To Beard Or Not To Beard

Just Plain Random Weirdness

Let’s make this perfectly clear, I am a terrible blogger.

It amazes me how so many others can find so much to write about while I struggle to get something here once a month. My life just doesn’t seem to be that interesting, but… I have been writing. Recently I joined the ranks of writing for The Good Men Project and have had three articles published by them. I do manage to toss a Tweet out now and again and post more frequectly on my Facebook page.

So, until I find something more enthralling to pass your way, he’s the link to my latest Good Men Project article, ‘To Beard Or Not To Beard’. Hope you enjoy.

http://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/to-beard-or-not-to-beard-2-dg/

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Road Gators, Vultures & Turkeys, Oh My!

Adventures / Cryptids / Just Plain Random Weirdness / Technology

I got me one of those new-fangled ‘smart’ phones about a month back. My previous phone was pretty old, took lousy pictures, and internet was next to impossible. I balked at spending so much on a new phone considering how little I used the old one, but not wanting to fall too far behind in the world of technology and thinking having something better for an upcoming road trip might not be such a bad idea, I bit the bullet and took the plunge.

Miraculously, I was able to transfer my minutes from my old phone to my new and input my contacts all by myself. Over the next two weeks, amongst other things, I learned how to answer my phone! Remember when all you had to do pick it up and say, “Hello?” I wanted to get to know this new piece of equipment as best I could before my teacher, my 23 year-old-son, was no longer available. Amazingly, my computer geek boyfriend’s phone is even more primitive than my old phone! He would be of no help whatsoever.

They say there are two tests that will either make or break a relationship; a building/remodeling project or a road trip. A road trip with a smoker not allowed to smoke in the car and this unfamiliar method of phone GPS promised to be an adventure. I was assured his need to smoke would coincide with my need to use the ladies room. This was not quite how it happened.

Our trip west was just over 1600 miles long one way. He’d traveled the roads twice on his own before and we’d made the journey together one-way a year and a half ago. His trips took two days. Our prior one-way took three, but we were pulling a U-Haul with a car stuffed to the gills. We allowed ourselves the time he’d made it in, two days. It seemed reasonable at the time. It also seemed a simple enough plan to take along lunch and drinks and snacks for the road. These were strategically placed, or so we thought, so that the passenger could easily turn around in their seat and get whatever beverage or edible was wanted.

Long story short, someone had to stop to pee AND have a smoke a whole lot more that there was need of the ladies room. Course, being as my daddy always taught me never to pass up a chance to pee while on the road, I made use of these stops, too. There was no hope of visiting Boggy Creek in Fouke, Arkansas, let alone play at Dinosaur World in Kentucky, but we did see plenty of Road Gators. Clearly we have different priorities when it comes to travel! Next time, damn it! As for those snacks and drinks, ease of retrieval involved undoing ones seat belt, turning around and half crawling into the back seat while your pilot cruised along at about 70 miles-per-hour keeping an eye out for the numerous police cars. Of course, if a cop had been spotted chances are pretty high in our less than nubile conditions, we’d never had made it back into our proper forward-facing seated positions in time. Hot coffee in a foam cup or thermos top was a blast. It was an adventure alright.

Admittedly it took longer than planned. We would like to blame a generous amounts of stop and go traffic due to construction, but I think it had more to do with too much coffee, sore bottoms, tired arms, head and neck aches, full bladders, nicotine fits, leg cramps, hunger and just plain “I’m tired and I’m cranky” moments. We rolled into the driveway of our final destination at about 1:15AM, a good three hours later than we’d hoped.

Our return trip thinking may not have been as well thought out as we’d intended. It’ll be faster if we miss all that construction, right? What’s a couple extra hundred miles, right? We’ll be going faster, right? It’ll be fine. Even if we get in by midnight, that’s alright. Did I mention Jim had to be to work by 2pm the day after we planned on getting home? No? Well… yeah. That’s not quite how it worked out either.

We got off track before we even left Texas! This is where the aforementioned new phone technology comes into play. It seemed a simple enough plan. Instead of going through construction riddled Waco and congested Dallas, we’ll just cut across and head towards Shreveport, Louisiana. Piece’o’cake. ‘Cept somehow we found ourselves heading towards Houston. Why does the car’s compass say we’re headed southeast? Without a paper map, we had to rely on my phone’s GPS which I had used maybe twice before and, of course, ‘Connection To GPS Has Been Lost’. Eventually, it kicked in well enough and long enough for me to figure out where we’d gone wrong and get us back on track, while Jim expertly avoided hitting a flock of five or six vultures dining on road kill armadillo. Past experience told him that it was in our best interest to not be driving around in the Deep South with a dead vulture pressed into the grill of the car.

We zipped through Louisiana and Mississippi like nobody’s business, keeping an eye on the numerous road gators, making certain they weren’t flesh and blood gators. We even stopped at the Mississippi Welcome Center and did a touch of site-seeing. Alabama welcomed us and at 9:30 we started looking for motels. By 10:00 our exhausted bodies and brains were settled in. As we unloaded the car, and the loud drone of whatever big and bizarre nocturnal bugs and birds they have in the woods of Alabama buzzed around us, we wondered what State “Deliverance” is supposed to be set in and if we were anywhere near there. (Answer: The remote northern Georgia wilderness on the fictional Cahulawassee River and no.) Course… there’s still Big Foot or Skunk Ape or whatever they call him down there, to deal with!

Our hopes high, we gobbled down hardboiled eggs, blueberry muffins, bananas, and coffee the next morning in the motel room and headed out, bright and early by 7am. Tennessee and Kentucky proved to be our friends. Yeah, we’ve made it to Virginia. I silently wished there was time to visit my cousin in Roanoke. And then, we saw the flashing lights.

“Urgent Message When Flashing” the roadside sign warned and told us where to tune for details. We tuned in. We listened. It didn’t seem to pertain to us. We sallied forth, returning to whatever decent rock station would come in, settling on country as we had to. Several miles later, “Right lane closed ahead. Prepare to stop.” Traffic reports on the radio told us there were delays ahead. We slowed to the pace of a rolling parking lot. Dead still and a walking pace swapped places for the next fifteen to twenty miles, at least. It seemed like a hundred. Jim threatened to get out and walk alongside the car while I drove so he could have a ciggy. It probably wasn’t really such a bad idea. I’m sure we’d have stayed abreast of each other well enough. Thank God neither of us needed to use the restroom.

Over the radio we heard something like this: “The right lane of Interstate 81 North in Botetourt County near mile marker 154 will remain closed until approximately 7 p.m. while crews continue clean up from a tractor-trailer accident. The tractor-trailer was hauling around 2,700 turkeys. Crews on scene are still removing turkeys from the area. Drivers are advised to keep watch for any other birds that may still be loose in the area.” What could we do but burst out laughing? I know, I know. It shouldn’t have been funny at all. Poor terrified turkeys and all, but all I could imagine were turkey running amok along the roadside like some sort of Warner Brother’s cartoon and an incident with my brother when he was just learning to read.

It was a different road trip entirely. I was seven. My brother would have been about ten. We were headed to Florida and suddenly he said, “Well, where are they?” One of my parents asked, “Where are what?” He said, “The chickens.” Confused looks were exchanged. “What chickens?” “The chickens I keep seeing the signs for.” More confused looks took place. He was instructed to point out one of these signs if he saw another and sure enough in only a few more miles he announced triumphantly, “There’s one! See! Speeding chicken by road! So, where are the chickens?” My parents both burst out laughing. “No, honey, that says, ‘Speed Checked By Radar’. My brother was quite disappointed.

We, too, were disappointed in some strange way. Not only did we not see any amok turkeys, speeding or otherwise, by the time we reached the accident site there was nothing but a dusting of white feathers scattered along the road while clean-up crew men picked up traffic cones and freed us to return to full highway speed once more. The Cracker Barrel in Bristol, Virginia fed us and the skies just outside of Winchester delighted us with a beautiful sunset. It was clear by now we were not going to make it home by midnight, not even close. GPS told us we still had five and a half hours to go. Stopping for the night seemed more sensible than getting ourselves killed.

Sleep was short and fitful. I felt so bad for Jim, knowing he was not sleeping any better than I was and that he had to be into work that afternoon. I took first shift driving, hoping he’d be able to get in a couple more hours of sleep at least. I’m pretty sure we were both feeling the stress more than either of us let on. We just wanted to get home.

By noon, we’d passed yet another test of our relationship. I realized along the way that different things about these trips and driving seemed to annoy us. That really worked to our advantage, because when one person was getting antsy and annoyed, the other was able to remain calm and interject some humor into the situation. We make a good team, me thinks.

Now… about that building project.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Who Are All These Old People At My High School Reunion??

Just Plain Random Weirdness

It doesn’t seem possible it’s been 30 (GULP!) YEARS! since I and a hundred+ others made our exit from high school. C’mon! How can this be? I remember my PARENTS (and they were totally ancient then) planning their 25th reunion, from the same high school I might add. This can’t possibly be happening to me, to us, my classmates of yore.

I hear myself using the phrase ‘back in the day’ a lot lately. I don’t like that, no, sir. I don’t like that one bit! Excuse me a moment, “Hey, you kids! Get outta my yard!” Anyway, where was I? Oh, yeah, Thirty Years High School Reunion.

I have to say that I really loved school. It was small and, as mentioned, we only had a little over a hundred in our graduating class. The even cooler part was I’d known most of those people since kindergarten. I remember my first day very well. My big brother walked me to the door of Mrs. Lacey’s classroom before heading off to his own homeroom. See, Mom, we didn’t ALWAYS fight. As I stepped into the door I saw one of my best friends, a boy named Tom. What a relief! His mom had been my baby sitter for the past couple years. Tom was also the only boy out of the three at the sitter who managed to escape being chased down, pinned to the ground, and kissed by yours truly. I was a bit boy crazy even as a five-year-old apparently.

Luckily, Tom did not spring to his feet and run when he saw me coming that time. I went over to where he sat on the floor playing with some rubber animals in a toy box. I distinctly remember the giraffe for some reason. Oddly, my only other clear memory of kindergarten also involves a boy I kissed. This was Gregory. I wonder if he remembers? We sealed our love with a kiss behind the mobile bookcase just prior to heading to the playground for recess. Ah, Gregory, where are you now? Sadly, Gregory and his family moved away and we didn’t make it to 1984 together.

Apparently I wasn’t too heartbroken as I found my next boyfriend, David, quickly enough. In the grand scheme of things it was looking pretty good for David and I. We were ‘an item’ from First to Third grade and then again in Fifth. Fourth grade took me temporarily away from my known friends and into the realm of strangers. Back then there were two elementary schools and I was given the option of spending that year in the other one. Best decision I ever made as an exiting third grader! I made some pretty awesome new friends! If they are reading this they know who they are. (Sherry, Jay, DeRue)

The building I know as the middle school was the high school back in my parents’ day. I tried to be athletic during those four years. I joined the girls’ softball team. I remember playing basketball on a four person team, David (yes, THAT same David), Ted, Ruth and I. I gave tennis a shot. I head-butted Rob off the top off a pile of snow while playing “King Of The Mountain” during recess and got in trouble for calling him an a-hole. Oops! These were also the days that saw the most hideous school picture ever known to man. Let’s not even go beyond that confession. Middle school saw me leave behind my dear David for ‘the new kid’, Steve.

I began my freshman year of high school in September 1979. Monty Python’s “Life of Brian” premiered that year, The Knack’s, “My Sharrona” was topping the charts, and President Carter was attacked by a rabbit while on a canoe trip in Plains, Georgia. Of course, all I can envision now is the killer rabbit from Monty Python’s “Quest for the Holy Grail”. I was, still am, a big Monty Python fan. It cost 15 cents to mail a First Class letter and gas was a whopping 86 cents per gallon. It was during this period I had it pounded into my head to turn off the light when you leave a room, “There’s an energy crisis going on, you know?” Um, okay, Dad, whatever you say.

I wasn’t popular in high school, but I don’t think I was scorned either. I was weird. I was kinda proud of my weirdness. I was goth before goth was goth, I guess you could say. I wore black, a lot! My fingernails were painted black. Black eyeliner was about the only make-up I ever wore. My friends were into punk rock. My friends were nerds. My friends were football players and cheerleaders. I only recently learned I was considered a bit of nerd, too. I’m still not sure how I feel about that label. I read a lot, but I was by no means uber smart, though my IQ said otherwise, which my guidance counselor was quick to point out to me. Hell, I barely passed basic algebra. I was just me and if me wasn’t good enough for others to be around, I took no offense.

Before I knew it, it was 1984 and I was donning a dress, high heels and a white cap and gown. What happened? When did I suddenly become a senior? What was I going to do with my life now? I had no plans for college. My only plan was a trip to England later than year. Pomp and Circumstance played, we did our walk, we got our diplomas and we threw our caps into the air. WWwwweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!

Then BAM!!! here we are, thirty years later! I swear to God I don’t remember that much time passing and they say it only gets worse. I really don’t even want to think about how fast the next thirty years are going to go by. How is it possible my ‘baby’ is 21 when I JUST graduated from high school??

At a previous reunion, maybe it was our 10th, a classmate that I considered more of an acquaintance than a friend came up to me and said something very profound, something that brings a tear to my eye when I think about it. She told me how much she admired me in high school. I was stunned and must have looked as much. She went on to explain how she always thought it was so cool how I didn’t do what everyone else was doing back then, that I was true to myself and who I was. She said she never had the nerve to do that. Wow, and this was from one of the Popular Girls! WHA??

In just over two weeks we’ll all be gathering again to do some catching up. There are people I am looking forward to seeing and others maybe not quite so much. There are those I wish could be there, who won’t be. We’re getting a tour of the middle school this time around which will be awesome. Sadly, we’ve already lost some of our classmates, but we will carry on in their memory and honor them with stories in some small way.

Thirty years, sheesh. Unbelievable!

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Let’s Play Pretend

Adventures / Childhood fantasies / Just Plain Random Weirdness

I may be pushing the Big 5-0 but as it never really sank in that I was an actual, real-life “growed up” until I turned 40 that make me more like 8. Right?

A Facebook (and RL friend) posted a series of wonderful watercolors last week that depicted images of children playing Pretend. Nerdy Childhood I was taken back to my own childhood when we ran around the forbidden lumber yard that was our playground, leaping immortally from one twenty foot stack of swaying lumber to another, with sticks making ‘Pew-pew-pew’ sounds as if shooting ray guns.  We adopted such names as Annie12 or Robert36, adapting to the popular television series of the time, “Logan’s Run” of which I was a HUGE! fan.  We also played our home grown version of “Planet of the Apes” and the more common, Cowboys and Indians.  As I was often the sole girl involved in these games of pretend, I found myself tied to a lot of trees or locked in jail so I could be rescued by one or another of the ‘big strong boys’.

We never got too fancy like today’s modern LARPers, (Live Action Role Players) who seem to think they’d stumbled upon some sort of new amusement by dressing up and carrying fake weapons and thumping each other with them. Sorry, I was doing that back in the 1970’s, guys. Best weapon ever; a thin, green branch – not too thin but just enough to be nice and springy. Willow worked really well, just saying. When properly loaded with a small, half-rotten apple these bad boys left bruises and you arrived home with enough rancid apple sauce on you to require a change of clothes and a shower. Headshots were common and though the most gratifying for the shooter, they were the least pleasant for the kid on the receiving end.

There are those that would argue that as we get older and grow-up, these games of Pretend are tossed to the wayside and left behind like so many Barbie dolls and stacks of Legos. As adults we are supposed to focus on work, making ourselves a home, driving cars, paying bills and all in all, being responsible without the annoyance of fantasy and imagination clouding up our more mature minds. To those people I place my thumbs to my temples with my fingers wagging in the air, stick out my tongue and give the Raspberry Salute! Neener-neener.

As Foghorn Leghorn might say, “Who, I say, who in their right mind would give up a part of their lives that brought them so much joy?” NOT IT!

Computers were just coming into fashion when I graduated from high school, a-way back in 1984. Along with Pong and Tank, Space Invaders and Pac Man there were the earliest versions of what we now call, First Person Shooters. The graphics on these babies left something to the imagination, but that was okay, we’d imagined ourselves to many places before then. If I could imagine a twig to be a space age ray gun, it wasn’t much of a stretch to see myself as that little blip of a man made up of 16 pixels.  My favorite game of this sort of “Questron”.  Hours upon hours were spent hunkered down in my mom’s home office in the semi-darkness playing black jack, getting into fights, robbing stores and, of course, battling beasties with my 3 pixel sword!

The next level of Pretend for me was when I was in my early twenties and I was introduced to the world of LambdaMOO. Holy Hook-Up, Batman! You mean I can do Text-based RPG with OTHER PEOPLE via this new technology called ‘The Web’? How crazy is that?  I can type on my computer at home, someone in the UK can read what I type only moments later and reply almost instantly?!  Sweet, baby Jesus, make it so!  My first character in this new and wonderful world was Lady Vivianne, a pale and powerful vampire mistress. Of course, everything you created in these MOO worlds was text-based so they attracted a lot of creative writer types. It gave you a chance to spread your wings and put yourself smack dab in the middle of one of your own stories as the main character! Better still, you could connect your little corner of the MOO to the corners of others! It was a seemingly endless series of homes, caves, oceans, cemeteries, clubs, pubs, forests and unfathomable dimensions of time and space.  “Hello, my name is Pam and I’m a MOO-Addict.” Yes, for a time it was that bad. For the few years I was mainlining these sorts of places I always thought, “Wouldn’t it be awesome if we had graphics as well as text for something like this?”

When AOL came out with their chat rooms, the population and popularity of the MOOs took a definable nose dive. Instead of having to wait in the queue to get logged in because traffic was so heavy, you would be instantly connected only to find maybe a hundred or so others logged in. And half of those had been idle for over a week. Another quarter might be active but secreted away in their little worlds and if you were really lucky, you could find maybe a dozen or so willing to interact with you.

By now, I was married with children and doing the Growed-Up things that were expected of me. I went to work. I did housework. I took care of the kids, paid my bills, bought cars and a house.  For many years the world of Pretend was enacted with my children. Match Box cars and Barbie dolls, digging in the dirt with Tonka trucks and spreading crayons and coloring books all over the dining room table filled the void of creativity I so much need in my life.  Together we played what are the more recognizable First Person Shooters on Ye Olde Playstation II and, of course, The Sims. As an aside, I was quite horrible at a James Bond Based FPS – but I digress.

Kids don’t  stay kids forever, sadly.  All too soon they were teenagers and playing Pretend with Mom just wasn’t the thing to do anymore. But lo, fear not! What’s this? Second Life, you say? Tell me more! Ladies and Gentleman, welcome to that world I once dreamed of LambdaMOO With Graphics! NICE graphics! No more 16 pixel people for me, no, sir. It’s no joke when I tell you that I have heard A LOT of people who play Second Life referring to their Avatars as “my Barbie doll” or “my Ken doll”. But, Barbie and Ken never had it so good. There are limitless possibilities in Second Life. There are things in Second Life I never could have imagined and things I wish I’d never seen or known existed. This is the imagination’s playground.  If you want to know how to survive in Second Life, you really need to watch this video, too! Man Vs. Second Life LOL. Oddly enough… my first Second Life character was also a rather powerful female vampire. Go figure!

And here is where my narrative takes a slightly sad turn. There are apparently people out there that believe that just because they don’t *get* a certain something that it must be bad and harmful to the person who does get it and not only that, enjoys getting it. Trying to truly explain to someone what Second Life is goes beyond difficult. I feel a little sorry for those folks. Maybe they’ve lost touch with their Inner Child. Maybe they had really bad childhoods and playing Pretend reminds them of that. Maybe they see those of us who are still able to play with such childlike abandon as inferior, as sad and pathetic. We must be miserable in our lives to want to escape for a few hours into this fantasy world that has no basis in reality.  As if going to the movies, going to a stage play, watching a sit-com or a ‘reality’ television show doesn’t do almost the same thing.  For me, they are the sad ones. They are the ones that can’t take their own imaginations on a journey into an endless world of possibilities. They prefer to sit at a distance, to be spectators instead of participants in their own entertainment. Their minds are too muddled up with grown-up gunk to let themselves play Pretend anymore and let someone else do the work for them.  They would rather sit in front of the Magic Blue Box known as television with no chance of interacting with what’s happening on the screen.

Second Life and places like it have made it possible for this Introvert to come out of her shell. I’ve made wonderful friends through these mediums. One of which I’ve had since 1995! We played together in LambdaMOO and by gum… we still get together once in a while on Second Life! We’ve met in person all of ONCE!  but we’ve shared so much of our lives in these past almost 20 years, our friendship is just as strong and real as if we saw each other face-to-face every day. (At least I think so. I hope he feels the same.)  Through the ups and downs of our lives, we’ve pulled each other through. Isn’t that what being friends is really about?

Yeah, there are a fair amount of idiots out there, too. You hear people say how dangerous it is to meet people online. It’s dangerous to meet strangers in bars, too. It’s dangerous to race cars and jump out of airplanes and climb cliff sides and go white water rafting. It was really dangerous for that group of kids I grew up with who loved to race across the tops of piles of logs and swaying twenty-foot cut timber piles. It was dangerous (and painful) getting hit with a half-rotten apple flung from the end of a stick, too! It’s called living, folks and sometimes you just have to take that leap of faith and pretend you know the outcome.

And sometimes… well, sometimes that Leap Of Faith makes you buy a one-way plane ticket to a place you’ve never been to meet up with a guy you’ve only met once before and it all turns out pretty darn good! So good that we no longer HAVE to play Pretend on Second Life anymore in order to be together, but um…. sometimes we still do, simply because we can. (Not to mention finding pirate ships to sail and shoot cannons from is pretty hard to come by these days.)

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Penny Therapy

Just Plain Random Weirdness

A penny saved may well be a penny earned, but a roll of pennies amounts to more than just fifty cents.

One of my earliest, clearest and happiest childhood memories involves money; lots of money – all in change. A great heap of quarters, dimes, nickels and pennies would be poured from coffee tins onto the middle of our dining room table a couple times a year. My heart would skip a beat. My palms would start to itch. I’d lick my lips eager to begin. Dad would ask, “Who wants to help me roll change?!” and by God I’d be the first in line. There was no reward. Not a scrap of that Heap-O-Cash was mine nor would any of it be mine. In fact, sometimes I’d even raid my own piggy bank to make the rolls come out even. What form of madness was this? Why was I so eager to get my hands on those piles of quarters? Why would I painstakingly count off little ten cent stacks of pennies?  What kind of weirdo kid was I?

All this money came from two sources. My parents were league bowlers. For years upon years my dad bowled on the volunteer fireman’s league every Friday night. On Wednesday’s they’d both bowl on a mixed league, usually made of husband-wife teams. I don’t remember those so well, but the Friday night ones, oh yes! Those are some of the sweetest memories I have from my youth. Every Friday night for years my best friend and I would be dropped off at the Baptist Church in Newark Valley to go to AWANA, a Bible-study group and my parents would head over to the bowling alley a block away. While we memorized verses and sang hymns to the Lord; they drank beer, cussed and bowled.  Once AWANA was over, we’d walk to the bowling alley, buy an ice cream sundae, candy, maybe a hot dog or burger and play video games until the game was done. Afterwards, we’d drop my friend off at her house and head on to ours. Or, better yet, I’d stay at her house or she’d come to mine for the night.

During these bowling extravagances team members were punished or rewarded for their efforts by means of a ‘Kitty’. I’m not completely sure of logistics, just that if you made your shot you got to keep the coins that rested on the outside of the can. If you missed, they shook the change-filled tin can and yelled, “Pay The Kitty!!” Apparently people missed a lot because that Kitty filled out pretty quickly, at least from my recollections.

Another type, and I suspect the larger of the two, of coin collection was in the form of the ‘Coffee Can’ that my dad was in charge of at work. Back in the days before vending machines and cafés had appeared in every nook and cranny of work life, folks were required to bring in their own coffee, own brewer and own pastries.  Once the initial expanse of buying these things was covered, the Coffee Can came into play. You’d pay a nickel or dime for your cup of coffee and the same for a donut using the trust system. No one manned the can or kept a till count. At the end of each month, my dad would lug that can of change home, pour it out on the table and then the fun would begin!

Mom would quite often help. Sometimes my brother would chip in but most of the time it was just me and my dad to the bitter, coppery end. We’d sit at the table, count change, talk, joke and laugh. It was real quality time together. No one bothers you much when they know you are trying to count change and it always seems to be easier to talk about things when your hands are busy. There would be long bouts of silence too as we each became one with Midas. Counting out loud was deeply frowned upon.

I have no doubt that to this day this is why I love to count and roll coins. It reminds me of my youth and time well spent with my dad. It’s a quiet, thoughtful time when nothing mattered but making rows of pennies, ten cents high, Penny Therapy, you could call it.

When Jim announced it was time to dump and count the change jar he has on his bedside table, a little spark of SQUEE! zipped through me. I have a big jar of pennies I need to roll up, too. YEAH! I started with Jim’s change last night and was amazed at how much money was actually in that little jar of his. It’s all going towards Christmas present for his daughter and grandkids so I am more than happy to help him out with the process.  Mine will probably be spent on groceries or the tags we need to stick on our garbage bags for pick-up each week. Yeah, wild and crazy spenders are we. Not a lot of things will send me on an unplanned trip to the Dollar General on a cold, Sunday afternoon when my car is covered with snow or find me trudging down to the bank first thing Monday morning, but apparently the quest for more change rollers is one such thing.

Back home the neatly stacked dimes, nickels and pennies from Jim’s change jar await me. Once these are done, my own jar(s) will come out of hiding and yield up their goods. Where else could you get Penny Therapy during the holidays?  I guess it really is money well spent, or in this case, rolled. Lucy Van Pelt would be proud.

Published by: 1

Thankful-Tude!

Food, Glorious Food! / Just Plain Random Weirdness

I’ve heard the remark, “Nobody sits down and eats dinner as a family anymore,” many times over in the past year. Until about five years ago I probably would have blamed it on the parents being too busy to bother or the kids having a lot of afterschool activities or heck, maybe even on cable television or video games. That’s no longer my tune.  I blame the increasing importance of retail stores and company greed.

My current household consists of four people between the ages of 23 and 56. Of those four, I am the ONLY one who does not work retail. That means I am the only one who has a standard Monday-Friday, 8am-5pm type of hours work schedule. One person has a set weekly schedule as far as days of the week go but is seldom home before 6 pm, closer to 7 o’clock most nights. The remaining two people have wild and random days they work and wide ranging hours. They can be on duty anywhere between 5 am and 10 pm. People leave the house as early as 4 in the morning to get to work and arrive home as late 11 o’clock at night or even midnight, depending on the time of year. Week to week this schedule varies. I have gone as long as three days and nights without seeing some members of the household upright and awake despite living in the same place. This does not even bring into the picture trying to find a date and time where my daughter can come over to visit or even meet us for dinner somewhere.

How does one schedule meals together when people have to work these wild shifts? Is anyone really going to show up at 7am on a Sunday morning to buy a pair of work gloves or set of ski poles? How often does someone arrive at 9:30 at night to order a set of cabinets?  What happen to a standard eight hour day? Oh, that’s right… MONEY!

If we stay open longer, more people will come. They will spend more money. We can get richer, faster. In the meantime, we have to have employees on duty for the customers that will be busting down the doors to get in at 7 o’clock in the morning. You never know when you’re going to have an “I need a new pair of boots” emergency! We better be open – – – just in case. And being open all these extra hours and having to pay the employees, not to mention the increased electric bill, we better lower the pay scale to cover all that thus making our profit even bigger! Woot!

Family sit down dinners where EVERYONE is present are few and far between in my house anymore. When they do happen it always seems to be a very special occasion and it really makes you appreciate that time. It’s a shame that the majority of corporate big wigs seem to have no concept anymore of what it means to have family time. Maybe they feel they’ve done their time and now that they’ve worked their way to the top of the ladder, those things are no longer important. Instead, they should be climbing down from that lofty position and remember from whence they came. Show your employees that you actually give a damn about them.

I stopped at a newly opened Hobby Lobby in town a couple weeks ago and then realized as a I pulled into the parking lot, “Oh, crap. It’s Sunday. They aren’t open on Sundays.” How awesome is that? I’m not even a Christian so I don’t need the time for ‘Worship’ but dang, the ‘time with their families’ clause really struck a chord with me and made me smile. Yes, it was slightly inconvenient as I’d made as special trip to check out the new store but if that’s the biggest thing I have to worry about in my life, that Hobby Lobby is closed on Sundays, I must really have a boring life. Which, I don’t.

As we dive head first into the holiday shopping season, I urge you to keep in mind those people behind the counters who are waiting on you. (I put in my retail time, too, folks, I know how nasty some holiday shoppers can be.) Remember they are only doing their jobs and trying to support their families on a pay check that probably barely covers their living expenses. Don’t get all snippy and impatient when a certain sweater isn’t there in the size or color you demand. Don’t be pushy and rude to your fellow human beings. Life as we know it is not going to implode on itself because you didn’t get the best deal of the day. Really – it’s not!

This is supposed to be a time of kindness, giving and love. A simple smile can go a lot further than you think.  Let these folks working their butts off at obscene hours of the day and night share in the joys of the holiday so that when they do eventually get to have some time at home with their family they don’t spend it venting off steam from your rude and demanding customer behavior. As much as you might like to imagine it, these folks are not your personal minions.  Be gracious and patient. It’s amazing how much your service will improve if you’re not being a greedy ass.

But, I digress.

I won’t be out shopping on Thanksgiving Day and by some miracle of miracles, all the members of my family have the day off! I have a lot of things to be thankful for this past year and a day spent with all of them enjoying a meal and some after dinner board games is going to be one more of those things.  We’ll have three generations around our table and that’s really what matters the most to me. Now, pass the gravy, please.

 

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Happy Festival Of The Imagination!

Just Plain Random Weirdness / Writing

Over on Twitter (pamelamorris65) and Facebook, I’ve been putting up a daily post about Halloween.  It’s been fun finding out new things about my favorite holiday. This morning I saw a news story about a school that has canceled their Halloween celebration because of its religious overtones. I’ve mixed feeling about that. Part of me says, “Well, that sucks!” Another part says, “I hope they cancel all their Christmas events at that school, too.”  I’ve never labeled myself as being ‘politically correct’ but I do try and not label and judge people based on religion, race, sexual preference, etc. As long as people don’t shove their personal labels in my face or try to jam them down my throat, I really don’t care who you pray to, from whose loins you sprang or what you do in the privacy of your own bedroom with another consenting adult. 

As a kid I never associated Halloween with religion. It was a time to dress up and play pretend with everyone else in the town. It was time to get free candy. That was it. Maybe it’s a good thing that Halloween is finally being recognized as what it really started out as. I’m all for the separation of Church (aka Religion) and State. However, if you are going to do that to Halloween, I think it’s only fair we look at the history of Christmas and Easter and the beliefs from which almost everything about those two holidays grew from, too.  Sorry if I burst some of your bubbles but both have some very Pagan roots.  Be all that as it may, I didn’t intend this to be a post about religion so I’ll cut that vine before it grows any longer.

The first costume I clearly remember was one of those store bought, hard plastic masks with a pull over, pre-printed smock dress. I wanted to be Sleeping Beauty but I guess she wasn’t popular enough and I ended up as Cinderella. My brother, now he was an original, he was a giant, paper mache carrot. Yes, you read that right – a carrot!  Maybe I should have gone as a rabbit. I dunno. He had, and still has, some pretty crazy ideas. A carrot… really?

The next costume I recall was recycled from the previous June’s Kiddie Parade hosted by our volunteer fire department. I was Little Red Riding Hood, complete with Big Bad Wolf. Okay… it was really our sweet and gentle German Sheppard but damn, I was cute! It was during that year I first experienced Halloween Mayhem. I was too little to control the dog myself so my big brother, dressed as the Woodsman, chaperoned myself and the Wolf to the fire station for their Halloween party about two blocks away. Old car tires were burning in the middle of the street. Lines of gasoline had been run across the road and ignited. Glass bottles and pumpkins were smashed everywhere. We trick or treated on our way there, got more candy at the party along with cider, donuts and the apples we bobbed for. I think we won a prize.

Years passed and I soon started making my own costumes. I was a vampire more times than I care to admit. One of my best friends and I dressed up like two of the members from KISS. She was Paul Stanley (on roller skates) and I was Ace Frehley. My dad helped make the platform shoes I wore.  A few years later a different bestie and I were Dracula and his bride. I got to be Dracula. There was a sexy witch in there someplace, too. My final trick or treat costume was the Grim Reaper. I think it snowed that year. I remember wearing a lot of layers under that big, black robe anyway. I was, believe it or not, seventeen when I finally decided I was too old. Now I hear about kids saying they are too old when they are twelve. That makes me sadder than the idea of a school not doing Halloween.

Eventually, I had kids of my own and the fun of Halloween returned in all its glory. I could dress up and go trick or treating again and no one would question it! YEAH! For years we decorated the house in a big way even asking friends to dress up and act as extras in the display. Droves of kids and parents came to the door. Gobs of candy was handed out. Now – my kids are grown. My son will be twenty-three in less than a week and my daughter is twenty. With no grand-babies in the near future, it’s going to be a long time before I get to go trick or treating again.  I am hoping to attend my first Zombie Walk in a couple weeks though.  I can’t help but wonder how many other people have “Participate in a Zombie Walk” on their Bucket List.

You hear a lot about how kids today lack any imagination due to television, video games and the like. If that’s the case, couldn’t Halloween be marketed as a Festival of the Imagination instead? If you could be anything you wanted to be, real or imagined, what would you be? On that one day you could become that thing. Let’s not take away something so valuable to our society, our sense of wonder and fun. Our sense of play is squashed enough as it is once we reach adulthood. We keep saying our kids are growing up too fast and yet we, the adults, are the ones that are making them do it. Taking away Halloween is like taking away part of being a kid. It’s pretend. It’s the one time of year we can maybe, just maybe, all get along regardless of religion, race and sexual orientation. Heck, even Jesus thought we should be more like children.  

Keep the spirit of Halloween alive in your heart. For me, that’s being like a child, playing dress up and pretend.  Don’t let “The Man” take away your sense of fun and wonderment or, most importantly, your fair portion of free candy! 

HAPPY FESTIVAL OF THE IMAGINATION!

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The Mother Within

Adventures / Just Plain Random Weirdness

It’s happening. I sense it peeking around the corners at me. It lurks in the back alleys waiting with all the patience of a cat watching a mouse hole. It smells my blood. It knows, oh yes indeed, it knows there’s no way I can escape my own mother growing inside me.

Don’t get me wrong, my mom is AWESOME! and to see those little sparks of her emerging from me during certain situations isn’t always a bad thing, unless it’s when that part of her is the part that wants to smack some idiot upside the head with a two-by-four. Not that mom ever did that of course, at least not literally – that I know of. Twice this week I have wished for said two-by-four. In fact, a large hammer and two shovels were given serious consideration late Monday morning by myself and two of my fellow co-workers.  Ah, yes. The joys of working with liars and thieves. Gotta love it! Said thief rather reluctantly returned the ill-gotten booty this morning. Guess there is some sort of guilty conscious in there after all. I made sure to thank the person for the return of the ‘mistakenly taken’ property.

But, in the heat of the  moment when I realized what had happened, my mother emerged in one of her darkest forms. You just don’t want to mess with Jackie when she sees an injustice being done ‘cuz she’ll damn well set you straight right to your face and not give a flying fu… erm fish, what you or anyone else thinks about it.  Right is right and wrong is wrong.

Mom came out again last night while Jim and I were at Karaoke.  I don’t drink a lot. When Jim and I go out I will have usually just one beer or mixed drink then go right for ginger ale on the rocks. Last night I indulged and was half way through my second beer when it happened.

Some dork had arrived earlier and was either smashed out of his mind or off his medication. I suspect both. Jim and I are sitting listening to the singers of wide ranging abilities croon to their hearts content and this dude is getting louder and louder and by his own mistake, he sat down next to me just moments before Jim went up to talk to the DJ about a song. Feeling pretty brave, ya know, with all of 1.5 bottles of liquid courage running like wild fire through my veins, I tried to very,  very hard to ignore this guy. I really did. But when every other word was spoken was the F-bomb and said less than a foot from my ear, Mom has her limits.

My mother turned on that bar stool I had sat so quietly at all evening and she looked at him through my eyes and said, “Do you mind? I am trying to listen to these people sing and if you say ‘f—‘ in my ear one more time I’m going to knock your ass off that barstool. Shut the f— up!”  *ahem* He looked back at me as if I’d suddenly grown a second head. “What? I wasn’t swearing.” I replied with, “Don’t what? me. All you’re saying to me is F-this and F-that. Say it again and I’m gonna smack ya.”  Apparently a friend of his overheard this and came over and said, “Is he bothering you.” I said he was and for the next five minutes or so she stood there talking to him telling him to stop cussing and leave people alone. I turned my attention back to the stage, took a deep breath and realized my heart was ready to leap out of my chest – or maybe that’s what it feels like when your mother releases her possession of you.

Just then Jim innocently and ignorantly strolls back and sits down beside me. He’s got his own beer buzz going on and the girl who has by now taken the offending Mother-rouser out of the picture comes over and says to me, “Sorry about that.” To which I nod and say thanks and we all go on our merry separate ways. Jim looks at  me, “Huh? What was she sorry about?” I told him he’d missed all the excitement and would tell him later on the drive home.  His remark later, “You shoulda said something. I woulda kicked his ass.” I snickered, “Nah, woulda been more humiliating to him if I’dda done that.”

So, *ahem* the part of my mother that speaks up and says something, the part that has a spine and doesn’t take crap from people is growing inside me. As I sit back and consider the situation and add my grandmother to the equation – oh yeah. I see where this is going real fast, kids!  “You kids! Get off my lawn!!” Just kidding, she never said that – but I’m getting the gumption of two of the most amazing women in my little corner of the family tree. And, woe unto the fella that messes with my daughter! She’s only 20 and she’s been displaying this trait for years! She’da kicked that drunk dude’s ass first and asked questions later.

So, thanks Mom and Gramma for spending a bit of time with me these past couple days. I can see so  much better where you’re coming from and where I’m headed and it’s not such a bad place at all.

 

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When I Grow Up I Want To Be An Undertaker!

Childhood fantasies / Just Plain Random Weirdness

These probably aren’t the words most parents want to hear coming from their child, but mine heard them and I was… yes, dead serious.

Rewind to the late 1970s. Disco was hot. Hair bands were everywhere. Anne Rice and Stephen King were on the upswing and thanks to my grandmother, I’d gotten a Ouija board for my 13th birthday instead of the stack of horror books I’d picked out. No joke, kids. Gramma had told me to go pick out whatever I wanted in the store for my birthday present. I picked books. Gramma said, and I quote, “Oh, you don’t want those scary things. Let me show you what you should get.” and she marched me right back to the games aisle and picked up good old William Fuld’s Ouija Board. I really wanted the books more but who’s gonna argue with Gramma?  We got the board out that night, Grampa sat nearby shaking his head and rolling his eyes at the foolishness of it all.

I don’t remember what, if any, results we got but from that point on my interest in such things grew even more serious and intense. This was the same Gramma who told me my first remembered true ghost story from her personal experience and the same Gramma that ignored those No Tresspassing signs and found a place for me to sneak into an abandoned house (or two) and unlock the door from the inside so she could get in, too and the one who dragged me from one cemetery to the other. And my parents thought all Gramma and I ever did together was go to yard sales! BAH!  Is it any wonder I am the way I am?? Not that that’s a bad thing, mind you!

So, here I am 13 or so, heading into High School and of course, they want you to start thinking about your future. What do you want to do with your life? College? Work? Trade School? Hm? Make up your mind. No rush, you have four years before you graduate. You all know the drill. I was under pressure man and being as I had all this experience with spooky stuff, thanks to Gramma, I got the notion in my head to become a funeral director. How hard could it possibly be? Cemeteries didn’t bother me. Dead people weren’t any big deal, right?

We had a school assignment to investigate what we’d need to do to pursue a possible career path, this included interviewing people already in that occupation. This lead to the call to the funeral home. I dare say they’d never gotten a phone call like mine before then and probably not after. I could be wrong. The funeral director, let’s call him Dave – because – well, that’s his name – was happy to oblige. We set up an appointment and folks, I got the behind the scenes tour, embalming room and all. Yep… that was special, but even then I was not deterred. Nay! I would not be swayed by any of what he showed me… until…

“What sort of schooling do you have to have to do this?”

Science? What do you mean science? Human anatomy? Practically a doctorate! Gonna need some math in there too so you know how much fluid the body is going to need. Plus a two year apprenticeship. I don’t want to be a doctor, man. I just wanna take care of dead bodies. Can’t I just dress in black and hang around corpses and caskets and console people and that sorta stuff? Apparently not. Ah well, at least I got a good grade on the paper and I’ll betcha my teacher never got another one quite like it!

And so ended my career dreams as an undertaker. Knowing Funeral Director Dave would come in real handy a few years down the line when he kindly furnished the limo that was used when I was married for the first time in 1989 – free of charge!

I did manage to portray the wife of a 19th century – US Civil War – undertaker for several years while I was a reenactor. That was fun. Grossing people out as we described putting needles in people’s necks and inner thighs and draining off the blood to make room for the fluid (not formaldehyde – cuz that wasn’t invented until after the War). We met very few others of our kind on the battlefield. And this time I did get to dress in black and hang out around a coffin and pretend at least to write consoling letters to the bereaved.

Now, I find myself writing about undertakers a lot. My current book, ‘That’s What Shadows Are Made Of” features a murdered undertaker. And, I should add, I made another call to that same funeral director with some research question on it. The novel just released in February has a funeral home scene and the forth-coming ghost story features both! I don’t want to be an undertaker when I grow up anymore – I’ll just write weird stuff about them instead. It’s probably a lot more fun and I’ve never had to use algebra to do it!

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The Voices In My Head Assure Me That I’m Sane

Just Plain Random Weirdness / Writer's Life

I’ve had first hand experience with a lot of crazy people. Family, of course, was first. Everyone’s got a few crazies in the bloodline. Best a person can hope for is that you’ve been spared. Sometimes crazy doesn’t hit you until you get older. That’s scary. I think I’d rather be a long-term crazy than to suddenly snap one day and lose it. “She’s always been that way.” just sounds better to me than, “One day she just went nuts.” I dated a crazy person for awhile. Not sure what it says about me if I add it took me a good number of years to realize this. Everyone else seemed to notice. Maybe they were crazy not to have given me a little but of a nudge. “Hey, Pam, you know, he’s crazy,” may just have been the push I needed. But, love can be pretty darn blind (deaf and mute, too) and I probably wouldn’t have listened to them anyway.

I’ve been called crazy. Who hasn’t? I’ve heard it a lot but I think the sort of crazy I am comes from being creative. The Muse can get some pretty funky ideas when she’s on a roll. All my life I’ve been able to visualize things in my head. I close my eyes and things start to happen. People I’ve never met start to show me places I’ve never been and tell me about themselves. They introduce me to their family, friends and enemies. Never a dull moment. The voices in my head assure me I’m sane and will remain so as long as I tell their stories. Once their stories are told, they move on. It’s a lot like ghost hunting, I suppose. They haunt me, poke me, and keep me awake at night until I figure out what it is they want and tell someone.

The problem(?) is as soon as I get one story told, another one appears. More times than not they overlap and I have to pick who to give my attention to. The most powerful voice wins out. The best I can do is write down what they tell me as quickly possible, hope it comes out making sense to anyone else who might read it and to do so in a way that is entertaining and satisfying. I told someone once to sit down and watch a movie they have never seen before with a pad of paper and a pencil and try and write down everything that happens; dialog, action, scenery. That’s what it’s like for me. Sometimes it’s really hard to keep up!

The most common question a writer hears is “Where do you get your ideas from?” From speaking with other writers and reading interviews of those more famous than I, we all have the same spin on it. On some level the story is already there. The blank page to a writer is like the block of wood to a sculptor. Ideas are everywhere. You may overhear a conversation in a coffee shop that sets the Muse to muttering. She does that a lot, by the way. A dream may do it. The other day I was wandering around my favorite local new and used bookstore and something leaped out at me and gave me an awesome title as a springboard. Thank God for a title. I’m over a third of the way through writing my second murder mystery and I’m still not happy with the title. The darn thing has already had three!! Titles, they are all part of the craziness.

Edgar Allen Poe said, “I became insane with long intervals of horrible sanity.” I think I get where he was coming from there. In order to keep my sanity, that part of me that functions day to day, the one who gets up every morning and stumbles around until coffee has been ingested, who goes to work and pays the bills, that every day me everyone sees, I have to listen to the voices in my head. I have to do what they tell me and write down all they show me of their own lives. I’ve enjoyed those voices all my life. They’ve made me who I am. I’ve always been this way. I hope I always am.

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