I am the Hillbilly Diva

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I am the Hillbilly Diva.  I have been for years. My blog is subtitled A Hillbilly Diva’s Blatherings.  I have been blathering on the internet since 1989.  In the early days, I was very paranoid about people knowing who I was in real life. My blog was anonymous for years.  I had an email address that was practically untraceable. This continued until after Barack Obama was elected.  I came out on Facebook as my real name.  I had been Connie Oberfuhrer. 

This was my avatar for years. I don’t know where the image came from or who to credit it to.

With the election of Obama, I felt hope and peace and love.  I no longer cared who knew who I was, and I no longer needed to be anonymous.  Plus, Facebook was cracking down on fake accounts. 

I’m starting to be paranoid again.  These are ugly times we live in.  Yes, I realize they’ve been ugly always, but now the underbelly is exposed, and the ferocious dog wags its tail.  The ugliness expects to be not just agreed with but praised for his divisiveness.  For its hate. 

I have reached that part of a woman’s life when she becomes invisible.  People, particularly men, don’t much notice me any longer.  In Frankie and Grace, they did a bit about the invisibility of old age.  I had been talking about it for some time. 

In my youth, I was quite attractive.  I didn’t know it, for the most part, though I had pretty decent self-esteem for a woman who came of age in the 70s.  Who had been battered and bruised by the commercials to make us not smell like ourselves, to enhance what was right and hide what was wrong. To get rid of excess weight and acne and gray hair.  To ward off wrinkles.  I lived fast in those early years – on 3 hours of sleep at night – one social engagement after another, one party after another going to work bleary-eyed with stories to tell.  My blood alcohol level probably still too high.

I am at peace with myself now.  For the most part. I would like to lose some of this COVID weight.  Not enough to do anything about it, mind you, but it bothers me some.  Besides, my clothes don’t fit, and I am too poor to afford new.

I do wear makeup, fake nails, and gaudy jewelry. Recently, I’ve taken up eyebrow pencil and lipstick.  Two things I never used.  But as I age, my lips and my eyebrows disappear.

I love my gray, silver, and white hair.  I am especially so at my temples. In the Cherokee tradition, these are known as Wisdom Locks.  Yes.  I have developed some wisdom over the years.  Good thing.  Had I continued my merry destructive way, I wouldn’t have lived this long. 

I may be invisible to the younguns and men, but I am visible to myself.  Perhaps for the first time, I know and understand who I am.  I have grown to accept my foibles while still working to fix the worst of my traits.  Wearing makeup, fake nails, gaudy jewelry, and ridiculous shoes, I shall not go gently into that good night.  I have too much good going on to stop now. 

In my late 30s, I used to say that I was done. I was not suicidal, but I felt like I had done what I had been put here to do.  I felt like it was time for me to move on to the next life.  I think God recycles. 

I still think we have a next life to go to and I’m looking forward to it, but oh I want to be here as long as I can be the self I’ve grown to be.  I have so much to live for.  There is so much I still want to do, go, see. 

We live in turbulent times, but life at its core is still sweet.  And I want it all. 

Monsoon Season in a Temperate Rain Forest

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I am not in the mood for this rain this morning.  Not in the least.  I need a crisp fall day with crystalline blue skies and the occasional orange leaf wafting past my window while I write.

Photo by Nick Nice on Unsplash

I have two deadlines for two major projects that have already gone by.  I asked for and received an extension on both, but now it’s do or die time.  I do not need to be drowsy and in fear of my power going out.

I’ve never lived anywhere where it rained like this.  Not even in Hawaii in the rainy season.  I call these the monsoon seasons and we have two of them – one in the spring and one in fall.  However, this past spring, they never ended.  It’s just been one very wet summer.  I am weary of rain.

West Virginia is a temperate rainforest.  Really.  I looked it up once and Seattle has nothing on us for rainy days.  It’s just that we concentrate our rain and have deluges.  I had a girlfriend visiting from San Francisco one time during one of our downpours.  She was both amazed and terrified.  She kept saying different things in the vein of, “If this was California we would be ordered to shelter in place.”  Here?  Life just goes on unless it floods.  I surely hope Ian doesn’t treat us to floods.  We’ve had more than our fair share.

When we moved to West Virginia the first time, I lived on the third floor of an old Southside Huntington brick.  There were sloping ceilings and one set of windows near my bed that went from floor to ceiling.  I could lie on the bed, watch the rain, read, and dream my high school dreams.  It was lovely. 

As the years went by, it became less and less lovely.  We transferred to Wisconsin where monsoons don’t happen and there is an abundance of sunny days, albeit often cold.  Very cold.  Blue skies in the winter guaranteed subzero temperatures.  It had to warm up to snow.

We transferred back here and moved into the barn with its tin roof.  Oh, how glorious, rain on a tin roof is!  My family room is still under a tin roof – I negotiated with the insurance agent who made us get a real roof if we wanted coverage.  So, I still get that roar of rain in this room.  The room where I write.  The room where I have to, have to, have to be productive today.

The sound is hypnotic, and I want nothing more than to curl up on the sofa with the puppies, a cup of coffee, and a good book.  But I procrastinated myself into this situation and I must muscle my way out of it.  By the sounds of it, it will still be raining after I’m finished.  I’ll get cuddle time, yet which is good.  I’m in sore need of downtime.

Hurray! It’s National Coffee Day!

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Today is National Coffee Day.  For me this is a high holiday.  I’m always tempted to decorate and make a luscious meal with wine that I can finish off with a robust cup of coffee – maybe with cream.  I generally drink, well always drink, my coffee black.  My father looked askance at me when I put cream in my coffee as if I was committing some crime.  Marines drink their coffee black.  None of this frou frou cream stuff.  After a grand dinner, however, I like the richness of cream in a really good roast of coffee not just for the taste of it, but the mouth feel and texture.  It becomes like liquid velvet. 

I drink Folgers coffee in the morning.  I do like a mild blend first thing in the morning, but it is one of my goals to be able to afford fresh ground Tanzanian Peaberry for my a.m. indulgence.  And indulgence it would be.  I think it reasonable to say that Tanzanian Peaberry is the nectar of the gods.  In my more hedonistic days, I used to buy a bag a month from a small coffee roaster in Milwaukee who was thrilled to ship it to me.  For a price. I’ve learned in life that you can have anything you want – for a price. 

But the immediate goal is to persevere with writing until it becomes a monetarily successive gig.  I’ve progressed from hobby writer to writer writer, but I’m still seldom a paid writer.  Don’t laugh, but I’ll probably celebrate my first book sale with a fine cup of coffee.  

Taped to the refrigerator, I have a quote by me: Sometimes coffee is a religious experience and others it’s just a caffeine delivery system.   

I once scribbled that in a notebook.  I said it to a few friends and one asked if she could quote me.  Flattered, I said, “Of course.”  I tried to meme it a few years ago, but alas it did not go viral.  I really do feel that way about coffee.  Folgers in the morning is a caffeine delivery system.  A robust blend with cream after fine dining is a religious experience. 

Whatever your preference – coffee, tea, hot cider or something else – please enjoy it today on this National Coffee Day in solidarity with me.  I swear, I can’t believe I don’t at least have a t-shirt for this holiday.  I have been remiss and shall remedy that later today!