Angela Catirina....... a Kooky Little Road Trip of a Well Crafted Life

In the Deep South.....

2011-11-04T23:16:00.000-07:00

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I started writing what was going to be a bit of travel Texas series earlier this year and it got sidetracked with life, as life often gets sidetracked. Bonnie, Apple Jack, Corn Bread, and I traveled Texas all summer long and enjoyed it just as much as we have in summer's past - making the rounds through the state about every six weeks for much of this year while we have been calling on retail stores wholesaling the jewelry we make. It's a big state, rich in history, music, art, and a culture uniquely drawn from Mexican, American, European, and American Indian influences. On our last round through the state this year I wanted to revisit all of the places we've grown to love over a lifetime and share them with all of you. I still intend to do that one day but I think what we discovered on that last round through the state is perhaps more pertinent, and more timely so I digress....

We had traveled from the panhandle of the state where my story left off to central Texas continuing our journey when we began hearing evidence of what the financial analysts were predicting a few years ago, that the bad economy would hit Texas in the Summer of 2011. While they weren't wrong about the housing foreclosures peaking this summer in Texas, they couldn't have also predicted the insufferable drought. Temperatures peaking out at 114-F and 115-F, triple digit heat 100 days straight in many areas, we actually had the kitties on a bed of ice in the back seat of the car for several weeks this summer.

Dust storms like my grandparents and great-grandparents recall from the Great Depression and Dust Boll days have invaded the western part of the state once again. While West Texas is largely dependent on oil drilling for revenue, the Texas Panhandle and plains is dependent on agriculture - farming and ranching. We've been hearing stories all year long in Texas and New Mexico about ranchers selling their cattle for next to nothing because they could no longer afford to feed them, or there simply was no feed available as a result of the drought. Water is also in extremely short supply - some communities have run out altogether and city council's were voting on whether it would be more practical to purchase emergency supplies of bottled water to ship in or spend upwards of a million dollars to pipe water in from nearby plants and factories on a temporary basis. In parts of the panhandle, farmers and residents were at odds with water needs. Farmer's using their own wells, on their own property, were irrigating thousands upon thousands of acres to produce much needed crops, for both livestock and human consumption. Nearby residents, who were dependent on well water for their households found their wells running dry because the farmers were using an over-abundance of water for irrigating. Residents were faced with having to spends thousands of dollars to dig deeper wells, purchase bottled water for both consumption and bathing and washing, or just flat out move until the water levels were restored - unless of course, they could convince or otherwise litigate the farmers out of irrigating above the norm.

One of our customers who owns a women's apparel store, also owns and operates a substantial family farm with her husband. They raise thousands of acres of corn and cotton. As wholesalers, we have learned over the past 20 years that it's important to understand our own customer's sources of revenue as well as that of their customers. It helps us produce products that fit their lifestyle and needs and are offered at a time they can afford them at a price they can also afford. So this drought has been on our radar for many months. Harvest precedes Thanksgiving and predicts the potential success of the upcoming retail season. Since we farm jewelry, the holiday season is our crop but is solely dependent upon the success of our customers in their crops.

On that last trip leaving the panhandle, we stopped by this customer's store to visit with her and she seemed quite uncertain about her future. We had noticed her fields driving into town - gorgeous, tall green stalks of perfect looking corn but oddly dry at the top. They looked good but strange - but then again, I'm no farmer so I asked her about it. She explained that they had been irrigating at the cost of $60,000/month all season long to run the wells hoping to reign in a crop. Although the fields looked good to a novice like me, they had been unable to keep the plants cool enough in the 114-F heat for them to properly pollinate so, although the plants themselves were beautiful as a direct result of all of the irrigating, when you pulled back the ears to expose the corn there were no more than a dozen kernels on each ear of corn. The entire crops, and everyone else’s crops, were a total failure. They were attempting to dry them to sell for silage (cattle feed) which would only produce enough income to only slightly recover any expenses incurred. The financial loss was catastrophic. The fact that it rained heavily the following day probably made the silage a total loss as well.

Ranchers were faced with similarly bad predicaments - shortages of feed, shortages of water, and triple digit heat, all of which were killing cattle in droves. The land is parched and wild fires have been raging. Another of our customers who also owns a family ranch that has been in the family for over 150 years faced a 12,000 acre fire at the same time. Not only were their losses within the ranch itself, they are of course billed for the 4 week effort to put out the fire, fined for any inefficiencies on their part (*such as the requirement to clear thousands upon thousands of acres of brush), etc...

Traveling through these portions of the state from late August through October, we began to spot foreclosure notices on homes and farms in noticeable abundance, like we had seen in Tennessee and Virginia in 2007 after leaving California. Cotton gins and grain elevators were for sale in abundance and posted with signs stating that all of the copper had already been stolen, the massive metal buildings were not for sale for scrap, etc… Farms that we have come to know well over a lifetime of living and traveling in these areas, and that we had seen flourishing in 2006 on our move from California to Tennessee, that at that time and in years past were lush with green leaves, bushy cotton plants waist high with fat white cotton bolls, these farms have turned to dust. Farmers faced with the gamble of pouring money into seed, water, fertilizer, equipment, and labor in a game of poker against Mother Nature. Of course, any farmer in West Texas will tell you that their labor is always a game a of poker with Mother Nature – and so it is, but this year was a losing hand. The true losing hand though was that of the farmers who took the gamble of refinancing their homes and farmland to build bigger homes and buy more farm land when those questionable, now regrettable, loans that were so readily abundant. It is now that those balloon payments are coming due, that the interest rates are increasing – it is now that they need a winning crop more than ever.

And for all the Texans who thought “George Bush was their friend”, “George Bush would never let anything happen to Texas”, “Texas is too good to fail” – ahem……..they might be eating their words about now. My distaste for politicians is bi-partisan by the way, but the arrogant remarks I have heard from my fellow Texans (I was born in San Antonio) over the past few years have left me cursing them under my breath on more than a few occasions. Texas has fared better than most states in recent years, thanks in large part to the fact that they had a Texas president in office for all of it. A Texas president responsible for most of it (*in my opinion). States that have a president in office tend to fare better than most during his term. By good fortune, and no doubt a lot of back door, good ole boy politicking, Texas has had the good fortune of having presidents in office for most of the past 40 years and they’ve had the fortune of an excellent economy to prove it. Having lived out of the state for most of these years, and all of the Bush years, I tend to think that Texas has profited at the expense of the other 49 states so I’ve been on pins and needles ready to watch them fall off their throne for some time now. Not that I want to see any more of us fall than already have but we’re all in need of a serious reality check and Texans are certainly no exception.

Since Bonnie and I have been living this economic crisis from it's inception in California in 2006 when it first hit there, to the east coast in 2007 when it crashed there and gas prices topped out at over $6.00/gallon for several weeks, to New Mexico when they were first feeling the effects of it, back to Texas where they were so convinced that they were immune and knocked off their arrogant thrones once they realized they weren't this summer, we decided we would just go back to the east coast, four years after this all began, to see if we see any changes there now. Absurd? Perhaps. But we don't have a permanent address and what the hell. So with a slight change of plans we didn't make one last round through Texas this summer. Instead, we stopped and made a ton more jewelry, and just kept driving east through the forests of east Texas, along the coasts of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, and into Georgia with the intention of continuing this journey as far as it takes us. It's not that we couldn't stop somewhere and live, it's that for four years now, every time we think we're about to get settled we get knocked off our butts again so rather than settling we just thought we would explore our options first.

Our last journey east, like this, was in 1994-1995. It took eighteen months and encompassed 38 states. This one is yet to be determined. We were in a state of constant panic and fear on that trip – not outwardly but, certainly privately. We had left Oklahoma where we had been somewhat enslaved for 4-1/2 years. Finally with a chance to get out we loaded up our car with two changes of clothes, our sewing machine, and $5,000 worth of wholesale, handmade crafts that we had made to sell to make enough money to get us somewhere. We left out in a rain storm headed for Texas because Texas was familiar turf, and we spent the next couple of months selling crafts to stores throughout the state. We didn’t know where to go, where we wanted to live, what we wanted to do, and our sales had been quite excellent but we needed a change. A friend’s mother, several years prior, had told us about the Smokey Mountains, Dollywood, Pigeon Forge, and suggested that we take our stuff that way to sell some day. We decided that would be the time. Although we had traveled quite extensively throughout my childhood, on long meandering summer trips and holidays, Bonnie and I had never set out so far on our own, with no hotel reservations, no credit cards, no itinerary, no money. We didn’t know the area, had no clue what was ahead of us, didn’t know a soul on that side of the world, but had an instinct it was what we needed to do.

Discussing this for weeks ahead, we made it across Arkansas which was still familiar turf to us. Memorably, we made a huge sale there one day which was a rarity in Arkansas. We had gone into the grocery store on our way out of town and noticed a woman in line ahead of us that was putting groceries back because she had gone over her budget. The woman was black. I remember her as being elderly and quite petite, Bonnie remembers her as being young. Whether she was young with an old spirit, or elderly with a young heart is irrelevant. I think her prayers for us carried us through that journey east. The young, high school age, white cashier, and the equally young sack boy, were making quite a production of publically embarrassing the woman for not being able to afford the food she obviously needed. It was the peaches – big, beautiful, juicy peaches that caught our eyes. That’s when Bonnie and I both realized what the scene playing before us was all about. We both said, “NO! WAIT!”….and I blurted out, “You stop that right now!” and turned to the woman, “Ma’am. I don’t live here. I’m just passing through but I’ve had an exceptionally good day and it would make my day even better if I could share it with you.” Then I turned to the cashier and said, “I’ll pay for her groceries. You bag them up for her and I’m paying for all of them”. The sack boy returned with the bag of beautiful peaches and Bonnie sent him to retrieve every other item he had made a production of taking away as well. The woman was more than grateful and kind but then she pulled a tiny black memo book from her pocket and handed me a pen, asking us each to write our names in her prayer book. She said she knew we were on a long journey, she knew angels were following us, and she wanted to pray for us a safe journey because we had good spirits. I believe her prayers carried us through and I hope ours for her have done the same.

We had sold crafts in Branson and Hot Springs over the years and had become familiar with the area on numerous trips. With trepidation, we sat on the edge of Western Tennessee in Dyersburg, until we totally and completely ran out of money. We had enough gas to make it to the Eastern edge of Tennessee and not a penny more. Again, we left in a rain storm. The tags on our Toyota Tercel were expired and somehow the rain made me feel safer, I had prayed for it. We drove all day and all night, taking back roads because of our expired tags, in a torrential storm that left trees falling behind us in the road all across the state. It was dark, wet, and not another car on the road for hours and hours then suddenly, we drove over a hill and in the near distance we could see lights like Las Vegas. Pigeon Forge, home of Dollywood, we had arrived. The first store we stopped at that morning bought every single thing we had made in our car and ordered more! We found a hotel room, unpacked the sewing machine and fabric and started filling the order with the intention of staying 3 or 4 days. For the next five months we sat in that hotel room sewing day and night, filling orders, and taking a day or two off a week to enjoy Dollywood and all the local sites. We hadn’t thought about leaving but we had thought we didn’t want to live there. At the end of summer, the shop owner who had been buying all of our stuff asked where we were going next. We hadn’t really given going anywhere else any thought. He went on to explain that they were closing for the season and winter snow storms were on their way. We needed to get over the mountains before we were stuck there with no income and nowhere to land. By what logic I am not sure but we left going north and east over the Blue Ridge Mountains and continued our journey as it had begun.

We have both known real fear in our lives, but I had never known the fear of every single day being a high wire without a net. The tags on our car were a year expired when we left and nearly five years expired when we finally got settled and got that sorted out, we had no insurance, no address, no destination, no family contacts, no telephone (cell phones were yet to come in those days – as was the internet), no bank account, no credit cards, and before it was over our only I.D.’s were expired. We were in places we had never been before, didn’t know if the people would talk to us, if what we had to sell would appeal to them, if they would give us the time of day. And every day, every person we encountered, greeted us with an demanding string of personal questions that were difficult if not impossible to answer. Never the pity party, we didn’t tell anyone we were homeless, scared, that that our next meal or next tank of gas, next night in a craptastic hotel hinged on a sale. We learned to keep moving to prevent suspicion. Perkily - we’re visiting friends in the area!! In those days the tourist areas were booming and a major part of our customer base so it was easy to make an excuse but keeping the answers to their questions in sync, and predicting what those questions might be, became an art. People are creatures of habit – thank god for that. Not that I suppose it mattered but it mattered to us – to not be thought of as failures, as homeless. We saved all of our receipts, both for taxes and for “proof” if we were ever questioned of our journey. I kept meticulous journals – more out of fear that if we had an accident and died on the road maybe someone would read them and know something of us. In some ways, maybe that’s why I write this blog. The future, for all of us, is always uncertain.

But this journey Eastward is not the same. The tags on the car are not expired. We have insurance. The car is often questionable but so is life. We don’t know exactly what is ahead of us with regard to the economy, with regard to retail and buying habits of retailers, but we’ve been here before. So in that sense, we don’t carry the moment to moment fear we lived with before. We are curious! We’re on both a fact finding mission, and a journey. So what is to come, and what we will find, is yet to be.

Coming across Texas this past month, it was obvious that Texas is finally facing reality. It is evident that the economy bubble is finally bursting in Texas and we will be interested to see what we find there in spring and summer. I think it won’t be good and given that we had considered making it our permanent home, this isn’t necessarily welcome news, but I also think it’s relevant and timely that Texans start to witness firsthand what the rest of the country has been living with for so long. Most Texans will agree that Rick Perry gaining the nomination is vital to the economic stability of the state. I think that’s highly unlikely and in recent weeks the Texans we talk to seem to agree. One woman said, “He’ll never get it if he doesn’t keep his mouth shut”. Not likely. Frankly I was surprised we made gas money to get across the state one last time, and given that retailers haven’t had any problem spending all summer long this turn of events has come on suddenly. I expect to find many retail stores out of business after the holiday season.

Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama have always been states we’ve traveled through quickly because the economy in those states is bad on a good year. We have traveled through all of them though many times in the past 20 years. This time we traveled down the coast from Bastrop, Texas into New Orleans, Gulfport, Mississippi, Mobile, Alabama, and Pensacola, Florida. I’ve never been able to spend the time in Louisiana that I would like and this time was no exception. It’s very difficult to make money in Louisiana and we had the added burden of very bad timing on this trip with two holidays, fall festivals, and football homecomings all converging to impede our progress.

I love the tiny, coastal towns of Western Louisiana – the quaint cottages and Main Street districts of Kaplan, Jennings, and Abbeville. Meandering down country roads lined with sugar cane fields and cotton. These are privately owned farms and the people are charm spread on thick, like rum butter on hot apple pie – delightful and sweet. I think I should come here at least a month every year and immerse myself in good manners and a softer tongue than I typically have. I have to remind myself to pace myself in the deep South………..life is slower and sweeter here, that’s for sure!

On towards Central and Eastern Louisiana we travel through more sugar cane fields being harvested, trailers full of cane being delivered by tractors to the processing plant where the bounty will be sold and turned into sugar. Beyond the sugar fields we wind our way into the swamp and fishing areas. Commercial fishermen lined up at the convenience store after a days fishing sharing the stories of their day over a meal and beer before heading home. They are upbeat and joyful, in spite of the well known fishing maladies in recent months since the BP oil spill that we will find on our way into Mississippi has still left the waters gray and barren. We wander into state highway 18, going East, between Gramercy and Avondale through what appears to be commercial sugar plantations. Oddly, we pass through several towns that don’t appear on any map (i.e. Lucy, LA). They have matching, newly painted, water towers but they are shanty towns – clusters of worn out shacks, with no post offices, no main street, no business to speak of at all other than a single convenience store at each one. These towns line highway 18, running south of the Mississippi River on the Southeast side of New Orleans and border the massive sugar cane fields. The only people to speak of are adult black males, in shabby shabby clothes, few vehicles, but a single, new looking school bus at each town parked along the highway. Call me crazy, but it’s a site that beckons to slavery in some modern form. The brand new looking school busses look mightily out of place in an area with no evidence of schools or children. The fact that town after town after town has no business, no post office, no obvious sign of revenue. I can’t help but take in the site before me and wonder if the men in these shanty towns aren’t somehow enslaved by the corporate farms. If the new school busses aren’t actually carrying them into the cane fields every day. The men I see look beaten down, hopeless, helpless, without resources. It’s a site that shakes my very core and I am left to wonder.

In New Orleans, almost six years after Hurricane Katrina, is still peppered with abandoned buildings, glass hanging from abandoned commercial structures, bridges black with mold, apartment complexes, houses, and commercial structures in need of demolition. For all of the progress since the catastrophic hurricane, there is still so much left to do. One can’t help but drive through the city and choke back tears at the memories of what we witnessed from the comfort of our living rooms via CNN.

Throughout the Mississippi Gulf Coast we find entire towns wiped off the map still today. Work is in progress. In Pass Christian, MS we find beautiful signs on the highway, put up by the city, directing tourists to a Main Street district offering art galleries, restaurants, shops, etc…. that aren’t there yet. A few building are in place and we found a couple of stores newly opened this month, but more buildings are under construction as well as city sidewalks, and other infrastructure. The beaches are beautiful beyond belief but the water is still very dark gray and I notice that on a day when the weather is in the 70’s not a soul is on the beach or in the sand. Whether it’s safe for humans now, after the catastrophic BP oil spill, I’m not certain but I rather doubt it.

We are almost to Alabama before we start to find cities in tact, and some thriving. The Florida panhandle is poor in a way that makes Appalachia look rich. I don’t think I’ve ever seen the Florida panhandle thriving but it’s obvious the economy has taken a toll on Florida the way it did in California. I’m afraid to try to explore the state further so we head towards Georgia where we found a hotel in the Southeastern city of Bainbridge. I can’t really report much about Georgia yet, in my brief day or so here I will say it sure feels like the sun is rising once again. Four years ago we spent a great deal of time in this state and at that time, the economy was really hurting. Today I have hope but I don’t have enough perspective to have certainty.

I met a young couple though, working in the hotel in Bainbridge, that really tell the story of so many Americans. Originally from Alabama, they found themselves without work and without money. They walked – WALKED – from Alabama to Florida in search of work. When that proved futile, they walked again to Georgia. They hadn’t found paying work but they did find a foreign hotel owner who lets them both work 80 hours per week in exchange for a room to sleep in – no money, no food. While not legal, they can’t complain because they are desperate. Desperate and determined. Say a prayer for them, and for all the people like them. There are so many of us in this struggle together and if we don’t start to look out for one another, we’re not going to get through this in tact. President Obama recently said, “the American people will pull this country out of this” (that’s a sub-quote from the best of my memory). Bonnie (*my mom) turned to me and said somewhat sarcastically, “Oh he can bet if anyone get’s this country out of this mess it will be US!” I think it will have to be.

I’ll keep you posted on the rest of our journey and I’ll take you on that tour of Texas one day soon!
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Bimbos, Broads, and Floozies.......Why Women Fail in Retail

2011-10-09T00:48:00.000-07:00

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Sales has never been my favorite thing but it's an inevitable task when fueling a creative existence. Thankfully Bonnie (my mom) has a gift for it! Grudgingly I tail along. My disdain for it doesn't make me an expert but 21 years of watching stores succeed and fail has taught me a great deal.

Surprisingly, I would say about 9.5 out 10 stores we have met with over the years fail within the first two years. On the outset nearly all of them look like they have the potential to be successful but I've found over the years that there is a pattern to success and the randomness of the women in business are often the sole cause of a retail stores failure.

Retail is theatre. It is constant movement and physical work, scenery, props, lines: improv at it's best! It's diplomacy, networking, marketing, and advertising - not to mention customer relations, human resources, and occasional psychotherapy. It's also accounting, budgets, numbers, and not always your own personal style. Retail is work! And all of these points are reasons that women fail in retail businesses.

People have asked us for years why we do wholesale instead of retail since we only make 50% of what a product actually sells for on a store's shelf - sometimes less. There are a few reasons for that but the primary one is that in spite of the fact we only make half the money, there is more money in wholesale. Why? Most retail businesses owned by women fail in the first two years - and over half of them in the first. And for every one that fails another two peek through the cracks. They don't have to fail though. Success requires both an art and a formula for success.

Earlier this summer there was a wave of financial experts in the news informing Americans that it would be smarter to invest in a business venture for their children than to invest money in a college education. I will agree that the financial expense of a college education is off the charts for most Americans paying out of pocket. It certainly wasn't an option for me. The flip side of this though, is someone is telling Americans that their children are a good financial investment right out of high school. Given that across the board, 50% of all start up businesses fail within the first two years, and that most high school graduates know virtually nothing about balancing their own bank account much less taxes, insurance, accounting, inventory, sales, human resources, etc... I'd re-think an investment of that scale - not only your life savings but your child's future and maybe your own.

The average store owner that we have dealt with over the years are women around 40-50 years of age - some married, some divorced, usually stay at home mom's that invented a way for themselves into the job market after their kids were fully enrolled in school or after a divorce. They usually have some start up money - a loan (rarely), a life insurance policy left by a deceased parent, a divorce settlement, or they somehow came into a piece of property (by inheritance or luck) that afforded them the opportunity. More often than not they've been stay at home mom's who profess to have master's degrees in this or that from their favorite football team's school. They rarely read books, keep up with magazines, or watch the news but they typically know everything there is to know about local school sports. They came into some money (usually not near enough), they rented a space, tacked up a sign, and opened a store. It's a start!

I read once that the difference between women and men in business is that men think long term - decades ahead of themselves. Women are thinking five minutes to 3 days ahead. That says alot!

The failures open a store and spend every dime they have on whatever they think the latest, greatest trend is with the anticipation that people will pour in through the doors and empty their pockets. Often this has more to do with trying to take over an established businesses clientelle with an identical product rather than building their own identity, which usually also goes back to some earlier rivalry. When people don't instantly pour through the front doors spending wads of cash they're angry, hurt, and mad but it somehow never occurred to them to:

* ADVERTISE! ADVERTISE! ADVERTISE!... Newspaper, radio, television, bill boards, flyers, bulletins, and internet marketing. Surprisingly enough, few advertise at all. Some stores only advertise sales which only gets them traffic when they are sacrificing profit to pay to advertise discounted goods. Duh! "Just Arrived!... the newest most fabulous and expensive jeans in town!" vs. "Last weeks newest, most fabulous and expensive jeans in town 90% off" This may be a news flash for people but just because you have a retail store, doesn't mean even one person will come into it every single day unless you invite them, lure them, do something to entice them in. We knew one store owner many years ago that tracked her customers over six months - she had on average 25 paying customer per month. From that you can average your expense and evaluate how much you need each customer to spend to meet your monthly expenses, or how many more customers you need to generate in comparison to the dollar amount of your average sale. And even after you get them in the door, you have to be on your toes to get them to drop money before they leave, much less to get them to ever want to come back again.

* Circulate and Work the Room.... I'm always amazed to walk in a store and wait and wait and wait for the owner or manager to finish a conversation on her cell phone, finish harvesting her Farmville crop, or have to shout "hello, hello" until she emerges from a back room. IF YOU'RE IN RETAIL SALES IS YOUR JOB! This floors me!? Women who think they open a store and customers will come in and wait on themselves, just leaving money on the counter with no work involved. If you don't know how to sell something - read some books, go to some seminars, do whatever you have to do to learn the craft because all that inventory you thought was so fabulous for your store that is sitting in inventory isn't going to sell itself. And if you don't sell it you won't have any money to buy more fabulous inventory to keep your store going. Owning a retail store means you have yourself a sales job plus a whole lot more responsibility!

* Diversify.... Most women open a store because they have a particular interest they want to expand on. If they have small children they may want to open a children's clothing store, if they have a new house they may be opening an antique and home decor store, if they love weddings they may open a wedding shop or florist, if they love clothes and accessories then they focus their interests in fashion, etc... You have to consider your prospective clientelle. In my experience, stores in small towns have the best opportunity for success and one reason for that is because they have the opportunity to get to know all of their customers and potential customers very well. As a wholesaler I can show them my merchandise and they will pick through it with certain customers in mind - knowing their favorite colors, likes, dislikes, sizes, birthdays, vacations, etc... A common mistake is buying merchandise that only you like. People have a wide variety of tastes and styles, and what you love may not be what your biggest spending customer cares for at all. Not everyone is your shape or size or has your coloring. Not everyone has your style of home or lifestyle. Know your clientelle and don't pigeon hole yourself by limiting your market.

* Tapping the Till...or letting your spouse, kids, or significant other tap it.... I see this all the time - a husband, boyfriend, or teenagers standing at the register pulling cash as quickly as it comes in. If you don't have an accounting background then it's well work investing a few hours time with an accountant to work out a budget strategy. Know how much your expense are vs. how much your mark up is vs. how much revenue you bring in on average. Work up a budget and stick with it! It's all too common on Friday afternoons, Saturdays, and just before holidays to see people that don't belong to the store hanging around the cash register and talking about happy hour, the lake, the game, or whatever they're waiting on money to go do. While women store owners are always fully aware of this, it would really be in the best interest of the business to say no. Keep the cash under lock and key and stay within your budget regardless of whatever carnival passes through town.

* Owning a Business is Not a Regular Pay Check... It's very common for people to have the idea that if they own a business they've suddenly got regular income. Nothing could be farther from the truth. If you're in retail your business flows with holidays and tourism if you're store is located in an area that generates tourism. Typically 50% of your annual revenue can be expected in the 4th quarter (Oct, Nov, Dec) and very little income at all in the first quarter (Jan, Feb, March). Taxes are typically due in April - unless you operate on a fiscal year which means you have to have ample reserves to make it through lean times that may last many weeks or months. If you spend all the money you made throughout the holiday season you may not have enough reserves to meet your first quarter expenses and pay your taxes.

* Location, Location, Location - The jazziest new mall or shopping center isn't necessarily the most profitable location. Tourist towns are also usually not the best bet for a successful venture unless you own the building outright. Owning a building, any building, outright is usually your best opportunity for success regardless of the location. If you're renting though, there are many potential traps for failure. some real estate contracts require that you offer your store inventory as security for the lease. It is a legal practice and if you sign that you'll most likely be bound to it by law. We've seen it happen over and over and over, and more and more frequently. Look at the type of customer your marketing to and consider whether or not they will venture through the mall to find you, or whether they will want to cart the products you offer through the mall if they wanted to buy them. While shopping centers may seem to offer lots of traffic - a busy restaurant next door may be a deterrent to potential customers entering your door - people follow their noses first. If you have higher end merchandise then you don't necessarily want subsidiary traffic from a liquor store, thrift store or pawn shop next door. Likewise, if you're looking into a touristy town, if you can't afford to buy don't rent. It's a trap and it will take you under financially before you ever have a chance. The implied added revenue of the tourists is often misleading and vs. the added expense it's rarely worth it unless you can afford to own the property.

* Scenery and Props.... The same person can walk into the same store every single day for a month and see the very same thing. We humans are creatures of habit. People typically walk into a store and circulate counter-clockwise. A store has to move, displays have to move and be reinvented on a daily basis, windows have to be interesting and always changing (both to keep merchandise from fading and to keep people on the street interested in coming in). Move both products and entire displays, re-create and re-invent on a regular basis. I can't tell you how many times a store owner has pointed to a product and said to me, "that's been there for 6 months and nobody's even looked at it." Then move it, display it, do something to make it interesting. If it interested you enough to buy it as merchandise in the first place then maybe you just need to present it in a way that do the same for your customers. On that note, consider what sold you on a product when selling it and then present it in a similar way to your customers.

* Sell it!... Where prayer is talking to God and meditating is listening to God, sales is as much listening to your customer as it is talking to them. I hate selling and I HATE SALESPEOPLE. By salespeople, I mean those people that are intent on talking you to death about a product until you submit to something you don't even know if you want it or not you just buy it to shut them up. It's not necessary. Start a conversation the way you would if you were hosting a party and talking to a plus one you didn't know. Be friendly, show them around, invite them to try something on or show them an interesting feature of something you like. You have to start somewhere.

* Partnerships... In the long term, they universally never work. If you don't have the money to start on your own then start smaller than you intended and do it on your own anyway. Partnerships in retail are destined to fail.

* If your spouse or boyfriend has another business or occupation then keep them out of the business end of your business. It may be an ugly argument or two but it's a boundary line that must be drawn.

* Don't Be Snooty... You wouldn't think I would have to say it but it does happen. I have a relative who was a wealthy cattleman and rancher. He walked in his bank one day in his work clothes and the teller who didn't recognize him out of his suit, went out of her way to be rude to him because of his appearance. He was so incensed by her rudeness that he chartered his own bank in that same town as a direct result of the incident. A spoonful of honey goes a long way but a spoonful of vinegar will go a lot farther. Nothing travels faster than an ugly truth.

With that said, the stores that we have dealt with over the years that actually succeeded in the long term all have some additional common traits.

* They started small... often with antiques and garage sale findings that they gradually upgraded to the products that interested them.

* They held onto their money for rainy days

* Own It....They owned their property from the start or they bought it outright as soon as they possibly could.

Keep Regular and Convenient Hours... Many successful stores stay open until 7:00 or 7:30 to allow people to stop by on their way home from work. They also stay open a full day on Saturdays. Most retail stores close on Mondays but occasionally that varies locally. A common mistake is opening at 11:00 and then closing at noon for lunch and again at 3:00 to pick children up from school and make deliveries, then closing at 5:00 to be home in time to cook dinner for family. Although we all agree that family should never be a sacrifice, if you can't find a way for the business to function around your personal needs then maybe this isn't the best time because owning a business isn't unlike being a new mom to a constantly crying baby.

*Be Professional... Know that you're not always going to look like a super model, that you'll be uncrating boxes, up ladders and hanging by your toes re-creating displays, dealing with all kinds of people and personalities on a daily basis, and basically pulled in a multiple directions at once every hour of every day. Whatever you're doing, how ever you feel on any particular day, check your ego at the door and don't present yourself as a bimbo, broad, or floozie. They're the ones that bite the dust first every time.
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Roadtripping........How this kooky little road trip of a well crafted life evolved

2011-10-02T10:29:00.000-07:00

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I think the most difficult part of telling a story is finding the beginning because the true beginnings often begin long before what becomes the story. When I was a kid, my work-at-home mom, Bonnie, started a business painting ceramics and selling them to local stores in Omaha, NE where we lived. She started out with holiday napkin rings that looked like fancy Thanksgiving turkeys and one Saturday I rode around the city with her as she dropped of Zip Loc baggies filled with samples (4 turkeys in 4 different painted styles), along with a price list and her name and phone number neatly written on square pieces of yellow legal paper and sliced into squares with her sewing scissors. Before we got home later that afternoon my dad had made dozens of trips from the garage, where he was transforming his 1972 Triumph TR6 from a factory model butter yellow to an emerald green with 36 coats of metallic paint and a fully chrome engine, to answer the basement chalkboard telephone that was scrawled with mine and Bonnie's names and our most current weight. By the time we arrived he was utterly frustrated and she had dozens of orders. A week later she had paid for a new kiln, the biggest home model the kiln manufacturer made, that sat proudly in a corner of the basement garage - an unwelcome guest until Rusty realized it served a dual purpose, also heating his frozen garage in Nebraska's freakishly cold winters. She was in business!

A couple of years later we moved - transferred again. One of numerous cross-country moves and school transfers both prior and yet to come. Then in Lubbock, Texas and getting acquainted with our new city, Bonnie and I ventured into a locally owned toy store, "The Pink Giraffe". I was 12 by then but I still collected Smurfs on a weekly, Saturday basis and seeking out a new toy store that carried them was part of our agenda. I was wearing a knicker outfit Bonnie had made for me and barrettes that I had made myself for my hair. They were silk flowers with a needle sculpted face made from panty hose set in the center of the flower. Bonnie had donated her ruined stockings and working from magazine instructions I had sculpted the faces and stitched them to flower centers and embellished them with embroidered faces. The woman who owned the toy shop asked me about them and Bonnie - always the salesman and proud mom said, "She made them herself...." and continued in far too great detail while I tried my best to shrink into the Smurfs. "Come here! Show the lady! Tell her how you made these! She likes them!" The woman wanted to know how much I would want to make some for her store, we negoitiated a price, and before I left I had purchased the Smurfs I had come in for and left with an order big enough to pay for them and the ones I would buy the following week. I had twice monthly orders from her until my parents divorced several months later and Rusty, answering the phone one day, told her I was out of business.

Later, in high school, Bonnie was working three jobs and struggling to make a payment on the house in Lubbock that she still owned but didn't at that moment have rented. I wanted to buy tickets to a Huey Lewis concert and take my friends. One of Bonnie's three jobs was working as manager and buyer for a locally owned chain of dress shops. She managed the shop staff and budget, as well as made quarterly trips to the Dallas Apparel Mart to buy stock for the store. The answer to our dilemma was a new fad, scarves that she had seen on her previous trip to market that we could make and sell to stores in nearby Lubbock. We spent the week, her at the sewing machine and me doing the handwork (beading and embroidery), making up several dozen. The following Saturday we drove two hours to Lubbock and systematically stopped at stores, Bonnie asking to speak with the owner or manager, telling them what we had, the price point, and did they want to see. By the end of the day we had sold out! Bonnie had made two house payments and I had concert and shopping money for me and my friends!...............So all of this was the beginning before the beginning of this kooky little road trip of what would become an extremely well crafted and well road tripped life.

After high school there was no money for me to go to college. Bonnie had always assumed Rusty would help pay for it. Rusty and Judy, after much discussion, came to visit me one day (our relations had always been strained) to inform me that they had something very serious to discuss and I shouldn't feel bad about it. They went on to tell me that I had been born mentally retarded and that Bonnie had always insisted that I be raised like any normal kid so nobody ever told me. They couldn't justify the expense of sending someone like me to school - someone who would never mentally be able to keep up, when Judy had two children that needed and deserved an education and were equally capable of maximizing it. I was crushed. I went into a two year period of depression, anger, and constant questioning. It was a lie. But it was one of those cruel lies that was so cruel it was almost easier to believe the lie than the cruelty.

I wavered, in and out, for a couple of years, at what I really believed. I also went to work. My senior British Literature teacher, Mrs. Sharma, gave us a graduation gift of a "List of 100 Books Everyone Should Read". I carried that list with me for years, prowling book stores to find each one. Eventually I lost it, but not before I got through most of them and books I found myself along the way from books I read. Eventually I found that books find you. I also realized I wasn't the handicapped one in my family.

A year or two after I graduated high school, 1989 or 1990, Bonnie and I had designed a line of hand-sculpted clay santa claus's. Bonnie had spent the year before cross-stitching all of the Leisure Art's Olde World Santa patterns for her bedroom that hung in frames on her bedroom walls from Thanksgiving until New Year's. She wanted to decorate a tree for the room but the santa's she wanted were made by Duncan Royale and sold for $500/each. I suggested she could make some and we spent months travelling to cities in the vicinity and searching the craft stores to find the perfect heads. She wanted wrinkled, old man faces but every Santa face was a plastic Coca Cola Santa version and she wouldn't accept any of them. Finally, fed up, I purchased a box of clay and while she was at work one day I sculpted eight wrinkled old man heads, with inset eyes, layers of wrinkles, rumpled chins and noses, and hand rolled clay beards. She came home from work later that night, "Is this what you want?".......She was thrilled and set out making historically accurate costumes that depicted the history of Santa Claus from his beginnings and through Eastern and Western Europe.

After Christmas, the following spring, we were taking a friend of mine back to the airport in Albuquerque and Bonnie loaded up the Santas in my taxi yellow duffel bag with the intention of driving on to Santa Fe and asking a local art gallery their opinion of her "artist daughter". I was mortified. She did it anyway. I sat in the car, refusing to go in, as she pranced herself and my taxi yellow bag into an art gallery on the cities historic square that had a $30,000 painting hanging int he window. I scrunched down in the seat low-rider style, watching out of the corner of my eye, fully expecting her to exit the store airborn and bottom first. I waited, and waited. Finally she emerged, tapping at my window. I rolled it down. "If you were going to sell these, not these, but more like them - how much would you want?"......."ummm....????....I don't know. Do you think they would give me $25?".......She presented me with a check for $1,000 and an order for 8 identical pieces to be delivered the following week.

We made the eight, plus eight more, this time to take to an art gallery in Albuquerque. The gallery in Albuquerque bought the eight, eight more, and then ordered an additional five indians. A couple of weeks later we delivered those and got the amazing news that our work had been chosen out of 40 artists in the gallery to be featured in "The Collector's Art Guide" - a prominent New Mexico art publication. I was to be the youngest artist to have ever been featured in it at that time. We went to parties, met artists and gallery owners, travelled extensively for the next year selling our work throughout New Mexico and Texas, and even had it picked up by a couple of museums. We had arrived to our fifteen minutes of fame. Then a tragedy that would last an eternal four, home bound, years.

Four years later everything had changed, we had no publicity, no magazines, had done nothing in the art world and been entirely confined and unheard of. The world around us had changed and we had to make a new start. Country decorating was big then and primitive country was emerging. I designed a line of home decor items that we could wholesale between $1.00 and $14.00 each. We made $5,000 worth of inventory, loaded our 1993 Toyota Tercel - the ugly one that we had called the dealership and said "we have this much money. We'll take anything you will bring us that it will buy." We loaded the car with our merchandise, sewing machine, scissors, tools and fabric we would need to keep going, two changes of clothes and t-shirts to sleep in, and we left. We left the house with everything in it knowing full well it was our only safe way out. Without direction and only gut instinct, we drove and sold and sewed over and over again for the next nineteen months.

Everything in that car was packed in tiny Zip Loc bags, meticulously organized so that we could easily take projects out and sew them up at night after driving and selling all day. Zip Loc bags because you can suck all of the air out of them and therefore pack a whole lot more in the tiniest of space. Bonnie swears that someone in a hotel parking lot somewhere saw me and my thousands of zip loc bags and had the idea to make the giant ones now sold on info-mericals. Probably. We covered 38 states in 19 months, sewing and selling the entire way. We paid off our car loan, paid our taxes, and when we were completely and entirely worn out, we drove back to the safest home we had ever known, Omaha - where we lived the next five years - supplementing work with wholesaling to local stores.

A life like this has to be meticulously organized. You can't afford mistakes or misteps. Missing a beat might mean missing a meal or a roof for the night. Being sick is not an option, taking a break is an unthinkable waste of time and over-compensating is the order of every day - right down to carrying rolls of wide masking tape with us to "vacuum" up all the bits of thread and fabric that may otherwise be left on hotel room floors. And Lysoling every hotel room both entering and exiting because a sick day will really throw you off your game.

Five years later, I was turning 30 by then, we decided to move to Los Angeles and we roadtripped our way there – selling crafts to stores along the way to pay our way. And until we found a permanent address in Los Angeles, a feat that would take nearly another year, I carried a giant duffel bag filled with rings and toe rings we made around the city on the metro bus to sell to local nail salons. The next eight years were pretty stable but then girls need to make money and we fall back on what we know best. The past three or four years have been pretty well documented in this blog, but when we were still tumbling and stumbling earlier this year we set out again. With only $12 we invested in two bags of beads, crimpers, and beading thread and started making toe rings again. Putting every dime back into it, we left New Mexico with barely $300 worth of wholesale inventory to sell, no destination, and no real plan other than to survive. Now at the beginning of October, we’ve survived every day, increased our jewelry line to include earrings, anklets, bracelets, necklaces, key chains, rings, eye glass lanyards, badge lanyards, to name a few items – and upgraded our products to include turquoise, amethyst, coral, and natural stones as well as milefori and lamp work glass, and the acrylics we started out with. We’ve sales, and re-orders, and re-orders again and again.

Corn Bread and Apple Jack, our two kitties, travel with us, come with us to call on stores, model jewelry, and have been delightful travel companions.

Life’s good! It’s peculiar and strange and unfamiliar to most but we’re paying off bills and living quite well. Maybe this girl's not so retarded afterall.

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To Really Know the REAL Me You Would Have to Friend Me on FaceBook

2011-10-01T23:24:00.000-07:00

NOTE: Someone posted a comment on here asking me if I was racist and in haste, I deleted it. I may or may not regret deleting the comment. I haven’t really decided how I feel about that decision. I do believe in freedom of speech. It is, however, my blog. But really, my impulse to delete the comment was not on the comment itself but on my own definition of the word. It all depends on how you define it.

I personally define racism as a person who blankets their preferences entirely by race. I DO NOT! Therefore, no, I don’t consider myself racist. If you have a different definition for the word then you may have a different opinion.

My childhood in the 1970’s and 1980’s was infused with Save the Children commercials featuring impoverished black children starving in Africa. I was the product of a public education system that believed that in spite of the fact that my parents went out of their way to find homes in areas with excellent schools, the children in those “privileged” neighborhoods should be bussed into urban areas therefore swapping resources with the urban students who were bussed into ours- a practice that infuriated my mother and amused me. I pretty much universally preferred and excelled in the urban environment. I enjoyed the diversity and didn’t consider the shortcomings a hardship as I had ample resources at home – a mother who could buy me books and take me to the library when I needed to go. If computers had been around then, no doubt I would have had one. I enjoyed films and tv shows like, “Fame” and dreamed of a more diverse, urban life. I was taught in those schools that when we voted we should vote for the under-dog, consider those less fortunate than us, etc… I think from that kind of thinking many of us sacrificed our own lives and livelihoods for people who were never and have no plans of of ever being real contributors.

When I got that life (in my 30’s – moving to downtown Los Angeles). The MacArthur Park neighborhood at 3rd and Alvarado – Bonnie and I were the ONLY two white girls in the hood for the next 8 years. We LOVED IT! We loved our neighbors and our neighbors loved us! I have over the years developed a love of Central and South American people and their culture. I have countless friends from numerous backgrounds and cultures – everything from Jewish Rabbi’s to ghetto ho’s. The constant moves of my life have granted me a wealth of diverse and fabulous friends! And, in fact, the conversation you commented on was both multi-cultural and multi-racial.

That said, I have spent years, and I mean YEARS, of my life travelling and in hotels that in the US are more and more frequently owned and operated by people first from India and increasingly from the Middle East. I don’t set out to dislike anyone up front, but years of getting kicked around by people that share certain traits will ultimately lead to comments that some may consider racist. I actually love Indian films and Indian novels, and have met countless people from India over the years with whom I have enjoyed delightful conversations. My impression of the culture as a whole is favorable – so much that I fantasize of living there for a 6 months to immerse myself in it. Something that will probably never be in my budget.

Through all of this though, I was raised with the idea that we are responsible for ourselves. That the choices we make every day lead us to the outcome. I didn’t have children because I could never afford it. It is unthinkable to me to use any form of public assistance as a selfish indulgence. So when I hear on the news that sexually irresponsible people in the far reaches of impoverished places are walking across desserts starving with kids by the dozens and WE need to $upport them. I wholeheartedly disagree. When a presidential candidate makes the case that WE need to pay for college for every foreigner that crosses the border, legally or illegally, I also wholeheartedly disagree. Nobody paid my way and fuck you people, I was born here! And for all of these self-indulgent people that feel entitled to a mini-mansion at the expense of the American people – I beg your pardon, NOBODY NEEDS THAT MUCH AUDACITY in their life. And my list goes on and on and on…………

I have dreams of leaving this country because I don’t like, I don’t like being forced to contribute to something that constantly slaps me in the face in favor of others. i.e. Tax deductions given for preferences in hiring minorities and parolees. It slaps me in the face when I can’t get a job because I haven’t been to prison because I’m not a crack head and it slaps me in the face again when I am living in hotels and getting kicked around by the very people that were the incompetent, unqualified tax deduction that got the job over me. And then I lay in bed at night knowing that the crack head running the front desk has a key to my room, my credit card number, etc…

You are free to think of me, and say about me, whatever you like. I am not alone. But people like me have been silenced for so long that we have long ago lost our voices and enough is enough. God bless you!

PS. Where just about everyone over the globe has been affected on some level with this economy (but ya know there's gotta be some asshole out there hoarding it all somewhere - LOL) the compounded cultural frustrations are overwhelming at times (like with the guy at the hotel called me 4 hours after we checked in, FULLY DECLARING THE KITTIES, wanting an additional pet deposit and an additional internet deposit although the internet wasn't working, the toilet was leaking all over the floor, and the shower barely worked. Last over priced room in town - unfortunately). It happens ALL THE TIME and ironically, it only happens with the Indian/Arab owned hotels. But in all fairness, largely courtesy of grant money, they own most of the hotels.........If they make unreasonable demands they're excused based on a cultural misunderstanding. If I complain about it - I'm a racist. If someone like me is passed over for an education grant or a job in favor of a tax deduction it's a smart business strategy or a "more culturally diverse' classroom. If a foreigner faces the same discrimination - it's a law suit............ It is what it is but honestly, I just hate this country. I hate what it's become. But don't get me wrong, I LOVE the people when they are purposeful, productive, pulling their own weight, contributing in whatever way they can. But as children we are taught that "to be a good guest, we are to pick up after ourselves, be polite, courteous, responsible, contribute to the conversation, and not take more than one serving, bring a dish, bring a hostess gift, and without question bring a sparkling personality and interesting conversation. And when you're a guest in someone else's house, you do your best to learn their rules and abide by them while you are there - not to impose your religion, your politics, your bad day, or your personal issues upon them. And if you've overstayed your welcome, aren't well or otherwise able to be a contributing guest then leave." In that same spirit, William Randolph Hearst often invited guests to the Hearst Castle but he had an unwritten rule - if a guest drank more than two drinks they banished. Never welcomed back..............They're a good example to live by and in spite of what some people think - Americans do have a culture and this is an old and established part of it.

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Note: You're true friends are people who love you in spite of you. Tonight's actual FaceBook transcript courtesy of true friends.

Angela Catirina Jones
Another stay at sandnigger 6. I've figured it out finally - to get excellent service at La Quinta you stay with them more than 3 weeks a year and they give you every possible upgrade and consideration you could ever think of. For just about the same price, you can choose sandnigger 6, stay over a hundred nights a year, and unless you're a crack whore who needs a downstairs room for frequent nightly visitors and micro/fridge to keep your energy up between johns
, they're going to give you the stinkiest, nastiest, upstairs, farthest from EVERYHING room with no toilet paper, no towels, and big fuck you to go with it!
Like · · Share · 4 hours ago

Tex and Teddy like this.

Benji What?..you stayed THERE!!?!..TWICE?!!...!!.I'm sorry young lady,...but..that clearly makes you a sandnigger lover

Angela Catirina Jones Nope, when I was young and dumb I dated one of those guys once. Lovely person. Never goin' there again. Seriously though, when they know or care NOTHING about the hospitality business - they should get the *F out of it!! And on that note.....they could leave the freakin' country too.

Miss M. Haaaaahaaaa I don't mean to laugh but I swear your adventures make me literally laugh till my side hurts.

Tex OMG...I've been to my share of those. My husband and his mom were visiting family in Indiana a few weeks ago and had car troubles that put them behind on time, so they pull over at the first shitty hotel they can find. There were so many bedbugs in the bed, you could literally see them moving. They called the front desk guy in to see the filth and he ACTUALLY said he couldn't refund their money but would give them a different room. He escorted them to room number 2.....SAME shit! They finally left and filed a stop payment. So gross.

Tex I also once stayed in one where if you walked on the carpet barefoot, your feet turned black....AND there were piss stains on my sheets. And There was a whole group of us so I got to check out multiple rooms....one had a shower with BLOOD all over inside!! Another....they put the key in the door to go in and the door handle fell off!!! REFUND!!!

Mitch I'm rollin here!!!! Hahahahaha and why did you have to include crack whores in your post....everyone has to make a living some how....who am I to judge??

Angela Catirina Jones Miss M., I'm glad you guys at least get a good laugh out of my misery. I swear! I'm on a mission to get these fucktards OUT of the hospitality indsutry!! Marky, I've got nothin' against crack whores. I'm just against them getting better room upgrades than me. That really pisses me off! Dallas, OMG!....I think I've been in most of those hotels this summer. I've worn socks 100% of the time for years becasue of the nasty carpet in most of these hotels - thankfully Motel 6 has gone to Pergo flooring. I come in the door Lysoling EVERYTHING - floor included. My kitties won't even stand on it until I clean it. Oh, and don't even get me started on the remote controls.......sanitize, sanitize, sanitize.... :0/

Angela Catirina Jones Just filed.... Dear Motel 6: Hello,

We stay with your hotels 100 or more nights per year and we have been staying with your chain consistently for the past 20 years. We have been incredibly disappointed in Motel 6 for the past couple of years and this past summer I have filed a few complaints with you when circumstances were beyond inexcusable. I have also written complimentary notes regarding locations that have made significant improvements or reached the standards we had come to expect from Motel 6 in years past - most recently just prior to this email regarding Amarillo, TX (West) and Wichita Falls, TX (Broadway).

Checking into this location in Lubbock, TX this evening we found a virtually empty parking lot and numerous, obviously unoccupied rooms on the first floor. In spite of this, we were told that we could only be given an upstairs room - that there was "absolutely nothing' left in the entire hotel. The first room we were assigned (non-smoking) wreaked of cigar smoke and I went to the manager to ask for a non-smoking room that had not been smoked in. I was moved to the room next door - also wreaking of smoke and this time with a non-working A/C. I again requested a clean room with a working AC and was switched yet again - with much flack from both the property manager and a subsidiary female employee but ONLY AFTER calling your complaint line and having them also contact the property manager. In the process of this, two men were checked into a downstairs, non-smoking room with two beds right in front of us and the manager. I protested to the manager that we had been refused that same type of room because there was ABSOLUTELY NOTHING ELSE available in the entire property. He argued that they had a reservation and (his story changed) only people with reservations get downstairs rooms. AHEM...... I HAD A RESERVATION and I handed him the confirmation number I had given them at check in. He blew me off.

I've stayed at this property numerous times over the past 3 years - both prior to and after your renovations. Prior to it, this hotel was full of crack whores and criminals that populated the balconies at all hours and hookers with johns coming in and out to the downstairs (easily accessible) rooms. You can paint a building, but continuing to offer priority to the extra curricular activities like this doesn't make it a better place for business travelers to stay.

We have booked probably around 100 nights with Motel 6 this year alone, and about 36 more with La Quinta. After about 20 nights with La Quinta they put us on a list for expedited check in, discounted room rates, upgrades for all of our stays at no additional charge (meaning we automatically get a micro/fridge, wi fi, etc..), all in appreciaton for our business. With 100 nights a Motel 6 we're still getting a middle finger in our face more often than not and far too often, in my opinion. In the 1990's when we stayed with Motel 6, the managers were usually semi-retired couples who had a head for business and a level of competence and courteousness that we have come to expect. I don't like your current hiring practices - preferring tax deductable employees over competent qualified employeees, I don't like the lower standards you have set for yourself, I HATE the smart mouthed employees and ghetto level guests you far too often attract. I'm sorry, but I think with only a couple of exceptions (locations we find excellent) you've officially lost our business. I just think you have a right to know why.

Miss M. You forgot ugly, lazy and disrespectful.

Angela Catirina Jones I really try to keep my curse words to a minimum with them but I'm just giving up on them altogether. The Indian owned ones are actually run pretty well (WF and Amarillo both) but they've seriously got Arabs owning a lot of these franchises. That is one race of people that should not be in the American hospitality business. They hate us from the start and I didn't really begin to hate them until they got in the hotel business. Although, the short crooked penis on the one I dated wasn't really a perk in their favor. LOL

Mitch OMG!!!! I'm in tears....by far one of the best threads of the year!!! BAhahahahahahahahahaha deep breath. Aaaaahahahahahaha

Angela Catirina Jones Mitch, bet I can get you a discounted rate on a cheap, ghetto crack whore! :0)

Mitch I'm in !!!

Kayla wow! Angie! This post is just crazy! I am glad you let them know,though! The Service industry we used to know is truly lacking in all areas!

Benji Thats why they dont charge even 100.00 per night...Any way dont forget that the dollar buys so much less these days.

Benji The real problem is however what you said..Only americans can provide quality comfortable accomadations, even for a low low price.

Mitch That's why I only choose American crack whores!!! Hahahahahahaha

Benji Well,,now...the American advantage is not so clear in THAT catagory

Benji Think we are about 17th in math, but maybe # 7 or 8 in Crack Whore Satisfaction.

Angela Catirina Jones Ahhh.....Ben, we have an CRACK WHORE AFFECIANADO in the house

Mitch True....the Russians seem to put out a quality product...as does the Ukraine !!!

Angela Catirina Jones Yeah, I bet. American girls are too busy working their butts off trying to support your lazy, American male, x-box playing, asses to be experts at putting out. Well, if we've got to outsource something it may as well be something that pays nothing and offers minimal benefits. har har

Mitch Hahahaha...and I don't have an x-box....playstation 3 beats it by a mile!!

Benji Of course my knowledge is only hearsay..but..The countries I hear thrown around includes, The Philipines and Puerto Rico,

Angela Catirina Jones OH GREAT.......I just realized no HDTV. DVD player
won't connect. :0(

Mitch Hmmmm have yet to "hear about" the Philipinos....but the Puerto Ricans "I hear" are o.k.

Angela Catirina Jones OMG?....you guys!! ha ha

Benji Yeah..and several of those Eastern European countries like Belgium and some others ending in "stan"

Benji Heyyy..stop with the quotatation marks!!

Mitch Hahahahahahahahah ending in "stan" had me literally laughing out loud!!

Mitch This Benji dude and I need to drink a few ales together in the seedy part of town some day!!

Benji Face it Yankee fan, a crack whore with a foreign accent is crazily exotic, i hear

Mitch Hahahaha can't hear the accent in a moan or scream!! They are usually told not to speak!!! Hahahahahah

Benji I used to love to go to seedy bars man, but now that i am much older,when i go to bars, I like bourgeois type places...that way if I get drunk, I never feel like a loser

Benji Ok..i never get drunk, and the only bars that i attend are sports bars

Benji But crack whores are here to stay, so may as well welcome them with open wallets..i mean.. open arms.

Mitch Dude your last 3 posts just described me to a T !!! Hahahahahaha!! I'm all talk anymore...to old to act !!!

Benji Did not mean to diminish the American ladies..and our women do go through the same grind we go through..but foreign crack whores?..Well.you know how people overrate rare stuff.

Benji I have a neighbor that has a '66 MG Roadster for sale..over priced cause it's rare..been on the market for 9 months. Rare car..but i have to cut myself out of the drivers seat with a can opener

Mitch I'm 6'6" and hovering on 240....I use MG's as hotwheels!!

Benji and to angela; not to appease her just because this is her thread but...American women are aok with me,,FORGET Guess Who..I even married one.

Mitch Ange is easily appeased!!! A little tofu and spinach greens maybe a grilled cheese sandwich and she'll be fine!!

Angela Catirina Jones Ahhh.....you guys know me well. Any time you want to go to a seedy bar and peruse crack whores count me in. Nobody knows the seedy side of town and two-dollar hookers like I do. Ask Missy. LOL

Mitch Why do I not doubt Missy would help lead that charge?? Hahahahaha

Angela Catirina Jones Bonnie just reminded me, I was standing out on the balcony of the courtyard yelling at the manager, "The only way to get a decent room in this hotel is to be a crack whore or a man". Then all the crack whores in the pool mysteriously disappeared not to be seen again yet. LOL

Benji Wow..then knowing ACJ is like having a relative in the pros..you can get free tickets to the games.

Mitch Omg,!!!!!! Hahahahahahaha! Excellent comparison!!! Ahahahahahaaha

Angela Catirina Jones You think that's funny, I had this guy move in above my apartment in LA that woke me up at 4:30 every morning. I finally got fed up with it and went storming down to managers apartment beating on her door like a mad woman and told her to come with me. I stormed up the stairs, beating on his door until he finnnnnaaaallly CAME. When he opened it he said - doofus, "Is there a problem?". ME, screaming, furious , raving mad at lost sleep for two months in a row: "YOU'RE FUCKING TOO LOUD!! YOU WAKE ME UP AT 4 AM EVERY SINGLE DAY - FUCKING TOOOOOO LOUD!!!" ....................our building manager fell down the stairs laughing. The guy moved out two days later. I got sleeeeeep. LOL

Benji There was a time when our diets were the same Angela,. It comes with the California turf..except that I was a pure vegan..no dairy.But now 20 years later..tommorrow I grill steaks beef ribs, an' chickin' wangs

Angela Catirina Jones I'm total vegan except my occasional affair with my two favorite guys, Ben and Jerry - LOL. 36 years now. I'm on a serious cookie kick these days though. :0(

Benji Is there a program somewhere like AA or NA, for people who want to get off of animal flesh?..I struggle

Angela Catirina Jones You're right - Cali makes veggie life so much easier.

Benji yes indeed

Benji I feel so violated now, living back home in FL.

Angela Catirina Jones I would think Florida would be excellent for a vegan diet??? I'm scared of the critters down there though.

Benji I lived in Santa Cruz, pop. 46,000 back in the 80s. it litterally had ONE meat store, 2 big chain super markets, 29 retail healthfood stores, and 41 wholesale health food outlets..These are TRUE stats..I went through the Yellow Pages and COUNTED. i still remember the stats.

Benji I physically drove around there for years, and the stats include CAPITOLA, and APTOS, the adjacent communities

Angela Catirina Jones Santa Cruz is GORGEOUS!! I doubt the stats have changed much. I lived in downtown LA for nearly 10 years, after nearly a year in the same motel that Robert Downy Jr. got arrested with the crack whore - LOL...TRUE....and then 6 miserable months in Pacific Beach at San Diego. I loved downtown LA best.

Benji That confirmed those stats.

Mitch Ahhhh the wonders of the new facebook...everyone can now read a post you made!! One of my friends just saw me talking on this thread (a woman) and she just told me to tell Angela that her posts about Motel 6 had her peeing in her pants!! I guess I better be careful...my pastor is a friend on facebook !!! Gulp!!

Benji Not the Alexandria hotel was it?

Benji I lived there when i first moved there, would look out of the window from the 3rd floor and watch them film a new TV series called HUNTER, starring Fred Dryer

Angela Catirina Jones LOL @ Marky, I don't hide from anyone. ha ha ha...... @ Benji, The Baldwin Motel in Mar Vista - they've since torn it down

Benji I was and extra in that movie 7 with Pitt and Freeman..played the part of a sky cap..they filmed it at the Frontier hotel..watched them film Brewster's Millions there too

Angela Catirina Jones cool

Mitch I don't either or I wouldn't say half the crap I do!!! Hahahahaha! And after this thread...I gues I'll find out who my friends really are hahahahaha

Benji gotta look up Mar Vista

Angela Catirina Jones your true friends are the people who love you in spite of you. I love you Mitchie!....in spite of you. :0)

Benji Ok thats near Culver City..i thought you meant downtown

Angela Catirina Jones The Baldwin Motel was near Culver City but in Mar Vista. I lived downtown (3rd & Alvarado) for nearly 10 years.

Benji I'll tell you this, if you lived in califronia for a good spell..you experienced an odyssey..fantastic memories

Mitch True dat Ange!!! And on that...this old white dude needs to put his kids to bed and then go to bed myself and remember my glory days in the seedy places...while sipping on a merlot and watching sportscenter!!! My how times have changed!!! I'm simply a shell of my former self!! Hahahaha but wouldn't change a thing!! Night freaks!!

Angela Catirina Jones amen!!

Angela Catirina Jones Ditto Marky. I'm going to hug the kitties and crochet some more on this elephant afghan. Night ya'll. xoxo

Benji FUCK!!..sorry..had to say it..girl you are very frikkin special

Angela Catirina Jones Thanks Benji. G;night

Angela Catirina Jones ‎Mitch <<<< :0) Benji I'd sleep good with you in my foxhole

Angela Catirina Jones ha ha

Benji Nice to meet you Yankee Fan

Angela Catirina Jones I went to 13 schools before I graduated high school. My mom used to tease me about making friends with the biggest, meanest for protection. Foxhole theory. lOL

Benji u r a savvy fox

Mitch Great convo tonight!!! Likewise Ben...ya made me literally laugh outloud several times!!

Miss M. HEY NOW...I see how it is, I get pulled into an alternate conversation and I skewered over here. WOW. I am not denying any of this mind you. Best freaking post since your last rant Angie...seriously!! You could do this for a living. haha. I would pay to listen to it. Hell, the entertainment at Cheddars hearing about ShitBob Drop Pants is worth paying for your meal. hahahah. I too have had to watch what I post now on Facebook thanks to the lovely scroll overthere...now EVERYONE can see the type of people you consort with on here.

Angela Catirina Jones I wondered why you drifted???...........Oh! So now you're saying you're ashamed of me????

Angela Catirina Jones Oh girl....10 fingers..10 convos....GET OFF THE MEDS!! lol

Angela Catirina Jones
SECOND LETTER IN TWO DAYS - DEAR MOTEL 6, I wrote you last night regarding issues we had with checking into this hotel and it requiring 3 room changes and a phone call to your corporate office after the manager was rude to find a clean, working room.

Day two of our stay has been filled with smoke in our room from the 5 people staying in the room next door to us. Whatever they are smoking or cooking doesn't exactly smell like normal tobacco. We have been sick all afternoon and evening from the smell, and the frat house coming and going next door is one thing but listening to the moaning and groaning next door, and the pounding on the door for the next couple to get in is more entertainment than we ever expected. Given that it is now midnight and this started before we woke up this morning - unacceptable!!

Walking in the courtyard earlier this afternoon, attempting to clear our heads, we came across two downstairs rooms on the west side of the courtyard with huge holes broken through the glass. I asked a housekeeper what had happened and she said, "Oh that? That's been that way forever. They just haven't fixed it yet." You would think they would at least remove the broken glass and board it up for safety.

Again, if you wonder why your hotels are losing business travellers like us (around 100 nights with you this year already) - the low standard s you have chosen to set for yourselves says it all. I can't tell you how many second and third, and multiple chances we have given this chain this year because we have been loyal to you now for 20 years but when I say I done - I'M DONE. I'm sorry you've taken the stance of catering to prostitutes, druggies, thugs, and the like. They seem to now not only represent Motel 6 as employees but as residents.

Another unfortunate turn in the American corporate landscape. Hopefully the tax deductions your getting out of this will offset the business you're destined to lose.

Kindest Regards, Angela & Bonnie Angela Catirina Jones

THIRD LETTER IN TWO DAYS - DEAR MOTEL 6 Just a little follow up for the last two emails on this stay. It's now 3:30AM and the noise and traffic in the room next door hasn't stopped. The entertainment here is endless. The two girls were taking turns dry humping all day and smoking crack (or something like it) between tricks. At one point, one of the girls was beating on the door with a guy tow, trying to get in the room (presumably for their turn) while the other couple was have really loud sex and screaming sexual demands. The other girl is beating on the door and the girl having sex is simultaneously yelling things at the guy she's having sex with and screaming at the door "not yet...I'm cumming!"..........After quitting time, their boyfriends (?) showed up and they've been snorting something the rest of the night. How do I know all of this??? ABSOLUTELY NO insulation. They at some point ran out of whatever drug they were smoking (the one I complained about earlier that was drifting into our room) and the guys went out to get something else. Whatever they came back with they were snorting. And one guy who took a first hit started pounding the walls and choking - yelling things like "bad shit" and "ice" and, I don't know.....there was a lot of commotion.

You're going to wonder if I called the office and the answer is no. After the arguments I had with your manager trying to get a decent room upon check in - and me telling him it was obvious they're still in the practice of saving downstairs rooms for the crack whores they prefer in this hotel and that I intended to report them to every local government agency and him telling me, "Go ahead. I'm not afraid of the police. They work with me." I wouldn't be a bit surprised. He's quite full of himself. He certainly makes it clear what sort of clientelle he values.

No doubt this wont be my last update on this particular Motel 6 stay but rest assured, it will be my LAST Motel 6 stay. .

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OUCH!

2011-09-15T07:02:00.000-07:00

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We went to TJ Maxx & Ross and I was in the ladies room at one of them (can't remember which), and I flushed the toilet with my hand. Here's the deal, I ALWAYS flush public toilets with my foot but for some reason today I just flushed it like a normal person and the damn thing PINCHED my hand in that spot where the skin is between your thumb and forefinger. So I'm thinking blood blister. NOPE! It ripped out about a half inch chunk of skin and my hand is instantly COVERED in blood like something out of a bad Halloween movie. In the meantime, Bonnie's in the other stall yacking yacking yacking ("Missy & Keith & Jason are so funny! I just love them! blah...blah...blah...) and I'm outside running water over my hand trying to find a hand under all the blood - the sink is red, the toilet is red, there's blood on the floor. I finally catch my breath enough to say "ummmm.....i think I'm bleeding to death"......and she finally processes that I'm not kidding and comes to help me. So anyway, five sales clerks and two managers later they locate a band aid and peroxide and I went back into the stall to get more toilet paper trying to get the blood to stop (no towels, of course. And the hand dryer doesn't work)...... and I look at the lever on the toilet to see if it was rusted or something (because i'm thinking I'm going to have to order something off the internet that will kill tetanus and hopefully not turn my vagina blue) and whew.....no rust, BUT..........the skin from my hand is stuck in it.

Why, oh WHY is it never a glamorous, 'I was caravanning through the jungle...' accident. I mean, SERIOUSLY????
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Men Can Be Real Idiots...

2011-08-27T21:45:00.000-07:00

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.....case in point - I was dating this guy in L.A. a decade ago and he DUMPED me because I moved to a downtown address. By his estimation it would ruin his "career" (hang on, we'll get to his definition of a career in a bit), it was beneath him to be seen in "that kind" of neighborhood. Which led me to wonder who the hell he though would see him there if it was so far away from "his world". His world was West L.A. The north side of Sunset Blvd. in trendy, upscale Brentwood. The way L.A. real estate works, you HAVE to be on the west side and north of Wilshire Blvd. If you're north of Sunset that's even better. Whatever....I had rent control downtown and big apartment at a reasonable price. In the unravelling of it all he also added that it would cause un-due wear and tear on his car, he would have to consider extra wear on his tires, mileage, accelerated vehicle depreciation. He didn't drive a Ferrari.......in fact, he had a Chevy.

I was crushed, but not crushed enough not to make the move. He was idiot! A fact I proudly shouted at him a few times over. Why did I ever date an idiot like this? Aside from the Freudian - we all date our fathers. Idiot guy was a good time, we had shared entertainment interests. He talked a good game and in those days he could hold up his end of a conversation. In hindsight he was always condescending, slightly snobbish - something I attributed to his sheltered life more than a greater definition of his personality. He would say things like, "you're really disappointing. You're such a beautiful girl and your intelligent. I would have thought you would have made something of yourself by now." Snobbish........You never really know though.

So we parted ways and life went on, then after many more years I moved to Tennessee and I called him one day. Not for any interest in rekindling an old flame but more to see if he ever grew up. Times were tough in L.A. then and had been for 2 or 3 years so I had thought that maybe a more grounded, likable personality would emerge. It didn't. I had also hoped he had seen a hard time or two since last we parted. Funny how life will make people more likable. It didn't.

So now it's three years later and we've been having these occasional, sometimes frequent phone conversations. I actually rarely use a phone. My ringer is always off and I never answer unless I get a text first and know someone is calling. Idiot guys doesn't text, always calls from a blocked number, refuses to email, and God forbid I mention social networking like FaceBook. I actually ran a background check on him once thinking he might be married. He's far too irresponsible and self centered to have ever been married. But in his own mind he's got the potential to become more famous than Brad Pitt and George Clooney rolled into one and he can't risk communicating with technology because it could potentially hurt his potential career in the entertainment industry. Ahem.....career. He's 50. He's got no "potential" career in the entertainment industry. Like many in L.A. he's worked intermittently with intermittent bouts of unemployment that allowed him the opportunity to shop headshots, audition, do open mike nights, and pound the pavement.

I moved to L.A. the year I turned 30 with the idea of becoming an actress. It took me about a year to fully realize that there is an entire industry fueled by the entertainment industry that is selling the idea of fame to the thousands of hopefuls that pack up everything they own and shoot for the stars in Hollywood every year. The more money you're willing to spend, the more false hope they're willing to sell you - everything from headshots, photo shoots, acting classes, dance classes, film classes, wardrobe, hair, make up, publicity, etc.... It's a suckers game and it can be a dangerous one too. A year and I was out with no regrets but a whole new perspective. I became acquainted with so many people during those years though that lost all sight of time, all reason with regard to potential. Countless 50 year old men shopping 25 year old head shots, still living in tiny apartment with multi-roommates, pouring every spare penny into fueling this machine that sucked them in decades before. All of them looking for a cheerleader, a woman to "$upport" them, $upport their dreams. Needless to say, I didn't date much during those years. In fact, I hardly dated anyone else at all. Coming from the South and the Midwest, I grew up on the idea that couples worked hard together for common goals so this new breed of man was foreign to me.

So the past three years I've had these frequent phone calls to and from idiot guy. With even more perspective, he's an even bigger idiot now. He has a standard list of questions, "What do you look like now? Are you fat? You should grow your hair out. You were a really good lookin' gal but you hair was always jacked up and you don't know how to dress. You should let me be your stylist. How much money are you making these days. (*I'm road tripping these days selling jewelry we make to stores), Are you staying in nice hotels? So you're out all day and the room is there just paid for? I could come and see you." Lucky me!? What's truly sad though - so many more are idiots too. I haven't seen him since we parted ways but he's been unemployed for three years and incredibly excited about the time he has had to work out 3 to 4 hours every day. "I am just sooo good lookin'! I mean, I'm ripped. I tell people I'm 35 because they would never believe how old I really am...............so what do you look like now? Have you let yourself go?" In my mind I'm thinking, "what difference could it possibly make - you're never gettin' any again".

He's been disowned and disinherited by his family who, by all accounts, is as screwed up as he is. What are the odds? And he's attached himself to a needy older neighbor that he hopes will leave him a pile of money - "so he can buy at least a house." Really, he's always been hoping for a small apartment complex that would sustain him. He "borrows" prescriptions for Valium and Zanax. I'm disappointing though. WOW?

I've tried, God knows I've tried, to pound some reason into him. "Do you think I should nail this deal down with my neighbor before he goes (dies)? Do you think I should offer to drive him to his lawyers office so he can get me in his will?"..............I want to explode....long pause...deep breath....and then I go into my most congenial version of "you're a fucking idiot" I can muster. I should have just exploded. He hung up on me and didn't speak for weeks. So I sent it in an email. He finally called me back a few weeks later with "I'm right but I respect the fact that because you're inferior you just don't understand how exceptional people like us do things"......okay that's not a direct quote but the sentiment is identical.

The thing is, I don't have an emotional connection with idiot guy anymore - haven't had in years. I'm just secretly hoping that he will really land on his ass one day and I'll get a ring side seat to see it happen. Three years of these ridiculous phone calls and I'm throwing in the towel. Hopefully his wealthy 90 year old, cancer ridden neighbor will wise up. But I know that even he has tried to reason with him. He tells him to get a job and he calls me and explodes. Getting a job would prohibit him from accompanying his neighbor to doctors appointments, pretending to be his attentive grandson, ultimately building his case with scores of potential witnesses he can call upon when he sues the estate. You think I'm exaggerating? He spent two years suing his own mother for her money after his dad died. He lost in court. Thus the disownment, and disinheritance from his own family that has led to this desperation. Any amount of money wouldn't be enough though.

But this guy's not the only one that I've been blessed with the past few years. Me and all my friends have been going on, becoming, and surpassing 40 these past few years and everything my mother ever told me about 40 year old men is proving her right. It's a mid-life crisis epidemic, I'm convinced. Friends - childhood friends. We kicked soccer balls around, went tick-or-treating, cruised Main Street, went to concerts, toilet papered houses and shoe polished cars together friends that I've reconnected with via social networking, reunions, etc... None of these guys are guys that I ever dated, some of them I barely knew, but damn if I don't get the freakiest of emails, texts, and phone calls. Not anymore on the phone calls - this is why my phone is permanently off. Most of them are far too graphic to repeat, but here's a really mild example:

"If I grew up, you would not hear me say that I want to lay you down, kiss you from your head to your toe, linger with your nipples and your lips, make sweet long passionate love to you then watch you leave me for another of your adventures."

This guy is MARRIED.......and has been MARRIED to the same woman for the last 20 years. They have children. They have a life. They have problems. Which pretty much describes all of them with the exception of a few who are actually in some phase of recent divorce. Having been a bookkeeper the past few years during this crazy economic high and devastating recession, I'm inclined to think alot of this discontent is more economic than anything else. Life is FUN when you have money. When you don't, not so much. Believe me, I get that! I live that! But quitting when times are tough only makes you a loser. No woman wants a man that quits when the going gets hard. Not even me - with my apparently "low standards I set for myself". (*okay, that part is a quote from Idiot Guy)

Dear Men, Dear Married Men, Dear Straight Men, Dear Single Men, Dear All Men: We girls don't sit around all day and fantasize about devouring a giant fudgesicle of your penis with our mouths, we don't share a joke with you on FaceBook secretly hoping to hear in detail what sexual favors you imagine we are performing on you. We don't want to hear how victimized you are because your wife no longer desires you sexually, or just doesn't want to give you oral sex, or won't take it in the ass just because, or anything else even remotely sexual about you - ESPECIALLY IF YOU ARE MARRIED!! And if you're really single, if you don't have a job, a direction, a purpose, a sense of responsibility, aren't entirely trustworthy and kind - we don't want you. We wouldn't expect you to accept less of us.

Then the flip side of all of this is the emails, messages, etc... I occasionally get, "don't comment on my FB page. My wife thinks we're having an affair". If you're wife thinks that then you probably led her to think that. I guarantee you - I DIDN'T!! And if you think i'm kidding.......I got a text one day from a man I know from business. I know he's married. I met him and his wife years ago and have had occasional dealings with them over the course of a decade - to say that they are filthy stinking rich is an understatement. They live in some of the most expensive real estate in the country. So I get this random text one day, "I'll fly you to a (*destination date)". Me: "Where's (*wife)?"......"She's out of town". Me: "Not interested."........or the messages from the women in their lives angry that I'm after their husband. "Lady, he weighs 300 pounds. He's been unemployed for months or years. Your house in foreclousure, your bankrupt, if you divorce he's going to be up to his neck in bad debt, bad credit, child support, and maybe even alimony. You don't even want him. Me? Seriously???"

And all of this takes me back to my childhood and my reasoning of my mother being upset at the other woman. The other woman didn't stand before family and a representative of God, with her hand on the Bible, and promise you faithfully to be yours and only yours. Your spouse did that. Sometimes anger is misdirected.

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I'll Show You My Texas..... (1)

2011-08-12T22:34:00.000-07:00

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The year I was twenty, turning twenty-one, Bonnie (my mom) and I took off on a year long journey through Texas. I was born in Texas but had almost never lived there - we left San Antonio when I was two, spent not quite a year in the tiny, panhandle, farming community of Morton until I was three (my dad loved the TV show "Green Acres" and had a fantasy idea of farming that didn't quite live up to his expectations, then leaving off on a gypsy trail not to return again until I was eleven - when we lived from May to November in the panhandle city of Lubbock - long enough for my dad to marry our next door neighbor (after her divorce of course). It's a friendly "love thy neighbor" state - that's for sure! On occasional summer visits "home", my Texas and New Mexico grandparents accused me as a child of having been "Yankee-fied" - it was an ugly word. And in whatever mid-western city we might be living in at the time my parents were having teachers conferences explaining that I wasn't "remedial" or retarded, I had a Southern accent which was obvious to my mid-western teachers after they met my parents, but severely debatable to my Southern family members - I was a damn Yankee to them!

So that year, 1990, Bonnie and I had fifteen minutes of fame with a line of clay sculpture I had done on a fluke. Old World Santa's were popular collectables then and my mom had spent the year prior cross-stitching them from a series of patterns printed by Leisure Arts. She had dozens of intricately detailed, cross stitched pictures of various historic European Santa Clauses meticulously matted and framed to decorate her bedroom for the holidays. To decorate the tree in that room, she wanted to find collectable santas that fit with the theme. The ones that she fixated on were produced by a company called Duncan Royale and they would have been insanely expensive tree ornaments - retailing at upwards of $300 a piece. So she contemplated making some herself and she dredged me through craft stores in several cities across two states - Texas and New Mexico, looking for the perfect santa heads to work with. I got fed up with escapade after being drug through a hundred or so stores, and bought myself a box of polymer clay. That weekend, she came in from work one night and I had sculpted eight, tiny, wrinkled faces with inset eyes and clay beards. "Will this work?".......she was finally appeased and I was finally off the hook - or so I hoped. Together we researched the history of Santa Clauses evolution throughout Europe over several centuries and Bonnie designed the costumes.

Later that spring we were taking a friend back to the airport in Albuquerque and Bonnie loaded up the eight pieces that we had made for her Christmas tree into my yellow duffel bag with checquered taxi trim, and we drove north from the airport in Albuquerque to historic downtown plaza in Santa Fe, where the streets were lined with art galleries, decadent restaurants, jewelry stores, and local indians selling silver and turquoise jewelry on the plaza square. Her intention was to take them into one of the art galleries to get their professional opinion of my work. "Oh good lord!" I wanted to melt into the pavement. She parked on the street in front of one of the most prominent galleries in the city and waltzed in with the goods while I sat hunched in the car in total embarrassment, fulling expecting her to come flying bottom first out of the establishment and landing with a thud onto the sidewalk. Hell and be damned if she didn't! Not at all! She emerged 30 or 45 minutes later, tapped on my window, and said "if you were going to sell some more like these, how much would you want for them?" I responded, "I dunno. Do you think they'd give me 25-bucks a piece?".....It was then that she presented me with a check from the gallery for a thousand dollars and an order for eight pieces identical to the ones she had just shown them. The story continues but ultimately the "Catirina Bonet Santas" (Catirina for my middle name - I was named after a ghost town in Texas. Bonet for Bonnie - because it sounded expensive and French vs. Dufus and Dufus Jones).......wound up featured in "The Collector's Art Guide" and several museums and galleries throughout the country. Hence, our fifteen minutes of fame.

It was with the santa sculpture that we left New Mexico. My mom was raised in New Mexico but didn't find out until she was 50 (1992) that she had been kidnapped as a child and illegally adopted by the woman who kidnapped her. She was severely abused - sold into sex slavery from the ages of 3 to 7 in the home of a bootlegger, and repeated sexually assaulted by her "adopted" brother, "adopted" step-father, and numerous uncles in the family from 7 to 12. From 1993 to 1997 she had horriffic, daily, vomiting, crying, purging, flashbacks that unfortunately enabled both of us to re-live this trauma in detail for just about every assault during those years of her life. (**an unrelated to this post side-note: but in the 1940's children were still considered property, there were no child advocacy laws, no Megan's Law, no Amber Alert's, etc...). We had moved to New Mexico during my parents divorce, and wound up staying there because after nearly a year of the court settling it, I couldn't move to any other state without being held back a year in school. The next seven years were all about biding our time, counting off days on the calendar and minutes on the clock. They were not days to be enjoyed so much as days to be endured - and had we be consciously aware of what we would eventually know in great detail we would have certainly left years sooner.

By 1990 though it was long past time to escape but we hadn't really equipped ourselves with a plan to get out or have any idea of where to go. When the only home you've ever known proves a threat to you, and the only people you've ever trusted prove the same, the answers aren't so logical or so easily come by. Finally, I had been driven to the edge, and we had this huge fight at our storage building one day. I was throwing necessities (clothes, sewing machine, clay tools, etc...) into the camper of a borrowed pick up truck and Bonnie was simultaneously throwing it all out. Me in, her out, over and over and over again while screaming at each other to the top of our lungs. An argument that had started early that morning finally ended late afternoon - I got the stuff in the truck and together we drove away on one-sixteenth of a tank of gas, and with 38-cents between us. We drove as far as it got us and stopped at a store (tossing a coin, more or less) to try to sell santas we had in the truck. They buy - we go as far as it get's us. They don't - we go back. Fifteen minutes before closing and they bought everything we had in the truck. I won! We left New Mexico for good.

We drove to Amarillo and booked a week in what had been a swanky motel in the sixties but was still quite nice if slightly dated. We ordered room service, swam in the indoor pool, and made more santas to sell. We kept coin tossing for the next year and one of what would become a series, of trip's of a lifetime! We're back in Texas again this year, and I want to share with you MY TEXAS!..............I think you'll like it! I do!

"My Texas"...that summer in 1990 the Texas Board of Tourism was running a series of commercials called "My Texas"...in which a native Texan would tell what they would show a visitor who came to see them in THEIR Texas. I remember the commercials for one hispanic woman, with a robust voice who said, "if you come to My Texas, I will show you the REAL cowboys"....she rolled her r's and sang her words with an enthusiastic slur that was utterly infectious as a herd of wild stallions ran across the screen. I wanted to jump on the back of a wild mustang along side her with a pitcher of margaritas and ride. Join me....

Entering from New Mexico take I-40 towards Amarillo and you'll pass Stanley Marsh's Cadillac Ranch - ten old Cadillac's buried nose down in a field West of Amarillo. As a kid I grew up with the story that an old rancher had bought a new Cadillac each year and subsequently buried the previous one nose down in his field. Looking this history of this installation up on line will get you more stories than buried Cadillac's or the number of year's they've been buried. That story isn't so far fetched to me. My parents were raised in this region and I've come to know many generations of their friends and family, many of whom (during the robust 1950's and 1960's in particular) bought expensive new cars every year with the payoffs from a particularly profitable crop, oil well, or otherwise - even diamonds, and furs. Some of them were indeed a spoiled and wasteful generation of people at times. My mother's adopted grand-father had a new combine (extremely expensive piece of farming equipment) parked in his field for each of many profitable years - trophies, of sorts.

But, as history is often a subjective matter, whatever story you choose to believe, Stanley Marsh's Cadillac Ranch is quite a site to behold against the backdrop of the West Texas Panhandle sky and landscape. You can pull off the interstate and park in the grassy area along the access road, you'll walk through a real cattle gate to the cars where many tourists bring cans of spray paint to leave their mark, I feel like it's a bit disrespectful........but that's just me.

Spend the night in Amarillo and drive 16 miles south to the small town of Canyon for an UNFORGETTABLE theatre experience. The Texas panhandle, in general, is honkey tonkin', boot scootin', farming, rural Texas but a real cultural gem in this remote part of the state is the "Texas Outdoor Musical Drama" - a professionally staged musical theatre production, rivaling any Broadway play I've ever seen (and I've seen hundreds!) that has been playing in the floor of the Palo Duro Canyon every summer since 1962. Even if you don't have theatre lovers in your family, it is an experience that has something for everyone and it's NOT TO BE MISSED! The musical drama, which has variations from season to season, tells the history of Texas and is similar in style to the musical, "Oklahoma". The canyon itself provides an amazing backdrop for both sight and sounds, and the special effects are unrivaled - they actually make the entire canyon lightening and thunder during the show. Prior to the show guests can enjoy chuck wagon BBQ, and you can book a variety of packages based on your travel needs and individual interests.

Palo Duro Canyon State Park itself has quite a history, the land originally owned by the Charles Goodnight Ranch - the Goodnight Family donated the canyon land to the State of Texas for use of a state park. This is a beautiful place for horse back riding, camping, hiking, or any of many other activities offered by the park.

You'll also want to spend a day exploring the local shops of Canyon Downtown, and touring the Panhandle Plains Historic Museum - okay, I'm plugging because they were the FIRST museum to purchase our original line of hand sculpted santa clauses, but it's also a fabulous museum worthy of a long weekend, or even a week. They have full dinosaur skeletons, fossils, fabulous artwork, indian artifacts, etc...etc...etc... It's not to miss!

Now, if you're NOT VEGAN......you HAVE to visit the Big Texan in Amarillo and challenge your intestines to a FREE 72 oz steak "IF" you can eat the entire thing in an hour or less.

Acutally, it's a fun place to visit, vegan or not. But if you are vegan, you'll get better food in the unlikeliest of places (but remember, the Texas Panhandle is lacking the variety of gastronomic fare some of us prefer..........they do fry cow's private parts there) United Market Street Deli.

Yep! It's a grocery store deli where you can build your own salad complete with a wide variety of lettuces, vegetable options, prepared deli salads served buffet style, even marinated tofu!.....by all means, indulge in their fabulous bakery items! You're on vacation afterall. Just be sure and pack a pair granny panties if you have a sweet tooth like I do. Their deli's are located throughout the Texas panhandle and West Texas, and if you are vegan you'll want to make a note of that because vegan food in this region of Texas is extremely difficult to find. That first year Bonnie and I spent a year traveling Texas, I remember ordering a salad in a restaurant that even salad wasn't on the menu but they were kind in accomodating me. The waitress proudly set the most beautiful salad I had ever seen in front of me and said, "I put a little bacon grease on it for ya - for the flavor!" She was being genuinely sincere but.... YIKES!

Another not-to-miss stop on your visit through Amarillo is The American Quarter Horse Hall of Fame Museum.

While the Texas Panhandle is not my favorite part of Texas, it does have a lot to offer. This area is hours from an airport of any decent size, and the drive from Amarillo to Dallas will take you through hundreds of miles of raw, untouched, ranch land - not even a cell phone signal. Be sure and fill up your tank before you leave. North, South, and West of Amarillo you will drive through lush farm fields of cotton and grain. While the summer months are best for seeing Texas the Musical, driving through in the fall you will have the opportunity to see cotton fields in full bloom - harvested between Halloween and Thanksgiving.

This is ONLY THE BEGINNING of "My Texas"....my blog posts are generally novels but I'm offering this one up in chapters. Click here to follow me for the next posts and I'll take you to where my heart truly lives!

A Betrayed Affair.......My Sangre de Cristo Love Story

2011-08-12T22:06:00.000-07:00

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I remember a time when the adobe galleries of downtown Santa Fe and Albuquerque, New Mexico were devoted solely to preserving the local culture by exhibiting and promoting local artisans exclusively. The mud and adobe structures have been a fixture in this part of the world for centuries and they were filled to the brim with local treasures created by predominantly Native American Indian artisans from the area but also the local artist population: Hispanics and Anglos as well. The historic areas of these two cities date back approximately 300 years – to an era when Spanish explorers were brining Catholicism through mainland North America. The history and culture has always been reflected in the local art – St. Christphers, monks, priests, nuns, Kachinas

each with their own story to tell, Story Teller dolls,

missions,

ristras,

serape’s,

sombrero’s,

broom skirts,

embroidered cottons,

and hand woven wollen rugs.

It is a unique culture and in my late teens and early twenties, exploring the bounty of art this part of the world had to offer was a passionate pursuit.

Bonnie and I lived five hours from here in a desolate part of New Mexico known more for dinosaur remains, arrow heads, and peanut and cotton farming. We worked all week, Bonnie working two or three jobs at a time and me working nearly full time hours after school each day. We would save up every dime past our monthly bills and drive like bandits on Friday evening to spend our weekends exploring the Sangre de Cristo Mountain towns for local art. Consumate gypsies, we indulged ourselves in every bit of the culture: from drinking in the mountain air like cold water on sultry day to seducing our taste buds with the succulent local flavors of blue corn tortillas, creamy guacamole, and spicy sauces and timing our every heartbeat to Indian chant’s or mariachi music playing from a restaurant near the square. One of the greatest luxuries of this gypsy life of mine has been to absorb the life and culture of whatever moment I am in.

This part of the world has long been a Mecca for spiritual seekers of all kinds. Sangre de Cristo translates literally as “Blood of Christ”. The mountains are rich red with clay and were no doubt named by the Spanish Priests that came to spread the word of Catholicism. Native American tribes had sacred ground here long before then. And in recent decades seekers of all kinds have come because this place has a living, breathing spirit about it no matter what your faith.

These cities were not my first taste of art but they were my first real romance with it. It was here that I learned to discern between art and craft, craft and crap. There is a vast difference but to an untrained eye there is only blindness. We would spend hours strolling the sidewalks of the town squares where only Native American Indians were licensed to sell their wares,

mostly handmade silver and turquoise jewelry, from blankets laid out on the sidewalk. Often sitting barefoot with braids and wearing contemporary clothing, they laid out their offerings to throngs of passersby. Generally non-chalant but always willing to tell you about their work, they would readily explain why a particular piece of turquoise was of more or less value because of the color of the stone or the veins running through it. They would explain their tribal design techniques whether they by the intricate needlepoint work or inlay work of the Zuni,

Hopi silverwork,

Navajo squash blossoms,

or any of the other numerous variations of native design.

Along our route, we would slip in and out of art galleries rich with sculpture, oils, acrylics, water colors, and multi-media paintings and sculptures. Expert dealers and artists readily passed on their knowledge and had no hesitancy in telling why one piece held a better price than another, how light was created in a work, or to point out why a still, two dimensional artwork had such “motion”. Gradually I would learn to discern when the spirit of the artist was genuinely inhabited into a motionless artwork emitting life. I would come to be able to discern the richness of an egg paint created with plant dyes over a latex acrylic, the virtues of linen over cotton, the beauty of a handmade paper – to tell from the feel of a pottery

whether it were a common, ordinary white clay or a local clay dug from the Sangre de Cristo earth and fired outdoors in an ancient kiva.

and befriended certain favorites: Kokopelli, famous for his flute

and Koshari – in his horizontal black and white stripes always dancing with a water melon.

He is the life of every party.

Dined on local flavors – blue corn tortilla enchiladas
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and guacamole and salsa, caramel apples from Senor Murphy Candy Maker, and spinach crepes and ratatouille from the French Pastry Shoppe. Every corner of the world has beckoned to this region and it is not more evident than in the availability of international cuisine.

Now, twenty-one years later I stroll these same sidewalks. Dive in and out of the same adobe buildings.

Dine in some of the same restaurants but what has changed is all that gave this place such beautiful life. The art is still here but it is overwhelmed by shop after shop now littered with cheap, copies probably made overseas. Many of the jewelry stores are now full of imitation turquoise set in chrome with an occasional genuine piece mixed in among dozens of frauds. A discerning eye will know but a tourist will be made a fool. The Native American Indians are dwindling among the vendors and in their place, dark haired, dark skinned imitators with accents obvious to someone who has lived many years among the Iranians and Iraqi’s of metropolitan Los Angeles. I walked in one “jewelry gallery” boasting “Native American Jewelry” on their front sign. A middle aged woman in braids at a table with a strand of imitation turquoise (resin) beads straight from the importer – still on the fishing line. She picked up the strand as we walked in and pretended to be crafting the piece herself, simultaneously greeting us, “Allooo. Welkom. I make all jewelry myself. Many good prices.” Zuni designs mocked up in chrome and plastic with turquoise and silver price tags. Shop after shop after shop a similar story. A few genuine old stores remained and I dare say that each and every one of them had a sign hanging in the window “Store for Sale – Building, Fixtures, Stock”.

The fraud of what it seems to be becoming is an atrocity, and the loss of what it once was is a priceless abomination. Not just a loss of art, culture, livelihood, tourism – but the genuine loss of history. Of knowledge and craftsmanship passed down from generation to generation. As this very thought is forming itself into a comprehensible sentence from my lips, we slip into what was once one of the most well known art galleries in the region. It is now a cheap, mall-type clothing store with over priced prices and imported from China quality. My heart drops and I suddenly realize I no longer want to live here. It is akin to visiting your family crypt only to find it’s been turned into a Dollar Store. We walked a mile to our car in stunned silence and all I could think of on the drive home is where do I want to go from here? And as crazy as that may sound to everyone with a permanent address – I’ll let you know where the next stop is when I get there but right now my heart is truly broken and my restless spirit feels the need to roam.

WARNING: This is a Mouthfull of Piss and Vinegar and It's Not At All Politically Correct.................whatever that is

2011-07-01T23:59:00.000-07:00

I am becoming one of those "OLD" people. You know, when you were a kid, there was always that token adult that didn't begin a statement without first saying, "I remember when.......the world was a better place." Being a child of the Seventies (1970's) that's hard to say with a straight face HOWEVER........ "I remember when..............
* Donna Reed re-runs were still on TV, Mrs. Brady ruled, and Beaver Cleaver (in re-runs) was considered ornery. While I'm all for freedom of the arts, and I have a fond appreciation for the entertainment value of Charlie Sheen, and secretly worry that Angus T. Jones will grow up to be like him, or worse, someday - reality TV has ruined all social civility for an entire generation. If you mimic, or aspire to be a Jersey Shore whore, "house wive" of Beverly Hills, Atlanta, Jersey, Basketball, or Mob, a Bachelor or Bachelorette - raise your standards for yourself and quit expecting the rest of us to tolerate the trailer trash standards you've set for yourself. It's EXHAUSTING and YOU'RE NOT WORTH IT but you could be worth so much more if only you would raise your own bar. And if you think being an asshole in the workplace makes you Donald Trump - you're a FUCKING IDIOT!! And the asshole you are behaving like on solidifies that. It's bad enough that those of us who have struggled gain and perfect all of the legitimate skills on our resumes while working another full time sideshow at they gym to keep up with the Barbie Doll expectations we've set for ourselves (yes. I admit it. I am flawed beyond all common sense) have had to put up with cock-suckers like Monica Lewinski who tried to take a low class short cut to success. Fire Me! I don't give a damn! You won't be the first! I showed up for work one day wearing a black "You're Fired" T-shirt just because I knew it was coming. It did! Now ten years later those losers are still stuck in the same gray cubicles and I'm surviving just fine NOT in that damn little caged in excuse for a life. Speaking of which...........

* "I remember when"............. we took long, mindless road trips with no destination in mind and no itenerary. We would stay and little "mom and pop motels" along the road that were generally hotels built near the highway in rural areas by people who had worked their lives on a farm or in some field of agriculture, as a retirement plan. They were tiny, clean, and often times the most memorable part of road trips across America because they were operated by the people who built them and spent their lives in the areas tourists like us, "road trippers" had spent their summer vacation to come and see: to Yellowstone National Park, the faces of Mt. Rushmore, the pipe stone quarries of Minnesota, the indian reservations of New Mexico and Arizona, the Texas Hill Country, the Smoky Mountains, the Blue Ridge Mountains, all the up to the Catskills and Niagra Falls. In the last 20 or so years, they've been gradually taken over by "foreigners" who bring their own standards for the hospitality industry. I actually had one of these hotel owners tell me one time that a ROOM WITH A LOCK ON THE DOOR would be "$20 extra" - (The Rose Motel - Venice Beach, CA). More than I can begin to count have brought with them a sideline of prostitution. I've actually heard negotiating of room rates by the hour and half hour, and watched people come and go without anyone resembling housekeeping make an appearance in between. But then again, if you're renting rooms by the half hour increments and fucking professionals you probably don't care much about housekeeping. "Mom and Pop" wouldn't have......and that's my point! On that note....

* "I remember when"...... jobs were not offered on the basis of a company getting tax deductions for hiring minorities and parolees. I've given up on the job market. Fuck it! They can have it! I make more money on my own and I don't have to be politically correct about it either. However, I'm traveling A LOT this summer and I'm really FUCKING FED UP with staying in hotels that are run by muther' fuckin' foreigners who know NOTHING about the hospitality industry. If this offends you, I don't give a shit!! Hotel rates of quadrupled in the last ten years and hospitality has disintegrated into oblivion. I travel with my two kitties. I'm not hiding them. I couldn't if I wanted to and I don't want to. They sit on the dash of my car and they're going spend most of their time in the window of any given hotel. I don't leave them in hotels when I am working (right now I wholesale jewelry to retail stores). They go with me. They're on a leash. They get a bath every week. They are incredibly well behaved and they have been welcomed in some very high end boutiques coast to coast. They sit on the floor, never on furniture (unless we are at home) or merchandise - and they do this all by themselves. Why? Because like good little children they want to be included and my rules for them are the same as my mother's were for me when I was 3 years old. "If you would like to join us you are welcome but you will not be ASKED to behave like a grown up. It's expected of you." So imagine my rage when I book reservations in a "pet friendly" motel, drive for hours and hours to get there, only to find that their idea of "pet friendly" is expecting my kitties to be caged for the duration of their stay. HELL FUCKING GODDAMMIT NO!! How would you like it if you had to sit in a cage just slightly bigger than your body for five minutes let alone "the duration of your stay" (Motel 6 - Kerrville, TX). And on that note, what if when we issued your Visa and invited you in, we had issued you a kennel and told you to sit in it for the duration of your stay. Come to think of it - we probably should. The peculiar thing is, when this has come up with hotel owners or managers, they've consistently been foreigners. I've had a few (a much smaller number however) Americans tell us we weren't welcome to rent a room but all of the ones who took my reservation, took my money, and THEN attempted to impose monetary fines or ridiculously inhumane rules, were ALL FOREIGNERS. Go figure!

And if the "pet friendly" issue isn't enough to make my blood boil, there are the name brand hotel chains that have decided it's better to hire an employee that offers a tax benefit to the hotel than one that might actually do a great job and bring in more revenue for doing so, ultimately being more profitable than the tax deduction slackers - parolees....minorities....

Motel 6 - Huntsville, TX: We've stayed in this hotel, in this location, for 20 years now. It's never been a vacation spot but if you're traveling for work and/or on a budget it's always been extremely clean, well maintained, and under great management. 20 years ago, Motel 6's were pretty consistently managed by "mom and pop" couples that were semi-retired, hospitality driven, and of pretty high moral character. Clean, sanitized, no hookers. This location was no exception. Now they seem to have turned their expectations for profits toward tax deductable employees rather than hospitality driven ones and here's what you get....

A nastily stinking room but it was so late the desk clerk wouldn't come back to the window or answer the phone when we tried to get another one. Luckily, or not, I know by now not to travel without Lysol

so after spending an hour and an entire can of disinfectant cleaning the room, I put on my clean pajamas and sat on the bed only to feel something wet soaking up through the mattress, the sheet, the blanket, and the comforter. URINE! The entire mattress was soaked in so much pee it could have only come from an elephant.

You can call the Motel 6 complaint line but they close at 5 pm - ironically before most people check-in. So I called the city police and finally got a reservations agent to get me through to a reservations manager only AFTER I had an argument with the hotel "security guard" who tried to prevent me from speaking with the police officer, who after 4 more hours, got the desk clerk to issue me another room. It was almost 6 am before I got it - check out is noon. But she didn't re-issue another room willingly. She said, "you need to go UPSTAIRS where people like you belong". If by "people like me" she meant what she implied: white, working class, with some level of self respect, what a nice thing to be discriminated against for. Oh!, and that "security guard" - turns out he wasn't employed by the chain at all......or maybe he was, but he's not a security guard - he's a pimp. Big surprise.

If you're blind as a bat, I'm guessing you didn't miss the roach on my toothbrush in that Lysol photo. Same chain - different city. Here's the close up:

If I'm not an all out cheapskate, I am conservative when it comes to expenses when we're on these road trip adventures. As a general rule of thumb, I opt for the less expensive hotels for overnight stays and save up the more expensive hotels for longer stays. If I'm only going to sleep a few hours, shower, and go...I don't see the point in paying extra for all the extras. But when, and WHY did "extras" become clean sheets, toilets that flush, light bulbs that work, and locks on the door?

Part of the sell for Motel 6 is that they're in the process of upgrading and re-designing all of their rooms, and their hotel directory is explicit on which hotels are "new" or "refreshed". Originally we opted only for these. They appear at first to be quite nice for an affordable hotel option - bamboo floors, modern fixtures, flat screen televisions, wifi, and an environmentally friendly philosophy. The televisions are awesome!.......with the exception of turning it on to two dudes having anal sex (Temple, TX). In fairness to that location, they haven't had the upgrade yet so the show was on the old box tv. The two people who woke us up in the middle of the night having sex on the balcony outside our door, that was a bonus live feature. SERIOUSLY! As for 'environmentally friendly', that means their toilets don't flush (Amarillo, TX; Abilene, TX, Victoria, TX, to name only a very few) and many locations claim not to own a plunger for guest use. Sadly, I don't travel with a plunger but in Amarillo, TX the managers husband did bring one to us 4 days after we requested it and just two hours before we checked out after a stay of several days. He knocked on the door and handed it to me with a smile and instructions to "take care of that before you go".

As for the wifi - it's generally another $3 bucks a day. And at the location in Corpus Christi, TX - if we stayed a week (which we did), housekeeping service is $20. We were told upon checking in that they would not provide clean towels or linens, toilet paper, or any housekeeping services at all if we stayed a week without a separate $20 fee. Oh, and.........they failed to mention that the pool is permanantly locked except for the use of the manager and his/her family or friends. Something we also found in Abilene, TX on multiple visits over a period of months. Generally speaking, if the pool looked sanitary enough to actually stick a toe in, it was locked, closed for maintenance, or some other petty excuse. Most of them are filthier than their non-flushing toilets.

So after one more attempt of staying with them in Amarillo, TX and finding a WHOLE LOT OF HAIR in my bed that wasn't mine, we had a conversation with ourselves about priorities and money and expenses, and decided that we could make more money and would quit short changing ourselves to save a buck. Travelling with two kitties, pet friendly (not "pet tolerant") is a MUST!....so we opted for La Quinta. La Quinta has generally been our duration stay hotel choice. They are lovely hotels - well landscaped, super clean, and offer lots of ammenities like sparkling clean pools, waffles for breakfast, newspaper at your door, Beauty Rest mattresses, wifi that is not an up-charge, and if you forgot anything they can generally provide it without a fee or a smart ass remark. Even better, they really love pets!! Minus the fact that they also seem to indulge in the tax deductible employee hiring option which doesn't always serve hotel guests so well (Huntsville, TX - slacker night clerk closed the pool 3 hours early because it easier for him, didn't want to give us a receipt for the cash we paid for the room, and didn't want to give us change for the $100 bill until the next day) - those have been minor aggravations in comparison to the multiple issues we've had with Motel 6.

* Oh! And this is just icing on my cake: I remember when cursive and handwriting were part of the public school curriculum. What next?? Drooling and nose picking as secondary school electives? Add butt picking to the list and your kid might qualify as management with Wal-Mart.

* Dear Fucktards, whoever you are, that are running this country and systematically lowering all the standards with which you do it. For profit, or for what - I don't know. Those of us who live here, who were born here, who have family roots that go back so many generations we would have to be multi-millionaires to leave this fucking mess of a country you are making for us. WE HAVE NOT LOWERED OUR STANDARDS FOR OURSELVES!!! If you want to live with these low standards go find a place where they exist and move yourself there but for God's sake, for our sake, don't keep shoveling that shit our way!!

A Betrayed Affair.......My Sangre de Cristo Love Story

2011-04-03T15:57:00.000-07:00

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German

Portuguese

Chinese

Italian

Russian

Japanese

Spanish

French

I remember a time when the adobe galleries of downtown Santa Fe and Albuquerque, New Mexico were devoted solely to preserving the local culture by exhibiting and promoting local artisans exclusively. The mud and adobe structures have been a fixture in this part of the world for centuries and they were filled to the brim with local treasures created by predominantly Native American Indian artisans from the area but also the local artist population: Hispanics and Anglos as well.

The historic areas of these two cities date back approximately 300 years – to an era when Spanish explorers were bringing Catholicism through mainland North America. The history and culture has always been reflected in the local art – St. Christophers, monks, priests, nuns, Kachinas

.........like Kokopelli, the dancing flute player who brings the spirit of music and is known for being mischievous. He is a fertility deity.

..........and Koshari, the black and white horizontal stripe wearing, watermelon eating party god known for his many indulgences and fun. I first became acquainted with him at an annual Santa Fe festival called 'The Burning of Zozobras' - a.k.a. The Burning of Gloom. I've had a growing infatuation with him ever since.

each with their own story to tell, Storyteller dolls,

missions,

ristras,

serape’s,

New Mexico indian pottery

sombrero’s,

broom skirts,

embroidered cottons,

and hand woven wollen rugs.

It is a unique culture and in my late teens and early twenties, exploring the bounty of art this part of the world had to offer was a passionate pursuit.

Bonnie and I lived five hours from here in a desolate part of New Mexico known more for dinosaur remains, arrow heads, and peanut and cotton farming.

My paternal grandparents lived in a home just across the highway from The Blackwater Draw Museum, home of two of North America's most important achaeological sites.

We worked all week, Bonnie working two or three jobs at a time and me working nearly full time hours after school each day. We would save up every dime past our monthly bills and drive like bandits on Friday evening to spend our weekends exploring the Sangre de Cristo Mountain towns for local art. Consumate gypsies, we indulged ourselves in every bit of the culture: from drinking in the mountain air like cold water on sultry day to seducing our taste buds with the succulent local flavors of blue corn tortillas,

creamy guacamole, and spicy sauces and timing our every heartbeat to Indian chant’s

or mariachi music playing from a restaurant near the square.

One of the greatest luxuries of this gypsy life of mine has been to absorb the life and culture of whatever moment I am in.

This part of the world has long been a Mecca for spiritual seekers of all kinds. Sangre de Cristo translates literally as “Blood of Christ”. The mountains are rich red with clay and were no doubt named by the Spanish Priests that came to spread the word of Catholicism. Native American tribes had sacred ground here long before then. And in recent decades seekers of all kinds have come because this place has a living, breathing spirit about it no matter what your faith.

These cities were not my first taste of art but they were my first real romance with it. It was here that I learned to discern between art and craft, craft and crap. There is a vast difference but to an untrained eye there is only blindness.

We would spend hours strolling the sidewalks of the town squares where only Native American Indians were licensed to sell their wares, mostly handmade silver and turquoise jewelry, from blankets laid out on the sidewalk. Often sitting barefoot with braids and wearing contemporary clothing, they laid out their offerings to throngs of passersby. Generally non-chalant but always willing to tell you about their work, they would readily explain why a particular piece of turquoise was of more or less value because of the color of the stone or the veins running through it. They would explain their tribal design techniques whether they by the intricate needlepoint work or inlay work of the Zuni,

Hopi silverwork,

Navajo squash blossoms,

.....or any of the other numerous variations of native design.

Along our route, we would slip in and out of art galleries rich with sculpture, oils, acrylics, water colors, and multi-media paintings and sculptures. Expert dealers and artists readily passed on their knowledge and had no hesitancy in telling why one piece held a better price than another, how light was created in a work, or to point out why a still, two dimensional artwork had such “motion”. Gradually I would learn to discern when the spirit of the artist was genuinely inhabited into a motionless artwork emitting life. I would come to be able to discern the richness of an egg paint created with plant dyes over a latex acrylic, the virtues of linen over cotton, the beauty of a handmade paper – to tell from the feel of a pottery whether it were a common, ordinary white clay or a local clay dug from the Sangre de Cristo earth and fired outdoors in an ancient kiva.

I learned of textiles from the women who raised sheep, llamas, and chow chows – sheared, cleaned and dyed the fur from vegetable dyes grown from their garden crop; combed the fleece, spun the wool roving into fine yarns, and wove or knitted cloth, rugs, sweaters, or whatever their imagination dared to dream. My mother had taught me as a little girl to discern fabrics by touch in lessons roaming the fabric stores. We would walk the aisles of yardage fingering the edge and she would say, “feel it. Cotton……wool…..nylon – yuck!........silk……..wool and silk blend……..linen…….” Eventually I learned the art. These lessons in the New Mexico mountains were an advanced appreciation of those earlier childhood days.

We drank it all in – breathing in the local culture like oxygen. We learned the names of the various kachinas and befriended certain favorites: Kokopelli, famous for his flute – and Koshari – in his horizontal black and white stripes always dancing with a water melon. He is the life of every party. Dined on local flavors – blue corn tortilla enchiladas, and guacamole and salsa, caramel apples from Senor Murphy Candy Maker, and spinach crepes and ratatouille from the French Pastry Shoppe. Every corner of the world has beckoned to this region and it is not more evident than in the availability of international cuisine.

Now, twenty-one years later I stroll these same sidewalks. Dive in and out of the same adobe buildings. Dine in some of the same restaurants but what has changed is all that gave this place such beautiful life. The art is still here but it is overwhelmed by shop after shop now littered with cheap, copies probably made overseas. Many of the jewelry stores are now full of imitation turquoise set in chrome with an occasional genuine piece mixed in among dozens of frauds. A discerning eye will know but a tourist will be made a fool. The Native American Indians are dwindling among the vendors and in their place, dark haired, dark skinned imitators with accents obvious to someone who has lived many years among the Iranians and Iraqi’s of metropolitan Los Angeles. I walked in one “jewelry gallery” boasting “Native American Jewelry” on their front sign. A middle aged woman in braids at a table with a strand of imitation turquoise (resin) beads straight from the importer – still on the fishing line. She picked up the strand as we walked in and pretended to be crafting the piece herself, simultaneously greeting us, “Allooo. Welkom. I make all jewelry myself. Many good prices.” Zuni designs mocked up in chrome and plastic with turquoise and silver price tags. Shop after shop after shop a similar story. A few genuine old stores remained and I dare say that each and every one of them had a sign hanging in the window “Store for Sale – Building, Fixtures, Stock”.

The fraud of what it seems to be becoming is an atrocity, and the loss of what it once was is a priceless abomination. Not just a loss of art, culture, livelihood, tourism – but the genuine loss of history. Of knowledge and craftsmanship passed down from generation to generation. As this very thought is forming itself into a comprehendable sentence from my lips, we slip into what was once one of the most well known art galleries in the region. It is now a cheap, mall-type clothing store with over priced prices and imported from China quality. My heart drops and I suddenly realize I no longer want to live here. It is akin to visiting your family crypt only to find it’s been turned into a Dollar Store. We walked a mile to our car in stunned silence and all I could think of on the drive home is where do I want to go from here? And as crazy as that may sound to everyone with a permanent address – I’ll let you know where the next stop is when I get there but right now my heart is truly broken and my restless spirit feels the need to roam.

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CRAP!.......No Wonder..........

2011-03-09T05:06:00.000-08:00

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I happened across this video posted on one of my favorite blog's - Finest Kind Clinic and Fish Blog and found myself both relieved and overwhelmed. The facts put my state of being into perspective. I'm EXHAUSTED.......ppppffffffffffttttt........ and I don't see any end in sight, and I know I'm not the only one.

If you've been following me and my rambling self for the past few years that this blog has been around then we probably last caught up in San Diego at Pacific Beach where I spent a few months last year dreaming of the sand and sun right out my front door and being tormented and assaulted by Surfer Dude's. Six months of my life I'll never get back - proof that sometimes paradise isn't what it's cracked up to be.

The weekend before Thanksgiving last year we packed up everything that would fit in my mom's little gray Saturn. My car wouldn't pass emissions in California and the three year old tags from Tennessee were becoming more and more conspicuous so I sold it to a man who took it across the border and sold it again in Mexico where emissions aren't considered a crippling ailment. All of the expensive kitchen equipment fit in the trunk. The lawn chairs in our living room had seen better days so we were happy to leave them behind. The new beds and mattresses we just would have to not let ourselves look back. There was no way to move them and no way to recover the expense. The big, flat screen tv tucked nicely in the back seat with two duffle bags full of whatever we could pack to wear, on top of floor to ceiling kitty condo that thankfully breaks down into little pieces that we carefully labeled and taped all the screws and bolts to for reassembly, blankets folded neatly on top of it all and a kitty litter box and two kitties that were has happy to leave San Diego as we were squeezed nearly to the roof of the car. I'm not sure what exactly was packed under my feet. Oh!? It may have been my printer and our two laptop computers. I think it was. My feet were on the dash, my knees against my boobs all the way to Albuquerque, NM (roughly 1,500 miles). We were each sitting on top of our coat. Albuquerque is in the mountains of New Mexico and that time of year we would expect cold weather and possibly snow. We weren't disappointed.

It was a three day trip - first day to Phoenix, Arizona; second to Gallup, New Mexico, and third into Albuquerque. We left with $800 and no place to land. As it happened, it all worked out. Go figure. After settling into a truly filthy but formerly (maybe 40 years prior) nice apartment we were penniless, gasless, and jobless, but we did have a roof plus a 20 pound bag of pinto beans and another 20 pound bag of jasmine rice, and cat food. I'm not certain now what we opted not to pack in lieu of the dry goods but experience has taught me some valuable lessons.

We moved into the apartment on a Friday night and by Tusday I had a job interview lined up for the next day. On Friday I had a bookkeeping job. Bonnie, my mom, had one just a few days later. No gas to get there though. hmmm...... Ironically, my horoscope had said that that month I would find myself pushing boundaries I had never pushed to accomplish things I needed to accomplish. That's always interesting! And so I did. We pawned our laptop computers for $100 each for gas and food. And yes, we got them out of hock two weeks later. Having never even entered a pawn shop before I had indeed crossed a boundary. I have always been raised in that Southern way of thinking that pawn shops are synonymous with bars - places ladies to don't enter at all, or at the very least not unescorted. It's funny now - the gentlemen that ran the place very nice and extremely professional.

We had gotten into the apartment by similar means. Bonnie gambled for a title loan on her car and then cleverly negotiated with the complex management for a cheaper deposit to let them out of doing a thorough clean. We rented it sight unseen so that was a somewhat regrettable choice when we saw it but I will say it beat any other alternatives that we clearly didn't have. We had gone to a Chinese food restaurant the night we signed the lease to celebrate. Bonnie pulled the car into a parking space and when she tried to shut off the ignition it was locked down. Nothing would remove the key or turn the ignition switch in any direction. After far too much fiddling and fumbling with it ourselves we caved and called a lock smith, and then another, and another, and another..... $600, $550, $450....it wasn't sounding any better. Our celebratory dinner quickly became a long night in a cold parking lot with a locksmith draining our every last dime. Which led us to pawning our computers a couple of days later to have enough gas to get to the interview for the job. Funny how life has a way of working itself out but never the way you want it to.

My dad's job had moved us constantly when I was a kid but not the kind of moving my mom and I have done over the years since. In those days, a semi truck, usually a green and yellow Mayflower, would pull in front of the house and out would come a crew of men in coveralls loaded with stacks of cardboard that would become boxes, felted blankets and cottony, industrial quilts, clip boards, and stickers with numbers on them. Like a well choreographed ballet they would disperse into different areas of the house and start labeling each piece of furniture, wrapping dishes, magically turning cardboard sheets into neatly stacked boxes that were tiered onto wheeled trolley's and wheeled up the ramp and into the truck. Bonnie ran her own ballet in the midst of that of the moving men. She would cleverly orchestrate meals of sandwiches and sweet iced tea, handed to me on trays and delivered one by one through the house and eventually into the driveway where the men would take breaks timed to the flow from the kitchen.

The last of these many moves I was eleven, by the time I was twelve we had begun the new cycle of post divorce moves - just my Bonnie Mommie and me. The first one came with help from various family members. The kind of people that come out of the woodwork when they think a fat divorce settlement might be on the horizon. Funny how those people dry up and disappear when the dust that settles isn't the gold they were hoping for. Bonnie still thinks of that move as the worst mistake of her life. If I believed in mistakes I might agree with her. It was an emotional choice from an emotional woman who after 19 years of marriage didn't believe she would ever be divorced - running back to a familiar place. What no one tells you is that 19 years later, nothing is familiar anymore. People forget you. Even family. What people don't tell you about divorce is that it's like a death - not just for the couple but maybe even more so for the kids. It's the death of your entire family and it's a grief that never finds comfort. And maybe it is that loss of comfort that makes a restless spirit roam....

It would be seven years before we could leave that place that she had moved us - Nowhere, New Mexico. Clovis, New Mexico, actually. Five hours from the nearest airport. Not even a Wal-Mart in town until my senior year in high school. We would have both moved anywhere else once the divorce had settled but I had found myself unexpectedly in the 49th ranked school system in the US. To move anywhere else would mean repeating a grade and it wasn't a sacrifice I was prepared to make. In hindsight, that was a mistake but try telling a miserable, unhappy, twelve year old they need to spend yet another year in junior high. Seven years later and I had graduated high school with no financial prospects at all for getting through college, and suddenly aware that we were at least 20 years behind in technology, and working for waitress minimum wage plus tips. I think all of my closest friends going off to college and me being abruptly left in their dust hit me like a runaway train. Suddenly, everything I didn't have to offer towards my own life came crashing into perspective and bit by bit our lives would unravel over the course of the next year the bulk of which impacted in a single week - our house was burned, my mother lost a business, my grandfather died, and the day after our house burned I pulled out of the driveway in my mom's car with her in the passenger seat, just as a car came barreling down our residential street at 60 mph. She hit us with such an impact that our vehicle rolled from the street in front of our driveway, across our property, across the intersection, and was stopped by a huge, old oak tree in our neighbors yard on the next block. The girl that hit us was a teenager with a driving record miles long. I had known her by reputation and was aware that she had had so many accidents that her parents installed a roll bar bumper on her car because of it. The judge was aware of this too and promptly threw out any judgment toward me in the accident. Because however, New Mexico had a law on the books since 1921 that "anyone coming from the right in a traffic accident is innocent" - our insurance company would bear all financial responsibility. As it turned out, our insurance had expired the day prior. What resulted was a ridiculous financial liability suit against us that the judge vehemently denounced but was forced to uphold - we had to pay and we BOTH (because I was driving the car & my mom owned it) lost our driver's licenses for 14 years. Let me say emphatically - there was no alcohol or drugs involved by any party nor was it ever alleged. Nor was anyone injured other than me. And we both lost our driver's licenses for 14 years.

Funny, how when your life is in one of those stages that everything is completely unraveling beyond any control, pieces are also falling into place in ways you may have never imagined. This was happening that year too. Our sculpture had been picked up in galleries in Santa Fe, Taos, Albuquerque, Las Cruces. We had been featured in "The Collector's Art Guide" and I was the youngest artist to have ever been featured by them. We even had museums picking up our work both for exhibition and for retail sale. We had done all of this in our spare time, between waitressing and running the day care center my mom had bought just after my graduation with the expectation of earning enough income to send me to college.

Left with a burned out shell of a house, no money, no way to work, and no way to drive we did the only thing we could do. We left. My uncle had parked an ugly old, 1965, red faded to orange, Chevy Bonanza pick up in our front yard because he didn't want to sell it and his wife thought their house was too hoity toity to have it parked in front of. It had been there for a couple of years and no one ever drove it except on occasional Saturday's to garage sales and to keep the engine running. We bought a camper for it, and had the biggest fight we'd ever had with each other loading it. We were going to sell arts and crafts to make some money but I was getting the hell out of that place. We were at our storage building in dresses and high heels - loading up merchandise to sell. I would pack the sewing machine and Bonnie would unpack it. I would pack supplies to re-group with and she would unpack them. I would put the sewing machine back in - she took it out. We had a screaming, cursing, Joan Collins vs. Linda Evans showdown that day. With time running out, I wore her down and she conceded that we could pack "whatever" but it was all coming back that night - and on a 1/16 of a tank of gas, 36-cents, and two donuts from the Motel 6 on the highway that we had been staying in since our house burned, we left. And we left for good! Armed with a graduation gift from my Senior High School British Literature teacher, a list of "the 100 books everyone should read before college or before they die" - bit by bit I would try to hold my educational ground by tearing away at that list book by book.

The likelihood that we would have made it back home from across the street was slim to none but we made it to a town 40 miles or so away and as luck would have it, the one woman, who owned the one gift shop in town, bought everything we had. We filled up our tank and kept trucking to Amarillo, Texas and rented a week in a fancy motel with an indoor pool, cable tv, and room service where we celebrated, swam, watched movies, and cut and sewed more crafts for a week and we just kept going and going and going for over a year.

By the time we landed in Stillwater, Oklahoma 14 months later we had 48 loads of laundry. We had sewn a new outfit almost every day of that trip. We had gone to Oklahoma because my cousin, my mom's niece, had told us that her husband was beating her black and blue and she needed us to come and help her take c.are of her three young children while she sorted through a divorce. Suckers for doing a good deed we drove there and rented an apartment at the swankiest place in town - it surrounded a small, private lake with exotic fish and pedal boats. We had developed a small mail order following by then and we knew that financially we could do nothing for 6 months or so while she sorted out things with her family. Turns out, the whole story was a rouse. She wasn't getting a divorce. She and her husband lived separately because they were cheating the system to qualify for a low income home loan. She did need a baby sitter pretty frequently but only because she was having an affair with someone 15 years younger who ironically, lived in the same apartment complex as us. When we confronted her about all of this, she turned us into the police for driving with suspended license and Bonnie was arrested. We were stuck fro 4-1/2 more years there. Our wholesale business shriveled up and died in months (there was no internet back then). Four miles from town and no public transportation, there were no options for work. Bit by bit we literlaly starved down to 82 pounds. We did what we could. We hung signs in the laundry and took in ironing for $1/piece and cleaned apartments when we could get the work. Bonnie had applied to work in the apartment office, she had been a realtor in two states and had 30 years bookkeeping experience, they offered her a job picking up trash. We took turns with that because we had one pair of tennis shoes between us. Finally the apartment manager noticed our weight loss and found out how to get food stmaps for us. Gradually we got more work with the complex cleaning apartments and hanging wallpaper. We had tried to pay off the judgment over the years but what started out $4,000 became $9,000, then $14,000, then $32,000. They would never accept any sort of payment arrangements and had no pity on the fact that we couldn't work if we couldn't drive. Years into this and we would find that the judgment itself had been sold to an individual who remained nameless. We were off of the food stamps in 3 months, and after 4-1/2 years of saving we had enough money to make a down payment on a car. We didn't get to pick it out. We called a dealer in Oklahoma City and told them how much moeny we had and that if they could bring whatever that would buy to us we would take it. We had a deal. The next morning a salesman showed up at our door with the ugliest green, Toyota Tercel ever made and a contract to sign. Still no license.

We made crafts. We made TONS of inexpensive, affordable crafts. The kind of thing that was a sure thing to sell in any tourist trap in Anywhere but there USA. Then, in the middle of the night one night, we loaded a sewing machine behind my seat, and two changes of clothes each, and packed our bounty and in every nook and cranny that tiny car would spare - and then we drove he hell out of there leaving everything else behind. A house fully furnished with all of the stuff that remained of our life when the Mayflower Truck magically appeared to ferry us from place to place with it's band of well orchestrates elves.

We went back to Texas to continue our former route of sewing and selling prior to our derailment in Oklahoma. We went there because it was familiar and because it had been successful for us. We went there because we reasoned that in Texas the police would be too polite to arrest a lady for driving without a license. And when we wore Texas out, we kept going ......nearly 200,000 miles and 38 states to the East coast and all the way back west as far as Wyoming and Colorado, before I got homesick for my Omaha childhood once again. we were in Colorado anyway so why not pop over for my 25th birthday. I cried for days when we entered the city. Sobbed inconsolably. I think that's the first moment of consciousness I had about divorce being akin to death. We stayed there for another 4-1/2 years before heading west in that same Toyota Tercel, Los Angeles boundand if you've read any of this blog the past few years, you know much of the rest of this story from here.

While in Omaha, we did scrape together a little bit of money that we took to a lawyer and told him the story of our driver's license. We had stumbled unwittingly into the new attorney's office of a former NYC police officer. He listened to our story, looked over the legal documents we had brought with us from the District Attorney in New Mexico that had spearheaded this rouse against us. He didn't utter a sound. We had come to ask if the money we had would be enough to pay his fees to try once again to make payment arrangements with them. I was 27 then so we had been 7 years without a license and 7 years yet to go. Still not a sound from his mouth when he picked up the telephone and began dialing. He got the man on the phone, gave him our names and our case number, introduced himself, and said, "I have one word for you Mr. _______, EXTORTION!" Within minutes a fax came through stating that the judgment was released effective immediately. The attorney that did all of this didn't charge us a dime. I quite literally, and I mean literally, knelt to the floor and kissed his feet. Sometimes you find goodness in the least likely of places. "Free at last! Free at last! Lawz has Mercy, we'z free at last!" we shouted and sang all the way home!

We had a moment there to make a choice. We could afford a new sewing machine or a new computer. Sewing had been our way out. Without a sewing machine we would have never made it out of Clovis in that old, red pick-up truck. And the sewing machine we had at that moment was 25 years old. My dad had fixed the motor on it before the divorce by replacing it with the motor from a saw. Bonnie had been sewing with it for a few years now with the tension attached with a piece of chewing gum. We needed a sewing machine. We needed a computer too. We had never owned one and work opportunities were fewer and fewer without the advantage of knowing how to use one. We were already on the cusp of Y2K and Al Gore was all over the news talking about "the internet super highway". Ultimately though, the sewing machine seemed the more practical investment and the computer would have to wait until long we arrived in California.

We left for California in March of 2000 with the Bernina packed in the back seat. In typical fashion, we were 25-bucking our way across the USA. It took us nearly four months to get from Omaha, Nebraska to Azusa, California - just outside of Los Angeles. We left in March and arrived on July 4. It was December 23, 2001 before we could afford our first apartment. It was 2004 when we finally were able to invest in computers. I feverishly scoured the Dell catalogues that came in the mail every month and read everything I could to explain gigabytes and RAM, Memory and modems, drives, etc.... and finally we bought two of the very best we could afford plus all of the online training I could find to buy with them. Luckily, life in California was peppered with frequent bits of paid unemployment that we used to plow into all of the online classes we had arranged.

We had known for years that we had a gap to jump. It had often felt like we were together on one of two, towering cliffs that were separated by a vast canyon. We were conscious of needing technology, education, employment, knowledge and more knowledge, to jump that divide - just to survive and keep a roof over our heads and our heads above water. And finally, when we got all that we were after, all that seemed it might give us a fighting chance, it's not enough. I don't mean I want more. I don't have a damn thing and that's not really a problem with me. But it's not enough, in that it's not enough to survive............and that video at the beginning of all of this, "Did You Know?". It completely validates everything I feel about my life and I can't seem to fix.

Is it possible that there is a point that, the fight is no longer worth all the fight?

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Catfish the Movie

2011-02-18T23:42:00.000-08:00

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I rented this documentary film from Red Box today and the many messages from it have been reeling through my head all day. I first learned of "Catfish" from a Blogger & FaceBook friend, Marion, who knew something of it before it premiered. Her anticipation was contagious and I've been awaiting my chance to see it ever since although I had no idea at all what the film was about. I tend to love documentaries and her recommendation was more than enough to pique my interest. WOW! WOW?

Initially I was thinking, what sort of crazy mother would expose her eight year old child to a strange man in New York City, and ultimately open up the intimacies of her entire family to complete strangers. But if you haven't seen it, it's NOT that kind of film at all. And I'm sure from me, that sounds like the pot calling the kettle black - every stumble and bumble of my life posted on the internet for all the world to experience first hand. Well, that's not exactly true: the intimate things that might cause harm to people are never posted and I don't have children in my life but if I did, strangers wouldn't know their address, the name of their school, or have access to photos and intimate details of their whereabouts and their day. I feel certain in saying that much. But just as I'm almost reeling from what appears to the the careless exposure of a child the world I am witnessing morphs into something entirely different and I realize that we all at times must question how we portray what we experience as life; and how others do the same. How much the state of mind affects the state of being. And how ultimately, "there are those people who are catfish in life. And they keep you on your toes. They keep you guessing, they keep you thinking, they keep you fresh. And I thank god for the catfish because we would be droll, boring and dull if we didn’t have somebody nipping at our fin."

I had this grandmother who was a manic depressive. Her life ended long before Prozac and she was far too rural to indulge in therapy. She married too young, too poor, and too abused so to cope she lived her life vicariously through soap box operas, as they were known in the days of radio - and she followed them onto black and white television and eventually color. As her children grew up and married and had families of their own, they bought her gifts of all the beautiful things women of her generation dreamed of: Carnival Glass, China, Crystal... all of which she kept meticulously wrapped in the original cartons so that she could unveil them in the appropriate mansion that she would one day own. She never owned the mansion and she died with most of her treasures gleaming under dust covered, moth eaten boxes. She rarely left the house but when she did, no doubt her conversation was about her "grand life"....and I think the life she lived in her head really was quite grand. The only way she had to cope with having made life long decisions too young. Not unlike Angela, in the film.

We've all done it to some degree, haven't we? Made up a story about a birthday or a holiday that didn't really come off so well, or just a time in our lives that was less perfect than we wanted the world to know. At this point in my life I think I've effectively mastered the art of imperfection but Heaven knows I've had my moments in the hall of shame.

And while it's easy to focus on the films main deceptor, the forgiveness of the filmmakers and the duped "Nev" himself twist the mind once more. I'm not sure I would be so forgiving. I said this aloud and my mom who knows me better than anyone answered, "I KNOW you WOULDN'T". While I admire them, she's right. Forgiveness at this level wouldn't have been my first reaction.

She's wicked that Angela (not me. The Angela in the film), yet she's so pathetically sad and sainted all the same. I've known women like her and have been to polite to say it but I have wondered what was going on in their crazy little heads. You know the ones I'm talking about: married the man with a truck load of child support, burdensome children. A man who doesn't work regularly or does so in such a way as to not contribute financially. I know a woman who did all of this, and married the guy knowing that on top of the child support and alimony, he was into the IRS for thousand$$ - part of which she cashed in her own IRA to pay towards his debt when she had a mortgage of her own. Now he doesn't work because (his excuse) he still owes the IRS and they'll garnish anything he makes. So she's working three jobs to pay off his back taxes and support the entire tribe. And how many women do I know that got a house either in a divorce or in an inheritance and had a proposal the same day. YIKES!, I say. Yet they dive right in anyway and then they wonder how they became overweight and depressed but not until they're in way past the point of no return. Then again, about love and marriage, I have always been too much of an accountant and too poor, plus too little of a romantic to believe the the hype.

Angela's husband, you want to say, "Oh God bless him for not being angry with her" but then again, she's been changing his adult, mentally retarded twins diapers for a decade now. What could he possibly be pissed off at her about? The entire town had a cloud of misery and depression over it but their home awash in filth and despair and the little bit of hope that peeked through was a colorful lie of a lie of a life. WOW? WOW!

And then Abby, the sweet little eight year old girl.......she was real after all. And thank goodness these guys in NYC that her mom had baited with her were genuinely good guys and not perverts or pedophiles because the only truths they were told were everything you wouldn't want a stranger to know about your child.

What is truly gripping though, despite the many deceptions, is how familiar this families' existence is. If not truly personal, I see snippets of their story in people I know from former schoolmates & co-workers to extended family and neighbors. They lives we all present vs. the lives we really live. I remember going to visit a childhood friend a couple of years ago. I hadn't seen her since grade school but we had been pen pals and phone friends since we were ten. I had to reorganize my head when I walked in her house and met her family for the first time. In her many calls and letters, she had mentioned the dogs but not the dog shit all over the house. The pretty, perfect teenage daughter but not the teenage pregnancy or high school drop out, drug addicted husband. Home schooling her youngest but not that Netflix was almost the entirety of his curriculum. And in spite of the many unpleasant things she had said about her husband, he turned out to be a really nice guy. Of course, with our friends and family that we hold so dear, we know where it stems from and we don't have to question why they cope the way they do.

Twenty years ago, my mother began having flash backs of sexual abuse she had experienced as a child - sold into child prostitution at the age of three and raped repeatedly until the age of twelve. For many years I had a first hand account of how the mind will play tricks on us to help us escape incomprehensible pain and suffering. At some point though, we all have to trick ourselves into facing our own truths, and working through the realities that are our own.

I don't generally write film reviews but Catfish is a keeper!

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It's a Windey Little Road, This Life...

2010-11-16T23:16:00.000-08:00

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Every time I move somewhere I think, I wonder if I gave as much as I got from the last place I lived. I think I became conscious of this in my very Central American L.A. neighborhood that had such poverty yet such generosity. Even then though, I looked back on the many other placed I had lived and wondered this same thing in retrospect, all the way back through my childhood. Not every stop holds the same answer but it's a comforting barometer of thought now. A way of keeping myself in check.

We moved to San Diego earlier this year, Easter Sunday in fact, on four free hotel coupons acquired over a disastrous Christmas holiday last year. By disastrous I mean, it snowed like Christmas in a city entirely unprepared for it and the hotel grossly inconvenienced us by not being prepared. Okay, I had an excusably explosive episode in their lobby when the automatic door locks conveniently locked me out in a blizzard just after I had unloaded my kitties, my Christmas goodies, and my purse and my winter coat and my cell phone on the other side of the locked door when the batteries to the door lock failed. My wrath was actually provoked by the office staff that refused to send someone to me and instead had me walk in my slippers and the frozen snow across the entire property and back four times before they sent someone to let me in. I'm just saying, I earned those free hotel coupons.

My mom, Bonnie, and I amused ourselves only briefly with the possibilities of places we might travel on the four free hotel vouchers that came our way as apology from hotel management. We know all too well by now that when things like this land out of the blue, they are more often than not, rescue helicopters sent from Heaven. "What on Earth will we be getting ourselves into now?", we wondered aloud.

By Easter our question would be answered. For years my mom had solicited employment as an apartment manager in California but she only wanted a beach apartment. Let me preface this by saying that she managed a 400+ unit luxury complex for nearly five years, she's had a 50 year accounting career, held real estate licenses in multiple states, and completed fire / casualty / professional liability insurance certification. Even with that, the opportunity to manage a beach apartment complex was remote. She is persistent, I will give her that.

So, low and behold, two years after leaving California after ten years of living there and persisting in this mission of hers, we get a phone call entirely out of the blue. Would you like to manage a small apartment complex a block from the beach in upscale San Diego. Thank goodness for those hotel vouchers. We began loading both of our cars that night and drove from Dallas two days later. Two extremely long days of driving - Dallas to El Paso on day one and El Paso to San Diego on Day two.

My car still had the Tennessee license plates that had expired two years earlier. I knew we would be driving through border patrol check stations along the way. Lucky for me they didn't care about my expired tags and were trying too hard to contain their laughter at my two kitty cats riding shot gun on the dashboard.

We arrived in San Diego on Easter Sunday, driving in just a couple of hours before the 8.0 earthquake struck in Mexico. We didn't feel it, as one often doesn't when driving in a desert area, but we did hear about it along the way when we had stopped for gas. When I thought we were just an hour or so away from our destination long past midnight, we opted to continue when we unexpectedly found ourselves in Devil's Canyon in fog too heavy to have any visibility at all. It was nearly daylight when we finally found our hotel. We would use the third voucher for an extra night's sleep and postpone our Monday interview until Tuesday - fourth voucher. The kitties had to have a place to stay while we interviewed and we had to unload at least the passenger seat of one car somewhere - the hotel was as good a place as any. I'm sure they wondered what was going on when we wheel a vacuum cleaner and boxes up on the luggage valet but they didn't ask.

Well, it's been six months here now and I'm asking myself my constant question - have we given as much as we've received? I never want to get more than I gave but I want a lot so that means I need to give more. We got the job, obviously. It's a small, twelve unit, complex which means it's a discounted apartment but not a salary. We weren't after a salary and we didn't want a big complex to manage so it was ideal. Actually, the fact that it's across the street from the beach makes it ideal. But we do have to work too and since we're new in town again on bookkeeping that means we have to find other sources of income so we've fallen back on what else we know - sales and not-for-profit theatre fundraising.

We had persistently worked fundraising campaigns for all of the not-for-profit theatres in Los Angeles during the ten years that we were there - The Geffen Playhouse, The Freud, Reprise!! Broadway's Best, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Hollywood Bowl, the Pasadena Playhouse......to name a few. We sought sought out the theatres here in San Diego right away - first the La Jolla Playhouse, who promptly shut down our department when they were sued by an employee just days after we began. Later we met with the staff of the Starlight Theatre in San Diego's famous and historic Balboa Park. The legendary outdoor venue had fallen on hard times and had quit actively fundraising they way they needed to to function properly. They couldn't afford us but we met with their marketing director and worked something out with them that they could afford - if we couldn't raise money for them they didn't have to pay us a dime. We had to perform and they couldn't lose for letting us try. They did!

I will say, it was the hardest theatre fundraising campaign I have ever worked due almost exclusively to the state of neglect the venue had fallen into. Regardless, we encouraged single ticket buyers to support the theatre by subscribing, and encouraged subscribers to support the venue with donations. My proudest achievement was orchestrating a donor endowment that invited Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts of America and their chaperones to the theatre free of charge.

The idea came to me during a conversation with a woman who tried to bring her children down once a year. She told me the sweetest story of how she met the man who became her husband when he was an Eagle Scout, how her children were in Boy Scouts and Daisy Scouts, and how much Scouting and the arts meant to their family. She told me that every year she and her husband presented to their children the things they had the opportunity to support as a family. They had decided they wanted to support the Starlight Theatre but they weren't exactly certain how. I presented to the Marketing Director, my idea for including reaching out the local Boy and Girl Scouts through a donation the family would provide in support of the theatre. As a result, 500 Scouts will enjoy performances from the family's initial donation and the program is designed to grow and reach out to more Scouts and interest arises.

In my many years of working for theatres, I know that if you ever ask a person what their very first experience with live theatre was, they always have a story. There is nothing that compares to the experience of a live performance and what that inspires in the mind for years to come.

Theatre influences the stories and books you seek to read, the cultures you choose to explore, the music that makes your heart sing. It draws you into places you didn't know existed and like any worthwhile addiction, it seduces you into coming back for more.

While that particular fundraising gig far from kept the lights on and food on the table, I know that I accomplished something important and worthwhile there so it's all good.

As for this apartment complex, the day we looked it over and accepted the responsibility he said, "It's pretty easy that's why it doesn't pay anything - collect the rent, sweep the courtyard, it pretty much takes care of itself." Ah hem????

Not exactly. In the past six months we've evicted at least two known hookers and four known drug dealers without any police help or intervention at all. Apparently the police have given up on anything in this beach area that doesn't involve a dead body or a deadly weapon - drugs are really irrelevant. They are a way of life here like nothing I've ever seen. What has changed in California in the two years that we've been away is that medical marijuana stores have popped up, quite literally, on every block. And while the 400 unit complex we managed years ago was populated with 400 college kids and four acre lake, it had nothing on the twelve units of drug dealing, trick turing, surfer dudes and dudettes that we stumbled into here.

Our first task was to evict a drug dealer and his two hooker girlfriends. Little did we know that he was only one drug dealer who had apparently stepped in on another drug dealing tenants turf - or so it seems. The thing about an eviction is that, well, first you need to know the name of the person you're evicting. The guy moved in without paperwork long before we ever got here so that was a minor problem. The other thing about an eviction is, it takes 90 days or so - every day of which we were cursed at, screamed at, had food and urine thrown at us and the exterior of our apartment. This creep would actually stand outside my bedroom window and beat his fists on the window screaming obscenities. No. The police didn't bother to show up. On the other end of this we had a management company telling us we had to get police report file numbers to add to our case for eviction. If the police won't show up, there is no file number. We learned all of this as we went which only fueled our vulnerability and lack of credibility with the people we've been fighting.

Another apartment full of drug dealing tenants mimicked this guy's behavior and added to it by throwing a bicycle down an exterior stairway and on their way out of here, peeing all over the walls of their apartment.

For weeks that turned into months we picked up trash bags full of home made beer can bongs, beer cans, cigarette butts, broken glass - every day. We've endured daily and nightly threats and cursing. We've evicted three apartments, overseen the renovation of all of them plus four others - mostly tenants that left of their own accord because we were too much of a thorn in their unseemly business. We negotiated contracts with vendors to install new, functioning washers and dryers. We began replacing stoves that were installed in 1952 and have become hazardous - something we realized when the repairman set off the smoke alarm after igniting his own arm while trying to light a stove burner that was a relic. We've battled with the landscapers to actually landscape something here the two times a month they send us invoices but don't bother to show up. They finally trimmed trees that were last trimmed eight years ago. And in the effort we've initiated effective screening methods for prospective new tenants, insisted on one year leases, and raised the rents 20% on newly leased apartments. We've also restored the paperwork and files to a proper state. All of this for a $300 a month discount on our rent. Yep, I think we've given more than we've got.

I guess the moral of this tale is, always take new roads just to see where they lead and know when the water's over your head you can always take another. Oh!....and......be careful what you wish for.

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2010-10-16T10:39:00.000-07:00

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When my mom & I first moved to Los Angeles in 2000 we would spend hours driving aimlessly around the city looking for a place to live. In those days I had dreams of becoming the next Audrey Hepburn and everyone told us we had to move to West L.A., specifically Santa Monica or somewhere very close. Driving through the neighborhoods of Santa Monica & Venice, my mom kept repeating, "Where are the nice neighborhoods? These houses all look like the houses on South Lea. It couldn't be safe here." South Lea was the street she had lived on as a child in a tiny New Mexico town.

South Lea was the wrong side of the tracks - old craftsman, or just cinder block and stucco houses with dirt yards, guard dogs chained to the porch, and not all of them had running water or indoor toilets. She was right, West L.A. did look like a cleaned up version of South Lea but we would soon find out these were million and million-plus dollar homes. Severely out of our price range.

An innocent trip to a local oil change shop and our dependable Toyota Tercel died a sad death. We would later find out that it had fallen victim to an L.A. gang that targeted working in oil change stations and ran water through the engine, the car will suddenly no longer go uphill, or even ascend the slightest of inclines. That's how we wound up living in the Baldwin "crackwhore" Motel for nearly an entire year.

The gangs would then use the contact information the car owner had provided to carjack the cars, rob the owners, you name it. It should have turned out in our favor that none of that information we had to give them was valid but they did actually return to steal it a few nights later - although their plan was foiled and we wound up donating it to a local charity instead. It was here that we learned to navigate the city by Metro and my mother's innocent questions about housing continued. "Where have all the white people gone?"

It wasn't a racist question. It was a question of overwhelmed curiosity and not just about this small area of the city. Just a few short years before, we had been 38 states in 19 months of endless roadtripping. Given the mobility of our lives for many, many years before we had had an up close and personal view of the population of the entire country and it had indeed changed. What she was saying was, "where are all the people who look like me and share my ideology?" A reasonable question, and we debated the possible answers. Maybe they had all been wandering aimlessly like us for the same time period. Maybe they didn't have neighborhoods and houses any more either. Mostly, we were too busy working too many jobs to get ourselves out of this mess to research it beyond our own private conversations. Also, in those days, we didn't have benefit of the internet since it would be another four years before we owned our first computers.

If the landscape had not changed, the peoplescape had. We eventually moved to what would become my most beloved address,

an apartment in the most populated and third most crime ridden area of the city. An entirely South American neighborhood where nobody looked like us and few spoke English - none as a first language. We were embraced and we found a sort of peace among this neighborhood that we had never known.

Walking down the sidewalk on any ordinary day, any random man might reach out and sweep you into a spontaneous salsa while music played from a street musician or radio someone just happened to have handy. Coming home from the subway station with a major purchase, a television, a parade of neighbors we didn't know honked their horns, chanted and cheered "good job!", "way to go!" "YAY! You got a TV!" What the neighborhood lacked in luster it more than made up for spirit. Kindness was a commodity.

Even years later our question still lingered, "where are all the people who are like us?" The people who used to live in suburban neighborhoods, that were home room mothers, CCD teachers, Brownie and Scout Leaders, women who sewed their own clothes, read real books, baked their own bread, invited the neighbors over for BBQ and Tupperware parites - where had we gone? We did all of these things but we've often been labeled freaks for it. I don't think either of us could count on one hand the clothes we've ever owned that we didn't also sew.

While in our trendy, West L.A. jobs we were admired for them just mention to someone that you made it and you're instantly met with a sneer and a disappointed, "oh? It's homemade" - as in relative to puke. Really what they mean is, it looks like the $2,500 dollar dress in the window at Barney's but if you can't afford the $2,500 dollar dress in the window at Barney's I don't want to waste my time being civil to you so I'll sneer instead. I could lie, but I'd rather not waste my time with such shallowness so I'll refrain. I could blame it on materialistic Los Angeles but I've had the same condescending conversations in no-name places like Stillwater, Oklahoma and Lubbock, TX. And if that is any example then the answer to my mother's question is that we've all, except a select few of us, become shallow and petty. We hoped not and so we still held that maybe there was just a secret location somewhere that the rest of us had disappeared to.

Hollywood - as in color television and high definition film, it changed our perception of what is possible in life. I'm no exception. I watched shows like "Friends" & "Sex In the City" and believed that if I moved to a city and found an apartment, decorated it very cool, and made some nice clothes, I would have some "friends". Friends and cities are an unlikely mix. I read a magazine article once about the number of young people who wound up in New York believing that they could work in a coffee shop and make enough money to have a 2 bedroom Manhattan apartment like Monica Gellar's which is about as likely as putting on a leotard and thinking you can fly to space like the voagers of Star Trek. The point being, we've lost our sense of reality. I was reading an article on Americans moving to Costa Rica. The author pointed out that American women who move there often feel intimidated by the "sexy" locals - like they can't compete. He went on to warn American women that the Costa Rican men say that American women are more likely to have sex with them. The Costa Rican women make them wait. It's yet another example of how we over identify with the 30 minute television romances and try to project the fantasy of a fictional life into our own reality.

The lower spectrum of this is the overwhelming number of young adults (of course the age range is not limited to "young" adults) who mimic every foolish stunt that the flavor of the day young Hollywood crowd lands themselves in the tabloids for. Living now in the trendy Pacific Beach neighborhood of San Diego I have the misfortune of seeing it played out before me multiple times every day. Twenty and thirty-somethings leaving the beach bars in the wee hours of the morning, so loaded with the combustive cocktails of alcohol laced with narcotics that they couldn't possibly know they are doing donuts on a bicycle over five lanes of traffic, or that they're skateboarding the wrong way into oncoming traffic. The lucky ones pass out in our neighbor's yards. The less fortunate probably landed mysteriously on the other end of the broken liquor bottles and torn panties we frequently find in the alley. These days, I am landlord to a small fraction of these "kids" - my mom and I, that is. We are not liked. There has been no friendly welcome into this neighborhood. We evict them. We insist their parents sign the lease. We call their parents. Occasionally, their parents cut off their trust funds. In many cases though, the apples don't fall far from the tree. If it weren't for the beautiful Pacific Ocean & sandy beaches for my front yard though, I would really hate this place. People, make all the difference.

The question comes back to us, we've pinpointed populations of assholes, now where did all the "nice" white people go? of assholes. Again, this is not intended as a racist question. It's an observation on the changing landscape and changing ideology of a population of people in the course of a three or more decades. And the fact that I feel the need to explain this is a galling revelation of our ever growing pride for our ever growing ignorance. I remember a time before it was illegal or politically incorrect, when my first grade teacher asked everyone in the class, "What nationality are you?" After school, when I was giving my mom the rundown of my day she replied, "And what did you say?"

"I told her my mommy is an Indian and my daddy is a white man." A fact I had wittingly absorbed from hearing that my great grandmother (who had recently died) was Cherokee and raised in Indian Territory, combined with my own assertion that my parents were Sonny & Cher from television - something I truly believed. I had just seen Cher perform "Half Breed" dressed in an Indian head dress. Therefore, to my 5 year old mind, my mommy was an Indian and my daddy was a white man............I digress.

I've been searching the internet lately about this subject. Actually I've been on this quest for a few years now and apparently I'm not the only one. I had first heard the word expatriate when I was a little girl in the mid-1970's. Something political had happened involving an expatriate and the word itself fell as a crime. When I asked my parents what it meant - it meant you didn't love your country, akin to foresaking God. It was a really, really bad thing so I put it on my "NOT to do" list.

As it turns out, in the past ten years, more Americans than ever are looking to their genealogy to gain dual citizenship in European Union countries. It seems for most of them, if you have any grandparent born in a European Union country you can start the process. The reward is not entirely giving up your U.S. citizenship, yet having the opportunity to live and travel anywhere within the European Union. Of course, like all good things, it costs money.

Americans who don't have that option are looking into options in Central and South America. Some of these countries are offering amazing welcome packages to Americans willing to make the move and depending on your situation, the investment isn't so steep. Retirees with pension income (retirement, military, government, or social security) that meet the minimum requirements can live quite comfortably, if not luxuriously, on what would be hand to mouth income in the U.S. Those who don't fall in the retirement category can opt to bring business with them once they meet minimum deposit requirements. You can't expect to work in any of these countries, it's not legal and you'd only be making about 10% of your normal wages if you did, but you can start a business that brings revenue into the country with almost no restrictions, and in many cases, exceptional tax advantages. They allow dual citizenship for Americans so you're not entirely jumping out of the fat and into the fire to try it.

Belize

I first heard of Belize watching a travel show several years ago. A couple from a small farm town in Iowa sold their farm and relocated there to retire. A foreigner can buy beach front property in Belize - not true in all countries, and a small beach front house goes for around $100,000 - you can pay up to a million though if you want celebrity luxury. Formerly British Honduras, English is their official language with most households speaking Spanish at home. This tiny, coastal country has a population of about 333,000 people with 70,000 living in it's largest city. Reefs, rain forests, and Mayan ruins - it is a unique and breathtaking paradise.
They have internet, standard electricity, and many of the comforts we are used to. Some downsides are a high violent crime rate, inadequate hospitals, and underfunded police. Belize is also in hurricane territory with hurricanes striking about once every ten years. Produce is abundant and affordable. The country is known for it's mango, banana, and sugar cane plantations.

The Belize government is eager to invite foreign investors & they're offering some hard to beat incentives! You need only US$2,000 per month to qualify. In Belize, you'll find very little "Fine print" and few strings associated with the offer. Given the evolution in the world economy toward e-commerce, "virtual" businesses, and the use of the Internet, it is conceivable that almost any business could operate as a Belizean MC. And now any qualifying individual can live and work on a tax-free basis in Belize. So it is fair to say that the law is not only for retired people but also for any other qualified individual wishing to lead a "tax-free" life.

If you're a QRP interested simply in managing your simply in managing your own financial affairs, the law is ideal- because neither active nor passive income is subject to taxation under this law. If your assets and ongoing business activities are placed under a proper trust/corporate structure it may also be possible to eliminate or greatly reduce your U-S. taxes when you live the requisite number of days outside of the United States.

Costa Rica

Costa Rica is geographically unique in that it is bordered by both Caribbean, giving way to Europe - and the Pacific Ocean, giving way to Asia. Twenty-five percent of the country is devoted to protected national parks that have 1,000 species of butterflies, 1,200 varieties of orchids, 850 species of birds, 130 species of freshwater fish, 4,000 species of insects, 160 species of amphibians, 220 species of reptiles, 1,600 species of fresh and salt water fish, 208 species of mammals, 9,000 species of plants, Cloud forests, Rain Forests, Volcanoes - including two active ones, Mangrove wetlands and swamps. The country itself contains 95% of the worlds bio-diversity. Costa Rica ranks 6th in the world in natural resources. The country's major exports are coffee and bananas, but with it's vastly eco-tourism - tourism brings in more revenue for the country now than coffee and bananas combined.

With a population of 4.3 million, and about 400,000 in the capital city of San Jose, this tiny country offers a lot of diversity. Main stream shopping, museums, theatres, scuba diving, river rafting, adventure surfing and adventure sports abound.

Costa Rica ranks highest in Latin America, and 81 in the world for literacy (compared to 35 for the USA and 36 for United Kingdom). Spanish is the national language with a large percentage of the population speaking English as a second language. The country operates on a French model of the legal system which some describe as "not exactly guilty until proven innocent."

The cost of living & quality of life is extremely attractive to North Americans and Europeans and Costa Rica welcomes those who want to retire there, as well as those who want to find unique ways to bring revenue to the country. Not unlike Belize, they offer generous incentives for those willing to make the effort.

The capital city, San Jose, is well equipped with internet, cell phone service, cable & sattelite television which broadcasts major network and cable channels from New York which is a big plus if you don't want to lose track of home. Some of the outlying and rural areas, including the beaches these things are less available. After my year in eastern Tennessee I would say they're about as caught up on technology as some parts of the USA. Additionally, they have a medical system that rivals that of the USA. Researching doctors I even found than a large percentage of them graduated from prominent US universities and still hold affiliations with a variety of US medical boards and associations. Medical services are offered at a fraction of the cost in the US, and the government has a top notch socialized medical plan as well as private insurance options for residents. Visitors will need insurance or cash. Many Americans travel to Costa Rica specifically for healthcare.

And if you ever do get homesick, it's a $200 round trip ticket to Miami or a $300 round trip ticket to Los Angeles.

Argentina
One person described it as "Wild Wild West meets European charm". No longer the old model of Evita and Juan Peron, Argentina is wildly diverse and rich with possibilities. For the first time in decades families and companies are keeping their money in the country. Privatizations have streamlined infrastructure and famous real estate powerhouses like George Soros and telecommunication giants like Ted Turner are coming to Argentina. Food giants such as Cargill and Dell have been here for years and now Argentine beef, surely the richest in the world, is being exported to the heavily regulated US market. One particular success story tells of a family owned beer company worth 10 million dollars eleven years ago and worth over 3 billion now..

Although their unemployment rate is quite high, they welcome foreigners to work or invest in bringing business to the country and have several options for short term, long term, work, resident, and citizenship status.

As it turns out, our observations were on the mark. After 9/11 Americans began trickling out in droves to every corner of the earth. American companies did as well. I've been watching these campaign ads lately for mid-term elections where each politician is promising to bring "more jobs to out of work Americans". Many of the candidates are former CEO bigwigs who outsourced their companies in exchange for multi-million dollar bonuses (Meg Whitman, Carly Fiorina, now turning to politics to further their careers with false promises to desperate yet hopeful Americans. What they fail to disclose is that when most companies outsource on such a grand scale, it takes a lot of bureaucratic negotiating with foreign governments who have the upper hand and want to bring long term revenue and jobs to their own countries. These things happen with 100 year contracts. Manufacturing America isn't coming back, not in our lifetimes. Neither is farming America in spite of the fact that until the last two decades of the last century we were an agriculture economy.

After the S&L crisis and economic downfall of the early 1980's (a la Bush Sr.) the savings and loans crumbled and so did American farmers - outsourced to corporate farming owned by foreign investors. My mom Bonnie & I were on the road in the late 80's and early 90's selling wholesale inventory to art galleries and gift shops, many of which were in rural areas. We heard first hand the stories of farming families losing their generations owned farms to "notes being called due" early (yes, that's legal), ultimately being displaced while the property and businesses were taken over by foreign investors which gifted us with "corporate farming".

No longer the days when you could spend a Saturday visiting a local farm and picking peas to go home and shell, can or freeze for winter. Scientists are even now discovering that corporate farming is the likely cause of the massive honey bee deaths of this past couple of decades. Bees are no longer getting the nourishment they need from a varied diet since they have only one crop to pollenate from. As a result, they are developing virusus and diseases that are epidemic proportion. Without honey bees over a third of the worlds produce is lost.

In the 1990's, my mom and I were again on the road wholesaling handmade's coast to coast. In came Wal-Mart. Acutally Wal-Mart had been around for decades but what actually happened was the second generation of Wal-Mart, after Sam Walton died. The Sam Walton model of Wal-Mart was good, old fashioned, post Depression era economics and many people benefitted from it. We had visited so many Wal-Mart's coast to coast in those days we seriously considered soliciting the headquarters for a job critiquing the various stores. We were in at least one and sometimes 3 or 4 a day - all in different cities and often different states. I could actually talk new cashiers through the training process of working the, then, new scanners when they often mal-functioned and had to key in the items.

What happened with the second generation of Wal-Mart though was they oblitterated the Depression era business model that had made them what they were and brought in Peoples Liberation Army of China backed business model for wiping out every Main Street America downtown shopping area. Wipe out the competition and then take over. Which is exactly what they did. Customers flocked to the stores in droves, some of our retail customers even bought some of their products as inventory to re-sell. Huge mistake but yes, they did. Local customers who had never imagined something so grand in their small town spent every dime they could spend every pay day. The Main Street stores withered and died. Customers that we had had for many years, who had owned successful retail stores suddenly found themselves bankrupt - virtually overnight. Definitely without warning. Wal-Mart shoppers were strangely giddy until they found themselves unable to find local employment because every local business (from the retail stores, to the parmacies, to the oil change places, hard ware stores, grocery stores, toy stores) ALL out of business. Now the only place in town to apply for a job was Wal-Mart. And if you work for them you can't afford to shop there. It was too late though. They work their employees to death and offer a pay scale that varies in each state to fall just in line for most of their employees to be eligible to be subsidized by public assistance. Some of their California employees sued along with the State of California and eventually won at least one $86 Million dollar settlement. California has done a good job keeping them out of the state but recently they are even losing the battle. I think Sam Walton must be rolling over in his grave. This is not the model he left for his legacy.

Then just a decade later, after 9/11, came the mass outsourcing of America's new found technology and computer wealth. Silicon Valley was shipped off to China, the Philippines, India, and any other far destination on the globe. It didn't just hit the left coast. Texas Instruments is all but outta here and my good friend from high school who had struggled through school on scholarships and whatever support they could muster from his 9 siblings and parents to be the first kid in their family to graduate from college now finds himself living in a trailer and supporting his family on a meager rural teachers salary - after a short lived, yet stellar career with Texas Instruments. Dell is gone. Hewlett Packard is gone. And too many others to name.

I can see it from two angles. Apparently people panicked and started to expatriate themselves as a result of the events of 9/11. I was doing fundraising in the L.A. theatre industry at the time and I do recall having countless conversations with former donors who were no longer making theatre contributions because they were liquidating and jumping through all the hoops one has to jump through to move to a new country. Frankly, I thought at the time that the general population was overreacting to 9/11. My mom and I were still each working 3 jobs and paying $90 a night to live in the craptastic Baldwin Motel. I couldn't afford to panic. From a lifetime of disasters I knew that panic will only slow you down. And it's what the assailants wanted of us anyway so I for one, wasn't about to give it to them. I've read a lot of war history since then though (Genghis Khan, The Histories of Herodotus, The Ordinary Business of Life, to name a few) and I see now that those people leaving had an understanding of something I didn't at that time. It's possible that American companies were sensing the same doom and opted to sell themselves, and us, out too as a preventative measure in the event that war actually did reach US shores. Or maybe they were just greedy. The fact that the same people who sold us out are now running for office doesn't ease my nerves on either argument.

When we left for Tennessee a few years ago we hadn't been out of Los Angeles in almost 8 years, other than a week in San Francisco. We had a case of coastal "island" fever. We could feel the world crashing in around us but we couldn't see beyond the California - where the news is all gossip and celebrity, and the rest of the world doesn't exist. It seemed the network news was suddenly being censored - we did actually have discussions about that. That and sudden news departures that seemed early - Tom Brokaw's retirement, Barbara Walters leaving the evening news, and others. We knew we weren't getting the whole story. What we found in the next couple of years is that this started on each coast and is working it's way in. They were telling us in early 2008 that this would last "a couple of years". "This" being the stock market downslide, and this "Recession". Many of us (not in Texas, because the state a President is from always prospers regardless of the rest of the country) were counting the days until Bush's departure but none of held out hope for any prospective new administration. I head the word "CHANGE" so much it began to feel like an enema just to hear it. Clearly it was a campaign built on the growing ignorance of an idiot population - college students. If not ACORN. The word itself translated as "doom", and doom it has been.

Coming from an accounting background, I knew that it wouldn't end with 2010 elections. We knew that the major mortgage foreclosures would likely hit in 2011 - probably predominantly in Bush's home state, when he was safely out of office and not likely to get the blame from Texans at least.

Living in Dallas form much of last year, it looks like a house of cards about to fall. I'm long familiar with the city. I was born in Texas and I've spent much of life all over the state. The landscape of Dallas had changed outrageously in the past 20 years. Neighborhood, after neighborhood, after neighborhood of houses so huge the people in them should be ashamed of themselves for such audacity. One housing edition after another, eight to ten thousand square feet homes on trac lots. People I know and am related too, that can't afford a movie ticket, own homes they will never in any lifetime have the means to pay for. We will be hit with something economically, the likes of which we have not yet witnessed, when those loans fail - and they will, just in time for the next presidential elections that will. And now I'm beginning to get the bigger picture of it.

Those of us left here have been so overwhelmed with the debris of outsourced jobs and a completely shattered economy that we haven't had a chance to stop and look at what's really going on around us. I had a "temporary" job a few years ago (2005, I think) as an employment recruiter for a huge call center in Los Angeles. It was a low level, administrative position that I took with the promise (well, sales pitch) of a senior opening ahead of me upon the retirement of another employee. In this temp position, it was my duty to pre-screen applicants to select interview candidates. I was instructed to "profile" candidates. Not racial profiling but, well, it did include some of that - but not the kind you might think. I was screening for "tax deductable employees". The business qualified for tax deductions by hiring individuals that were: *of a minority race, *on paroll or out of prison, *receiving subsidy (welfare, food stamps, MedicAid). A candidate didn't have to have any qualification, references, education, character, or morals - although lack of pleasant body odor was negotiable. The company strived to hire 100% employees from these categories to maximize their tax deductions. Numerous times I had very well qualified candidates that I was ordered to turn away in lieu of "tax deductable" ones.

I had been feeling the frustrations of the job market for several years by then and had devoted every free moment of the previous years to furthering my education & skills to maximize my advantage. Now here I was in the cockpit of what I had been actually fighting - but never knew it until then. No shrinking violet, I asked my boss one day why I was hired for the job I had - and him, for that matter. We were two of only a handful of people that didn't fit the criteria. His answer, "eye candy". HUH? "Eye Candy". I left of my own accord, not waiting for his imminent retirement. I have no doubt the job was mine but I had no desire to be a part of what is actually mainstream American business these days.

I mentioned this to a friend in the midwest some time later. He was in a similar situation as me. Already a college graduate (which I am not), and in the middle of his professional career. Frustrated with the job market, trying desperately to hang on, and hoping to make headway by furthering his education while working a full time job and supporting a family - even at one point commuting hundreds of miles every week to keep it all together. In his current college courses he was having to write papers advocating the very thing that is putting us in this position in the first place.

I had applied for a Pell Grant for college. Our house had even burned just after graduation. If ever I had thought I would be eligible for something it would have been then. I was flatly denied in a letter with a phone number to call if I had questions about the decision. I called and the woman on the phone said, "Honey, you checked the box. You should have never checked that box. You'll never get anything now." Upon further discussion, the box in questions, was optional on the form to collect data or race. I checked Caucasian. College would never be a reality for me so I struggled with multiple jobs. In fact, I started working well before I graduated high school, at 15. Waitressing, telemarketing, creative work like store display design, commercial wallpaper hanging, commercial painting, maid.....at one point I even wrote college essays for $20/page, fundraising, sewing, design. You name it, like many of us, we've done all of that and then some - intermingled with months turned into years of homelessness, before I could ever afford a computer AND a roof over my head at the same time, for enough years to learn every software Microsoft, Adobe, & Intuit (to name a few) have on the market. Sudy accounting, insurance, real estate, web design and anything else I could squeeze in - including knitting & crochet with which I have designed and copyrighted over 200 patterns. All of this, and I still can't afford healthcare, holidays, or the birth of a child.

An entire generation of us was born into the last moments of the American American dream, and have lived our developing adult lives in it's destruction. Promises shattered not before our eyes, as much as in the midst of our very existence. Our parents came into a world where union jobs were abundant when they graduated high school, pension plans were in place for their retirement, homes were affordable, medical care was not a luxury only available to the wealthy and the illegal immigrants, and homes were affordable - and not stupendous fantasies of theatrical design. Families could afford road tripping vacations in the summer, Christmas presents under the tree, Easter dresses, and puppies.

I do think that the fantasy of television blaring in our daily lives took a vast toll on the expectations of this population, of these generations. I think the drug addiction that plagued this country after the Vietnam War demoralized us as a society. I also think that the previous generation, who had not lived through the Great Depression, did not believe the bounty would ever turn to drought. Complacency gave way to the quest for knowledge, learning, striving to keep up with the rest of the world. Indeed, as Americans, we haven't developed our knowledge or understanding of the rest of the world nearly as much as we have publicized our own culture all over it. We are a narcissistic society. Our films, television shows, celebrities, even politicians broadcast themselves the world over yet we make far less effort to draw from what the rest of the world has to offer.

We complain, we grit our teeth, we speak under our breath in hushed whispers about the foreigners taking over. What on earth did we expect? If I were to walk down a street in a bad part of town wearing a fur coat, ball gown, diamonds, and pearls; showing off what I have that they don't - what should I expect? We did just that. With our audacity. With our arrogance. With our pride. With our generosity. We did it and we opened our doors to others to provide for them what we can no longer afford to provide for ourselves. And I think that far too often, our frustrations vents as racism, cultural and religious intolerance - when in reality, we're just too frustrated for words, too exhausted with overwork, too poor, too beaten down, too under-educated, too overwhelmed to see the situation for what it is. We are now living our great, and great-great grandparents reality. And that's just the way it is.

Why don't I have children and I'm forty? It brings tears to my eyes to write the question. I can't afford a baby. I haven't in the last 10 years been able to afford a baby. I can't afford healthcare. I can't afford private pay hospitalization. Could I feed, clothe, nurture, take care of child? Absolutely. But I can't afford the medical and I've been turned away in the emergency room with a broken arm (set at home), and a potential tumor (treated homeopathically & with much help from the internet). In both cases though, the hospitals that turned me away without so much as an exam, also billed me thousands of dollars that is now attached to my credit record. Sure you can argue and get it removed. No. You can't. Yet I run into, Illegal immigrants, and people I perceive to be illegal immigrants, with a handful of a family lined up at free medical clinics almost every day - in my former downtown L.A. neighborhood. They will no doubt graduate college as well.

Do I resent it? You bet I do. I don't hold them personally responsible for taking advantage of what previous generations of us made so readily available to them. Not at all. But I do resent it. I think our parents, and the generations that preceded us, up to the Depression Era generation who would have had first hand perspective, are very much to blame. And my dad's assertion that "you should find a rich feller to take care 'eh yuh", is affirmation that that sort of thinking is what got us here in the first place. And if this "feller" were to die, or divorce me, and leave me with a two income life to sustain on one, or perhaps none - then what? We can no longer afford to live a fantasy, or irresponsibly.

All we can do now though is look at our situation from every perspective, explore our options, make better choices, and do the best we can with what's left. Go to Netflix and rent, or watch it by clicking here"Tibet: Cry of the Snow Lion" I first saw this film several years ago before we left Los Angeles. I feel about it the way I felt on the day of 9/11 - like I had to keep going, like I had to keep my wits about me, like I had to draw knowledge from sources I didn't yet have. I feel we are headed this same direction unless we can extract the enema of old thinking from our brains and make our own "CHANGE".

There's a great big world out there! Explore it!

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A Furry Family Vacation

2010-10-15T17:33:00.001-07:00

I wouldn't think of leaving these guys behind.....

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I learned the most exciting thing recently about everyone’s favorite furry family members!

Are your pets micro-chipped? If not, they should be. And did you know that many animal shelters offer low cost, and sometimes even no-cost micro-chip pet tags? It’s absolutely true! Where I live in San Diego, CA all dogs, cats, and rabbits that are at least 8 weeks old, that run through the San Diego County Animal Shelters are micro-chipped. You can even take your pet in on certain days and have them implanted for just $20.

What are pet I.D. microchips? About the size of a grain of rice, they are a micro-chip implanted under the skin that communicates with the internet and stores all of the information about your pet and you. So if your little friend ever gets lost, he can be scanned by any animal shelter, veterinarian, or public service personnel who can notify you and bring you back together. Remember all of the pets lost in Hurricane Katrina? Even if your pets never leave the house, you never know when an emergency might occur that could separate you. Or if you’re like me and take them with you everywhere you go – such reassurance.

After the chip I.D. is installed you can log into the internet and update your contact information when needed. Your veterinarian will store all of your pets medical records online as well – shot records and any other medical information that might be critical. Additionally, if you have pet insurance that information can be stored as well. I’ve always said it’s a good idea to tag your pet with not only your contact information but also the contact information of your veterinarian in case of emergency. It’s also a good idea to have your vet keep your credit card information on file should an emergency arise and you not be there. In the US, that also includes signing emergency release documents for the vet to have on file as well.

Travelling Internationally? Did you know that your pets can travel with you to lots of countries now without quarantine if they are micro-chipped? One of the great blessings of pet micro-chip I.D. tags is that countries that not so many years ago required long quarantine periods for pets entering the country (England used to be a mandatory 6 month quarantine) have lifted them entirely for pets that have the micro-chip I.D. tags and meet all the necessary health requirements. Click here for a full list of countries that now welcome your pets on arrival.

I travel EVERYWHERE with my two kitties. They're both leash trained but on airlines and mass transit I have luggage pet carriers that also works as backpacks. These meet airline regulations for carry-on bags (*which is an important thing to look for on the label when you are purchasing) and they can ride under the airline seat - usually for $100 up-charge but you do have to make this arrangement with the airline when you book the flight. Not all airlines allow it and some limit the number of carry on pets per flight.

Additionally, you need to find out the regulations of the countries you'll be exiting and entering (multiple countries if you have layovers) to find out if they require quarantine and what types of shots they require. This is a great web site for all of that.

Most countries will allow pets to enter now if they are micro-chipped and have all of the required shots. You need to find this out early though and do EVERYTHING in advance because if you don't your pet can be seized and quarantined at the airport - in some countries for up to 6 months. As long as you do your research and prepare you'll have no trouble at all.

Talk to your vet about the duration of the trip. My kitties usually fast 6 hours before we go and I pack a disposable, travel litter tray (the kind that has litter under a removable seal) for our landing. I find that they rarely eat or drink when we travel, although on extended road trips they do get quite comfortable in the car after a few days and will eat dry food throughout the day). Keep a sample size bag of dried food with you, and a bottled water. You can pry their mouth and feed them a capful of water periodically. They do make pet travel water bottles but check with the airline about anything they might have on their "terrorist" list. I find a regular, sealed water bottle is easiest with flight.

Definitely carry him with you on the plane as opposed to storing him in cargo. It costs a little more but it's so worth the peace of mind for both of you. Additionally, you’ll need to plan ahead for hotels that allow pets, and in some countries taxi cabs and mass transit may selectively allow pets in carriers. In most U.S. cities pets are allowed on mass transit only if travelling in a pet carrier. Since taxi’s are generally owned by the driver, it’s up to the driver if he will take you or not.

Most of these rules apply to cats and dogs. In some countries rabbits are also included. Reptiles, small mammals (gerbils, mice, etc…), and birds often fall under an entirely different set of rules for international and domestic travel – although they can still be micro-chip I.D.’d for your own peace of mind.

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WOW! The Recession is Over Just in Time for the Holidays!

2010-09-21T13:21:00.000-07:00

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This is another long post but don't give up on me. I'm going somewhere fun with it in the end!

I heard on the news yesterday that the recession is officially over. I think our government press agents and financial experts have been watching a little too many Kevin Costner re-runs ala "If you build it, they will come" hence, "if you tell them it's over, they'll believe it." Clearly they think we're stupid. And if we really did have anything to do with electing most of them, we are. I'm not convinced. I think in generations to come they will discover that our corrupt "government" somehow tinkered with the electronics and the polls and somebody sold our livelihood off for their own personal, financial gain. So many of my friends secretly admit they would leave this country in a heartbeat if there were anywhere to go, any way to get there but then I have friends in other countries who share our disdain. It is global. That's a fact.

Here in California we have a satirical cast of mid-term candidates. Carly Fiorina - elegant, beautiful, well spoken.

A former big wig at HP who tripled her salary after outsourcing thousands of American jobs to Asian countries bought five company jets and herself a private yacht.

Meg Whitman, ugly as a mud hen.

Her commercials have been running in California for years and she certainly hasn't found success with her looks. No, not at all. She's the "Fee-Bay" in "Ebay". According to campaign commericals she's the CEO responsible for raising Ebay fees so high that (as we know from the Etsy forums and personal experience) many private sellers had to give up their small businesses because it was no longer viable to sell small ticket items with the inflated listings. She also brought EBay to China which pretty well put small time American sellers out of business. I'm sure she'd be a great politician for the people of China. Too bad for her, they already have President Hu Jintao.

Then there's Jerry Brown.

He's been a piece of work for decades but now he's saying that at this point in his life he's ready to do the right thing. Well Jerry Brown, it's a little too late to do the right thing now.

I wouldn't even know all of this if it weren't for their constant interruptions in a 30 minute episode of "Jeopardy". I'd like to see the producers of Jeopardy put together an episode "Former President's Jeopardy". Can't you just see the candidates Clinton, Carter, and G.W. Bush.

And now the frosting in the middle of the cake. Residents of Bell, California discovered this past July that their city officials were paying themselves twice what the President of the United States is making. Outraged citizens stormed City Hall, brought in the media, and yesterday September 21, 2010 all 8 Bell City Council members were arrested. It seems now they are only the first in what is likely to be a wave of many more to come. The average income of Bell residents is $32K. There are 36,000 people and 9,000 homes in the city of Bell that have been forced to fund the City Councils $5M annual salary pay for 8 members.

Politics and politicians aside, I'm guessing that this latest news of the recessions end is somehow connected to the government hoping to boost 4th quarter gain - particularly in retail through the holiday season. Interesting they announced the news conspicuously before the end of the 3rd quarter, and the same week that all of the malls are starting to assemble holiday displays. The end of Labor Day is typically the beginning retail's biggest season. It's biggest boost peaking between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Not to mention that officially ending "this" recession gives way for opportunity of labeling these years as a "Double Dip Recession" rather than a "Depression" as we are expected to really hit rock bottom 2011. You can take a piece of chocolate and wrap it up in fancy gold foil and sell it for $40 bucks - Hershey's or Godiva, it's still chocolate. A Recession, a Double Dip Recession, a Depression - label it as they will, it is what it is.

Let me preface this by saying, I'm no stranger to what individuals and small businesses are dealing with economically these days. Being a free-lance bookkeeper who has been trying to navigate this "Recession" since 2007 by literally moving 3,000 miles and back with pit stops in between - I've seen it firsthand from coast to coast. We knew when it started in California that the housing bubble (900 square foot Sears Craftsman houses built c. WWII near the coast selling for $1M and up in 2003) had burst by 2007. Well over half of our bookkeeping clients at the time were 100% invested in real estate. Many of them navigated their investments out of California by buying foreclosure homes sight unseen, online, in places like Detroit where a 2,000 square foot foreclosure home was under $40K. They thought they were snapping up bargains but at the time, nobody foresaw the demise of of the auto industry, and our California investors had never ventured to the upper midwest at all, much less during a winter of freezing pipes, roofs collapsing from snow, etc...
The other half of our bookkeeping clients were actively working in the entertainment industry which in 2007, was also failing miserably. Studios were closing. Struggling production companies were hanging on by moving to less taxed states and countries like New Mexico and Canada. Four months behind on our rent in an apartment we'd had for ten years and never been a day late with, we left also. Our landlord was actually willing to give us more time but with the view we had we couldn't see an end in sight.

The move to Tennessee was a risk, and it failed but in hindsight I don't honestly think any options were fool proof. The move to Dallas was a calculated accident. Typically, if you're living in the state the sitting president is from, you have a much better economic situation to work from. My parents learned this in the years that my dad's job was transferring him annually. My mom and I tested the theory over the years that we were traveling around selling art work, and later crafts. Dallas was definitely feeling the downturn last - not surprisingly given that Bush will be a couple of years out of office before the mortgage (and foreclosure) disaster is suppose to hit rock bottom in 2011. We bought some time there but what we saw businesses dealing with financially mimics what we were seeing in California 2 to 3 years earlier. One example, contractors were running commercials offering home repair and improvement at cost, just to keep their staff employed. Having roots in Texas I know, nobody squeals louder than a stuck pig unless it's a broke Texan.

I had been talking to friends in California all along who agreed that "the economy was finally leveling out but it's leveled out at such a low level it's hard to comprehend." And so it is. A contractor called me recently about bookkeeping. He has been in business over 35 years and until three years ago had been running $3M in annual revenue. His business has sunk to $60K. He's faced with cutting all of his employees, and working basically like he did when he started out 35 years ago. It's a tough reality, especially for a 60 year old man. Numerous companies have taken on massive credit card debt at 18% to 30% APR to cover basic operating costs. Unable to make the minimum payments they are in serious debt. I've even run into companies who have intermingled casino gambling in the company operating accounts (a HUGE no-no with the IRS), and a sad, desperate attempt to keep hope alive.

So back to 4th quarter, holidays, and reality. The best financial advice I've heard was a man on the news a couple of years ago who owned a pawn shop in Palm Beach, Florida. The mega wealthy were liquidating family heirlooms at the time to cover basic expenses. This was BEFORE Bernie Madoff. That's a good little eye opener for the rest of us. If the rich are broke, middle class is broker. What this guys said was, "buy bags of dried beans, dried rice, and what you need to get by and lay low." He has a valid point.

Running around like chickens with our heads cut off the past few years hasn't gained us anything. I still don't regret leaving L.A. but I know the worst isn't over. We have waves of income. People come with bookkeeping because they think if they get their books together they might find a loan or grant money. Two or three weeks into it and we have to give them the reality - you may have had a successful, multi-million dollar business a few years ago but now you're buried in credit card debt at maximum interest because all of your payments are late so you're also buried in late fees, your bank has been covering your payroll checks for months (and in many cases years), you're years behind on your taxes. Ain't nobody gonna give you a loan. It's a brutal truth to tell and one that's never gracefully received.

And I should add, you're not a failure. Your country failed you. My country failed me too. And in the words of my grandmother, "pull up your boot straps. you've got some work ahead of you." Buy dried food, canned food, stock up. Buy paper goods, buy soap, shop sales. Pay your utility bills ahead. Cut out superflous expenses - do you NEED 300 channels of cable television? Think! Be practical and minimalistic in your choices for the next year or so. And when the government puts out bulletins that the recession is over, don't buy into it. Don't blow all of your money on extravagant holidays. If people can't reciprocate they'll feel badly about it and if you're just doing it to show off remember, you might rather have electricity and gas this winter.

Which brings me to where I was headed with this in the first place, what are your ideas for low-cost, no-cost holiday gifts. I have a few and I thought we could share.

* I have a friend who loves to cook and he's constantly scouring book stores for particular types of recipes. I recently found a website that has thousands of recipes for free so I've started compiling some that I think he would particularly like into a digital cookbook. I'm setting it up in a .PDF format that will download to his Kindle DX which I know he will appreciate.

* I have several friends with young children that I don't really know but I always like to send them something special for the holidays. One of my favorite things to get into at my grandmother's house when I was a little girls was her stash of paper dolls that she had collected from newspapers and magazines since the 1920's.

I recently googled paper doll downloads and found thousands for free. I have a an excellent color printer - so this should be a fun, inexpensive gift for the girls. For the boys I love this site!

Actually, there are some fun projects here for girls as well.

* If you have any scrapbooking friends
this is also a fun link from the same site.

* If you have friends that knit or crochet there are tons of free patterns online. I even offer a download now">free scarf pattern

through my Ravelry store - a scarf easily knit from scrap bits of yarn.

* Another idea for your knit or crochet friends might surprise you. There is a huge trend right now in recycled yarns. Literally, yarns that are from sweaters picked up at Goodwill or garage sales. Simply clip a sweater at one end and start unravelling it into balls of yarn. No kidding! People sell these all over the internet and unique yarns are highly sought after.

* One I really love, and would love to have, is family pictures. Do you have a stash of great old family photos? Download them on discs or have printed copies made for family members. You can scan and upload them for free to Shutterfly. From there you can make photo gifts, photo albums, inexpensive prints, discs, and even create a share site like mine for free - where family and friends can also contribute and make their own purchases.

* If you are the family chef, make a recipe book or box of your own family recipes. This is a great gift to children, grand children, or a new daughter in law. A friend of mine's mom was dying a few years ago after a very long battle with cancer. She was a remarkable cook! In the end the family was making plans with how to distribute her belongings. My friend kept saying he didn't know what he wanted out of her world of collectibles. I said you don't want any of it. You want her cookbooks. When you miss her you will miss the foods she made you at holiday, on special occasions, to comfort you. He didn't listen but he should have. What a treasured gift!

* My adopted great-grandmother had 19 children. She died decades ago but the item that is most treasured of hers still is the hand written story she left behind of some of her childhood memories. There is more to life than gizmos and gadgets.

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love and marriage...

2010-07-01T22:02:00.000-07:00

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When I first moved to California, the first time - in 2000, I met this guy outside of the theatre where my Saturday acting classes were held. I had arrived for morning class and he was on the sidewalk, leaving the cafe next door. He introduced himself, we had a brief conversation. He was still there later in the afternoon - he had returned to ask me out. I gave him my number, and after a few phone calls we settled on a date. I was hesitant. Hesitant because I had just met him on the sidewalk - a classic problem with dating in a big city, especially if you're a foreigner.

I didn't know how to work a computer back then and had never heard of Google. I couldn't very well ask for references. And really, what are references anyway. The new landlords of my last troublesome tenants called me for a reference - "yeah, there awesome! Take them!". Really they sucked but better him than me. My date: he seemed nice. He was nice. He seemed thoughtful. He was thoughtful. He seemed interesting. He was. I took a chance. It worked out. He was also had some good old fashioned chutzpah; not unlike me.

My mom and I had been living in the Baldwin Motel, in L.A.'s trendy west side. It's a crap motel. A seedy little dive that had been there too long - unkempt, unsanitary. It was $90 a night and the shower was more hideous than most public toilets. They placed us conspicuously in a room that faced the busiest street out front. No doubt to entice the traffic for the underbelly of their business and simultaneously to keep us safe from that same crowd. This was, afterall, the same hotel that Robert Downey Jr. had been arrested in with the crack whore, only just a couple of months later. I'm no whore. I hadn't had sex with anyone in ten years then. I had hardly even had a date since high school. I was 30.

So this sweet, charming guy who had asked me out - I had to break it to him the news about where I was living, and where he would have to pick me up. And he did. That alone made him FABULOUS to me. It was an embarrassment to confess my address and that he didn't judge me for it was such a relief. He arrived with a menu of options. He had tickets to see "The Vagina Monologues" at a theatre in Beverly Hills, tickets to a jazz club, tickets, tickets, and more tickets. What did I want to do?

Sitting in the passenger seat and him driving, I split my legs wide across the dash board (yes I was wearing pants) and said, "I can just see in my head, Phyllis Diller on the poster of 'The Vagina Monologues". "Vagina Monologues" DEFINITELY!". He seemed conservative. The guys I'm attracted to usually are. I had a sinking thought that he might make a U-turn and drop me right back off where he had picked me up but he laughed instead.

We had good times. Lots of them. We dated for the next several months until I finally found the apartment in downtown L.A. that would be my home for the next decade. He didn't like my real estate - and it ended. I was crushed. "I'm really disappointed. You have a lot working for you. Look at you! You could do a lot better for yourself and you just don't do it. I don't understand", he would say over and over in the years that followed.

I haven't dated a lot of men in my life but I have managed to remain friends with nearly all of the ones that I have, and this guy was no exception. I haven't seen him in ten years but we've talked monthly, weekly, daily, often. I'm always the instigator of these residual friendships. I'm an only child, an orphan, a gypsy - I have a fear of being forgotten.

They've nearly all gotten married. Except this one and another who turned out to be gay. Many of them I hear from once a year, or every few years. One guy I dated when I was about 14 called me out of the blue a couple of years ago - when I was in Tennessee. It was a long conversation over the phone with someone I hadn't set on my porch with in 25 years, yet it could have been yesterday but with a lot of catching up. I knew exactly who he was but he was completely unknown to me. He had a lot to say about his wife who was a failure at his otherwise successful attempt at a marriage. He likes sex "hard and heavy at 5 a.m." - she doesn't. Apparently she doesn't like sex with him all anymore. He likes to re-imagine porn films in their bedroom. She's not comfortable with whatever it is he expects. Too much information but I couldn't stop him from talking, "Angie, here's the thing. I'm like a sex machine. I can't get enough. I need more. That's why I left my wife and I'm living in a hotel. I need to leave my wife for someone who can satisfy me sexually. Someone like........." Damn. I just lost a signal.

I look like something I'm not. I'm aware of that. The thing is, I like the way I look and I like the person I am. But if you judge me by my cover you miss the page turning, plot.

We're 40 now, most of us. The guy from California - he's older. He was born the year my mom graduated from high school. He was 40 the year I dated him. He's 50 now.

I didn't get married out of high school like most of the girls I knew. Even if I had had the opportunity, I'm certain I would have resisted it. I had fantasies of weddings, and wedding dresses like every little girl. I doodled wedding gowns all through jr. high and high school. Like many girls, I envisioned a dress, a wedding, a theatrical production with myself as the star but I never envisioned a marriage. Not really. I did have a boy friend in high school that I made a pact with: if neither of us were married by 35 then we would have a wedding and get it quickly annulled. Just to say we hadn't missed out but so we could still go back to our own lives after.

I have mixed feeling on marriages - most of them don't seem to work out. But also, I had the wrong foundation for wanting it. When I was 5 months old my mom was on her way to work with me in the passenger seat in my car seat. Well, what served for a car seat in 1970 when no one wore seatbelts and most kids rode, laying down in the back window. Her car was slammed from the right at an intersection, by an oncoming vehicle doing 50. It U-turned and hit her again from the other side. The car was totaled, I was wailing, but human injuries were minor. She took me across a yard to a middle aged woman who had come out on her front porch, hand her a bottle: "would you feed my baby? She's not hurt. She hasn't had her bottle yet."

I don't remember the woman of course, but she rocked me for hours while my mother met with the police, and the tow truck, and my dad who was angry over the car. And while I don't remember the woman, all of my life I have remembered the words she spoke to me: "Don't spend your life polishing door knobs. Don't spend you life polishing a house that is continually cluttered by people who have a life. Forget the doorknobs. Forget clean windows. Go out in the world. Get a life." She was at a place of regret and she wished for me a life of something else. How generous. How kind. How earthshakingly sad.

My parents ended 19 years of marriage when I was 11. My dad swears he never loved my mom. They got married when they were 22. I think he wanted out of Vietnam and she wanted out of her crazy family. I dunno? I think.

When I was in my mid-20's I had a telemarketing job for a company that renewed magazine subscriptions for every magazine published in North America. I called for Playboy, and listened to old man after old man tell me every detail about every centerfold from Playboy's inception. Most of them thought I was one of the Playmates calling them personally. They did. Idiots. Then I called all the homemaker magazines, "Better Homes and Gardens", "Ladies Home Journal", others....Women at or near retirement age, bawling and sobbing into the phone line: "My-y-y-y.. (snort) husband's retiring (boo hoo hoo). He's going to be home now (choke....snort) EVERY day, ALL DAY LONG....for the rest (snort) of my (boo hoo hoo) li-i-i-i-fe. He gets to retire (sob), and all I ever wanted was a home and a family but I can't stand him being here all the time. He get's to retire (sob...sob...) and I have to live with him, and cook for him, and clean up after him, for the REST (wailing sob) of my LIFE! (boo hoo snort hoo)". It wasn't the sort of job that made me want to run out and get myself a husband. I ran to California to be an actress instead.

In California, after my California boyfriend dumped me because he didn't like my real estate, I was working for a theatre as a fundraiser. I was speaking with a client one day who was in a state of utter despair, not unlike the women from the homemaker magazine subscriptions. She had come to California when she was young and beautiful, in search of an older, wealthy husband. She found one. She married him. She was quite forward in saying that she just thought he would die in a few years and she could still have a life. She was 40 then. he was 85 and they had been married almost 20 years - 10 of which he had been in adult diapers and too ill for them to leave the house for anything other than medical appointments. She didn't go to the theatre, have friends, have kids, nothing. She warned me against making the same choices she had. I was never inclined but I've never forgotten her.

So we're all 40 now - my old friends and me. And coming into 40 these past couple of years has been peppered with moments of insight. A got another call, from an old boy friend I speak to every year or so - sometimes more. "You know Angie, I love my kids. I really, really love my kids. I love my wife too. But if I had it to do over again, I'd never get married." My heart breaks for him and for all the others because I know that somewhere in their souls they genuinely mean it. And for their wives, almost none of whom do I know very well at all, I think that for the most part, they have genuinely devoted themselves fully to the same institution of marriage, and to some degree, probably harbor similar regrets. And the for all of them, I think they probably house the double guilt of thinking they think that - whether or not they really do.

And then there is me. The one who didn't get married. They see the woman who has traveled everywhere, and is so seemingly carefree. They see a cover - not a book. They miss the part in my 20's where I spent years holding my mothers' head over a toilet while she vomited up horrific memories of an severely abused childhood. Where I was teased by people I would have liked to have been friends with because I was working as a maid and taking in ironing to help feed us. They don't know that for a few years she really hated me for being there when she recalled the abuse - as if I instigated it. They think they miss the adventurous life of a carefree, traveling artist but they don't know the years of living out of a suitcase and surviving with creative makings from a sewing machine packed in my trunk - all the while piecing together the genealogy of a past that was dying more quickly than we could sew and fleeing into anonymity from another past that was trying to prevent us from proving the truth. They don't know that I am 40 and wish for children that I know I may never have. And that I reconcile myself to two furry, baby boy kitty cats that may be the only children I ever have. They don't know that the sperm bank is my home page. They don't know that I am not wild sex. Not a fantasy. But they regret - or so they think.

The guy in California, he was a good time but he was also a fraud. He flubbed about where he worked, what he did. Maybe for his privacy. Maybe he was a cheater. Who knows. I suspected some of it right off but I know there's no point in asking someone who is lying to you to tell you a truth. They'll tell you a lie on top of a lie. I'm a patient person. A truth will eventually surface. It always does. But he was also 40. He must have been going through a similar stage as my friends now. He had come to California to be an actor, 20 years prior. He was looking for someone to latch onto - someone who might jump start his career. He thought that because of the way I looked I might find a way in, and he would too. He has said this to me since. I thought I was in love with him then but then I thought he loved me too so maybe I just couldn't see the forest for the trees. I don't know.

There have been times that I have thought of myself as some freak because of my lack of social involvement: friends, dates, lovers. It's the life God gave me though. I was responsible when I could have been reckless. I think I've always been more conscious of the need to be responsible because I've always had such a very small support system - my mother, myself.

So anyway, California guy called the other night. I know him well now. He hit hard times like we all did a couple of years ago. He's "lonely". He "loves me". He's thinking marriage. I know he is. If I were 20, I would feel swept away. I'm not 20. I don't fantasize about weddings and white gowns. I don't even know anyone that would show up for my wedding if I were to have one. He "loves" me, but he didn't love me when I lived in bad real estate and rode a metro bus. He didn't love me when I had another ten years to have children. He loves me now "that he should be slowing down. Shouldn't have to be working so hard." He's a friend but I think he's more afraid than in love. Afraid of an uncertain future. We all have an uncertain future. Afraid of being alone. We're all alone - in one way or another. I don't want to change his adult diapers. I just don't.

These friends though, it's good we've had these moments of conversation. I hope they're all really happy and they just had to step away for a moment to realize how happy they really are. For myself I have realized that we're about even on the dating scene. Most of them got married and 20 and hopefully quit dating outside of their marriage when they did. I hope I have children before it really is too late. I hope I can financially support myself for the rest of my life. I hope my life is long, fulfilling, and worthwhile.

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There Is No Friend Like An Old Book; Except.....

2010-06-30T16:40:00.000-07:00

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There is no friend like an old book, except of course like a friend with old books - and one who is talented and creative at that!

Funny sometimes how friends read our thoughts from thousands of miles away. I am a book worm but I've had a long dry spell of and I have spent the past couple of weeks on the internet with books, once again, mysteriously finding me as they so often do. They're much better at finding me than I am of finding them.

I had just ordered the Gregory Maguire series of "Wicked", "Son of a Witch", and "A Lion Among Men" when Laurie emailed me. She had a conversation going on her FaceBook page about the books we all collect, or in some cases, acquire. I confessed that I have purchased so many books over the years I could have easily shelved a good chunk of the NY Public Library. I've had brief fantasies of housing a room with my own library but I am a mobile creature by nature and this is pure fantasy. They go as easily as they come: distributed to friends, neighbors, even the homeless man that used to come by collecting bottles at our building in L.A. He lived in a box on the vacant lot across the street and one fatefully hot summer day when I had taken him an iced drink with our contribution of cans, & simultaneously received my Book of the Month Club order from the mail man we had a lovely discussion of the books we both loved. From that day on I passed on books he expressed interest in along with drug store reading glasses purchased from time to time.

So back to my FaceBook friend Laurie; she was doing some Spring cleaning and did I want her Jane Austen's? REALLY?! EXCITEMENT!!! Are you kidding me? That's a rhetorical question. YES! YES! YES!!

Growing up an only child, in a world of women, Jane Austen was my older sister who shared with me her secrets and stories - hopes, dreams, and failures of love. I've worn out many copies and will delightfully revisit my old friends in the pages and know that they were sent by a friend who mysteriously knew my thoughts from a thousand miles away.

Included in the package that arrived today was a hand-cross-stitched (Or as we would say in the South, "hand did") pillow dedicated to the two furry boys who steal my heart every day. She made it herself - every beautiful, meticulous stitch. And the fabric backing is a vintage piece she's is so precise at coming across. It's a vintage British fabric - how appropriately Austen! It reads: "And thou shall have dominion over all the beasts.....except of course for cats." Felines: 3-5

Laurie has an Etsy Store where she sells unique vintage finds, and she writes one of my favorite blogs: "Indulge Your Shelf". She also writes fun articles about everything vintage for The Examiner.

Corn Bread and Apple Jack instantly knew the box was sent just for them!

Dear Laurie, you are a DOLL! I will sink my toes in the sand and devour every delicious word! **HUGS** Angela Catirina

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