Hot & Heavy

The Austin Hot Sauce Festival 2012   Picture this. A dry, dry, arid & dry field. I said dry, right? Just wanna be sure my not so subtle drift is catching. Some grass. Patches of dust that kick up when the wind blows. It's a clear day and heat is radiating off the ground in waves that blurry the world like those cartoon mirages. It's 96 degrees and the sun is beating down--accent of beating. No passive sun here. This one is heavy and pissed. Somewhere out there is that dried up cow skull singing "you'll be sooorrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrry.."   Now sprinkle this field with booths and small pitch tents. Add a few thousand people, a booth or two dispensing alcohol and you have the 2012 Austin Hot Sauce Festival. Lines snake backward from booth after booth as fans of hot sauce stand in the hard sun. Sweat is dripping down everyones face. No one here is wearing a dry shirt and me, I can feel the sweat pooling at the base of my spine. The back of my dress is sticking to me no matter how I move.   How to choose which booth to try next? I look around for a few seconds reading the signs. Each one is colorful and has snappy names. "Hot Ass Hot Sauce" "Don't Panic Hispanic" "Glaming Lips" and "Three drops of Death"...Do any of these booths have shade? Ha! Yeah, right. This is Texas. I think back to New York Rule #1. Fuck You. I remember that well. I lived under that rule for 15 years. Need a cab in the rain? Fuck you. Can't pay your rent? Fuck you. Want to avoid that bum peeing in the corner on the subway? Fuck you.  Texas has different rules. Texas rule #1. Drink water. Texas rule #2, do not ignore rule number 1.   Back to the Festival. Ok, I've been through maybe 4 booths. I'm hungry but I'm dizzy. This is not good. I know if I start to see stars, I have maybe 2 minutes before the lights go out so I'm paying close attention to the constellations in my head. Shade. Need shade. We find some bleachers in a shady spot and sit down. This is an endurance fest but not the kind I like. The heat is making my confused and cranky. I don't even want to hang with me. A rest in the shade is not enough. I need submersion and fast.   Later back on the couch, I am still pummeled. The sun here is like nothing I've ever felt before. The sheer strength with which it pushes down. No passive shining here. This is an aggressive sun. It reach and wallops you upside the head. My knees are still wobbly, arms weigh 600 pounds each and the headache is worse. Even the next day I am still wiped. There was a plethora of delicious hot sauces but was it really worth this? WTH? Decisions are made to avoid all summer outdoor festivals until maybe 2015. By then they will have invented wearable ACs....until then, I'm good. Just pass me a margarita & point me to the shady spot in the pool.

Hocus Pocus

I was in a nail salon yesterday and this large older woman came in and climbed onto the pedicure chair next to me. She's yakking to the nail tech while techie works on her feet...and I'm not listening to the conversation until she starts talking about a toilet brush...She explains how next week is her 5 year old grand-daughters birthday and the girl has asked for a toilet brush. "I told my son that he could dress it up with glitter or sumthun..."           Wow, this blew my whole day. The idea of some poor kid wanting a toilet brush as if that were some kid of actual gift really depressed the hell outta me. I thought kids dreamed about Justin Beiber or being a  Kardashian (which incidentally, may require a toilet brush, a tetanus shot, irradiation, etc.) but really, if that's your dream, isn't it time to aim higher?? All I could think of was that old quote from Diana Vreeland "People that eat white bread have no dreams"...snotty to be sure but isn't there something seriously wrong with this picture? I realized a few hours later that the kid probably wanted a magic wand and had been playing with the toilet brush instead. If that's all you have to play with I think a magic wand is a perfectly reasonable desire. Maybe even a necessity. But geez! Then get the freakin' kid a wand. Actually buying her a toilet brush? What's gonna happen when she realized the tool she thought could make her dreams come true actually just removes stains from the crapper? That's a harsh reality I wouldn't wish on the shittiest of people....

Land of Oz

Ok, its time for a repositioning of sorts. I can't really write about working in Big Law anymore b/c I don't. I've been furloughed and I'm not going back to the big house. No how. No way. So from now on, its just stories of my new life. Big Law free. I'm off the hard stuff and ready to live clean and semi-sober.

So if you're heard to read tales of big law, moooooooove on. I have. thank freakin' god.

The Bitch is Back!

If you can't stand the heat..blah blah blah. Its too hot for me to care. Texas is hot. Old news yes but not to me. After 10 years living in Upstate New York (yes that is a specific location)...I had had it with gloomy grey skies, with the promise of nice weather without the follow through, with living among depressed people who didn't know they were depressed." What the hell's wrong with you? Nobody promised you a sunny day!"  I'm from So Cal, A sunny day is my birthright. I pulled a Jed Clampett and packed up the Truck and moved to Beverly...or in this case, Austin. I'd been to Austin twice before more than 12 years ago with my husbands band. It was small and sunny with places to swim and great tex mex at every turn. It didn't need 1/2 that to get me here. As a Cali girl, I needed to be in the West but at my current salary, I'd be living in a dog house in So Cal so I had to be somewhere I could afford. And Texas is far enough away from the East coast to be West but not too close to Cali to actually BE Cali. Different is good. New is good. Change is good. I had been eyeing Austin for almost a year. I filled out the 30+ pages to get admitted to the Texas bar and got rejected because I hadn't been a lawyer for 5 of the last 7 years...it hadn't been 7 years since I became a lawyer. I took it as a bad sign. Maybe I shouldn't go/. Maybe I should just dig in where I was, get over the lack of anything interesting, the rednecks, the white trash and go along to get along. But something in my head had been speaking quietly saying 'its not YOU, its THEM" for years. Now it was yelling right out of the Amityville Horror "GET OUT!".... I had been speaking to a temp agency in Austin about a job. I had interviewed and they told me the job I was interviewing for was only short term and the employer, while they loved me, felt uncomfortable having me move out here for a job that probably would only be for a few months. 2 days later I got laid off. I called the temp agency and said I was coming anyway so get me a desk at that job. Gave hubby 8 days notice and started packing. Found a 3 month rental on Craigslist in a town I'd never heard of in North Austin called Jollyville. The name made me laugh. I packed faster. Now I've been here almost 10 months. The time has flown by. I love it. I really do. The heat is a wonder. Every time I walk outside, I am impressed that it is so hot but that's only for 2 months. The rest of the year is downright stunningly beautiful. mid 70s mid 80s, clear blue sky as far as the eye can see. I love the grey green scrub brush landscape, the smell when the wind blows of dry land, sand and canyon. I love the wide roads. I could go on but if anyone is reading this (thanks dad) you've probably already gone to sleep. night.