There are several topics I should be covering in this post, updates to keep you in the loop of Tracy’s and my lives, and Banjo’s, too.
Updates You’re Not Getting
How Tracy’s building the fence with concrete and posts and pickets, and how I’m keeping the neighbors satisfied with more tomatoes than two blocks of east Madison can eat. How we’ve gotten the chimney of the house rebuilt, and are getting a new roof today and replacement siding and all that exterior jazz next week.
How Tracy’s sister, Darcy, is driving through on a giant road trip of her own and staying with us for several days, on and off. How she and Finn have never met! (She lives in Florida and wasn’t nearby for our small wedding.) How I continue to kayak Lake Monona once or twice a week, and rebuild muscle in those old-people exercise classes, and groove to live music outside in these late-summer evenings, and play trivia with friends, and ride bikes to all of this. How I feel better than I have in a couple of years, look worse than I ever have, and dread this winter.
Podcast Episode #5
Finn and I got back making to our podcast, How Many Times Do I Have to Tell You? Instead of taking time to plan the episode, which would have put it off even further, we just went for it, recording on the spur of the moment. We cover two topics, mostly from the view of my storytelling: our separate but oddly parallel experiences with horseback riding, and a bit more about our favorite topic, the sci-fi universe of Star Trek.
You can watch us on YouTube, here.
This one’s light on the story-telling, heavy on the giggles.
50 Ways
The intent of this main part of the post is a funny list—that started as a faq, then morphed into facts, then threatens to be all-out bragging. It’s hilarious, or I think it is. Unless the result has you thinking, “Shelly, you’re getting bad-ass mixed up with dumb-ass.” To me, we should all be making this list for ourselves. We are all bad asses. (Some of us are actual dumbasses.)
I began this chronologically, then gave that up. Just, immerse yourself in this jumble of strange facts.
- Fox hunted (see podcast episode, above) and went to cotillion, at about the same time in my life
- Watched my father and mother die, my mother in my arms
- Saw the Grateful Dead before I could drive
- Fell in love with not shaving my legs or armpits by jonesing on the beautifully hairy legs of bassist Dave Schools’ date, standing next to me at a Dead show
- Had a fabulous fake ID
- First year of college, went as long as I could without wearing shoes (until the first snow!)
- Wasn’t accepted (at first) into both my college and my grad school
- Used to go to Glacier National Park about once a month in for a couple of summers, including once with actor Billy Crudup
- Was personal tutor to Nike founder Phil Knight’s son
- Erroneously chose to do an acid trip in a cemetery on Memorial Day
- Breastfed my son backstage at a Phish show
- Stopped for at least one night in 300 places over five years during a certain road trip
- Drank a cocktail with a mummified toe in it
- Was personally responsible for letting Billy Strings know that he is now too famous to hang with his fans
- Was a very strict vegetarian for 20 years
- Have had two major tick-borne diseases (Rocky Mountain Spotted, and Lyme, several times)
- Saw the Grateful Dead 20 times and Phish 30 times, or maybe it’s vice versa
- Had a mom who once, in London, quoted Pink Floyd in an effort to get her daughters to eat meat (“You can’t have any pudding …”)
- Spent a winter in the Keys, a summer in Alaska: almost the most southern and northern spots in the U.S.
- Have gone ten days with no shower, over and over, and with lots of sunscreen, bug spray, bug bites, sunburn, and sand where you don’t want it
- Stopped at the sound of a stranger playing ukulele in a desert in Arizona and made a friend
- Broke several bones as a kid riding horses (all on separate occasions)
- Went to a festival in honor of a chicken who lived for 18 months without a head, named Mike
- Hung out with a guy who was to become my favorite author, unbeknownst to me, while he was writing the book to become my favorite book
- Have a variety of tattoos from my ankles up my back, over my shoulder, to my wrist. They each are meaningful to me, and together they all make a mural
- First tattoo is a special one I share with my son and ex-husband, of the Star Trek communicator badge, in the correct location
- Was taught writing by NIkki Giovani and hated her
- Coerce people I love to read long book series, including Tracy!
- Have a son, Finn, and I’m not a bad ass because he’s finishing his PhD in physics, but because he just is, and is a wonderful person, no matter what he does
- Had dreadlocks
- Went to serious boxing training class that began at 6 am for three days a week for a year (was still terrible at it)
- Quarantined with Covid in 50 square feet for 10 days
- Shared a small island for an afternoon with a bear (we were the only ones on it!)
- Been scuba diving, many times
- Crossed a border with forged paperwork (Costa Rico to Panama)
- Lived in a house with the telephone on the outside
- Cross-stitched a map of the U.S. and filled in each state as we stayed in it
- Busked in the London Tube (before you had to have a license)
- Drove across Montana and South Dakota in one day, on acid
- Was a little over 3 lbs when I was born and lived in an incubator for two weeks
- Flown over the Bermuda Triangle in a four-person airplane
- Did laundry in a bucket with a plunger, per my own brilliant design
- Flew to Martinique in a medivac helicopter and waited while my niece had emergency surgery, then flew back to our island and went swimming that afternoon
- Hadn’t written anything of note (except a terrible editorial in a magazine) until I started this blog
- Had my long hair dyed in various shades of green and blue like the sea, thanks to a recurring dream
- Thought for a moment that my ex and I were dating the same person named Tracy
- Emptied the equivalent of four houses, giving or selling almost everything, owning almost nothing, in about two years’ time
- Went to a Los Angeles Oscar party for The Return of the King, one of only three movies to win 11 Oscar awards
- Had a bond with a dog that was so special, I know I’ll never have one like it again
- Fell in love with a man whose two-week vacation every year was to kayak a different segment of the upper Mississippi, sleeping in his tent beside the river each night
Badassitude is very much relative; I left off a lot of travel-related items because I’ve already posted about full-timing friends whose asses are badder than mine in that regard.
I challenge you to make your own list!
I think it’s very badass to supply your whole neighborhood with homegrown tomatoes! I did blotter acid once and it lasted for days. I flew to Florida on it. Once was enough for me. 😵💫
That tomato one might be an exaggeration—I have six plants that are producing a ton, so I have a table in my front yard with tomatoes and a free sign on it that I replenish each day, and at the end of each day they’re all gone, so I can at least attempt that claim!
That one acid experience sounds like once is enough!
I enjoyed reading this list! You really are a badass with colorful life. I’m sure you’ll keep adding to the list!
I don’t know about adding to the list … these days I get plenty of thrills just hanging my laundry on my new laundry line. I just LOVE doing that, ha!
When I first discovered your blog, I was really impressed by your life on the road. Not many people have the guts to do this, so I thought it was really cool you experienced it. I can imagine it’s wasn’t all roses and sunshine, but it must have been a wonderful experience. Must be nice to set down some roots. I hope you enjoy this next chapter of life.
It wasn’t that I was brave, more like so burned out doing what I had been doing (raising a smart kid, working a job, running a house, taking care of mentally and physically ill family). I was ready to do something different so badly that a life on the road was an easy choice!
And now, this life settling down is yet another reaction instead of intentional: life on the road was indeed hard, and my health did indeed need attention, so I bounced into this life I have now. I’m hoping it’s sustainable, and my bouncing days are over. Or, I don’t know, maybe the next life I bounce into will be equally interesting. 🙂
I bet yours will be, too.
So many experiences, so many questions. You need to post a pic of dreadlocked Shelly!
I’m probably most jealous about #48.
Somehow I don’t have a great pic with dreadlocks – they just kept getting shorter and shorter in that first year, and then I cut them all off before I hit the road. I’ll try to find a decent pic. I was thinking the same thing, that each of these 50 would make an okay blog post! I’m open for suggestions.
How about #39, your literal acid trip?
That’s an easy one, seeing as how the person I was traveling with hasn’t given me permission to write about her part in my adventures, so I can reply here with a quick summary. We had to take a car across country for some reason and needed to do it kind of quickly, so we travelled more than 1,000 miles that day, on the interstates, which I now hate but they serve a purpose. She drove (thank God) and I picked the music. Lots of Jimi Hendrix live CDs in the CD player in that car, a little Honda CRV with a sunroof. We kept that sunroof open the whole time and the music just BLARING. I couldn’t deal with pulling over at rest stops, so we pulled over to pee at an overpass where no one was around, and I peed under the bridge. It can be kind of easy to focus on a task on acid when the task is complicated/simple in its own way, like driving a straight interstate with few cars, and navigating and changing CDs. It was a super fun day I will always think of as one of my favorites!
That’s a LOT of driving in one day! Sounds like a fun adventure, though. Can’t say I’ve ever tuned in, turned on, dropped out (isn’t that how the saying goes?), so I can only imagine!
Yes, you can certainly say that! I’m guessing that not a lot of people are willing to say they have tried it, much less as often as I have. I fully recommend mushrooms, maybe not acid, as shrooms are much milder but with similar benefits. It’s certainly a fantastic way to experience being alive, one that teaches you a whole heck of a lot about how to manage your emotions, your reactions, intentions, everything about how you interact with the world. It’s an eye opener, make no mistake.