There were plenty of disadvantages to being in the tiny house during weather but they were far outweighed by the joys that could be experienced if one knew what to be looking and listening for. My two favorite things about living in the tiny house were listening to the rain on the tin roof (an undescribably peaceful and melodic noise) and feeling a soft breeze pulled through the house by open windows on opposite sides of the room on a barely windy day when the temperature was not too cold and not too warm. After that the whole house would smell fresher. There was a cleanness to the air and the breeze felt good on my skin. I relished the days when the weather was good and i could spend my day off cooking in the kitchen, watching the curtains sway gently as the fresh air was pulled through the house. I never wanted to feel removed from nature. I wanted to feel as if i was immersed in the wilderness in a little box for shelter from the elements. On good weather days the smells of cedar and clean air drifted in through the windows and i felt as if the wilderness was indoors too.
I could talk for hours about how unfair it was; the big fat lie that health care workers didn’t get sick, as if we were some sort of magical beings with iron immune systems, exposed to every illness imaginable and walking away unscathed. The healthcare system was set up in a way that punished workers for being ill. You could call in sick for one day but if you were feverish more than a day you needed a doctor’s note saying that you weren’t lying just because you didn’t want to go to work and would rather play hooky. You needed a doctor’s note to tell the company what the thermometer and your upchuck reflex just told you. This meant, instead of resting in bed, the infected healthcare personnel had to drag themselves to the car with a bucket and drive themselves, feverish and vomiting, to an urgent care clinic, wait in the waiting room (infecting everyone else…dooming them to join in the agonizing misery), and see a doctor who after a 50 second interview and a thermometer reading would exclaim, “yep, you have the stomach flu” and write on a palm sized piece of paper “stomach flu…not to return to work until 24 hours after loss of fever”. Then the doctor would sign his/her name and the healthcare worker would be expected to fork up the money for the bill, not having met their insanely unrealistic insurance deductible. They had not been to work, they just obtained a piece of paper that said they were not allowed to go to work. So, now the money for the bills at the end of the month would be more scarce than usual, and on top of that, for the doctor’s expert 50 second opinion, the worker now had a 1 or 200 dollar bill. It might not seem like a big deal to most but for someone who was living paycheck to paycheck with each dollar promised to some monthly payment due before it was even made, this kind of ritual could really tank a person’s existence. Add children to the mix and it was not an option. Single moms on a CNAs salary were not going to take food out of their kids mouths or spend the school supply money to obtain that little doctor’s note that said they had a fever. Thus was born the lie that healthcare workers did not get sick.
For 4 days i cared for those who were feverish, complaining of body aches, and puking their guts up, and on the fifth day i joined them. Living on the homestead, i’d come to understand why people sent for the priest so quickly in the olden days when someone fell ill. There were few modern comforts to be enjoyed during illness and i often wondered dramatically if i was going to survive. There was no hot water unless it was boiled, no heat unless the space heater was turned on and moved about the room in rotation. You could soak in an epson salt bath to address your aching bones during fever if you could make it to the shed to get the epson salt, lift the bath tub and carry it into the house, boil the water for the bath, and muster the strength to tip the tub to drain the water at the end. It wasn’t worth it so i just laid there. Living alone on the homestead, things like tea and soup required making. Heat required attention and effort. Even drinking water had to be carried from the shed in 3 gallon jugs. I laid in the bed and waited to die.
At first i became incredibly tired. I couldn’t keep my eyes open and i felt sick to my stomach. I decided to lay down but i didn’t make it to the bed. I laid on the floor, grabbing the couch throw that had been hanging on the rocking chair. I wrapped it around me and slept, face pressed against the cool floorboards. When i woke, both dogs were nestled against me but i was not in a condition to enjoy their comfort. I frantically searched the tiny house for something to puke in. My septic system was limping along as it was. I was not going to try my luck with flushing upchuck. I grabbed a metal mixing bowl from the kitchen. Up came my dinner. Mom’s beloved soup. At first i thought it was over. I had puked. It was done. I just wouldn’t consume any more food and everything would be fine in a day or two. But i was wrong. Oh was i wrong. I didn’t feed the dogs that night. I didn’t let them out to go potty until midnight and i didn’t make it to the door to bring them in until 4 am. I puked my guts up until there was nothing left but stomach acid. After the 30th time i stopped counting. At first i was in awe but after the number 30 my thoughts turned to survival. I had to hold the bowl up as i puked into it because if i turned my head down the vomit came out my nose and i couldn’t breathe. I struggled to not swallow though my brain told me to. When i swallowed, sometimes it went down the wrong way so i tried not to. But when i just kept puking and puking 5 or 6 times in a row i needed a break to breathe and out of desperation i would begin swallowing hard to try and stop the coming reflex from being triggered again, even if just for a second to catch a quick breath. As i laid on the floor of the bathroom, sitting quickly before each upchuck, raising the metal bowl to my chin with shaking hands, the hours of operation of the dollar general, the only store in my town, had not been on my mind. I thought that at some point it would end. I thought, “this can’t go on forever.” But i was wrong. When my stomach was emptied of contents i threw up acid alone. It burned my throat and chest after each time. Sometimes it burned the passages in my nose. It felt like i had swallowed water swimming and was drowning in my own stomach juices. I couldn’t swallow any water to wash the acid away because that would just come up as well. So i sat there and endured the burn. Eventually i realized i needed help. This was not going to stop on its own. The patients had all been given anti-nausea tablets by the nurse, ordered by the doctor. I knew the dollar general would have some but they were closed. They did not open until 8 am the following morning. That was a long time to wait. I asked myself if i could make it the thirty minute drive to the nearest city where there was an all night walmart who could help me. The answer was no. I would crash the car trying not to swallow my vomit into my lungs or miss the bucket. Would the bucket even fit over the steering wheel? I was in no condition to drive. Eventually, i left the bathroom floor and crawled to my bed. The dogs were outside. I didn’t think i could make it to the door so i left them out there. It wasn’t a cold night. I was in such a state i couldn’t even worry about whether they lived or died. I was very dehydrated. My lips were chapped. My mouth was slimy with thick saliva. I wanted water so badly but i could have none. I wet a towel and wrapped it around my shoulders in the bed. I put another over my face, peeling it off every time i needed to sit up and vomit. I had to trick my body into feeling like i had somehow given it water. I made my skin wet because i could not put water in my mouth. It helped a little bit. At least i felt like i was doing something to remedy the thirst. I ached for water. It seemed there was nothing better in the world than the thought of cool clean water. “Water water water, water water water water…” i mumbled. I began to make plans for the following morning. I had to save enough strength to get to the car, open the gate, drive down the road, get out of the car, and purchase anti-nausea tablets at the dollar general at 8 am. I would leave at 7:50. I just had to make it to 7:50. I woke every twenty minutes, sometimes to vomit and sometimes just because i was thirsty or my bones ached. Sleep was thin and delirious. My thoughts turned to Jesus. He had died on the cross, crucified brutally, muscles and tendons torn, bloody and beaten, the weight of his body tearing flesh further, thorns pressed into his scalp…i thought to myself, “if jesus can bear being crucified, i can bear dehydration.” Each time i wanted to cry i turned my thoughts to jesus, his bloody body hanging on the cross. I stayed focused in this way for a number of hours but around 6 am the sky began to lighten just the littlest bit and i could taste the nearing of 8 am with each passing minute. I mumbled continuously about water, “water water water water water water water water…” stopping only to take a breath or upchuck more vile greenish yellow liquid. I soaked the towels in water from the sink faucet, not ringing them out thoroughly as i had before. The bed sheets became sopping wet, and probably the mattress too. My clothes stuck to me in the dampness. I didn’t care. All i could think about was water and 8 am.
At 7:50 i made my move. I left the dogs in the house, running loose. I crawled through the yard, dragging my bucket and car keys behind me, one of the towels still sitting around my neck. I made it to the door and hoisted myself in. I was going to get help. There was going to be life after this. I was going to civilization where they would help me. This was going to end soon. I puked one more time in the bucket and drove the car towards the gate. My head felt funny. I was there but not really there. I knew i was driving but kept forgetting where. Then i’d snap back to reality and remember where i was going. I had a very high fever but i couldn’t keep the fever reducer down. That was going to change soon. 8 am was coming. It was coming. I left the gate open. I had gotten it open. I still had to get out the car at the store. I didn’t want to waste my energy closing it. So i left it open and said a prayer to God to keep trespassers from walking through. I managed to make it all the way to the dollar general without throwing up again. Water, beautiful water. Finally, 8:00 am shone in beautiful bright numbers on the clock in the car.
A woman came and unlocked the door. I must have looked a strange sight with my disheveled hair, my bath towel cape, my bucket, and my soggy shirt. I must have looked a little bit zombiesque because she looked at me as if she had seen a hoard of flesh eating monsters approaching the doors. She disappeared back into the store and i mustered my strength one last time. Leaning on the basket with shaking hands i asked the employees i found in the front of the dollar general, “please…anti nausea tablets…”. The woman pointed. The man decided to help me and took me directly to the little purple box in the middle of the aisle. I thanked him. I waited until he’d gone and then i tore into the box, pressing into the little foil package to release one beautiful pink chalky little tablet that was going to restore my ability to drink water. I chewed and swallowed it. It stayed down. Slowly, my nausea dissipated as i shopped. The woman said, “anything else?” I said, “yes, water, lots of water.” I could not lift the 3 gallon jugs in the shed. I was looking for something portable and oh how good it would taste to tear into it in the parking lot. So close now. So close to clear clean cold beautiful water. Mine all mine. I bought a 24 pack of mini water bottles and the last two boxes of anti nausea tablets in town. I slid down the side of the car in the parking lot and wrenched open the cap of one of the water bottles i had ripped out of the package. I tried not to choke. I tried to drink slowly but it was so good. It was so so good. I had water running down my face and soaking into my grimey shirt. I didn’t care. It was water. I would need the anti nausea tablets for 4 whole days just to hold anything down. Eventually i made it to the walmart in kerrville and bought another box. I decided they were a must to have in the purse at all times. It would take 2 weeks to catch up on all the chores i had abandoned during my introduction to the stomach flu. I would never look at water without gratitude again. I would remain a self-appointed hand washing and infection control practices enforcement officer in my field, as it was the only piece of the puzzle i could control. I would begin stashing coconut water and anti nausea tablets in the nooks and crannies of the tiny house for any future times when i was stranded in the country with sickness. I wished not to repeat the experience.
It would be 3 days before i got my shot at Rasputin. After chasing Charlotte off she had sat in her web for days, taking advantage of the spider’s system and beheading anything that became ensnared in the webbing. I had looked for her, hungry for vengeance for my poor friend and eager to protect the remaining spiders from her rutheless activities. But it seemed she knew my plan. She did not show herself. Until one day she was there, sitting behind the delicately placed threads of Odessa’s masterpiece; the only trace of her that remained. My blood turned to fire and a rage ignited inside of me. I said nothing. I quietly entered the house, grabbed the heavy lantern, and climbed the porch railing. When she saw me coming she scurried into one of my hanging plants where i had nothing hard to smash her against and couldn’t hit her without destroying the plant i’d been nursing along towards winter. She was smart but she would still be losing her life that day. I’d made up my mind. I’d let her go once and she’d killed Odessa and left the carcass on my front doorstep for me to see. She would not be getting the chance to leave me another of her tragic gifts. No, Rasputin was a killer. If allowed to live she would kill all the spiders i regarded as friends of my little one woman and two dog family. So, i had to become a killer too. She clung to the branches of my hanging plant and refused to let go. I jumped down and grabbed the scissors from the windowsill in the kitchen. I cut the branch she clung to. As i was positioning the scissors around the branch, she had reached out with her folded barbed arms and was clawing at my fingers. She followed my every movement. She was no longer trying to get away. The fight was on. I ran down the stairs and around the house to where she had fallen. I quickly spotted her long green body amongst the branches in the grass. I used the scissors to hold her in place while i dragged the branch away. She squirmed and clawed the air, turning her head this way and that. She reached out at me, as if punching an invisible bag. I took the scissors and smashed the living daylights out of her until she moved no more. Her innards splayed out of her as when one tries to open a too-ripe banana and the top part wont peel so the banana goo escapes from the middle and it is ruined. Rasputin was a threat no more. I scooped her into the water pitcher and carried her to the compost pile. I laid her delicately on top and let the birds and the hornets have at what was left of her. Odessa, i had given a proper burial with a little service which both dogs and a female cardinal had attended. She had a tombstone (the tree stump) and was laid to rest respectfully. Rasputin would be afforded no such niceties. Praying mantises neither numbed the animals they ate, paralyzed them, nor brought about a quick and merciful death. They tortured their victims, unphased by their suffering. I wasn’t sure why God had created these strange beings with their iron arms but if found on my property, they would be given to the birds. As i walked back to the house, both ruby and charlotte were in their webs. I stopped in front of each and notified them that Rasputin was no more. Piper was missing. 1 tell tale spider leg lay in the grass where she usually sat in her web. I knew she had joined Odessa and i began preparing a tree stump tombstone for her beside the other.
There was a cold front heading towards the property but it wasn’t supposed to hit until nightfall. I had finished up my work with the mindset of getting home in time to ready the property for the coming weather. As i drove through the gate and hopped out the car to close it behind me the sky wore an ominous look of change. There was blue, gray, and white all spread across the same canvas and the clouds were windswept and layered. Seemingly stationary clouds sat above another low-hanging layer that raced beneath them. They seemed to be racing me to nightfall. The changing weather instilled a sense of urgency in me and i hurried about digging blankets for the fruit trees out of the shed and closing the little potted porch plants into the well house, flicking the switch to the heat bulb jutting from the wall before locking the door and swinging it shut. I went to the house to grab the water pitcher. I liked to water the plants before cold weather so that if i couldn’t uncover them for days they wouldn’t die of thirst. As i stepped onto the porch i noticed a flash of familiar black and yellow at my feet.
It was Odessa, but she was all wrong. Broken and crumpled, legs folded, flat and lifeless…missing her head. One of her legs was strewn across the porch a foot away. As i knelt to examine the damage i noticed blood. I hadn’t thought of spiders having blood. Something had chewed through her, bite by bite, severing her whole head from her once impressive body. My mind immediately flicked back to that day the praying mantis had gone after Odessa and i with a mind to kill it had missed. Rasputin had finished the job. If it had been charlotte she would have packed up and picked a new spot, making another web from scratch. If it had been Ruby, she might have hid. But Odessa, she had been fearless; unphased. I wondered if she ever realized the trouble she was in. I wondered if she put up a good fight. I wondered how quickly it was over. I wondered how something so big and so vibrant could be reduced to this crumpled heap on the porch before me. She looked so small. There was no more time to contemplate. The wind was picking up and the weather was moving in fast. Now i had one more task to add to the list of things i had to get done by nightfall.
I stood and headed for the tool shed. I went with the mindset to get a shovel. I was going to dig Odessa a grave. However, i soon had a new problem on my hands. As i slid the door open i knew exactly what i was looking at. A formidably sized tail moved around in the dark as the rump of what could only be a rat bumbled around in amongst the scrap wood before climbing the sideways ladder and jumping across the room to scurry behind the shelves. As all this was going on i stood in the middle of the shed shouting, “oh, oh, oh, oh!” Both dogs ran to the shed entrance to see if i was harmed. I pointed to the rat. Both dogs leaned in and sniffed. As soon as she caught a whiff Sili was out. She turned on her heel and ran the other direction, away from the shed. I called, “sili, get back here and help me with this rat!” She glanced back, shot me a look that said “**** no”, and then continued running. Cashew backed away from the entrance to the shed slowly. I held out my hand and in my softest sweetest voice said, “here girl, come here, come to mommy…help me get the rat.” As soon as i said the word Cashew took off towards the house. I screamed, “get back here! Both of you!” But neither of them would listen. I had nothing of interest for a rat in the tool shed. However, most of my neighbors had livestock and i imagined there was animal feed in their sheds. This guy was a good sized rat and he looked like he hadn’t missed a meal in his entire life. I imagined he had found his way into the bags of feed somewhere. It was unnatural for a rat to be that well-fed in the wild. He continued to move about the shed and realizing the dogs were not coming back for me i grabbed my shovel and began swatting at the rat as it moved from shelf to shelf. I was not making contact with the rat, who was quicker than me in the ever worsening darkness. In fact i was just destroying the shed. Eventually i couldn’t waste any more time on the spontaneously added task and i gave up. Maybe it would freeze. I took the shovel back to the house and began digging a hole near some trees in back of it. I dug a good sized hole and then i gently shifted the lifeless corpse onto the blade of the shovel. Cashew immediately tried to eat her. I scolded her sharply and she ceased her efforts. I carried Odessa over to the little hole and dumped her deflated wrinkly abdomen and stiffened legs into the indentation in the earth. I began shoveling the dirt on top of her, saying a few words and vowing to kill Rasputin the next time i saw her, to save the others from Odessa’s fate.
Next to the little hole had been a tree stump. I took a permanent marker and wrote odessa’s name on the tree stump. It would be her tombstone. She started out covered only with dirt but as i turned to walk away i saw dirt flying through the air in my peripheral vision. When i turned back around Cashew had both paws in the hole and was holding Odessa in her mouth. “No!” I barked, “give me that!” I pried her jaw open and fished out the slobbery remains of the spider. I reburied her in the hole and placed rocks on top of her grave. Then i went back to preparing for the approaching storm. The rat and my revenge on Rasputin would have to wait.
Eventually Piper and Wilma would join Odessa in the spider graveyard just a week later. Piper had most likely been killed by a smaller male praying mantis seen lurking around the well house the morning of her disappearance. All that remained of her was a single torn black leg in the grass. Wilma was not in her web one day. Though i searched the property for weeks she was never found and i assumed the worst. Now all that remained were the two original sisters, Charlotte and Ruby.
I had always feared my eventual resting place ever since i was a child. I worried that if i died my parents would bury me somewhere far from the trees and nature that i loved. I was worried i would either end up amongst cactus and flat open spaces without any trees in sight or sandwiched between neighboring corpses like a sardine in a can or those cookie cutter houses in a row in the suburbs. It was probably the thing that haunted my thoughts the most; where was my body going to be when i died? I was quite sure that my spirit would leave my body, as it would be a straight bummer to stick around once the body was done living. However, my body was the only form i’d ever been familiar with and it was near impossible for me to think of it as something other than part of me. So even if i wasn’t going to be in it, i wanted to know what was going to happen to my body once my spirit wasn’t in it. I wanted it to rest some place nice with lots of trees, no unnaturally-bright plastic flowers, and few other people. I was reminded time and time again that all cemetaries would have “other people”. I was endlessly annoyed with this detail. I didn’t want my corpse to rest like a sardine. I wondered if it would be possible to save up enough money to buy the four plots around mine to make sure nobody else’s corpse could crowd me. But this created a new worry. Which family members and their offspring would i be survived by, and if they became desperate for a little extra cash, would they think much of selling the plots off, resulting in the inevitable crowding of my former shell anyways? Every time i passed a cemetary i noted how far apart the tombstones were and what type, age, and number of trees existed amongst the graves. There was nothing remotely close to what i was looking for. The graveyards with 200 year old trees were already full. There were no available plots for newcomers. The best and biggest trees, it seemed, stood in the cemetaries for veterans and you could only rest amongst them if you had risked your life serving our country, which i had not. In college i was in Oakland California and i did a photojournalism assignment on a crematorium there. It was beautiful. I took some of the best photos i’ve ever produced with that camera in the oakland crematorium. There were trees growing out of the floor in that building, stained glass windows, fountains, streams, frosted sky lights filtering diffuse light onto a cement floor, and rooms and rooms of boxes built into the wall with glass windows on the front. Next to each box was a plaque that told you a little bit about the person inside and then in the middle of the box would be an urn. Each urn was different and the words printed next to each box were different, chosen by the family to represent the life of who they had lost. I really enjoyed being there and thought how wonderful it would be to reside there in the days after death. But of course, it was full. There were no more boxes available to put new urns in. After watching what was involved in the cremation process i found it to be a rather unnatural process. Most of the ashes were not belonging to anything human and the parts of the human that wouldn’t burn had to be ground into powder in a rather abrasive way. I wanted to be buried. It seemed less violent. For a while i jumped on the bandwagon of a growing trend. The corpse was folded into a seated position in a bag surrounding the roots of a tree. That tree was planted in the ground and the decomposing body gave the roots of the tree nourishment so that it may grow. That would be one way to ensure i got a tree near my grave plot. But the idea of roots poking through my whithered skull as the tree grew started to creep me out a bit. So, 8 months after i bought my property it occured to me; i’d make a family graveyard and be buried on my land! That way i could pick a spot next to a 200 year old tree and make sure strangers weren’t parked around me like fish in a can. I spoke to my mother about the idea. I decided to choose a spot near one of my 2 really old oak trees. I didn’t want to disturb its roots so when the time came i would hire someone to cut down a couple mature cedar trees opposite of it so that there was room to dig a grave. My mother, my grandmother, myself, and any of our dogs that had gone to be with the lord could all eventually rest together under the shade of my oak and cedar trees. It was super important to me to find the right spot as once a family graveyard was cleared and fenced, i was not moving it. I thought how nice it would be to always have the dogs close; in life and in death. I thought how nice it would be to visit and speak to the tombstones of beloved companions that had passed and introduce them to four legged siblings that came to join the homestead after their passing. I texted a picture of the spot to my mother and asked if she and my grandmother would like to rest there when the time came. It certainly was a beautiful spot and it meant that i wouldn’t have to leave my land, even in death. Well, now that i had the next 60 years planned out i could relax and stop worrying about final resting places. My final resting place was home.
It was hard to get a lot of the health food items i was used to in the hill country. Everything had to be made from scratch, not because i felt like cooking from scratch, but because prepared or instant vegan food was just hard to come by in the country. In a big city there was going to be an abundance of gluten-free, dairy-free cakes and cookies, little chocolate pies and brownies. There would be vegetarian and vegan options at the soup bar. There would even be cheese free cheese-puffs in the chip aisle. In the middle of the hill country the health food stores were mostly investing in dry goods that would keep well for long periods of time on the shelves. If i wanted the solitude and beauty of the country i had to cook and i was okay with that. It was cheaper anyways. The problem arose when the stores stopped carrying rapunzel vegetable bouillon cubes because if not bought and used immediately the oil in them would turn rancid. Without the rapunzel bouillon cubes i wasn’t sure how to make soup. Soup was what i made in the winter months to get me through to days when the light lasted longer and i had more time to do things after work. I would gather all the vegetables available at the local farm market and put them all in a pot with bouillon cubes and water. Then i would simmer it until the vegetables were nice and soft and the herbs had coated each piece. I would pack it for lunch and eat it for dinner for the rest of the week. My mother was a raw-food chef. She had this uncanny ability to taste something and recreate it exactly. She knew what ingredients were used to create the flavors she was tasting in one bite. We had gone to our favorite restaurants and fed her our favorite dishes offered there in the hopes that she’d be able to recreate them for the holidays when we visited even though the restaurant would be closed. Boy did she deliver. If you had closed your eyes, you would have sworn we were sitting at a table in the hole-in-the-wall restaurant that we loved so much. So, when the stores stopped carrying rapunzel bouillon cubes, i asked my mother if she could make a vegan bouillon soup mix to sell on her website for people like me who wanted to make soup but lived too far out to not have to make it from scratch, boiling vegetable scraps and onion skins to try and infuse water with flavor without the salty oily grease of chicken (harder than it sounds). 2 months later she delivered. She put a glass jar of tan-colored powder in my hand on one of my visits and gave me the test batch of her new product, vegetable stock bouillon powder. I tucked the treasure i held in my hand into a nook in the car and drove it home to the tiny house in the hill country. It would be another month before i got away from work long enough to make soup. One day i found the time. I called my mother for the dosage and unscrewed the cap of the stout little jar i’d been keeping in the freezer for freshness. As soon as i put my nose over it the spices hit me. It smelled savory and familiar like herbed bread rising in the oven. I chopped all my local vegetables and threw them in a pot. I filled the pot with water and spooned in the aromatic tan-colored powder speckled with flecks of green. I stirred it together and put it on the stove to bring to a boil and then simmer as i went about the day’s chores. The market had held in their wooden bins; cabbages, potatoes, carrots, celery, onions, a few good bell peppers that hadn’t turned to mush that late in the season, and i had thrown in a box of store bought mushrooms just because i loved them. I stirred and checked on the soup in between each of my chores, anxiously awaiting its finale. I was so hungry and it had been so long since i’d had vegetable soup. The little tiny house was filling with the aroma of herbs. My mouth was watering and my belly was hungry. Finally, i lifted the lid to see the carrots soft and rounded by the bouillon bath and the bits of skin falling away from the soft chunks of potato. The onions had cooked down and were now soft and see-through, just the way i liked them. I went to the shed and got my soup ladle. I washed it and spooned out a helping of soup in one of the stonewear bowls my parents had owned when we were growing up. I could barely wait to take a bite. I stood at the counter blowing on my spoonful of veggie soup. When i finally tucked into that bowl of soup it was the best thing my tastebuds had savored in a long while. I called my mother to tell her she had better start making more and come up with a label and a price for the jar. It was perfect. I would use her soup mix many more times throughout the winter months, until the local market closed up for the year, not to open again until mid may. There was no need for the discontinued rapunzel bouillon cubes in the country anymore.
Depending on where one was planning on driving to and from in Texas, it was a good idea to take everything needed along. One must always have a spare tire, the equipment needed to change a tire, a knife, a jacket, water, toilet paper, a plastic bag, a first aid kit, a full tank of gas, and some kind of food. Depending on which direction one was traveling, some places in texas could get pretty sparsely populated and the towns one did encounter would be mostly ranches with large gates blocking the drive, miles from the actual house. There would be one gas station/grocery store that was closed on mondays and no public bathrooms or car repair shops. You were not likely to have cell service when you actually needed to call triple A or youtube how to open the hood of your car. Even the radio stations were sparse in some of the areas i was traveling through. Way out, there’d be nothing but static. Closer to the well populated towns with fast food joints and hospitals you could get country and church radio. The idea was to keep moving until you got to your destination. Don’t hit any deer and don’t have any car trouble. If you could manage that it was a good trip. I enjoyed the solitude in the middle of nowhere with the sparse radio stations and the barren landscapes out the window. I enjoyed the herds of livestock, the buzzards picking at carcasses alongside the road, and the occasional road runner or jack rabbit. The long drives gave me time to think, contemplate life’s mysteries, and rest for lack of a better word. I didn’t have to always be thinking about how my behavior was being perceived, whether my body language, facial expressions, and words were conveying the appropriate thing for each social situation. Solitude appealed to me because it was easy. It was restful. It was peace. I enjoyed road trips…just maybe not trying to cram the round trip into one day so i could get back to the dogs by nightfall and get ready for work in the morning.
I stopped on the side of the road to take a 10 minute nap and there were these 3 giant bulls. They waited to see if i had food, then turned and ran when they weren’t sure what i was about.
On this particular day i had already made the trek to see family and was heading towards home as fast as i could manage safely on the winding one-lane roads. I was racing the clock to let the dogs out before they shredded the pee pads and cashew went into full-blown poopapalooza mode. I had tried to stop at two different gas stations when i passed through blanco. It was the last big city i’d be seeing for a while. I had to pee. I knew blanco was my last chance at an actual bathroom. I passed the entrance to the first gas station because nobody would let me over one lane. I tried to stop at the second gas station but a truck had parked sideways, blocking my access to the available parking spots on the other side of him. Thinking he would see my car and adjust his so i could get through, i sat for a good 8 minutes. When it became apparent that the **** *** had no intention of moving i became disenchanted with the city of blanco and began to long for the solitude of the dry and undeveloped scenery of the open road. I left. When i could hold my urine no more i pulled the car over on the side of the road and opened the trunk. In it was a roll of toilet paper, a plastic bag, and the bottom half of an ozarka gallon jug of water, sawed off with a box cutter. I gathered the items and climbed into the back seat of the car. I quickly unfastened my belt and squatted over my ozarka travel potty. I heard a noise. “Ba-ah-ah-ah” then again. “Ba-ah-ah-ah”. Then around fifty sheep ran down the hill and stood next to the car, staring at me. No doubt they thought i had brought food. Several of my neighbors held a routine of driving their truck up to the fence and dumping hay from the bed of their truck into the animals’ feed area during the evenings. These sheep most likely thought i had come to do just that. But i hadn’t. I was just sitting there trying to pee with an audience of fifty sheep. I hurried up and tied the tp neatly in my plastic bag. Then i fastened my belt and opened the back door, stepping out to empty the ozarka jug. As i carried it behind the car the sheep followed me. I poured it out in the grass. At this point the sheep decided i hadn’t brought food and the herd disscipated, scattering across the hill. I waved goodbye. Many a time i had opened the bathroom door to an audience of two curious dogs who wanted to know what the heck i was doing in there but it was the first time i had peed in front of fifty sheep.
So there my spiders were, doing their thing and living their best life. charlotte was catching bugs that flew behind the house, ruby caught the flies that tried to get in the shed, odessa caught everything attracted to the porch light, and piper went after the flies that attempted to make it into the well house when the door was open. They seemed to be thriving and i hadn’t seen a mosquito in weeks. For the most part i left them alone.
Then one day i stepped out onto the porch and i noticed the big female praying mantis that had been on the porch when charlotte disappeared weeks ago. She was right next to odessa. Odessa was not as smart as charlotte. She didn’t seem phased in the slightest. The mantis had inched close enough now to grab her and still odessa sat in her web looking positively relaxed. I said, “hold on odessa, i’m coming.” I went inside and grabbed my step stool. They were on the ceiling of the porch. I was five foot. It had to be done. I grabbed the plastic lantern and tried to smash the praying mantis with it. The mantis moved. I smashed again. She moved again. Every time i tried to smash the thing it moved. Finally it climbed onto the top of the roof and out of my sight. It was on the roof somewhere. I was not getting the ladder out of the shed to go after this thing. I let it go. I had a chat with odessa about stranger danger. I told her how Charlotte had left the porch to avoid the praying mantis i now dubbed “Rasputin”. I told her she needed to be careful because the porch was a confirmed spider hangout and the mantises knew that. Odessa seemed unphased. She continued on with her routines business as usual. It was her confidence that would be her undoing in the end.
Shortly after i discovered Odessa and Piper i noticed a different type of spider on the property gate in the evenings and mornings. She would hold on for dear life every time the gate swung open. She turned out to be a spotted orb weaver. She had the most stunning bright red legs. I noticed she would take down her web every time bad weather was on the way and put it back up when the rain, sleet, or wind had passed. For this reason i dubbed her “wilma the weather spider”. Wilma was a joy to watch. She was very active, always either constructing or deconstructing a web. she quickly became my new favorite for the simple fact of her bright red legs. For around a month i used her behavior to tell me if it was going to rain overnight. Whenever the weatherman on the radio disagreed with her, he was wrong.
One day i arrived home from work to find Charlotte back on the porch. At first i was very concerned because i liked the thought of her being some place the praying mantises didn’t know to look for her. But then i realized, it was not Charlotte. The spider was smaller than Charlotte. Who was i looking at? Maybe Ruby? I sauntered over to the shed. Ruby was hanging in her web on the shed. I clapped my hands in delight. Another one! Another golden orb weaver! What an immensely happy surprise! This spider was not afraid of anything. She was more assertive than both ruby and charlotte though she was a tad bit smaller than them. She followed the movements of myself and the dogs as we walked around her web. As she was a bit more bold than the other two spiders and very regal, i decided to name her odessa. I ran around the house to tell Charlotte about the newcomer. As i did i passed the well house and a set of slender legs caught my eye.
Another one! This one was smaller than all the others, a little mini golden orb weaver. She was missing a leg. It looked as if she had already tangled with a predator and lost the battle but escaped with her life. She did everything the other spiders could do. She just took a little bit longer than her larger cousins. She used an alternate leg to pull and place the threads of her web as she was constructing it. All the other spiders used their back leg but this little bitty spider only had one back leg. So she stood on the back leg and used a middle leg to place the threads. It took her longer but she got it done. This little spider was spunky and resourceful. I decided to name her piper.
Now i had an entire crew of mosquito-eating night-shift working spiders. Within 2 weeks i could stand on the porch while the dogs played without a single mosquito bite. It was lovely.
