Becoming Agitated: A Movie Review

As an early birthday present, I was given a membership to Netflix! I was so delirious I instantly watched one of the free online movies because I intend to take FULL advantage of all the free movies even if watching them online means they are herky-jerky and the sound gets funky.

What do I care? It's not like I watch Action Flicks!

And my first movie was Becoming Jane starring Anne Hathaway. Now, I happen to like her. She's clean and wholesome and has lovely eyes and lips and a very clear complexion. I could imagine her playing the role of the young Jane Austen with dignity and style. And she did, for the most part. But....and this is a BIG BUTT...

For the entire movie she seemed to be the only person dressed in Napoleonic 1810 period clothing. Everyone else was dressed in clothing from the late 1700's. And believe me, those 10-20 years makes a HUGE difference, just as it does today. Picture yourself walking down the street in full 1980's regalia and you will see instantly what I mean. Because in the 80's I wore purple tuxedo jackets with the sleeves shoved up to my elbows, black stretch-pants tights and high-collar silk shirts with giant brooches.

So instead of looking like THIS:

She looked like This:

Even though the costumer got it right for everyone else, they just HAD to make poor Jane stick out like a sore thumb. I guess they wanted her to look like Keira Knightley in Pride and Prejudice who seemed to spend the entire movie stomping around in an old bathrobe and a gauze stick-dress with no chemise:

What is UP with that???

At the ball Jane looked like THIS: Notice how in the background the other guests are dressed in the same era clothing which is obviously NOT the era Jane is dressed from!

And sitting on the Front Porch we have THIS:

There's Jane, schlumped in the background with hideous posture and no corset. She should be looking like THIS on an outing such as a family picnic or to watch the fellas play cricket:

But instead, she seems to be wearing the 1795 version of the string bikini:

Spaghetti Straps and a white cotton undershirt???

Don't even get me started on the hair.

Jane Austen was born in 1775 and died at 47 years of age in 1817. She would have been wearing her hair like this, for the most part, as well as dressed like this: But instead, at the end of the movie, they had Anne Hathaway's Jane wearing THIS EXACT HAIRDO:

So I hated the movie.

One of Life's Little Mysteries

I've been fiddling around with a place called http://www.scrapblog.com/ for all morning and could get nowhere with it. I want to be able to do creative headers and change my background once in a while but I can't get blogger to let me pick my OWN background. I wanted to use things like THIS:

And THIS:

Or THIS:
And later on, after my birthday hoopla, ones like THIS:
And THIS:
But I give up. I can't get it to work so my blog background will have to stay white for the time being.

Speaking of WHITES...here is a mystery.

I wash my clothes every Wednesday because that is the only day I have both the time and access to the washer without someone else hoarding it first.

If you can do math, which I can't, you can pretty much figure that in seven days there will be seven white washcloths and 7 pairs of white undies to be washed and dried. Along with a couple pairs of colored undies for evening dinner party undergarments.

But today as I was folding my clothes, I counted 18 pairs of white undies and 4 pairs of colored undies in the pile. But just 7 washcloths.

That's like 2.8 pairs of undies per day. Since there is no such thing as an eighth of a pair of undies (see previous post) at least not WEARABLY so, I can round up to 3 pairs of undies a day or down to 2 pairs of undies a day.

But I have NO MEMORY of changing my panties twice or thrice a day for the last 7 days. Am I running home at noon and donning a fresh pair? Did I go on one long bender of a panty-changing spree but was so drunk on cotton fibers that I had a black-out afterwards so I forgot?

I really have no idea. You can leave suggestions in the comments section if you can figure it out for me.

Numbers

I was speaking with a friend who recently opened a dog boarding kennel. He is also a stockbroker and has one of those analytical/mathematical minds. I always go to him for financial advice and to discuss trends. (i.e: I complain about how broke I am and he complains about the Bush Administration)

I asked him how the kennel is doing during these trying times and he said, "Well, I averaged 6.8 dogs a day last month but I need 8 dogs a day to break even."

"How do you board an eighth of a dog?" I asked, "Did someone just leave you the head?"

As if explaining to an idiot or an eighth of a child he launched into a simplistic analysis of estimates and averages. But I was having none of it! I told him, "I think you should change the name to Heads or Tails But Not Both Boarding Kennel for Partial Dogs."

There was a brief pause and then my clever friend said, "Keep it up and you'll be getting an eighth of a birthday present!"

Like Sarah Palin's Hair

I had a day exactly like Sarah Palin's hair. A rats nest of Mess in the back, and hanging in greasy strings down my forehead in the front, obscuring my vision. Yep, that just sums it up!!!

The ultimate bed-head kind of day.First off, my printer DIED. Yes, another one bites the dust. I've owned 2 computers in my lifetime and during that same span I've gone through 7 or 8 printers. And these aren't cheap babies, either!

In the midst of printing out a time-sensitive document (doesn't that sound awesome and virtual?) (Actually it was a birthday card, ha-ha) I noticed that the printer was no longer making thunking noises. Or scritching noises.

Thunk. Scritch. Thunk. Scritch. Dead Silence.

I tried to reboot, unplug and replug, threaten and cajole but nothing worked. The printer had gone to it's Great Beyond.

Scrutinizing my harried schedule for the day, I realized that if I wanted to avoid the horrid Sunday is Mexican Father Day at Walmart, I had better just head on over there at 7:00 am before going to work.

For those not in the know or not from the West Coast, it is standard operating procedure for Hispanic Men to bring their litters of children to the Walmart on Sunday afternoon's and just turn them loose to romp and play in the aisles. My guess is that it's the free version of taking them to Disneyland. They get to play with all the toys with no consequences if they break them or leave them strewn about the floor; they get to race through the aisles knocking the slow and plodding into the $5 DVD bins; they get to squirt each other with shaken orange soda bottles and SCREAM!!! They do a lot of screaming.

So there I was at 7 am with my broken printer standing in line behind a woman who had a giant plastic zippered bag like comforters or bedding come in, FILLED to capacity with chatcke's she was returning. My first thought was that she knocked over a Walmart truck in some kind of midnight heist, but in fact she had receipts for each item she was returning. Separate receipts. Which she had to dig through in order to match them up with the appropriate return.

She was returning things like a paper towel holder. And a box of bobby pins. And a brown bathroom rug and a brown bathroom mat. And some crackers. And some kiddy socks. My guess is she had about 20 items, and right in the middle of this drama she abruptly left the window, and raced off into the store to find an item so that it could be scanned for the appropriate code.

I was staring at my cell phony, realizing that my time was running thin when she returned with towel in hand and her business was concluded.

My transaction took mere moments because I had no box and no receipt. I know, I know, you are supposed to keep those things but I don't. Basically I was turned down flat AND to top it off she wouldn't even throw the useless printer away for me. She said, "What if you came back later and wanted to dig it out of the garbage? We can't be responsible for that."

AS IF!!! Like who would want to come back later and dig something out of the garbage?

So I hauled the printer outside of the store and threw it into the garbage can by the front door and proceeded to race back in and buy the quickest, cheapest printer I could grab and be on my way.

I had 15 minutes to go before I would be late so I raced at incredible speeds down the freeway and through the backstreets to my client's house.

Except when I got to her street it was cordoned off with a big sign that said, "Closed for the Cowtown Marathon". What the *!*%&#@???

I was doomed. There appeared to be one thousand slow moving people strolling aimlessly down the center of the street headed who knows where. It was more like a Cowpoke Marathon if you ask me.

Now, Land Park is an area of town where the streets go bendy-bendy. There is no such thing as just going around the block or taking a parallel street to get close to where you need to be. Streets veer off in all directions and intersect each other in 5 way stops. It's designed to Hex the Outsiders, is my guess. Because Land Parkian's don't take kindly to folks they don't KNOW coming around their town.

After sneaking through an abandoned road barrier and almost running down a small childlike volunteer who was too puny to really man her post, I was able to get within a block of my destination. But I was thwarted by a very fat copper with a BIG walkie-talkie. You know, the kind that likes to RUN things in ULTIMATE control. So I pulled out my best 'feeble female' impersonation and told him that I simply HAD to get to work because an elderly woman was depending on me for her very existance and I pointed to her front door and said, "It's just RIGHT there! And I need to pull into the driveway for emergency purposes."

He looked like he was about to tell me no, but since there weren't any cowpoker's on the block at that moment he let me mosy on down to her driveway.

I punched in the number for the teletime card with moments to spare.

After work I raced home to unpack and install my new cheap-ass printer. Only to discover that it appeared to be missing the cable that connects the printer to the computer. Reading the fine print inside the box, I saw where it read, "If this device does not come with a USB cable, you must purchase one seperately." Like: don't they KNOW? When they print up the boxes and the booklets, they don't KNOW whether they are going to include a USB cable? Like, maybe on a WHIM they will and maybe they won't???

Oh. I said "Oh."

Because that's when it struck me. The garbage. Back at Walmart. Wherein resides my USB cable in perfect condition which I threw away because I wouldn't possibly need that old thing ever again since a new printer would come with it's own new cable, because who in their right mind would ever need to go and rootle around in the walmart garbage in order to retrieve something he or she had thrown away?

Someone having a Sarah Palin's Hair kind of day, that's who!!!!

Seasons Change And So Do My Linens...You Need Not Wonder Why

Ah! The First of October! Only 17 days until I turn 52! Scary...and Oh So Real.
And I am itching to get rid of the summer decor! I looked at my bedroom this morning and thought...this crisp summer white needs to go hibernate. Time for a warm, rich, winter feel to my slumbers. So I changed THIS:


To THIS:

But not quite in the blink of an eye. Because I stored all my quilts UNDER the mattress this year and of course this one was on the very bottom layer. But I love my bedroom so it was worth it.

And now a word from the Big Baby Bibliodatum:

Last week Miss Kitty and I went to buy yet another baby gift. This time, it was for a BIG baby. Not your ordinary wee little one, but a Big Whopping Giant Baby. Although Kitty had not yet seen or met this Behemoth, she assured me that it was TWICE the size of the last little baby we bought for, and at the same age.

So instead of shopping in the Newborn-3 months category I upped us to the 3-6 months category, shuddering to think what giving birth to a six month old sized baby must have done to the mother.

After a slight brangle over the fact that Miss Kitty does not like footed sleepers because it makes it too hard for the baby to walk on hardwood floors--because you know how newborns like to creep around in the night like Chuckie--we finally decided upon a very cute little velour onesie.

Lo and Behold! Yesterday when I went to pick up Miss Kitty, she informed me proudly that the outfit we chose was MUCH too small for the Big Baby.

Which just goes to show that sometimes in life the baby really is BIG.

I'm in Stitches

Look at what I borrowed (stole) from the mammogram clinic today so I could copy it as a pattern for a wrap dress and a summer bathrobe!!!

(don't worry, she said I could take it.)

Look at what I whipped up today from my fabric stash which I am DETERMINED to reduce by half! (Don't look if you don't want to know what you are getting for Christmas, peeps!)

I must be manic. I made this skirt from start to finish in 2 and a half hours. That's less time than it takes to run my McAfee! Even the seams are finished and I don't own a serger!

(SPOILER: What you can't see from the picture is that this skirt has a 12 INCH waist and wouldn't fit a single soul living on this planet not even Barbie it's so tiny.)

(So let's just call it a prototype, shall we?)

How Many Miss Kitty's Does It Take to Screw in a Bug Light?

Ah, the Bug Lights Saga continues....

Yesterday was my 11 hour work day and believe me, I was tired beyond all Realms of Tiredness. When I showed up at Miss Kitty's to take her to the grocery she was out back rootling around in her garage. I watched her pull out her wheel chair and walk it over to the back door. There was no cane in sight which means she walked down her back porch steps and the 30 feet to her garage with no other assistance whatsoever than her own steam.

This is how I know she's a big Faker.

As we were gathering up her things to go shopping I noticed a burned out bug light on the kitchen table. I asked her what that was about, and she told me that she put it there to remind her brother to put a new one in the socket on her front porch light.

What this means is that she unscrewed the burnt out lightbulb, took the bad one and placed it on the kitchen table so that her brother could come along and put the NEW bulb in the light fixture for her.

Because although it may be a job for One Kitty to unscrew a bug light, its a BIG deal to put the new bulb in it's place. Besides, how could she remain a helpless invalid if her brother discovered she could damn well screw in her own lightbulbs?

What a Beautiful Mess I'm In

TODAY'S THEME SONG:

Going out of my mind these days,

Like I'm walkin' round in a haze.

I can't think straight, I can't concentrate.

And I need a shave.

I go to work and I look tired.

The boss man says: "Girl, you're gonna get fired."

This ain't your style, and from behind my coffee cup,

I just smile.

What a beautiful mess!

What a beautiful mess I'm in.

Spendin' all my time with you,

There's nothin' else I'd rather do.

What a sweet addiction that I'm caught up in. (Diamond Rio)

I just had to do it! I had to crawl myself from my bed of woe and make a couple new aprons. It's autumn, and those springy-summery pastels are not the look I'm cravin' for when I don my work attire each morning and head out to the salt mines.

Thank God for Walmart with it's last remaining bastion of the $1 and $2 a yard fabric selections! Most of it is crap but if you dig, you can find some 100% cotton. Sure, it's not flame retardant and I could go up in a kitchen fire like Poof! But new aprons I must have and this is how I can afford to do it!

Laying out the pattern that is most dear to me in the word! GGB's apron pattern from 1932. It's the only one I've ever come across that covers me up the way an apron should.

Cutting out two aprons at once is one of my many smart little tricks!

Getting those pocket placements just right is Easy when you have a handy-dandy reversible pattern.

Operating the sewing machine is more art than science! Take her out for a spin, Young Laredo!

Okay, making miles of bias tape by hand creates heat-blistered fingers and some very wavy tape, but it's soooo worth it in the end.

Click on this picture to see what I mean about the bias tape.
What a beautiful mess I'm in!


Hours of toil and it's finally finished.

The Padawan naps through the entire project!

No time to admire it for long, it's officially on duty and ready to go.

The Other Cat's Grass...

Mackie wants out and Spawn wants in. They can sit like this for hours, never making eye contact or acknowledging the other one's existence. Mackie will not go out as long as Spawn is on the stoop and Spawn will not leave for hours and hours; not until he's good and ready and ready to give up on the possibility of getting a treat from me.

I think there is a rap song like that:

I want what you've got
You want what I've got...

Anyway, I had a friend once who seemed to have it made. Her husband made oodles of money; she didn't have to do anything but work 2 hours a week at the local rubber stamp store so she could get their discounts;, she got to spend whatever she wanted on her Hall teapot collection and on slight acquaintance she seemed to have it all. I could have been envious but I just wasn't. And it was a good thing, too, because on further acquaintance I discovered she had a hoarding disease, and that paranoia thing where you never let anyone into your home or invite friends over, as well as a host of ailments and oddities that brought her 'lucky life' down in my opinion to a mere trickle.

Nope, I had already realized long before that, that I don't want to trade lives with anyone. Not for an instant. No matter how weird or hard or strange my life can be, I don't want the other man's grass! My problems are FAMILIAR to me. I don't want to adopt another life because of the problems that come with it. Foreign ones.

Anyway, I am pretty sure that Mackie knows his grass is the greenest, as well!

Victim Threat Level in the Yellow! (Elevated!)

Yup. I'm still the Vector for Nut Magnets and now it seems I'm attracting Victims like Quarks and Protons into a Black Hole!

Today was a busy one. I had to go get my annual TB test for work, pick up my meds. swing by the grocery for cat food and coffee filters and then try to find the nearest Safeway Gas Station because I get 10 cents OFF per gallon but only until the 30th of this month. Plus, I had to swing by the License Only Cosmetology store so I could get the stuff I need to turn my hair back to blonde from this weird Ash Head I've got now.

Busy times!

As I was tooling the aisle in the Safeway I happened to see this lady with the prettiest red hair. She had golden highlights and she had a layered mid-length bob. Very attractive! And it's my motto to compliment people because compliments don't cost me a thing and they sure do make people feel good!

So I told her I loved her hair and the next thing I knew, I was pinned between the Cocoa Puffs and my cart listening to her really looooooong tale about all her troubles. And believe me she had a few! Her husband is a cop and has a broken foot from chasing down a druggie. He has a bad rotater cuff from being yanked violently by a sex predator trying to escape his grasp; her twins have cerebral palsy; her daughter has scoliosis; her son is perfectly fine 'but it's just a matter of time!' she said; she herself had some kind of virus that drained every bit of potassium from her body, migraine headaches, fibromyalgia, multiple skin lesions, and the Black Plague.

Well, not those last two but I was just standing there trying to inch away while allowing her the space to vent her little heart out to somebody who would listen!

I told her to make sure she took a little time for herself no matter what. What I should have told her is to start a dang blog so she can vent all she wants to!!!!

I could have taken a couple of push-pins out of my feet and given her a quick acupuncture treatment, but I could tell she really didn't want anything to get better. Not just yet. Not until after her son becomes a helpless cripple or an alcoholic at age 7.

Finally, I escaped. As I turned around and headed for the check out stand, bearing down on me like a bullet to the bullseye was an elderly women in a whiplash collar, both arms bandaged, legs in plastic braces, wheeling herself along with her food basket precariously balanced on her broken knees...avoiding eye contact I ran as fast as my crucifixion feet would allow.

My main reason for going to the grocery was to buy coffee filters. Because I don't own any! I own a Braun with a permanent gold filter. This morning when I made coffee in my new/used Mr. Coffee I just dumped the scoop of chocolate vanilla blend coffee right into the basket. And YUM! Chewy coffee!!!

Wait, I'm getting ahead of myself.

As most of you know, Miss Kitty likes to talk about BIG stuff and also likes to hoard things like Bug Lights in case of a nuclear freeze she will still be able to keep her porch light on.

But we haven't bought Bug Lights in ages, however we have started to buy Tweezers. We've purchased 3 tweezers in the last 2 weeks. And we are still browsing the tweezer aisle and talking about slant versus straight tweezers. Miss Kitty will not use a slant tweezer. And no matter how I tell her she has at least 15 pairs of tweezers in her make-up drawer at home, she insists that she has to buy tweezers.

I guess she's got a BIG, BIG, BIG whisker problem. And since her eyebrows are tattooed on, I just don't want to KNOW what she's tweezing.

And then there's the Coffee Maker issue. In the 3 years I've been with her we have purchased 6 brand new Coffee Makers. At first I didn't catch on: if she said she needed a new one I didn't ask any questions about why?. After the 3rd or 4th one I started to wonder what was up with that?

It appears she doesn't like a dirty coffee pot. And she thinks that might mean it is wearing out and she has to buy a new one just to have a backup. She's got 4 used Mr. Coffee's in the garage in case something happens to the newest one, and 2 brand-new-in-the-box Mr. Coffee's just in case. Obviously she's got a stockpile of coffee on hand as well.

Yesterday, after unpacking the new Mr. Coffee we just purchased, I asked her what she was going to do with the old one? On a rare whim she told me I could have it! But keep it on hand in case something goes wrong with her new one! Because it's a BIG deal not to have coffee. BIG!!

Meet BIG Mr. Coffee

(Look, Joy! Twinkly lights on my two tiered plate rack!)

Tool Time!

There is a cool country song out right now by Rascal Flatts that is my theme song and my motto and my anthem. It's called Every Day.

I come around all broken down and
Crowded out
And you're a comfort
Sometimes the place I go
Is so deep and dark and desperate
I don't know, I don't know

Every day, every day
You save me
Every day you save my life.

Okay, now some folks are singing that about Jesus and some are singing that about their significant other, but I'm singing it about the wonder drug LYRICA.

It's the definitive drug for fibromyalgia pain, which isn't affected by normal pills like Advil or Ibuprofin or Vicodan or Demerol or Opium. I love it and I say it saves my life. Every Day.

But there's just this one thing that bothers me about Lyrica: THE COMMERCIALS.

The ones on television depict a spiffy middle aged woman prancing around in a flea market with a big heavy bag slung over her shoulder. Or dancing into the wee hours with the ubiquitous grey haired man who in real life would just be GAY he looks so good. Or standing in a windy field of daisies leaning on a white rail fence jabbering on about how she has just hoofed it over 40 acres with her mule. That's right, 40 acres and a MULE.

I think they should show it like it really is: Every day it's like somebody took one of these:

and pulverized the hell out of every soft tissue and muscle in my body. Every day. And I mean beat me up good, too, not some light percussion massage.

So when I saw this latest print ad I laughed in Wild Peals of Angry Mirth...

Because I'm like: PUSH PINS????? PUSH PINS????? Is this somebodys idea of an understated joke? Because for ME, what is sticking into my feet all over are THESE:

And it feels like THIS:

And what's worse? I have to WALK AROUND LIKE THAT.

The Slime of Miss Green Moldy

Hey, what can I say? I can't remember why I'm standing in the kitchen spinning in circles with the water running, the tea kettle boiling, my Sim peeps hollering for help while sweat trickles down the middle of my back and pools in my butt crack, but I can STILL MAKE UP SILLY TITLES FOR THINGS!

For those of you who were not born before the Flood, that title is a take on some old movie: the Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.

I thought of another one, sure to go right over the heads of the less aged and/or historically savvy: "Would you like some Menachem Bacon with those eggs?"

Okay, today was one of those days. Up at 3:30 for no reason at all except I could tell my body was done sleeping for the night. Exhausted by 10 am with a mounting headache, I decided to pop out to the grocery store really quick for some laundry detergent and the super duper bottle of quick-release Advil. My hair was wet from the shower, I had on baggy clothes that are stained and frankly not fit for the charity barrel, and the worst shoes on earth: old red tennies that I spray painted pink once upon a time on a whim.

Because, you know, I'm just popping out for 15 minutes. I'll keep my head down low. I won't meet anyone I know. I won't be talking to any strangers. There won't be any dangers, dramas or emergencies between there and back again.

At the grocery store I successfully avoided the cute produce dude that has teased me for years that he is my husband because once, a LONG time ago he was sweeping the floor and I jumped over the broom.

I avoided going to my favorite checker because I felt too badly to make eye contact.

I made it all the way to pulling out my debit card when two ladies behind me raised a fuss about the cute little card holder I made out of paisley paper to keep my card from losing it's swipe. It's just like an old library card pocket, back when library cards were made of paper and needed to be protected. You know, kids, before PLASTIC was invented.

They kept insisting that was my hidden talent and where my fortune lay! I wanted to hang down my head and cry because, frankly? If that's my hidden talent? and where my fortunes lie? Then I'm a lost goner. Because I could probably sell them at 5 cents apiece and once I'd saturated the market I'd have made a quarter.

Finally I made it out of that store without too much fuss and as I pulled into the alley behind my building I almost ran smack dab into a downed power wire! Or, it could have been a telephone wire but how would I know? Like the Good Samaritan that I am, I whipped my car across the alley to block all other traffic and threw on my flashers.

I asked a nearby parishioner of the church, congregating in the parking lot like always, if she had a cell phone and explained the situation. She debated whether it was a 911 emergency or not while I had time to take stock of her bling, her perfectly coiffed hair, her designer shoes and the fact that her ear robot was the best quality shiny Star Wars model available on the market, I just KNEW she had time to take stock of my shoes, my hair, my air of desperate downtroddenness, and my trembling need for a big fix of Advil. Which, by the way, was all I could do to keep from whipping that bottle open right there and gnawing through the plastic in order to down a couple of them.

It's a shame, but I felt ashamed at my absolutely demented appearance. And why didn't I have my cell phone with me? What good does it do me at home when I'm out and about?

Nevertheless, I was not about to be thwarted in my quest to be a hero, so I stood my ground while she dithered about the phone. She finally decided to call the church administrator and see what he thought. I decided to handle it myself, quickly ran upstairs and called 911. I told the dispatcher that it might not be an emergency but it might be a sizzling smokin' hot 400 million volts of blue steel molten electricity just waiting for the hapless victim to come along and touch it, but it was her call whether to send out an officer or not.

Then I returned to my car hoping the cop was cute and single and over 75 otherwise he'd not be attracted to me unless he had full blown cataracts; firmly determined to have saved at least a dozen citizens from being reduced to charred ash heaps.

Alas, the cop was about 5 foot 1 inches tall, 23 years old soaking wet, totally oblivious to my flashers or my peepers, who calmly pulled up, got out of his vehicle and proceeded to roll the wire up and toss it out of the way.

Well, REALLY!

Its the Most Wonderful Time of the Year

No, Not Christmas, although that's also the Most Wonderful Time of the year. And not Easter, although that, too, is the Most Wonderful Time of the Year...

SEPTEMBER!!!! Almost AUTUMN!

When summer is gone and it's oh, so mellow! When August is about half over I start to get that longing for the changing season. When you get that certain tang in the air like the bittersweet is about to start popping out in the hedgerows and the leaves are going to turn the most glorious shades of fall. When you start to think of decorating in fall colors, and buying pumpkins and gourds and Indian Corn.

In Sacramento, however, the days still evoke this: Bright White light pouring through the window on a warm breeze.

Even so, I couldn't help myself. I had to go ahead and change the table decor into an autumn theme.And if you don't just adore that crow perched on the shoulder of that scarecrow...well, you are just not from this galaxy, is all I have to say.

Happy September everybody!

It Don't Mean a Thang!

Well, this has not been the most pleasant of weeks as far as work goes. I truly love my job but, like all jobs, it has it's down days.

But with the elderly you never know what's going to hit you! It's not like when the french-fryer goes on the fritz and the customers start walking out on you. Which is why I'm seriously thinking nostalgically about going to work in some truck stop somewhere. I know how to sling hash! I don't always know how to care for my clients.

This week one of my ladies had a melt-down temper tantrum on the sidewalk outside her dentist's office. She refused to use her cane and wanted to hang off my arm like a monkey. I told her to take her cane and start walking and she grabbed my arm and dug her hand into my flesh with all her might and screamed at me that I was MEAN! I was being MEAN to her. Like that will look good on my criminal record rap sheet. Elder abuse or in this case, caregiver abuse!

The other lady insisted that I was using someone else's broom vac and that there was squash in the fridge and I had better cook it for her. She insisted that the smoke alarm went off for 2 days in a row and nobody would help her. (She's never without care so that's just not possible.) Then she asked me if I had ever gotten a new tenant and when I told her I owned no rental property she got a little huffy with me. Because I'm, like, hiding my assets or something.

The worst part was when my third clients daughter called and asked me what happened to the bag of marshmallows that were in the cupboard? I had thrown them out. They were congealed, had melted and then solidified into a solid mass. Not the healthiest of snacks in my opinion. But noooo...I was told in no uncertain terms that if her mother wanted stale marshmallows I was not to interfere. It was her house and her rules. "If mom wants to leave an open can of cat food on the counter covered in ants, that's her prerogative."

After that phone call I wanted to crawl under the bed and hide my shame. What was I thinking to presume I could throw away bad or rotten food?

So it is just a little glimpse of happy to think about when my other lady tells me this story:

It was WWII and there was gasoline rationing, so my lady had to ride her bike 2 miles each day to prepare a little house she and her husband had purchased for her bonkers mother to live in. She had one sibling, Flora Jean, who lived far away so she was not able to help in this endeavor.

I say her mother was bonkers because she threw herself into the ocean and several other suicidal feats. In today's world we'd say she was manic depressive schizophrenic but back then she was referred to as 'a tad touched'.

Anyway, my lady prepared this little house with paint, wallpaper, soap and beeswax polish and on the day she took her mother to present her with this amazing gift of a home of her own...her mother walked in the front door, glanced around and said, "It doesn't mean a thing without Flora Jean."

And although it was meant to be a very pathetic story, it cracks me up every time she tells it.

I want to change the grammar around a little bit and make it into a country western song.

"It don't mean a thing without Flora Jean

not my pickup my dog or my gun...

Since Flora Jean went on the run..."

The Secret Life of Paper

Okay, I guess if I can bare my soul and confess I'm a glutton I may as well confess something else...

I'm a USER. Yes, I use them. I use them ALL. And when they are done for, I throw away their empty shell and start over on different ones.

Magnetic Notepads.

Can there ever be enough of them? Can I ever have enough of their efficient, pretty, handy, delightful presence in my life and on my fridge?

It's not like it's a REAL addiction. I can stop anytime I want to. It doesn't affect my job performance. My relationships are not suffering because of it...Okay, my bank account is, just a little bit, but I don't binge on buying them. I can buy just a few at a time or even just one and nurse it while I listen to the band.

There is nothing obsessive, compulsive or hoardish about it, either. I have it under control.

But wait, there's more of them:


I know what you are thinking. One of these days I'll hit rock bottom. There will be no more options for me; no space for my little habit, and then I'll have a meltdown. You are thinking maybe you should plan an intervention for me. Like maybe a Tupperware party to confront me with my need and try to get me to diversify a little bit.

You are thinking, "Can't she just stick with refrigerator magnets like the rest of us? Why does she have to be so out there with this excessive indulgence?

But I won't hit rock bottom. I have a contingency plan.

I'm already planning where to put a second refrigerator.

You Decide

As always, my pictures are viewed best when clicked on and enlarged. (Because, frankly, the batteries in this camera are almost totally dead, which makes the photos bland.) Is this for me? Really?Sniff
Chomp
****

Last night at work as I was cutting a muskmelon, my lady and I were talking about eating habits and food. She is a voracious eater, but in little amounts.

I on the other hand am a 'stuff it in and reach for more and as soon as a meal is finished, start looking for something to peck on until the next mealtime' type.

I told her I was afraid I suffered from the Deadly Sin of Gluttony.

She thought about this for a bit and said, "Oh, that's nothing. You could be an alcoholic. You could be a drug peddler."

Well, when you look at it like that... it puts a new spin on it. I should start thinking about it in a new way.

Obese Glutton or Chubby Nibbler? You Decide

The Blair Recipe Project

Having lost my pancake recipe 5 times in a row because it was just tucked into my recipe book any which way, I decided it was time to tackle the Dreaded Recipe Book Organization Project... You all know what I mean. Recipes jotted onto scraps of paper, on index cards neatly typed but ancient with flour dust and spilled liquid spots, torn out of magazines, downloaded from cooksdotcom on full-size sheets that have to be folded up and therefore never get used.

We have every intention of getting them into some kind of binder, neatly typed and readily accessible by category if not downright alphabetized.

Once upon a time, I had taken one of those pretty blank diary type notebooks that everyone has but nobody uses, and had painstakingly copied out about 20 of my 2,000 recipes in pretty markers, color-coordinating the types of recipe...cakes, cookies, breads, cookies, meat dishes, cookies.

And then my hand wore out. So that project never got finished. Over time those pages became indecipherable because the ink bled all over the place and was eventually blotted out entirely.

Since Idle Hands are the Devil's Workshop, I decided I had nothing better to do than get that recipe book into shape once and for all. That meant NO cheating such as gluing the old recipe onto a new page.

Of course I decided to document this awesome task because nobody would believe me if I didn't.
Except the pictures kept turning out blurry. And dark. And gloomy. Are there darker forces at work? Trying to keep me from being the only person on the green Earth --except for possibly Martha Stewart-- who has her ducks all in a row and her recipes neat, tidy and organized?

I want to tell those petty Gods of Clutter and Mayhem that they need not fear me. I've already glued several long drawn out recipes right onto the pages, and I've even gone ahead and simply hole-punched the existing old recipes and stuck them in the binder.

In fact that may be what I'll do! Just hole punch everything, as is, ink blots, globs of dried cookie dough and all!

P.S: A friend suggested that I get those nice plastic page protectors that fit the ring binder and you slide the recipe down into a pocket. Neat idea! Except those only come in full-ring size binders! But next time! For sure!

Don't It Make My Brown Eggs Blue

How do you designate which eggs in your fridge are boiled and which are raw?

It seems that everybody does this differently. For instance I know people tend to keep them in different compartments. Or the raw ones in the egg holders built into the fridge door and the boiled ones in a bowl or the original egg carton. Or vice versa I don't know which.

Cousin Pearl Baker-Snell-Forbes-Jackson-Rowe-Tackett (she's been married 5 times) peels them all, which to me seems to defeat the entire purpose of boiled eggs which is to make them last forever in your fridge without spoiling.

When I was growing up my best friend Eliza's mother put a big black X on the boiled ones. I still think a black X is repetitious and depressing.

So I always make my boiled eggs blue. Always.

And since I keep all my eggs in one basket, I think that makes perfect sense.

Maiden of the Corn

Well, it's been a while since I ran into any nutcases out there in the universe, but maybe it was because the God of Nuts was on vacation? Or saving up for a big whammy?

Last night, as I was cruising the produce department at the local Save-Away, I heard this frantic shredding and tearing sound. I turned around and saw a seemingly normal young Japanese woman in medical assistant scrubs shredding the heck out of about a dozen ears of corn. She had a bag of cleaned corn in her cart and was tearing, shredding, peeling away like a madwoman. I was so puzzled I was almost stunned.

She was throwing the shucks back into the bin with the other ears of corn, making a huge and to my way of thinking rude and inconsiderate mess of the corn she was leaving behind.

I wanted to say something SO badly. I circled the melon kiosk trying to get my courage up enough to approach her and say, "Is that how your mother taught you to shop for corn?" Or I wanted to say, "Can't you do that at home?" Or further, "Does the hovel you live in not have a garbage receptacle?" Or "Are you terrified of corn silk and wish to leave it all in the store rather than risk taking it home with you?"

I started to get actually pissed off about it, after pushing my cart around the potato bin a few times. I searched for the usually ubiquitous produce clerk to lodge a complaint but none was to be found.

I even tried to imagine that she was just checking to see if the ears were good. Of course, the rest of us just peel back a little corner of the top, but maybe her culture is different? Like maybe they don't have corn on the planet Slorgon? But no, she wasn't checking anything. She was furiously, frantically and downright viciously stripping and processing that corn right there in the produce aisle.

As I glared at her and swooped my cart around the peach and nectarine cases I was muttering pithy and devastating remarks to her under my breath. "What the Eff is wrong with you, Jap Bitch?" was probably the low point of my tirade.

It was then, steeped in a fugue of fume, that I noticed a nice young Soccer Mommy with her wee tot in her cart, staring at me with fear and trepidation. It was clear to me that she thought I was the nut! She thought I was the Crazy Lady in the Plaza de Produce!

I raced to the middle of the store and buried myself in the frozen food locker, counting on the frosted-up glass to cool me down and hide my shame.

I don't know why it is I didn't just run and tattle on her. I also don't know why I didn't say something pithy or even snarky right to her face. What do I care? I could take that little chick in a brawl. But noooo! I have to be all polite and scared and reserved. With the unfortunate upshot that I fret about it and fume for all to see.

Next time? Should I ever be so lucky as to see some fool peeling corn in the store and leaving a mess? I'm going to walk right up to her and say..."Shuck Off, Lady."

Sea Meth

Last night my subconscious, while I was sleeping, revealed to me the reason all those skiers, jet-skiers, motor-boaters and surfers are so amped up all the time. It's because of the Sea Meth.

Yes, it's a naturally occurring methamphetamine found in saltine sea water, which enters the body through the nasal passages every time you fall in and get a snortful.

In my dream, I was handed a pamphlet while at the beach with the words SEA METH emblazoned on the front in shiny red letters, warning of the hazards of inhaling too much salt water while partaking of aquatic diversions at the seashore.

So I had to tell everybody. Some folk might want to rush right down there and dive in, but some might want to sell their snorkels and swim fins on eBay and take up a less drug-laced form of recreation.

This public service announcement has been brought to you by the Dream State of Miss Pink Ponsonby.

I'll Be the Xylophone Waiting for YOU

It's August, and a new month means a new table-top decor. It's one of my personal pleasures to arrange my table with a few of my likable things so it's the first thing I see when I walk into my kitchen each morning that puts a smile on my face. The fridge is the next thing, with the coffee pot or tea kettle being next.

Inside the pitcher is my collection of old wooden shoe trees for women. Some of them have little cloth covers on the tree part. I rarely see these anymore but for the most part I bought them for a quarter apiece. My antique stoneware gravy boat doubles as the butterscotch disk holder.

The book I am rereading for the umpteenth time is "An Hour Before Daylight" by our President Jimmy Carter. He is an amazing writer and this book reminisces all about his childhood days growing up in Georgia. It is funny and sweet and takes me back to the days when I, too, peed in outhouses, chamber pots, or back behind the barn when necessary.
When I'm sitting at my table having breakfast and reading, I can see this view. It's my favorite collection of the Wade Figurines. This is the Nursery Rhyme set and I don't have all of them but I keep looking. I want the gingerbread man, but he must have run pretty far away because you can't find him anywhere. Those old nursery rhymes were weird but they are a part of our cherished past, as well, aren't they?
And then I ran across this little family portrait from the olden days and had to put it up here. You won't know it if you are a 'yung-in' but this couple were the height of fashion and all that was glorious and most desirable, back in the day. Some of my cousin's still wear their hair this way.

The world needs it's fashion time warps.

And the world always needs another mis-heard lyric. I was bopping down the road the other day singing to my heart's content to an old song on the radio...

Why dont you build me a buttercup Baby
Just to let me down (Let me down)
And mess me around
And then worst of all (Worst of all)
You never call baby When you say you will
But I love you still...
And I'll make you happy
I'll be home
I'll be the Xylophone Waiting for you.