Look at me all participating & stuff!

To help me with my mojo-malfunction I decided to link up with Mama Kat’s (pretty much worldfamous) Writer's Workshop. 

This week's suggestions were fun to think about but my ultimate decision was really a no-brainer.

I mean, why would I tell you all about how I am in love sweet love with both Jim Parsons and Jon Yumm Hamm but how I would eventually have to break their hearts by running away to marry Zach Galifiankis, or how 31 years after the fact I can still smell the vomit on my Miss Piggy pillow-sham just by thinking about liver & onions, when I finally have the opportunity to throw a pity party over the 2 things I always wanted for Christmas as a kid but never got?

Technically, the writing prompt is 10 things I Wanted for Christmas as a Kid but Didn’t Get and Still Want. (inspired by Hello Giggles) ~ but I don’t think I ever wanted 10 things at one time.

My brother & I grew up in the 80’s as children of baby-boomer consumers. There wasn’t much that we wanted that they didn’t already want to get for us. I’m not kidding you when I say that I had no freaking clue what an Atari was when we woke up to find Santa had brought us one. My parents were always way ahead of us on all the cool stuff. 

Unfortunately, the appeal of electronic-y stuff was lost on me. Save for "the 2 things", I was happy with my Rubiks cube and the giant Barbie head that I could put make up on.

In my day, Babs looked alot like a $2 version of Dolly Parton. 

Long before there were Razor Scooters there were Honda Kick’n’Go’s. They looked very similar to the scooters these days except they had this lever thing on the back & you used your foot to pump it & propel yourself as fast as you wanted to go. Yet another feature lost on me. You see, I have always been a creature of comfort - not necessarily speed or um, agility. My dad built custom motorcycles back then & they sold them in his shop and so naturally he thought we had to have them. Although I eventually got it together with the whole hand/foot coordination required to not crash, I'm pretty sure Dad still got the bigger Kick out of watching us Go. 

So what was it that I always wanted but never got? (Is it just me or can you guys hear my husbands voice saying "GET TO THE POINT ALREADY!" too?) 


Fine. What I always wanted was a

Lite Brite and a Cabbage Patch Kid.

But I never got either one.

My mom thought Cabbage Patch dolls were “ugly”. This is a woman who dressed me in rabbit fur coats at the age of 8 (pre-PETA & the red paint). Ugly in her world was (and still is) a crime.

The Lite Brite was “messy”. All those little black dots of construction paper & light bits made her shudder. Let's not talk about the fact that her favorite child my brother had a crap-ton of Lego’s that were often scattered everywhere or how he would purposely land-mine them along my bedroom doorway at night so that I would unavoidably step on them barefoot, in the dark, on my way to the bathroom at 2am. 

So yeah. No authentic adoption certificates or brightly lit displays of art for me. Because, you know, Ugly & Messy! 

Atari Pong induced coma's and Kick and Go scars on the chin, elbow, knee's & knuckles? Pure childhood FUN! 


Hours of quiet, creative time or honing my motherly instincts? 
Ugly & messy.

Years later they would use these same words to describe my boyfriends.  


My brother is now an architect in Anchorage, Alaska. Naturally my mother credits this to his Lego days. By that reasoning, I could have been Angelina Jolie if only she had let me adopt a stinkin' Cabbage Patch Kid!

Keep Calm & Carry A Camera

I took this last month when the leaves had begun to change.

The industrial park where I work is actually a very pretty, very woodsy & very critter filled area that also encompasses an historical landmark from the Civil War era.

A few weeks ago there was a movie crew camping out for awhile while they filmed scenes for a new motion picture about Pocahontas, she’s from this part of Virginia.

Big deal.

You know what they should have been filming?

A remake of Alfred Hitchcock’s THE BIRDS. That’s what.

(insert freaky music & bird squawking noises here)

Yesterday I was coming back from lunch when I saw these guys chillin on a lamp post:

Then I noticed the rest of them:

 Of all the times I’d wished I’d had my real camera with me to capture something really pretty and instead I capture TURKEY VULTURES.

DID YOU HEAR ME? I SAID VULTURES!!!!!!!!

I won’t lie. I stayed far enough away, in my car, with the window rolled down only enough to give the lens a clear shot.

This one tried to punk me:

I swear he started posing too. He was kind of hopping like maybe he was hurt or trying to line dance (you never know in Virginia) so I inched the window down just a tad more so I could get a closer & that bastard spread his wings & took flight at me! Ok, not at me, but over the car. Still, it scared me so much that I accidentally pushed the button to roll down the back windows instead of rolling up the front window. 

It’s a good thing I didn’t have to pee. Just sayin'.

Wiki says they are a protected species, even though they are known to carry anthrax (ANTHRAX!!) and hog cholera. I'm not sure what hog cholera is all about but it sounds detrimental to my bacon consumption. Not cool. 

You know what else I learned from Wikipedia about Turkey Vultures? That when they feel threatened they regurgitate on their attacker & feign death. Oh my god, ME TOO!!

Maybe I should star in the remake?

Pictures

Remember how I told you my husband has a tool bucket? Well, the truth is, he has TWO. And he prefers the buckets to the box in the back. I can only attribute this to his native american roots - he is (by way of his mother) half Pomo Indian (a small tribe of basket weavers in back home in NorCal). Maybe his inner Dances With Tools feels the bucket is more akin to a basket? I don't know. Sometimes there is just no explaining the male species.

This next picture has nothing to do with anything except that I loves it. How can you not love banana splits and pedicures? I attended this holiday luncheon gig at The Great Wolf Lodge last week and found this little spa adjoining the grown up ladies spa. So the seats are not exactly comfy (or roomy) enough for my derriere, but what they lack in backside support they more than make up for in adorableness.

~cliche title here~

Out with the new, in with the old!

Eh.

Everything old is new again?

Hmph.

Look, I tried. I thought what was killing my mojo was feeling haunted by nosy old busybodies so I started a fresh blog. Turns out – fresh starts are overrated and overwhelming. I couldn’t pull off the consistency of posting to establish myself. So here I am again.

Mary Engelbreit says “Wherever You Go, There You Are.”

She’s right.

Of course, she also says crazy stuff like “Life is just a chair of bowlies”.  Um...what does that even mean?

I’m pretty sure we can all agree that Forrest Gump is far more accurate in his statement that “Life Is Like A Box Of Chocolates”…..until you try! And that’s what I did. I tried. And now I’m baaa-aaack.

~~~

So who’s ready for Christmas? I’m not – at least not in the sense of getting the gift part accomplished.

I started getting into the spirit about Thanksgiving time and started making some stockings. Cute & easy peasy. Well, easy peasy except for the one with “the toe”. That one made me cuss & rip seams. Even so, holiday cheer was starting to seep into my psyche.

And then the stupid car threw a hissy fit. It’s all my fault.

You know how they say not to say certain things out loud because giving voice to them pretty much activates it? (Think: Wonder Twins) Well, there was this one day that gas had gone down to $3.09/gallon (dirt cheap in there here parts) so, being the very grown up person that I am (shut it), I decided to fill ol’ Miss Daisy all the way up. 


As I was pulling away from the gas station my dashboard was telling me I had 396 miles to go until empty. First I was all, “HOLLA! I can get back & forth to work all week without any gas pitt-stops, go me!” And then I was all, “watch this thing break on a full tank”. And then it did! That bitch broke.

Well, not like right there dead in its tracks or anything. I mean, made it the 25 miles to work, pulled into my usual spot, turned it off, and then it broke. I sat and watched a cloud of smoke (or steam, whatever) billow from under the hood. You’d a though Snoop Dogg was up under therrre!

I cried and called Craig and got mad at him, as per The Wife how-to manual. 

·         Me: *sob* The car is *sob* broke.

·         Him: I can’t hear you.

·         Me: *sob* The car is *sob* BROKE!

·         Him: I still didn’t hear you, you’re breaking up, are you...
                                        ~CLICK~

·         Me: *The clicking was me. I hung up on him. Oh come on! He couldn’t hear me, what was I supposed to do?*

He called me back but I didn’t answer. What if I had been stranded on the side of the road somewhere? Hello, I needed him to be worried!! So I waited until the 3rd ring of his 2nd phone call  - and then I answered. It's all about timing people. 

·         Me: *SOB!* HELLO! CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW?

·         Him: Yes, calm down, whats wrong?

·         Me: Are you SURE you can hear me? Because I don’t have all day for you to go get a hearing aid…

·         Him: I can hear you, what is wrong?

·         Me: The car is broke. There’s all this smoke wafting out from under the hoo-oood *sob*…

·         Him: Is it smoke or is it steam?

·         Me: How am I supposed to know? It’s like I’m sitting to close to the stage at a KISS concert and I’m scared shooting flames are up next! What if it EXPLODES?

·         Him: It’s not going to explode.

·         Me: It might. You don’t know. I filled it all. the. way. full of gas this morning.

·         Him: It won’t explode.

·         Me: You are gonna feel so bad if it does.

·         Him: Go inside, I will see you in a little while.

Later in the day he arrived with his tool bucket. That's right, tool (old 5 gallon paint) bucket.

He has a tool box.

He brought his tool bucket.

But I can’t pick on his in good conscience at this point because the man is like House, M.D. when it comes to diagnosing cars. Pure genius. He figured out what I needed to do to make it to work & home all week until he could do the major repair that weekend. I knew he could do it!

Now if only I could find a way to speak a million bucks into my bank account….

~~~