Cigarette Burns

The daughter unit went back to Seattle after a six day visit. It was sad to see her go and it put me in mind of the first time I sent her off without a parent. She was 14 and she and her 13 year old cousin went to Salt Lake City to visit their grandma (my mom). I only worried a little about the flight - what really made me fret was that they were going to spend a week in Smokeytown. My mom was a very addicted smoker.

She also used to burn me with cigarettes. Not on purpose, she was an inveterate puffer and she was also a serial gesticulator. During my childhood, I ran afoul of the business end of many "ciggies". Most of the time I happened onto a conversation in progress and got bumped by the glowing butt that was always clamped firmly between her fingers. She always felt really bad, but I felt worse - it hurt like Hell!

Sometimes she'd leave a hot butt on the counter while she was cooking. I'd come in to preview dinner and lean up against the burning tobacco. Shreiking, I'd then stick my burned part under the cold faucet. Cigarette burns are weird - they hurt a lot but I think that's partly because tobacco burns at temperatures slightly less hot than the surface of the sun. Also, the burns are little and round and white in the middle. Did I mention they hurt? A lot?

As dangerous as living with one effusive smoker was, it was worth my life to negotiate my way around my mom, my grandma and my aunt when they were chatting. It was like being surrounded by a swarm of kamikazi fireflies...There were glowing butts everywhere. And not just where mine got singed if I was in shorts or a swimsuit. Yowie! I found it prudent to stay sitting in a corner during these gatherings. Or another room.

The problem was, my mom and our relatives were a heck of a lot of fun. They all loved to tell stories and we'd all get to laughing. Then they'd start flapping their arms (and attached tobacco delivery systems) and I'd get burned. It was OK, though,I had fun and got to know my family. Plus I didn't scar, probably because the cig was always pulled away at the beginning of my shriek so the burns weren't very deep.

So I sent my baby off to visit her granny and possibly get burned. I hoped she wouldn't, but I knew my mom and her tendancy to flail her arms when smoking. I told my baby all about it and warned her to watch out. I also taught her how to treat a burn. Just in case.

The daughter and her cousin came back unscathed. That is good because they are both pale skinned redheads who scar easily. I suppose if she can make it there, in the words of Liza Minelli, she can make it anywhere, and she knows how to treat a burn.

I Tought I Could

I went to a birthday party today. It was a fortieth birthday party and it was in this cool little community center building in San Francisco in Glen Park. I'm used to the Financial District, Embarcadero, Union Square, Chinatown, the Zoo and a number of See's candy stores, but I'd never been in Glen Park before today. Its a really cute little neighborhood.

There was good beer, great barbecue, delicious cake, nice people and my contribution was...really crappy dancing. I have always loved to dance. Not in any organized or performing capacity, I just like to move to music. I have good rhythm and all through school I looked pretty good on the dance floor. There are even times I've ballroom danced and I took ballroom and folk dancing in college.

My point is, I have known dancing and loved it. I've known how to dance properly - I got A's in dance class for Pete's sake - now I suck. This dancing suckage first surfaced on a cruise the hub and I took about seven years ago. We went into the bar where they were doing line dances. "This will be easy for my dancing impaired hubby", I thought. We lined up on the floor and took our places for the Boot Scootin' Boogie. Step, step, hop, step.

I stumbled, got lost, looked around and there was the hub, merrily hopping and stepping away. He smiled at me - I nearly hit the floor. I had officially begun to suck at dancing. Today, I got on the floor and began undulating in time to the music. The music was hip hop which, love it or hate it, is easy to dance to. I was boogieing away and suddenly realized that I was boogieing away in front of people. Horrified, I boogied over to the cake table to see if there were any big crumbs I could nibble on.

I have several more dancing opportunities coming up in the next few months. I really don't want to appear on anybody's blooper reel so I'm going to have to address this problem. Watching videos seems like a possibility but nobody really dances like that. Maybe I can volunteer to chaperon a prom. I wish Soul Train was still on, I could totally learn to dance from that show. Or American Bandstand those were fun shows. But I digress - and date myself. Oh, hell, you already know I'm about to turn 55...

Maybe Ill pay some teenagers to teach me to bust a move. My niece is 18 (she turns 19 a week before I turn 55) and I bet she could show me something. When she gets back from Disneyland ( Jeez - it'd be great to be a kid. ) I'm gonna ask her. It can be my birthday present! She'll help her poor, old, creaky Auntie. I just hope she can control her natural mirth. She'd better, her birthday present might be riding on it.

I Have a Dell P.O.C.

So my computer is misbehaving again. It has taken to deciding which letters it wants to print and which ones it won't. Piece of crap. The irony is that I'm writing something which, when posted, will be able to be read all over the world ( I'm not saying it will be, but it could). And I'm dissing this machine that makes it possible. That's kind of like yelling "Hurry up!" to a microwave.

Or like getting a snow blower after using a snow shovel for years and getting all mad because it left chunks of snow behind. But really, all I'm expecting this damn thing to do is what it was designed to do. Like I expect my car to go and my dogs to bark. I guess the more complicated the machine, the madder we get when it doesn't work.

Or maybe it has to do with cost. Computers are pretty expensive to suddenly turn into large paperweights. And they are too complicated to fix at home. Plus, if you lose your computer access, most people lose a lot of their social contact, which is nerdy and sad but the way the modern world works.

I am not a typist. People who are typists can pound away on a keyboard for hours without looking at their fingers. I enjoy watching a good typist at work. I am awestruck by that skill, its like watching a concert pianist. My best speed is about 10 words a minute. Not exactly light speed...

My husband's secretary at his last office was an amazing typist. She could type 5,000 words a minute with no mistakes. I frequently expected her keyboard to burst into flames when she really got going. Ironically, her hobby was calligraphy and her name was Betty. Her name isn't ironic, but its a great name - especially for a secretary.

So I'm plugging away on my stupid Piece of Crap. I have to keep checking and rechecking to make sure all my p's and q's are present and accounted for. I have no problem with proofreading my writing, I just hate it when "proofing" becomes "poofing" or, worse. "pooing" when I didn't want it to. Piece of crap.

A Bunch of Reasons March Pisses Me Off

March is quite a beautiful month. I've always loved early spring; the birds are back, flowers are blooming, its my son's birthday month (this is something that also pisses me off - more in a minute), there's also (shudder) March Madness. People who've read my blog since the beginning will remember that I have a deep and abiding loathing for the game of basketball. With the sole exception of a Harlem Globetrotters game I went to with my brother in high school, I have had nothing but negative experiences at b-ball games. Usually they involved my rear end keeping the bench company throughout the whole game. Sometimes I got sweated on and even took a ball to the gut on occasion.

Beautiful flowers are nice and now that we water them, they die less often. They still make me sneeze, though. Birds are pretty, too, and last year I learned not to try to see their nest in a tree, because I tend to gape at things with my mouth open and stuff could fall in or near my oral orifice. Ew - no, a bird didn't poop in my mouth, but it tossed an acorn really close. That poop thing could have happened, though.

Easter annoys me, because sometimes its in March, sometimes its in April - you don't know for sure unless you are a member of the clergy or a lunar devotee. What gives anyway, forty days past the first full moon after my dog gets her first flea of the season. Or something. I mean, they established a specific date for Jesus's birth, so why the lunar influence with Easter? It seems kind of pagan and according to people who are really Christian and don't like people who aren't, that's bad.

Then there's my son who I love more than chocolate, puppies, kittens, pretty dresses and Mexican food combined. He will be 27 at the end of March. I was 27 when I had him. For some reason, 27 years after he took 46 hours to extricate himself from my uterus, my son has decided that he knows how I should live my life. Since we're now both adults, he feels duty bound to inform me of everything I say, think or do that he feels I shouldn't. My daughter does the same thing. I think I must be the best mom ever because I raised kids who know everything!

Maybe this March Madness thing doesn't have to refer to the hated game of basketball. Maybe its about early spring making people nuts. Especially me. Especially during all those b-ball games which are sweaty and gross to watch, so I avoid them which is kind of hard to do since they're all over TV. That's OK, though - April is coming and baseball starts again. Hot dogs and beer! Plus our anniversary is in April - like I said - hot dogs and beer...

Swedish Cars

I was reading my scandal rags a week or so ago and something caught my eye. There's a young actor named Robert Pattinson. He's a really handsome fellow well known for playing a vampire in one of those unrequited love young adult movies. And also for starring in the fantasies of middle aged women (not me - I like grownups). Anyway, this kid was doing a photo shoot for Vanity Fair magazine and it involved him and a bunch of naked female models. He said that he hadn't realized that the women wouldn't bother to cover up between shots until a few hours into the eight hour shoot. As a result, this charming, well spoken young man said he thinks he's developed an allergy to vagina.

There are those who would sarcastically say "Oh boo hoo" and play a tiny pretend violin, but I feel sorry for this kid. He's 23 years old and he has no idea what he's talking about. Especially women's bodies. There are a lot of people who are equally misinformed so I feel the need to set the record straight. When that vampire kid was getting his picture taken, he wasn't looking at vaginas. Vagina is a beautiful word for a part of a woman that is inside of her.

The part he was looking at also begins with the letter "v" but its a much less attractive word. The word is very reminiscent of a Swedish model of car. I was at my gynecologist yesterday and while sitting there waiting for him, bare butt nekkid ,wrapped in paper, I looked around the office and scoped out the pamphlets and fliers in the holder on the wall. One of them was called "Care of the (Swedish Car)". I really hate that word... there's got to be a better one. I've heard "cooch" or "cooter" which are better than the other "c" word, but they sound itchy.

Whoever named our...(Swedish car) really messed up - I mean, why did they give the part you can't even see the pretty name and the pretty part that shows the industrial name? Once when I was working with little kids, a four year old girl needed help in the bathroom after going "big potty". I wiped her heinie then left her to finish up. She followed me to the sink, pants around her ankles, and snarled "You didn't wipe my vagina!" I told her that was her job.

Yeah, she was a pushy little person and she was also wrong. I knew, though, that explaining her mistake would be unacceptable and could get me arrested. So I told her mom what she said - in the guise of "isn't that cute". That way she could set her straight if she wanted, but apparently the mom was just as misinformed because the kid kept calling her (Swedish car) her vagina. This kid was a little fixated on that part of herself. Not odd for a four year old but sometimes she just wouldn't shut up about it. I wonder what she's doing now. Actually, I don't...

I really hope somebody explains womens' bodies to that young actor guy. He's good looking, charming and talented but he needs to look through an anatomy book. A man needs to understand where stuff is in order to learn how to make it work properly. If he thinks the inside is the outside and vice versa his charm and good looks will go to waste All because he couldn't find the (Swedish car) and take it for a spin.

Tour de Newark

This morning I was trying to think of some exercise I could do that would not impact my bum left elbow. I hurt my wing at the gym and figured that I can't use at least half my usual machine repertoire since they require arms to operate. I thought I could use the recumbent bike and then I remembered the time my brother told me he was thinking of buying a stairclimber. "But you have stairs," I said, smartass that I am. "I have a bike" I thought, and not just any bike.

A few years ago, the hub was trying to get me off my butt and he suggested I start riding my bike to work. My bike at this time was a partially decomposed heap of rust perched atop two vaguely wheel-like artifacts. It was parked next to the house but nobody would steal it. I wasn't going to be seen on it so I told the hub that if I had a really cool bike and a garage door opener, I would get more exercise. I needed a cool bike because, well...just because, and I needed the opener so I wouldn't have to open the door, back out the bike go back inside, lock the door and go back outside. That's how Old Rusty came about.

On my next birthday, the hub gave me the most awesome piece of cycle-age on two wheels. She's a Schwinn and she's an unreal shade of shimmery pink. If Mary Kay gave out bikes they would be this shade. She has shiny, chrome fenders. Little girls gaze in awe as I ride by and grown up girls call out "Great bike!" I love my pink bike and I call her my Sweet, Sweet Ride. The kids presented me with a garage door opener which the hub installed. My bluff was officially called. It took me a little while to integrate my Ride into mt life. OK, it took two years, but I'm riding the heck out of it now.

So, today I took her out for a tour around my neighborhood. Down to the lake for a spin on the perimeter road, which follows the lake but keeps to the streets. Past the lady with two Chihuahua mixes and the leashes wrapped around her ankles. Said "Hello!" to the nice Greek gentleman who has a beautiful garden and rides a giant red tricycle. Once I called 911 on him because I thought his rose spray was a gas leak. He grows figs, too.

I rode to the back of the lake then cut over to the lake path. Fat geese hate my Sweet Sweet Ride. People feed them white bread by the loaf which is like putting me behind a counter at See's and saying "Have at it!" The lake geese have fat that hangs down between their legs all the way to the ground. Its gross and unhealthy. In my capacity as Arterial Avenger I feel I must protect not just the human species so I might have got a few of them running. They're so fat they can't even fly!

Finished tormenting the geese, I proceeded around the lake. I got to say "On your left" to an older couple.They are slow runners, too, but not as slow as the geese. I sped past a runner duck which is a weird looking bird but fast. There are little hills by the lake and you have to speed down them to get up the next one. Feeling like Lancette Armstrong, Queen of the Lake, I cut back over to the perimeter road and rode home.

With my doubling up of paths, I had effectively increased my ride by half. Upon getting home, I sat in a sunbeam on my couch and conked out. After,of course, I had used my garage door opener to stow my Sweet, Sweet Ride.

The Beeste of My Dreams

Today, I was walking to the farm to have lunch with the hub. I looked up ahead and saw a lady walking a huge dog. When I caught up to them, I discovered that the massive mammal was a Great Pyrenees boy named Rex. He was very cute and smelly and he reminded me of my big old rug of a sheepdog named Willy. Also Wildebeest. Also the Beest.

I think that the same way everybody secretly has an Academy Award speech memorized, everybody has a notion of their perfect dog and Willy was mine. My friend found a sign in a pet store that said "Free Old English Sheepdog" with a phone number. She copied it down and gave it to me. I called and arranged a meeting. The hub and I went to their house and met...the
Most Perfect Dog in the World. He was 100 pounds of fur with a grey body, white head and a grey left ear flap. Turns out the lady who lived at the house loved the dog but her husband was afraid he'd mess up their oak floors so she kept this rambunctious sweetie on a short leash all the time.

Despite his wife's efforts, and without telling her, the husband went and put the sign up in the pet store. I'd have gotten rid of the husband. But, lucky us! We got our Beest! We named him Willy after the Credence Clearwater song "Down On the Corner" about Willy and the poor boys.
Willy was bred to be a show dog, in fact his brother was in the movies (He played Nana in "Hook"), but Willy was sold to the wrong people and wound up matted, underweight and sad.

He perked up after he came to live with us and became the perfect dog. The hub, who was skeptical at first, decided he wanted a herd of beests. Willy followed me everywhere. Apparently, male sheepies can be a little snarfy so our vet got down on the ground with Willy and gave him a shove to see what he'd do. Willy came galoomphing back and asked for more. The vet played with him some more and after a while I think he actually forgot I was there. He said "You got the movie dog!" I think he wanted to keep him. Everybody did except Mr. Oak Floors.

Besides a lactose intolerance situation, which we didn't recognize at first but became clear when gave him cheese nummies for treats, and the brushing, he was an easy dog. He loved eggs, shells and all, and he liked to heard kids like they were sheep. Willy was a counter surfer extraordinaire and due to his size, nothing was out of his reach. He would sneak around the perimeter of a room to steal a cookie or a pizza slice he felt was being guarded too closely. All that would remain was a few crumbs and a giant, wet slurp mark.

One day, my sister was petting him and said " Oh - I can feel where they removed his tail! (Sometimes they're docked sometimes they're surgically removed) She rubbed him for a while then realized that her finger was positioned a little lower than she thought. She screamed and ran to wash her hands - for a really long time. Willy loved my sister.

When I got to the big dog and his lady, I couldn't stop thinking of Willy. Lucky thing, because it was cold and I didn't have my mittens so my big, sweet Beest occupied my brain for the rest of the walk. I've had a number of dogs in my life but I've never mourned one as long as I have Willy. He's been gone 11 years. I guess that's what happens when you find the perfect dog.

Penises & Breastesses

I find myself increasingly concerned about the future of mankind. Specifically, men. See, we women have already drunk the kool-aid, gone down the tubes, over the fence, followed the lemmings .There's no turning back for us - we've been convinced that we are imperfect beings only physically salvageable by doctors who can slice us up and reassemble us in a more beautiful configuration.We're also at the mercy of chemists who formulate dyes, lotions, scrubs and unguents to de-wrinklize us. (I gotta say, though, that Olay stuff in the red bottle is awesome! No, I'm not proud of that - but my skin is smooth...)

I thought that men were, if not immune, at least resistant to these insidious forces, and then I saw an ad on TV today that totally flummoxed me. Jimmy Johnson (hee hee - Johnson), former Dallas Cowboys coach and paragon of testosterone production, was advertising a penis extending product. Fortunately, its a pill so there wasn't a demo. So now men are supposed to be ashamed of their private zones - like women revile their breasts. What's next, Silicone? I know, cosmetic penile implants exist but from what I read, they aren't widely used and don't work very well.

There was also a piece on the news that I found disturbing. A group of people advocating the right to openly carry guns were walking around with handguns in holsters in San Jose. Some of them were women, I know, but there are always women who want attention for weird things. They probably went to a wet T-shirt contest later. But the guys' guns were all really long and protuberant. Used to be that guys would compensate for a small penis with a big truck.

Gas prices being what they are, trucks are a stretch. Then there was the scary dog penis extender. But you had to walk the dog around on a big chain with a spiked collar. Now its a handgun. The stupid thing is that I always heard that an unloaded gun is basically just an expensive paper weight. Its against the law to carry them loaded, so...phallus. Why not just put a dildo in your pocket? It would be just as useful and a lot more direct.

I just hope that men don't start going as over the fence as women have. Its so insidious. Just start planting seeds and eventually people will start doubting, then hating, then trying to improve themselves. Somebody will make a lot of money off this. They are evil. Nobody should be convinced to hate themselves. Penises are amazing! Think what they do...Breasts are awesome, too, and big or not-so-big, like the words to that old song "It ain't the meat, its the motion." Plus, penises help make babies and brestesses feed them, so how can we not love them, no matter what the size.

Augmented breasts rarely look real. Plus, they float in water and look goofy. Imagine swimming with an augmented penis. Sucker would keep wanting to surface. If you ask me, those things have enough of a mind of their own. They don't need any help. And this includes football guy endorsed extending pills.

I'm Baaaack!

So I haven't posted anything for a while and there are two very good reasons for this. The first reason is this ridiculously snotty cold that has been dogging me for the last few weeks. I read somewhere that in Victorian times, when people were stupid, OK - not stupid so much - but they didn't know a lot of stuff, they thought that when your nose runs you were losing brain fluid.

I always thought that was a bunch of hooey. They were not idiots, how could they think that something so common would be dangerous? I'm beginning to think the Victorians were right. I've been blowing gallons of snot out of my honker the last few weeks and every time I toss a kleenex, it has a couple of IQ points in it. I know this because I've become stupid.

Also, there is zero energy in me. I've been sleeping til 10 in the morning. Sometimes its great to be unemployed. Yesterday I slept til 1pm. Yehaaaaa! I'd worry that I was depressed, but it would take a freakin' powerful mood swing to punch through the 40 mg of Paxil that courses through my veins on a daily basis. Maybe I just like to sleep. Plus, I have two cats and a dog pinning me to the matress so I really have to commit to getting up. I've gotta want it, oh yeah!

The second reason I haven't blogged lately is that when we went out a few weeks ago with the hub's childhood best friend, he said " I read your blog; I really like your stuff "Stuff? I have stuff? That's like a baseball pitcher, like Timmy, he has stuff (I'm not talking about junk, get your mind out of the potty). Its so cool to have stuff. Then, at a retirement party last weekend, several people told me they like my blog (hee hee, my "stuff"). One person even called me "prolific".

Basking in this prolific stuff glow, I came home and settled down to write, Usually, words fall out of me like crap from a flock of seagulls. I can't stop them and don't really want to. However, after all that stroking and blog love no vocabulary issued from my brain. Granted, my gray matter was half snot at the time, but nothing came out of me. Except IQ points full of boogers.

Things seem to be solidifying, now, though. The tide of my slipping intellect seems to have been stemmed and the glow of praise has dimmed a little. I'm back in front of my computer oozing more words, less phlegm and getting back to normal...