The Moon, Mars, and Monkey Grass

Most of the time, I’m up and about during the wee hours. Jack says that my midnight is about the equivalent of 3:00 in the afternoon for most people. So obviously, I have to find some way to occupy my time besides watching reruns on television. (Not that I don’t do that too.) Sometimes I read. Sometimes I set up my recorder to tape strange sounds in the woods. Sometimes I go outside with my handy night-vision binoculars, but I can’t find them right now. Where are those things?!!

During the summer, the dogs and I have a ritual of running out to the pool and looking for the big bullfrog that takes a late dip around 1 a. m. All I have to ask is, “Want to look at the frog?” and they knock me down on the way out the doggy door. Of course, I use the real door, except for once last week when I locked myself out of the house by first locking myself in the garage, then once I found my way out because there were no lights and groped my way to the back door, I had to crawl through the doggy door.

Anyway, about a week ago, I scooped Mr. Frog out of the pool with the whatever you call that pool dipper thing, as is my habit, and put him in the monkey grass. Suddenly, Bear jumped into the monkey grass trying to catch the frog, and since Bear weighs about 90 lbs. I was very much afraid that he’d squashed our amphibious amie. I was even more worried when the big squishy guy didn’t show up for the next week or so. Bear was pretty inconsolable. He walked around and around the pool every night looking for the frog that he may possibly have flattened. Much to my relief, Mr. Frog reappeared last night, fit as an unflat frog can be. I know that I’m going to have to sit Bear and London down and talk to them about hibernation, but at least I don’t have a death on my shoulders. Not that one at least, yah ah hah!!

Now I noticed that not one news station mentioned the fact that during the last week of August, Mars was going to be closer to the moon that it had been or would be for another 5,000 years. Of course, that entire week was the cloudiest of the summer. However, I took my little camera, aimed it at the moon (I don’t have a tripod and I’m no professional) and snapped a few shots. Above is a photo of Mars to the left of the moon (like many current politicians). I sent this photo to Jack with the tag line, “A picture of your home planet. With love from Earth Woman.” Just in case any of you wanted to come back and see this phenomenon in another 5,000, I just saved you the trip! [Editor’s note: The person writing this blog is obviously under the delusion that not only more than one, but even one person is reading it.]

So what was the point of this whole message? The many benefits of staying up and howling at the moon, of course. How dense can you be?

[Editor’s note: The person writing the editor’s note is also the writer of this blog. How crazy is that?]

Time to Drink the Kool-Aid

Lately, I’m doing everything I can think of to avoid thinking about the reality of life: it’s just too crushing. Like today I filled salt and pepper shakers. Actually that’s a lie. I just filled one pepper shaker. That was all the energy I could work up.

I went on an interview with a job placement group last week and felt like Methuselah at a frat party. Although I’ve actually never been to a frat party, but since I’m so damned ancient I can get away with saying things like that.

How old am I? This past Labor Day weekend was our 29th anniversary. My Mom called to impart good wishes and I thanked her but gently reminded her that our anniversary wasn’t until the next day. She asked, “Isn’t today the sixth?” By jingies it was our anniversary and we didn’t even know it. I went to get my cards out of the car and came back into the house to give them to Jack but he was nowhere to be found and he didn’t answer my calls. Then I heard him running down the stairs. I flew out the back but he was gone. Nothing like waiting until the last minute to make a romantic trip to the grocery for cards and flowers, Captain Obvious! But just kidding. I applaud his effort. This tendency is exactly why I like to go to card counters on Valentine’s Day, stand behind a group of men and yell out, “Procrastinators!” I’ve gotten some great reactions.

But don’t think I’m insensitive. Today I was coming back from an errand and playing the soundtrack to "The Departed." I was listening to the Irish song where the lead is yelling out “I’ve a sailor’s peg, ‘cause I lost my leg. Climbing on the topsail, I lost my leg!” I noticed that the car next to me had a handicapped sticker so I rolled up my window. Thoughty of me, right?

If you haven’t noticed, I’ve decided to pepper my language with old geezer type words since that’s what everyone has made me feel like lately. Maybe I should start calling interviewers, “Whippersnappers” and asking them where I am over and over again. I interviewed a guy (over the phone) for a magazine article the other day. I knew he was young by his voice and also by the fact that I’d seen his picture on the company’s Web site. Since he couldn’t see my Dorian Grey reflected-in-the-mirror hideous image, he didn’t know my age because I hadn’t called him a "young man" or referred to other ancient things like the Beatles. He was describing a Seniors Day event that his facility put on for “baby boomers” and he actually said this, “You know. We want them to know that they can still do things besides plan their funerals.”

Wow, good to know. He actually inspired me to put down by Funerals ‘R Us Planning guide, but only long enough to fill one pepper shaker. Now, I’m exhausted.

Free Manure!

The other day I was driving down the road, and I’ve got to say, I was feeling pretty down. Then I saw this sign that said “Free Manure.” Well, damn! Finally there’s something that really is free and I don’t need any of it. That’s just another irony in the bullshit of life! But then, I thought, Wait a minute, angry person . . . Maybe that’s a protest sign. Yeah, “Free Manure!” Manure deserves to be free after all these years of being bagged up, churned under, or just left for stinking dead. Or maybe somebody named their kid “Manure” and for some odd reason things didn’t go right for that kid and now he or she is sitting around in prison and the proud parents have decided that kid should be free!

Anyway, I was just on my way to the grocery but I’ve got to say if you believe in all that is good and holy, “Free Manure!”

A Few Commercials and Why they Eat at Me:

Dr. Tenlan, that doctor for Restasis, the prescription eye drops for dry eyes: I’m sure she’s a very nice person/alien (the other planet type), but I’ve seen lizards that blink more than she does and whose eyes are closer together for that matter. (Not to mention her Stephen Hawking delivery.) No wonder she has dry eyes! She assumed an earthly form but skipped human facial expressions training. Hint Dr. Tenlan: If you blinked more than once a day, your eyes might naturally lubricate.

The woman who comes over with her entire family to her elderly mother’s house for lasagna every Sunday: One Sunday she and her brood arrive at Mom’s only to find that Mom isn’t in the kitchen cooking away, but taking it easy in the den. “Mom, it’s Sunday!” she whines, automatically assuming that the octogenarian has Alzheimer’s. "I knew then that it was time to call the doctor," she opines. Maybe the poor woman is tired of making dinner for you every Sunday. Maybe she’s sick of lasagna. Maybe it's time for you to get off of your lazy, fat butt and make her something to eat or take her out for gosh sakes!

The young female (who is also a doctor) who rattles off the entire pharmaceutical info/warning sheet for Yasmine (a birth control pill) to her friends at a bar: First of all just the name Yasmine for something that’s going to make you gain 20 pounds of water weight and break you out worse than when you were 12, effectively preventing pregnancy due to enforced abstinence, just ticks me off! Yasmine. She’d be wearing her pretty little martini way before she finished that dialog.

Those cervical cancer immunizations commercials in which a slew of supposedly caring mothers announce that they’re having their pre-pubescent daughters immunized: With a shot that has never been tried, that no one knows what the long-term effects might be, and that the voiceover reminds doesn’t cure all kinds of cervical cancer. Thanks Mom!

Gross miscasting because someone must have known someone (wink, wink): One commercial has the daughter rolling her eyes and saying, “I always get grounded.” The mother counters that the daughter will lose that sassiness when she’s on her own. Let’s hope that’s soon, because the “teenager” is about 35-years-old! (About the same age as the klutz that played Liam Neeson’s daughter on the movie “Taken. She was not a day younger than 27, playing a 19-year-old that acted like a 12-year-old with the mental capacity of a four-year-old. I kept hoping Liam wouldn’t get there in time to rescue her from the white slave traffickers but I think they were pretty well fed-up with her and death was their preferred option.

Why do I even bother with critiquing these ridiculous gaffes? Because people other than me are getting paid really good money to come up with things like an animated set of lips with legs that asks questions of an animated, and poorly drawn ear that only answers, “No.”

Oh well.

Monday 'Til Midnight

I’ve heard all the admonitions about hating Mondays—that’s a seventh of your week; thank God it’s Monday, yada, yada, yada. But these people must be writing Chicken Soup for the Soul entries and sipping mint juleps all day. Mondays stink and I try to lay low and survive the 24 hours until Tuesday. I could try going to bed early but since I’m a night person, I’d just be spending the time staring at the ceiling.

Jack calls and tells me that he woke up with a black eye. Not guilty! What the heck! We haven’t figured that one out yet, but even though I’m up way after he goes to bed, beating the sleeping isn’t one of my activities. I’m too busy doing things like chasing bullfrogs.

Yes, every night between midnight and 1 a. m. the dogs and I go out to the pool to remove a giant frog from his nightly swim. Bear especially loves to run around the pool chasing the frog’s underwater path and usually blocking my attempts to catch him in my net. The frog seems to enjoy the whole thing. In fact, if he isn’t in the pool when we come out, he suddenly emerges from the monkey grass, jumps right past us, jumps in and swims around a bit. He then compliantly lets me lift him out after a few laps. (He has to be removed because the chlorine isn’t good for him and sometimes the frogs can’t get out and eventually drown.) This one seems to be an old pro, but I don’t want to take any chances. Besides, it’s a ritual for my two canines who jump up and run for the door when I ask, “Want to go see the frog?”

After deliberations with dogs over continually begging for treats, running through the house, and fighting with one another, I finally sat down to watch a bit of television. Yeah right. The rest of the evening was spent on HazMat cleanup duty that led me to leave this note for Jack:

Sweetie:
One of the dogs threw up—a lot—and Bear was eating it. I had to spray him with the bad dog water spray to get him away from it and put the vacuum over the spot after cleaning it because he was still licking the carpet. Very, very gross!

XXOO,
Me

P. S. How’s that for a love note?

Thank God it’s Tuesday.

I'm Baaack . . . I Think

Over the past few months I’ve put my brain into even more of a self-imposed state of hibernation than usual due to a series of events including :

A fraudulent accusation by a nutcase accusing my son of purposefully kicking the back of her chair in a theater when he crossed his legs. She wanted him charged with assault! The kid’s never even been in a fist fight. The accuser and her husband were on police blotters, had aliases, but we couldn’t bring that up because she was the “victim.” I think they thought we’d give them a call and make an offer to make it go away, but we had nothing to offer. No telling how many innocent victims she’s had and probably continues to have. Never being in the courts for my entire family’s history, I learned that anyone can make any accusation and no matter how outrageous, the accused pays for the entire debacle. In England the accuser pays if the case is deemed ridiculous—as it was—but not in good old America! In short, we endured a several months long nightmare, or should I say daymare, because I barely slept through the entire ordeal. Case dismissed, but legal fees and moving him to another location because these people know where he lives (another courtesy of the court)—very pricey.

Moses, my 14-year-old pug and my little baby: we had to have him put to rest after months of trying to address with pharmaceuticals what may have been sinus cancer. The tests and the operations were just too cruel at his age so I gave it a try. It was rough going, so I finally had to make the call. After years of having that heavy little fire hydrant command my sleep position, I actually thought I’d sleep better even after all the grief, but so far I still can’t get quite as comfortable without his pudgy little body against me. Can there be too much flexibility freedom?


Bills without billables. The year for this freelancer has been a bit meager which means I spend my time looking for work or completing the little work that I find. I’m very tired of the whole shebang, but sort of stuck in a rut. Anyone know of a company that will hire geezers?


I have to have outpatient surgery. What a hassle! Nobody hates hospitals and medical procedures like I do, but hey, guess I better go while I can. I understand that soon I’ll be categorized as not worth resuscitating. Are they going to put that on the driver’s licenses along with the donor status? NWR!


Okay, so kvetch, kvetch, kvetch. My sense of humor may eventually make a comeback, but right now it’s in slo-mo. I’ve missed my little blogging habit though. It’s an outlet, so I’m plugging back in and hoping my generator will recharge.

And the Beat Goes On . . .

Oh, the new year, full of promises such as the world is going to hell in a hand basket and all of those who have worked for a living and retirement for the past three decades should finally realize that any promises the government ever gave them—which were far and few between for working folk—were total BS.

So let’s move on. I asked for pepper spray for Christmas. Didn’t get it, but did get a night vision scope. When I asked for a coach gun for my birthday, Jack asked, “What is wrong with you?!” Just trying to be a good Boy Scout, I think.

Mom called early on a Monday a. m. and in a panic-stricken voice said, “I’m in big, big trouble!” Did she kill someone, rob a bank, pull up the pansies at her subdivision entrance? No. She had flushed her entire set of keys down the toilet at Publix. And . . . she had a bridge party at her house within the hour. Luckily, after some coordination, Jennifer, who works near the debacle, was soon to the rescue with a set of keys to Mom’s house which also held a set of spare keys to her car. “You can put this in that blog of yours,” said Mom. Here you have it Mama!

The first of the year is always slow for writers. Coupled with the psychotic Georgia weather—just shoot me. Jack is once again out of town which means that Bear, his favorite canine child, is ever vigilant, jumping between barking at everything that moves—today a wild turkey in the driveway—and sitting on top of me whenever I settle. That would be fine if he didn’t weigh 80-plus pounds.

Jack called and told me once again that I couldn't reach him via cell phone the following day because such communication-with-humans devices weren't allowed in the high security area where he worked. "That's so that no pictures can be made, no data recorded, and so on," he explained.

"And also for the most important reason," I added. "Because cell phones cause the aliens' heads to explode when you're all in the pod, and though their heads do regenerate it causes a horrible mess."

"Yes," he replied patiently, and then quickly changed the subject.

Today, a Monday, gloomy and alone, I watched a PBS special by Dr. Amen who wrote a book called “Change Your Brain, Change Your Life.” He had some good tips but I wondered if I could rebuild a brain from the medulla oblongata up, because that’s all I have left. So I called David to give him some of the doc’s hints about focus and concentration. I started with, “I just saw this guy on television who wrote the book ‘Change Your Brain, Change Your Life.”

“Mom, I am NOT getting a brain transplant!” David asserted. Then he went on to tell me about an ROTC field trip next Sunday which includes a trip in a C100 transport plane. Great. “Could you tell me about these things AFTER their completion?” I asked. I actually accept change (such as my only son talking to me in military acronyms) really quickly. For example, just this weekend I peeled the Tasmanian Devil and Yosemite Sam stickers off of our bedroom mirrors that David put there when HE WAS SEVEN YEARS OLD! Yes, I’m flexible that way and always on the forefront of change.

Oh well, out with the old and in with the new. But as I asked at a “FINAL DAYS” sales event with friend Denise, “Does that mean theirs or ours?”