Therapy Girl is going to have some Feelings now.  Therapy Girl is embarrassed at how often in the past she has publicly posted about her deepest desires, thoughts, emotions, confessions, bowel movements and feminine hygiene issues, and so she has decided to create a new handle, Therapy Girl, in order to give you warning when she’s going to have Feelings.  So if you’re somebody who doesn’t want to hear about Therapy Girl’s past trauma, you may now run away.

Therapy Girl will do her best to speak in first person, too.

On to today’s Feelings. Some of this is excerpted from a Facebook post, for context.  You can search my blog for “island” and you’ll see it all over the place; those who have been readers here for a while will already know.

On an island halfway up the coast of Maine is an old farm, Thomas Farm, the mothership of the Ox family, where my heart resides. There’s a big super-old white farmhouse with an attic that used to be haunted by my grandmother, I’m certain, and a root cellar with a particular smell of damp cool rock and laundry soap; there are outbuildings, a woodshed, a barn, fields, and a beautiful salt cove that leads out onto the river and bay. Every single room and outbuilding and crawl space on that 180 acres of virgin pine and shorefront, and every dark saltwater inlet haven, is filled with memories, some of the only really good memories I have of my childhood.  I only know what it feels like to be truly, deeply carefree and happy, because I remember a time when I lived on that farm and was surrounded by love.

Have you ever felt like your blood turns cold in your veins? That’s how it felt to find out that Thomas Farm is going to be sold.

My family can’t afford it much longer. I don’t know when it will happen; it could be five years, ten, or one.  It’s up to the uncle who takes care of the place. The surrounding land has already been given to the Nature Conservancy, years back, to uphold a family pact between our family and the original owners, the Thomases, when the farm switched hands, to keep the land wild, undeveloped. It just never occurred to me that I would someday not be able to go back.

I had a rough time as a kid. I left home at sixteen and moved halfway across the country to figure out who I was outside of that place.  For me Maine is both a precious gem and a bed of quicksand.  When I had been gone long enough, I figured out that I could someday go back and reconcile with Home, really face my past and maybe let some things go, but I never did.

I’ve moved around my whole life, like a sailboat pulling anchor during every storm, constantly aching to be brought back to home port, to her mooring.  She never left her anchor down for long.  Then she got brought onshore and hauled a thousand miles south to the desert – and that was Texas, where for years I was that little sailboat, born at sea, meant to be afloat, living on hot, dry land.  Instead of sea lavender and gulls I was surrounded by prickly pear cacti and scorpions.  And rattlesnakes.  And Texas red centipedes.  And cottonmouths.  But I digress.  Also women went topless at Barton Springs pool – that was a plus, and there was Tex Mex, and an amazing dance community, and people I love, and I’ll stop digressing now.  Eventually, after a decade, central Texas won my heart, and part of me is Austin now, big bright blue sky and all those bitey stingy things that are actually really cool, my point being and I’ll stop the run-on sentence that after ten years, even with my soul moored on an island off the coast of Maine, someplace like that could actually become home at least to part of me.

Letting go has happened without my knowing it, over the past 20 years – art school, college, friends and loves, sleeping on park benches, sleeping on countless Greyhound buses as every corner of the country rolled by out the windows.  Austin, career, partner, childbirth, children, big mistakes, redemption, art, healing that happened when I wasn’t looking. Transformation. A quiet redesign of the Home concept.

Here in Lebanucky, I’ve delighted in the springtime crocuses and daffodils, the miracle of ice coating and sparkling every branch and twig, fall colors, certain songbirds, things I left behind and yearned for that northern Kentucky has in common with New England.  And I’ve discovered that there are things to love that are, for me, particular to this place.  Being married to a community-oriented culture where family comes before individualism.  Growing food in amazingly dark, rich soil.   Living in a wonderful old house with enough room and hardwoods and a coal chute and a milk door, in a beautiful neighborhood – and being able to stay here, not because we’re making a crapload of money, but because good housing here is working-class affordable.  Forming relationships with people who are Not Like Me. Did you know that conservative Republican Christians and commie pinko Pagan homos like me can actually be friends and have great conversations about politics, religion, sexuality and gender?  For a gal who’s sequestered herself for a lifetime in oases of liberal thinking, this is very new ground.

My parents divorced when I was five and I left the island, and since then, any happiness I’ve felt has tugged on a deeply entrenched sense of loss as old as my soul.  On a deep level, for me, Home, happiness, can only be visited.  Every other weekend, and your mean stepmother will be there, and your dog and bedroom and father will now belong to her kids.

Here’s what’s going to happen.  When that place gets sold, along with the grief, I’ll feel like something inside me has been set free.  In fact, I’m already feeling that old barnacle-covered mooring tugging up, inch by inch, with each day that I further process the transformations that are happening in my family.  We’re leaving Thomas Farm.  We’re leaving the island.  My grandmother the matriarch died in 1978, and the exodus has been underway ever since.  Now the uncle my blog is named after, and my aunt, his ex-wife/best friend, are moving away.  That leaves one aging uncle, who deserves to retire and relinquish the house and its massive upkeep.

And then Thomas Farm will be the summer home for some rich person from southern California.  I hope she and her grandkids love it as much as I did.  I hope they create wonderful new memories to fill the place: the boathouse on stilts, the woodshed, attic, the Blue Room (that was once my bedroom), Thomas Cove, the little Toe islands, harbor seals, herons and egrets, Witch’s Cove, Cocktail Rock, ancient stunted windswept pines, granite ledges, Maggie the dog’s crumbling grave, Ben’s Folly, the outhouse that’s falling off the embankment, croquet balls lost in the mud flats, broken clam shells that cut my feet at low tide, old china shards and the very rare spectacles that can be dug out of Mill Cove, Uncle Steve’s campsite and beer cans, old Nellie’s booze bottles flung off the cliff, the tree we used to pretend was a horse, the mosquitoes and biting flies, red foxes, moose and bear, cranberry bogs, wild blueberries, red wintergreen berries you can find under the crust of snow, the osprey, sunsets on the bay, sea smoke, salt air, the Pink Lady or whatever tourist boats have taken her place, lobstermen and their maze of lobster pots.  Remember, about the marker buoys: Right Red Returning, and stay out of Hellgate in your small boat. Look for the phosporescent creatures that sparkle like underwater galaxies on black nights at full tide.  Maybe you’ll find a squid after a good storm.  Or a message in a bottle – maybe mine, finally come home after thirty years at sea.

In early December, Barbie takes her family out to Old Tyme Christmas on Frankfort Avenue, in their neighborhood.  First stop: Santa!  Rocky knows this one’s a fake, but she’s a good sport about it.

Anyone can visit with Santa – even if she’s a grown woman!  Lucky Barbie! Barbie has been so good this year – if you don’t count beating up her coworker after the drag show on her birthday.

After Santa, it’s time for a carriage ride down Frankfort Ave.  Barbie used to own a pair of chaps that looked like the harness on that horse’s rear.  Wait, did Barbie just say that out loud?

Barbie doesn’t seem to notice that Rocky is getting beamed back to the mothership.

Barbie loves Old Tyme Christmas, but she always gets annoyed when people spell it “Tyme”.  See how annoyed she is?

A few weeks later, it’s time to go do some shopping and get a tree.  On the way, Mo and Barbie get into an argument over what kind of tree to get – pine or spruce?  Oh, get over yourselves, you two!

Oh yes, this one will do nicely.  Thank you, young man!

No thanks, Barbie can get it on the car herself.

Hey Barbie, that’s an impressive taut-line hitch! Were you in the Barbiescouts?

A few days to go.  Gifts are wrapped, the tree is up, decorating is done.  Happy Hannukah, everyone!

Christmas morning!  What did Barbie get?  Oh my.  Good thing Barbie didn’t open her gift from Mo in front of Rocky.  Rrrar!

Gifts are put away, Rocky is asleep, and Christmas is over.  Barbie sits back to enjoy the quiet night with a mug of spiced cider and Vivaldi on Pandora.  It’s good to be plastic.

I’m sorry I fought with you about the tree, Mo.

My sweet boy is dying.  It looks like he’s got cancer pretty bad.  Today Mo and I finally let him out. Being an Austin greenbelt cat, he’d been jonesing to get back outside – where he loves most to be – for days.  We had been keeping him in to give him antibiotics, since there’s a chance this could be a severe bacterial infection.  Now signs are pointing toward the bad news.  So, knowing today could be our last day of sunshine for a while (and maybe his last one, period), the three of us held him, kissed him and hugged him, cried, and let him go.

He immediately perked up.  He hobbled over to his scent-signposts for a sniff, toured the garden, and finally, instead of disappearing forever, came back over to us, crawled up to the landing and settled himself down in a patch of sun.  He accepted some pets and even purred a little.  This evening he ate Friskies from a can, and came back in for the night.  So much for our tearful goodbye.

He seems happier now.  Not healthier, but happier.

Raise your glasses, everyone! Lets make it a night to remember!

Mmm. Sushi. That hits the spot, doesn’t it Barbie?

…but not as much as a few cups of sake! Thanks, Jes! Keep it coming.

Aw HELL yeah.  That’s what we’re talkin’ about.  After her friends finally get Barbie to come down from the chandelier, it’s time to hit the club.

At The Connection, things get wild with two beautiful strangers on the dance floor…

After ripping the shirt off a drunken gay man, Barbie suddenly notices that her girl is talking to ANOTHER WOMAN.

Oops. It was only her co-worker.  Barbie shouldn’t drink; she goes all ninja on people at the bar.

Oh, Barbie!

check out the original mini-dyke superhero that inspired me!

Here are the 5 Easy Steps to building a hoop house you can be proud of.

————————————————–

Goal:

Step 1: Gather your tools. You will need:

a) A bangy tool

b) a heavy-duty l’il pink plastic shovel

c) an ancient rusted hacksaw

d) the work gloves you forgot in the wet, moldy wood behind the garden last Fall

Step 2: Throw the work gloves in the trash can.

Step 3: Assemble your materials.  You will need:

a) some wood

b) Johnny Depp

I mean plastic sheeting

and c) some other random crap.

Note: you’ll need 2300g/m2/24h needle punched nonwoven PE breathable film.

Or that enormous wad of used plastic your neighbor’s movers left in the driveway that everyone is walking around instead of picking up.

Step 3: Take a break for Chinese food.

Fortune cookie fortune: “Your hoop house is going to look like a pile of shit.”

Step 4: Use the tools and the wood to assemble the frame.

It should look exactly like this:

See the hoop?

Don’t forget the flying buttresses!

Step 5: Put on the plastic sheeting.

While applying the plastic to the frame, you fall somehow and hurt your wrist, shoulder, back and the right side of your butt, as well as crushing a row of young lettuces and soiling your favorite jeans, and you decide to take some aspirin and call it a night.

Step 5: Put on the plastic sheeting

Your friends should help you with this part, but it might be a good idea to tell them to pull up their boxers.

And voila! You now have a beautiful, aerodynamic hoop house, and soon the neighbors will be begging you for your blueprints!

Wait for it . . .

Wait for it . . .

Tell the neighbors you don’t know where the blueprints came from.

Her thin wrists, bent to lay palms
across the narrow chest
over her sternum
where living bones have knitted a living space
for wire.
You can feel it
(but don’t wake her up)
with two light fingers
the hard irregular bumps
of a breastbone opened
and closed
by a man’s hands
while she slept
in whatever that tightly-controlled place is
that men create
between sleep and death.

I breathe it through
every night
in this same dim light

while this girl’s blood
and lymph, hips and toes
dead and live cells
bursa, pancreas
cerebrum, cerebellum
thyroid and freckles
pain receptors
pain blockers
heart and broken-through bones
quietly grow.

I was on a saltwater beach with my brother.  We were kids, maybe 10 or 11.  There was a pile of old lobster traps on the beach, belonging to our lobsterman father.  The traps looked more like rusted animal crates.  I heard a loud squawking, and trapped in the crates, accidentally, were a seagull and something that looked like a pelican.  I knew our lobsterman father would be angry with me for doing it, but I needed to free the birds.  As I walked toward the crates, I felt the familiar confidence I feel when called to help an animal. The pelican was messed up somehow – another familiar feeling, this one from childhood, when a creature is somehow “not right”, like the time there was a rabid fox in the woods.

As the pelican flew away, I realized that it was made of different colored raspberries – red, yellow, orange.  The berries were shining in the sun, as the bird looked down at me with a look of gratitude.

If so, then you surely won’t care about the major changes the KY State Nature Preserves Commission is proposing for natural areas in the Bluegrass State. If you said “no” to any of the above, and you live in Lebanucky, or, as some from outside my family’s cultural bubble call it, “Kentucky”, then please read on and send an email to this Don fella.

This is excerpted from the Blackacre State Nature Preserve mailing:

“The Kentucky State Nature Preserves Commission (ksnpc) is proposing new regulations for Kentucky’s nature preserves. proposed new guidelines are 400 kar 2:090

 These proposed regulations will go into effect unless written objections are submitted to Don.Dott@KY.Gov by June 30th!!

These new regulations affect the following activities for ky nature preserves including blackacre

 what changes would affect blackacre and other nature preserves?

“access track ten feet in width” – section 5(2)(b): (no turn around for buses, no access for vehicles with ramps for handicapped visitors)

 ”a trail shall be designed to affect only part of the nature preserve”  – section 7(1)(a): this could severely limit the length of trails and visitors’ ability to experience different ecosystems

 ”natural wildlife paths are restricted to single file width to allow one person to pass another but not wide enough for two people to walk abreast of one another” – Section 7(2)(3): (mothers with children, elderly who need help walking, school kids who like to walk in pairs, people who like to share nature hand in hand could no longer walk nature paths. how will people support natural areas in the future if they cannot learn about and experience nature in our nature preserves?

 ”minimal impact on natural features” – section 7(a): this could limit the ability to create accessible trails for wheelchairs, or provide provide stable, firm surfaces for people who have difficulty walking. our population is aging, and those who have supported nature preserves may not be able to enjoy them in the future

 ”any other structure shall be located in a service area”- section 8(2): no restrooms could be located in a nature preserve. this includes the blackacre homestead.

 ”measures shall not be taken to alter natural growth or features for enhancing the beauty, neatness or amenities of a nature preserve” – section 10(1): this could prevent mowing the homestead grounds at blackacre, or maintaining trails through the hay fields, long grass fields or access to ponds. it could restrict maintenance of dams on existing man-made ponds (dragonfly, spring house and jackson ponds at blackacre)

 ”the following activities shall be prohibited: a. grazing by domestic animals b. farming c. spreading of …other materials” – section 10(a)(b)(f): blackacre could no longer have farm animals, a demonstration heirloom teaching garden, haying (for farm animal food), composting for our garden, or mulch on trails

 ”water levels that have been altered by humans may be changed” – section 11: this could result in removing blackacre’s man made ponds (dragonfly, spring house and jackson ponds)

 ”camping, picnicking, building fires, using audio equipment shall be prohibited at all times” – section 15(10): this would end school group and rental picnics, wedding rentals, concerts, re-enactors (limited camping) and pioneer activity demonstrations requiring a fire

 ”a person wishing to engage in research or educational activities…shall secure prior permission of the commission” – section 18 (1): the commission could restrict activities such as pioneer day, harvest festival, star gazing, crafts, etc.

 ”Material for classroom laboratory observation or study shall not be collected”: this could prohibit collection of water samples, insects, and amphibians for observation at blackacre’s environmental education program (note: all samples are returned safely to their sources)

 blackacre state nature preserve is a magical place and different from other nature preserves. we are an historic homestead, environmental education center, and an old farm. we do not have rare or endangered species or an unusual habitat. help us protect and preserve blackacre for the purpose it was founded!

please email your comments to don.dott@ky.gov“

I certainly think there should be regulations to protect our natural places (for example, I’m not against limiting trails through preserves).  Seriously, though, we’re allowing the removal of entire mountaintops in Kentucky, but we’re so serious about nature preserves that we’re willing to pick on old folks?

Here’s a copy of my letter to the Commission.

Hello,

I’m writing to express my concern with the proposed changes to the governance of Kentucky’s nature preserves.  Although I see the benefit of some of the changes, I believe many other of the propositions will produce a grievous bias against certain populations’ ability to enjoy our nature preserves.  For example, Section 5(2)(B) would make it impossible for vehicles with handicap ramps to enter a nature preserve.  Sections 7(2)(3) and 7(A) would create trails that would not be accessible to people in wheelchairs or who have difficulty walking, such as elderly people or disabled people who use walkers and other assisted-walking devices.    I believe that preserves where the trails are already handicap accessible should be grandfathered in order to allow them to maintain their accessibility, and others that would like to be accessible should be able to petition for an exception to the regulations.

I have other concerns that apply particularly to Blackacre State Nature Preserve in Louisville.  Blackacre is an historic working farm and homestead and teaching facility beloved by all in our area.  It’s been a place for schoolchildren, many of them from our inner city, to learn about farm life though direct interaction with farm animals such as baby goats and donkeys, to have an experiential lesson in our state’s rich history and heritage, as well as to learn about our natural habitat and thereby develop a sense of responsibility for the environment.  Almost all of the proposals, it seems, will negatively impact places like Blackacre, and the people who benefit from it.

Please take these issues into consideration.

Thank you for your time.

Sincerely,

B.O., Esquire

Just look at this frickin’ thing.  Gah!