The Interview

Last night my company had an interview with a non-profit organization, and we were so anxious to be awarded the work that we arrived a few minutes early to make a good impression.

We could hear an interview going on in the large office, but we couldn’t see it because of a partition.

We were greeted by a middle aged woman wearing a knobby tan ski cap with tassels hanging down the sides, ending just above her ample bosom, which gravity was pulling down like a boy ringing a giant church bell. The bright, multi-colored shirt she was wearing looked like it had come from the 70% off racks at a discount store. She had dark brown freckles on pale ale skin, and when we approached she kept her face level with the computer screen but raised her eyes to look at us and say, “Can I help you?”

“We’re here for the interview,” the company owner whispered. “We’re a few minutes early, do you have a bathroom?”

“Sure do,” she said, and hoomphed herself up from her chair, “I’ll show you where it is.”

“I’ll go too,” I said, thinking I could check my hair and see if I had any of that black stuff you get in the corner of your eyes if you wear mascara.

When the receptionist was finally on her feet, she was stooped over like little pine tree in a snowstorm. She put one foot deliberately in front of another, like a hospital patient inching down a long hallway with an IV pole.

She rounded the corner of her desk and started heading toward the aisle where the interview voices were coming from.

“Oh crap,” I hissed.

“I’m not going,” my boss whispered.

We stood there watching the receptionist progress along until she was beside where the interview was happening, muttering and not realizing we weren’t behind her.

“Oh my gosh, that poor woman,” I said. “I’ll go.”

I scurried toward her – this aisle was a good forty feet long and she had covered most of it. I kept my eyes straight ahead as I passed the interview table, noticing in my peripheral vision that there were at least five people – not counting the three from the other company with their backs to me – who saw me whisking by.

The receptionist stopped and turned to speak to me and saw that I was hustling to catch up. “Lord, honey,” she said in a voice oblivious that business was being conducted a few feet away, “I didn’t know you wasn’t behind me, I’ve been talking to myself the whole way.”.

She led me through a closed door, down a stretch of hallway, around a couple of corners and through another door or two. Finally she said, “Here it is!” - proud she’d accomplished this important mission.

I ducked into the door and started asking myself important questions in preparation for the interview, such as: “What were you thinking, you idiot? Why did you ask to go to the bathroom, you didn’t need to go to the bathroom? You looked like an idiot out there and now you have to walk past that table. There’s no escaping this blunder." Then I looked at myself in the mirror and found 9,000 flaws. “Oh my gosh, how are you going to go back out there looking like that and walk past table?”

I decided to skip the interview and stay in the bathroom. Seeing the impracticality of this, I figured I’d wait until I thought the other company would be gone.

When I thought it was safe, I crept out the door and turned to the right and encountered a network of cubicles and hallways - and freaking got lost. I’d been preoccupied with being an idiot so didn’t notice the hallways running in all different directions. I wandered around for an eternity until I finally discovered the main door that led to the other room.

When I got to the table, my company’s interview was already in progress. That threw me so off kilter that I could barely look anyone in the eye as the boss hurriedly introduced me. When it came my turn to speak, I started saying my rehearsed words, got a frog in my throat, cleared it two or three times, stuttered, stuttered some more, got a few things out before my brain fizzled on me.

No one asked me any questions.

I spent the whole evening and restless night worrying that I had blown our chances. I kept saying, “Why didn’t you make a joke like, ‘That’s really a journey to your bathroom - I felt like I was on some reality show and had been dropped in a maze.’ They would have chuckled and loved you forever. Why? Why? Why?

The next day, at 1:38 in the afternoon, we got a call saying we’d been awarded the contract. We must have been the very lowest bidder!

Hot Lips Nachos

I had nachos for dinner tonight and got way too liberal with the hot sauce and jalapeno peppers. Law have mercy! My lips were burning like someone was lighting them with a match. And yet I could not stop eating, so the flame barely had half a second to calm down before I put some more fire in my mouth.

I suffered through a rather large plate of nachos, and it never got any easier. Each bite was as hot as the last, and just as painful, and yet it was not a deterrent to me stuffing myself.

The weird thing is that once it got past my lips and into my mouth, which was also burning like asphalt on the equator, and then headed to my throat, it didn’t burn anymore. All the way down the chute to my stomach, I didn’t feel a thing.

This makes sense, when you think about it. Your lips and mouth are like two Buckingham Palace guards – they’re not going to let anything in that would do you any harm. If those guys can take the red-hot fire of spicy food, then they must figure that your cast iron stomach should do just fine.

I’ve popped things in my mouth and discovered that they were too freaking hot – as in like they’ve come out of an oven in Hades. When that happens I don’t spit it out, I simply make a big “O” with my mouth and say, “Hot! Hot! Hot!” and fan it a few times with my hand. And then I swallow the blistering tidbit so it quits burning - once it gets past a point, I can’t feel it anymore.

This is a wonder of biological engineering - a miracle of the human body.

On the other hand, some things go in your mouth all nice and easy-like, for instance the beans I had for lunch today, and then later they raise a ruckus in your digestive system like two Tasmanian devils wrestling in the belly of a tornado.

But I am not going to let this deteriorate into a discussion about flaming bottoms and lighting matches to see if they can ignite a blow torches when a person passes gas, and so forth.

Why can I NOT seem to get past bathroom humor?

When I went with my writer’s group to a retreat a few weeks ago, I got the “Humor” award, and the one line summary of me was, “Wait, wait – I have to go to the bathroom.” That pretty much sums me up – I don’t want to miss anything, hence the “wait, wait,” but the bathroom is always close by – either in my writing, in my talking, or when I’m rushing for it because of some extremely spicy food I had no business eating.

Okay, speaking of the toilet I have to tell a story, but it will need to wait until tomorrow because it’s too long for tonight when the bed is calling and my eyelids are as heavy as a full bladder. See, I just can’t get away from bodily functions……

Stuff I'm Thankful for

We just got through with Thanksgiving and I forgot to mention things I’m thankful for. Since this is supposed to be humorous, I’m obliged to be silly.

First, I’m thankful that I can end sentences with infinitives and no one seems to mind. In college composition classes you would have had to write: “These are the things for which I am thankful,” because it isn’t proper English to say, “These are the things I’m thankful for.” But when you’re writing a humor blog, you can do anything you want, even going so far as to split infinitives – which used to make the nuns at my grade school mad as toothless beavers. Here’s an example of a split infinitive if you don’t know what I’m talking about: “I needed to briskly go to the bathroom or I was going to whiz my britches, and yet there was a line as long as the Baltimore tunnel.”

In this example, briskly is an adverb and it should not come between the infinitive “to” and the verb, “go.” You can get away with it in your own blog where there’s not a nun around to slap your hand with a ruler, and for that I am thankful.

I’m thankful that Thanksgiving is over, because now all those premature Christmas decorations all over the stores and on people’s houses are no longer illegitimate. As far as I’m concerned, they are justified the day after Thanksgiving but not before – I get sick of harping at me to buy for Christmas. I’m going to put it off until the last minute no matter how early the commercials start because that’s who I am and I’m not changing, so those early commercials and decorations irritate me. They make me feel more like a procrastinator than usual.

I’m thankful for gas stations that fill you up without making you get out of the car. We just went to Seattle and in Washington you have to pump your own gas. I used to not mind when I lived in Tennessee, but now that I’ve been spoiled, it’s a nuisance – I always get gas on my shoes when I have to pump my own. At least one drop leaks out of the nozzle before I can whip it back into place. So I’m thankful Oregon charges the same for our gas and I don’t have to get out in the freezing rain to fill ‘er up.

Another thing I’m thankful for is that I put up some of my outside lights last night when it was dry, because right now it’s raining like a cow pissin’ on a flat rock.

I’m thankful for the above saying, which was handed down to me from my dad.

I’m especially thankful that I didn’t gain much more than five pounds during the gorge-fest I had on Thanksgiving Day - and every 2 waking hours since with all the leftovers.

Finally, I’m thankful for you, my faithful readers, who put up with my foolishness and come back for more. You are the best fans I can ever think of, and that you continue to boldly go down that path of humor with me, even when sometimes I’m about as funny as a cockroach in a Rueben sandwich, makes me as thankful as I was when I took notice of that cockroach as my mouth was traveling toward that thick sandwich and somehow I spied a leg between layers of corned beef. I’m really thankful that I did not take a bite and later discover half a cockroach, if you catch my drift.

And now I bet you’re thankful I’m not going to expose you to any more disgusting stories – at least not tonight.

JHappiness

This is dedicated to happiness - what is it, where do you get it, how much does it cost, why is mine on backorder, and when is it going to get in?

What is it? That’s easy. It’s feeling good while, at the same time, not feeling guilty. Guilt is a big deterrent to happiness, especially if you’ve been raised religious. A lot of stuff that should make you happy can also make you guilty – like you could steal something and have it, and you think you’re happy that you got it, but then you feel guilty about stealing it – unless you’re a heathen. I am only talking about religion so I can type the word “heathen.” What a great word. It sounds like a trouble-maker, doesn’t it? I like words with sounds that evoke their meaning.

Moving right along, where do you get happiness? In simple things, like winning the lottery. Show me someone who’s won a couple million bucks and I’ll show you one happy honcho.

How much does happiness cost? They say you can’t buy it, and I believe that’s true, because I’ve never seen it in a store – not in a bottle or can or box. If you find some, buy it and send it to me.

Why is my happiness on backorder? Ha, ha, that’s funny, since I just said you can’t buy happiness. But seriously, a lot of the time happiness seems to hinge on some upcoming thing, like, “I’ll sure be happy when I get this blog written tonight.” So while I’m writing, I’m anticipating that feeling of accomplishment and those soft sheets I get to climb into when this is posted.

When is happiness going to get in? Ha ha, another funny comment. I’m full of them – it just delights me, makes me happy as a mule eating briars. I once tutored this high school kid who was perpetually miserable. He wanted to spend the whole hour complaining about his mom, his classmates, his teachers. Once I got so fed up that I bitch slapped him. Not really, I wanted to, but instead I drew a world and a face looking at it with a frown. I said, “This is how you see the world.” Then I erased the little frown line and made it into a smile. “But you could also see the world this way. The world itself doesn’t change. It’s just how you look at it.”

The kid bitch slapped ME and never came back. Not really, I just love saying “bitch slapped.” I’m laughing right now after typing it. It’s a blessing to be easily amused. But in all seriousness, if you’re waiting for happiness to show up on your doorstep looking like a winning lottery ticket wrapped in chocolate, you’re going to have a whole lot of dull hours in your life. Happiness can come knocking every minute of the day, all you have to do is give it a toehold by looking for amusement in your everyday life even when you feel like wearing a frown.

Christmas Is Like NASCAR

Christmas reminds me of NASCAR. It passes by and then it comes around again – over and over. Lately it’s been coming around faster than ever.

In fact, it arrived in Portland, OR around Halloween. I remember a few years ago when people griped about the department stores putting Christmas decorations out before Thanksgiving. We didn’t know how good we had it. Now they are putting things out before Halloween. Red and green decorations and snowy white angels on shelves next to orange ceramic pumpkins and ugly witches is disconcerting.

Even worse than that is the Christmas programs already starting on TV. Used to be – and I’m talking a couple of years ago - you could at least get through Thanksgiving before Santa and Rudolf started showing their red noses on TV. Already they’re running Santa movies - for the last two weeks - and it’s the day before Thanksgiving.

What’s this world coming to?
Trick or treaters in Santa costumes?
Give Trick or Treaters those swirly Christmas candies that get gooey and stick together because they’re for “decoration” and nobody eats them?
Sell pumpkins as Christmas ornaments?
Get rid of the turkey and have a Christmas ham for Thanksgiving?

When I was a kid it seemed like Christmas took forever to get here. That’s because it was considered white trash to put anything Christmassy out until after Thanksgiving. People already have Christmas lights on their houses – I drove by one a couple days ago with lights all over their outside tree and a lighted reindeer in the yard. Years ago we would have shunned them into keeping that stuff in the attic until the proper designated time. Now you just shake your head and wonder what the heck’s the hurry.

This is why Christmas feels like NASCAR to me – it lasts 4 months by the time you see things in the store in October and it’s still in the stores in January on the clearance aisles, there’s not a lot of time in between like there used to be – it just keeps whipping back around. About the time you get all those decorations into the attic in late February when football season is over and you can get your husband off the remote control, you get a short lull and then that Christmas “car” is back again.

I love Christmas, I really do. But there’s an old saying, “Familiarity breeds contempt,” and I’m feeling mighty contemptuous thinking about all those TV commercials I’m going to be watching the next few weeks. They’re almost as bad as mud-slinging political ads for being annoying and repetitive – kindof like the only NASCAR race I went to...

Bathroom Blues

I am here at the beach with my writer’s group – 8 ladies total, and there’s a big problem. The bathroom is right off the living area.

After careful planning, all eight women were assigned the food we were supposed to bring, and all eight of us worried that we might run out and starve to death, even though we have six cars here and the store is a quarter mile away. Each one of us brought a few extra things, mainly in the potato chip, cookie, candy, and pastry food groups.

These are the exact foods I find it impossible to resist. You add lemon drop martinis and red wine to the equation, and that is one lethal mixture, especially with the chili we had for dinner last night.

There are two problems with the bathroom being right next to the living area. The first is that, when you combine alcohol with all the food a perpetually hungry person such as myself, can shovel in before bedtime, you are looking at scientific chemical reactions that occur all through the night, some of which interfere with sleep itself. In the morning these chemical reactions produce certain byproducts that are explosive in nature. When the bathroom is in the center of the house where everyone else hangs out, they gonna hear you, even if you’ve got the fan on and in some cases, the sink water running.

If this weren’t bad enough, the number 2 problem, as it were, is that these scientific chemical reactions, and their explosive byproducts are unpleasant to additional senses besides hearing. To illusrate what I’m saying, one time someone entered the bathroom after me, a skinny, uneducated, uncouth young man, and rushed out gasping a few seconds later, rubbing his eyes like a child who just woke up from a nap. He exclaimed so everyone could hear, “It’s not so much the smell as the burning of the eyes.”

If the bathroom is located near the living area, a scented candle of a few sprays of Glade is not going to prevent the entire living are from smelling like a latrine at a boy scout camp deep in Arkansas backcountry. In a house shared by people you know, you can’t pretend some stranger was in the bathroom before you – some sickly old woman with parasites and diverticulitis who just walked out the door when you were walking in.

You’d think a person like me, prone to these types of problems, would cut down on the eating in order to avoid the embarrassment. But when there is all this food around, I have no control.

So sorry, ladies, a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do – I apologize in advance for what’s going to happen tomorrow morning. Now pass me those potato chips.

The Demise of Decoulatage

I am so happy with the new fashions coming out. They don’t show cleavage! I noticed it at church on Sunday – on their way back from Communion, none of the old folks forced me to look at their wrinkly, saggy boobs.

Then today while I was waiting at the permit office (I was picking up a solar permit in case you’re curious), they had an InStyle magazine and it had pictures of women in scarves and high-necked t-shirts – even Victorian lace all the way up to their chins. It was all I could do to keep from shouting, “HALLELUIA” right there in the Land Use and Planning waiting area.

I wrote a blog around this time last year about going to a party and having to see all the “hip” moms revealing their cleavage – and at their age that ended up being about six inches lower on their chests than it was before they became moms.

When there’s cleavage staring at you, your eyes don’t want to look, you beg them not to look, you turn you head away and talk to the woman out of the side of your face to avoid looking, but it’s just like someone saying, “don’t look now, but….” What do you do immediately? You look.

And then you regret it, because older cleavage is over-suntanned and thus splotchy and rough looking. This is due to the fact that older “hip” women worship the sun, possibly because in their minds they think a tan makes them look athletic and wealthy, when in reality they look old and weathered.

Young cleavage is just as disturbing, but for other reasons, mainly because these young girls do not need to be enticing boys or men in any way. The guys are lusting after them already and imagining what they could do with those bodies if they just had half the chance. Revealing huge portions of the objects of their lust just makes things worse. It’s a mother’s nightmare, I can tell you that.

What’s funny is that I listen to Blue Collar Radio (the one set up by Jeff Foxworthy and his blue collar cronies), and many of the male comedians actually make fun of cleavage. They talk about old cleavage as if it could singe their eyeballs. They tell parents not to let their daughters leave the house like that. If these guys are making fun of seeing women’s boobs, then who are the women showing them off to?

So if other women don’t want to see cleavage – not any women I know – and men are making jokes about it, you gotta wonder how this fashion fad came about.

Me personally, I don’t give a flying rip who came up with it, I’m just ecstatic it’s on its way out. Not that I’m thrilled about Victorian foo-foo lace scratching my throat – I’m not going to wear it. Talk about the pendulum swinging in the total opposite direction. I am keeping my fingers crossed that cleavage will soon be gone for good.

The Miracle of My Dog's Teeth Cleaning

I got my dog’s teeth cleaned!!!!!!!!!

You may be saying to yourself, “So fricking what?” And I can understand how you might not be as thrilled about this as I am. You may very well live a much more exciting live than I do, and have exotic adventures and lots of important friends you meet at wonderful places for hilarious fun. Getting a dog’s teeth cleaned may be at the very bottom of your list of interesting ways to spend your time.

However, it may pique your interest to know that I got my dog’s teeth clean without anesthesia.

“So fricking what” you ask. Is that all you know how to say? If you’d quit interrupting I’ll explain.

Have you ever heard of “bad breath in dogs?” It’s a medical condition brought about because dogs will eat anything – the more dead, the better. Woo-wee! But they also get bad breath because they won’t brush their teeth. They lack digits to hold the toothbrush, but even if they had hands, they would not use them for brushing their teeth, they’d use them to lift other dogs’ tails for easier sniffing. Or to reach up on your dining room table and grab the Thanksgiving turkey by the leg and fly off down the hallway with it to their lair.

Furthermore, they will fight your attempts to brush their teeth for them. They would prefer that you take that doggie toothbrush and shove it up your….. I know this because my dog has given me that “you know where you can shove that toothbrush” looks every time I’ve tried to brush her teeth.

Over time, the stuff on a dog’s teeth, called tartar, hardens and bonds to its pearly whites like brown cement. Around her in Portland, OR vets charge you $350 to chisel that stuff off, and they want to put the dog under general anesthesia to do it because that’s the only way a dog will put up with it.

But a few days ago I discovered a place that cleans teeth without putting the dog to sleep. Apparently they accomplish this by laying the dog in their lap as they sit on the floor. The secret is getting you out of the room and putting a towel over the dog.

Don’t ask me how it works, but when that dog was done in one hour, she had white teeth and I had an extra $200 in my pocket. I highly recommend this for your dog or cat – Apollo Pet Care did my dog’s teeth – 1-800-285-6204. They are in Washington and Oregon.

This is not a shameless commercial but a recommendation for people who, in my opinion, granted me a miracle. Now I don’t have to worry and fret about this any more.

And you’re wrong to assume I have a boring life. I got her teeth done on Friday just before we left town, and it was the highlight of my weekend – three days which included going up to Seattle and watching the Ducks beat the Huskies at the last game ever to be played in the Huskies old stadium before they tear it down, going out for Sushi at Umi’s, watching U Dub’s crew team glide through misty water under the salmon glow of early morning, eating an amazing lava cake at the Tap House Grill, walking around Bellevue before sunrise, and staying with our dear friends for two nights at the Oakwood (great deal there, by the way on a 2 bedroom condo) – none of these things came even CLOSE to how exhilarated I was about finally getting that dog’s teeth cleaned. It’s something I will cherish always.

Testicular Terror (or Tumor Humor)

I was at a loss for words, so I decided to get inspiration from today’s headlines. After looking as some pretty miserable accounts of murders, floods, famines, and so forth I stumbled across a CNN video entitled “Testicular Tumor with a spooky face.” Jackpot!

I waited for five hours while the video loaded to give Intel time to run their commercial. I love the internet but I’m getting sick of the commercials. You know how on TV they make you wait to get to see your show? It starts, then the commercial then about 2 minutes of show, then 3 minutes of commercials – mostly drugs for men who no longer have the ability to get it up or just drugs in general – then three more minutes of show and 4 minutes of drugs, etc.

The internet is getting to be that way, too, and I loathe it. I attempt to go to a website, and when it doesn’t pop up right away I know it’s because some stupid commercial or flashy thing on the page that took forever to load and is most likely going to drive me insane while I’m looking around the site. It’s not worth it – I will move on to a new site like a Japanese obstacle course contestant hopping from one slippery rock to another so he doesn’t fall into a vat of brown slime.

Which is what these internet commercials feel like – some unpleasant disappointment behind Door Number 2. You know you’re picked the wrong site when that white screen stares at you like an albino owl in a spotlight.

But I have wandered off track and should mosey back to civilization and talk about that testicular tumor. In my frustration with the CNN website taking so long to load – I could have showered, blow dried my hair and given myself a pedicure before the circular thingy quit spinning. Finally I got to see the face in the tumor and it was as touted – spooky. It was somewhere in what I assume was a man’s testicle – on the inside because they were looking at it using an ultrasound. The mouth of the face was gaping open and it had one big round sad eye with the white showing all around. Don’t know what that white was, but being that it was a testicle I can only imagine.

I got to see this face in fits and starts since the video loaded for 2 minutes and then showed 8 seconds of video. There was a woman newsperson who was narrating the story, and she’d say 2 or 3 words, like “left testicle” and “testicle positioned” and “into the testicle” before the thing would start loading again.

So I went to YouTube thinking CNN was too freaking slow, and I couldn’t fine the video – even though the woman said it went viral. But when I typed in testicular searching for it, there came up a whole slew of vey graphic images showing live human testicles with the titles being “Testicular self-exam.” The picture for that one showed a guy holding up and pressing his penis against his abdomen so that you could see his hairy scrotum whether you wanted to or not. Which I can assure you I did not.

Fortunately, I have finished this and no longer have to talk about testicles, which is not really my favorite topic of sparkling conversation. Here’s the link in case you simply must see this tumor for yourself. http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/us/2011/11/03/pkg-moos-testicular-tumor-face.cnn Settle in with a cup of coffee and a newspaper or something to keep you busy while you wait for the commercials to play out. It’s worth it I suppose.

Rain and Heroes

It is raining like a cow pissing on a flat rock outside.

That’s one of my dad’s old sayings, and it seems to fit. I can hear the rain rapping on the skylight like a million pygmy fists. This dog of mine won’t go out in it to relieve herself before bedtime, so around 3:45 a.m. she’ll start whining to go out because she can’t hold it anymore. And then she’ll come back in soaking wet and smelling like wet Fritos and furry musk, and she’ll start licking her paws like a cat because she doesn’t like her feet wet.

And I’m supposed to go back to sleep after all of that?

Which is just nuts. I mean, licking her wet feet. That’s like telling a kid, “Shut up that crying or I’ll give you something to cry about!” If a dog’s foot is already wet, how does a wet licking help the situation?

This is one of the many mysteries I like to ponder during the day. Like how come, after decades upon decades of typing, I still can’t type without a typo every fourth word? If practice makes perfect, then I should be the world’s #1 typist. In fact, I probably get more practice than most, because I have to backspace constantly and retype my mistakes, so I’m typing twice as much as what shows up on the page. And yet the typos are pretty consistent no matter how many hours I live on the computer each day.

That rain is making it hard for me to concentrate. This is the kind of rain my daughter would run out in and stand there with her face looking up at the sky. She’s always liked weather anomalies. Sleet, hail, snow, and crashing rain lure her out to the back patio every time. She can’t resist. Like a moth to a bug zapper.

We went to a function tonight at the request of our stockbroker to see a Medal of Honor recipient. He was in his seventies and fought in the Vietnam War. Gosh what a funny man he was. I had consented to go to this out of a sense of duty, but I had no intention of being anything but bored by the whole affair, except for the offering of free food.

This guy, who’s name I’ll add later when I get up and look it up in the book they gave us, was so humble and so witty. He got the Medal of Honor – the highest honor in the country, for flying wounded out of a ground attack and delivering ammunition when he came back for more wounded. He did it with another guy – both of them volunteering and getting shot at. He went through four different helicopters – when one got shot up he’d trade it for another. He saved over 70 lives that day.

He said he went to the White House for the Medal ceremony, and he was wearing a hat – some kind of uniform hat – and one of the aids told him it was not appropriate. “This isn’t the first inappropriate thing I’ve done, and it sure won’t be the last.” He kept the hat on, and President Bush said, “Nice hat,” when he hung the Medal on him.

He also got about forty-eleven other medals, but the one that made him most proud was the Good Conduct Medal. He pointed at the Medal of Honor and said, “This one I just happened to get after a day’s work – the Good Conduct Medal took me a whole year to earn.”

I came out of that presentation a lot happier than I went in. I don’t know how men do it – go to war and fight and then come home and go about their business as if they hadn’t witnessed horrors you and I can’t even imagine. I’m pretty stoked to have had the honor of meeting this man, whose name is – let me get up, I’ll be right back – here we go, whose name is Bruce Crandall.

The moderator asked him if he got scared while all this was going on – he flew in and out of the war zone 22 times that day. He said he was too busy to be scared. He just knew if he didn’t help those guys, they didn’t stand a chance.

This funny, fearless man who saved so many lives and stood up for his hat at the White House – he’s now my new hero and inspiration.

Dear Diary

This blog is starting to sound like a Dear Diary, as in:

Dear Diary,

Today I made a fool of myself going to church. It was a holy day and I needed to go to the early Mass because I knew I was going to a movie during the late Mass time. I went to see The Rum Diaries. It got really bad reviews but it was lol funny in lots of places and I was very glad I went. I recommend it, and that doesn’t have anything to do with the main actor being so utterly nice to look at.

But this blog is not about Johnny Depp. Mass started at 7:30 a.m. and I was running a tad late as usual. There was a thick soupy fog that caused everyone to drive at 8 mph. These Oregon drivers are absurd. We drive in rain and fog all the time – it’s OREGON! – but they drive like four-foot-tall great grandmothers whenever it is not clear and dry. Look at one of them next time. They’re hunched over the steering wheel as if leaning forward is going to help part the fog and they’ll be able to see. Their extraordinary caution made me even later, and I felt really bad about wanting to curse them on the way to Mass.

When I got there, I slowly opened the door hoping to creep in unnoticed. I looked into the church and saw the entire assembly of that morning’s churchgoers staring straight at me. Granted it was only about 40 blue haired elderly ladies, but it was embarrassing. The priest had moved the altar to the other side of the church so that every one of them was facing toward me – knowing I was late and not liking it.

I gasped and backed out the door, wondering whether to just get back in my car and go home or tough it out. I chose the ladder and climbed into the balcony.

Not really, it just seemed like a good idea to say ladder than latter. Bet you didn’t even catch that.

I walked outside the church, all the way around to the other side when everyone was, and slowly opened the door. The priest was looking straight at me from 20 feet away, but I refused to make eye contact as I slithered into the first empty pew. I pledged (not for the first time) to do better from here on out.

And, Dear Diary, I saw something interesting on the way home from church. Toilet paper in the road, like someone had thrown it – two rolls. It brought back some fine memories of tossing toilet paper rolls into tall trees and watching them cascade down like a comet with a long, long tail. It’s not something you see much anymore – a person’s yard and trees completely covered in toilet paper like it snowed on their property overnight. I hope it’s not a dying tradition. It’s always fun to see it on someone else’s lawn.

Seems like there were other excitements, but they’ll have to carry over to tomorrow. Dear Diary, aren’t you glad you have me to keep you entertained?

Happy Halloween

Happy Halloween!

I have just come home from traipsing my old neighborhood with my friend, Laurie. We have a tradition of walking the dogs and sneaking up to houses where they’ve left candy on the porch and helping ourselves to treats.

I know, this doesn’t sound very grown up. I never really cottoned to the idea of growing up. Candy tastes so much sweeter when you’ve quietly crept up on someone’s porch and fished through their bowl of treats looking for M&M’s with peanuts or Almond Joys. Knowing that any second they could swing the front door open with a giant swoosh and make you feel like an idiot made it all the better as your ran through the dew-soaked grass out to the anominity of the street.

Tonight we had the added pleasure of stopping by one house in which the two adult men occupants had decorated the yard with giant spider webs, tombstones, skulls, haystacks, about 40 candles in glass jars, a video shining on the side of the house with really spooky things, and a fog machine. They also had adult treats – Jello shooters and lemon drops.

I wonder if the inventor of Jello ever thought that one day someone would add vodka instead of water to the Jello mix?

Anyway these things gave us antifreeze to wander the streets, enjoying people’s carved pumpkins and Halloween decorations. At one place there

was a bowl on the porch, but you had to go down a longish driveway, up several steps, and across the porch. There was a big picture window that the homeowner could look out and see you.

I hesitated – it was a daunting obstacle course just to get a piece of candy. I really did NOT want to be confronted by some grown-up

“I’m going for it,” Laurie said.

I followed her – I couldn’t stay behind. I’m supposed to be the brave one. So I shuffled up behind her. We tiptoed up the stairs and crouched and crept across the porch until we reached the bowl, which was up on a pedestal. I was looking through the candy, deciding what to pick when all of a sudden there is a huge crash at the glass door directly behind me. A ferocious 500 pound dog had flung itself against the door and barked so loud it rattled the boards on the porch. I never saw the dog because I took off running the second I heard that massive THUMP he made on the glass, but in my mind he was as big and vicious as Stephen King’s Cujo.

It was wonderful! What a great time we had. We stopped back by the lemon drop house to take in a little more Halloween ambiance, and then walked back home under the clear sky splashed with sparkling stars and a sliver moon to light our way, pockets full of sneaked candy to show for our labors. I hope all of you found a little adventure tonight – it’s good for the soul. I will leave you with this cool Halloween card. Enjoy!


Greatest Halloween Card Ever ... Click Here

Bad Wine and Spotted Dick

This blog post is going to be a recap of interesting things that happened today. For one, I went to church and the priest had some wine he was getting ready to bless for communion when he stopped cold and said, “There’s something wrong with the wine.” He turned to the choir director, “Can you give us some music while we get this taken care of?”

The pianist started playing a song and one of the altar guys took the wine and headed back to the room behind the altar. The priest stood there looking over the congregation, and I wondered, “What could be wrong with the wine? Maybe it turned to vinegar and he took that little drink and nearly gagged. Or maybe it had a fly doing the backstroke in there. Or maybe there was green mold floating on top. Or maybe it had a tarantula in it. That last one was far fetched there aren’t any tarantulas around here, but there was quite a bit of time to kill so I had to get creative.

This is the same priest I wrote about last week – the one that I won the raffle for him to come and bless my house. I have not set that up yet because I still haven’t decided on the correct protocol – do I have him for lunch, etc. or just have him do a slam, bam, thank you ma’am type of blessing and send him on his way. After today’s events I’m glad I’ve been indecisive, because now when he comes I can ask him what happened to the wine.

The altar guy eventually brought new wine out and the service continued, but it was quite unusual.

Another odd thing that happened was that I got behind the zebra car on the freeway. What are the chances of that? There’s this white car that parks a few blocks from my house and someone has painted stripes on it to look like a zebra. On the trunk they’ve mounted a tail. My daughter and I have seen it parked, and we always say, “Look at that zebra car. Who would paint their car like a zebra?”

So today I went down the ramp and got on the freeway, and this zebra car was exactly in front of me. I watched that zebra tail – complete with a realistic black tuft at the end – for several miles, twitching in the wind. I got so excited I texted my daughter, “That zebra car is in front of me on the freeway.” She immediately texted back, “Are you texting while you’re driving?” I didn’t answer her.

This evening my cousin Nancy from Memphis called and started telling me a funny story about an older man she was visiting – the husband of an elderly friend of hers who had passed away. Each time she visited him in the nursing home she’d ask him questions. He’d say, “Now why are you doing this?” She’d tell him it was because he’d lived an interesting life and she wanted to record his story. Finally he asked her again and she gave him the same answer. He looked at her for a couple of minutes and said, “You know, I’ve had an operation.”

Nancy and I both burst out laughing when she told me this. “He thought you were hitting on him,” I said, “and he wanted to make sure you knew he couldn’t make any little Nancy babies.”

“And then there was the time I was at the grocery store,” Nancy said. She was on a roll. “There was this attractive older woman walking down the aisle and I was behind her for a good ways. Finally she stopped at the same place I was going to stop. I was right beside her, and I reached for a can of Spotted Dick.”

“Spotted WHAT?” I said.

“Spotted Dick. I picked up the can and said to the woman, just to make conversation because she was right beside me, “Have you ever had any of this?

“The woman looked puzzled and said, ‘Why, I don’t believe I have.’ She turned away quickly and scurried down the aisle.”

“She thought you were hitting on her, too! My gosh, Nancy, do you just stalk old folks so you can hit on them – it doesn’t matter if they’re male or female? Can you imagine that poor old woman, knowing someone is following her down the aisles. She finally stops thinking the stalker will pass, and instead the crazy woman tries to make a pass at her with a can of Spotted Dick?”

We laughed until we couldn’t breathe.

“What the heck is Spotted Dick anyway?” I asked, wiping the tears from my eyes.

“It’s sponge cake in a can,” Nancy said, and we laughed all over again at the absurdity of that.

“Who puts sponge cake in a can? And then names it Spotted Dick? Oh my gosh!”

Anyway, as you can see, this has been a most interesting day. And I was fretting because I didn’t know what to write about….

Excavating the Empty Nest

I finished shoveling out my daughter’s room today. It was part two of the cleaning - I got about halfway done a few days after she left for college but after a few hours I just closed the door. It was like that TV show where people hoard things and won’t throw them away. She not only kept every single item she’s ever claimed as hers since she was an infant – such as seashells, pretty rocks, pieces of Barbies (they didn’t seem to survive with all their limbs intact for very long), she also kept ever candy wrapper and potato chip bag she snuck into her room and ate late at night, wadding up the evidence and tossing it under the bed.

I found two portable phones that have been lost for years under there.

Her room hasn’t been really clean in years. Sure, we’d change the sheets and dust and vacuum – but she’d simply take everything that was in the middle of the floor and piled on top of her dresser and toss them under the bed and into the closet. It would appear to be clean for a day or two, and then it looked like Hoarders again.

I used to “help” my kids clean their rooms every few weeks – usually before we had a party. They threw clothes, toys, and school work in the floor and cleared out enough of a path to walk through. It would take hours to get those rooms clean.

First we’d pull out all the dirty clothes, some of which had been used stuffed into the closet still wet and muddy to better cultivate mold and mildew and the odors they cause. Then we’d put away all the books that were piled on the floor beside the bed, away from the door so your couldn’t see them. Then we’d arrange the stuffed animals and large toys back on the shelves. That all went pretty fast.

The worst was those little odds and ends left on the floor – things that didn’t really have a specific place, such as the toys they got for free from McDonalds or those little things they’d win at arcades when they cashed in their tickets.

They hated to throw away anything – it all had some wonderful function or memory tied to it, but by the time I’d gotten through all the garbage and junk up until that point, I was ready to be done. I did not want to sort that little stuff. Somehow they had manage to wander out of the room to get something to eat and hadn’t come back.

I finally created a new bin for the McDonald’s toys and little stuff. Some were never even opened. One of these days they’ll be worth a fortune, I’m sure.

Kindof like those Beanie Babies. My son’s friend, Dylan, was obsessed with them. Every time a new one came out, which was about three times a day, he’d get his dad to drive them to the mall so they could buy it. They bought tag protectors to keep the tags from getting crumpled, because that made their “investment” more valuable.

I used to say, “How can something that they are selling to every kid in the universe and a whole lot of their parents be an investment? Something has to be rare before it’s valuable. They’re selling millions of these.” They wouldn’t listen because they kept hearing on the commercials (made by the company selling the Beanie Babies) that they were collector’s items.

Those Beanie Babies are in two duffle bags in my son’s room. They never really played with them, although they’d dump them on the floor and pick them up one at a time to admire them and talk about how valuable they were, like Midas counting his gold. They also threw a substantial amount of money away on Pokemon cards for the same reason.

Today when I was cleaning my daughter’s room, lots of good memories flooded into my head, so I guess it was worth it – at least I can open the door now. I will be one happy mother if I never make another memory of cleaning their rooms. If I en, and I am so thankful that I won’t have to add any new memories of cleaning her room again. I can’t even imagine what her dorm room looks like, and thank goodness I don’t have to.

My Dog's Frito Feet

My dog’s feet smell like Fritos. She’s lying beside me as I type on my laptop on the sofa, and she just changed positions. The smell of Fritos wafted into the air like some doggish incense.

My family thinks the dog’s feet smell pleasant, whereas our personal human feet are disgusting, especially when they’ve been in sweaty tennis shoes. Perhaps that’s the problem. If we did not wear synthetic footwear for hours on end, would we have pleasant smelling feet too?

This is for future pondering because we want to focus on the dog’s feet right now and ask the question, how on earth did a dog’s feet come to smell like a corn chip?

A corn chip is made of corn and salt all smashed down together, baked until it has that perfect crunch, and sealed in a bag that is impossible for humans to penetrate without a sharp object or very strong teeth. It used to be that you’d get a guy to open a jar for you, mostly so he’d feel like he had some degree of worth in this world, but now you have to find a guy to get into a bag of chips. Sometimes, if there’s no guy handy, I’ve had to tear at these bags with my teeth like some savage jackal-like creature, over and over, getting a small bit of bag each time, spitting it out and tearing some more until I excavate a hole big enough to plunge my fist through.

So the grains and salts and other things that go into a corn chip – the chemical composition as it were – and the baking which alters, or at least dehydrates the chemicals – and the packaging which protects the baked chip until the year 4010 because air doesn’t have teeth to penetrate the seal – how in the universe can THAT smell like my dog’s feet?

My dog’s feet always smell like Fritos except just after a bath, at which time she runs outside and tries to roll in anything to cover up the good smell of doggie shampoo with something more friendly to the canine nose such as a dead rodent In advanced stages of decay. Within a day, the Frito feet are back – all four of them. The rest of the dog may be foul, but those feet are pleasant.

It’s a mystery someone needs to solve, because there is something very, very sick about smelling a dog’s feet and craving Fritos with cream cheese.

If you’ve never tried it, take a normal Frito – not the big ones – and scrape it through a container of Philadelphia cream cheese. It’s quite tasty. Don’t go in too deep or the Frito will break off. BEWARE – you will go through a whole container of cream cheese pretty quick and become a big fat lard because you won’t have the willpower to stop eating them, they’re that good.

Back to the subject, which is, why does my dog have Frito feet? If you know the answer, please don’t hesitate to send it to me via a package containing Fritos. I’m running low.

The Paradox of Paradoxes, Part 2

This article continues the rambling I started yesterday about paradoxes.

On Sunday I was wishing for two things, that I would get my luck back and win a raffle for the first time in a coon’s age, and that I’d win a pie, preferably a tasty pie like peach or blackberry or strawberry rhubarb.

Lo and behold, the first raffle number called was mine! I broke my long dry spell of no raffle prizes. I could just taste that flaky piecrust. Then they announced my prize.

A visit from the priest to bless my house.

Lord have mercy.

(a) My husband is an atheist. Not an agnostic/on the fence kind of believer who’s just not sure. He is absolutely positive there is no God and people like me are simply deceiving ourselves and not right in the head.

(2) I’m a Catholic who likes to go to church on Sunday because I feel good about it, but I arrive a little late and don’t hang around after Mass glad-handing with the parishioners. I slip in and slip out like a thief. That’s not to say I haven’t given back, because I spent years teaching Sunday school and serving on assorted committees. But I’ve never even met this new priest and I HIGHLY suspect he doesn’t appreciate that he’s ten minutes into the service when the side door creaks open and I slink in and duck into the first empty pew.

So when my raffle number was called, the priest came over and shook my hand. “Call the office and we’ll get this scheduled,” he said.

Get what scheduled? Will he just come over and stand on the doorstep with me holding the door open, hand firmly on the door knob, unsure whether to invite him in and not knowing what to do with him if he says yes. Should I have him over for dinner? Lunch? Dessert? Coffee? Cocktails?

My husband loves to cook and invite people over, but when I told him about my prize he said, “I don’t need to be here for that.” He doesn’t want to get into a religious discussion with anyone under any circumstances. For me, it’s not even that the man is a priest, it’s more that he’s a perfect stranger.

On the other hand, I believe things don’t happen by coincidence. I won that raffle for a reason. My quandary is more, “What kind of hospitality do I extend to this gentleman coming to bless my house?” rather than, “Holy moly, what the heck am I going to talk about?”

The last time I talked to a priest was at a party. I’d just come back from Italy and started blabbering about the Vatican. “It was beautiful but kindof creepy the way they had all those old Popes in coffins all over the place and there was that embalmed Pope in a glass coffin that gave me the eevy jeevies. What’s up with that?”

The priest excused himself immediately and went to talk with a hunchbacked old woman who, apparently, afforded better opportunity for sparkling conversation than the likes of me.

As you can see, talking to priests is not my forte, hence my shyness about how to handle this visit to my home, though Lord knows this place could use a blessing, and a good cleaning, for that matter. Which is another stumbling block – I’d have to clean. Maybe I could have him come just before Thanksgiving, when I’m going to have to buckle down and get the vacuum out anyway.

Oh well, there are many considerations for me to consider, so I’ll close this long dissertation on raffles, paradoxes and priests. I will leave you with one final paradox, apropos to these most recent events: Be careful what you wish for because it may come true.

The Paradox of Paradoxes

’ve had an exhausting day of trying to set up meetings. Granted it’s easier with email than making a bunch of phone calls, but still it just takes forever.

Come to think of it, it seems like everything takes forever but then how come nothing lasts forever. Quite the paradox. Here’s some other paradoxes for you, but first, we need to define paradox for our illiterate readers. Only you know if you fit in that category and I’m not here to judge. I’m here to define this in simple terms even you can understand:

A paradox is two things that don’t make sense – that are illogical. To remember it, think of para like a “pair a” things that don’t add up. Here are some samples of para – doxes like I promised in the last paragraph:

You can save money by spending it.

Youth is wasted on the young.

I can resist anything but temptation.

Nobody goes to that restaurant, it's too crowded.

Don't go near the water until you've learned to swim.

If you fall down and break your leg, don’t come running to me.

That’s enough paradoxes.

That last sentence was not a paradox, by the way.

Neither was that one.

So I was talking about things lasting forever. This topic has dragged on for quite some time, and perhaps you might say that it, in fact, has lasted forever.

That might be true except that I am about to bring it to an abrupt halt wiith one story that might illustrate several key points.

I was in church on Sunday and they were having this stewardship fair so they wanted us to go over to coffee and donuts and visit the various tables to learn about volunteer opportunities. Each table you went to and talked with someone, they gave you a raffle ticket. The prize was a pie. I collected as many as I could. I didn’t even care what kind of pie it was. I like all pies except apple, which I will eat with abandon but only if another pie isn’t handy.

About a year ago I quit winning raffles. Prior to that I could not lose. If there were raffle tickets given out, I won, even if I had a torn raffle ticket with shoe prints all over it that I picked up off a greasy floor.

And then, just like someone had turned off the luck faucet, I went into a dry spell where I didn’t win any raffles.

You might think, “How many raffles is this woman exposed to?” And I would say, “Who wants to know?” Then you’d say, “What’s it to you?” and I’d say, “It’s none of your freaking business,” and you’d say, “I’m damn well making it my business,” and I’d say, “Well you can damn well try and see how far that gets you,” and then you would lunge at my throat with your long, yellow fingernails and try to strangle me, and I’d take off running – in a zigzag pattern so you couldn’t shoot me, and you’d jump in your car and try to run me down, and I’d duck around a corner and find myself in a dark alley with a brick wall at the end and no way out, then you’d turn the corner and I’d be spotlighted as you bore down on the accelerator, and then I’d scream and we’d break for commercial..

Yes, I suppose some things do last forever, like this article, which is……..TO BE CONTINUED.

Aging Gracelessly

As we age, our bodies go through changes. Some are good – like when I was pregnant and my hair got thick – and some are bad – like aches and pains and wrinkles.

But there’s one change I’ve recently encountered that is working out just fine. For some crazy, inexplicable reason, I no longer fart – I burp instead.

Please do not think I’m trying to be crude. I’m just relating the simple facts. I used to pass gas on a fairly consistent basis, i.e. whenever I was awake. I could pass gas on demand, something I used to punctuate social interactions such as:

My brother: “How do you like my haircut?”

Me: “Pffffffft.”

Or:

My brother: “What did you think of my speech?”

Me: “Pfffffff ffffff ffffff fffff ffffft.”

As welcome as this communication tool was, it sometimes became a problem. Being gassy by nature was bad enough, but when I ate legumes, which was every chance I got, it became nearly unbearable for my loved ones to be on the same street with me. I have emptied cars full of people when legume-propelled emissions accidently erupted without warning, completely out of my control.

I’ll admit I enjoyed, to some extent, the leverage these incidents afforded me. Such as:

My brother: “I’m not moving.”

Me: “You better or I’ll fart.”

Recently, however, I have been burping, rather loudly, from the very depths of my internal areas. These things are audible from three rooms away, but they lack the persuasive qualities of gas. On the other hand, they don’t cause me nearly as much misery, especially after eating legumes, so I am not complaining. This is one thing Mother Nature got right.

The Boomerang Backpack

When my son was in high school, I got a call from someone who said, “Do you have a son named Chris?”

“Yes,” I said slowly, worried that he was either injured, or more likely, in trouble.

“Does he have a backpack?”

“Yeah,” I said, even more slowly. “Why?”

“I found it in a ditch and thought he might like it back.”

“In a ditch? Where?”

“On Arnold Street.”

Arnold Street - the deserted road near our house? How did that happen?

“Well, sure, he’d like it back, I’ll come right over and get it.”

A few minutes later I’m looking at this threadbare backpack with odds and ends of junk in it. Someone must have stolen it and swiped the good stuff before they threw it out the window.

When Chris got home later, I held the backpack up and said, “Look what I found.”

His mouth dropped open and his eyes got wide. “Where the heck did that come from?”

“Somebody discovered it on Arnold Street in a ditch.”

“Oh my gosh,” he said.

“When did you lose it? Was it stolen or what?”

“Uh, no. It’s just a piece of junk. I wasn’t using it anymore.”

“Then how did it get in the ditch?”

“Uh, well, I threw it out the window.”

“You WHAT!?”

“I didn’t need it anymore and it was just cluttering up my car, so I tossed it out the window.”

“You don’t just toss something out the window. Why didn’t you bring it home and throw it in the garbage?”

“I don’t know. What kind of person picks up a ratty old backpack in a ditch?”

“What kind of person THROWS a backpack in a ditch?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t need it anymore. Are there any cookies left?”

“You know better than to litter, for crying out loud. Some stranger has to call me because my son throws a backpack out the window.” I paused to show my utter dismay about the situation. “They’re on the counter.”

And that was the end of the whole incredible incident. It turned out to be a mini-commentary on what happens to kids when they get to be teenagers. You hound your children for years and years, trying to teach them to be good citizens, and they turn into teenagers and get a car and end up throwing everything you’ve taught them out the window like an old backpack.

If you’re lucky, as a parent, some of it will start to come back to them when they leave those teen years behind – and they’re not trying to be the exact opposite of that good little boy or girl that you worked so hard to mold. And hopefully, those life lessons will come back around and start to make sense - just like that old backpack. (Well, I don’t know if the backpack made sense, but it seemed like a profound way to end this, don’t you agree?)

Even Idiots Get Miracles Sometimes

I was desperate the other day and made a pact with God. I said I’d write for one half hour a day. It was better than selling my soul to the devil, and I actually enjoy writing, but I’m just so (cue the violin) crazy busy.

That was in the morning. I went to work and slogged through the pile in my inbox that just keeps growing even as I get things done. I kept thinking, “I’ve got to leave here by 3:45 at the latest to get to the permit office on time.”

Obstacles and phone calls and crises distracted me until it was 4:20 – on a Friday night with horrendous rush hour traffic. I snatched up my Mac and rushed out the door, cursing myself for waiting so long.

I started praying that the traffic would part like the Red Sea and I could somehow get all the way across town in time.

The good Lord did his best to get people out of my way, but it was still slow going. I developed a headache, and escalated the nasty tongue lashing about what a stupid idiot I was for not leaving earlier and what the hell was I thinking – I know traffic is much worse on Friday afternoon, I don’t know why, maybe everyone’s headed out of town or going out to dinner, but it’s always like that and I know that good and well and what the eff was I thinking and why can’t I ever get anywhere on freaking time????

I was blessed to compress a journey that should have taken an hour into exactly 39 minutes – it was 4:59 when I pulled into the permit office parking lot, grabbed my purse, slammed the car door, and breathlessly dashed to the counter and said, “I need to pick up a permit.”

The lady behind the counter said, “We close for permits at 4:30 – didn’t they tell you that when they called to say the permit was ready?”

I buried my head in my hands, partly because I had that splitting headache, and partly because I couldn’t believe I had driven like a maniac and I couldn’t believe I had waited so long to leave the office, and knowing my crew needed that permit on Monday and the permit office was closed Monday and what in the name of everything holy was I going to do? I stayed there with my head buried in my hands running all this through my mind like a drowning person sees their life before their eyes until finally I let out a huge sigh and looked up at the lady. She looked at me like I was the most pitiful human being on the face of the planet. She said, “Let’s just look at this for a second and see.”

She proceeded to click on the computer and look at the paperwork and click some more and look some more and click and look, and said, “Do you know if you owe any money on this?” I handed her the check and she printed out the permit.
I learned a lesson that day about faith, hope, and love. I saw all of them compressed in that little bit of time. I was praying like a maniac every time I came up on the bumper of a slow moving car; every time I could see a bunch of those red lights on the freeway which meant that the cars in front of me were slowing down or stopping; every time I came to a red light. I knew that I would not make it, even my GPS said there wasn’t enough time, but I also knew that God has the ability to make things happen when it doesn’t really seem like it’s possible. So I had faith that he would somehow get me there. I also hoped it would happen, and I hoped that I wouldn’t get turned away by some technicality.

But when I got there and realized I was too late, that I wasn’t going to get that permit, even though I walked in the door with a full 30 seconds to spare, it ended up being love that softened the clerk into giving me that permit even though she wasn’t supposed to – to have mercy on my wretched, headached soul and rationalize to herself, “this poor woman, do I really have the heart to send her home and make her come back?”

When I walked out and got in my car I started crying. I don’t know if they were tears of joy or just incredible tears of relief but it was just this magnificent release of overwhelming emotion and the feeling of God’s hand resting on my shoulder and realizing he’d done me a humongous favor and it’s still hard to believe that God and that woman had compassion for an idiot like me.

The Magnificient Spit

Today I was behind a car waiting at a stoplight, and I noticed it was a single guy in the driver’s seat with his arm on the back of the passenger seat. Why I observed this I don’t know, but just at that second I saw two white masses, side by side, come sailing out of the passenger window, fly over the grassy strip on the side of the road, and hit a bush a good fifteen feet away.

It could only have been spit or lugies propelled by a slingshot mouth that could launch a sputnik. I was utterly amazed. You just don’t see freaks of nature like this every day. In fact, I’ve never seen a lugie hurled that far.

That’s probably why he had his arm on the passenger seat – to hold him steady.
My daughter won a watermelon spitting contest in kindergarten. I was quite the proud little momma. She beat everyone by several feet. That child’s mouth was lethal – even to this day you should never EVER get near her teeth if she’s mad at you. You risk coming away with a missing hunk of forearm. But even she could not have launched spit that far.

What was so amazing is that he was so accurate. He had the opening of a window to get through, and you might not think that’s difficult but it is. Not that I’ve ever spit out the passenger side – I’m not brave enough for that and besides I don’t spit. Never have except if a bug flies in my mouth or something. But on occasion I will eat an apple and find myself holding a sticky core and nowhere to put it. I start thinking about the little birdies or rodents that would be delighted to munch on that core, and why should I deprive them?

But you can’t throw it out the driver’s door, not in the US anyway – maybe in England. You’d end up with the core in the road, and then some little furry thing would get squashed flatter than a tortilla. So I have to throw them out the passenger door. And I have to thrust really really hard or else it will land in the road and then – out of guilt – I’d have to turn around and go back to move the apple lest I worry all day about some little sweet gift of nature getting it’s eyeballs popped out when it was it by a diesel truck as it tried to pull the apple out of the road.

So I cock my elbow and bring the hand holding the apple all the way in front of my face to get more leverage, and then I fling the arm toward the passenger window as hard as I can.

Nine times out of ten it hits the inside door and leaves a wet, mushy spot before landing on the passenger seat and rolling onto the floor, going front to back on the hairy carpet like some golf course lawn mower, leaving a trail of apple juice over every fuzzy inch.

This is why I was so amazed that the guy got those lugies out the window today. And that they flew so far. It really was truly amazing. Wish you could have seen it.

Beware the Ides of March Part 2

First I feel a little guilty about disparaging George Clooney’s movie last night. But not guilty enough that I’m going to keep quiet because I’ve been thinking more about it. The movie was called Ides of March, about a good politician with good ideas who would probably have done very good things for the country except that he made a mistake and in order to cover that mistake up, he had to compromise his values or else lose the election.

That part was pretty good, because you often wonder if politicians start out being slimeballs, but this movie shows you they can be regular people wanting to save the world but then they have this fatal flaw (generally located between their legs) that causes their downfall or at least becomes their main focus in life – not the ideals they went into politics for in the first place.

That part was eye opening and gave me a more sympathetic perspective on the life of politicians. But there was a part of the plot that just didn’t add up, and it distracted from everything. In fact, it made it the whole movie seem ludicrous.

But I can’t talk about it or it will spoil the movie if you decide to go see it. But I will say this. It was like someone said, “We need to show that this politician was a good guy but people forced him to compromise against his will because if he didn’t, his mistake would be exposed and he’d lose the election and then he wouldn’t be able to do all the good things he set out to do when he first got into politics. So what could that be? Think. Think really hard. What is something a politician could do that would put him in a compromised position. Come on, we’ve got to think of something. Mmmm, how about a good looking intern?”

That’s how it seemed like the plot got put together. And it just didn’t add up. You can have great actors and great filming and wonderful settings and love interests, but if the story seems contrived, the whole thing crumbles.
Enough of that movie – it was irritating but I have to get on with my life. I’m changing the subject.

Better still, I’m going to bed. Besides, I have the TV on in the background and I can’t concentrate. The remote is too far away, and I’m trying to focus but I’ve re-typed things because I kept getting distracted. And now there’s another Cialis commercial on and I can’t take it anymore. I’m sick of erectile dysfunction. I HAVE to get up and turn off that TV. When historians look back on these days and try to analyze why television went extinct, they will trace it to the outlandish proliferation of ED commercials. Someone needs to warn the Networks – a “Beware the Ides of March” soothsayer should tell them that they are running off people like me with those commercials. I can’t take it anymore. I’m getting up, turning the confounded thing off and going to bed. Goodnight.

Beware the Ides of March

We just got home from the movie, “The Ides of March.” For those of you who didn’t take Latin somewhere along the line, the “Ides” is the 15th of the month. When Julius Ceaser was out walking around Rome, a soothsayer (or sightseer) said to him, “Beware the Ides of March.”

And beware he should have, because on the Ides of March he got stabbed 23 times, led by an esteemed group of his colleagues and his good friend Brutus to whom he said these famous words, “E tu Brute?” which, roughly translated, means, “What the %$*@?”

George Clooney decided to make a film about this for modern times – about political betrayal and so forth – and by giving it this old Latin name he was evoking the similarities between ancient Rome and modern America.
Or maybe he was just trying to make a buck with a movie he hoped would draw in ticket buyers such as myself. You never know about the motivations of Hollywood. The movie seemed like an obvious remake of Bill Clinton’s dalliance with an intern and how he had such noble ideas but he let his little head do the thinking and ended up committing political suicide.

I, for one, didn’t need to watch a fake politician do all the sordid stuff these people do to get elected. I think everyone on earth, even bush people in Africa, knows that politics turns people into back scratching, blackmailing extortionists. I don’t know why I have to spend my Saturday night watching a predictable movie play out the same old story.

Every leading character in this movie either compromised their integrity, blackmailed someone, played dirty tricks, lied, betrayed their friends, or had sex with someone they shouldn’t have. It was business as usual for stereotypical politicians cynically depicted as visionaries without the backbone to do the right thing if it means they will lose the election.

Not much different that what old Julius Caesar was up to a couple thousand years ago. He should have stayed home, and I should have too.

A Drive to the Airport

I took my coworker and her husband to the airport this morning. I hadn’t met her husband yet, and I wanted to make a good impression. My little dog was coming with me in the car, and she often smells like a goat. The beast rolls in everything. She cannot go outside without flopping on her back and wiggling from side to side, all four legs in the air, grinding herself into some foul smelling dead something. I’ve seen her roll on a squished earthworm – any creature that has departed this world she will hunt down and have her back smeared into it in nanoseconds. She has to do it quick because I’ll see her through the window and yell at her to stop. She pretends she can’t hear me long enough to get coated in a stench, then jumps up and looks at me like, “You talkin’ to me?”

So this morning I gave her a couple of squirts of some cheap flowery smelling stuff my daughter had bought. My husband is allergic to scents so I don’t have my own perfumes.

When I squirted that dog with a fine mist of smell, she was so insulted. She took off running like I’d poured hot water on her and tried to rub it off on the walls. She nosed down into the carpet and walked along like she was trying to shovel something, pressing one side of her face and shoulder then the other into the rug in a pitiful attempt to try and scrape the scent off.

I’m not sure why a dog can’t stand to smell good. Not this one, anyway. If I let her outside after a bath, she streaks to the grass and starts rolling just to get the smell of dirt on her. She comes back in with half the back yard clinging to her long wet hair. You can’t comb it off, it’s woven in and half the time it’s sticky – why I don’t know. But as she walks through the house it drops all over the floor like autumn leaves in a windstorm. It looks like someone’s scattered brown and green confetti over every floor in the house.

There are laws of physics that state: a 10 pound, 12 inch high dog with long black hair can collect 30 times the squared surface area of its body in yard debris consisting of tiny sticks, brown grass from last week’s mowing, and those little maple helicopters. Double the formula if the place where the dog rolls is under a sappy fir tree like the ones covering our back yard.

So this morning this dog that normally smells like a goat because it’s not practical to give her a bath every five minutes - this dog smelled like a cheap tramp. When we got in the car, the whole place filled with the sweet smell of a bouquet of sickly sweet flowers. I discovered I didn’t have any gum and I hadn’t brushed my teeth for fear of being late. Then I put on some “unscented” lotion that added an acrid element to the mix.

When my passengers got in the car, the husband who I just met immediately rolled down his window, even though it was raining. The dog, loving the fresh air, jumped into the backseat to sit on his lap, coating his jeans in that perfumed goat smell that probably lingered throughout their whole 15 hour flight to Brazil.

I’m not so sure I made a good impression.

The Middleman Mentality in America Part 2

What’s this got to do with middlemen? Back in the day, you could go to a “doctor” and he’d do what he could for you and send you home. Now there is no such thing as just a plain doctor. You go to your (insert whatever you call the person you go to for stuff – like your gynecologist or internist or proctologist), and then s/he refers you to someone else – usually a drug company to get some antibiotic or cough syrup, or to another doctor, called a specialist because he doesn’t know anything about the human body except that one special part – be it the brain or kidneys or intestines. Don’t even ask him about that wart on your big toe – he doesn’t know what to do about it except to refer you to a toe specialist.

What’s the connection? The person you call “doctor” is a middleman for the drug companies and specialists, and the drug companies are the middleman between you and staying healthy in the first place.

Where did all these middle people come from? I just heard on the TV that in the last hundred or so years, the population of the world went from 1 billion to almost 7 billion. All those people have to have jobs – and since all the regular jobs were filled, then we in America created all these middlemen jobs to keep these people busy and off the streets.

A hundred years ago, your town had one doctor and all the drugs he had were in a little black back that opened at the top. I always liked those bags. No zippers. I don’t know how they kept them closed, but in the movies the doc just pulled the two handles apart and took out a little clear bottle with a cork in it, and that cured anything from hoof and mouth disease to tapeworm.

Today, these middlemen are everywhere. You can’t call anyone directly if they have a business, you have to go through a receptionist. You can’t buy a new car from a salesperson, you have to go through the guy who makes you feel like your breaking his company but he’s going to – against his better judgment – give you a fantastic deal and an outrageous trade-in allowance on your beater if you’ll sign right now. You have to get a wedding planner to coordinate your wedding, and a realtor to help you buy a house. These positions give all those extra people something to do.

I’m not saying I’m against drug companies, or doctors, or anything else in particular. But it rankles when I think of drug companies inventing these cures for things that could easily be fixed with a little lifestyle change. The commercials should be like, “If you are losing bone density, get up right now, RIGHT NOW I SAID, and get some exercise, you big fat lard. You do NOT need this pill I’m pushing. And you do not need to hound your doctor into prescribing it to you.”

But that would be stupid for the drug companies to do. So it appears middlemen are here to stay, for better or for worse. Otherwise the unemployment rate would soar and Obama (yo mama) would never get that jobs bill passed.

The Middleman Mentality in America

I just saw a commercial on TV that showed a close-up of a big leg, broken and mending in a lumpy grey cast that looked like it had been globbed on by a kindergartner.

I could comment on the shoddy workmanship of orthopedic practioners, but let’s move forward to the purpose of this article – the reason for that commercial.

It was an alert to people with osteoporosis that they could sue their doctors if they had broken various bones since starting drugs prescribed by their doctors to prevent osteoporosis.

I promise not to use any more big words after this next couple of osteoporosises, because they are too hard to type. If you don’t know what osteoporosis is, come out of your wilderness cave and turn on the TV. There you will learn, among other things, that it is impossible to get or maintain an erection in America. You will also find out that several drugs - developed by good, honest drug companies - have been prescribed to help prevent osteoporosis – drugs whose very purpose was to make things all better in the “O-word” area of people’s lives – and now we come to find out that these selfsame drugs had in fact been causing the very symptom – THE VERY SYMPTOM – that they have been relentlously tauting as a cure on TV, in magazines, and everywhere else visible to the human eye – yes, these drugs that were meant to prevent broken bones caused by the O-word actually CAUSE broken bones.

You might be wondering, what kind of a person can produce the run-on sentence in the last paragraph and get away with it. But we’re not here to talk about grammer for crying out loud (or spelling either, for that matter), we’re here to talk about something I’m sure I’ll remember if I reread what I just wrote.

Yes, we’re here to talk about the middleman mentality in America. What do commercials about drug companies being sued have to do with that? Something, you can bet your bottom dollar on that.

It’s just this. The big-O can be helped by weight-bearing exercise and a healthy diet rich in calcium and Vitamin D. Healthy diet refers to foods in the non-potato chip/non-pork-rind family. Weight-bearing means getting off the couch and bearing your weight around the block a few times, as well as using your arms to lift some weight – like your chocolate-smeared, bawling toddler with the diaper sagging to his ankles, and so forth. Many, many Americans refuse to exercise, preferring to sit in the comfort of their home and watch people on TV very much like themselves who waddle around and scream obscenities at their friends and loved ones all day long.

This is where the drug companies come in – the middlemen in the health care industry. They create drugs for all the billions of Americans in the aforementioned paragraph so they won’t HAVE to exercise or give up the foods they love, such as beer and cigarettes. Instead they can take a pill.

In the case of the O-word, the pill is supposed to help prevent broken bones. So if you’ve got a bone that broke because you took a drug to keep that was supposed to keep it from breaking – a perfectly good bone that might not have broken, left to its own devices, for years and years – then you have the right to sue the #*)@! out of the drug company, according to these commercials.

To be continued….if I don’t forget

Lamenting the Foulness of Life

My dog’s stomach is growling. She had a bunch o’ rib bones and now I can expect puddles of barbecued barf in my bed tonight. Disgusting, huh?

This dog weighs ten pounds and is by my side night and day. She’s laying snugged up next to me on the couch while I type, right in the path of the 140º heat blowing out of my laptop. It’s like someone strapped a heating pad to my leg.

I generally like heat – love those seat warmers. My cousin always wants to drive my car when we go somewhere and all winter I’ve got my seat warmer on. He’ll be sitting there in the driver’s seat, talking about his latest BM.

“Boys, you should have seen what came out of me this morning.” He says boys no matter what the gender of his audience is. “Black as coal and all of 12 inches, coiled up like a cobra, part of it floating like it was ready to strike.”

“I do NOT need to hear about this,” I say.

“It was remarkable,” he’ll say. “Never seen anything like it. I got a picture of it here on my phone – take a look, you won’t believe it. Here, see? Why is it so friggin’ hot? My nuts are roastin’!”

He says it every time we’re in the car – like the seat has launched some sneak attack against his scrotum.

Worse than his stories are when my dog barfs in the car while she’s sitting on my lap. I hear this little burbing noise and a nano-second later she heaves and there’s a puddle the size of a spilled glass of milk on my thigh – slimy and the color of whatever nauseating thing she ate out in our woods. Sometimes it grass in a clear slime like some kind of Tai pad lemongrass soup. Others it’s brown and lumpy.

The worse part is that you can’t do anything about it. I’ll be on the freeway going 65 mph when she Ralphs on me. First the sound, and I try to get her off my lap but I’m never fast enough. Just about the time I get my hands on her waist and snatch her up, I feel the warmth on my thigh, then the wetness. Anyone who’s had a baby knows what that feeling is like. That baby’s happy and coochie cooing one minute, and the next minute you’ve got this foul ooze traveling south down your silk blouse.

At least the dog barf doesn’t smell so bad. You talk about smells, I went into the ladies bathroom at the permit office the other day. Oh my gosh! Women’s bathrooms after they’ve had their morning coffee are worse than paper factories. Woo-whee! Brings tears to the eyes.

I don’t know what’s made me write about these things. Oh yeah, it was that dog’s growling belly. It’s my lament of the unwelcome bodily functions I encounter daily.

What's with Democrats?

What’s Up with Democrats?

In my last blog I trashed Republicans. That was pretty easy to do because they have gotten so ridiculous. Their only reason for being in office, apparently, is to get Obama out of office - even if it means destroying these entire United States.

But for this to be a bi-partisan blog so as not to alienate half the country, I am obliged to also take a poke at Democrats. That’s pretty easy too.

Democrats believe that everyone deserves help – even the lowlifes who get pregnant to increase their welfare stipend. Actually, I’m not sure if that goes on anymore – surely even the most fertile dimwit knows that a child costs more in the long run than you’ll ever get from the government. But just in case there are people still doing this for a living, I believe the Democrats should at least ask them to give something in return for the handout.

Once you start giving people money for nothing, how many are going to want to go back to scrubbing toilets or plucking chickens? I say give these able-bodied people money, but only in exchange for useful work. Make the welfare moms work in day cares so they can get a belly full of children. Make them work in grocery stores so they can see how obnoxious the people getting food stamps can be. Let them deal with those very heavy, loud mouthed mothers in checkout lines with their carts are full of cigarettes and fried potato products, arrogant and entitled, chips on their shoulders – trying to sneak stuff by and arguing indignantly when they get caught.

These are the people the Democrats insist that American taxpayers help. We taxpayers don’t mind helping those people who are temporarily down and out, we are sympathetic to the man trying to support his family after he’s had a job yanked out from under him, but we’re sick of those who milk us because they’re lazy and no account. They’re almost as bad as rich Republicans who milk us because they’ve figured out how to avoid paying even one penny in taxes.

Democrats want better health care for everyone. You want healthy people, make them get off their lard bottoms and walk somewhere else besides to the refrigerator. Make food stamp people weigh in, or prove they’re buying vegetables for their children instead of Twinkies. Give them books on healthy living and test them once a week before they get our tax dollars. Force them to be healthy in exchange for their money so they won’t need doctors for diabetes for them and their innocent offspring.

Democrats want to help anyone without accountability so that people get lazy – and Republicans want to help themselves get richer so that people get bitter. Doesn’t anyone see this except me?

What's with Republicans?

What’s with Republicans?

I know I should not talk about politics. It’s a total waste of time - you can’t convert anyone – you’re either preaching to the choir or talking to a brick wall.

Nonetheless, I have to ask, what is freaking up with Republicans? The ones I know are either wealthy and don’t want the government to take any of their money, or they’re dirt poor and fiercely prejudiced – they resent everyone who isn’t like them.

It’s funny to listen to the fat cat Republicans fretting about taxes. The ones I know have two houses, drive Lexus’s, send their kids to private schools, take several vacations a year to Hawaii and Mexico, and so forth.

Yet they get very angry when anyone talks about raising taxes. They don’t want riff-raff sucking away all their hard earned money. I can almost understand these guys – at least they’re sensible. They’re trying to protect what they’ve earned.

It’s the poor Republicans I don’t get. They resent everyone and feel they’re better than the rest of the poor because they have more than 50 percent of their teeth. They are perfectly contented to send their kids to crumbling schools and packed classrooms because they think education is a waste of time – it never got them anywhere. They’re not worried about the condition of roads because their beaters bounce about the same whether the road’s paved or potholed.

As long as they’ve got beer after a sweaty day at work, and something fresh to complain about, they’re pretty satisfied. They don’t want to help anyone else because no one else deserves it, dammit.

If the rich Republicans paid fair taxes, then the poor Republicans could have better schools, roads, parks, libraries, police protection, early education for their children, health care, etc. But the rich ones want to stay rich – they have enough money to buy all these things - and the poor ones think these things are a waste. The poor wear their lack of ambition like a badge of honor.

These two groups have nothing in common, but they rely on each other to fight the battle against those who want a to raise the standards for everyone. When Republicans control things, the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer. I don’t get why poor Republicans are so hell-bent on being worse off. And rich Republicans have no remorse about hoarding their wealth and living the good life when they could share some of their blessings and make life better for everyone.

This is what dictators and wicked kings do. But in a country where people are free to choose, we ought to have better sense. However, the poor will spite their own selves rather than help those they hate, and the rich, knowing this, will egg the poor on and rile them up about illegal aliens or welfare or whatever it is they despise at this point in history. Then the rich laugh all the way to the bank. This, my friends, is why I don’t get Republicans.

Happy as a Clam

I am a crazy person. I’m crazy for doing what I did, and even crazier for telling you about it. But I said I’d write a blog tonight after a long, long absence and I’ve procrastinated until it’s late and I’m tired and woe is me. This story I can do quick.

My husband bought a bunch of clams last Saturday for a seafood feed at our friends’ vacation house. He cooked most of them, but decided to cull out some to take home the next day.

When we got back, he found a broken clam and decided all the clams could be bad, so he chucked them in the garbage.

I was livid. He should have just cooked them all at our friends’. He should not have bought them in the first place because there was way too much food already and we couldn’t’ plow through it all (though I tried). He should have been more careful bringing them home. These are all things I made sure he clearly understood after he tossed those clams.

But those weren’t the reasons I was so irritated. I was P.O.’d because I knew good and well that I’d think about those clams in the garbage can, dying a slow miserable death as the heat got to them, wondering what they were thinking in their little clam brains as the life oozed out of them like the yellow goo leaching out of a festering boil, and knowing that they were calling, in their tiny clam voices, “Somebody please help us.”

I knew I’d lose sleep, and I knew I’d remember it with remorse all the days of my life and into the very grave. This is what made me mad as a hornet, fit to be tied, and angry as a skunk tangled in briars.

I went out to that filthy, slimy garbage can and fished out those clams, one by one, amid the coffee grounds, corn husks, and used feminine hygiene products, and put them into a bowl in the refrigerator because, according to Google, that’s how you keep clams alive. I would drive them to the beach two hours away, by golly, and put them back in the bay.

This morning I talked my daughter into going with me and we headed to Netarts. We waded into the ice-cold Oregon bay, full of squishy mud, seaweed, and pointy rocks, and I gave those poor clams back to the clear brown sea. I don’t know how many survived the ordeal in the cooler and refrigerator, and I don’t know what will happen to them or whether they will be able to make a home where I left them, or if the seagulls and crabs will feast on them when the tide goes out, but I do know I will sleep tonight because they aren’t in my garbage can screaming in voices that I would have heard all night long in my dreams.

And if that trip to the beach makes me a crazy woman, I’d rather be crazy than wrestling nightmares for the next six hours.

BTW, it’s good to be back to my blog. You could say I’m, well, uh, happy as a clam. Snicker, snicker.