Pilgrim in the Trailer Park

 September has gone by faster than August, in my opinion. I’m still knocking back the coffee. I have not resolved to knock this chemical addiction which is draining my wallet and ruining my health. It is what it is, to sound trite. “Think about your face!” my mother laments. Well I have, and …it’s still there.  I have spent less time on the blog and more time walking around the park talking on the phone (with my mother). Which has been leading to me getting, what I call harassed, by strange men: one guy asked for a lighter to light his cigarette and said something like “ain’t you pretty” (your southern charm won’t work here); another guy drove up and down the road several times to get a look at me, and it freaked me out and I ran in the house (Ray said “was he a grabber?”); and yet another pulled up slow beside me and also said I was pretty (fly for a white girl). I’m not bulging with cleavage (im actually part of the IBTC, if you know what that is) and I don’t wear a thong th...

 I shouldn’t have to keep writing these kinds of stories but I guess I have to: our little black baby has disappeared. Blackie was only a year old. He was an un-neutered male. He had a jumpy, light gait and we’d call him The Flash for how he’d fly into the living room. It’s only been three days, but we have strong reason to believe he won’t return; when Sherman went missing he was never found. John believes in coyotes now more than ever.  Blackie was one of three brothers, and actually from a litter of six. I found him in October of last year, him and his two brothers roaming out of their litterage. I gave them wet food and whipped cream (it’s a great treat for cats, sugar free, of course) and eventually we got them in the house. I gave one to my dad. Blackie and Earl Grey were inseparable. They were the Hurricane Kittens, surviving Milton. They were a miracle. They were a joy to have around. Even when they mostly hid behind a mattress in the bedroom and dotted the room with t...

 Yesterday, September 17, marks three years since I moved into this park, in 2022.  On a Saturday in the almost fall I loaded my Hyundai Accent with all my things and drove 13 miles from Selden Ave in Ormond Beach to Riverside Mobile Home and RV park in Port Orange, Florida. My dad followed me with my mattress in his hatchback. I had been down here once to meet with my new roommate Tommy. It seemed like a nice place, a trailer park on the water. But in reality, it was one of my only options, as my dad had given me three months to move out, and this guy was charging $500 to rent a room without a door in the back of his trailer. I would have to drive far for work in Ormond Beach, but I didn’t care. I was scared of being homeless. Tommy left the back door unlocked and I carried in my various belongings, like my milk crate full of books, my binder from rehab, and my hospital folders. All my clothes fit in a round, green plastic laundry basket. I was wearing my black tred-safe work...

Last night I found a pretty, green tree frog. My cat, Blackie, almost ate him! I had to keep pushing the cat away, saying “Go…go…go!” Until finally I just moved the frog. “There you go, buddy.” Blackie kept sniffing the ground where he had been at, confused by the whereabouts of his new play toy. It was satifying to save a frog. His skin was soft, cold, and moist on my hand. Three months ago I found a frog in the bathtub. I wrote the following in my digital journal:  5/30/25  The day is already exciting: there was a frog in the shower! I told John about it. “Did you get a picture?” “No.” “Why not?” So I snapped and dark and fuzzy picture in the weird angle of the tub. Before John took him outside he asked “What’s his name?” I said “Froggy” ( like the bar on Main Street). Now he’s settled in the palm tree in the back yard. Upon further thought, I think he should be called John Froggerty (after John Fogerty, of course), because, yes, he’s seen the rain, and he ain’t no fortunate...