It’s because of Them

“I'm sick of just liking people. I wish to God I could meet somebody I could respect.” (J.D. Salinger)

I try every day to see the beauty in people. I try, as my sister has always assured me, to find  the “good side” of everyone – as she’s sure there is one. And thus I go through the day and think that there is more than what we see in everyone, and that we never quite know the true and full story of everyone. I try to tell myself not to judge and especially not to comment out loud. Because we just never know.

But, man-oh-man, some days this is hard to do! Some days, it takes all my might to settle down my hot blood and not to jump out of my skin and punch someone in the face. Or at least give them the lip!

Because people seem just so clueless sometimes.

I still remember, as a little girl, yelling at a 6+ft, 300lbs man (my best friend’s dad) for insulting my dad! I was probably 10 or so, and was fearless. That little girl still comes out today, every once in a while, and I start yelling (almost literally, sometimes) at the injustices of the world and people’s stupidity!

We went on a week long tour of Utah last week, and we were travelling through public places every day. We visited national parks, full of all sorts of people, all ages, all nationalities, all kinds of background. We shared dining rooms, buses and trails with all these people. Most of them were respectful of their surroundings and their fellow humans. And then, there were those who were not.

I wish there is a crash course in being an integrated human, before they launch us into the world. A crash course where they teach you about your personal space and how that affects others (everyone!) around you. A crash course on general respect, not just towards people, but towards landscape, buildings, “things”, in general, as well. And this course should be mandatory. And then, they should have a test. And if you fail, you should not be allowed to leave you stinky house! You should rot there, forever!

Lots of people trampled my nerves last week, but there were at least two of them that really, really, really bugged me. They annoyed me so much in fact, I thought there for a minute that they might call the cops on me if I should intervene to adjust their behaviors!  

We took the bus in Zion National Park. It’s a tour bus, with a hop on - hop off schedule, that stops at some of the most interesting view points in the park. It has no air conditioning, but the sun roofs are wide open and all the windows too so the cross ventilation is great. It gets hotter than 100F every day in the summer in this park, in the middle of the desert, so, you can imagine how some air is needed from somewhere when you’re cooped up with 50 other humans in such a small space.

It was a sunny day and the sun was baking the tops of our heads while sitting in the bus seats. 102F for the high that day! So, this gentleman pulled out an umbrella, to make some shade for his wife and himself, sitting next to him. (I know – how thoughtful, right?!). We all felt jealous that we didn’t have an umbrella ourselves. Everyone starting taking pictures, all in good humor: “what a great idea” – we all said.

Until this lady and her husband and 2 year old boarded the bus. She demanded that the sun roofs be closed shut. She asked her husband several times that he would close them now! He ignored her. Then, she almost yelled at the man with the umbrella to close it: “Close that now! You can put my eye out! I can’t believe this! An umbrella on the bus! Unbelievable!”.  No “please”, no “sorry, sir”, no “would you mind?”. Just “do it”. “Now”.

What was unbelievable to me, and everyone else, probably, was not only the fact that she had a hat with a pretty wide brim on her head and a huge pair of sunglasses covering her whole face (put what eye out?! The one hidden behind all that?!). She was also sitting down, in her seat, while the umbrella was way high, over the heads of the people in front of her, 5-6 feet at least away from her. What was unbelievable was that her own husband was carrying her 2 year old child in an aluminum carrier, on his back, which had nothing but a metal frame sticking out in everyone’s faces, about 4 feet away from his back. Whether you were standing up behind him or sitting down in the chair, the carrier’s frame was in front of your face, which could put your eye out, because there was no human watching the carrier’s whereabouts in the back of this man!

We all had to dodge his carrier as he moved and twirled around the bus in search for the perfect spot, where he and the kid were comfortable and the wife could see her treasure, as well. They took, in all, the room of four people, but one umbrella, above one person’s head was too much for her to handle! Unlike the child carrier, the umbrellas was really not invading anyone’s space at all.

On the same day, we went on the river walk trail, starting at The Temple of Sinawava, the last stop on the bus tour. The trail runs along the Virgin River, and is full of wildlife. Lots of bugs, lizards, squirrels, deer, birds. Even wild turkeys say “good day” to hikers right on the trail. This 11-12 year old kid was running along the trail, pushing his little cousin around, from one end of it to another, with a rubber gun in his hand. I watched him, as a rubber gun is hardly a commonality on a wilderness trail! He was looking for lizards, to shoot them with the gun. He found one, shot, and missed – in fact, his rubber snapped and fell limp on the ground. The failure only made him angrier. He grinded his teeth, and looked feverishly for a rock, then, from 2-3 feet away from the poor thing, stoned it. I could not handle this anymore, and yelled, along with another lady who watched the whole thing just like me: “Don’t you do THAT, kid!!”. We went on about how this is a park and protected environment and how the lizard didn’t hurt anyone, and how he should respect nature.

His mom just heard our screaming at him – she was completely oblivious to the whole episode. She waltzed into the altercation, fake bleached hair, fake boobs and Paris Hilton glasses covering her face, going in a slow, Valley linger: “and what exactly did he do?!” Oh, I had so many problems with that! First, don’t bring your son to the national park with a gun; then, explain to him the basic rules while he’s in here; then, be around and watch that he actually listens to you. He was, like I said, old enough to know better. But he would not know better, even if he were 32, if someone (his mom, maybe?!) didn’t teach him first! All she did after both I and the other woman told her about the stoning was to tap him on the shoulder and say “Honey, you need to think what you’re doing next time!”. Think of what, exactly, I told myself: she’s delivering no content to the kid. Think of what?! I am sure he’s thinking: “sure, mom, I’ll think of squishing the darn thing with my foot next time, instead! That’ll be surest to kill it!”. There is no thinking to be done without a frame of reference, in my opinion.

And I could sit here and list all the other annoying things people did all week long. Taking up too much room in the dining rooms, to the point that you had to walk around whole sections of tables in order to get out of your own chair, because they were blocking whole areas up with their “lounging” slouch; moving 2-3 times around the restaurant because one table is too small, and one is too close to the entrance, and one is not in the shade enough and another is too far away from the atmosphere, and  … And so on and so forth.

I am not sure whether this is a sign of getting old, but I notice these ungrateful, self-entitled, spoiled egocentric bothers more and more lately. And it’s also becoming significantly harder to keep my mouth shut!

I wanted so badly to physically hurt the woman with the umbrella problem as well as the fakely bleached blonde in a trance. Just to give them the same rude, hurtful treatment they dish out to the world.

And this made me realize: as much as I love traveling, I’ll probably stop doing it at some point. It’s either being miserable when all these brats (and there are more and more of them as our culture keeps encouraging instant gratification and entitlement in everything we do!) are working my nerves and intruding on my personal space and values, or going to jail because I’m going to hurt them right back just to prove a point.

I’m afraid there will be a day when I’ll have to make a choice there. And I am not looking forward to it.

Still a Rocky Business

... or: I've Never Felt This Much Pain Before. Ever.
 

You might remember, many moons ago, that I broke my (figurative) back trying to clean up our very rockful yard. That was 2010, my first year of living in Utah. I was trying, back then, to just have some grass grow. And three years later, I have not stopped trying. And cleaning out rocks.

Ever since, I have done nothing but dig up more and more rocks over all the yard work sessions I have embraced. Every single year, I try to make stuff grow – it’s dig up the rocks, make room for the plants. And some things make it (to encourage me to plant more!), and some die the next spring. *Sigh*. I have looked recently through some old pictures of my yard, here, at home, and it’s amazing how many bushes and plants just ended up in the trash after a winter. But, to my encouragement and complete amazement, some things have been as old as I have been in this house, too! So, life happens. Apparently. Occasionally.

The soil here sure is tough! As tough as these mountains, for sure, if not more.

With every spring, like with any rite of passage, my husband and I attempt to tame the surroundings of our house. Last fall, we “invested” into having our front yard rockscaped. Yes, you might be asking: “What?! More rocks?!”. Oh, yes, I say: if you can’t domesticate it, let it take over, at least! Yes, we had tons and tons of rocks and gravel and boulders delivered and now our front yard blends in beautifully with the desert mountains around. And this shrunk our planting playground, to something that we deemed “manageable” for us. 

Some of the "supplies" for this year's extravaganza ...

 

As much as I love our rocky front yard, though, the Southerner and Carpathian in me demanded some green. So, we decided to grow stuff in the back yard, instead. We left the back grassy (or … weedy) and we installed some landscape and our usual veggie garden, ourselves. 

Glimpses of our front yard rockscape

I thanked God for giving us a not so hot May this year, because I am no longer cut for digging up boulders in 100F weather! For the past three weeks or so, we have been seeding, watering, trimming, mowing, installing mulch and edging, planting trees, bushes, flowers, a veggie garden, and, of course, digging up more junk in the process.

It must be that I am getting old and I am sadly out of shape, because I don’t remember having hurt this much from physical labor ever in my whole life! It’s an overwhelming and all encompassing type of pain: all muscles hurt (and the ones I just discovered I had!), all joints, my palms and the soles of my feet, even my nails and my toe nails hurt! It takes my whole body to put up a fight against what I have to dig out in order to have room to put something else in its stead. And this body is not used to this kind of fightin’, let me tell you! I think I have one very short hair on my head, that's getting ready to fall out that might not be hurting. But that's it

Another downside of living where we are is that, unlike in a normal place in the world, here, contractors don’t call you back! For one reason or another, the only three people that did call us back were the guys who installed our fence, the ones with the rockscaping, and the little man who got rid of our gophers, God bless him and his whole family forever!

Other than that, we tried to call a grass company, and a tree company and a landscape maintenance company, and …nothing … No calls back, no shows. So, we’re on our own if we don’t want to live in a jungle and if we want to eat some tomatoes this summer or smell some roses.

Don’t get me wrong: I love doing this stuff, but a bit of help with at least cleaning up the soil and prepping it, aerating it, or something, would have been appreciated! Not to mention a little help in building a porch, as well. Well, that "help" is us. And I am pretty darn proud of what we accomplished on our own, especially since we’re mostly indoor, geeky people rather than outdoor, farming type of people! Our back yard is still noisy (can’t do anything about the road right behind it!), but it’s peaceful to look at. It’s (finally!) green and natural and “organized”.

And as much as both Aa. and I are saying that  we’re “really done” this year, I still see room for growth in it. We might have won the battle against desert and emptiness, but we are still to win the one against the blazing sun! We are still patiently waiting for the trees and bushes to grow so we can get some shade with our burgers.

As for filling in the room for growth, hopefully, another family will do that. Other than the maintenance that I am sure will follow, and replacing some of the things that will die, I really do want to be done, too. At least for a little while, till all the sores in my feet and hands are healed.

Here are some shots of what we have managed to accomplish, with very little help, in the past three years. To us, it seems like we just conquered The Everest!

Enjoy, and come visit, sometimes.

  

Blooms in the back yard

 

 

 Three years now: a lilac tree and a Japanese maple were some of the first things we planted in the back yard

 

The very first thing we ever planted around the house was this clematis plant, to the right of the front door - it's been the happiest thing yet! 

Various angles of the back yard, all done!

 Fresh roses in the front yard

 The veggie garden

 

Strawberries (2 years), raspberry (1 year) and grapes (3 years)

 

Visitors: first time I ever saw an oriole - so beautiful! 

Blast from the past: this is what we started with!

 Night - night! 

An (Undramatic) Dream Came True

“Hey man, I'm alive
I'm taking each day and night at a time
I'm feeling like a Monday but someday I'll be Saturday night... “

I’ll give you one guess at who said that! One guess, because I know that no matter your age, social class, country, or amount of rocks you’ve been living under, you know that those lyrics are belched out by Jon Bon Jovi!

I can’t even remember the very first time I knew about Bon Jovi. It could have been in my middle school years (that’s around 1985’ish), but because that was the tail end of Communism and the worst years ever under that regime, I doubt I would have heard of them underneath that iron curtain.

So, it must have been high school – most likely after 1989 … But that seems too late!

Needless to say, I feel like I was born and was raised on their music, much like I was on that of The Beatles’ and Elvis’s. I can recognize Jon’s voice on the radio any time, even if it’s a song that I have never heard before – if such a thing is still possible!

They’ve been such a mainstay in my life, that I never even thought about actually wanting so badly to see them live. I felt like, in a way, they’re everywhere. How much closer to them can a live performance get me?!  

I remember I listened to them on my 10^th grade graduation retreat, on my summer breaks in the Romanian mountains, in my very hot flat, during college summer nights, at mom’s home. I remember reading about what a great big deal was when he chopped off his hair. I remember him on Ally McBeal! To me, they’re as American as Bruce Springsteen, and as lovable and popular as a white zin amongst the wines or a golden lab amongst the dogs – they just go with everything and lick everyone’s hand! There is something of the “boy next door” familiarity about these kids, I tell you this much. A timeless, ageless flair.

I finally got the chance to be under the same roof as them about 3 weeks ago, in Salt Lake City. And what do you know?! I was not truly, deeply moved! It was like seeing old friends. It was probably the only live show I have ever been to where I felt like I knew every song – there was an eerie intimacy to it. What I knew about them (except for Sambora who was missing that night, replaced by a new Canadian guitarist, apparently) was all there. Same voice, same crazy running up and down the stage, same solos, same focus on delivering plain, good, clean music. Same black leather vest.

There was nothing spectacular, out of the world shocking (like Aerosmith showing up an hour late to the show, with Steve and Joe Perry screaming at each other in a spat) or Gene Simmons stuffing his tongue down some chick’s throat at a KISS show; or Melissa Etheridge demanding a Persian rug be on stage before she could start playing, during a downpour in Deer Valley! It was just plain, good, synchronized, clean music. Same ol’ – same ol’. And flawless! There is lots to be said for exactness and non-drama in this crazy rock-n-roll business, for sure. Except, of course, for the fact, that their famous front guitarist didn’t show. I guess that’s the bit of the chance in this business.

I have many Bon Jovi favorite songs. When I plug them into my car cd player, I sing along with every tune, all the way to work. But I lived for hearing Bed of Roses live. It played at my wedding and it’s just the most peaceful rock ballad I know. And I would not be opposed to playing it at my funeral, too, if someone will remember this.

And that night , for this song alone, will stay in my memory as one where a dream came true – because he, the man from Jersey, the un-dramatic, “clean” rocker did that for me. With one song! So, I guess, I was moved, after all. Moved that not only did I hear my favorite song one more time, but that he played it live. For me. And I got a live recording of it. All mine.   

Enjoy – funny interlude and all: