Beauty Dish: Underground Adventures of an (EX!) Avon Lady

Nature and Nurture

Please read my new article: My Libertines

Oh, those nutty guitar students!

Evaporated

I wrote a story on our road trip to our family vacation last summer. We stopped in Greensburg, Kansas, the town that was devasted by the tornado. My story is about that town, and how much my boys loved its... grass.

Fun scenes from around my tiny town

Surf on over to My Tiny Vegas and see the photographs I've been taking of my town, Las Vegas... New Mexico!

A Mom Called Paladin

Please read my Nature and Nurture column, titled A Mom Called Paladin. Thank you.

My beautiful town

I made a Squidoo lens on my favorite place in the whole, wide world - my crazy New Mexican town. I put it together for those folks looking for information on Las Vegas.

A Grumpy Pregnant Woman Meets Kilgore Trout

I have alluded to this particular chance meeting a few times during my three years blogging, told bits and pieces of the story. Here it is in its entirety. When I lived in So Cal I managed, like all other beach bums, to see Hollywood stars in their native habitat. I never found much inspiration in those encounters, a few laughs or moments of introspection, but nothing that gave me great pause. One day, thirteen years ago on the Indiana backroads, I met one of the great writers of this generation, in fact the only great writer I ever met, and it spurred years of wonder and dreams. I'm going to miss him.

I pulled off the road on one side of a valley forged between two rolling hills. The year was 1993. A creek wound through vale center, directly below an old Indiana train trestle, the town's namesake. Tulip Trestle was the oldest, longest, tallest original wooden railway passage in the country. It rose hundreds of feet above the ground with a full half-mile span, a relic of the 20's when the trains would carry Al Capone and his gangsters along with sickly wealthy women to the hot mineral water spas at Baden Springs. Today the track is worn through in some places, but still structurally sound. Cargo trains clamor over the trestle several times a day, shaking the valley, shooting sharp slivers of creosote-soaked wood to the ground, far below. My husband at the time dared me to cross.

"Let's climb to the top."

He pointed to the point where the trestle met the granite outcropping at the top of the hill. Grabbing points of granite, slipping my sandaled feet into crevices, I pulled myself to the train tracks. Scores of teenagers had been here before us, graffiti marred the tracks and the rock, broken beer and whisky bottles littered the ground. Sitting at the edge of the rock, I raised my hand over my eyes and surveyed the area, marveling that this decaying vestige could hold tons of moving slag and coal. My arms were sore from pulling myself up, my left big toe was bleeding, and I had scratches on my legs from the rough climb. I stood up to scope out an easier trail down the hill.

He pointed to the other side of the valley, where the track faded into a speck on another hill.

"I'm glad you're not afraid of heights, Birdie! Let's walk across the trestle."

Damn. Caught in a lie, I had to act fearless. There were no side rails to hold on to, to keep me from falling. Each crossrail connected to the I-beams at least two feet from the next, nothing separating certain death from my feet but the sky. Taking several deep breaths, I stared straight ahead at the other end, and slid one foot in front of the other. I managed to get twenty feet when my stomach spun and fell through my feet. My progress was arrested by my terror; I wanted to grab something, anything; the wind whipped around me, threatening my precarious position.

My husband calmly continued to stride in front of me, he didn't recognize my abject fear. I eased forward, feeling the wood sway and rock beneath me. Halfway across the trestle, I made the mistake of looking down, in the space between the tracks cradling my feet. Vertigo weakened my knees, my arms trembled, and panic ripped through my chest when it occurred to me that a train might be approaching. The stream below was a thin thread, the cows just spots on a green carpet. I stared at the largest cow in the field, and in my mind I said, "Moo." She turned her head to look at me and gave a moo, a plaintive cry, mimicking the drawn out bleat in my head.

I became a fixture in my Salvador Dali vision, a breathing part of the trestle, sharing the same space as ghost trains from eras past, sharing the wind with the waving grains and the granite. I saw the women from my belly dance class skip across the trestle in the place between my eyes, caressing the structure with their feet, their hands, turning cartwheels, leaping from I-beam to I-beam, the trestle holding their weight, moving to catch them, anticipating their motions. For a moment, I became one of them, giving up the decision to understand why they could do this, instead feeling it, living it, melting with the trestle, until we both were a creosote and bird-pitch covered, sandal-wearing entity, reaching from the ground to the sky, running along the ground till we tickled the soft bristly flesh of the cows and ran our limbs through the cool stream. I ran across the remainder of the trestle; I knew I could not fall - I was the trestle.

Two years later I pulled over once more. My belly barely fit behind the wheel. I left my husband at home that evening, needed time, needed space, needed the memory of fractal cows to seep into my skin. I rolled down my window and cool Fall air met my face. Another car parked near me, but I didn't think to look at the driver, only watched his steady stream of cigarette smoke snake out his window, rise high above the molting trees.

My baby kicked. I pressed one hand into my abdomen to give him a caress, let the other wipe a cascade of tired tears from my cheeks. The other driver opened his door, stepped into twilight, hand still holding smoldering tobacco. He turned. I froze. I knew this man, this writer from Indiana. I knew who he was. He approached my car.

"Excuse me, miss. Do you have the time?"

I stuttered. I was mute. I pointed to my watchless wrist. The clunker I drove didn't have a clock, and this was a good seven years before I would own a cell phone.

"When's your baby due?"

He inhaled sweet smoke, turned his head to blow it deep into the valley. I managed a reply.

"January. Feels like I've been pregnant forever, though."

"This is a good place to take a baby, I think."

He smiled. He leaned against my car and watched the last of the sun fade into the auburn woods. I wanted to say something smart, something important. I wanted him to know I loved his words, that I was a simple woman, an uneducated woman, but I knew his words, that they meant something important to me, but my mouth sprouted the only things I could think, could remember.

"The last time I was here, I walked the trestle with my husband. He didn't know I was afraid. But the cows below - I became one of them. I could feel them breathe. I was the trestle."

I stopped, realizing how stupid I sounded, how bizarre. The man lifted his free hand and ran it through unruly hair. He laughed.

"Fuck. Wish I had the balls to walk the trestle. I would like to be a cow for one night."

I sat in the twilight. He stood. We didn't speak. He slipped a tiny notebook from his shirt pocket, a pen, wrote something small. He ripped the page and handed it to me. The signature was barely legible, the first and last name run together in angular symphony. I still own it, keep it deep in my jewelry box, pull it out when I need to remember what it means to belong this this earth.

Thank you for being a cow. Kurt Vonnegut

Mothership Down - Final Installment

You can read the final installment of my ovarian cyst saga here! I'm so glad I'm feeling better!

Elvis, Charlie, and Life Changin' Art

You may have read this, but I'm linking it for anyone new.

My latest post to The Nervous Breakdown is about the summer I took Arts and Crafts:

One summer I collected Monarch butterflies and pinned them to an old walnut board in the family barn. I was eleven and chubby with a Dorothy Hamill haircut. My younger sisters and I built endless Mexican blanket forts in our battered living room and dressed our long-suffering dog in my dad’s blue boxer shorts. My mom decided she couldn’t take one more minute of our endless muggy summer, and she signed us up for the one-week August hell known as Arts and Crafts camp at the Town Hall.

Read the rest of the story here.

Were you ever forced to take a summer camp or class? Tell me about it!

Greetings from the Triple R Ranch

What happens when a young bunny's thoughts turn to love? Click here for what's happening at my house this week!

A story I never passed along because I was chicken

I wrote a story last month about grief, about a shamanic ritual I chose to deal with that grief. I posted it at TNB, and never posted the link here until today. Some of you found it, left me dear comments. I was worried about posting the link here, worried that I might be judged for the ceremony I chose, the danger of it, the illegality of it. I'm not so afraid now. I am human, a failure in many ways, someone who is always searching for meaning beyond the layer of skin that thinks it can hold my thoughts, my being.

I hope you enjoy it.

Mothership Down - Part Two

I just posted Part Two of Mothership Down, about my ovarian cyst and all the crazy trouble it caused!

Thank you for reading.

Avon Ladies live in all kinds of places!

I posted a photograph album of my little piece of America - Las Vegas, New Mexico. My tiny town is the "Original" Vegas!

Beauty Dish Returns Feb 26th!

Hold that thought!

In the meantime, please keep sending Birdie your Avon Lady tips and Customer reviews! Beauty Dish returns Monday, February 26th, with the daily Avon dish.... and a few surprises!

A little story

I wrote a little story about the morning, my youngest boy, the ways we both tell stories.

Enjoy!

I have a new fun story posted!

I have a story about my trip to "Stonefridge" in Santa Fe posted at The Nervous Breakdown. Please read my story: Thirty-six Days Past Solstice in a Circle of Dead Refrigerators and leave me a comment over there! Thanks!

 

We All Be Happy

I've been so darn busy!

I'm keeping up with the fun bits of daily advice - thanks to all you wonderful people sending me your tips and reviews! But the rest of my life is one beat past midnight, slow, full of chasing snowbound boys. I know I've been promising the rest of the Roswell story, so you shall have that this week!

In the meantime, read this fun news story about the happiest man in the world! We choose our path, each moment of every day. We can choose to be happy. I am grateful for the reminder.

I didn't realize I was this stylish!

Overheard in the backseat on a long drive toward Santa Fe this morning:

My son, age 11: Did you fart?

My other son, age 9: No!

11: Yes you did!

9: No, YOU farted!

11: No, YOU farted!

9: (sotto voce) Maybe it was Mom.

11: Mom never farts.

9: Yes she does. I experienced one once. It was a fashion fart.

Graphic of "fashion fart" courtesy of Bonnie!

A few non-Avon stories

Here are links to a few things offsite things I've written. Please enjoy while I get my 2007 self organized:

I take the Polar Bear Plunge!

Laura Ingalls made it. Why not me and my son, 9?

My 2006 was the Year of Yes.

Viva la Salsa!

The Marshmallow Paradox

Photo courtesy of Eric Swanson, photographer of amazing ability and two-marshmallowed phenomenon

A Santa Fe photographer knelt against the concrete curb, a long-lensed Nikon pressed against his face. I could see his dirty-blonde eyebrows, a hint of calculated smile. His left cheek radiated concentration, the stark and bitter flavor of work. His assistant lifted a memory-wire rimmed white circle. She let the sun fret behind it, let the flat umbrella cast opaque light on her subject. I stood, my cowboy boots on decorative gravel, an Avon bag in my left hand.

"Hey, what's the strangest person you ever photographed?"

I let my voice rise over the wind. My hair whipped against my back. A gold clip encrusted with fake jewels couldn't hold it, couldn't hold the mountain cascade of harsh air, the tide of time.

Read the rest here!

Because Today is Tomorrow!

Happy Birthday to Louise!!

The Birthday Trifecta has once again arrived! Today (well, tomorrow, the 6th, but Louise is in New Zealand where they have their days all messed up) is Louise's birthday, the 7th is mine, and the 8th is Carroll's! Yay!

Leave your gifts for Louise and Carroll below!

Of Pinkies and Priests

I chaperoned the 4th grade on a physical education field trip to Santa Fe yesterday. This poor swollen broken pinky is my reward. Makes it hard to type, oh yeah. I didn't break it cavorting in the Chavez Center's pools, didn't crack it during my multiple corkscrew slips down the monster water slide, didn't smash it when I held the hand of wobble-ankled skaters as we carefully glided across the ice rink. I showed off, too, skated backward and demonstrated my patented double twirl with a leap "Birdie Lutz." Nope. I jammed it carrying equipment off the bus at the end of the day.

Last night one of the local Catholic priests called. He's been ordering bottles of Extraordinary and Crystal Aura Avon fragrances to present as Sunday afternoon Bingo gifts. I finally asked him why he didn't order from a member of his congregation. Surely some good church goer sells Avon? He gently laughed.

"Birdie, I hope you don't take this the wrong way. If I ordered from one of the women who sells Avon in the parish, I would have a riot on my hands! I have to order from you because I think you're the only Avon Lady in town who doesn't attend Mass."

Ah, the economic blessings of the heathen...

Snowed In!

The view down my street:

I just got the call. My boys' school gets out at noon due to snow! Three inches upon the ground so far. So much for my planned day of door-to-door Avon. (Yay for enforced days off!)

Segue back into blogging, Avon, and New Mexican life in general

I hope everyone's holiday was most wonderful!

Here are a couple of photos from our long weekend. We took the two-lane roads to my sister's home in Las Cruces, then visited Carlsbad Caverns on the return trip.

What did you do this Thanksgiving?

Frankie comes home from his... vacation... tomorrow morning. I'm sure he'll have something to say about it then!

Happy Thanksgiving

I am most thankful for my friends and family this year. So much has happened in the last twelve months, and all of you have kept me laughing and looking foward to the future.

I'm taking a break until after Thanksgiving weekend. See you then!

If 11 gets a chance to finish his story while we're doing some family stuff, I'm sure he'll duck in to post his fascinating conclusion. Other than that, keep safe and all my love to you and yours.

Thanks, Monty!

Monty chose my story, Richer than the Sum of My Skirt, my loving tribute to my young boys and our New Mexican lower-lower-lower-lower-middleclassness, as her selection for September's Perfect Post.

Thanks, Monty!

Once an Avon Lady....

More thoughts on being an unofficial Avon blogger

I'm working on my blog today, taking a day to reflect on Avon and what it has meant to me. I'm not sure, in this moment, what I feel and think about my nearly three years as an Avon Lady. Some days are like this. I see the red balance at the end of my spreadsheet, the customers who bounce checks, the homebodies who slam doors against my samples.

Sometimes I wonder if Avon HQ knows how much this blog has contributed to its own culture, how many Avon Reps have told me that Beauty Dish helped them decide to walk that door-to-door path. If I count my saved email, just the ones from bona fide new Avon Ladies who plunked down hard cash to get their kit after reading my adventures, it numbers over 200. And many of them sold like crazy, stamped brochure after brochure, left them here and there, enough places to raise their sample coffers to the level of President's Club, those who drop a cool ten grand and more in Avon's lap. And those are the women who took the time to email, to offer thanks. Customers number over 8000. Just the ones that took the time to email and tell me what they thought after they bought a product due to one of my reviews. It all adds up to incredible revenue for Avon, at my best guess a cool million bucks, and probably five times more, due to a blog from a dirt poor Southwest blogger who can't even pay her telephone bill most months.

Avon remains silent, a marble statue in some forgotten New York museum. The museum doesn't send a travel bus, doesn't send messages to the scarred adobe walls of New Mexico. I work on the fringes, share my experience because it feels right, somehow feels sacred. I never asked for recognition, for reward. I like being a lone beacon, someone who blogs the sorry damn truth about every product - the great ones, the ones that should have never seen the light of day. And my adventures, yeah, my adventures. I use Avon as a springboard, let it leap me into the arms of my fellow human, let it cast me out to sea, carry me home on waves higher, faster than anything you could imagine. I have a lifetime of memory and only two tired hands to relay it.

Two things keep me blogging. Those gentle emails from Avon Ladies, those emails from customers, the ones that tell me I changed their life, gave them some kind of beauty when they most needed it. And the fact that I can't stop writing, can't stop sharing my life, my deepest dark blue current with you. I can't stop.

I sat and thought these things, one, two, three, four, let them wash across my mind like salt kelp waters. And then my phone rang, the way it does when an Avon customer wants to break my concentration.

"Hi! This is Birdie! Can I help you?"

I tried not to sound the way my face looked, sound like a million weary tears.

"Birdie, this is Nellie Romero. I need to know if I can use that new mascara, the Avon Astonishing Lengths, on my terrier. We've got a big show this weekend and she has to look good."

I swallowed my tears, let them digest into laughter, swallowed that, too.

"I'll call Avon and find out for ya, Nellie. Give Ginger a squeeze, okay?"

This afternoon I'm not the world's best Avon Evangelist. I'm not even sure I like Avon today, like the culture of paid beauty. Tomorrow I'll feel different, the way I always do. But I'll help a woman's dog make the full breed finals, and somehow we'll both be the better for it.

Beauty Blogging Wit For Hire

I have kept Beauty Dish free of advertising for its entire two and a half years of existence. But the costs of running the site are starting to escalate! Some of my Avon Adventure stories and Avon Product reviews generate quite a few hits, day after day. I am so grateful for the kind PayPal donations I have received to date, but they aren't covering my blogging and hosting costs on an ongoing basis. And to be completely honest, my Avon career hasn't generated enough income to cover both my home and blogging expenses.

I'm going to pursue some kind of gentle advertising. I want your input! At the moment, I am testing a few things out over here. To be honest, these small get-paid-by-the-click ads do not thrill me, but perhaps I am too close to my creation. Please voice your input, friends.

What I would love, most of all, is to find a company, or a small number of companies - each socially responsible - who would like to sponsor both me as a writer and my continuing Beauty Dish Blog. I would love to write the occasional story about a caring sponsor that would help introduce their important works to the world. I'm not talking shilling for random products, but more of a set of wonderful essays that would be at home in any newspaper, corporate journal, or literary magazine.

If you know of any such potential sponsors, please drop me a note or let them know that Beauty Dish has an elegant and irreverent pen for hire!

Thank you for your continued support and love for Beauty Dish.

Green Machines

My lungs filled with the heavy air of roasting green chile as I waited my turn at the gas pumps. Gabriel continued filling the pump of some tired local elementary teacher. She slumped in the seat of her beat Ford Escort as if five minutes of fuel were twelve hours of good sleep. I waved, and she bid me hello. I realized she wasn't sleeping; her closed eyes meant rapture.

"Cómo estás, Birdie! You smell the chile? It's finally Fall." She reached outside her window and waved a plastic bag of cinnamon-laced biscochitos my way. I accepted a cookie, took a bite.

"Hey, thanks. I love chile season."

The end of September in New Mexico means chile, means waxy green pods stuffed in burlap bags at the local grocer. The new, bright red ristras can be seen hanging from balconies and porches, and men man caged machines where the green chile harvest is turned over shooting flames to produce a blistered skin.

Chile is so important to New Mexico that it's been declared the state vegetable, even though scientists call it a fruit. Most people credit Juan de Oñate, the Spaniard who founded Santa Fe in 1609, with bringing cultivated chiles into our area. He spread the tiny dried seeds of chiles he carried from Chihuahua along his route, with native farmers, with mission monks, with the hope he would return to vibrant fields of fragrant spicy peppers.

The old monks roasted chile in the same manner we do today – over fire with a continuous flipping and tossing of pods so that they are evenly blackened. You can see these roasters at various locations around town – at Lowe's, at Wal-Mart, on Bridge Street where a quiet man smiles at me as he turns his wire machine. Sometimes I pause and watch him, watch his wiry arms load new green chile into the 55-gallon basket turned on its side, watch him close the hatch, rotate it over a fire fueled by canisters of propane. He concentrates on the chile as it spins, his brown eyes closed in rapture as if his meditation coaxes them to life, to the daily communion of red or green we take at each meal.

I watched two cousins spin green in front of Lowe's on Mill Street. They chatted with their customer as the broken black skin fell from the wire basket into a trough below the flames. Greg Luhan spoke to me as Orlando Luhan fiddled carefully with the cage, made sure his customer's chile burned even and true. Greg shrugged his shoulders when I asked him how long he cooked chile.

"Just a month. It’s a job, you know?"

He laughed, as if roasting chile was a small thing, something unimportant. His black hat covered his eyebrows, made him seem mysterious, a chile Ninja. But his dark eyes gave away his emotion, his connection to these long green pods.

"It smells so good."

I let my words smile for me, let him know I loved his work, loved the way the sky rose with the scent of our ancient land. He smiled, too.

"Yeah. It smells good."

This story first appeared in the Las Vegas Times, 9-15-2006

Happy 40th Birthday, Star Trek!!

In honor of Star Trek's 40th birthday, the boys and I are making a special celebratory dinner tomorrow night!

You'll NEVER guess what's on the menu! Check out the cookbook in my photo....

I'll post pictures of the shindig!

If you haven't read my Star Trek adventures, now might be a good time....

Richer than the Sum of My Skirt

My favorite skirt ripped last night as my son, 11, helped me take the clothes off the twisted rope hanging across my backyard. It caught on the rough tin edge of the garden shed as I swung it from line to basket, tore an uneven aqua letter L across the right butt cheek.

"Mom! That's your favorite skirt!"

11 looked worried. He reached over, tried to pat the fraying L back into the fabric.

"What are you gonna do? Mom? Can you fix it? Can you buy a new one? You never buy new clothes."

I smiled, reached my arms to give 11 a hug. He smelled like the sun-baked clothes, like the ozone of our frequent monsoon afternoons, like new school pencils and little boy dirt. I realized with a start that he'd finally reached my height.

"Why would I want to buy a new skirt? I'd just look like everyone else! It's just a piece of fabric, honey. I can make a cool patch to go over the rip. Maybe you can help me design something fabulous!"

I stretched out the word fabulous like I was a flaming gay television designing evangelist, ready to preach the gospel of style. 11 laughed, struck a fashion icon's vogue pose, and pursed his lips in elegant thought. The setting sun caught the highlights in his dark hair, made him seem even taller than a moment ago, made him shine retro, handsome, like some old 40's photograph and I tried to grab it, grab the sun, his hair, his height, his lopsided smile like mine, tried to frame it forever in some sturdy neural pathway.

Oh, please, please, please. Always be this boy, always be this connected to me, to the dirt on our shoes.

I pretended to take his picture with my hands held in front of my eyes in an angled square. I didn't want him to see the tear forming in the corner of my left eye. A yellow swallowtail butterfly glided by, landed on our basket of laundry for just a second. Just a second.

Everything goes so fast. I want to slow time, slow that butterfly, slow all of this, my backyard, the rising grass, the bunnies growing fat and sleek in their cozy hutch.

As the sky grew dark my sons both drew fanciful designs of starships and planetoids, the perfect foils for an exposed rump. I chose one design from each, hauled out my old Singer and covered the rip with a red picnic-check UFO. I added a long-tailed silver comet to the other side of the skirt, turned and sewed, slowly, slowly, watched the needle dragonfly down in the ritual my gramma taught me three decades ago. I hemmed two pairs of school pants, darned a couple of socks, tucked the boys into bed, and called it a night.

We walked to school this morning, walked the mile-and-a-half, me in my fabulous new galactic aqua skirt, my boys in freshly hemmed khakis. The morning wind lifted my skirt in the ways I liked, let a bit of this thigh show, then the other. My cowboy boots stomped on the sidewalk. I could feel the cool air rise through the bottom of my right foot where I stepped on a rail spike. Torn skirt, holy boot, pants to let out, beans and rice, walk instead of drive, hanging clothes in the sun, I chanted a silent litany of all the ways I desperately saved pennies. So many years. So few pennies. A blackbird squawked as we crossed a street lined with scraggly cedars. He dropped a feather in our path, and we hovered near the storm cistern as the feather twisted in an expanding spiral toward our heads.

I made the right decision. I've been a stay at home mom all these years, gave up a lifetime of career, a lifetime of adult interaction, years of slightly better comfort, better clothes, nice things to own. It's hard, but I know it's right. Avon barely pays these damn bills. But look what you have, just look. Look.

I watched my boys run ahead, run into the rising sun. 11 stopped short, turned quick as he forgot something important at home. I braced myself for a run west.

"Mom!"

11 ran to me. His backpack slapped against his shoulders one beat behind his feet.

"Yeah? Forget something, honey?"

"Yes! I did!"

11 held out his arms and tackled me in a bear hug.

"I forgot to tell you how cool your skirt looks."

108 Degrees of Bliss

I moved to Las Vegas, New Mexico, from a frantic coastal town north of San Diego. I moved to be closer to the gifts of nature, to escape the endless highway crawl where cars roast in the road, sit and oscillate against a backdrop of perpetual construction. I chose Las Vegas over the internet, chose it over a thousand other small Southwest towns when I saw photographs of the tree-lined Plaza, of Hermit's Peak, of Bridge Street, of the Montezuma Hot Springs. A good place to raise a family, I thought. A good place to settle.

The hot springs called my name as I hauled kids and pets and my household goods in a rental truck through the arid plains of the Mojave. I recalled the online stories of Spanish explorers who believed they found the Fountain of Youth, or at least a cure for syphilis. Native Americans knew of the springs for centuries before them, knew the waters held healing properties.

The first time I visited the springs, I hesitated before stepping into the water. Montezuma Castle loomed large across the Rio Gallinas, a statement of stark architectural beauty and elegance, framed by a hillside of cultivated foliage. The springs, by comparison, were homely, rock-lined pits coated with slick green algae, a hundred thousand weeds between them and the fading river. These weren't the blue-watered miracle pools of my California dreams. But I dipped my toes into the heat, let the liquid rise to meet my ankle, then my shin, my thigh, my waist. I understood what others have known for hundreds of years. The aching heat, the scrape of my back against uneven rock, the rush of water from one pool to the next caressed my body into a state of hyperawareness, of pain mixed with relaxation.

The last two weeks brought monsoons to Las Vegas. The Rio Gallinas now runs stronger than a man's will to live, sprints like an Olympic champion past the castle, past the springs, through a town now as lush and fragrant as the Midwest. And though the sun casts August fire most early afternoons, I found myself on the edge of the springs once more, to soak thermal under the sparse shadow of the simple branch fence.

Two boys rested in the lower pool. The younger child swept his arm across the water, let it ripple and fade into his chest. Their mother sat in the middle pool, across from me, her dark hair melting into heat-sealed ringlets. She didn't speak a word. The water spoke for us, gave our muscles ancient mineral messages. Three old men yelled to us from the river. They jumped into the rushing current, their bellies soft and colorless, let the Gallinas carry them fast, far, into a pool of muddy reeds. I laughed out loud, at the sheer joy of watching old men play, of watching young boys rest, the world upside-down, insane.

I drove home, my body saturated, content. I didn't see another commuting car. The street lined a town filled with history, with quiet passion. I belong here, I thought. I'm a Las Vegan now. The waters called me home.

This story first appeared in the Las Vegas Times last week.

And Another School Year Begins

My boys started school today, and I rested.

Tomorrow, the Avon, the stories, the mad dash scramble of foot against pavement begins.

Bird Things

Today is the last day of summer vacation for my boys. Yay for school! Tomorrow will be a seriously good and wonderful day! For me, that is! For Avon, even!

Since I'm chasing my boys through field and pond one last day, I will leave you with two lists I wrote over the past few weeks and posted to my OurStory site where I archive all my adventures. I still need to pound out 34 more things to complete the trifecta.

33/100 Things About Me

34-66/100 Things About Me

Caption the Non-Avon Photo!

A photo of my boys' bunnies in their hutch. The New Mexico lottery distributed those bumper stickers with the local paper. A bunny hutch seems the perfect place to stick 'em!

Wherin Birdie Nearly Meets Her Maker

This is not elegant. I shake as I type this.

The car I loved above all others, the Miata my best friend willed me when he died, has joined my friend in the afterlife.

I was driving to Santa Fe, just fifteen miles out of the gate. Three hours ago. Rain fell heavy against the highway. I kept both hands on the wheel, seatbelt secure, eyes on the road.

BAM! A man in a Toyota hydroplaned - slid - fast - fast - fast! I didn't see him! He rode the fast lane behind me. I didn't hear him! Not until he slid, smashed - smashed! My left rear! My car! I spun toward certain death, spun twice on the highway, then careened across the shoulder into a mesquite tree, spun again! So Fucking Fast!

Landed in a ditch, felt the rush of water onto my legs. Couldn't move, couldn't think. Unbuckled. Found my phone flung behind my seat.

9-1-1

The man was cited for reckless driving. Dear God, Universe, Gaia Goddess, please give him current insurance.

I am so grateful to be alive this moment.

Damn.

I'm alive.

And yeah, the cheese story awaits, written, just waiting for me to format the photos and upload. Let me get the boys to bed, get some aspirin inside this bruised body.

Damn.

Yeah! The Bird is Back!

I'm baaaaaaack! Back to full-time Avon, full-time bloggin' and full-time carousin' New Mexican style...

What's a box of grated cheese doing at Beauty Dish?! Find out tomorrow when I post a little (true!) story about summer reflection, a favorite childhood book that one of my sons also loves, and a man from Kraft who sent me a hunk of Parmesan.

You just never know what the hell is gonna happen around here!

Where the heck has Birdie been?!

It's been a crazy few weeks! In addition to getting (and losing, yes) a new job, I've been wrapping up a "hairy" situation, plus I've met a few... interesting... Avon customers. Yeah, baby, I've got stories galore... and I'll tell them one by one...

In the meantime, caption a Boy and his new Bunny (and light saber):

Stories

The Stories of My Heart

A few weeks ago I made a hard decision. Avon just ain't cutting it, I thought. I counted my pocket pennies, the stay at home promises I made to my young boys, the dreams I stacked at an angle against my tired bed. Gotta get a dumb job.

So job I got, a full-time monstrosity in a local government office, where I tabulate, measure, and sift unquestionable facts. A dumb job with a written, official No Blogging Policy. I signed the dotted line, swore my first and last born that I wouldn't divulge any work secrets, and cursed my sorry poor life. I signed my kids into all day Art Camp, and started 40 hours of ridiculous bean counting in exchange for health insurance and a nearly-livable hourly wage.

I'm still shilling Avon, yeah, but my new job doesn't allow the furtive circulation of dog-eared brochures, so I spend evenings dropping Avon books around my neighborhood, my two boys pooped from painting Pet Rocks and weaving macrame dream catchers.

But in the midst of difficult diversions I found something extra cool, something that made me smile. A website. I found the link through a weekly email I received from BlogHer, which held their yearly conference this past weekend.

Enter the vacation story contest! Win a free trip to BlogHer 2007! Win other fabulous prizes!

I almost deleted the email. No time for more stories, I thought. No time to tell the stories trying to escape from my typing fingers. No time. But I didn't delete the email. I stayed up way too late, and reworked a few vacation stories I wrote over the past year. I thought I would get to email them to the contest organizers, to hit Send and Forget It. I don't have a chance, anyway, I thought. I only have goofy stories of my kids, of my dirt sandwich childhood.

But the contest rules made me growl. You had to sign up for a new website, for a new service, for a new sorta social networking kinda site. Argh!! Again, I almost didn't enter. No Time. No Time. Something made me do it, something that whispered in the back of my mind, whispered Do It! Do It!

So I did it, signed up for the new OurStory service, and discovered...

I LOVE IT. Seriously Love It.

OurStory lets you organize your life stories like a memory book, in order of when they occurred - not when you wrote them, in an intuitive and easy way. They make it easy to find and upload fun photos to add to your stories, too, just like a scrapbook. I spent a couple of late evenings uploading my favorite personal stories, and watched the way they cascaded together into the timeline of my life. You can connect to other people with similar interests, you can comment on others' work, and it's gentle, fun, and kind. You never lose track of your stories - they remain front and center in your timeline.

I'm hooked!I'm going to continue cross-posting my personal (not my Avon, per se) stories here and at my OurStory page. I'm still uploading personal stories, still have so many more to write and tell, so it's a work in progress like the rest of my 40 hour a week life.

And hey! I won the grand prize in the OurStory/BlogHer competition! I'm going to BlogHer 2007, all expenses paid, plus I won a snazzy digital camera, too!

If you blog and want a new way of looking at your work, at your life, please get a free OurStory account. I don't make anything but good karma in telling you about this.

Still underwater!

I'm still a wee bit underwater - trying to catch up on a million odds and ends in my business and professional life. Sorry I've been a lame-o blogger this past month!

I am posting below a story I wrote that appeared in the Las Vegas Times two weeks ago. I also sent this story out to the secret bird call list. Please enjoy, and if you are a bird-caller and it's a rerun, extra big hugs to you!

State of Confusion

which side are you on?

When the Coen Brothers' movie cameras focus on the dusty Mexican border replica spanning the University Ave bridge, they will capture the dark hours before sunrise. A man bleeding from a bullet wound will carry a battered valise filled with two million dollars cash, money found in a West Texas field littered with a dozen dead victims of a drug deal gone bad. The man will hold his wounded arm and offer five hundred dollars to a passerby for his coat. He will stagger and fall. He will pick himself up, and with what little strength he can muster, he will hoist the valise over his head and toss it over the bridge, into the no-man's land between Mexico and sleepy border town United States.

I pictured this scene from Cormac McCarthy's disturbing novel, No Country For Old Men, as I walked along Grand Avenue last week. The movie construction crew welded heavy steel supports to their convincing border station as the occasional vehicle exited Interstate 25 and crawled across the bridge into my town- tiny Las Vegas, New Mexico. I paused for a moment after I crossed the intersection. A scruffy man in oil-stained overalls reached into the bed of a pick-up truck and pulled out a piece of flat gray metal. He set it against the newly manufactured gateshack. A red Ford Escort with New Jersey plates gingerly crossed the bridge and turned North. The driver pulled alongside me and a woman in the passenger seat rolled down her window.

"Excuse me! You speak English?"

I turned around to make sure she was speaking to me. A man's thick Jersey accent cut across her shoulder.

"Of course she doesn't speak English! We crossed the friggen border!"

I lowered my head and stared inside their car. The woman sported lethal red fingernails and curled hair sprayed to six times its natural size. Her breasts were barely contained by a gold lamé halter-top, and I worried as she unfolded a AAA map that one might escape. She turned to her companion and hit the map with the back of her hand.

"How can we be in Mexico? We just left Colorado two hours ago!"

My mouth hung open as they consulted the map. The man lit an unfiltered cigarette and flicked ashes into a styrofoam cup half-filled with old coffee. He shrugged his slim shoulders. He opened his mouth to speak but the woman smacked him in the arm.

"You be quiet! You got us into this!"

She turned to me.

"We're supposed to be going to Las Vegas. That's why we took the exit."

She spoke slowly, as if I might not understand. I laughed and pointed to the fake border station.

"Oh! You are in Las Vegas! There's a movie being filmed here, and that's just part of the set."

The couple stared at the bridge, at the signs welcoming them to Mexico. They turned and looked around them, toward the tree-lined streets pointing toward town.

"Movie set, huh? This is Vegas? Wow, that was quicker than I thought."

She grabbed the man's cigarette and took a long drag. She blew smoke into the air between us, and it hung for a moment like a murky cloud.

"So. Where's the friggen Strip?"

Summer Replay

This story was originally published at the Virtual Occoquan. Since it's a fun summer vacation story, I'm posting it now while I finish some important work-related stuff. Sorry I've been a sporadic blogger this month. I have so many family things on my plate (uh, like working my butt off to feed said family), and I'm behind like I've never been behind before. Please bear with me, and enjoy this summer re-run:

Arts and Crafts

One summer I collected Monarch butterflies and pinned them to an old walnut board in the family barn. I was eleven and chubby with a Dorothy Hamill haircut, and my two younger sisters and I built endless Mexican blanket forts in our battered living room and dressed our long-suffering dog in my dad’s blue boxer shorts. My mom decided she couldn’t take one more minute of an endless muggy minute summer, and she signed us up for the one-week August hell known as Arts and Crafts camp at the Town Hall.

We marched the two blocks to the hall, and opened great mahogany doors to a building more than 200 years old. It housed Selectman offices, the hunting and fishing commission, and a hall with a sagging scratched wooden floor and wire-covered windows where town meetings and middle-school physical education classes met. We waited, my feet nestled in Dr. Sholls, my two sisters in matching brown suede clogs. We didn’t want to spend a week painting and sculpting. We called it Farts and Craps and waited with five other dirt-poor town children for our teacher.

He told us to call him “Charlie.” He said this as he paced the gym, white t-shirt with a hole two-thirds down his back stuck to his skin with sweat, faded photo of Elvis on the front. He seemed so old to me, to my sisters, to the five other squirmy kids in our camp class. He must have been twenty-five, maybe thirty, we thought. And rich! He must be rich, he collected three dollars from each of us, and he used big words like “disenfranchised” and told off-color jokes we didn’t understand. He set a beat-up black tape player on the floor and flicked on a Fleetwood Mac cassette.

Charlie never gave us paper and old watercolors and told us to paint pictures of our parents like our school art teacher. He slapped old magazines with strange names like Ebony and American Film and Cinefantastique on long folding tables, and showed us how to cut out random eyes and words and legs and cigarettes and paste them on poster board. Make a message! Change the world! Charlie spoke in exclamation marks and shook his hands like they were coated with water. His breath smelled of tobacco and lemon and a shock of hair like blonde heat lightening stuck out from the right side of his head.

“You gotta use your ART to CHANGE society, man! You gotta give a voice to the disenfranchised! You gotta bring down the MAN, you hear me? You hear me?” We said yes, we hear you, and we continued gluing dark brown fingers and ice cream cones on bright orange cardboard, shrugging our shoulders at each other, our moms sitting home watching Days of Our Lives in blissful peace.

Charlie started each class with a relaxation exercise. We lay on our backs; legs cool against the polyurethane, and listened to him recite a litany of energy and body parts.

“Power to your toes, power to you toes!
“Power to you feet, power to your feet!
“Power to your legs, power to your legs!
“Power to your knees, power to your knees!
“Power to your thighs, power to your thighs!”

We jiggled each piece in unison to the chant, synchronous child art jellyfish, knowing our Farts and Craps days were numbered if our parents knew we played hippy games like this with our clove cigarette teacher, knowing they would call the Selectmen and demand a refund, demand a sturdy woman in polyester with a portfolio of landscapes and pet portraits. We loved that exercise, loved Charlie, jiggled and oscillated, upstream salmon revolutionaries, knowing these days were diamond rare special, life changing, crazy art life-changing.

I pasted a thousand wandering eyes on a piece of red poster paper, kaleidoscope eyes, made them match the songs on that looping tape, arranged them in a circle around a photo of a perfect plastic hot fudge sundae. Charlie grabbed my poster and held it over his head with one hand, smoking another clove cigarette with the other.

“Look! Birdie’s got it! She’s got it! Look! This is such a fanfuckingtastic statement on society, man, can you see it? Can you see it? Look at those hungry eyes. Look at that fucking plastic ice cream, man, that’s the fucking United States. Far out. Far out, Birdie. You’re an artist now, congratulations.” Charlie placed the poster on the table, swapped his smoke from one hand to the other and extended his right hand, shook mine, blew sweet smoke in my face. I didn’t dare smile, the moment seemed to serious, but I relished that compliment more than any other I ever received, replayed the words in my mind the rest of the day, and carried my art home as if I was carrying the Lord’s Supper at mass. I hid it in my closet, didn’t dare show my parents, didn’t want to face questions, have to make up answers, and couldn’t rat on Charlie.

The last day of class one of the girls arrived late for class. She lived next door to me, in a rotting Colonial home like ours, and carried a red bamboo purse everywhere she went. She walked into the hall, no purse in hand, eyes inflamed from crying. Her skin shone pale from shock, and the endless bruises on her arms looked darker than usual. She sat against a radiator, tears falling over her face, arms, legs, onto the floor.

“Why are we here? Why are you here? Elvis died. We just heard it on the radio. They found him dead. Elvis is dead. Please, we can’t have class. Charlie, Elvis died.” She stared into the space between us, as if Elvis’s new ghost walked the hall, and let those tormented tears run, run like the river Styx.

“Man, no way. No way. It can’t be. You’re right. No class today.” Charlie whispered, the first soft words he ever uttered, and he picked up his carpetbag of magazines and glue and left. We walked into the sunlight, followed Charlie out the door, watched him slump to the bus stop. We sat on the cement steps and cried for the poor bruised girl, for Elvis, for Charlie, for our lost poster revolution.