Brian's Song

Once again, I've wandered away and left the blog alone and neglected. If Lori didn't drop by and feed it occasionally it would have starved long ago. Lately I've been busy, and I've been saying pretty much what I'm inclined to say on a couple of message boards that we are active in, so I'm pretty much tapped out when it comes time for blogging.

But the other day I was explaining our cat Brian and his magnificent athletic abilities and my daughter recommended I post his story here.


Brian's Song

We have a cat, Brian, who is not very bright. He had a little oxygen deprivation problem at birth and you can tell he's a few bricks short. He spends a large part of his day staring blankly into space with an empty look in his glazed eyes. Brian's favorite thing in the world is when Katie dangles a shoelace over his head and then flicks it up into the air. Brian will just up to the top of the doorframes to grab that shoelace, and he'll jump for it all day long. As long, in fact, as someone is willing to stand there flicking a shoelace. We call that the String Game, and although all the cats will play it for a while, none play it as well or as long as Brian. We think Brian doesn't have many options for upward mobility in his life, but he is the undisputed master of the String Game. So K*tie and I have Brian's String Game career pretty much mapped out for him.

Brian will enroll in a high school with a respected String Game program. Even though he's not very bright, the athletic department will provide him with tutors to keep him eligible for his spot on the Varsity String Game team. If he can get his ACTs over 18 by taking the test over and over and over, he can get into a Division I school on a String Game scholarship...maybe Notre Dame or Florida or Michigan...somewhere where he can get some national exposure.

Since he'll only squeak in on academic probation, he'll have to redshirt his freshman year, but that'll give him a chance to practice with the team and "fill out", which means take a higher dose of steroids.

Brian's sophomore season is his breakout season, and he takes his school to the String Game National Bowl Title. Of course, Brian flunks all his classes and is about to lose his scholarship, but that's okay because he's going to turn pro at the end of the year.

Brian signs with an agent and makes himself eligible for the draft. He gets chosen in the first round of the String Game draft by an expansion team that plans to build their franchise around him. He'll be making $15 million his rookie season, in spite of the fact that he can neither read nor write nor ever hope to live independently. He hires someone to fill his kibble bowl, and he has a team of people to clean his litter box and replace the light bulbs in the lamps he knocks over.

Over the next five seasons, Brian makes over $200 million and goes to the Pro Bowl of String every year. Then he blows out a paw making a routine leap in practice one day, and his String career is over.

Brian gets a job doing color commentary on ESPN3. His responsibilities are limited to reminiscing about his own Hall of Fame career, and being a foil for Howie Long. But his retardation becomes glaringly obvious in front of a camera, and Brian gets less and less air time.

The paw never healed right and Brian's been taking ever increasing doses of painkillers for years to get some relief. Over time, Brain descends into alcoholism and catnip addiction. He loses his job with the network, spends his time gambling on unsanctioned String Game tournaments, and eventually hits bottom: broke, addicted and alone. His high-living friends have abandoned him, moving on to the next party.

Finally, Brian gets into a 12 step program and slowly works on becoming the cat he once was. He repairs his relationship with his brother Slipper and takes a job coaching inner city cats on String Game fundamentals.But all those years of hard living have taken their toll on Brian, and he dies quietly, in his sleep, of a heart attack.

Brian was 7.

A made-for-tv movie about Brian's life has been optioned to ABC and is in pre-production. His family will memorialize Brian's inspirational story of hope and sacrifice by offering the rights to Kitty Kelley, but we'll require a $10 million advance, and a fieldhouse built in his honor at his alma mater.Kwachie and I will be promoting his image on posters and cereal boxes, and eventually as a Saturday morning cartoon and a set of limited edition commemorative litter boxes.

Jon Stewart Home-Run

I know that some of you (shout-out to the Canadians) are getting tired of our political kerfuffle, but some things are just too good not to post. If I knew how to put this video over on the sidebar and keep it playing for the next two months, I would:

Where To Start??

I feel like I should be blogging about Sarah Palin ... but I wouldn't know where to start, and so many people are doing a better job of it than I could even hope to. So, start here, with one of my new favorite bloggers:

Mudflats

I feel like I should be blogging about the Republican Convention and how they're using Hurricane Gustav to make themselves look like they give a good goddamn about the country, but I wouldn't know where to start, so here's a letter to God from Michael Moore that I thought was an enjoyable read:

Sunday, August 31st, 2008

Dear God,

The other night, the Rev. James Dobson's ministry asked all believers to pray for a storm on Thursday night so that the Obama acceptance speech outdoors in Denver would have to be cancelled.

I see that You have answered Rev. Dobson's prayers -- except the storm You have sent to earth is not over Denver, but on its way to New Orleans! In fact, You have scheduled it to hit Louisiana at exactly the moment that George W. Bush is to deliver his speech at the Republican National Convention.

Now, heavenly Father, we all know You have a great sense of humor and impeccable timing. To send a hurricane on the third anniversary of the Katrina disaster AND right at the beginning of the Republican Convention was, at first blush, a stroke of divine irony. I don't blame You, I know You're angry that the Republicans tried to blame YOU for Katrina by calling it an "Act of God" -- when the truth was that the hurricane itself caused few casualties in New Orleans. Over a thousand people died because of the mistakes and neglect caused by humans, not You.

Some of us tried to help after Katrina hit, while Bush ate cake with McCain and twiddled his thumbs. I closed my office in New York and sent my entire staff down to New Orleans to help. I asked people on my website to contribute to the relief effort I organized -- and I ended up sending over two million dollars in donations, food, water, and supplies (collected from thousands of fans) to New Orleans while Bush's FEMA ice trucks were still driving around Maine three weeks later.

But this past Thursday night, the Washington Post reported that the Republicans had begun making plans to possibly postpone the convention. The AP had reported that there were no shelters set up in New Orleans for this storm, and that the levee repairs have not been adequate. In other words, as the great Ronald Reagan would say, "There you go again!" So the last thing John McCain and the Republicans needed was to have a split-screen on TVs across America: one side with Bush and McCain partying in St. Paul, and on the other side of the screen, live footage of their Republican administration screwing up once again while New Orleans drowns.

So, yes, You have scared the Jesus, Mary and Joseph out of them, and more than a few million of your followers tip their hats to You.

But now it appears that You haven't been having just a little fun with Bush & Co. It appears that Hurricane Gustav is truly heading to New Orleans and the Gulf coast. We hear You, O Lord, loud and clear, just as we did when Rev. Falwell said You made 9/11 happen because of all those gays and abortions. We beseech You, O Merciful One, not to punish us again as Pat Robertson said You did by giving us Katrina because of America's "wholesale slaughter of unborn children." His sentiments were echoed by other Republicans in 2005.

So this is my plea to you: Don't do this to Louisiana again. The Republicans got your message. They are scrambling and doing the best they can to get planes, trains and buses to New Orleans so that everyone can get out. They haven't sent the entire Louisiana National Guard to Iraq this time -- they are already patrolling the city streets. And, in a nod to I don't know what, Bush's head of FEMA has named a man to help manage the federal government's response. His name is W. Michael Moore. I kid you not, heavenly Father. They have sent a man with both my name AND W's to help save the Gulf Coast.

So please God, let the storm die out at sea. It's done enough damage already. If you do this one favor for me, I promise not to invoke your name again. I'll leave that to the followers of Rev. Dobson and to those gathering this week in St. Paul.

Your faithful servant and former seminarian,

Michael Moore

I should even be posting about the ducks, but I don't know where to start. Last week they started laying eggs and they're delicious. We've gotten five so far ... but we lost two ducks. Not to the egg-laying process, but to predators. Richard's drake and one of the black cayugas were taken from their pen last week and their little carcasses were left in Richard's field on the path to the pond. I'm bereft.

That's all the news from Nowhere today.

Jesse Jackson Jr. at the Democratic National Convention

Michelle was wonderful, as usual, and the video tributes to her and to Senator Kennedy were beautiful and moving, but this is the moment that gave me goosebumps.

American Prayer

I've got nothing funny or clever to say today, but I hope you'll read along all the same.

For the past several months I've been alternately excited, worried, anxious, angry, thrilled and hopeful. Tomorrow morning we'll wake up to the start of the 2008 Democratic National Convention, and I can't even find words to express what I'm feeling about that tonight. It's like all the best Christmases of my life all jammed together and on steroids, but even better.

I've lived a lot of years, voted in a lot of elections, been supportive of a few candidates and despondent about a lot more, but I've never before felt so much "on the brink" about any political event as I do now. This is history, folks, and once again, as has happened a few times in my life, I'm very much aware that I'm witnessing the kind of historic event they put in textbooks. In my lifetime, I've paid sad witness to the assassination of John F. Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr., among others. I've been awed and inspired to watch the first footstep of a human being on the surface of the moon and now proud and privileged to be here in this moment.

There have been other memorable occasions along the way, moments that will also go into the history books, but those are the big ones for me. They're the moments when it felt to me as if America, and the world, seemed to be drawing a collective breath and focusing together on one singular event ... and those big events, for me, revolved around singular human beings.

Dave Stewart co-wrote this song with Bono, and here's part of what he had to say about this gift from two British songwriter's on the eve of a singular moment in our history:

People long for a connection -- whether it is to music, to their country, or to a big idea. Regardless of what happens in November, Senator Obama has reminded millions of people that they have the power to connect to bigger ideas. He is, in essence, the embodiment of a new anthem for change. He has continued King's narrative from what was once thought of as a dream to a reality. I find it especially relevant that Barack Obama will accept the Democratic Party Nomination for President 45 years to the day of King's "I Have a Dream" speech.

What moves me most about Dave Stewart's message is not what he says about Barack Obama, but what he says about this country, and I'm grateful beyond words that there are still people "across the pond" who hold our country in this kind of regard and see us, not solely through the lens of the past eight years:

When we were originally writing the song, Bono was crafting the words in a way that would make people think about the fact that 'America' as a concept was a truly great idea, based on the bedrock of equality. I find it more pertinent than ever to release it now; to the moment America finds itself in, daring to re-imagine itself and its place in the world.

See, that's why he's a songwriter and I'm not, so I'll let him sum up, and I'll just pass along the gift of this video to all of you:

As an Englishman, I'm not an expert in all the intricate details of American politics. But as an artist, I understand how rare it is to inspire a connection to a bigger idea or purpose. This video isn't so much an endorsement of Barack Obama as much as it is a celebration of all those who have picked up a sign, who have registered to vote and are working to make the world a better place. So as Senator Barack Obama ascends to the mountain top, let us not forget all of the others who for the past 40 years have sung anthems of change to make this moment possible.

Friday's Project

I have an old Bolens HT 23 tractor that I bought from a friend for $150. He claimed that it was running when I bought it, but I was skeptical, to say the least. However, it's exactly what I need: bigger than a lawn tractor but smaller than a great big farm tractor, and with big tires to climb rough terrain. It's been sitting for the last few years and it's going to be a big project to restore, so a couple of weeks ago I moved it from it's quiet resting place under a big maple tree to the side yard. I try to do that with big projects...I move them out into the open where I'll see them every day. That forces me to actually think about it instead of letting it fade into the landscape.

So I've been reading up about how to restore it to, if not glory, at least functionality. Tomorrow's my day off; I'd like to spend part of it screwing around with the tractor. The tires will hold air, and I'm thinking that instead of messing with the old rusted 23 horsepower engine that's on it, I might check into a used replacement engine.

My dream would be to get this thing running again and put it into service working on my mom's yard. It's got a PTO; I can pull a bush hog with it. Then I won't have to find someone else to clear her property, which means I won't have to work with time pressure. Also, this is the kind of project I like to do in bites: clear a few hundred feet, reassess. Clear some more, reassess. I'd feel guilty if I hired someone and then wasted his time while I walked around strategizing the next move.

So if anyone's handy with small engine repair, feel free to drop me an e-mail so I'll know who to whine to when I get hung up. Wish me luck.

Bathtime For Hunter

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Friday Update, The Sequel

The good news is that she's not nearly as blind as we were expecting. The bad news is that, as I feared, we ran out of things to say about the kids and were forced to talk about other things on the way home. It'll take me another 6 or 8 hours to massage loose the hard, fibrous knot of filial frustration* lodged in my chest. I wonder if I can call in to work with the excuse that I spent the day with my mother and now I have to stay home and drink?

On the way home, my mother dismissed her cataract by saying, "I always say if it ain't broke, don't fix it." And I replied, "But it is broke. Just because you've managed to find some way to live with only seeing out of one eye doesn't mean that this is the best it can be. If you have an option to see out of both eyes but are only seeing out of one...it's broke."

And then a little further down the road, the subject of a handyman came up. We both agree that an impartial handyman is the way to go. She has numerous small and not-so-small things that need to be repaired around the house but she won't let me fix them because she thinks I'll be judgmental. She's right; I would. So we've agreed to a handyman. However, she doesn't want the handyman to come to the house until she has the money for him to do the work. I want him to come out, assess the situation and give us an estimate for each problem. That way we can start picking away at them one at a time. But no...she doesn't see the sense in it, unless she can afford the work.

My position is this: molehills become mountains one grain at a time. It took her 10 years to create this mess and it's going to take time to fix it. If you can knock a few bucketfuls of dirt off the mountain...a Medicare card here, a new pair of glasses there...then your mountain is moving in the right direction. If a handyman can look at her stuff and tell her which could be quick fixes and which would be major projects, we could do the quick stuff.

But no. It ain't broke anymore. If you've figured out where to put the buckets under the leaking roof, the problem is no longer a problem and therefore it no longer needs fixing. When the roof collapses, says I between my clenched teeth, does it get elevated back up to "problem" status? Yes. At the point it qualifies as a problem again. So wouldn't it be wiser to handle it now? No...it's not a problem now.

Similarly, the cataract is not a problem now. It will be, when the other eye can't see either. At that point it will officially qualify as a problem.

So I didn't reach across the seat and throttle her. Instead I took her home, told her I'd call Medicare for her and take her in to have her glasses prescription filled. Then I came home and made some lunch without throwing the dishes around or kicking a cat or sticking a steak knife in my eye. Which would have been, by the way, a problem for me. For her? Not so much.

*When I looked up the spelling of "filial" I found an alternate usage that was extra appropriate in our case:

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Filial is an adjective used to describe sons and daughters. It may also mean:
Filial cannibalism - Where a parent eats its own offspring.

Give it some thought.

Friday Update

Today is the day I take my mom for her eye doctor appointment. Fittingly, the weather is ominous, which matches my outlook perfectly. Two hours in the truck with my mom? We can only spend so much of that time talking about the kids...

However...forgive me if I've already mentioned this but in my haze of parental PTSD, the details are somewhat foggy...My mom's one blind eye and monocle-wearing status ("It was a blessing from God that I lost the lens over my blind eye!") necessitate this outing.

Oh...have I mentioned that my cyclops mother still possesses a valid Illinois drivers license and still drives to town once a week for church and a trip to Wal-Mart? Well she does. So I recommend that people wanting to avoid a head-on introduction to a one-eyed, toothless, hardheaded elderly midget might want to stay off Old Highway 51 on Saturday.

Her church day is Saturday because my mom is a Seventh Day Adventist, whatever that is. My total knowledge of her religious habits is that they take place on Saturday, although if she doesn't get her Jesus bank completely filled on Saturday, she frequently tops it off on Sunday at another church. I think she's not too picky about the denomination as long as the holy is rollin' .

Which reminds me...my mother's street address is 1665, a fact that's so distressing to her (it's awfully close to 666, if you add the one and the five together) that she's petitioned the county to have her number changed. The godless county officials nixed that because it'll throw off the rest of the numbers on her road. So she's making the best of it, but she discusses her street address problem with a great deal more trepidation than she does, say, the tree laying across her house. She's confident that God will take care of her tree problem, but she's worried that the street address thing might piss him off.

God, in fact, will NOT be taking care of the tree problem. He won't be climbing up there and chunking up that tree. God will be sending his unwilling minion, me, out there with my Holy Chainsaw and Divine Bug Dope to tackle that problem, while God sits back sipping mint juleps and accepting all the Glory.

Cushy fuckin' job.

WTF???

It turns out that on the Potty Mouth Scale, we have caused barely a ripple in the linguistic sewage lagoon.


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As you can plainly see, even with a rating of "high" (and by what pious, mealy-mouthed standard could 15.5% be considered "high" anyway?) we seem to be severely lagging behind in the cussing. This surprises me, because I guarantee you that a helluva lot more than 15.5% of our conversations around the family compound contain words and phrases that more than qualify, but I suppose we've been more cognizant of our language on the blog ... and this pitiful rating is the thanks we get!

To see just what constitutes an impressive Cuss-O-Meter reading, I checked to see how we stacked up against a known potty mouth, and ran the stats on Feral. I knew she'd win, but holy crap! She's got our pathetic pansy-asses completely licked (there ... I said "ass" and "lick" in the same sentence ... that should give us a tiny boost) with a whopping Cuss-O-Meter rating of 60.9%!

I realize that Feral's achievement (509% higher than the average blog) is one that we pedestrian slingers about of the vernacular can't even hope to approach (although I'll begrudgingly bet a goodly portion of that score is attributable solely to "wooo! tits!"), but still ... a paltry 15.5%? That's goddamned embarassing.

Fuck.

Another Day, Another Day In Which I Didn't Kill My Mother

Today I had a surprisingly harmonious day with my mom. After taking her to the state offices to hook her up with some social services, we went to the Senior Services office, where they gave her coupons for the Farmer's Market, which, happily, is held on Tuesdays.. So I drove her to the Farmer's Market with her $21 worth of coupons clutched in her withered (yet still oddly threatening, if you grew up with her) fist.

The Farmer's Market is in the parking lot of the old Wal-Mart, which is down the road from the Super Wal-Mart, where not only you can get shoddy clothing made by exploited brown people in far-away countries chained to their sewing machines, you can also get bad food wrapped in plastic.

The Farmer's Market is a long line of booths selling fresh produce off the backs of trucks. I parked the truck at the most easterly end of the parking lot. She wanted to start at the most westerly end. We trudged over to that end and started looking and shopping and working our way back east. After we'd gone the entire length of booths and were back to the easternmost end, she decided: she wanted the 50 pound watermelon from the booth on the end. The western end. So I, trying to parlay this outing into a mother-daughter bonding session instead of a tragic murder-suicide, said, "I'll get it. Wait here."

I went back for the melon, then wrestled it into my truck. In the meantime, she's moved on and was busily interrogating the eggplant lady about the relative merits of Asian vs. domestic eggplants.

She eventually picked out a few more things, for a whopping total of $12, and we headed back to my house so Lori could cut up the watermelon. I chose Lori for that project since she's less likely to plunge it into my mother's heart than I might be.

All of this is good, since yesterday was the day we stood toe-to-toe and I flatly told her that she'd lost control of her life and I was going to begin the process of making it manageable for her. She narrowed her old lady eyes at me, stuck out her toothless old lady jaw and said, "Don't make me hate you, Evelyn"

I made my meanest Mean Mommy face back at her and said, "Really, I'd prefer that you don't hate me, but whether you do or not, I have an obligation to keep you safe. Either we work together to achieve that, or I'll roll over you like a steamroller. But you're not going to break a fucking hip and die in the driveway and have your face eaten by the dogs if I have anything to say about it."

It would have been a Mexican standoff except that neither of us are Mexican, and I was already guaranteed to win, because I'm more stubborn and I really fear the day I find her dead at the bottom of her front steps.

I have to go to work, but I'm sure I'll have plenty more later...

As the distinguished philosopher, Stan Lee, has taught us, "With great power comes great responsibility."

Much like the bookish science geek, Peter Parker, whose chance encounter with an irradiated spider transformed him into an unlikely superhero, swinging high above the city from one strand of web to the next, proving that even nerdy kids can wear their undies on the outside, we have been bitten by the irradiated spider of the blogosphere and transformed from mild-mannered middle-aged rural lesbian bloggers of small but loyal readership into minor superheroines, leaping across the vast expanse of cyberspace from one strand of our cobwebby brains to another, with our undies on the outside. And who do we have to thank for this? Why, it's our own faithful reader and fellow blogger, XUP, who bestowed upon us this lovely award!

Isn't it pretty!? It's the Arte y Pico Award (which translates roughly as "over the top"), and it's true value is that it can only be bestowed "blogger a blogger." You can't buy one of these, beotch!

Receiving such an accolade from a peer is both a joyous and a humbling experience. Joyous because we've given you some pleasure (or at least made you grateful to be you) and humbling because ... jeez ... now we probably have to blog less sporadically, huh?

Here's how the Pico y Arte works:

"This award was created to be given to bloggers who inspire others with their creativity and their talents, and for contributing to the blogging world in whatever medium. When you receive this award it is considered a “special honor”. Once you have received this award, you are to pass it on to 5 others. What a wonderful way to show some love and appreciation to your fellow bloggers!
The rules for passing this honor on are:

Pick 5 blogs that you would like to award this honor to.

Each award has to have the name of the author and also a link to his or her blog to be visited by everyone.

Each award winner has to show the award and put the name and link to the blog that has given her or him the award itself.

Award-winner and the one who has given the prize have to show the link of “Arte y Pico” blog, so everyone will know the origin of this award from Arte Y Pico."

This award should not be confused with Pico de Gallo, which is also a very nice thing to share with friends. It's tasty with tortilla chips and a cold beer or a frozen margarita, but, unlike a Pico y Arte, it tends to fall off the chip and land on your shirt, leaving a nasty tomato-based stain ... and it can sometimes tend to be a bit heavy on the cilantro.

Sorry. I got distracted.

Thank you, XUP, for the Pico y Arte! We've put our pointy heads together and decided bestow this award to the following bloggers:

1. Are We There Yet? - because someday we want to know how to build a log cabin and be organic farmers with goats and greenhouses and little baby lambs (but maybe not bees).

2. cake-n-cookies - because we love her and she cooks pretty.

3. Ms. Sassy Pants - and her awesome adventures in heterosexuality.

4. Thumbscre.ws - because haven't we all, at one time or another, or might we not, but not as wittily as Jul?

5. Angry Black Bitch - for smartness and bitchitude above and beyond the call of duty. The bitch was even on NPR today.

We'd totally throw back some ice-cold beverages and a bowl of pico de gallo with any and all of the above.

The Home Stretch

Katie will be home from Tucson on Friday. We've missed her and her noise and her mess and her hundreds of outfits and pillbox hats. Sage has missed her most of all. She's so lonely for Katie that she actually put her head on Carrie's knee, which astounded us both. Sage is a one-woman dog. Maybe she was confused.

I'm beginning to think of this as practice for being an empty-nester. Katie's a high school senior this year, and she'll be going to college next year: locally if we have a say in it, and at the U. of Bora Bora if she has her way. I'm hearing an underlying desire for distance...

I'm getting better at this. The first couple of summers she spent in Tucson I was about as out-of-sorts as Sage. I hadn't lived in a kid-free home in more than 20 years, and I was a little bereft. This summer I handled it like a champ. I think I'm ready for the Big Moment...when she leaves to go to school and we're officially childless.

My friend Joyce just sent her last child to college and celebrated by walking down the hall to the shower naked. In the daytime. A thing she hasn't done in 25 years. I can totally relate. I think we sneak around more to have sex in our 40s and 50s than we did as teenagers. Imagine being able to do the deed with the bedroom door open. It boggles the imagination!

So Friday she comes home. Monday she starts Band Camp. A week later she starts her Senior year, nine months after that she'll graduate, and a year from now my 23 year long experiment in parenting will be over. At least for a moment, and unless they come back.

Joyce cried when Adam left for school, but then she healed enough the next day to get naked in her own hallway. Joyce is an inspiration to me.

Jammies, The Great Equalizer

Lori and I had to make an unscheduled midweek trip to town today which is fine since it gives us a little car time together, which we love. Along the way we were discussing our pompous and pretentious neighbor who's life peaked when she was delivering Meals on Wheels to AIDS patients thirty years ago. While we agreed that it was certainly a kind and admirable thing to do, it should not be the LAST thing one does before one retires from life at 30, and spends the next thirty years retelling the story and waiting to receive her own Meals on Wheels so she can die.

During this conversation, I referred to the neighbor as Florence Nightingown. Lori laughed and said "What is it about you and jammies?"

I didn't actually realize I had a thing about jammies, but after some consideration, I guess I must. I thought about it and decided jammies are a little bit vulnerable. Not so nakedly exposed as say, nakedness, but certainly not so armor plated as daywear, which people often choose based on it's ability to make a statement of some kind. No one wears Power Jammies.

Children wear cute jammies with feet. Old ladies wear those old lady nightgowns that they've had since the '50s. Old men wear cool old two piece cotton jammies where the bottoms and the tops match. And in the summer, they wear the even cooler ones with the short pants that highlight their skinny old man legs.

Lori and I sleep in jammie pants and crappy old t-shirts with paint stains or dumb slogans that we've acquired from life. I have about a thousand t-shirts from the Red Cross from being both a blood donor and a blood banker, and I tend to sleep in one of those. In the summer. we swap out the jammie pants for SIU jersey shorts.

I like to talk to people about their jammies, especially people who are a little too impressed with their own perceived power. Jammies are nice. When people are wearing their jammies, they're rarely in a position to be an asshole, except to the person next to them in bed, which is not my business anyway.

And people who sleep naked? Unless the sex has already begun before bedtime, don't you think it's good bed etiquette to at least put the jammies on for a minute, and THEN tear them back off? At least for a minute?

I know. I'm old.

How Long Until September?

Okay. It's August. It's hot. It's humid. I think I've had enough for this year.

We enjoyed out semi-weekly family potluck yesterday, even if it was bisected for a while by Carrie getting called in to work for an hour. And we're approaching the Illinois State Fair season, and that'll be fun. But I'm generally tired of toiling in the heat. I'm a lesbian, ferchristsake! I should be wearing flannel!

We're going to wait until it cools down some and then begin the monumental task of cleaning up my mom's yard. She's got about 7 acres, three of which used to be cleared as yard but are now so overgrown that "lawn care" is a laughable term. I think the first step will be to firebomb it, then start from the dirt up.

But it'll take about a 20 or 30 degree drop in temperature for me to even consider wading in there in boots, flannel shirt, and gloves. I'm ambitious, but after my last chigger infestation I'm a little wiser.

Really, I'm just thinking out loud, I suppose. Lori and I had a fun weekend with just enough family time and just enough grown-up girlfriend time. But I feel like I'm ready to start on another project soon, and I wish it could be the Yard of Doom project. I keep telling myself that by December I'll be bitching about the cold. Oh well...welcome to the Midwest.

Hunter! We're sharing and caring!

Yesterday's post about the Hunter Method prompted me to delve a little deeper into the crisis facing our nation ... and lay a little literary blame, just for fun.

Sometime in the middle of my now-adult child's adolescence, we had occasion to seek the advice of a Child Psychology Professional ... a counselor ... a shrink. Actually, we had a couple of occasions to seek same, but that one was the last one ... and the best. The advice he gave me at the conclusion of our intake interview was this:

"The problem with kids today is that they don't fear their parents anymore."

Ding, ding, ding!

I don't know about the rest of you, but I was scared shitless of my mother, and remained so throughout my adult life. I did not want that woman mad at me. It wasn't that she spanked the daylights out of me, although she certainly would if she needed to. It wasn't that she shamed or belittled or abused me, although at one time in my adult life I liked to call it that, because it was trendy to go to Gestalt weekends and smack chairs and learn to love our inner child. Hell, I still had a healthy fear of Mother's Wrath long after I was too old to spank and too smart-assed to belittle.

When the counselor said those simple words ... and I looked over at my own little "Hunter" sitting on a counselor's couch looking bored and aloof instead of sitting in his own room afraid for his very existence ... I realized what a moron I was about parenting, and what a great mother I'd had.

The truth is, I wouldn't know how to do half the stuff I know how to do if it weren't for my mother making me do chores, and watching her do things. I wouldn't have the high degree of good quality guilt that makes me clean a baseboard once in a blue moon or the absolute aversion I have to lying if it weren't for my mother being a clean freak and instilling in us a good measure of guilt about what other people would think. I never feared the police or any other authority figure the way I feared my mother. I never smoked pot in high school because I knew my mother would find out and kill me. No court of law could have forced me to stay up all night cleaning my house in preparation for a home visit, but a phone call from my mother saying she was coming for the weekend sure as hell could! And I'm not fooling myself that mid-life has made me any less dependent on my mother's approval. The only reason I can live with a degree of comfortable messiness now, at fifty-four years old, is that she's dead and can't come visit anymore.

So what changed between my mother's generation and mine? Somewhere along the line, people seem to have forgotten what the goal of parenting is.

It's not to ensure that your child has the most stuff, or the best and the happiest and the most carefree childhood. It's not to build "self-esteem" and an overblown sense of your child's inherent value to the universe. Ev blames Shel Silverstein and that god-awful book "The Giving Tree," in which parents are encouraged to "give until you can give no more" ... and then, when you've bailed your kid out of every failure and handed them everything they wanted on a silver platter and you're completely used up, let the kids use you for a comfy place to sit in their own old age. I owned not one, but TWO copies of it.

I also blame "The Little Prince." Hunter, you are not unique in all the world. You do not need to be kept under a glass jar and protected. In fact, Hunter, that's the surest way to ensure that you will not thrive.

Of all the parenting tools I tried to employ over the span of my sons childhood, the best thing I ever did for him was to have life intervene and render me unable to maintain his glass jar. The first time he called me from 1200 miles a way to ask for a monetary bail-out and I couldn't afford to send it, he got a job. The next time he called and asked for money to fix his car and I couldn't afford to send it, he got a real job. Now I bemoan the fact that he doesn't call and doesn't need me for anything ... because ... hello ... he grew up.

The goal of parenting is to equip children for adulthood ... that crazy time when no one is going to take care of you and there will be demands on you (some of them harder than picking up your toys). We're supposed to teach children how to navigate a world full of sharp corners -- not pad everything. We're supposed to model how humans interact and teach them how to do things. Then we're supposed to release them into a world where there might be people who don't always have their best interest at heart, and we'd better had taught them how to stand up for themselves by some more effective means than throwing a wall-eyed tantrum.

I've been there and done that, so I can tell you from first-hand experience:

This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang, but with a "Hunter, honey ..."

Don't take your guns to town, Hunter

Lori and I were headed to town this morning to do some shopping. Since we used the phrase "to town" about 10 times, I started thinking about the song Don't Take Your Guns To Town. I sang it in what was I'm sure an incredibly irritating way for about five minutes, then said idly to Lori, "Why didn't Bill's mom just forbid him to take the guns to town? Like, "Bill, give me the goddamn guns. When you get home from town I'll give them back."

Lori said that's not how modern mother's handle things. Oh...when we want to make fun of new-age permissive mothers, we refer to their child as "Hunter", because that was the name of the most obnoxious child we ever had the misfortune of seeing throw a fit in public. We know his name because his mother was using it repeatedly while trying to negotiate with the little bastard.

"Hunter, if you stop screaming I'll take you for ice cream. Hunter...come on now. People are staring. Hunter, I know you're upset, but we talk about our feelings, we don't raise our voices."

My parenting strategy with Hunter would have been something like dragging Hunter into a quiet spot and looking him in the eye with my Mean Mommy face. Then I would say, "Hunter, if you don't knock that shit off right now, I'll take you out to the car and spank you 'til you're dead. If you survive, you won't be going to the store again until you're 18 and you're leaving for college. Knock it off."

And Hunter would believe me, because I had exactly that moment one time each with all three of my kids, and they knew I'm crazy and I don't make idle threats. So here's Bill's mother, pleading with Bill not to take his guns to town, using the Hunter Method of conflict resolution: negotiating with her child when he's being a moron.

"Bill, please...please don't take your guns to town. Please. Leave your guns at home, Bill."

And Bill, playing the role of Hunter, does it anyway. Now we know what happens next: Bill takes the guns to town, gets into a bar fight and gets killed. Using the Hunter Method of parenting, Bill's mom rationalizes Bill's incredibly stupid decision to take the guns to town by crying, "Bill was a good boy! He never meant to hurt anyone!", and then suing Smith & Wesson.

This why the human race is headed for extinction. It's not global warming that will eventually kill us, it's the Hunter Method of bad parenting.

"Hunter, honey... do you think it's a very good idea to take your guns to town? If you don't take your guns to town, we'll go for ice cream later. Hunter, in this family we don't take guns to town, we talk about our problems."

Do a good thing ... you'll be happy.

If you saw Katie Couric on CBS Nightly News tonight, you may have seen this story about Sgt. Joe Barzeski and the CSC Scania Burn Clinic.

"Conditions are primitive. But even so, the burn unit is filled to capacity. It's tucked away on a U.S. base that's known as the biggest gas station in Iraq. It's where military convoys refuel. While on the far side, Iraqi families - as many as 80 a day - wait patiently to be admitted to a clinic that's more MASH unit than E.R. Barzeski had no medical training before he joined the Army - so he's been learning on the job."

The patients at the Scania Burn Clinic are Iraqi children, and the clinic is staffed by soldiers, mostly without prior medical training, who volunteer to spend any off-duty time they get debriding burns, bandaging little limbs and comforting these children and their families, all on a dwindling supply of medical supplies.

The volunteers at Scania are using an amazingly successful treatment for their burn patients to prevent debilitating scarring. It includes an old home remedy ... honey. Specifically, an irradiated and sterilized product called medi-honey.

" 'There was a boy who came in my son's age, and he couldn't turn his waist because he had these painful keloids on his hips, and that's when I decided I was going to try and do something,' Barzeski said. He treats the patients with what he calls Mayo, a blend of steroids, antibiotics and something called medi-honey - spread on the bodies of little patients to help them re-grow healthy skin.

All the drugs and bandages often run dangerously low. They have to be donated - as the clinic can't draw on Army stock. 'Its against the medical rules of engagement,' Barzeski said. 'Since we don't cause the injury, we can't treat them with our supplies.' Despite chronic shortages, the clinic has treated more than 1,000 children. "

And that's where we come in. I'm asking you to watch this video, take down the addresses at the end, and then ... you know ... donate.



Kwach

No, It's NOT Fine.

I'm in the middle of doing that thing that everyone sort of knows they may have to do someday but most of us shove to the back corners of our brain where we keep things like the day our period started at school in 8th grade, or the day our friends came over and found mother sunbathing nude in the yard.

I'm at the beginning of the process of taking away a great deal of my mother's independence. If I tell you that this experience has allowed me to get in touch with pockets of guilt and resentment I never touched before, I'm probably understating. I've come to understand the phrase "Sandwich Generation" with a new clarity. My youngest child is a high school senior. She's visiting colleges, getting her prerequisites in order, checking into scholarship programs...

And just at that moment, when I can begin to imagine a world in which sex happens without fortress-like door locks and money doesn't flow like water...in walks my mother.

My mother is 73. She's intelligent and articulate, well-read, passionate about animals and the ecology. She's always been a little out of the mainstream, but what the hell...so have I. Recently, though, her quirkiness has evolved into something a lot less cute and a lot more unsafe. As she's aged, the details of her life have become unmanageable. And the more the trappings of normalcy slip away, the more she's isolated herself, hoping that no one will notice how overwhelmed she is.

I've run through the usual litany of corrective actions: offers of help for her sake, offers of help for my sake, dire predictions about the danger of hurting herself, and my favorite of all...the Scenario of Doom. "Mom. You're going to fall and break something, and no one will know until you're dead and the dogs have eaten your face. And who's going to find that? Me. So your last official act in this world will be to ruin my life? Thanks."

My mother's response? "I'm fine. It's fine." The tree across the driveway? It's fine. It's good exercise for elderly people to crawl over or under it. It's like having a 10 ton Bowflex. The tree on the utility lines? It's fine too. It keeps the power bill down.

*sigh*

So this last week I have begun the project of hooking my mom up with a variety of Elderly Assistance organizations. I'm alternately relieved, defiant, and wracked with guilt. Who ever thought that I, a small "L" libertarian, would ever tell another sentient adult how to live? But now I have. I am. I'm on a mission to make my mother's life safe and manageable, whether she likes it or not. I plan to knock down the 4 foot high weeds in the yard, to cut up the downed trees that fell in last years storms (including the one that landed on the roof), and to do the repairs and maintenance to her house that homes need in order to make them habitable and comfortable.

She'll be mad at me for intervening. I'll be mad at me if I don't. It's funny, at 45, to realize that you still don't want to piss off your mother.

Like the lady at the Sunshine Senior Services asked, "Does your mother hold a grudge?"

I hope not.

Blowin' In The Wind

We had a little storm yesterday afternoon.

It moved in fast, whipped through the yard with 70mph winds blowing rain sideways in three directions at once and then sped on to the next town, leaving a path of demolished trees and strewn personal belongings in its wake. Our trash can lids are in the neighbor's yard across the street.

After the brief but impressive storm passed, I looked out the front door and noticed what appeared to be a large limb from the trees next to our driveway lying next to Katie's truck. "Whew!" I thought to myself, "That's a big branch! It's lucky that didn't hit her truck!"

It was even luckier than I thought.

It wasn't, in fact, a tree limb ... it was a thirty foot tree, wrapped in vines and poison ivy. It's just that all I could see of it from the house was the top of it. The rest of it was lying across our driveway. Somehow, it miraculously landed safely in the triangle formed by Katie's truck, the electric box and the Luckiest Little Sapling in Southern Illinois (which, as you can see, it missed by about two inches).

So this morning Ev and I got out the trusty chainsaw and made firewood out of it. It took us about an hour to cut it up, haul the top of it to the burn pile down the hill and the trunk parts to the wood pile for splitting. I still have a small mountain of branches and poison ivy to drag to the burn pile, but at least we can navigate the driveway again.

While we took a break to sit on stumps, wipe the sweat from our eyes, play with the hundreds of tiny katydids on the dead tree and pant in the 94% humidity, we could hear the sound of chainsaws coming from other yards all around us. Ev said, "God, I love Southern Illinois! Everywhere else people go to church on Sunday. Here it's all about cutting shit up!"

We're getting so good at this that we think there ought to be a competition for it. Maybe they should have Olympic events that are actually useful ... team stump removal, fallen tree swamping, burn pile immolation ... we could totally medal.

To my son, the scofflaw

I'm indebted to Amanda Marcotte over at Pandagon for bringing this to my attention. Let this be a warning to the Fruit of my Looms:

Do not plan a trip to Flint, Michigan unless you plan to pull up your pants.

I Protest!

I really don't have much to say, but I'm tired of seeing The Crystals. Since that video has been sitting there for a week, however, it did inspire me to research the god-awful song, and I learned some interesting things about it. It was written by Gerry Goffin and Carole King, and produced by (irony warning) Phil Spector. Originally, the song was written as a protest song against the abuse of women, and was inspired by the bad love life of singer Little Eva, who said her boyfriend only beat the crap out of her because he loved her. It never got much radio play in 1962. Apparently, the irony doesn't come across very well, and it sounds more like an anthem to abuse than a protest against it.

The obscure little gem has, however, been influential in the lives of other tragic singers. Courtney Love and Hole covered it. Amy Winehouse says the song "inspired" her and shaped her life. Have you seen Amy Winehouse lately? Gerry Goffin and Carole King should pay for her next trip to the ER.

So that's all I have to say about "He Hit Me (and it felt like a kiss)".

Ev tried to post another video yesterday, but it wouldn't post. Which was sad, because it was a nifty video of one of our favorite singer-songwriters, John Prine, talking about the tragedies of war and the young lives sacrificed to it, and singing a verse of "Sam Stone" to illustrate the point.

I like a nice protest song, don't you?

I was reading yesterday about a protest movement afoot for a "general strike" on September 11, 2008. The idea is that everyone in America should do exactly nothing on that day. Don't be a consumer. Don't drive. Don't show up to work for The Man. Don't turn on your lights or watch your TV. Just disappear from the grid for a day. It sounds good, in theory, but I don't think it will work in practice. It's like threatening to punish your kids by cancelling the family vacation to the beach. They know you aren't really going to do it, because it's your vacation, too, and you aren't going to punish yourself for their bad behavior. I'm not going to just not show up for work, or call off and say, "Hey, I'm not coming in today because I'm showing solidarity and engaging in a general strike against ... everything," because I'm a wage slave and I need my job.

I'd like to march and protest and picket and raise hell about something, but it's really hot and muggy out there, and I have hot flashes even with the air conditioning on. That's why I love a good protest song, and why, when "Your Flag Decal Won't Get You Into Heaven Anymore" comes on the CD player while I'm at a red light next to a redneck with flag stickers all over his truck, I turn it up really loud and sneer. Take that, motherfucker!!

The Crystals - He Hit Me (And It Felt Like A Kiss)

I...I...I don't know what to say. I just...I don't know...

A Forced March To Merriment

The other day we decided to clear a path to Richard's pond and then teach the ducks to use it. They're usually pretty good about stuff like that. Once one of them has figured it out she'll lead the others, and pretty soon they'll all be able to go there on their own. Not that they ever do anything on their own. Usually one of the females gets an idea in her head and quacks and honks and pesters the others until they all come out from under the porch and do what she wants. There's a metaphor in there somewhere.


So I took chainsaw in hand and cut out the scrubby little trees blocking the path to the pond. Then Lori cleaned it up with the loppers, enough so they wouldn't trip going through it. They trip over their feet a lot. One of those big old feet will get hung up on something and then Wham!...the duck will land on its chin. I assume they don't like that...I know I wouldn't...so we tried to make the path as duck-friendly as possible so they'd be more inclined to use it.

Once it was clear enough we started moving them towards it. First, with the help of Katie and Dane, we managed to get them walking in that direction. Almost always when we try to make them go in a certain direction, they act like we're herding them to a slaughterhouse. They quack furiously and run in 10 different directions looking wild-eyed and frantic. Then they regroup somewhere else in the yard and quack indignantly for a few minutes before they get back to hunting for worms and forget why they were so pissed off.



So we herded them towards the path: across the yard, around the woodpile, through the break in the trees. We were hoping that when they saw the water they'd go Yay! Water! But no. They acted like they were on the Bataan Death March. Any time one of them spotted a break in our circle around them, they'd run furiously towards it. Dane was definitely our weakest link. He must have thought that this was the kind of outing you see on National Geographic shows where the skinny boys in loin clothes casually guide a thousand ducks to the village market. No. This was full-contact duck herding.





We manged to get seven of them down to the pond and the other three followed behind, bitching furiously. We herded our seven right to the water's edge and then nudged them into the pond, where they clustered 6 inches from the shore in 2 inches of water, acting like they were standing in a vat of hydrochloric acid. Finally, after a lot of idiotic looking flapping and yelling on our part, they paddled out 2 feet and huddled together, eating weeds and eyeing us distrustfully.



Did I mention that during this process Lori and I both slipped and fell in the mud, then slid into the pond? We did.

Finally, with the ducks bobbing peacefully a foot from shore, we headed for home. They bobbed another 5 minutes or so, just to prove we ain't the boss of 'em, then followed. Since then they've wandered down the hill a couple of times, but I haven't seen them get in the water. Instead, they wander around Richard's field looking for worms, exactly the way they wander around our field, then they come home and jump into their kiddie pool in the yard.


Duckie bastards.

A Duck Tale

We're Southern Illinoisans in many ways, but we fall way outside the norm when it comes to pets. For most Southern Illinoisans, pets are those animals that show up and hang out in your yard until they run off or get killed by something. People here don't expect to have the same pets for very long, and there are always replacements.

Our cats live in the house. Our dog lives in the house. Even our ducks live in a house. Most Southern Illinoisans wouldn't build a $1000 duck dome ... or even a secure night pen with an enclosed hutch and a fenced area covered in aviary netting. We have both.

We stand out like sore thumbs in the pet department, because we have real Southern Illinoisans for neighbors. You've heard about Al. Now, meet Richard:

This morning there was a knock on our door about 7:00am. It was an older man who introduced himself as the neighbor who lives behind us, on the other side of our tree line. He has a lovely property with a big grass pasture and a pond. He came up to tell me he was missing his ducks.

When we got our ducks I worried that they'd wander off and end up in his pond, and I suspected I might have to explain them to him at some point. I didn't anticipate that we would, in fact, become unwitting ducknappers.

As it turns out, his son gave him a pair of ducks for his pond the other day and they've been wandering up here when we're not home. He comes and retrieves them, but they keep coming back. This morning they were trying desperately to get into the duck enclosure with our ducks. He scooped them up and took them home and told me that our ducks were welcome to come swim on his pond.

A play date! A pond to swim in, instead of a tiny wading pool! Yay!

So I got dressed, let our ducks out, and tried to take them over to the pond. They followed me about halfway across our property and then ran back to their pool. I got behind them and herded them. They turned the corner onto his property and then ran along the tree line and charged back through the brush into our yard again. I gave up and went to work thinking maybe I'd try again this evening.

I obsessively count the ducks to make sure there are eight, alive and well. When I got home from work tonight I counted them ... one, two, three, four ... five ... six, seven, eight ... nine, ten???? Crap. Two extra. I tried to figure out which two were Richard's, since they're also Rouens. I think his are a little darker than ours, but hell ... ducks look very much alike! His are tamer ... or they were tamer this morning when he walked over and picked them up ... but they spent all day with our yard ducks and now they're not very damn tame anymore. I tried to get them to follow me to the pond and they ran back to the wading pool. I tried to herd the whole flock to the pond and they ran in three different directions.

I gave up and went to talk to Richard. I told him his ducks were at our house and he said he knew ... he'd chased them back twice today and finally gave up. I told him I'd put them in our enclosure tonight so they don't hurt themselves trying to get in, and he offered to pay for any feed they eat.
Tomorrow, while Ev and I are both off work, we'll try and herd them to the pond again. Maybe he can at least enjoy seeing them on his pond, since I don't think he's going to get them back. The living is pretty good up here at the Duck Dome and they appear to have settled in. We were short on females anyway.

As it turns out, these are not the first pets Richard has lost to us. He is, apparently, the source of all of our strays. Last year's duck belonged to him, too. I found that out while we were chatting tonight. He said he had a pair of mallards last year but one got killed and one wandered off. Oops. I said, "Um, yeah ... she wandered off to our yard. We fed her for awhile and then she got killed in the road."

Poor Richard looked stricken. Then he said, "I wish that road wasn't so close. My dog got hit on that road last year. She was a black lab ... a really good dog." Oops. "Was Sidney your dog??" I asked him. Sidney was the black lab who adopted us last year ... the one who used to sleep in my convertible if I left the top down ... the one who would sit in the bed of Ev's truck for hours waiting to go for a ride ... the one who is buried in our yard.

Now Richard has a little black lab puppy named Boots. She tried to follow me home.

If there's a Mrs. Richard I hope he doesn't let her wander up here.

Goin' To Town

I love to drive.

When I first got this car I would put the top down, put on my cool green Kate Spade sunglasses, crank up the stereo and just dri-i-i-i-i-i-ve for the sheer pleasure of it. It was so much fun that I felt guilty, as if I must be doing something illegal and should be getting a ticket for it.

Ev and I love car trips. We love to get out on the road and just explore shit. We'll drive down roads just to see where they go, engaged in great conversations. It's our quality couple time. We once went on a little drive in Arizona, intending to tool around the desert of southeastern Arizona, and we ended up eating dinner in Puerto Penasco, Mexico and then having to drive like hell to get back to the border before they locked it down at 10:00pm so we wouldn't have to call the kids and tell them we accidentally got stuck in Mexico.

I love St. Louis

There are about a zillion things to do in St. Louis. I love to shop at the Miniature Museum. The St. Louis Zoo is free. The food at the Schafley Brew Pub is most excellent, and you can pick up a couple of cases of Schafley APA while you're there. The Mississippi River crested up to the base of the Arch last week, which is something that would be very cool to see.

I love my kid.

I haven't seen him since Christmas and I barely recognize him now that he's pretty much a grown man. He's got a new job, a new car and a new girlfriend since he was here in December, and he sounds like he's getting his act together.

I love the 4th of July.

I like fireworks, fried chicken, potato salad, long holiday weekends and sparklers. I even like some of the patriotic music (with the exception of "We'll Put a Boot Up Yer Ass, It's the American Way" and songs of that ilk). Ev and I went to Cape Girardeau the first summer we were here and watched the fireworks on the river ... it rained and it was too crowded, but it was still very pretty.

This week all of those elements will align perfectly. On Thursday I'm driving my convertible to the St. Louis airport early in the morning to drop off Katie for her summer trip to Arizona, and then I have the day to myself in St. Louis, because I'm picking up my son and his girlfriend from the airport in the evening. Then we'll all drive somewhere to watch the fireworks on the 4th. They have to go home again on Sunday, so Ev and I will drive them back to St. Louis and then we'll have the drive home to do our thang ... cruisin' ... talking ... enjoying the scenery.

You'd think the juxtaposition of all the things I love would make me ecstatically happy. And it would, if I hadn't tallied up the two round-trips to St. Louis at 26mpg, at $4.05 a gallon, which equals roughly $200, which is the price of the goddamn airline tickets each of the kids bought to fly 3000 miles round trip between Phoenix and St. Louis. We'd be better off flying to the fucking airport.

I hate George W. Bush. I'd like to see him tarred and feathered, but he is so not worth the price of tar.

Dodged Another Bullet

I'm feeling much better today. I cut and burned and cut and burned until I couldn't lift my arms anymore. Wisely, Al stayed home. I guess it's true: God DOES protect drunkards and fools. Somewhere along the line the Menstrual Gods rewarded me with another 26 days of sanity, so it's safe for Lori to come out of the storm cellar again.

And yes, Cedar. menopause is the reward for making it 30 years without killing anyone.

So I usually like to take a victory lap around the year with my coffee cup the morning after a day of good yard work, but it's been raining like crazy since the middle of the night, so the validation part of the day is on hold for a while.

I work this weekend, but I have the 4th of July holiday off with next weekend. Coupled with my hormonally-dependent peace and goodwill towards my brethren and sistren, I might spend part of it in the company of humans. Maybe.

Johnny Cash - Don't Take Your Guns To Town

Life's a Bitch and Then I'm a Bitch, Too

I've have very bad PMS for the last couple of days. Today is the apex. Therefore:

1. I'm irrationally angry.
2. I'm fighting the impulse to kill everyone stupid enough to speak to me. Luckily, that's virtually no one, since my kids are taking one look at me and slinking back to their room/home.
3. Gas is expensive, which means we have no disposable income, contributing to #1. However even if gas were cheap I'd still be angry about something. That's the good thing about PMS. It allows a person to be an equal opportunity hater.

Therefore, I'm going to finish my chicken and rice, take up my chainsaw, and finish cutting up the termite tree while fantasizing about who's face is on each limb. Then with any luck, the weather will hold and I'll throw the dismembered termite tree parts on the burn pile and burn the motherfucker to the ground while sitting in a lawn chair and drinking beer in front of it. If Al comes over I plan to shoot him.

I Probably Don't Have Long to Live

I have a confession to make: I'm dealing with the heartbreak of mono globglowlaparaproteinmia.

Well, okay...maybe I'm not. But we had a patient come in with that diagnosis last night and I decided that if I ever choose to call in fraudulently, I'm using that excuse.

Clearly someone in Admitting tried to spell something phonetically and failed. Miserably.

So add mono globglowlaparaproteinmia to to list of debilitating illnesses I have that sometimes make me unable to go to work. The feline leukemia, the erectile dysfunction (hey, they said it could happen to anyone!), the mono globglowlaparaproteinmia, and it's more severe secondary stage, poly globglowlaparaproteinmia... it's a miracle I can get out of bed each day. Sort of a testament to my bravery, eh?

And on a completely unrelated note, except that it's my blog and I can talk about anything I want...has anybody ever had a citronella plant? Lori's going to buy a couple of them from Rural King, and I was wondering if anyone had any experience with them besides that they smell nice.

When Nothing Much Is Going On...

I was up late last night finishing a book, Black and White by Lewis Shiner, that I downloaded as a PDF file. I've never done that before but it had a couple of advantages, one of which was that I could increase the text size to 212% and read easily without straining my eyes. But besides the great (big) font, it was also a great read, and I heartily recommend it.

However, the price I paid for that nocturnal indulgence is that I slept late and didn't go outside or do anything of value this morning. So a few minutes ago I poked my head out the back door to see what the weather's doing before I get dressed for work....not that I would do anything different based on that information. I wear essentially the same thing every day anyway. One of four pairs of identical pants with one of six identical (except the color) short sleeve shirts in the summer, or one of ten identical (except the color) long sleeve shirts in the winter. I think my non-existent fashion sense may drive people nuts, but my theory is that once you find something that works for you, stick with it.

But that's not the important part. The important part is that when I went out on the porch I noticed that one of the rosebushes is beautiful, so I took a picture.

Baseball and Football

George Carlin ... safe at home at 71. Seventy-one???????? How the hell old ARE we?

Shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cock-suckin' motherfucker and tits.

RIP, George.

Steve Goodman: A Dying Cubs Fan's Last Request

And while we're thinking about it, here's something just for Valerie!

Beyond Thunder(duck)dome!

Ev's gone to the store for more long-ass deck screws, so I'm taking this opportunity to post the updated project photos.

And they said it couldn't be done by two middle-aged lesbians of short stature! HA!

Well, okay. It couldn't have been done entirely by two middle-aged lesbians of short stature, but it could, by-god, be done by two middle-aged lesbians of short stature and one tall, agreeable, ex-husband! So there! Looks like a Tiki Hut, huh? Everyone but Ev thinks it would looks spiffy with a thatched roof. She's still holding out for shingles. Rob thinks it needs a bar ... the kind with the grass skirt around it ... and it certainly needs tiki torches. We all agree it's pretty fancy-schmancy for ducks!

Everything cooperated today. The weather is cooler, there's more shade and more breeze, the ladder gods smiled on us and we found a spiffy two-in-one step and extension ladder for a hundred bucks at Sears, and the girls couldn't go to Magic Mountain with their dad today as planned ... so he came here instead. Yay!

It turns out that a six-foot-tall ex-husband on an extension ladder is just the right height to get to the pinnacle of an 11-and-a-half-foot-tall roof ... if you leave little triangular openings for him to squeeze through with an electric screwdriver.

If we can't get him back out, we'll have to tell the ducks he's a pinata.







Now we have to cut and put up another row of bracing cross-pieces and cut little triangles (all slightly different -- don't ask) to cover the remaining Rob openings. I suspect we'll have to ply him with beer to convince him to climb the extension ladder and lay on the roof trusses to screw them in place.

Carrie helped out by whipping up a three-way-combo birthday and Father's Day feast of bacon wrapped steak and ginger-soy drizzle. It was oh-my-god delicious!

I've thrown in a picture of the lucky recipients of all this effort. Here they are, mindlessly dunking their heads in an afternoon mud puddle and dribbling on each other. They don't look like something that needs luxury accommodations, do they?

There is really nothing anyone could aspire to that would be a better deal than being a pet in this household. You don't see us building little Tiki huts in the yard for the children, do you??

Prettiness!

On our quest for "cheap and local" we stumbled across ... pretty!

Last week I was telling my friend, Pamela, how gorgeous the wildflowers have been on my way home from work, and bemoaning the fact that all my vases are packed away somewhere in the shed. On Wednesday we were working in Benton, and we had a few minutes to kill after lunch, so we went browsing in one of the antique stores -- and she bought me this pretty combination antique pitcher and wildflower vase for my birthday! Thank you, Pamela!

Ev and I went "to town" today to buy some straw for the ducks and a taller ladder to finish the Duck Dome, and on the way home we stopped along her mom's road and picked Queen Anne's Lace, thistles, Black-Eyed-Susans, Tiger Lilies and some tiny daisy-ish flowers and purple flowering vines we didn't recognize but liked a lot. Pretty, huh!?

Even Slipper-Dipper seems to approve of them -- or he's just concerned that we've done something new to his mantle. With Slipper it's hard to tell the difference between approval and concern.

I also managed to catch the ducks in the sunlight today and get a couple of shots of their pretty iridescent feathers. As you can see, Omelette has a lot of fluffy chest feathers now, and I could finally capture an image of the blue-green feathers behind her wings. All of the Rouens have the iridescent stripe on their wings, but it's a little different on all of them. Some have broader stripes of black and one of them has an almost purple stripe.

America's Pastime

Lori and I have the weekend off and we need to get out into the world. We stay home pretty much every weekend and enjoy it a ton..it's relaxing, low stress and we get to reconnect with each other...but this weekend we're feeling the need to do something recreational. Since we almost never leave the house voluntarily, I solicited some ideas from my friends at work. They were mostly useless except as comic relief.

I was trying to come up with something cheap and local since gas is so expensive. I asked Val if she'd ever been to a Miners game (the Southern Illinois Miners is our local minor league team) and she said, "I actually thought baseball season was over. It seems like it's already been going on for a really long time, doesn't it?"

Okay...maybe we're not the only ones who need to get out of the house occasionally...hmmm?

For those of you longing for a mercifully short baseball season...baseball is a marathon, not a sprint. It's 162 games during the regular season and 20-ish more in the playoffs. The object of the game is to still have at least 9 players at the end of that time who are uninjured AND don't suck. And if you've got an extra pitcher or two who isn't just trying to make it until his post-season elbow reconstruction surgery, that's a plus.

Baseball isn't like NASCAR...it's not one brutally hellish day in the hot sun drinking crappy beer. It's 80 hellish days in the hot sun, and another 80 in the bug-infested night. It's 10 mile long lines to get into the women's bathroom, it's $9 a cup Budweiser, it's a $12 hot dog. It's tradition. People who get up in the seventh inning to "beat the crowd"? Losers. Quitters. For my $35 ticket in the nosebleed seats, I want my money's worth. Not only an I going to stay for the entire game until they shut off the stadium lights, but I may hang around the clubhouse, follow a player out to his car and steal his hubcaps. Hell, he makes more money in the 30 seconds it takes to call 911 than I will in my lifetime.

I came of age during the Ryne Sandberg/Leon Durham/Ron Cey era of the Chicago Cubs. No one understands the concept of overpaid underachievers like we veteran fans of the 80's Cubs. We listened faithfully, knowing that we'd never be able to get thse 486 wasted hours per season back again. The important things were that A) the Cubs played in the daytime, so you could listen to Harry Carey's idiotic babble at work, and B) you could enjoy the spring successes while still looking forward in anticipation of the inevitable post-All Star break crash. Will it be July? August? When will the Cubbies have that 20 game losing streak?

Because baseball is a patient person's game.

So yes, Valerie...there is a baseball season still. And it will still end in heartbreak for most of the nation's fans. Long after the $9 beer has been urinated in the parking lot, long after the stupid Mardi Gras beads, the big foam finger, the Health Care Worker Tribute Day souvenir ball cap are all thrown away...there will still be another 120 games left in the season.

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