rosietherioter's Open Salon Blog

When murderers hit close to home: UWF Manhunt continues

Tue, 6 Oct 2009 21:10:29 -0400

When I heard the sirens in early July, I didn't think much of it. Just some trouble makers out on another steamy night in Northwest Florida. The next day, I read in the papers there was a double homicide three miles from my house. The Billings murders gave me a glimpse of the cruel mortality brought on good people for money. I couldn't believe it. There were two weeks in the summer where there were a total of two consistent headlines: Michael Jackson's death and the Billings murders in Beulah, a small community on the Flora-Bama border where I live. News vans scooted about the streets looking for a willing interviewee, suckling on the southern charm of the area.

After a few weeks had passed, the trickle of the media frenzy dissipated and our lives began to move on far from the media's eye. I did not take the murders to heart too much, I'm sorry to say. The Billings lived in a more affluent area and our social circles never crossed.

Today our little area was hit once again with fear. After deciding not to stay after class in the library, I left the UWF campus just north of Pensacola only to receive a text message from the school while en route home: "Police are pursuing a muder suspect in woods near campus: W/M 42yo DK GRN shirt jeans5-8 160. If seen call 9-1-1.

Unfortunately, this news wasn't all too shocking. Being on a border town, convicts cross the state lines to Alabama and we have experienced escape prisoner alerts four times in the last year. My daughter is well aware of proper procedure on what to do should a lock down at school occur; she has been through two.

About an hour later, I received a second text message from the school: "Suspect seen in woods on campus property. Stay inside buildings, lock doors. Night classes are canceled. "

Then came the solemn hush. I started getting messages from friends saying they were off campus and all right. Even though my close friends were all right, it was unsettling going into stores. I heard a young man talking to a friend on his phone, "Please pray for her, yeah. She's in the library and being moved into an internal room and locked in with the rest of the kids. I can't even a text from her."

A mother in Blockbuster wanted to know if I had anymore information because her son was stuck in a building as well. I told her what I could, wishing I knew more.

At 5:21 the last message was issued: "Lockdown is lifted. Campus community is free to leave. Classes canceled tonight." They have yet to apprehend the suspect, but are allowing commuting students and teachers to leave, keeping those who live in campus housing to remain on lock down for the time being.

Alerts like these make me wonder about safety, real safety. I have to admit, I'm going to be double checking the locks on my doors. This is coming all too close to home.

And yet I feel lucky. If this is all of the problems we are facing, it's not that bad. Situations like these give me a better perspective on the atrocities that are going on around the world in places where people truly feel the anxiety of mortality everyday. It provides an empathy for others in harder situations and places where murderers don't hide in the woods on a college campus, but walk around daily slinging weapons over their arms, ready to kill at the mere glimmer of a threat. In that respect we are fortunate. Even though these situations have occurred recently, it is rare and will hopefully become less frequent. I only hope the police get him off of my campus safely, and soon.

What's in a name; a flu in search of identity

Wed, 2 Sep 2009 22:09:47 -0400

Warning: This blog's writer may contain the flu. Though this virus is NOT virtually contagious, you may develop symptoms just by reading about it.

The college that I am currently taking classes has just been notified that there are three cases of this flu. No one has gotten overly sick, and most are simply under quarantine and not allowed back at school for another week.

Stranger still was the notification that the Swine flu took a swing back to officially being named H1N1 flu. Again. That must be awfully confusing for the poor virus. Who is it? Does the name indicate it's victims? If you are Muslim and don't eat pork does that make you invincible against said virus? I think they need to market this one a little better, a flu for the masses. Mexican flu really doesn't get the enough folks either. H1N1 is just vague enough to be for everyone. Everyone, that it, that can read above a third grade reading level.

My daughter was reading the news over my shoulder tonight and said, "h-i-n-i. Heiny? What's Heiny flu? Does it make your heiny sick? Does it make you feel like a butt?"

I would love to leave the toilet humor far behind (dammit, there it is again), unfortunately, my favorite characters won't let it rest until the render every giggle and guffaw.

So watch out for the heiny flu. But more so, watch out for the fear pandemic, which I think might be much worse. Symptoms include, restlessness, aches, stress, sleeplessness, paranoia and agoraphobia. These symptoms may be far more debilitating than those of the heiny pandemic,but are guaranteed to last much longer.

The seven year old and the cycle- Comic version

Fri, 28 Aug 2009 20:08:42 -0400

Color me humiliated

Mon, 24 Aug 2009 18:08:00 -0400

So I went to my first day of class and within the first class I had managed to completely and utterly humiliate myself. During free write, our creative writing professor wanted to focus on non-fiction and the prompt was, "what are you doing here?" Where everyone wrote about how much they wanted to be there to begin to write and told a little bit about themselves, I wrote a fiction free write. And then I read it aloud and everyone was completely freaked out. NON-FICTION!!! I just wrote what came to me, I didn't even consider the parameters, I just wrote.

Everyone stared, wide-eyed in disbelief. I could hear people blushing for me. The prof, who I believe is wonderful, just stared and tried to smile through pursed lips. Was I in fact married to a Tupperware salesman with sclerosis of the liver? Were we a broke family trying to keep it together?
Only after coming home did I realize why people were acting so awkward.

If it were a true story, it would have been really uncomfortable, which is what they believed. I doubt that I'll ever read aloud in class again. Right now, I just want to drop the class.

Isn't a free write a 'free' write? Why can't we write whatever pops into our little heads? I know what I did was wrong,(given that free write is only as free as the boundaries set upon it) and only now do I realize it. I am counting down the minutes until my 5 o'clock glass of wine.
I know that I'm being a bit histrionic. Okay, really histrionic. But there I was making a first impression to my peers and they think I'm an absolute nut.

So, while I'm writing this I'm needing a bit of advice. What do I do? Do I run away from the embarrassment? Or like Scarlett O'Hara, dance with Rhett in the low cut antithesis-of-a-mourning dress of shame across the floor, trying to maintain the scraps of dignity I have left with grace and poise?
Or maybe I'll just dye my hair, or sit uni-bomber style in the back row. Or maybe, just maybe, not get so overly invested. Ah! lightbulb.

I hindsight, this was probably the biggest lesson I have learned in a while; to be objective, listen to the guidelines and not take other people's opinions to heart, or at least not as deeply as I did.

Adventures in Shopping: Jean Angst

Mon, 10 Aug 2009 10:08:57 -0400

Shopping can be a very volatile experience. It can go really well, and then BANG! A little muffin top here, a little pooch here can turn your day of shopping into a nightmare. Today was no different. I needed jeans. For the last few weeks my legs have been drowning in a sea of denim. Renegade pant legs have taken hold of my feet rendering them useless mid stride and landing me on my face on the carpet. Countless wedgies have been bestowed upon me. My intimates are no longer intimate, but a shining beacon for all to see. It is the time when sexy hip huggers find themselves turning into desperate ass grabbers. It is the time to reward myself with a new wardrobe, albeit a wardrobe on a budget. So there I was grabbing15 pairs of jeans off the Goodwill racks, one hand remaining in a belt loop of my own pants as not to experience the humiliation of premature separation.

Jeans that look like they fit go to into the cart. Only until you get into the dressing room do you actually look at the sizes. . My time in the dressing room was blissful. Twelve’s were way too big, the eights were working. Then I got to the ninth pair. SIZE 4! Are you kidding? Serious? Did I actually think that they would fit? They don't look too far off the mark. Were the guts there to dare try them on? What the hell? Yes. I slid those bad boys up (okay there might have been one or ten hops) I took a deep breath and successfully buttoned them on. Yes! Then I went for the zipper. All of a sudden I was back in the eighties, watching my aunt supine on her bed while two friends wrestled her zipper up with pliers. What I would have given for a pair of both. I said a little prayer and gave a yank. And then it happened. The zipper went up, but not before breaking every tooth along the way.

Dejected, I unbuttoned the deceptive pants, only to find out the horrible truth. Did I say all of the teeth had broken? I was terribly wrong. The cheaply made rags maintained their vice-like grip with the top two steel teeth. Groaning in anguish, the muffin top grew exponentially. I tried to relieve myself of the devil jeans as torrents of panic rolled in. What could I do? What kind of explanation could I muster while stuck in size 4's? What would I say to the EMT's should they arrive? Or should I just take the price tag and suffer the walk of shame to the cash register and out to the car until I could surgically remove them within the confines of my house? Oh hell no. A mouse could ski moguls down my thighs.
So I did what any other normal (or desperate) woman would do. I birthed the suckers. Squeezing, pushing, pulling and screaming they finally came off. After scraping the last of the cruel pants off of my calves, I came to the conclusion that, being it was the Goodwill, the zipper was probably already broken, slipped them back on the hanger, wiped the tears and slithered out of the dressing room. Whistling, I checked to make sure the coast was clear and nonchalantly slipped the size 4’s back on the rack. The eights will do nicely, thank you very much.
When I got home, my lovely husband was in shock and awe with my new jeans. The Six inch heels didn't hurt either. "wow honey!" he said, assessing his matrimonial property. "don't take this the wrong way, but you look so skinny when you are in heels! gorgeous!" My husband is a catch, what can I say?
Now, instead of dieting my way to size 4 bliss, I'm taking another approach. I'm not going to lose anymore weight, I'm going to gain inches. From now on, when you see me in the grocery store, you will no longer see the mother of two at a mere 5' 8", but a svelte 6'2" goddess, wincing in pain while I strut down the aisles wearing dirty sweatpants and stripper heels.