The kid date

He has kids. Or maybe he doesn't. Either way, your own time is not exactly your own when you're a single parent. So if you do just possibly, maybe have that 'only-because-winter's-terribly-boring' kind of feeling and get the hankering to go out with someone whom you might be interested in, you could get Grandma to pinch-hit for the night, or you take part in what i like to call the "kid date."

You know, where you invite a friend along to one of the kid outings you're already taking to the ski slope or the ice rink. If you both have kids, then activities like this are probably going to be more necessary -- since getting two sets of sitters could be a daunting task.

These kid-dates can be quite pleasant for the fact that the two of you could-be lovers have plenty of opportunity to break the awkward metaphorical ice, while keeping the kids from falling on the actual ice. Not as much pressure, wondering whether you're going to have an awkward kiss later on (in front of the kids?!) or whether he's going to throw in some meek attempts at chivalry. It's just you, being your regular parent self, with a companion to join you for once. At least that's the way you can think of it, to help yourself feel calmer about dating.

Then again, it can also painful at times, when your kid insists "you guys are boyfriend and girlfriend" halfway through the event.

For the most part, though, it's a good way to deviate from the plain ol' living room date, where you invite the person over after the kids are in bed, for dinner and movies and whatever else. That could be more of an intimate affair than the kid-date, with its natural "out" clause. Meaning, if you end up going on a kid-date and don't actually want to pursue further dates, you can call it simply "hanging out," and pretend it wasn't a kid-date at all. Either way, you got out of the house, and you all had fun.

Removal: The Real Form of Protest

I have to hand it to Flashpoints and Pacifica Radio for doing a kick-ass job laying out the colossal mess our financial markets are in -- telling us who the key players are, what the WTO has to do with it (pressuring Brazil to de-regulate their banks, like we did, for one...), and what the hell we can do about it.

One of the things the guest on the show pointed out today was that people continue to protest over deregulation and the abuse of power by banks. But while they're demonstrating and holding a protest sign high in the air, a corporate credit card is bumping around in their wallet.

Greed still pays -- and guess who's paying? Us -- when we allow these large banks to leverage the pithy savings in our bank accounts against bad loans and hedged credit. When we protest outside of Bank of America, we perpetuate the myth that these corporations have power over us. Truth is, whoever holds the cash has the power. So the first step in the real war of resistance is not to demonstrate, but to remove our pithy savings from their coffers.

These corporations only have power because we give it to them.

And people are the same. A shaman or a charming soothsayer is only as powerful as the people who follow him -- however blindly.

Lately i and some of my people have been coming to terms with other people's falls from grace. We all know people we've believed were demigods; maybe they're old lovers, or maybe they're old friends.

At times we've believed so deeply in these people's power that we've refused to stand up for ourselves and demand the dignity that everyone deserves. We've put up with so many injustices from these so-called demigods, because certainly they must be smarter, more charming, more deserving of love and respect than ourselves.

When we finally realize that it's all pathetic bravado, the temptation is to tell them how pathetic they are, as publicly as possible.

But that's just like protesting outside the glassy towers of Bank of America. Our attention to these people's injustices simply validates their existence, and their power, when our energies should really be spent moving away as quickly as possible from the source of injustice. When someone mistreats you or turns their back on you or doles out a series of small yet overwhelming gestures of disrespect, don't waste your breath railing at them about how bad they are. Just leave them behind.

And start leaving your savings under the mattress.

Saving Energy

I apologize to those for whom this is really, really old news. But i just got an energy audit from the Energy Trust of Oregon, and i want to make sure everyone knows about it. It could save you a ton of money in energy costs year-round.

You call up this awesome non-profit and they come out to your house to check how well your heating system works, how much insulation you have, how well your windows are sealed and whether your faucets are leaking, among other things. They replace your showerhead with a lower-flow one and put in new faucet heads on your sinks and replace all your old incandescent bulbs with compact florescent ones. They also leave you with a booklet on tax credits and incentives you can get from the state and the federal government, to improve efficiency in your home. And the whole consultation is free!

I got my landlord to agree to do this, after the outrageous numbers on last year's gas bills. With another four to five months of cold weather ahead, and me paying the bills on my own, i figured i should try to spare myself the aggravation and expense of literally feeling the heat sucked out of the windows that lack sealant and the walls that lack insulation. Hopefully the landlord will make some of the improvements, since in the end they'll get the money back in tax credits.

If you are a homeowner and you live in this state, you've got to do this, to save yourself some cash. At the Green Cities conference earlier this year, Mayor Sam Adams talked with mayors from other parts of the country about how Portland has become a leader in sustainability. He said the issue of sustainability was important, but the way that city leaders could convince their constituents that it was needed -- beyond the more altruistic idea of environmental stewardship -- was because of money. Sealing up your house saves you money. Sealing up a government building or school saves us all money. It also just happens to conserve our natural resources too.

If you don't live in Oregon, you can find some of the same tax credits and incentives for energy efficiency in other states too. They might not come to your house and do the work for you, but the programs are out there to be found.

Out here in pale sun

kicking maple leaves around

walking it off,

walking it all off.

It's the night that will envelop me;

blinded by the wet black dark

and rage

for what you've done this time.

On these long nights i start thinking

There is so much he doesn't see, this father of this child of mine.

He doesn't see a little girl on a purple bike, splashing through a puddle and slamming on the brakes. She's wobbled a little and is clearly frustrated, though normally this puddle would not be such a big deal. But this time, i call out "are you ok?" and she answers with less than the usual rebelangel pluck.

"I don't have a dad anymore," she sniffs, kicking at the wet pavement.

This is not true, per se. She's been catching snippets of my conversations with friends, which were supposed to be hushed, and behind my bedroom door. But she always knows the score, more or less.

She knows i've resolved not to let her be at her father's house for a while, on account of the string of sketchy people with missing teeth, the girlfriend with the stripper vibe, the phone that's cut off again, the reports of unreliable parenting, and a feeling i get in the pit of my stomach when i think about his spiraling life of late. I don't even want to invite the rage that would come should i ponder what danger he's possibly put her in, while she's been in his care.

Still, i am feeling the usual pangs of sorrow for my daughter's self-esteem, for the statistics about daughters and absent fathers, and for her feeling that my decision means she 'doesn't have a dad anymore.'

I tell her that she will always have a dad who loves her, no matter what. I shore up some kind of reassurance for her, because that is the only thing i can do -- reassure, and pray that it comes true. But i hate that i have to be the one to tell her that her father loves her.

Truth be told, sometimes i wish he weren't around at all. He brings so much sorrow to the people who love him -- his mother whom he ignores until he needs something, his two daughters with whom he oversleeps and overyells, their respective mothers who he's emotionally manipulated one by one, and even at the same time. He continually makes promises and breaks them, yet here i am reassuring her that he loves my daughter, because anything else would be an even bigger blow to her psyche.

At what point is it all right to give it to a kid straight that their parent is fucked up?

Is this just a bitter realization that they must come to on their own, since all other meddling will be seen as such? And does this non-meddling mean we as the other parent are supposed to defend the fucked-up parent's love for their child, when the conversation comes up?

I'm like Seinfeld in this way

Going along,

listening to the music

convincing yourself

'this is a pretty good tune,'

til one comes on that makes you go

'awwwww...'

and you leap up

to dance and trip-step and

get spun on that song.

So like a melody,

love is this way.

You know it all in the first few notes.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

These days i suppose i'm like the characters in Seinfeld, who i once derided for being so picky. They'd drop their love interests for minor infractions, and i just didn't get it. Now i do, and i do it. Not that there's anything wrong with that...

Is it that i am getting older, and more able to see what i want? Or is it that mixed with the fact that i have extremely high standards for the rebelangel's male influences?

Way back when, when episodes of Seinfeld were part of my purple-Bugaboo-jacket, 1990's consciousness, i suppose i found it hard to believe that someone knew themselves that well, because i suppose i didn't know my own self so well. Rejecting someone for the way they ate just seemed ridiculous.

It's not that i come up with quite such petty reasons to turn people down, but they are more particular than they used to be. Like the man i decided i couldn't date because i didn't like his teeth. Or the Leo man who seemed a bit too into himself -- a cardinal sin for the Leo woman who wanted that attention pointed my way. (I didn't say my requirements were rational...)

So i guess i'm just like Seinfeld in this way. And no, there shouldn't be anything wrong with that...

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It's a song that grabs you

and you want to sing it over and over and over and over and over and

* Related article: Why I'm Not Waiting for Mr. Right *

* Related song: Jolie Holland's Damn Shame *

Four Doors Away

"And these here, they're in for life..."

I'm inside the medium-security section of Coffee Creek Correctional Facility. I'm here to do a radio project that gives a special troop of Girl Scouts the chance to voice their stories of living life with a mother in prison.

Around me moms and daughters are sitting close together, laughter tinkling around the room as they spread the peanut butter on their sandwiches with plastic knives. The coordinator of this program is explaining to me that the 'N/A' next to some moms' names on this list means this is all their gonna get. There will be no more comparing this time in here with what they might someday do out there. They are here for the rest of their lives.

Only a few names say that -- most will get another chance to raise their own daughters -- but there are those few... and for them i stand in total amazement. What a feat of strength it must be, to see your daughter leave through the locked doors after just a short time.

Four locked doors away is the sweet still air of a sunny Saturday in Oregon. In a couple hours, the girls here today will say a sorrowful goodbye to their mamas, and wait another two weeks to come back. Even if they do come before that--on a regular visit and not one with Girl Scouts--they won't be able to sit on their mom's laps like they are today, or hug them for as long as they want to. The special rules for this Girl Scout troop are just one of the ways these mothers are getting back their basic humanity, even while behind bars.

As a parent, I can't comprehend the idea of not being able to embrace my own daughter. It sets the hairs on my arm on end to think about it. I want to tear up or run out of the room, or call my daughter on the phone just to see how she's doing. I have a profound respect for these women for what they must go through, when the fourth door slams shut.

I can hear the more traditional people in my life whispering, "well they're in there for something, so don't feel too sorry," but I don't think of it like that. Convictions or not, overworked DA's or not , three-strike-rules or not, racial profiling or not, suspended sentences for petty crimes or not, Measure 11 or not -- it's unnatural to look at your baby through a layer of glass, or have restrictions upon how and when you can snuggle them.

In just a few minutes, I'll leave through those four locked doors. I'll be grateful when I get to the other side, watching the way a puff of a cigarette rises above the parking lot, in a place where nothing else moves, the way the October light plays on the dappled back of a horse, ridden by a little girl across the street from the prison, and how everything out here seems to move so slow and so fast... and how freedom feels different, after only mere moments of not having it...

The mothers and daughters from the local Girl Scouts Beyond Bars program will be featured on my radio show, Bread and Roses, on KBOO 90.7 FM in the coming months. Stay tuned for times and dates right here, or at www.kboobreadandroses.blogspot.com and www.nicolevulcan.com.

Switching things around

It's not that i don't love writing on this forum. That's not it at all. It's just that when you're a scrappy freelance writer, you often have to write the stuff that pays money first, and sometimes late in the night, you can twist your head around writing for fun. I wonder what that is sometimes...

Amidst all of that, I'm also getting more serious about my online profile. That's why I've created www.nicolevulcan.com to establish a web presence that doesn't necessarily present me as the harried mother of a spirited child (right off the bat anyway-- they're gonna figure it out eventually!). I'll also be moving this blog over to Wordpress one of these days, to give the whole thing a classier look.

For now, drop by my new site and leave me comment, telling me what you think. If you do i'll be your bestest friend and love you forever.

Chillin' green

As you will see from the right-hand side of this blog, it is supposed to be about self-sufficiency, single parenting and social change.

Sometimes i deliver, other times i ramble about the woes of raising a rambunctious kid. (Who, by the way, is doing much better about listening to her teacher these days -- no thanks to my woeful whining on this forum.)

But once in a while, i actually have epiphanies that combine the self-sufficiency, single parenting and social change all in one. Maybe they're not that revolutionary to all of you, but they make me feel better, and they save me a few coins.

So here's one:

When the wind starts blowing and cold air is seeping in, making you not want to set foot outside your door, you have a couple choices to make. You could crank up the heat and resign yourself to paying out the nose for the next six months, or you could stave it off a bit longer by snuggling. Yep, i just told you to snuggle your way out of your cranking up the furnace, and using the fossil fuels that bring the unhappy bill to your door.

I've probably admitted at least once that i sleep with my kid. I try on occasion to get her back in her own bed, but then cold weather comes along and she becomes my own little sustainable heater. Imagine it. Instead of having the heat cranking all night, you are curled up around a 98-degree body, eight hours a night, times 6 months. That's not a little coin--it's a lot.

Just add food and water, and she will warm my bed all night -- no gas bill involved.

Birth and Growth

It comes around every year. Our house gets doused in black and orange; more garishly than we dare to go for the Christmas green and red.

We just love Halloween -- because it's near the girl's birthday, and because we get to invent characters for ourselves that we may or may not really want to be. I tend to go for the grotesque-ish versions of real life people -- J.D. the androgynous personal trainer, Cindy the sleazily-polyestered 70's skiier, Rodney the Butt Rock Roadie. I get really damn serious on this blog but in real life i am kind of funny. The kiddo, meanwhile, goes for the princess kind of stuff -- tiaras, gowns, and Tinkerbell. I tried to get her to put in the ugly teeth i got in a three-pack this year, but she was having none of it.

Last year I wrote this blog about sustainable Halloween. All of it still applies -- only this year we added a huge pumpkin patch to the garden to harvest our own jack-o-lanterns too. I had grand illusions of selling my orange beauties at the farmer's market, so my dad rented a tiller early in the spring and got the ball rolling. When my copious planting yielded only about 30 pumpkins, some smaller than a softball, I decided to use them as painting projects during the kiddo's birthday, instead of hawking them in the rain at the amateur's table.

By the way, I wrote a story about the girl's birthday last year around this time too -- so i suppose now is a good time to reflect on that one as well. Happy 6th, my love!

Changes

It's eight o'clock at night and i'm rousing myself from a warm spot under the covers of my daughter's bed. She drifted off to sleep about thirty minutes ago. Me, i pretended to be wide awake for about five, then slid slowly into rest and comfort for the next 25. Counterintuitively, now i'm pouring myself a glass of wine to wake back up.

It's just so quiet here, with the house all to myself...

But this the way i've wanted it -- just me, my kid, and the starry black night to fill in whatever way i choose. I've relied on the presence of other people to fill my time and thoughts for too long, perhaps at the expense of my child, and i'm through doing it. I'll take the lonely pop of a bottle that will be drunk by only me over the sad flash that crosses my daughter's face, when she realizes her home may not be the safety zone she thought it was.

It went like this:

I had to make a choice between an old old friend (and roommate) recently, and the little girl in the other room, who's turning six this week. If you have any conception of the strength of a mother's love, then you know which one i chose. But it was hard -- pushing the friend to the side over the wrong words spoken, and knowing that i'd be facing more poverty and quiet nights because of it. Knowing that i may lose a friend over something that could be twisted into being not that big of a deal.

What i realized though, is that my daughter was watching. She would know that i had allowed someone to treat her with disrespect, and she would remember. What would i want her to remember -- that a roommate had spoken to her the wrong way, and i had passed it over? Or that her mother had wrapped her arms around the sanctuary that is our home and said "no more"?

The word 'sanctuary' kept running through my head, and i knew i would have to make this decision over and over, should i keep choosing to have roommates.

So among the other changes that are upon us due to kindergarten, there's another one -- that our house is our own. No late-night forays to the back patio for a glass of wine and conversation with the old friends and roommates, but no deciding who is more important than who either.

Titles

I've been really neglecting this blog lately, and here's why:

I'm stepping back to evaluate whether encouraging this revolutionary behavior has been such a good thing.

I know i've said it before, kind of joking-like; that someday i might regret calling this blog what it is, because it could lead to her being a teenage Republican (positioned among the liberal-minded throngs here in Portland) or the leader of some yet-to-be-formed gang. But when your child is independent (and is named thusly), shouldn't you love her for what she is, even if she starts acting the rebel part in the kindergarten, and you're getting called in for after-school conferences on the second week? Or should you encourage another sort of title?

I ask myself if she is merely acting the part that i've cast her as -- the charming, deviant rebel who pays heed to no one but her mama. She can't read yet and she has no clue that there is a blog about her and me out there in cyberspace called 'Raising a Revolutionary." So should i give her a different title, or is it a mere coincidence that i'm reaping what i've sown? It's a conundrum that has me unable to write much that heralds the rebelangel side of her for the time being.

In any case, things are a little more strict around our house these days. If she doesn't obey her teacher, there are no sweets, no tv, and no playing on the playground after school that day. I might still call her a revolutionary when i find the time to write (which isn't much, on account of all the consequences and rewards i'm finding myself paying heed to), but nowadays i'm trying to regard her as a spunky brainiac, when she comes around asking what i think of her.

Hasty

We musnt' be hasty now, mother

we mustn't be hasty.

We shouldn't start pointing fingers,

thinking it's all over when

your most beautiful creation starts

stepping outside the lines.

After all, look up to the title of this blog and it's called

'raising a revolutionary.'

So why you so surprised when you get one;

when you're the one parent of many who's getting the talking-to

after kindergarten;

when you're the one who's losing steam at the third meltdown of the night

lo, around seven o'clock?

Mustn't be hasty.

Mustn't start thinking that studies like these and parenting groups like these

are laughing raucously at your attempt to do things right.

Must put child to bed earlier.

Must feed healthier food.

More protein.

Allow less television.

More exercise.

Less yelling.

Must wait.

Somedays do come

I always knew someday

you'd reach out your arm

point a finger at some distant star

and fly there.

I always knew someday

you'd start being a child of the universe

and not just my baby

and that day is today.

Today you start hearing the words of others

as much as you've ever heard mine.

Today you'll look forward to leaving home,

having your own life,

having secrets that only you know.

Today you'll leave my arms, and

teachers will guide you

girls will make friends

boys will make fun

the wide world will beckon;

you'll know it's all yours,

i give it to you, as i know it --

bungled, rotten, and repaired,

askance, askew, and amazing...

So here it is

just like that

just come back to me

and tell me all about it.

A bit of a retraction

So i admit it. Perhaps there are things that a partner is good for. Perhaps i was a bit hasty in one of my most recent posts.

Like, say, you've been working like death on a project and finally get it done. And then it doesn't work the way it's supposed to. So there's more finagling, more consulting the oracle, more pushing away the kiddo like the harried, overworked parents in the movie Coraline.

This is when a partner might come in handy, to talk you off the ledge.

Maybe that's also the role that roommates have served for me for the past few years, and just now i've flung them all off, so i'm feeling the void. In the evolution of things i've decided it might be better to have one's own place -- including the kiddo of course -- and all the peace that comes with it, as opposed to all the financial security that comes with having more people paying the rent.

Over the past few hours i've been maniacally checking and cross-checking all the reasons why the project in question is defunct. If i had someone who cared about my well-being here in this house, they would say something like "Ok missy, time to drink some wine and think about this whole mess tomorrow." Instead i'm trading the maniacal checking for the mad tapping of these keys.

Wine,

breathe,

i can do this...

Forgiveness

How long does it take for you to forgive? I suppose if you are a strong proud Leo type, it might take you close to a decade to bury the hatchet.

Not that i am proud of being that way.

But today i am sitting at the computer with a smile on my face and a few tears threatening to pop out of my eyes, because i finally heard from a friend who i haven't spoken to since 1999. She and i had some disagreements about whose man was whose back in the day, and haven't spoken since. This after living together for almost two years, bouncing around Portland together when living in Portland was only a pipe dream, and doing all the things that best friends do. Then one day, i found out something i didn't need to know. And i dropped her.

It seemed so simple at the time. Someone crosses you and you cross back. Or you walk away. But now that i've found her again, it makes me wonder what all that negative effort was for. Did i really need to expunge all trace of her from my life? Did i really need to spend so much time lamenting about how she'd hurt me, so that ten years down the road i could just forget again and try to Google her name to find her?

Granted, there are some things that people do that can't be forgiven. But as the years stretch out, a lot of those things lose their strength, until you're left wondering if losing a friend was worth the effort it took to hate them. This lesson has taught me that life is too short -- i've missed out on the birth of her beautiful daughters, her marriage, her career... all the marking points in life that you want loved ones to share with you. I've forgiven her, and she me, and now we can move on.

Hopefully we have the next 40 years to make up for the last ten.

My Name is Independence

A trip to the library today got me spinning about a new project.

I was crouched down by the kid-sized stacks in the parenting section, looking for kid books on divorce and split families to explain some questions my daughter has been having. The titles i was finding were "My Mommy's Wedding" and "My Mama is Away," among other titles i've already forgotten that deal with the big 'D' word.

It hit me that most of the books explained to kids either the concept of divorce, or how to deal with the fact that one of the parents was getting remarried. This got me thinking about how often conventional wisdom is telling my daughter that someday this too would be her reality -- that one day mama would get married to someone and she would find ways to deal with it. And it seems that everyone around me is reinforcing that belief.

It's in the little comments from friends: 'o someday it will all be easier, when there are two incomes in your house again..."

It's in the asides from family: 'o someday they'll be yet another wedding..."

It's in the hope in a little girl's voice: 'mama, when you have another baby, i want you to name her such and such...'

It's in the parenting section of the library, that provides no literature about someone who may have a child, yes, but who just might enjoy the fact that there is no wedding ring on her finger. Take time to gasp here, if you must. Or roll your eyes at my demand that another fringe lifestyle be endorsed by the public library.

But i am very bothered by the fact that so many people believe that women -- especially women with children -- need a partner to save them from the terrible fate of going through life alone. I am bothered by the fact that even my own child has little conception that it can be any other way -- and that even though she lives with me and doesn't bear witness to any lonely crying from me, she too believes i must be lonely.

I suppose among other populations, this conception of the independent woman only goes so far too. A childless woman too may spend most of her young life in a powerful job, living high on the hog with all her material needs taken care of from her own hand alone. But once she reaches a certain age, people begin to question what she's doing with her life. Will she get married, have kids, settle down like the rest of the world? Or will she bear the scarlet A-title we call "Old Maid?"

Is this really the way we want our girls growing up -- believing that if they're alone they're less than fulfilled; that they're just half of a person and need outward validation to feel whole?

Let me make this point perfectly clear, though. I am not, as this post might seem, categorically against marriage. My parents have been happily married for 32 years, so i know from their experience that it can be a good way to live. What i am against is the notion that all of us -- all us poor single people -- are somehow not as good without someone by our sides, and we must all scramble out to find a mate.

So there is really just one thing i feel i can do about it. Start writing books about the topic to fill the stacks of the parenting section.

They first one is all but written -- about a girl named Independence who got her name because her fierce mama believed in the concept. She's got a house and a dog and chickens and a life she doesn't always understand, especially when her other friends have dads and stepdads and even second moms. But she learns that love is not something that can be sought for love's sake, and that a person can be happy, even when there is no one around to tell them they're great.

"My name is Independence
my mama gave me that name..."

all i could carry with two hands

24 bottles, iced down for the party.

24 figs, 12 stalks of basil, 6 pounds of blackberries, three pounds of tomatoes, and two carrots.

One little girl, kindergarten size.

It's good to be here,

holding the latter two

instead of slinging the first

on the journey back home.

The Buffalo Chip 2009: A recap

The first time i went to the Sturgis Rally i was 15 or 16. My friend Linz and i drove her banged up Subaru up there from Rapid City, parking on a side street so we wouldn't be seen not rolling in on a motorcycle. We wore no hooched-out clothes and carried no cash. To us, black leather was stupid and the old sluts who wore mere clutches of it, barely covering their aging breasts, were stupider. We were Rally rookies -- besides experiencing the constant roar of motorcycles passing through Rapid every summer of our young lives.

And that's more or less the way it remained for me, until this year. Even when i worked in tv news in Rapid City, the closest i got to being at the Rally was coordinating live shots with our on-the-scene reporters. Not quite the same when you see the action from a ten-inch monitor.

So that's probably why i feel the need to catalogue a bit more about working at the Buffalo Chip Campground this past week. I don't relate to the signs at the massive biker mecca that read "Welcome Home Riders," but it's still one hell of an experience, and it has to be shared.

And there's just so damn much to tell.

This year, my time is my own, and the promise of banking a few grand and going home to see my sister, nephew and parents at the same time was too tempting to pass up. Plus... the stories...

So here it goes, day by day, starting with July 31st:

Day 1

Em and i roll into the campground, wearing the least hoochie of our hoochie Rally gear. That is is, if you call ripped-up leggings and a longish, ripped-up blue t-shirt "least hoochie." A mad gale of wind is blowing all through the center bowl of the campground, the dust cloud over the scene highlighting the fact that most of the bikers have yet to roll in. It's Friday, and many of them are still finishing off a week at the plant or the machine shop and packing up their gear. We haven't sold a single drink yet, but my sis is more than ready to spend some cash on a Buffalo Chip sweatshirt to keep warm in the wind. Soon all the bartenders' scant clothing is covered up by warm coats and even a few pairs of gloves. The Hawaiian Tropic/Miss Buffalo Chip bikini contest kicks off in spite of the cold weather. My favorite quote was from the model who said her interests were 'go-go dancing and shopping.' As the slow, cold night progresses, our most notable customers are a pair of short locals in ill-fitting bandanas, drunk as sailors by the time they reach our bar. They're enamored with the ripped leggings and ask more than once, "how much do you cost?" They also ask me to turn around at the end of the bar like i'm cruising a catwalk in Milan. Some of the other workers find a nest of newborn bunnies in a firepit near the bar, and cover it up with a picnic table to protect them from the soon-to-arrive throng of steel-toed biker boots.

Day 2

Sly and the Family Stone rock the main stage, minus the Sly. Em and i are assigned the "upper Steel" bar, where bikers can ride up above the crowd onto a metal deck and burn out their back tires in a haze of smelly black choke. We wear matching black shirts, white skirts, and get our picture taken incessantly. We get offered $100 to take the tops off, to reveal the matching bras underneath. We don't.

Day 3

Em and i work a day shift near the "beach" -- a manmade lagoon with a couple rope swings and a blow-up slide. Security starts regulating the women who decide to take a nude dip in the heat, telling them they can't go topless. Men strut around with big bellies and awful suntan lines, while the women fashion pasties out of duct tape to cover their 'offensive' parts. Margaritas and straight shots of Cuervo sell by the dozen, and a young Wyoming miner posts up at my bar, regaling me with tales of riding his friend's scooter to Sturgis after he fell asleep behind the wheel of his truck and wrecked both his motorcycle and truck in one fell swoop. A couple Vietnam vets in patch-heavy vests poke fun of the jailhouse tattoos on one of the women in pasties. Among other ill-done tats, she and her husband have the words "white" down the back of one arm, and "trash" down the other, with a little devil tail coming off the 'h'. People walk by my bar asking for directions to the pickle lickin' contest and the mechanical penis ride.

Day 4

Country demigod Toby Keith headlines on the main stage. Cowboy boots outnumber biker boots, and the place is packed. The singer scores major points with the crowd with two 'we love our troops' songs and two 'America rules' songs. I get assigned the Top Shelf bar -- a private party with a great view of the stage. A legion of short-haired middle-aged South Dakota women stomp their boots to the music and try to extract their own cans of Coors Light from my beer tub. They tip quite well though.

Day 5

It's been raining off and on all week, but this time it dumps ten-gallon buckets just as Cheech and Chong are set to light up on stage. The stoner crowd is already mellower than most, but the thunderstorm puts a big damper on things. I work an outside beer tub with one of the Hawaiian Tropic models. She becomes my best friend ('o my god, i totally love you!!') when i score two yellow plastic ponchos off the Geico reps who are passing them out -- throwing them from their covered golf cart the way small town beauty queens toss roses to an adoring crowd. Somehow the Tropic model's ass still looks glorious, even while wearing plastic. I am more of the drowned-rat type of girl. I head home early, my cowboy-booted feet about the only thing that stays dry.

Day 6

I already did this one, and it was a doozy. See the highlights here.

Day 7

Em and i sleep well past one o'clock and wake to shower and reapply our now-caked makeup and dash back to the Chip. We work together in a bar fashioned out of an old school bus. A national champion Lakota hoop dancer gets a handful of beer-bellied, middle aged bikers to hoop dance with her, until one by one they drop out of the festivities -- on account of the thin air and the higher elevation than they're used to back in Missouri. A Christian rock band takes the bus bar stage next -- their pack of adoring teenage fans testifying with their hands in the air. No one buys beer or anything else until about one o'clock in the morning, when the main stage closes. We spend about 11 hours standing, and about 45 minutes sweating. Earlier on the main stage, hair band Tesla asks the crowd whether they want to go back to 1986. A few hands clap in affirmation. A man's girlfriend falls in love with us as bartenders and sisters, and advises her man to give us an extra tip. He openly refuses, because after another round of storms we're wearing jackets that cover our skimpy clothes. Truth be told we are beginning to give up on getting decked out each night.

Day 8

We are beginning to realize this year won't be quite as lucrative as most, with the incessant rain soaking the ground and leaving the bikers to hunker down in their campers and tents. Then the big shit hits. Golf-ball size hail slams down on the metal roof of the bar we are working. We close the bar windows and try to stay dry. Somehow Em gets pelted with a huge hail ball, even though we are essentially inside. There's talk of a tornado and i whisper to my sister that we will be the first to take shelter in the walk-in beer cooler if anything serious goes down. We are working with a Hawaiian Tropic girl from California who believes we're going through a war in this storm. She stares at us in awe, with our local-girl cool about the whole thing. When the clouds pass it looks like it's snowed outside, and both my sister's car and our dad's truck have cracked windshields. We are some of the luckier ones though. Other people who took refuge in their motorhomes had to hunker under blankets when their windows started busting out one by one. Balls of hail leave windshields with clean round holes, and people's tents lie on the ground in sad sloshy heaps. We hear that bikers who were out on the road had to hop into friendly people's cars on the Interstate, watching their Harleys take a beating while their heads got spared.

Day 9

LAST DAY. Hoochie outfits are more than over with. We've even stopped taking pictures of our getups, because we're too tired to dress alike and even more tired of smiling for photos. Instead we take unsmiling photos of the pack of us hunkering down in the bar, when yet ANOTHER round of thunderheads boom through our vicinity. Two words: Over It. We beg our boss to let three of the four of us check out from the bar, so the one who is left can try to make some money off the boot-wearing bikers who brave Lake Buffalo Chip to get to our bar.

It's our turn to drink booze aplenty, count our money, and dream of the trip back home.

Sturgis

There i was, blazing down a dirt road in a cowboy truck, giving the one-finger wave to the ranchers who passed by, watching baby cows storm the ditches where they'd busted loose of their pens. Ahead in the distance was Bear Butte, a Lakota sacred ground; below it a hundred thousand bikers' campers and tents and Harleys sat under a yellow grey haze of heat and hedonism.

How did i get out there, thirty miles yet from civilization, in a ripped up pink tank top and ass-short shorts?

There i was, rum and vodka and all manner of biker-loved boozed dripping down my legs; smiling for pictures while Steven Tyler crooned on the stage nearby. Old men in black leather vests taking my picture and me smiling like i did this all the time. I wasn't taking off my top on command like some of the other chicks, but the ripped-up shirt was almost the same anydamnway...

How did i get here, behind this bar, winking for tips?

I've been working at the Buffalo Chip Campground this week, during the biggest party South Dakota has ever thrown -- the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally. There have been weird things to report all week, but tonight, during the full moon, has to be the weirdest succession of events thus far. And it's only Wednesday.

It started off pretty normal, as far as the Chip goes. We bartenders (including my baby sis, working alongside me all the while) counted out the money for our cash registers and made our way to the bars we'd be working at. Tonight ours was next to the stage where Aerosmith was set to go on around 10:30. Only about four hours to lube up the crowd with Jaeger Bombs, shots of tequila and a boatload of Miller Lites before the band went on stage.

Things were going along quite nicely when lightning started streaking across the sky -- parallel to the ground in mad flashes. The chicks in leather bras and dudes in leather vests couldn't have cared less that their parade was getting rained on. Aerosmith -- fucking Aerosmith, man -- was about to go on stage. So they waited it out in the wet, howling at the full moon when it finally came back out, dancing in the rain and drinking more than anyone really ever should.

The band had rocked about half of their set when all of a sudden Steven Tyler's mouth was moving, but nothing was coming out. Some wires had gotten crossed backstage, and since our bar was directly connected to backstage, both Steven's mic and our bar lights went out at the same time. That wasn't about to stop the old rocker from rocking it, so he headed out onto the wet stage to party with the crowd and dance around. Until he fell off the end of it.

The crowd erupted into cheers, thinking the sixty-something old guy was trying to crowd surf. I wonder who it was who first noticed the blood coming from the back of his head. In a matter of a few minutes, Steven was whisked off on a stretcher, under the cover of someone's camp tent so no one could take pictures, into an ambulance bound for Rapid City. Since it's just a few hours hence, there's no word yet on how he's doing, but the word from the dustbowl is he broke his head open, and busted his collar bone.

So the show was over, and our bar was doused in blackness. We stayed open a bit longer, fishing cold Miller Lites from the trough of icy water one by one and holding them up to the light of the street lamp near the bar to make sure they were the right ones. A series of three unfortunate events -- the thunderstorm, Tyler's fall, and the lights going out were just about all the excitement i could take for the night.

But things just kept getting weirder. While we were counting out our money, the ladies in the business office noticed that one of the Hawaiian Tropic models who double as bartenders alongside us at the Chip had been stealing money in the form of pocketing cash for beers. Or at least that was the word on the street.

Then at the gas station, where my sis and i were stuffing our starved faces with nasty nachos, a woman came in blabbing about how the US Marshals were escorting her home, because the Hells Angels had threatened to kill her when she tried to extract her friend from their clubhouse. Apparently the friend was being kept there against her will -- a 21 year old naive bimbo who thought it might be cool to hang with the Angels during Bike Week was now getting the scare of her life. We rode in the wake of the Marshals all the way to Rapid City -- 35 miles from where they'd started.

Really though, how did i get here?

It's four in the morning in South Dakota and i am tired. And i don't think i can take any more surprises tonight.

Gypsy Math Lesson

Some of you have heard tell of the gypsy math lesson.

A few of you have raised objections about its name.

Others have raised objections about what you see as me pimping out my kid.

But all i know is the kiddo has been learning one hell of a lesson about math and human nature, and she's more than ready for addition, subtraction and even fractions in the classroom.

It goes like this:

The kiddo and i have been making flower pins for the hair, and she's been selling them at the festivals we've been attending this summer. At the Northwest String Summit the whole tribe of Harmony kids got in on the fun -- first taking apart a bouquet of silk flowers, gluing the blooms onto hair pins, watching them dry and then hawking them on a blanket near the rest of the vendors.

Women old and young can't resist; you see them stroll past the blanket, casting the initial uninterested look the kids' way. Then their gait starts to weave in the direction of the five-year old cherubs, so earnestly trying to get their attention. Most times they don't even know what the kids are selling until they get a good look inside the jewelry box positioned on the back side of the blanket. But by then they're hooked. The girls proudly announce it'll be one for two bucks, or two for three, twirling the fake blooms into the unsuspecting customer's hands. The ladies paw their pockets for loose change and walk off a little more festive-looking than they were before.

This last time, the girls sold out. Then i went back to town for more flowers and they sold out again. When it was all said and done, each of the kids knew how to make change from a five-dollar bill. They each got to buy a sno-cone or two with their own money. They learned lessons about what things cost and what they must do to earn enough to buy what they'd like.

It's a great summer lesson, this gypsy math, and i'm sorry to disappoint the naysayers by saying we'll be doing it again next year.

But when the sun goes away again and we all start hiding away inside for the season, we'll probably switch back to an allowance. Gypsy math is making me broke.