Month: June 2009

And the gist of this gist is:

There is a 99.9 percent chance we will NOT be moving to northern California to run a coffeehouse/resort on the banks of the Trinity River.

Mainly because owner dude has, for three days now, completely ignored the email he asked us to send “listing” our salary requirements/needs if we were to make the move. This, added to our existing impression of him, isn’t exactly sweetening the pot, you know?

So.

Okay.

Well.

Now I am free to tell the story with total abandon.

Hallelujah!

Okay. You will, most likely, notice the disconnect between the title of this post — “photos” — and the complete lack of photos in this post, again, called “photos.”

Although maybe you won’t notice and if you don’t, well, yamahama, Crackie, there be problems and I’m sorry to tell you that you don’t meet the perilously low IQ minimum required to be reading this blog.

But let’s move on, shall we, because once again, I do not know what I’m talking about.

Okay.

I’m going to give you a link to photos of “The Resort That Cost Us 473,578 Hours of Butt Time in The Horrible Rented PT Cruiser.”

You NEED to see photos before I go any further with the whole story and, well, I didn’t take any except with my cell phone — and we all know how good those look — mainly because I don’t currently have a camera. I mean, I suspect that could be a contributing factor to the overall lack of photos.

BUT …. I’m not actually giving you a direct link because I don’t want it traced back to meee and Thee Olde Blogge here. I’m a cagey little minx.

So. Here you go: Type these three words into the URL thingamabob — as one word, of course:

straw
house
resorts

Then type (dot) com.

Okay. Personally, I put the sound on mute when I go to the website because it’s all a little too Tinkerbell for me, what with all the shinga-shinga sounds, but that’s just me. On the main page, click on “Welcome” then click on the “Gallery” icon that will appear in the lower left-hand corner. That will take you to the photos that I would have uploaded and put in this post, but couldn’t because ___________(insert reason here).

All I know is it’s definitely not my fault. It is someone else’s fault, as usual, I’m pretty sure.

I don’t know why, but I’m feeling the need to be absolved of everything lately.

Nothing is my fault anymore, ever, from here on out, okay?

Thankee.

The other morning, as we wound our way through the mountains approaching the resort, I really tried to ignore them — those looming imperial things. Maybe that sounds strange. I suppose it is strange, but they were so beautiful, so green, so full and alive, they literally made me ache. They reminded me of the Northwest, gave me flashbacks of an easier life, of simpler times. So I tried — with all my might — to ignore them. I told MB, “It’s like someone has put the cutest puppy in the world in my lap, telling me he could be mine, and I’m waiting for the catch. I’m holding my breath. I must stay objective about the puppy.”

So that became our catchphrase as we twined past the towering seduction of those mountains: “Don’t look at the puppy. Don’t look at the puppy.”

They were speaking to me, those mountains, luring me, calling me, and I didn’t want to be swept away. Keep your wits about you, Trace. I felt a little undone by it all, knowing as I do that the landscape surrounding me at that moment precisely matches the landscape of my own heart. Somehow, I understand it and feel it understands me. If you can feel a kinship with a landscape, then I do, I truly do. It lies dormant and quiet inside me much of the time because I don’t live in that now, but deep in that greenery, covered in mountains, I could suddenly feel the rumblings and stirrings of that sleeping giant inside me and the rumblings actually hurt. Oh, they hurt. I felt too small and too weak to contain them all: Uh-oh. He’s waking up. He’s waking up. Shhh ….. shhhhhh …. it’s okay … go back to sleep …. back to sleep.

“Don’t look at the puppy. Don’t look at the puppy.”

Life does things to you that you never ever imagine it will. Things happen that make it hard to believe in the possibility of good things anymore. That’s it; that’s the cold steel rod that runs through your core: the death of possibility. You start to live in this suspended state inside, not turning here, not turning there, just dangling, noncommital, practicing an apathy you don’t really feel, but hope to feel because maybe apathy is the answer. Maybe it’s the thing that will protect you from disappointment because the slow burn of regular disappointment feels as if it must be worse than death. Sometimes you think you’d rather die than be disappointed just one more time. You wonder, you worry, When will that final drop fall that starts the deadly flood?

“Don’t look at the puppy. Don’t look at the puppy.”

“Whatever you do, do not look at the puppy.”

The gist of it is this:

We have an opportunity to run a coffeehouse/resort on the banks of the Trinity River in northern CA.

So that’s the gist of it and that’s where we were — checking it out, you see.

Oh, but wait! There’s more.

Oh, not now. Oh, no. Now, I couldn’t possibly. I mean, eventually, yes, there’s more.

Okay. I’m a tease and a drunken slattern, as we all know.