This tale begins in my backyard at a baby shower for my fat pregnant self. I was about 9 months along. My family doesn’t exclude men or differentiate between a regular party and a baby shower, so just image a gathering of friends and family, drinking, eating and celebrating with a pregnant host and possibly pregnant buddies or new babies running around.
It was a really nice shindig, the early June weather was perfect, not too hot and our good looking friends were lounging around in sun dresses and shorts sipping designer beer. The backyard was covered in grass, and guests were comfortably chatting outdoors in lounge chairs in the afternoon shade of our giant mulberry trees. Helmet was living in the grannie house; I’m going backward a bit in this tale, about a year and half before the artshow snafu because I had excluded a significant character trait that can explain where the relationship between me and Helmet started to get rocky. My husband went to the store for barbeque goods or beer, I can’t remember exactly why he left, but he walked out the side gate. It didn’t automatically lock and could be pushed open. Helmet, being a “per-tographer” her word, not mine, had a camera and was chasing children, because they’re cuter than adults and this is not uncommon. I have a tendency to try to get that perfect shot when I have a camera and there’s a cute kid near me. There’s some magic sparkle you can occasionally capture. Helmet chased my cousin’s daughter, Kady, around the corner away from the party attempting to photograph her. Kady thought it was a fun game, she was almost 18 months old. I overheard someone tell my cousin, but she said, “It’s ok, she’s with [Helmet’s real name]." About 5-10 minutes later my husband came back to the party with the store bought goods and he was carrying Kady. His face was twisted, he was really concerned that he found Kady alone in our driveway near the street. Our street is dangerous. Dan was hit as a child on that same stretch of road. People use our street as a cut through to the highway so there is a lot of unnecessary traffic. Kady was ok, so there was no need to freak out but the whole situation seemed really idiotic. I can’t count how many children I have yelled at, disciplined, rewarded and spoiled because all parents need help. It does take a village to raise a child. We support one another because being a parent is hard. No one can watch their child 24/7 so a little assistance is always appreciated. There were questions suddenly raised on the mental aptitude of Helmet, who had chased Kady to the gate and then walked away leaving her there unsupervised. Helmet, of all people, knew that gate didn’t lock and could be pushed open. She lived there; that was her daily route. “Your cousin is a bad mom.” You have to be kidding me. This was after the party; everyone had left. “She wasn’t even watching her child.” No, my cousin had assumed the moron with the camera chasing her child around the corner trying to get that perfect kid photo would be looking out for her, not to mention my cousin’s entire family and about 30 friends were there. We automatically watch loose children. It’s a thing. I wanted to punch Helmet, I will not lie. There is a code of all moms that requires we do not judge one another. No one raises their child the same way, and there is NEVER a right or wrong. People are people, we are human, we make mistakes, but that is life. Where one mother lacks something another usually can assist to fill that space. If not, that is the lesson that needs to be learned. How dare that reject judge my cousin for something SHE did. Helmet was the idiot who ran the child around the corner to the gate. I was done listening to Helmet’s moron mouth babble. I walked away from the situation before I said or did something I would regret. I have a mean mouth sometimes, and I can’t say I’ve never punched anyone in the face. I have popped a few people, most of them deserved it (who’s judging now?) Pregnant or not, I was still me. I made a beautiful abstract painting and named it “If you don’t like Sawittre (my cousin), I don’t like you.” I don’t think that I made it about Helmet, but maybe I did because it coincides with the timing. Sawittre actually paid good money for that piece and I still like her. This little incident happened before Helmet crashed into Dan’s work van then lied about it and before she humiliated Gayla in front of her family at the art show but after she stuck her nose in the Hobbit and Gayla’s personal relationship. This may have been the first time I almost punched Helmet, but definitely not the last time. After the delivery of my child, and some much needed space from Helmet, I was forced out of financial necessity to work with her at the Hobbit’s cabin again. This is a season after the art show, and after the car smash, and after her fish had been buried so our relationship was a bit strained. She and Alissa had a falling out, I think they were no longer speaking. Hobbit didn’t care, as long as his farming got done so he instructed Gayla “Not to make faces at Helmet,” and we had to cut his flowers in a community room, the cabin next to his on the mountain in the middle of nowhere. This time only Gayla, me, JR, who is my husband’s cousin, and Helmet were working together. I will explain how the Hobbit got his name. He dwelled on an empty mountain most months half of the year, camping out while farming and living in a yurt. He had long, unbrushed hair, wore holy jeans with no underwear (I’m only stating the obvious because the holes were up high, luckily no balls were ever spotted), and he often went without shoes. He had hairy, dirty toes and was short in stature. Calling him a Hobbit was an understated comparison. He didn’t mind, we called him that to his face. With his Irish brogue and funny, drunken leprechaun ways it was fitting. Once I tricked him into singing “Magically delicious!” and doing a jig. He was really drunk, and he fit right in with my mish-mash, art party crew. Hobbit had changed a lot by this time, the Helmet years. He used to buy us lunch when we were working, and he would hang out with us all day and chit chat while we clipped. Those were the years before Helmet started working. In the past we even drove to Seattle together to celebrate the end of the season, and we’d all go to San Francisco to bar hop or shop on the off season. Gayla and I were his personal stylists, he needed assistance with his wardrobe and home furnishings to show how cool he was to his Irish buddies and the holey jeans and camping shirts wouldn’t fly back home. They apparently dress very well to hit the clubs in Europe. We played and made merry as friends will often do, but since Helmet started coming up the hill Hobbit began acting very strangely. After 3 years of great friendship Hobbit didn’t want to be anywhere near the working crew. We didn’t really notice it at first, he was loud and obnoxious anyway, not to mention paranoid and hermitish but the silence did seem curious. JR was new to working with us, but I brought him because I wanted to get the job done as fast as possible and he was living with Dan and me, going through hard times and he was unemployed. Hobbit was usually overly paranoid about new people, but he liked JR and he was family. JR and Gayla bonded over the art show argument in my front yard so they became evil BFF twins at the cabin, camping out in the loft while Helmet slept in the midst of our trim dust downstairs in the main room during the Monday-Friday work week. My daughter who was 5-months-old, was staying with and being cared for by my mother in Nevada County, so I went home to my mom’s every night to snuggle the baby and supply her with boob milk. It was a seasonal position that paid well, and I needed all the cash or product I could flip to be a stay and work from home artist/photographer mom. The job usually lasted 2-3 weeks. We all went home on the weekends, except Helmet, who now had no more fish to feed and no friends, having lost Alissa’s companionship. After a week of working on the hill it was time to take a weekend break and head home to the valley. JR and Gayla were eager to tell me their new Helmet problem. She refused to bathe. It had been 5 days. As I mentioned earlier in this story Hobbit had become somewhat indifferent to us, he was not really our friend anymore, he transformed into an angry, weird boss person who was avoiding us and limiting his regular contact. Gayla and I noticed it, but JR said it was probably because Helmet stunk up the cabin “...like onions and ketchup.” Gayla and JR didn’t let Hobbit’s detachment stop them from going to his fancy, nice cabin to shower in the evenings, the job was a filthy one, and even I showered there every night after work before going to my mother’s, she wasn’t privy to exactly what florist I was working for, or what kind of flowers I cut. JR asked if Helmet had bathed yet when we were being taxied down the rabbit hole by the Hobbit the following Monday. Hobbit assumed she had, because he left every day to do his farming but didn’t note her bathing schedule. He was hoping she would use his facilities while he was gone. Our small side cabin had only a toilet, no usable shower, and even the toilet had to be flushed by a water bucket (no. 1 only), because the pipes had frozen a few years prior. We entered the cabin and were greeted by the aroma of armpits and stank ass. She had not taken a shower yet, and we were on day 8. JR wasn’t messing around, and immediately told her to bathe. He probably did not speak with a kind tone, after working with her for 5 days and he was living next to her. She was residing in our grannie home which JR probably wanted to stay in, so there was no love lost between the two. JR was sarcastic and witty and Helmet was, well, the opposite of that. Helmet said she didn’t like going in Hobbit’s house because he didn’t like people in his house. So what? We were trapped on a mountain working for him, he can suck it up while we pooped or showered. No one wants to smell another persons 8-day no shower, working every day 17 hours + odor. Was she pooping in the woods? Helmet refused to go into the Hobbit’s house while he was there, but we knew he’d be taking off soon to start his work, so we silently prayed he would leave sooner than later and held our breaths in the stankosphere. JR brought a movie, which was pretty new at that time; it was Dane Cook’s stand up comedy. Dane Cook mentioned a female having a stinky cooter, that smelled like it was washed with an even stinkier coot and we all laughed. Helmet did not think it was funny. She picked up her chair, slammed it down angrily, and turned it around so her back was to us and the television set. She put her headphones on. Helmet had clipper burn out, it was obvious. This happens if a person works in the trimming environment (similar to a sweatshop) without taking necessary breaks. Her brain broke. In the middle of another conversation that JR, Gayla and I were having Helmet suddenly joined in. We thought she was listening to headphones and we were safe but no, we were not that lucky. For some reason we were making jokes about meat curtains and the porn industry in general when Helmet thought it necessary to chime in about a personal sexual experience. I will also add now that JR is a DJ and had been privately recording some of our conversations without anyone’s knowledge for who knows what reason. I got a copy of this day’s recording after he edited it and it was appropriately named “Clipper Burnout.” “I don’t like getting my salad tossed.” Dude, never, never join a conversation like that because people will stop talking and stare at you with oddly puckered mouths, bug eyes and raised eyebrows. We all turned and looked at Helmet just like that. She had placed her chair back to the original position, she faced us. She continued speaking because we were stunned silent, not just because she was talking about someone tossing her salad, but because she was talking about it when she had not bathed in 8 days. “A guy tossed my salad once, and he ended up in the hospital with e coli poisoning.” Now, I know this isn’t nice, but it was an honest reaction. Gayla and I literally fell out of our chairs laughing until we almost peed our pants. I’m not sure if we were pointing, but we didn’t have to. I unfortunately have a recorded CD of this very conversation, but JR must have had the recorder in his sleeping bag, because it’s muffled and all I can really hear is me and Gayla dying for a very long time. No one could speak or respond to this, but we were saved because finally Hobbit flew up the hill in his beat up 4x4 to finish his farming. JR told Helmet if she didn’t go take a shower he was going to do something ungentlemanly. Since we’re still in the cabin setting I will now introduce Mickey, the cute little mouse, who first made an appearance in the bathroom when someone was peeing, I think it was JR who yelled and reported the first sighting, and after that it was not uncommon to see Mickey’s little head poke out of a hole when we urinated. It was a welcome visit, as our company was limited, and we were on 11 acres of Hobbit’s private property which was in the middle of hundreds or thousands of acres of National Forest in the high sierra region. “I’m going to trap him,” Hobbit said when he got wind of our cabin’s new mascot. Hobbit would have trapped him in a humane way, he’s a vegetarian by choice because he, “loves animals.” Hobbit lived off potatoes and beer. “No! Don’t trap him. A mouse is one of my totem animals.” cried Helmet when we were leaving to return home after the second work week. We returned Monday to a very different scene. -- TO BE CONTINUED -- It get’s really weird
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
My mind wandersI write whatever I'm thinking in no particular order Archives
July 2023
Categories |