I find it impossible to introduce myself in writing to strangers, telling them a little bit about me in a way that helps them understand who I am. I worry about the image my self-description creates.
WTF?
I’m certainly not a gray-haired granny knitting booties from a rocker but I do have nine grandchildren. I don’t knit, though. I try it every couple of years. My fingers are too fat. The work is mindless. The instructions are the stuff of metaphysical science and I can’t understand them.
Five years ago I visited Mickey’s Surplus in Kansas City and found a sale on Carhartt overalls. I didn’t yet know the full impact of the Carhartt brand but I knew it was a pretty big deal because of a giant family riff some years earlier over a particular Carhartt jacket I’d found in a closet and given to the wrong male family member. He’d procrastinated about returning the jacket when the actual owner showed up and demanded it back. Took a while for that little deal to die down.
I found some new Carhartt overalls on sale for $17.00 at Mickey’s and I thought…hmmm… Continue reading
I took a quick scroll thru my Facebook feed before bed last night and recognized a young woman’s selfie among the hundreds of other selfies. She is a friend of one of my kids and was dressed in some kind of lacy, low-cut top with plenty of cleavage on display. Continue reading
Several months ago my youngest daughter graduated nursing school and moved 500 miles from home to work in a hospital. Soon after she started the job she became more and more anxious about her new career. She worried that she’d made the wrong decision with nursing. The patient/nurse ratio was overwhelming, the other nurses were proficient and confident while she second-guessed everything she did. A few doctors were demeaning and condescending and she started calling home every couple of nights with increasing panic. Read More
Happy Birthday Lily Belle
Today is Lily Belle’s 6th birthday so I joined her at Kindergarten to eat lunch. The “special” table was full so we sat with the “regular” people. It’s also Frozen Friday so we chose ice cream sandwiches for our treat.
Once we sat down I noticed Ms. Ratched, the lunchroom and #walkdontrun monitor was walking towards us so I said, pretty loud, “Lily, since it’s your birthday you get to eat your ice cream first!” Lily replied, “I know! Yay!” Ms. Ratched slowed her giddyup just long enough to shoot me a scalding glance but obviously thought better of correcting me before she sped off to find another rule breaker.
One of my favorite events at school lunches is when Ms. Gable counts down from three to zero, at which point there is either total silence in the room or, and I’ve never actually 
seen this play out, some kind of hell to pay. All of my grand kids enjoy this little activity as much as I do and we sit with our arms raised and follow along, folding down each of three fingers until we are left with a fist in the air. Silence Power!
Rapist and the Rapist’s father
I am just a tiny bit skeptical about all the brouhaha over the bug-eyed, chinless rapist with his little swimmer’s hair Afro. The one who got nearly a free pass for raping a 23-year-old unconscious woman. After all, both parents of the rapist have expressed how sad and depressed he is after the raping. He hardly smiles anymore, they said. He’s too delicate to survive in prison, his mother told the judge. He’s even taken on the “binge-drinking” cause and plans to let others know what a bad thing it is to consume copious amounts of alcohol. Violent rape is hardly worth mentioning but binge drinking is a really bad idea. His family is really proud of him for taking this on. Bless their hearts. Continue reading
I haven’t written anything I can publish for public consumption lately but I came across a photo I promised to share with Sir Ozzy a long time ago.
It’s a photo of me fishing with my Uncle Joe a thousand years ago in the Florida Keys. Joe was my dad’s brother, the two of them formidable members of the Fighting Bell Boys and along with the third member of this obscure but infamous trio, is retired to the great beyond. At least two of the Fighting Bell Boys are remembered with some measure of fondness. My father isn’t one of those.
The boat was rumored to be owned by Jimmy Hoffa (uncle Joe had connections, he told me). I ate a raw shrimp on a dare that day. All sailors eat raw shrimp, the fishermen told me. Looking back I realize it was just another cruel joke I fell for in my youth – never one to pass up a challenge of my grit and determination to fit in… somewhere.
I don’t have bad memories of this particular trip – it’s all part of the strange texture of my life.
Be sure to check out Sir Ozzy’s blog for fun stories about his travels.
**I forgot to add that I caught several of those fish on the table there. My stomach was black and blue the next day from the fishing pole.**
Leavenworth County, Kan. –Reports early Saturday afternoon indicate unusual behavior for drivers headed south on Kan. Highway 7, just outside of Lansing, Kansas. Several witnesses called the station with similar reports of Leavenworth County (LvCo) drivers operating vehicles while in the right-hand lane as they traveled south on the highway.
One witness said she saw several southbound LvCo drivers gripping the steering wheel, “…(they were) white-knuckled, with expressions of abject terror on their faces. A passenger in one car had her eyes covered with her hands and appeared to be screaming,” the witness said. “I’ve never in my life seen a driver from Leavenworth County driving in the right-hand lane. It was terrifying.”
Another witness reported that at least one driver in the left lane was gesturing wildly to the drivers in the right lane to get back over to the “normal” driving lane. The driver was screaming, “What are you doing over there?” the witness said. Continue reading
Marriage. It’s a funny thing. I swore it off after the first time around but I eventually found another guy I figured I could tolerate. He liked me too, back then. Over the past 22 or so years our union has grown into a kind of mutual appreciation of the convenience and efficiency of coupling. That sounds a bit like a PVC elbow connection and I visualize the maze of grey and white pipes hanging under the ceiling joists in my basement. Not a very attractive image but fairly efficient. That’s our marriage. Functional. Efficient.
It’s not that we don’t love each other because I’m sure we do but I have news for the young bride and groom skipping down the aisle: love is a verb. I mean yeah, the early years are all raunchy sex and loud music but eventually the sidewalk needs shoveled, the shitter needs replaced and the chicken needs fried. Somebody invariably has to clean up somebody else’s vomit. That’s where love comes in because nobody does that stuff for fun.
We’re certainly not romantic in any way, although, in spite of my insistence that he not go to any effort or spend any money I get the obligatory (six?) roses every February 14th. He’s a good guy really and all told, I’m not a great wife. Still, the relationship works out okay. We have a pretty decent marriage.
Today, however, was one of those times where the old buyer’s remorse (re)surfaces and makes me wonder what the hell I was thinking 22 years ago.
Nothing’s gonna change my world
Jai Guru Deva OM
Eating dinner at my house was pretty much a thirty-minute game of survival-of-the-
most-invisible for the three of us kids. The cleverest of the bunch was able to duck under dad’s radar and avoid pressing whatever hot-button issue was brewing just below the surface for him. Often it was a racism issue or a sex or religion issue or something to do with a current popular song on the radio which fueled–in his mind– an increasing cultural depravity in the generation of anti-establishment teenagers who occupied his classrooms.
Dad hated religion but he hated what society became in its absence even more. I don’t know that he recognized the dichotomy there but it kept him embroiled in an emotional battle that he foisted on his own kids as he constantly prodded and poked us about concepts he’d caught wind of from his students and from which he was determined to save us.
BzirkWorld 