Babbelorious

I was feeling rather victorious
in my use of the word metaphorius.
Not that I know what metaphorius
means any more than melaphorius.
The room was becoming quite sonorious
as I expanded upon the theme odorious.
My attempt to explain, although laborious
was a mite less than valorious,
and soon became uproarious.
Hark, the Brontosaurious
is waxing amorious.
And there absconds my mood languorious
resulting in vain glorious, bangorious rigamortious.

Laments

Why is it some mornings you get up, and feel like you shouldn't have? Every day that I drag my butt out of bed at 5:00 AM (more or less) convinces me I need to retire. I'm a writer, not just another anonymous number sitting at a desk pounding away at the keyboard in a 9x9 cubicle.

I've said for years it's who you know and who you blow around here that counts. Since I refuse to prostitute myself,I will never be one of the "boys". Once an estimator always an estimator. In spite of what the so-called experts say, the Glass ceiling still exists in the workplace.

If someone were to keel over dead at their desk, management might have the courtesy to kick the body out of the way before hiring a replacement. Notice I said might. More than likely, they would become a floor mat for the next guy to walk on.

Don't get me wrong, I really do like my job. It's just that I've become jaded after sooo many years of doing the same thing. And I really, really do want to retire before I drop dead at my desk. Besides that, I'm just out of synch with humanity this morning.

Educating Nankin

I'm beginning to think I lead the world's dullest life. I get up, go to work, go home, fix dinner, go to bed...then do it all over again the next day. My kids have seen more of Texas than I have since moving here from Illinois. They got to take field trips in school while I went to work.

Speaking of Texas...I was raised in California (yeah, an honest to God prune picker) but both my parents were born and raised Texans. Mom was from Kemp and Daddy grew up in Kaufman. I'm sure no one has ever heard of these great meccas of humanity, but they really do exist. Anyway, back to my point. The first time I can consciously remember visiting our relatives in Texas was when I was about eight. I actually thought we were going to see real live, gun toting cowboys and Indians, horses at the hitching rail, and the Longbranch Saloon from Gunsmoke. (But maybe that was supposed to be Kansas).

The only Indian we saw (well actually heard) was somewhere in New Mexico where we stayed the night. My sister, cousin and I had one room in the motel while Mom and Daddy were right next door. About two AM, we heard this caterwauling beneath the bathroom window. Scared the pee out of us three girls. The next morning the motel manager informed us it was a brave from the Indian reservation that had gotten hold of too much fire water.

Daddy's idea of a vacation was to pile in the car and drive like hell for twelve to fourteen hours a day, so we didn't see much of the passing country. I've been past the Grand Canyon too many times to count. We were always very careful not to take too much time in the restroom whenever he stopped for gas. We didn't want to get left behind if Daddy was ready to go and we weren't.

Our next big shock upon arriving in Texas...it was no different than California. They had sidewalks, sky scrapers and traffic jams just like we did. I cried because there were no horses on the street, no cowboys, and no Indians (sober or otherwise). What a let down!

We spent our first night in Dallas at our grandmother's house. She made a point of telling us that if we saw a scorpion, we should call her. My sister and I had no idea what a scorpion was, but when we headed to bed and there was a large bug on the wall in our room, we dutifully called Granny just like she told us to.

Dear, sweet Granny came running with an even larger hammer. We showed her the bug and she proceeded to smash it with a powerful blow from her trusty weapon of choice without a single word. Yes, it was a scorpion, but she didn't have to put a hole in the wall to kill it.

We learned about Blue Northers that Christmas, too. What's a Blue Norther? They're just like the Santa Ana winds in California, except they are cold. A Santa Ana wind is hot enough to burn your skin and blows for days and days. What made the Blue Norther so bad was that the foundation to Granny's house was nothing more than a few cinder blocks stacked at strategic points. Not only did the house shake with every gust of wind, but it was not airtight in anyone's imagination. No wonder the scorpions could get in the house.

A few days later, we went to see my grandfather in Kaufman. They had a new courthouse, so Grandad wanted to brag about it. He took us for a tour which was all warm and fuzzy until I wanted a drink. In my innocence, I go bopping up to the nearest water fountain. Next thing I knew, Mom grabs me by the shoulder and says, "Not that one." Dummy me, I ask why not. She pointed to a sign over the fountain that said, "BLACKS ONLY".

I still didn't get it until she pointed to the other fountain where the sign read, "WHITES ONLY!". That's where my education in prejudice began. I was shocked, bewildered, dumbfounded and unbelieving. To give Mom and Daddy credit, at least they didn't teach discrimination in spite of their Southern upbringing.

It wasn't until years later that I realized that their prejudice lay barely below the skin even if they didn't teach it.

And here I thought I had nothing to say when I sat down at the computer. Oh well.

Breakfast Girls

Once a month, several of us girls (no smart remarks) get together on a Saturday to have breakfast. This was our last outing to LePeeps in Frisco. It's such fun getting together without the husbands to talk girl talk. Pretty much everything is open for conversation. I won't identify the "Food Whore", because we all did a pretty good job of stuffing our faces.

One More Mouth To Feed

I couldn't believe my ears last Saturday. Jimbob has never been terribly fond of cats and complains about the Persian Princess when he can get away with it. But he also spoils her rotten. I had taken Tink to the vet for a geriatric check up and he was concerned since sixteen is ancient for Persians. A little later he said, "I guess we'll have to look into getting another cat soon."

I nearly fell out of my chair. He's a closet cat lover, but don't tell him that. I'm more than willing to add another cat to the household. At one time, I had five. After we come back from vacation in July, I'm headed to the SPCA to pick out another little darling.

Cleavage Anonymous 2

It's Monday, and here's installment number two in the saga of understanding my children. If you missed Friday's post, I suggest you read it first.

But what makes Barbie popular? It has to be the cleavage. Otherwise she’s nothing but an empty headed plaything with glitzy clothes, big hair, cars, and a boyfriend named Ken. And of course little girls want to look like Barbie so they can have all the toys and boys too. I’ve even heard of women having cosmetic surgery in order to resemble this icon of modern popularity.

Not satisfied, I delved deeper into the mysteries of cleavage. Movies were my next resource. After my experience with the internet, I was afraid to view the most current box office fare. So I returned to my youth once again. The rage of the mid-sixties was the beach party movies with Frankie and Annette. Every one of them was awful. The acting was horrible, the story was non-existent, the directing was worse, but there was plenty of cleavage. By today’s standards it was all very tame, yet these movies captured the imagination of countless teenage males.

With the misconception that I was now ready to tackle some hands on (so to speak) research I laid out a plan of action. Saturday morning dawned and my research team arrived as prearranged. Jason and three of his friends piled into the van to accompany me to the mall. Brittany tagged along in the hope of getting some new clothes.

Numerous candidates were reconnoitered and the boys resigned themselves to the difficult task at hand. Some chicks were too tall, too short, too plain or downright ugly. Others were too skinny, knock-kneed, had flat buns or a multitude of other inherited natural defects that did not meet their critical standards. Not one of the young ladies stood out as memorable to my team of unbiased researchers.

Then disaster struck. The six of us were disembarking from the up escalator when a pair of cantaloupe like breast encased in a postage sized, damp appearing t-shirt strolled past. Not one of the boys could tell you what the young lady’s face looked like or whether she was blond, brunette or a redhead, but she had cleavage. In fact, she had CLEAVAGE.

Major carnage was barely avoided as the boys tumbled off the escalator and over each other trying to get a better view. I barely dragged Brittany to safety before she did a cartwheel over the writhing, slobbering, incoherent mass of prepubescent masculinity on the floor. Shoppers were stacking up on the escalator behind them and other braver souls were doing their best to step around the boys. Mall security was quickly converging on us to determine the source of the disturbance.

“Get your stuff,” I snarled grabbing the closest boy by the collar,”we’re going home.” My children would just have to go through life being totally misunderstood. I’d had enough research for one day.

Cleavage Anonymous

I've been sitting here all day dealing with a carnivorous bra, and it reminded me of an essay I wrote a while back. Here for your reading pleasure (at least I hope it's pleasurable) is the first half of:

In Pursuit of Understanding

Do any of us truly understand our children? The day my ten year old son, Jason, told me he was handling his puberty very well I nearly drove into the ditch. Little did I know this was merely a preview of things to come with this precocious youngster.

I didn't grow up around boys. There was just my sister, who longed desperately to be an only child, and me. Boys were icky, dirty little people that ate snails and teased girls. Besides that, they had cooties. Blessed with a healthy baby boy at thirty-five, I had no idea what I was in for.

As I mentioned, Jason was precocious. One Saturday, he and his friends were talking about the chicks they'd seen while cruising the mall the day before and I innocently asked what was so great about them. Six baby faced young men came up with six different versions of cleavage with some very inappropriate gestures, and a rabid gleam in their eyes.

I wouldn't have thought anymore about it except a couple of days later, his little sister Brittany asked if I thought she'd need a bra by the end of fourth grade. So I got to wondering what the big deal was. I never had cleavage until Jason was born and then God got even. Frankly, I thought it was highly overrated. Nevertheless I set out to do a little research to understand the fascination on behalf of both my children.

The logical place to start was the internet, and in my ignorance I typed in the simple word "cleavage". What popped up on my screen wasn't fit to be viewed in a dark room all by myself. My face burned like a radioactive torch. Furtively, I checked over my shoulder to see if any of the kids had wandered in. I was feeling like a wanted criminal. Do real people look at that stuff? If the neighborhood mothers knew, I was sure to be arrested for child pornography. Quickly, I abandoned that line of research.

What better place to look next than to a little girl's favorite toy? Dolls, no matter how crude, have been around practically since the dawn of human history. So I got out Brittany's favorite Barbie dolls to see what made them so popular. Compared to the androgynous Raggedy Ann, Betsy Wetsy, Miss Revlon and Betsy McCall that I grew up with, Barbie is an Amazon of totally unrealistic proportions. Why don't they just give her a leotard with one breast bared, a spear and a shield? If she could yodel like Tarzan, so much the better. No human being is built like that. She doesn't walk or talk. About the only thing you can do with a Barbie is pose her in her many outfits with her cars, pools, ponies, motorcycles and on and on.

Tune in Monday for the conclusion.

Red Alert!

Yesterday was our first ozone red alert. How many years did we live before knowing about ozone? I sure didn't notice any less traffic on the road. Did you? Who didn't stop for gas on their way to work because it was an ozone alert day? I'm not about to run out of gas out there on 121.

And I'm sure that warning not to mow your grass until evening stopped a whole bunch of Texans getting out in 100 degree weather. The only ones out mowing in the middle of the day are landscapers and they're not going to forgo getting paid because some bureaucrat says it's an ozone red alert day.

I've heard the explanation of what ozone is numerous times, but I've never met one personally. Perhaps ozone is a new alien invader that we should be shipping out to Area 51 north of Las Vegas. And the government can pickle all those little ozones, then deny they exist. That way, we can get on with our lives and not have to worry about ozones creeping into our houses at night and kidnapping us for weird sexual experiments.

Rambling Rose

I seem to be suffering from writer's block. Not only can I not think of anything to write, but I don't even want to write. Not a good predicament for someone who is hoping to break into print any day now. I've been told the best thing to do in this case is to write anything, so here I am rambling like a rose on the fence post.

I've been playing with my son's digital camera the last few days. Yeah, I'm a dinosaur and don't have my own. I really like the fact that you can erase the pictures that are duds or closeups of your thumb, or the floor, or whatever. I keep trying to get a shot of the sunrise, but it's not easy when you're speeding west at 60 MPH and the sun is in the east. I'm sure the other drivers think I've lost my mind.

I had a very busy weekend. Saturday morning, I met with five ladies from the chancel choir for breakfast. It's always fun to gather without the presence of husbands. You never know what subject will come up for discussion. One unnamed participant admitted to being "a food whore." That is after we had all lamented about gravity taking over our bodies.

Then I headed to Home Depot where I bought myself a table saw. I also needed to replace the thermostat on the air conditioner. Our old one was either on or off. When it was on, the house would get down to +/-60 degrees and of course if it was off...you can imagine.

Well, by then it was too hot to work in the yard, so I fooled around until it was time to go to a wedding. It was a very interesting affair. The groom is Hispanic and the bride Korean. The bride's mother and grandmother wore traditional Korean dresses. Our pastor (who is also Korean) officiated even though it wasn't at our church. At least everyone spoke English.

Sunday, I got up early so I could clean the garden pond in the backyard before going to church. The night before, it had spontaneously emptied itself for some unknown reason. It does this every so often and for the life of me I can't figure out where the water is going. When I got home I tried to plant some flowers, but nearly died from the heat. Later I managed to set up our new awning. But by then, I was sweating so bad, I couldn't see what I was doing.

Okay, so it's taken me most of the day to write this little bit, and I still have this humungus writer's block. I guess I'll have to try something else.

Persian Princess

This is the Persian Princess, Tinkerbell. She's sixteen years old and was a throw away because her nose wasn't flat enough to be a show cat. I guess she has a right to have an attitude.

Dining Adventure

It's strange how things happen. Last night when I got home, Jimbob asked if I wanted to go to dinner. I said, sure, what are you thinking? Well, he had a coupon from a new restaurant we both had thought about trying. We piled into the PT Cruiser and headed down the road. When we got there, it wasn't the place we had a coupon for, but it was where we both had in mind.

I highly recommend, "Marry's Bistro" in McKinney. I ordered the Greek Salad and Jimbob had chicken pasta of some sort. They were both delicious. The wait person (see, I can be politically correct) suggested Marry's bread pudding for dessert. I didn't know anyone could do such luscious things with old bread. I came very close to licking the plate to get the last drop of wonderful sauce.

So if you every find yourself in McKinney, stop by Marry's Bistro, you won't be disappointed. From Central Expressway, you head west on Eldorado Parkway to Ridge Road. Marry's sets back on the northwest end of the shopping center where Market Street is.

Bon appetite!

This look like my drive home every night. You never know what you'll encounter. 

Betrayed

I've been betrayed. My body has joined the enemy camp. Every morning I get up feeling like I've been assaulted by a rampaging hord of rabid pachyderms. (Who left the door open?) First order of the day is to walk around at least five minutes before I can really "walk". That is after I've let the Persian princess out because her bladder is bursting, being sure to avoid any slimy hairballs she may have gagged up during the night.

When I'm ready to go,it's paramount that I find my glasses to see if I've made a mess of my makeup and hair. What did God have in mind when he created aging as part of the human experience? It's all a cruel joke when I look in the mirror to check for wayward chin hairs. Of course, I can't see them in a mirror even with my glasses on. I have to wait until I get in the car on a bright sunny day...then I find the suckers! Oh my word! I've been walking around looking like a teenage, mutant, ninja porcupine. Who stole my tweezers?

I seem to be investing (or wasting money) on a new wardrobe every year or two because gravity is winning the battle. Thirty plus years as a desk jockey have definitely not been kind to the old derriere. Men get gray around the temples and sport a potbelly and they think they look rugged. If a woman does the same thing, these men are out looking for some little twit 20 years younger to show they still have "It". I sure don't call that justice.

My body thermostat is now riveted at "Freeze" or "On Fire". I think I should make up a new setting called "Whacked Out". It might be 80 degrees outside and I'm all bundled up in a sweater shivering. At the opposite extreme, everyone else is shivering and I'm glowing like a radio active torch and sweating profusely. My ears especially like this setting. What normal person goes around with one/or both ears the color of a stop sign?

Other than that, life is beautiful. First thing tomorrow morning I'm going to get on my hot line to God and tell him maturity sucks.

I'VE BEEN BETRAYED!

Is It Really Tuesday?

This place has been an absolute zoo today. Everytime I get one e-mail taken care of, I get three more. It's more like Monday than Tuesday. I'm going on strike. I refuse to do a damn thing until 4:15. Then I'm gonna blow this place.

Garage Sale

Our Chancel Choir held a garage sale this last Saturday to raise money for new choir robes. We showed up in the church parking lot at 6:00AM and started "arranging" stuff for sale on tables. Some of also brought enough baked goods to enlarge the bottoms of the entire church. We may have to get wider seats for the new sanctuary that we are buying the new robes for.
By 11:30 all the goodies were gone along with a great deal of our recycled junk. It's amazing what people will buy. Not that I'm any different. I told Jimbob to write the church a check for $100 before he left so I could shop at my leisure. You can buy a whole lot of STUFF for $100. And here I've been trying to clean my garage out.
Jimbob still has three saddles (no horses), boxes and boxes of paper from thirty years ago that he "might need" and clothes that he wore in the 50's. Not to mention the artwork that he's collected over half a lifetime.
You should see the walls inside our house. There isn't a square inch of wall space that doesn't have a picture hung on it. I love art, but enough is enough.

One of Life's Mysteries

Why do grown women pee on the toilet set? There's nothing like waiting until the very last minute because you want to finish what you're doing, running into the ladies room and plopping down on the toilet...and finding that the previous occupant has dribbled all over the seat. Haven't these women been using indoor plumbing with seats for the majority of their lives? After all, most of us were potty trained by the time we were two years old. What do they do, try to shake out the last few drops like men eschewing the use of toilet paper?
When my daughter was little, she tried to imitate her brother doing his business standing up, but that was a long time ago. I know now why she always wanted me to go first when I'd take her to the ladies room. If anyone was going to feel wet and nasty, it would be Mom.
Get a grip ladies, others of us don't like to sit in your pee!

A Favorite Poem

Ruby Slippers



The wicked witch roared into the schoolyard,
swooping and swirling upon her smoldering mop.
(The mop was a flop, but her broom was on strike and left her no recourse.)
A stinking, sulphurous trail of burning embers branded her wake.
In terror, the children ran, but not fast enough.
Cruelly she snagged the first muffin baby within reach,
and wrenched the poor darling right off her feet.
“Where are me slippers, ye revolting worm?” she belched hoarsely,
her breath as hot and putrid as the wind that blew her in.
“I know they’re here, I can smell them.
They be as plain as that wad of gum in your ugly hatch!” she screeched.
Aghast and ablubber, the muffin babe could do naught but wail,
“I want my momma…I want my momma…I want my momma!”
Winking slyly at the carrot top writhing in her knurled grasp, she whispered,
“I want your momma too, puddin, if she be hiding me slippers.”
Beside herself, the carrot top, muffin baby tossed her cookies all over the witch.
Revolted, the mop nearly bolted before the hag could throttle its gears.
“I’ll show you who’s boss!” the witch crowed, roughly garroting her steed.
And the carrot top dangled high above the ground,
reminding the witch evermore of a piece of meat.
Wiping the spittle from her chin, the old harridan breathed,
“I wants me slippers, but you are a right tasty little poppit.
Mayhaps I should come back later. What do ye think little one?”
Too frightened to think, the muffin baby screamed… and screamed…
and screamed until the whole school trembled with ague.
The very clouds in the sky quivered and leaked tears of fright.
And the poor mop had had quite enough.
She popped all her gears…and left the witch flailing in a heap.
The tears were rain…and the rain was poison to the witch.
And the witch could do nothing as the
carrot top, muffin baby hit the ground and ran.
She ran as fast as she could with her short little legs…
and her high heeled Ruby slippers.

Oh Happy Day!

I'm getting a laptop! I'm getting a laptop. And I don't mean from the company either. I finally decided to shell out the money and treat myself. This way I can take it with me and work on my books. I hate having to write anything out longhand and then try to decipher what I wrote. Double work if you ask me.

Well, I just got back from a meeting with my two co-workers. What a joke. They both get their panties in a wad over nothing and then spend more time pissing and moaning about it than it would take to do the job in the first place. I just don't understand that type of mentality. There's a reason they call our department customer service. I was flabbergasted to hear from more than one source that Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum refuse to help with a project that isn't theirs. Maybe next time they're out I should refuse to fill in for them. I can just hear them now complaining to the boss that I'm such a bitch.

Oh well! Maybe I am a bitch and just don't know it. So I'll continue to help out wherever I can. I guess I just haven't learned to say no.