It's been a month since my last post. Sigh... It's been a busy month. This court shit is busting my ass. In addition to my community service (11 days down, 19 to go), this month I've had to attend re-education camp in Roanoke every Saturday. That's 25 miles one way. That's 8 rides I have to search for (sessions are about 5 hours long) because I don't get my license back until the middle of May.
Fortunately (for me anyway), Bark Boomhauer has to go to the same re-education camp as me. He got a DUI over a year ago across the state line and had finally finished all that the court required of him. He applied for license reinstatement and was basically told "Well, you may be squared up with Georgia but Alabama still has a few hoops for you to jump through." So now he's paying $265 for re-education camp and I'm bumming along with his rides. Re-education camp also required us to attend four AA meetings this month (another 5 miles each way).
I also have a once-a-week trip to Wedowee for community service. That's another 15 miles each way - 10 more rides this month. And the once-a-month trip back to Roanoke to pee in a cup. And the once-a-month trip to Wedowee for "court review." That's when everybody on community service shows up to court and has to face the judge.
You sit around waiting for your name to be called. Luckily for me, it's alphabetical so I get out of there pretty quick - less than an hour. God forbid your name is Williams. You go in front of the judge, a hard ass straight out of central casting, who asks if you've been coming to community service every week and if your fines are up-to-date (even though the court already has paperwork on this shit). If the answer to those questions is "no," you will go to jail. If you do not show up to court review, a warrant will be issued for your arrest. The cops will show up at your house.
Many people I've worked with on community service have lost their jobs because of these demands on their time. Those who were already out of work can't even look for a job because who's gonna hire you when you're guaranteed to miss at least one day a week?
In another stroke of good fortune (for me anyway), I met someone at community service who lives very close to me and I now hitch rides with her. She was one of 148 people arrested at a weekly cockfight a mile down the road from me. She got 40 hours of community service and fines totalling almost $4000 - a much harsher penalty than drunk driving. Hell, she probably would've gotten a lighter sentence had she been selling drugs in the school parking lot. Not to condone cockfighting but this seems silly to me. In all honesty, those birds probably didn't have it any worse than the millions of factory farm chickens being raised and slaughtered for meat in this country.
Speaking of factory farm chickens: I got four new refugee hens a couple weeks ago. Like all my new refugees, they are sad and pitiful looking. They are missing lots of feathers and scared of everything. They are still confused by the "real" food the other birds greedily devour, preferring the feed they grew up on (of which the factory farm kindly donated about 150 pounds). They spend all day inside the coop even though that have access to the whole outdoors. Only one of the new hens has started venturing outside and has discovered that earthworms are magically delicious.
Speaking of creepy-crawlies: I recently uncovered this humoungous grub while transforming the old barn floor into my newest garden plot:
It's the larvae of a scary-looking yet harmless stag beetle. It's probably three or four years old. It's been underneath the old barn this whole time, feeding on rotting wood. Decades of decomposing pine planks and oak rafters has left this little plot with six inches of some of the best, rich, black soil on the property. And, since it's all encased in a concrete foundation, it's a raised bed garden!
Since the wondergrub will do no harm beyond scaring small children, I snapped a few pictures and put it back where I'd found it.
Not everyone was in agreement about reburying the grub. Buddie was eyeing that thing like it was a juicy jumbo prawn. A bug that size could choke a chicken! Speaking of choking the chicken: I finally had to dispatch my overly-aggressive rooster, Caleb. At the time of his death, he weighed a whopping 18-pounds. Not only was he constantly attacking me, he had grown so large that he could no longer safely mate with the hens.
He had previously injured Murray who spent a month being mostly confined to the porch while she recuperated. She had finally healed enough that I was able to let her run loose with the rest of the flock, though she still had to wear a saddle to protect her from Caleb's amorous advances. I fashioned it from a 50-year-old flour sack I'd found in the old barn.
When his sharp spurs ripped holes through the skin of a second hen, I knew it was time for him to go to that big chicken coop in the sky.
The question was how to send him there?
His neck was so large I couldn't even get my hand all the way around it. There was no way I could get a hatchet through it with one swift blow. His feathers were so thick they would've blunted any blow I could deliver. When I had killed Cornelieus, who weighed almost 15 pounds, it took more than a few swings to do the job - a situation that was horrible for both of us.
I came up with the bright idea of shooting Caleb in the head - kneel down next him, level the barrel to his temple and pull the trigger. Have you ever tried to shoot a chicken in the head with a .22? Even at extremely close range, it is not an easy task. A chicken's head is in constant motion. They're like bobbleheads.
I put the gun away then chased Caleb around the yard until I caught him. I held the struggling rooster tight and weighed my remaining options.
I thought about wringing his neck. I've never been comfortable with this method even though it is widely recommended. I tried it once with Joshua, the first chicken I ever killed, and it didn't go so well. I hadn't tried it since, opting for the chopping block. I wasn't sure I wanted to give it another shot, at least not with Chickenzilla.
I was reconsidering the inadequate hatchet when he almost broke free of my grasp. I knew if he got away, I wouldn't be able to get near him all day. If that happened, I'd end up having to shoot him in full view all the chickens. I hate killing chickens in front of other chickens. Besides, I'm such a lousy shot that the prospect of all that could go wrong made this prospect unpalatable.
Instinctively, my right hand reached for his neck and squeezed. Yes, I literally choked the chicken. And he fought me every inch of the way. Can't blame him. Hell, I don't even blame him for the things he did that made me have to kill him. He was just doing what roosters do. But he was large and under the misconception he was in charge - a dangerous combination. There was no way I could have this angry, horny cock running loose in the yard all spring. In the end, I was just doing what farmers do. Well, I don't think this was the way a real farmer would've done it.
I fought Caleb mano a mano. While he got in a few good hits, I finally pinned him to the ground with one knee, one hand wrapped around around his feet to keep his sharp spurs from digging into my skin and my other hand wrapped around his neck. I didn't dare let go now - I'd never get near him again. I held on for dear life until I knew for certain he was dead - a fact made evident by the evacuation of his bowels. In other words: With his dying breath, Caleb shit on me. I reached for my nearby knife, slit his jugular vein and bled him out.
After butchering him, I had ten pounds of meat in the fridge and freezer. His drumsticks and thighs alone weighed four and half pounds. That's about how much each of my other two roosters weigh. The breast meat came to three pounds.
a single chicken breast - one and a half pounds
Speaking of something completely not related to anything above: Angela recently posted photos to her blog of a bruise she got from wiping out on her bike.
After being roommates for almost a decade, Angela and I are like this (you can't see it, but I'm crossing my fingers to show we're super tight). We can read eachother's minds, we can finish eachother's sentences, we can leap to the same conclusions in a single bound. Even our periods were synched up.
What I'm trying to say here is that a mere 5,000 miles cannot break the bond that we share. So it was no surprise to learn that Angela got a big bike-related ass bruise within days of me getting a big bike-related ass bruise.
A neighbor-cousin lent me an old-school one-speed bicycle while I'm without a driver's license. I use it for traveling to and from various odd jobs. It sucks not being able to change gears while traveling this hilly terrain but it still beats walking. It's not so bad going to jobs because I live on one of the highest points around and can coast downhill much of the way. Coming home is a different story, taking at least twice as long because I spend a lot of time pushing the bike uphill.
The furthest commute takes place on Fridays when I ride five miles each way to earn twenty-five bucks cleaning a house (though, if someone is home, they'll give me and the bike a ride home). I had just pulled into their driveway when their dog ran up and bit me on the ass.
This is no ordinary dog. It's a full-grown male Great Pyrenees, weighing well over 100 pounds. He's big enough that he can keep all four feet on the ground and still reach my ass on a bike seat. He didn't bite me nearly as hard as he could have, yet it still hurt like hell and left a bruise that looks like somebody punched me in the ass with pointy brass knuckles.
Sadly, no one was home that day so me and my sore ass had to pedal/push the bike home.
So, Angela, this ass shot is for you:
There are still absurd tales from community service and re-education camp I want to share but those will have to wait for another day. I hate to see March pass without a single post and I'll never get this done if I try to tell those stories right now.
I've been woefully slack about updating this blog. Okay, let's get things back up to speed around here.
About a month ago, I hosted a couchsurfer - Tom from the Netherlands. He hung around a for a few days and was a wonderful guest. We drank beer, shared stories and drove around looking at the countryside. He even helped haul old rotten planks from the barn up to the house so we could have a nice bonfire.
Tom in front of Frankencoop
You can read about his travels on his blog (assuming you can read Dutch). Me, I just look at the pictures.
My parents also came for a visit since my last update. They only stayed for five days - much more manageable than a multi-month visit like last time. They may be back in a week or so for a couple more days.
I managed to keep my DUI under wraps while they were here. B.J. Boomhauer hauled my dead truck away to his farm. None of my court-mandated shit fell on a day when they were here.Nobody spilled the beans on me. All neighbor-cousins were under strict orders not to mention it. I told them "You don't have to lie for me. Just don't bring it up."
Speaking of court-mandated shit: I had to go in for "monitoring" Thursday. A fifty-mile roundtrip for a fifteen minute visit. This cost me twenty bucks. I also had to submit to my first ever piss test. That was another twenty. Fuckers. Forty dollars is about how much I spend on groceries in a month.
I'm in no danger of starving or anything, but those two avocados (a glorious luxury) I got in town are probably the last groceries I'll buy for a while. Thankfully, I have plenty of food right now. The freezer is stocked with lots of venison that my parents brought. Probably a good 30-40 pounds. I have lots of flour, sugar, powdered milk, yeast, oil and other various staples. I also recently received a care package from an Alaskan friend who kindly sent a couple pounds of good coffee beans, my favorite stinky bleu cheese, hummus mix, nori sushi wrappers and other delectables that cannot be found here in rural Alabama.
And I am seriously considering killing my 15-pound rooster, Caleb soon. All of a sudden, he has become very aggressive towards me. He's repeatedly attacking me - and it fucking hurts! He's huge. He has a sharp beak and spurs like arrow points.
When my old alpha-male, Gimpy, used to attack me it, it was kinda cute. He only weighed four pounds. He only attacked my feet. As long as I was wearing boots, I was safe. (I learned the hard way not to wear flip-flops around him.) But Caleb is a 15-pound monster. It's like having a bowling ball thrown at you. A bowling ball with razorblades sticking out of it. And he doesn't go for my feet. He goes for my legs. This will not fly when it warms up and I start wearing shorts again.
I'm sure it's all attributable to hormones and the approach of spring. He's just being a rooster. But I cannot deal with this angry behemoth living under my porch. I'd rather have a two weeks' worth of chicken curry, chicken marsala, chicken salad, sweet-n-sour chicken and a couple gallons of chicken stock than a summer of looking over my shoulder and dodging a crazy cock out for blood (which he has drawn twice in the last couple days).
It would also be easier on my hen, Murray, if Caleb was to disappear. A few weeks ago, he injured her in a bout of rough sex. Ripped big holes in her sides with his sharp claws. She's doing fine but must be kept separate from him until she completely heals otherwise he'll just jump her again and reopen her wounds.
For now, she spends her days confined to the porch and her evenings sleeping in a cage in the back room. Sometimes, I lock Caleb under the porch for a while and let Murray run free in the yard so she can take a dust bath and scratch for bugs.
But this is all a major inconvenience for me (as well as Murray). If Caleb were gone, she could go back to being free-range and sleeping under the porch. And I could go back to not having a chicken in the house. Nothing makes you feel white trash like keeping a chicken in your trailer.
Anyway, back to my piss test...
So, I went back to the same dingy offices behind the minimall where I was summoned before. You know, the place that looks like a child molester's basement. I waited on the raggedy old couch with a book until it was my turn. The woman I had to see was already with someone else. The door to the office was wide open and I could hear their entire conversation. Nothing really juicy was discussed but I thought it odd that something like this wouldn't be more...you know...private.
When it was my turn, I went in and sat down in front of her desk. She asked if I had brought forty dollars. I handed it over while she typed something in her computer. Then, unfuckingbelivably, she picked up the phone and called her goddamned hairdresser! I sat there in disbelief while she yammered away, explaining why she was going to have to cancel her appointment. Like she couldn't have done this two minutes earlier before calling me into her office. The call lasted long enough that I seriously began to consider opening the book on my lap.
She hung up the phone, handed me a plastic cup and pointed me in the direction of the bathroom. I walked back through the lobby, past the guy now waiting for his turn, and went into the bathroom - the only truly private part of the experience. I had half-expected that I would have to piss in front of somebody. So, a tip for those of you taking a court-mandated piss in Randolph County, Alabama: Feel free to bring a friend's clean urine to substitute for yours if you need to. They won't be checking.
I walked back to her office, carrying half a cup of fresh steaming piss which I placed on her desk. Then, unfuckingbelievably, she pulled out a sheet of paper towel and used it to grab the rim of the cup. "We're all out of gloves," she tells me. Jesus! What kind of rinky dink outfit is this?
She takes a little stick and puts it in the cup. While we wait for the results, she turns back to the computer and starts asking me routine questions. Are you still at the same address? Have you been in any trouble with the law since your last visit? Blah, blah, blah. She also apologizes for calling her hairdresser.
After a few minutes, she gingerly grabs the cup with the paper towel again and removes the stick. "I really hate doing this without gloves."
I want to say "Apparently not enough to let me keep my twenty fucking dollars." Wisely, I bite my tongue but refuse to return her awkward smile. I have not a single damned ounce of sympathy for this woman who just took food out of my mouth by making me submit to a test she could have easily waived.
But I'm smiling on the inside because of what I ate for breakfast that morning. Her office is filled with the pungent odor of asparagus pee. At least in some small way, I can strike back against the system. Fuck 'em. I hope I'm on my period next time.
She glances at the stick, throws it in the garbage and types something into the computer. She doesn't say so, but I assume this means I passed. She hands the cup of piss back to me, still grasping it with the paper towel. "You can throw this away." I resist the urge to toss it in the garbage can. Instead, I take it from her (not surprisingly, I am not offered a piece of paper towel) and walk back to the bathroom where I pour it in the toilet.
I go back to her office and she gives me a piece of paper with the info about my upcoming re-education camp - six hours every Saturday in March. This will cost me 265 more motherfucking dollars. Hopefully, this will help them afford some goddamned latex gloves.
There's other stuff I wanted to tell you about but, I'm afraid if I don't wrap this up now, it'll be another week before I get this posted. I swear I'm gonna start updating this blog more often. It's not like I don't have the time.
I'll wrap this post up with a photo of a couple eggs I collected today:
The egg on the right is what's known as a "fart egg." It doesn't contain a yolk - only the white. It's not very common but it does happen occasionally.
Yeah, I know I'm behind on my posts. I'll catch you all up sooner or later on the happenings here at Spenardo del Sur. But for now, here's a video of my new baby goats gamboling and frolicking on a sunny morning.
My nanny goat, Rosemary, gave birth to two adorable baby goats yesterday morning. Today, I went down early to check on them and discovered my other nanny goat, Lipstick, had given birth to another two. Within 24 hours, I went from three goats to seven.
The cuteness of four newborn goats (all girls) is overwhelming. But don't take my word for it. See for yourself:
I'm now two days into my 30 days of community service. They've got me on janitorial duty at the court house. It's pretty easy work. Hell, compared to those days when I worked the graveyard shift at the porno store and had to clean the glory hole booths, this is a goddamned piece of cake.
I did not really want to usher in the Obama era today by mopping, vacuuming and cleaning bathrooms, but a ride to the courthouse fell into my lap and I figured it was best to just get it over with for this week. It turned out that Victoria, who hails from my old neighborhood of Spenard, was on a southern roadtrip and emailed me to arrange a two-night stopover here at Spenardo del Sur. The timing could not have been better! Not only was she able to drop me off at the court house this morning on her way out of town, she kindly took me yesterday to my court mandated "evaluation" 25 miles away.
It wasn't all about court mandated appointments. Victoria and I still found time to drive down dirt roads, visit a couple local cemeteries and check out a dilapidated old barn. (Okay, party central this ain't.)
My evaluation took place in an unmarked office on the backside of a minimall. It was a sad and forlorn place: shabby furniture, well-worn industrial carpet, no windows. If it hadn't been for the photocopied motivational sayings taped to the dingy walls, you could've easily mistaken it for a child molester's basement.
It was here I was questioned about my living situation, income, drinking habits, the accident and Alaska. As soon as anyone finds out I moved here from Alaska, they can't help but ask about it. The two biggest topics, which were both covered that day, are the weather and Sarah Palin. And then, after it comes out that I worked at a recording studio, the next question is always "Did anyone famous go there?" So then I had to talk about Ewan McGregor and Ted Stevens before getting to the nitty gritty of just how much more time and money am I gonna have to give The Man before I can put all this shit behind me?
Let's just say it's a lot. I have 24 hours of re-education camp to look forward to: four six-hour sessions held in the same gloomy office space. This will set me back $265. I also have to visit once a month for something called "monitoring." This goes on for six months at twenty bucks a pop - forty if they decide to make me pee in a cup. The piss test pisses me off. There were no drugs (other than alcohol) involved in my accident. The police dog that was there will back me up on that. Yet the state of Alabama now reserves the right to collect my urine (and charge me $20 for it) just because they can. At least they didn't demand any from me on this visit, letting me keep my much needed twenty spot (but still charging me fifty for the evaluation).
And these monitoring sessions/potential piss tests can only be done on a weekday and re-education camp is only on Saturdays so I have twice as many rides to beg for until I get my license reinstated.
So, I'm sorry to say, the pledge drive is still going on. As someone who's living on an average of $300-400 a month (with no government assistance), I'm once again asking for your help. Many of you have already given and I thank you. You paid my initial fine and court costs, keeping me from going back to the pokey. I owe you all big time. But we have not quite met our fundraising goal yet. There's only fifty bucks in the coffers right now and the electric company is first in line to take that. I got another fifty bucks coming in on Friday but that's going to the phone/internet company.
So here's the PayPal button again for those who'd like to donate. Or, if you live in Anchorage, you can give the money directly to Angela and she'll make sure I get it.
As a special thank you gift for new and renewing members, Spenardo del Sur is offering these Scrubba Dubya bumpersticker removal kits with your donation of $20 or more. It's a brand new morning in America and it's time we scrape those unsightly reminders of the last eight years off bumpers everywhere. (Not only will it also work on Ted Stevens bumperstickers, I think you could use the scraper in a pinch to clear a frosty windshield.)
Generously donated by David and Priscilla
The chickens have started laying eggs again. Well, Cheepacabra has anyway. The others should be soon to follow. They stopped laying a couple months ago when they started molting. The addition of eggs once again to my kitchen is most welcome. Without eggs I can't make pasta, pies or hollandaise sauce. God, how I've missed hollandaise sauce!
Cheepa gets ready to lay the very first egg of 2009. Rather than drag grandma's old stove out of the house and figure out how to dispose of it, I gave it a new life as a nesting box. Until now, there hasn't been a chicken in that oven for over 15 years.
Last winter, most of the chickens were young and continued laying through the winter. Now, all my birds are over a year old - except for the two roosters born last spring, Sanchez and Babyman. Sanchez is now officially the alpha male. After a couple days of agonizing over which of Frankencoop's three roosters would get the axe, I came to the decision that it had to be Corny. If I didn't kill him, Sanchez would. So Corny went to that big farm in the sky. He also went into a big bowl of curried chicken salad, a pot of jambalya and a couple gallons of soup stock.
My first day of community service, I brought some of the curried chicken salad with me for lunch. The other woman cleaning the courthouse with me could not believe I had actually butchered the chicken myself. When we took our lunch break, she was relieved that it was chicken salad. She was half-expecting me to pull a whole roasted chicken out of my tote bag.
In community service, women generally clean the courthouse. The men get the outside duties like picking up roadside trash. Me and my janitorial partner were the only two women that day. Of the seven or eight men, the majority of those were black. As this is rural Alabama, I was not surprised. Today, the day of Obama's inauguration, there were only about five or six of us that showed up and we were all white. I couldn't help but contemplate how often that happens here. I know that there are currently about 500 doing community service but have no idea what the demographics of that group are.
It's odd how invisible I feel as I work my way through the court house, even though I'm wearing a bright orange vest with reflective yellow stripes (really more designed for those working on the side of the road). I find it weird that I'm just tossed into the courthouse and allowed access to almost every office in the courthouse - many of them often empty when I'm there. Sometimes, the women who work in the courthouse (lots of the offices are manned by mostly women) will not even make eye contact with me. Kinda like how some people won't even look at a homeless guy who asks them for change. One woman gives me the eagle eye as I empty her trash, as if I might steal something if she turned her back on me. I want to tell her "Don't worry, I'm just a drunk driver not a thief." As my janitorial partner told me "These white bitches think their shit don't stink!" But there's some decent people too. Today, I was the only woman who showed up and I got to clean the 2-story courthouse and 3 annexes across the street by myself. As I said, the job is piece of cake. Not only did I finish with time to spare, I also restocked the utility closet and still snuck in extra smoke breaks and had a few conversations with court house employees.
Sometimes, I would pass through an empty breakroom with a TV showing inaugural festivities and I'd work extra slow so I could catch a couple minutes of the broadcast. I happened to walk into a woman's office as she watching Barack's speech. One of my community service supervisors, a middle-aged black man, was standing behind her watching it too. I asked him if it would be okay for me to hang out and watch the rest of the speech with them.
I don't know how long his speech was. I only caught the last five minutes. That was just enough to make me all teary-eyed. Damn, am I glad that douchebag Dubya is finally gone!
In another office, a younger black woman let me watch a little more of the festivities on her computer with her. We talked about how jealous we were of our friends who were there in person today. Since the vote here in Randolph County pretty much followed racial lines, with McCain getting 70% of the vote, I avoided talking politics with white people. It's a good bet that any random white person here did not vote for Obama.
I only overheard one politically-themed conversation between white people today - two older ladies in an office who completely ignored me as I washed the windows.
I had no idea that Barney Frank was gay. Did you know Barney Frank was gay?
Who's Barney Frank?
Oh, you know...that big, fat slob in Washington D.C.
I don't know.
Oh...he's...that guy. You know...he's fat. He's...he's a liberal.
No, I don't know who he is.
Well, he's gay. I had no idea that he's gay.
Okay, on that note, let's wrap this post up with a couple random pictures:
Della has resigned herself to being outnumbered.
While playing archaeologist a couple days ago, I unearthed these tiny ceramic monkeys. They are only about an inch tall. They were made in Japan in either the 1930s or 1950s.
One of my hens, Miss Lillian, seems to be growing an extra claw out of the bottom of her foot. Not quite as cool as a three-legged chicken but I'll take what I can get.
a single chicken breast - one and a half pounds
