Nattering Chatter

Let's Pretend!

2012-01-15T10:37:00.000-05:00

First of all, let me make it clear that I don't have a television, so I don't watch the news. I don't read newspapers. I don't check the news online. My only source of information is Facebook. I try to ignore the politics and the lost children and every other sensational item, but every now and again, something sneaks in when I'm looking at elsewhere.

Therefore, I know this about Tebow: he publicly prays for victory in his sport, which I'm very certain is football. I don't know his team or position or first name or denomination. Some people on Facebook seem to revere him. Most seem to mock him. I wouldn't recognize him if he knocked on my door and offered me a free cat.

As they say in recipes, set aside.

Last night, I was with friends at Eckerd College, listening to Andre Dubus III read and speak. Among other things, he wrote House of Fog and Sand. Apparently there was a big football game going on. He and the master of ceremonies Dennis LeHane (Shutter Island) joked about rushing through the evening in order to catch the game. In fact, at one point, an audience member's electronic device made enough noise to catch the attention of the men on stage. They interrupted themselves to ask the guy what the score was.

All of it was astonishing to me – the famous writers' interest in the game, and the audience member's complete lack of respect for the famous writers, and the famous writers not even seeming to see it as disrespect. Well, maybe it wasn't. Maybe the men were just enjoying being the keynote speaker and his host. The worst that could happen was that they wouldn't be invited back next year (fat chance). And maybe they felt they had to prove they're manly men like Hemingway instead of unmanly men like Capote. They snorted and grabbed their groins (figuratively) and talked about football. Or heck. Maybe they really did care about the game.

In any case, part of the football talk involved jokes about Tebow. The first remark was okay with me, but there were too many jokes. Enough already. Talk about writing. That's what we were there for (weren't we?).

Afterwards, a woman in front of us chatted while we waited to exit the auditorium. "Didn't you think those Tebow remarks were offensive?" she asked.

"I just thought they were excessive, not offensive. I think Christians are offensive."

Well, she felt public speakers should be more "cautious." I guess she was talking about being politically correct. I'm not entirely certain what political correctness is. For instance, if it means not making racial slurs, then I'm all for it. I don't seem to mind religious slurs, though ... oh, unless they're against Jews or Muslims or Hindus. Go ahead and slur upon Christians, though.

Thank the gods for freedom of speech!

The woman also said that Dubus (rhymes with caboose) acted as if everyone thought the same way he does about Tebow. She felt that was inappropriate. I think if I'm saying it or writing it, you'd do well to assume it's my opinion – who else's would it be? – and why, really, should I change my opinion to reflect your tender sensibilities?

Don't get me wrong. If I get a chance to blast you for referring to grown human females as girls instead of women, I'll do it. But that sure doesn't mean you have to do anything about it but laugh in my face (even though I do wish you'd think about it. Please?).

And there's this: It was Dubus's show. He doesn't have to care one whit about our opinions. He's there to give us his. And we're there to hear it, by the way. Why should he tone it down in the interest of caution, of political correctness? Goodness.

But let's go back to Tebow. My understanding is that Tebow prays for victory, and ... I don't know ... I guess he's getting it?

Well, let's pretend that there even is a God. Okay. Now let's pretend God cares about American football. Well, how does He decide who wins? Is it by the number of prayers sent up to Heaven for each side? What else could it be? So let's save a boat load of money and time and anguish and life-changing injuries, and do this. Let's set up a website that's perfectly secure (God will see to that) and just have people "pray" by casting their vote for which team they want to win. God would tot up the votes and made a divine announcement.

I have a friend who belonged to a car club for Scion owners. There were prizes for the car that had the most and coolest modifications. When I asked my friend what prevented him from making a modification he so admired, he said, "Money." Again, let's simplify. Let's just display pay stubs.

Do You Hear What I Hear?

2011-10-04T10:31:00.000-04:00

Now that we've had a cold snap in Florida – that is, now that it's in the sixties at night and only the eighties in the day (and with little humidity at that) – our windows are open. That means fresh air wafts through the rooms, stirring up fairy-light clumps of cat hair, which drift, carefree, until they tangle with others under the legs of the toy piano or line up together against the couch. That means I can sit in the library (shown above) and hear the furious and incessant squawking of a bird of some sort. With the windows closed, I might hear that, but it wouldn't catch my attention. Now it does, and it sounds almost like rusty machinery, which makes me think of Sarah Thee Campagna's robots (CyberCraftRobots.com), and I wonder what they sound like when they talk (not that they'd do it in front of humans – not yet).

There are other birds who sound more birdlike, chirping and tweeting, and it sounds like Spring again.

I can hear the little pond that Shreeram and Rebecca brought over to me. So far, I've only heard its tiny fountain splashing when I've been outside, but now the outside is in and I think I live in a Disney forest. Wait. Woods. A Disney woods. I believe "forests" are evil, and there's no evil here. It's all sweet breeze and cute squirrels, last-minute bees sipping at last-minute blooms.

And here's another thing. Sunday night, I was awakened at midnight by the sounds of lovemaking. It was my neighbors to the west. There's a tall fence and a lot of foliage between us and I almost never think of them. But now that the windows are open, I realize that we're only twelve, maybe fourteen feet apart.

First it was him, all rhythmic and grateful and urgent. Then it was her, high-pitched and yearning. I lay there expecting a denouement, but then it was him again, the same as before, only more so. It eventually ended, of course, and I could hear gasps and then quiet conversation and chuckles, and I felt happy for everyone – even myself. What a wonderful thing love is! And sex! Separately or together – how nice!

These people are my age, and I just turned sixty-one. She's fat and floozy-looking. I've only seen her in shorts caught up into a V between her legs, huge breasts fighting against a tight tank top, flip-flopping down the street calling for her white fluffy but matted dog. She herself has hair that's far too black. The guy across the street always yells at her for not safekeeping her dog, and she responds with a barroom growl. The husband is handsome in a broken, unhealthy sort of way, with the chronic cough of a smoker who quit too late.

But in the night, when it's cool and the windows are open, and the birds have settled and the fountain burbles, they sound young and in love and perfectly beautiful.

Bowled Over

2011-09-10T16:25:00.000-04:00

I've been on a tear this rainy Saturday. I've emptied two bank boxes full of papers, and put most of the contents into the recycle bin. The rest has gone into the filing cabinet.

I ran into letters from my late mother, which made me sob my little heart out. I found a missive from my favorite ex-True Love. He said – paraphrasing to protect the appalled – I was the person who'd cut the largest swath in his life, and he'd always be grateful to me. Right back atcha, babe!

Having cleared those boxes, I turned, in unprecedented zeal, to the giant, nine-drawer oak chest where I basically cram things when guests are arriving and I'm not ready – junk mail, magazines, books, odds and ends that belong in the studio but are always in the office. I emptied three of those drawers and then moved to the other side, in search of receipts for my taxes which will be done in time to prevent imprisonment, or so my accountant and best friend assures me. But first I had to move things out of the way, and one of those things was a huge plastic bowl.

If you worked the night shift with me at the Widget Factory, you'll remember those wonderful Rice Krispie® Treats I made. Well, it was in this very bowl that said sweets were born. It was the perfect size for swirling the cereal into the melted marshmallows and butter. Most recently, the bowl was holding two big plastic bags of beads, large and small, all colors, many shapes, shown above. It's also in this historic bowl that one of my cats peed.

Well, one of the reasons I was so set on cleaning this room was to find the source of the bad odor, so in that sense, it's been a very successful day.

But here's what gets me. If cats have such a fine sense of smell, why does their urine have to be so pungent? Can't they make their statements in a more subtle fashion? My god! the least twitch of a tail is a full paragraph in Feline Lingo! Cats are so graceful, so quiet, so mysterious, you'd think their communications would would follow suit. The teeniest poof of pee should be enough to get their point across.

On the other hand, who really knows what cats think? I assume they're marking their territory when they pee in the house, but maybe they're actually saying something like, "Aw, I'm too tired to walk all the way through the living room to the litter box, so I guess I'll just use this bowl. Hey! I wonder if I can make my pee get right into those heavy plastic, zippered bags? I'll bet I can!"

I brought the bowl and its piercing contents to the kitchen sink. Half a dozen loose beads had to slip down to the garbage disposal before I caught on. I plugged the trap and continued rinsing all those shiny orbs. Happily, most of them were still in necklace form, so it wasn't too bad. Those plastic bags may never be the same, though.

I got out the flashlight and peered into the garbage disposal. Now, when David installed the thing, he assured me that I couldn't lose my hand in there. He showed me the thick disks that spin and slice, and I could see the circle of holes through which the chopped gunk gets into Tampa Bay. He was trying to ease my discomfort about garbage disposals in general, but it didn't work. I saw Fargo. You can't fool me. Sure, that was a wood-chipper and this is for egg shells, but the principle's the same.

Still, I dug out the little pellets and then ran the disposal. It put forth a cacophony that made its normal clank and grind sound like chamber music. It took several tries, but I finally got all the bead bits out of there. They're drying, as seen above, but now I'm wondering if I should have given them to an artist friend before I wrote this blog. Maybe I'll distract her with Rice Krispie Treats.

Romances

2011-08-14T10:54:00.000-04:00

I engaged in a little four-year marriage when I was very young, and the only way I got through that last year was by devouring an entire paperback romance novel each day, accompanied by an excessive amount of Cheetos®. The books are so formulaic that the guidelines are actually written down, body part by body part, and available from, for instance, www.eharlequin.com.

I was avoiding my life in pre-Internet days, but I still knew the rules. A blond man and a brunette man would vie for the heart – et cetera – of our heroine. We orange-fingered readers would know within a couple chapters that the fair-haired man was up to no good. But wait. Maybe it was the dark fellow who was going to do her wrong. It got pretty tense, waiting to see if she'd choose correctly, and knowing, from the sweet experience of just yesterday, that she would make the right decision did not detract from the suspense, or from the subsequent relief.

But reading romance novels was a pleasure tainted with guilt. My mother was a librarian, for god's sake. There was a world map on our dining room wall, and a dictionary on the shelf. There was also a washer and dryer in this "dining room," lest you get the wrong idea, and seven chairs cluttered up against a table for four. Okay. Maybe it was meant to seat six, but it was always felt too small and, to this day, I'd really rather have a whole side to myself, thanks.

My point is that I was no more raised to read romance novels than to listen to country music, so if I ever actually enjoy either one, I feel bad about it. I feel as if I'm letting someone down – Mom, Dad, god, someone.

When I got divorced, I gave up romance novels, having lost the need to blot out the pain.

Nearly twenty years later, however, I had a co-worker who unabashedly enjoyed romances, and I realized that in my dirty little fling with that ilk, I'd never read one from the Queen Herself, Danielle Steel. So I bought one and started reading it.

I don't remember the details, but I do remember the page number. On page sixty, the blond guy said something that made me snort in derision. "There's no way he'd do that!" I tossed the book down in disgust and have never read another romance. However, that book – whatever it was – set a standard for me. I now give the author a sixty-page chance to prove herself. If I'm still heaving melodramatic sighs, rolling my eyes like a teenager, and talking out loud to the book at page sixty, I'm allowed to snap it shut and bring it to the thrift store.

So thank you, Danielle Steel, and happy sixty-fourth birthday. In a burst of meaningless coincidence, that four-year husband will also turn sixty-four – in exactly a week, as a matter of fact. Danielle has just published her ninety-seventh book. You heard me. Hell, most people don't even read that many in a lifetime. So good for her ... but I still don't like the genre.

However, there's a wonderful book with a major theme of writing romance novels, and the novel itself has romance in it, but it's not a romance novel. It's The Boyfriend School by Sarah Bird. It was out of print for a while, but it's back. Go read it. It's one of my favorites. I understand that's like the waitress saying, "Good choice! That's my favorite, too!" but I don't care. Go read it anyhow.

I don't know if you were with me when I praised Hannah's Dream, a novel by Diane Hammond, but the actual Diane Hammond commented on my blog. That was embarrassing and thrilling, and it made me a bit afraid of naming names. Even so, at the risk of conjuring her, I'm going to name a fourth writer, Joyce Carol Oates. She, like Danielle Steel, is prodigiously prolific. She also has three names which, for reasons known not even to myself, I always connect with romance writers. So I avoided her like, like ... like a romance writer.

But one day I picked up one of her books and behold! She's great. Dark. Bleak. Depressing, perhaps, but hey! she writes about my home area, non-city New York. I also love how she looks, which is irrelevant and enchanting. Her sentences are perfect. No blond guy ever says something in a book he wouldn't say in Real Life. And her stories don't require assistance from Cheetos.

Please Pass the Word

2011-08-07T10:13:00.001-04:00

I think it's hilarious, in a non-funny sort of way, that we're told to use a different password for each account we have. Clearly, it was some twenty-five-year-old who thought that one up. Who can remember even three passwords? Not I, although I could have, years ago.

I had a file named PASSWORDS in my email for a while ... until I couldn't get into my email because I didn't have the password. Mister Google so seldom asks for it that I had simply forgotten it. Now it's all written down in the back pages of my desk calendar, except for the ones that are written down ... elsewhere. Probably.

A couple years ago, I got a letter from my bank. It said someone had been caught phishing in my account, and so I should change my password and, in fact, change the password of any other accounts that might have the same password. "Might," indeed. At that time, I used the same password for everything.

Now I have a different password for every account, and there are fifteen, at a quick glance. I voted for Gulfport for the Best of the Road competition from Rand McNally. There's a password I'll never use again. I'm voting for SHAMc – the Safety Harbor Art and Music Center – so they'll get a ton of money from Pepsi-Cola which, by the way, when its letters are rearranged, spells Episcopal. I pay my bills online, so there are all those passwords. So some I'll use again, and some I won't, but when I need them, I need them, so I have to keep track of them.

Today is my Uncle Eddie's birthday, except that he died on January 1 of this year, so it's no more his eighty-sixth birthday than yesterday was Lucille Ball's hundredth.

I know it's his birthday because Facebook said so. I went over to his Wall and behold! there are birthday greetings for him. One is from his great-nephew, who says Uncle Eddie has joined his late siblings, but another is from a Nicolazzo in Italy who may or may not be related, but who clearly doesn't know Uncle Eddie, um, transitioned.

A friend from my hometown in rural New York moved to an even more rural place in Montana, and he started dying of lung cancer. His wife got on his Facebook page and kept us abreast of his condition, and when he died, she posted it, and we all responded. It actually was touching. It was like being at the wake without having to take time off work and pay for a plane ticket to Montana, and a rental car, and a hotel room. Ah, yes, it was virtually like being there. Hm.

And so now I'm thinking that when we die, we not only live on in people's hearts and minds, but on Facebook, too. Unless your Last Will and Testament includes the pertinent passwords, your Wall will stand forever.

I'm not sure I want that, but on the other hand, it would be a sort of legacy, wouldn't it? I don't have children to carry on whatever dysfunction I'd have given them, so I'll have to settle for everything I've splatted onto the Internet. I have a blog with all my painted cars on it. That will just sit there, unchanging, while I'm off trying to learn to play the harp and walk with wings at the same time.

Now, I wouldn't necessarily want all the LOLs my Friends have posted on Facebook to remain with us forever, but my photo albums? Sure. Why not? I'd love for a great-great-great-niece to stumble upon the photos of mailboxes I've painted, and pine for the great-great-great-aunt she never had a chance to meet and love. One of my cousins posted a bunch of photos from the early fifties, of our parents (see above), and it's wonderful. We all get to leave comments and argue over who's who. It's almost like we're in the same room. Almost.

Facebook, Picasa, Flickr – these are all good ways to preserve photos, and everyone can see them (if they remember their passwords, of course), not just the one kid in the family who's the unofficial archivist, the one who has all the black album pages with fading snapshots and ballpoint captions, the one who has forgotten which was Aunt Erla and which was Grandma.

But surely all these cyber storage spaces will morph into something else, and then something else. Maybe Facebook will go bankrupt and all our shared daily profundity will disappear in the blink of an eye – along with the need for its password.

_________________________
Dad is the man on the far left, top, and Mom's on the far left in the next row in pink. With a hat. And a shawl. Have mercy!

To die, to sleep

2011-07-31T19:38:00.000-04:00

No. I don't want to talk about Shakespeare, and I don't want you to think that sweet Benji, shown slumbering above, has died. I want to talk about death – not his – and not that I know much about it. There were two deaths important to me during my girlhood. One was a schoolmate's dad who had a heart attack at a wrestling match. His face was black when they carried him out. I went to the funeral home to see the body so I wouldn't have to remember that unnatural black face all my life.

It didn't work.

A couple years earlier, my cousin Susan's baby sister died a crib death. My sister, who was fourteen if I was thirteen, said she didn't think it was such a big deal that a baby had died. It's not like we knew her, right? I thought that was cold, even as I agreed. Now that I've fallen in love with kittens at the speed of a super hero, I do believe that the death of a baby is a big deal (and I know my sister does, too). But I didn't really believe it then.

But I don't want to talk about death in general. I want to talk about a specific kind of death.

I was at a stop light next to my friend Liz and she called over, "Did you hear about Mary Smith? She died in her sleep last Saturday!"

Whoa – she died in her sleep? The conversation seems to have to stop right there. There's nothing more to say. If she had died of cancer, we could have murmured things like Oh! I hadn't known! or I thought she looked ... bald ... last time I saw her or Man, I'm glad I quit smoking when I did! If she had died of a heart attack, we might have said Wow. She was so young! or Huh. She always seemed so healthy.

But when you die in your sleep, it's like you died of ... nothing.

"She died in her sleep."

"Yeah? What'd she die of?"

"Uh ... sleep?"

It's just too weird. You can't even talk about it.

And wouldn't you think a body would wake up in order to die? When I meditate (Transcendental Meditation™), I sometimes nod off, but then my body wakes me with a jerk. (I've awakened with a jerk more than once, but that's off topic.) The TM™ people tell me my body's releasing stress, but I think my body is trying to wake me up so I don't fall over and clunk my head on the cave floor and die before I've gone forth and populated the earth. So wouldn't my body wake me up so I could die? Why would I be allowed to just slip away like Little Nell who, after all, is merely literary? I mean, that's a pretty serious transition, isn't it? Whether there's an afterlife or not, I just can't imagine snoozing through such an event.

Do you think anyone's ever been born asleep? Really now. You're floating around in those life juices, just relaxing and dreaming, maybe humming to yourself like a cat purrs, smiling a bit every time you hear your mom's voice. Then that warm liquid suddenly whooshes away, to be replaced with pressure and squeezing as you're forced out of the lovely existence you've so enjoyed for your whole life and you finally plop out into a cold, drafty, noisy, bright world – and you're still dozing? You're napping?

Really?

And so I think there should be no dying while asleep, either. It's just not fair. It's not balanced. If birth is so traumatic, death should be traumatic, too. Maybe when we cross into death, instead of getting smacked on the butt to start our breathing, someone Over There slaps us in the face to stop our breathing, and then we start adjusting to whatever's going on in that place.

Even if it's no place.

Daddy's Little Boy ... er, Girl

2011-03-20T10:51:00.003-04:00

I confess. This blog has nothing to do with Geri's 1993 Volkswagen EuroVan with Westfalia roof as pictured above. I wanted a photo, and she did just drive it home, so it's still new and exciting. I was able to put a dent in my fear of heights by sitting up on the roof to paint it.

But no. This blog is about giving boy names to girls because Dad Always Wanted A Boy. And gosh! Maybe Geri is one of those.

I was at Senior Stretches at The Gulfport Multipurpose Senior Center Foundation, Inc. (whew!) with Jimi (89) last Tuesday. One woman asked Jimi what her real name is. It's Evelyn, but, yes, her father always wanted a boy. Jimi has a sister, Larry. Her real name is Lorraine, but who cares? Dad always wanted a boy, so everyone knows her as Larry.

Marion (in her 70s) gasped and said, "My name's Marion but it's spelled with an O, the way it's spelled for boys. My dad always wanted a boy, so he made my mother spell it that way."

Then Rae (mid-60s) joined in. She, too, was named after her dad because blah blah boy.

Sheesh. These women, from their very births, were told they were wrong. Their very gender was unacceptable. Maybe with sonogram's early gender detection, the men have more time to get used to the idea, so maybe fewer girls end up with boy names?

Nah. I don't think so. All we've done is open up some names to both genders. Jamie springs to mind. And there are those names like Madison that seem to have started out as gender-neutral. Why not Hamilton or Washington, if you're getting so presidential? I don't like those names. Those are like Synovus. Or Wachovia. Or Third Fifth (or is it Fifth Third?). They're fake, like vinyl wraps on cars, when you could have actual paint from an actual artist (ahem).

I looked up Wachovia, just so I could despise it more authentically, but it turns out that Moravian settlers named it after a place on the Danube River (and what's more romantic than that?), and it's near Bethabara, North Carolina, and my only sister's name is Beth and mine is Barbara, and so it's all coming together now!

Beth, in fact, is Beth Ann. I would love to have been Barbara Ann, if only because of those dreamy Beach Boys, but Mom didn't think it was right to have girls with the same middle name, and Beth Ann got here first, so I am Barbara Jean. Oh, Barbara Je-ee-een, ta-ake my splee-ee-en! Ya' got me rockin' and a-rollin' ...

One of my Desert Island Books is Woman on the Edge of Time by Marge Piercy. We move between an abused woman stuck in an insane asylum in the present to a gender-equal far-away future. In the future section, Piercy absolutely does away with gender-specific names. The people in the future – who go off into the wilderness as young teens and come out with names they've chosen themselves – are named Jackrabbit and Luciente and Bee. At first it bothered me, not knowing instantly if a new character was a man or a woman, but it ended up not really mattering. None of that society was divvied up according to gender. Babies were sort of test-tube babies (gasp!), and it took a trio of adults to get a baby going.

I read a mystery translated from Italian (if not from the Italian), and I found it very difficult to follow just because the names were so unfamiliar. And long. With so many vowels! Much as I want to shake my fist about genders and all, I probably really want something I can understand without having to think too long about it, or too far out of the bag, either.

I can't natter about names without mentioning my Aunt Ethel. She married my Uncle Pearl. Huckabone. You heard me.

Bored of the Flies

2011-02-22T09:27:00.004-05:00

On November 22, 2010, I had a plague of flies for a day. The kittens, at seven months, spent most of the day chasing the fat buzzing buggers from room to room. There were dozens of flying demons outside, too. I don't know what caused this event. I didn't see or smell any rotting creatures or compost. The flies mostly swarmed around the front of the house, which made coming and going a creepy event. At one point, several of them got between the screen and the window in my front door. I used a housewarming gift from our practical Flahoos – a fly swatter – to mash them while they were trapped.

Well, as you can see in this Glamour Shot, they're still trapped. It's true that the ensuing months have caused a certain shrinking of the mini-monsters, but their spirtless presence is starting to bore me. I'm no longer interested, in a vaguely scientific way, in their slow transition to dust. If I could figure out how the window works, I'd push them out.

I recently noticed that if I can't figure something out quickly – as in instantaneously – I simply won't do it. I give up. I have zero tenacity. Some unloving pseudo-friend sent an email to her "intelligent" friends, according to the Subject Line. What do these words have in common? asked the chirky email. Listed were banana, dresser, grammar, potato, and others. And no, the email cautioned, it's not that they have letter-doubles.

Normally, I would just click my tongue and frown, cursing the person who sent such nonsense. However, that email also suggested that I Give it another try and Look at each word carefully. I can't imagine what possessed me, but I actually followed the directions. I tried. And I figured it out, and now the friend who sent it is one of my very best friends.

So I suppose it's possible that I'll be able to decipher that window someday and scoop out those dusty cadavers.

Speaking of things that expire, did you know that Dawn dishwashing liquid expires? It does, at least if you're using it with the other secret ingredients that make up the bubble solution used by Sonny Fenwick for his Bubble Truck (www.bubbletruck.com). The Dawn has to be a particular kind of Dawn, which I used for a while. Last night, I brought home my favorite kind, the stuff that smells like lavender, so I can think I'm at a tony spa while I wash the dishes (uh huh). Because my dad's spirit lives on, I tipped the remains of the blue Dawn into the fresh purple Dawn and behold: blue is heavier than purple.

Speaking of colors, here's a yellow flower. I don't know what kind it is, but there's another plant like it nearby, and one about three feet tall twenty feet away. They'll produce a single yellow bloom, one at a time, at the very top. Thanks!

Speaking of flowers, here's a rather scraggly pot of hyacinths I bought at Publix the other day. I prefer purple, but those were really sad. This white one apparently is spending all its energy on fragrance, which creates throat-quivering nostalgia in me. Give it a day or two and that aroma will fill my whole house ... except that the weather is so fine that all the windows and half the doors are open, so the scent will whoosh outside with gentle spring gusts.

I don't know if spring has sprung here on the West Coast of Florida. I realized for the first time this year that I don't know what the defining symptom is, for spring. At home, in Western New York, it was when the snow stopped, not that we'd know exactly when that was. I don't know what it is here. When we turn on the air conditioning? (Please say no!) When there's no threat of another thirty-degree night?

What if the appearance of disembodied squirrel tails is a sign of spring? Nancy said she'd heard that hawks will snatch up a squirrel with their claws and then use their mighty beaks to snip off the tail, since there's no real nutrition in it. That would explain what happened here. There were no other squirrel bits about and none of the seven felines were wearing rodent-eating grins.

And really, I don't know if hawks have mighty beaks, but I do know if that if I'm referring to wingéd predators, mighty's got to be in there somewhere.

I'll show more pictures of Jean's car on my Car'toos blog (which you can reach from this page, I think, but don't rush over there; I probably won't have time today) , but for now, let's just all enjoy this one.

First I used black and blue paint on her silver car, which she asked for. I delivered it to her. She was unhappy with it. We weren't able to get together to talk about making her happy for more than a month, a month during which I steamed and stewed and thrashed – and lost confidence. Not everyone has fainted with pleasure when they take delivery of a car I've painted, but most of them really really like 'em. I engaged in all varieties of self-doubt and -castigation, but when Jean and I finally got together, she told me her solution: paint over the black and blue, lightly, with pink.

Wha–? That didn't sound right. But I did it and it actually looks very cool and Jean is now ecstatic. I learn something with every car, but this lesson was more abstract than just a technique or product. Jean offered me more money, since she agreed that I had given her what she asked for initially. But when I saw how happy she was with the car, I refused the extra money. I realized that while I won't work for free, I really value the person's satisfaction. I want you to like your car, not just put up with it, like I'm putting up with screened-in flies.

Thank you, Mr. Whitman

2011-02-14T13:23:00.010-05:00

A nineteen-year-old Quaker, Stephen F. Whitman, opened a confectionery shop (if not shoppe) in Philadelphia in 1842. Because of that, here I am, eating the first bon bon from my small Whitman's Sampler. I thought it was a chocolate-covered cherry. I don't like them, so I wanted to get it over with. It turned out to be filled with coconut, though. Yay!

It's Valentine's Day. Have you noticed? Sixty and single, it seems I've sort of forgotten about this day. I know there was a time, when I was young and juicy, when I really craved a Hallmark Valentine's Day. I wanted a boyfriend who was sophisticated enough – and rich enough – to give me the works: flowers, candy, a card so extravagant it would embarrass us all with its velvet and ribbons and embossed hearts and that one thin translucent sheet that protected those reckless, swirling words of eternal devotion.

Turns out those things don't require sophistication, although they do require more cash than perhaps ought to be spent. When I was thirty-five, I had such a boyfriend. A gold necklace may even have been involved. Whatever, it didn't thrill me like I thought it would, and I blame that on my father.

Dad, despite his solid Italian blood, didn't show any emotion besides rage until he was a grandpa, so giving his wife and kids a decent Valentine's Day involved collusive subterfuge. Dinner was usually eaten as fast as possible so we kids could get on with our lives – Scouts or Capture the Flag or skating (ice and otherwise) or reading or homework or whatever the season and various ages suggested. But on February 14, we didn't leave the table. We sat and waited for Dad to finish his meal. Finally, with a sheepish grin and a poorly executed stretch and yawn, he'd stand up. "I'm tired," he'd say. "I guess I'll go up for a nap."

And up he'd go, up our creaking stairs to his bedroom where we'd hear paper rattling. He'd clump back down the stairs and put the big flat brown paper bag next to his dinner plate. "Oh," he'd say, as innocent as bad acting would allow, "I forgot these!" And then he'd disappear up the stairs again.

Mom would open the bag and behold: five small Whitman's Samplers very much like the one next to my keyboard right now, complete with its bit-mapped rose. Oh wait. That's not bit-mapped. That's supposed to look like needlepoint, like a, um, sampler. Yes. There would be five small Whitman's Samplers and one big one for Mom. It's only this year that I paused to wonder if she shared hers with Dad, even though I've thought about Dad's Valentine's Day tradition for years.

I've wondered, for instance, how long he stayed upstairs after he dropped off the hearts. And I wonder what he felt when the year came when he only needed four small hearts because his firstborn – a son! – was off at college. I also wonder if he carried that tradition all the way through to his fifth child – a son! – who was (and remains) four years younger than the fourth child – a son!

Well, however that tradition started or ended, I know that it lives on with me. Even though I much prefer chocolate-covered orange peels from Schakolad (or lemon peels or ginger, if anyone's taking notes), I still want a Whitman's Sampler at Valentine's Day. And in the years when I want to share the love, that's what I give, too. But I always make sure Dad's third child – a girl! – gets one of her very own.

Happy Anniversary!

2011-01-31T09:14:00.005-05:00

There's the best man, Dad's cousin Frank Butera,
then Dad (Mickele Edward Nicolazzo),
then Mom (Bertha Erma Huckabone – you heard me!),
and her maid of honor, her sister Gladys Huckabone.
The bridal party is standing left to right.

My parents would have celebrated sixty-three years of marriage today, had death not parted them fourteen years ago, when Dad died and Mom's Alzheimer's became screamingly apparent.

But let's pretend that Mom had remained her normal lively self for those last two years. Would she have celebrated the anniversary without her husband? I guess not. She surely would have noted the day. I still think it's awkward to talk about dead people. To say I loved my mother seems wrong, and yet to love someone who doesn't exist – at least not on this side of the Veil – seems if not wrong, at least ... ineffective.

Well, to say my parents would have celebrated is strange, too, but on their birthdays, I always count it up. Wow, I'll think, Dad would have been eighty-nine today. Yeah, well, he died at age seventy-four. Surely when I'm seventy-four, I won't think, Wow. Dad would have been a hundred and two today. Or will I?

But back to 1948.

Mom was a Baptist and Dad was a Roman Catholic, so they had to get married in a Catholic church, but she couldn't approach the altar. They were married somewhere else. The priest's office? A side chapel? A broom closet? I don't know. I'm pretty sure they had to sign a paper – or maybe it was only she – swearing to raise any kids Catholic. I wonder if she worried over that or just signed the damned thing. Seeing that my brother Jim was a premature baby, as many were in those pre-Pill days, I'm guessing she signed as quickly as possible.

And now, apparently, she's rotting in Hell, because while the first three of five children were baptized Catholic, none of them was raised that way. By the time my parents left this vale of tears, my Dad was a Bible-beating fundamentalist of some sort, a Brand X, or even Y, of Protestantism, and Mom was simply a smiling, compassionate agnostic.

But what an odd phrase is "rotting in Hell." The whole point of the afterlife is that we won't, after all, rot. What good is damning someone to Hell – or to Heaven, for that matter – if they're going to rot anyhow? Their punishment – or sparkly reward – will be too short, and I'm pretty sure we're promised ETERNITY here, whether it's a teeth-gnashing sort of eternity, or a harp-playing, sweetly swaying one.

Well, that settles that, then: Mom's not rotting in Hell. Whew.

A Bean-Counter

2011-01-29T19:49:00.003-05:00

Since it's been so cold, soup sounded like a fabulous supper, so I bought a 15-bean soup kit. It came with beans, a list of ingredients I'd have to add myself, and a tiny packet of Ham Flavor. That was absolutely the only type on the little label, and of course I accidentally dropped the thing into the boiling water.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

First off, I needed a ham hock. I sincerely don't know what that is. I asked a woman near me at Publix and she said she thought they'd be with the smoked meats. Oh. I was standing in pork (as it were). Right. So I moved over to the smoked meats department and there was a worker. I asked him about ham hocks and, busy and frazzled though he was, he pointed to the right place. Alas, I couldn't imagine cooking such things and then ... eating them. Whatever they are – pig ankles? – they looked like rolled-down socks of fat. With skin.

Well, the soup kit said I could used smoked sausage, too, so I opted for that, for turkey sausage, in fact, because I still feel separate from birds, although I can already imagine the end of that.

A childhood fantasy was to marry a farmer and collect eggs each morning, because being a farmer was no more an option than not marrying at all. I'd be wearing a bonnet with ruffled edges and the eggs would be gathered in a wicker basket with a big curved handle. Despite this, and despite the fact that I think chickens, especially dark ones like Rhode Island Reds,* are the most gorgeous birds on earth, I'm terrified of chickens and, in fact, of all birds. I don't know if I saw Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds at precisely the wrong moment in my developing adolescent psyche or if I had a horrid experience with birds so traumatic that I've blocked it out, but I think birds are scary.

About fifteen years ago, though, I went to the Arbor Arts Festival at Boyd Hill Nature Park, and there was a petting zoo. There were a couple show chickens and some show ducks. You heard me: show chickens, show ducks. I wanted to hold a chicken, but I was afraid to. A sensitive teenage boy, the curator of this zoo, soothed and cooed me into accepting a huge hen into my arms – and possibly my heart. I discovered an amazing thing: chickens are warm like us, like us mammals. I always thought they'd be cold, like snakes. Even though I've owned snakes and have felt great affection for them, it must be said: snakes are cold, cold like aliens.

Still, as far as food is concerned, I can feel bad about eating pigs (even as I love their meat), so I think and fear the time is coming when I'll quit eating them altogether (much to the joy of Nonie's moms). But so far, even with that Arbor Arts experience, fowl remain guilt-free eating for me. Hence, the turkey sausage.

I went home with the soup kit, the sausage, the onion, and the canned tomatoes. I measured out the water and put it on the stove. I almost dumped the beans in when I realized that I didn't quite trust the label. Fifteen-bean soup. Really? Fifteen different varieties of bean? That sounds suspect, doesn't it? That's probably not fair, since I myself can only name a toddler's handful of beans: kidney, white kidney, navy, lentil, split pea, garbanzo. Well, maybe I wasn't so much suspicious as curious. In any case, I poked around in the pile of beans, separating the unique ones and, indeed, I found fifteen. When I read the label, I saw that the manufacturer listed seventeen varieties and said that "at least" fifteen of them were used. Huh.

The soup was and remains delicious, although next time I'll skip the packet of Ham Flavor. It doesn't make sense to mix all these healthy, authentic foods, and then to sprinkle them with ... "flavor."

This weather calls for baking, too, and so I baked some pumpkin-curry scones recently, with crystallized ginger. And then some banana-pecan muffins with a nice, crunchy cinnamon topping. Today I baked chocolate chip cookies but, though I eat them by a lumberjack's handful, I don't really like them. I never have. I'll give them to Mike if any are left by the time he shows up two hours from now.

I think baking is a way to feel productive without actually doing anything. It's also a way to recall my mother, who died in 1998, and whom I miss so much. And it's a fabulous way to sabotage my New Year's Weight-Loss Plan.

__________

*This is absolutely the only breed of chicken I know.

Yes! No! Er ... yes?

2011-01-15T13:17:00.000-05:00

I found some watches in the Signals catalog to give to Olga and me for Christmas. But gosh, the online comments about similar, cheaper watches were discouraging. It's impossible to reset the time. The battery only runs for a month. But the Customer Service Rep at Signals and I decided that the catalog's watches were more expensive and therefore higher quality. Also, I could always send them back. Also, they were made in Italy, the home of half my ancestors and much good design.

Well, Christmas came and went without the watches. I finally called. Signals had sent them, but they were probably languishing in a USPS warehouse. I was just about to ask for a credit, but Signals said it would send out another two promptly. It did. They arrived in clever little jars. Those Italians!

But you know what? I couldn't reset the time. The instructions – in more languages than I knew existed – said to "press" buttons on the back, but I pressed like crazy, with no result. I also poked but that began to seem dangerous, plus it remained useless.

I wrote to the manufacturer. A perky CSR wrote back, simply repeating the instructions from the card in the jar. She ended with, "Have a Thriving Thursday!" I'm not kidding. I wrote back and asked her to actually read my original email. She wrote back and told me to pull the watch out of the silicon (not silicone) strap, and send it to them. I wrote back and said no. She wrote back and said they're here to help, and to have a Whimsical Weekend. (Still not kidding.)

In the end, I'll return the jars of watches and Signals will refund everything, including the return shipping, so all is well. Still,
it's not like me to want something and then not want it and then want it again.

Or is it?

I signed up for St. Petersburg's amazing curb-side recycling pickup because ... well, because it was 2010, after all. They take all manner of office paper and junkmail and tag board, and any plastic at all if it's got a recycle number on it. When I lived in Gulfport, lo, these nine months ago, they didn't even pick up glass or any plastic except #1 and #2. So I should be happy, right?

Yes. But.

I had to have the bin out there by seven o'clock on Monday morning. I could do that right up until it got so cold. And if I put it out the night before, all my junkmail would fly away in the blustery winds we've been having. And, really, if I skip a week – because I really don't have that much stuff – I feel guilty because I'm pretty sure I'm the only recycler in a seven-block radius.

I got a notice from Waste Services of Florida, Inc., saying I owed $7.59. I had paid for a whole year, so what the heck? I called. It turned out that the year I paid for was 2011, but that I hadn't paid for October, November, or December of 2010. Well, that's just weird. The clerk said it appeared that no one had been told about that. So I did what any red-blooded American would do: I cancelled the service.

This painting was done by Angus Macaulay (http://www.angusmacaulaydesigns.com)
with my colors in mind. How wonderful! Cups by Meow Mix.

I've left my tub out there in the cold sand for two weeks now, and no one has picked it up. My orange plastic cups from Meow Mix are multiplying, though. And really, it was pretty convenient to just toss it all into that bin. The handful of workers would race out of the truck and separate it themselves. That's easy. (For me.)

I checked my bank account and saw that the money hadn't been refunded yet, so I called and – yes: I reinstated my service. I asked specifically if they'd throw rocks at my windows if I skipped a week and was assured they would not. Yay.

Have you ever swept a floor with a broom when there are kittens in the house? If you have, you know exactly how pointless that is. The kits think it's a new game. They love the scritching noise. They love the motion. They love jumping into the pile of cat hair and – let it be said now – Barbara hair and litter trackings and kibble crumbs that you've swept together. They roll in it like it's catnip, like they're six-year-olds in a Northern autumn pile
of leaves.

I told a friend about the wisps of cat hair that float up to the ceiling like elfin clouds in a miniature heaven when I'm sweeping. She said I should vacuum my wooden floors. Oh. But I gave my vacuum cleaner to Mike when I moved here. And the cats hate that noise. And I'd knock all manner of things down with the cord. So how about a carpet sweeper? Yes! That's the solution!
It's non-electric, just like my beloved clothes line, and will do
the trick.

I almost bought one from the Vermont Country Store catalog because I'm an idiot. Let me stop right here and say that I am all about shopping locally. I mean it. I don't even quite approve of cantaloupe right now. It's January. Even Florida doesn't have cantaloupe. It's just not right. I think you should buy your stuff from local artists (ahem) or at least local merchants. It's getting to be a habit to stop by the Gulfport Hardware Store before I check out to Home Depot.

Except that, well, gosh, online shopping is so much fun, isn't it? You're sitting there in your at-home clothes (or not). It could be six a.m. or midnight. Who cares? It's so very available, you know? And it's not like I'm using any gasoline, right?

So I found the model of carpet sweeper I wanted. Then I
checked other online sources and found that Lowe's has one for twenty bucks cheaper and no shipping if I pick it up. Please. This was clearly divine intervention from Saint Martha, patron saint
of maids.

It was ready for pickup on the twelfth, but when I showed up on the thirteenth, it wasn't there. New paperwork said it would be there on the nineteenth, but it showed up the next day. And guess what?

Yeah, it really doesn't clean that well. There are settings for

long pile
short pile
carpet tile
floor

And here's where this blog takes a sharp corner. Of course I was thinking about returning the inefficient carpet sweeper, but I'm a nut for details, and so I checked the sweeper before telling you about the settings. I wanted to get the words exact. I never would have remembered "carpet tile" on my own. I never heard of such a thing. It turns out the sweeper was set to short pile instead of floor. When I corrected that, it swept nicely. Yay! A return, a change of mind, a dithering averted!

Now, according to Levine and Jawer, this nation's premier astrologers, "Irrepressible Mars prances into [my] 5th House of Fun and Games to lighten [my] heart and brighten [my] spirit," on this very day. Therefore, I'll scrape around for an appropriate picture (or three) for this blog, and then go forth with a light heart and bright spirit. Whew! I'm really ready for some of that!

Here's a picture of Henry just because he's so cute.
With his sleeves rolled up he looks like a professor inside and
a git-r-done kind of man outside.

1/1/11

2010-12-27T09:46:00.004-05:00

In high school, I used to write down New Year's Resolutions. I'm pretty sure each list included LOSE WEIGHT!!! because I was, after all, a girl in the United States. Now I'd write the same thing, but it would be upper and lower case without exclamation points or boldface, and without the hope I had in 1966. I guess in that sense, I haven't lost my girlish figure after all: It's still completely unacceptable.

For years, I just ignored the whole Resolution thing. After all, I'd never (ever) followed through with a single one of them. Why keep kidding myself? But then I fell in with a small clutch of people who were heavily into intentions. "Hey! Are you going to the museum tomorrow?" "That is my intention." You couldn't get a yes or a no out of these people. I was so focused on their complete lack of a straight answer that I never did understand what their intent(!) was. Were they demonstrating their lack of control in Life? Were they avoiding disappointing others, like Dad, who'd only answer "Maybe" to the clamor to go four whole miles to Silver Lake to swim? Were they eschewing responsibility? I never asked that. I just listened to their intentions and simmered in my own slight indignation.

And that led me to, for the last fifteen years or so, making New Year's Vague Intentions. Why torture myself? Why not face reality? Why not just admit that I'm not going to lose the weight (or exercise or learn to play piano or stop having clutter), but that I am going to have the vague intention to do all that? This way, I'd be a Winner all year long! No one's disappointed. There's no pressure. Just relax. Ahhh.

But a couple weeks ago, I burst into flames and engaged in really bad behavior. I decided that I'd had enough self-indulgence on all levels (except maybe for that weekly massage) and that it was time to Straighten Up. Even my horoscope was on my Higher Self's side. Levine & Jawer say, for the end of the year for Libra:

But insistent Mars's square to parental Saturn in your 1st House of Self on December 29 says enough is enough. No matter how old you are, it's time to grow up. Stop dancing, turn off the music, and get serious about the commitments you're making.

So this year, I'm re-instituting my New Year's Resolutions. No more dithering for me! No siree, Bob! And none of this general 6. Be kind to people stuff, either. I want specifics here. There will be the short form (1. Lose weight) followed by a concise plan of action, because if you fail to plan, you plan to fail. I'm not letting me off the hook, no matter what.

Nor am I listing my Resolutions for you. The proof will be in the pudding, which is an adage that has always baffled me, yet I continue to be unwilling to look it up. Even now, with the Internet at my literal finger tips, I will not research it. If an instructive phrase is so obscure as to be unintelligible, then it's time to ease it out of the language.

On the other hand, it's occasionally fun to just invent what it might mean. Maybe it's from the times of ancient printers, when ink was still something of a mystery. Maybe someone accidentally dropped the proof – for an early blog, for instance – into the Christmas pudding (so it would have been a Yule blog), and while it colored the food a bit, the words remained intact on the goat skin, proving that the ink was superior, and so it's a phrase to be used when we really want to say, well ... something like, I don't know – Time will tell? Just you wait and see? We won't know till we know?

And look at today's numerical date. You don't have to be a fan of the binary to appreciate that.

Bloopers

2010-11-08T07:49:00.005-05:00

I know we're not supposed to air our dirty laundry, but the truth is, this is my clean laundry. I hung up this colorful display in the evening just before it finally rained after sixty-seven days of fasting. Therefore, this Tibetan prayer flag of panties stayed up for another two days before it dried.

In another clothing-related blooper, I went to Tampa International Airport on Thursday to pick up Kathy. The timing was right for me to stop in at the inaugural exhibit at the new gallery space in the walkway between the terminal and the Marriott Hotel. It's Owen Pach and his "Fiery Passion, The Beauty of Elements." It was impressive. Make a point to check it out next time you're in the airport. http://www.OwenPachGlass.com

As I approached the exhibit, Victoria Wenner, Owen's sweetheart, called out, "Barbara Nicolazzo! I have a tee shirt with your name on it!" Ah! I had painted an iguana which was auctioned off, along with many others, to raise money for Lizard Live, a charity Victoria supports. Apparently the organization had listed the names of the donating artists on the back of the shirts. How kind!

Later, when I ran into Owen, he too said there was a shirt for me. "And it's got my name on it!" I exclaimed. He frowned and tipped his head and wasn't sure. It was hours later, I swear, before I realized that Victoria was simply using an idiom in English, my mother language, as in, "This dunce cap has your name on it, Barbara!"

Plus, I locked my keys in the car. That's not really so awful. I mean, the engine wasn't running and it wasn't raining. But it was the second time in as many weeks. It had taken forty-five minutes to jimmy the first time, but the locksmith – the same one, of course – is no fool. It only took fifteen minutes this time.

The thing is, I had made a copy of my key after the first incident. I just hadn't gotten around to taking it off my keyring and putting it somewhere where it would be useful in the extremely likely event that I'd do it again.

And then there was dinner last night, the first Sunday in November. It was a lazy day, the first day in a long time with no demands on me except a long nap with the kittens, and then a great dinner at seven o'clock cooked by Kathy and Richard – spinach pies and leek risotto, respectively – followed by pumpkin pie by Ruth! Yay! I was doing dishes when I glanced at the clock and saw I was going to be late if I didn't hustle. I threw the Meow Mix containers on the floor, letting the cats pine for opposable thumbs while I raced to get dressed. I flew over to the house and got there two minutes before seven.

Except that it was actually two minutes before six because, of course, we FALL BACK the first Sunday in November. Indeed, I had FALLEN BACK with my alarm clock, my car clock, and the microwave clock. I still can't figure out my stove's clock, but I try not to look at that appliance anyhow. My computer and cellphone are resourceful: they do it themselves. That only leaves the kitchen clock and that, of course, was where I looked. There's a Murphy's Law in here somewhere.

Face Value

2010-10-25T09:20:00.002-04:00

"Not on my face, Henry! Not on my face!"

That's what I was yelling this morning at two-thirty. I'm glad that I live in a house now and not in a duplex whose wall I shared (for sixteen years) with various people. I suppose what my erstwhile neighbors would have thought of my outburst would have depended on their own experience in life, coupled with what they could glean of my life, living, as we did, bedroom-by-jowl, but without being friends.

I knew, for instance, that Sharon arose at six each day and went through a ritual with her two very large dogs. First they chased a ball. Then they leapt into the air. Then they wrestled over a toy. Sharon would clap her hands again, and it would be breakfast time. Face to face, though, she and I barely spoke. She silently disapproved of my rolling-in-the-dirt Benji and the sprawling, wandering Sunny. She'd stand at the corner of the building, her giant canines at her side, waiting for us to tumble and bumble past before they began their orderly, educational walk.

Wes, my first and favorite neighbor, was never home.

Nadia herself was quiet, but had a short-term boyfriend who crowed like a rooster each morning. He was very good at it, and I was out of work by then, so I didn't mind the disruption at all. In fact, I liked it. It's an exuberant start to the day.

In the house next door was a couple about my age with a grown daughter who had some kind of mental illness. She'd be fine for months and months, but then there'd be a sort of breakdown and she'd get out the lawnmower. She'd mow and mow and mow, furiously churning the dust – this is Florida, remember – first muttering to herself, and then yelling to herself, and then finally sobbing. I was always so impressed that they'd discovered mowing as a way for her to release her steam.

One time I went out to my car and found the father and daughter tinkering with the mower. She was still hiccuping with sobs, her mascara mixing with dirt, but her dad and I chatted about the weather as if an hysterical nutball of a daughter were the norm – which it was, after all.

Of course, I provided some entertainment, if not consternation, for my neighbors, too, but it seems to me that people who live in groups – that is, us – simply must pretend that they don't hear and see what they hear and see. That's part of being a good neighbor, like not using the chain saw too early, or taking packages inside when it's raining.

So I don't know if anyone heard me last night when I yelled at Henry. He's one of four six-month-old kittens. I remember vigorously wiping something off my face a couple of times, and then I woke up to find him stepping on my face. That's when I yelled. Three of the cats flew off the bed, but Henry stayed. He probably thinks he's showing me acceptance and tolerance, whereas I'm wondering if someone had dropped him on his head when he was little – and if not, why not?

Super Size: Me!

2010-10-21T07:49:00.002-04:00

At about seven this morning, I bagged up the garbage and brought it out to the Dumpster. I returned forty seconds later to find the trash container full of kittens. At first, Ruthie was just sitting in the bottom, but then Henry joined her, which tipped the thing over, and battle ensued. Jack joined the fray but Luca, ever the lady, simply watched.

Happily, they were distracted by breakfast, so I was able to right the container and put in a fresh liner. I have four boxes of Glad ForceFlex Medium Garbage Bags in my cupboard. Tall and Small are on every store's shelves, but Medium are hard to come by. Whenever I find them, I buy them. Let's dismiss Small as too small to do the job as a main garbage container in a kitchen, even for a single woman who doesn't cook. That leaves Tall, which is too big to fit under the sink. That leaves Medium, which is my size, but, as I said, difficult to find.

That means that people have their kitchen garbage out in the open? Or their countertops are taller than mine, and a Tall can fit under the sink? I really don't know. I just know that it's getting more and more difficult to stay Medium.

Look at this beautiful cup and saucer Kimberly gave me for a housewarming gift! I love it! I collect blue-and-white teacups, although I am not a serious collector. That is, I don't know jack about the cups. I just like them. Still, I noticed that this cup is especially large. I checked out the writing on the bottom. It was designed by Ralph Lauren (or a minion thereof). Ah, so it's modern. I think my next most modern piece is at least twenty-five years old, a blue-grey by Mikasa. Ralph's is eight ounces, while the standard teacup is only six. I have a couple that are five ounces, but beyond that, they move into the realm of the demi-tasse. Apparently in the teacup world, bigger isn't necessarily better, but it is newer.

The other day, Olga and I went down to North Port to Warm Mineral Springs (dot com). That's the catchy name of a warm mineral springs that maintains a steady eighty-seven degrees, and which Ponce de Leon mistook for the Fountain of Youth, because of its fifty-one chemicals and stinky nature, I guess. In any case, "warm" is misleading – at least in my world – but in the world of springs, it is warm. There are cold, warm, and hot springs, and their standards are different from mine. I, for instance, would have named the place Chilly Mineral Springs.

On the ride there, I put my twenty-ounce bottle of water into the cup-holder built into my 1990 Toyoto Corolla. It just barely fit. In fact, before the trip was over, I just put the bottle between the seats, and let it bobble around on the parking brake's handle. Twenty years ago, no one was driving with twenty-ounce cups.

I, too, am getting bigger. I hit a milestone the other day. I had the perfect over-medium eggs at the Kopper Kitchen. When I stood and looked down at the check, I saw instead a lovely glob of golden yoke on my shirt. As my party pictures showed, but which I had been able to ignore, I've become one of those middle-aged women whose, um, chest has broadened and sunken down onto her stomach, which has also grown, until her whole torso is just this, this wobbling barrel of doughy flesh. And that chest has become a sort of table for all manner of things, starting with, on that fateful day, egg yolk. Instead of the 36 C of my youth, I'm a 44 Long.

Curses!

2010-05-26T07:50:00.002-04:00

When I was a kid, I never even said damn it. That's not a surprise. There was almost no cussing in my house. It certainly wasn't on television (not that we had free access to that), and of course there was no YouTube or other cyber source to provide us with models.

Note that I switched from I to we. That happens when I think about my childhood. I imagine that when I was a kid, I felt more connected to others, more a part of a group – my four siblings and two parents – so that my experience always felt like a shared experience, even when it wasn't. I've also noticed that I easily say we "used to" do things. We used to play Capture the Flag at Chasteks in the dusk. We used to play Hide and Seek with the whole neighborhood. We used to go swimming at Silver Lake.

Well, I know we did those things, but I'm not convinced, now, that we did them often. I remember the games as having been played only when we were pretty small, and that they were played with big kids who, in reality, probably didn't let us play with them much at all.

Still, my sister and I used to have to share a pair of skates. I think we were brilliant (or was it Mom?) because instead of one girl skating with two skates half the time, we each had one skate all the time. We'd push and coast, push and coast, like a kid on a scooter, but not.

But back to swearing. Yes. That's what this blog is about. What did you think it was?

About once a year, my dad, who was a hothead, would roar, "Jesus Christ Almighty!" He sounded like the very God Whose name he was taking in vain. That evoked silence all round. Once he said, "Poop!" and we little kids giggled ourselves silly. Mom said damn several times a year, which is not bad for a working mother with five kids, I'd say.

Well, and the kudos don't really go to her. It was the times, I fear, and perhaps place. I never even read The F-Word until I was in my twenties, reading Vonnegut. I certainly hadn't heard it from anyone's mouth.

But the more I type, the more I think my family might have been freakish. Perhaps we were cleaner than others (or more repressed?), but the era certainly had something to do with it.

I've got a Friend on Facebook (hence the properly nouned "friend") whom I know to be a sweet, gentle young woman. She belongs to a group on Facebook named Pull Up Your F**king Pants You Look Like An Idiot. I was appalled when I saw that. I imagined her saying those words, which she would never do.

But of course, she merely joined the group; she didn't name it. A child named it, else there'd be some punctuation between Pants and You.

This morning, I read another Facebook entry that disturbed me. It's from a fourteen-year-old I know personally (unlike some Facebook Friends, I'm amazed to report), who's a well-behaved kid. He's handsome and bright and plays the French horn, for god's sake. (The actual instrument has been changed to protect his identity but not his innocence.) Here's what he wrote around midnight: "2 more goddam mother f**king days".

Well, even though it's incomplete, I'd like to have had a period at the end of the sentence. The number should have been spelled out: Two. If I thought "goddam" was truncated for the purpose of a slight bit of reverence or at least misdirection, that would be cool, but I think it was done out of ignorance. The really upsetting part, of course, is – how can he not know that "mother f**king" is one word?

In the end, I think we should legalize swear words. It seems that the UK has done it. Even chubby gray-haired ladies (ahem) holding cloth bags full of cabbages, standing under black umbrellas, say fooken. Ah, maybe that's what we should do. Let's curse with accents! I have long been a fan of shite.

I have a Colombian friend who liberally sprinkles his conversation with, er, fooken and motherfooken. I assume that on some level, he knows those are bad swear words, but I should think it's easy to swear in another language. It's like you're not quite guilty, since it's really not your language. I have a Polish friend who would never say pizza because it sounded too much like, um, female genitalia in Polish. Well now.

If there were no swearing – since it would all be acceptable – that would be one less thing to watch out for. We wouldn't have to think about who's hearing us (like our uncle's stupid friend who's always nosing around on Facebook!). No one would ever have to hear that ridiculous argument that people who swear a lot are simply showing off their lack of vocabulary. No. They're displaying the miracle of muscle memory, if you ask me, the amazing strength of habit.

I say let's swear with accents or in languages other than English, and get on with our lives. Che cazzo, y'know?

Waaaaah!

2010-05-14T11:20:00.005-04:00

Okay. I'm painting a car, but I'm also waiting for yet another air-conditioning man to show up and give yet another estimate, and I'd rather paint straight through than be interrupted, and I just tried to update my address with Office Depot which resulted in many curse words, so – I know! I'll write a blog!

There must be a god! Look! I just made a dash! This is seriously exciting, and I've been yanked out of my discontent like a, a ... oh, let's let a Southern Writer finish the simile. In any case, those who know me from working with me know what a complete thrill this is. NUM LOC on. Hold down ALT. Zero one five zero. Whoo hoo!

I remember changing my name on everything from my Social Security Card to my library card when I got married ... and then again when I got unmarried. It was difficult, but I was young (twenty-three) and technology hadn't even given us a vertical line in typesetting yet, so it wasn't so bad. These days, though, trying to change my address at not quite sixty, while blasting myself for procrastinating on painting that car, and suffering heartily and loudly at a lack of air conditioning, it's a lot harder.

This last episode – the Office Depot one – was made extra annoying because there was a slight delay on their phone, so while the beleaguered Customer Service Rep was waiting for me to tell her how I was today, and while I was debating whether to channel my mother and simply say, "Fine, thank you," or channel my own damned self and say, "What difference does it make?" she thought I hadn't heard, and so repeated the offensive question.

Seriously. Can't we just cut to the chase? Can't we just conduct business? I'd like to hear, "How can I help you?" I can't even bear it when s/he says, "How may I assist you?" so imagine my burst-into-flamesedness when s/he says, "How may I make your day even better and more productive with our fine Office Depot products?" By cutting your tongue out, sweetie.

And have you noticed that Have a nice day in the stores is being replaced with Have a nice rest of the day? Ah. I guess they didn't catch me early enough to have a whole nice day, so I'll just have to settle for the rest of the day. I've even heard Have a nice rest of the week. What? Why? Jesus.

Ms. Home Depot also used my name for each and every question and comment. Okay. I know when I'm in love, there's nothing sweeter than his name, and I over-use it at every chance. But please. I'm just trying to change my address. Hearing my name twelve times in a two-minute conversation is just too much, no matter how much she and, by extension, Office Depot love me.

"Okay, Barbara, I just need you to verify your original address, okay, Barbara?"

Well, it's not okay. See, I actually can't verify my address. She has to verify my address. I can confirm it if she'll first announce it. I want her to say, "I'll need to verify your address. What is it?" I think this has to do with transitive and intransitive verbs, but I don't know for sure. Perhaps it only has to do with personality disorders.

In any case, when she ended our oddly successful call with the waitress-like question, "Is that all for you today, Barbara, or is there something else I can assist you with, Barbara?" I paused – to let that delay in the phone take place – and said, "Yes. No." We both hung up.

And that's another thing. With cell phones and even cordless phones, you can't slam a phone anymore. How frustrating! Hanging up on someone is no louder or rage-filled than someone gently touching the OFF button after murmuring sweet nothings to his/her girl/boyfriend. This is no way to live! I can't even slam a door anymore. Dave installed a storm door which eases shut and neatly ticks into the closed position.

Before you make Facebookesque comments about how you haven't even turned on your air-conditioning yet (and you know who you are), let me refer you to the accompanying photograph. See the ceiling fan whirling its little heart out? See the open window and the swing outside? See the other open window on the west? No. You don't. But it is open, creating a nice cross-breeze. And it's a windy day with an overcast sky, so the heat really isn't bugging me. It's kind of like you really don't have to use the bathroom until you're on the highway.

Let's go back to that remark about Southern Writers. I know Liz, Gale, and Rhett have just perked up their eyes. What I don't get is why there is a genre called Southern. Joyce Carol Oates often writes about Western and Central New York, but I don't think there's a genre called Western New York Writing, or even Rural Writing or Midwest Writing or Northern Writing. So why the Southern?

I can't quite believe it has to do with slavery, only because I've read Southern Novels that aren't about slavery. Can it possibly have to do with racism? Is that it – even though there's surely racism in all fifty states and our territories? James Baldwin is with me on this.

I sort of thought it might have to do with colorful similes, which is why I called for help in that area. I generally think catfish and hound dogs have to be involved. That dash yanked me out of my discontent like a catfish snatching a June bug out the air! But maybe I'm thinking of Mountain Folk?

In Pat Conroy's latest book, a really bad book which I couldn't even finish, he had sentences like, "Being a good Southern boy, I wore a tie to church." Boys in Chicago don't wear ties to church?

Don't make me Google this!

Gulfport! Magazine

2010-04-17T08:54:00.009-04:00

You have to look closely to see what's really going on here. Nero's trying to, um, pet the nice snake which is disguised as a bush branch in the upper left of this photo. See her head? I tried to think about her neck, but that's impossible.

I first came upon the dark duo with her coiled in a big enough circle to support herself in the strike position while she opened her mouth as w-i-d-e as it would go. Nero was lounging not a foot away, occasionally glancing at her, but mostly acting bored. Just as her open-wide stance is a strategy for survival, so is his ennui. I saw her strike out a couple of times, but either she was just trying to make him blink or her neck was too short. He didn't even flinch.

Later I discovered them around the corner, apparently trying to build a tree house together, as suggested in this photo. In the end (so far), I think she slid under the door of a shed out back, because I found him there, sitting calmly, waiting.

He didn't come home with snake on his breath, so I assume their friendship continues.

What's this got to do with Gulfport! Magazine, you ask. Nothing, say I. But I do urge you to go down to the Casino today at 4:30 to be on the cover of the inaugural issue, unless you're an artist, in which case you should go at 5. I think the camera will be clicking pretty much as scheduled, so be prompt. Go to www.GulfportMagazine.com for more information but, really, isn't this enough information right here? Of course it is.

I'm going to bring my AutoCling to St. Pete Beach's Corey Avenue Sunday Market from 9 to 2 tomorrow. Come out and buy some CarBling. Here are some awful shots of the newest Mo'bling. Yep. I can't settle on a name, but remember there was a whole blog about my [not] naming stuff? It's called, appropriately enough, Nameless, from June 29, 2008. Go read it on your own, okay? I've got to order new glasses. They'll at least help me see things if not name things.

And, really, what's your opinion about "Dinky Manor"? Should I keep the name of the house that Vicky named when she owned it -- and for which her parents made a sign -- or should I change it, and if so, to what? Here's a picture of the kitchen. New cabinets, door, and floor! It's neither a before nor an after picture. It's a during picture, which is the worst.

Change of Address

2010-04-06T11:48:00.003-04:00

I've lived at this address here in Gulfport for sixteen years as of July 1, but I'll be moving out by May 1. That means I'll be dealing with -- ominous fanfare, please, like when we're about the meet the monster for the very first time in a black-and-white movie but before the torch-wielding villagers have gathered, scarves wound tight against bats, pitchforks at the fore -- the Dreaded Customer Service Representative (DCSR).

Yep. I'll be on the phone a lot, after having pressed so many numbers on my cell phone that it thinks it's about to connect me to someplace in Indonesia, when in fact I'm just trying to reach a human being ... English ... existing account ... address change ... I said address change ... no, I don't want auto insurance .... EXISTING ACCOUNT! Of course, poking "5" several times really hard doesn't come across like CAPITAL LETTERS IN AN eMAIL, so there's really no satisfaction to be had.

At least this morning's call was just to renew my AAA membership. It should have been simple. I'd received written notice that the automatic renewal was going to take place shortly. Had all my information remained the same, you wouldn't be reading this blog. As it was, not only is my address changing soon, but the debit card used for payment has since swooned or otherwise expired, so I had to furnish that fresh information, too.

And I would have done it online except that the instructions in the letter were incorrect. There was no "My Account" at the top of the page (or the bottom or the center) of AAA.com. But I'm no idiot. I fumbled around till I found a Renew Your Membership page, but of course I couldn't remember if I'd ever been online with Triple A before (because I'm not twenty-one), and even if I could have remembered that, I promise you I wouldn't have remembered the password because ... well, see excuse above.

In addition, the topics listed online were so very sensitive to the merest tickle from my mouse that menus and sub-menus were bursting out on the page so fast and colorfully that they obliterated everything else ... except my desire to slap someone. Ooh ... how about a DCSR?

I used the 800 number and got a man with a Radio Voice. That's always pleasant. I like nice voices (I trust Berny is blushing now). I also prefer to talk to male DCSRs. This will probably come as a surprise to you, but sometimes I'm a tad hot-headed. This never bothers men. They just don't take me seriously. They ignore the crazy lady. Women, on the other hand, won't give an inch. They respond to every nuance in my tone, my word choice, my neck angle -- and they make me pay for it.

So I got the nice man with the Radio Voice and it really was quite pleasant. He did say "St. Pete," as opposed to "St. Petersburg," and I'm a nut about that, just because I have a baton up my derrière, but we straightened that out. Then he made the mistake of asking me if there was anything else he could do for me today.

Well, I told him about the bad instructions for renewing online. Yes. I actually thought he'd do something about that. Perhaps he felt personally attacked (despite my Radio Voice) because he suddenly started acting like one of those Talking Robots on phones. You know how they are. If you clear your throat, they interrupt themselves and say, pleasantly enough, "I'm sorry. I didn't hear that." Some -- the more relaxed Talking Robots, the ones in jeans -- will even say, "I'm sorry. I didn't catch that." You apologize, and the Robot repeats itself. If, like me, you end up cursing the day it was assembled, it again apologizes and repeats the options. It's sort of like being on the the phone with a friend when you both have bad cell phone reception. Just when you think she's done talking and so you say something, she says something, so you're both apologizing and saying What? Huh? Within thirty seconds of that, you're no longer friends. It's just too annoying.

So Radio Voice (RV) and I went on like this:

BN: I'm just saying the written instructions are wrong.

RV: Now, if you just go to where it says "My Account--"

BN: That's what I'm saying, there's --

RV: and choose--

BN: no "My Account."

RV: "Renewal Options" and--

BN (shrieking): LISTEN TO ME!

RV (stung): I'm just trying to help.

BN: There is no help. It's DONE. I called you instead of using the computer. I'm trying to make it better for the next--

RV: Oh no, ma'am, I can help you, or you can just go to AAA.com and--

BN: You HAVE to let me--

RV: add "South" to the--

BN: finish a sentence!

RV: address. Triple A South. See?

BN: But it doesn't SAY to do that!

RV: We can do it now! Together!

BN: We've ALREADY DONE IT! I'm just telling you--

RV: Just go to Triple AA south dot com and--

BN (weeping): the instructions are wrong.

The difference between male and female DCSRs is that the women hang up on me, whereas I hang up on the men.

Carp!

2010-03-30T13:24:00.008-04:00

I wish the title were something inspiring like carpe diem! which we all know from Dead Poets Society. Or even Carpy Derby, a fish festival my Uncle Bob used to run near Binghamton [NY]. I'd be satisfied with Joe Carp, for that matter (as is Steven), but alas, the title is simply Carp! because I want to complain.

I was at the cat food store, since I'm not allowed around dog food for the nonce, and I was in line behind a young mother with a son. The kid wanted her attention, and kept pulling on her clothes. Her jeans were really tight, but he found a belt loop he could yank, to no avail. She was on a cell phone, which is why she didn't have enough extra attention to give to her son.

Keep in mind that I'm not a mother, so my comments should carry twice the weight of someone who actually knows what s/he's talking about.

But really, before cell phones, at least the mother could snap at the kid to shut. up. right. now. Or she could have threatened him with some privilege being withdrawn. Or, heck, she might even have listened to him and they could've spent five minutes looking at the rescue kitties. With her cell phone, though, she barely had enough energy or brain cells or whatever it takes to deal with whoever she was talking to and the clerk, who needed the Magic Cat Food Store Card and who wanted her to sign the receipt.

Yes. She could have been a pediatrician saving some child's life over the phone, but, again, today's title is Carp! so maybe you should just shut. up. right. now.

I was at Sears purchasing an emergency tire. I had just noticed that my right rear tire was bald as a pancake, so I ran out and got the tire. There's not much to do around a tire shop, even one near Tyrone Mall, so I took my book to the waiting room. A woman who'd removed her red cowboy boots was talking loudly (of course) on a cell phone (of course). The television was squealing and yammering from a high corner. I tried to turn off the TV, but I couldn't find the switch. I would have settled for a mute button, but that was lost to me, too. All I could do was find a channel with snow, which actually worked pretty well. When I turned around to find a seat, the woman glared at me and said, "I was watching that!"

"But you're on the phone!" I exclaimed, as you can see from my exclamation point.

"I can listen to the phone with my ears and watch the TV with my eyes," she said.

I held up my book and said, "You mean I have to listen to you and the TV?"

Apparently so.

The only way I could walk peacefully out the door -- after restoring the barefoot cowgirl's channel, of course -- was by recognizing that I was the freak in that scene. Most people really can watch TV and chat on the phone. I can't.

But I'll bet I could watch TV and carp on the phone ...

The Black Eye Quiz

2010-03-24T12:04:00.007-04:00

You know we all put our best face forward on these social networking sites, so when you start getting dizzy from looking at my black eye (and my frizzing gray hair and my sagging right eye and the snarl lines around my mouth), just glance over at the good photo that lives on this page before continuing to read this blog. Think of the good photo as the sherbet served at restaurants to cleanse your ocular palate, as it were ... not that either one of us has ever been to a restaurant that did that.

Are you still with me? Good. So how did I get that black eye?

Mike gave it to me because I want to paint the original tongue-in-groove real wood paneling at Dinky Manor, my new house. Michele did it because ditto. Gower did it because ditto, but he added, "It's your heritage!" It's not my heritage. It's not even his heritage. He's just a second-generation Floridian.

Let's move on to other options.

Mittens gave it to me because I continue to feed Nero, and to aid and abet and otherwise nurture his existence, which I also do for her, which obviously doesn't hold any weight.

Time Insulation gave me the ol' shiner because I couldn't schedule the crawl-space or attic insulation without first conferring with Dave. I'm pretty sure that my friend Steven schedules this sort of thing for a living. Now I know why he always wants to quit his job. First the AC guys have to go in, then the solar tube needs insertion, then the insulation can go in, but that's just for the attic. There are other reasons the crawl-space can't be insulated now, including, but not limited to, electrical work, plumbing work, and spiders with opposable thumbs.

Rhett because, although I have gathered new paint (Mediterranean Blue, Pool Blue, Passion, Kelly Green, and Apple Tart) and have procured another new mailbox, I still haven't started painting. The first two attempts were so disastrous, I had to scrape the paint off and start again.

As long as we're in that vein, perhaps James held me down while his young daughter Jamie kicked me in the eye because I said I'd rewrite their story -- and I will! I will! -- but I just haven't gotten into it yet.

Val and David smacked me because of my political views.

Dave did it because I haven't found the black-and-white floor tile I want in the kitchen.

Do you think Small Adventures Bookshop did it because I was too fast in my turnaround for new business cards? No. Of course not, but I had to add something positive here.

Okay. How about this? How about a can of dog food fell on my face?

Spring Ain't Sprung

2010-03-08T09:35:00.007-05:00

I'm dressed in what is by now my normal winter at-home ensemble: black leggings, black socks, black sandals (I'm sorry); a long-sleeved, ankle-length lavender nightgown, an item I go many years without wearing at all; and a black-cream-and-brown below-the-knee caftan. Today I added a yellow-and-orange sarong wound around my head and throat, believing that most of my heat leaves through the top of my head if not out my nostrils like a dragon. I feel like a pioneer woman -- from the Middle East.

My point is, it's still freepin' cold here on the west coast of Florida -- at least in my apartment. I have to say, though, that I'm getting used to it. I'm not comfortable with the cold itself, but I am starting to pull on all these clothes without complaining about it.

Okay. So Spring ain't sprung, the grass ain't riz, but guess just where my hy'cinth iz! Yes! Last year, I planted the hyacinth I'd bought at Publix. I stuck my face in the purple blooms and inhaled the scent of home. Oh my. I think our cold winter made it all possible. I am thrilled on a daily basis. I wonder if I'll dig them up -- there are three -- and bring them with me when I move (eleven blocks east and fifteen blocks north) or if I'll leave them for future renters. I suspect the former, selfish wench that I am.

My friend Fernando (from Colombia) says his mother tosses out tulips all the time because they're overrunning her St. Pete lawn. Really? I hadn't known that bulb plants could flourish without a hard freeze. Well, here I am with my concrete thumb, thinking I should know all about plants.

Fragrant flowers aren't the only new thing I've discovered this season. Look what a routine trip to Walgreens yielded:

Yikes, huh? I can't quite put my finger on what's so amazing about a chocolate cross or praying hands, but I am dumbfounded. It seems sacrilegious, and yet it is a nice melding of the secular and the Christian, and it's doing it with chocolate, so how bad can that be?

On the other hand, someone told me they'd bought chocolate Jesuses at a church once. Man, I'd love one of those! Talk about "This is the body"! Talk about becoming One!

And the last of the newness is MotoBling -- mobile bling. Michele still prefers Mo'bling because it suggests mobile bling and more bling, but since I'm a missionary for artcars, I must insist upon MotoBling. I want people to buy a handful of these painted magnetic-sheeting squares and put them on their cars in patterns. If they won't paint their cars, they can at least decorate them.

I scanned these Oms instead of taking actual photos. The colors aren't true, so you'll have to see them in the flesh this Saturday, March 13, at The Longhouse (www.longhouse.info) from 11 to 4, during the Pink Flamingo Home Tour. The Longhouse is not only celebrating five years of delivering great massages (among other things) but also the grand opening of Longhouse Yoga right next door. I'll pitch my canopy and sell tee shirts, mailboxes, and MotoBling. Much of the latter is geared toward yogites, but Om is good for everyone. There will be free organic and vegan food by King Natural Catering Company (727 631-1314). You can tour the facilities of both buildings, meet the teachers and practitioners of various disciplines, participate in yoga demonstrations, and enter free drawings for great gifts including but not limited to a full set of chakra-colored lotus MotoBling by the verbose local artist, moi.

Positively Republican

2010-03-03T08:10:00.002-05:00

That's a bumper sticker on a car that's often in the parking lot of my Walgreens. Someday, if I'm lucky, I'll bump into the driver.

I remember thinking kindly of Eisenhower, perhaps only because he was the first president I was aware of, and I believed, as a child, that presidents were right and good. Or heck, maybe Ike was right and good.

I assume I started viewing Republicans as absolute other around Nixon's time, but I wasn't always like that. I remember hanging Kennedy-Johnson posters with my best friend Linda Seth. She was Catholic: of course she was going to vote for Kennedy. Or would have if we weren't ten. The point is, I wasn't against Nixon. I was for Kennedy.

By the time W came to steal the election, my stomach hurt every time I heard his voice. I had breakfast the other day with a friend who couldn't stand his face. She covered her own eyes as she said it, just as I cover my ears when I say my bit. The repulsion is real. Perhaps it's just -- "just" -- that we've made him stand for everything that's stupid and violent, dangerous and arrogant in this country.

In this country? I almost changed that to "in the government," but these days, I see all Republicans as Bushites: stupid, violent, dangerous, arrogant. I can't stand that they're pro-life and pro-war. Just how does that work? I can't stand that they're big fat Christians, but killing is somehow okay. The bumper sticker WHO WOULD JESUS BOMB? doesn't even strike them as sarcasm. They stroke their beards and think about it. Hm ... who would Jesus bomb? Let's see, we got them A-rabs, of course, and maybe a buncha Jews ...

I got a mass email today with a really funny joke about a Muslim (of course) terrorist (of course). Our American forefathers, in this hilarious scenario, greet him at the Pearly Gates, although how such an evil person made it to heaven is not explained. These righteous Americans take turns committing violence upon him (yes! in heaven!), while quoting the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and their own historical speeches (although not the bit about religious freedom, of course). When the poor man is finally left alone, weeping, an angel appears. The Muslim cries bitterly that this was not what he was promised. "I told you there would be seventy-two Virginians waiting for you in heaven," quoth the angel. "What did you think I said?"

Heh.

I burst into flames when I read that, of course. Well, the email was from a woman in a group of friends from a conservative rural area. Does that also mean Christian? Probably. The kind that hate? Yeah. This whole God Is Love thing that Christians like to promote, based on their own holy text, is nonsense to most of them. Or maybe it's more like a selective love. God loves Christians and whites, for sure. I suppose He loves men more than women, brunettes over blondes, swords over ploughshares. I'm pretty sure He just doesn't have quite enough love for gays, though. Or liberals.

Enough.

I know I have at least one (1) Christian reader here who actually embodies that God Is Love thing. And I know there's at least one (1) Republican, based on that hopeful bumper sticker, who is probably merely conservative, not stupid, violent, dangerous, or arrogant. She (I'm so sure she's a she!) wouldn't refer to her president using a racial slur, even though she may have preferred McCain. So there's hope, right?

Mostly what I want is for me to quit being so sure that all Republicans are idiots. I can't stand it that I'm right there in the black-or-white, either-or world, but I am. I can subscribe to the theory that we're all multi-faceted and that we shouldn't be judged (if at all) by just one facet. What if you judged me only by my near-total inability to find my car in a parking lot? But if you believe in torture, then how we are in the world -- our orientation -- is so very different that I don't know if we could find things to talk about at lunch. If I know that you automatically think black people are less than white people, how can we even chat about books? Don't our politics reflect our core values? I don't know how I can enjoy your (non-religious, non-political) humor while also knowing that you think Palin is a fine example of American womanhood.

Deleting without reading emails from certain "friends" doesn't seem to be the answer. I'm already an ostrich in so many ways. Right now, I'm incapable of calm, political discussion, and I may always be so. I had to take a psychological test when I worked at The Widget Factory. It turned out that in all my reactions, I was never "neutral" or "moderate." I was either "passionate" or "extreme." That doesn't sound like a good dinner companion, does it?

The Big Game

2010-02-07T16:51:00.001-05:00

I worked fifteen years for America's Favorite Junkmail®, so I know that Joe's Bar & Grill down the street cannot advertise any "Superbowl" specials. Oh no. That would bring a swoop of attorneys* down on his beer-soaked wooden floors. Now, if he spends the huge dollars and arranges licensing with the Superbowl boys, then it's okay, but those people are few -- and wealthy beyond belief. Therefore, poor Joe has to advertise "The Big Game" specials.

Each year at the junkmail factory, we'd receive a memo reminding us not to type "Superbowl," even if the advertiser did. They'd have to fax us a copy of the license to get The S-Word on a coupon, and I personally never saw one.

For some reason, I thought that law applied only to print advertising, but this year I noticed a couple bars with "The Big Game" on their marquees, and then I went to Publix ... on the day before The Big Game, which I'll never do again.

The place was so packed, I very nearly had to park across the street. The store was full of signs about The Big Game. Drinks for The Big Game. Snacks for The Big Game. Meat, potatoes, side dishes, napkins, cakes, balloons, and feminine hygiene for The Big Game. Okay. Maybe not, but the whole store seemed to have its very existence rooted in the idea of The Big Game. The PA system was full of it, too. At checkout, I gloated to the clerk. "Hah! You can't say 'Superbowl,' but I can!" A department manager overheard me, and we smiled and rolled our eyes in insider sisterhood.

So here's my dream. I want everyone to be so paranoid about saying or typing or even thinking "Superbowl" that we as a nation end up calling it The Big Game. Hah. Let's see 'em copyright that!

_____________

*It's like a pride of lions or a pod of whales or -- closer -- a murder of crows.

Finding Beauty in Death

2010-01-25T15:27:00.004-05:00

I know few of you northerners had sympathy for us southerners during the cold weather at the beginning of this month, but perhaps you could dig deep and feel sorry for our plants. Most of them really suffered from the freeze, although I can't tell yet if the damage is permanent. René says this isn't the time for pruning. We're to leave everything alone and see what develops in the spring, which should be in another week or two.

In the meantime, look at how gorgeous these palms are. True, those copper fronds are probably dead, but what colors! In the sun, they're golden. In the shade, bronze. And the plant itself is still alive. I have a cactus of some sort, thanks to Vicki, that's now reddish, too, thanks to the temperature. Based on what happened to a frozen aloe a couple years ago, I think the cactus will resume its green, given time.

Now here's a picture of Silver who, despite the title, is not dead. He's an outdoor cat from down the street who occasionally takes an afternoon nap on my bed and usually shows up once a day for fish. I woke up one recent morning and opened the door to the porch. There was Silver in a chair and there -- stepping backward then -- was something slightly spongy underfoot. It was a three-legged squirrel, an apparent thank-you gift from Silver, for those soft naps and the daily Meow Mix.

The stump seemed pretty well healed, and there wasn't any blood anywhere; nor was there life. For all I know, Silver just happened upon a fresh corpse and decided to cash in on it. Well, why not?

I figured I'd pick it up like I pick up after Benji. I'd put my hand into a plastic bag, snatch up the poor squirrel, and then push the bag down off my forearm for a tidy package. Alas. I turn out to be much too squeamish for that. I couldn't stand the idea of feeling the squirrel's not yet rigid body with just the thinnest of plastic between us. I had to put on a big yellow Playtex glove and, holding four folded-over paper towels (that's eight layers now), lift the squirrel by the merest last hair on its tail, and lower it nose-first into the bag, trying very hard not to watch, yet wanting, at all costs, to have perfect aim.

Interestingly, I also had to make noises. I suppose it was just my version of whistling in the dark, but I had to make eewing and gakking sounds, and I had to gibber out loud. "Oh man. Silver. Jeeze. Thanks but really. Yuck. Ouch. What was that? Aw man."

Whenever I watch suspense movies, I picture myself in her -- always her -- shoes, and I know I could never keep my mouth shut while the demented stalker searches for me, muttering and panting while he tosses his knife from one scarred, rough hand to the other. I could tolerate about four seconds of hiding behind a post in a midnight parking garage before I'd burst into the open, hands in the air, shrieking, "Here I am! Here I am!"

I was going to take a picture of the dead squirrel but decided against it, even though it wasn't especially disturbing. (You're welcome, flahoos.) Instead, I'll include a picture of its initial resting place, a sort of funeral parlor. Or maybe this is the critter version of the Catholic Purgatory (assuming they've still held onto that little bit of dogma). Here's where the squirrel waits until it ascends into that Great Landfill in the Sky.

Two friends later told me I should've put the body in a public waste basket, like at Walgreens or by the Beach Bazaar downtown. That way, it would be taken away the very same day, instead of having to wait the whole weekend for Pickup Monday. So that's the Body Disposal Tip for today. You're welcome.

Parallelism

2010-01-18T13:34:00.002-05:00

This is America, after all, so we'll assume that Whitco Insurance doesn't actually sell people, even though that's what its sign says. I understand that the sign isn't big enough to hold the word "insurance," or that they may have run out of S's. I know Mister Whitco is trusting Gulfport's citizens to use that phenomenon of closure to add "insurance" in their minds as they drive by on the way to Walgreens to get some Moose Tracks.

I don't mind any of that, but I do mind it that Whitco also sells "car" insurance. I mind the inconsistency of language here. Why is one type of insurance for an inanimate object (a car) and the other for an animate object (a person who owns a home)? Why not "car insurance" and "house insurance"? Or "carowners insurance" and "homeowners [insurance]"?

Unbelievably, I'm not even complaining about "homeowners" being one word, or about the lack of a possessive apostrophe. No. I'm grousing about the disorderly usage.

I think it has to do with euphemisms. Really now, you don't buy a "home." You buy a "house." Only love and cinnamon -- not insurance -- make a house a home. But the whole real estate industry is about making the structures we live in sound better than they really are. Hence, "cozy" really means "cramped."

And speaking of synonyms, let raise our voices (in unison, of course) to wish Peter Mark Roget a happy birthday. Since he was born in 1779, he won't be smiling and blushing while we sing, but his famous Thesaurus, first published in 1852, has been in print ever since then, so perhaps his spirit is coloring with pride at such an accomplishment.

I think we should all celebrate this occasion -- observe, commemorate, keep, remember, solemnize, extol, honor, praise, eulogize, glorify, exalt, toast -- by using as many synonyms as possible, all day long, in everything we do. Repeat, reiterate, reassert. Another fun activity would be to ponder the fact that there's no synonym for synonym.

New Year's Vague Intentions

2009-12-31T09:58:00.003-05:00

I have never been a resolute person. Opinionated? Sure. Passionate? Absolutely. Resolute? Um, not really. Well, let's give Noah* a chance, shall we?

[Busy pause.]

No. He's way too complicated. Oh heck. As long as we've stopped, let's take care of that asterisk right now. All my life, I've been thinking that Daniel Webster wrote the first American dictionary, but it turns out that Noah, called The Father of American Scholarship and Education, became associated with dictionaries because of the modern Merriam-Webster dictionary that was first published in 1828 (but under a difference name).

Roget's Thesaurus will be quicker, and time is important. I mean, this very evening is New Year's Eve so this blog has to be disseminated to the masses by then or the consequences will be unthinkable.

Resolute: determined, purposeful, decisive, firm, steady, constant, fixed, unswerving, unyielding, flat-footed (goodness!), resolved, convinced, strong-willed, decided, steadfast, persevering, persistent, adamant.

The antonyms are more my style: weak, changeable, unsteady, faltering, purposeless, aimless.

You see, then, that New Year's Resolutions would be folly for me, guaranteed failures. That's not to say that I won't scramble up on any bandwagon that'll have me. I was perfectly sincere when I signed up at Curves. I absolutely believed I'd show up and work out three times a week, even if my foot hurt or I had a cold or I was too busy with Christmas preparations, even if I have to pay for it whether I show up or not.

Therefore, I have developed New Year's Vague Intentions, which work much better for me. It's not that I actually institute any changes, of course, but at least I feel better about the whole thing. I'm pretty sure that I let "Intentions" be plural just to march along nicely with "Resolutions," but the truth is that I only declare -- well, mutter, sotto voce -- one. I don't want to feel overwhelmed.

This year's Vague Intention is simply to Eat Breakfast. I want to eat a meal within an hour of rising. I've already been awake for three hours and I've still not eaten. I'm told that my body is, as we speak, preparing for me to wander in the wilderness -- surely aimlessly -- for weeks, so it's conserving energy for that event by slowing down my metabolism to the coma level. I'm helping by moving only from my chair to the couch, so, between us, we've probably burned about four calories so far.

So yeah: Breakfast. Soon.

I mean it.

See you next year!

Bad Combo

2009-12-26T18:26:00.006-05:00

Santa asked for a Wish List from me this year, and I was happy to comply. One of the best pleasures of the season is figuring out what to get my friends for gifts, but in the end, the known preference is probably better than the unknown.

For instance, when my buddy Mike, who shall remain nameless, asked about gifts for his sister, I asked if she'd read the Ladies' No. 1 Detective Agency series by Alexander McCall Smith. She had not, declared my friend. Excellent! There's the gift!

Alas, sister Liz had in fact read at least part of the series. Mike went to the bookstore after Christmas and returned the book. He came back out with a gift card, since Liz doesn't remember if she was at #3 or #4 in the series.

So you see that a list can be very important, if less creative and romantic.

It's like the naming of the streets in St. Petersburg. I was so disappointed when I moved here on July 13, 1985, to discover that, with a sprinkling of exceptions, the streets and avenues are simply named numbers. Here I was in an exotic land with palm trees (They're not trees! They're pithy plants!) and draw bridges and tourists and the most amazing storms and the biggest birds ... and the most mundane street names, er, numbers.

But when I discovered how easy navigation was, I was delighted. You could tell me you lived at 5711 21st Avenue South, and I'd actually know how to get there. I lived on East Main in Rochester, but if you didn't know where that was, you just didn't know, and let's not talk about Monroe Avenue or Genesee Street.

So yay for numbered street grids and yay for Wish Lists!

I wanted a day-by-day calendar of quotes from His Holiness, the Dalai Lama. There's one in the bathroom at The Longhouse (http://www.longhouse.info/) and I always feel better -- uplifted -- when I read it. The wisdom, peace, and compassion that seep into me might last all the way to my car, so imagine how nice I'd be if I had my own daily dose of holiness.

Well, Santa brought it to me. Yay, Santa! Alas, it's from a strange publisher, indeed, a publisher who clearly wanted to give his customers a little something in addition to sacred words of His Holiness, a publisher named Andrews McMeel Publishing, at 1130 Walnut Street, Kansas City, Missouri, 64106. This bonus is in the form of THE DAILY EXTRA on the back of each of three hundred and sixty-five pages. Oh wait. That can't be the right number, because Saturday and Sunday share a page. What the heck?

Okay. Let's skip the numbers and just get down to the problem. Here's the Dalai Lama for Friday, July 16: Live a good, honorable life. Then when you get older and think back, you'll be able to enjoy it a second time.

Fine. That's not so very very profound, but it's okay. But what ho! on the back of the page is THE DAILY EXTRA: Match the Artist with the Song.

Summer Breeze
Summer Wind
Summer in the City
Boys of Summer
Girls in Their Summer Clothes

Lovin' Spoonful
Bruce Springsteen
Seals and Crofts
Frank Sinatra
Don Henley

Still thinking about that honorable life, are you?

Here's October 6, with apologies to David Rogachefsky and Olga, born on that day: Mistakenly apprehending inherent existence in all phenomena serves as the root of all other delusions. And THE DAILY EXTRA: Cool But Disgusting Fact. "Humans shed about 600,000 particles of skin every hour -- about 1.5 pounds a year. By 70 years of age, an average person will have lost 105 pounds of skin."

Okay. Maybe thinking about rogue skin is easier than trying to understand what the heck was going on with that quote, but you get my point.

One more and I swear I'll quit. Says His Holiness: If you fulfill the value of a human lifetime through engaging in religious practice, then there is no point in worrying about death. THE DAILY EXTRA: Household Hint. "Old nylon stockings, cut lengthwise, make great ties for tomato plants. They won't cut into the stalk, are weather resistant, and are very strong."

Have mercy!

The Camels Are Lowing

2009-12-20T10:27:00.005-05:00

Today's long-awaited blog will be a mishmash of Christmas images and thoughts, starting with the traditional Mahon Camel Cookies. Saudi Arabia is dear to this family's collective heart (and the family is dear to mine), so I started making molasses camels for them. I had trouble this year. I used the wrong recipe (from The Joy of Cooking), and produced a dough as stiff as pasta dough, which Olga tells me is as tough as the dog biscuit dough I'll be making for Benji later on. I let Mike test-drive the camel, and it came up substandard for both taste and texture, so I herded the rest into the trash and went back to the tried and true Ms. Crocker. As you can imagine, the dough sometimes gets stuck in those hooves, so we have to pretend that some of the camels are sitting down.

These festive bells are made with The Joy of Cooking's Rich Sugar Cookie recipe, substituting 100% of the vanilla with 150% of maple extract. Yum. Meee. For the paint, I beat an egg yolk with another drop or two of the maple, some water, and some food coloring.

Moving out of the kitchen into the living room, behold this package from a dear friend in The Land of Several Lakes. It was a tight fit in my mailbox, so I had to yank it out, and when I did, it fell to the ground and was hoisted, sort of, on its own acorn. As you can see, that acorn is really in there. I'm counting it as a Christmas Miracle, right up there with the fact that I was able to use Photoshop to erase enough of my friend's address to render him or her anonymous.

Now let's go outside to the Fallen Santa. I raved enough about this last year, but nothing exceeds like excess. Really, in the daytime, it looks as if hordes of barbarians entered the village and slaughtered all the brightly dressed townspeople. Or maybe the Florida sun melted all of Santa's helpers and then the cooler evening hardened them again. And again. I mean, it's cheerful in its own way, but gee, the same could have been said about my grandmother's funeral procession (sixty miles from Kane to Oil City, PA, at 40mph, the teenagers and mid-twenties in the last cars, laughing and singing with the radio, carrying on as if death had no sting).

Down a couple more blocks, though, you'll see this holiday-heavy lawn. These people keep the decorations inflated -- and aloft! -- all day and all night.

I sure hope the Santa Pilot stays clear of all that Spanish moss, which, by the way, was used to stuff furniture, like sofas and mattresses, in the Olden Days. This is on René's street. Further up 49th (maybe around 5th Avenue North), but sadly without a photo here, is a house with five trees in row, each in a rainbow color (=). [The preceding is not a ridiculous emoticon of a surprised person with vertical eyes, which would be surprising, indeed, but the equal sign, indicating the desire for equality under the law for non-heterosexual people, too.]

And look at this inclusive setup, on 58th Street: a dreidel and a manger. I can't tell if the dreidel is looking curiously at the manger or if it's acting in a menacing fashion, but it doesn't matter: They're together.

In checking the spelling of dreidel, I found out that it's a game of chance involving pennies or, preferably, chocolate money. Really now. A religion featuring chocolate and money? How bad could that be?

Merry Christmas!

2009-11-29T09:29:00.004-05:00

Thanksgiving is not even cold in its grave. Leftovers are still in the refrigerator. It's not even December. Yet my first Christmas card was in my mailbox yesterday. It was from my sister-in-law ... er, that is, my brother and his wife. I know she loves most holidays, so her eagerness to get started on Christmas is no surprise. In truth, the fact that she's a recent, first-time grandmother is probably what prompted the early cards. There's a photo of the little angel inside the card.

I have no doubt that this woman would call herself a Christian (heck, she may be one for all I know), but I further doubt she celebrates the birth of Christ at Christmas. I imagine she celebrates her joy in her family, and the special feeling of excitement that Christmas brings -- and who cares if it's simply residual childhood hysteria or the mob rule of gift-buying or the thrill of making special foods and putting up special decorations, the thrill of tradition-building or tradition-confirmation or tradition-breaking? Who cares what the source is? Christmastime feels good.

I think Christmastime feels good to Jews in America and Muslims (if they've been here long enough to get swept up in it) and whatever else we've got here. Hindus? Taoists? Is that even a religion? Who knows? Who cares? Christmastime is fun and warm and fuzzy.

One year, I celebrated the Chinese New Year with a small Hispanic family in Bogotá, Colombia. I got swept up. I twirled around, clanging my bag of money over my head, screaming and yelling with the best of them, making enough noise to chase away the bad spirits, as directed. I backed up into the celebrants behind me, all of us yelling and tumbling and laughing, to make way for the giant dragon roaring and swaying its way through the crowd. I felt exultant as I walked through the mist of lavender water the Buddhist priests sprayed on me as I left the celebration.

Did I believe the Blessing of the Money ceremony actually blessed my money? Hmm ... Since it was Colombian money and I returned home the next day, I'd have to say no. Was I now a Buddhist because I bought a candle and paid for it to be lit and placed in a room with hundreds and hundreds of other burning candles? Uh, no, but I'm glad I got to feel the astonishing heat of all those candles. I felt my hair move in the heat waves from so many tiny flames. Talk about the power of numbers! Years and miles and cultures away, I walked into the Mint Room at the Celestial Seasonings Tea Company in Boulder, Colorado, and felt the stunning yet exhilarating opposite sensation: Cold so cold it felt like my eyes were breathing frosty air ... except it wasn't cold at all. It was merely minty -- minty twenty feet tall and fresh from a workout.

The point is, I just don't think the motive behind the good feelings matters so much. As you know if you've been paying attention (and you know who you are), I don't have a television and I don't read the papers or listen to the news on the radio. Even so, I know there's fuss about the Obama family having a "holiday" tree instead of a "Christmas" tree. I love it that the Christians who object don't seem to know that the word holiday means holy day. They're so ready to be riled.

A tree by any other name would smell as piney.

Let's take a moment and look up yule, okay? Oh wow. This is fun. The word is taken from the Old(e) English word for the pagan midwinter festival, but after the 12th century, it means, ah, Christmas.

I got all fussy a week ago about the term African American. I was told that it's the politically correct version. I'm pretty sure that the PC versions of anything are just to shut up the real rabble-rousers, the squeaky wheels. The rest of the population doesn't much give a hoot. I'm that way with the term woman. I'm not a chick -- and certainly not a chic, which I'm seeing way too much on Facebook -- or a girl or a gal. I'm a woman. Hear me screech. But I'm finally, after too many decades, getting it that woman is just the PC term and most of that population -- women (and you know who you are) -- either don't care or prefer the term girl. I'm making a leap and suggesting that African Americans are the same way. They're probably just fine with being black. I grew up with them being colored, then black, then Afro hyphen American, and now African American.

Of course, I want to say, in a pouty, defensive tone, "Well, then, why aren't I called an Italian-American?" but then my mother's side, the Huckabone side, leaps up and adds Irish and Swedish and god knows what all. The wordsmith finally takes its head out of a book long enough to remark, "Africa's a continent, not a country," so at least I can make my whining easier: "Well, then, why aren't I called a European-American instead of a white person?"

I don't even know what we're trying to define here. I mean, if the guy's black, I can tell just by looking. If he's white, ditto. Those basic colors -- which, by the way, go together really well (cf your traditional wedding) -- don't describe the actual skin tones of Negroes or Caucasians, so we know that's not it.

Not to mention: We're all from Africa anyway, so what's all this noise? Furthermore, what's that got to do with Kwanzaa, er, Christmas?

I have a friend (who shall remain nameless) who loves to give gifts and loves to get gifts but hates Christmas because it's expected that he should give and get gifts. My thoughtful, compassionate response is: tough noogies. Get out there and enjoy the lights and the corny music and the good cheer. Yes. Merry Christmas to all!

Hardware

2009-11-26T03:59:00.003-05:00

My first impulse when I need something from the hardware store is to think I need something from Home Depot, so congratulations to their PR firm. I'm trying to work my way out of that, though, so when Sven (Anne's Volvo, remember) needed new nuts, I went to the Gulfport Hardware Store. The man didn't have an exact match in terms of style, but he gave me self-locking nuts, which is a phrase I never thought I'd use. Ever. I don't even like saying they're "nuts." It just doesn't make sense to me, but "washers" doesn't make sense, either. Is it possible that a self-locking nut doesn't need a washer? If so, washers should be called lockers.

Well, yesterday -- Thanksgiving Eve Day -- I faced a car-painting crisis which involved taking off about a third of the paint that was already on Sven. That called for mineral spirits, in addition to burning a Jesus candle from the Hispanic section of Sweetbay and burying a Hot Wheels car upside down in my backyard. I ran off to the Gulfport Hardware Store, wearing my painting clothes because that's okay when you're staying local.

My painting clothes consist of bike pants for their non-restrictive qualities, and an over-sized tee shirt (which is my size), usually from my days of major blood-donation. They're all covered with paint, but I keep washing them and using them. Lately I've been turning them around and cutting a slit in the collar for a more fashionable v-neck style.

Note that my painting clothes don't include a bra. In my earlier years (if not yours), that might have been something to wiggle your eyebrows about. In these years, let's all just turn our heads aside and think of something pleasant.

Well, dang. I got there at two:forty-five and they had closed at two:thirty. I cursed my luck. Now I'd have to go back home and change my clothes in order to go to Home Depot. That's not local, you see. What ho! There's some sort of hardware store on Ninth Avenue, in that odd little jog between 58th and Tyrone. Aker's True Value, maybe. Something like that. I'll go there!

I went. The place looked closed -- it always does -- but it was open. Mineral spirits were the first thing I saw. The shelves were more than half-empty -- and I don't mean half-full. I don't remember if the floors were uneven boards, but it's the kind of place that should be floored that way, with squeaks.

The old man behind the counter made me and the customer behind me wait while he brought a handful of bills and checks to the back room. I entertained myself by reading a notice and wondering what it meant. "A donation of 50 cents is appreciated, to keep this service available. Progress Energy." Hmm. Progress Energy is the old Florida Progress which is the old Florida Power which is the old ... well, it probably goes on for another half dozen names. At least -- so far -- it still employs actual words, unlike, say, Wachovia, and it isn't a torment like Fifth Third Bank. Wait a minute. Maybe only banks have nonsense names. Hmm ...

Anyway, when the man returned, I asked about the notice. He may as well have told me it was a fifth third from Wachovia, but I think the notice meant if you pay your electric bill at this hardware store, please consider adding a fifty-cent tip.

That four-dollar can of solvent cost twice what it should have because I had to stop down the block and get a jug of Farm Store eggnog.

Well, I got back home and could not open that can. I was almost weeping with frustration when I decided I'd simply have to go back to Aker's and have them open the damned can. But then -- because my mother lives on? -- I knew I'd have to change clothes including, this time, underwear appropriate to a middle-aged woman. The old man was outside smoking. He tried but couldn't get it open. He told me to get pljdih, which I thought might be the other clerk's name. He was talking around the cigarette, using both hands to give himself a hernia over that cap.

I went inside and waited while the other clerk chatted up the customer, who did not want to buy a ten-dollar flashlight. "Batteries are included!" the clerk said. He asked if the man had a knife. He did not, but I did, so he was able to open the flashlight package. In the meantime, I found the smallest toy solider I've ever seen. It might have been half an inch tall. He was next to a penny. I put the soldier on top of the cash register and said, "This is a stick-up," but no one paid attention to me.

Finally it was my turn. The fortysomething clerk patiently explained to me that you've got to push down while you turn. Oh, gosh. What an idiot I am. It's probably from having worn a bra too long. I kept my mouth shut, though, because I knew the guy wouldn't be able to open that can. I was right. He got a pair of pliers and that did the trick.

I own a pair of pliers, by the way, but it's not natural for me to think about tools. If I can't do it with my own hands, I bring it to someone with bigger hands. It simply doesn't occur to me that the right tool might make my hands stronger. I can think of a hammer, but that's it. Well, perhaps my tool-consciousness has been raised.

I love marching into the ever-masculine Home Depot, going directly to the aisle with the mailboxes or the blue painters' tape. I love acting like I belong there amongst all the bearded, ball-capped men with their trolleys of 2x4s and heavy buckets of ... of ... of whatever comes in those huge tubs. But I really do prefer the intimacy of the little hardware stores. I wonder, though, what I'd be thinking if Aker's had also closed early because of the holiday.

The Cookie Blog

2009-11-23T19:46:00.002-05:00

I apologize, once again, for the awful photographs. Clearly, I'm doing something wrong. One of you (and you know who you are) should take pity on me and help me.

In addition to apparently mishandling a camera, I'm also at a loss when it comes to processing the pix once I've taken them. Since I got my new computer, my old system is, I don't know, floating around in cyber space, yearning to come home. Now I can't figure out how to delete photos from the camera. It gets heavier every day.

But that's not why we're here! We're here to look at these cookies.

They're just sugar cookies, using maple extract instead of vanilla, and painted with egg-yolk colors, which the extract made darker, giving them a more autumnal look. But the leaf is hard to cut out. Dough's always getting stuck in the crannies, and the cookies are too big anyhow. Okay. I'll bring them to Mike's parents for Thanksgiving.

I made a bunch of little cookies and intended to color them like autumn leaves, hoping to convince Jill's other guests on Friday that, indeed, some Northern leaves are circular in shape, with scalloped edges. However, I started messing with the paint brushes -- surely influenced by Stillwagon on Saturday -- and look what happened. I made Korean fortune cookies!

Messy, Messy!

2009-11-22T14:50:00.004-05:00

I was outside just now, fighting the wind as I painted the roof of Sven, Anne's 1998 silver Volvo S70. Benji was helping by thrashing around in a dirt puddle, chewing stickers off his dirty feet with an equally dirty mouth (see photo above). After his bath, I passed my computer and saw that I had a new email from a high school classmate. I read it, burst into flames, and spent a few furious moments learning how to block someone from my gmail. I'm usually a compleat idiot with things technological, but I was so very motivated that I whipped through the process as if I'd invented it myself.

Then I took a shower, needing no hot water at all.

The email has text first:

The devastation and ignorance being caused by this
Catastrophic occurrence will forever destroy the
Fiber and character of a once great nation
With little hope for correction or rebuilding
At the present rate of duplicity and complacence
Being displayed by the American public.

Then there was a painting called The Gathering Storm. There were human faces painted into the storm clouds. Now, I've never been familiar with famous faces. I'm usually reduced to saying things like, "Oh, you know -- that French Connection guy." I hadn't even laid eyes on a picture of David Letterman until a friend made me watch the Tenth Anniversary Show. Nope. I'd never seen him before. So I don't recognize all the people in the painting, but the main one is this black guy who would look just like President Obama except that he seems to have a bit of a moustache. A not-quite Hilary is next to him, and it looks like McCain on the other side, so it must be Biden (that was an earlier blog). And others.

These peopled clouds are squatting oppressively over a small town that looks like it's from the Depression Era, and the subtitle says -- unbelievably -- We're from the government ... and we're here for your guns.

The wit who arranged the email added: And your healthcare, taxes and your personal choice.

As if all that weren't graphically pleasing enough, there's the latest monstrosity from emoticons, the inventor of which should be made to read by blogs for the rest of his life. Not content with a winking, blinking, colorful Smiley Face, my, um, friend from high school added a big-eyed, orange-haired little girl swinging her legs (and one shoe lace has come undone -- awww!), clutching a teddy bear. The girl, unfortunately, is rather more demonic than endearing, with eyes like that Chucky person who was not in The French Connection.

Well, I became instantly incensed, of course. Obama is here to remove my personal choice. What does that even mean? Isn't that usually about abortion or gay marriage or something?

Well, one personal choice that's still available to me is what kind of junk I get in my emails. I hit REPLY and said, "No right wing stuff for me, please and thank you." I added more, then deleted it, then wrote something else instead, then deleted it. Reason, oddly, prevailed.

She wrote back immediately and said, "LOL - you liberals have no sense of humor! I won't send you any more truth."

Hah! If I thought I was furious before, that was nothing compared to my reaction to the LOL. But I've had a shower now and I'm sipping a soothing cup of coffee. I've turned the AC on and soon I'll have some lovely chicken kebab leftovers from the Pasadena Steak House, so all is not horrible in my world. But let me get this straight. I object to devastation and ignorance, duplicity and complacence, so I have no sense of humor? I object to calling the election of Obama a catastrophy, and someone thinks I should be LOLing instead?

That's when I figured out how to block her.

So here's the deal, then. I celebrate some diversity. I'm all about culinary diversity, racial diversity, sexual diversity (as long as the involved people are smiling). Give me cultural diversity and literary, musical, and visual diversity. Yay for religious diversity. Well, and go ahead and have your political diversity, just don't burden me with it.

No one has ever changed my mind about politics by sending me an email. I don't expect that to change. Look, one time I sent all of you in my Blog Group an email from Amnesty International. There was special action to be taken to try to, gosh, stop torture. One of you (and you know who you are) wrote back and told me to leave you out of my political mailings. And so I have. I did not write back and taunt him for being pro-torture (despite all evidence that proves it doesn't work, ahem). I didn't accuse him of losing his sense of humor (believe me! torture's a great topic for humor!). I just quit sending him political things.

I want my classmate to act like me. Is that so much to ask?

I see a woman every couple of weeks who sort of wastes the group's time by telling us, over and over, how her feelings have recently been hurt. She's had nearly thirty years of active self-improvement, so I'm always baffled by this annoying behavior on her part. "Grow some ova!" I want to shout. But today I was thinking that I'm just like her, except I don't tell you about it. I am so thin-skinned and so very tender and easily wounded that I can't stand to engage in political debate. I hear "you liberals," and my throat closes up. Tossing out my television and refusing to read newspapers, while certainly a sign of spiritual superiority, is nothing more than or less than self-protection. And that's what blocking Brenda McNulty, who shall remain nameless, is.

On a lighter note (yay!), I took the first of five painting classes with Keith Stillwagon. What a delightful mess his paints are! He's a frowning, muttering man who is nonetheless a total charmer. He somehow managed to make most of us begin some pretty good paintings. I have every faith that I won't be ashamed to hang my painting right in front of everyone before it's all over. Of course, not all that much shames me ... and "right in front of everyone" might include the crawl space in my new house (about which I continue to hear nothing).

Gooses and Ganders

2009-10-31T06:45:00.003-04:00

Well. Webster's Word of the Day is celebrating Halloween. Today's Word is lycanthropy: the delusion that one has become a wolf. Google, of course, has entertained itself and me with the messing of its logo. In fact, that's one reason it's my home page. Letting the kids in the back room play with the logo for special events is something like driving an artcar. It takes an American icon off the pedestal and onto the lawn for a picnic.

Today is Halloween. I can see from Facebook and Walgreens that it's a big fat deal to many people. It seems to be growing like the wart on a witch's nose, but I don't know why. I know my brand-new great-niece has a costume, and she's not the only infant to have one.

As far as Mike can make me do anything, he's making me go to his veterinarian's party tonight. We thought it might be funny to go as ghosts the old-fashioned way -- with white sheets and eye-holes -- but I haven't seen a white sheet in years. I'm not sure a floral or striped ghost would fly.

I met a thirtyish man in the Halloween aisle at Walgreens yesterday. He told me his girl (his language) wanted him to go as her pimp so she could dress up "cute, y'know." Oddly, I do know. I remember wanting to be, uh, cute and Halloween seemed to be the one time a year it could be attempted. I never did, though. I didn't know how. Still don't. Tonight I'll probably toss on my nun suit and be done with it. Mike will slap his monster mask on his face, becoming a magician -- transforming a "mask" into a "costume."

Terry Washburn, a boy from high school who scared me on a hormonal level because his very presence made me want to be, um, cute, complained on Facebook that his girlfriend is making him "dress up like a chick. UGH."

There's something fundamentally wrong with "chick" coming from a sixty-year-old's mouth. However, that leads nicely into my main point, about ganders and sauces, and so we're grateful to Terry.

When I was in fifth grade, my brother Jim was in seventh, and he'd made a papier-mâché mask with one eye and one horn. It was purple. You know the song. My dad had a pair of knit pajamas -- tee-shirt material -- that were purple enough for Halloween. They were medium blue.

Jim was going as a chick, although I'm quite certain we said "woman," and if we didn't, I'll simply rewrite history and say we did.

To that end, he went out back and borrowed a bra from Bernice Recchio. She was my best friend Kathy's mom, our backyard neighbors, and she was big enough that a twelve-year-old boy could fasten her bra around his scrawny chest. Naturally, Jim stuffed the cups with toilet paper and continued with his costume.

I put on Dad's pajamas and, just as naturally, stuffed the groinal area with toilet paper and continued with my costume.

I assure you that nothing sexual was going on. I was merely filling that vacuum which Nature is said to abhor.

Alas, it turned out that we were allowed to emphasize some body parts but not others. If I'd spent fifth grade in the time of codpieces, it would have been a different story. Indeed, the thrust of the costume would have been the groin. But this was 1960 or '61, and after Mom laughed herself sick, she made me remove the toilet paper.

I've been sullen ever since.

_______________________________________

Please read the next entry, which is also for Halloween.

Sarah’s Metamorphosis

2009-10-31T06:36:00.001-04:00

A Piece of Fabulous Flash Fiction

by Sloan Davis

with his kind permission

His voice hummed deep and soft in her ears even after she hung up. Had he actually said she was the prettiest thing on two legs? Her face flushed at the thought. She reached for the salve and, rubbing the ointment over the pimple that had appeared that morning on her nose, felt warmth emanating from the pus-filled lump. She went to the bathroom mirror and saw to her disbelief it had tripled in size in less than an hour. It was a full blown boil. The Autumn Ball would have to wait. She couldn't go with him, not now, not like this. In the kitchen she poured herself a steaming cup of coffee and sat at the breakfast nook table and cried. All her plans, dreams, chucked upon the rocks. He would meet somebody new. She rubbed the back of her neck and felt another lump, but this one wasn't a boil. She ran back into the bathroom in time to see her shoulders cave in and a large hump, not unlike Quasimodo's, rise below her skin. Panicked, she darted to the phone, but it was too late. Her skin cracked. Long ugly hairs grew out of the boil. Her fingers stretched and bent with long sharp nails. A front tooth fell out. She spun around in her kitchen in an absolute daze when something inside her bubbled and boiled until she couldn't stand it any longer. She opened her mouth and screamed, "Happy Halloween!"

Copyright 2009 by Sloan Davis

Chained Enterprise

2009-10-23T09:32:00.004-04:00

Let's get the immediate things out of the way: Tonight is drumming with Buddy Helm (dot com) at The Longhouse (longhouse.info) from seven to nine. And tomorrow is Circus McGurkis (dot org) from nine to four, rain and shine. I'm looking forward to both, although tomorrow I'll be in front of Liz's house at six-fifteen a.m. in the morning, which is a purposeful redundancy, a reminder of the insanity that led to me agree to such a godless hour.

Or what do I know? Maybe six-thirty is a godly hour. I've rarely seen it.

I'm concerned right now about those low book prices that the Icky Stores are promoting: Walmart, Amazon-dot-com, and Target, where -- unbelievably -- the customers are called guests. You can read all about it at http://news.bookweb.org if you haven't heard about it already. Basically, if I can get a brand new Barbara Kingsolver hardback for ten bucks, why would I ever pay twenty-five bucks again? Given that, why would anyone ever publish a writer less than (so far) Kingsolver, less known, less proven?

This is not to mention the independent bookstores who simply can't afford to match Walmart's prices.

The dilemma here is that, gosh -- those chains sure are cheap and convenient, aren't they? Yep. I needed a copy of the APA publication laws (believe me -- these people are not into "guidelines"). I called Haslam's. They don't stock it, but they can order it. Well, I believed I needed it right then, and even if I didn't believe that, I don't know if you've noticed, but I'm an American and I deserve instant gratification.

Mercy. Is that whole John Lennon INSTANT KARMA thing a reaction to that whole Red-Blooded American INSTANT GRATIFICATION thing?

Well, I called Borders and they had it and I got it and now I wish I'd waited. If I really want to be the change, then I'm going to have to, um, be the change. I can't cheat and go off to a chain just because it's faster and cheaper. I'm all for free enterprise except for when I'm not. I'm not for it when big fat corporations like Walmart can and do stomp out the Little Guy. I don't know what the solution is. Man, I can barely articulate the problem. But I do know that my books will have to come -- finally! -- from independent bookstores.

The profit Haslam's makes pretty much stays in Pinellas County. The profit Walmart makes? I hate to think.

I have a dear friend, Kati, who works for a non-profit organization that helps indies stay alive in the face of the chains. How awful that such an organization is even needed. It's like the American Civil Liberties Union. Too bad it has to exist, but as long as it does, it's got my membership.

Remember when Walmart was first spawned? It absolutely raved, in red, white, and blue tones, that all its items were Made in the U.S. of A. Remember that? Now you'd be hard-pressed to find any item made here.

It'll be hard to give up Amazon because I buy really cheap used books there. I'll consult with FlaHoos. She'll tell me where to get them.

Well, it took a little doing, but I've been buying nothing but Fair Trade Certified coffee for years. Now it's time for books.

And then vegetarianism.

But first I'm taking Mo back to the hospital.

Lost Art

2009-10-12T10:48:00.010-04:00

I was waiting at the airport last night and wandered over to a display case featuring the Sister Cities program in Tampa. Six countries were represented: Spain, France, Italy, Mexico, Colombia, and Israel. Each country had sent a small gift. Italy, for instance, sent a colorful miniature wooden horse pulling a wagon. It looked like a gypsy wagon, like those teeny Italian cars at Mazzarro's on 22nd Avenue North which Vitale Bros. has painted. There were five at my last count -- cars, not brothers -- and they're a ball to look at: such detail! such color!

Israel's gift was a small slab of silver with a rendering of the city of Ashdod etched into it. Because of its placement on the shelf and the mirrored surface thereof, it was easy to see MADE IN ITALY at the base. That seemed ... sad? funny? Well, odd at best. Oh. I suppose it could have seemed cooperative, couldn't it?

Nearby, in that short hallway leading to the smokers' exit, was a replica of the cathedral at Oviedo, a gift from Spain too big for the display case -- too big for the hallway, too. It was six or seven feet tall, its spire cramped against the ceiling. The whole thing was crowded in that spot. The plaque describing it was mounted on a stubby post, which I had to bend over to read, yet which came up to the third floor of the cathedral.

Well, maybe Ovideo had a dozen of these impressive buildings cast in bronze and keeps them in a (big) back closet until they sister up with another city. I just googled it because I really couldn't remember if it was a cathedral or a castle, and I was taking notes with my Swiss Army Pen (a photo of which is displayed here, not for the first time, but I'm sick of not having photos on my blog), on the back of a business card that was already full of notes. It turns out that one of the relics at the cathedral (not castle) is the sudarium, the cloth used to cover and clean the face of Jesus after the crucifixion, not to be confused with the Shroud of Turin.

Good heavens!

I wonder how many people even look at that Sister Cities display. Thousands of people walk, rush, struggle through that airport every day, but checking out the miniature paintings from France in the display case probably isn't on their itinerary.

Harmony Pharmacy had a kiosk at the airport. For $35 you could get a flu shot. I can't imagine a less medical setting than an airport, unless it's a Walgreens drug store, where you can also get a flu shot. Yes: You can get one. I'm not going to.

In other news, it's Columbus Day, and for a change, Monday falls on the twelfth. Remember when Columbus Day was a nice day? Years ago, I bought A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn. I just didn't have the heart to read it, though. Look at this, an online excerpt taken from the book at http://www.historyisaweapon.com/:

Then, on October 12, a sailor called Rodrigo saw the early morning moon shining on white sands, and cried out. It was an island in the Bahamas, the Caribbean sea. The first man to sight land was supposed to get a yearly pension of 10,000 maravedis for life, but Rodrigo never got it. Columbus claimed he had seen a light the evening before. He got the reward.

And that little injustice didn't even involve blood.

It pleases me, in a gloomy sort of way, to think that things were good -- or at least better -- in The Olden Days, whether I mean cave days or Mom's time, and that things are just getting worse. I watched Impromptu again Saturday night, the movie about Frederic Chopin and George Sand. There was a little dope-smokin' goin' on, and a fellow viewer exclaimed, "They had that back then?"

Maybe each generation thinks it invented all the vices. Maybe it takes a perverse pleasure in Being Bad, like rival high schools bragging about how awful the food is in the cafeteria. Or maybe things -- that is, people -- have stayed pretty much the same.

After the movie, my friend said she wished she'd lived in times like the movie, with the balls and the gowns and the tea in the garden. Yes. Except that she'd have been the servant sewing those gowns, working sixteen hours a day, six days a week. And she sure wouldn't have gotten Columbus Day off!

Smooth Moves

2009-10-04T16:07:00.003-04:00

Now that some gas stations insist I use their brand credit card or actual cash in order to get fuel at the marquee price, I haven't quite found my gas station. I want to use my debit card and I want to get the price that's advertised. That means I'm driving around until suddenly my car is gasping for sustenance, and I stop at the next place.

The other day, it was the Shell at 58th and Central. I'd been there once or twice before and have enjoyed the classical music swelling incongruously at the pumps. That day, though, it was plain old rock 'n' rock. Perhaps that should have tipped me off.

In any case, I marched off into the little store because I'd be using cash, thanks to its maddening Shell-cards-only policy. I whined to the silent clerk about having to make two trips to get the stated price for a fill-up. I mean, this is America. Cheap, abundant gas at great convenience to myself is a birthright. I handed him some collateral: a twenty-dollar bill. He barely looked at me.

I removed the trigger from its holster and jammed it at my tank. It wouldn't fit. Great. I wiggled and poked some more until reason struck: I'd grabbed the diesel pump. Yes, Virginia, size does matter -- and hallelujah for that.

I decided that instead of a fill-up, I'd just get the twenty, thereby saving me that journey back to the store. I never want to tell them I'm just getting twenty dollars' worth because the system will take as much time to pump those last fifteen cents as it took to get that far in the first place. I felt a tad smug, as if I were outwitting that blank clerk somehow. Yep, I felt that way right up until it hit $19.85 and slowed to the pace of molasses in ... oh, well, tourists in July.

And then today, I took a Publix gift card and went off to buy coffee and other life-saving supplies. The checkout girl -- a teenager obviously new to the job -- couldn't get the price on an item, so she asked me the price. Right. Like I'd know. If you put me on The Price Is Right, and offered everyday items like bread and milk, I wouldn't have a clue. I've never known how much things cost. The clerk just sort of stood there, helpless. I suggested brightly that she call for a bag boy. She said they were short-handed and other clerks would get mad if she took their bag boys.

I told her to forget the item. By now I had two people behind me -- and we were in the Express Lane. She finished up and I swiped my card. It wouldn't take. I tried again. It wouldn't take. The clerk tried. It wouldn't take. I tried again. She tried again. I gave up. I said I'd pay with real money. Turns out I didn't have enough real money. The clerk and I stared at each other. "What do I do now?" I asked.

"I don't know," she said.

I snapped, "Well, find someone who does," and she managed to do that.

While she was explaining the problem to the supervisor, the woman behind me, who'd been waiting peacefully, said, "I noticed you're using a Publix card."

"Yes," I said, suspicion and mortification dawning.

"Well, but this is Sweet Bay."

A Milestone

2009-09-16T17:48:00.003-04:00

I like firsts. The first time I felt a Florida summer rain, I couldn't believe it: warm rain. I hadn't known that was possible. My first kiss was actually three kisses and I remember pointing out the exact placement of each one to my best friend. Lips, yes, they were all on my lips, but one was off to the side, see? It seemed important to note that.

The thing about a first is that you remember it, but you don't remember a last, since you don't really know when that is. I mean, my life isn't over yet, so I don't know if my first trip to Africa, for instance, was also my last. See?

Well, I had a first today, and if I weren't such an exhibitionist, as demonstrated by blogging, I'd say I was embarrassed by it.

I'm copyediting a woman's third novel and we're using hard copy. I've set myself up at a pretty table. I've got the Chicago Manual of Style and the dictionary. I have pens in three colors. I have coffee and water and a scratch pad. I'm ready for action.

Well, I've never been certain of the spelling of Manhattan. I really think there should be an e in there somewhere, probably at the end. Manhattan came up in the manuscript so I pushed out my chair and stood up. I went over to my computer and typed Manhatten into the Search line. It turns out that all the vowels are a's. Okay. Good. It's conceivable I'll remember that for the rest of my life. Finally.

Great, but did you notice that I actually left my workstation to go check it online instead of picking up the dictionary that was at my elbow?

Yeah. Wow.

The Collector

2009-09-12T10:43:00.007-04:00

The car in front of me at the ATM had a bumper sticker: I COLLECT MATCHBOOKS! That's infinitely better than I SELL MARY KAY COSMETICS (too commercial) or MY CHILD IS CITIZEN OF THE MONTH (too boring) or McCAIN/PALIN (too damn bad).

Still, I can't even imagine where our matchbook-collecting friend bought such a bumper sticker. Do you suppose there's a matchbook collectors' association? Do they have monthly meetings and yearly conventions in Miami -- or Buffalo? What do they even talk about? Well, perhaps they trade them like baseball cards. In fact, before I step over a line here, let it be confessed that I, in fact, used to collect matchbooks, too. True, it was during my misspent youth, and they mainly came from various dirtball bars and diners in Western New York, and I often stole from my own collection when my lighter ran out of fluid, but still, it was a collection. Well, and it's also true that there was no organization to the things. I suppose the true collector has custom-made racks for displaying his or her goods. Maybe some are so precious -- from Czechoslovakia, say, before it became the Czech Republic -- that they're kept in velvet-lined boxes, safe from damaging light and the dull gazes of the ignorant.

Most of the matchbook collections I've seen are displayed in a tasteful jumble inside a dusty, over-sized brandy snifter. There's usually a stolen beer sign blinking erratically on the wall.

My new neighbor collects key chains. Now, that's not a bad collection target. Most of them are free, and once people know you're collecting, they'll give you all the key chains you can stand. What would insurance companies do without key chains with their logos and phone numbers? I've been to a couple artcar shows that give swag bags to participants. The bags are always full of key chains. Well, and baby-doll heads, too, but that's another story.

My neighbor has strung her four-hundred-plus key chains along the top of her living room walls, sort of like Christmas tinsel. She has placed a special marker at every hundred chains so she never has to count them again. The collection is twenty years old. She's only thirty-four. She's got three miniature Etch-A-Sketches which, in my tight little World of Collections, would be illegal. Duplicates aren't fair.

Besides way too many pieces of paper and unwashed dishes, I only collect blue-and-white teacups. And saucers. In another era, I wouldn't have had to say "and saucers." I had a group of women over once and, with a gesture sweeping enough for any duchess, showed them my custom-made teacup (and saucer) rack and invited them to choose their favorite for the coffee I was serving. One woman chose the cup, but not the saucer. I suppose she thought it was just a short, round mug, and what the heck, that's pretty much what it is.

I've broken many of the teacups over the years both because of the aforementioned misspent youth and because of happenstance. For a while, I made it a point of honor that I never bought my own teacups. I wanted them to be gifts and souvenirs from friends and family. But every now and then, I'm in a shop and I see a cup that I simply must have, so I have it.

The trouble with a collection, though, is that it automatically makes me a Collector, and I'm pretty sure Collectors have to know something about the items they're collecting. I know only as much as is printed on the bottom of the saucer. I have one teacup that was made in "Occupied Japan." My heart stopped when I first read that. The cup was so beautiful, but the wording screamed atom bomb! death! destruction! humiliation! remorse! Well, maybe those last two are just my own. I remember thinking it seemed so petty and nasty to make the Japanese put those words on their goods. They'd already lost, for pete's sake. Why rub it in?

Here's some irony: I only drink coffee out of my teacups. And I drink my tea out of coffee mugs.

At least my collection is practical. I use the teacups and saucers every single day. But what about the impractical collections? What happens when you're truly sick of your teddy bear collection, yet people keep giving you teddy bears because, really, losing interest in a hobby is not generally signaled with announcements and fanfare? What happens, in fact, to sentences that start out as questions and yet sort of meander off into statements so that the question mark at the end seems ridiculous?

Oh. I see.

Dan, Dan, Dan (Head Sadly Shaking)

2009-09-06T09:51:00.003-04:00

I subscribe to Merriam-Webster's online Word of the Day. It's also the hard-copy dictionary I use. Today's word is irenic which means operating toward peace. Fine. But what really caught my eye was the spelled-out pronunciation: eye-REN-ik.

Hmm ... I've never seen that kind of spelling in a dictionary before. I snatched up the book and looked it up: i-'re-nik with a horizontal mark above the first i, making it a long i, which, if Mister Google would provide a wider selection of accent marks, I wouldn't have to explain.

I don't know if the online pronunciation is done "phonetically." I'm not certain of that term, but whatever it's called, I wonder why it's not presented the same way both in the dictionary and on the line. My first thought was that they're dumbing it down for online use, but that's just fear and snobbery talking. You can actually listen to a very formal fellow speaking the Word of the Day like the narrator in film strips from the fifties, so, really, the online user isn't dependent upon the written clues to pronunciation.

Then I thought maybe they just didn't want to repeat the pronunciation key online. It's on every page of the real dictionary. Space is no object, though. Well, somebody knows why it's done this way. I'm just not the one.

There's also a Did You Know? section on the online version. I really object to this title. That's for grade school, isn't it? for barely important side-facts? Did You Know ... that the world is round? It's just too cute for the serious yet exciting history of a word. In fact, today I learned that irenic comes from Greek mythology, from the goddess of peace, Eirene. That's where our old-fashioned woman's name Irene comes from, too, and "Goodnight, Irene," was the top song in my birth year, 1950.

What more do we need to know?

Here's the Book Report:

Sugar Cage by Connie May Fowler. I couldn't tell if I'm too depressed to feel or if the writing just doesn't move me, but there were scenes that should have been powerful, but weren't. I think this was her first novel, though, and I'm currently reading a more recent one from this Southern writer. I described one scene to Mike last night and he said, "Don't you read any happy books?"
The Host by Stephenie Meyer. The six hundred and nineteen pages flew by. I kept reading long past bedtime, long after my eyes were begging for moisture. She's very good at all degrees of suspense, from real Don't open that door! scenes to simple eagerness for more. I don't know that I'd read her work twice, but reading it once is sheer enjoyment. I'm smiling now, just thinking of it.
Falling Angels by Tracy Chevalier. Read it. She's good.
The Ballad of the Sad Cafe & other stories by Carson McCullers. I liked the title story best, although it was really sad (!). Damn Rebels!
The End of Overeating: taking control of the insatiable American appetite by David Kessler, M.D. I fear this is fiction after all. Still, I got some good information out of it. Because it's non-fiction, it took me a long time to read it.

He said a whole lot of interesting things in that book, and here's one of them. Our culture has devolved to the point where it's pretty much okay to eat any old time at all. When I was a kid, we weren't allowed to just eat when we wanted to. There were specific, regular mealtimes. I only remember gum as snacks. He said that European business meetings don't have the bagel tray and lattes.

Yikes. And look at movie theaters. True, I've not been in one in years, but when I was a girl (admittedly a frighteningly long time ago), there were popcorn and Milk Duds. That was true even fifteen, twenty years ago. There weren't hot dogs and nachos dripping with melted processed cheese spread, which actually comes pre-melted.

A couple weeks ago, Mike and I agreed that desserts in restaurants are always disappointing. The more layered they are, the bigger they are, the more disappointing they are, even though the photos and descriptions are so very enticing. Well, but then he made the exception of that Vienna Sumpin' Sumpin' Pie he always gets at Good Times -- ice cream with strawberries in a sinful sauce, on a crusty pastry of almonds. And I made the exception of the cinnamon roll at Panera (which is as big as your face -- yes, yours) and the Apple Strudel at Good Times.

So I suppose if I wrote Kessler's book, it would be something like The End of Overeating: except for things with cinnamon; well, and pizza; ooh! and vermicelli! by Barbara Nicolazzo, 2X.

The N Word

2009-08-26T19:17:00.009-04:00

Here's poor Mo, trying to take a nap with the camera flash in his eyes. He's got a hair cut that would make any groomer cringe. In the first place, he had those three surgeries on his back -- all in different places -- so he has four levels of fur up there, counting the untouched hair.

In the second place, his under-carriage was cleanly shaved last week so the sonogram could be performed. That's when I discovered, to my ignorant amazement, that he has nipples.

Now, it was already concluded at lunch yesterday -- at the Kopper Kitchen on Central Avenue and 56th, eating the best patty melt in the world -- that it's okay to mention nipples in a blog if they belong to critters or human males. Human females must be excluded from the discussion. Well.

Anyway, why in the world does a male cat have nipples? Male humans, I get (and for the men who refuse to experience pleasure there, well, I'm sorry). But why critters? Symmetry with the females? Irony? Oversight?

I have a couple women friends who've gone without bras for decades. This is for comfort and health, not exhibitionism. They're in need of tee shirts designed with nippouflage in mind -- tee shirts with a dense enough design in the tip-of-the-chest area that coverage is achieved. That's my next project, although I get immediate satisfaction from the name: nippouflage.

This next picture is again of Mo. I looked all over for him -- all over except for on the edge of the tub between the shower curtain and the liner.

Cast your minds back to the mailbox question on August 20. The woman chose the plainer box, the one shown within the body text. She blamed her classy neighborhood, implying that it wouldn't stand for anything less conservative, but I don't believe her. It doesn't matter, but I wish she could have just chosen, without any bogus explanation.

And my car? Well, I got the pricey, Toyota-built distributor assembly installed. I went home, and then to my massage, and then to Panera, and then I couldn't leave because my car wouldn't start. This was actually good news, because my mechanic finally had a chance to see my car in non-action. He was able to get to it before its mood passed. He banged some things under the hood, and when one of the bangs started the car, he said -- with immense satisfaction -- "It's the starter." We'd replaced one eighteen months ago (the plural pronoun is used as a sign of solidarity), so the starter had been removed from the list of suspects. It turned out to be a lemon. The starter was ordered -- no rebuilds! -- and installed, and I didn't have to pay for it. Yay.

And my computer? I woke up Saturday without an internet connection. The call to Bright House determined that it was my computer's fault. I won't go into the painful story of trying to back up my data and losing all my processed photos. Four days later, the computer guy came over. I was prepared to pay big bucks for a new computer. Instead, he spent about forty-five seconds in my chair before announcing that my Norton Anti-Virus software was the problem. Indeed, Marty removed Norton, and my internet connection sprang back to life.

How can such things happen and not be prevented? How can Norton keep selling its product? Why doesn't Bright House go through its gyrations and then, just before it blames the customer's computer, ask, "Do you fraternize with Mister Norton?"

I hate to quote an outdated beer commercial, but why ask why?

Because I can't help it, that's why! Why, for instance, is my PREVIEW mode here at blogger dot com so terribly unlike what I get when I publish? If the text wraps around the photos in a stupid fashion, it's Mister Google's fault entirely. If it works okay, it's because I was doing it right. Yikes! I have to re-publish! It's leaving only three or four characters on a line. Grrrr!

Whose Story?

2009-08-21T11:24:00.007-04:00

I had lunch with a new acquaintance yesterday, a photographer. Although she's a prize-winning photographer (yay!), she's also a fairly new one. She took a black-and-white photo of another artist's watercolor of eggs in a nest. She did some magic with it, and it was the first prize she ever won. When she brought the painting back to the artist, he told her to keep it. It was entitled New Beginnings, and he felt that my friend was the one with the new beginnings, not himself.

Well, that's a nice enough story, isn't it? But here I am, being disagreeable again. I love the photo of the eggs and, even more, the watercolor of it. But all that back story does nothing for me. It may actually detract from the pleasure. What if, for instance, I love the egg piece because it reminds me of gathering eggs with my grandma when I was really small? That memory, stimulated by the painting, doesn't conjure new beginnings for me. It conjures the past: my past.

I was at the photographer's house, and I saw a gorgeous ... um, piece. It's a wooden board maybe four feet long, with seven or eight five-inch pieces of wood glued onto it like big rectangular buttons. Each is painted in beautiful seashore colors, bold and happy. I love it.

But then I'm told it's made from wood found in the artist's yard after Hurricane Ivan. In fact, "Ivan" is in the name of the piece, which I forgot because I wanted to. It might have been something like Ivan's Gift, which is okay, but. But. I love the thing for its color and shape. I don't need the history to appreciate it even more. Like the egg painting, this extra information takes away from it.

My photographer said that many people ask for the stories. Yes. I bet they do. And they should be told. But I, apparently, am one of the ones who doesn't want to know.

I'm wondering if it's a form of territorialism on my part. When I buy something with a sticker on it, I remove the sticker. I don't care if it's a watering can or a trash can. I don't care if the sticker's on the bottom or inside. It's not mine until I remove the sticker.

Somehow, not wanting to hear the artist's story about her own work seems connected. If the painting is now mine, then I'm going to tell the story of how I found it and what it means to me. It's the artist's prerogative to tell her story about it, right up until she sells it. Then it's mine.

Well, as you know if you've been paying attention (and you know who you are), I don't like naming things anyhow -- neither cars nor cats -- and naming a piece of art seems extra awful. If art is in the eye of the beholder, then you're better off keeping it Untitled.

As I left my photographer yesterday, she pointed out a watercolor that had somehow ended up in her garage. She doesn't remember where it came from. She doesn't especially like it. It's on my desk right now, just so I can watch it. There's no room on my desk, of course, but there's no room on my wall, either. (I really need that new house!)

There's a volcano in the picture (which I'm sharing) and a village at the bottom (which I'm not). The house roofs are thatched. The colors are absolutely beautiful -- a lot of olives and sages with just enough blue, purple, and red. The whole thing is very restful. Even the volcano seems to be having a post-prandial smoke, with nothing fatal in its evening plans. I mentioned the church, but the photographer looked at me askance. Oh. She's right. There is no church. But I see a holy man anyhow, so there may as well be a church.

If the title turns out to be Happy Hour, I'm not going to be happy.

________

You Facebookers will find out this evening which mailbox was chosen. You Bloggers will have to wait till the next blog.

Tidying Up

2009-08-20T15:04:00.005-04:00

Let’s do a little housecleaning, shall we?

You know my poor car has been stranding me for about a year now, and you remember my agonizing about loyalty: Do I stick with my beloved mechanic or switch to the place that actually fixed the problem?

Not to worry! The new place didn’t fix the problem, despite its two-hundred-dollar solution. I got stranded at a fancy house at the Pasadena Yacht and Country Club while delivering a mailbox. The well-off woman and the sweaty, raggedy artist made awkward conversation while waiting nearly an hour for Triple A.

And that’s another story. I so resent getting letters from AAA, telling me I’m over-using their services. In the many years when I’ve used their precious services not at all, did I get letters thanking me for being so kind as to give them money for absolutely nothing? I did not.

But let’s get back to the mailbox, okay? You Facebookers know that I took a commission for a mailbox. The woman wanted a peach background with palm fronds on top. Well, after the first ten minutes, I saw that I wasn’t giving her what she wanted at all. I was giving her what I wanted her to want. I went out and bought another mailbox and painted it per instructions. (Hey! I didn’t get fired just to follow instructions!)

I brought both boxes and gave her a choice. Which do you think she chose? The one at the top of this blog, or the one below this paragraph?

But let’s get back to the car, okay? I’ve heard of jump boxes, so I looked at some online. I even watched a video on how to use one. That’s my solution: A charged battery that I carry in my car. When it acts up, I jump it with the jump box, and I’m not stranded, I’m merely inconvenienced for a couple minutes. I can handle that!

Ah, but the clerk at the auto parts store said, “Sweetheart, you don’t need a jump box. You need a master ultra-static relay. You can only get ’em at the dealership. It’s a hundred bucks. It’ll fix your problem.”

Yay!

Oh wait! Not yay. Toyota had never heard of a master or slave ultra-static relay. Neither had Jon, the aforementioned beloved mechanic. The plan now is for me to show up at nine tomorrow morning. He’ll install a brand new, Toyota-built distributor assembly. I made him give me a percentage on how sure he is that this would solve the problem. I have, after all, had a new starter, new alternator, new battery, new fuel pump, new fuse, and new fuse box in the last year. And look at me! I was also willing to have a new master ultra-static relay!

He gave me ninety-six percent, so we’re on.

Okay. And remember those holes in my lawn? They turned out to be big beetle bugs. I rarely see them alive. I can’t imagine how they spend their days. I do, however, have photographic evidence of how they spend their afterlives. Look at that! Spiders have strung up at least two of those giant beetles. One was tied up to this little pot of flowers that, clearly, didn’t have enough to drink that day, and the other was roped up to the rosemary. What the heck? The bugs are empty, too. Now, maybe the spiders are carrion-eaters. Maybe they just wait for the bugs to die and dry out and then they drag them home. They’re decorative planters, for all I know, and soon we’ll see spider-sized geraniums spouting out of the bugs’ ears. Still, I suspect foul play, both before and after death.

I have no idea why I must take such horrendous, out-of-focus photographs. My favorite soothsayer sayed a man would teach me -- for free -- so, step up, lads!

And books. I’ve just read The Help by Kathryn Stockett. I really liked it. A Southern friend has no interest. She said she lived it. Or maybe she resents everyone pushing it on her just because she has a beautiful accent. In any case, I liked it a lot. It’s a book about a book about the relationships between the colored help and the white helpees in Jackson, Mississippi, in the early 1960s.

I See You Everywhere by Julia Glass was good, too. In fact, I’ve had a nice run of good books, which I deserve, having read Close Encounters of the Third Kind just before John Updike’s The Widows of Eastwick. I had enjoyed The Witches of Eastwick in the eighties and so expected to enjoy this. I was wrong.

I just finished The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery, as prompted by my wise friend in Minnesota, Kati. Parts of it were too intellectual for me. I had to stop and think. And parts of it were so profound, I had to stop and think. And it was funny and suspenseful, with cats and wealthy foreign men. Well, I guess all the men were foreign, since it was written in French (but read in English, I assure you).

Anything else? I guess not. I’m just waiting for my computer to give the go-ahead to http://www.blogger.com/. Well, and to Facebook and my bank, too. Suddenly, I’m told that those sites are having problems with their security certificates. I doubt it. I fear it’s my own computer. If it were universal, I could accept it with good grace. I’d just sigh and wait. If it’s just mine, though, I’ll burst into flames.

THE MORNING PASSES

Hah! instead of anything dramatic, I merely eed the right man with the right question. My computer's time had reverted to January 2002. No wonder it was upset!

Thanks, mcd.

Hyperbole

2009-08-14T20:08:00.003-04:00

Here in the Pasadena Shopping Center is my little Curves Weight Loss Center. The Power to Amaze Yourself, the sign says. Right next to it is Kumon, a tutoring business (Math Reading Success says the description, complete with no punctuation). Its slogan is Let Your Child Amaze You.

So maybe with all this amazing stuff going on, it's no surprise that it happens at Blockbuster, too, on the other end of the shopping center. "Did you find everything you were looking for?" asks the perky clerk.

"Yep," say I.

"Awesome!" she gushes.

Now, a sunset over the Gulf of Mexico could be awesome, I should think, or something to do with mountains. If the word grandeur springs to mind, then go ahead -- say it's awesome. But finding Disc Two of the Third Season of The Office? Nice, but not awesome.

I know the kid is just using kid talk, but I guess I'm middle-aged enough to find it offensive.

And oh! you don't want to be with me when the waitress calls us "you guys," especially when it's another woman and me. You guys is way beyond just kid talk. Our whole country talks that way, including people who hate it, including, I'm saddened to say, me.

No one says You're welcome anymore, either. I thank the clerk at Publix and he says, "No problem." Well, yeah. I didn't expect it to be a problem. The cash register told you how much everything was. It totalled it up. It added the tax. It figured out how much I saved. It told you how much change I should get back, plus it's the lesser-paid bag boy who's asking me about my paper-plastic preference, so, yeah, "No problem" is probably correct. I just don't see it as the appropriate response to Thank you.

Today at Blockbuster, the price was suddenly $1.99 per video per day, instead of the regular $1.00. "What?" I exclaimed. "The price doubled just since yesterday?"

"No. It started today."

Fine. She pointed out that it hadn't actually doubled. I pointed out that one penny away from two bucks is two bucks in anybody's book. She pointed out that some people think they're getting a deal by having it "under two dollars." I pointed out that her mother wears Army boots.

Torture

2009-08-14T12:47:00.004-04:00

I'm copying this from an email I got this morning:

Reports in Newsweek and the LA Times indicate that Attorney General Holder is on the verge of appointing an independent prosecutor to investigate CIA abuses committed during the interrogation of detainees in U.S. custody.

Unfortunately, the reports indicate that the investigation may be limited to low-level CIA operatives who went beyond techniques authorized in the “torture memos,” letting high level government officials who commissioned and authorized “enhanced interrogation techniques” off the hook.

It is absolutely critical for Attorney General Holder to know that the American people support a full investigation -- wherever the facts may lead -- and that those who authorized these horrific violations of human rights must be held accountable.

Now please go watch this video and take the action it suggests, if you agree:

http://www.aclu.org/torturedlogic/index2.php

I know I have at least one reader of this blog who thinks torture's just fine, but every study done about torture shows that it doesn't work. It doesn't make people tell the truth. It's true that it terrifies and humiliates and permanently damages people, physically and mentally, but that's generally not the truth torturers are looking for.

Or is it?

Sometimes when I have the least little pain -- say a paper cut -- I wonder what it would be like if I had paper cuts all over my body, all the time. I wonder if that would make a good torture technique. What about an earache? In addition to everything else, what if torture victims also were given earaches, something to plague them between waterboarding sessions? Sometimes when my back goes out (I don't know where it goes, and I can't say I blame it, but still, it really hurts), I think, what if I were a slave and I had to go out and tote dat barge anyhow?

I think about that when I see street people sometimes. Some of them walk so awkwardly, with shoulders all skewed this way and that. I'm guessing they don't get a lot of chiropractor care. They just have to keep moving, no matter how painful, no matter the condition of their shoes.

I remember overhearing my parents talk when I was a kid. I believe now that the Ku Klux Klan was in the news then, and that the American Civil Liberties Union was defending the Klan's right to meet peacefully. That's what the ACLU is for. Mom said if we decide that the KKK isn't allowed to meet peacefully, then maybe we'd decide that oh, the Republican Party wouldn't be allowed to, either. It really had to be a right for all, or none.

I later discovered it was the issue that lost a whole lot of members for the ACLU, but I'm with Mom. She was right.

Now you know I can't stomach "news," but I'm pretty sure the United States has its own rules about torture, and that people in the Bush administration broke those rules. I believe they need to be ... hm ... "held accountable"? Would that do it? What does that even mean? Or should they be "punished"? What if they were subjected to the same torture they permitted? Do you think that would stop them? Or would we be just as bad as they?

And so what if we were?

What I can't stand about it is the cold cruelty of torture. If it were passion of some sort, it wouldn't seem quite so bad. But this is cold-blooded. It's discussed. It's decided exactly who will do what for a particular form of torture. And I suppose various employees develop specialties. Jesus.

There's a scene in the movie Stand by Me that just kills me every time. The big boys -- the JD's (junior delinquents, to the uninitiated) -- take the smaller boy's ball cap and play keep-away with it while he scrambles, in vain, to recapture it. The thing is, it belonged to his dead older brother and it really meant something to the kid. See? It's the meanness that makes it so awful, the complete lack of sympathy or empathy or compassion.

Well, I recently read the daily meditation page in the bathroom at The Longhouse. It was a simple statement from the Dalai Lama: We must be compassionate to all. All.

After I read that, I actually made a point to feed Nero every day, even though I'd started to dislike him because I think he bullies my Mittens. But surely Nero is part of this all His Holiness is talking about, so I do it. In fact, I just went out on the porch, and there was Nero in a chair, out of the rain, skeeters circling him. I sprayed him and Mittens with mosquito-repellent, which they both despised.

So we must be compassionate to Bush and his ilk. Man. I don't know.

A friend called and interrupted this blog with his opinions on this stuff, which I did not ask for. I guess now I'd have to say that at least two of my readers think torture's okay. Damn. Anyway, he says there can be no rules in war. The other side's going to break the rules, so we may as well, too. But, but -- the Geneva Conventions?

Well, I can't quite just shrug. I can't just shake my head at this torture stuff and get back to my book. So I'll write a blog that's remarkably informed (for me, who prefers the Dave Barry System of Research [ask someone else]), and I'll provide a link which I hope you'll follow, and I'll even put up a picture of a yawning cat, our dear dying Mo, so that his sharp, bared teeth may be a lesson to us all.

Miracle Nothing

2009-08-11T09:18:00.007-04:00

As you know if you'd been paying attention, I joined Curves last week. It turns out that you can't actually get fit that way. You have to go to the workout. Drat. Anyway, in a similar fit of self-loathing, I, uh, bought something. I suppose if I had a television, I'd have bought some fabulous jewelry from the Home Shopping Network, just to make my fat self feel better, or maybe I'd have ordered an amazing exercise system that works all my muscles in only fourteen minutes a day, so I suppose I should just be grateful that I only have a computer, and that I only ordered twenty seven-ounce packets of Miracle Noodles.

Near as I can tell, these noodles are a vegetable fiber, even though they contain zero dietary fiber. They're a filler -- a carb-free, calorie-free, fat-free filler. Like tofu, they take on the taste of whatever's around them. I committed two recipes: an Asian thing with shredded cabbage and a hot peanut sauce, and my own delicious macaroni salad. It was a costume ball, with the Miracle Noodle masquerading as elbow macaroni. Its mask kept slipping off, the hat tipping, the robe sliding off the shoulder, revealing not succulence but pestilence.

The only real trouble with the Miracle Noodles is that I'm simply not going to cook. I discovered, too, from post-purchase research that most people say the noodles work best in Asian recipes. Heck, if I'm going to bother to cook, I want to cook something I love.

I spent forty bucks for the things, which includes shipping, and since they're packed in some gelatinous, translucent substance that smells a bit like fish (but may taste like chicken), they're heavy. And that's what inspired today's blog for me. If these noodles weighed, say, five pounds, I'd have tossed them -- and my money -- out with Monday's trash and been done with it. You'd never have known about it. But it's a whole different thing when there's such substance. I feel truly wasteful throwing out twenty pounds of stuff.

The hole was dug even deeper when, refusing to throw the noodles out, I offered them on Craig's List. I put them under Health and Beauty and am asking ten dollars for the whole mess. Since my ad will stay on the list for a month, I think I have to keep the noodles in my refrigerator, even if I change my mind about tossing them out. They're good till mid-November, as long as we understand that "good" means many things.

As a special offer to my Blog Friends, I'll let you have the things for FREE. Just come and get 'em.

But let's move on to more pleasant topics, like my new license plate. Notice anything strange? Yes. The tags expire in September 2011. We Floridians can now renew for two years at a time. The price jumps thirty-five percent on September 1, so people born in the last quarter of the year (and you know who you are) have the option of renewing early, to enjoy the savings for both years.

I did that yesterday and while I was at it, I personalized my Imagine plate with -- you guessed it! -- BIEN50. It will be centered on the plate, which will cover up John Lennon's self-portrait, but that's what you get when you mix art and bureaucracy. I'm convinced they let a Republican design the plate. The background sky could easily have been much better, and the lettering for IMAGINE breaks the very first rule of typography: Make it legible. Still, the extra money I paid goes to local food pantries, so it may be sadly ugly, but at least it does some good.

Olga was over here the other day. Yes, the same Olga who needs to upload a photo of herself as my Follower. She, like too many, appears to be in the Witness Protection Program. Ah. Maybe I'll call those faceless Followers Stalkers. Will that urge them to show their faces?

Anyway, we saw a butterfly dragging a dead leaf as it lumbered from one branch to another. I thought it was gathering material to build a nest, although it is the wrong season and, um, the wrong species. It turned out that it was carrying its Significant Other, with makin' whoopee on whatever they use for minds.

I never know in the insect world who's doing what. Bugs are just too alien to me. I mean, when monkeys are making babies, I get it. Ditto ducks and dogs. I think the water mammals might baffle me, though, and I know bugs do, so it took a moment to figure out that the butterflies were mating.

I know in the bird world, the males are the showoffs, strutting their brighter colors to capture the females' attention. Mammals, too, have the males pounding their chests and smashing their horns to show who's got the best sperm. Of course, we're mammals, so I don't understand why the females are the ones who, for instance, jump on the backs of motorcycles wearing leather short-shorts and teeny bikini tops while the males driving the bikes are covered (except for their heads, of course) in thick denim and leather. I suppose it's the same thing that made girls in my high school wear their fat winter coats over their above-the-knee skirts (jeans and even slacks making the dress code cover its eyes with the back of its hand and feel faint). Our bare legs were out there in the cold. We wore our little white sneakers (kept white with baby-shoe polish) and little white ankle socks. In the Buffalo Snowbelt.

Something got turned around. I mean, women's magazine covers hint at the treasures inside: How To Make Him Really Hot, Top Ten Ways To Turn Him On. Huh? When did that become an issue? Goodness. Just say yes. That'll turn him on.

Well, I guess we got civilized. We crawled out of the caves and moved to Madison Avenue and Wall Street. Now instead of roaring and charging, the human male mammal buys a car that'll do that. Okay. Maybe my metaphors are getting puréed here, but, really, look at our progress: The males spend a lot of money to show us they've got the best sperm, and we females spend a lot of money to make sure that fine sperm goes to waste. It's like my Miracle Noodles. I've found a food that delivers absolutely no nutrition or calories or fat or protein. Next thing you know, we'll be sending it to Ethiopia.

I apologize for that awful photo of the butterflies getting it on. All the others were actually out of focus, and it's an auto-focus camera. But did you notice the ACCENT MARK? I'm so thrilled! My friend Luis turned me on to that. Yay!

Say Cheesy!

2009-08-04T13:10:00.006-04:00

This was weird. This morning, while buying vegetables, washing the car, and doing a load of laundry at the Laundromat -- all pre-coffee, thank you -- I noticed that I'd missed a call from Amy Oatley, from the Industrial Arts Center (IAC) here in Gulfport. Well, she didn't leave a message, so I got on with my chores.

Just now, I decided to send her a message via the website:

http://www.industrialartscenter.org/

My sound was on, and I heard her call out, "Hi Barbara!" Whoa! How 'bout that technology, huh? Well, I'd been to that site before. Maybe there's something about ... oh, I don't know ... cookies or worms or spies that enables the site to know who's looking and to yell out her or his name.

Well, then I realized that more was being said. I had activated a little video of me in all my glory, tripping over my words as I talked about my mailboxes, mumbling and talking too fast. I had no idea I'm that inarticulate, but now we have it in living sound. Amy's an excellent editor, though, so it's not nearly as bad as it, well, as it actually is.

In any case, go listen to me.

And go see how fat I am. Jeepers! Yesterday, I joined Curves. Yolanda took way too many measurements. This is so we can amaze ourselves with the progress I'll make. Uh huh. Except for my upper arm and upper thigh, all my measurements start with 4. This is appalling. If I were blessed with any shame at all, I wouldn't be telling you this. I had a nutbag co-worker who believed that 4 was an evil number. Her cubicle had a 4 in it, and at the beginning of her shift, she'd cover the 4. Now I understand.

But back to the video ...

Years and years ago, my mother was in the Wyoming County [NY] Bicentennial Singers' production of I Do! I Do! There's a male lead and a female lead, and that's it. The play follows a couple from their wedding day to their retirement. She was on stage for all three acts -- so was the bout of shingles that settled in the middle of her forehead like a good Hindu wife. Well, there was what she called The Flaming Agnes Scene, where she attempts to be seductive. My mother. Seductive. I wish she had let me show her a few dance moves before the play. Seriously. I could have helped.

Well, she could have helped me during this little video, and I wish she had. Alas, she left this vale of tears in 1998, so I was on my own and I talked too fast and too stupid, but there it is.

We're trying to put together a class so I can teach people how to paint mailboxes. It isn't going well. Frankly, it's embarrassingly expensive and I don't think it's worth it. Am I allowed to say that on a blog? The IAC is holding a mailbox contest in September, for Gulfportions. I think that will be a success, but this class? Nope.

Hey! Let me put up a picture of a mailbox! Ooh, I know! I'll just show the ends of the mailbox, making it just as awkward as my video!

Better Red than Dead!

2009-08-03T15:53:00.002-04:00

My friend, whom I'll cleverly call Zil in order to preserve her anonymity, is pretty much a Communist. If she's got a dime she doesn't really need, and she sees that you (or at least I) need (or needs) a dime, she'll give it to us (!).

Knowing my poor car was in the shop for having stranded me again -- this time for more than an hour on a sultry night, with Benji but without his leash since it was to be a quick hop in and out at Blockbuster -- she drove by my house the other day. She called ahead to say she had something for me. It was a hundred bucks. When I refused graciously ("I'm not taking your freaking money!"), she drawled like the Atlanta Belle she is, "Then Ah'll jus' drawp it on yore lawn," using two full syllables for "lawn."

I recently read a Buddhist quote -- maybe from His Holiness Himself -- that basically said one must breathe in and out. One cannot breathe in only. One cannot breathe out only.

I took the cash.

I brought it to Pasadena Car Care (PCC) this afternoon and, after adding another $119.65, got my car back. Its random refusal to start every single time has been a problem for more than a year. I've had a new alternator, a new starter, and new fuses. I may have had other new things, too, but I prefer to remain in denial about them. I know it has cost many hundreds of dollars and many hours without a car. The guys at PCC are confident they've fixed it.

It was a melted fuse-holder. A short caused it, and general wear and tear caused the short. It's the third one they've had -- always on Toyotas -- in the last couple of months. Huh.

The problem now is one of loyalty. What do I do about the man who's watched over this car since I've owned it? Because he couldn't find this one (1) problem, does that mean he's out of my life? But he calls me Miz Nicolazzo with the sweetest South Carolinian accent! PCC's a lot closer, though. Both Zil and Mike ... er, Ekim ... use them. Well, if I quit the first guy, do I send him a Dear Jon Letter or just fade away? PCC actually had the problem fixed on Friday but no one called me. I called them today (it's Monday) and they acted surprised that I didn't know it had been ready all this time. Shall we vote?

Meanwhile, how 'bout them Scientologists? Did you get their big fat magazine in the mail? I just can't work myself up into an interest in them, although I have been on the sidewalk in downtown Clearwater when there's been no one else but Them, walking quietly in small groups their blue suits, and it really is a bit creepy, like a horror movie just before the first zombie reaches the square.

I wish someone I trust would tell me, in twenty-five words or less (and no using "u" for "you"), what their basic beliefs are. That would satisfy me. I don't need a whole magazine. All I saw at my quick run-through was an accusation against the reporters of the St. Petersburg Times. The article said the reporters had about seventeen thousand words on a recorded interview, but only used forty-one of them in the article. I hope whoever did the counting earns more than minimum wage.

The lawn here hasn't been mown in more than a month. That's partially why I didn't let Zil drop the bills there. We'd never find them again. The slumlord (from Atlanta, oddly enough) is doing an entertaining song and dance about Gino The Lawn Guy, but none of it is making the grass shorter. By the time I get from the side door to my car out back, I've got enough seeds on my legs to plant an acre. I also have something sticky -- bug juice or sap or frog spit -- around my ankles. I guess the liquid is heavier than the seeds. Neither dog nor cat wishes to slog through the stuff. Stanya, the Czech Republic woman on the other side of this duplex, parks her car out front, which helps keep the grass down -- on her side anyhow. If we pay for a mowing, we'll be setting a terrible precedent, so we just roll our eyes at each other.

Oh. Back to Benji and me at Blockbuster, panting in the heavy night air. I used my Swiss Army Knife's scissors to make a leash out of a Publix grocery bag. It was enough to bring him around the corner, where we caught a slight breeze. Now if I could just get him to eat grass, we'd be all set.

Roll Up The Windows!

2009-07-29T17:24:00.006-04:00

At Least I Can Still Smoke In My Car!

That's a bumper sticker I was following the other day. The big pickup truck had a small American flag decal and a big American flag with an eagle covering the whole back window. There was also a poor little copyright-ignored Calvin peeing on something. He's always urinating on an object I can't quite make out.

Yes. At least smokers can still smoke in their cars. But they don't. Have you noticed that? Even in the rain, one or two fingers and a thumb are sticking out of the top of the window, holding the smoldering cigarette out into the drizzle. I've actually experienced more second-hand smoke driving, since people can't smoke anywhere inside.

Do you think they think it's against the law to smoke inside their own cars?

I smoked three packs a day for twenty-four years, right up until July 5, 1992. Now I hate cigarette smoking and can't believe my eyes when someone I know and love still smokes. I mean it. I am amazed when I see them light up. I'm in denial about it for them. "You still smoke?" I'll ask, incredulously. I'll ask that five times a week if that's how often I see them. I just can't get it through my head that everybody didn't quit smoking on July 5, 1992.

Fee Fine Mo Mum

2009-07-27T16:36:00.003-04:00

With all the parking and unparking and reparking that I've done today, it's a miracle that I only earned one (1) parking ticket. And with all the cussing and blaming and rationalizing that I did upon seeing said ticket, it's amazing that I finally just shut up and paid the fine. In fact, believe it or not, the check really is in the mail.

First I picked up Mike at his house (and parked, of course). Then I brought him to the whole Bayfront Blah Blah Medical Thing downtown (and parked). I was slightly familiar with the complex because we'd made a trip to the Emergency Room the day before. In fact, every three hours yesterday, I went back outside with my pocket full of purposeful quarters and fed the machine. Perhaps I expected to be rewarded today for yesterday's vigilance.

As I gazed down on Sixth Street this morning from the doctor's waiting room, I could see block-long lines of cars parked on both sides. Only one car had a ticket on it. I found myself coming back again and again to the car with the ticket. Then I felt I was giving it too much power. I was inadvertently invoking the Law of Attraction, so I made myself think Pleasant Thoughts to negate the negativity of that ticket.

It didn't work.

Still, after receiving the ticket, I drove back home (and parked) to put Mo in a box and bring him to his chemo therapy (where I parked).

Headed back home, I stopped at Subway (and parked) because it was just after noon and I still hadn't had morning coffee or breakfast, so a five-dollar footlong sounded great, even though I can't agree with the lack of a hyphen in "footlong."

Well, my car wouldn't start, so I walked the ten blocks to Mike's house, hoping to use his car. It started to rain on the way, but it was only drizzle, so I just walked faster. Olga passed me and honked merrily. She just saw me striding along, finally doing that exercise I'd been talking about. I could have flagged her down, of course, but the walking actually felt good. It was helping to stamp out the building aggravation.

I got Mike's car and went back to Subway (and parked). My car started. That wasn't a complete surprise. It's been misbehaving that way for months and months. The mechanic has replaced fuses and a fuel pump, and those have helped, but nothing has solved the problem. It's intermittent, which just makes everything worse.

So there I was with two cars and a footlong. It began to feel like the riddle with a goose, a fox, and a bag of corn.

I drove home in Mike's car (and parked). Liz came and brought me to my car at Subway and I brought it home (and parked). Then it was time to pick up Mo, so there I was, parked at the animal hospital again. Let's stop and count, shall we? Let's see ... counting reparking back at home now, that's ten. There will be one more when I pick him up, another when I bring him to his place, and another when I return The Rainmaker to Blockbuster. And then home again for the night, yes? Good.

I'd like to know who wrote the parking ticket -- I mean, who wrote the words to be printed on the ticket. On the side giving my car's information -- including that it's "red," which is always amusing -- there's a ten-digit Issue No. That's the only number given on the ticket. Still, on the front of the envelope, under the spaces for my return address, they require my Case No. And on the back, as a mailing instruction, they insist that I put the Citation No. on my check.

Whenever I've had a multiple-choice question, I've assumed someone's toying with me. I expect there to be some evil twist, some loophole, some punctuation left out that's going to affect the answer. I don't expect the multiple-choice question to be straightforward.

Well, I have the same suspicions of anything government-related, no matter how small the government. I actually think that a Case No. is printed on my ticket somewhere, possibly in invisible ink, and that my inserting the Issue No. will hold up payment to such an extent that I'll have to pay the late fine of $40.00 instead of the timely fine of $25.00.

Furthermore, why is this thing even called a ticket? You get tickets to a movie, tickets to the ballgame, to the concert. Yay! I have tickets!

Hah.

And no, I'm not going to tell you what happened to Mike. You'll have to read his blog to find that out. Suffice it to say that his medical insurance does not cover parking fines.

The Runaway Returns

2009-07-20T13:16:00.005-04:00

Well, it's been an awful morning. I've experienced anger, panic, despair, sorrow, boredom, gratitude, and joy. No wonder I'm tired.

I let Mittens outside last night around eight. I was watching a fairly stupid movie on hulu.com. Maybe it's call A Dog's Breakfast. Instead of a made-for-TV movie, it was a made-for-cultdom movie, but it never made it. Anyway, I knew I'd be up for another hour, so I obeyed the wishes of my beloved cat, and let her out.

I called her many times after the movie, but she didn't return. Well, she's been hanging with Nero. Oh my god! I wonder if they have formed a cult? He does seem to have some strange power over her. He's an unfixed male (as you'd know if you'd been paying attention) and I swear I've seen her want to come inside, but she checks with him and he says no and she stays outside.

Being a wild-haired feminist myself, of course I resent her kowtowing to him. On the other hand, although they're faint, I, too, have memories of losing my heart and other organs to inappropriate males, so I've not been too harsh with Mittens's choice of companion.

Well, if she starts wearing a bonnet, I'm putting a stop to the whole thing.

So Mittens was gone all night. That's not my preference, but it's not unusual, either. She's always out front waiting for me when I get up the next day. I'll open the door and she'll start talking before she even gets all the way inside. I never know if she's chewing me out for having slept later than she'd counted on, or if she's simply engaging in Girl Talk, regaling me with tales of her night. Either way, I enjoy it.

In fact, that's one of the things I prefer about cats -- at least my cat -- compared to dogs: She talks with me. She says something and I respond and she responds and then I say something. It's a regular dialogue and I love it. A dog may flap his tail, roll onto his back, or even yelp a little greeting, but it's just that -- a greeting, not a conversation. No wonder they're men's best friends.

Well, this morning, I was up at four because, actually, I was concerned about Mittens. I went out and called for her, a waste of breath. I went out again at six. Nero was there. I brought him wet food. I think I may entice him into a cat-carrier one day and bring him to the vet for neutering and vaccinating and debugging. Bringing on the Meow Mix is the first step.

So far, when Nero's around, Mittens is around, too. But not today.

I Facebooked it and got some sympathy, which was nice. I skimmed the entire novel, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, by Steven Spielberg, of all people. There's a fourth book in that series. I'm assuming the movie borrows from all four because there was no cute little E.T. in this one.

While I'm at it, let me also say that I finished Sarah Bird's The Flamenco Academy. Usually her writing is jaunty and casual. This is a real departure from that, which she talks about just before the Reading Group Questions and Topics for Discussion section. I like both her styles, and now I want her to write a book about writing. Anyway, thumbs up on this one.

Ooh, but thumbs down on those annoying book club cheaters at the end of so many novels these days. Maybe this is just sour grapes because I've never been invited to join a reading group and a minuscule part of me wishes I would, but most of the questions seem insulting or irrelevant. I wonder if the authors even like this sort of thing. And who writes the questions? And do reading clubs even use them?

But I digress, don't I, Diane?

I wanted to take Benji on our regular walk so we could look for Mittens that way. He didn't want to walk, however, and I've never been able to say no to him. The only reason I wanted him with me was so I could talk out loud and people would think I was talking to my dog instead of to myself. Years of living alone -- and especially these last eighteen months of not even going to a job -- have encouraged me to chat away even though no one else is around. Thank god that business of talking to yourself equalling insanity is just an old wives' tale, right? Right?

I embarrassed my own self by chanting that find-it poem that Catholics and other superstitious people say. Oh. I suppose it's a prayer, since it's addressed to St. Anthony:

St. Anthony, St. Anthony,
Please come down.
Something's lost
And must be found.

You don't mind a little forced rhyme, do you? Me neither. Presumably St. Anthony's okay with it, too. Or maybe he had a fight with the Patron Saints of Poets -- there are four of them. Dang. There's only one Patron Saint of Geologists, and it's Barbara. There are over twenty for Difficult Marriages but only one for Happy Marriages.

I thought about the photos I have of Mittens and envisioned them in LOST posters. I don't have good pictures of her, mainly because I'm a lousy photographer. Since this is skeeter season -- as it is for about nine-tenths of the Floridian year -- her nose looks like raw hamburger. She has a hyper-sensitivity to mosquito bites. I started putting Skin So Soft on her this year after all the bumps showed up. I actually think the bad nose keeps her from being kidnapped, though.

I called my friend, an animal psychic, and left a message asking if she'd "gotten" anything on Mittens.

About three minutes after that, I heard Mittens's adorable voice. I looked out the window and there she was on the porch. I, of course, was up for a tearful, heartfelt reunion. She was up for Meow Mix and a nap. She chose a new place amongst the clutter. She was so bushed, the flash didn't even bother her. And she wasn't chatty, either. I fear that last night's activities will remain a mystery to me.

But how do people with children ever handle the angst? Seriously. How can you stand knowing all the things that could happen to your kids, and yet you let them out of your sight anyhow? Okay, sure. They're in their thirties, but still, doesn't it just break your heart, make you useless with all that hand-wringing? Don't forget, there are only five Patron Saints of Parenthood ...

Sun Tea

2009-07-15T17:18:00.004-04:00

I mostly drink water and coffee (fair trade, with turbinado sugar and soy creamer) but I also enjoy a couple herbal teas: rooibos (red bush), drunk by one of my favorite literary characters (Mma Precious Ramotswe, which you'd know if you'd been paying attention); peppermint; licorice, which does not taste like Good & Plenties, which are vile (no offense, Messrs. Strickland, Mahon, or Hershey). What these herbal teas have in common is that there's only one ingredient. That appeals to me.

Despite the title of this blog, I want you to notice that the photo shows no sun. Nope. This is really Shade Tea. I used to make Star Tea when I worked nights. I put a dozen bags of rooibos into a tall glass jar that held a couple quarts. I filled it with water and put it out on the sidewalk in front of my house. This would happen around two in the morning. When I woke up the next day, I'd wring out the tea bags and put the jar in the refrigerator.

I called it Moon Tea for a while, but I like Star Tea better. It's because of the Star Tea that I tried Shade Tea and found that it works just fine. Now, deep inside my brain, I feel quite certain that the tea would brew indoors. It would brew in the corner of a closet under a pillow in a box. Nonetheless, Shade Tea is far more romantic than, say, Under The Bed Tea, or Top Cupboard Tea.

I had a better photo of the tea brewing, but I wanted my northern readers to see the grass. We've had so much rain that we may actually be out of the three-year drought. But look: there are still bald patches.

Speaking of bald, here's my hubcap! The UPS guy brought it yesterday. Until I got this, with its cone in the center, I had assumed my 'cap would be a plain jane. It's going to be fun to figure out what to put on it, and how. I hadn't though about those spaces around the rim, either, and now I want to weave something through there. But I paint; I don't weave. Do I?

If I were in my new house (again with the euphemisms, if not flat-out lies), I'd at least have primed it by now ...

Book Update: I may have to give up on the idea of telling you each book I read. It's too hard to keep track of. I mean, emulating dear KT in Minneapolis, I'm writing each book down -- in the same place, not on bitty little scraps of paper floating around -- but then I forget to record them here. I just wasted time searching my blog and even so, I can't tell. So never mind. The last three I read are:

Testimony by Anita Shreve which was very Jodi Picoultesque; I enjoyed it.
When You Are Engulfed in Flames by David Sedaris. I laughed at a bunch of these essays. I'm not a diehard fan, but each book I read gets me closer to that category.
I Was Told There'd Be Cake by Sloan Crosley, who appears to be a David Sedaris wannabee. Or not. I don't know. This was a collection of essays, too. She just seems too mean. Great title, though, huh?

Mo, by the way, is doing nicely. The vet said his bloodwork is good, but I don't know what that has to do with cancer. He spends at least part of the night on my pillow which, oddly, I don't mind at all.

Nero -- that scrawny black unfixed stray who may or may not be bullying my beloved Mittens -- has a wound that's looking pretty bad. Someone thought the young man out back might be the owner, so I sought him out. He was wearing Surfer Boy shorts and a boa constrictor when I found him. A former snake-owner myself, I just found the creature absolutely appealing -- so smooth and muscular. When the sun caught her just right, her scales seemed holographic.

He doesn't own Nero, though, so I'm trying to think of ways to capture him and bring him to a vet. The trouble is, I only see him at night. He'd hate me if I kept him in a carrier all night long. He'd probably yowl the neighborhood awake, too, and do that spraying thing that male cats do that is still, thankfully, just a theory to me. So I'm just wringing my hands for now.

Lubber Update: I sprayed Windex on that last lubber, since one article said that dumping it in soapy water would kill it. It didn't seem to have an effect on it, but I haven't seen it since. I look for it all the time, though. If I find it again, I'm just going to push it off my Mandeville, but not kill, maim, or annoy it. Okay, you lubber lovers?

One Love / One World

2009-07-09T09:55:00.008-04:00

Oh yeah, let's sing it all together now. One love! One heart! Let's get together and feel alright! I've always been in a musical black hole. This is embarrassing, but by the time I became aware of Bob Marley, he was already dead. I had a television then and Publix had that great commercial of The Good Uncle blowing up all the water toys for the kids at the family reunion until all the food was gone. One Love played throughout. It blew me away. I asked around and found out who it was and bought a CD and became a fan.

Well, tonight at 11:35 on The Tonight Show, the Playing for Change (dot com) band will be playing, and maybe they'll play One Love. I almost wish I had a television ... Check it out if you don't have to be up at five to go to work. The man on the far right in the photo is Vusi Mahlasela, part of the band. Just saying his last name -- no matter how you pronounce it -- is music.

I've met Lillo Nicolazzo on Facebook. He may or may not be related. Since his English is as non-existent as my Italian, we basically just smile at each other across the ocean. Still, I had enough French and Latin in high school, and enough Spanish in romance, and enough English in my life to understand his response to my comment. I told him to say hi to my beloved President Barack Obama if he sees him. Yes. Somehow I -- with no tv or newspapers -- found out that Obama's in Italy!

Oh. I know. My CD-player in my car is starting to deteriorate, and I couldn't stand listening to Sounds of Blackness (Africa to America: the journey of the drum) hop and skip, so I resorted to the radio. I listen to WUSF because I like the classical music. I don't like their politics, though. I support WMNF (I don't want their music but I like their politics) by, uh, wearing the tee shirts that Mike gets when he sends them money. Either way, they both subscribe to NPR news, so that's the news I catch a couple times a month.

I told Lillo to say hi to Obama and Lillo wrote back: Io apprezzo molto il tuo Presidente Obama ...

We must be related, as I, too, often dribble off with ellipses ...

Mike and I went down to the animal hospital to get Mo from his first chemo treatment. As we walked in, the receptionist said she was just about to call Mike to tell him Sunny's ashes had arrived. Yep. Festivities all 'round. Mo's reacting well to the treatment, but I don't know if that says anything about the actual cancer.

Remember when people wouldn't even say cancer? They used to say the Big C, dipping their heads a bit as if it were a secret. They'd whisper about cancer. Now, heck, I know an older couple who goes to the dermatologist together to have their melanoma (melanomi?) removed. It's an outing.

Twice now, I've had to interrupt myself (and I hate when that happens) to see if I've talked about something before. It turns out that I've talked about things on Facebook. Well, that's going to stop. I can't be flitting around, searching for keywords (lillo, hubcaps), and god knows I can't just remember, either.

So check out Eunice Fisher's contribution to Ken Marquis' project, http://www.landfillart.org/, shown here. See it bigger on the site, where the pieces are shown alphabetically by artist. I'll be getting my own hubcap in the mail soon. I can hardly wait!

I just commissioned Derrick Johnson to paint my chest of drawers. I'm really excited about that. He's here in Gulfport. I just love his stuff. http://www.stankinstudio.com/. And how about Vincent Pompei? Can you even imagine having such a name? http://www.pompeistudio.com/. I'll be needing one of his pieces soon, so perhaps you'd like to start saving now. My birthday's sooner than you think!

Speaking of birthdays, I celebrated twenty-five clean and sober years on Tuesday. That's not nearly as exciting as you might think it should be, but I suppose it's like a plain old birthday. Turning thirty was a lot more interesting than I suspect turning sixty will be, but I still like gifts and restaurant meals, you know? Well, do things just get more ordinary as we age, do you think? Here comes Christmas! Yah, yah. I've had a buncha of those. Nice, but so what? Is that it?

I remember when Mom said she probably wouldn't even put up a tree one year. That seems so sad, but now it just seems ... convenient. I know I used to collect rocking horse ornaments, but I haven't displayed them in a long, long time. Ten years? At least.

Okay. Maybe celebrations of annually occurring things aren't as exciting, but, truly, my Stankin' dresser? THAT'S exciting. The upcoming hubcap? Oh yeah.

Good. I didn't think life was that bland ...

The Fifth of July

2009-07-05T11:23:00.004-04:00

I just love having another artcar out back! Josh acts like his truck is no big deal. He cut the metal to use as stencils on it. Well, maybe it's nothing compared to what he could do, but it's pretty impressive to me as is.

Furthermore, there are no wild parties, so far, from the eastern side of this bitty little duplex into which he just moved, so all is well. Still, I'm anxiously awaiting news on my new house ... "my" and "new" being euphemisms.

If you're also a Facebookie, you'll know that on Friday, July 3, I was the Featured Artist at the Industrial Arts Center. As is par for those events, I made about $5.50 per hour, not counting setup and teardown, but I had a lot of fun and made some good contacts.

Because I am fat and sedentary, and because I moved all my stuff three times on Friday (into the car, out of the car, and back into the car, where it remains two days later), I could barely walk on Saturday, the Fourth. That's fine with me. I rarely do anything on the Fourth. It's never meant much to me.

When I was in high school, it meant there'd be the big parade in Warsaw [NY], population 3,651 in 2009. I imagine it was about the same in, say, 1968, my senior year. The Attica State Prison riot trials took place there, since the prison is in Wyoming County, of which Warsaw is the seat, being the big city and all. It not only has traffic lights but a monument in the middle of an intersection. Until this exact moment, it never occurred to me to wonder what the monument is about. I've pretty much only viewed it from the eye level of a kid sitting in a car, going around it, feeling scared and excited because you really can't see anything from that perspective. Death could have come unseen.

My friend Jeri was once driving her three-year-old around the monument because she was making a left-hand turn. This was in the Olden Days when kids could clamber all over the vehicle and no one thought they were in danger. Well, as she executed the turn, she heard little Stevie giggling like crazy. She glanced over and saw him hanging by both hands from the bottom of the window well, swinging his feet out into the open air created by the door flying open on the turn.

Talk about excitement!

Well, okay, being in the marching band wasn't that exciting. On the other marching-band holiday, Memorial Day, we'd march in three little towns on Saturday and one other on Sunday, but on the Fourth of July, we'd march in the big parade in Warsaw, where there were actually three bands. That's pretty amazing, really. They were from Warsaw, Perry, and my school, Letchworth Central Junior-Senior High School. It was made up of five little villages and the surrounding farms, so we weren't as cohesive, perhaps, as the other bands. Or maybe we were. I have no idea.

I know that Perry had a girls' athletics department. A couple of times, Mrs. Dake, the girls' gym teacher at Letchworth, would pick out a team-load of us and tell us we were playing Perry in basketball that night. You didn't have to be athletic. You only had to be obedient. I know for a fact that knowledge of the rules of the game wasn't a factor. You had to be the kind of kid who said, "Okay." Those Perry girls actually had plays worked out that seemed to be announced by a special clap which their coach -- a coach! -- would make. I was just baffled and ashamed.

But good ol' LCS shone on the parade grounds. I'm pretty sure we did, because we were the only band to go all the way to Syracuse to compete in the statewide championships there. I remember almost nothing of those trips except my mother's excitement. If we won, if we placed anywhere, we were to call her -- collect! -- and she'd arrange a band made up of the parents of band members to welcome us home. I have no doubt she'd have done that, had there ever been a reason ...

The Fourth of July was Mom's favorite holiday, although I don't know why and now I never shall, and it's also Leone's favorite. She's the friend I just helped move into the Independent Living facility. We talked about it last night on the phone. She grew up when World War II was going on, and she was aware of the fact that we were losing. It was a big deal when the battle at Normandy took place, and the war started turning around. She was so proud to be an American.

I, on the other hand, grew up in the Vietnam Era, when Our Boys were coming home hooked on heroin, facing hippies who protested again the war and preached love and peace and marijuana instead. I grew up when our cops killed our teenagers at Kent State. What??! I still had a television when Watergate was happening, and even then, I remember thinking that I'd better not have kids because if their kids ever asked Grandma what it was like during Watergate, I wouldn't be able to tell them. I couldn't pay attention to stuff like that. It seemed too confusing and too ugly. Yes. I never had the head or heart or stomach for this sort of thing. I don't know why, at age fifty-eight, this is news to me. I can't read books or watch movies about "international espionage" because I just can't keep track of everything. I'm much better at forthrightness and transparency.

So unlike Leone, I grew up in an America that seemed pretty bad, really, where it seemed even the government was against The People. We had JFK and lost him, MLK and lost him (except in street names now), and Bobby, who never had initials, and lost him, too. If you were "proud to be an American," it meant you were a Republican and thought we should go forth and kill everyone except the white people (well, go ahead and kill the French), taking everyone's natural and unnatural resources, bringing them back for a few paunchy white men to share, and the price in blood be damned. It was either non-white blood or poor-white blood, so it hardly mattered. Its loss could be seen as a good thing.

If anyone can bring me back to being proud to be an American, it's President Barack Obama, although, really, being proud of a citizenship into which I was born is equal to being proud of my eye color. I had nothing to do with it.

Good News, Bad News

2009-06-29T10:57:00.004-04:00

The Good News is that Mo got his stitches out this morning. Yay! In fact, he can go back to being an indoor/outdoor cat at Mike's place -- he's free! he's free! -- except that the Bad News is that he already has another lump. The Good News is that he's had a BB in him for years (don't ask). The Bad News is that the BB's on the other side. So instead of setting him free only to snatch him up again for another surgery, we're keeping him inside. Tomorrow will be the report from the chemo guy. Then we'll know what the next move is.

Did you read the comments on my last blog, the one entitled Pride? Please take a moment to go read them, but especially the one from Anonymous, who's gone to Pride events for thirty-two years.

Hellooooo? Jeeze. I didn't say read the blogs all the way back to June 2008!

Well, at first, Anonymous was talking about how he (yes? he?) loves to taunt "them." I thought he meant the gay people celebrating Pride. As I read on, I got more furious. "What does it take to discourage These People?" he asks. Ooh! I'm incensed!

Okay. The term tract should have tipped me off at the very beginning, but it didn't. I don't even remember when it finally hit me that Anonymous was agreeing with me. Oh. Oh, then everything was fine. The Good News is that the right-thinking man was on my side. The Bad News is that the guy was a narrow-minded, ignorant, bigoted puke-ball ... right up until he agreed with me.

Let's revisit that beautiful but entirely creepy grasshopper, okay? If you read those comments, you'd see that I'm in the minority by wanting the critter out of my space. Yeah. I want 'im on Facebook. Heh. Heh.

Well, the truth is that I lifted up that bucket the next day, and the creature was still there, still beautiful with its yellow-and-rust tapestry, still as creepy as all nightmares rolled into one, accented with an episode or two of The Twilight Zone as seen by a twelve-year-old. It didn't hop away immediately -- not away from me or towards me -- so I mashed it with the rim of the bucket. More than once. Yes. I split it in two and killed it.

Maybe two hours later, I was back out there, and I saw that, to my horror, the thing was about a foot apart. I mean, it was beside itself -- ten, twelve inches away.

The next morning, I couldn't find it at all, not the end piece, not the front piece. Hm. One friend told me that her grasshopper carcass lasted for over a year.

Well, the next day, I saw that another grasshopper was trying to hide on the Mandeville. Dang! The first experience was so awful -- feeling squeamish about it and killing it and listening to all you bug-lovers -- that I just didn't want to deal with it. But dammit! I want that Mandeville! I want it healthy and happy so I can plant it when I move. Well, I was on a mission, so I didn't have time to handle it then. I shook the plant but the bug didn't fall off, and I went on my way. Hours later, I returned. I found a stick and knocked the critter off the plant and into the base of the pot.

The Good News is that it wasn't a grasshopper after all! The Bad News is that it was -- I swear! -- HALF a grasshopper! No kidding. The front half of that first one had managed to crawl back to the plant and hang out in it until it had what we all hope was a peaceful death.

Can you imagine that? And now do you see why I'm terrified of them? They have too much power. I actually do believe in reincarnation, although I've never considered that we reincarnate as things other than humans. Surely that version is for Hindus, not lapsed Christians. We switch genders and races and circumstances, but not species. I mean, we don't, do we? We stick to the same species? Right? Because if we don't, and that bug comes back as a sort of Ironsides version of that grasshopper, and I'm back as a gorgeous but icky bug, he'll probably aim those wheels right at me. At the very least, he'll break my glasses.

Pride

2009-06-27T17:43:00.005-04:00

Please don't air Silencing Christians tonight. If you do, don't think of yourselves as "journalists." Think of yourselves as "hate-mongers."

That's the heartfelt email I sent to WFLA, Channel 8, here in the Tampa Bay area.

I got notice of Silencing Christians from Equality Florida, a gay activist organization, via email. After I signed and sent the email they provided, I also forwarded the thing to friends I thought would be interested.

In their thank-you note, Equality Florida asked me to go further and call WFLA to ask them to refrain from showing the infomercial. Well, actually, they told me to "insist," which is something I'm usually quite good at, but it didn't feel correct in this instance. The phone was answered right away -- by a human, of all things -- but it turned out to be the Online line, so I was transferred to Programming. If I'd been counting, I'd know how many times a phone rings in sixteen minutes. Programming never did answer. I prefer to see that as a good sign, that the line was clogged with thousands of insistent gay people and the people who love them. That's certainly a more desired scenario than the kid who answered Online just shuffling me off to some department that isn't even open at this time of day.

I'm grateful I have T-Mobile's unlimited calling plan. Plus my writers' group is tomorrow and I haven't written anything yet. Holding onto my phone and listening to sixteen minutes of rings is as good a way as any to procrastinate on that. It's as good as writing a blog entry, for instance.

And yes, I did say infomercial. You can watch the thing yourself at
http://www.silencingchristians.com/ but why would you want to?

I feel a bit helpless -- or is it hopeless? -- in the face of things like this. The hostess smilingly talks about "homosexual propaganda," inviting us to smile (condescendingly?) with her. She talks about how homosexuals have "changed the language" by calling themselves gay and others homophobic.

Okay. I'll agree with that hideous woman about the gay thing. Yes. The language changed. In addition to meaning merry, it means homosexual. I imagine most people used "gay" -- in my generation anyhow -- as often as they used "merry" in normal life -- outside of December anyhow. That is, hardly at all.

But I'm not buying the homophobic thing. I don't think gays invented that. Hah. Perhaps those Silent Christians invented it. To me, homophobic is sort of like using the prefix "mini" with another word. If I think you're being a little idiotic, I might refer to you as being mini-stupid but I don't think I should be credited with having invented a word.

I often call myself an afrophile -- usually when I'm talking about my painted car -- and some people act as if I created that word, since they'd never heard it before. I don't think I invented it. I think I just used it. Or I just picked it up off the ground. I mean, it was waiting to be used. So those Silent Christians are just making themselves look stupid -- and not even in a mini fashion.

I hope they're no more dangerous than average stupidity is dangerous.

The thing is, I was driving to a meeting today and noticed a lot of people walking on Central Avenue, when usually no one is walking there. Then I recognized it as part of the Gay Pride celebration breaking up. I drove five blocks through dispersing crowds. I actually got choked up with pride (I swear!) because we'd come so far -- we gays, we friends and families thereof. Good for us! I thought.

And then this ignorant paid-for hourlong piece of dribble* from the Silent Christians showed up. According to Equality Florida, tv stations in Michigan and Ohio have refused to air the thing, even for pay. (And according to Mike, according to Steven, Equality Florida did something stupid with the funds and stopped the same-gender marriage law from going through, but that's for a blog I'll never write, and I doubt they did it on purpose.)

Anyway, since I couldn't call the station, I went to the website, to the Contact Us place, and sent them the message at the top of this blog. I don't know who reads those things, or when, but my message would probably lose a little credibility if they knew I don't even own a television ...

And one of many reasons that I'm tv-free is that I hate getting all fired up about stuff like this. I've chosen a few organizations that I support with money and clicktivism (Amnesty International, the ACLU, the Quakers, the International Rescue Committee, okay and maybe more than a few) but I don't even really want to know what they're upset about. I want to hit ENTER with my eyes shut because I simply don't have the stomach for it anymore, if I ever did.

Years ago -- maybe fifteen, maybe more -- I was driving with a friend. We went past a car accident, complete with backed-up traffic and multiple ambulances. My friend, a newly sober woman, started crying. I thought, Fer crissake! You don't even know these people! I really thought she was sensitive to the point of psychosis. Well, I have since had the same reaction -- not so much since I got fired and the depression lifted, but still, yes: my heart bleeds.

[Whoa. Let's take a moment to admire the punctuation in that last sentence.]

Despite my short temper and my speedy reactions, I really don't like confrontations. I do, however, want to know how people think about certain things. For instance, the people who are otherwise kind and smart -- how is it that they "hate" homosexuals? I've never met someone I could talk with calmly about this. Or maybe I've never met a homophobe who's kind and smart.

I have a gay friend who says he thinks "queers" are aberrations. Why? Because they can't reproduce. My thinking is that since about ten percent of the population is gay, it can't be an aberration. Well, okay. Webster says someone who is aberrant is someone who deviates from the standard. I'm spinning my wheels here. My god! who doesn't deviate from the standard? And shouldn't we want to, at least in some categories?

Anyway, I actually can't understand why people get upset about gay people, and I don't have much hope of finding someone who could talk reasonably to me about it. But today, a man I really like, told me that the Bible says we're not to disfigure our bodies. That is, we shouldn't have tattoos or tribal scars or piercings. Because God said so -- in both Testaments, according to my friend. He's teaching his child this. In the end, I think he's using the Body As A Holy Temple thang and interpreting it to mean no tats.

I met a little boy in Ghana who had scars radiating from the outer edges of his eyes like the sun in a child's drawing. He was so marked because his mother had had five miscarriages before he was finally born. The scars were a sign of thanks for his life, thanks, one assumes, to, um, that God who doesn't want tattoos.

I don't really want to examine this, but I suspect I have dozens of ridiculous beliefs that I'd defend most fiercely (as long as no one loses an eye) but I refuse to look at them because ... it's too much work? I don't like to be wrong?

Well, anyway, I've accomplished my goal: I don't have time to write anything for the writers' group. I'm off to Billy's on Tierra Verde.

____________________
*Forgive me, but I just watched Burn After Reading. Twice. I couldn't help it.

Bye-Bye, Sunny!

2009-06-25T10:47:00.005-04:00

Here's a picture of Sunny from February of this year, a month after her seventeenth birthday. This morning, Sunny was euthanized. It would have been a really hard decision for Mike to make, except that Sunny made it herself, by refusing to eat. Thank you, Sunny!

We brought Benji with us. The vet had said bringing the sibling pets is for the human's sake, not the animal's. In that case, I would have left Benji home. But then Mike rightly pointed out that, really, how do we know at all what animals are thinking? At least we can know (can't we?) what we're thinking, and so Benji came, too.

Sunny's leftover medicines -- and there were lots of them -- were left with the vet, to be donated to animal shelters.

And then Mike stopped at Eileen's so I could drop off the proofs for the playbill, and he brought me to the library to return some movies and a book.

Life goes on, see? as they always say at funerals.

Yeah. Except for the dead ones.

Mother Nature

2009-06-24T14:58:00.008-04:00

Look, I know that we are all One. I really do. I remember, not even a year ago, opening up a big plastic storage box and being nearly overcome with the toxic stench of it. That's when I really got it: If it's bad for the Earth, it's bad for me; if it's bad for me, it's bad for the Earth. This is true whether we're talking about beef or FD&C Yellow#5.

I just went off to research -- only in my kitchen -- that FD&C thing. Is that the agency that approves and disapproves of color in food and health products? Or is it the actual color code like PMS in four-color printing? Or what, please? Well, I'm amazed, but I couldn't find any food item in my cupboards that had color added. I have canned goods, but there was nothing there. I have boxed mac-n-cheese, but it's organic so its color is natural. Before we all bow to my superior eating habits, let me remind us that I can hardly remember where I left the stove.

Anyway, yes: We are all One. The Earth and me. You and me. Critters and me. Oh yah? Guess what this is:

Well, sure, it's the bucket I use when I mix up the Secret Bubble Formula Sonny Fenwick (www.bubblebus.com) whispered in my ear one time. But it's also the containment for the critter below. Now, if the creature had been standing on a nice shiny black surface like that, looking all fresh-from-the-showroom, still having that new-bug smell, I might not have squeezed an eeek from my tightened throat and gone running back into the house, acting as if I were being chased by the Four Horsemen.

I came back out with the pruning shears. I don't know what my intent was. Several weeks ago, I was so deeply offended by seeing the smaller, black grasshopper -- the one with a thin orange dotted line running up its back like a please cut here coupon border that is the adolescent version of the one in the photo -- that I knocked it off the plant with Benji's leash and then just smashed it with my flipflopped foot.

But this creature, this giant, adult one? No. I simply saw it lurking on the Mandeville and went screeching into the house for a weapon. I did knock it off the plant with those shears, but it started hopping away. I smacked the ground a couple of times, trying to smash it, but I was really too creeped out to keep a decent aim. The larger part of me didn't really want to connect with it anyhow. What a huge mess such a big bug would make. Plus, it turned around and started coming at me and that's simply too awful to tolerate, so I tossed the bucket over it -- and I didn't get it right the first time, either. I doubt very much that I have the guts to remove the bucket. Even if I did, I'm sure the thing would have found its way out.

I had wondered why the Mandeville, above, had stopped thriving.

Fernando from Colombia's mother says you have to cut off the head of these grasshoppers, that cutting them in half -- at the bellybutton, say -- won't make them die. I believe her.

While I'm at it, what do you suppose came up out of this hole? Or yipes! do you think something went down first? Wow. It just now occurred to me that I do indeed think something came up first. I wonder how I thought it breathed. Or did I think it didn't even need air? Or that it breathed dirt? Well, jeeze, does that mean the thing is still down there? Doing what? My ignorance is vast.

Whatever it is, I have a lot of them. I just don't know if they're out or in.

I've often wondered just how big the bug would be if you could combine all the bugs I've ever killed into one giant bug. I'm not even talking about the bugs that are killed when The Bug Man comes over. I just mean the ones who died by my hand, as long as we understand that that hand usually had something in it like a spray can of poison or a fly-swatter or a paper towel, and also that that hand could have been a foot, surely clad. Would it be as big as a dog? a bear? Surely not an elephant. I'm unsure of its size, but I think I have a good idea of what its attitude would be.

Speaking of attitudes, go back and look at poor Mo on May 8 of this year (KT's birthday revisited!). Now come back and look at him as of today.

Yep. He had cancer surgery one day and then again six weeks later. Poor thing! He's really a great cat, though, always ready to be affectionate, rarely upset by anything. He's so lively so soon after the operation that it makes me think if I ever have to return for surgery, I'll go to the vet instead.

Mike's coming home from Colorado today, so Benji got a bath despite all his protestations. Mo will stay at least until his stitches come out next week, and maybe longer. Mittens has licked her paws of the whole thing. First Pook, then Mo. She's disgusted. There's talk of running off with Nero but I've warned her I'll only feed one stray.

I just read How Far to Bethlehem?, an historical novel by Nora Lofts. I used to read her all the time. I probably haven't read one of her books in more than twenty years, but I quite enjoyed this one.

My writers' group meets Sunday. I hope I write something by then. I wish my blog would count.

Expiration

2009-06-21T17:16:00.003-04:00

Here's my dad and me. I was born in late September 1950. Someone who knows more about babies will have to guess which month this is, based on how old you think I am (I'm the one in white). It's probably northwestern Pennsylvania, so take that climate into consideration during your calculations.

Dad would have been just barely thirty in this picture, and I'm the third kid. Two more are on the way, but not for another five years.

Dad was my first parent to die. That was July 8, 1996. He was seventy-four. It took a while to learn to use the past tense when talking about him. Then it suddenly seemed that he'd been dead ten years. Or was it ten days?

The last Father's Day I attended, back in Western New York, he was all twitchy and unhappy about it because, as a Bible-beatin' Christian, he felt there was no real father except our Heavenly Father. Or something. I only remember that it was annoying, and hardly fair to the sister who'd spent so much money on a gift (as opposed to myself, who always felt that my mere presence on such an occasion was gift enough). I wonder if now he's hanging out, waiting for the next incarnation, feeling like an idiot about his attitude towards Father's Day. Or maybe he's laughing at the whole thing, especially since in his next life, he's going to be a woman. Well, who knows?

I also wonder how you're supposed to celebrate Father's Day if yours is dead and you aren't one yourself and the only other closer father is in Boulder, Colorado, alive and well at eighty-two, with his kids and grandkids. Mister Hallmark is probably wringing his hands, trying to come up with a place to send a Father's Day card when you have no father. It must just kill him to think that he's losing sales just because of lack of life. Maybe they can invent some place like Santa's North Pole, and have fatherless children -- even adult children -- send glossy cards up there. There must be a Tie, Nebraska, or Pipe, Omaha. Or, yes, Arm Chair, Ohio. Where, oh, where would we be without stereotypes?

I'm only mentioning Father's Day because I've spent too much time on MyFace and seen that others have posted pictures of their fathers. That made me dig around for a photo of mine. How's that for originality?

I really wanted to talk about expiration. I'm pretty sure I can force that to dovetail with Father's Day ... something like If your father has expired, you are exempt from acknowledging Father's Day.

It's just that I checked the date on the carton of eggs in my refrigerator. It was January 20. I'm happy to report that the year was 2009, so I've got that going for me. Still, the eggs looked okay. I mean, their shells were still there, and nothing rattled when I shook them. Years of bitter experience suggests that were I to crack one open, I'd find an egg with the viscosity of room-temperature butter.

Speaking of eggs, I'm reading The End of Overeating by David Kessler, M.D. Here's a point of amazement: I didn't even have to check the title or author. And a point of absurdity: I got dressed 'long about page fifteen and ran over to Walgreens for what surely will be my last bag of Lay's Classic Potato Chips. Really. I mean it. Anyway, there are birds who, given the choice, will sit on a big egg -- laid by a much bigger bird, an egg they couldn't possibly bring to maturation -- rather than on their own egg. Yes. In some birds, bigger is even better than species survival.

Supersize me!

But back to expirations ... I had my limit of four DVDs checked out of the Gulfport library. I've been very busy and scattered, so I was dismayed but not surprised when I realized that all four movies were overdue. The fine is two bucks per day per movie. Well, I love libraries, so I grumbled not at all as I plucked out a five and three ones and raced to the library. Raced? Yes. I had about seven minutes to keep the penalty at eight bucks. Yeah, yeah, I love libraries, but not sixteen dollars worth. I pressed against the automatic door with three minutes to spare. No other, um, client? consumer? citizen? was there, only employees wishing they'd locked the door a moment earlier. My movies were swiped and came up No fine due. Yay, but why not? Because there's a grace period of a day.

Ah, grace!

You'll remember Poor Sunny, Mike's seventeen-and-a-half-year-old cocker spaniel. Well, she's about to expire, or at least an expiration is about to be committed upon her. We thought it was going to take place while Mike was in Colorado, but the ex-girlfriend -- curse her insight! -- told him he'd regret not having been there at Sunny's Final Moment. So we're thinking Thursday, the day after he returns from the mountains. I'd be willing to bet my library fine that when Thursday comes, someone who shall remain nameless will decide that there's still some life in the ol' gal yet, and Sunny herself will experience yet another reprieve, another grace period. May it be short.

Department of Transportation

2009-06-10T15:23:00.009-04:00

These three cars have been in my driveway for quite some time. It's a good thing the other side of this duplex is empty.

Of course you recognize my car, in the forefront. The other red car, in the foreback, belongs to Melanie, who is back in D.C., for her father's funeral. I sympathize. I empathize.

The middle car is for sale and I want you to buy it. Blue Book says $12,000, but Leone says $11,300. There are fifty thousand miles on this 3.7-liter 2003 Jeep Liberty. White leather interior. Moon roof. Satellite radio, if that's what it is when the radio displays the pieces that are currently playing. That's a little spooky. God. I remember when Caller I.D. was new. Charlie would pick up the phone, saying, "Hi Barbara!" and I thought he was intuitive. No. He just was -- and presumably remains -- a gadget junkie.

Anyway, the Jeep needs new tires and an alignment, but not desperately so, and there's a small scrape on the front fender, nothing a reasonably-priced artcar paint job couldn't remedy.

Buy it.

As long as we're in consumer mode, please show up for Vicki's yard sale this upcoming Saturday, June 13, starting at eight in the morning. There's a spa or whirlpool or whatever they call it for sale, and I think a washer and dryer, too. Lots of wooden things. Plants. Stuff. She's moving to North Carolina in a week, so come help her do it at 4751 Sixth Avenue South in St. Petersburg (but just barely), 33707.

And now to support the arts ... My friend Veronika Jackson, whom I've known for years and years, has earned a scholarship for a five-day intensive workshop at the Augusta Heritage Center in Elkins, West Virginia. Congratulations, Veronika! Alas, the scholarship just covers the workshop, not the transportation or room and board while there, so she needs to raise between eight hundred and a thousand dollars by early July. Please send her some money. Even ten bucks will make a difference.

Yep. I know Times Are Hard but that just means charity is needed more than ever. Send your donation to her at:
Veronika Jackson
PO Box 374494
Decatur, Georgia, 30034
and check her out at:
http://www.veronikajackson.com/

This picture was taken at a blues festival in France. Ooh la la!

Let's see ... the Book Report. I read the fourth in the Twilight series by Stephenie Meyer. I needn't say more. And I bought a book from the Friends of the [Gulfport] Library: The Iron Girl by Ellen Hart. It was okay. The sleuth, which is a word I've never said out loud, is a lesbian, as are -- believe it or not -- the people she dates. I like that about Hart.

Speaking of which, I just read the new bumper stickers from Stamp and Shout (dot com). I love this one: Want to protect marriage? Make divorce illegal. Really, now. How can a culture with a fifty percent divorce rate also wring its hands over the sanctity of marriage? Well, I know from bitter personal experience that hypocrisy takes a lot of energy.

June 7 -- last Sunday -- was not only a full moon but my wedding anniversary. Sometimes I feel just awful that I can remember that, given that the sanctity of that date was destroyed four years later. I want to smack myself for cluttering up an already scattered brain with irrelevance.

But look at this -- and here's where hypocrisy raises his or her or its sly head -- I don't mind it at all that I remember that Danny Chastek's birthday is August 5. I was in love with him in sixth grade. In fact, I wrote his name on my Pink Pet eraser. Wow. Was that really the brand name? Yep. Still is. I just looked it up. Yay, internet (I guess ...)!

I remember Ronnie Green from first grade, which I think is the last time I saw him, which is about fifty-three years ago. So why should I think remembering my wedding day -- "the most important day in a girl's life" -- is neurotic? I suppose if I'd remarried right away (as opposed to the current never), I might have forgotten the date.

You know those business cards that are printed on flat little magnets? Well, I saw a bunch of them clinging happily to a painter's truck today, hair blowing back, eyes squinting as the air rushed by, smiling and feeling free. I think that's a brilliant idea. When the truck is parked at Home Depot, people who need their houses painted can just pluck off one of the cards and call the company later.

Here's something that isn't a good idea, though: drooling cats. You'll remember Mo recuperating at my place. Well, when he really got into a good massage, he'd drool. My ninety-second research said that it's a sign in some cats that they're really, really enjoying whatever's going on. Okay. Well, Pook's been here since Friday, and yesterday I discovered how much she loves her face, in particular, to be brushed. Her drooling makes Mo's look like a drop in the bucket (heh). She drools like a faucet has been turned. No offense, dear Pook, but it's gross. On the other hand, I really like her, so I just wrap a paper towel around the brush handle and stand back.

Some of you have noted that I've not nattered in a while. I've been having a hard time, feeling blue. I think it started with accidentally hearing some television news on May 26. I wrote about it for my writers' group and now I'm going to post it here, too. Yeah. I want you all to suffer with me! No. It's more like an explanation, not that you asked for one. Or maybe it is some sort of cry in the void, hoping someone can respond with an answer that will kiss my boo-boo and make it all better. In any case, feel free to stop reading NOW.

__________________________________________

I GET IT

I am outraged. I am furious, enraged, angered, vexed, shocked, scandalized, incensed, provoked, maddened, galled, affronted, and offended. Thanks, Monsieur Roget.

I am sickened, puzzled, and frustrated.

I took a friend to get her first colonoscopy and was therefore subjected to television news, something I rarely see, for about fifteen minutes while she filled out the paperwork. Four middle school students had raped a classmate. I glanced at the screen. It showed what looked like two white and two black men, but since I’d heard “middle school,” these must have been boys. I don’t even know what middle school is. Is it the old junior high? Are these kids twelve? thirteen? older?

I ran my eyes around the waiting room. A man my age said, “They’re going to try them as adults because rape is an adult crime.” I just shook my head. Everyone else was filling out papers or talking on cell phones or paging through ragged magazines. I wondered if the facility would appreciate my old, still unread Smithsonians.

Then the newscaster told me that the rape had been committed with hockey sticks and a broom handle. I see.

I muttered something like, “In my day, kids didn’t need weapons.” I have no idea what I was saying. I hadn’t known any raped girls when I was a kid. Maybe I was upset because these boy-men didn’t even make their crime personal, as if that would make it better somehow.

“They picked on him all the time because he was fat,” said the man.

Oh. Oh, now it makes sense. Of course. Those boy-men would want to use tools because they weren’t sexually aroused by a frightened, squirming, crying fat boy. I get it. But maybe the fat boy was angry and fighting and resisting the whole time. Maybe he was punching and cursing their mothers and twisting and flailing even as he was overpowered by their numbers. Maybe he was raped but not beaten.

No. He was a fat boy. He couldn’t have been that bold. He was surely blubbering (get it?) and begging during the whole thing, until finally, for some reason, they stopped and went away, leaving him in a humiliated, painful mound of despair.

Imagine the next time he goes to school. Now instead of being picked on for being fat, he will also be picked on for having been raped. Now they’ll be calling him a homo or whatever the middle school word is. Now kids will be asking him about hockey scores and squirting him with Preparation H.

I wonder if the boy’s parents will move out of town, make a new start. I wonder if new starts work. Will the kid lose weight? Probably not. Probably he’ll gain weight, searching for more armor that doesn’t work.

Usually when I can’t stand something, I’ll make up a story about it. I’ll invent a way, for instance, that those four boy-men could have arrived at the point where they were okay with shoving sticks up a poor boy’s ass. I’d look at their horrifying childhoods and at least understand, at least a little bit.

But this time, I either can’t or won’t.

Hey, but that’s not all!

After my friend’s procedure – the nature of which is not lost on me – I returned to pick her up. This time, the television wanted to tell me about foster homes. Oh goody, I thought, more about sex abuse in the very homes that are supposed to protect kids.

But no. This was about the need for foster homes, as witnessed by one mother who tortured her two little girls by, among other things, using an eye dropper to put bleach into their eyes. Mom apparently thought the girls were vampires.

I don’t need to think of a story for this. I get it: Mom’s a nutbag. Anyone else would have known to use liquid silver on a vampire.

See how I distanced the atrocity with humor? Pretty good, huh?

I thought I would rant and rave here about the media in general instead of harping on the actual events with these kids. For instance, why do we need to know these stories? Is there a benefit anywhere to anybody to hear about these things? I can’t think of one. With the possibility of the so-called copy-cat crimes, it’s not as if we can claim that knowing about these transgressions will help prevent reoccurrences.

I have recently wondered if my ban on television and newspapers in my world is still okay. Maybe I’m being too much of a candy-ass. How can I possibly be a good dinner companion if I’m not up on the latest news? Heck, during that same colonoscopy day, there was something – I started listening too late to know what – about North Korea. What I did see, though, was their odd, extravagant way of marching, so I was able to put forth the theory that armies who march weird – like Hitler’s goose-stepping troops – are armies to squelch as soon as possible. That little tidbit was worth sitting through the rape and torture, wasn’t it?

Of course not. And so when I took a nap the other day, I woke up from a dream of crying. There was no context in the dream, no framework or visual cues. I was merely sobbing in the dark, mourning for I knew not what. I was simply and heartily crying. Weeping. Wailing. Keening. Howling. Bawling. It wasn’t a good cry, either. It was a bad cry. It provided no relief, got no attention, received no solace. It was a lamentation in an unknown wilderness that no one heard, that had no effect, that left my chest still thick and heavy with helpless sorrow.

Wrong Thinking

2009-05-25T11:07:00.005-04:00

I wouldn't have to play catch-up if I were more diligent, would I? Well, I've been busy helping Leone get ready to move, and then my mind has been just racing with the idea of moving myself -- this, after fifteen years at the same address. Here's what I think mostly about my moving: The party I'd have. Yes. I think about where people could park and whether I should invite the new neighbors. I think about whether Buddy Helm could bring a bunch of drums and some of us would get to play. I know I'd want Andrea to sing, maybe over by the fire pit, while others are engaging in edgy repartee in the side yard. I'm pretty social out of my house, but in it? Not so much. Still, I could have the party right away, so if something's not absolutely perfect, I could wave it away, breathlessly claiming that, gee, I just moved in. After the party, I'd never have anyone over again.

I have a couple examples of wrong thinking that just floor me. I suppose I could be grateful that I'm able to shock myself. It might be an odd sort of skill, like the ability to tickle yourself.

See that amazing photo above? It's by Clark Little (http://www.clarklittlephotography.com/). Isn't that something? You can check out his site to see how he manages to catch waves like that. He was recently one of the options on http://www.hyd-masti.com/, a free service that daily presents interesting (or not) tidbits. There are usually seven or eight things to choose from -- beautiful Indian women, over-loaded Chinese bicycles, strange fruit, things like that.

Well, this morning, my inbox held a set of Little's photos, sent by a friend. I instantly wanted to write back and tell her that I, in fact, was the one who, who ... who what? gave birth to him? inspired him to be so talented? gave him the break he needed? No. I merely saw him first -- first, of the whole two of us.

It blows my mind, if we may dip back into the sixties for a moment, to realize that that was my thought. I wanted credit, fer crissake, for having seen something first. How absurd! It's bad enough that the same thing happens with relatives. I'm so proud that Rachel Z (http://www.rachelz.com/) is my cousin -- my first cousin! Again, I want credit for that. At least with that, some of the same DN and A's are ambling through our veins, which, again, was none of my doing. Well, let's move on to the other, more embarrassing sample of wrong thinking.

Clarence Bekker. Do you know him? You would if you'd followed my instructions earlier and gone to http://www.playingforchange.com/ to hear their version of Stand by Me. I still get choked up when I watch it. Bekker is the handsome black man with the medium dreads from the Netherlands. There's something about him that makes me want to call him "tight." I hardly know what I mean by that. And usually "tight" is a negative, like uptight or tightwad or tightly wound. It's something about his chest, I think, or the way he holds himself close and bounces. Anyway, my god! what style! what a voice! what beauty!

Yeah, and it turns out he's gay.

You know my first thought there? What a waste!

Yes. What a waste! As if, what? as if love is wasted if it's gay love? Or as if sex is wasted if it's gay sex? Now, you know I don't believe that. But there's some bizarre thought here. Did I expect Bekker to find me somehow and come fall in love with me? Am I saying boo hoo -- my chances with Bekker are now dashed: he's gay!

What idiocy!

Now please sit quietly in your chairs while we catch up on the books I've read.

Belong to Me by Marisa de los Santos. It has a happy ending, which is just one reason I loved it.
Sum by David Eagleman, subtitled 40 Possible Afterlives. He's creative and fun, a neuroscientist or something. I'd look it up, but it occurs to me that the book may have gotten mixed up with books that ended up at the thrift store (instead of back to Liz where it belongs), so: yipes! Anyway, Eagleman looks to be at least twelve, and his short essays use speculation about afterlives as a vehicle for talking about human nature.
Skylight Confessions by Alice Hoffman. She's one of the writers who responded to my fan letters years and years ago. I'm never sure of her, though. Still, I'll buy each of her books because some are fabulous.
Burning Bright by Tracy Chevalier. This was an historical novel about, peripherally anyhow, William Blake. I don't even know who he was. I enjoyed her Girl with a Pearl Earring better than this one, although this was okay. I just went to her website (http://www.tchevalier.com/). It's showing the UK and U.S. covers of the same books. That's interesting right there. Check it out.
A Much-Married Man by Nicholas Coleridge. One way I judge books is whether I lend them to Mike's mother, Ruth. Only the first one on this list will be offered to her.
Slow Man by J.M. Coetzee. Well, in the first place, I can't pronounce his name. I read Disgrace by him. Twice. It was only twice because I didn't remember it from the first time. I enjoyed the second reading, though. He's ... odd. That's all I know.
How to Be Cool by Johanna Edwards. This was a two-for-ten book from Walgreens. I always enjoy the opportunity to find a good writer this way. This particular book seemed a bit too young for me, but I'd read another book by her.

There. I think we're caught up in The Library Corner.
If your home page isn't Google, you should at least check Google each day to see if it's a holiday of some sort. They decorate their name to indicate the special event. I found this on my screen and was taken aback. I was afraid something horrible had happened to my computer. Nope. Mister Google was simply commemorating Mister Morse's birthday.

I should have known that it wasn't my computer. I'd told you earlier that I was getting a new one, but the TechGuy came over and pronounced my old computer just fine. He gave it a tune-up and removed a loose screw -- literally -- from the tower (the hard drive?). That's Marty Belford at http://www.vipcclub.com/. 727 418-0219. Use him. Tell him I sent you. Hah!

On / Off / Ouch

2009-05-14T11:46:00.003-04:00

My ear drum was just shattered because I tried to put my new cellphone on SPEAKER mode. It didn't seem to work, so my friend on the other end suggested that the volume might be too low. Ah, yes. The volume is a button on the side with up and down arrows. I'm never sure which way it's going, so that seemed to be a real possibility.

It still didn't work, but by then, I just wanted the conversation, so I gave up. My little phone screen said Spkr on which I no longer wanted, so just put my ear back to the phone.

That's when my hearing was impaired for all eternity.

I watch a fair amount of tv on hulu.com, and I'm finding out that little notations like Hi Res (or Spkr on) are not, after all, choices I'm offered, but notices of current status. Where was I when they changed all that?

Or maybe I'm just too computerized. I see something I want, I click on it, and I get it. That's not true in the cellphone world.

And it's this very reason that I'm so resistent to new gadgets. I put up with a failing cellphone for a long, long time, just because I didn't want to have to learn new ways to complete old tasks -- and that was before I discovered that physical pain would be involved in the learning. On my old phone, the back-arrow deleted what I had just typed. On this phone, the C button -- for Crap! -- will do the same thing. I don't know what the back-arrow will do, but I'm pretty sure it involves a sharp stick in the eye.

I still don't know how to save the phone number of someone who just called. And my home page, if indeed that's what it's called, has four little circles with Fisher-Price People in them, and one big one. What's that for? I'm sure if I could just find the instruction manual, I'd be able to figure it out ...

How long do you suppose it took to standardize the old-fashioned rotary phone? I'll bet it didn't take a week. I'll bet only one company made them at first, and then the others just followed. I'll bet people didn't think that "different" always meant "better." I'll bet I'm not willing to look it up ...

TMCS

2009-05-11T14:50:00.004-04:00

Too Much Customer Service

I walked into my Regions Bank the other day. Before I could stroll the twenty feet to get to the one teller at the one open window, three employees greeted me. The thing is, I was focused on my destination, of course, so I never saw who, exactly, was calling out Good Morning. Naturally, I glanced around quickly to see who was accosting me, but they'd all gone back to whatever they'd been doing before I walked in. Apparently it's a one-sided event. They never really expected me to return the greeting. In fact, I later found out that one of the greeters was in an alcove, sitting behind a desk. Was I really expected to spot him and greet him back?

Please say no.

It felt like entering a Blockbuster. Clerks there are trained to shout out greetings, but a contact is never actually made. They may as well have speakers spewing out random greetings, for as personal as the thing is.

At the bank, one of those three did, in fact, come up to me as I waited for the teller. "How are you today?" was his second greeting. Since we were actually eye-to-eye, I figured he did want a response. Of course I, um, shared my feelings with him. Being bombarded with greetings from people who aren't engaged with me just feels confusing and annoying. I'm left standing in the middle of the room, frantically looking around for the verbal snipers.

The guy said it's a security measure. It's a way of saying We see you, buster! to the valued customer ... er, to the potential crook, I mean.

On my way out, another of the original three male greeters reminded me to take a cookie and a carnation, it being Mother's Day soon. That gave me another opportunity to snarl at someone for making me search for the source(s) of disembodied greetings. When I said that his cohort had told me it was an anti-theft procedure, he said, "Yeah? Really? He told you that?" Well, dang. Have they added lying to their list of services?

And then at Publix today, Mrs. X asked a clerk where the Y was, but then Mrs. X saw it and said, "Oh! Never mind!" While the clerk was still in Customer Service Mode, I said, "Tuna?" The clerk started to say something and then shifted herself and put down her pricing machine and said, "Follow me!" and took off.

I called after her, "Just give me the aisle number!" but she pooh-poohed that idea, saying over her shoulder, "They want us to bring the customer to the spot."

Well, gee. I don't like feeling that I'm interrupting someone's job, especially since I hate to be interrupted. I also don't want to be zoomed along the aisles. There's nothing faster than a clerk leading me to the proper spot. And maybe I knew I needed Aisle Six for olives and Aisle Seven for mayonnaise, so if tuna is in Aisle Eight, I'd stop for those others first, so just give me a number, don't lead the expedition.

I wonder if "they," who want employees to escort customers to the toothpicks, have ever asked "us" what we want? Maybe they have. But we know for sure that they haven't asked me.

You hear about marketing research and focus groups and things, but I wonder if the results of those are ever actually used?

When I visit Leone at Condescension Acres, the piped-in music is, well, I think it might be classified as swing, but maybe not. I'm not sure. Leone says it's aimed at the ninety-year-olds. It makes her livid that it's in all the public spaces. And of course it's too loud because that's a law when you're dealing with Old Folks.

But what gets me is that (1) they act as if everyone is ninety-seven, and (2) as if everyone who's ninety-seven likes the same kind of music. What're the odds of that?

What really scares me, of course, is that when I'm enjoying my Golden Years down at The Home, I'll be subjected to Jimi Hendrix in the hallways, blasting the hearing aids right out of my head. But I won't want Peter, Paul and Mary, either.

I ordered Playing For Change's new CD/DVD the same day that Liz tucked a copy of it into my mailbox. When mine came, I offered it to Mike who, unbelievably, doesn't like love and peace and all that. Who can not like Keb Mo'? Who can not like Clarence Bekker? The point is -- big surprise -- very few people share musical tastes.

Maybe the motto is If you can't please everybody, don't please anybody.

The music above the coolers in a convenience store this morning was classical. I couldn't believe it. A dark man named Mo claimed responsibility for it. Way to go, Mo!

Well, if we've got Keb Mo' and Convenience Mo, let's have Mike's cat Mo. I woke up this morning to find that Mo had shed his blue collar. I eventually found it on the couch in the living room, which is Mittens's territory. That means either that Mittens beat Mo up and ripped off his clothes in an attempt to humiliate him further, or that Mittens watched with cold eyes while Mo wrestled himself out of the collar. One day last week, I found Mo with his head and one leg poking out of the collar. That can't have been comfortable. And the other night, I was sleepily adjusting the bedding with my legs when I realized that it wasn't the sheets I was shifting at all. It was Mo.

Kibbles and Bits

2009-05-08T09:50:00.006-04:00

Here's a big sunburst my cousin Terry Huckabone made for me. How cool is that? He didn't even know the colors in my apartment. I may put it outside, or maybe I'll leave it here ... but then that poor decoupage of St. Peter will have to go ... or not. My ex-husband's sister made it for us for Christmas one year when everyone was doing decoupage. Linda, though, did it well, which was something almost none of us was doing.

Speaking of Steve, he told me that his daughter's name, Lied, is German -- not Swedish -- for song. I'm glad I didn't know that till now, otherwise my blog on April 15 would have been missing an entire paragraph.

That wire from my radio in the photo adds A Touch of Class, don't you think?

Here's some good timing I've never experienced before: I used up the last crumb of coffee at the same time I used my last coffee filter.

There are a couple more pictures and a lot more babbling about Olga's car on my other blog, Car'toos, so check that out if it interests you. You'll be able to see it -- and Liz's car, too -- tomorrow from eleven to three at The Longhouse (http://www.longhouse.info/) for the Bloom Where You're Planted thang. I'll be introducing my new line of toilet seats. You can go home and take a nap and then return for drumming with Buddy Helm (http://www.buddyhelm.com/) from seven to nine for twenty-five bucks. It's always a fulfilling time for me.

I know. You're sick of hearing about it. But if you'd come and see what I'm talking about, then you'd think I don't promote it enough. I just can't please you, can I?

I apparently need a bigger apartment. Mo has been here, recuperating from a tumor removal. He's one of four of Mike's cats, and he can't convalesce at home because there's a cat door and he's not allowed to go out while the stitches remain. So he's staying in the Guest Cottage here where Miss Pook vacations. Well, it turns out that Miss Pook also needs to use the Cottage next week. What a dilemma!

Mo's got a sort of Reverse Mohawk (Kwahom!) going on in his nether regions. He's a completely sweet cat, purring to the point of drooling, tucking his face into my neck, hanging his paw over my shoulder -- until the malevolent Mittens appears. There's been a bit of hissing and groaning between the two, and I try to stay out of it, but it seems too unfair. I mean, look at that incision! I'm embarrassed that Mittens is such a surly hostess, but she may get that from her mother ...

I found some of Olga's glitter on my bedroom windows outside.

Mittens showed up last evening soaking wet from the waist down. I suspect she received a comeuppance.

And finally, Happy birthday, KT! This is a dear friend in Minneapolis. She was my first massage therapist. I had a near-weekly massage from her for ten years. Imagine that. Wow. And I rarely talked during a massage. Now I babble like a ... well, like a nattering chatterer. I don't know what happened. I used to say that if KT ever returned to her native Minnesota, I'd move with her, but that time came and I turned out to be a liar.

Meanwhile, back when we both lived in Gulfport ...

When my Alzheimery mother was still able to go on field trips, I brought her to visit KT. It was Christmastime, and Svea, a co-worker, had given me a crocheted-and-starched angel which I'd hung from my rear-view mirror. Well, as Mom got out of my car at KT's, she unhooked the angel and brought it to KT, who still has it. Aww.

Lakshmi Delivered

2009-05-05T15:23:00.006-04:00

Olga got her car, Lakshmi (Goddess of Prosperity), back last night, all painted up. It's a tense time for both the client and me. The big question, of course, is Will she like it? And if she doesn't, well, there's not a WHOLE lot that can be done about it. Therefore, what a giant lurch of faith on the client's part.

Client. It's funny. If you've got bronchitis and go to a doctor, you're a patient, but if you're a nut-bag and go to a different kind of doctor, you're a client. I don't want to say I have a customer because that's too crudely commercial, and yet painting someone's car is a commercial venture.

Anyway, here's Lakshmi. That's Lakshmi written in Sanskrit on the hood. If you're not impressed, you should be. You may also see her in the flesh this upcoming Saturday, May 9, at The Longhouse (2301 49th Street South) for the so49 Bloom Where You're Planted event from eleven to three. Liz will be there with her X-terra, too. I'll be selling my tee shirts, mailboxes, and planters. Businessess on 49th Street will have balloons outside if they're participating.

* * *

Today is Linda Seth's birthday. She and I were Best Friends off and on from about third grade to seventh, and then more distant friends after that, after we went to The Big School. What a cool birthday: 05/05/50. Another thing about Linda that is so notable is her name: Linda Diana Mary Johanna Seth. I love the music in that name! Like my brave and brilliant Mittens with her extra toes, Linda was born with an extra middle name, and then Catholicism added another.

Something Linda did when she was newly licensed by the State of New York to drive a vehicle during daylight hours was to stop at three or four gas stations on a Saturday afternoon, getting fifty cents worth of gas from each, just to flirt with the various boys who pumped the gas.

You heard me, children: The boys who pumped the gas. For that fifty cents, they'd even wash off your windshield.

I don't remember the year when self-serve became the norm. I'm guessing it was after 1973. I do remember that I didn't like it. I hated the smell and the noise, clunking things around, having to touch the gas cap with its stinky wetness. Everything seemed too big and noisy. I felt incapable. I got over it, of course. We all did. Little ol' ladies in Sunday dresses started pumping gas. We started feeling proficient about the whole thing. I suppose the Riveting Rosies felt the same way in their day, only more so, I should hope. I loved it when I finally figured out how to lock the pump so I could stroll around the car, hands in my pockets, acting like a man -- so casually competent. Too soon after that, they took off those locks. I don't know why.

I'm feeling incompetent again at the gas pumps. I'm never clear on whether I have to pay in advance if I'm using cash. I'm so used to using a debit card and filling up with no interference from a clerk that I'm absolutely exasperated when I have to walk to the counter twice, once to leave a twenty-dollar bill, and again to collect my change after a fill-up.

The only other recourse is to own a credit card for every brand of gasoline.

Remember when the business used to pay that three-point-five percent fee for card usage? Now they're passing that fee on to the consumer, or maybe the client, in tonier neighborhoods.

This morning, I was at the first anniversary celebration of Banyan Scapes Nursery. I painted two of their trucks, remember?

Well, a speaker at the celebration pointed out that huge corporations can cut back by closing a location or two, but small businesses have to toddle on, or quit altogether. There's not a lot of cutting-back to be done. That seemed like a good point.

But what's that got to do with gas stations? Absolutely nothing.

The last time I went to pump gas, I was flummoxed by the procedure. I've taken to using cash because I want the lower price, even though I never actually notice the price. Is it two cents cheaper or ten? Ten would make a different to me; two wouldn't. I'd have to pay way too much attention to know. Anyway, I ended up pushing the HELP button and talking to the clerk. Indeed, I'd have to pay with my cash before filling the tank. I was indignant. Shouldn't that information be clearly posted?

Well, of course it was posted on the pump, along with:

descriptions of the three grades of gasoline, with attendant buttons to push and a smaller sticker -- that is, three smaller stickers -- warning (?) me that my choice contains "up to" 10% ethanol. I don't know whether to be happy or sad about that ethanol thing, but I have no doubt that someone spent a lot of money making sure that those stickers get put on every gas pump in the country. Whoa. What if it's the sticker-makers' lobbyists who did that and not the ethanol people or the Ralph Nader Making the World Safer people?
the push-button for speaking with the attendant
a listing of the "family" of Shell credit cards; how cozy
a TeleCheck notice of the huge fee that will be charged if a credit or debit card turns out to be invalid; hmm ... wouldn't it be rejected if it were invalid?
a slot from which to receive a receipt
a slot for the credit card, along with a keypad
a much bigger sign once again warning about that pesky ethanol. Those sticker-makers are serious!
a big sticker telling me how to get ahold of Charles Bronson (seriously), the Commissioner of Stickers.

Well, it's no wonder, with all that mess, that I missed the sticker that said cash-users would have to pay in advance.

And do you remember when that became the standard? Me, neither, not exactly. It used to be that you pumped your gas and then paid for it. I was dating Tommy at the time of the change. I remember that he drove up to the pump, went inside to pay in advance, returned to his car, and drove off. He was so used to the payment being the last thing done in a gassing-up event that he simply drove away, without filling the tank. He returned within a couple of blocks, but the clerk didn't believe him. I bet if he'd been a client she'd have believed him.