organized chaos

It’s been quite a weekend around here, and it’s only Saturday morning.  You know, Saturday in the park, I think it was the fourth of July. Only, there’s no man selling ice cream. And it’s not the fourth of July.

But I digress. Before I go off on a weirdo tangent let me just take this moment to refer you to one of my favorite East Texas posts. That is, if you’re looking for something to read. If not, why have you even read this far, hmmm?

Recycling makes the world go round, no? Click here to read.

I don’t really know who other young girls in the eighties held high on the Music Pedestal. In fact, most of the music I listened to came straight from my little square lilac colored boom box. So I, to this day, am dreadfully ignorant of the names of all those rad vocalists who graced the airwaves.

In our double wide, we had a few records. You know; round, vinyl, black with ridges? And we had a few cassette tapes that piqued my interest for many a year. One of them had a song called “Sail Away” which I later learned was done by a band named Styx. I must have listened to that song hundreds of times, always wondering where those guys hoped to sail to and if maybe they would ever consider taking me from East Texas Hell.

Another cassette I found laying around and became totally enamored with was Lynyrd Skynyrd. Especially that one about giving him three steps, Mister and how he spun a tale of a place called The Jug where he found a girl named Linda Lou, who consequently could really cut a rug. For some reason I always pictured them dancing on this round blue and white area rug. I thought on these particular lyrics for hours at a time. Deep and profound.

Then there was our record of The Judds and I really got off on that one because they sang low enough for me to sing along and belt it out. I learned how to sing harmony with those two red heads that were so young and pretty I could hardly tell which one was the mother and which one was the daughter. I dreamed about what a girl’s night out would be like, ’cause Honey there ain’t no doubt, that I would dance every dance until the boys went home.

Then there was the album called The Doobie Brothers, and I didn’t listen to that one much, because on the inside cover there was a picture of the whole band plus some girls, naked with cowboy hats over most of their privates. It freaked me out a little to say the least.

But hands down, the album I listened to and obsessed over the most was My Precious. My crazy, eccentric pretend best friend, Cyndi Lauper. I don’t know how it started. Maybe I got that album as a Christmas gift or something. It was the one with Cyndi laying almost face down on a mirror with her multicolored hair all swept up. True Colors was the name of it. And it didn’t even include the all too famous “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun.” I got that later on an old cassette someone gave me.

I don’t know if other girls were as obsessed with her as I was, but she just spoke to my oddities in a way no one else ever had. The way she sang with that high baby voice that I would never be able to blend with. The way she wore mismatched clothing and danced around like a mad woman. If only there were girls like that at my school. Then we could’ve hung out in our funky black and white skirts paired with purple leather jackets and thumbed our noses at those preppies!

Then, at the height of my adoration, my mother did the impossible. She got tickets to The Concert in nearby Tyler. My stomach did flip flops. My throat dried out. My hair frizzed more than normal. We were going to see Cyndi Lauper in person. And she would sing all the songs on my album and she might even call me up on stage to dance the funky dance with her. Then she would take me to her fav salon the next day and pay to have my hair colored black, blue, red and maybe even a streak of purple.

But when we got there and she started doing her thang, a little something I like to call Concert Shock happened. You know, when the singer sounds nothing like they do on the record, and they sing off key a little, and you’re like, “Whoa! I can totally sing better than them!”

Then she went a step further and sang a whole slew of songs I didn’t even know. I only had that one album. We were poor. No more albums in sight. I didn’t like any of her new stuff anyway and was saddened that I wouldn’t be making that hair appointment the next day.

I still liked the old gal. I still listened to “Change of Heart” and “Iko, Iko” over and over. I still held her fashion choices up on a pedestal. And she shaped me to this day. Because of Cyndi Lauper, I don’t feel like such a freak.

Thanks, Cynd’s. Give me a call sometime, we could still make that hair appointment and I’d let you wear my orange and red striped capri’s.

copyright 2007 carrielouise

did you miss your weekly dose of this?

For the blog carnival hosted over at Owlhaven.

This is an excerpt from a series I posted on my childhood days down in East Texas.

I may have only lived in the East Texas area for five or six years, but they were formative years, coming of age years. That must be why, when I really press myself to be honest, most of my opinions can be traced back to something that happened there. It was a bittersweet time, really, a strange mix of horrible memories and some of my fondest. Much like finding a few morsels of the finest dark chocolate still wrapped, swirling around in the creamed corn your mother is forcing you to eat. You pluck them out, hide them in your pocket, swallow down as much as that mushy corn as you possibly can, because you’re a good kid, and savor those chocolates later when you are utterly alone and can finally think.

It was the summer before third grade when we moved down to the lake. At eight years, I recall feeling very grown up. I’m the oldest of three, and I think the oldest always feels more grown up at an earlier age. When I look at my eight year old son now, and compare, it shocks me to know how young I actually was. My step dad, Donnie had gotten discharged from the Navy and wanted to move back to his roots. I would later learn that meant the place where the largest number of his drug buddies resided.

His dad got him a sweet job for one of the largest grocery stores in Texas. But thankfully for us, it wasn’t playing cashier. This particular company owned a large section of land next to Lake Palestine, one of the largest lakes in the area. Of course everything’s bigger in Texas. They used this land as a Recreation Center for company employees. Most called it a campground. I called it paradise. It turned out to be the missing piece of my puzzle.

Donnie was employed as a kind of grounds-keeper; mowing, picking up trash, schmoozing the guests and CEOs, getting really drunk, organizing company parties where other people could get really drunk. We lived in a good sized trailer smack in the middle of the grounds, within running distance of the lake. I guess it would’ve been walking distance, but we kids ran everywhere, as if our butts were on fire or something. We had a fenced yard, and directly behind was a grand playground. What kid isn’t excited about her own industrial strength playground right in the back yard?

The rest of the park included such luxuries as a fishing pier, a long rickety boathouse where people checked out motorboats for free, a boat dock, an orchard with more fig trees than I cared for, and more stomping ground than I knew what to do with. Behind the house a ways was a creek that eventually poured into the lake, and it ran through a sort of nature trail. It was one of my favorite places. Not many campers went back in there, and it’s shady, fairylike presence hid me like a womb.

An exciting time to be sure. Especially for a kid, and we were pretty much given freedom to roam. Maybe not my younger brother and sister, who were four and five years younger than me. Kristi and Mitch were required to slow me down at regular intervals. Although Kristi rebelled frequently and roamed off on her own. I thought she did just fine on her own. She would spend the better part of the next five years tormenting me in every way possible, so time away from her was sweet relief. We are the best of friends now, so she did outgrow some of that.

In addition to the grandeur of living on the lake, we now had Donnie’s relatives to be reacquainted with. I think most of them had lived somewhere in that area, south of Dallas, west of the Louisiana border, their whole lives. They certainly exhibited a pride over their heritage and ways of life. And believe me, they did do things a little differently. This book of essays is in no way meant to be an insult to them or anyone else residing in East Texas. It’s just one girl’s look back at her past, writing stuff down to make myself laugh, even if no one else thinks it’s that funny.

To read this post in it’s entirety, you’ll find it here.

To check out all the posts in this series, you’ll find them here.

It’s true. While this is not the end of the book, it’s the end of what I’ve written. You know, I just sit around all day and stare at walls. There’s really no excuse for me not to write. Nothing like, umm, I just had a baby four five months ago or anything like that.

But I hope you’ve enjoyed your visit to East Texas through my warped perspective. And I hope you leave some feedback after this post. Did you like it? Did you find it disturbing? Did you like it even though you found it disturbing? Whatever. I’d like to hear your thoughts. Even if you’ve never left your thoughts anywhere on this blog before, and I don’t know you from Adam. Go ahead. It won’t hurt. And now to the final chapter for now. (more…)

Remember, for the rest of (Almost) Everything I Know I Learned in East Texas, find the category on the side bar. 

Discipline: East Texas Style

I’ve already mentioned the Rubber Finger. While that was not usually a form of discipline, Donnie did cross the line with it occasionally. He had some other fine tricks up his sleeve, as well.

From a very early age I’ve had the endearing habit of laughing uncontrollably. In socially unacceptable situations. Chalk it up to nerves, whatever. One of Donnie’s first disciplinary actions for me happened at the dinner table. There’s something about sitting at the dinner table all together as a family that just cracked me up. I’m sure it had more to do with the pressure of using manners and having to sit in one place for so long. At any rate, I have many memories of getting the giggles so bad during dinner that I would get in trouble. From a man who used The Rubber Finger to entertain his guests. Go figure.

So the obvious discipline for this was to make the child stand for the duration of the dinner. Makes total sense to me. Action: excessive laughter, Consequence: standing while she eats. Gotcha.

Did it make me stop laughing? Nope.

Another favorite for excessive laughing during other inappropriate times was standing in the corner. When I couldn’t stop laughing, I was paddled and laughed through that as well. Now that I think about this, a lot of things are starting to make sense about my persona. But that’s a whole other book.

Just a side note. Later in Jr High School, after we moved back to Kansas, I had a really weird Science teacher that creeped me out. I had this laughing issue in her class also. One day she couldn’t take it anymore and dragged me down to the principal’s office and called my mother at work. You want to know what dear old mom said to her?

“I’m trying to work here, so if you can’t control your students any better than that, maybe you should find a different job.”

Thanks, Mom.

Cleaning up trash in the park may not have been a consequence for any behavioral issues, but we hated it anyway. Donnie had some friends called the Trash Sticks, and they were old broom handles with nails hammered into the ends so that the pointy side could jab at the trash on the ground and one could beautify the park with ease. It still makes my teeth grind every time I think about sticking that nail into an aluminum can. The screech of metal against metal just does me in to this day.

To punish us for getting a sunburn, Nanny, Donnie’s mother, had an old time solution. If we showed up at her house with the red glow of summer, she’d throw back some beer, then break out the cheap white vinegar. I don’t care how common of a trick this is. I know people still do this, and I know it works to pull the heat out. But if you want to torture a child, go ahead and try it. She’d soak a rag in that stuff and stink us up real good with it, then watch out. At any given time, four or five kids would be running full speed around her house all a blur. It was the Vinegar Sprint. That crap burned so bad.

Then there was Fetching The Ice. Oh yeah, that was fun. Down across the big parking lot, past the check in office, sat a fish cleaning station next to the creek. Because Donnie and my mother were trying to raise me up right, they sent me with the little silver bowl to fetch ice. Remember this was back in the day before ice makers or those fancy pants refrigerators with the nifty water/ice combos on front. I’m sure someone had them. All my friends lived in trailers, so it wasn’t us.

So to really train me right, they sent me for ice at night. In the dark. By the creek. Where at any moment a Slimy Monster Thing could’ve come up out of that water and knocked my little silver bowl right out of my hands, ice a flyin’, and snatched me for his child-bride.

It could happen.

I think the whole point of this little disciplinary exercise was to see how fast I could run with a bowl of freezing ice in my hands, and not spill any of it. To this day, I have excellent balance.

Here’s number 9, you crazy East Texas Fans!

If you want to read the rest of (Almost) Everything I Know I Learned In East Texas, find the category section on the side bar and click on ‘East Texas’.

Imaginary Friends

If you want your kids to have a great imagination, move them out to the middle of nowhere and drink too much beer, therefore rendering yourself incapable of driving them to any friends’ house they may have made at school.

Back in East Texas we didn’t have playdates or Mom’s Day out. We didn’t have weekly Bible clubs, at least not that I was aware of, but every summer some nearby church hosted a honky-tonk vacation Bible school that we usually got to attend thanks to Grandad and Memom. We did have dances on the pavilion with plenty of Hank Williams Jr. and Willie Nelson. I learned to two step with the old timers.

We had a fish fry every week or so after enough campers caught enough catfish to feed all us hungry yard apes. We had our three channels on television and that was enough for me to form some lifelong friendships that would keep me company during those long off season months when my camper friends were gone.

My obsession with tv characters started early. My earliest memory being one from age seven or so when I lived with my mother’s parents in Kansas. One of my favorite shows was Happy Days. In this memory I’m talking, out loud, to The Fonz. That’s all the specifics I can recall of that. Other than the feeling that I could make myself believe he was really there, and we were buds. As I got older, this sensation didn’t decrease. Instead I added more characters: that kid from Starman the tv show, MacGyver, Mike from Growing Pains, or anyone else I had a crush on. There were girls too and they all thought I was the bomb. The cat’s meow. The life of the party. Solid Gold. I was the center of their universe and I spent many a day flitting about the park, networking with my pals as they flew in from LA or where ever.

My kids have made-up imaginary friends. I had pre-fabricated ones thought up by creative writing teams somewhere in Hollywood. It matters not. In the end, the result is the same. Imaginary friends don’t let you down, unless you imagine it out of a need for conflict. Imaginary friends laugh at all your stupid jokes. They talk about you with your other imaginary friends, expounding about how cool it is to be friends with you.

They come every time you call them, without fail. They never grow old and die. But at the end of the day, they’re not real and you know it. And it leaves an emptiness when you realize you’re a grown up and it’s time to make some friends who have a free will.

Remember, if you want the other entries on this series, scroll down the sidebar to “On The Brain” and click on East Texas. 

Grown Up Friends are the Best Kind

Donnie and my mother made some choice friends down in Texas. I have several vivid impressions of them that remain solidified to this day. Oddly, I don’t remember names or much of their faces, but rather snippets of how they impacted me.

Let’s call the first one June. A friend of mom’s, she frequented many a beer sloshing party at our house, and sometimes at someone else’s trailer. I liked her well enough, then she won my heart with one single comment. We took a boat out one afternoon, maybe we were fishing. I didn’t think much of myself back then. At school I became invisible, and when I wasn’t blending into the wall pattern I stood out in stark contrast to all the pretty, popular girls with their fancy hair and designer clothes. Looking back at pictures I can honestly say I went through a very awkward stage for a very long awkward time. No thanks to the long bus ride that wrecked my attempts at nice hair on picture day.

I’ve always been very tall for my age; very tall. I ended up at six feet when it was all said and done in high school, just to give a gauge. To boot, I was sickly skinny with knobs for knees and elbows. So, there we were out in our boat and June looks at me and says to my mother, “You know, she’s going to be a heartbreaker someday.” I wasn’t exactly sure what a heartbreaker did, but it swam in my mind forever after that. For the first time in my young life, I realized those boys who ignored me at school were the ones missing out. They were the stupid ones. I would show them someday.

It amazes me that one little compliment, and not a fakey one; a genuine, thoughtful one, could spin a little girl’s perspective of herself that much. After that, I think I made an annoyance of myself by attaching myself to that woman every time she was around.

A friend of Donnie’s, who we’ll call Buck, due to the swiss cheese conspiracy concerning his name, came around most often when there was weed to be shared. He was a big guy, complete with tight Wrangler’s and boots. I don’t remember him ever being sober. The one experience with him that stands out in my mind happened in a way that I’m still not sure of. The executives of the grocery store chain had their own trailer down one of our roads a bit; a place away from the blue collar campers, where they could nosh it up in privacy. Across the road from their love nest was a smaller boathouse, hiding in the trees. It had two stalls, just enough for their fancy pants jet skis.

Buck got it in his weed filled head that we should head down to the little boathouse. Just the two of us. Keep in mind, I was no older than twelve at the time.

 Never one to question an adult, I went along with it, but had my doubts that he should  (more…)

Reminder to those just joining “(Almost) Everything I know I Learned in East Texas”: to find the rest of this series, scroll down the sidebar to On The Brain, then click on East Texas.

One of our favorite things to do with Donnie was the beer run. Because we did live so far away from civilization our beer purchasing options were to hop in one of the motorboats and hit the little store across the lake several miles away, which we did on occasion. Or pile into the blue two toned Citation and follow the snakey highway twenty miles away to the other beer store located in one of the many obscure East Texas towns that never hosted a population more than 50 people, yet always had a beer store. To us, it wasn’t a liquor store, for all we knew, they sold only beer, and one other commodity that made our dangerous trip with Donnie worthwhile.

Beer Nuts.

We braved riding with my step dad and his brewsky buzz on that long Texas highway where goodness knows how many other step dads were buzzing and traveling the same as us. We braved his breakneck speeds, we braved his lewd jokes. We braved his sometimes bad moods, wishing he hadn’t taken us. We braved the Texas heat. We braved the occasional armadillo crossing the road while we traveled at Donnie’s breakneck speeds. For a new hip Michael Jackson record? Nah. For a bag of jelly beans? Forget about it. For a chocolate dipped ice cream cone? Never.

Beer Nuts.

A miniscule bag of crunch, a mix of sweet and salt that I would eat one at a time all the way back home.

The next part of (Almost) Everything I Know I Learned in East Texas is a series of short quirky pieces.  Instead of posting them all together, I’ll just do one at a time to stretch it out. 

And I also created a category for all this East Texas nonsense, so if you want to start at the beginning scroll down the sidebar, click on the white box under “On The Brain” and click on “East Texas” (more…)

Here’s #5 of (Almost) Everything I Know I Learned in East Texas.  For your convenience I’ve added a category for East Texas.  So if you want to start at the beginning, scroll down the sidebar till you get to “On The Brain” and click the little white box.  Then click “East Texas.”  And the latest posts are from top to bottom.  (more…)

Geez a Pete, has it been a week already?  I must be stuck in a time vortex, because every week seems to go faster and faster.

Anyway, here ya go, East Texas fans.  As usual, here are the links to the rest:

#0, #1, #2, #3

(more…)

Well it’s already been a week, and I suppose I should post the next chapter of (Almost) Everything I Know I Learned in East Texas. 

If this is your first visit, and you want to start at the beginning of this series go HERE and scroll down for the timeline, then #1, and #2.  Otherwise, just click below.  (more…)

I’ve had a taker.  And if you’re a writer, in any capacity, you know if even one person wants to read more of what you’ve written, that’s all it takes.  Not including your own mother, of course. 

On a side note: True to my spazoid nature, I forgot to include the Preface before the intro on my last post of this series.  I’ll just include it here before chapter one.  Thanks for reading!  (more…)

As promised, I thought I would post some of my writing on here.  I thought about a chapter of my novel, but I really don’t want anyone stealing my idea. Not that it’s so original, but I like it.

So following the timeline that you can find on this post, here is the intro to the memoir I’m working on.  It is a third draft, so keep that in mind.  I may or may not keep posting this particular book, it just depends on if there’s anyone who wants to keep reading it.  That means you should probably leave a comment if you want more, or email me-address on the end of my sidebar.  So now you know the reason for this post’s title.  (more…)

I remember the first time, as an adult, I realized I was supposed to be a writer.  I’d read somewhere that people with the gift of writing are really good at the “What If” game.  You know, “What if I ran up the aisle during church during the sermon and started doing the chicken dance?”  And then they play the whole scenario out in their head.  Or they frequently hear voices. 

Like: “What if someone said, ‘blah, blah, blah,’ to me, and then I said, ‘yadda, yadda, yadda,’ to them.  And then they would say…” You get the idea.

What a relief it was to me that while that would still sound highly abnormal if I were to try to explain the stuff going on inside my head, it makes for great fiction writing.  And when I started doing that, writing fiction, I found something I actually loved the process of as much as the outcome. 

I usually don’t like processes.  At all.

So I’ll use this category to post snippets of my writing.  Since it’s just sitting in my hard drive collecting dust anyway. 

Here’s a timeline I plan on using in a non-fiction piece I’m working on called, “(Almost) Everything I Know I Learned In East Texas”

(more…)