Last night I went to a wedding reception for one of the girls I went to school with, and whoa boy, we Montanans sure know how to throw a P-A-R-T-Y. There was a live band, balloons and icicle lights, and an endless parade of people topping off champagne glasses…all in a quonset, on a farm in the middle of nowhere. There were outhouses for taking care of business. Outhouses and champagne…only in Montana.

I saw a lot of the people I went to school with. Some of them I was glad to see, and some of them I’ll be happy to go for another few years without. We all drank too much, and danced poorly, and despite all of our reinforced Kindergarten teachings, almost no one kept their hands to themselves.

I slept at my friend’s house. She was sweet enough to wake me up this morning armed with a cup of coffee and an Advil, which is one of the reasons I like her. I hate that hungover feeling. That sort of dehydrated, fuzzy, dizzy feeling that makes me want to guzzle water and climb into my shower and live there for a week, with warning signs posted about it being an alcohol-free zone.

And after our shared coffee and unfortunate recap, I had NO desire to get back into my stinky beer clothes, so I stayed in the pajamas she loaned me, tugged my sexy (er, uncomfortable) black boots on, put my coat on, and staggered outide into daylight with an armful of clothes and my head ducked in shame – especially when her mother-in-law, who was all dressed up for church and smelled like flowers, politely offered to drive me home. Talk about a taxi-cab confessional, OY.

Anyway. Showers and greasy food are GOOD, that’s my motto.

I have a car. I don’t own it, I’m just using it until my finances are in the way of allowing me to purchase my own. Which will hopefully be soon, because although I’m very thankful to be mobile, oh my GOD this car is a BEAST.

It’s a beige Buick Electra – I’m not sure what year it is, what do I look like, some kind of car-obsessing expert? But it’s long. It’s so long it might as well be three cars in one, I’m not kidding. The trunk area is a small car, the riding area is another small car, and the hood…well, I feel like whenever I turn I’m in imminent danger of running into anything in my path. And it gets better – the Buick is NOISY. Not noisy like a regular big-ass car, noisy in the way that makes people crane their necks to stare in my direction and see why there’s suddenly a jumbo jet taking off from US 2.

So, if I had any issues with being stared/gawked/gaped at, now would be the time to get over it, because it is impossible NOT to stare at the Buick and the whack-job crazy enough to drive it. I would stare at whoever was driving (and naturally expect to see a little old man or woman) if it wasn’t ME. On the plus side, the seats are wide and cushy, and if I ever wreck, I’m fairly confident the indestructible steel frame would protect me, and demolish any of the newer, compact cars.

Someday, I will be the proud owner of a compact, sexy car in a bold color that goes fast and corners beautifully. Until then, if you hear what sounds like the apocalypse barreling toward you, don’t worry, it’s only me.

I went to the eye doctor on Tuesday, for all the obvious reasons: my contacts prescription was quite obviously outdated, my glasses were even more outdated than the contacts, and, oh yes, I was forced to because I got an eye infection and my last pair of over-worked contacts became unusable.

I’ve been seeing the same doctor, code name Rock, since I got my first pair of ugly-ass violet colored glasses at age seven. He always sings to me, because, he says, I have curly hair and remind him of ‘Annie’. And, you guessed it, he always sings…”the sun’ll come out, TOMORROW, bet your bottom dollar that – ” Yeah, you get the point. He sings it loudly, in front of the entire waiting room, but who cares? He’s embarrassing HIMSELF, not me. Or so I tell myself, when I’m drilling holes into the cheap floors with my blank, humiliated stare.

Why do I subject myself to this torture, you might be wondering? Well, that’s easy – I don’t have insurance, and Rock lets me use a payment plan so that I don’t have to go hungry while forking over the cash for expensive lenses and even more pricey appointments. Although I SHOULD switch doctors, because…

I started noticing a few years ago that whenever I go in to get my eyes checked and need a stronger prescription, which happens every time (by the time I’m forty I’m convinced I’ll be totally blind), and then recieve the new and supposedly improved contacts in the mail, they are NEVER quite as strong as I need them to be. One eye, usually my right, is always just a little bit blurry. Which makes me INSANE, because hello, didn’t I just pay through the fucking nose for perfect vision? That is in fact what the contacts are for – to CORRECT my vision, giving me the magical ability to see 20/20. 

On Tuesday I was determined to get the exact prescription I needed, and made sure to be very specific and firm when he was clicking the annoying clicker thing and asking me which set of letters was clearer, flipping them back and forth back and forth until I was dizzy and ready to stab myself in the eye and escape. And what does he do? He starts saying, every time I tell him which one is clearer, “Remember, if the letters get smaller, the prescription will be too strong” and “Amber, you don’t want the letters getting smaller” and “Which one did you say? Which one? Are they smaller, now?”  Because CLEARLY I am incapable of deciding for myself which set of letters I can SEE.

Nonetheless, I was optimistic. Until I got my new contacts on Thursday, and after elatedly sticking them to my eyeballs, realized MY RIGHT EYE IS STILL SLIGHTLY BLURRY. Which one, he asks? I’ll give him which one! And now the responsible thing to do would be to call his office and bitch, and explain that the right contact is still not quite up to standard, but oh why bother? I’ll need a new prescription in a year anyway, at which time I’ll go to a new and improved doctor who will hopefully not assume I have no idea what I’m saying and knock the prescription down a few notches to suit his assumptions.

Aside from that, I went to Great Falls this week and got the most AMAZING jar of cuticle salve, called: The Savannah Bee Company 100% Natural Beeswax Hand & Nail Salve. And oh my god, it is the best ever. Three days ago, my cuticles were the sad, bleeding victims of my teeth…and now they are smooth and mostly healed. After only three days! Yay. Also, for the $9 it cost me, the tin it comes in provides plenty. Yay.

Still more exciting (I can just see you all, clinging to the edge of your chairs with bated breath), I got the third season of HOUSE on DVD! And ah, the blissful sloth I descended into to watch all twenty-four riveting episodes in a single mind-numbing marathon. If you haven’t started watching HOUSE, you should. Be warned, Hugh Laurie weilding a cane and popping off with caustic, witty comments while simultaneously being all puppy-dog vulnerable is more of an addicting combo than you might think. Which is why I don’t watch the show during the actual season, but wait for the DVD release so that I can gorge myself.

A good friend of mine directed me to this website today, because damn, is she clever. Or maybe she just wanted me to shut up. Either way, I have been entertained. I LOVE words. I love the whole English language, and every other language – though I prefer to hear other languages as opposed to reading them, since I am singularly lingual. Obsessed with communication in general, that’s me.

The site, it really isn’t anything stupendous – it’s just people logging on and listing words they love or hate, but JEEZ, I went there and found three words I’d never heard before automatically, and went to look them up, because a word I don’t KNOW? How sad. So it’s practically educational! And as someone who loves to write, it’s nice to have a huge list of words available to me at any given moment.

There is literally a plethora of descriptive, fun, and annoying words littering the page. Words like heliotrope, and avocado, poignancy, stymied…and the list just goes ON. And plethora is on there, too, in case you’re wondering.

Yeah, I think that’s about enough getting in touch with my inner geek for one day. Or at least one blog post. What’s that? You’re curious as to whether I wear a pocket protector? The answer is no, but I definitely WOULD. (Okay, not really).

Why is it that doing the right thing is never also the easy thing?

When I was eleven, my mom and siblings and I traveled to Washington, my place of birth, for a small family reunion. It was there that I met my second uncle, a short, stocky man with beady black eyes and a smile that never seemed happy to me. He was from Arizona. I was immediately uncomfortable around him, but my mother was so happy to have our whole family together, and so I did my best to like him.

As our reunion drew to a close, my uncle asked me if I wanted to go back to Arizona with him for the summer, to see Phoenix and extend my vacation. I was hesitant, but like I said, my Mom was so pleased to see everyone getting along, and I very much wanted to please her. So I agreed. I distinctly remember sleeping poorly the night before we left – I was sick, literally. Looking back, I think it was fear. Maybe a child’s intuition?

We left the next morning. I should mention that my uncle had a physically disabled wife, and he treated her more like an accessory than a companion. I’ll add that she slept a lot. It was while she was sleeping, in the back of the van, that he told me what he had planned for me – before we even left the city limits of Spokane.

He raped me, repeatedly, for that entire summer. I was trapped, literally helpless. Whenever my mother called, he monitored our conversations, making sure I sounded happy, and that I lied about what a lovely time I was having. I had to tell her I wasn’t ready to come home, I was having too much fun, or he would punish me, and it was always easier if I pretended to enjoy his attentions.

Let me just say, it was a nightmare, one I was suffocating in, one I couldn’t wake up from. But that isn’t quite the point of this story. The point is, when I got home in August, my mother – being a woman with a brain – could tell, right away, that I was damaged – and demanded to know what had gone on. So I made myself tell her. Fighting through the shame enough to talk about it was one of the hardest things I have ever done. She raged, and she cried…and she called him, to deliver a lecture. She screamed at him, and hated him. But she never called the police, she never had him arrested. I didn’t understand.

I understood later on that she was afraid to rock the boat. She’d spoken with her mother, my grandmother, who refused to believe that her oldest son was a monster, and told my mother I was a sick, manipulative child who had fabricated the whole story for attention. My mother, like me, desperately wanted to please her own mother. So although she severed all contact with her brother, she never pressed charges. She wanted to keep the peace in her family. She was afraid, I think, that her mother would hate her if she put her brother in jail.

I have, over the years, done my best to forget the whole thing, to forgive and move on and live my life. I hated my mom for a long time. I was afraid, for a long time. Afraid that he could come find me, and punish me, or take me away with him in his truck – he drove one of those ‘Mayflower’ moving trucks, and talked about how we would travel together, like a boyfriend and girlfriend. I used to get sick to my stomach when I saw one. I’m better now.

Or I thought I was, until my sister went to visit the aforementioned grandmother in Washington earlier this year. H has chosen to maintain a relationship with her for a number of reasons, and I respect that. I have not chosen to maintain any kind of relationship with her, whatsoever. And oh, believe me when I say I never will. Regardless, when H returned, she mentioned to our other grandmother, affectionately titled ‘Grams’, that she’d learned that my uncle had remarried. Evidently the physically disabled wife died, and he met a woman – a woman with children. A little girl for certain, I’m not sure about the gender of the second one, although I’m positive it doesn’t matter.

My uncle, with access to the well-being of children. I never considered it, never imagined. How naive and stupid of me. Well, now I’m considering it. Now it’s eating me up inside, to know that because my family was determined to bury the ‘unpleasantness’ and move on, some other child is suffering the same fate. Fuck, how did this happen? And I know it’s ridiculous, evil doesn’t have an instantly recognizable face, but how could this woman – whoever she is – MARRY him?

I immediately brought up my concerns for the welfare of the kids, and the general opinion was, they’re ‘probably fine’. I love my family, very much, but pardon the holy FUCK out of me? They’re ‘probably fine’? What in god’s name was I, some kind of special rape-magnet? I think not. And of course, they don’t think that. I think that we don’t know for certain, and what’s the point in rocking the boat?

Well, you know what I think? FUCK THAT. That is precisely the kind of attitude that caused my mother NOT to call the police, and file a report, and allow her child to feel safe and protected. And more, I feel a responsibility to those kids. Who cares, even if they aren’t currently being abused, they are LIVING WITH A CHILD MOLESTER.

I’m deeply ashamed to admit that I wanted, for a little while, to ignore it. To pretend that everything was fine, and that my family knew what they were saying – the kids are probably just fine. And I couldn’t. I couldn’t, not and go on looking at myself in the mirror and seeing someone I can respect. So I called Phoenix, and went through the proper channels, and was told that although there is no statute of limitations for the rape of a child in Arizona, they can’t do anything without a date of birth or an address. And I have neither. And the only way to obtain that information is to call the grandmother mentioned previously, and what are the odds that she would be the slightest bit helpful in this matter?

So. I feel drained, and useless, and more than a touch vulnerable at having spewed this all over the web. I don’t know what else to do.

Forgive the title, it hatched (shudder) out of blind, gut-wrenching fear. I hate chickens. I don’t really like birds in general, truthfully. I mean, what kind of thing is covered in feathers, so as to give the illusion of something soft and cute, and yet also has clawed feet and a BEAK, for the love of god?! A beak! And the flapping wings. You pick them up, for whatever misguided reason, and they beat at you with their wings, causing feathers to fly and pulses (mine, anyway) to shoot into the stratosphere. I would describe my personal level of comfort regarding chickens to be nonexistent.

My best friend, of course, ordered chickens via the USPS – and that’s another thing, what kind of plainly evil so-called animal can be ordered through the postal service? – after getting the idea to start her own coop. She ordered two boxes from some hatchery in Illinois or somewhere, and now she has over twenty chickens in one of the empty grain bins on her property, where she has diligently constructed (with the grudging help of her father and brother) a makeshift coop.

Now, when the boxes first arrived four months ago, I was smitten and somewhat sympathetic. I mean, it was still cold, so a lot of them died…but the ones that didn’t were all tiny and fluffy and timid, in desperate need of oohing and ahhing and possibly small amounts of nuzzling. Anyway, they got bigger – naturally – and with the growth came the ability to FLY AT RANDOM and make irritating squawking noises (they hardly qualify as actual chickens, the way they sound) and the utterly creepy thing they do where they inch forward menacingly, beaks outstretched, like they may decide to peck me at any possible moment. I’ve never actually been pecked, due to large amounts of excuse-making and avoidances concerning visits to the coop, but I’m thinking it could be painful. And maybe even result in bleeding of some kind. From my soft, fleshy bits. I think I’d prefer to pass.

But last night, while visiting K’s house, she suggested (she’s been oh-so-encouragingly prodding me into contact with the chickens in various ways, perhaps to squash my immense loathing of them) that I go collect the one or two eggs, because yes, now at least one of the little beasts is making eggs. So I sucked it up and ventured bravely out to the coop, where straw and bird poop mountains needed to be navigated in order to reach the actual solitary egg, which to my extraordinary relief was NOT covered in poop. Of course, K’s evil plan hadn’t reached it’s full scope – when I returned inside, and delicately held the egg out to her, she suggested that I wash it and take it home, because after all, I collected it.

I eat chicken, and eggs, sometimes. I even enjoy certain types of chicken-like foods, although they aren’t my favorite. And I’m not especially fond of eggs, but I choke them down some mornings because of their protein content, or what the Food Pyramid would like us to believe is their ‘protein’ content. Tricky, conspiring bastards…anyway. The thought of eating an egg from a carton is a lot easier to swallow (clever, aren’t I?) than the idea of eating an egg that I took from under a chicken’s ass. Now, to clarify, I’m not an idiot – I realize, fully, that eggs all come from the same dark, chicken-y orifices. But it’s quite different buying them from a brightly lit shelf, where I’m sure they have been bleached and sanitized and soaked in all manner of acidic, purifying substances…than it is to wash them with soap and warm water, okay?

Of course, I am working on eating one of those coop eggs, and by ‘working on’ I mean that maybe sometime before I die I may crack one, fry it, and take an experimental bite before gagging in irrational disgust and rushing to the nearest waste-basket to heave until my eyes water and fall out of my head.

My trip to Helena was a total success. I know considerably more about how to do my job – always a bright and shiny bonus – and I have new long-distance friends. Oh, yeah, and I have a completely geeky and ultimately COOL commemorative coin from the Montana Department of Justice. And a POST certificate, and a diploma. Who knew I could get a diploma after a mere week of eight-hour classes topped by excessive partying? All colleges should work that way, as far as I’m concerned. I’d have a doctorate by now.

Also, before I left I, er…forgot, yes, that’s it – to mention that I adopted another kitten. A male, soon to be without his bits, who is an orange and white manx, dubbed Salem because I figured, what the hell, why not continue with the vaguely ‘magical’ names? So, now I’ve got two cats, and oh my god, the clean up is SUCH a pain in the ass. Twice as much litter scooping and sweeping, and frantically squirting their upturned, unsuspecting asses with a water bottle when they do all of the following, which they do ALL the time: get on the table, play with any and all cords and wires, get on the table and knock things down, get on the end tables, claw at the furniture and carpet, claw ME, get on the table, ect.

Despite their enormous mischief-causing, I am totally smitten with both of them, and ridiculously happy when I unlock my front door and hear the unmistakable thuds of two cats hitting the floor, bolting from their separate corners to meet me at the door, purring noisily and rubbing against my legs. Ah, love. And love in French, too, however you say that. Tomorrow night I should have photos posted of Salem posted on here so you can lean back and think to yourselves how retarded I am for getting a second feline, but oh wait, he IS adorable…