I've known for years that I was geographically challenged, but I sure get tired of it. I always think I know how to get from point A to point B, and often I've taken the trip hundreds of times. But way too often I find myself somewhere between points X and Y with no idea how I got there and less idea of how to get back. There are no maps in my head. None. My car gets me to work every morning all by itself, and I can get many places from the office. But it's tiring to drive to the office to head on a trip to Gainesville, for instance.
Today i returned from a visit in Mount Pleasant via I30 to US380. But there's construction, and the highway gods decided it would be funny for me to miss that very important turn. Next thing I knew I was in Rockwall.
Now I have nothing against Rockwall. I'm sure it's a very nice place to live.
Friggin' Rockwall! I never wanted to be in Roakwall and I was certain it was not on the way from Mount Pleasant to Denton.
So I headed in a northerly direction and after a few hundred miles I found myself in Farmersville - on US 380 headed west - and back to Denton.
I may have had a lucid moment today, but I doubt it.

They say Internet dating is the most popular form of meeting people nowadays and it sure does beat hanging around in bars, though I never had the nerve to do any of that anyway.
But it's weird. Sort of like catalog shopping. You flip though and look at all the pictures and when something catches your eye you stop and read the description. If it sounds enticing enough you may send off for it.
There are a few differences, of course. One, the product may not want you. Often that happens. Imagine ordering a blue sweater with lace on the collar. Then you get a message. The blue sweater isn't interested in you! What did I ever do to that sweater? you think. I might be just the body that sweater needs to show off to best advantage. But no, the sweater doesn't want you.
That hurts. Sweater rejection. Damn. So you cry a little bit and then you pick up the catalog and flip through it some more. Ah, here's a green sweater that is actually nicer than the blue one! You never really liked the blue one anyway and you can't wait to meet the green one.
You meet. You try it on. You think it's a nice fit, really comfy and it looks great on you. You really hit it off - laughed all evening. Then you get the message. The green sweater thinks you're nice but not really the shoulders it was hoping to caress.
Damn.
You don't get warm but you still have to pay the price.

It's morning and I barely slept.
All my critters decided to share the bed with me and they kept rooting me over the edge. It's a king-sized bed, for goodness sake. How come there's no room for me?
I wonder what will happen on my glamorous beat today? One day this week I was summoned to Bolivar to smell a dead cow. The lady insisted. A neighbor had dragged his dead cow right up to his fence next to the road and allowed it to rot there. It was horrid for everyone passing by, she said, and I don't doubt it.
That cow was clearly most sincerly dead.
Oh yeah, Oz again.
Turns out there is no law against allowing a dead animal to putrify on your own property. Who knew?

So here I am in a fairly lucid moment sitting at my computer having created a blog with no real idea of what I am doing.
I know I want to have fun. I know I want to make people laugh or cry or think about things in a new, slightly cracked way.
I know I want to create a place where smiles are the norm and sunshine reigns and frowns are forbidden. Maybe that place is Oz. Maybe it doesn't exist. But maybe it can exist, here in one of my more lucid moments, just us, picking life apart and reassembling it to make more sense.
I'm a senior citizen, a crazy teen, I'm ageless. I'm excited every day to feel life, to taste it, to hold it in my hands and mold it into something elegant and bold.
This is not your weekly Donna Fielder column, my friends. This is tastier, zestier, richer in color and free of those bothersome editors who won't let me write certain words in a family oriented newspaper.
Will you follow me down that yellow brick road?
The man behind the curtain, I hear, is naked.