sugarcain

Please come join me at the new paperbatty blog

2010-04-01T18:47:00.001-04:00

The moon across the street this morning.

I wanted to consolidate my identity on the web, so I've become paperbatty everywhere. That meant a new blog. I've moved some of my old stories over there, and I'll leave this blog in case I want to link to something here.

I'd like to see your faces over on paperbatty. Come on over and follow me. As I was just saying over there, when I look at that little block of avatars I imagine that you are sitting in dusty red velvet fold-down seats talking quietly among yourselves and waiting for my show to start.

Crafty Monday

2010-02-01T20:01:00.005-05:00

I want to show you a card I made for my Twitter friend Dreena's color (or colour, as she writes it) challenge called Curry Chicken. Go over to Prairie Papercrafts and Stamps if you'd like to read Dreena's challenge post.

All she really asks is that designers use Real Red, Night of Navy, Crushed Curry, and Whisper White. These vibrant colors from Stampin' Up! are some of my favorites, although it's asking a lot of me to require four colors. I like two colors and maybe a teeny bit of a third accent color. So, I decided to stretch myself. That's always good.

I kept with Dreena's nautical suggestion--at least in spirit--and gave it my own Victorian turn, as always.

This is the first challenge in which I've participated. I used MyDigitalStudio to design this card. I've just begun to be able to do a lot of the things I wanted the software to do. I like using it to make a collage of images and paper patterns. Click on the image above to see a much larger version.

You can see that the image needs some glitter. That's something My Digital Studio needs badly. I will definitely glitter the cards I print.

One more thing. It's Lisa's birthday and she's giving stuff away on her blog, Papergrace Designs. You might want to check it out, if you like papercrafts. And you probably wouldn't put up with me if you didn't.

Happy birthday, Lisa, one of the sweetest chicks on Twitter.

Valentine smart-ass

2010-01-28T18:11:00.001-05:00

I have a million Valentine stories.

I believe what Mama used to tell me: If you get too big for your britches, someone will take you down a notch or two. Yes, she really talks like that. Usually what takes me down a notch is Fate or karma or the Force or the universe at large.

When I was in sixth grade, I was a smart-ass, but hardly anyone at school knew that, because I didn't talk that much. Ever since my parents had lied me all the way from Honolulu to the god-forsaken frozen prairie of Illinois two years before, I had drawn my mouth up into a tiny anus and refused to cooperate. I scowled in silence. I demanded mangoes and fresh pineapple and sugar cane. I didn't get what I wanted. People I didn't even know felt free to tell me how cute I would be if I would smile.

Make me, I'd think to myself.

What gave me a great deal of pleasure at that time was to be better than any of my classmates. I could draw and write, and I loved to hear how wonderful it was so I could blow off the compliments with my snotty eyebrows. I was wearing a cloak of meanness, and it was a good thing because that place was freezing.

So...sixth grade, and Valentine's Day was approaching. Mrs. Guthridge told us that we would have a contest. Each student would bring a box to decorate, as our Valentine mailbox. We would vote on the winning design. I knew then that I was going to win.

Most kids brought a shoe box, so I was ahead already. I had a shirt box, with a large surface for decorating. I was going 3-dimensional. This thing was elaborate. I covered it with little lace-doily umbrellas with bendy-straw handles and red and pink hearts, and plenty of glitter. It was beautiful. I sat in my sullen bubble and waited for the votes to be counted. I was the winner. Of course.

I acted like it didn't mean a thing to me, but I felt good inside my bubble of superiority. I might have to put up with these dumb farm kids referring to my birthplace as HY-why-ya and asking me if that was why I had slanty eyes, but I enjoyed my hateful thoughts.

The day of the Valentine's party, we took our boxes full of candy and bad puns and cheap little envelopes home with us. I had to walk six blocks, and the wind was sharp. The kids with the shoe box mailboxes just tucked them under their arms and went on their ways. My shirt box caught the wind and escaped like a kite. The whole box flew up into the air, sailed right into Mr. Gordon's tree, and burst open. My Valentines flew away like birds.

Goes to show you.

Valentine thoughts

2010-01-27T19:12:00.002-05:00

I love Valentines.

Because we lived so far away, I don't remember meeting my grandma until I was four years old, and that only briefly. Most of my younger years, Grandma was photos, letters, and cards. Cards! With glitter and foil and dry embossing and movable parts. The Valentines were especially appealing, with their hearts and lace and sweet sentiments.

So here's my first Valentine of the year. The little pocket on the front holds a tag for a special message. The pocket can also hold a gift card, tea bag, chocolate square, or love note. My favorite part is the inside tag with the x and o.

I can't tell you what sort of paper I used. I bought a stack about a foot tall at a rummage sale, and I've been trying to use it up ever since.

I stamped lightly with tea-colored Ranger Distress Ink, and used the same color to antique the edges of the paper pieces. I crumpled up a piece of pink card stock and smoothed it with a bone folder, and then repeated it numerous times until I liked the soft texture of the paper. I drew a tag and cut it out, backed it with pinkish card stock and tied a little raffia through a paper heart and a tiny button. I used some mulberry paper that Crooked Stamper sent to me. And glitter, of course.

See anything strange about my photos? I am stressed by the fact that I can't seem to take a decent photo for anything. Really. No matter how many experts give me advice. I don't understand it. But I'm not going to let that hold me back. These images are scanned. I know they aren't good, but I'm just going to call it my style for now.

I hope these scans don't kill my mentor Lydia.

Dance like #612 Moe - Chihuahua

2010-01-05T20:15:00.000-05:00

I love dogs, but I had no intention of adopting another one anytime soon--until someone sent me an email link to a little Chihuahua named Moe, who was living out at the Anderson County animal shelter, where they do euthanize dogs when they are overcrowded.

In the ad on Petfinder, he looked so sad and pitiful. The shelter was offering a bargain on adoption fees in hopes of enticing people to rescue animals before the holidays. I kept checking back to see if someone had adopted him, but there Moe sat.

Finally I decided I had to go see him. Perhaps there would be a reason we weren't right for each other. He'd be too grouchy or ugly or mean. He'd make it plain that he didn't want to live with me. It would be obvious that he would never fit into our furry little family. If we didn't like each other, then I would wish him the best and stop thinking about him.

Nope. He was a teeny little big-headed imp who weighed less than four pounds but didn't seem to notice. I just loved his attitude. And he loved me as soon as I understood that his business was to dance and mine was to feed him dry cereal for his trouble.

He sleeps curled up on my shoulder with his head in the hollow of my neck. He makes little baby noises when I cuddle him. He bites me whenever he wants to express his displeasure. We're working on that, but after all he is a Chihuahua.

He dances so joyously. First he throws his arms up over his head, then he spins on his back legs so fast that I'm not yet sure how he does it. He throws himself into it, turns 360 degrees, stops on a dime for Rice Chex or a pretzel. If I don't have something edible to offer, he spins again. And again.

He makes me laugh. A smile is worth a million bucks some days.

He makes me think, too. Makes me tell myself, I should dance joyously again sometime.

P.S. After a day at our house being called "the little guy," #612 Moe revealed that his secret dog name is Bob Bobby Boblet Bobert.

The Twilight Zone

2010-01-02T22:36:00.002-05:00

I don't stay up to watch the ball drop anymore on new years eve.

Instead I watch hour after hour of The Twilight Zone on Syfy, supplemented by Wikipedia's list of episodes. The program, first broadcast during my formative years, helped me answer the age old questions for myself and became a part of my world philosophy (and also scared me so badly I'd lie in bed and ponder the mysteries long after the light was switched out). I swear that I still make decisions based on lessons I learned from Rod Serling.

In the twilight zone, life is fair. Steal, and you will never live to enjoy what you've taken. Lie, and the lie will come true in a way that will force you to lie in the bed you made. Lose your faith and find yourself tested and found wanting. Maintain a childlike sense of wonder and the universe will protect you from yourself. Offend nature and be quickly reminded of the fact that you are a mere mortal animal. Refuse to understand another's perspective and find yourself in a similar position when next you wake.

Too bad that real life is not more like The Twilight Zone, where the good are rewarded and the bad are punished in ironic ways.

P.S. My favorite episode is the one in which Old Man Simpson is saved from the fires of hell by his love for his old woman Rachel and his coon hound Rip.

A new start

2010-01-01T21:49:00.002-05:00

Happy new year.

I'm back. We'll no doubt talk about that later. I may start slowly, but I'll endeavor to persevere.

Resolutions? I have a few.

1. Learn something every day. This one isn't difficult at all; I include it so I guarantee myself some success.

2. Blog regularly. Who is to say what "regularly" means? I am going to try for several times a week at least.

3. Become more fit.

4. Organize this whole house. (I've been working on it for two years. I can almost find everything now.)

Okay. Stick with me. I'll get warmed up and then we will see where we end up.

I'll keep you posted.

P.S. Rose, thank you for all your encouragement.

No, I haven't changed this to The Birthday Blog, but...

2009-08-25T05:22:00.007-04:00

Happy birthday, Auntie Princess!

Auntie Princess is a tough broad kind-hearted woman with a wit as sharp as a meat slicer. She sends some of the funniest tweets you're ever going to hear on twitter, and she's not telling jokes - she's reporting on her life. Remember, we only have 140 characters.

BIL cut pictures out of calendars & put then in a 3 ring binder as bday gift for husbo. How did he not think we would just throw them away?

Because she's a princess, she needs a tiara to wear. This one seemed festive enough for a birthday.

Auntie is as unusual as an armadillo purse. If you are interested in the one shown above, visit Auntie's Etsy Vintage Store and snap it up. She specializes in the unusual.

She's as sassy as a pink vintage shoe.

53 is a prime number, so I guess that means tomorrow I'll be in my prime!!

Sparkly and classic as an art deco chocolate pot.

She makes these beautiful cocardes for the adornment of women who have a taste for vintage. I have one that looks similar to this, although my vintage button has some rhinestones. I love it.

So, happy birthday, Auntie. Thanks for making me laugh!

The funniest thing I've "heard" her say this week?

I see drunk people.

Happy birthday, Lydia!

2009-08-24T00:01:00.013-04:00

Last week (was it only last week?) Lydia taught a number of us how a blog hop works, and we had fun writing posts about bacon. Now we decided to use what she taught us to celebrate her birthday. We have been sneaking around behind her back all week.

BTW, Lydia also gave me a lot of pointers on making a banner, so I put together the birthday banner using the cute little blue squirrel that Patricia Monkey drew especially for this occasion. Lydia loves blue. And squirrels and all other baby animals (except monkeys) too. (And if a monkey baby really needed her, I'm sure she'd get over her monkey fears for that instant. That's just the kind of girl she is.)

Lydia loves blue. She understands it. I've been shopping online all week for blue things. Here is the cake I found for her. I'm sure it's yummy inside.

Have you ever noticed how something blue in nature really catches your eye? The sky makes the earth more beautiful, and any little piece of blue among the greens of summer satisfies my craving for beauty. I think of Lydia when I notice a flash of this particular shade.

Lydia seems to have the bluebird of happiness riding on her shoulder. Although she can be fierce at injustice, she is just about the sweetest woman I've ever met. She is always busy, and yet she always has time for others.

I found Lydia some socks that combine two of her favorite things: cats and blue. She loves her furkids Maddie and Splotchy, and she even made Maddie famous by designing a rubber stamp and t-shirts depicting her. I know Lydia likes her toes to be free, but since these are virtual socks, she might wear them on a chilly night.

I recently saw a little squirrel sleeping on a branch. I'd never seen that before. I immediately thought of showing it to Lydia because she loves squirrels. I think blue squirrels are a symbol of creativity for her. Anyway, my photo didn't turn out so well. Someone else, however, took this wonderful shot that shows how a squirrel nap looks. As much as she accomplishes, I'm not sure if Lydia sleeps at all.

Lydia's birthday wouldn't be complete if I didn't include a piece of artwork for her.

Happy birthday, Lydia.

The next stop on the hop is a message from Brown-eyed Pea. Click here.

Birthday greetings from Brown-eyed Pea

2009-08-24T00:01:00.012-04:00

You've reached the second stop on the UBlue birthday blog hop. If you didn't start at the beginning, you can go back to Angelique's post here.

What Do You Mean You've Never Met Your Best Friends?

Understanding BLUE

Sometimes I think back and wonder how it all happened? How did we all meet? Was it that little BLUE bird on Twitter who flew by each of us and guided us to Follow each other? Whatever, the details are unimportant.

What IS important is the Friendship. The Bonding. The Communion of Like Souls. The Support. The Love.

And that gets back to the query of How You Can Love Someone You've Never Met.

I found a group of Like People. Caring People who understood that fur creatures are just as beloved as flesh.

~Witty people who make me laugh everyday.

~Loving people who cheer me up when I'm sad and give me a hug when I need one.

~Creative People who express their creativity in many ways and know that you not only do not have to color within the lines but it is better to color outside them. And also that squirrels most certainly are BLUE!

And on your birthday, Lydia, you who "like to give giffies", have given us the most wonderful gift of all.

You have taught us to UNDERSTAND BLUE.

HAPPY, HAPPY BIRTHDAY WITH MUCH LOVE~ Pea

The next stop on the UBlue birthday blog hop is Leslie at The Crooked Stamper.

Castles in my life

2009-08-18T05:08:00.010-04:00

I've been lucky enough to have lived near two different castles in my life. It might be commonplace to Europeans, but in America we don't have that many castles. I have had more than my share.

In the very early eighties, I lived in the country near Camdenton, Missouri, at the Dead End of Spencer Creek Road on a defunct turkey farm. Our land backed up to a state park that contained Ha Ha Tonka castle, built by a wealthy businessman, burnt, and never lived in.

The castle sits up on a 250-foot cliff and looks out over Lake of the Ozarks. I used to take the Jaybird there often, because he was fascinated with any place where you were likely to see wildlife and plants and human ruins.

Down the road and around a curve was what the locals called "the slab." An enormous tree was uprooted and lay across what used to be the road; on its side, the tree was taller than I stand. The road was broken into six- and eight-foot pieces, and tossed up into a pile. The first time we came upon this place, Jaybird said, "Oh, wow. Something happened here." I have no idea what it was that had happened, but it was wild and beautiful.

Three or four feet of crystal clear water had gathered in the low areas. We could see the pebbles on the bottom and our feet on the pebbles. You could reach right down and touch crawdads and fish. The trees were so tall that they made a greeny yellow canopy above so even a fair-skinned lass like myself wasn't likely to get sunburned. On a hot afternoon, that place was heaven.

The first time I saw the castle here in Lexington, I had taken a wrong turn in the early morning and out of the fog, away in the distance, was a castle just sitting there. I thought it was a mirage.

This castle was also built by some wealthy person who never lived in it. You hear rumors of it changing hands, and it burnt at least once since I've lived here. I love seeing it sitting out there on the side of Versailles Road, but you can't take a decent photo of it because there's no good place to stop on the busy road. I've heard there's a back way but I don't know it. Supposedly someone is busy turning it into a hotel now.

I like a little magic in my life. What's more magical than a castle?

The small ideas add up

2009-08-17T05:00:00.005-04:00

In my family, we place a high value on Big Ideas, but most of the time it's the small ideas that go the farthest. Mama made a cheese slicer out of a piece of thread, and Dad cut gaskets out of a sheet of cork. We made clothes out of bigger clothes.

Sometimes I forget to look for improvements and continue to do something the same old way, even though it's tedious or obnoxious. I need to remember to look for those small ideas that improve your life in little ways and add up to a small pile of happiness.

For example, I need three keys to get into my office. One opens the door to the building, one opens the door to our area, and one opens my office door. For at least a year I kept the keys on my keyring in an order other than the one in which I used them. Every morning and every evening I would grumble and try one, two, sometimes three keys for every lock I encountered.

I did this for at least a year, fumbling through three nearly identical keys for every lock.

Then one day I had that small idea. I switched the order of the keys to reflect the order in which I would use them. My frustration level plummeted. Such a little thing to make such a big difference.

I also used to have cell phone anxiety. I'd worry all the time: will my battery run out today, will I forget to bring my charger to work, will I leave my charger at work when I need to use my phone at home? I worried more when I decided to give up my land line and use only my cell phone.

Finally one day while I was buying batteries at the Mart of Wal, I saw a phone charger exactly like mine for $15. My gosh, I've been torturing myself foolishly when all I had to do was have one charger at work and one at home! I thought. I bought it and took it to my office. I've probably saved an hour a week not having to obsess about the level of the juice in my phone.

So next time I find myself stressing over some minor irritation, I'm going to look for the small idea that will fix it.

I'll keep you posted.

Twitter Bacon Blog Hop

2009-08-16T00:00:00.001-04:00

Welcome to the first annual Twitter Bacon Blog Hop.

With apologies to my vegetarian friends, I love bacon. I have never been without bacon - sweet and salty, crisp and smokey. I was raised on bacon, and I have also raised bacon.

I would eat these donuts in a minute. You know how the yummy goodness of bacon flares up into culinary delight when paired with a sweet flavor like maple. That's the magic of bacon: it enhances and expands. Like a good partner, bacon makes anything more than it is by itself.

In my family, bacon was a cost-saving measure. Mom could serve a big pan of fresh green beans and new potatoes or soup beans with little slivers of carrot and onion and flavor a whole dish with six slices of bacon. Throw in a skillet of cornbread, and you have a meal.

In my childhood, bacon nearly always came with breakfast, my favorite meal. Mom believed in sending us off to walk the six blocks to school with a hot meal in our bellies: eggs and bacon, waffles and bacon, biscuits and bacon, bacon gravy over toast with little slices of boiled egg. You can taste it, can't you? Waking up to that sizzly smell made me feel as though we were rich, although later I learned that we were not quite poor.

When my mom and my aunts were feeling festive, bacon was always served up as an offering to the gods. Bacon was an appetizer, a garnish, a salad topping, the best part of the baked beans, the "B" in the BLT, a pan-liner for grandma's meatloaf. Party food. We cared nothing for calories or the glycemic index. We liked bacon: wrapped around chicken livers, skewered on kabobs, crumbled on a cheese log, one of the layers in the seven-layer salad, sprinkled on top of the melted Velveeta dip. My mouth is starting to water just thinking of it. Is yours?

As the women in my family grow older, they develop figures that look disturbingly like sparrows or robins, a heavy torso that absorbs the waist and consigns us to a life of fashion separates. Why? Because we love bacon! We make no apologies. I'll even eat that little piece of fatty pork they stick in the pork and beans. Every one of us pours bacon grease into a container and keeps it on the back of the stove until a recipe "calls for it."

I call for it. Bring me bacon! Not turkey bacon.

One more thing.

Dear Red the pig,

When we were feeding you all that good slop and buckets of corn and pig chow and scratching your back with a cob and riding you around the barn, we truly did not know that later that year we would eat you. But even when we found out, we couldn't help ourselves. The universe is a weird place. Thank you for the bacon.

Love,

Angie

Following is an easy quick recipe you can use to make a tray of what my dad always called horse doovers:

Bacon Scallop Roll-ups

Make as many as you want. People like to eat them.

For each appetizer, place a scallop on a water chestnut and wrap in a half a slice of thin bacon. Secure with a cocktail pick. Place on a metal pan about an inch apart. Bake at about 400 degrees (F) until the bacon is crisp. Place on paper to drain. Serve immediately. Smile as your guests make umm ummmmmmmm sounds and look heavenward.

Click here to visit Sarah's blog, the next post in the first annual Twitter Bacon Blog Hop. If you didn't start at the beginning of the hop, you can go back to Leslie's blog here so you don't miss one moment of bacony goodness.

Thanks to Lydia for getting me out of my blog funk. I'll be back tomorrow.

My Dark Series

2009-07-28T19:17:00.006-04:00

I have hit a bad patch and don't feel much like waxing poetic. Today my friend Cecile, who is from France, called it a dark series. That is exactly what I'm going through: a dark series. It sounds like a fantasy trilogy, and it feels a little like that too.

Ian Aspen's Really Good Thinking today was about being grateful. I realized that I've been so tied up with everything that's not working for me right now that I haven't stopped to look at it from the other side: Many things in my life are just fine. Still, it is a bit difficult for me to see it that way at the moment.

Go on over to Ian's blog if you are interested in increasing the quality of your life, reaching out to the world, and decreasing your stress level. I'm taking what he says very seriously, and while pondering it today I realized that I have lost the habit of looking at things from a positive perspective. And that's not the person I want to be.

So I have some work to do on myself. Big surprise.

Thanks, Ian, for the well-considered post you shared today. I'm sure I'm not the only one you've challenged. I'm grateful for how you made me think.

Blog awards ceremony

2009-07-26T20:29:00.006-04:00

Irene at the Green Stone Woman gave me a blog award. It's my first one, and I'm proud of it. Thank you, Irene.

Irene's instructions said to post it on my site with a link back to hers and to give it to 15 deserving bloggers. Well, I would be here all night if I were to try to find 15 awardees, although I know there are so many deserving bloggers out there. If I don't mention you and you want the award for your blog, let me know, or just claim it.

I know Irene will forgive me for not following the rules, because she doesn't follow them either.

The envelope please... a drumroll... and tonight's winners of the One Lovely Blog award are:

Lydia at UnderstandBlue

Gary at Excelsior

Leslie at The Crooked Stamper

Rose at powdergirl

Patti at Patricia Monkey

Don't feel obligated to display or pass along the award unless you feel like it. I just wanted to use this opportunity to mention some blogs that entertain and teach me.

Birdie and I have a crash

2009-07-25T09:29:00.005-04:00

I had a magnificently maddening day yesterday. Herein lies the story of my morning. There is a lot more to tell about the day, but I'd simply go into a coma if I had to tell it all at once.

I got out of bed with a neck ache more powerful than usual, and the day went downhill fast. I was late out the door for work, but I only work 2.2 miles from home, so I didn't worry much. I backed out of the drive and tooled the car in first gear out to Nicholasville Road, where I stepped on the brakes.

There were no brakes. Nothing but a hard pedal that would go nowhere. I stood on it.

Funny how your brain slows everything down when you think you're going to run into five lanes of morning traffic without control of your vehicle. I had time to think of shifting gears, and time to reject that notion on the grounds that there is nowhere down to go from first. I had time to realize that all I had to do was pull the emergency brake hard.

Which I did.

I drive a 17-year-old car, so I expect it to malfunction. Actually, the car holds up her end of the bargain better than I do because I forget to check her fluids and provide new supplies until she coughs or spits, but she cheerfully functions as transportation, book storage, canine wagon, and an extra closet for shoes and jackets. She rarely refuses to give me what I ask. And she has a super charger and a low center of gravity that makes her hug curves like a pro.

I don't own this car. I don't even think that the Woodsman knows she's a girl car. I call her Birdie.

So I'm dead at the stop sign with my blinkers on, trying to decide what to do. I carry my bags back home and call the service center just a few blocks away, where I've done business for twelve years or so, to ask if they have a wrecker. They don't, but they recommend one. I grab my little purse out of my bag and leave the rest of my work things in the chair. This is where I really went wrong, but I don't know it them. I walk back down to where the car is still blinking blinking blinking and waiting.

The wrecker comes and hooks her up and drives me and the Thunderbird a few blocks to the service station. But I'm a diabetic and I realize I don't have anything in my tiny purse to eat. I thought I was going to go straight to work and eat something there. I left my big bag of comfort sitting in the chair.

The walking and the stress have lowered my blood sugar, and I need a couple of starlight mints or a Coke. I start to feel like the wrecker seat is swallowing me, but I keep making small talk with the very nice wrecker driver because I want him to take a check from me, when a lot of times they won't. I have experience with wrecker drivers, and this is the way it's done. They have to connect with you to take a check; he'd already said how cozy and nice my neighborhood was, so we were well on the way to striking an understanding.

Oh, Mr. Wreckerman, do you have to write so slowly? He's so conscientious and neat on his invoice, but I start to wonder whether I should tell him I'm about to keel over or just let him find out on his own. Finally we're finished; he took a check.

Thank goodness I know the co-owner of the service station, and she fed me Fritos and let me sit around until I felt better. Boy, a big infusion of carbs when you haven't been having them sure tastes luxurious. I never thought I'd be waxing poetic over a lunch-size bag of Fritos. Lesson learned. A cowgirl never goes on an adventure without some high-protein snacks.

I got a ride home and sat around trembling and thinking of what might have been, which is never productive or calming. I got to where I couldn't tell whether it was blood sugar or shock that had me so disoriented. I finally emailed my boss to say I couldn't come in. I don't know if anyone ever used the excuse of being trembly and unsettled as a reason to take a vacation day.

Maybe I'm a wimp.

What do men want?

2009-07-23T06:47:00.022-04:00

Today our post is about makeup. But don't go running off, boys. You all can do womankind a great service if you answer my questions.

I got to wondering what men want when I started cutting my makeup requirements to nothing. My mama wears makeup every day. Because she has no eyebrows (allergic reaction!), she figures she may as well do the rest of her face after she draws on her brows. But I just can't do that full-face full-coverage start-from-scratch routine anymore.

For one thing, it's so blasted hot lately. Sweat and makeup don't mix. Well, actually they do mix, and then they run down your face and into your collar. Then - skip this line, guys - there's menopause, when some days power surges raise my body temperature to about 110 degrees F.

These days my makeup practices run somewhere between none at all and about one minute of color. I hope that my wardrobe of earrings will draw the eye away from my lack of makeup. If not, I'm out of tricks.

Here's the most I do: Moisturizer is a necessity when you get my age. I'm really pale, so blush is good. I have little bitty eyes, so a smudgy dash of eyeliner makes me a little more defined. I don't have any eyelashes to speak of, so mascara is a farce. And I love lipstick.

Some women wear a lot of makeup. And usually the complaints I hear are from men. They always say they don't like for a woman to wear too much makeup. But how much is too much? A lot of guys I know don't wear makeup, so how do they know what's too much? Let's get a definitive answer about the quantity.

Okay, everybody pick the appropriate question for themselves.

So, boys, what do you really want? Do you want a woman who wears no makeup at all and just goes around with her little bitty eyes undefined and her lips a nondescript flesh color and her cheeks pale and wan, but oh, so natural? Or do you want a woman who wears makeup but doesn't look like she does, thereby saving you from looking at the flaws and imperfections that we think you don't even know are there? Or do you like your girls a little slutty and fast, with blue eyeshadow up to the brow bone and nails to match her lips? Do you like that sparkly party makeup that we have a lot of fun applying for festive occasions?

Women, how much is too much? How long does your everyday makeup routine take? Do you care what your partner thinks about your makeup? Do you know what your partner wants to see? Do you look better with makeup or without? Do you sparkle up for festive occasions?

While I'm on this topic, I have a few more words about makeup.

We have these ghoul mirrors at work. They make your skin look sallow and your eyes look sunken and your hair look like it's barely covering your skull. You can look perfectly fine in your makeup mirror at home, and you go to work and see your zombie self looking back at you from mirrors that are probably as old as the building, which is old. Somebody needs to do something about that lighting (they won't) before some woman in a PMS rage breaks every last mirror with her shoe.

Another thing. Don't ever tell your friend that she wears too much makeup. I have done that twice, and they will not believe you anyway. I had a friend who wore make up that looked as though she applied it with a trowel. People were suggesting that I gently push her in the direction of the fresh-face look. I had to practice what I was going to say; it's not an easy thing to tell someone.

I screwed up my courage and blurted something out. I really don't remember now. But it didn't matter, because she just frowned at me and said, "Get outta here."

The second time I had to do it, my victim shook her head at me and said, "I do not wear too much makeup."

Yeah, I know. I should have learned the first time.

P.S. I have some friends whose lifestyles don't fit into the questions above. I'm sorry I couldn't figure out the wording to include you properly. You can answer any of the questions you want.

My baggage and the horse I rode in on - and a note on monkeys

2009-07-23T04:30:00.008-04:00

My mind sometimes fastens on a metaphor and rides it to the very end of the road.

Irene, the Green Stone Woman, blogged about an image her therapist gave her. She "imagined me climbing on a healthy horse with my disorders as a little bit of baggage hanging off my saddle," Irene wrote. This metaphor struck me and hovered in the back of my head all day.

I started thinking about my baggage, which wouldn't be just a little bit hanging off my saddle. I'd need a big Pony Express bag to carry my stuff along. I know my horse would behave better if I'd lighten the load, but every time I start to discard something, I get bogged down in the provenance of the item. This is the anger I carry in the inside pocket, and a little bit of blame I keep because no one else wants it. Here's a chunk of stupidity that I've learned to live with, and the guilt from that one period when I wasn't a good mom. Down in the bottom I carry a heavy regret for a fork I took in the road.

I know everyone has baggage. I've been trying to get rid of some of mine. The funny part is that I don't need to have a rummage sale or take it to Goodwill or rent a storage unit to keep it in. All I have to do is take it out of the bag and drop it. Toss it over my shoulder. Ride on without it. But I hoard the things in my saddlebag like treasures.

The part that I dislike most about the baggage I'm carrying is that sometimes I try to make other people responsible for it. Some innocent action or response makes me angry or sad - because it reminds me of some resentment I've been hoarding in my bag. That's not fair to anyone, because I'm likely to take out one of those little stones and chuck it at the head of someone who doesn't deserve it.

I don't know why we cling so desperately to attitudes and pain that we don't need and would be better off without. My horse feels a little tired from carrying useless baggage and would appreciate my cooperation, so I'm going to empty this bag into the first convenient Dumpster. Wait - maybe I can just toss the whole saddlebag into the trash bin and ride on fresh and renewed.

My monkey post from a couple of days ago got me into trouble. So I learned that there are some monkey lovers out there, and they seem to think that I find their monkey teasing amusing in some way. People never seem to believe me when I say I am afraid of monkeys. Pictures of them give me the creeps. The noise they make is something I hope I never hear again. I won't even watch a nature program if there is a chance a monkey figures somewhere in the story. Otherwise likeable people can't seem to grasp this. (And I'm not talking about people who comment on this blog; I love every one of them for giving their opinions.)

Some people seem to think I'd like to participate in conversations about kissing monkeys, which upsets my stomach. I don't care one bit whether you couldn't tell a monkey kiss from a dog kiss if you were blindfolded (although I don't believe that for a minute). I said it was an irrational fear. I cannot explain it, and I wasn't writing an endorsement of my position. I'm sure a hypnotist could cure me, but since I'm not likely to encounter a monkey on my daily rounds, I don't feel that my fear reduces the quality of my life that much.

There are people who are afraid of water, and I wouldn't push them in the pond. Some people fear snakes to the point where a photo of one makes their heart beat faster. Others scream when they see a spider in the house. My aunt Thedis was so afraid of cats that she used to wet her pants if one got too close to her. I don't see the point of torturing any of them.

Massage is the message

2009-07-22T05:00:00.005-04:00

Have you ever had a therapeutic massage? I don't mean the kind where the masseuse plays tinkly music and powders your feet and tickles them with a feather duster. I once received a gift certificate for a massage, and it turned out to be a little more new agey than I'm able to appreciate.

What I experienced yesterday was nothing related to the bell-ringing incense-burning chickie who scared me. Her massage, although it made an hour seem like a day, did nothing but make me tired and cranky. My muscles didn't even realize they'd been massaged. It was a skin rub.

Today I visited Ollie Layne, massage therapist, at Elswick Chiropractic over on Custer Drive here in Lexington. I chose a half-hour treatment because I was skeptical. I have a combination of conditions that we'd both be bored to hear described. Suffice it to say that I have a lot of pain and can't go flying around on pain killers, much as I might like to, because I have things to do. So my doctor suggested I find out if massage could give me some relief.

I can't say that I really enjoyed the massage per se; it was painful, but the relief I felt was indescribable. And yet, I'm going to try to describe it.

The setting: The office is nothing special, just wood and black leather and short carpet. The waiting area is very green. Manly forest green. The office is up about a half a flight upstairs, and I always feel better upstairs. I grew up upstairs.

I met Ollie, and I had that feeling of recognition you sometimes feel with someone new whom you can't possibly recognize. It's usually a good feeling for me. So I liked her right off. She took me into a dim and quiet room with a comfy padded table and a soft rolled pillow to put under my knees. A boombox on a chair softly played a repetitive loop of music, and I found that calming.

Ollie applied some sort of warmish lotion to my skin, and this allowed her to stick her strong fingers completely through my skin and into the heart of my muscles to wake up whatever was in there. Really. I felt as though I were having a psychic surgery. And I mean this in the best possible way.

I was comfortable the whole time because Ollie spoke quietly during the process, telling me what to expect, warning me of pain. I don't know about you, but I'd rather know what's coming than be surprised. And there were only a couple of times when I found the pain intense. Most of the time it was less than the pain I have in my neck when I get up in the morning.

The first thing she did was push her arms under my shoulders and press her fingers into my back muscles (imagine me on my back the way the woman is in the photo above) while she pulled her hands up toward my neck. She had me at that moment, but then she did a thing that I would pay for every day: the pillow of heaven.

This pillow of heaven wasn't that pleasant of itself. In fact, I wanted at first to resist. I was on the edge of pain. Ollie pressed her fingers at the base of my skull and held my head up a bit on her fingers. But what was nearly unbelievable was that I physically felt tension releasing from my muscles. It felt as though a thick liquid was running out of the muscles, down and off the table. Like a magic trick. Within a few seconds. Heaven. Pillow. O.M.G.

I really can't describe the rest of the process. I just gave in to that wave of relaxation. Even when Ollie said, "This'll probably burn like fire" - and it did! - I didn't care. I just shut my eyes and listened to her voice and felt wave after wave of relaxation as she worked on various muscles that have hurt for years. In a few minutes I could move my neck much further to the right than I've been able to do for a year or more. I was amazed. She massaged my scalp and I felt the tension break into a million cold splinters.

I think I saw angels flying around the room. No, I think it was butterflies, honeybees, and hummingbirds. Or maybe it was just the glittering behind my eyes. I kept my eyes closed and leaned into the pain until I felt that release. Blessed release.

When the session was finished, I made another appointment. This time for an hour. I'm no longer a skeptic.

Here's something I find appalling. If this sort of relief is available to people like me, why won't my insurance pay for it? I'm not going to a day spa. This is really hard work, and the benefits are almost immediate. But according to Ollie, they only last for a few days, so of course I'll want to go back. I'll have to dig into my pocket, but therapeutic massage seems such a healthy, relatively inexpensive, drug-free solution to chronic pain. Why wouldn't it be covered by most insurance plans?

Ah, don't bother to answer that question. I have had dealings with the dicks at several insurance companies.

Which of the massages would you enjoy? The tinkly powdery crystal woman, or the deep, painful, joy-inducing hands of Ollie? I think it all depends on what you need.

A note about customer service: You know I've been bitching about how I hate the customer service at most of my local stores. They could take lessons from the office staff at Elswick Chiropractic. First, I was given directions over the phone covering every turn between my office and theirs. Easy peasy and I, known for making wrong turns and driving miles out of my way, was there in no time. When there was a mix-up about who was making my next appointment, the professional woman at the desk looked me right in the eyes and apologized for leaving me standing there while she helped a client on the phone. I swear I was standing there for all of four minutes. I really appreciated that acknowledgment, though. It makes me feel happy to go back. Take a note if you own a store: Treat people nicely and you won't have to spend so much money on television ads with dancing scissors and smiley-face - whatever.

I asked for a photo, but Ollie didn't want that. Still, I highly recommend her hands.

Monkey fears

2009-07-21T05:00:00.008-04:00

Have you ever had an irrational fear? I am afraid of monkeys. I can't even stand a monkey sock doll or stuffed animal. People think it's so funny to give me birthday cards with monkeys on them; they don't know I'm seriously afflicted with monkey fear. I don't think that this fear was irrational when it first developed. I blame it on my parents.

Part of the reason I don't like monkeys is because they look so much like people, and I find their little hands and their gestures and facial expressions to be a creepy mirror of human behavior. For example, this is me at my doctor appointment last Friday. Don't you hate it when they make you undress and put on one of those silly gowns?

And I particularly hate it when monkeys wear clothes. That is really too much. Then they look like little messed up humans, and that is also creepy. Remember that Lancelot Link show where monkeys chewing gum acted out the parts, and they dubbed in the dialogue? Oh, I could not stand to watch that. Lancelot looked exactly like George Burns.

Once when my son was about three years old, I left him with my mama and went over to my friend Nancy's house to see her newborn baby. He had been delivered prematurely, and he was this little bitty squinched up kid about the size of a Thumbelina doll. When I came back home, Mama said, "Was he cute?" I said, "No, he looked like a little monkey." The next time Nancy came over to visit, she was carrying little John wrapped up in a blanket. Jaybird tip-toed up to her and whispered, "Can I see your little monkey?"

Once I was in the mall, passing outside the toy store. A battery-operated monkey about a foot and a half tall came dancing out of the store and made a beeline for me. He was toddling along with his little hands raised up at the sides of his head like a baby. In fact, he was wearing a pair of white baby shoes and carrying a half-peeled banana. Before I even had time to think, I just kicked that monkey right back into the store. "Well, that wasn't very nice," the clerk told me. At least they didn't make me buy it.

Look at this little hand. It reminds me of my Dad's hands when he got old. See what I'm saying? Monkeys are just too human.

Now this one is almost cute, and I don't find him all that scary. You guessed it. It's because he looks like a monkey, not a kid.

Now, this is why I blame my parents for my monkey fear. When I was four years old they got me all excited about staying up past bedtime and watching a special movie. Mama popped popcorn and we all sat down to watch The Wizard of Oz. When I saw those evil flying monkeys, I went completely out of my skin. They tried talking me down. Then they tried threatening me. All the time they were bent over at the waist, holding their sides and laughing until tears flowed from their eyes. It served them right that Mama had to poke a broom under my bed and check in the closet and out the windows every night after that before I'd go to sleep.

Here's the kind of mama I am: I did the same thing to my son. We were snuggled up together on the couch watching the movie when the dreaded monkeys came on. I shivered and said, "See? I told you they were really scary!" Jaybird patted me on the cheeks and said, "It's okay, Mommy. They're only little people dressed up like monkeys."

Also, monkeys are biters. There's nothing you can do about it. They're wild animals. It's not their fault that people want to treat them like babies.

For some reason, just in the past few years I've been getting over my fear of monkeys. But I'm still not planning to go to any continent where they run around unfettered. My brother's girlfriend Julia went to India, and she came back with a million stories about the trouble monkeys can get you into. There they run around in packs like juvenile delinquents.

I've recently met a monkey girl I like. She paints wicked little animals that smoke cigarettes and act like humans, but they're so cute that I can't get mad at them. You can visit the Patti Monkey blog and see her little demons here.

Do you have any irrational fears, or am I the only one holding on to my little childhood traumas?

Frankie is dead and there's nothing to be done about it

2009-07-20T05:00:00.007-04:00

Cover the mirrors and stop the clocks. My dear Frank McCourt is dead.

The author who changed my life by making me want to write again, who taught my son that a good book is a good friend, who showed us all that no matter how mean or dirty or short your life is, there is always some meaning to the story.

"Imagine if you'd had Mr. McCourt for a teacher," my son said. "I'll bet you'd be a writer then."

That hurt. I was a little bitter back then, believing that I'd settled for editing and a paycheck when I should have suffered for my art and produced a masterpiece. And single parents don't do that. Then there I was, skating toward middle age.

Hey, wait a minute. Frank McCourt's first book was published when he was 66 years old. There were no rules about when you could be brilliant.

"But I did have Mr. McCourt for a teacher," I told the Jaybird. I realized that I'd better get busy. I started writing again the next day.

My mother, who grew up poor and ashamed of it, could not read half of Angela's Ashes. It pained her so. "Those worthless parents!" she raged, and I had to agree in a sad way. After all, I had read all of Angela's Ashes and McCourt's second book, 'Tis, so I knew a lot more than she did about just how worthless the parents were. But those worthless parents made Francis McCourt, just as my parents - who weren't shiftless but did have a rather unconventional approach to childrearing - had made me. Just as my sweet grandmother and her bigamist husband had made my mama.

"You just don't like to think about growing up poor without a father," I told her.

"No, I don't. Who would? But we weren't hungry, or dirty, or dressed in rags. My mother worked hard."

"Then you were lucky," I said.

She looked away so long I thought she wouldn't answer. She was known for that.

"Yes I was," she finally said.

Some people called Frank McCourt a liar, including his own mother. Well, that has happened to me too. And who cares if you lie a little if you write of the absurdity of your position in life with humor and goodwill? I don't. Even the saddest passages in a Frank McCourt book are underpinned with the music of language and the charm of a little laugh choked down behind the sorrow. So he hasn't written a history book. I don't care.

"I did not like the jackdaws that perched on trees and gravestones and I did not want to leave Oliver with them. I threw a rock at a jackdaw that waddled toward Oliver's grave. Dad said I shouldn't throw rocks at jackdaws, they might be somebody's soul. I didn't know what a soul was but I didn't ask him because I didn't care. Oliver was dead and I hated jackdaws. I'd be a man someday and I'd come back with a bag of rocks and I'd leave the graveyard littered with dead jackdaws" (Angela's Ashes).

See what I mean? The beauty is in the telling, and the Irish are famous for that.

Frank McCourt made the world better with his words. He made me better with his words.

Open one of his books anywhere, any page, and you will find something to cry about while you're laughing about it too. Life is hard. We agree on that. Life beats some people down; some people it enriches in the most amazing ways. You're lucky if, like Frank, like my mama, you get most of your beatings and starving and death out of the way during your early life so you have the rest to decide what it all means, if you can. And he did.

I cannot do him justice. I do not have the skills for eulogizing Mr. McCourt. I only tell you how his words ran through our family and caused us to pass our feelings from hand to hand, sharing them and giving them their freedom.

All of Limerick might have once been mad at you, but I love you for that, Frank McCourt.

P.S. Lydia at UnderstandBlue wrote a grand tribute, and her brother, Bob Blakley, traveled on a bus with the author for an entire week and took a wonderful photo of him. Lucky duck.

Poetry for Sunday

2009-07-19T14:56:00.009-04:00

It's that time again: this week's poetry post. I don't know if I can pull this off every week. I think I hear some of you saying, "Yay!"

I was inspired by one of my best blogger friends to write this poem. She's given me a lot of support, and she knows who she is, so we'll leave it at that. If you've given me a lot of support and don't see yourself in this poem, wait your turn. I'm a slow writer.

I also must admit that I've taken a bit of poetic license with the geography, since she's not really all the way around the world from me.

The Wolf of the World

A woman on the other side

of the world sleeps when I wake

wakes alone without map or net

and watches each way while I sleep.

A candle burns on both ends.

A harsh note on the other side

of the dark vibrates up my last nerve

and sets me humming in my spine.

Speak now. You will not be allowed

to forever hold your peace.

I must stand with the woman

who stands with me, because

women can do these things: pull

each other up by the boot buckles

carve each other out sin by sin.

I send notes to the other side

of the void to say: yes

I have not only heard of the wolf

I have seen him from the corner

of my eye, that sly worn devil

nearly toothless in the light of cold day

but often so large and so patient.

I hope your weekend has been poetic.

Wanted: Big old personalities blogging frequently

2009-07-18T10:47:00.013-04:00

I just love some of the blogs I read, and the bloggers who write them. I will share three of my favorites with you today. I hope you'll recommend others to me, because a lot of my regulars are taking it easy this summer, and I need a lot of reading to be happy.

As I've said before, I like a blog that is pinned to a big old personality; creative use of the English language and frequent blogging are also highly appreciated.

powdergirl. This woman - demolition expert, mother, sassy girl, big-shoe lover, and hell of a writer - is just GOOD. She is high-strung and good hearted and hails from British Columbia. Tough with a soft squishy heart in the center. This week she wrote about her regret at having killed a hummingbird. No tiny bird has received a more poetic eulogy. She has a fine sense of language and priorities. Every post is a delicious mixture of laughter and truth, and she is a master of the short character study. And she's got a mouth on her. The fuse is lit... and it ain't gettin' any longer.

Irene, the Green Stone Woman, writes about mental health. She does this by posting daily about her own mental state and her quiet life in the Netherlands. Irene has the added perspective of having lived in the states for a number of years. She is open, humorous, and deeply insightful. She is in tune with current events, and she comments on all manner of cultural and political phenomena, but most of what she writes is deeply personal. Her life has not been easy, and it still isn't. Because I suffer from depression and mood swings myself, I read with interest as she discovers and reveals herself. To read Irene's blog is to go on the interior journey with this remarkable woman because she has the ability to lay herself bare without apology. I don't suppose I'll ever meet her in person, but I deeply admire this strong and unique woman and would love to share coffee and cigarettes and a piece of cheese with her. I feel love and concern for her. I feel better because of her. I have learned so much from her. Thank you, Irene.

Lilly's Life. Lilly is an Australian woman with an interest in world affairs. She's smart and funny and has good journalistic instincts. She usually ends her blog posts with a question or assignment, which generates a lot of interesting comments from all over the world. She writes about Rupert Murdock and Mark Sandford and the world economy and her wonderful father. I'm half in love with Des, who is in poor health but not so that he can't play matchmaker and guest blogger. She also writes messages to her grown daughter and comments on the everyday things with humor and insight. The most beautiful post I've read on Lilly's blog is The Day Isaam Came to Live with Us. If you don't cry when you read this story, Lilly's probably not for you. She's on vacation right now, but there is plenty of good back reading there.

One of the things I love most about the blog universe is that it is global. Yeah, most of my life I've heard people lament the state of American education and how we don't place a high value on learning about other cultures. But I never realized the size of this lapse until I started reading blogs of people in other countries. The simple things I have to look up! Facts I should have known since sixth grade. I'm appalled at the gaps in my knowledge - and happy to learn. Always.

Next time I recommend blogs, I'll tell you about a group of crafty people I adore. In the past I've reviewed a few other blogs:

Tristan Robin Blakeman and his Enchanted Revelry

Bete de Jour: The Intimate Adventures of an Ugly Man

Dave King's Pics and Poems

So, who do you love reading?

Casual Friday

2009-07-17T22:48:00.007-04:00

It's casual Friday again already, so here are the pieces and parts for this week.

It's beeeeeeeeg! Yesterday I was sitting at the computer, frustrated because it wasn't working the way it was supposed to. Someone pounded on my door... once... twice... The dogs went wild but that didn't deter him. He knocked a third time. I looked out the peephole and saw a dirty smiling man of about thirty in a ball cap and coveralls. At the curb was a jalopy worthy of the Clampetts.

I went back to the computer. He began knocking again. The dogs were throwing their usual fits, and Pixie was furiously running circles on the rug in front of the door.

"I'm wondering if you want me to cut that oak tree," he said when I opened the door a crack and held the dogs at bay with my foot.

It's a huge beautiful tree, one of the tallest on the block, and it shades the whole front of the house. "Why would you want to cut that tree?" I asked.

"Well, it's BEEEEEEEEEEEG," he said.

I just stared at him for a moment, visualizing him driving his truck through the city toward the biggest trees he could find, then asking whoever was home if he could cut them down.

"I don't think so," I told him.

He looked so disappointed.

Janitors overheard. I heard our three janitors in the break room discussing the pros and cons of vampirism.

A: It would be great to be a vampire. You could live your life over and over again.

B: No! I'm too tired to have eternal life.

C: I guess it would be okay as long as you didn't have to work.

Mercury rising. When I was about nine years old, I broke a thermometer on the floor and picked up all the little balls and put them in a doll bottle. I played with that mercury whenever I'd think of it, and it took me a long time to grow tired of breaking the quarter-sized shimmer into BBs and then putting it back together. I eventually lost the bottle, or maybe it simply consumed itself.

Revenge. Never lie to your hair stylist about cutting your own hair. They resent it the way the cops on Cops get pissed when anyone lies to them. Okay, buddy. They take people to jail for lying.

If you break down and admit that you've been cutting on your own hair, your stylist may take pity on you and work with you to make it look as good as it can.

But if Bonnie Lee says, "Ummmm mmm mmmm... Who has been cuttin on this hair?"

And you say, "It's been awful dry. It's probably breakage..."

She will take her revenge by what stylists call "evening it up," which means cutting every hair on your head to match the shortest one you cut.

Speaking of hair. Growing older is like being in one of those fairy tale movies where nothing makes sense. Why can't I just keep the hair I like? I never had what I considered my fair share of hair already, and now it's disappearing in places I don't want to ask my friends about. And yet it continues to try to get a foothold in places it clearly has no business.

Strange beds. Usually when my parents went socializing, they took me along. I was well trained to be seen and not heard and to play games in my head and not call any attention to myself. If my parents stayed late, they would put me to bed in a strange bedroom with strange shadows and strange smells. That would give me the willies. I absolutely hated to lie there staring at whatever articles were on the night stand, trying not to breathe deep and almost wishing I'd fall asleep. And I hated to sleep.

Survey says. I hate surveys. I don't even know why. I guess because I feel inconvenienced for no return. I often lie if I can't get out of taking a survey. I got my one and only obscene phone call in the form of a phone survey.

My clinic sent me a survey. The letter accompanying it said that I'd been chosen to be in a small elite group of people who were asked their opinions on the clinic and its services. I didn't feel special, particularly when I saw that the survey was as long as the old grade school achievement tests. I threw it away.

Two weeks later I got the same survey booklet, and the accompanying letter was stern: explaining how the survey would only be valuable if everyone who had been chosen participated. I murmured something about how their survey wasn't going to be valuable then, and threw out the second mailing.

Two weeks later I received the third booklet, and the letter wasn't messing around: I was to return the enclosed survey in the accompanying addressed and postage paid envelope by such and such a date.

They reminded me at every turn of the process that it was completely anonymous. So... I did what I was told. I returned the survey booklet in the envelope provided. They didn't say anything about completing the survey, just returning. This petty little action made me feel better than it should have. I figure I wasted an hour dealing with the junk mail.

For at least a decade, Exley was scanning every purchase he made and transmitting it weekly by phone to some company gathering marketing data. He filled out surveys on products and services. He earned points that were worth prizes. I couldn't stand the thought of scanning every item I bought after I'd stood at the store watching someone scanning them all just a while before. Sometimes Exley would nag until I filled out some survey that was meant for the lady of the house. "Can't you just make up the answers?" I'd ask. Exley was like one of the Neilson families for shopping.

Just wondering. Real bad. How did Michael Jackson get white? Please don't make me read one of those thousand books that will be out next week. Someone must know the answer.

I feel all twittery

2009-07-16T15:54:00.021-04:00

I guess it happens to all bloggers who are fans of Twitter. Sooner or later, we have to blog about the social network that challenges you to answer the question What are you doing? in 140 characters or fewer.

I tried MySpace for a week. I skipped Facebook altogether. I signed up for Twitter because I wanted to know what all the fuss was about. Now I know.

And I still like it. I didn't think I would, but I do.

I get news by following my local newscasters and my national favorites. Often Twitter is the first place breaking news is discussed, and being able to tweet pundits and reporters makes the news interactive. People in trouble post amazing video. People fighting for freedom in far-off countries update us on their progress.

I learn about my city by following local go-getters and councilwomen and people who work where I work. I follow Governor Sarah Palin because she tweets hilarious things such as, "Mama bear's gutteral raw instinct" and "constant thumped-up ethics charges." Poor Sarah. A script would help her a lot, and I hope she finds one that's been well written by someone else.

I send a link when I update my blog, and some people who follow me go and read it; sometimes they even send a tweet of encouragement or tell me a story (very short) of their own experience. I've "met" numerous people that way.

Just recently two artists in my special group collaborated at lightning speed. @AuntiePrincess, one funny broad, tweeted one of her smart mouth but so true sayings. @crookedstamper shot back that she'd like to make a card using the sentiment. Auntie agreed. The next day, @crookedstamper has the card up on her blog. We all felt a part of it.

I make friends, and that's the part I like the most. Oh, sure, they aren't like face to face friends you meet in real life; they're much less annoying. By trial and error, following and listening, I've built a little community of people I like. A collection of minds who entertain or inform me. People who tweet about politics, and those who talk about art, and those who scour the internet for interesting visual delights.

And now we come to unfollowing. I've been in trouble for this. I really don't understand it; I feel that if we are entering into a twittery relationship, either of us has the right to discontinue it at any time for any reason. We're not married. I do not believe my unfollowing you gives you the right to demand a reason. But some do.

I'm a Gemini. Maybe my attitude is just a little too airy for some of you. I come and go. I change my mind. I like to take an independent approach. I unfollow people who bore me or offend me or make me angry, and I don't know why you don't do the same.

I've been told that I should follow back everyone who follows me. Now, why would I do that? I am not competing in a popularity contest, so I don't care about the numbers of people who follow me or whom I follow. I twitter because I find it enjoyable to cast a net and surprise myself with what I uncover. People can be very interesting. If they aren't, that's the reason for the unfollow button.

Following are my tweet peeves, the reasons I'll unfollow/not follow you:

Tweeting in all caps. I don't care if your name is Kirstie Alley. It's annoying.

Talking about Jesus. No argument. We're just not for each other.

Asking me to vote for any part of your body for any reason.

Tweeting only about the products you want me to buy. If your tweet stream looks like this:

Sold and relisted...

New product...

I'm probably not following you anyway. Throw in something of value. Like an opinion. If you don't have an opinion, maybe you can re-tweet someone who does.

Using the term "I likey" or "me likey." Come on. If I already know you and love you, I will sigh and overlook that one, but it's not English and I am not amused.

Claiming to be doing something you can't possibly be doing while tweeting. Like changing a dirty diaper.

Squealing about how many followers you have, or asking for a few new ones to make a particularly significant (to you) number.

Sharing anything about bowel movements. Anything.

Not bothering to use a photo. If I see that little brown square that looks like a bag you'd wear over your head, I'm not following. Well, okay. A few relatives.

Never tweeting. What's the point?

Becoming tiresomely dramatic or overly quarrelsome. It's a social network, and I don't enjoy constant bitching. Except about politics.

Showing a photo of the meal you're about to eat. Unless it is the most beautiful arrangement I've ever seen. Or you are @understandblue and it's the Fourth of July and you have artfully arranged your hotdogs.

Advising me to go to your blog without including a link. I don't have time to look it up.

Disclaimer: The purpose of this post is to report on my Twitter experience. I am not trying to convince you to take it up, because it is not for everyone. I know bunches of people who think it sounds stupid or who tried it and didn't like it, and that's okay with me.

Okay. About those hairless cats from yesterday. A lot of people were interested. Some found them creepy; some thought they were cute. (I'm in the latter group.) Because of the questions, I read more about them. These cats are called Canadian Sphinx cats. Tristan pointed out that they look like gargoyles (forgive me, Tristan, if that's not what you meant), and now I can't stop thinking that.

One thing I found absolutely heinous is that people in Moscow have these cats tattooed. Yes, needle and buzz, tattooed. I have been tattooed, and it is not really all that pleasant. I do not know how they would subdue the poor animal for several hours so they can do something that unnatural to a cat who already looks like it comes from another planet. I am not going to show you a photo of these "designer cats" I am so outraged about, although you can find them yourself online if you want.

Yes, Irene, you are right about them being very sensitive to temperatures. They need clothing when they go outside because not only can they easily catch a cold, but they also sunburn. They do have a little coat of peachfuzz, but not enough to protect them. Their skin is said to feel like velvet. They need to be bathed a couple of times a month to keep their skin healthy.

Brief post for today

2009-07-15T21:21:00.011-04:00

I feel a little like this today. Did you know that such a breed of cat exists? I didn't, until my Twitter friend @crookedstamper turned me on to the fact. You can visit her crooked blog here.

I've never understood cats, but if I ever get one, it will look like this. Look at that face.

Who knew there was so much to say about shoes? People have been twittering and emailing me about them since I wrote about my love of shoes Monday. Zip over to the UnderstandBlue blog and see Lydia's favorite pair of shoes. She describes shoe passion. Or click over to Inspiration Beyond Reason and see some ridiculously useless shoes. And Tristan Robin sent a link to these shoes, which look as much like delicate chandeliers as they do sandals.

The Waitress Dude

2009-07-14T16:49:00.010-04:00

We went out to dinner on Friday, at the same restaurant we usually visit on date night. But our experience was distinctly different than usual.

Our waitress was clearly experiencing a reality of which we were not part.

I felt as though I was a character in A Clockwork Orange. If you recall that dystopian novel (or the Kubrick movie), Alex the antihero and his droogs speak in a slang that is not explained in the book, at least not in the first version to be published, the version I read. But after slogging through a few chapters, I found myself understanding the lingo and reading faster and faster as if the text was written in ordinary English.

But I really didn't have enough time at dinner to learn to understand our waitress.

I don't believe that we have been served by this girl before, but I have seen her there. She was dressed in a t-shirt, as all of the wait staff are, but hers was as long as a dress. Long seemed the theme of her ensemble: her dark pants were at least four inches too long, and her shoes were somewhere in the stringy mess of cuffs, although I never saw them.

She moved quickly with some ghostly power, across the room as though she were gliding a couple of inches above the floor. Her face was propped open on the verge of confusion. Her eyes had a shine you see on animals hiding in ditches beside the road.

Everything she said we had to ask her to repeat. Everything.

Because she was talking ninety miles per minute.

Doyouknowwhatyouwanttodrink? We looked at each other, and I could see the Woodsman tamping down a smile, as I was myself. I felt as though I was a stranger in a strange land, not understanding the common customs of the planet.

Areyoureadytoorderordoyouneedmoretime? I truly listened very hard, but I could not decode the sounds she made.

Howdoeseverythingtaste?

Wouldyoulikedessertorareyoureadyforyourcheck?

Finally came the one that made me laugh out loud. Poof. She appeared next to my elbow and said, Wouldyoulikeformeto getyoua--

She couldn't think of the word. The name of the thing she was supposed to provide that would allow me to take my soup home with me.

In broad gestures she mimed the container. About this tall, about this big around, with a lid... and then she said--I kid you not--

youknowoneofthoseleftoverdudes...

Yes, I told her, swallowing my smile, I would like one of those leftover dudes.

We giggled and snorted until we saw her coming back toward the table with the leftover dude, and then we tried to pull it together and act like grownups. Which we look like. But we're not.

You know that saying: I'd like to have some of what she's on?

Neither of us said that.

I hope she got home okay. The way she was moving, she could have started walking and ended up in Chicago by morning.

Bad girl shoes make the world more fun

2009-07-13T19:55:00.006-04:00

I love shoes. Bad girl shoes. Big, sexy shoes. Shoes that make noise. Shoes with accoutrements: ties and buckles and taps and bows. I mean, I absolutely love shoes. Why? Because I don't have a crown and an ermine cape.

Who cares why? I used to be much larger than I am now, and at that time I didn't want to look at myself in the mirror. But I could look down and if I was wearing hot shoes, I felt a little better about myself. Because there was something cute, flashy, noisy, right there on the ends of my legs.

I get tired of Imelda Marcos jokes. Once because Exley said I couldn't do it, I went for an entire year without buying a pair of shoes. That didn't hurt me a bit. I must have had at least fifty pairs, so I could just shop around in my own closet and find something that felt new.

Now I choose not to buy new shoes, because I have put myself on a strict budget and that's where I'm staying until my bills are all paid off. But I don't care. I have shoes and boots and walkers. I have more shoes than I have clothes to go with them. I have Fat Babies and Candies and Bongos and Mudds. Cowboy boots, ankle boots, platforms, and even a pair of wedgies that look like they are made out of an old grey gym shirt. None of my shoes are expensive, because inexpensive means... MORE.

My son says that if he were rich he'd wear a new pair of socks every day. But if I had a big stack of cash, I'd have a lot of expensive shoes. I'm not interested in owning a giant wardrobe because I don't like to shop for clothes, but if you have enough moolah, you can get people to make handmade shoes to fit your feet. Can you imagine the luxury of that?

I clean house in my platform heels with the stereo blaring. That's just the way I roll. If I can't make a job fun, I can't do it. And, because I'm home alone most of the week, there is no one here to roll their eyes or smirk. And what difference does it make, as long as I get done what needs to be done?

It worked for June Cleaver, and it works for me.

If I'm going somewhere special, I start with the shoes and build the ensemble from the ground up. When I buy a pair of shoes, I know what they should be worn with, whether or not I own that article. Thank goodness my mama made sure I could sew.

I know I'm going to get hurt someday. Don't think I don't. I know that you can fall off your shoes and twist an ankle or fall in the street or even pitch headfirst down a flight of stairs. But I take that risk for one clear reason.

I love big bad girl shoes.

I have big feet - size 10. But so does Liz Taylor, and it hasn't stopped her from wearing some of the most exquisitely styled shoes I have seen. Big feet, big shoes. And big shoes are the bomb.

I think I've told you that sometimes I work up a sweat following the moves on a Christina Aguilera video. I wear my favorite platform heels for that. Oh, I love how she jumps when she sings "Ain't No Other Man Like You" - boom boom boom.

Bad girl shoes. Big bad shoes. They make the world go 'round and 'round.

Poetry for Sunday

2009-07-12T09:25:00.010-04:00

I haven't written much poetry in the past ten years, although contemporary poetry was the subject of my master's thesis long long ago. But it's a wonderful habit to have, writing poetry. It focuses and disciplines the mind, and it allows the poet to crystallize a philosophy or thought into images that can be transferred to the reader. A poem says so much more than it says.

I was inspired to get back to this healthy habit by reading Dave King's blog Pics and Poems. If you would like more poetry after you finish here, today Dave has posted these beautiful lines:

Unreal, I thought, him being dead,

with all that life, those plans still unfulfilled.

And more.

I would like to know what you think of the following poem. I drafted it only this morning, and I usually write in layers, going back and over the words to find exactly the ones that most convey my meaning. So this may not be the final incarnation.

(I can't make the poem look the way I want it to. I'm going to have to ask my computer geek mentor Lydia to help me with that.)

Old Love

I may need a stout rod

for the journey but

I can walk it on my own

because of the scent of your skin

because your eyes are the same

sea glass shade as your laugh

because you are here.

I expect certain considerations

a touch on the back

a brief clasping of hands

a kiss that has nothing to do

with a peck. An opening:

your mind into mine, an emptying:

your baggage, the polished suitcase

in which you carry your heart.

And then we fill each other gently

with secrets torn apart and shared

like bread. Spread like a net to keep us

each from falling into wilderness.

Know that I choose

exactly this.

You may expect me

to be more of a trellis

than a blade. More of

a rich dark vein and less—

not at all—of a potion mined

in the crevice where conceit

intersects with air. Forget the old

except for the parts that contain us.

I will keep in my heart for you

a small portrait, a mirror that shows

you standing in your finest pose.

We are too old for games of chance.

Some seeds don’t open

until fire and heat have brazed

the useless outer layers.

May the remainder of your weekend be poetic.

Don't forget that my friend Lydia is taking reservations for her next webinar. In the webinar I took, I learned so much about how to refine the design of my blog and how to use various analytics. And it was a lot of fun too. I blogged about it here.

Casual Friday

2009-07-10T17:50:00.013-04:00

I always have a lot of little notes in my journal that don't turn out to be big enough thoughts to make a blog post. So I thought I'd just give you a random sampling of the things that run through my head. If it turns out to be entertaining, I'll do it again next Friday.

Acorns. The giant oak tree outside is dropping acorns. They started falling slowly, and now it sounds as if someone is throwing handsful of gravel on the roof. We're having a big rain storm now, so that may take care of the rest of them. These are the tiniest little acorns I've ever seen. Even the squirrels don't seem interested.

Name calling. I love it when Keith Olbermann calls Karl Rove "turd blossom." Turd is such a derisive thing to call a man.

Customer service. Why is it so out of fashion to treat customers properly? I don't have to have my ass kissed at a store in order to feel satisfied with my shopping experience, but there is a woman at my Kroger store who practically throws the grocery items across the scanner and down the ramp to the bagger, accompanied by huffing and eye-rolling. (This isn't an isolated incident; it's her ordinary behavior.) I go to WalMart, a harrowing experience at best, and I have to wait for the checkers to stop bitching about their manager long enough to check me out. Attention retailers: If you need someone to give your employees a workshop in common courtesy, I'd be happy to do so.

Ouch. Last week my body decided that it could do without my right arm. I was carrying several big tote bags out the door, and I hit my funny bone so hard on the door knob that I dropped the bags and began to dance around in a circle saying, "Ouch, ouch, ouch, oh, oh, oh." The dogs thought it was a new game. Whoever made up the term "funny bone" was a sadist. The next day I parked the car under a tree and tried to duck out of the door without closing a tree branch in it. I raised up and slammed my shoulder into the side mirror. "Ouch, ouch, ouch, oh, oh, oh." My shoulder looks like an eggplant now. I think I'm leaning to the right. What do I need this shoulder for if it can't hold a tote bag?

Nancy Grace. She's a mean little woman with a blonde helmet of hair who gave birth to twins at the age of 49. She is a former prosecutor from the South, Atlanta I think, who comments on HLN about crime and punishment. She says some of the most outrageous things. Last week she said, "I just had to bless out a guy who was in front of our building smoking." I'll bet that guy quit smoking cold turkey; when Nancy doesn't like something, her face looks like she's holding a tiny piece of shit on the tip of her tongue. It scares me, and I'm just sitting out here in TV land. Yesterday she called the people at Michael Jackson's funeral "star suckers." She talks a little like powdergirl, only she's not funny and powdergirl is.

Glass globes. We found the glass globes that belong on our dining room chandelier in the garage wrapped in newspaper from 1984. That was when the old guy who built this house for his family was still living in it. I wonder what made him take those globes and store them in the garage, so that the dining room light fixture looked bare and the light bulbs showed. I just can't think of a plausible story to cover it.

Cheryl. I went to high school with a girl who wanted to be a vampire. That attitude wasn't as common as it is today, with all the vampire literature available. Back then we had Dark Shadows and Nosferatu and some Christopher Lee movies. (I loved Dark Shadows because one of the characters was a beautiful witch named Angelique.) Cheryl wore black and was as pale as a ghost. She may have invented the goth look. One day when we were out on the street after dark, Cheryl started screaming and crying because the bats came out of Virgil Roberts' chimney (as they did every night), and she thought one of them was going to get tangled in her long dank hair. Now, what kind of vampire would be anything but loving toward those little creatures? I lost track of her, but I often wonder if Cheryl ever got her wish.

Peanut allergy. I have an allergy to packing peanuts. I hate them. Those little things are so charged with static electricity that you open the box and - boof - they're all over you. You can't even shake them off your fingers without throwing a fit. Don't ever send me a box full of those things. I don't care what else is in the box. Just. Don't.

Market research. I didn't do enough research before I settled on the name "Sugarcain." I chose it because (1) my last name is Cain, and (2) I was half-way raised in Honolulu (where they have a lot of sugarcane). Make a google search and you'll find several other people already using the name. (Yes, I like to google myself and everyone else I know.) There is an entertainment company, whatever that is, with a blog design by Sebastian Schmeig, which I find to be a comical name. Then there is Sugar Cain, "actress, model, and spokeswoman," who directed and acted in a movie called "Rama." They probably don't have it at Netflix. Then there is Merrit Patrick "Sugar" Cain, a pitcher in the major leagues during the 1930s. Then a guy calling himself Sugar Cain who has two pictures on Flickr. Then, finally, me, my Etsy store, my blog, and an old stale entry for me in some business directory that clearly hasn't been updated since 2004. If I blog hard, I ought to be able to get to the top of the google page, because none of these other sugars are anything to tweet about. It's only a small dream.

Pixie. Little Pixie wanted her own Twitter account. She will be tweeting about life on the street and how she found her forever home, and she'll be looking for ways to help other shelter dogs. She's @PixiePuppy on Twitter. I'll put up a link when I remember how to do it.

Well, reading over this post, I am not sure that casual Friday has been a big success. But what else am I going to do with all my little thoughts if I don't tell them to you? What do you think?

What's My Line?

2009-07-09T18:09:00.008-04:00

I get paid to read. Yep. If you are a serious reader, you recognize how cool that is. There's a little bit more to the job of editing - correcting computer files and styling them for the designers, negotiating with authors without alienating them - but the heart of the job is reading critically and uncovering all manner of infelicities.* Editors make writers look good. It's an important job, although not highly compensated, except sometimes intellectually.

But, if you can believe it, I'm fortunate enough to be able to say that reading for a living is not the coolest job I've ever had. Not by a long shot.

I used to work at Old Frontier Town. We had donkeys and goats on the streets, a shootout every noon, a hanging at two, and gift shops in all the little buildings of the town. A steamtrain was molested by outlaws on the hour. The guy in the jail sold t-shirts, and the couple in the trading post sold penny candy and all manner of hillbilly paraphernalia (such as the hillbilly switchblade, which was made from one and a half clothespins and a rubber band). I was in the undertaker's selling handmade baskets.

I dressed in a prairie dress with an apron - yards and yards of pastel cotton print - and wore a bonnet when I went out on the street. It was if the baskets I made were magic. No matter how many I made after hours, I could never keep my shop well stocked. Baskets, cradles, chairs with caned seats flew out of the shop and went home with tourists from all over the world. No one told me what to make or how to make it. I kept raising my prices, and customers kept buying. It was a charmed life.

Was that the best job I've ever had? No.

I once worked as an assistant to The Amazing Gregor, magician extraordinaire. His wife was pregnant and had to stay off her feet, so she coached us, lying on an antique chaise in the back of the theater. I got the job partly because I fit the wardrobe, and every day I got to choose whatever gown and fancy heels I wanted to wear on stage.

Twice a day and three times on Saturdays I was cut in three parts and reassembled. Two blades of surgical steel! Gregor would shout and crash the blades together like cymbals before he pushed a blade across my knees and another across my chest. For that illusion, I screamed on cue. I agreed not to disclose his secrets.

We had rabbits and doves and self-lighting cigarettes. Umbrellas with hollow handles and magnetic playing cards. A box with a false bottom and a carton with a hinged door in the back. A box that made Gregor's head disappear. Flash paper and Chinese rings and a straightjacket.

And applause.

Well, I can't choose. I've had great jobs. Jobs you wanted to be on time for. Jobs that were more fun than not. Jobs you can't believe someone would pay you for.

What is the best job you've ever had? What job would you have if there were no limitations on your imagination? Whose job would you like to do for a day?

*Other kinds of editors exist, but this is not a lesson in publishing, so I'll leave that subject for another time.

Pixie and Taz: I Didn't Know You Cared So Much

2009-07-08T17:33:00.022-04:00

I think the first time Taz became really aware of Pixie's existence was when he was gaily galloping through the house, joyous and oblivious, and she shot out of the kneehole of the desk and took him to school.

She kept schooling him for six months or more. Every day. He could do nothing right. She bullied him into giving up his food, stole his treats, and tried to scare him into packing his bags and leaving. He was long-suffering. He was humble. He did not put up a fight about anything at first.

Taz loves attention. He wants to camp out on humans as often as possible. This was completely disconcerting to Pixie. The poor little neurotic thing, she would trot in circles with her tongue hanging out, worrying about change and its implications.

Finally, she decided that she could not let the boy get all the human affection. Perhaps she could enjoy a little of that too. She started to jump up in a chair with us and after a year or two even learned to give kisses, although if she stops to think about it, she cannot possibly kiss anyone. Kissing can be frightening.

Pixie's shell grew thinner. Sometimes I would see her looking at something Taz was doing with a look on her face that on a human would mean, Oh, that's how we do it. She did not know how to be a dog, but with Taz's joyous example, she was learning.

You would be amazed at the number of people who torture my dog until I get mad and take the dog and refuse to let people touch her. Strangers, relatives, friends, acquaintances. I say, "She is afraid of people." If you ask me, anyone with a little bit of empathy would not try to scare her further, thereby proving to her that her suspicions are well founded.

Taz is very clever, makes up his own tricks, hates to wear clothes, loves to play hide and seek, and hates dry dog food. The way he plays is a treat to watch. I can't imagine feeling that much abandon. He is a fierce hunter in the small backyard, terror to birds, squirrels, and snakes. One day I saw him on his back legs trying to jump up into the sky and get the traffic helicopter.

So Pixie's shell melted little by little. She began to let Taz into her bed, and they'd lie side by side with their heads resting on rumps. Pixie would groom and groom Taz, cleaning his whole face and inside his ears, until he would make a noise that meant, Alright already.

Taz began to settle down and care about what we think. He's very sensitive and can't stand to be spoken to harshly. He minds well unless he's in the presence of other dogs. We don't know what's up with that. I think he needs good citizen classes. At home he's quite hen-pecked.

Pixie still jumps on him sometimes when he's playing with abandon. He will be chasing a ball or just dashing through the house, and little bitty Pixie launches herself at him. Even though she's starting all the trouble, I still get mad at Taz for squeaking her.

Once a little girl at the dog park looked down at Taz and said, "Oh, hi, little wolf guy." I think that's really cute.

Taz claiming the Woodsman as his own.

He still prefers men, and if he gets loose on the street, he runs up to women and barks. I don't know what's up with that either. God forbid he ever gets loose. He leaps about the streets barking with joy and accosting people with dogs on leashes. I have to keep running after him saying, "He's not vicious, just stupid." He chases bicyclists and children on Big Wheels, barking and trying to herd them. He went into the house of a neighbor who left his front door open and the Woodsman had to track him down.

The funniest thing he does: He runs up to the front door of every house, smells the doormat, and pees on the bushes. He continues down one side of the block and up the other, barking, sniffing, peeing, leaping, ever joyous. He knows where he lives and comes home when he feels like it. I try never to let him run out the front door.

So Pixie is becoming a real dog now. She is still easily scared but she has learned the basic commands - sit, down, stay, come, wait. Taz refuses to lie down on command, although he is often eager to lie down. When he is ready for bed, he unmakes my bed and crawls between the sheets. We took to calling him B(eauregard) Tazwell because he isn't really a tasmanian devil anymore. He's older and smoother now.

When we went to the family reunion a few weeks ago, I asked Exley to babysit for Taz. Two little dogs are a lot to handle with thirty people, a lot of them kids, and Taz has a habit of whining nonstop in the car. Exley's backyard is fenced and overgrown with the sort of things that interest a joyous dog. He thinks it's a canine wonderland and Exley likes him, so I didn't feel bad about leaving him.

Exley took this self-portrait for me so you'd know who I'm talking about.

I never expected this to happen, considering the way she acts, but Pixie was bereft without her partner. She hardly wanted to eat, and she just lay at my feet except when she needed a walk. She seemed so sad, and she wouldn't let me get two inches away from her. I imagined she was thinking, Well, she got rid of that other dog, so she could be planning to leave me here.

She was so happy to see that crazy joyful boy again. She twirled and twirled with joy. Somewhere in the past two years she's learned to love him. Some of his habits still annoy her, and you know how it is when a guy gets on your last nerve... you have to school him.

Pixie and Taz: A Love/Hate Story

2009-07-07T18:18:00.011-04:00

I got my little Chihuahua Pixie from a dog rescue in Nicholasville, Kentucky. That's her on the left in the pink linen frock. Nobody knew where she came from; a guy in Nicholasville said he tried for a week to catch her, but she was so fast and scared that he couldn't get close to her. That's all we know, except that she has a tattoo (A-1) in her ear. I swear sometimes I think about contacting that pet psychic from Animal Planet because I can't even guess what the poor little thing went through before I took her home with me.

The rescue lady suggested that a breeder probably put the tattoo in her ear. I know that she was isolated and not properly socialized. Maybe she was a lab specimen. She was clearly underweight and hungry, but she would not eat anything. After two days, I took her to the vet, who injected water under her skin because she hadn't had a drop to drink since I adopted her. I finally learned that if I put her in the bathroom with her food dish and closed the door, she would gobble the whole thing in minutes.

When I brought her home, she was so frightened of me that she jumped into the cubbyhole in the entertainment center and would not come out. I finally put her bed in there to comfort her, even though the rescue lady had warned me not to let her hide.

It broke my heart to look at her. She didn't even walk upright: she almost crawled on her belly. If anyone reached down to her, she shrank to half her size and put up her little front paw as if to say, Please don't hit me. She was afraid of feet and brooms and purses and kids. Her ears were tightened to her head like two little fur and flesh roses. Her tail was so tightly clamped into her butt crack that our neighbor argued with me that she was a male. I had to say, "That's just the end of her tail clamped under her belly." (Now, stop grabbing; you're frightening the life out of her, old woman, I wanted to say.)

I felt like I had a stuffed animal instead of a pet. She just sat in that little bed I got at the shelter with her eyes so wide I could see the whites all the way around her irises. If I tried to take her out on a leash, she hit the deck and would not move at all. I would reach in and pull her out of the entertainment center and cuddle her and coo to her, but she was not impressed. The minute I let go of her, right back into the cubbyhole she went.

This went on for months. I began to give up hoping she would come out of whatever trauma had reduced her to a fear-ridden shadow of a dog. I wondered whether I was going to be able to increase the quality of her life at all. I read dog behavior books and online articles, but none mentioned a dog as pitiful and frightened as my little girl. My own dog wouldn't even take a treat from my hand, and she cringed as though I was going to beat her every time I wanted to touch her.

I put a small set of steps beside the bed, but she only used them to affect an escape. Until one night while I was lying in bed in the dark thinking before sleep. I felt a rough little tongue in the middle of my back. Pixie was showing me as much love as she could by sneaking up behind my back when she thought I was asleep, giving me little puppy kisses in the night.

I felt like Annie Sullivan the first time Helen Keller spelled a word and knew what it meant. I felt as though I'd just triumphed over one of the biggest problems I'd been given to solve thusfar.

The Woodsman and I came up with the idea that another dog was what Pixie needed. Even if it didn't help her come out of her shell, we thought, at least she would have company. We wanted to find a dog about the same size as Pix but much more outgoing. (Any dog was going to be more outgoing, but we wanted to find her the right partner.)

Eventually we found a little grey Chihuahua mix online. He was living with a foster family just one county over from where I lived. I filled out the application and waited for an appointment to meet the little guy. The shelter sent someone to check out my place and make sure I could accommodate him.

The day we took Pixie to meet the little guy, he did not pay any attention to my little girl, even though she had learned to walk on a leash by that time and wasn't nearly as pitiful as she had been. We took her into the play yard where the little guy was running full blast from one end of the yard to the other, through tunnels and over hurdles as if they weren't even there. Pixie did not have eyes for him; she just stood under my skirt, her favorite place to hide when anyone looked her way.

Lenny didn't pay a bit of attention to Pixie either. But the moment he locked eyes with the Woodsman, his life changed. He wanted to be chased, and the Woodsman obliged him. Quite a bit of chasing was necessary before he stopped for a break. Then he just flopped on the ground at the Woodsman's feet and stayed there.

After the appropriate business transactions, we took him home. I began to doubt our choice the moment we walked into the house. He hiked his leg and tried to pee on one of only two chairs I owned back then. He only had two speeds: full out or dead asleep. He was clearly a man's dog. He didn't want anything to do with me. It was probably the fault of the weird foster mother, who said his name like "Lennnnn-ay!"

When we met him, he was wearing a tight little muscle shirt. When we took it off, we could see his ribs. Oddly, he had no interest in eating, even though he was very thin. We soon found out that the poor little thing was full of worms. I let out a little scream when I saw a white worm log instead of the dog turd I expected. He smelled funny, and he began to shed most of his fur, which was dull and as scratchy as a floor brush.

When we called him Lenny, he winced as though it hurt him. We discussed a new name. Duke? Shadow? Ghostboy? Speedy? "He's kind of like the Tasmanian Devil," I said, while the dog whipped from the front of the house to the back, disturbing anything in his way.

The Woodsman turned to the dog and said, "Would you like to be called Taz?" The little dog leaped into the Woodsman's lap and leaned against him, resting his head against the Woodsman's chest. We decided he liked the sound of that name. He came when we called him that, although every once in a while we'd say "Lennnnn-ay!" just to see him cringe.

Did Pixie like her new partner? No, she did not. Not one little bit.

Tomorrow I will tell you the rest of the story, how Pixie was cured and how Taz became Beauregard Tazwell. I don't think you'll be disappointed.

Blue squirrels and other creative endeavors

2009-07-06T21:22:00.017-04:00

I've always had a problem with unimaginative teachers, when I was a student, and later as the mother of a smart little boy with a creative meteor trailing behind him.

One day my son came home from school with a large picture he'd drawn and colored. It featured a curly branch with a few green leaves and a big blue squirrel eating an acorn. It was magnificent.

When I took it from him to put it on the refridgerator, as was our usual practice, I noticed a note stapled to the corner.

It read: "Dear Mrs. Whatever My Name Was Back Then, Please tell the Jaybird to color things the correct colors."

WTF?

We were an artsy family. My father painted in watercolor and made us a fake cardboard fireplace to hang our Christmas stockings on. My mother embroidered and crocheted elaborate patterns in thread and yarn. I sculpted, first with Play Dough and later with air-dry clay. One of my sisters drew little girls with big eyes and decorated them with sayings about love and determination, and my other sister made dolls. My brother constructed vehicles of meticulously layered brown paper sacks (I think that was only one summer) and by high school was painting complex paintings in oils. These are just a few of our talents. We never saw a craft that we thought was worth buying; "I can do that" was our motto.

We played cut-throat Masterpiece, our favorite game. My siblings and I still play it when we get together. My brother, who attends the Art Institute in Chicago, now can show off by telling us which of the masterpieces he's seen in real life and what size they actually are. As I said, we're just an artsy fartsy family. Neither of my parents finished high school, but they knew what they liked.

The best thing my parents provided was a shelf full of art books with every painting of every old master known to man, starting with the cave paintings and moving up to Pollack and Hopper. I used to like to look at them because they contained so many naked people, but I was also absorbing centuries of color and style.

So I ripped that snotty little note off the Jaybird's squirrel and told him to go to school the next day and ask his teacher if she'd ever heard of Picasso. The Jaybird knew what I meant. He could identify all the paintings in the Masterpiece game too.

I was always doing things like that. I always thought I knew more than the teachers, and I was not willing to let them mold my child in ways I found short-sighted and designed to make him docile and unthinking and dull.

When the Jaybird got off of the bus the next day, he said, "Yes, Mom, the teacher has heard of Picasso, and Picasso is not in second grade." He handed me a summons to appear before the teacher.

My mom refused to go to the school unless we killed someone. She told us to fight our own battles. She said that if she heard that the teacher had paddled us, she'd paddle us again when we got home. If we wanted her to come to an open house or Halloween parade, she'd look toward the ceiling and sigh out a lungful of cigarette smoke. That was the end of it.

I wasn't that thrilled about going to school, but I got a ride into town the next day. I met with the Jaybird's teacher in her miniature room. I'm not going to go into what I said after I sat on a very small chair and listened to the teacher suggesting that I was doing my child a disservice by being less than conventional. She explained how she had been taught to interpret a child's mental state by whether or not he could color items the colors they were in real life.

Oh, boy.

Suffice it to say that her eyes were wide and her hands were clenched when I left.

I did not tell my child to color the correct colors. I said, "You can look outside if you want to see a brown squirrel. Color things whatever color you want."

He looked at me and said, "I love you."

Isn't that what we mothers do everything for? To hear that.

Children are naturally creative. A good teacher can bring that out and make more of it, and a bad teacher can squash it into a little puddle of mush on which the janitor will sprinkle that smelly green sawdusty stuff.

Some kids are lucky enough to have a shelf of oversize art books, along with tape and glue and macaroni and paint and modeling clay and oil cloths to spread like picnic blankets. My parents, no matter how odd - and they were odd - and no matter how lacking in academic credentials, provided us with materials and adhesives and ideas.

Please do that for a kid.

The Twitter girls want pictures

2009-07-05T07:57:00.002-04:00

My friend Pea and I took these photos at lunch so we can use them for future sky paintings.

This is for Mariam. The stupid look on my face comes from trying to use the timer on my camera. "I wonder why this darn camera won't--oh. It did work..."

Happy birthday, America

2009-07-04T08:04:00.008-04:00

Happy Independence Day, American readers.

Here we are getting ready for the dog and bike parade, where neighbors decorate their small vehicles and ride past to celebrate our nation's birthday. And ice cream and hot dogs are provided!

My dog Pixie may wear her white summer frock, although she does have a pink linen number that matches my blog, and we just haven't decided. She has nothing red, white, and blue, being much more subtle than that in her fashion choices.

I haven't prepared a nice philosophical post for you, although I had hoped to. I bitch a lot about politics (hey, what about Palin? Can't stop grinning but need to know more), but I love this country and want to make it better. But I do have something to say to our dear elected officials. So, let's break for this message.

Dear President Obama and Vice President Biden,

I love you both. I really do, even though you, Joe Biden, come from the deregulated state of Delaware, where credit card companies have gathered and schemed to bankrupt me and many other fine Americans. I can forgive you for that if you work hard for me now. I do think you are trying your best.

Being in the lower lower middle class, I have no spare change. No one is promising to stimulate me. The measly amount you've added to my check each month doesn't buy dog food. And now I am paying (at least this one month anyway) 27.5 percent interest on money I borrowed from the usurers. That's my situation.

I love getting your email. I like it that you want to keep me apprised of your situation since we are all in this very big, very leaky boat together. Receiving your updates and watching your videos makes me feel as though we're friends. I don't mind that you ask me to tell my friends about your plans or attend block parties or contact my representatives.

But will you please stop asking me for money? Why don't you fine the people who got us into this mess, or cancel some of the pork, or cut some programs that are ridiculous, or - whatever. I gave you money I couldn't afford to give so that you could get this job. I've supported you all the way. Now you do your job with the money America has left, because I am tapped out. Scraping the bottom of the barrel. Doing without extras. Seeing no raise in sight.

Please don't stop writing. Just give me a break.

Thank you, Mr. President and Mr. Vice President.

Sincerely,

Angelique

Now for something completely different:

Understand Blue's blog webinar

2009-07-02T19:23:00.005-04:00

I'm live blogging from a webinar presented by Lydia Fiedler of Understand Blue. She is showing us how to set up and maintain a blog. She's a hoot, and she knows what she's talking about.

I may be behind the times, but I am amazed at this webinar thing (even though that is a stupid sounding name). The Woodsman was not the least bit amazed, because he attends webinars all the time at work. So I'd be glad to tell you more, but I suspect you already know.

I followed a link from Lydia's email message and went to a site called "GoToMeeting." The name reminds me of the Sunday go to meetin' something in that Blues Brothers song. After downloading a little bitty thing called "GoToMeeting Quick Connect," I was in a chat room with Lydia.

I liked hearing Lydia's western drawl. She gave me a mini-tutorial while we waited for the others to show up. I know, I'm old, but I was also amazed by the fact that I could see everything on Lydia's computer screen. Even her cursor moving.

Lydia loves Google. Everything Google. But she doesn't work for Google. She just loves it.

Ooops. The webinar is heating up, so I'm going to have to pay attention. I'll tell you all about it later.

Okay, I'm back.

Lydia taught us a hundred things about Google, Blogger, Analytics, Feed Burner, SiteMeter, and all you need to know to start a blog. Right now. Tonight. If you are computer confused like me, let Lydia know what you need to know, and she'll teach you too.

As amazed as I might have been, I couldn't at first get the hang of the software. I was making myself laugh. I could hear Lydia speaking through my headset, but she had muted the participants to avoid feedback. I just couldn't stop trying to speak to her out loud, even when it came to saying, "Something is wrong with the sound. I can't hear you."

Any webinar from Understand Blue is highly recommended. Lydia takes questions as she makes her presentation and tailors the discussion to the participants' interests.

And my favorite thing: Every once in a while, Lydia would breathe slowly into the microphone like a tiny horse in a far off land called Texas.

I can no longer pay my stupid tax

2009-07-01T16:35:00.009-04:00

Once in Indianapolis, my dog Pixie flew out of the Jeep and dashed across five lanes of traffic. She made it across four of them, then was rolled by a van and tossed onto a strip of grass by the road.

I could do absolutely nothing but scream and grab my head. I thought my little girl was going to be squashed on the road right in front of my eyes. My vision went completely away for a moment, and I could not get my breath. My knees buckled. I thought I was going to faint.

Fortunately, Pixie was only stunned, and her confusion kept her sitting there on the grass until I got across the road and picked her up. Miraculously, nothing at all was wrong with her. I was in worse shape than she was.

I had a worse shock than that yesterday when I opened my mail.

My vision grew blurry. I had trouble catching my breath, as if I had run a long way. Cold needles flew into my scalp, and my head tightened up until it was the size of a coconut. My heart pounded, and I started to sway and grope for the back of a chair to steady myself. I felt as though I might feel a little better if I took a two-by-four and hit myself repeatedly over the head.

The interest rate on two of my credit cards had risen from 4.99 percent to 22 and 27 percent. If I didn't like that, the small print informed me, I could pay the total balance and go on my merry way.

Oh, right. If I could write a check for the balance, why would I be carrying it at all?

I recently read an article, in Newsweek I think, that warned that credit card companies were poised to raise rates across the board on people who were faithfully paying their bills. These loyal customers would have to bear the burden of all those who have defaulted on their accounts.

I just never thought that it would happen to me. Because if it did, it would be terribly unfair. I follow the rules. I pay my bills. I intend to pay everything I owe. And I hate unfairness.

Okay. Like a lot of other idiots, I charged while the charging was good. While changing jobs, being out of work, freelancing when I could, getting a divorce, and moving residences, I took credit where I could get it. I got offers in the mail every week. The fear of grand mal failure made me vow not to think of it until later. When I had a steady income again. When I could afford to live within my means again.

If I could just keep all the bills in the air, juggling, juggling, secretly juggling and throwing up when the queasy stomach got to be too much. I couldn't talk to anyone else about it. It was my dirty little secret, as if I had run up a big bill for internet porn or bought five hundred pairs of shoes I didn't need.

I was raised to save money until I could afford what I want. To pay cash or not buy. I didn't forget that lesson, but I pushed it far into the back of my mind. Charging items such as hospital bills, groceries, medications, and other essentials left me a heftly little bundle to repay.

I got through the rough patch and got a decent job and took stock. The picture was not rosy. Handling money has always made me queasy. Growing up poor made me leary of running short. Not having what I need. Now I was going to have to learn how to manage because l was not going to be saved by lottery or white knight.

I made a strict budget and followed it for three years, paying off thousands of the dollars I owed. The total amount wasn't equal to my student loans, and I had payed them off easily in ten years. I set a goal of five years to pay off my stupidity.

I never once thought that I wouldn't have to pay the bills I incurred, but I was naive enough to think that transferring a balance was an honest business deal. I really thought that some regulatory or government agency forced companies to behave ethically. I did not have a clue about the slow-mailing, due-date-changing tricks credit card companies can use to trip you up. And sure, I read the fine print about how they can bend you over and screw you real slowly at their own convenience. I just couldn't believe they would do something that unfair.

They act as though they don't really want me to be able to pay my bills. Do they actually prefer to see me default on my obligations? They have pushed me right up to the brink of bankruptcy, and at my age that would ruin my finances for the rest of my life.

I've already lost investments - who knows how much; I'm not even looking at that. I don't own a house because I have been trying like hell to live within my means. I have not received a raise for two years because the university I work for is as strapped as I am. I drive a car that doesn't even belong to me, and if I didn't, I'd ride a bike because I can't afford to own a car and probably couldn't get a loan if I asked for one.

My mom used to say: Who ever said life was fair? No one promised it; I just hate being forced into a situation where I'm being hurt and I have no choice but to bear it.

It's been 24 hours since I opened that mail, and I haven't stopped shaking yet. I think my heart is beating irregularly. I have thrown up and sweated and yelled while I was telling the story to my boyfriend. And I can't see my way out of this fog.

I have read that you can sometimes negotiate with the credit card companies, but I can't call them until I know I'm not going to break down in tears or open my toolbox full of creative and ridiculously pointed curses and talk like a jerk. After all, the person I get on the phone will just be some poor peon who had nothing to do with setting their company's policy.

I'm completely fucked.

All good things must end

2009-06-29T21:35:00.020-04:00

I hate to give you another of my lazy posts full of photos, but I am dog tired and can't think of all the amusing things I've been storing up to tell you. Tomorrow I'll be back to normal (as far as I know).

All the treats and lovin' just wore my girl Pixie out.

Most of my first cousins showed up for the festivities. (Hey, where were Davey and Becky and Eric?) Except for the weather (hot hot hot), things went off without a hitch. Aren't we a motley crew? I'm the fat one on the right. Please believe me when I tell you that we are not always so sweaty and red-faced. Our collars are wet because we were forced to wear wet wash cloths on the backs of our necks so we wouldn't die of heat stroke.

This is my mama (left) and her two sisters. They are as sweet as honey. They are participants in the southern belle relocation program, whereby steel magnolias who were born in some other part of the country are retired to Tennessee to live out their days making seven-layer salads and saying, "Well, bless your heart."

Here's the house at the end of Mom's lane. I don't think anyone lives there, but there is a big television antenna on the roof, so you have to wonder.

We don't have to pay attention to this sign. We have connections.

Here's what I wanted to drive home, but it wasn't quite ready for me.

I stayed an extra day, so you know I had fun. There were no sister incidents. In fact, except for a couple of demon children, there were no unpleasantries at all. Just for the record, I believe that children should be taught the proper ways to interact with dogs. Then perhaps they will be ready for human contact.

I do have a funny story. My cousin Suzie has a sweet little boy named Michael. He was petting my Pixie gently and exclaiming over how much he liked her, although he is generally afraid of dogs. "Is this a Chihuahua?" he asked me. When I said yes, he told me, "This is the first Chihuahua I've ever touched!" While I was laughing at that, he added, "Well, except for that one that ran away in the woods." I never got a chance to ask him why a Chihuahua was in the woods, because we were laughing too much.

I'll be back to normal and back to actual blogging tomorrow. Thanks for vacationing with me.

The reunion continues

2009-06-28T22:17:00.008-04:00

The sun came up through the fog.

Spiders had been busy during the night.

My heroic mom killed a dive bombing bee with the hairspray she had handy.

Pixie, my best girlfriend, was very hot.

An unsteady hand on the camera in the cemetery made this nice ghostly shot.

Update from the reunion

2009-06-27T23:30:00.004-04:00

Just a quick note to say that the drive to Tennessee to the family reunion was uneventful and pleasant. We passed up a lot of chances to create fireworks.

The roads are narrow but scenic. The bad part of the day was that the temperature reached 97 (heat index 105 degrees F), there was a minor blow-up concerning sleeping arrangements, and I don't enjoy kids. The food was good, and I managed not to eat bad things. I really did.

I wanted to stop at Dinosaur World, but the schedule wouldn't allow it. After all, I had the buns for the cookout.

I promise more news and photos tomorrow. Stay tuned.

Mother and child reunion

2009-06-26T22:07:00.004-04:00

I'm on my way to a family reunion, my mother's family, not the crazy side of the family. About 30 people are planning to show up, from the East Coast and the Midwest and the South.

Joyous gatherings like this I usually find somewhat stressful. My mom and I get together and talk nonstop like magpies. My sister and I can do the same, although we can also fall into a disagreement and avoid each other for the weekend. Sometimes that sort of intense catching up can be fun, and sometimes it can be exhausting. Then there is all the coordination and bossing around; Mom has to do a lot of that because she is the oldest sister. So am I.

The long table is always laden with dishes. I told you how I have begun to avoid dishes, which have hidden within them delicious morsels of fat and carbs that at one time I would have loved to eat but now I won't. Because I'm stubborn. Because I'm smart. Because I have somehow flipped a switch in my brain and now many of the calorie laden foods I have wanted to gorge on in the past do not appeal to me. We went to Golden Coral last weekend, and I was getting kind of sick at what other people were eating - just the shear amount in some cases. They seemed to take the "all you can eat" thing to be a challenge.

I've lost 5 pounds since I started to walk purposefully 30 minutes a day. That's not too big of a chunk out of the day, is it? I'm still not hating it, and I'm trying to stay positive until it's a habit. My mom has an oval track mowed out of the pasture so I'll have a place to walk.

Having felt cranky and moody and low for the past few weeks, I took a couple of days off work to make a nice long weekend. I'll rest up and finish cleaning on Monday, and back to work on Tuesday.

So I will try to blog every day while I'm gone. If I can't manage that (not sure how much computer time I can beg), I should at least be able to post some photos from the festivities.

Remember that Christina Aguilera video I like to follow for good sweaty exercise? Well, today it was the king of pop. Every news channel I usually watch was full of nothing but Michael Jackson, so I took advantage of it and danced with him when I wasn't moving furniture and sorting paper. I'm not a fan, but the music is very danceable, and I don't think Michael would find it objectionable, except for the way I dance. Sweat was shed, and that's my measurement for whether I worked hard enough.

The photo at the head of this post is the car I drive, which the Woodsman waxed and shined and scrubbed. If you look close, you can see the flowerbed he planted reflected in the side of the car. I think it looks great, especially for a 17-year-old car. It's a Thunderbird Super Coupe, 1992. Some people love this car so much they have a club for owners.

When I went to an interview for the job I have now, I drove this car, which I had parked under a mimosa tree for about a month beforehand. The car was covered with bird doo and desicated mimosa blooms that had stuck. The back seat was full of books stacked every which way, and the passenger seat held a multi-colored afghan that my dog Pixie likes to nest in when we travel.

You don't expect your prospective employer to get a look at your car when you interview, but I had to park at a meter, and the meter had to be fed. My (now) boss volunteered to go out and do it. He came back laughing, but didn't say anything during the interview. He later hired me, but he still likes to tease me about the way my car looked: "Exactly the kind of car I expect an editor to drive," he says.

Have a good weekend, and I'll post something tomorrow.

My daily egg

2009-06-25T18:13:00.007-04:00

I went to a rumpled, overweight nutritionist. It seemed ironic that she would advise me to give up my daily egg when her practices weren't working too well for her.

She pointed me in the direction of Weight Watchers and advised me to join a gym. Hmm. So that's what nutritionists do. I was hoping for a simple diet plan that I could easily follow. I'm broke, and if I need exercise I'm not going to pay to get it.

I got much better advice from powdergirl: Food is fuel. I have lost 3 pounds since I started walking purposefully and pondering the food I will eat. I hope I can keep it up.

Last November I learned that I was diabetic. That piece of news was totally unexpected and threw me off a little. None of the medical professionals were able to give me a good idea of a simple plan to follow. If this disease is so prevalent today, why isn't it easy to find good advice?

One doctor did tell me that if I would lose as little as 20 pounds, I might not need medication. I want that. So I am learning how to eat heathfully at the ripe old age of 53.

I had to do my own research, reading a whole shelf of books and websites galore, and testing my blood before and after I ate a food and noting the effects on my blood glucose level. I found the foods that I can eat and keep my levels reasonable. Very few of them are carbs.

I would have thought that I would lose weight just by giving up the six Cokes I liked to drink in a day. Add to that the fact that I have always been an absolute sugar hound and now I consume a teaspoon of sugar a day for my first cup of tea in the morning.

A big secret about carbs is that the fewer you eat, the fewer you want. I would have never believed it myself, but I sure am relieved to have lost my taste for them without a big battle.

Now I eat foods, not dishes. Dishes have rice and pasta and gravy and bread. But I can make a nice little picnic from a handful of berries, some almonds, and yogurt. I have learned to appreciate my food with my eyes: a favorite cobalt-colored plate, with sliced peaches and a strawberry and a dollop of vanilla yogurt. Beautiful. A ripe tomato from the farmers market with a scoop of cottage cheese on top, sprinkled with red pepper. A work of art.

I stay away from those "sugar free" foods since I found corn syrup on the ingredients list of a so-called sugar-free whipped topping. Instead of trying to replicate my favorite desserts in sugar-free form myself, now I just eat a little fresh or frozen fruit or a nice piece of dark chocolate or warm milk with a dash of cinnamon.

No potatoes, no white bread, no cake. Aside from the cake, I don't miss it.

I do like using Splenda, but I have my doubts about whether it is advisable to eat something that has been molecularly altered. Since I gave up Coke, I have developed a taste for lemonade made with Splenda, but the jury is still out on that one.

For the first time in my life I've found an exercise I don't completely hate. I eat six small meals a day with a lot of low glycemic impact fiber and protein. A nutritionist should know these things.

Are you thinking what I'm thinking? Maybe this disease is not such a bad thing for me.

I'm not giving up my egg.

Curly bubs

2009-06-24T19:07:00.011-04:00

I want to save the world. I used to despair because I knew I couldn't. I'm older and I hope a little wiser now, and I'm beginning to see that I have to do all that I can as an individual to make my footprint as small as possible. (I have really big feet.) And then I have to try to pass on my attitude to anyone else the least bit susceptible.

I am not a proselytizer, so I guess I will have to charm people into it. Hmmmm. I may get an idea here in a moment. I know that all of my regular readers care about taking care of the planet, and I don't want to be preaching to the choir. Instead, I'll tell you what we do, and you tell me more things I can do.

Down here you'll hear people call light bulbs "bubs." I have to say that this particular pronunciation cracks me up when I hear it. I like to call those energy efficient bulbs "curly bubs." Even though the color of the light takes some getting used to and I have to let the bedroom light warm up before it puts out enough light to read by, we replaced all the bubs that we could with the curly kind. We try not to leave lights burning when we're not in a room, although I am guilty of that sometimes when I'm alone and the house seems really still and dark.

I take my own shopping bags with me to the store. It's no trouble at all to keep a tote full of shopping bags by the front door or in the car, and you don't have to carry home those nasty bags that get stuck in trees and line the ditches and gather in the sea and choke turtles and cause cows to starve. That plastic bag you brought home can last a thousand years on the earth. The U.S. uses 100 billion bags a year and only 2 percent of those are recycled. All of the plastic ever made still exists on the earth. That scares me.

It's like the Mart of Wal - I stole that phrase from the Evil Twin's Wife - is working for the devil the way they put one item in each bag so that when you get home you have enough bags to fill up a bag and you have to remember to return it to the store next time you go. Don't let them palm them off on you. I don't know what kind of thrill they get from contributing so much to an island of plastic trash the size of Texas that floats in the Pacific. Hey, that's my ocean; I was born on an island in the middle of it.

Woooooooooo. I am finished preaching. I don't find that charming, and charm was my plan just a few paragraphs above.

Our water heater is gas, and I would prefer electricity because the rates are cheaper, but as a renter I have nothing to say about that. I only wash a full load of wash, and I run the dishwasher once or twice a week. That does mean more rinsing, but I don't get carried away with it.

I drive one of the Woodsman's vehicles, and I drive 4.2 miles a day to work and back. 21 miles a week, 84 miles a month. I fill the tank every six to eight weeks. I do believe that if I want to put my money where my mouth is I would walk or ride the bus, but I don't. I like to be the captain of my ship. I don't drive far is as much as I can say for myself. When I'm a more experienced purposeful walker, I will see if I can make that walk.

I buy cotton clothes. I know that cotton sucks up water and soil nutrients, but my body rebels at the synthetics. I want nothing slinky or plastic or shiny on my skin. (If someone doesn't invent a comfortable bra by the time I'm sixty, things are going to get ugly.) Besides, synthetics are produced from oil. I have cotton clothing that is ten years old and has been taken in four sizes and was just dyed two weeks ago and I'm still wearing it and I'm going to continue another couple of years. So that saves.

We recycle. It's easy here because the city trucks pick it up at the curb once a week. We don't even have to sort it anymore. Part of recycling for me is taking clothes and household items I can no longer use somewhere to wait for a new home. I don't like to throw things away.

I make one bag of trash that can't be reused or recycled every two weeks. Two bags a month. I buy products that are lightly packaged so that I won't have much waste. Look at the picture at the head of this post to see how much packaging comes in month's worth of the stop-smoking drug Chantix. The tiny pills would fit in a tiny bottle.

I also look for products that can be refilled at a savings to me and the earth. Grandma used to have a compact of silver that accommodated a cake of powder in an aluminum tray. She had that same compact for years and years. She just bought a powder refill and dropped it in. I bought refillable pens, and the office stores don't stock the refills and don't want to be bothered to special order a small number of them.

The air-conditioning is an ethical dilemma for me. I used to hate the winter, one of the reasons I left Illinois, but now I cannot stand to be hot. I overheat easily, like an old car. The older I get, the more I hate the heat and the humidity. I make do with fans as much as I can. I leave the thermostat set on 80 degrees Fahrenheit. That's the line I shouldn't have to cross; I shouldn't have to be hotter than 80 degrees. I hate using the electricity, paying a big electric bill, but I can't sleep very well, and not at all if my sheets are damp and wrinkled and hot.

And then there's meat. Do I want to make that decision? I can't stand to watch a video of how pigs live before they are killed for meat, so why do I want to eat it, contributing to those practices? Good question. There seems to be only one answer when the question is asked that way. Raise your own or go without.

All my efforts sound somewhat half-hearted. Full of compromises. And the more I learn, the worse the situation sounds. I heard that driving a Hummer for a year causes no more pollution and uses no more resources than using as much toilet paper as a woman uses in a year. I hope to hell that I heard that wrong.

So will you tell me what you do to save the planet? What are your tricks for conserving resources? Is conservation legislated where you live? Do you think our outlook is bleak?

Checking In

2009-06-23T19:08:00.002-04:00

In the past several years, my family has developed a method of staying in touch. We call it the checking-in list. It started with me, my mom, my son, and my brother. When Mom and I would exchange email, we'd copy the boys on it. They didn't get it. Why would they want to read someone else's email messages?

So we dropped them and added my sisters. Each person's message went to all the others. Other people were gradually added, my mom's sisters - my aunts - and eventually their children. At some point, cousins of my mom and her sisters were added.

Now, most of what we report is mundane chit chat, but we stay well connected. And today, when people don't stay where they were born and a family can be spread all across the globe, staying connected is a pleasure.

Some people don't write very often. I'm one of those. I don't find much of my life interesting enough to report. Some people never write the group, or forward a joke a couple of times a year. One of my aunts writes a long message several times a week detailing her quilting, her goals, her housekeeping, her shopping, her clubs, and her church work. She does ten times more than I do in a week.

My other aunt writes a hurried message about once a week, but her life is more interesting than email, so she keeps it short. She's the sassy widow of the group. She lives right next door to my mother now, and that cuts down the number of check-ins they make.

Mom likes to forward religious pep-talks, military support, Maxine punchlines, chain letters, sisterhood messages, and rumors of computer viruses. My cousin reports on her son. Another reports on her dog and her job and her training. One of my sisters wanted to be taken off the list, and the other deletes without reading.

We exchange photos and recipes and advice. We keep track. It's a nice tradition.

The Pink House in Dreamland

2009-06-22T20:36:00.010-04:00

Last night I had a dream that I have had many times before. Maybe a hundred times before, since I was a child. It involves a large pink house with which I am very familiar and where I have been many times before.

This house is not well-kept like the one in the photo above. Its paint is peeling and its windows have the ripples and fog of old glass that has stood long in the sun. A porch runs across the front of the building, and on the second floor, a veranda does the same.

Like Dr. Who's tardis, this house contains any number of rooms, sometimes more than others. I may meet anyone I know inside the house; although they don't always look like themselves, I always recognize them.

In what I think of as the basement is a long hall with doorways on either side of it, like a hotel. Sometimes I walk down the hall and choose a door and open it and see a scene of splendor or squalor. The people in the hotel hall are usually people who have passed on or those with whom I've lost touch, but they are never as I knew them in life. Sometimes they say something that sticks with me when I wake. Sometimes I take what they say as a warning, such as the time my grandma told me that Exley should not ride his motorcycle without the sidecar.

(The next day when Exley asked me to help him take the sidecar off his motorcycle, I refused. I told him the dream. I said it was important. He didn't listen. I nursed him for months after he wrecked his bike before he was put back together enough to be functional.)

At the end of the hotel hall is a door that leads into a church. It happens to be the same church I attended when I was young, the one where I lost my faith. I usually do not go there, as it is in good repair and does not need my attention. When I dream about my dad's funeral, it takes place in this church, although in reality it did not. I remember a wedding there once, and several ceremonies involving medals.

In the dreams I always concern myself with the rooms on the first floor, a few of which I have already renovated and made beautiful, but most of which are in need of work. One room, which I worked on during several dreams, was covered with piles of dirty, stinking blankets and towels. Around the baseboards were piles of old discarded clothing. The room had the smell of motor oil and axle grease. The last time I saw it, the room was empty, but there was still a faded olive green carpet that would need to be removed or replaced.

I'm not kidding. I also cleaned and decorated a downstairs room so that the right side of the room was an exact reverse of the left side, a mirror image.

These dreams are physically tiring, because I am always climbing stairs, carrying furniture, using power tools - and I'm thirsty. It seems that people in my pink house are always thirsty. I know there are parties, but I don't remember ever having something to drink.

The veranda scares me, although the last time I was there some work had been done to make it more sturdy. I no longer felt as though my footsteps would create enough vibration to send the porch roof tumbling to the floor. I used to be so afraid to go there that I would wake up at the thought of it. On the veranda sits a pair of chairs covered in green velvet, a little French provential table between them.

Quite a few things inside the house are green - natural greens, not those horrible glowing, shouting, modern greens. But still I don't like green, whatever its shade. I have no idea why it is inside my house.

This is the part I think is the strangest. The house and its big front yard and the field behind and the barn are smack dab in the middle of a tiny town where I am free to take what I want, and I never meet any other person, although there is a veritable crowd in my pink house.

When I'm not working on the pink house, I walk slowly about the town looking in windows and potting sheds and kitchen cabinets for things I want to take home.

The idea that anyone would have a dream frequently enough to know what street she lives on in Dreamland fascinates me. The idea that I'm the one having the dream - what the heck does it mean?

Do you have a recurring dream or nightmare? What's the strangest dream you've ever had? Have you ever had a dream come true? Do you take dreams to be simply our brains blowing off steam, or do you believe they mean something? Pick one and give details.

Dad and Virginia

2009-06-21T11:58:00.009-04:00

When Dad was really "sick" and my mother sent him to my granny's, he got the car and she kept the house. He put a sign in the back window of his car that read, "Pete + Siddie" (my parents' nicknames), as if all he had to express his love for my mom was a third-grade intellect. He also bent his radio antenna into the rough shape of a heart. My heart nearly bleeds when I tell you this now, but then I had only the one thought: escaping the humiliation. When I graduated high school, I moved to another town to avoid dealing with the worst of it. There was nothing I could do but watch.

Suddenly, with Virginia, he was my old Dad again, annoying but definitely in possession of his faculties. The more Virginia needed him, the kinder he became. He still had his bullying tendencies, but Virginia took those for concern and did whatever he told her to do. She didn't even notice his criticisms and answered each of his comments with a teasing, flirtatious banter. Once she made him laugh so hard he spit his teeth into his ashtray. Those things count for something.

Virginia's children had nothing to do with her - and that is for them to live with because I know it must have been hell to deal with the situation - but we loved her because she had unwittingly and cheerfully cured my dad. And she loved him with a fierceness that she was forever shouting from the rooftops, and that made him stand taller.

As I said before, there was a lot of money. Once when my dad and I were were driving around at dusk looking for Virginia, who sometimes wandered farther than she should and got caught out in the dark, he told me she was a millionaire. Just matter of factly and without any of the greed that used to sparkle in his eyes when he thought he could get the better of you. He said she got a monthly allowance and had to ask the financial planner for money for extra purchases, like the computer. I was completely amazed. They lived in an apartment that rented for $250 a month.

"She gives me an allowance," Dad said. "Five hundred dollars a month. It makes her happy. I don't spend it; I just put it in the bank. I have my own money."

"I guess you're a modern husband," I teased, "being taken care of by your wife."

"She takes pretty good care of me," he said. "She always pays the dinner bill."

Virginia and my father went to Alaska on a cruise ship, and they came home with a camera full of photos, mostly of the food the ship served. Dad was an old hand at ships, but Virginia could not stop talking about the opulence. It seemed that they had no memory of icebergs or whales or dolphins, which I assume you might see on an Alaskan cruise, but instead they told about their lodgings, as if they had spent ten days in Buckingham palace.

Virginia would still buy a store cake every once in a while, and sometimes Dad would let her enjoy it in her own compulsive way, and sometimes he would put half of it in the freezer when she wasn't looking. She covered her closet floor in bags of potato chips, pretzels, and corn curls, toilet paper and fun-size candy bars, two or three layers deep.

"Be sure and come over here for the Apocalypse," my dad would say. "Virginia's got everything we need."

When Virginia put up new curtains and announced that my father should smoke outside, he picked up his kitchen chair and set it outside the door. I can only imagine what he would have said if my mother had suggested that years before. He had a colorful vocabulary when he wanted to use it. After all, he had been a sailor. Instead, he sat outside the front door and smoked, watching the grass grow, squinting into the sun. Virginia would stand in the door and talk to him through the screen until he'd say, "Quit air-conditioning the whole neighborhood" or "Stop letting the heat out."

When Virginia would become agitated and confused, as she did occasionally, my dad would say, "Ah ah ah," as he used to say to us when we were young and headed in the wrong direction. That always seemed to break Virginia's fixation and she would come back to us. He made the same noise when she tried to take four pieces of pie from the dinner buffet, and then she would put some back.

So they lived a small life in a small town, eating at restaurants, driving on Sundays, watching Lawrence Welk. They seemed well suited to each other, two damaged people holding their hands over the other's broken spots.

They were happily married for six short years, filling in each other's blanks, keeping each other company, giving and receiving by turns, when my dad dropped dead in the middle of the night. With no warning at all: Gone.

Virginia was whisked off by her children, and taken to a town near her money and put into a home for those who couldn't take care of themselves. I know she couldn't, but it seems so unfair. She had all that money and it couldn't fix her. I used to wonder whether she remembered her six years of happiness, because to me that seems like a very small slice in a life very full of disappointments and pain. None of us ever saw her again.

Virginia died a few weeks ago, nearly seven years to the day after my father. She was buried next to him under the big fancy headstone she had installed when he died - with the ghostly engraving of my father's face superimposed over a picture of the ship they took to Alaska. It's gaudy and I hate to see it when I go to the cemetery.

But I will always be thankful for Virginia, who was a lot like Aunt Clara in the old Bewitched show. Nothing went according to plan, but it kind of worked out in the end. She gave us our dad back, even a new improved dad who had feelings and opinions and desires, not like the lump of flesh we'd tried to relate to for years. Can you imagine what it means to his children to have those six years of memories? Like the commercial says: Priceless.

So, Virginia, I hope you rest easy. I am so grateful to have known you. I carry you in my heart.

***

Today's a better day than yesterday. I got dressed and made the bed and jumped rope until I sweated but good. I'm going to have to get a sports bra before I do too much more jumping. I was surprised that I remembered how to do redhots and crossovers and didn't get tangled too many times. The dogs did not appreciate my talents, or the noise I was making on the hardwood floor. I don't think I'll take it up as a regular activity. I like the purposeful walking much more. Now, I wonder if I could find my old baton and see if I still remember how to twirl it...

***

So, how did you like my story? I feel better for having told it to you.

Here's Virginia

2009-06-20T22:51:00.005-04:00

I guess this is background to the background. I wanted to tell you the story of my life pretty much in the order it happened, unveil events in more or less the order they occurred - explain to you and to myself How I Got the Way I Am - but I need to tell you some things about my dad in order for you to understand the sweetness of Virginia's story.

The summer I was in eighth grade my father went haywire. My uncle covered for him at his job for a while, but then he was home all the time, as my mother called it, "sick." He was diagnosed as schizophrenic, and no treatment offered relief. We were ashamed, embarrassed, and torn by the idea that this was our dad, when in reality he was someone we had no acquaintance with.

Eventually my parents divorced, and my dad went to live with his mother, my granny, which wasn't a good combination. I lived with them years later in one of the more surreal parts of my life, and by then they had settled into a rhythm of criticism and pettiness not unlike a tired old married couple. He seemed to carry a torch for my mother, about whom he would never listen to anything bad, not from me, nor my granny, nor my siblings. My granny died, and my dad went to live in a converted schoolhouse known as the Haven of Rest, which is where Virginia lived after her husband died and she was acquitted by a jury of her peers.

Virginia was the sweetest, oddest woman I have ever met. I have been having such a hard time describing her that I fear I may miss my midnight deadline for posting here (writing every day is my goal). I realize that all I can do is tell you the stories I was part of and those that were told to me. I feel silly saying that the affection I feel for Virginia is like what I feel for my best and most loved pets. It was an honor to know such a pure and unfiltered human being, but you knew that, in the most harmless way possible, she was as mad as a hatter.

So one night at the Haven of Rest, my father was sitting on the couch after dinner watching an old Lawrence Welk rerun. Virginia sat next to him. She loved music, especially the kind on you heard on Lawrence Welk. She conversed with my dad during the commercials.

In the middle of some silliness she was recounting, Dad turned to her and said, "I would like to have sex again before I die."

Virginia drew herself up very straight and said, "I don't do that with people I'm not married to."

During the next commercial break, my dad said, "Well, do you want to get married?"

And she did. They wasted no time.

I heard about it from my sister. She was so upset. I forget how she found out, but she called me and blurted out, "Dad married Virginia B___!"

"The one who killed her husband?" I asked.

"Yes!"

"That's weird," is all I could think of to say. My sister always wanted to stop someone from doing something, and my philosophy is to leave them alone.

The people who ran the Haven of Rest were not equipped to deal with the newlyweds, so they got a little apartment and furnished it cheaply by virtue of the fact that my father was not too shy to walk into the houses of his brothers and sisters and announce, "We need a couch" or "It doesn't look like you're using that table."

Virginia did the strangest things.

She was obsessed with cake. She would buy a cake from the store, and then she would consume it over the course of a day, opening the refridgerator, opening the cake box, cutting a bite, closing the box, putting it back in the refridgerator, closing the refridgerator, eating the bite of cake, washing the knife, putting it back in the drawer. Ten minutes later she would do it again.

She took some sort of computer classes at the senior citizens center - which was just the basement of the Nazarene church with a 40-cup percolator and an activity director - then bought a computer and hired someone to set it up. She would call me over and over and ask me to tell her how to look at her email. Sometimes she would ask me to come over and get the computer to work, and I'd have to explain that I lived five hours away. One day she sent me an email message that read, "Angie, we are going to have to cut this off. We have been seeing entirely too much of each other."

My father had a miraculous recovery, possibly proving my theory that he was only happy when he had someone to boss around. The more Virginia needed him, the more he rose to the occasion. He got her a bright orange hunters cap so that he could find her when she got lost in the store. He distracted her from the cake ritual. He taught her to be obsessed with the Fighting Illini.

And Virginia was delighted by her overseer. She would tell everyone how much she loved him, how good he was to her, how sweet and kind he could be. My siblings and I always got to laughing when she did that, because Cains are known to be impossible to live with and in truth there are very few who can do it, and some say you have to be crazy.

***

I am ashamed of the way I spent the day. I didn't get dressed, and I ignored everything around me, sitting at the dining room table drinking coffee. Other than producing a dinner from the freezer (I did cook it myself, but a couple of weeks ago) at the appropriate time, I did nothing but read The Green Stone Woman's blog and take a five-hour nap. Now I'm writing this post with as much speed as possible, and I know that to write well I have to go over it several times.

I have been out of my regular sleep cycle, and that's something I have to watch because it is one of my depression clues, although sometimes it isn't, if that makes sense. I checked my houseplants just to be sure, but they are all doing well. I'm not sure that's a clue at all this time of year, because they always do very well once I carry them outside in late spring. I also have that stomach ache which is usually accompanied by a vague sense of dread. And then there are the dining room blinds... Well, so far I'm just reporting. I'll try to do better tomorrow.

Exercise: turning over in bed.

***

I am going to have to make a powderpuff. My mom gave me a nice porcelain powder box, and I am using an old footie to foof the powder on after my shower. I think I'm better than that.

Meet Virginia

2009-06-19T23:13:00.006-04:00

This story is long, so I'll have to write it in parts. This particular part, the background, will seem somewhat dark and harsh, but it's only the background. I promise you will find the story uplifting, if a bit unusual.

I don't know what my stepmother was like before she married my dad. But, I imagine that she was a lot different. There was a day when she was walking a country road and her life was suddenly cleaved in half. Stop. Begin again as a new person. A different kind of person. Of course, I'm guessing here.

All this happened before I knew Virginia, but I come from a small town, and we know everything about each other, or we know where we can find out everything. I'm telling it as accurately as I can, but most of it comes from gossip and newspaper articles I read at least twenty years ago. The rest I guess I just made up.

So Virginia was walking along a country road, which she did every morning. Whatever was in the fields she passed glimmered with fat drops of dew. Birds called: quail and pheasant and red-winged black birds. She had a lot of energy. She loved to walk. Because her mother and one of her sisters weighed hundreds of pounds each, she was petrified of gaining weight. Her walks were her only peaceful moments. She sang, prayed, and talked to God, right out loud if she felt like it. She held membership in three churches because she loved going to church. She would have liked to go every day. She was seeking peace.

Semi-trucks never used to go on the two lane country road, but in the past decade some of the Amish in the area had started manufacturing furniture in barns here and there, and they had wood delivered by trucks that drove too fast for the narrow roads and misjudged the width of the lane or didn't see an old lady at all. An old lady can fly through the air for what seems like a mile and not remember her name when she lands.

That Virginia who set out on her walk would never be again. That Virginia was gone completely, killed by a wood truck on a country road. The body was left alive, and eventually a new personality filled it. The body had to learn to walk again. The personality had to mark time in a convalescent home because it had no one to come to its rescue, although there were grown children and a husband. The insurance paid for it.

There was a load of insurance money. The truck driver was clearly in the wrong. Luckily the settlement was put in the hands of an impartial financial officer who meant to protect Virginia's interests.

After being beaten with all manner of objects, tied and bruised and browbeaten and scorned, flung in closets and hung in barns and left without water in the sun, Virginia was not inclined to express her own needs at all. (My uncle Joe was a cop, and he was called out to that farm many times. Men weren't usually arrested then for getting drunk and scaring the devil out of their wives.)

When Virginia came home from the nursing home, she was addled and nervous and unable to stand, fragile but somewhat stable. Her husband wanted some money wanted some money wanted some money and he couldn't get it away from that lawyer.

Virginia couldn't think, couldn't get away and walk between the fields, couldn't get a hold on her emotions, couldn't hear God speak. In the home, her church friends came and went in a long parade from breakfast to afternoon nap. They brought so many little treats to cheer her up. She had held court in her wheelchair with a nice lace shawl on her legs, and now she was heavy. She feared being heavy. She would have to get out of that chair and learn to use her legs again or she was going to go mad from his constant harping about the money and her fear of her weight and her overwhelming confusion about how she got in this state.

She was able to walk by the evening he took her by the neck and said he would never let go. He wanted some money. There was nothing she could do about it. She was incompetent and her money was in the hands of some lawyer. When he threw her into the corner, she stayed there crumpled and choking. She couldn't do anything.

But she did do something. There was that money at the lawyer's office to be spent to make her well. It was like a ticket on a train that went far across the mountains to a new life. She waited for him to fall asleep. This is the part that could have put her in prison for life. That she waited.

And when he was snoring, she took the gun he kept on the nightstand and pointed it down at his chest and pulled the trigger. He wasn't dead when she put the phone next to him on the bed and took the van he parked out back. She didn't even have a license to drive.

Virginia drove all the way to Ohio without stopping. Actually she drove without thinking. She drove as if she knew what she was doing, and luckily had stopped in the parking lot of a truck stop to wipe her eyes and wonder when the car ran out of gas, chugged once, and was dead to her.

She didn't know who she was. She certainly didn't know where she was. She remembered her sister's phone number. That, and her weight.

***

Let's not talk about Virginia yet. It hurts me to tell this part of the story, although she will find a little broken piece of happiness in the end.

***

The exercise is better than I ever thought it would be. After only five days I have noticeably more energy and perhaps even a better mood. I'm proud of myself. Yay.

So, how do like cruising around with me so far? I've had a ball this week and will try to blog each day next week. It's therapeutic. Blogging sounds like a good reward for jumping around sweating like a fool, doesn't it?

I am obstinate

2009-06-18T16:48:00.020-04:00

Having grown up the way I did with a control freak for a mother and a bully for a dad, I don't like to be bossed around. Early on I discovered that people cannot make you do anything if you don't want to do it. I explained a little of that when I told you about my attitude toward anything physical.

I made peace with my parents by learning what made them tick and teaching them how to relate to me as an adult. And yet I seem to collect people who are very much like my parents were when I was growing up. It has happened since grade school. Does something in my demeanor invite people to tell me what to do? Does my don't-give-a-shit-about-stuff-that's-stupid-to-me attitude look somehow like uncertainty? Is coming to terms with this issue my mission in this particular life?

I've gotten a divorce over it. I've thrown out friends because of it. I've moved and withheld my phone number and closed my MySpace account - all because I don't have the energy to argue with people over baloney. And you telling me what to do is baloney.

I may sound a lot more confident than I am. I am only now learning just exactly who I am and why I do the things I do, but I know this one thing about myself: If you boss me around, I'm going to get ugly about it.

I am not the least bit inflexible. I will listen to you. I know a good plan when I hear one. I will change my mind when I'm wrong. I will apologize when I've been a bitch. I'll ask advice if I'm at a loss. But if you plan to tell me what I should do, then just get out of my car.

There are numerous ways to get me to do something. Make a good case for your viewpoint. I've been an English teacher. I taught many people to write persuasion papers, and I have a keen appreciation for a well made case. I will even thank you for your big idea. But don't shove your opinion at me or I'm going to knock it out of your hands way before you can get it down my throat.

I don't know why people feel free to boss others around. I don't have any desire to tell anyone what to do. When I encounter people, I feel a natural curiosity about them. I observe what they do and form my own opinions. I may ask questions about motivations or request clarification. But you're never going to hear me say the words, "You know what you ought to do?" You know why? Because I truly don't care what you do. I'll watch you do it, but I have no investment in the outcome.

You must feel really superior to me if you think you can just spout off some pronouncement and have me fall right into line. Some people are just gleeful when they think they can force you into something. Like the religious farts. What a scam to come up with: If you don't do what we want you to, you'll die. And not just in this one life you're trying your best to live now, but forever and ever into all eternity. And we won't answer your questions either. Have faith.

The minister I grew up with once told me, "And when you get to college, you'd better not take any philosophy courses, because your faith is already shaky as it is." One guess which courses I signed up for first. In philosophy courses, I learned to think. That wasn't valued in my religious circle. I wasn't in church the day the minister got potted before Sunday services, fell out of the pulpit, and had to be sent somewhere to dry out. He had a lot to do with my shaky faith, and I never got a chance to tell him.

And then there are the naggers. Just keep saying the same thing over and over and I'm sure I'll start liking the message better when I've heard it a dozen times. Just keep bringing the topic up and giving your same old opinion until I'm puking with boredom. Make sure that the solution you're pushing is real good for you and of no interest to me. Don't bother to find out what I think. What do they get out of it? Do they ever stop in mid-sentence and realize that they are talking to themselves? No. Because they apparently have no audience awareness. I will eventually break down to shut you up and then I'll hate us both.

My dad was a nagger. I would resist for a while and then finally give in and make a bad deal with him so he would shut up. We both knew what he was doing, and he still enjoyed it. I traded cars with him. I bought a car from him for a dollar and he gave me a car that wasn't worth a dollar. I was involved in a complicated three-way trade with him and his brother, and I somehow ended up with Granny's TV and had to give it back when she thought I stole it. Dad never changed, except for the times his eyebrows drew together and he drew inside himself and looked only at his shoes. Depression runs in that family.

Exley was a nagger too, only he didn't really mean to be a bully as much as he meant to do whatever was necessary to get what he wanted. That feels like bullying to me. He can't help it. He's an Aries - and the youngest kid and a good guy in a weird way. He always wants to be of help but he just keeps saying it, like a kid, until he wears you down and you say yes just so you won't have to hear it again. Here's your money for the movies.

Mom wasn't a nagger. She told you once, then slapped you if she didn't think you were moving fast enough. She has developed a good bit of patience in the past fifty years. I actually like her method better than wheedling.

And the non-smoking Nazis. As far as I'm concerned, you have every right not to breathe cigarette smoke. You can allow no smoking in your house. You can require restaurants and bars to have squeaky clean air and lobby for legislation to protect your offspring and get the laws changed so that no one can smoke anywhere near the door to a public building. I even kind of admire you for going after what you think is best. You can look down on the filthy habit. But you can't make people stop smoking, and that's what you really want to do. Admit it.

There is one special person who doesn't find me lacking. He enjoys the way I am and doesn't advise me to change. That means a lot to me.

The exercise. Four days. Would you believe me if I said I was kind of liking it? It's because of the big purposeful steps, endorsed by powdergirl, whose blog post today made me bawl. I've always wondered why other people can walk so much faster than I do, and now I know. You don't speed up by taking faster tiny steps. Take big old steps and you go faster and you feel it in the back of your legs and your butt and pretty soon you start swinging your arms and then your hips. If only someone will give me to the key to swimming.

Pretty soon we'll be walking real fast instead of driving around in that Cadillac.

Oh, yeah. I have new business cards. Aren't they adorable? They tell you all the ways you can find me online.

I'm imperfect

2009-06-17T09:09:00.015-04:00

Somewhere lately I've read this piece of advice: Done is better than perfect. That's what I say to myself now when I take the silverware out of the dishwasher and put it into the drawer without sorting it. No one else gets in that drawer. Why should I worry about it? For a moment after I shut the drawer I feel a creepy gooseflesh on the back of my neck: Don't walk away. There is a mess here. Fix it. Fix it. Alert. Alert.

I'm trying to learn to embrace imperfection. For one thing, I think perfectionism contributes to my (very annoying) habit of procrastinating. If I am working toward perfection, then I can never finish because calling something finished also means admitting that I fell short of perfection. I have a room full of projects partly finished. They hold within them the seeds of perfection. Let it go. Work toward good, or even brilliant, but you can't be perfect. Face it.

Perfectionism prevents me from embracing myself. I hold myself to a much higher standard than I do others. For example, I know people who carry a lot of extra poundage, and that rarely enters my mind when I'm admiring them. A smile, the flash of an eye, the way someone moves can delight me. But let me look at myself in the mirror, and here comes that critical bitchy mommy voice telling me my hair is frizzy or my skirt doesn't hang right or my legs are as white as a fish belly. I appreciate a little of my own feedback, but I am going to have to learn to cut myself some slack or I'm going to be very unhappy as I age.

I'm trying to whip myself up into a frenzy of self-improvement, but I also want to learn to like myself the way I am. I want to be able to get some stuff out of my too-small bag and wear it again. That's the only place I'm going to get new items right now. Goodness knows my budget won't stretch to any of those new sleeveless paper clothes WalMart is selling, which look a lot like they were stitched up on My First Sewing Machine by ten year olds with spools of rotten thread. And may well have been. (The Evil Twin's Wife called it "the Mart of Wal" in her blog this morning, and I let out a little *squeal of laughter* when I read that.)

The exercise continues. Three days. Shew. Still taking big old man steps or, as powdergirl called it, walking like "a purposeful woman". (Check out the comment powdergirl left on the previous post. She makes it sound so easy: Keep walkin'. Eat for fuel. Stay away from carbs. Yes, ma'am. I'm going to do it.)

Yesterday I put on a DVR I made of a Christine Aguilera concert and tried to follow every move Christina made, except when she got on top of the piano and lolled around. Oh, I'm sure it would have made a very funny video. I put on my whorey silver platform pumps for the last number, but if I had caused an injury that required an emergency visit, I'd have lied like a rug about that. This morning I weighed myself and I feel chicken-livered not to just blurt the number out to you, but I can't seem to do it. Let's just say that I've not reached circus proportions.

So for now it's my secret number, and I'm going to make it go down. I am going to hold on to the idea that after exercise I feel really good - I mean it too; good like I used to feel back in the seventies. I will try to learn a little about this stranger who passes for my body. I know this: I like her cleavage and the way her hair curls up when it's cut the right way and her little deep-set blue-grey eyes. I want her to be able to cross her legs and carry a typewriter and go up the attic steps without trembling.

Pick you up tomorrow about the same time? And leave some comments, would ya? I need all the help I can get.

Are you a perfectionist? A procrastinator? Is your body your friend or some big piece of meat you drag around with you?

I am lazy

2009-06-16T15:21:00.019-04:00

I have been lazy my entire life. I have never liked to do anything physical. I'm not comfortable in my body. It's like I'm wearing a stranger's heavy, ill-fitting coat. My life has been one big fight to get done what I need to get done and still do as little as possible. And everything I enjoy doing - with the possible exception of listening to books on tape - involves sitting on my butt.

When I was a child, Mom would make rules about where I could take a book or pen and paper. Never into the bathroom. I wouldn't be seen again until Thanksgiving. Not into the yard. Go outside and get some fresh air, she'd say. You're not going to spend the weekend lying on your bed. Surely she didn't think she was going to look out the kitchen window and see me frolicing on the big lawn. She knew me by then. I would climb up the buckeye tree, from which I could see three blocks in several directions, and sit. Sometimes I would skate, which was effortless and made you feel like a movie star, as long as you knew where the sidewalk was cracked. I also enjoyed scribbling bitterly in my secret journal about the conspiracy unfolding all around me.

When I say that I'm not willing to do something physical, I'm not going to change my mind. I know my limitations. My mother learned this, but my teachers couldn't accept it. I didn't bend. I had teachers make me run laps around the cinder track for weeks, and around the gym when the weather was bad, because I wouldn't jump over a string of hurdles. That was a reasonable deal to me. Punishment would have been for them to continue to badger and bully me, call attention to me, tire me out before I even got started running. The same teacher made me wear a sign that said I was an idiot. I had asked her when in the world I was going to need the ability to jump off a vaulting box and over a pommel horse. I refused to do it.

I was like Bartleby the scrivener. I preferred not to. Anything. My freshman year in high school there was this program called the Presidential Challenge or some such thing. You had to do a certain number of sit-ups and push-ups and run the 50-yard dash in a certain number of seconds and climb a certain number of feet up a rope. The teacher carried around a clipboard and verified our abilities. I declined to climb a rope. I didn't like how it looked when girls got stuck halfway up, their arms shaking, their feet clamped on top of each other on top of a knot, not knowing whether to give up or go on. For no real reason. There was no reason to climb up a rope. My parents didn't even like Richard Nixon.

In high school, being lazy was difficult. Someone was always inviting me to go somewhere, and my mother was all in favor of it. She'd push me to go to a dance with some boy whose mother impressed her. Or to a picnic with some family she considered high class. Or the worst: Stay over night at someone's house. I wanted to stay home and read Edgar Allen Poe and Jonathan Livingston Seagull and memorize poems by e.e. cummings and T.S. Elliot. I wanted to watch Monty Python reruns on the educational channel and lie in bed with my transitor radio under my pillow, tuned to WLS, which wasn't all talk back then.

Swimming doesn't work for me either. I have taken lessons since I was a child and the last time I did so I was 45 years old. As a child, I sat on a bench safely far off of the tiled lip of the public pool and waited for lessons to be over. My mother paid 50 cents a week for me to ride the bus to the class on Saturday mornings, but I never once got wet. Not even tempted. The teacher quickly gave up trying to talk me into trying. Well-meaning adults would push or toss me into a body of water, believing that I would automatically swim by some instinct to save myself. Not so. I was fished out several times.

As an adult, I decided that swimming was just too hard. I was missing some vital piece of information, some technique that would make it feel effortless and fishy. Exley would swim, slow and steady, up and down the pool, caring not one bit if the water was four feet or fifteen feet deep. I'd see kids swimming in the deep end like it was fun. The best I could do was put a boogie board under my chest and flap my legs and arms like hell, hardly moving through the water at all. Not worth the effort to paddle that hard for nothing.

I never liked riding a bicycle either. I become very tired imagining and avoiding calamity. I begged my mom to give me $10 for my fifteenth birthday so that I could buy a used bike. Our little town had brick-paved streets. I was afraid of traffic, even on foot, and couldn't judge speed and distance all that well. (I have no idea how I missed learning these things, but even now I'm challenged.) I rode the bicycle about three blocks, started to wobble, fell over into the gutter, and skinned my palms and knees. See how my treacherous body is involved in my laziness? After that I was willing only to ride on the handlebars of my friends' bikes; all I had to do was hold on and keep my feet out of the spokes.

I'm so lazy that I am even a terrible traveler. It's too much trouble to go to another country. Too much trouble to run for a plane. Much too much trouble to arrange for the travel and buy the tickets and make the decisions required. I did it once, and I was so tired by the time I arrived that I fell asleep on top of a motel bedspread in Amsterdam and missed the last total eclipse of the sun for that century. The amount of energy it takes just to get somewhere else is triple the amount it would take me to read sixteen books during a week off work. And that I'd enjoy doing.

Why can't I just stay in my house and live the simple life of Kwai Chang Caine? I like to drive - or rather I like to be driven - slowly through the country. I like to walk on country roads and I like to look at things, especially in forests, nurseries, and old structures. I like to shut all the lights off and watch a good HD movie on the big-screen TV. I like to go to antique shops and read all the tags and guess what things are and ask a lot of questions and try on hats when no one is looking. I like museums and forts and farms and state parks. I like to make things of paper and cloth.

Well, lazy goes along with fat, I guess. I don't like exercise, even though I claim I'm interested in losing weight. But yesterday I asked myself to do something about it. I flapped my arms and marched and ran in place and did push-ups and toe-touches for 30 minutes, following Kirstie Alley's (a nut) instructions on Twitter. I could do this every day; I didn't even feel close to a heart attack. I started to sweat, which I usually take as a signal to stop immediately, but I worked through it. It is supposed to be good for you. Pores or something.

Here's the dirty rotten secret: It wasn't nearly as hard as I had imagined it would be. Nobody's making me, so I have only myself to blame for getting physical. I feel silly reporting that after the workout I felt very good for probably a full hour or more. When I walked to my car after work, I sped up and learned this: If I'd stop taking these little bitty steps like you do when you wear nice heels and started taking big old man steps, it can be a bit of a workout over to the parking structure. I had a few nice tingles in my legs and got home five minutes earlier than usual.

I have this funny body shape, created by childbirth and gaining a hundred pounds more than I need and my serious commitment to laziness. I look like a pregnant old lady. I believe I'm described as an apple shape. My figure reminds me a lot of a Rubens model. I can't find clothes or even sewing patterns to fit correctly. I would like to achieve the semblance of a waist, so I made that my goal for this exercise adventure. A waist - even just one inch smaller than my hips. Is it possible? I don't know. I'll have to see if I can keep myself moving.

Thanks for riding along with me. I'll pick you up tomorrow.

So do you hate exercise? If you do it, what keeps you going? If you don't do it, do you ignore all the advice and studies and experts? How often? What kind? Why? Have you ever felt as though your body is an awkward stranger you don't like very much? Help.

Switching gears

2009-06-15T21:04:00.014-04:00

I once started a blog that I subtitled "my purely positive blog". I started this blog on the shallow end of an exhausted depression, while the house plants were still alive but the curtains had already been closed. I thought I could use the writing - the routine of the writing - as a flotation device to save me from drowning. That's it, I thought, I'll find the positive in every situation. It would have been nice to have developed that talent, I think. As I remember it, I wrote a post every day for eight days. That's it.

When I started this blog, I didn't think far in advance of... well... starting. Now that we've got the speed up to about 30 mph, I'm going to grab hold of the steering wheel and turn us in a direction not everyone might like to come. If you have to excuse yourself, I understand.

I've traded in my learners permit for an official drivers license, and I'm taking this baby for a spin. I don't care to choose a destination, but I have scribbled out a little map.

Want to come along for a ride? Okay. Hop in. As my granny used to say, I'll carry us down the road a ways.

For you who are bloggers, why did you start? Did you have a message, or a need to communicate, or a marketing plan? Do you think about your readers when you write, or do you write to suit yourself, make a record, entertain?

Those of you who read blogs, what makes you return to a certain blog post after post? Are you more interested in the topics or theme, or the person writing?

"Human destiny is not determined by forces beyond our control"

2009-06-06T21:01:00.008-04:00

Usually when everyone starts liking something, I don't like it anymore. It goes for music and celebrities and food. I just don't like being bombarded with the same thing over and over. But I can't help being trendy on this one. I love our president. And I love the fact that we don't have to be embarrassed when our president represents us abroad. I love the fact that he speaks well and is charismatic in a way that inspires others to rise above the ordinary. Today he spoke about men who performed extraordinary feats of bravery and courage.

"It was unknowable then, but so much of the progress that would define the 20th century, on both sides of the Atlantic, came down to the battle for a slice of beach only six miles long and two miles wide.

"More particularly, it came down to the men who landed here--those who now rest in this place for eternity, and those who are with us here today. Perhaps more than any other reason, you, the veterans of that landing, are why we still remember what happened on D-Day. You're why we keep coming back.

"For you remind us that in the end, human destiny is not determined by forces beyond our control. You remind us that our future is not shaped by mere chance or circumstance. Our history has always been the sum total of the choices made and the actions taken by each individual man and woman. It has always been up to us."

Thank you, brave men. Thank you, Mr. President.

Photo 1: Mandel Ngan, AFP. Today, on a beach near Colleville-sur-Mer. Photos 2 and 3: National Archives.

Bête de Jour: The intimate adventures of an ugly man

2009-06-04T21:31:00.010-04:00

By Stan Cattermole
Harper Collins, June 2009

This is the first book I’ve read that began as a blog. I was already enchanted with the blog when I learned about the book, but, being a book-lover, I wanted to see how the stories would hang together as a book. No worries there.

The book has a blog’s timing and sense of unfolding that makes it irresistible. Immediate. As if we’re along for the ride. And yet I can hold it in my hand, underline passages, dog ear the pages, and let it drop to the floor as I finish reading for the night. I miss that about a blog.

So, Stan Cattermole describes himself as a very ugly child who grew into a very ugly man—“a voluminous bag, fashioned from thick human skin and filled to bursting with the bones of a thousand elbows.” But we can’t tell whether to believe him on this, because people comment on his looks all through the blog/book, and they always describe him as some variation of “not so bad.” But, regardless of the “truth,” Stan believes he’s ugly, and he drags that idea behind him like an old piece of luggage.

Stan reaches rock bottom just before his thirtieth birthday and, as most of us are prone to do when we come awake to find ourselves ready to eat canned cat food rather than go out and face humanity, he decides he must change his life. Thus he begins a quest: to lose weight, to stop smoking, and to “Fall in Fully Reciprocated Love with the Woman of My Dreams.” The blog is born: a way to keep himself accountable, whether anyone else is listening or not.

The blog becomes an actual character in the book. It grows and becomes the Blog. It insinuates itself between Stan and his life-long best friend, and more than one acquaintance is put off by what is written about her. The Blog engenders other blogs, although I find it difficult to believe that any spin-off would be as bright and beautiful as the original. Because of the Blog, Stan’s circle grows wider and he meets people virtually and in the flesh that he begins to know as friends.

Regular readers comment on Stan’s stories, and this gives him courage and validation—two of the things he needs to venture forth and find his lady love. And we’re all pulling for him to do just that, although none of the women he finds seems good enough for him, with his cutting wit and his sensitive heart and his big dick and his hot-air balloon of a spirit.

About Stan’s heart. Stan evidently was born with no outer shell at all; he is like the baby he describes “with its heart on the outside of its skin, clinging to its chest like a silver bell on a kitten’s bib, beating and bleeding and raw for all to see.” For a variety of reasons we learn as we follow Stan’s adventures, he is starved for affection, human touch, reciprocated love, and sex. At the first sign that a relationship is possible, Stan tears open his chest, reveals his own beating, ragged heart, and says, “Here. Take it. It’s yours.”

The writing. Oh, the writing. I enjoy reading Stan Cattermole’s writing as much as I enjoy Mark Twain and Charles Dickens and Kurt Vonnegut. In fact, I have rarely read anything more painfully humorous and delightfully moving. For me, this book is packed full of snivels and dusted with scenes that require tissues and a break. And yet the same book contains wondrous interludes that make me laugh out loud, even on third or fourth reading.

And the mystery. Every book is a mystery, and one of the reasons we read is to find out where it ends up. But in addition to the story question, this book has a mystery author. When I first started reading the blog, I was sure that it was written by a bored author of hundreds of bestsellers who had created this magnificent Cattermole character and was shining us on while he entertained the hell out of us. At night over wine he would smirk a little and read our comments and feel superior because we were all taken in. Now I just don’t care. As long as the story continues.

I must not forget to point out that this book is subtitled “intimate adventures,” and I’m sure it’s not for everyone, because not everyone enjoys reading the intimate sexual details of another person’s quest for love. (Oh, come on now. What’s more fun?) The author offers us even his shabbiest, most embarrassing moments and invites us to study and comment upon them, as if he is determined to tell all of it, just absolutely everything that he can remember to tell, and let us judge him for ourselves.

Well, I haven’t told you the entire story the way a lousy book reviewer does, because it’s Stan’s story to tell and I want you to enjoy it the way he unfolds it. So purchase a copy of the book here in the U.S. or here in the U.K. Follow Stan on Twitter. Visit his Blog. Show him some love.

This is my place

2009-06-02T14:42:00.032-04:00

I have finished reading a book by the man I call @scattermole, and a review is percolating in my head. While I ignore that and let it simmer, I’ll tell you about how I’m trying to learn to be happy with a frugal amount of everything.

Because I’m broke (paying off bills from the carefree days) and frugal and smarter than I used to be, I look for small pleasures in my life. The Woodsman tells me it’s the little things that are the most important. Mom (and a lot of other old wives) say the best things in life are free. I find these little things everywhere. They cost less than shoes, and they make me just as happy.

Last year I rented an ugly little duplex with human animals living in the unit next door. This family’s surname was the same as a popular nut. The universe handed out something appropriate there. When the lease was up, I was too tired to move a third year in a row, but I did. For the quiet. And the calm. Now I live in a cute little house with its own yard in a quiet neighborhood on a pretty street—for the same amount of rent as I paid to be disturbed on a daily (and nightly) basis.

As you can see, the place is cute, no matter the season, and you know how good it makes you feel to be surrounded by cute. For the same amount of money as I paid to live next to the zoo—and throw in a nice landlord too.

I didn't even realize just how stressful the year next door to the "Walnut" family was until I moved. Now I am grateful every single night that I don't have to share in some other family's hateful noise and rage and thumping and bumping and yelling.

I have friendly neighbors now, and that means something. Sometimes I come home from work and think that Mr. Sweep next door has built some sort of steampunk amusement park in the driveway we share.

But he and his wife, the Feng Shui expert, are as sweet as you could ask for and always willing to help. They had a neighborhood cookout this last weekend to celebrate Mr. Sweep’s fiftieth birthday, and I got to see their backyard.

My dogs are different creatures now that they have a yard to play in without being molested by screaming children who were never taught respect for other creatures. (The hellions would actually bark at the dogs. I kid you not.) I don’t think my dogs are ever going to stop barking at the good neighbors, but I understand why they have trust issues.

And there’s a little green tomato on one of my tomato plants. I forgot to get a shot of that.

These are really good things to take pleasure in, I think. What a difference a year can make.

Are there little free things that bring a lot of pleasure into your life? Now that I've started learning to appreciate them, I feel pretty clever. And I'm a cheap date too.

Introducing Pea, guest blogger and jewelry maker

2009-05-26T14:11:00.021-04:00

The entries!

Mixing it up!

And the winner is...

Lezanac! Thank you all very much for entering and visiting my shop. I really appreciate the comments and I loved seeing the diversity of “favorites”. I feel I’m on the right track with making pieces that are appealing for a variety of jewelry lovers. I’ll just keep plugging along and doing what I love and hopefully I’ll have an even bigger and better selection when the economy picks up.

My newest earrings: Copper 'n' Chestnuts, made with hand-carved leaves of real chestnut wood.

I really love making jewelry, for myself, my friends and for my shop. I have a nice little workshop space and I love to get out different components and let the pieces evolve. Many times what I started out to make becomes something totally different as my hands fly to a different bead here or a different metal there.

Maggie, acrylic on canvas

I find that process is a lot like painting. You may start out with an idea and even a sketch but the colors and the images in your mind take over and then the fun begins. Because I have a “real” job during the day I have to make my jewelry in the evening, sometimes very late in the evening. When I get up in the morning I’ll take a look at what I made the night before and sometimes I can’t even remember how a certain piece came to be. I love the feeling of being entranced and surprised and excited. That is how the creative process works best and it’s what keeps me interested in learning and doing more.

Cat Family, acrylic on canvas

I am currently learning about polymer clay and PMC so that I can begin making some my own beads. I will continue to mix vintage, handmade, found and collected components to make future pieces. Of course there will always be crystals and glass for a bit of sparkle whenever possible. I love the light it gives to the jewelry and to the wearer.

Thank you again your entries and I hope you will continue to visit Sugarcain’s amazing blog and both of our etsy shops.

A special thank you goes to Sugar Cain for opening up her fabulous blog to me and my earring give-away. She’s a special person with a generous heart and is so supportive of me and all the other creative sorts out there. We have many great discussions that help me get moving and excited about my work. She’s given me great advice and turned me on to so many great sites, fellow bloggers, good books, and just the weird and wonderful world around us. She is a woman of incredible talents and the proud owner of an amazing brain that she’s always putting to very good use.

Lake Cumberland, Kentucky, a beautiful place to spend Memorial Day weekend with friends.

As a special thanks to all who entered the give-away, we both are offering a 10% discount off any items purchased from our shops from today through Sunday, May 31, 2009. Go to PatiR (earrings) or Sugarcain (little sweets and tarts) to make your purchases. Etsy requires a simple registration process; it only takes a minute to sign up. Then make your selection and contact the shop owner through etsy (on the right side of the screen you’ll see a “contact” link) and let us know what you are purchasing. We will adjust the price and put up a special listing for you , then e-mail you back so you can make your purchase.

Pati

Go back to school if you think the only heroes are the ones who are serving now

2009-05-25T10:29:00.011-04:00

I am spitting mad. I tried to swallow it down, and a lot of times that works. But this particular situation has not abated in a week or more, so I figure, like a bad song stuck in my head, if I share it it will dissipate.

My niece Kayli, who is ten years old (today, as a matter of fact), was given a school assignment to write a letter to someone who served in the military and helped to keep our country safe. She wrote her letter to her granddad, my father.

Dad definitely qualifies as a subject of the exercise. He served in the US Navy during several conflicts, as an engineman on a minesweeper. I remember during the Vietnam conflict the war statistics were given every evening on the news. On the network we watched, they used a graphic of a silhouette of a soldier with the casualty numbers superimposed over it. I held my breath every time I saw it, as though the newscaster might shout out my dad's name. Every day I worried about my dad, and at bedtime Mom would sit next to my bed while I prayed aloud for him to be blessed and kept safe. That was all that we on the homefront could do, we thought. Carry on. Put on a brave face. Hope. Be prepared. I can only imagine what it was like for my mother, because she must not show me how frightened she was.

We gave, and my father gave. The worst thing was balancing the fear with the patriotism. That's when I first developed my talent for just not thinking about things. Certain things I couldn't control or resolve. I have a meter in my stomach that tells me when to stop thinking, and then I just put the thought in my little mental room with the other dark things and come back to it later. No one can teach you those things. You just develop methods to survive.

Growing up a military brat, dragged from sea to shining sea, made me who I am. I would not change a minute of it except that fear. And that fear just goes along with the military life. I was and I am proud of my father and his service, and I stand taller when I hear someone thank the veterans who have served and died.

Now, back to Kayli's Memorial Day assignment. She wrote a nice letter to Dad thanking him for his service, but the teacher found it insufficient. Why?

BECAUSE MY FATHER IS DEAD. And he didn't die in battle; he died many years later in his own bedroom in the middle of a spring night.

This kind of stupid bitch is allowed to teach children? Molding young minds? I know you don't get the pick of the litter in a town of 2,600 people, but WTF. Does she think Memorial Day (we called it Decoration Day) is for school holidays and picnics and beer? Was she not even required to learn enough American history that she would be ahead of her students in that department?

I told my sister to go directly to the school and defend my tearful niece's choice, but she is not that sort of person. I'm five hours away and the teachers there already hate me. When my son was there, I was at the school once a month agitating for intellectual standards, or simple manners, or just plain logic. To my niece, it seemed as though her granddad wasn't good enough. She refused to choose another veteran to write about. She preferred to fail the assignment.

Well, my sweet little Shuggie, you didn't fail at all. Take it from me. The world is so much bigger and wider than that little town. Go to the cemetery today and you will see the flags on Granddad's grave. That means he's a hero.

Daddy, thank you and all of the other veterans of all the wars and conflicts for your contributions to the country and the world. I think about you every day, but today I thank you. I love you. You are a hero to me.

Happy birthday, Kayli. I love you too.

Treasury with the poetry of bats

2009-05-19T17:44:00.022-04:00

My paperbat print is in a treasury, a color-coordinated cavalcade of beauties curated by Liese Martin of DeadpanAlley. Thanks for including me, Liese. "It looks good enough to EAT" is the title of the treasury, and the colors make me think of peanut butter pie, chili peppers, butterscotch, olives, raspberries, pimentos, dark chocolate, leaf lettuce, flan, shellfish, watermelon, orange and lime sherbet, and leechee fruit. Click on the photo above to view the Etsy treasury page while it lasts.

My imaginative little bunny girl is the item of the day on the Etsy Dark Side Street Team's blog page over on MySpace. Click on the photo above to be transported. Thanks, Dark Team.

I have confidence in my work, but I get a little puffed up when I see it in some "official" venue.

Don't forget that my friend Pea is having an earring give-away. Follow the three easy steps here and get a chance to win them.

The universe gives what we need

2009-05-18T19:20:00.013-04:00

Every year on my son's birthday I wear a button I was given as a gift by the hospital where I gave birth. It's beat up and faded, and I love wearing it.

Thirty-five years ago today I was sitting in a hospital bed braiding my hair and waiting for the nurses to bring me a baby. A baby that scared the snot out of me--he was mine.

I wasn't one of those little girls who dreamed of a wedding and played with her dolls as gently as if they were actual children, diapering and blanketing and cooing. I wanted to ride an ocean liner again and learn how to spit six feet and own a dog who could understand what I was saying. I was unprepared, to say the least.

Just as it always turns out, the universe had a better idea of what I needed than I did. And apparently what I needed was a cute little eleven pound boy covered with peachfuzz and possessing enough of my looks to fascinate me from the moment I saw him. We didn't have ultasounds back then, and we waited until the moment of birth to learn the gender of the baby we carried. But I had a dream about him, swaddled in a blue mohair blanket that I would receive as a gift months in the future.

Even though I thought I didn't want any children, I am so grateful that I accidentally got one. My son Jaybird has been a joy and still is. I had my sister and my mom to help with him, and I truly don't remember ever changing his diaper. I remember the sweet stuff. I bathed him and dressed him and told him stories, taught him to talk, and squatted down on the sidewalk with him to point at ants.

I'm not tossing the word joy around lightly. Perhaps the universe also arranged for me to have the kind of child I would be good at raising: a smart, independent, creative little man who brought back to me that childlike sense of wonder that I was missing. A talkative boy who said the most insightful things and had a streak of the curmudgeon. Serious and funny. Look! His favorite word was Look!

Now he's a grown man who likes to play guitar and read history and biography. He draws and paints and researches genealogy. He loves his dogs and knows himself in a way that makes him practical and steady. Sometimes we get to talking and the conversation strides off in all directions because we are so eager to swap what we know. He is a good man. What mother would ask for more?

Happy birthday, Jaybird. I love you.

Don't forget that my friend Pea is having an earring give-away. Follow the three easy steps here and get a chance to win them.

Pea's earring give-away: Everyday Iridescence

2009-05-17T13:52:00.014-04:00

Let's have some fun. Pea has contributed a lovely pair of earrings for me to give away. Just a few simple steps and you can be wearing them.

I always laugh when I read a description on Etsy or e-Bay that includes some little plea for the product, noting that it looks much better in person or that it doesn't photograph nearly as beautiful as it really is. I always think, well, you'd better brush up on your photography skills.

But Pea and I have been discussing why no one views or hearts this lovely pair of earrings in her Etsy shop. I've seen them in person, and they are full of sparkle and color. The large bead is Czech pressed glass in a rainbow hue. The little teal beads are a nice complement to them. Try after try, they simply do not photograph that way. So Pea has decided that they are not a creation that's going to impress a shopper in an online shop, where all they have to go on is a picture.

Lucky you. You can win some Everyday Iridescence by playing along with our game.

1. Go to Pea's shop and check out the jewelry.

2. Return here and leave a comment.

3. Include the name of the piece of Pea's jewelry that you like best.

4. (Optional) Give any constructive criticism you have on Pea's shop.

How can Pea make her jewelry and her shop stand out from the crowd? I don't know the answer. I'm glad that jewelry-making is not my area, because the competition on Etsy is astounding. I'm no big shakes on math, but if you are browsing "earrings" or "jewelry", the chance that you will land on Pea's work must be astronomical. Then if a seller has a limited (or nonexistent) marketing budget, where does she concentrate her efforts to best effect? We don't know. Maybe you can offer an opinion or your personal experience to help.

Pea will draw the winning name a week from tomorrow, May 25, which is a holiday, but who cares? I may even talk Pea into guest blogging.

I look forward to hearing from you. Please come back tomorrow when I'll be blogging on the occasion of my son's thirty-fourth birthday.

A compendium of my disorganized thoughts--and the winning name

2009-05-13T11:59:00.006-04:00

I've been remiss in responding to the wonderful, creative names you all left for my bunnyatrix. I apologize and assure you that my mother taught me to do better than to leave my friends hanging in the air after they have done me a favor.

I have learned that I can't be blogging while I'm making art, and I can't be making art while I'm blogging. So sad, because I love to do both of them. I have read the same lament on many other blogs. I won't be quitting my day job, so I'll have to resolve the issue somehow.

I have numerous stories started that have not yet come to their natural conclusions, so I don't feel yet like posting them. Some people have suggested that I might post my stories in smaller installments. What do you think? Would you rather wait longer for a finished "episode," or would you enjoy reading smaller chunks of the story, with natural little cliff-hangers and foreshadowing (that would, I hope, keep you returning)? I could really use your opinions; perhaps some of you have already pondered this same question in respect to your own writing. Please leave a comment if you have the time.

Back to bunny. I love so many of the names you suggested for my paper doll that I will need to make other little adventurers to carry them: Indina Jones, Lila Cuttle, Sofie Swiftly, Cleo Cloudhopsky, Honey O'Hare, among many others. A number of people came up with Amelia Earheart, or some variation thereof, and that made me ask myself, Where in the world has my head been? Why didn't I think of that? It seems so perfect that her name should be something related to the great aviatrix. (I actually used an old photo of Amelia to get ideas for the bunny's costume and still didn't think of playing off her name.)

So I knew this name was perfect the moment I read it: Amelia Hareart, which was suggested by talented blogger, crafter, quilter, storyteller, finder of vintage treasures, and super duper bunny namer, Tristan Robin Blakeman. If you have not sampled Tristan's blog, I urge you to do so. (Finish reading this post first, please.)

So, Tristan, I will send you an Amelia Hareart sheet so that you can construct your own little bunnyatrix--if you want. But I will also tell you that I have on my work table a couple of boy paper dolls--a badger and a fox--and you are welcome to wait for one of those if you would rather. And thank you so much for the name. It's perfect.

And thanks to all of you who posted suggestions. If I use your name for a future paper doll sheet, I will send you a copy and give you credit.

I will post again today/this evening to let you know how to win a pair of Pea's earrings. I may have to give her a present to make up for my neglect.

Oh, one more thing. I learned from Maddie (skullsonstuff) that there is a steampunk name generator. That's going to come in handy.

Adventurous little bunny no-name

2009-05-10T10:02:00.018-04:00

Please help me name my newly designed little bunnyatrix. I am really pleased with her. She was a happy accident; she originally started out as a pillow, then went through several incarnations and a brainstorming session with Pea. What do you think of her?

I'll be back later with details of a new give-away featuring one of my bunny paper doll sets and a beautiful pair of glass-bead earrings that Pea designed.

In the meantime, please leave a comment or tweet. This adventurous little girl needs a good steampunky name.

P.S. Happy Mothers Day.

Poetry is rumored to be dead again this year*

2009-04-30T20:41:00.011-04:00

Today is the last day of National Poetry Month, and I’ve read once again this year that poetry is dying. But it’s not. I’ll tell you why.

The old-fashioned, iambic, rhyming poetry can be a big part of a good childhood. It is satisfying to a human brain in its playful state. We know that children are affected by rhythm. Healthy children rock and swing, and unhealthy children knock their heads against the walls. Nursery rhymes and Dr. Seuss and Shel Silverstein and Edward Leary and every song lyric you’ve ever heard have rhythm and rhyme.

There was an old woman lived under the hill,

And if she's not gone she lives there still.

You see a large number of noses turn up when you mention poetry, but I’d venture to say that a majority of ordinary folks enjoy the universal wisdom in the simple kind of poetry, and they don’t buy poetry journals or get interviewed by Newsweek or read bare modern poetry. But they know you don’t fall asleep under a haystack while you’re supposed to be watching sheep and that you have to let your light shine, as well as

Righty tighty

lefty loosey

Thirty days has September,

April, June, and November.

I before E except after C

and when it says A

as in “neighbor” and “weigh.”

I studied contemporary American poetry as a master’s candidate. I like poetry that doesn’t rhyme, poetry that is hard to figure out, poetry that is translated from other languages, and poetry that emphasizes concision and intellect and symbol. But I really like the pleasure of a good rhyming poem, especially the fun of saying it aloud. Think about what happens when you hear the first bars of a song you haven’t heard for years: You start singing, without thinking, because your brain has stored the lyrics away in stanzas, with a chorus, a tune, and a beat. As poetry.

Fats and Skinny sleeping in the bed.

Fats rolled over, and Skinny was dead.

Some of the best moments I have ever spent in this life involved the energy and clarity of a good rhyming poem. When I was small, my mother would read to me. She was a good reader with a variety of voices and the timing of a dramatic actress, and I felt completely cheated if I had to go to bed without a private performance.

We’re three little kittens.

We’ve lost our mittens.

Birds in a pie, cows over the moon, highwaymen, ghosts, nightmare horses, dragons and fairies and porridge. I learned to make that magic for myself when I had to, because the poetry that my mother read to me stuck in my mind without effort. The words kept me calm and slowed my breathing and occupied the time until sleep came for me.

When I was a little boy, I lived by myself,

And all the bread and cheese I got I put upon a shelf;

A few years later, I read to my sister, speaking the voices as my mother had, pausing for effect, stretching a rhyme here and there to add to the drama. I enjoyed playing my mother’s role, especially if I was wearing her high heels while I read. I passed the rhythms and rhymes to my sister, and she would eventually carry them to her brood of children. I hope she did. Our favorite was the poem in the big red book in which a little girl entreats her doll to explain why she ignores her:

Matilda Jane, you never look

at any toys or picture books.

I show you pretty things in vain,

You must be blind, Matilda Jane.

I read to my youngest sister and my little brother too. I went to college where I wrote and read my own poetry. My son and I spent hours and days reading together. I had a much larger repertoire of voices by then, and I delighted in the fact that I could mesmerize him with the same old tales that were magical to me.

The time has come, the walrus said,

To speak of many things.

Even now someone in my family will recite a line from a poem we used to read together:

Did I ever tell you about Mrs. McCabe?

and someone else will answer with the next line:

She had twenty-three sons and she named them all Dave.

and so on…

Our first poems are the best. They contain lessons and mysteries and history. They tickle the brain and worm in deep and stay a long time and disappear last. Poetry is not dying. It’s not even ill.

*My apologies to any poet I misquoted. I thought it would be fun to see how accurate my memory is. Okay. I was too lazy to look things up.

My fifteen minutes in the sun

2009-04-28T18:49:00.021-04:00

The first memory I am sure I remember is of a day at the beach with my parents. My dad swung my little sister in her carrier, which had its own awning to keep the sun off of her. She wore that little blue hat tied to her bald head, her little wrinkled face screwed up, always squinting as if an answer was about to come to her.

My mother wore her modest black bathing suit with a white terry cloth robe over it and a new pair of black flip-flops. She had a bright print scarf tied around her big black hair. She shook out a horse-hair navy-issue blanket and arranged herself on it with her freckled legs out in front of her, teetering a little from side to side, catching herself on her elbows. My dad always teased her that she never really tanned, just became one big freckle. I had a half a cup of my mom's freckles poured across my nose, but I was rosy and fair (flushed and pale?) with light pinky blonde hair, and I burned to a crisp in half an hour.

My dad loved to take photos and movie film. He pointed the camera at my mother, and she threw her hand up to her collarbone and turned her head as though she didn't want her picture taken. Later she would send out three copies: one to each of her sisters and one to Grandma. We had one in our album too.

I stood in front of my mom while she rubbed sun cream on my back. She spun me around and greased up my front side too. As my dad put the baby down his shadow fell across us. My mom looked up, and her husband was reflected in the lenses of her big black sun glasses. She looked like a minor movie star with her big white teeth glittering in the sun, her shiny black hair tumbling down her back. “Go on,” she said to me. “You can only spend fifteen minutes in the sun.”

“But I want to build a castle–”

“You’d better get going, then. You’ve already wasted a minute. Go with your dad and get in the water.”

My mom took sunburn seriously. The first year they were married, she and my dad had been attracted to the beaches as only two young newlyweds from Illinois could be. They'd awake early on Saturdays, pack some snacks and drinks, and drive to the beach. The world was Technicolor, and they were wholesome young adults in a salty, vivid land.

Everybody hears the warnings; they are all over the place. But the sun on a tropical island is not the same as the sun that ripens corn and beans on the Midwest prairies, and even if a man has sported a farmer’s tan for twenty-four years he can’t lie out in the island rays and expect not to cook like a chicken thigh.

So one time my dad didn’t turn over when my mom told him to but said instead that he’d turn over when he damn well pleased. He thought the heat was clearing up the acne on his back. He didn’t really start to smell like frying bacon until they were on their way home.

He was so sick that a couple of times he said he wished he’d turned over when she told him to. He slept at the kitchen table the first night. He moaned and roared when he tried to move. A fan oscillated across his skin and my mom kept slathering on handsful of Noxema.

Mom said he was so sick she wanted to call the doctor. He was vomiting from the heat and dehydration, and his skin was as red as a hot dog. His body temperature was high, and his mood was hot as hell. He slept at the kitchen table the next night. The skin on his back curled up like pork rinds and fell to the floor like husks. He was in so much pain that he began to converse with my mother. “I could be court martialed for this,” he told her.

“For a sunburn?”

“For damaging government property.”

She put that piece of information away in her little mental tote, filed under “court martial” and cross-referenced to “sunburn”. By the time I was born her fear of the sun had gelled into a standard operating procedure, and I was always subjected to a lecture and a creamy rub before I went outside in the sun.

“Go on, go on,” she said as she shooed me toward my dad. “Dwain, take her into the water,” she directed. She lit a cigarette and blew the first drag up into the sparkly air. She checked my sister with one eye only, the other one squinted up from the smoke. She rubbed cream into her thighs with the palms of her hands, keeping her fingers splayed back so the Coppertone would not collect under her red-lacquered nails.

My mother never went into the water. Part of it was that she didn’t want to muss her hair. She did have a beautiful head of hair. The other part was that she couldn’t swim a lick, and my dad was a trickster. She might have enjoyed a lazy bob in the waves, but she didn't trust her husband not to turn her weakness into a nasty practical joke. Our outings nearly always ended with someone crying.

I couldn't swim either, but I took hold of my father's hand, and he led me along the sand to where the wetness began, squeezing my knuckles together until the bones rolled against each other and hurt. I didn't say a word because complaints usually caused him to decide to play rougher, squeezing my pinkie finger into a little white swirl and rolling it into a knot until I began to cry and he began to laugh. Being good meant no whining, and that was not always easy to achieve with my parents.

So we dug our toes into the sand and waited as the waves approached. I stood in the little oval spot of my dad's shadow. The water tumbled over our feet and backed away again, seeming to suck the sand from under our feet. Each time a wave retreated, I felt as though I was flying backward toward the blanket and I laughed.

“Watch this,” my dad said. He picked me up and tossed me about three feet away into the water.

The whole world slowed almost to a stop. The water twirled me around and I saw shells and crabs and sticks and silt spinning around with me. I was jerked out to sea as the wave receded. I felt as if I traveled a hundred miles from the beach. I had not known that you could see under water. My ears echoed with a rhythmic sound that I didn’t recognize as my own heartbeat.

Finally, my dad grabbed me by the arm and lifted me up out of the water. I heard myself choking and gagging and spitting, before I lay still in the hot sand. This afternoon was the first time I felt that hot anger that drove me through my twenties, thirties, and forties before I gradually learned to loosen its hold. The first time I let myself feel anything but afraid.

"She's drowning," my mother said to my dad.

"She is not. It was only a foot of water." My dad poked at me with his foot as if I were driftwood that had washed up on the beach. "Hush up," he said, “or we'll just go home."

I lay on my belly in the hot sand, my father's bad toe with its thick yellow horn of a nail an inch away from my nose. I didn’t make a sound while I tried to calm my breath and stop sucking in great gulps of air.

"It's your own fault," my dad said. "The sea hates whiney sailors. Get up. I'm not going to tell you again.”

I lay there hiccupping and burping up sea water, feeling the skin on my back grow crinkled, as my fifteen minutes in the sun burned away.

A Hawai'ian Dream

2009-04-20T19:42:00.044-04:00

My father was a sailor, and he and his sixteen-year-old bride had set out on an adventure that landed them in Honolulu, thousands of miles from the Illinois prairie where they grew up. Two years later I was born, and they raised me until the age of eight not knowing that there were places cold and colorless and dull.

My dad told me that he wanted to name me Sugar and my sister Candy. Since our last name is Cain, my mother wouldn't let him do that. I don't know if that story is true or not. Once I said to him, "My last name would be Payne (my mother's maiden name) if it weren't for you." He said, "If it weren't for me, your name would be Mudd." I had to wonder about that one a long time before I learned about Dr. Mudd.

Plumeria plant at GriffithGardens.

Even though my father’s academic career ended a few months short of high-school graduation when he threw a basketball at the coach’s head and stormed out of the gym, he was smart. Perhaps the fact that he rarely spoke and did not waste too many words on feelings or tales of the past (or the present, for that matter) made him seem smarter than he was. He usually spoke for practical reasons: Hand me that hammer. Get me some coffee. Where’s the twine?

When I was about six years old, my father came home from working in what he called Uncle Sam’s engine room and said he was going to become a millionaire. He had a plan. He would be rich by the time he was forty years old. He was getting in on the ground floor of an opportunity to strike it big. Everyone in the house had drawn near and grown still just to hear him talk. My mom stood by the stove with a wooden spoon in her hand, letting the white chicken gravy drip while she stared at him.

Tropical Floral Barkcloth at The Rockpile

“Mutual funds,” he said.

What my father was proposing was no more imaginable than me flying to the moon on a clothesline. My mother did not entertain the thought of my father becoming a salesman. She simply turned back to the stove and continued stirring as though he had not spoken.

Wikimedia.

For two weeks after that, my dad sat around in his spare time reading looseleaf notebooks and writing up worksheets for fictional clients. He even practiced his sales pitch on my mom while she was peeling potatoes.

I could not picture my father coming into someone’s house the way the carpet sweeper man had come to ours, making small talk and then turning the topic to what he had to sell. And he didn’t get the least bit upset when it became clear that my parents were not going to buy, even though he was obliged to leave the free gift he had promised (four steak knives, I think). I couldn’t imagine my dad nodding politely, listening politely to potential clients. Spit it out, he’d tell them. I haven’t got all day. If they couldn’t spit it out, he’d say. Yak, yak, yak.

Wikimedia.

Then my dad announced that we were going to a fancy fake luau at the home of a couple who came from Boston but now owned a three-story glass house with a lake and a waterfall, wild birds and a tame monkey, all from selling mutual funds. This was even stranger to us than the fact that my father had found himself a second job.

Sears catalogue 1939.

With the exception of a few friends, my dad did not visit people: He visited car shows and zoos and Sears, places you didn’t dress up or worry about manners. Right away my mom went into a frenzy of planning. She feared that we wouldn’t know how to behave in a nice place, as if our house was the pig sty she was always telling me it wasn’t. Get those toys picked up! You don’t live in a pig sty! Apparently even my dad was too ignorant to be allowed in public without coaching, because she kept giving him etiquette tips until he said, “Who made you the goddamn queen?”

www.fashionera.com

My mom was a slave to women’s magazines that told her how to make a gracious home on a shoe string, and that servitude was going to serve her now. She was twenty-four years old, cute and coltish, but her family… well, she had a lot of work to do. For the four days remaining before the visit, she discussed our wardrobes with herself. She tried to make us the smart, young family on the go. I was going to wear a turquoise dress with a white sash that made me look plump. Nearly every time she grabbed me at the last minute and started to improve me she ended up embarrassing us both, and I feared that. In her nervousness she began to cut my hair, and each day the bangs of my pixie cut grew shorter as she tried to match up the sides.

Hawaiian dress at UpscaleVintage

My sister Lissa, who was two years old at this time, looked like a little old man. She had no hair and a squinched up suspicious little face, and my mom always stuck a bow to her head so she was identifiable as a girl. Lissa was going to wear a blue dress with matching ruffled panties and ridiculously useless sandals. She was to sit on my mom’s lap, and she was not to snot, to cry, or to throw up. And I was not to do any of my nervous habits: harumping or clearing my throat or biting my fingers. “Just try me and see,” Mom said. “I’ll blister your butt in front of everybody.” But she wouldn’t. I knew that. She would never call attention to herself.
(I hope my sister sees this.)

As we drove on the narrow twisted lava roads lined with trees and plants I've never seen the equal of even yet, my parents sparred half-heartedly, my mom describing my dad’s shoes in unflattering terms and my dad calling her a fat ass. All the time my mom sat in the middle of the bench seat with her hand on my dad’s knee while he drove.

The party was not a success for the young family on the go. There weren't any other children there except a snotty teenage girl with a dog under her arm. I stayed a little behind my mom and said nothing. I thought the guests looked at me as though they were holding little pieces of poop on the tips of their tongues. Just like a sitcom, everyone was wearing casual luau clothes except us. My mom took the belt off my turquoise dress and let me remove my shoes and socks in hopes that I would look billowy and in a luau mood, but instead I was sweaty and graceless, starting to burn.

My little sister fell asleep on my mom’s lap and saved her from having to mix. She sat silently and soaked up the uncomfortable smiles as if she didn’t notice. When her feelings were hurt, you’d never know it. Later she’d unleash a streak of venom and clean the house furiously as she ranted and eventually run down to a headache and a nap. I sat on the grass next to her chair with my big old feet politely stuck up under my dress so I wouldn’t look like I came from Dogpatch, as my mom described it.

And do you know what we got from all of this? We were invited to attend the hosts’ church home, and my parents, now fired with the idea that they could have a mansion and a fake luau, accepted.

Honolulu, Hawai'i, taken by Steve and Pam Paulson from Amos Griffith's Giffin and Hoxie.

I don't remember even once going to church before this time, though my mom would talk about the church ladies who helped her through pregnancy, stillbirth, and tumor, so I must have. We had a big book of Old Testament stories that had colored drawings my mother deemed too active for us to read before bed. I believed that God made the world out of clay and it thundered when he was bowling and rained was when he was crying. Lightening, he was sharpening his sword. He put a rainbow in the sky to say I'm watching you. He lived in the sky in a country called Heaven, but we couldn’t see him because of the clouds. When someone died it was because God needed them for something up there. Sometimes I got God mixed up with Aesop, but these were the tenants of my secret religion, a collection of lore I had gleaned from many sources.

So, we went to church for a month. The Sunday school teachers taught us songs that I can still remember. I’m in the Lord’s Army and Zachias Was a Wee Little Man. I sang without emitting a sound and never recited an answer when my name was called. I felt proud of the stars they put up on the wall chart next to my name, though I had done nothing to deserve them but show up. One week we sang Climb, Climb Up Sunshine Mountain in front of the church before the sermon, all of us making the motions like little mimes, the teachers standing in front of us singing with exaggerated cheerfulness and drawing big smiles in the air with their hands as we sang faces all aglow.

After a few weeks of scuttling to church once a week, making Sunday as stressful as a school day, or any other day you had to get ready to go somewhere with my mom, I learned what a revival was: a chance to go to church every night for a week and all day on the concluding Sunday. My heart sank into my shoe. It was one thing to tolerate a once a week visit, sing a few songs, make a craft, listen to stories that were not as good as the ones my mom read to me before bed. I didn't like other kids. I didn't like strange adults urging me to participate and speaking to me like I was an idiot because I wouldn't. About this time I was developing my habit of fuzzing my eyes up so I couldn't see clearly and staring off into space as though I was deaf.

But now I had to go to church in a hurry every night after my dad got home from work and cleaned up. My parents both were oddly enthusiastic and talked excitedly about the future in the car on the way. Mom carried a dish for the fellowship dinner in the church basement. I’d get a shaky stomach from eating other people’s food and having my mom whispering directions and threatening punishment. I had to go to bed at seven o’clock in the evening when we were home, so by the time the congregation was gathered, I was falling asleep, and my sister was sacked out on a pew, sleeping like a baby.

The church was packed and we all sat looking toward the front, where we expected our minister to appear. The sanctuary was hung with banners about our lord and they were twirling slowly from the big fans in the ceiling. Music came out of the huge speakers on the walls, instrumentals that sounded familiar and inspirational. We were in back of the sanctuary, which was built like a plush coliseum, the seats staggered upwards so that everyone could see. Throughout the room heads were turning and people were mouthing words that could not be heard over the vibrations of the speakers.

Suddenly the whole room went quiet and our special musical guests appeared. They were identical twins, The Good Twins, who sang in perfect harmony and witnessed for the lord with their music. The minister’s wife introduced them and made them sound like someone famous that we had somehow missed hearing about. Their hairlines were receding identically and they were dressed exactly alike. They introduced their beautiful wives, who were also twins, who smiled and sang a number with them.

They put on a heck of a show, my dad said. Several times my mother stilled my little sister’s feet because she was kicking the back of the seat in time to the music. During an intermission my parents shelled out for one of their albums, Good News, so either they really wanted to impress the guy with the glass house or they really liked the music. I was pretty fond of “You’ll Never Walk Alone,” because it swelled to a dramatic moment at the end.

As the minister began to speak, my mom motioned me to take my sister to the restroom. It took me a minute to realize what she meant because she never trusted either one of us out of her sight for a moment, and usually she would rather keep shushing Lissa than take her downstairs before she whined with desperation. My only guess is that my mom was so touched by the holy spirit that she forgot that she didn’t trust us any farther than she could throw us, which she didn’t do back then. Or The Good Twins had stirred her in a way she hadn’t been stirred before.

(I still have the albums.)

So I took my sister down the stairs, holding her hand and the banister. I was a clumsy child, and steps terrified me; I had fallen down them so often. We got into the roomy one-room bathroom without a calamity.

“Hurry up and go,” I told Lissa. My mom always locked us in, so I turned and fiddled with the lock on the door. I heard the little click and felt a stab of maturity before I heard Lissa let out a shrill scream that filled me with a greasy-stomach dread.

She was standing there with her ruffled blue pants around her ankles, her underpants nested in them. She pointed at the toilet as she let out another siren. Something was splashing in the bowl. I crept forward and stretched my neck out like Pippy Longstocking.

“It’s a mongoose,” I said. “Look. He’s taking a bath.”

Lissa was bent over at the waist, her rosy butt cheeks pointed toward the door, staring into the commode, her hands thrown up at the sides of her head, her little white church gloves reminding me of a clown. We looked like someone should paint us: two homely urchins and a mongoose in the toilet.

The mongoose pulled himself up by the elbows and hung on the toilet ring. He opened his pointy little mouth and made a rude noise at us. Lissa screamed again before I could grab her and try to keep her quiet. I put my hand across her mouth and said, “Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.” She just bobbed her head around trying to get away.

I talked to her in a sing-songy voice. “He’s taking a bath, then he’ll go home. See? He’s taking a bath in the toilet.” I didn’t think a mongoose was any more dangerous than a rat, and we saw them all the time. Rats are a part of living in the tropics. They would run off with a kitten if you didn’t watch them.

Giant rat. BBC news.

Pretty soon Lissa was repeating after me, “There’s a mongoose in the toilet.” She was wrestling her panties up, and I helped her, my gloves clamped under my arm, forgetting all about the original purpose of our visit to the restroom. The mongoose leaped out of the toilet and started moving around the edges of the room looking for an escape. This set my sister off again. She was loud, and we were not allowed to be loud, especially not in church. The mongoose ran behind a carton of toilet paper, and she stopped--

Dwarf Mongooses at linohype

A commotion arose at the door, pounding, shouting, stomping, pounding. Open the door! What's the matter! Is someone hurt? Open the door!

The door would not open. Now the yelling crowd outside the door had frightened us more than the mongoose, and Lissa started wailing. We were breaking my mom's cardinal rule: Don't call attention to yourself. I kept trying to shush my little sister, but I was so scared that I had to bend over and clear my throat of the nervousness before I tried to unlock the door. The little button that had so easily slid to the right wouldn't budge back toward the left. I fumbled. Break it open! Unlock the door! What's the matter? Get back! I'm coming in!

Click. I swung the door open and there stood my parents, frowning, glowering, surrounded by the congregation, all with eager, concerned looks on their faces. Even The Good Twins were peering into the bathroom. I squinched my nose. I leaned over and hurumphed a few times. I think my mother thought I was going to throw up, because she put her gloved hand on my back and tried to lead me away from the crowd. I thought she wanted to get me alone so she could lecture, pinch, and smack me, so I stood there doubled over in the midst of the churchgoers knowing that for one brief moment she could not touch me except gently.

My dad squatted down and put his arm around Lissa's legs and lifted her up so she was sitting on his forearm, her favorite seat. "What was going on in there?" he asked her.

He never expected her to answer. She never spoke except in her special Lissa babble that no one could understand but me. My mom always said that Lissa was too lazy to talk because I talked for her.

"There’s a mongoose in the toilet," she said, plain as day. Then she wet her ruffled blue panties, my dad’s sleeve, and part of his pant leg.

Mom would not leave me alone on the way home. Never had she been so mortified, she said. Her own children screaming and playing grab-ass in the church! In the church! She grilled me about the mongoose.

“It was probably a rat,” she said.

“It wasn’t a rat,” I told her.

“There’s a mongoose in the toilet,” Lissa said.

“You,” my mom said to her, “lie down and go to sleep.”

“Because a mongoose doesn’t look like a rat,” I said.

“Well, then, Miss Smarty Pants, what does a mongoose look like?”

“A little like a weasel,” I said. "A little like a cat."

“Dwain?” she said to my dad. “Dwain! Is that what a mongoose looks like?”

“It looks something like a weasel,” my dad said. "They kill snakes and birds."

“Weasel or no weasel,” my mom said, “if you ever scream in church again I’ll whip you into next week. You hear me?”

"I didn't scream," I said.

She turned to my father and said, “We can’t go back there. I’m absolutely mortified."

A ghostly apparition

2009-04-16T20:54:00.003-04:00

I can only take decent photos in the sun. I've read a hundred tips, but I still do a crappy job if I'm trying to light an object. I know that photos sell your work, but I don't know if I'm ever going to learn to take those clear, clean shots I so admire.

So I sculpted a tiny little bunny girl 3.5 inches tall. She has a poseable body and I think she will wear a pair of bloomers and a pinafore. I tried to photograph her to show you, but I just couldn't do it. Unfortunately I forgot those camera lessons my sister gave me (she's a photographer) when I discovered that the sun covers a multitude of ineptitude.

But what do I do after dark? Here's the ghostly rabbit girl of Lexington. You'll see more of her soon. In the sun.

I'm in two treasuries at once--whew

2009-04-16T17:03:00.012-04:00

Because I'm being exceptionally creative today, I thought I'd just post the two treasuries I find myself in. That way, when they go away in a little while, I can still come back and see them here. I'm baking a few babies and hope to have something impressive to show you soon. If not, I'll show you something a strange and interesting to make up for my lapse.
PattiBacker's "Peculiar Prints" treasury.

I don't know why I like it so much when people think I'm odd. It's always been a point of pride with me. Good thing, too, or I would have hurt feelings.
Deadpan Alley's "Strange Brew" treasury.

This is one of those "Treasury West" pages, and no one I know seems to understand how they came about or why they are likely to disappear at any time, as the note below the treasuries in the west reads. I kind of imagine myself and my art standing out in the desert with 11 compatriots. Where are we? I don't know. Do you think anyone will see us?