leave of absence

I will be leaving all of you wonderful and faithful readers for a few days while I depart for Austin for a short fun-packed vacation. I will be visiting my oldest and dearest friend, Tracy, her husband Dave, their 2 teenagers, one teenage neice and two dogs. Add Karen and, you guessed it, INSTANT PARTY. It's such a treat to drink some wine, crank up the Doug Sahm albums and show those teens how we did it in 1978! They are always most impressed and grateful when we impart to them the sacred knowledge of our shared youths.

I will be taking The Box and hopefully exchanging it for The Box that lives at Tracy's house. Being the lazy, spoiled children we are, Tracy & I long ago abandoned any pretext of social decorum and, instead of sending each other birthday and Christmas presents & cards, we would just buy them and put them in a Box until which time we actually got to see each other. I hope this explains why I have not sent any of you a birthday or Chrismas card. It's not that I'm not thinking of each and every one of you during special seasons - I am - it's just that I'm lazy and spoiled.

For your reading enjoyment, I have thoroughly researched some appropriate substitutes for this blog:
Stuck in Rehab With Pat O'Brien
Funnsylvania
Kittenpants
Intellectualize *this one is from Texas. Let us pray.

Letter to Oprah #2

Dear Oprah,
Monday's show with Tom Cruise was sooo awesome! And his new girlfriend Katie Holmes - ohmygod!!!!! She's just as cute as a little button! But really, don't you kind of worry about Tom dating a girl 16 years younger than himself? Even if she was on Dawson's Creek - I mean, really. What could they possibly have in common? She wasn't even BORN when Mission Impossible was on TV.

Did you hear that Tom told Brooke Shields she shouldn't have taken those nasty antidepressants to treat her postpartum depression? I guess Scientologists don't believe in taking medicine, only vitamins. What if Tom and Katie have kids and she gets postpartum depression and he only lets her take VITAMINS for it? What if she like drowns her kids in the bathtub like that lady in Houston who was also real religious? I bet he'd be changing his happy cult-religion tune then, don't you?

Anyway, is it me or was Tom TOTALLY hitting on you? I swear I was catching a vibe there.

Yours truly,

K

quotes of the day

Ken: Isn't today the day you have your appointment at that place, what's it called - Friendly Hands?

Me: What??

Ken: You know, your gynecologist.



Me: I'm bored today

Ken: You could always go down to the truck stop and watch the big rigs come in.

branson - portal to hell **updated!

Audience members at "The Baldknobbers"

This is just one of the hundreds, no thousands, of reasons I will never go to Branson. If I want to see people like this I'll go hang out at my local Wal-Mart.

deep thoughts

Printed on the 5" x 5" plastic bag containing a plastic fork, knife and salad dressing packet I received with my fast food salad today, was a warning to keep the bag away from babies and children to avoid danger of suffocation. Since the bag is only large enough to fit over a newborn's head, wouldn't this warning logically be directed at the parent contemplating infanticide? Just wondering.

letter to oprah

Dear Oprah,

I just want to start out by saying I love you! I've been watching your show for years, and as someone with a weight problem myself I just have to say You Go Girlfriend!!! But isn't it depressing that no matter how much weight we lose, we're bound to gain it all back? I'll bet you're not looking forward to being fat again, especially when you have to be on TV every single day! People can be SO mean. There are a couple of 7th graders who live on my block that make fun of me, and I'm telling you Oprah sometimes it's all I can do to keep my dignity and just ignore them. Some days when they're yelling "Hey fatty" or "Watch out, it's 2-Ton Tillie", a black feeling of hatred just washes over me and I get this urge to march up to them and strangle the life out of their little, scrawny, half-developed bodies! But then I just ask myself "what would Oprah do?" and it makes me feel all calm again. I know YOU wouldn't let a couple of stupid 13 year old boys screw with YOUR head. Even stupid 13 year old boys who wear god-awful pants that show most of their underpants and look sooo stupid you just want to shove red-hot sticks into their eyeballs. You, Oprah, would keep your cool because that's the kind of person you are.

Anyway, I just wanted to congratulate you on your truly inspired "Wildest Dreams" season. Maybe you don't remember, but I sent you five letters asking you to grant MY wildest dream of having stomach stapling surgery, which you ignored. I guess it was more important to grant the wildest dreams of people who wanted to meet Usher and Mariah Carey than to address MY urgent pleas to be released from my prison of fat. It's OK, really, I'm over it.

Anyway, good luck next season, Oprah, and I hope you have a really nice summer!

Your pal,

K

cemetary flowers

Last week, while attending the burial of my aunts, I noticed that it was May in the Midwest, which means that the peonies are blooming. Next to lilacs, peonies are my favorite flower. They are huge and lush and smell like a million different kinds of sweet. They are a nearly perfect thing. Cemeteries around here are just chock full of peonies because they bloom right around Memorial Day, making them a ready-made grave decoration, and I made a mental note to take Coco, my little dog, for a walk in my local cemetery soon - not because The Puffball loves to take walks, but because I was planning on scoring me a major peony bouquet for the house. Before you recoil in horror, let me explain: My own peony plants had to be moved to make way for the new fence, and they didn’t set any blooms. I don’t have my own peonies this year, therefore, I am relying on the generosity of the dead. I know people think that picking flowers in a cemetary is questionable behavior, but let me be clear: I am not taking flower arrangements off of graves; I am picking the flowers off of plants that happen to be on graves.

I got my start in flower thievery a long, long time ago, when I was living in Austin. For a few months one year I roomed with another woman in a small, roach-infested duplex. For some strange reason, our shitbox little house was located right in the middle of old Austin opulence, in the Pease Park mansion district. This duplex was so badly infested with roaches we called it the Roach Motel, and in order to cook anything you first had to light the oven and get it hot enough to make the roaches run out. Sleeping was an exercise in bravery and more than once I woke up to find a cockroach scurrying across my leg, or neck or some other body part.

In Central Texas, there is a short window of time when the weather is absolutely beautiful and the flowers bloom like crazy. After that, the average daily temperature spikes up to about 2000 degrees Fahrenheit and all plant life shrivels up and appears dead, much like the desert. Our own yard was perpetually void of much plant life year round - the yard contained a few patches of St. Augustine grass and that was about it. Nothing would grow at our house and it's likely that the ever-increasing population of cockroaches just simply consumed all of our outdoor plants in their day-to-day forays out of the stove to look for more food. My roommate and I, in an effort to distract ourselves from the roaches and bring some beauty into our squalid little hovel, took to sneaking out at night to pick the neighbor’s flowers. Our rich neighbors had plenty of great flowers, so we figured why not? We would sneak out into the night with scissors in hand, running from house to house, snipping off tulip blooms, gladiolas, daffodils or whatever we could find. Then we'd come back and turn those flowers into pretty floral arrangements and place them all over the house. It certainly perked up our lives and I personally don’t think the homeowners even noticed that anything was missing - we were careful to steal equally from everyone.

I resumed my life of flower theivery a few years later after moving back to the Midwest. One day, as I was driving over to my mother’s, I passed by a cemetery that had just scads of lilac bushes that were in FULL BLOOM. Not having a lilac bush of my own at the time, and knowing that mom’s lilacs had been badly frostbitten, I stopped and picked a whole shitload of lilacs for the both of us. Much to my surprise, when I told my family members where I found these great lilacs, they were shocked and horrified.
"You mean you TOOK them from the CEMETARY?"
"Well, it’s not like I stole somebody’s flower arrangement. They were still on the bush. I PICKED THEM OFF THE BUSH!"I said, wanting to be clear about that.
"But still… the cemetery? How could you?"
I get the picture – you don't approve.

Even though I now know most people find it perverse to pick flowers in a cemetery, my desire to have a large peony arrangement in my house was much stronger than the social stigma associated with my method of procurement. So today I hooked little Coco up to his leash, put a pair of scissors in my pocket, and set off on my mission. I parked my car in a place close to a lot of peony bushes so I could gather my bounty quickly, and after walking the dog, I snipped flowers. I got white ones and red ones and pink ones - all the different colors that peonies come in - two great fistfuls of the sweetest smelling flower on the planet. The trick is to just take a few from each bush so you can't really tell any are missing. I worked real quick, just in case anyone happened to come by and wanted to know just what the hell I was doing and I would have to make up some lame excuse like "oh my dog peed on these so I'm picking them off."

You may be asking "Why not just wait until dark to steal flowers if you’re so worried about what other people might think??" Actually there are two very good reasons: First - that would mean I’d have to change my nightly routine, which would really screw with my OCD tendencies. Second - fear of zombies. It would just be my luck that picking flowers in a cemetery at night would piss off the undead, and they would come lurching after me, tearing the flesh from my bones and leaving nothing but a pair of scissors and a bunch of torn-up peonies. I’d like to see Without A Trace explain THAT one. "Well folks, it looks like we've got us another zombie killing. Boy, those cemetary flower thieves really seem to piss off the living dead..."

Anyway, now I’ve got my peonies, and they smell and look fabulous. I don’t think Hank Johnson: born 1887, died 1942, or Twila Rupp: born 1927, died 1975 really care that I picked a few of their damn flowers. They had plenty to spare and most importantly, it brought joy to MY life. Next year, after my own peonies are rejuenated, I'm hoping to be able to retire completely from the flower theivery business . I'm getting too old for a life of crime and my nerves are shot. I fear the wrath of the undead and am tired of people shooing me away from their flower beds - it's embarrassing. In the meantime I will enjoy this last stolen bouquet, and remember the good old days.

lease agreement

Lease agreement for the rental house across the street from me:

Renter agrees to own at least one car with a defective muffler at all times
Renter must have variety of unstable personal relationships, and
Renter must periodically get into loud drunken arguments in the front yard, in the middle of the night. Renter will get one free month’s rent if police are called.
Renter must display one or more of the following items on the front porch:
1. BBQ Grill
2. Dead plants
3. Broken chairs or other broken furniture
4. Refrigerator and/or freezer
5. Bags of trash

Renter agrees to not own a lawnmower or to mow the lawn more often than once a month
Renter agrees not to use garbage cans. All trash bags should be placed on front porch until trash day.
Renter agrees to park all vehicles on the street, and not in the driveway
Renter must only use driveway for stacking excess bags of trash and old tires.
Renter agrees to own at least one dog that has a barking and/or attacking and/or intestinal problem.

Do not get friendly with the neighbors. Your landlords haven’t and you don’t want to start a trend.
Note: Neighbor across the street is a light sleeper. When she asks you to please be quiet at 2am, the correct response is to yell “Hey, fuck you, lady.”

TV land and other stuff

The best thing about driving in a funeral procession is that you get to run red lights and stop signs. That rocks.

Something that really bothers me is when you've been watching a TV show for awhile and all of a sudden, in one episode, one of the characters smokes a cigarette. Like, oh by the way my character is a smoker in this episode. Since I used to smoke, I know you just don't go around not smoking most of the time, then all of a sudden out of the blue you're having a cigarette.

Here are my favorite TV shows right now. You may not care, but this is my blog, and since you're reading it you already have some kind of sick fascination with my life as it is, so here goes:

10. Desperate Housewives. This would get a higher rating except one of the characters is having sex with a 17 year old boy and since my son is 17, the YUCK factor is definitely in play here. Thinking about your child having sex is seriously gross and second only to imagining your own parents having sex.

9. Still Standing - There's something so sweet about a couple of parents who have absolutely no interest in their own children, still go to Ozfest, and talk about how they used to smoke pot in high school.

8. Medium - What I really like about this show is the main character's husband. He's hot in a boyish, sweet way, plus he's a mathematician which appeals to my inner geek. Also, they named one of their kids Ariel like in the Little Mermaid. That takes guts.

7. Sex in the City - OK, I only have access to the TBS version so there's no good nudity and the characters say "frig" instead of "fuck" but you can still read their lips so you know what they're really saying and does one really have to hear the characters say fuck as long as you can hear it in your mind???

6. Survivor - I've been watching it since the beginning so there's no such thing as not watching at this point. Yes, they always vote out the best players too soon but Tom's still alive and kicking in this game and as long as he keeps winning immunity he'll win. I'm rooting for Tom in case you're wondering and boy am I glad they got rid of Coby because he was too swishy, even for me and I'm a big huge fan of the gay guy.

5. Apprentice - OK, everything he owns is "the best" and "the most expensive" and his taste sucks but I watch it because I like George and Carolyn. I wish I was Carolyn - so tall and blonde and skinny and you just know she kicks ass all over the place. I wish they would have a show where Carolyn kicks Donald Trump's ass all over the boardroom. They could call it "Carolyn Kicks Donald's Ass".

4. 3-1/2 Men - It's hard to believe they actually have a prime-time show where the main character drinks excessive amounts of vodka straight from the bottle, screws a different woman in every show and teaches his 10 year old nephew how to gamble.

3. Lost - I like this show because it's not a cop or hospital drama, plus there's a big fucking monster in it.

2. Intervention - I don't really know anybody else who watches this show but it's a reality show about people with addition problems and the cameras follow them around scoring drugs and doing drugs, or cutting themselves, or gambling away their families' savings, or going around to a bunch of fast food places and gorging out on food, or just playing video games all day and night and generally not working or doing anything else. Then at the end, the families surprise them by staging an intervention and, ha!ha!, the addict has to choose right then if they're going to go to rehab or not - and if not, their families tell them that they don't want them around anymore. The fun part is when an addict gets all "what's up with this shit?" and "you mean I gotta go right now?" and the families are all like "hey you slacker, you just live at my house and eat up all my food and don't work and smoke crack in the back bedroom and we're tired of your shit." It's fun.

1. Nip/Tuck - This is my number one favorite show right now and I got hooked on it via reruns, when FX ran 4hr long Nip/Tuck marathons on Saturday nights, which I watched every Saturday night - so that pretty much tells you how much of a loser I am. HA! Just kidding about the loser part! This show pretty much falls into the soft porn category and since I'm too cheap to pay for HBO or any of those other pricy networks, this is the best TV gets for me.

correction

A small correction to the previous day's post: The King says "meatnormous" and "cheesenormous", not enormalicious and cheesealicious. I got confused with the made-up adjectives and made up a couple of my own.

wake up with the king

I do so love the new/old Burger King commercials featuring the scary looking king who says things like emormalicious and cheesealicious. However, I think a more appropriate tag line would be "Wake up screaming with the King" because that's what I would do if I found this guy sitting on the side of my bed when I woke up in the morning.

child endangerment

I got a nifty birthday present - A 1957 McCalls magazine Amid all the ads for the miracle inventions of the time - washing machines, dryers, dishwashers, carpeting (carpeting?) - there was a little gem of an article about how to handle your child's temper tantrums, complete with photographs.

Allow me to describe:

First we see mom trying to do her family's grocery shopping - along with her infant son and 2-year old daughter Betsy - while wearing a dress and high heels. I don't even know where to start pointing out all the mistakes this idiotic mother made from the get go; 1) a baby, 2) a 2-yr old, 3) a dress, and 4) high heels. What was she thinking???

In frame #2, mom puts the baby in the only available baby seat in the cart. That's when Betsy starts to freak out. Why? Because SHE WANTS TO SIT IN THE SEAT, GODDAMN IT! And who can blame her, really? Everything was probably perfectly fine in Betsy's little world until her stupid parents decided to have MORE CHILDREN and ruin EVERYTHING. Stupid 50's parents.

For the next couple of frames mom ignores Betsy, as if this will actually help. Betsy then rightfully escalates the madness. She throws herself on the floor, kicking and screaming bloody hell, proving to the world that she has been SCREWED OUT OF WHAT WAS RIGHTFULLY HERS. And who hasn't felt that way a time or two in their lives? Hell, I feel that way nearly every day when thinking about all the good stuff that I have been denied - long legs, sparkling personality, a trust fund. It's enough to make you want to rip your hair out.

Anyhoo, the kicking and screaming part is always the pivotal point in any tantrum held in a public place. This is the part when all the other shoppers start to notice that your child is behaving like an out-of-control Red Howler monkey, and all eyes are on the mom to see how she'll handle it. which is what happens to the mom in this story. With her back up against the wall and feeling really freaked out and exhausted from trying to control a screaming 2-year-old while wearing a dress and high heels, the mom attempts to shut little Betsy up by buying her a toy. Brilliant! I think, because there's generally nothing like bribery to shut the mouths of your enemies. But does Betsy cut her losses, suck it up and take the stupid little toy? No she doesn't. Betsy is single-mindedly bound and determined to complete her infant-seat coup, oust her little brother from power and rule the world. At this point, I'm thinking Betsy must have some sort of brain dysfunction or be borderline retarded because she still wants to sit in the fucking infant seat, but Betsy is a genius compared to what her mother does next...

Now this is where our story veers off to a place that we cannot begin to imagine in this day and age of carjackings and kidnappings and sex offenders. Ready? Mom asks a stranger in the store to watch the baby, while she takes Betsy to the car and leaves her there. Did you get that? At this point in the story, I'm throwing up my hands and screaming at the magazine "You idiot! You don't wear a dress and high heels to grocery shop with your baby and toddler, then leave the baby with a stranger so you can take the crazy toddler out to the car and leave her there alone!!!" The last frame shows a tearful and clearly pissed-off Betsy with her face pressed up against the car window, begging to be released. The text says "Mother should not have left Betsy in the car, as this only makes her angrier." Nowhere does it say that it might be dangerous to leave your child in the car alone, only that it could make the tantrum worse. Even if the world was void of child molesters back then, what about the heat? Didn't little brains fry the same way then that they do now?

Now, who among us hasn't secretly wanted to march our little hellions out to the car and leave them there? Sure you want to, but common sense and fear of child death prevents you from doing so. Was the world so much safer in the 50s that you didn't have to worry about baby kidnappers? What about Communists? What about The Bomb? I asked my mother, who in 1959 had a 2-year old and an infant. Did I ever have tantrums? (doubt it) Did she ever take me to the car and leave me there?? Mom says no, she never left any of us kids alone in the car. In fact, she didn't have to because my mother understood the value of a really good bribe. Just the thought of getting that candy bar at the end of every shopping trip was enough to keep us all in line. But most importantly - and I think this is key - my mother knew better than to wear a dress and high heels to the grocery store. That's enough to make anybody just a little crazy.

birthdays

Today is my birthday. Last year my birthday fell on Mother's Day and the Season Finale of Survivor, which really rocked. This year my birthday does not fall on Mother's Day but does occur on the same day that Oprah reveals her Big Family Secret. I can't imagine what that will be since I thought we already knew way too much about her already.

I am 48 today, but started telling people I was already that age months ago. In January, after the new year changes, I start thinking about how old I'm going to be in May. Then I start practicing saying the new age in my mind. Soon after that I start saying it out loud to people. I'm a huge age-dropper and LOVE telling people how old I am, like I think people will be impressed by how many years I've been around. It's a deep-seated neurosis of mine.

My mother is the oldest of her many siblings and when she had me, I was the first-born grandchild. I was fussed over and made to feel special - as is the right of any first-born child in any family - and thus I spent my formative years being treated like a little princess. Over the subsequent years, I accumulated about 15 younger first cousins and at major holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas the entire extended family would get together for the shared meal. The children were placed in a separate room to eat. I'm sure you're familiar with The Kid's Table as it seems all families have something like this - a place where the children can be segregated from the more formal dining experience of the adults and where the chatter and messiness of children won't mar the holiday meal for the grownups. At around age 10 I began to resent eating at the kid's table. My cousins were all young and babyish and had absolutely no respect for my elder position. I would look at them eating their Thanksgiving meal on their paper plates, scooping up mashed potatoes with plastic forks, and think "I MADE this Goddamn Kid's table but now I'm SICK of all of you and can't wait until I can get out of here and take my rightful place at the adult's table, where I really belong." That year, I asked when I could stop eating at the kid's table and was told "how about when you're 12?" This seemed reasonable to me, although apparently the adult who said it didn't mean it and probably assumed I'd forget about it over the next 2 years.
But I didn't forget.

The year I turned 12, I was ready for Thanksgiving. I got my plate ready, flounced up to the adult's table, and was promptly halted by my mother who held out her hand like a stop sign, saying "Hey there, where do you think you're going?"
"Uh, I get to sit here," I said, then added for clarification: " I'm 12 now."
But my mother wasn't buying it. "Oh no you don't. This table is for grownups, honey. Twelve is not grown up, believe me, so go on now. Scoot."
This was very disappointing news and I began to panic. "No" I thought. I can't go back in there. I'll die in there with all those CHILDREN." I began to plead with an intensity I had perfected over many years of adult manipulation but it was no use. I wasn't going to be allowed back in with the adults, and now my protests had caught the attention of the rest of my aunts and uncles who actually started laughing at me. "What did she do, try to sneak in here with us?" they said. "Hey, don't be in such a hurry to grow up, kid."
The situation had definitely turned ugly and I slunk off with my plate of turkey and marshmallow salad and ate my Thanksgiving dinner under the stairs alone, leaking tears of embarrassment and frustration. It was then that I decided that growing up in a hurry was exactly what I needed to do. That is the year when I begin to anticipate my birthdays months in advance.

In my twenties I was saddled by the burden of still looking like a teenager. For years, when salespeople would knock on my apartment door, I would be greeted with a "Hello there, is your mother home?" I became convinced there was a well-coordinated cosmic conspiracy to keep me from completely being accepted as an adult and my twenties sped by in a race to get to age thirty. In my thirties, motherhood worked its natural aging process and grocery sackers started calling my ma'am. I considered this progress in the right direction.

Now at age 48, I no longer look like I'm in my teens or twenties, or even thirties. I've been eating at the adult table for a very long time now and took perverse pleasure in seating my own son at the Kid's Table when he was small. The practice of anticipating my age several months in advance is a finely honed habit I'll probably never grow out of even though I'm almost 50. Fifty. Geez, I can't believe I'm going to be that old in just another year and a half.

little movie

I got this in my email today. Interesting little movie. The guy in it is Ben of Ben & Jerry's ice cream.

chainsaw massacre

Ken and I recently faced an obstacle in the fence project. A small to medium-sized tree was in the way of our construction zone and needed to be to be removed – cut down. The job obviously required a chainsaw, which is something I did not own. After some consideration, I decided the thing to do was just to buy one; besides, I had other tree-type things that needed to be cut up – some large limbs fallen from a massive sycamore tree during last winter’s ice storm and were too thick to saw by hand. I decided to talk this over with my dad, who knows about all things related to power tools and it became immediately apparent that my dad was not terribly keen on the idea of me using a chainsaw. He was OK with me buying one, just not using one.
“Well, you’ve got to really watch out for the kickback. And remember you always have to use both hands. Oh, and make sure you hold that sucker away from your body, not close in. Boy I’ve seen some people get really hurt using chain saws the wrong way. Real hurt.”

My dad is always quick to remind people about how clumsy I once was in my pre-adolescent years. “You should have seen it – she ran right into that car with her bike and dislocated her elbow!” or “There she was, foot all stitched up cause she’d fallen down the week before and cut it. And so she’s hopping around cause she couldn’t walk on that stitched up foot, you know, and then she falls right down on her ass and breaks her thumb. Breaks her thumb! Can you believe that? Grace. That’s what we used to call her. Ha-Ha! Get it? Grace?”

Forgetting that the clumsy period in my life only lasted a couple of years, my dad still operates under the belief that I cannot walk across a room without incurring an injury requiring medical attention. Knowing this about my dad, I assured him that I wasn’t planning on using the chainsaw myself, but would instead leave the cutting to Ken. A couple of days later I went to Lowe’s and purchased a Log Master chainsaw (love that name), took it home and read the instructions. It seems my dad really knew what he was talking about because the booklet was full of warnings about kickback and using both hands and other useful information, specifically about not using a chainsaw when you’re on a ladder which makes no sense to me because how else do you cut down a tree?

Saturday was the day designated for cutting down the offending tree and Ken prepared for the job by (what else?) getting the ladder set up. Now, Ken doesn’t much like climbing ladders and would probably prefer fighting off a pack of wild dogs, but he got up there, by God, and you gottta love him for that. As soon as he started up the chainsaw, I cut my eyes over to the neighbor’s back door, testing a little theory I had. Knowing my ammo-loving, Sequoia-plantin’ alpha male neighbor, I figured it would only take a couple of seconds of a chain-saw melody to lure him outside, and sure enough I was right. Rhett came bounding out the back door practically at a sprint, still chewing his last bite of lunch. “Hey dude. Need some help? Cause I’m telling you, I’m one ladder climbing sonofabitch. No shit.”

Ken & I both knew it wasn’t the ladder that my neighbor wanted to climb. He wanted to operate the chainsaw. And we were more than happy to oblige him. “Why sure, thanks a lot!” And Rhett climbed up to the very top of the ladder and commenced to cutting off branches, like the madman that he is.

If I’m not mistaken, Rhett violated every last one of the safety instructions written in the Log Master’s book of rules. He was cutting with one hand. He was holding the chain saw recklessly. He was flirting with kickback all over the place. At one point he was on the top rung of the ladder, doing all of the above. Had he been in my yard at the time, I would have put a stop to this kind of reckless abandon, not willing to risk the $1000 deductible on my homeowner's insurance, but since the tree was mostly in his yard I let him go all out. He seemed to be having such a good time. After the tree was cut down, I let Rhett continue using the saw to cut up the logs. He and his wife have one of those patio fire pits that are fashionable these days and he wanted the wood for burning later. I don’t really mind having a fire pit next door, except instead of having a happy little fire, Rhett likes to stuff his fire pit as full of wood as possible and start a raging inferno. Sometimes at night, you can see the burning embers floating through the neighborhood, like large grotesque fireflies. Nevertheless, we left him sawing up his logs, happy as a little lumberjack; and there he continued working until he injured himself. Horribly. Yes, Rhett wrenched his back out of place. His back. Here’s a guy who just risked traumatic amputation of just about every appendage he owns and he’s felled by something as commonplace as a back injury. Go figure.

I haven't seen Rhett since Saturday and I wonder if his back still has him laid up. The logs are still lying in his back yard along with some of the other branches he didn’t get around to cutting up. That, in addition to all of his kid’s toys, makes for an increasingly chaotic picture over there. The fence project is once again moving along since the tree is no longer an obstacle, and we're working at a fever pitch to finish the section between our yards. I can't say I will miss the view, but I have to admit the neighbor has his own entertainment value. I'm sure it won't be long before he starts up the old fire pit again and the glowing embers that it spits out will begin their freakish wanderings around the neighborhood. I just hope one of them doesn't burn my fence down.

she's baaaaaack...

Wilbanks found
Originally uploaded by kpalmer45.

I think Jennifer Wilbanks really was abducted while out jogging, but the fact that she seemed totally unable to blink her eyes really freaked out the couple who took her, so they let her go.

how come the good stuff never happens to me?

The other night I was watching the news and there was a report about a new cancer pill that patients could take, which is supposed to eliminate the inconvenient nausea, vomiting and hair loss that chemo causes. This caught my attention. What? No heaving vomiting? No hair falling out in clumps? No opportuninty to wear flattering scarves over the baldness; scarves that could mean only one thing – you had cancer? How would strangers know you were sick? How would they know you were special and possibly dying?

I had cancer once, over 10 years ago. It’s almost embarrassing really; cervical cancer just doesn’t have the cachet of say, bone cancer or pancreatic cancer. Cervical cancer is like having skin cancer; it's easily removed and the death rate is pretty low. There was no chemo nor radiation, no hair loss, none of that. About the only real benefit to having had cervical cancer was the hysterectomy, so I haven't had a period in a long time. I asked the doctor to keep my ovaries, which I wanted to keep for purely financial reasons. Being the skinflint I am, it only made sense for me to continue to make the estrogen myself instead of paying the greedy pharmaceutical manufacturers for their fake estrogen product for the next 15 years or so. He agreed but I'm a little surprised this option wasn't offered to me, which makes me wonder if these guys are on some kind of kick-back program with the manufacturer of Premarin.

During the surgery to rip out the uterus, the ovaries have to be removed also. Apparently (and this is what continues to baffle me), the ovaries are re-attached to your body, right there in the gaping cavity left by the departed uterus. There they miraculously start up their little estrogen-producing process again, like a factory shipped overseas. It's cool the way the body works, and I wonder if my ovaries would still do their thing if, for example, they were reattached in another area of my body - like the backs of my eyeballs or to the spinal column.

Over the years, my little overseas factories have continued to provide me with the female hormones needed to ward off heart attacks, without enduring the increasingly painful and heavy periods the rest of my peri-menopausal gender are having. Without these physical markers of impending menopause, I chug along pretty much unaware of what's going on down there. Sometimes I think I'm having a hot flash, but most times I'm probably just sweaty. Sure I'm cranky - but that's normal for me. As a result, I'm beginning to feel cheated out of the whole experience. Where's my chance to be miserable? What happened to my chance to complain about having yet another period this month? Is this my fate in life - to just miss out on the things that others take for granted?

Yes, I've had cancer, but it was the non-lifethreatening kind. Sure I had major surgery, but missed out on chemotherapy and the opportuninty to generate looks of pity in strangers' faces when noticing my head scarf. Now I'm missing out on PERI-MENOPAUSE and I'm afraid I may miss out on most of the menopausal symptoms too. And to top it all off, they now tell me that future cancer treatments can be relatively pain-free. So here's what I've decided: If I ever have cancer again and they offer me this pill, I will say "No thanks. I prefer that you drip poison chemotherapy agents into my veins so as to cause the most pain and discomfort as humanly possible." Go ahead, call me perverse. Or masochistic. I know you want to. But I'll bet a little-bitty part of yourselves knows exactly what I'm talking about. You may even have your own head scarf picked out, just in case, like I do.