I Did Not See This Day Coming

There's a story here. 
The story of my day, in fact. A day in which it took me over four hours to get gas, shop at Costco, and go to Publix. For some reason though, I never got upset or even too perturbed. 
What happened was that I was driving Glen's Camry because my Prius needs new tires and is not safe to drive and the Camry needed gas. 
Now. Glen had told me that the lever to open the fuel door on the car was a bit funky and he also pointed out that the fuel door needed a specific sort of heel-of-the-hand slam and he showed me how to do these things and I felt quite confident that I indeed could manage to do these things successfully.
Look. We're not going to do a minute by minute of this. What is the point? The point is, is that after failing to be able to open the fuel door and and then talking to Glen who is up in Georgia about it, I did get it open and managed to get gas. 
Whoo! 
Now. If you ever want to know what may be lurking beneath the little box (?) where your interior trunk lid opener and fuel door opener look like, it may be something like this.

Ignore all the leaves and detritus there. That area is generally covered by the little box (?) that those cables with the round heads fit in. 
Just thought you'd be interested in that. 

So I got my gas, I went into Costco. I had a lovely time as always and bought my ham and some smoked salmon and four pounds of organic extra firm tofu for $5.47 cents (yes, I am freezing all but two pounds of it) and some other stuff and took it all out to the car where I opened the trunk to put the food into the bags I had thoughtfully moved from my car to this car, even remembering to bring an insulated bag with those little freezer things in it and I loaded up the bags with my purchases and went to shut the trunk lid and, well- it would not shut. 
Oh fuckity fuck. And when you drive in that car and the trunk lid is open it beeps every second. 
Beep, beep, beep, beep...
And so forth.
I fiddled around with the cables, no luck, called poor Mr. Moon again and he sent me to a nearby place where they do truck modifications and all sorts of groovy things to trucks and it's in the building that Glen and his daddy built which was the home of Moon Tire and Repair many years ago. 
So Joe, and yes his name was Joe, seemed to be incredibly busy but he told me to just park out front and he'd get around to it and he did send a guy named Joey out to see what he could see and Joey got the trunk lid shut but the gas tank door, which he had inadvertently opened, I guess, would not shut and I said, "Got any duct tape?" and he did and he neatly applied the duct tape you see above. 
He warned me that the whole thing needed fixing because chances were good the trunk lid cable was going to fuck up and I wouldn't be able to open it and would have to lower the back seat and climb through to pull the emergency trunk lid opener. 
I asked him if that was for people who had been snatched by the Mafia and he said it was. 
You know what I'm talking about. 
So. Hurray! 
By this time it was 3:15 and I was understandably hungry so I got myself a burrito at a nearby joint and then drove to Publix with the luxury of no beeps and even stopped at the library to return books and all was well, all was lovely, until I went back to the trunk at Publix to get more bags out of the trunk and guess what? 
The damn thing would not close. 
I did not even consider bothering my husband about this. What in the world could he do? I could drive home with the car beeping and ultimately, that is what I did. I sort of got used to the beeping before I got to Lloyd so it wasn't horrible but I would not volunteer to repeat the situation unless absolutely necessary, like if I had to drive myself to the emergency room or something. 
Which means I won't be going to pottery tomorrow which is fine. Jessie has to work tonight and tomorrow so she won't be going anyway and I've still got that spoon rest to glaze paint and I can do that here so as not to waste class time next week. 

So that is what I did today and as I said, I am not upset nor do I even feel very frustrated. These things happen, you know? I even sort of enjoyed my encounter with Joey who reminded me of a thing an old friend used to say which was that the best people, the real people are the tillers of the soil and the changers of the oil. 
Or something like that. 
I don't think Joey actually changes oil but I have no doubt he has before. 
I even ran into an old friend at Publix and part of me was like, "Oh dear god. I just want to get this over with and go home," but then I realized that she needed an ear and an understanding friend and there I was. 

I think I have taken Karen's words to heart and am just taking things as they come. 
This will probably last for about three more days and then I'll be right back to bitching about everything. 

Moving on, there were several comments on yesterday's post about how I should try the clumping bamboo rather than the spreading bamboo and I realize that I have not made the enormity of the situation clear. I am not ever going to plant any more bamboo of any kind in this yard. Ever. I do not need any more bamboo. It would take heavy machinery and a team of horses to eliminate the bamboo we have here. So all we are trying to do is to contain it within the boundaries of what it already is. 

I took some pictures. Some panoramics because there is no other way to get the entire bamboo jungle/forest in one picture. Even then, the scale is not quite possible to grasp. 

What we have here is the width of the growth nearest to the house. That photo gives a less than accurate picture of what it actually looks like and also, that is the thinnest part of the strip. 

For scale, here is a one stalk of bamboo which I am grasping. 

It is thick and it is tall. 
No dirty comments needed. I know. 

Here is how densely the bamboo grows within the jungle/forest. 

See what I'm saying here? A skinny child could not make their way through that mess. You would need an experienced jungle explorer with massive machete skills to make your way through it. 
Hell, Tarzan could be living in there somewhere for all I know. 
That would be so cool. 

This is my pano of the length of it. 

That is one of the two burn piles in this yard and it is huge. Far bigger than it looks.

In spring, the sprouts come up in that entire field and also in the camellia bed which is far to the left of what you are seeing and also in the space between the house and the next door neighbors' house and also in the front yard and sometimes it comes up in the old chicken run which is not close at all to the closest part of the jungle/forest. 
And let us not forget, there is another type of bamboo which comes up everywhere which is far skinnier and you can not kick it over because it just whips about when you try, and the roots from which it travels are as hard as iron. 
Okay. Maybe not quite that hard but when I try to use my clipper to cut through one, it just laughs and laughs and my clipper, poor thing, just cries. 

Life in Lloyd. 
And still, you know I love it. 

Mr. Moon found a cache of old Life magazines from the mid-fifties in one of the many dressers in the cabin today. 

How cool is that? 

And...he found this.

When we were on our trip, whenever I'd see a baby or a small child, I would say, "Perhaps that is a bad baby and they would give it to me."
Ultimately we decided that none of the bebes we saw were bad and so (sigh) I got no baby. 
But perhaps this one is a bad baby and I am going to adopt her. Yes, her hair's a bit of a mess but so is mine. Please do not say she is scary. I think she has a very engaging expression. I believe she is a Toni doll, also from the mid-fifties. 

As are Glen and I. Well, we're not Toni dolls but we are from the mid-fifties. 

Tomorrow I am going to get shit done! What that will look like remains to be seen but it's going to happen. 
You can read all about it right here. If you should so please. 

Love...Ms. Moon