Category: Humor

Strange but True

Kat19 Comments

You could use a little funny right about now, couldn’t you?

Absolutely.

True.

Story.

I’d been isolated in stir  my home, alone, for about three weeks. I’d stopped bothering changing from day pajamas to night pajamas and just went with whatever until the fumes were visible.

One day after an extra cup of coffee, I had enough energy to fill my bird feeder. The seed container was half empty so I admit I was having some feelings about filling the tube feeder to the top. Less than an hour after I filled the feeder I went to the sliding door, a third cup of coffee in hand, to watch the cardinals, woodpeckers and nuthatches that regularly visit. But there were grackles instead, their weight almost pulling the feeder from the deck railing. I love birds in general but I hate grackles. They’re big thug birds with oily feathers, beedie eyes and they don’t like sharing. Outraged, I stepped out onto the deck and yelled, “Oh no, you ain’t eatin’ today!”

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Shhh…this is actually a starling but you get the idea. (Pixabay)

Now, I have new next door neighbors. I’ve judged and disparaged them the way I do most of my neighbors as I mentioned in my doorbell cam post. I judged their social class by their clothes. I judged their decision making abilities by their apparent lack of coronavirus protection. Whelp, when I screamed at the grackles I hadn’t noticed that the new people were in their backyard playing ball until it was too late. In that moment I saw myself as they saw me; an old women in a food stained shirt and wrinkled pajama bottoms, hair sticking up on her head, shouting at birds. Karma is a bitch.

 

WordPress let me know that I’ve received 1000 likes on this blog. I don’t have many followers so I appreciate all of you. Thank you!

Ding Dong

Kat10 Comments

I got a doorbell camera. There have been unintended consequences.

When I had it installed a few months ago I didn’t know about the alert feature that indicates when there’s motion near the door and records it. There had been some car break-ins and package thefts in my neighborhood, so I set the detection range from my car in the parking lot to my front door. This is what the camera has detected ninety-five percent of the time:

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Nothing. Nada. Not a thing.

The other five percent of the time it has detected the routine comings and goings of my neighbors. This has resulted in making me what my son calls “that nosy old woman”. I know what time everyone leaves in the morning and what time they come back. I know which people are frequent Amazon customers and who still gets old school newspapers. I know what time they walk their dogs and who doesn’t pick up the doo. If the alert chimes at an irregular time during the day I run to the window to see who’s up to what. Worst of all, I judge everybody. I’ve come up with names for them like, Mr. Back and Forth, The Phantom, Weird Guy, Crooked Parking Grandma…

Anyway, it wasn’t just the package thefts and car break-ins that prompted me to get the camera. I got it because I felt vulnerable. I developed insomnia from worrying that someone was going to break into my house in the middle of the night. I think that as I’ve gotten older, I feel I can’t defend myself the way I once could. It didn’t help that racoons were setting off the motion detector on my back slider every few nights. The point is that it was all in my head. I knew it was the racoons lighting up the deck at 3am but I couldn’t shake the fear. I imagined that someone was going to get in and something terrible was going to happen to me. What my doorbell camera has shown me is that nothing ever happens in my neighborhood and that my neighbors are just plain folks. It has shown me that the problem is internal not external. Security measures are a good thing, anxiety isn’t. My therapist daughter says that I need to think about that and for God’s sake stop watching people. I think that from now on I’ll only turn the alert on at night.

Minnie and Me

Kat20 Comments

 

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Where were we?

Her name is Minnie. She’s twelve years old and we’ve been together since she rolled off the Toyota dealership showroom floor. I know every inch of her silver full-size body. I like to think the ease with which she handles is because she knows me.

She’s a twelve-year-old hybrid that still gets great gas mileage. She and I, just the two of us, have taken so many fuel-efficient round trips from DC to Boston and back that I could do it with my eyes closed. (Actually, that wouldn’t be a good idea.) Most times we leave at 4am so we miss rush hour traffic on both the Baltimore-Washington Parkway (too early) and the George Washington bridge (too late) and make it to New York City in three and a half hours. Flat. We get behind the fastest car on the New Jersey Turnpike, crank up the tunes and roll. We listen to The Allman Brothers Band’s “Blue Sky” to cruise to as the sun comes up. Then we do some reflecting to Santana’s “Song of the Wind” during the long straight stretches. We use the high energy of Tupac’s “California Love” and Beyonce’s version of “Before I Let Go” to get us through to the end. (There are lots of tunes in between.) I’m sure other drivers see my gray braids bouncing and my lips moving to the music as we fly down the highway at I-don’t-want-to-tell-you mph and think, “What is up with that old lady!” Whereas all I’m thinking is, “Get out of my way!” We get to Boston by lunchtime if we’re lucky on the Mass Pike. Sometimes we’re not so lucky. We did the trip in a blizzard one year. It took us ten and a half hours, but we made it.

Minnie has her issues. Her last name is McSqueaks because one of her sounds is an intermittent squeak that she refuses to let Keith at Franconia Service Center hear. She usually does it after we drive over any raised surface. I told my grandkids that it’s the way she talks to me. On the rare occasions when they hear it, they always squeal, “What’s she saying, Memu, what’s she saying!” Squealing and squeaking. I have the most interesting car rides.

Another of her sounds is the flapping noise under the bumper on the driver side when we go over sixty. That one is my fault. I used to hit things. A lot. I hit concrete wheel stops regularly. Consequently, the front of Minnie’s undercarriage resembles Swiss cheese. The flapping sound is the bit hanging down as it moves in the wind. I once hit my own moving van. That one cost me termination by my insurance company. It also cost me very expensive coverage with another. I was the DMV’s poster child for how not to drive. I haven’t had any accidents since moving to the DC area. (She looks around for wood to knock on.)

So, Minnie is, justifiably, showing signs of age, wear and tear. But then, so am I. I know the time will come soon for me to think about getting to know another car. It will feel a little like a betrayal, though. My husband bought Minnie for me after he was diagnosed with cancer. He wanted me to have a good reliable car that wouldn’t require much maintenance. Minnie is all of that. I’m grateful for his gift and I appreciate her. I don’t have to think too much about it because I can’t afford another car for at least another year. So, for now, it’s still Minnie and me, two old girls rollin’.

And Another Thing About Music

Kat7 Comments

A few of the WordPress bloggers I follow post everyday. That will never be me. I have way too many other daily routines vying for my time like, hair removal, staring into space and Konmaring my house. Speaking of Maria Kondo, y’all know that in a year we won’t remember her, right? It’ll be Maria who? But she won’t care because she’ll be sitting in her joyful L.A. home with her two adorable daughters tranquil in the knowledge that messy people around the world have already paid for their college educations. But this post isn’t about her.

No, I don’t have it in me to blog everyday but fellow blogger Hanspostcard’s Song of the Day has motivated me to write in my journal daily about music. I call it Kat’s Bewildering Morning Song. I realized a couple of months ago that most mornings I wake up with a random song going through my head. And when I say random, I mean random. Why Elmo’s ring bearer song from Maria and Luis’ 1980s Sesame St. wedding? Why? “Don’t drop the ring Elmo, don’t drop the ring…” It’s not the same as ear worm songs because as far as I can tell, nothing prompts it. You’re probably thinking, she’s hearing those songs sometime during the day before and just doesn’t know it. I can guarantee you that I did not hear Oh Come, Oh Come Emanuel at the supermarket yesterday so I don’t understand why it was the soundtrack served up with my breakfast.

I have a theory. What if the random playlist is my brain’s way of choosing songs to dump. What if it’s like, “Ok, you want to remember those Kendrick Lamar lyrics? Well then to make room, Twelfth of Never by Johnny Mathis has to go. So here it is for the last time unless you stubble on the one Pandora station that plays it.”

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It makes sense right? At this age I’ve filled up a lot of my memory. Many times I feel as though I’ve forgotten more than I remember. Sometimes while reading on a subject I want to know about I’ll find myself thinking, wait, did I know this before. Unfortunately, I can’t prove my theory because if my brain is jettisoning songs from my memory, how would I know? I can’t remember what I’ve forgotten. And if I do hear that song on Pandora, will I remember hearing it before or that I’d forgotten it? What did I forget to make room for the Leon Bridges album? Of course there is some music I’ll never forget even if Apple took it from my iTunes.

Right now I’m just waiting to hear what  will come up this morning. Will it be Umbrella by Rhianna or High Hopes by Frank Sinatra. I never know. How about you? Can you stop the music if you want to? When you walk down memory lane do the songs come up or do you have to google the year to remind yourself of what they were? What goes through your heads, musically speaking?

I’d forgotten about this song until I wrote this post.

And thanks for reading.

Donkey On The Beach

Kat8 Comments

I was in Tulum, Mexico last month for my son’s wedding. Yes, the beaches are beautiful, the wedding was awesome, they’re very much in love and very happy. Here are some photos of that glorious day (Of course, I had to.)

 

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The wedding isn’t what this is about though. This is about whether or not I’m losing my mind.

The day of the wedding I got up to an extraordinary sunrise that’s ordinary in Tulum. I went down to do my morning meditation on the beach as had become my routine while  I was there.  It was easy to lose myself in the beauty of the water, sky, birds and flora. There was no cell service and no every day distractions so I could concentrate and contemplate fully. It was mystical.

I felt wonderful…and hungry. I went to breakfast and had my usual egg white omelette at a restaurant that wasn’t my usual. It was kind of salty which made me nervous (but I ate it anyway). I was afraid the salt would bloat me and make me look like the Michelin Man in the wedding photos. I had dieted, exercised, gone to the hairdresser and dentist in preparation for the photos so no matter how ethereal I felt on the beach,  I wasn’t about to let some eggs make a wedding balloon out of me. I didn’t think my daily diuretic would do enough damage control. I decided to go for a long walk on the beach in the sun to promote sweating. I figured sweat and the diaretic would do the trick. Tulum has a long beach with a string of resorts, one after another. The first half of my walk went according to plan. I walked past resort after resort, looking back and forth from the sea to other tourists lounging in the sun.

As an aside, one resort had this sign stuck in the sand in front of it. I thought it was funny so I took a photo. I showed it to my offspring. As they often do, they reacted as though I was showing them an obiturary I’d cut out of a newspaper.

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I still think it’s funny.

Anyway, I was walking back to my resort, wiping sweat from my face with my t-shirt and feeling satisfied that I’d already lost the extra water weight. I looked from the ocean to the resort on my right and there was a donkey standing there. ALONE! It was standing in the sand, outside the resort but there weren’t any people with it, handling it or controlling it. And it wasn’t wearing any festive donkey regalia a tourist like me might expect; no Mexican blanket, no sombrero, nothing. It was just standing there. At first, I thought to myself, “Oh Lawd, I’m dehydrated. I’m hallucinating.” Then I wondered if I forgot to take my blood pressure meds. Then I thought maybe I needed my meds tweaked. As I was musing, the donkey turned toward me and brayed. (I had to google how to spell brayed because I don’t have many donkey encounters.) It wasn’t a friendly bray so I got scared. I said to the donkey, “Don’t you come after me cuz if you do I’m going to have to jump into the ocean.” Then I wondered if donkeys can swim. I wanted to take a photo but I was shaking and trying to get away. Imagine a woman of a certain age trying to run in sand from a donkey. All I could manage was this one picture.

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You see the donkey, right?

A lot of cool stuff happened on that beach in Tulum, mystical and otherwise. I’m grateful. That will only change if I start seeing the donkey in my backyard.

 

 

 

Oh and snake lamp update: the grandkids were by the other day, See no evil:

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The Devil’s Decor

Kat2 Comments

 

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One or two of you might remember this photo. It was the featured image on my post about storage units. This lamp, this six-foot tall, 80 lb bronze snake lamp had been in my storage unit for ten years. That’s right, I said TEN YEARS! You might wonder why. Well, so do I.

It all started twenty years ago on a family trip to Jim Thorpe, PA. We were browsing in an antique shop when my late husband got excited and stopped in his tracks. He said, “Honey, look at that lamp! Man, that’s great looking!” I answered, “What lamp?” There was only one lamp on display in the store but I didn’t want to believe he meant the hideous thing in front of us.

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I mean, look at it! It has a red glowing eye. The long tongue is extending out four inches. And it’s looming out of its basket and standing on its tail. So not only is it ugly but it’s a menacing snake lamp. I felt it was impossible for anyone who was serious about decor to work this curious floor lamp into a design concept. But because of B.T.’s attachment and the support of clueless children, we loaded the stupid thing awkwardly into our minivan for the drive back to Massachusetts. (It served those kids right to spend the five-hour trip maneuvering around the tail to reach their snacks. The tongue kept poking the youngest. The oldest spent the trip holding the heavy yellow glass shade which unfortunately didn’t break.)  I tried to get B.T. to take it down to his basement man cave but he wanted to see what it’d look like in the family room. He thought it was unique and stylish. If I could have lifted it by myself, I would have taken all that uniqueness downstairs as soon as he next left the house but I couldn’t so there it stood for all the world especially my friends and neighbors to see.

In the following years I had to pretend to be obsessively interested in rearranging the furniture so I could move it farther and farther into the corner of the room. I even tried hiding it behind the curtains. Nothing worked. It’s so big some part of it was always visible. I felt like the mom from A Christmas Story who had to deal with the leg lamp. At least that was small enough to push over.

When I downsized to a condo I had to put some furniture into storage. The snake lamp was the first item in, way in the back. I would have tried to get rid of it then except the offspring were sentimental about it. I kept the unit longer than planned but I disposed of everything over time…except the lamp. Last month while visiting family in Boston, I closed out the storage unit. The lamp was the only thing left. I wanted to sell it and have the buyer pick it up at the storage place. I thought maybe I could get $100 or so for it. I checked online (well you do, don’t you) and my luck, the thing is worth a little coin. I guess the lamp is in the style of Edgar Brandt’s La Tentation. Who knew it was a thing. Apparently there are other people who like the style and can make it work. My serpent isn’t worth the price of an original but it’s worth more than I thought, damn it.

You know where this is going, don’t you? Yup, I loaded up the red-eyed devil lamp for yet another long car ride. This time it was just me and the snake from Boston to Alexandria, Virginia where I now live. There were a couple of times I thought I heard it hiss.

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So where is the lamp now? You already know. The Edgar Brandt style, six-foot tall, looming, intimidating viper is taking up valuable real estate in my living room right next to the one window. I can’t believe I’m living with it again. It scares my grandkids so I have to cover the head when they come over. But it’ll stay there until I can unload sell it to a susceptible  discerning buyer. How did this happen? I can only assume it’s because I’m in hell.

Please Don’t Call Me Grandma

Kat5 Comments

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My daughter called me a few days ago laughing. A family friend welcomed her first grandchild last month. My daughter was laughing because the friend told her she wants to be known as Neena to the baby. My daughter said, “All you baby boomers have different grandmother monikers and none of them is Grandma.”

Damn right. I have three grandchildren and I  dare any of them to call me Grandma. My chosen grandmother name is Memu. I love it when the middle one sees me at her preschool and says in her little New York accent, “I’m going with my grrrranmaa…” but I don’t want her to introduce me that way. I cringe when her teachers call out, “Nyla, Grandma’s here.” Is it crazy that I correct them sometimes? Her teachers are young so I’m sure they think, “Whatev.”

Is my daughter is right?  Do you think it’s because we’re boomers? If it is, maybe it’s the second stage boomers, those of us who came of age during the nineteen sixties. Our frame of reference developed during an era of major changes like the Voter Rights Act and the Equal Rights Act. We were empowered by its ethos. We define ourselves by that time and we think we’re cool. You’re more likely to see most of us in jeans and T-shirts than in black pants and Alfred Dunner blouses. You probably won’t find us with glasses hanging from chains around our necks. We turn our Marvin Gaye and Van Morrison up loud in our cars and we rock it like we know how. I don’t dye my grey hair but I do wear it in long braids, thank you very much. Many of us use social media. Interestingly, I know a few women born at the end of WWII who, although they like Facebook, won’t do Twitter or Instagram. I both tweet and ‘gram, much to the chagrin of my grandkids’ parents. I was told explicitly by one of them NOT to get on Snapchat. (Truth be told, I tried to post my first Instagram story recently, but I sent it to a young acquaintance by mistake. I could almost hear her saying to herself, “Why is this old lady texting me a video of her car window?”)

That brings up another point. I’ve had conversations with other grandmothers my age about how our adult children don’t like our attitudes. They would prefer it if we “acted our age” which I guess means old. I was told I’d be selfish if I let my social life impede being a good grandmother. I don’t understand what that even means. It’s not that I don’t like being with my grandkids. I look at their faces and my heart sings. They are my best friends. Their presence enhances my life for real. In them I have love to the second power…I just don’t want them calling me Grandma.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t deny my age. In fact, I embrace it. I’m fortunate to still be here. Several of the folks dear to me are gone now. And often I feel my age. I feel it when my knee doesn’t want to get out of the car with me after a long ride, when I fill my weekly pill case, when I catch myself eating dinner at 4pm and I feel it when the grandkids ask me to push them on the swings for what seems like days. But maybe my daughter is right. Maybe it is my attitude.  No matter how achy or tired I feel I’m always in the mood to put on my suede booties and go out to see what else there is for me to discover and enjoy.

So like all the other Memus and Mimis, the Neenas and Nonas and Nikas, I’ll be there on the school playground to pick up the kids and push them on the swings like the good grandmother I am. But please don’t call me Grandma and watch out for me when I leave. I’ll be the one tearing out of the parking lot with my music turned up, bouncing to the boomer beat.

Jingle All The Ways???

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I’m too lazy to write a Christmas post this year so here’s a reblog of one from a few years back.

Stop Along The Way

Sometimes it's hard to stay focused at Christmastime Sometimes it’s hard to stay focused at Christmastime

It’s a hallmark (pun intended) of this season to say “I can’t believe it’s holiday time again already!” I know it always seems to come around more than once a year to me! Maybe it’s because I’ve gone through a lot of them and I’ve done Christmas (which is my family’s tradition) in every way possible.

It started after I had my first kid and I wanted to teach her the true meaning of the holiday. It was one of the many mistakes I made while child rearing. Anyway, in my search for a way to “authentically” celebrate the holiday I’ve tried a lot of different approaches , the first of which was,

IMG_1096The Purist Way: It involved a real tree with only wooden ornaments and strung berries. I wanted to put candles on it but my husband grumbled something about our…

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Blue Blazes

Kat2 Comments

Is it me? Man, it feels hot! As I’ve written about before, one of the reasons I moved to Virginia from Massachusetts was for the weather. I don’t like cold and I love the heat but man, it’s been hot here lately. When I came here in the summer of 2012 I relished the 90 degree days. I’d compare temperatures on my Yahoo Weather app and then call my sisters back in New England and ask them with stifled laughter if they were chilly. There were fifty 90 plus degree days that year and I rejoiced. So far this year there have been 52 and I’m uncomfortable.

Is it me? What’s different this year? Is it because 2013 and 2014 weren’t as hot? Did my Boston bred body reboot? These last couple of days, I thought my car thermometer was broken because it read 90 every damn time of the day and night. That was until yesterday when it read 93. And today it read 95!  I was actually annoyed to see a group of high-school students, during only the second day of the new school year, practicing band OUTSIDE, laughing and dancing. How dare they look fresh as little daisies while I look like a wilted brown-eyed susan, bent over in the heat.  And I’m tired of seeing skinny, good-looking young women in cute sundresses and Michael Kors sandals. I need for them to need to cover up.

Every morning for what seems like a month, as I sip my morning coffee (ice coffee), I hear the words “hazy, hot and humid” coming from the local TV meteorologist. I’ll give it to her, she has tried to change it up a bit lately by using expressions like, “trending above normal” and “summer continues” but we all know it just means it’s hot as hell. As a matter of fact, there was a fire in a field nearby a couple of days ago and the combination of the heat and red glow made me wonder if I’d slipped, bumped my head and now… Anyway, I’m not tolerating it well. I feel as if someone soaked a lead x-ray apron in water and threw it on my chest. The only consolation is that I’m not the only one. I’ve seen other folks huffing and puffing as they push grocery carts to their cars in supermarket parking lots under the blazing sun. And I was behind a man in FedEx today whose shirt back was completely wet with sweat even though the AC was on full blast. Earlier this afternoon,  I was stopped by the neighborhood dog walker who told me he’d never understood the term “hot as blue blazes” until today. Speaking of the neighborhood, I’m just moving in this week, this incredibly hot week, and three of my boxes collapsed  from the sweat on my hands. I’ve already written off the 3 new neighbors who asked, “Is it hot enough for ya?”

The forecast is for cooling in the next few days, a quick change which is good, I guess.  I thought I’d remembered there being a transitional period in August, a cooling off period, a winding down time between pool days and apple picking days. But that’s probably a memory created by classroom posters. When I was in elementary school I more than likely I went to the first day in shorts gratefully washed by my mother just like every other kid in my grade. So, right now I’ll wait with heavy, congested breath for the cold front I hear tell is about to pass through. Now watch, I’ll post this and tomorrow I’ll be looking for my sweater.

How about where you are? Has it been devilish hot where you live? Do you see a change in recent weather patterns?

Why You Won’t Be Seeing Us Real Soon

Kat1 Comment

 It’s been a little while since I posted.  I have a few pieces in the pipeline so I  hope to post more during the summer. But there’s been a lot going on around here, the best of which was finishing the first draft of my first novella, “Ties That Bind”. I ‘ll talk about that experience on my other blog,  BusyWritingLife.

The other stuff is mainly around family, some good, some bad which are the subjects I’ll be sharing this summer. And speaking of which;

 

Yeah, Disney, about that…..

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We’ve been thinking about doing a family vacation this summer. There are young’ens in our clan so, naturally, when I threw out the vacation idea, Disneyland was mentioned by their parents as a possibility. I grew up in the counter-culture days and tend to think of myself as a social reform type so at the Disney suggestion the only response that came to my mind was, as one of the other family members says, “hashtag, I can’t”. But I was pointedly reminded by one daughter that as I was bringing her up, I pushed Disney like a Oxycontin dealer.

I admit it’s true. I enjoyed a lot of Disney movies, both as a child and as an adult. When I became a mother, the memories of feelings I had as a child for Snow White and Cinderella overcame my supposed highly developed social sense. My emotional need was to share those memories with my kids. I wanted them to give them what I thought I’d gotten out of the films. It was a knee-jerk response to parenthood. And, truth be told, I continued to get with the Disney program. As a matter of fact, The Little Mermaid was a special bonding experience for me and that same daughter. Her favorite song was Part of That World and mine was Under the Sea. Some things never change…

…And some things do. So, I changed my mind. Sue me. (Oh that’s right, daughter can because she’s an attorney now. Take that Arial!)  It was right around the Aladdin years that I noticed a change in my attitude toward Disney films. I was starting to become bothered by the things like historical contexts and language. Why is a princess using an expression like, “at your service?” And why a princess? Why always a princess?! By the time Pocahontas was released I was suspicious of all the basic Disney themes. (Actually during one point in that movie, in a theater, my sister and I both stood and shouted, ‘Oh c’mon!”)  I started questioning what it was I actually did get from those old “classics” in terms of gender roles, class distinctions and cultural perspective. I realized that as an evolved, modern, African-American woman, I needed a new cartoon vision that matched my mood. (Haha.) That’s when I started boring my kids with “responsible” TV shows like Captain Planet. We stopped going to Disney movies and instead I brought home videos like Ferngully, The Last Rainforest”. The only Disney distributed movie I let into the house was The Brave Little Toaster. It scared the shit out of them and began the “reading era” of their childhood. As a result, when they criticize me about that time, as they still do, it’s in very literate terms.

Did I do the right thing by casting a jaundice eye on Disney and sharing my misgivings with my kids or was I the throw back hippie hypocrite they feel I was? I’m not sure but I’m still going to take a pass on dunking the grandkids in the Disney kool-aid as our summertime fun. Maybe I’ll suggest a hiking trip in the mountains instead. Now, please excuse me. We have a birthday party this afternoon and I have to go wrap an Elsa’s Frozen Palace play set.