Reflexology and the Mancard

In case you thought that you heard the tornado siren going off around the university campus tonight, it wasn’t the siren; it was me.  Tonight I went to walk off my “dinner roll”. I had just gotten back from picking up a saw and a hacksaw (I guess the hacksaw is just a cheap copy of a real saw). Don’t get any grand ideas that I was going to do any kind of carpentry work ‘cause I got no skills. I actually just needed to cut the ends off of a piece of lattice, which I might have been able to do with a steak knife but I thought the saw and hacksaw would give me points on my mancard and also give me some neighborhood street cred. 

I went in the house and put on my old lawn-mowing clothes (the almost sheer shirt and 1990’s swimsuit that I always wore prior to hiring the Adios Grass Brothers) and unloaded my car of its manly tools. I started thinking about the fact that once I got started I needed to finish the entire project and decided that I should put it off until tomorrow. The sun was starting to set and it was so nice out that I thought it would be a perfect time to go and get my walk on.

 I hesitated for a minute, as I was still in my former lawn-mowing attire, but I knew that if I went back in the house there would be no laps for me tonight, except for the ones I would make in my bowl of ice cream later.  So off I went, pride to the side, determined to get in a little sunset exercise.

I got to the track and had forgotten that it is next to a pretty busy road but I just tried to ignore my “bad neighbor” period costume and focus on the task at hand. I put on Pandora, plugged in my earbuds and took off. I made one sweaty loop around the track, along with about five other people and noticed as I turned the corner, that up ahead, off to my right in the grass, was a college guy with a golf club and some golf balls. I looked back down and didn’t look back up again until I was just maybe ten to fifteen feet away. What I didn’t know was that he had some kind of practice golf balls that are like a cross between a ping pong ball and cotton candy. That really would have been nice to know in advance. All I know is that I was going straight ahead, full turtle, and he was facing me but was just a few feet to the right. When I looked up he was swinging through and zing, he sliced and the ball was headed straight for my big ol’noggin. I am not sure if it hit me or not but I think it did graze my hair. Hitting my hair, with all this gel in it, would actually cause more damage to a golf ball than to my head.

Anyway, he hit the ball and it came flying at me at an angle and I screamed like a white woman…screamed…like a white woman. Somewhere mid-wwscream, I torqued into a fantastic ninja/matrix move. The problem with me doing ninja/matrix moves is that I don’t do them every day and they require practice…stretching…and time. In a flash of a second, somewhere post-wwscream and mid-ninja/matrix move, my back went out. Well not really out, but it caught and I couldn’t stand back up. I ended my ninja/matrix move with a loud, “Ouch, ouch, ouch,oooohhh” and then a few other words that I can’t remember how to spell. Let’s just say that everybody at the track and all the cars passing by heard me…loud and clear. This strange double event was followed by a slow-motion dialogue. It may have only felt slow-motion because I could only move in slow-motion.  Anysqueal, the golfer ran over and was yelling, “Are you alright? Are you ok? That didn’t hurt did it? I can’t believe that hurt. I am so sorry. Are you ok?” I was bent over thinking I was never going to be able to walk in a fully upright position again. I stood there bent over for a minute, taking it all in. At my feet was the ball and I could see it was a fake…a little plastic designed-to-not-travel-very-far  fake golfball. I wanted to lie and conjure up a goose egg on my forehead or whip out some fake blood or something. The last thing I wanted to do was to tell him that I had moved too fast and that I had a catch in my back and that I had the musculoskeletal system of a 95 year old man. He was apologizing and all confused as to how I could be hurt so badly by a nerf ball and why I was wearing a swimsuit from the 1990’s in public. All I could do was moan and try to stand upright…without any luck.

Finally, I ran out of ideas and told him the painful truth. I told him that the ball had not hit me but my back was messed up. I told him not to worry about it, that I would be fine and that I was going home. So I waddled off the track like a creature from a fairy tale that lives under a bridge …and wears old lawn-mowing clothes in public.

Let’s just say it took a moment for me to get into my car. I didn’t look back to see the audience. I know they were there; I could fee their questioning eyes on me but I just didn’t want to look. I tried to put my feet into the car first and then decided it would be best to “back in” and then I changed my mind and started with the foot again. I had to be a sight. I drove out of there knowing that I had not walked long enough to have burned any calories or lost any weight but I had definitely lost a huge chunk of my pride and a large portion of my dignity…that’s got to count for something, right?

I got home and decided I needed to just put the saw and the hacksaw in the shed and think about all that tomorrow….if I could get out of bed in the morning. I went around to the back and opened up our big old, run-down shed. The doors slide open on tracks and as I opened the door, a rabbit jumped out, straight at me. Once again, I screamed like a white woman and did some kind of body jerk. I didn’t move much but just tensed up all over. That prompted a loud, “Ouch, oh, oh, (fill in the blanks), oh!” Beside me was the privacy fence. On the other side of the fence was my next door neighbor. He is a nice guy, great neighbor, but to be honest, I don’t know his name, what he does for a living, where he went to school…nothing. He is just kind of my “Howdy neighbor” on the other side of the fence. I think he is mid to late thirties and has lived there now for about ten years. Sometimes I am slow to mingle…don’t judge.

So I am standing there with my heart trying to figure out if it needs to send me some kind of warning pain to let me know that I can’t keep doing things like this, and I hear my neighbor, “Are you ok over there?” I wanted to make up a story of some kind. Once again I found myself backed into the little white lie corner. I wanted to tell him that I had just, minutes ago, been almost killed by a golf ball and that I was still suffering from PTGBS (Post Traumatic Golf Ball Syndrome). I couldn’t do it. I had already lost most of my dignity and pride, what else was there to lose? So I told him that I had just seen a rabbit and that it had scared me and made me jump and hurt my sore back. He responded, “A rabbit made you scream like that?”... (laughter heard over the fence) “Are you going to be alright over there Princess or are you going to need some help?” And then it happened; he swiped my mancard and took away all my earned credits and bonus points.

In the morning I will be getting up early. I’ve got to make sure to be all set up before my neighbor pulls out of his driveway to go to whatever job it is that he does, wherever that might be. I will be all set up with a table, saw and a hacksaw. I am not sure what I am going to be sawing but it is not going to be my white balsa wood lattice. I am going to have limbs, old furniture…maybe a pipe or two sitting out and all ready to be chopped to bits. I am going to get those points back.  Oh yeah, I might even buy something like a rocking chair and say that I built it while he was gone to work…or while he was in jail…or whatever it is he does during the day.

I am also going back to the track in full, matching, tracksuit gear and wearing shoes that aren’t green half way up. I will try to regain some of my dignity and pride while also losing weight.  I know that I am going to have to go up to each person at the track and ask if they were there and saw all the commotion. I have to track each one down and fix this story. In my defense, I didn’t know that it wasn’t a real ball! That ninja/matrix move could have saved my life, even though a good pre-stretch and more time to get into position would have been really nice. As for my neighbor, he needs to understand that I had just been through a traumatic situation only to come home and find myself face to face with an animal that had fur and it was lunging at me. It could have been a rabid dog or a cougar or something. That wwscream might have been enough to scare off a wild animal…it certainly alerted the neighbors…it was a natural reflex and once again, it could have saved my life. Yeah, that’s my story….I am getting those points back…dignity and pride to follow.

Milestone

I used to love to run to stay in shape. I ran high school track (like a turtle) and a little cross country (like a turtle in the woods). In college and after college my favorite running to do was at the MTSU stadium. I would run a lap around the track, and then run the stadium stairs, run the track, run the stairs, etc.  That was my exercise. It gave me a skinny little body and frog legs. That was just the way I looked for a long time. Every now and then when I see a runner I will remember, “oh yeah, I used to be built just like that”. Now I am the opposite. I have the frog body and the skinny granddaddy long legs.

Tonight, as I decided I had to walk off some of my “ I refuse to get a to-go box” night, I went to walked around a track near my house. I walked about a mile and was talking on the phone the entire time (yes I am one of those people). Something about having to talk and walk at the same time really got me winded (and gave me a chance to show off my skill set). As I made my last lap in silence, except for the sound of my heavy breathing and the click, click, click of my pedometer, I realized that I was pooped. I got into my car after this cross-training event sweating like Heidi Fleiss in a confession booth and remembered something that I had told myself years ago.

It was a concept or a reality tag that I had put on myself for the future. I have done this many times for many things and for some reason I never forget them. Years ago, back when I was doing my track/stairs medley, I would see older adults walking around the track. I used to think that I wanted to go up to those people and say, “Seriously? Do you really think you are doing something?  You are walking! That’s not exercise!” At some point in my runner years, I had told myself, “ I will know that I am officially old when I think that walking is exercise.” 

Oh the ignorance/vanity of youth. I have fulfilled so many of my prophecies. Why do I do these things to myself? I have done it with many facets of life including (but not limited to) “I will officially know I am too fat when, too old when, a loser when,…” I have set all these lovely benchmarks for myself as if they were goals to obtain. So tonight, as I was riding home in the car with my feet feeling like twice stuffed potatoes from walking on hot asphalt for a mile, I remembered the “I am officially old” prophesy and decided that I was an idiot at the time I set all those benchmarks and that I was going to declare them all null and void. That was such a burden off of my slumped shoulders.

I came home and put my feet up. Oh my dogs were barking. I put on my fuzzy slippers, chugged a mixed drink (orange Metamucil and water) and turned on the TV. Old/schmold, that was crazy talk way back when.  I am doing fine. I have a small mirror in my bathroom illuminated by a 40 watt light bulb that tells me so every morning.

In a few minutes will be the nightly bowl of ice cream with maybe an Ibuprofen chaser. What did I know way back then…please. As I am typing, I looked down at my hands and realized that they have turned into my dad’s hands. I remember once thinking that when I got to the point that my hands looked like my dad’s hands….oh yeah…erase…null and void…forgotten.  I will say that sitting here my calves are starting to throb. I think I’ll get up early in the morning to beat the Walmart rush and get some of those socks that come all the way up to the knee. They are supposed to be for better circulation…I hear all the college kids and professional athletes are wearing them.

Winter Smack Down

I have written several notes in the past few years about my neighbors and their decorating habits titled  “Bambi’s Pulling  Overtime”, “Heavy Decorating” and “Au Natural”, just to mention a few. I haven’t posted any of them here yet but here is one I think you can enjoy without much backstory.  There have up to now only been two real contestants in the “decorator challenge on a dime” in our neighpoorhood…until now. There is a new kid in town to take on the power-grid duo that have dominated for so long. There is the original neighbor, “The King of Lawn Art”…”The Picasso of Polyvinyl Inflatables”, who has mastered the art of blending Santa, Rudolph, Joseph, farm animals, a penguin and some camels into one big multicultural seasonal celebration…like a patchwork quilt from a memory soaked fabric of days gone by.  For the reader’s sake, I will call him “Blanket”.

Blanket is the one that last year had a big yard sale…literally…he sold the things from out of his yard that were already set up for Christmas to the guy  that lives diagonally across the street from him. I’ll call him “Diagonal Guy”…or DG for sort.  Well before Blanket or DG could even get set up this year, a new-comer jumped out into the lead of the neighborhood decorating pack. It is the drug dealer that is a few doors down (I’ll call him “Baggie”…’cause that’s what he sells).

Baggie came out first and strong with a huge selection of extra large inflatable creatures. They fill the middle of the front yard but stay out of reach of each side yard because of the fear of them falling into the clutches of the rope restrained thing that I am pretty sure is a cross between a Pit bull and some type of wild horse. I call it a “Pitstange”-it’s a monster of a dog/horse.  Anyvick, the inflatables are taller than I am and they blink…I don’t mean their eyes; I mean they have blinking lights inside.  There is also a massive penguin that stands off to the side but has no lights in it.  At night you can see the bright on again off again ensemble glow and cast a quick glimpse of a dark creature standing nearby. Since most of the penguin is black except for the stomach, and it has no lights, it kind of looks like a ghost…with its eyes closed. Baggie also wrapped his columns on the front porch in lights that blink in perfect non-unison.    It is all big, bold and eye catching (and could induce a seizure on you too if look at it for too long) and was up and running for three days before Blanket or DG got to set up.

Sunday was the big day. Blanket obviously couldn’t take it any longer or this past Sunday was just the red letter day for setting up his “Winter Wonderlawn”. With only one day’s all out effort, there is no argument that Blanket has now pulled ahead into a strong lead. He not only has already put up bigger and better inflatable creatures that are well above six to nine feet tall, but they all have lights in them…constant, bright, satellite identifiable lights. There are also the smaller, well lit creatures to help with dimension, scale and 3-D-ness. There is a new Santa and reindeer (lit) and the year round deer (former Santa reindeer that branched out) that look like real live plastic deer and are  still in their places from the summer. Even though I am sure that Blanket isn’t finished (there is still grass showing), he went ahead and set himself apart from the rest of neighborhood in his early attention to detail. It was if he was saying, “Here’s to you Diagonal guy…eat my snowflakes-they are on the power lines.  Here’s to you Baggie, my eight foot penguin is lit and I have a corner lot with a decorated side yard. You are waaay out of your league.”  Then Blanket did it; the piece de resistance, he went ahead and played his trump card …the card of all cards…the plastic baby Jesus…oh yeah…it’s on.  As I drove passed it tonight with my mouth hanging open, I looked at the glowing manger, Joseph, Mary, the wise men, the cow, they were all there, glowing and focused and surrounded by their towering frosty friends. For a moment, I thought I heard a voice…a soft, yet firm childlike voice coming from that tiny manger with a message to the rest of the neighborhood…”Bring it”.

Before Lift Off

I just pulled the cobbler from the oven. The barley and rice chicken soup is brewing with Crockzilla fired up on all pistons. The smell of okra and potatoes fills the air.  Now before I project the wrong persona here as someone who knows how to cook, let me make it perfectly clear that I do not…at all. As for the chicken soup, don't go thinking I went out and cooked a bird. I have never bought an animal carcass and cooked it and I can say that only twice in my life do I remember ever buying a pre-cooked whole chicken. Tonight was one of those nights. I just make it a habit not to eat anything that looks like the animal it came from. I don’t like feeling like I am in biology class dissecting an animal that I am about to eat. Plus there is all that extra…you know…discard.  Oouuup, there went the gag reflex. No, I am not much of the hunter gatherer, kill-it/skin-it/eat-it kind of guy. Just give me a boneless, skinless chicken patty and I am fine. There is a reason though why the house smells like okra, chicken and Hawaii; let me explain.

I got off schedule today and went to Kroger two hours past my normal dinner time to find something to eat. I was walking down the isles without any concept of what I wanted (shopping while hungry…yeah that’s always a good plan). I starting thinking about tonight’s pending tornadic activity along with what I wanted to eat for dinner and it all morphed into a “What would I have as my last meal?” shopping experience. Of course it was tainted by the constraints of what I know how to cook so my choices were from a very short list.

I guess this means I have not been challenging my brain enough or filling it with new ideas and concepts since now it tends to wander off into tangents like this. Nevertheless, that’s what it does and I found myself surfing the Kroger isles hungry and pretending it was my last meal before “lift off”.

The obvious answer was okra and potatoes, so I loaded up on them. There was one of those 10 for 10 sales going on so I was piling up my shopping cart with bags of frozen okra and looked up at my reflection in the glass of the freezer door. I looked like one of those extreme couponers who had just hit the “snip and save” jackpot…but it didn’t stop me. I was saving!

I started planning on making blackberry cobbler again, as it is my favorite, but got thrown completely off track when I passed the deli warmers displaying their roasted chickens all bagged up and ready to go. I grabbed a bird, threw it in the cart and then starting trying to figure out what I was going to do with it. I do love Crockzilla, and I remembered my bag of whole grain rice at home so bada-bing that was it. I was going to make chicken and rice soup in the crock pot. My stomach rumbled with excitement.

With a cart full of frozen okra and one dead chicken, I hungrily made another predatory lap down a few more isles. I passed a can of cream of coconut….eureka! I had a flashback to my pina-colabbler from over a year ago. I had to make it and this time add the cream of coconut.  With any luck I might even weigh myself down enough to not be able to be blown away! Now normally I try to make everything on the healthy side and I only gave the nutritional chart ( which I usually call the “warning label”)on the can of cream of coconut a quick glance. I remember seeing something about 5 grams of fat…it’s natural…that’s not so bad…it could be my last…go for it.

Once home I threw the okra/potato medley in the oven, the dismembered chicken into the Crockpot, and I started mixing everything together for the cobbler. I realized that I had never written down the recipe and that I was once again going to have to wing it. I read the cream of coconut can as I was pouring it in to the concoction and saw the 5 grams of fat and 130 calories per serving warning but then I saw how many servings were in the little 15 oz can…15! What? Fifteen serving in one little can? Once again I was glad that I have no ability whatsoever to do math in my head but still, 15 x130 calories for one ingredient = weight gain…with or without a calculator.

So I sat down to right all this and forgot to bring the timer in with me. I never heard the “ding”. It’s the pina-colabbler; the bottom burned. Since I made it I can over look it and have to say it is not bad at all…if you like things that tasted like something you might have tried to cook in college with the random ingredients you found left over in your refrigerator. For my guest one, it is perfect.

I know my love handles are getting ready to take on another “freshmen 10” from this as I will be the only one brave enough to eat it. I don’t want to be wasteful…I’ll just have a full waist. I think I can justify it all as I will be able to balance this with my barley and rice chicken soup (yep I finally found a use for the bag-o-barley that’s been hanging out on top of the microwave).

Oh yeah, the okra/potato medley was deeelish. Some last meal, huh? In reality, with me not cooking, the last meal would involve baby back ribs, crab legs and lobster tail. I know, it’s time for me to put this brain to work so it will stop wandering tangents like this so it can focus on more important issues of the day. I am wondering if that second bowl of cobbler will be as good as the first? There’s no time like the present…what with the pending tornadic activity and all.

It's Only Natural

In some ways, it might seem that the furry little creatures and even the slimy ones serve no purpose here on this earth other than being here for our entertainment. They are entertaining for sure, and they can also be great companions. I think that they are all here to teach us something. We have learned the art of camouflage from many creatures like the grasshopper, the polar bear, frogs and the cheetah…not to mention the king of camo, the chameleon. We have learned about suction cups from the octopus, the mechanics of a spring from the snake, and the art of catching our prey in a carefully woven net from the spider. We learned that carrying our baby in a pouch close to our body is not such a bad thing from the kangaroo. The art of warfare has taken its tips from the animal/insect world as we have learned not only the art of camouflage but also the importance of body armor from the alligator, and that we need sharp objects for battle such as those of the creatures with fangs, claws and talons. From things  that we can step on and that are often very small we have learned that poison works great on larger enemies; the spider, snake and jellyfish have taught us this very well. We have discovered that sometimes it is best to hunt in a pack like the wolves and sometimes it is best to be stealth like the leopard.

We watched and copied the gift of flight by learning from our feathered friends. We also have learned that flying south for the winter is actually not such a bad idea for us old birds. Some might argue that dogs and cats are here to teach us the difference between men and women. The dog tends to be bigger and stronger and wants to be the protector of its house. Really all it takes to make a dog happy is to feed it, play catch, and to give it a good scratch every now and then. Cats tend to be smaller and more temperamental. They are curious creatures that study the little details. To make them happy they don’t always want a big bowl of food or to play catch, and they don’t always want to be petted. They are more agile and quiet. Put a dog and a cat in the same house and even though the dog may be much bigger and louder, we all know who rules the roost. I am not going to say that I agree or disagree with this assessment; I know better.

We have learned valuable lessons for life from the world around us. We have learned that an unassuming creature such as the bee, would just as soon sting us as to look at us but can create the sweetest thing we have ever tasted. We have also learned not to judge a book by its cover; we get this from the oyster. You never know when that rough looking creature with the hardened exterior might just turn out to be a real gem on the inside. That brings me to another creature, the duck billed platypus. This odd little animal teaches us that when we start over manipulating nature by having things sucked out of one end of our body and shoved into the other end and we keep carving and narrowing and enlarging our body parts, that at some point we are no longer going to look natural and if we are not careful, we are going to end up looking like a duck billed platypus.

Dear People: Buzz and Bubbles

Dear Drug Dealer hanging out by the potting soil in the Walmart parking lot,
  Thank you for picking me out of the crowd last night as "the guy most likely to be a stoner". I appreciate that. I am not sure if you know it or not but I saw you walk all the way across the parking lot and hide behind the dirt bags (great camouflage for you by the way) while I was loading up my potting soil. This is the reason that I was already giving you the "stink eye" by the time you got up to me. I am so glad you were able to hold you breath until you got right up to me so that I could get a slight buzz from your emissions as you exhaled and started to talk. Jeez oh Petes that was strong! Thank you for opening up your wallet to show me that you only had seven dollars left and for telling me that all you needed was seven more dollars so that you could go buy some antifreeze for your new Lexus. I appreciate you pointing out your new car to me and for leaving it's emergency lights flashing for a nice touch of reality. I think I may have been a bit short or rude with you and for that I am sorry. Telling you that you were going to have to phone a friend or use another life line was just not even funny. You are just a business man trying to earn a living. Now, I must confess;  I told you a lie. I don't know if it was the fear or the pot talking, but that last thing I said about being an off- duty police officer just trying to get back home to plant some tomato plants and to get rid of some weeds was not true. I am sorry if that made you uncomfortable and I regret that I might have made you nervous when I added that everybody needs to get rid of their weeds before they become a problem. I have to say though, I do love to watch a good sprint.

Dear Fifty Year Old Woman at the gym with the new "pair",
  Yes, we all saw them. Everybody saw them. The girl at the desk that checked you in saw them. The children in daycare saw them. The people in the cardio room saw them. The people on the weight machines saw them. The people on the free weights saw them...everybody saw them. Google Earth saw them. You did a great job of walking around and covering every square inch of the gym. No head was left unturned. I am going to guess that you have an advertising background and understand the importance of a broad audience and hitting them from every angle. We saw them from every angle. Thank you for cutting out the neck of your thin t-shirt and for adding a slit to make it a V-neck and also for allowing "the girls" to roam free. You are certainly considerate to be thinking of those who might be  visually impaired. Also, I would recommend a lanyard type key chain to help hold on to your keys. I noticed that you kept dropping your keys and that you had to keep bending over to pick them up. It sounded like it really exhausted you with those loud moans you let out each time you raised back up and flipped your hair. I just wanted you to know that despite all the key droppings (which did seem to add an air of suspense) you had a great parade. Congrats on defying gravity and for always being able to hear the ocean. Oh yes, and if you ever decide that you need it, Haynes Her Way has a "support group" for you.

Dear People (Bird Watch)

Dear man standing in front of me at Kroger in the mislabeled “fast lane/self check out”. This is not a test, you are not on Let’s Make a Deal, you do not have curtains to choose from and you are not to pick from box #1, #2 or #3. Just do it. More importantly, the MasterCard…I’m sorry, MasterCharge, doesn’t get scanned over the glass scanner. Yes, I have seen your kind trying to do this twice now and it stumps me every time. There are also voice commands that you can follow and even though it doesn’t have “red neck” as a language option, you should be able to understand it.

Hitting the scanner was not your best moment. Yelling “bleep you…take my bleeping MasterCharge” was also not your best moment. Flipping a bird into the scanner screen as an “in your face scanner machine” was classic. Getting mad and walking off without your pile of trailer filler was the icing on the cake. The candle on the iced cake was you turning around at the exit door and making a gesture rarely seen outside the WWF arena. It was the rare but never misunderstood “overhead flying double bird w/up and down alternating piston arms”. What lit the candle on top of the iced cake was you yelling out to the Kroger shoppers, “This is bogus; I am going to Wallmarts”.

Dear sassy young Tyra Banks clone with luscious long hair and pink fuzzy house shoes standing in front of me at the mislabeled “fast lane/self check out” who witnessed what I witnessed, thank you for turning to me, flipping your long Tyra Banks hair to the back while holding  up one perfectly manicured fingernail and saying, “There ain’t no ‘s’ in Wallmart…he crazy.”  You made my night.

Thank you baby Jesus for putting in the midst of these special moments so that I can share them with others.

Eye-talian Sprinkle Cheese

I went to a restaurant the other night (it will remain nameless just in case I am talking about someone’s daughter here) but it was in a town smaller than Murfreesboro and considered one of their good restaurants. My waitress was a young girl that was country as a cow bell and really in the wrong profession. To skip the details and get to the funny part, I was ordering something with a baked potato and wanted to get a little grated Parmesan to go on it. Here is the conversation that followed (W-waitress, M-me)

M: Can I get a little grated Parmesan cheese on the side?

W: (with a confused look on her face) Parmeeshian cheese?

M: Yes, just a little on the side for the potato

W: We don’t have none…not really

M: Well I saw you have pasta and thought you might have some that you put on that.

W: Not really…I mean we have some but it ain’t no good. It’s not the normal kind; you wouldn’t like it. It’s in pieces.

M: You mean big chunks?

W: No, lots of little pieces but it’s not the normal kind

M: Do you mean like shaved Parmesan? That would be ok.

W: No, it’s just not regular; it ain’t no good, I don’t like it. It ain’t the normal kind of “sprinkle cheese” that you put on sketty.

(Indulge me while I repeat that sentence:”It ain’t the normal kind of sprinkle cheese that you put on sketty”).

M: Oh well, just bring me what you have and I’ll try it.

When she brought it to the table, it was …grated Parmesan, plain and simple. She sat it down and said, “See what I mean? It’s embarrassing ‘cause that’s all we’ve got to serve with our sketty. I can’t believe we ain’t got a can of sprinkle cheese in this whole building.”

I suddenly had a flashback to a years ago, in this same town, going to an “upscale” ,new and short lived Italian restaurant. My waitress had obviously been hired from Denny’s and was a bit hardened from her years of experience in fast paced family dining. They had a “build your own calzone” offer so that is what I did. I didn’t see spinach on the list of choices so I asked for it. She looked at me and gave me one of those “You don’t get out much do you?” kinds of looks. “Uh (she said with a little attitude, a slight pause and a very slow blink while checking one of her back teeth with her tongue-you know the move) Spinach?...in and Eye-talian restaurant?..........I don’t think so.”  Her attitude really kind of cracked me up. I repeat that sentence often with the person that went with me, even though it was years ago. “Clueless with attitude” tends to be funny. Thinking back, “Sprinkle Cheese” could be the daughter of “Uh…not in an Eye-talian restaurant” lady. . Now that would be ironic but very possible. Just how many turnip trucks do we have around here and why are people always falling out of them, landing on their heads and then crossing paths with my life?

Where Do I Type?

Is this live chat?  Hello. Live chat? So, is this where I type? I am trying to start a blog...well I kind of already blog in a way on facebook but that isn't really a blog because you have to be my friend to read it. Is that what makes a blog a blog....people you don't like can read it? I hope so because there are a lot of people out there that I don't like. I don't guess I shouldn't put it that way because there are a lot of people out there that I don't even know at all and  I might like them a lot. I am just saying that out of the people that I do know, well, I guess you get the drift. 

Are you still there live chat? I'll just keep posting as I know it takes a while for this to get to India. I hope you are having good weather over there. I had some chicken curry the other night and it was really good. Do you have blogs over there or do you guys just do live chat with bloggers from here? I guess in a way you blog all the time but just one person gets to see it. Hello?

So anyway, I am trying to start a blog because my friends think it is a good idea and I do want to make myself write more. I figure if I tell everyone that I have a blog, then they might go check it out or tell a friend and then I'll be forced to write something so that I don't have an empty blog page. Nobody wants to stare at an empty blog screen....actually, I guess I shouldn't say "nobody". Some people might prefer a blank screen to reading where somebody just blabbed on and on about nothing, blah, blah, blah. I had a great uncle who stared at his TV for hours every night before he went to bed. That screen hadn't worked for five years; it was just black and white dots but he loved to look at it anyway.

Live chat are you there yet? You may be typing or using Google translate; take your time. I"ll just be pressing a few buttons while I wait and that will probably bring up some additional topics for you to cover. I'll bet you have heard it all. Do you enjoy what you do? I'll bet there is never a dull moment...unless no one asks you a question. I guess if no one asks you a question then it isn't live chat that night...it's just...live.  Do you have to use spellcheck or is it automatic with your software program? I use spellcheck all the time. If I didn't, people would think I was some kind of idiot.  I will have a few more questions when you come online.

1. There really are a lot of buttons here aren't there? How did you ever learn all this?
2. Did you go to Microsoft University? 

Ooops sorry, family picture. I don't know how that got here. How do I delete this? I didn't mean to put a wedding pic in here. That's Dooley and Brenda Faye's special day. The dog's name is Peaches. Anyway, as you can see I am learning a lot of stuff here and this has been very helpful. I still can't believe how many buttons y'all have got here. 

Well live chat, it may be morning time over there but it is late here and this'un has got to head to bed. I've enjoyed the visitation and look forward to mastering this blog thing. I have a feeling you are the silent type but you seem real nice. When you get a chance, shoot me an e-mail with the answers to how I make this thing work right and how I get it started. I want to do this thing right. I wouldn't want to do anything that would make a bad first impression.

• After all, I am a professional