February Made Me Shiver

So they came upon a field of empty trees, stark and witchlike against the country winter sky. The ground was dirty, muddy, the patches of frozen ( then thawed then frozen then thawed still tenaciously clinging to it's green) grass, now petrified in a permanent taxidermy of an orchard. The gnarled and burned branches lay broken haphazardly underneath the victims. He pulled over, and she got out to take pictures, but the farm dog tied up to the distant barn heard them and sounded the alarm. So they drove further down the empty road, and found a more inconspicuous spot for her to pretend to be a photographer. He stayed in the car.

 "What do you think they are?"

"I think they are monsters."
 "I think they are trees. Probably apple trees."
"I think you are wrong. They are monsters."
 "Well if they are not apple trees, they are too sad to be monsters."
 "Don't you think monsters are sad? I think monsters must be the saddest of all animals. They are all alone. There are very few of any one kind, they are all different and alone and have no one to relate to their own particular monstrosity."
 "But all these trees, they aren't alone. They are just dead together. They must have been alive together at some point too."
 "What if it's not just lots of monsters, but only one monster, buried under the ground, with lots of arms sticking up and out, all connected by tentacle roots, and they all look dead together because only one huge massive thing underneath our feet is dead?"
 "You are a weird funny girl"
 "It's not weird or funny. It's tragic and sad. You only think I'm funny cause you feel like somewhere deep in your chest I might be right. And that's why you put up with me."
"I put up with you because you are brilliant and beautiful."
"That isn't the point. The point is I am right. In some world, these are not trees, this is the brittle rotting skeleton of a creature we might only see in our dreams, something low and long and buried and slow like a glacier or like that giant fungus that is basically the whole state of Washington. That makes much more sense than individual lifeforms that grow up uniformly despite being separate creatures, then die every winter and come back every Spring and just magically give us stuff to eat."
"So that would make sap blood."
 "Yes, and apples would be..."
"...fingernails..."
 "...or warts...."
"something that falls off."
 "right, falls off a living creature, and then we eat it."
 "gross."

Suppose that each black and wizened broken trunk was broken open, that you drove your car straight into the field and mowed them down like kindling. Then as you get out of your Cadillac in the middle of the orchard, looking at the path of dead tree devastion behind you, your radiator starting to smoke, the ground around you starts to sparkle. Slight at first, then stronger, building momentum and light. Gathering like fireflies, only it's daytime though a dark daytime, and yet you can see them clearer and clearer. A thousand pricks of light, little diamonds rising out of the organic wreckage and war, floating hovering through their own pulsing a few feet above their former prisons.

 And every single one is a wish someone made before winter began, something that grew shimmering from a bit of dirt or bark or glass that got lodged one day in your chest, that was coated layer by layer over time with hopes you had for what might happen next year. Then the new year came and went, and February's winds stole all these pearls while we were sleeping, sucked them out of our mouths like cats sucking souls, blew them out of the houses and apartments and into the outlying forests and farms and jesus we're all hidden out there, our real selves and the prettiest part of ourselves, stuck cursed little summer souls in cold dark lifeless magic trees.

 So obviously, you have to knock them all down and free them.

 "But wait, what if our wishes need to hibernate and sleep through the winter like the trees, or they won't bloom when it gets warmers? What if I let them all out and then a frost kills them?"

 You're right, of course. But she doesn't like that conclusion, because it smacks of sentimentality, and spirituality, and purpose. And she'd rather have everything made of conflict.

 The little sparks from the crunching wreckage are now milling about, gusts of wind making them eddy and flow like Northern Lights. They haven't got anywhere to go, and so they blend and bleed with each other until it's a shimmering indistinct fog, diluting with the mud and asphalt of the road as it drifts up and over and into other fields.

Car Insurance Logic: How To Not Find Yourself Screwed This Winter

Disclaimer: This is advice I am giving you solely as a private citizen. I do work for an insurance company, who shall go nameless, because they have nothing to do with the advice I'm giving you. Before you make any changes to your policy you should check with a licensed agent for your state at your company.



1. READ YOUR POLICY DOCUMENTS SO YOU KNOW WHAT'S INCLUDED AND WHAT'S NOT.

It's about to become bad driving time in Ohio, and is already in lots of other states, so its time to review your car insurance policy and know what the F you have on it. Insurance is pretty basic, but if you don't take the time to know what you're paying for, there's nobody to blame but yourself if you have an accident and don't have the right coverage. A lot of people assume their agent is selling them what they want, but when it comes down to it, you are responsible to check your own policy and make sure it's on there. No company is really going to do anything about the "I thought my agent put it on there" excuse. There are good agents and bad agents, and the same goes for the people you talk to in customer service when you call to make changes. So when they send you that thick envelope in the mail, READ YOUR DECLARATION PAGE AT THE VERY LEAST. Do not just use it as a coaster till you get around to throwing it out.

2. FULL COVERAGE IS NOT A LEGAL TENDER TERM. IT IS GIBBERISH.

Full coverage is not a real term. What is "full coverage" to one person, is not to the other. So yes, GENERALLY if someone tells you that you have full coverage, you probably have Comprehensive and Collision coverage. However you may not have Medical. Or Roadside Assistance. Or Rental Car Reimbursement. Or Uninsured Motorist Property Damage. Do not assume you just "get" any of those things with "full coverage".

3. KNOW WHAT YOUR DEDUCTIBLES ARE.

Every time you make a claim on your insurance, you are going to have to pay a deductible. There are very few exceptions, and they are EXCEPTIONS. If your insurance is paying for a claim, they are going to take a deductible out of that and you are going to pay that to the shop. It is not just when you are at fault for the accident. Comprehensive claims are by definition never At Fault accidents, but you still always have a deductible. Vandalism? You have a deductible. Hit and Run? You have a deductible.

And you CHOOSE what those deductibles are. If you have an accident and find out you have a 1000 dollar deductible, that is because you picked that out when you started your policy. You said, "if something happens, I can pay 1000 dollars out of my own pocket to fix the car." The insurance companies don't force you to have a certain deductible. If you can't afford to pay 500 if something happens, then call your agent and lower that. But you will pay more on your monthly rate. Because you're paying for better coverage

4. KNOW WHAT YOUR BODILY INJURY AND PROPERTY DAMAGE LIMITS ARE.

In the state of Ohio, our minimum required Property Damage, what we have to carry to be legal, is 7500 dollars. That's it. If you hit a decent SUV or any car newer than 05, that's not going to get you very far. And they are going to come after you for the rest.

Our minimum Bodily Injury limits (to pay for the other party's medical bills) are 12,500 per person, with a 25,000 per accident max. You see it on your statement as 12.5/25. 25,000 is not very much when it comes to medical bills anyway. An ambulance ride only can cost upward of 1500. But the number you should be looking at is that 12,500 per person. PER PERSON. So no one person you hit can get more than that.

It is usually extremely cheap to move yourself up to the next level of coverage when it comes to BI and PD. Like, maybe a dollar more a month cheap. There is no reason why anyone should be driving around with less than 50/100 in BI and 50 in PD. Even if you have a crappy car, and you have liability only because you're poor or you don't care about your car, you should still have 50/100. It's a minimal difference, honest.

5. IF YOU HIT ICE OR SNOW AND HAVE AN ACCIDENT, IT WILL BE AN AT FAULT ACCIDENT.

I know you think it's a weather claim. But it's not. A weather claim is when your car is flooded, or a tornado hits it, or hail pounds it into ground meat. It's when weather happens TO your car. If you make the decision to drive your car in nasty conditions, it's your responsibility to decide what is worth the risk or not. If it's raining and you hydroplane, you are at fault. If you hit black ice and slide off into a ditch, you are at fault. So maybe, just maybe, you should slow the F--K down.

6. TAKE THE TIME TO ASK SOMEONE HOW UNINSURED MOTORIST COVERAGE WORKS IN YOUR STATE.

This is a coverage that is completely different state to state. In some places, it covers you for hit and runs. In other states, you need to prove that the other driver has no insurance, which means you need to know who they are. Some states don't even have this coverage. So this leads us to our final point...

7. IF YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND SOMETHING, ASK.

Most companies now have 24 hour customer service reps who should be trained on certain states. If you call, you can ask to speak to someone who knows how to answer your questions. To work in insurance and answer specific coverage questions, you need a license for most places, so there will be someone there who can help you. Or talk to your agent. But this is not something where you're going to be subjected to a crazy lecture for an hour, this is simple. Insurance is not rocket science, and it is not your insurance company's fault if you never bothered to find out what you're paying for.

A Few Bits From This Weekend

Going in here didn't have it's usual thrill for me. I mean, I was thrilled in the "look where I am" sort of way. But what really depressed me was all the water. It had poured the day before, but was clear that morning. Inside though, even on the third floor, with like at least three floors above me, there was water just pouring down the walls and collecting on the walkways. Most of the buildings I go into have already been abandoned a long time ago, and are more landscape than useful structure. But this place didn't have to be this way, if only someone would fix the roof. It will be completely unusable as anything else within the year. And I thought they were going to sell it? Or remake it? Or something. It's just a proud old building where people used to do good things, and now it's just being left to rot away under the rain. It makes me sad for it. But I'll probably go back, like some voyeuristic bone picker. The Wasteland isn't all fun and games. It's also, you know, waste.


On a happier, cheerier note, have I mentioned how much I love The Sign Guy? I suppose as long as there's always one guy like that in Tremont, we'll all stay sane there.

I'm getting the whole biking thing. I like it. But its still so painful. Here is a picture of us, or rather them, fixing their bikes, the curse of the "bringing the bike out at the end of summer" crowd. But it worked out in the end, and they didn't get too frustrated when I had to turn around because my legs were trembling after a paltry few miles. Because they are nice. My bike's name, meaning the actual name on the frame cause I don't name my modes of transport, is the Stump Jumper. I couldn't really beat that anyway. I don't feel up to that bike. It wants to go offroad, and tackle fallen logs, and be all cool and shit. I want to coast along silent and slow, maintaining my balance and trying not to freak out when passing dogs.



I was waiting for them back at the parking lot, and ran into two old ladies who told me about monkey balls, that fall off a certain tree, and will keep spiders and centipedes away if you leave them in a dish in a corner. Which prompted us to poach some, or rather prompted me to make my friends help me get some for my house, because I hate centipedes in my personal space. They should be called monkey brains, since that's what they look like, not balls. They are kind of hairy though.

Jere was missing, kidnapped? on Monday, so Charity and I went driving around the Flats. I know it looks sunny, but Monday was the first real day of Fall. Look at the clouds, you can tell.


I don't think I will ever get tired of living by the river. Or rust. I'm really partial to rust. But I wonder how many pictures of the glass factory I will take in my life. I will make a collage of all them someday. It's just endlessly fascinating to me. I keep hoping to find another huge purple glass skull of discarded melt, like the one we found a decade ago, that I think got stolen when that Chevy did.


After driving around for bit, we went to the West Side Market. We were bored. I tried to take a few shots, but the market is so utilitarian to me, and not as interesting as it was when I was a kid. It's where old Polish ladies buy blood sausage for Easter, or where that used to be. I didn't see any blood sausage there that day, but I certainly saw enough jalapeno sausage. What is the world coming too? I'm sure it was the Monday light that did it, but I searched for that raspberry yogurt I used to get, and all I found were tightly wrapped cheeses from other places not Ohio. It's good. It's just not old world good.


I bought some jerky, a few slices of Swiss, half a cheese apricot strudel, and a large kosher pickle.
Later, my headlights both went out at the same time, and today I got my first loaner car from a mechanic, who by the way constantly refers to me as married, though I'm definitely not. I don't correct him. Sometimes it's an advantage to have them think you have a husband. Winter is coming.