Improper Poll: Blog Award Time!

Jules at Just Trying to Get Over the Rainbow gave me a lovely award Friday! Thanks so much, Jules! Problem is, I can't get the actual award to post.  Nonetheless, the answers Jules gave were hysterically funny. Here are my answers. They are also your Improper Poll questions should you decide to accept them, so pay attention to the questions!

Are you a rutabaga?
I don’t know what this means, but yesterday I drove out of town, so I’ll say I feel more like a Winnebaga. And I lovelovelove summer festival time.


Who is your current crush?
I have one! I do! A real live person this time! That’s all I’m sayin’. ;)


A picture that makes you smile.

Pretty much anything on Awkward Family Photos.  The pictures—along with the titles and captions—never fail to make me giggle uncontrollably.

Oh, and also this. It’s all over the Internet, but for good reason. Who can resist a bowl of kitties? Especially a wash bowl? Add those expressions…. It doesn’t matter how often I see this picture. I melt every time.


When was the last time you ate a vine-ripened tomato?
Today, thanks to my friend John who gave me two big bags of them, along with two big bags of peppers from his garden. And they are incredible!  I didn’t grow them this year and have regretted it every day of tomato season.

Name a habit that causes other people to plot your demise.
Here is but one. I sneeze about ten times in a row after I eat. It makes some people very uncomfortable. Me too. Though once when it happened at lunch with a friend, I was apologizing in between sneezes. She merely shrugged and gave me this sage look she has and murmured, “gustatory rhinitis.” I looked it up when I got home and as usual, she was right.


What is the weirdest most disgusting job you have ever had to do?
I did product demonstrations in college. When it was food and I was in a grocery store, I had to wash up in the meat department. Butchers have to be the lustiest group of men on earth, giving new meaning to the term, “meat market.” They could be counted upon to ask for my phone number, probably because, in contrast to everything else in their workspace, I was female and human and alive. The back of a meat department is enough to make you a vegetarian—which I un-coincidentally was at that point in my life—and has to be one of the most un-romantic places in the world. So I was standing there shivering in the cold and struggling not to dry heave while surrounded by the stench of raw, dead animal flesh and little globs of fat and pools of blood getting on my shoes, and some old guy in a bloody apron surrounded by cleavers would be coming onto me. Trust me, it was disgusting.

Where da muffin top at?
Forgive me for boasting, but I bet I could produce a muffin top around any cinched body part. Case in point.


Describe yourself using obscure Latin terms.
Besides Gustatory Rhinitis, which sounds Latin to me, Vetulus Pectoris, Ploutizo Pneuma. According to something I read, it means “poor souls, enriched spirit.” I heard it in reference to artistic types. In case that’s not obscure enough, I speak gardening Latin such as clematis triternata rubromarginata.

I never know how people feel about awards, so I officially pass this one to anyone who wants it. You have been polled! Thank you again to Jules!

Book Blurb Friday #25

Time for Book Blurb Friday, a meme from Lisa Ricard Claro’s Writing in the Buff. This fun challenge offers a picture for inspiration. Our job is to write a book jacket blurb of 150 words or fewer that makes potential readers feel compelled to buy the book.  This week I came up with 126 words.

~Grand Land~

Decker “Deckhead” Worthingless was a spoiled trust fund baby who decided that the best way to get his parents’ attention was to ignore them. Going home for Christmas vacation with his Princeton roommate, the brilliant and eccentric Larry Squirell from Grand Island, Nebraska, seemed just the thing.

Despite the name, Grand Island is neither grand…nor an island. Yet Larry affectionately referred to his small, prairie-grass-roots home town as “Grand ’Land.” What Decker found in Nebraska surrounded by the Squirell clan—Helen, Chuck, Grandpa Winslow, and Larry’s quirky sister Evelyn—was indeed something grand that would change more lives than just Decker’s…especially when Decker made a mistake that no trust fund could buy off.

Fortunately for everyone, what happens in Grand Land doesn’t stay in Grand Land.

The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing. ~John Powell

Timeless

When I was very, very small, my grandfather would hold up his watch. Hear it? He’d say. Hear the tick tick tick?

He was born on this day in 1889. And when my own son was born in 1989, I was proud to hold up that same watch that I’d wound for just that purpose.

My grandfather had several gifts to give: the wisdom to know what to pass along, the inclination to pass it, and the talent to do it well. He was a former teacher who knew that life is a lesson and a game, both, and he possessed the divine sense to give these gifts to any child who would take them. He died when I was too young yet to thank him, so I try hard to pass along what I remember and hope it is thanks enough.

Now I look at my son who is studying to be a teacher. Born 100 years after his great grandfather. Learning to be a real man in his own right, nurtured by teachers, coaches, his girlfriend’s father who is both. Hear the watch, my son?

I believe he did. He heard.

And only now do I know. That tick tick tick was the sound of immortality.

Children are the only form of immortality that we can be sure of. ~Peter Ustinov

Improper Poll: (Don’t) Give Me a Hand

I recently read an article on weird dreams and what they mean. Nowadays I tend to have nightmares about things like my air conditioning going out. Which did, in fact, come true. And yes, it was a nightmare!

But it got me thinking about my Weirdest Dream Ever. It was a toss-up between several, but this is the most recent. I dreamed I’d moved to Boulder, Colorado and wanted to have a party to meet people. My neighbor suggested that if I wanted to be really cool, I should serve as an hors d’oeuvre the latest delicacy: human body parts. I thought that was gross, but I also happen to think some kinds of sushi are gross, so I called the contact she gave me. He told me he had a nice shipment of hands coming in. I asked him how one prepares human body parts, and he told me it would come precooked and everything. Hooray for convenience food!

Fast-forward to party day. I went to pick up my hors d’oeuvre. The Body Part Guy proudly pronounced my prize “a real nice one” and pulled back a piece of foil, and there, on a plate, was a slightly roasted man’s hand. To this day I can’t type this without shuddering. It was a decapitated hand with fingernails and little hairs and everything, and I was so horrified that I awoke with a gasp and couldn’t get that picture out of my head.

I eventually realized the dream was meant to be what it was: a hefty little wake-up shove from my subconscious mind…in this case about some parenting issues. It’s easy to get lazy as a single parent. Parenting is hard work even when there are two of you. With one, you really are forced to work twice as hard to do a good job, yet there’s no one to back you up. And the great paradox of single parenting: if you make a mistake, it’s your fault for trying.

What I realized was that I was allowing my teenaged son to do something only because some other parents I knew allowed it, but that didn’t make it right. (I can’t remember now what it was. Nothing major, but child-rearing is never a truly minor thing, is it?) That dream was the equivalent of my subconscious mind asking me if I would jump off a cliff just because some other parents were doing it. And would I serve human body parts as food if that were the latest craze, too?

I tell you, single parenting…bites. Because you could always use an extra…hand. Ack! Do you have a really weird dream you’d be willing to share?

Book Blurb Friday #24

Have you ever had a week that simultaneously dragged and flew? That describes my week and my body, come to think of it. I’ve felt like a really fast zombie. School started like gangbusters, and no one seemed prepared…including my immune system.  I promptly caught a cold. Plus months ago my daughter and I decided her graduation party would be more of a bon voyage party right before she and her friends set sail on the winds of their various futures. Which turned out to be this weekend.

So…am sorry I’m so behind on your blogs this week, but I hope to get caught up now that I’m almost over the hump. Till then, thank heavens for caffeine and Book Blurb Friday, a meme in which our delightful host, Lisa Ricard Claro of Writing in the Buff, posts a picture of a pretend book cover. The challenge is to write an accompanying blurb of 150 words or fewer to sell the book. Mine is a petite 80 words. 

~Embracing Nice~

Carolyn Sweeting was nice. And nice, of course, is practically synonymous with nerdy. Nice is the oatmeal, the mouse brown, the canvas tennis shoes of virtues.

But Carolyn’s not-so-nice husband gave her the only real gift of their lives together: the realization of what it was she valued most in this world. So when the children moved out, she divorced him and left behind her former soccer mom life in order to move to…where else? Nice. Nice, France.

It was only when Carolyn embraced nice that she found sometimes…nice can be a lot more exciting than anyone ever seems to think possible.

“Just like your mother, you’re unfailingly kind—a trait people never fail to undervalue, I’m afraid.” ~Albus Dumbledore in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

Improper Poll: Haggaday

They say it as I’m leaving Costco: “Haggaday!” Bank tellers say it, too. “Haggaday!” I just heard it again as I was leaving the grocery store: “Haggaday!”

I’m not making fun of them; the words are bound to slur together when people utter the same sentence hundreds of times a day. The thing that makes me giggle is the logo that always pops into my head:

Do you ever hear a silly pronunciation?

Book Blurb Friday #23.

Time for Book Blurb Friday, a meme from Lisa Ricard Claro’s Writing in the Buff.   We are challenged to use the picture for inspiration to write a book jacket blurb of 150 words or fewer that makes potential readers feel compelled to buy the book.  Mine this week was 77 words.

~Rain, Rain Go Away~

By Rob R. Duckie

Terrorism.
We feared it would rain down on us as bombs.
We feared it would rain down on us as plagues.
We feared it would rain down on us in the form of poisonous gasses.
We even feared it would rain down as poisoned food and water supplies.
What no one foresaw was that it would rain down on us…as rain.

Rain, rain go away,
Come again another day
Or we’ll all die in a horrible way….

(This is kind of ironic since we are currently getting the first significant rain we’ve had in ages. I actually danced a little jig of hooray-I-don’t-have-to-haul-the-hose-out happiness. A real-life rain dance!)

“Why?” ~Purported last word of Rebecca Schaeffer right after a stranger ambushed and shot her

Senior Sex(less) and the City: More Single Women!

Chatty Cathy
I got stuck next to her during a single’s event where very few people showed up. Thing I learned : don‘t ever, ever sit on the end at a single’s event where you know no one, because on the end, you might only have one person seated next to you, and then you’re trapped.

“…cousin, who’s friend is a professional hairdresser….”
“…next house had only two bedrooms….”
“…was a drunk, and so was his brother….”
“…vet. So I picked up Fluffy….”
“…go, ‘No way!’ And she goes, ‘yuh huh,’ and….”
“…Wicked Witch of the West! No kidding…."

I kept zoning out and coming to, wondering things like how she breathed and so forth, so that I just heard fragments. It didn’t matter, because there wasn’t enough of a pause to allow me to respond, anyway:

“…shift starts at 9:00, but I always….”
“…from cirrhosis of the liver….”
“…houses down? Or was it three….? Anyway, he goes….”
“…barked. It was the cutest thing! So….”

I finally got “sick” and had to leave. She probably still hasn’t noticed.

From Modern Family:

Phil [about their son, Luke]: He’s one of those kids you get him a gift and all he wants to do is play with the box.

Claire: One year we just got him a box, a really nice box.

Phil: And we made the mistake of putting it in a gift bag.

Claire: So he played with the gift bag.

Phil: We can’t get it right.

Improper Poll: When Memory Serves

Along the lines of “when I am old, I shall wear purple,” I’ve decided that I shall buy mismatched plates to use according to my mood. And in an uncharacteristic stroke of luck, I recently ran across a china pattern that my late grandmother had. On sale.  I took it as a sign.

I bought two place settings. Every time I see them, I get a little giggly thrill because I’m instantly transported to my grandmother’s house. The emptier those plates are, the fuller I feel.

Her birthday would have been this week. Or would you say, “is” this week, since the day still exists even though she doesn’t? Go figure—that wasn’t even my question, though I would love to hear how you’d phrase that.  Also, for me the photo is creating the optical illusion that the center part protrudes rather than recedes.  Is it just me?

Anyhoo.  My question is: Do you have something that reminds you of a loved one and just makes you feel good inside?

Book Blurb Friday #22

It’s Book Blurb Friday! This fun meme from Lisa Ricard Claro’s Writing in the Buff challenges us to take each week’s picture and use it as a prompt for a book jacket blurb of 150 words or fewer that makes potential readers feel compelled to buy the book. Mine this week has 147 words.

~Listening Lydia~

“And these voices,” said Dr. Sullivan, “do they tell you to do anything?”

“Even weirder,” said Lydia, twisting her tiny white hands together, the bones looking oddly like bird wings. “It’s all nonsense. Like scraps of conversations here and there. Things like, ‘guess that’s what you call a coop de grass.’”

Marcy Sullivan’s head snapped up. “What did you say? Don’t you mean ‘coup de grâce’?”

Lydia’s hands kept twisting. “No, that’s what I mean. It doesn’t even make sense. The voices in my head are as crazy as I am.”

Marcy looked down at her own hands this time. What was it her brother had said at dinner last night? That their mother had finally decided to have the henhouse torn down and planted with sod. “Guess that’s what you call a coop de grass,” he’d joked.

Were the voices in Marcy’s schizophrenic patient’s mind…Marcy’s voices?

All the arts depend upon telepathy to some degree, but I believe that writing offers the purest distillation. ~Stephen King, On Writing

When Last We Meet

 My children have been involved in the neighborhood swim team since they were practically toddlers. The wonderful coaches taught them to swim. Amazing to me that I have now watched them grow up to be lifeguards and coaches themselves.

Monday night was our last regular meet. As in, last ever. Of course I’ll miss it. I’ll miss the way the pool goes from blue to fluorescent turquoise at night and the way splashes briefly explode against the evening lights like liquid fireworks. I’ll miss the lazy background lull of cicadas and the smell of chlorine and the spidery brown children with bleached hair. I’ll miss the familiar chant of the starter, “Timers clear your watches. Swimmers take your mark. Go.”

Now that we’ve come full circle, I can’t help but notice how our worlds kept widening like ripples from a water droplet in a pool. When my children were little, I cheered for them. Then I learned to cheer for the ones on our team. Lately I’ve found myself cheering for all of them—especially the ones who need cheering the most. At some point I stopped noticing who was on what team.

Lo and behold, all those years I was growing up, too. And now I have the real prize—I learned in the end what winning really is.

Be careful to leave your sons well instructed rather than rich, for the hopes of the instructed are better than the wealth of the ignorant.~Epictetus

Improper Poll: Petty Potty Peeves

The commercial said to talk about what we really want in toilet paper. What I want most is the good old days when toilet paper came in a roll that fit on the spool. I bought it and it performed its intended duties.

It’s the deception that bothers me. When my pleasantly-plump toilet paper went on a diet and started coming out of the plastic looking as lean and wiry as if it had been running the Boston marathon, it bothered me that paper companies tried to pretend it had always looked like that. My toilet paper formerly-known-as-normal then became known as the “Double” or "Mega" roll.

Quite often the packaging hides the size of the roll. Remember the old commercial about squeezing? I’ve become such a squeezer that I really do worry that passers-by will think I have a creepy need to feel up toilet paper. Squeezing taught me that some sneaky companies were simply rolling them loosely. They looked like a double roll, but it was all an elaborate toilet paper ruse.

The thing is, I fight enough with my family about changing the roll. I don’t want something that’s half gone before it ever gets going and has to be changed twice as often.

So after careful squeezing, this is what I bought the other day (above, right). When I took it out of the opaque packaging, it was clear that although the girth of the roll was plenty plus-sized by today’s standards, the spool was a full ¼ inch shorter than it used to be. They’ve come up with new ways to shrink my toilet paper! And now I'll have to grope it in multiple directions before buying.

Note to toilet paper companies: I don’t want perfumes, cosmetics, or lotions. I don’t care about how the plies are knitted together. I don’t need little designs. I don’t consider strength to be an issue. I don’t particularly enjoy going…anywhere that involves toilet paper. I just want my stupid toilet paper roll to fit on the stupid roller and not have to be changed everyday. And I don’t want you to pretend there hasn’t been shrinkage.

Crapiche?

Do you have a pet peeve about household products?

Book Blurb Friday #21

It’s Book Blurb Friday, a meme from Lisa Ricard Claro’s Writing in the Buff in which 150 words or fewer must sell a fictional book. I found this week’s picture compelling from so many standpoints that any accompanying plot just had to feel meaningful. The gentle hints of conflicting emotion playing on that tear-streaked face make the statue as enigmatic to me as the Mona Lisa herself. Lisa once made the comment that “some weeks the plot resonates more than others.” This is one I really would like to write, so thank you to Lisa and to Sioux for the inspiring photo!

~Fall from Grace~

At the intersection of love, mystery, fantasy and legend, there is Grace….

Distraught over dealing with his mentally ill mother, Jayde Calvert took a trek with his buddies to Our Lady of Sorrows Cemetery one night in drunken pursuit of "The Gray Girl”—a statue legendary among high school students. It was said that to climb up and kiss the tear-streaked statue of The Gray Girl meant that the stone’s suitor would be issued one wish. But as Jayde wished for emotional peace, he fell and struck his head, leaving him in a coma.

What took place inside Jayde’s suspended mind was a fantastical journey that is not to be missed, a soul-embracing tryst with the amazing, flesh-and-blood Gray Girl, Grace Lamp, that would forever change more lives that just Jayde’s…whether or not he ever awoke.

Don’t miss Book II, Amazing Grace, and Book III, Saving Grace.
(147 words)

In dreams, we enter a world that's entirely our own. ~Steven Kloves (screenplay), Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, 2004, spoken by Albus Dumbledore

Improper Poll: Father May I Have More Characters

Last Friday, Lisa Ricard Claro made a comment about my character who avoided marriage because her father had told her that men were evil. Where I grew up there really was a little retired schoolteacher in my neighborhood I’ll call Miss Amelia Plimpton (name has been changed, but not much). Miss Plimpton lived in a huge, historic home all by herself and had never married due to her father’s dire warnings about men.

The irony wasn’t lost on children, even.

I know about her reasoning because my mom was into taking “poor old souls” under her wing. Apparently there was a long list of things that “Father” found dangerous, but another memorable one was left-hand turns. My mother tried taking Miss Plimpton to the doctor, but driving trips had to be plotted at length and executed with enormous care in order to avoid the dreaded left-hand turns. It’s an understatement to say that when my mom returned from outings with Miss Plimpton, she looked rattled.

At times like that that, my dad brought on the Miss Plimpton impression. “Oh horrors, Father always said that toilets were dangerous because you might slip and fall in, so I use coffee cans, but only the slow roast, because Father didn’t like instant….” And my mom would do that thing where she couldn’t decide whether to laugh or scold, so she did both: “Oh hush!”

Miss Plimpton was far from the only unusual person in that neighborhood. Maybe it’s because I grew up with so many, but once I reached a certain age, I started attracting characters. And that’s okay with me.

If I got on a city bus and there were two seats left, one next to a businessman immersed in his laptop and one next to a woman wearing a garbage bag over her clothes and an aluminum foil hat, more often than not I would choose the foil-hat-lady as long as she looked harmless and I didn’t have anything pressing I needed to do during the ride. I told that to a friend once, and she clearly thought I was very strange. But what an opportunity!

Did you grow up with weird characters? And do you think they helped shape you as a writer? Which one would you sit next to on the bus?

Book Blurb Friday #20

Welcome to Book Blurb Friday, a meme from Writing in the Buff. Each week, Lisa Ricard Claro posts a picture of a fictional book cover, and the challenge is to come up with an accompanying blurb of 150 words or fewer. I counted120 words this week.

~At the End of the Rainbow Bridge~

Father had warned Dorothea Cumberton about the evils of men, so Dorothea, ever the good daughter, never married. Yet she was devastated when she lost her beloved Irish terrier, Leprechaun. When she tried to retreat to her bed to forget, she was plagued by dreams of meeting Chaun at the foot of a bridge—and always at the end of his leash was The Man with the Kind Face. Was Dorothea’s dear dog trying to give her one last gift from beyond?

Dorothea would find out when she went to have Chaun’s headstone carved and met Pat O’Gold. But Pat, it seemed, had a mystery in his past. Was Father right? Was he evil in spite of his kind face?

A good friend is a connection to life—a tie to the past, a road to the future, the key to sanity in a totally insane world. ~Lois Wyse

New Leash on Life

A while back, I mentioned that our 15-year old dog had a large, benign eye growth that the vet said couldn’t be removed because a general anesthetic was too risky. It grew to be so enormous, it looked like he was missing an eye. He was pawing and rubbing at it constantly, not just because it was obstructing his vision, but because it was irritating the eye itself. He’d even occasionally rub parts of it off, which would buy him a few days of semi-relief. It also meant he bled all over his eye, us, and the house. I can’t imagine the constant discomfort he must've had.

It just happened that I found another vet who thought he could sedate Buddy enough to cauterize the growth with a local anesthetic, but on the day of the procedure, I got a call. After taking a better look, the vet realized that the thing was rooted in too massively for cauterization. It would have to be cut out under the riskier general anesthetic.

Fortunately this vet and his associate have both worked at emergency clinics. He assured me they were “pretty good with” anesthetics. Buddy not only made it through the surgery, but he did so well that the vet gave him a partial tooth cleaning (free of charge) and a good nail clipping. If only he’d given our rather dandruffy dog a bath….



One day after eye surgery

 That was one week ago. It was clear almost immediately that Buddy was much happier, even with his eye shaved, swollen and stitched together. Now the swelling is almost gone, and Buddy plays with toys and wags his tail again. He pranced yesterday. Pranced!


Six days after eye surgery

Many, many thanks to Dr. Brad Waltman for improving our dear Budster’s quality of life. And as always, thank you so much for your thoughts and prayers!

Friends are God’s way of taking care of us. ~ Anonymous

Improper Poll: When Bugs Attack

Last week's responses reminded me of the many bug encounters I’ve had throughout my life. One of them was when I was a teenager and a cicada flew into my hair while I was sitting around a campfire in the woods. My so-called friends did not rescue me, but instead ran away, pointing to my head with horrified faces. If hair came with an eject button, I would have detached the whole river-soaked business off my head and started over with a fresh, cicada-free batch right then and there.

But the most frightening was when I lived in Richmond Hill, Georgia, outside of Savannah, and was laying sod. I’d pick up a slab and slap it against my torso and walk it to where it needed to be. One of those times I dropped the sod, a furious mass of fire ants was left. On my chest. Like a bib you might wear for eating lobster, but picture the lobsters eating you instead, hundreds and hundreds of them, in miniature perhaps, but vicious and venomous and really really angry that you just moved their house, and with no rubber bands on their little pincer claws.

I had never encountered fire ants till I moved down South. But when I did, I was shocked that Southerners matter-of-factly train their children to avoid “fahr ant” nests and then go about their business as if it’s normal to have these subjects of a sensationalistic National Geographic special living all around you.

Fire ants masquerade as normal ants, but they have a bite that stings like fire, furious dispositions, and a talent for working with their brethren until they are one oozing mass of killer destruction. I admit that even as an adult, I couldn’t resist the temptation to poke sticks at fire ant hills just to watch them come boiling up out of the bowels of hell like a mini-volcano spewing a molten mass of teaming ant-fury. If the children were bored, sometimes we’d go on fire ant expeditions in the backyard. I know it was a horrible thing to teach my children, but those creatures never ceased to fascinate me.

Which is perhaps why I was always blundering into their nests.

During the Sod Incident, they were moving en masse up my shirt, mere inches from engulfing my face like the victim in a bad horror flick. As if in a nightmare, I remember trying to scream and nothing came out but a strangled little sound. “Urk.” Which is probably a good thing, because I didn’t need to attract attention disrobing there in my front yard. I was also flailing and running faster than I’ve ever run in my life. Once in my garage, I flung my tee-shirt as far as it would go and did a heebie-jeebie dance that lasted not only through a hot shower, but through the better part of an hour, and then returned periodically throughout the day…and ever since, as a matter of fact. I am in fact heebie-jeebieing right now.

Because although that was about ten years ago, to this day I panic a tiny bit when I see an ant, even the benign Northern kind. You never know if they’ve mutated….

Have you ever been attacked by bugs?

Book Blurb Friday #19

Welcome to Book Blurb Friday, a meme from Writing in the Buff. Each week, Lisa Ricard Claro posts a picture of a fictional book cover. The challenge is to come up with an accompanying blurb of 150 words or fewer. This week I counted141 words.

~Dead Lines~

Jonathan and Emma congratulated themselves. In spite of being young newlyweds, they were smart enough to be able to buy Seabaugh Farm, a place they never could have afforded if it weren’t supposedly haunted by Audrey Seabaugh, the town’s legend who had murdered her sister’s fiancé in a fit of jealousy and then killed herself.

But after Jonathan set up an office in the barn as a place to work on his novel in his spare time, the letters began appearing in the old typewriter he found in the loft. “My Dearest Johnny Boy….” It had to be a joke, of course, but the letters were so juicy and enticing that Jonathan played along. Did his wife really have such a raunchy side?

But it became clear that the letter-writer not only wasn’t Emma, it was someone who wanted her dead….

The biggest thing separating people from their artistic ambitions is not a lack of talent. It’s the lack of a deadline. ~No Plot? No Problem, by Chris Baty

Ten Things: Yet MORE Good Things About Getting Old!

21. We can get away with more stuff. Old people are stereotypically so harmless that no one suspects us of anything. I think it’s because we sometimes don’t have the energy to be really awful. Or maybe because we look too much like someone’s mom.

22. I feel so empowered because no one yells at me anymore. They’re all younger than I am and are a little scared of me.

23. At school, I can leave my coat out and no teenager will steal it because it has cooties of sorts. Though a male teacher did walk off with it once thinking it was his.

24. Young people—even girls—hold doors for me.

25. It’s harder to see those chin hairs with my eyesight going.

26. It’s harder to see the backs of my legs due to my increasing decrepitude.

27. I don’t mind writing entire blog posts about my intestines.

28. My friends apparently don’t mind reading posts about my intestines, bless them, and even leave comments so I don’t feel like I’m the only one.

29. I’ve been through enough awful stuff that it takes very little to make me feel happy and lucky.

30. That hair that’s growing where no hair should grow becomes less noticeable because—as if the aforementioned isn’t bad enough—it’s turned white.

Improper Poll: Waiter, What is That in My Soup?

Last week, Valthevictorian mentioned she ate Hair Soup. But it was a clean hair.

No offense to Val, but that’s just not remotely gross in my book. We have a dog that sheds so massively, I hate to think how much of his hair probably makes it into our food. And I wouldn’t call it clean, either.

But the worst thing I ever ate was when I made some stew. The recipe called for ground pepper and paprika. After I’d eaten most of a bowl, I noticed that the pepper looked too…uniform. And it had an odd sheen to it. Let’s just say that, after I examined my stew (and then the paprika) with a magnifying lens, I lost my appetite. For at least ten years—at least when it came to stew. I still can’t touch beef stew without examining it closely.

Have you ever found anything disgusting in your food?

Book Blurb Friday #18

What a week! Won’t get into it now, but life’s been crazy enough that it’s made me a bit late for Book Blurb Friday, a meme from Writing in the Buff. Each week, Lisa Ricard Claro posts a picture of a fictional book cover. The challenge is to come up with an accompanying blurb of 150 words or fewer. This week’s came in at 149 words.

~Blind Draw~ 

by Annie Up

When they were engaged, Tom joked to Tina that he would have affairs after they were married. Tina merely smiled and promised Tom that if he did, she would have three for every one of his. How would Tom dare to risk those odds? Tom traveled as a professional poker player, true, but Tina never hurt for male admirers when she wanted them.  And...she was psychic.

Years later, when Tom (“The Seven Card Stud”) had come to realize that there was far more to Tina than met the eye, he would be forced to look at their son and realize that his own actions meant he now had to question the boy’s paternity. The young man was, after all, nothing like Tom.

And Tina was always honest. Had she meant her promise? If so, who were the three? Tom couldn’t make any accusations without pointing the finger at himself.

My philosophy, like color television, is all there in black and white~Monty Python

Senior Sex(less) and the City : #20 The Other Side : Single Women!

Witchy Woman
I first talked to her because she couldn’t really be as scary as she looks, right ? Silly me! I can’t say a word about this one because I am scared of her. In fact, I suspect she is lurking somewhere, shaking chicken blood on mysterious little symbols. Shh…I don’t want one of them to be my name!

***
I used a short one because I have a favor to ask. I can’t tell you how flattered I am that some of you seem to think I should compile my Sex(less) in the City segments into…something. My question is, what do you think that “something” should be? It’s way too big for an essay. A chapbook? Chapter or section of a larger book—possibly a divorce guide for older women?

Or should I try to come up with more on the single women I’ve met and make it for all divorced people? Or should it somehow not be about divorce at all?

Thank you so, so much in advance. Needless to say, if this somehow makes it into print, this is my "Acknowledgements" page in the making!

Sometimes our light goes out but is blown into flame by another human being. Each of us owes deepest thanks to those who have rekindled this light. ~Albert Schweitzer

Improper Poll: Very Un-Playful Possum

Number one on my list of things to do this morning was “Dispose of dead baby possum on the patio.”  Not a fun start to my day.

I first discovered it when the dog showed me last night. I hoped it was playing possum as they say, but I kept conducting possum checks through the window, and if it was pretending to be dead, it sure was convincing. I enlisted the kids’ help. One of them surmised that the dog might have “squeaked” it, but we're not entirely sure how he could have caught it in the first place, being deaf and as legally blind as Mr. Magoo. 

I admired its acting ability when the rain came and it was still playing possum, but when the hail fell, it could have been nominated for an Academy Award. The flies this morning were the clincher, though I left the plastic bag open in the garbage just in case.

What’s the grossest thing you've done lately? (Sorry if this is lame. I had another question for you, but I've decided to save it till Wednesday.)

Book Blurb Friday #17

I was excited about Book Blurb Friday, so I’m posting a wee bit early.  For this meme from Writing in the Buff, Lisa Ricard Claro posts a picture of a fictional book cover.  The challenge is to come up with an accompanying blurb of 150 words or fewer.  I loved this week’s picture the second I saw it.  Yes, it was like a big old carrot dangling in front of me, and yes, I obediently followed…with 122 words. 

And welcome to Susan! Susan, I’d love to see your blog but can’t find it. Am I that technologically challenged? Definitely.

~The Sort of New Adventures of Really, Really Old Christine~

By Steve King

The last time Christine fixed her own dents and chugged her way out of the junkyard, she realized her fenders just couldn’t take much more.  Could it be true?  It was.  Killing young boys just wasn’t as much fun as it used to be. It was time to drive herself down to Boca.  Maybe buy a little garage and play some Mahjong with some Cadillac Coupe de Villes.  

Relax with Steve King’s less scary sequel focusing on Christine’s retirement years, during which her radio plays e-z listening tunes such as:

I Lost My Grille Climbing Blueberry Hill

Highway to Purgatory

Tow Truck to Heaven

Ain’t Killin’ Nothin’ But a Few Hound Dogs

Baby Got Trunk

Come On Baby, Rub My Tires

Liz Lemon from 30 Rock, about a romantic weekend she’s planning: “I’m taking underwear that isn’t gray!”

Senior Sex(less) and the City: #19

The Gargoyle
I had just walked into a single’s dance. At a church, no less. I bet I hadn’t been sitting for two minutes when he swooped in, lurking beside me. “You’re new,” he accused, hunkering down into the chair next to me, uninvited. He was petite and creepily serious. And he fired off a lot of questions, but not the polite kind. Where had I come from? Why was I there at a single’s dance?

He started babbling, and for some reason he blurted out that he used to have dogs, but he didn’t have room for them anymore, so he had to have them all put to sleep. Four of them. He was really upset about it of course! I stared in open-mouthed horror, too many responses warring in my head, and all of them so angry that I finally just turned my back on him. It didn’t keep him from talking, though.

He would dance with me, he said, but he couldn’t. He had filed a worker’s compensation lawsuit for an injury. If he danced, they might take pictures to use against him in court. They send out spies like that.

I’d better watch it, he told me. There were people there who’d take advantage of me. He just wanted to warn me! Some men—not him, of course, because he was just looking out for me—some of those men might pounce right on me. I looked around. My friends were all dancing when I’d come in. He was the only one who even seemed to have noticed my presence. He had a peculiar intensity about him. Why, they might just look at me as another notch on the old belt!

So, why was I there, he demanded again. I tried to look as innocent as a person over 40 can look. Oh, just looking for another notch on the old belt, I shrugged. You know. But not him, of course! I would NEVER take advantage of him, so no worries there! And his injury and all. He was perfectly safe from me for sure!

Then I got up and went to the bathroom because, besides wanting to get away from him, I had to giggle. The look on his face before he retreated into the corners of the room was enough to send me back into the bathroom several times to get the laughter out of my system. Fortunately our table filled up and there was nowhere for him to perch from then on. But I could see him hovering most of the night in the shadows….

Next week: Mr. Name Dropper

Improper Poll: Best Dad

I will always have a soft spot for Lorne Greene because I used to watch Bonanza with my dad. I remember almost nothing about the show itself other than the fact that Adam always wore a black hat, and if any of the boys fell in love, the girl was doomed to die within an episode or two. My father used to mutter, “Uh oh—she’s a goner” whenever one of the Cartwright boys kissed a girl.

What became memorable for me was the way my father and I would greet each other for the rest of his life, no matter how old I was. “Howdy Paw,” I’d say. And he would respond, “Howdy Lil’ Podner.” He even signed his letters “Love, Paw."

In the end, those were our last words to one other. And that’s fine. Somehow those words said it all.

Who was your favorite TV dad?

Book Blurb Friday #16

It’s time again for Book Blurb Friday!  Each week, Lisa Ricard Claro of Writing inthe Buff posts a picture of a fictional book cover.  The challenge is to come up with an accompanying blurb of 150 words or fewer.  This week’s blurb has been whittled down to 150 words (not counting the title).  Happy weekend!

~Worth a Chocolate Mint~

by Candace Barr

Dr. Cheri Van Illa was considered one of the country’s foremost experts in language and communication, called in to help determine what it was the alien wanted.

She had been prepped, vaccinated and briefed all week. She knew he was humanoid, but what they hadn’t told her was that he was possibly the most gorgeous creature in the Milky Way with skin like milk chocolate and eyes a soft mocha that glowed under the rich, dark semi-sweet curls of his lashes. His hair was the palest green.

Her heart pounded as he wasted no time approaching her. His hand reached out and brushed her hipbone, then disappeared inside her pocket and withdrew the candy bar she’d brought back from her last study in France. She’d been saving it for her lunch.

Just before she tackled him to the ground, she heard herself scream, “NOT…THE…CHOCOLATE!!!”

Hadn’t his people heard of PMS?

Any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae. ~Kurt Vonnegut

Not So Glad Topic That Keeps Rearing Its Ugly…Feet

My post about shoe gluing made me realize that maybe it was time once again to try to replace the precious B.U.S.es (butt-ugly shoes; thank you, Sioux, for giving them such an appropriate name in the comment section of this post). Although they were so very comfortable, there have to be other comfortable shoes in the world, right?

I was hoping the replacement I got would do double-time. Couldn’t cute also be comfortable? The box said they could. These were sort of gladiator-style shoes with incredibly soft soles made of suede that feel like they have memory foam underneath. Ahhhh.

Yet…I knew the straps on them felt a little tight, but they would loosen up, right?

Ha. My gladiators are at war with my feet. They are vicious opponents. They grab hold of my toes and keep them bound into submission like slaves to their torturous leather straps that cut like whips. At the end of the first day I wore them, I emancipated my feet while still in the school parking lot and let out a small scream of horror. My feet had been lashed, slashed, gashed and mashed in such horrible ways that the sight of them scared me a little bit.

The next day I was limping. I’m too old to have shoe-wars. My dearest Butt Uglies, I embrace you yet again…but not too hard because you’re falling apart. Pass the glue.

My momma always said you can tell a lot about a person by their shoes, where they go, where they've been. ~Forrest Gump

Improper Poll: See Jane

Remember those little storage boxes shaped like books that were popular a few years ago? I’m not making fun of them, mind you (have one myself), but I once saw one whose title was “Jane Eyer.” So not only was it a fake book presumably designed to make its owner appear well read, but this was a misspelled fake book. That name still makes me giggle, because I always want to picture this alternate Jane as a be-monocled female Mad-Eye Moody. Or maybe a female Sherlock Holmes complete with magnifying glass.

I thought of that this week because my daughter and I went to see the newest Jane Eyre movie. I hadn’t read the book until college, but she recently read it in high school. So when we discovered that the movie was still playing at a theatre across town, we went for it.

It was playing in the wealthy part of town. The very wealthy, old-money part. The perky girl who sold us tickets also sold concessions. Would we care for a nosh? The gelato was delicious! And for drinks, might she recommend an “Arnold Palmer?”

My daughter and I exchanged looks that said, “No guzzling of Slushies and Whoppers and greasy popcorn tubs here! They nosh! On gelato and mysterious drinks with cocktail names!!! Golfer cocktails!!!”

As we settled in the very back of the small theatre with our noshes, I realized there was nothing but a sea of white hair ahead of us. Not only was my daughter obviously the youngest person in there, I was probably second youngest. And they didn’t talk before the movie, let alone during. Also, no one had bothered to take our tickets. In fact, there was no security whatsoever. Who keeps people from sneaking in? Then we realized: There is no such thing as gangs of hoodlums waiting to sneak into Jane Eyre!!

What an amazing experience. The movie, of course, was wonderful. How could it not be, in a peaceful, cool theatre on a hot summer afternoon where we were so thoroughly tucked away from the real world beneath this cushy-thick layer of delightfulness?

Anyway. In honor of Jane Eyre and all of those white haired gangs of ladies who viewed her movie with us (The Jane-Eyers?), this week’s question will be only ever so slightly improper:

Have you run across any fun misspellings lately?

Book Blurb Friday Saturday (?!) #15

First of all, let me thank Sandra Davies for telling me that Firefox is somehow responsible for my inability to see pictures! She is absolutely right—if I go in through Internet Explorer, pictures appear out of nowhere. Amazing.

Speaking of pictures, I am VERY late getting finished with my Book Blurb Friday from Writing in the Buff! Each week Lisa Ricard Claro posts a pretend book cover, and we are asked to write an accompanying blurb of 150 words or less. I got overwhelmed this week while my muse went on vacation, but at least it’s a short one at only 87 words. Hope you have a great weekend!

~Toast~

An alcoholic mother.

A woman aching to give her dying husband one last taste of normal life.

A young paraplegic who broke his spine in a simple game of backyard football.

A teenager who decided to rough up an old man just to take his beer.

All are linked by one thing: Each drinks a simple can of beer, and each makes a toast before taking that first swig.

But is it really a simple can of beer? Especially when it always makes that toast come true?


Be careful what you wish for.  ~Anonymous

Pupdate

Your thoughts and prayers meant so much when I thought our dog had been stricken by a stroke a month or two ago! Here’s an update. According to the vet, this was an inner ear problem sometimes called Canine Geriatric Vestibular Syndrome. He said there are several causes, and if it was due to something less insidious than a brain tumor, Buddy should recover fully within 14 days. Our beloved dog did recover, but it took a little longer than 14 days and he continues to have some residual effects. Does that mean it’s a brain tumor? I sure hope not.

In the meantime, we’ve all adjusted to this new way of being. Buddy is very old (15 and counting) no matter how you look at it. He still carries his head to the side. He occasionally stumbles and bumps into things. Sometimes he falls over when he shakes his head; he’s learned to stand next to us, and we’ve learned to reach out and steady him. In fact, we’ve steadied him so many times that he does what we call The Swoon: He’ll lean in to be scratched and just fall over if you’re not paying attention. He can no longer run without careening into things. He’s almost completely deaf and has been medicated for arthritis for some time. He has cataracts and one of those eyelid tumors that dogs get. The vet said it was too risky to do surgery at Buddy’s age, but it’s getting very close to touching his eyeball. What options will he have when that happens? I don’t know. I just pray whatever choices we make will be the ones he would make for himself.

Other than that, he seems quite happy and has actually earned himself some perks. He got so thin for a while that I started adding special canned food made for arthritic dogs mixed in with his kibble, and he loves it. I’ve elevated his dishes and moved the whole “dish throne” into the dining room because the rug in there is easier on his limbs and helps keep him from slipping. We joke that the dog is the only one in our house who actually dines in the dining room.

He has a bed in a very unattractive and inconvenient place right now: in the middle of everything. But when I move it to clean, Buddy stands in the spot and gives me The Pitiful Look until I put it all back. I figure his heart’s desire is to be in the midst of all of us, and this helps him to be there in comfort. He’s earned it.

He can still go in and outside and has learned to maneuver the two stairs again. This was the most important improvement of all. Carrying a sixty-pound dog down brick stairs is just not fun for any of the involved parties.

He still often whines, barks, and paces in the night for no apparent reason, but I hear that’s all part of extreme dog aging. Once my son got home from college for the summer, he started taking over so I could get enough sleep to function at work the next day. It helped immensely.

Like any care-givers, we are taking it one day at a time. We’re grateful for each one. And as always, we’re grateful for all of your prayers and good wishes!

What a wretched lot of old shriveled creatures we shall be by-and-by. Never mind—the uglier we get in the eyes of others, the lovelier we shall be to each other; that has always been my firm faith about friendship. ~George Eliot

Jarred Back to Reality

Last night I jumped out of bed thinking we’d had an earthquake. But when I consulted with my son, who usually feels them, he didn’t know what I was talking about. Had I dreamed it? After all, this felt different from the usual ones our area experiences—it was more of a roll than a jiggle. So I stayed awake for a while wondering what my subconscious mind was trying to tell me. Earthquake symbolism...hmmm!  Makes sense when you figure that our lives have been “shaken up” a bit with my daughter’s recent graduation!

Then this morning I heard we really did have one, a 4.2.  Oh.  So much for my dream analysis. Thanks to Jules for asking how we're doing!  You are very sweet.  Fortunately I don't think anything even fell over.

I don't have any earthquake quotes, so here's a line from a song that I like:

Some will fall in love with life and drink it from a fountain/

That is pouring like and avalanche coming down the mountain. ~Butthole Surfers, “Jingle of a Dog’s Collar”

Improper Poll: Secretly Watching

My daughter’s high school graduation was this weekend. And what do graduations remind me of, you ask? Or, more probably, you don’t…but I’m going to tell you anyway, although can you tell I am putting this off? Okay. Here goes. I used to be addicted to “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.”

It’s true. This was the TV show version, which I discovered—as I’ve discovered most of my great TV loves—in syndication. It used to be aired late at night in my area on Saturday nights. My children were younger then, so I was overwhelmingly busy most days and evenings, yet had nothing to do on weekend nights.

For one thing, the casting director for that show must’ve had the most wonderful taste in men. Even the supposed nerds were hot. And how can you not love a little high school girl who calmly kicks vampire butt like that? Buffy was the ultimate liberated woman. She was feminine, smart, calm and powerful. She loved and respected men—just not the ones who attacked her, from whom she took not an ounce of grief. In retrospect, Buffy helped inspire me to do a little real-life-vampire ass-kicking (or out-kicking)…and for that, I will be eternally grateful. Even the name is wonderful: “Buffy!”…snort…. If by chance you’ve never seen the Buffy/Twilight Remix, it’s worth a look (and I am not a Twilight-hater, either). Go Buffy.

Do you have a show you’ve secretly loved but are a bit embarrassed to claim?

Book Blurb Friday #14

Once again, it’s Book Blurb Friday! I find this meme from Writing in the Buff so very addictive—not only because I enjoy the writing exercise, but because it’s so much fun to read all of the different and creative takes on one picture. Each week, Lisa Ricard Claro posts the pretend cover of a book. Our job is to write an accompanying blurb in 150 words or fewer. I apologize in advance to Kay Davies for taking liberties with her beautiful picture. I believe it’s 138 words this week.

~ Pepé: Les Premières Années de le Pew~

par Guy de Malpewsscent

(forward by Victor Pughgo)

We think we know the jovial Pepé Le Pew, but what was his life like before he became an actor for Warner Brothers? This shocking biography details Pepé’s lonely early years and his little-known dreams of a career in law enforcement.  Few knew that such a cloud of angst hung over Pepé at being treated as a social outcast due to his “problème d'odeur.”

Follow his frustrating attempts to earn a Master’s degree in horticulture while living in a small Paris flat where even the pelargoniums swooned beneath his putrescent paw.

And finally, see him pursue one unrequited love after another before eventually moving to the United States and finally coming out about his secret, cross-species attraction to..les chats.

“Heartbreaking” ~Elle Magazine
“Ou la la!” ~French Quarterly

Welcome to Jabblog, Sara, Kay Davies and Karen Lange! (If I ever leave anyone out, I apologize.  I can't see some of my followers in Firefox and have to switch to Internet Explorer.  It's very weird!)

Despair seems to afflict only those whose relation to life is a serious and potentially responsible one.~ from “Mockingbird Years” by Emily Fox Gordon

Ten Things: The Graduation Speech No One Will Ask Me to Make

This is in honor of my youngest child’s last two days in high school. Woo hoo! But no one ever asks me to deliver a graduation speech. I know—go figure. So here is the speech I find myself wanting to make. These are the ten most important things I wish someone had told me, or things I am working on, or things I learned the hard way. What would YOU add?

1. Some people would have you believe that kindness is synonymous with stupidity, empathy is synonymous with weakness, and honesty and respect are synonymous with naiveté. Don’t buy it. There is no accomplishment in selfishness. It takes a wealth of inner resources to be a giver—and a lack of them to be greedy. In the long run, the people we all remember and respect the most in life aren’t the rich or the beautiful. They are the ones who gave something to others—and not because it glorified them. They gave simply out of love.

2. Remember what Jane Austen said over 200 years ago. Marry a spouse with character. That woman knew human nature. She’s still right.

3. Beauty really is overrated. What’s more, beauty is a lot more common than I always used to think—it’s everywhere. And thank heavens for that. If you don’t see it, change your definition. If you’re concerned about how you look, work to be healthy, happy, and good. Then you will be truly beautiful to other truly beautiful people.

4. When you finish learning, you finish living. Always learn.

5. Laugh at yourself. You’re a cheap source of amusement and you’re always politically correct.

6. Be best to those who love you most. Too many people work to attain the approval of strangers while mistreating their loved ones. Avoid those people at all costs. Be loyal to the people who matter. Including yourself (go Polonius).

7. If that little warning light in the back of your mind goes off, don’t be an idiot. Listen.

8. Beware of people who habitually ask for pity…or those who habitually try to dole it out. Both are manipulators. The people who deserve the most respect tend to be the ones who show it to others. Seek them out and befriend them. If they respect you back, they will always be dear to your heart and your life. And really beware of those who operate on double standards. In fact, beware of inequality. Woodrow Wilson said, “You cannot be friends upon any other terms than upon the terms of equality.” Was he ever right.

9. Crappy things that are completely beyond your control will happen to you. Maybe they already have. It sucks. The good news is that being an adult means you can either change your situation, or failing that, change your response to it. Do one of those, or both, making sure your choices are positive ones that make things better for yourself and others in the long run. Then be thankful for the person you’ve become and for the crappy things that led you there. If you do that, you will make each of life’s gouges into a stroke of the sculptor’s knife, and in the end you’ll be left with a work of art called Wisdom.

10. Two of the most valuable possessions you can own are a good walk and a good laugh. Walk like you own the world and people will think you do. Laugh like you love the world, and people will know you do.

So…walk far and laugh a lot.


In honor of the occasion, I have two quotes, each from one of my all-time favorite authors :

If we listened to our intellect, we'd never have a love affair. We'd never have a friendship. We'd never go into business, because we'd be cynical. Well, that's nonsense. You've got to jump off cliffs all the time and build your wings on the way down. ~Ray Bradbury

If you can do a half-assed job of anything, you're a one-eyed man in a kingdom of the blind. ~Kurt Vonnegut

Improper Poll: (Green) Beaned

My daughter and I felt a little sick last week. No one threw up, but we occasionally felt as if we might be on the brink. But then, we are not thrower-uppers.

In college, I heard of a girl who routinely stuck her finger down her throat to barf up her dinner. I’d never heard of bulimia, so I tried it. I succeeded merely in drooling clear down to my elbow. By then I was so grossed out that I gave up. Now I know I'm not so unlucky that my body has the annoying habit of hanging onto food.

But anyway, while thinking about vomit, I was reminded of the time my sister threw up and a green bean came out her nose. I mentioned this to a group of friends once, and one of them volunteered that she’d had a similar experience with corn. Corn! Out the nose! Will wonders never cease??!

So naturally I am wondering if this phenomenon is confined to vegetables or side dishes or what. Have you ever vomited out the nose? Is this common, nasal vomitage? Is “nasal vomitage” a real phrase, or merely one that should be?

And do you have any puking stories to share?

Book Blurb Friday #13

Oh, how I love Fridays...especially during final's week, when I get the luxury of an actual lunch hour rather than twenty minutes!!!

Thank you to Lisa Ricard Claro of Writing in the Buff for hosting Book Blurb Friday and also for forwarding this week’s picture to me so I could see it! I do have a Firefox update to install that I’m hoping will help me to see pictures again. In the meantime, Ms. Ricard Claro presents us with a challenge each week to write a blurb (150 words or fewer) to go with the pretend book cover. Am not quite as crazy about my blurb as I am the beautiful picture, but at least I made the limit at 150 words!

Welcome to Marie Sterling Wilber! I find her blog helps me learn about an art form I’ve always admired—photography—but never explored well enough. It’s worthwhile just to look at the pictures!

~Silent Night, Deadly Night~

Jason Rasmussen was handsome, intelligent, and married to his childhood sweetheart, the lovely and gentle Elise Rasmussen. But on Christmas night, Jason seemed to disappear into thin air.

Investigations revealed that Jason was medicated for bipolar disorder and Elise had had an affair with the boy who bagged her groceries. Had Elise had something to do with his disappearance? Yet it was Jason who had recently taken out a life insurance policy on Elise, and she had broken off the affair six months earlier with the claim that she still loved her husband. Had someone else had something to do with his disappearance? If so, who?

Most disturbing of all was the fact that absolutely nothing indicated Jason had even left home at all—there were no missing car and no tracks in the fresh snow…nothing. Or was there?

Silent night, deadly night
All is calm, nothing is quite right….

“…the rock-bottom requirement for any good partnership is that you want what’s best for the other person.” ~Gloria Steinem

Senior Sex(less) and the City: #18

Cute Guy
“Guess who likes you?” my friend asked me. “Who?” I asked. I wrinkled my nose out of habit.

For Valentine’s Day, I got a card from a friend. Two little girls were on the front. “Johnny likes you,” says one.

“Paste-Eating Johnny, or Booger-Eating Johnny?” asks the other. I wish I could find what I did with it, because I can’t remember the punch line. Something about enjoying my options, I think. But the point is, that’s how I feel. Amazingly, it was neither Paste-Eating Johnny nor Booger-Eating Johnny. It was…could it be??!!!

Cute Guy.

I squealed. “Really!?! Are you sure?! Did he tell you, or do you just think so? Does he like me, or does he LIKE me like me??!!” I made her repeat every single word that passed between them on the subject. Twice. Then of course I made her add in any facial nuances he may have used to convey the message. Then I giggled and danced around a bit.

Cute Guy is more than cute. He is smooth. He has chunky-but-clean man hands and a warm handshake and a winning smile. He smells good. Not good as in too-much-aftershave-good, but good as in his personal scent is good. Not that sharp, I-can’t-walk-up-a-hill-so-I’m-turning-red-and-emitting-sour-sweat personal scent. But a clean skin smell. That one. Oooh….

Then she mentioned his age. Oh. Oh crap. He is quite a bit younger than I’d hoped. I told my friend my age. Maybe it’s that she’s only seen me in darkened rooms, or maybe the fat distracted her from the wrinkles or something, but she thought I was younger. Oh, she says. Oh. She knows it, too—it’s too much of an age difference. And truthfully, I don’t blame him a bit. I wouldn’t date someone that much older than I am. I don't think I want to date someone that much younger than I am, either.  Some people can do it. I can’t. I want someone my own age.

Still. I’m unaccountably happy. Like the birthday card, I do have some pretty fun options. And age? I’m still giggling like a twelve-year-old.

Cute Guy liked me!



Welcome and thank you to new blog follower Dorothy Evans!

Improper Poll: A Day in the Life

Friday after work I checked out the news and found out I only had one day to live. Where did this come from?  I thought we had until 2012.  So all of a sudden I had to think about how I would spend my last day on earth.

I thought about things like drinking and smoking and trips, but in the end, I spent my pretend last day on earth almost like any other weekend, and I think that’s just what I’d choose. 

Except…my son is now home from college.  His mess follows him home like Schultz’s Pigpen, a pile of wet-clothes clutter that grows until it engulfs our house and garage like kid-kudzu. Kidzu? Krudzu? There are paper plates of petrified pizza and fingerprints and smeary half-filled glasses all over the house.  He shoots Nerf darts at his sister when she’s forced to pass his room, so in addition to the random shrieking, there are things like little darts all over. 

So I think if it were really my last day and I had time to plan, I would have hired a maid service.  And I did buy chocolate—the creamiest, milkiest chocolate I could find.

But here is today, one more day, a miracle no matter how you look at it.   

How would you spend your last day on earth?

Book Blurb Friday #12

Amazing that the week has gone by so fast and it’s another Book Blurb Friday already!  If you are unfamiliar with Book Blurb Friday, please check out Writing in the Buff, where Lisa Ricard Claro provides us with a weekly fictional book cover. The challenge is to write an accompanying blurb of 150 words or less. Mine for this week came in at 149 words. And welcome to new blog follower Liz Davis! Thanks so much and hope you visit often!

 ~Contra Band~

2111 A.D.: Funding for education has been cut so much (because who cares about children who can’t vote?) there are no longer any teachers—merely Educational Facilitators who screen for weapons and make sure that the children are getting their government-approved H-Tel Imagery lessons properly streamed into their nervous systems.

The arts are expendable, too, of course—except in certain government-approved E.C. Facilities—but art made of metal? Metal is too precious and must be used for important things like technology.

When sixteen-year-old Denver Bishop and his fourteen-year-old sister Fantom move to a new subcity, however, they find a storage facility for antique art that somehow missed being surrendered to the government…and there they find old-fashioned musical instruments thought to exist only in museums. Will Denver, Fantom and their friends be able to learn to play in secret? Or will the government find out and destroy it—and them?

Use the talents you possess, for the woods would be very silent if no birds sang but the best. ~Henry Van Dyke

Improper Poll: Taboo Love

Here’s the thing. I am positively known for being conservative in some ways…especially when it comes to dress. Still, I harbor a secret love of…don’t tell…tacky watches. How they twist and curl, some of them quite literally snake-like, whispering “pick me” to some inner yearning!

Recently I found the mother of all tackiness. It beckoned from its eBay page, drawing me back again and again for stolen glances at this, my porn of the wrist. And there it was, so beguiling in its size, its sheer glittery-ness. And the colors!

I am weak, I admit it. When I gave in and ordered it, I was trying to fool myself into believing that maybe I could sneak it into normal life, tuck it under a sleeve so no one would know.

When it arrived, it had been shipped all the way from Hong Kong in a little box covered in stamps. Cost of shipping? Five dollars. How can that be? At that price I can’t help but picture somebody paddling very fast on a raft.

And then…oh, gracious. It is the hoochy-coochy dancing watch of all time, this glob of gaudy goodness. But worse—much worse—is the size. Huge, yes, but the hinged metal cuff size is made for Asian women. And although I am very small boned for an American of European decent, it puts me in sadistic watch-bondage, cutting off the circulation and corseting me in like Scarlett, leaving my wrist in an hourglass shape that would put Marilyn herself to shame.

Alas, I may have to come up with another use for it, such as decorating yet another thing on my desk. Still, I know that I just can’t give it away. So here it is.  Not the best shot, maybe, but it's surprisingly hard to photograph your own wrist.  You can see that it is creating dual muffin-tops on my wrist, which I had previously thought was about the only relatively fat-free body part I had.  I can't even show you the front.  I am too ashamed.

Do you have an object you love and just can’t explain why?

Book Blurb Friday #11

What annoys me most about Blogger’s being unavailable this week is that it just happened to coincide with the times that I was. So now I have some major catching up to do. Am starting with Lisa Ricard Claro’s Book Blurb Friday—a meme which challenges readers to come up with a blurb of 150 words or fewer to go with a fictional book cover. I barely made it this week at exactly 150 words (not counting the title):

~Buried Past~

Eva Leighton led a quiet life. So quiet, in fact, that researching her family tree seemed like the perfect hobby.

But when her research uncovered a mysterious ancestor who shared her first name, Eva was driven to learn more. This other Eva had roared during the Roaring Twenties and then seemingly vanished. That she turned out to be her biological great grandmother was the least of Eva’s surprises.

Unidentified bones of a woman had been found in the Mojave desert, buried near a rusted Model A Ford. Eva transformed into a sleuth who, together with the handsome detective who was willing to reopen a very cold case, had uncovered far more than a family secret.

Eva had unearthed her great grandmother’s murder. But who had killed her? As she worked to learn more, it became clear that Eva’s life would never be quiet again. In fact, would history repeat itself?

“In the desert, an old monk had once advised a traveler, the voices of God and the Devil are scarcely distinguishable.” ~Loren Eiseley

Improper Poll: Ten Things I’ve Learned as a Mother

When I was pregnant with my first child, I naively believed that I would have soap opera children. You know—clean, quiet children who make an occasional appearance and stare in rapt attention while being taught valuable mom things? And then they would go nap.

If you are a seasoned mother, and even if you are not, you are now cringing because you know that God got me back for that big time. Ha ha! That silly God sure has a sense of humor!

As soon as my children were born, and in some ways before, they promptly taught me these things:
1. I am an utter and complete idiot who knows nothing.
2. My children do not belong to me. They taught me they belonged to themselves even clear back when my abdomen woke me up in the middle of the night for the nightly kidney-pummeling.
3. We have more to learn from our children than we have to teach them. If we’re lucky.
4. My children were the only ones I knew who did not nap from age two on. Ever. And they did this not merely just to torture me, but as direct punishment for wanting soap opera children.
5. I would not have a good night’s sleep again for the better part of a decade, and then they would interrupt my sleep again when they hit adolescence. I’m still not sure when I’ll get to sleep again.
6. I need to remember that the most valuable words I can utter as a mother are, “What do you think?” I should probably carry a roll of duct tape for my mouth along with my own private cue card printed with those words, because it’s surprisingly hard for me to remember.
7. When you are a new mother, and some older woman gasps and says (with judgmental horror), “Oh, I see you do it that way? Well, I guess the baby will be okay,” learn to laugh and ignore her. (And Lord help me never to be that woman!)
8. The best advice I ever got on mothering came from a parenting magazine, and I wish I could remember the author. It was to say these words when the child whines: “I’m sorry, but I can’t understand that voice. Could you talk in your real voice, please?"
9. Mothers don’t really teach. At best, we guide. But mostly we just love, and that is the best lesson there is.
10. I may be an utter and complete idiot who knows nothing, but still, by the absolute grace of God and lots of prayer and a few understanding friends, I still managed to get great children.

So today’s Improper Poll question is:
What have you learned either as a mother or from your mother?  Happy Mother's Day!

Sweater, n.: garment worn by child when its mother is feeling chilly. ~Ambrose Bierce

Book Blurb Friday #10

This week I am especially grateful for Writing in the Buff’s Book Blurb Friday, in which Lisa Ricard Claro presents her readers with a fictional book cover as a challenge to come up with a blurb of 150 words or less to go with it.

This is my second blurb for this picture. The first one I wrote went with a children’s series I (literally) dreamed up years ago. And now, thanks to Ms. Ricard Claro, I am seriously thinking about getting back to it. So many, many thanks to her already! Whether I really do get back to that book or not, it’s been a lot of fun to think about again.

Anyway. I put that one away for now and came up with this one, trimmed and chopped and hyphenated to a mere149 words (not counting the title):

~The Miracle of Esterbrook Pond~

Ten-year-old Ray-Hope Fenwick made a discovery out by Esterbrook pond: a lady that only she could see appeared in the fountain every morning. What’s more, the lady told Ray-Hope that she would perform one miracle on May 6, 2011. Ray-Hope was so convincing that the crowds began to gather. Who would receive the miracle? And what’s more, who should?

Would it be Milos San Raphael, wealthy businessman seeking a cure for his Lou Gehrig’s before the disease progressed? Or the humble Grady family, hoping to heal their child? Would land-owner Elmore Esterbrook cash in on the water? And if the waters were miraculous, why didn’t little Ray-Hope cure her own brother of his autism?

Or had the child simply made it all up?

Follow twelve families in this masterpiece of good and evil as they struggle in the fountain’s waters…and discover for yourself the true miracle of Esterbrook.

(P.S. May the miracle today be yours!)

Our whole business therefore in this life is to restore to health the eye of the heart whereby God may be seen. ~Saint Augustine

Grief Divided

It was a beautiful day when I stood behind her in the Walmart line. She had a false-cheerful tone to her voice that bothered me without reason. And then I realized there was a reason. I knew that voice.

I always seem to get the worst news on a beautiful day. I’ve looked longingly out hospital windows at a flawless afternoon, where the birds kept on singing and the sun kept on shining from a startlingly blue sky as if to say, “No, everything’s fine with us, thanks!” Meanwhile, my own life slumped in agony at my feet.

Funerals for me have never been like in the movies, where umbrellas seem to sprout from the gloom like black flowers. In my life, the day has always been heartbreakingly beautiful as if to taunt me. The message is the same: Life goes on. You are alone.

Some of the greatest beauty in my life has been refracted through tears, like looking through glass blocks, because of course it’s not really crying if you hold your eyes wide open and refuse to let the tears spill out. We can’t be expected to bother others with our grief when it isn’t theirs to bear. That woman’s voice made me ache. It’s the voice I’ve forced out of my own mouth when something horrible had happened and I was struggling to function normally in a world that was lucky enough not to have to share my pain.

I looked up, and for just a split second, our eyes met. The abject agony I saw in her eyes at that second haunted me, haunts me still. She had Prison Camp Eyes.

I’m still upset, though I’ll never know for what we grieved, are grieving. I’m sending her my best wishes. I want her to know that life doesn’t really go on, unconcerned. Sometimes it stops and grieves too because it knows that we are all in this together. After all, we’re really only taking turns.

You bear God within you, poor wretch, and know it not. ~Epictetus

Improper Poll: It’s a Drag

Is there a small thing that you’ve really regretted? I don’t mean big things, but those little chances you passed up and now regret?

In my last Book Blurb Friday post, I mentioned a character who was a female impersonator. This reminded me of the time I passed up attending a “Miss Drag Queen” contest. It was held after the bars closed. I opted not to go because my children were young then and I was perpetually tired in those days.  But now I have to ask myself what tiredness is compared to an opportunity like that. Throughout all of the years since, I’ve thought of that as one of the adventures I’m most sorry I passed up in life, because how often does a straight Midwestern suburban mom—especially one who writes—get to attend a drag queen pageant? And this was in Omaha, so it was in fact a Nebraskan drag queen pageant. Let’s face it: life just doesn’t get much better than that.

I had gone to a party with my sister, who is involved in community theatre. The party was held by two gay men who hadn’t come out until after both were married with children. So they divorced their wives and began a less traditional blended family with about five children between them, sort of like the Brady Bunch, only with a male Carol. Very cool party, too—they had a mini-amusement park set up for the children and a mini gambling casino set up for the adults. Gamboling and gambling, ar ar.

Anyway. Is there anything in life you passed up and now regret?