Sweet Dreams?

I rarely remember my dreams. But last night’s was so vivid, it stuck with me most of the day. Here’s how it went:

I was driving the 4-Runner, Doc. B. was in the passenger seat. It was dusk and chilly. We slowly maneuvered the car into the back alley; the distance of 6 houses on our right and three on our left. I could see the light of the television in one home – the University of Georgia vs. Georgia Tech football game. We turned the car lights to dim so as not to draw too much attention. Once we got to Mrs. K’s section of the back alley, we could go no further – there were compost bins in our way.

We stopped there and quietly slipped out of the beat-up leather seats, leaving the doors ajar as we made our way to the back of the car. Doc. B. put on a pair of work gloves and I asked if there was a pair for me. We opened the back door hatch and tugged at a crinkly blue plastic tarp. It was so heavy we had to work together to slide its contents to the back of the SUV. Its contents? A heavy, dirty, damp female body. So heavy, it was like an awkward chunk of cement that took all of our intellect and might to move it out, onto the ground and to its final resting place.

I woke up smiling. Why? Because this was a replay of the prior evenings events. No, we didn’t literally take a body out of our car. But we did purchase a cement Buddha (Kwan Yin) statue that I’m guessing weighs over 200 pounds. And we did transport it in our 4-Runner to the back alley where we placed it, at dusk, with great difficulty, on the site of our dearly departed 100+ year old oak tree.

She looks good, huh?

You've Got Something on your Face

Last weekend, right before we were to go to a rather large holiday shindig, I scraped my chin. Well, not really my chin, more like that area between your lip and your chin. Okay, it’s actually just below the right corner of my lip and closely resembles a cold sore the size of a dime that’s been placed in one of those coin crushers at the county fair. You know, flattened out into the shape of a deflated football. The category of deflated your ego suffers when you’re even the slightest bit vain and have a big cold sore-like defect on your face.


I asked Doc. B. if it was conspicuous and I got the old “oh, no one will notice”. Yeah, right. I tried to cover it up with some five-year old waterproof Lancôme that I bought at the Hilton Head mall to match my skin color after lounging in a deck chair from 10am to 2pm for a week. That cosmetics lady behind the counter really knew she had a sucker when she was able to talk me into purchasing a shade that wouldn’t match as soon as my tan faded and I returned to the fluorescent lighting of my cubicle. Anyway, the darker-than-my-skin-color makeup just made the scrape look like a bruise. So I washed my face, told myself it wasn’t that bad (which it really wasn’t yet) and went on to the party. No one said anything about it, people did not treat me like a leper (it really is spelled with only one “P”, I had to look it up) and the wine rep in attendance kept filling my glass. So I figured I was okay.

By Monday morning, the scrape was an eye-catching scab, but off to work I went anyway. I decided a minor facial blemish was not how I wanted to end my 5 year and 8 month record of never having called in sick. By 4:00pm, only one co-worker (besides Mrs. T.) had asked about it. People traipsed in and out of my cube all day with their eyes either averted, staring directly at the blemish, or trying with great effort to look directly into my eyes.

I just hope these same co-workers will at least tell me when my zipper is down.

It's An End of a Decade

Mom and Dad, affectionately known as M & D came to visit last weekend. They brought with them a sense of calm that only people retired for 20 years can know. They also tried to bring us some homemade jam but the TSA confiscated it - could have been used to spread all over their stale Delta bread before they blew up the plane - gotta be careful. I didn’t ask M&D if they had succumbed to the full body cavity search at Detroit Metro; I’ll have to follow up on that.

One thing that did make it through the TSA pat-down and the metal detector was my 1980 High School Yearbook. I was a sophomore at Marshall High School that year and I must confess that I was not a stellar student. I played basketball. That’s what I did…period. So it was a bit surprising to discover that my 1980 yearbook editors included some incredible political commentary that would have been way over my head at the time, and probably still is. But before I get into that, let me quote some of the profound inscriptions of my classmates (signatures removed to protect the sappy, corny and trite writings of 16 year olds – grammatical errors and misspellings included):

To one of the sweetest girls I know. Good luck in basketball for the rest of the season and also good luck in the future.

Just remember that when we go out to football games and get hit in the head with a bottle, we believe in organized sports. Get bent. Oh well, gotta go, your a real sweetie and I love ya.

You have stayed the same sweetheart that you were in kindergarten when I played with dolls and you played with trucks. I know you’ll stay uncorrupted if you come to MYF more often and participate in the friendship circle.
You are a wild and crazy chick who I have not known very long but I like ya just the same. Take it easy or any way you can. Good luck! Get wild! Party Harty!

And my personal favorite…I think you’re a real sweet girl and I would like to get to know you a lot better! I hope you feel the same!

In the back of the yearbook was a page called “It’s an end of a decade.” It talked about the 70’s beginning in the midst of the furor and turmoil of the Vietnam War and how the 70’s were also a decade of rights – equal, gay, voting and drinking. Names like Anita Bryant, Jimmy Carter and Patricia Hearst were included in this commentary along with Watergate, the Guyana People’s Temple and inflation.

It’s hard to believe we’re coming to the end of yet another decade. It seems like not so long ago that we were stocking our basements full of bottled water, spam, wine and Twinkies and partying like it was 1999.

I wonder what the next decade will bring? Hard tellin’

Love ya, mean it, don’t go changin’ just to please me. Stay sweet and good luck in the future. You’re the best and all the best people know it.

An Upper Porch With a View

So I'm coming home from the vet, with sub-cutaneous fluids for our 22 year old kitten, and I can't pull the Ford Ranger into the driveway.  Two cop cars were blocking my path.  Now, we love our city of Decatur Po-Po, and we don't mind an inconvenience in order to stop a speeding out-of-towner, but I never did figure out why a woman with six children, including one on crutches, was pulled over.  Maybe she forgot to get her emissions inspection.  Those children give off some fumes I'm sure.

So this type of activity, combined with MARTA bus number 86 going back and forth every ten minutes, is reason number 12 for adding a screened in BACK porch to a house that already has an upper AND lower front porch.  To discover reasons 1 - 11, please come visit!  Mom and Dad, you are first on the list!