May this be your best year yet!

Bethany & Josiah

In 2001, I had a joint bridal shower with one Bethany McNichols in Seattle.  We were both to be married that summer to our respective fiances, whom we met in the Theatre department of Seattle Pacific University.

We laughed, exchanged gifts, socialized, ate, and somehow ended up dressed in gowns made of wrapping paper and bows.

It was the beginning of the next stage of our lives.  But I have a feeling that at that time, if you had told us that less than 9 years from then, we would both live in Texas and be hanging out with our combined 4 kids, we probably would have laughed in disbelief.

Funny how the times change…

Sunday, January 16, 2005

Back on Track

I’m taking a writing class to improve my creative and copywriting skills and by all accounts, I really should be doing my current assignment right now (since it’s already a week late). However, I had to take a break from my 3,000 word story that I’m frustrated with right now because I no longer care about the plot or characters I have thusfar created. This indicates a major problem and probably means that I should start over with something new, but since I’m short on time, the prospect of starting over makes me groan. I therefore feel obligated to continue muddling through the structure I have already set up.

Anyway, I wanted to take a break to express how happy I am that J has this marketing job. It’s fun to be watching TV with him and when a commercial comes on hear him say “Hey, we did that.” For the first time in two years, he’s not hating his job and for the first time in three and a half years, seems to really be enjoying his job. That’s priceless.

Until May 2003, we were trekking through life at a relatively amiable pace. We were financially and otherwise independent, both working, and had bought a house. Suddenly, our lives were run off the road and brought to a screeching halt when J’s boss took a dive off the deep end of sanity. Added to that major problem was also the issue that our mortgage company had originally mis-estimated our mortgage payment and sent us a letter in May stating that the monthly payment would go up by 20%. That was 20% we didn’t have.

Before we knew it, J was out of work in a dead economy, and we had to sell our little house and move to Texas seeking shelter from my parents. We lost everything we had put into the house that we had only lived in for ten months, were unemployed, and J was still recovering from the emotional hell that boss-man had put him through. The situation wasn’t helped by the fact that our beloved puppy, Japp, escaped from the yard the day we arrived in Texas and was killed by a speeding driver.

Since that point, try as we might to get back on the track of life and progress over the last year and a half, we seemed to be doing little more than spinning doughnuts on the side of the road. J bounced from junk job to junk job, each time getting further from his intended field (we soon discovered that the job market in Dallas was not much better than the job market in Seattle) and while I was generally steadily employed, it was never enough to pay the bills. For the first six months of our stay in Texas, I was working for my Dad, and although I enjoyed the job and took it very seriously, I couldn’t help but feel that it was something of a handout. A handout I was extremely grateful for, but I still had the need to earn my own way.

There were times when we were able to save a little money, but something always came along to instantly eat away the savings that we had painstakingly accrued.

And now, J and I both have jobs that we love and obtained “on our own.” Even better, we don’t have to choose each month between paying the bills or paying rent (gasp!). Though it may have suffered some dents along the way, it appears that our little car has made its way back onto the highway and is once again heading in the right direction. Hope is a powerful thing. And God is good.

And now I’d better get back on track with my writing assignment.