the ants go marching

I'm cleaning up a few nights ago when J walks over to the verandah and opens the slider. Immediately he leaps back and streams of black ants come piling in covering his feet and crawling up his legs. He slams the door and starts jumping around, expletives abound.

I run over and flip on the outside light and the porch looks as if it's alive, a black swarming mass of moving floor space. Marching ants. Holy shit.

We quickly stomp on all the ants that made it inside and brush them out of J's hair and after some looking around, it appears that the ants are not only on the porch but climbing up the house. We've heard about these things in jungle folklore before, the marching ants come in the millions sweeping through areas eating everything in their wake. Some of our neighbors think they are a good thing because they clean out all the other bugs as they pass, the black swarm comes and goes in a short amount of time.

But I can't quite embrace their calmness. What the fuck is this I say over and over, watching the blackness puddle and swoon like a funhouse mirror gone very wrong. We realize this side of the house is fairly safe but we have no idea what cracks or holes exist in places we cannot see. After a while of sitting in somewhat bizarre stupor it hits me that the right side of the house, where the little buggers are heading, has no such reinforcements. The space between the door and the floor is ample enough for ants to come in riding on each other's backs. In triple. Shit. I say as much to J and so we head over and tentatively open the door and here they come, their blackness swarming towards us. Foolishly, I grab a towel like I was taught to do in those old fire safety movies back in the 70's. I wet it and stick it along the door jam to keep the smoke out. Or in this case, ants. I do this quickly and feel triumphant until the towel seems to slowly start to move. What happens if we can't stop them? Will they slowly overtake our bodies leaving only heaving black mounds of flesh?

Danger Will Robinson. Oh, and holy shit get me out of here.

M is asleep, thankfully and blissfully unaware that we are about to be consumed. J and I go on defense, I am spraying bug spray at the door frame and we are stomping in abandon. Somehow or perhaps it was never meant to be it works and the ants slightly shift course and we see them marching their massive way across the driveway. Our dog comes out of hiding. J looks at me and says you'll have to blog about this one and I laugh. Not until I'm sure we aren't waking up covered in ants I say.

I wake up the next morning ant free and nervously eye the porch. We tell M all about it at breakfast and she's filled with dismay at missing the escapades of the night before. She's a brave one, my kid. I tell a neighbor about it who laughs and says they came through her house a few days ago. Sprinkle water on them next time she says, they don't like the water. Later I come back from taking M to school and from the market and walk out onto the porch when I see them, a marching black wall coming over the lip of the porch from the ground, a good three feet long and about a foot onto the concrete turning it black. Being a secret double agent, I grab the hose and turn it on and let out a screech and a jet spray so powerful it's like washing thick mud off the side of a house, the blackness goes flying backwards onto the grass and I'm going Apocalypse Now on the little fuckers, spraying and spraying until the porch is clean and the fortress is intact. I peer over the edge of the porch and the ground beneath is fully alive, the marching ants are still marching. Several dogs have now taken refuge on my porch and they all look at me expectantly, watch the gringa, she's crazy and I think about spraying them too but I pull myself in check.

After way too much water I finally concede that maybe I've won this round, those little bastards are 0-2 now but I know and they know that they'll win sooner or later, whether it's 2am or when we aren't home, you can't stop nature from running it's course. So I can only hope that they've moved on down the village, making their way far away from here.

In other news we are bracing ourselves for the first real storm of the season, the hurricane to the south of us will bring us rain and I reminisce about last year when the entire village was flooded and I hope that like the ants, the rain will go easy on us too.

hip hop you don't stop

So, she says, do you wear the same four outfits every week? I laugh a little and say I do. And in cubicle world I am sure it gets noticed. But you know, still. She cases me a little so, is what you have on one of your outfits? I'm wearing jeans and a shirt and after 12 hours I'm sloppy. After 2 hours I'm probably sloppy. Yes I say.

She runs up the stairs and comes back down. She's holding two dresses. I don't wear these anymore she says and hands them to me. They are lovely and casual and nice all at once. Really? I say and she smiles. Try them on she says. She hands them over and I understand again how you never really know till you know. How every day is a series of little gifts and sparkly rainbows. Of tears and longing. Of realizing how alive you are in the presence of others and outside of your usual routine.

And this is how it's been, this new world of couch surfing and depending on friends, of catching cabs and flights and morphing one world into the next. Of the kindness of strangers and also your friends. I'm busy and I'm lonely and I'm full and I miss my family and I like the work and I have fallen asleep on the floor and guest beds and once a bit tipsy after a long night of red wine and the most delicious chilean sea bass I've ever tasted.

I miss my home. I desperately miss my kid, a few weeks away from her has been like a gaping wound that no amount of skype or phone calls can cure. I miss her smell and her giggle and I miss the jungle and even the dirty heat. I feel like I'm the worst mom in the world. I fall in love with her father all over again without him even knowing it.

So I'll zig to my zag, this brave new world we've created, one foot in the first and the other in the third, there is no playbook for this and so we go day by day wondering if this is right or that is right or what it all means and in the end it means we are still living, one of us hasn't left the jungle and two of us have gone back and forth and the third, the girl third has been back and forth for two months now, an upside down sort of something that feels shaky and stable all at once.

So the radio silence has been just that. Of not knowing what to say and of having to say too much.

snappish

I have internet in our jungle house now.  It took all this time and acts of equal parts contrition and might but here I am, catching up with you.  It's slow here, not quite dial up but not quite right, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. And after all this time I've decided I don't need it as much as I once thought I did.

My friends down the road run a guest lodge and I am there sometimes either visiting or watching our collective kids run wild.  They also have easy access to the river and when it's as hot as it's been lately I take M up there to go for a cool off swim.  In case you are curious we also have cool off showers and cool off under the net experiences as well.  We actually call these things that.  So our big dumb puppy follows us the other day which means all three of us are in the river cooling off when some of the tourist folk staying at the lodge wander down for a swim. So we do our swimming thing and they laugh about our silly dog and my silly kid and we don't really talk much and life goes on as normal.  

So the next day I am at the market in town buying a few things for dinner when I hear someone calling my name. I look around and it's those tourists from the day before in the back of a taxi, they are calling my name and one of them takes out her camera and actually takes pictures of me while I am hauling my sweaty ass into our car with a few grocery bags like we are all buddies hanging out on an adventure. I mean, I guess in the philosophical sense we ARE all just buddies hanging out on an adventure. But I digress.

I know this is a touristed area, folks come here to experience the jungle, hell it's how we found this place ourselves.  But now that I live here and am not on vacation it feels different.  This is my real life here and my real life entails buying groceries at a shitty market down the road before driving home and cooking dinner on a shitty stove. I mean, there are good things too about being here but I'm just summing some of the less than good ones up for you here, and for some reason it struck me as odd that people I do not know would want to take pictures of something so mundane and for some reason I was now unwittingly part of their vacation experience, with them meeting weird local folk with weird local dogs and kids doing weird local type things.  With pictures. 

Or maybe I'm just being too sensitive.  

PS. If YOU came here to visit me you can take all the pictures you want.  That's different. See how that's different?

PPS. Maybe I'm the one with the problem.  

PPPS. I need to shut up already don't I?

PPPPS. We were sound asleep when the earthquake hit. It went on for quite a while in a house and a village and a country not built for such things.  Aside from a few broken things we are fine and so are our neighbors.  We'll learn more as the day goes on.  Scared me, though. This was by far the hardest one I've ever felt and I'm from California.

take me out to the ballgame (and hurt me)

I'm probably hovering at 38,000 feet right now as you read this, or wading through the Houston airport accidentally breathing in swine flu germs or perhaps just perhaps cracking that first jungle beer but I couldn't leave the US of A without sharing a story with you to ponder whilst I'm en route.  So sit back and relax and at the end I'll be asking for your opinion.

J and I are at a Dodger game with two friends.  It's maybe the 4th inning, we are in fairly decent seats (friends with money treated us to the game) and we are enjoying our first beer.  The crowd is raucous, it's obviously that this section has some very dedicated fans who whoop it up every time something good happens.  It's good fun and everyone seems friendly.  We are here at the 4th inning because traffic was so bad (yes LA you have bad traffic you bad city you bad traffic city you) that it took us this long to get here and then to find the beer.  But it's okay because on the way we were listening to New Order and you know, I haven't listened to New Order since I was a wee wisp of a thing, and now I'm old.  So it was quite a reunion me and New Order. But I digress.

Sitting in the stadium on the first base line, I can see the field and the night is clear.  I smell hotdogs and everyone is wearing blue. Directly in front of us is a couple that I might rather generously describe as rednecky.  The dude is affable and loud, the woman seems to be enjoying herself.  They are sitting close but then again we are all sitting close packed into stadium seating. He jumps up and screams every time something good happens for his team which happens a lot.

 

And then it happens. 

All of a sudden and without provocation a peanut shell lands on my hand.

I glance down and see it and a few more shells on the aforementioned affable yet rednecky gentleman in front of me.  Almost unthinkingly I reach down to brush off the shells on his back when all of a sudden his lady friend whirls around (think the chick from Exorcism) and grabs my hand and squeezes it hard.  Hard.  And right before I even make contact with the said shells. As she squeezes it she says Don't you touch him and then lets go of my hand and turns back around.  I see her gentleman friend nudge her but he doesn't look back. J's watching the game and misses the entire thing. 

Needless to say I am speechless. She then proceeds to turn around and glance at me every 12 minutes or so for the rest of the game.  Just in case.  But in case of what? 

Lacking closure and slightly afraid of the crazy chick in front of me I am unable to find resolution and am left to wonder what could have possibly been going through her mind and what would cause a person to react like that.  So I've come to you for help. 

Is it that she:

1. Was terribly insecure and thought I was hitting on her aging rednecky gentleman caller even as I sat with a male friend of my own?

2. Has eyes on the back of her head implanted there by the CIA for purposes of looking over her shoulder to thwart evil at large scale sporting events?

3. Thought the peanut shells added a little sexy something to his ensemble?

4. Thought I was an alien invader looking to suck the blood of a strapping young buck and feared for her very life?

5. Thought I looked like his 2nd ex-wife, the one he can't get over and still calls on Fridays after too many beers?

6. Fill in the blank

Or was I simply wrong for somewhat absentmindedly invading another person's personal space, space that is on short order at a sporting event of this kind?  I realize that is probably the right answer but her response was well over the top for such a minor offense.  

Or was it?

See you on the flip side (from down under and why do they only say that about Australia anyways?).

its ladies night oh what a night

It's been our ritual for years, these two friends and me.  When faced with big life changes we conspire to make it happen and this time was no different and in fact it's somehow the biggest change so far. I'm leaving them this time and there were no excuses to be had. My life will be so far away from this I can't help but say yes.

So we hopped on a plane to Vegas.

I rarely drink bloody marys but in Vegas it's all I am thirsty for.  We arrived at dusk as we watched the sun set and the moon rise from 30,000 feet.  It was spectacular and for a moment rational thought settled in. Then my friend handed me another bloody mary.  

When together we are so ridiculous and so silly that we spend most of our time doubled over, this motley crew of gender and race, we three race from taxi to hotel to casino, hurling our bags in the overpriced room one of them sprung for. We have to. It's our last night.  We spend the next several hours gambling and laughing and ordering drink after drink.  We have a minor run at the poker table, thankfully one of us is a professional and simply told the others what to do. Bet, hold, pass, shut up already.  All of a sudden it's 3am and two of us are fading fast but one of us, he can never let a night end. He looks at us and jumps up and down.  We have to, he says. In fact it would mean a lot to me. It's not the first time he's asked us to do this, in fact he asks us every single time and we always laugh and ignore him but it's one of the reasons we love him, he never gives up and is always earnest even when he's wrong.  But tonight feels more final somehow. So we look into his soulful brown eyes dancing with gin and look at each other and nod, fueled by a night of cocktails and our judgment is impaired. We are going to a gentleman's club.

I barely remember the taxi ride, our hilarity is so over the top.  The club like all the other clubs is as bright as sunrise.  We tumble out of the cab as groups of men stream past.  We females look at each other and shake our heads. I can't fucking believe we are fucking doing this she says and laughs.

The beefy guy at the front tells us how much it costs to get in and I turn to leave thinking there's absolutely no way in hell anything inside that room is worth this price.  As I'm turning I notice my friend pulling out his wallet. He pays for all of us and the velvet ropes part. We step over the line and I want to grab my friend's hand but it's time to cowboy up and this is no place for sissies. We walk inside.

This is where I should pretend like I'm sophisticated and worldly and that my jaw didn't drop on the floor. That I wasn't caught speechless by the dozens of drop dead ridiculously gorgeous women all walking around in every fantasy possible. Now I really want to grab my friend's hand but when I look over at her I realize she's got a woman pulling her towards a table. We sit down and three or four women descend immediately.  One of them starts petting my friend's hair and she looks at me in desperation.  Now who wants to hold whose hand I think with a grin.

Our reason for being there is for the first time all night playing it cool.  He settles in his chair and looks at us expectantly. So whaddya think?  I start to tell him exactly what I think but all of a sudden he's got a woman next to him. She's not doing much but she's beyond sexy. They all are. There's no denying this simple fact as much as I'd like to posture about how terrible I think all of this is, how baseless and demoralizing and....but I am suddenly captivated by a woman onstage dancing with a pole.  I've never seen this sort of thing in real life and now all of a sudden it's everywhere, it's dripping out of every pore and oozing from the floor. I turn to see if my girlfriend is watching and I catch her eye.  We cock an eyebrow at each other for a moment in shock and awe. I can't believe some people can actually move like that in real life. Girls come and go, a steady stream of them artfully and professionally ascertaining exactly how much money they can get out of us and fairly shortly they settle on the boy in the group, no surprise there. Even the five or so minutes of constant attention was so unsettling that I am happy it's over and they've focused their efforts elsewhere. We sit and watch for awhile longer, I'm sipping a final bloody mary like it's water and I've been in the desert for weeks.  

We talk quietly between us, mostly whispering things like look at her oh my god look at her how does she do that mother of god look over there when a woman sidles up to us and starts petting my arm.  Do you like what you see baby she says to me in exactly the way she's supposed to and I say sister you are smoking but can I ask you something and she nods I'm asking in all honesty and with no disrespect do you like this because I can't imagine this is fun for you and she looks at me and laughs. She plops down next to me and says fuck no, this is just the shit I do because men are dumb enough to want to pay for it. We start talking about this like I'm a freshman and she lays it all out, all the ins and outs and nightmares in between. She grabs my drink and finishes it off but for some reason I don't mind. 

Another girl comes up and joins in and we talk some more. It's the obvious things, the cash, the tips, the hours, and surprisingly, the medical benefits that make them choose this. We might as well be shoe shopping as they points out girls who glide by fake, real, what do you think, she's everyone's favorite, she's really nice, that guy is here every night that one's a nightmare and on it goes. She's nice, this woman. She goes on to explain how the private rooms work and my eyebrows shoot up again at the price. I want to ask what exactly comes with a cost like that but it strikes me that I might sound like I really am the most naive person in the room. So our conversation runs its course and I like her and I also want to cry.

Sensing there's nowhere else to go she gets up and leaves. My friend and I look at each other, we are exhausted now, this whole place is so tragic and unreal and stimulating and wrong.  We look at my friend and he sees our faces What? You guys want to go? And his face falls a bit, it's one of the reasons I love him, he's always earnest even when he's wrong.

It's just really sad here I say and my friend nods and says honestly what did you think we would think. I just can't believe you can really enjoy this and he shakes his head.  Well if you want to talk about reality then I guess it's ruined and he laughs and stands up to go.  We stumble past the rest of the scene and I can't help but see it all, the fake and the pretty, the desperate and the glitter and heat.  We go outside and fall into a cab. I smell like them now my friend says and she does, it's cloying and sparkly and sweat and silicone. We ride into the predawn, silent now for the first time all night. That was really weird doing that with you he says and we punch him in the arm, one on either side. What did you expect, you jackass. And he laughs and reframes himself. I just wanted to do that with you guys and even though it should be weird it's not because he's earnest even when he's wrong and somehow it even makes sense.