Wordsmith

David came home from school for the weekend. He told me that he, his girlfriend Amanda, and another couple had plans to go to a pumpkin farm. “What will you do there?” I asked. “Look for bananas,” he answered dryly.

Jack, (originator of verbal twists such as “kitchen quesadillas” and “The Nodules of Nottingham,” a.k.a. “The Chronicles of Narnia”) was halfway under the sink working on the pipe that the counter installers broke off at the wall. He poked his head out and asked, “So you’re going to the Function Farm?”

David and I exchanged a glance. “You’re revealing your Martianality again. Remember, you’re not supposed to talk about those things with Earthlings,” I said.

“Dad, what the heck is a Function Farm?” David asked.

“Well at least I didn’t say the Dysfunction Farm,” the Martian attempted as a cover-up.

“No, that would be this house,” replied David.

I picked up a newly arrived catalog with a robot on the cover. “Here’s one of Dad’s friends from the Function Farm.”

“Oh boy, you guys aren’t going to let me forget that one, are you?” said Jack.

“Not as long as we’re standing here in the chicken,” David replied.

No wonder the poor man travels so often.

Of Marble, Men, and Maltese Canines

Everywhere we look, our house appears to be falling apart. Most of the repairs require money we don’t have, so we try to turn a blind eye. When we moved here over twenty years ago, we told ourselves that it was a fixer-upper, and by-gosh-by-golly it still is! All of our renovation dollars went into that large amount of funds required to raise one child and numerous dogs—I think it’s an estimate in the hundreds of thousands. I find it too painful to research the exact sum, but so far, it has been our only investment with justifiable returns.

Anyway, a few years back I picked up a kitchen trivet from the counter to discover that it was covering a huge weltering burn mark. We host many family and other gatherings, so some scoundrel did the damage, covered up the murder, and stayed for a few more drinks. Of course, the trivet found a permanent home there. Then my BFF Jill accidentally set a plastic plate afire with a birthday candle and burned some odd shapes into another portion of the counter. She felt terrible, but I truly didn’t care because the whole thing was a mess already. Besides, I drew a Happy Pig and Dancing Horse around the burn marks that made for a spiffy conversation piece if I might say so myself, although some people said the pig looked more like an aardvark.

A bargain is never a bargain, but we are also people who don’t learn. We got a great offer on some marble “left over” from another project and the seller told us he knew some people who would cut and install it for less than we could have ever imagined. It was a bargain we couldn’t afford but couldn’t afford to miss. When the installers called Jack early on the morning of the job and the first thing Jack yelled into the phone was, “That’s a bunch of crap!” I knew the day would be going downhill from there.

Supposedly the stone cutter/installers needed more stone even though they had done all of the measuring and assured us it could be done for our budgeted amount. Wow it seems like only last year but was just five days ago when they broke the kitchen sink pipe off at the wall, disconnected all my fixtures (including the dishwasher), and left us with countertops that looked like a very bad glued-together jigsaw puzzle. Jack yelled, “I wish I’d never seen this damn stuff!” I just felt sick that I was going to have to look at the botched job for the remainder of my life.

After much “diplomacy” the installers returned and removed the most offensive portions of the countertop. They were gone for three days while I tried to work on a table covered with every item that previously resided in the kitchen. (I have to work off of the kitchen table because Max can’t make it downstairs to the office.) They finally returned. In the melee of trying to keep lab Max and pug Moses in a back room where they wouldn’t bother the workers, answering phones, and so on, I lost one of my paychecks from a client. I prayed and I sweated, but my prayers went unanswered. I never found the check even after considerable dumpster diving. However, I did find a large honeydew melon ripening in the seat of one of my dining room chairs.

I inhaled a lot of passive glue fumes during said installation and took it upon myself to advise the very young men doing the work that they should be wearing masks. “Constantly inhaling this stuff cannot be good for you,” I admonished. “They stared at me blankly. I told them the story of Popcorn Lung. One of them said, “Wow man.” I had as much impact on them with my warning as I do with my own twenty-year-old: namely, absolutely none. However, they appeared to be slightly amused by my efforts to protect them from lung cancer or worse two decades from now.

Jack came home and though I was relieved and pleased with the results, he started yelling out things like, “Hell, this is a quarter of an inch off!” “Where’s the damn backsplash right here?” “Damn it, I told them to make this hole an eight of an inch bigger!” “The stove won’t fit back in this space!” (Actually it all did fit due to Jack’s expertise later, but this kind of reaction is a pattern of his.) Between calls to Jack, dogs, “work, and lack thereof” and the mess around me, I needed to get out, and since there was no visible means available of preparing any food other than cereal, Jack, my Mom (who had come up to view the debacle), and I went out for a bite. Returning after dark on a busy road that fronts our road of habitat Jack slammed on the brakes for what appeared to be a tiny white and dead long-haired squirrel. Instead it was a white Maltese puppy lying in the middle of the road. She stood up and wagged her tail, stared into the headlights, and appeared to have no idea that she was soon to become road kill. Jack got out of the car, picked her up, brought her to the car, and handed her to me. She was adorable and wore a little pink collar with LOVE embossed on it with rhinestones.

“We don’t need this!” I wailed. “We can’t leave her here and there is no way I’m taking this dog treat to Max. I don’t think he would hurt her, but he could accidentally sit on her.” We started ringing doorbells, and mind you, this is not in a well-lighted neighborhood, but on a rural, dark road. “Well Jack looks cute carrying that little dog around like that,” Mom commented from the back seat. Long story short, we took the dog home and called and called all of the neighbors we could. Amidst much barking, we eventually found the owner who was very happy to be reunited with the little pup that had been let out of the front door inadvertently by the husband.

“She is not street smart!” explained the neighbor when she came to pick up Sassy (her name we now know). “I never let her out alone. He just doesn’t pay attention. I’m going to kill my husband!” she said.

“Well, time’s a wastin’” I advised.

The Death of Halloween

For decades American children have enjoyed Halloween and built memories from cool nights running through the streets, falling over poorly made costumes and, as comedian Jerry Seinfeld says, yelling “Wait up!” in whining tones to our siblings and friends as we try to fix the flimsy rubber bands on our plastic masks. I actually only had two “store bought” costumes as a child: one was Tweety-Bird and the other a gorilla. Both had great masks, but the rubber bands, not so good.

Later, as old black-and-white photos will attest, older sister Lynn always dressed as something glam like a fairy princess or something. I stand next to her in oversized clothes from my father’s closet with charcoal on my face and sometimes a tooth blacked out—a hobo, or something similar. Those were the times when we could run through the neighborhood with those lousy pre-printed Halloween bags that when the bottoms hit the damp ground or bushes gave way and spewed our precious candy everywhere. I was a picky eater and didn’t really care that much for most of the candy, anyway; I’m still the same way; I don’t have much of a sweet tooth, but I enjoyed the hunt.

Once my Dad put his suit coat on backward and wrapped his head in gauze, Invisible Man style. He wanted to scare some of the big teenagers who he thought were well past the door-to-door age. So he crept up behind one who was standing on our front porch and tapped him on the shoulder. His little trick backfired because the kid ripped our screen door right off the hinges and ran through our living room screaming leaving muddy footprints all over my Mom’s carpet. She wasn’t pleased.

When son David had his first go at Halloween at about two-and-a-half years of age, we dressed him like a Jack-o-Lantern and took him to my parent’s neighborhood. (It’s the only age that parents can ever get away with that type of costume.) Once we coached him on the right words, he was unstoppable, running from one door to another shouting “Fwick o Feet.” He was one persistent pumpkin. Then I think he was Batman for the remainder of his Halloween career with one brief sojourn as Sonic the Hedgehog. Now all these politically correct do-gooders, along with their twisted sicko counterparts have just about ruined the tradition. Kids have to roam around in brightly lit shopping malls and collect candy. What a drag!

I devised an elaborate treasure hunt for a Halloween party one year, at the age when only boys were invited and that was fine with them. I hid cool stuff like squishy eyeballs, skeletons, and rubber fingers throughout the woods and handed them all a poem I’d written that included clues to the bounty. What the hell was I thinking? Within five seconds of telling them about goods in the woods, I was picking up a ream of orange handouts and listening to what sounded like a re-enactment of the Civil War in the trees. It started to drizzle as I prayed that no one broke any noses or limbs during the rampage. My brother-in-law, dressed as Freddy Kruger ran out of the dark with a chain saw as Jack pulled wagonloads of them through the woods on the tractor. (They loved that.) And Grandma as gypsy read fortunes. They were naively amazed when she told them revealing things like, “You appear to like baseball.” Jennifer the pirate tried to apply rub-on tattoos as the kids said things like, “These tattoos suck!”

“Aye, me matey, just hold still,” she replied.

The piñata fell on the floor after the first hit and as a scene from “Lord of the Flies, a Halloween story” ensued I was witness to what vicious little beasts the male gender can be. As the parents retrieved their muddy children, they looked at me like I was insane, but there may have been just a glint of admiration in their eyes, a nod to my bravery. Nah! Probably not. To this day, I have never fully recovered.

But my real disappointment regarding this upcoming festivity is that we don’t have Trick or Treaters. As David grew up, we had eighteen children on this small rural road—one was mine and the remainder belonged to two, yes two, other families. These are the ones who go around telling their children that Halloween is evil and so on, but one such family would let the kids go from room to room in their own home while the Mom and Dad answered the interior doors and gave them candy. Now if that isn’t scary, what is?! The daughter from said family once spotted a plastic pumpkin filled with candy on my kitchen counter and admonished me that Halloween was the devil’s birthday. “Oh it is not! Have some candy,” I told her. Then the all-of-six-year’s-old tyke looked at Jennifer and asked, “Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your personal savior?”

“I don’t think a little girl should be asking an adult that question because it’s none of your business,” Jennifer replied blandly. (I thought that was a great answer.)

Now you can’t even find a damn Halloween puzzle depicting this most sinful of celebrations where God forbid, kids dress up in costumes and laugh and giggle and eat candy. Blasphemy! I’ve given up putting a bowl of candy on the steps for the kids that never come if I’m not at home, becaue I occasionally go to a friend’s house to view the paltry few little cherubs that show up at the door. It’s a shame, but I still decorate with my plug-in pumpkin and cardboard skeletons and witchy lawn ornament. So Happy Halloween you bad, bad people! One of these days I’m going to follow through with my idea to put a big sign in my front yard that reads, “Happy Birthday Satan!”

Stairstep Conversations

For the entire month of September, which included our 27th anniversary, Jack was out of town with the exception of one weekend. Both of us are like separate planets in the same orbit, so we fall back into our familiar patterns. Max, old yeller Lab, is joined to me at the hip, so I have had to move my office upstairs to the kitchen table. It’s exasperating to have to put a baby fence across the top stairs, because he will follow me hell or high water and fall down the steps if not stopped by a barrier. When I do run down, blocking him with the baby fence, old Max works himself into a frenzy running back and forth on the landing and whimpering. He had a horrible seizure last week. The poor old lion went through the frightening events of literally flipping over backward, and then losing all control of his body and bodily functions.

Of course, Jack was out of town, David in college, and much crying was involved on my part as I tried to console old Max and clean-up the aftermath. The vet said later, that at Max’s octogenarian- plus age, we were lucky not to have experienced more of the same. All that aside, we must keep the baby fence at the top of the stairs, because Max can’t negotiate the steps anymore. First day home, Jack is down in his office and I spend about twenty minutes at the top of the stairs telling Jack about recent events, after saying “Hey Jack!” and receiving his “Yeah!” response.

I tell him funny stories. Nothing. I tell him frustrating facts. Nothing. I tell him what his son just said about their last conversation. Nothing. “Okay, I’m getting flop sweat up here,” I yell down the stairs. “Can you just acknowledge that I’m alive?”

“What?” Jack replies.

“I’ve been telling you about everything that happened recently,” I call.

“Oh,” he shouts. “Sorry! I thought you were talking on the phone.”

“No, damnit, I’m trying to talk to you!” I reply. He laughs. The phone rings, and I go to answer it. Then I return and yell down the stairs, “Hey Jack!”

“Can’t talk! I’m on my cell phone!” he replies.

And people wonder why I’m crazy.

Riverfest: Part Deux

So as we meandered through the fair, Jennifer decided to purchase one of those wooden frogs (she really wanted a cricket but they were sold out) with ridges across its back. You move a stick across the ridges and it sounds like it’s croaking. She had to ask for lessons so the gay guy (not that there’s anything wrong with that) in the booth said, “That’s okay honey, I’m blonde too.” And he was!

Full of kettle corn and having seen our “fair” share of painted gourds, signs that said, “No sketching or photography; these items are copyrighted” (No Problem!), and wooden Santas, we decided to leave.

However, more fun was yet to come. A K-Mart existed nearby, one of the most run down, sad sack of its kind I have ever seen. (And I’ve been to two of them!) Jennifer who has dog-with-a-bone-syndrome about certain things, a malady from which every member of this side of the family appears to suffer—but manifests in different ways and which professionals call “obsessive compulsive,”—was on a tear trying to find a Halloween jigsaw puzzle. Apparently, these things no longer exist because she had already completed a nationwide search for such and this K-Mart was the only place remaining.

We entered the store only to be immediately greeted by a man handing out raffle tickets for a free gold necklace. “The drawing is in two minutes and you have to be there to win!” he said as he disappeared like the white rabbit. Then he began to yell over the store loudspeaker that the drawing was happening right now! in the furniture department. Have you ever tried to find the furniture department in a K-Mart? For some reason we felt compelled to do so! It’s one of those things that’s difficult to explain later to oneself or others. As it turned out, a couple of pieces of furniture officially constituted that location.

About ten people showed up, all with a look of utter despondency on their faces, with the exception of a little girl with her Mom and Grandmother. Some of the people had too few teeth; others had way too many. That poor jewelry representative stood behind a little white ply board podium and tried to drum up some excitement (more about drumming later). Well, as one always learns, there is no free lunch. He proceeded to ask for a show of hands to rate such and such piece of smaltzy jewelry. Then he proceeded to make a pitch for buying said jewelry at an all-time low price. And, he announced that the winner of the gold necklace worth $120 was required to yell “Whoopee!”

“Let’s get out of here,” Jennifer whispered.

“No, I’ve already wasted too much time,” I reasoned.

“May I have a drum roll?” the poor salesman sap requested.

I was standing next to several cartons full of dishes adjacent to the “furniture” department, so I accommodated him with a drum roll via the box top cartons. He seemed eternally grateful.
“Oh my God!” said Jennifer.

Then guess what! He called my ticket number. It’s the first thing I’ve ever won since—okay it’s the first thing I’ve ever won. “That’s me! Whoopee!” I declared.

He gave me the necklace, a gold chain with a crystal heart on it in a little velvet pouch. We examined it and decided that none of us would ever wear it, but it had its merits. I hunted down the little girl and gave it to her. She was absolutely thrilled and her ear-to-ear grin made it all worthwhile.

Mom enjoyed seeing that, so I told her I should have made her stand on the other side of the store during the present giving after her parasol incident. (She still had no regrets.)

Later, in the K-Mart “puzzle section” Jennifer pondered over puzzles for about half an hour, which was difficult since there were only about eight of them. If so much as an orange leaf appeared in the puzzle picture she proclaimed, “This looks like Halloween.”

“Self-deception is sad,” I told her.

So she finally picked out some puzzles, got to the counter, and decided not to buy them. “Well, that was an hour of my life that I’ll never get back,” I said as we left.

All the way home we laughed about a scenario in which I got the little girl’s phone number and called her for the rest of her life to remind her that I gave her the necklace. I’d keep asking if she still liked it, until as a grown woman she’d beg me to take it back as I requested an invitation to her wedding. It would be the gift that kept on taking.

Jennifer summed up the day: “Oh well, you’ll have a lot of good karma for giving her that necklace,” she said to me. “Mom, not so much for the parasol.”

ATTENTION!

This first week of October is National Squirrel Awareness Week. And I must say that we are very aware of the dozen or so that are living in our attack (wait, I meant attic) and about to eat their way through the ceiling. Their next stop: our faces.

An Outing as an Attempt to End the Malaise

Every year a fall festival called “Riverfest” takes place in this area, supposedly to honor American Cherokee Indians. My husband and I both have descendants from the tribe, by the way. Usually, however, fair attendants are treated to Civil War re-enactments (not that there’s anything wrong with that) but it’s confusing. Every year we vow to never return, but it’s become a ritual that signals the transition into the fall season.

This year when I reminded Jennifer (younger sister) of the upcoming event, she vowed not to go.

”But remember last year when we found the African water baskets and everyone kept asking us where we got them?” I queried. “That was a fine, fine day!”

“It was a fine, fine day,” she agreed. “Maybe we should go.”

By “we,” I mean Jennifer and I, and sometimes Mom. No, Jack would have to be knocked out or dead to attend, and who can blame him for such good sense? So we travel past several groups flagging us on with signs that say “No parking spaces left; go to next lot up the road” to a local high school, business, etc. Then you have your inevitable Yankees who are raising hell because they have to wait for a shuttle bus. “I don’t have time to be here!” yells a New York-accented woman to a poor booth volunteer, who has been schooled and trained in the Southern school of courtesy. “Then take your precious time and obnoxious persona and stick it up your self-righteous a--!” I murmur to present company. Sadly, my family encourages me to share such sentiments, but I know that if the police are hauling me off, they’ll just shake their heads and tisk-tisk about my lack of self-control.

Anyway, as we wait for the shuttle in front of a sign that says “Wait here for Shuttle” Mom asks, “What are we waiting for?” I respond, “We’re waiting for the festival to come to us.” She hits me. Then we pass another (probably Northern transplant) who is passed out on the pavement surrounded by 911 employees. Everyone is sympathetic, but when it’s almost 95 degrees outside, you just shouldn’t be wearing a Halloween-themed sweater and wool pants!

I’m already thirsty so I go up to a booth and ask for their advertised Sweet, Brewed, Iced Tea. (By the way folks, iced tea was invented in the South, so if you have a problem with it being sweet, go to the maker! When it’s 100-plus degrees outside, you need to rush hydration to your system!) Larger or small? the vendor asks. "Large," I answer thirstily. "We only have small," she answers. Okaay, and here we go.

In a large festival, Mom (of course) wins a door prize—a little yellow parasol painted with daisies. We decide to search the crowd for a deserving little girl, because Mom has no use for it. Not that one, too spoiled; not that one, too old; not that one, a tomboy. Jennifer and I stop to look at some jewelry and Mom says she’s going to stand over in the shade. Five minutes later she appears sans parasol. “Where is it?” we ask.

“I gave it away,” she answers.

“We have so little! How could you not understand that we wanted to see you give it away?” asks Jennifer.

“I gave it away to a Yankee family with a little girl.” She points to the ambivalent little girl whose mother is holding the gift. “They said thank-you.”

We’re incredulous. “You gave a parasol to an ungrateful little Yankee girl?” Jennifer exclaims.

“I have no regrets,” says Mom.

A little boy walks past chanting, “Jesus died on the cross.”

“I think I’ve had enough,” I say.

(Sadly, there is a part deux.)