opinions solicited on an Shirley Jackson-esque article....

[politicat]

This is my work that follows... I've got a market picked out for it, but I'm still a little ambivalent on this going out... it sounds like I'm channeling Life Among the Savages to my ears.

Please let me know if you enjoy this. It's totally non-political, completely silly and was written entirely for the fun of it.

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Pioneer Eccentric Cat Lady, or My Mountain Vacation


We'd had a bad week, no denying it. My darling husband and I were frazzled by the rat race that we grudgingly pursue so that we can support our lives in the great outdoors and so he can support my latest novel. Supporting our cat-children in the style which they demand is easily done on William Randolph Hearst's income, but the rest of us have to budget to keep that catnip habit under control.

So, on the Monday before the week of Independence Day last year we got a call from a savior. One of our friends is the last heir and scion of an ancient and noble family of Colorado pioneers. He's one of those strange Colorado hybrids that adores the outdoors, lives for his time in the middle of nowhere... and works on computers. Network administrator, and hard to pry away from a beloved Solaris installation. He said that the company was taking advantage of the fact that most everyone was on vacation and doing a major upgrade to all of the servers and workstations. He offered us his cabin for the week since he wasn't going to be able to use it.

No fools us, we jumped at this chance. Andy had the week off because Sun does not work that week - they even turn off the air conditioning everywhere but the server rooms, and that was where Andy was a consultant at the time.

We packed up three cats in car carriers because we most emphatically did not want to come back to a shredded house - and the fireworks were already starting to drive them batty. Then we packed litterboxes, harnesses, leashes, hiking boots, books, food, clothes, soap, bottled water, GPS, propane and the stove, laptops, axes, and probably the kitchen sink. We stowed them in the off-road worthy Suburban, and drove up Tuesday morning. Oh, yes, cell phones and chargers - both car and 110v - and the cell modems because our friend can't get a phone line up there without paying Qworst some ridiculous, huge "last 30 miles" fee.

Our friend has a solar power system at the cabin, so we could use the machines while we were up there and I'd get some writing done. The last stop was at the vet for kitty tranks, so we only had to listen to 45 minutes of Siamese Meow, Chartreuse whisky-and-cigarettes "Riaorow" and mutt-cat "meep" instead of four hours.

It took four hours on the road, the last hour and a half at glacial speeds, to get from the Front Range to that great cabin. Our truck is off-road equipped - we bought it used and it came with a four-inch lift and big knobby tires, two spares, roll bars, four-wheel drive, a luggage rack suitable for African medical missionaries and bunny-killer headlights on every surface possible. Truck looks like a miniature monster truck when she's not parked next to my little, tiny Hyundai. Then she looks like someone gave her Bovine Growth Hormone and steroid cocktails... and never stopped. The only reason I can figure that Andy had to have her when we went looking for a little, light pickup to replace his old Ford Escort and get us through remodeling the house his ex-wife foisted on him in the divorce settlement is that he grew up in Kentucky and still has farm-boy, redneck urges from time to time. Other than that, he's mostly normal geek.

Our friend's great to the 10th place grandparents came to Colorado to strike it rich in the fur trade in probably 1702... well, not quite that early, but they claim they had Zebulon Pike as a house guest. I don't quite believe that, but the Kit Carson stories are probably mostly true. For all of you nonColoradans, Zebulon Pike was the first European person to try to climb Pike's Peak, our most famous 14000+ foot mountain. He and his group of Federal Government explorers got halfway up, got cold, and said the mountain was not climbable. 30 years later, someone climbed it. Poor Zeb lived to hear this, and died, I think, of the shame. About 200 years later, I climbed it on a monthly basis because I lived near the bottom of the trailhead and it's a not real hard day climb - 14 miles up, 14 miles down. The worst part was the flatlander touristas who forgot the air is thinner above 10K feet.

So, it took our friend's family several generations, but they did eventually strike it rich... on the mineral and water rights attached to the property. The property backs up on Roosevelt National Forest...and the forest starts at the property line because our friend's grandfather got offended at the low price the Feds offered for the land back in 1911. Refused to sell and fought and won an imminent domain case. The cabin's in the center of this huge property that was the result of all seven brothers, plus brother-in-laws, cousins, the family cattle et cetera claiming and homesteading together, then combining their land at about 9,000 feet elevation, 35 miles from the nearest paved road, 20 miles from the nearest road that gets more than a semi-annual grading and 10 miles from the nearest road that gets gravel. Halliburton keeps offering them obscene cash and improved roads if they'll lease the coal rights to the place, but our friend has a sick sense of humor and won't. He plays with Halliburton the way my cats play with toy mice.

I, Elizabeth, am ecstatic - I've been around WAY too many people the last few months for my taste and since this is the first year in the last five that fireworks have been legal (due to drought conditions) I've been as jumpy as the cats. Bang, boom, crackle, bubblewrap noises over the last week have just gotten on my last nerve. I grew up around weapons that make the same noises and smell the same way, and I really dislike them. Plus, we were recovering from a pay-cut that Andy's company made him take because they forgot that this isn't the Bubble Economy any more. Grumpy, us. Making noises about selling it all and heading for Montana. Start a recurve bow-based commune founded on anti-corporate, anti-marketing, cat-worshipping principles. Andy's been playing Quake and Doom again to take out his hostile, active-aggressive feelings against his corporate pointy-haired bosses and the sales people that keep feeding them.

The cabin hoves into sight. Three rooms, the main room is the original squared off, chinked-log cabin that our friend's great-grandfather put up when his wife got tired of raising three kids out of the back of an (18)70's model Conestoga land-yacht. (There are other cabins on the property, but abandoned since the 20's or so when most of the family realized that there was money to be made down in Denver.) The other two rooms are of (slightly) newer vintage. It's Gilligan's Island in the Rockies - no phones, no lights, no motor cars (except the one we brought) not a single luxury - except silence, blessed silence.

Not entirely true, though. Our friend is rabidly eco of the "manage the forests and they'll take care of us forever" variant. Spark arresters on the chimneys, solar everything, chainsaw. Chainsaw? Chainsaw. To cut out the little growth and keep this place safe from forest fires. Half a mile from the house, there's a woodpile that just might be the unofficial highest point in the state. I didn't check. Half mile in the an other direction is the privy pit that probably pisses off Halliburton since it's the old mine shaft left over from the 20's coal mining experiment that Halliburton lusts over. Very cool - a privy that doesn't stink.... but don't fall in!

A mile in the third direction is the bathroom.... the reason Old Ma (Friend) said, "Jasper, I'm not going any further!" - a hot spring. We don't have a lot of hot springs in Colorado, but we have a number of them, and this one is privately owned, and as far as I can tell, not documented. At least, it doesn't show up in the "Hot Springs of Colorado" guide book that my grandmother bought for me on Amazon when I hurt my back and she suggested "taking the waters". 190 F running water that collects in a rock pool that our friend spends a lot of his free time futzing with.... He's done gorgeous work. And no, I won't tell you where it is.

We unpack, lock two disgruntled kitties into one room to bathe each other and de-stress, lock the third in the second room to bathe herself and de-stress (she doesn't get along well with the other two), figuring that all three are going to be accusing us of high crimes and misdemeanors for the next twenty-four hours, vote to impeach us as personal slaves, and then fail to get the votes to convict. Dizzy's a softie, and Angelica can't work the can opener. Then we head out for our own baths. Mmmmm.... Hot Spring..... (Further details private - we've only been married 18 months. *grin*)

By the time we get back, Andy's getting withdrawal jitters. He's addicted to that box of his. I sigh, let him futz with the solar thingy, the cell thingies, the network thingy.... put away food, play with kitties, put away clothes, play with kitties, put away books, play with kitties, set up the propane stove because I'm not such a great fool as to think I'm a pioneer mother who can cook over a fireplace and camp fires are forbidden this year (bears, not fire danger) and play with kitties and revel in the quiet.

"Cell phones don't work," Andy says. "Well, they do, we get one bar out on top of the wood pile."

Now, for me, this is no tragedy. A week without that bleeping leash isn't going to upset me. I smile sweetly, say "If you think I'm climbing that woodpile to get one bar of reception, you're out of your (deleted) mind."

"Oh. Okay." He goes back to futzing.

I go back to housekeeping chores. "We can't use the solar charger, either." He proceeds to start in on this long, complex explanation of AC and DC and voltage and amperage and I think I hear joules mentioned too. Not being an electrical engineer, I cut him off.

"Really? I'm sorry." Now, this is less happy for me, since I really did want to write some while I was up here, but I've got tablets and pens, and I don't mind paper writing because my mother thought shorthand was a good idea for a girl to have and so I learned shorthand the summer between 7th grade and high school. It's handy, in fact. I packed an old print-out of both major works so I'll be reasonably okay.

Sunset's coming, Andy's still futzing. I make him stop, eat something, he goes right back to it. I mutter something about rehab. By now, his computer is getting a little low on battery, so he switches to mine. I light the propane lantern, sit down to do some serious editing, re-writing, re-arranging and feel like I'm Laura Ingalls Wilder without the sunbonnet.

"I'm taking these back home tomorrow," Andy says with this look of utter fear on his face. "You don't want to come back to 1000 messages on the server, and the batteries will be dead anyway."

"Just power them off, Andy," I say. "If I let you go back down with your computer, I'll be stuck up here for the next six months with three cats with totalitarian leanings to keep me company. You'll come back and find them standing over my suffocated, rotting body after they take revenge on me. They'll look smug about it, too." I go back to my MS.

"Well...." He does power them off, lights the fireplace since it's getting a little chilly. He plays games on his Palm. We eventually go to bed after inflating the air mattress and putting it in the box bed-frame thingy. The solar batteries work on the pump, else I think we'd STILL be huffing and puffing.

Wednesday morning, I wake up, late as always since I'm a night owl of the worst sort. I stay up for sunrises, I don't get up for them. No Andy in bed. Not surprising. He's a morning person. The fact that we are married at all has more to do with my former life as a corporate drone when I had to be awake early. I hornswaggled him, I admit it. I didn't quit working for a corp until after we married, and then I didn't go into private practice, I went freelance. Then he found out. Fortunately, he loves me enough not to complain about the hours I keep.

No Andy in the cabin. No Andy at the woodpile, getting his measley 9 bits per second over the cell phone. No Andy at the privy. No Andy at the spring. No Truck. No TRUCK!!!

No computers. There's a sweet little note on the table.

I love you. I worried all night about the computers. We didn't do a back up before we left, so I love you and I'm taking the computers home. This altitude's probably not good for them, either. I love you. I'll bring ice and gin and tonic on my way back. I love you. Love, Andy.

For the next two hours, I detail his ancestry, habits and thinking in highly scatalogical terms to the three cats while I putter around and eventually make tuna fish sandwiches. They listened happily because I bribe them with the liquid from the tuna can. Then I curse some more, put their harnesses on them, and stake their leashes in a partly shady grassy place outside the front door of the cabin and starte writing this. Andy probably "slept in" till 8,was on the road by 9, so he'll be back by 5 or 6. If he doesn't stop to play a few rounds of IceWind Dale or build a killer database app.

2 pm, I'm less grumpy. At least with the computers gone, we can go hiking and be good slaves to three kitties. Between times, we can pay attention to each other. Kind of like the honeymoon we didn't take because we got married in December and the only vacations we could find that wouldn't require a second mortgage were to places the sun never quits shining. More sunscreen. The kitties are bored trying to climb the two trees and getting yanked back down because I won't lengthen their leashes to let them really get into trouble.

"Back in the house, fur-beasts." I round up three kitties in three trips, untangling leashes and getting lots of "Jeez, Mom" looks and chat. "When your father gets home, he can let you climb the trees. I'm not chasing three cats up fifty-foot trees with spindly little branches and a bad wrist. You three don't have a clue what the great outdoors is all about, and I'm not going to be the one to teach you."

I go about figuring out how to roast the nice meat we brought on this little reflector oven thing that I know our friend had. Very cool gadget. I could get into this pioneer mother thing. I start having fantasies of getting a long term lease from our friend and never going back to civilization.

I've got the doors closed because bears are a problem this year. They're big, thick doors with no glass and no screens. Getting warm. There's this fan that runs off the solar rig. That's better. The kitties start going normal cat nuts, chasing each other around and pouncing on things that must be there, but are invisible to humans. 4 o'clock comes and goes. Roast coming along nicely, even though I'm not real happy about having to run the fireplace. Seventy is nice to me, not cold enough to require heating. Pioneer mother thing, I conclude.

Five. No Andy. I curse at whatever malevolent entity ever gave males of the species an interest in video games. Six. Roast is done, getting a little too well done for our taste, in fact. I wrap it up, put it in the cooler for now. We can re-warm it on the reflectory thingy. Peel, boil potatoes on the propane stove. Tear up salad. Get annoyed again at my wayward husband and take it out on a batch of bread from a box of mix. Knead, pound, knead. Let it rise over by the fire. There's an oven built into the chimney, I'll figure it out later.

This pioneer mother thing has potential. Three little voices. Okay, maybe not. Cats are bad enough... pioneer mothers need kids to qualify for the title. I wonder if I can be a Pioneer Eccentric Cat Lady. Drag out the cat food, make them eat crunchies first before they get their one-third can each. Seven. Beat down the bread, let it rise again. Eight. Andy can scrounge. I share out the rare bits with the kitties and we leave the well done parts for Andy. Revenge.

Nine. No truck, no Andy. 9:22, rumble, roar, up the deer path our friend calls a road. Bunny killers on high. Andy. I bottle up all of the invectives I've been telling the kitties all day and smile sweetly.

"Guess what Best Buy had?" If there are 5 words I never want to hear again, it's "Guess what Best Buy had?" Every time I hear those words, I feel our credit balance shift into red. Same for the Apple Store, CompUSA, and MacPlay.

"What did Best Buy have, dear, that kept you out until 9 o' frigging clock at night!!!"

His face fell. Almost, I forgave him.

"I thought you'd want to write while we were up here."

That's what all those legal pads you were complaining about were for!"

"Oh. I'll take it back then." Un-hunh. I'm not letting him out of my sight again. I give in on his technological, pathological addiction. Mushy scene followed where we worked out our differences.

Best Buy, it turned out, had a nifty little gadget that let us use the solar kit, plus solar panels for the little laptop demons. Still, no cell reception, but darn that all to pieces! So we made a deal that mornings were for gaming (while I slept) afternoons were for hiking and and teaching the kitties how not to hang themselves in the trees.
Evenings were for writing, more gaming. Hot springs at midnight. DVDs on the Powerbook after.

Andy bought me Bringing Up Baby, one of my very favorites, and even watched it with me. I was gracious and watched the Star Wars (originals) boxed set with him. All in all, a very nice week, with no noisy bang-crackle-pop noises but from the fireplace.

So, yesterday, we packed up three very Outward Bound qualified cats, litterboxes, the remains of food, books, laptops, an assortment of electronics, hiking boots, clothes.... chased cat-hair dust-bunnies (How do they shed so much? Is there cat under the cat-hair?) said a regretful good bye to the hot spring (Maybe my grandmother is right; my neck isn't bothering me, at least.) and came home.

To 1500 email messages, a dead lawn, four rosebushes with serious dehydration, and three seriously annoyed kitties. There are tranks left. Hmmm.... Kitties on drugs. Maybe there is something to be said for better living though chemistry.
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