November 2007

Maybe a band could use the title of this blog as lyrics… nah… too trite.

Yesterday began with Val’s trip to CVS for Ruth’s prescriptions. She returned home to relate the usual tale of “Doctor’s office didn’t call in the refill in October, when I asked them to for the first time. Remember the hooplah back then?” (hooplah and bilge water are two of my wife’s favorite word(s).)

I listened to Val as I stood at the top of the stairs with my head cocked toward the kitchen below. See, my wife believes my highly trained warrior ears have super-strength hearing functionality and that I can hear and understand her perfectly no matter where she is in the house or yard.

I realized I needed to brush my teeth before work. Yes, I was multi-thinking. And I was upset at the prospect of another day of pleading for refills for the generic heart meds which cost less than $9.00.

I grabbed my toothbrush, squirted Colgate across the bristles and smacked the brush into my mouth.

Only it wasn’t Colgate. It was Intensive Care Hand Lotion, squirt bottle purse size. Everyone has a story like this, right? Val always has a couple new toothbrushes in the cabinet for just such an occasion. She reminded me recently, “the metal basket on the right side of the sink is for mouth, the wicker basket on the left side is for body. If you confuse the two, it will result in a mechanical failure.” What a comedian.

Best part of the story? I’d grabbed Val’s toothbrush.

It’s Thursday now. I’ve been told there are pecan pralines in my future. And shortbread.

(See previous blog posts for other discussions of Val’s baking. She peruses the Land o’Lakes website for ideas. Gotta’ love a woman who goes straight for the butter and brown sugar, leaving the meat and veggies behind, huh?)

As my family moves on toward the “It’s December, hence the workday lethargy increases” season, it pains me to realize television will not serve as a panacea for my entertainment ills. We all know it. The re-run parade of questionable original episode champions began with failed labor negotiations. All the holiday-type tripe movies were shown last week. From Elf to Miracle on 32nd St..

Val and I were talking last night about there’s no television anticipation anymore. While the networks and cable channels use their teasers: Original Series! Starts Tonight! The Most Loved New Show on TV! We at home feel no sense of urgency. Not really… with 24/7 programming and more channels than names in the Little Rock phone book, what goes around will certainly come around. Again and again and again.

It’s kind of a shame, isn’t it? Val remembers when The Wizard of Oz was on just one Sunday night a year… it was the premiere entertainment event for kids. “It made us pay attention to every piece of dialog. The next day at school would be spent re-enacting the movie, even teacher’s would go along with it. I had one teacher who could do a perfect Glenda the Good Witch… we baby-boomers are the film strip generation.”

I was born along with Woodstock. That makes me the first VCR generation, I suppose. Ollie and Emmett (the grandballoons) are the first DVR generation. At 90 yoa, my m-i-l Ruth is the Talkie Generation. Her sister Helen played the piano / pump organ in a Cincinnati movie theater back in the 1920s. From Rudolph Valentino to a Red-Nosed Reindeer.

This blog is going to begin to include more cultural conversations. I’ve got almost a century of human experience years bombarding me all day long.

After noticing the wonderful write-up by Joyce rssHugger joined my short list. Collin LaHay is the brains behind the spam free rssHugger. So if you find yourself becoming ever increasingly referred to as a blogosphere cele. head over to rsshugger.com for another knotch in your belt.

I kid

Many “How To’s” exist online. It occurred to me yesterday, as I watched Val’s futile attempts to create fabric from Piggly Wiggly grocery bags, that my writing and posting a series of “How Not To’s” might just help the common blog.

If you don’t shop at The Pig, other grocery bags will do, they just won’t be as fetching in design.

I filmed my wife and family for this How Not To.

Put an ironing board in the middle of a room. In this case, it’s Val’s studio. Plug in $6.99 Procter Silex iron bought 4 years ago at a Walgreens when pressing my khaki’s seemed prudent whilst we visited friends in NYC . It is, most probably, the cheapest iron ever manufactured. Turn the iron’s heat setting to the highest temperature and be sure to wrap the cord around the ironing board legs.

Encourage all the dogs you currently own or are baby-sitting for to run through the studio and out the back door. (On this particular occasion, three Jack Russell terriers and one slightly demented Scottie served the dog requirement.)

Give half-a-gabillion plastic grocery sacks, all of them crumpled and smashed into a giant Target plastic bag, to a 90-year-old woman and ask her to flatten them out individually. Tell her to stack them with all the handles facing north. *This was my personal favorite step.

Cut handles and fused ends from about 20 bags. Trim a sufficient amount, allowing for plenty of fubars while not destroying the entire gabillion bag collection.

Eat a piece of double-chocolate devil’s food bundt cake with butter cream and cocoa icing. When fully recovered from sugar shock, commence fusing attempt.

Layer six plastic grocery sacks between two pieces of parchment paper. Iron the whole ensemble for 15 seconds, constantly moving iron back and forth across paper. Flip the toxic fume sandwich and grill on other side.

Ooops, iron too hot.

Dammit! Iron too cold.

Wow, that plastic shrivels really quickly, no matter what the temperature.

Try it all again.

Laugh and start a new project.

Get real purdy fall leaves from the front yard. Place leaves between two sheets of waxed paper thus creating a red - yellow - brown speckled leaves with very small spider montage.

Iron the montage.
Smile and remember grade school — The Best of Times.

Across the street, we watch a couple of weekend warriors work to rehabilitate a house. The house is of a rather pedestrian design (to borrow a phrase from Val) meaning it is simple, a working-man’s house. Two rooms upstairs, two rooms down with a shotgun hall on the left hand side. Our former neighbor, Jasper, lived there his entire life and had inherited the house from the aunt who raised him when his parents were killed in a tragic train wreck in Kentucky in 1932. Jasper married a few years ago, moved into his new wife’s house. He decided to sell the house about six months ago, put a price of $93,000 on it and sold it in two days. Suffice it to say, he made out like a bandit.

The rehab couple drives 4 or 5 hours twice a month from the farthest border of Virginia — almost in West Virginia. They want to retire here About six weeks ago, the wife-half of the duo gave Val the “Hey” sign and the two women chatted for a moment. “It sure is hot,” warrior wife commented, “I thought it would be chilly in the evenings by now.”

“Oh, we’ll have a temperature drop now and then, but we’ll be barefoot at Thanksgiving,” I heard Val reply.

The next day as the couple drove away, wife-warrior rolled down the window of their 4×4 king cab pickup to tell Val, “We’re coming back in two weeks with some friends and we’re bringing our boat! See you then!”

Sure enough, two weeks later… the couple arrives, huge boat in tow, friends in close pursuit. Understand, please, our houses are directly across the street from each other. The view of Jasper’s house is ubiquitous, unavoidable, as is the hearing the conversation of anyone in the yard or house as sound travels up just as it is amplified across water. It’s about 40 degrees and overcast. The house has no electricity and running water exists outside, not inside. Warrior couple has completely gutted the home. (And they gave Val the old kitchen sink! Cast iron… it’s on the back porch where it will remain because it’s too heavy to even push out of the way…)

Back to story. The couple and their friends stand in yard, donning coats and scarves. Val comes around corner of yard and they “Hey” to her. She heys back. “Thought the weather was going to stay warm,” warrior wife complains.

“Two months of the year, the weather sucks here. It’s just not a steady two months it varies from day to day. We’ll be barefoot on Thanksgiving.” Val waves and walks back into the house.

I couldn’t help but laugh as I looked out the kitchen window and saw my wife throwing the ball for the dogs in the backyard yesterday (Thanksgiving) afternoon.

She was, in true raised-in-Arkansas fashion, barefoot.

I’m so getting a Vespa for my 40th birthday. If it means that sites are going to be monetized out the ass then so be it. The Ford Explorer will be sold for $1,500 or best offer. No, not towards the Vespa but to purchase a macbook for my wife to help write ads.

This isn’t a new desire a ‘oh my god 40 is around the corner’ type thing. Actually, the truth is that due to our online activities we can do things like this. Hell, I’d make more money if I didn’t have a full time job and got to stay home to concentrate on this work.