Chickens with Black Belts

So, the trailer dilemma. It’s cool. I mean Really Cool. It’s been in my family forever. 20 years longer than I have, to be exact.

In case you did not know me in the 90’s, you may not know that I am big time Vintage Girl. I worked at vintage store- and a silver jewelry shop- most of my trip through college. I am a leopard-skin kinda gal who has been trapped in corporate America for 10 years. I’ve been nice. I’ve been respectable. I’ve been upper middle class. I’m a mom. And now, it’s time to be just a little BAD. Irresponsible. Fun.

Ring. Ri-ng. Riiiinnng! “Daddy, I want the trailer!”

Ok. How am I gonna pull this off? Unlike my loner younger years when I shunned too much companionship and anything that looked like, heaven forbid, help, I am now much, much smarter.

 I lived, alone for 10 years in a Victorian tear down. No Central AC. In Houston. What I learned was that I was tough. And cool. And LONELY as hell. So, belatedly I figured out how damn wrong Mazlow was about the pyramid of needs. Food? Shelter? 401K? Shit. What a person needs is decent freakin’ friends. They are the ultimate survival secret and if you don’t have them you ARE starving in a gutter even if you don’t realize it.

I have a little kid. She’s 3. I am all up-to-date on my classic bedtime stories. Well, do you remember The Little Red Hen? You know: She Found Some Wheat? “Who will help me plant/ reap/ grind the wheat?” Well, she had a bunch of lazy-ass friends who would not do jack squat to help her. “Not I!” they gleefully cried, which is the bedtime story equivalent of not answering cell phones or replying to text messages. In the end, LRH whips up some fabulous bread and wadda ya know. All the friends are ready to Party. And LRH has a clue by this point and shuns them with a big ole No Way.

Now. Is the point of the story that LRH showed them in the end? No. I think not. Pay attention! LRH was left eating bread alone, people.  The point is that LRH had a bunch of loser friends who needed dumping sooner, not later. She should have found some peeps who thought helping her was part of the Party. Then she would not have eaten enough bread to make herself sick primarily to spite others.  I mean, honestly, self-righteousness does not equal FUN.

This moral was not lost on me. I’ve spent 20 years cultivating the most bad-ass set of friends you’ve ever seen. I mean, my friends are the Justice League of America. They provide a quality of protection against Life’s Cruel Disappointments that is generally reserved for fiction. Only they are Real. Real and Really Talented. And probably slightly off-kilter, but hey, look who they hang out with.

Thus, I am taking my trailer project to my Little Black Belt Hens (LBBH?). We are sooo gonna make this one Secret Lair to write home about.