Dryer Fire Aborted

Once again, it is time to call in the professionals.
This time, my dryer is broken. I await the arrival of my next service professional with a mixture of dread and optimism. Nobody could be worse than the plumber who wasn't a plumber, right? Unless this guy drags me into the basement and dismembers me?
Wait, we don't have a basement. I will be fine, and people are born not wanting to drag people into basements ad dismember them.....or run off and cash checks that don't belong to them. Yes, I have optimism. At least, this is what I repeat over and over to myself with disturbing rhythm.

So, he came, he rattled parts, he applied the art of drier science in a way I never could have. Actually, first he came through my front door and applied giant white elastic booties over his shoes, just like surgeons do before they enter the operating room.
For a moment I felt my blood run cold and wondered if perhaps we do have a basement door after all, but then it hit me. He was trying to protect my carpets.

Dude, you obviously haven't seen my carpets. This is no excuse, but they have obviously been in the house since it was built around twenty years ago, and everyone who has lived here has had pets; no-one more than me. O.k, so I guess that was an attempt at an excuse, but how can you really excuse stains that look like I allowed each and every one of my daughter's dead mice to decompose on a different stair instead of burying them outside. How can you excuse that more of the carpet has cat puke stains than doesn't. Different colors for different varieties of food. And cat.

I got past that. So anyway, he banged and rattled and applied his magic, and descended the terrifying stairs to deliver the verdict.
More terrifying than the carpet.
"It works?" I asked, with feigned giddiness to make up for my carpets.
"It works," he replied, and handed me a deep trash can filled with what looked like the hide of some ancient, mythical half land, half water beast, or perhaps the contents of said beast's stomach, compacted into the kind of fur ball that a giant owl coughs up.
Apparently, this is what had been clogging the underbelly of my dryer, sucked back through the lint trap over the course of six years, and hiding, waiting to "explode into flame" within weeks, had I not called out the repairman.
Yes, I think the seventy-five dollar service fee was well worth it this time.
Yes, I do.

I do want this posting to serve as a warning to not only empty the regular lint basket on your dryer (I did that...often), but either check the wall vent tubing yourself or call someone out to do it for regular maintenance. AVOID A DRYER FIRE.

The beginings of my love for Ebay

I have a fascination with Ebay. It started back in 2003 when I purchased my first item from Ebay, and I am so much of a cyber geek that I remember what that item was. I entered Ebay shopping in my polish pottery phase  since I had been newly introduced to what seemed like a holy world from which I had thus far been shunned, from by a delightfully energetic Army wife. She explained that one cannot be a true Army wife, at least not an Officer's wife, without owning a few shelves/cabinets, display cases filled with Polish pottery, and that no, there was no prerequisite to visit Poland or even Germany in order to own such a collection. She showed me some of her smaller pieces and more common patterns which seemed somewhat affordable, and were indeed, pleasing to my artistic eye.

 

 

 

Pretty, yes?

At about $24.00 dollars per tea cup and saucer, plus shipping, this is not exactly cheap, but something  that the Army wife, who often feels  deprived of attention while her spouse is involved in one of his numerous deployments or field duty activities, manages to justify. Then the collection expands and soon enough I found my Christmas tree strung with little Polish pottery snowmen, and I was introduced the golden egg of Polish pottery; the Unikat piece. This is a one of a kind, hand painted piece made by artists who sign their work so that the piece you own is unlike any that any other lonely Army Wife, substituting  for affection, owns. Now we are hitting over $100.00 Like this:

 

The problem was, that I was not the typical Officer's wife. I did not have money to spend on this delightful trinkets because my husband was mired in Medical school debt, and I had been "lonely wife spending" long before I discovered my love for polish pottery, and were already a couple in debt with two small children.   Affording one piece was a stretch, but somehow, I ended up with a collection which made my enthusiastic, chummy, friend rather jealous, and me, swimming in guilt and credit debt.

 

Sure, I went to work in the Polish Pottery warehouse, unpacking new loads fresh from Poland in exchange for new pieces, but that hardly made up for my habit. I found it amazing and felt very proud of myself for my clever way of obtaining even more, but after about a year and a half, I began to look at my vast collection (which would have taken anyone else ten years to acquire) and felt sick. I began selling on Ebay. Selling some of the more expensive pieces, but also selling other things to make money. Clothes, purses, ornaments, the odd piece of jewelry. Thus, I became an Ebay seller and my relationship with Ebay grew. I can sing with gusto, "I found it on eeeeeeebay! woah ooh!" What fun!!





Choose NOT to Trike

Riding a Trike is a phrase that should be reserved for children, in scenes like this:

 

Cute, right!

 



So am I wrong in saying that there is very little that is cute about the following scene:

 

O.K, the couple is cute, but not in the same way that a child is cute.

 

These people are trying to pose as bad ass motor cycle riders. Or at least, they used to pose as motorcycle badass riders and they used to ride motorcycles, and I used to have respect for their bad ass spirit, but somewhere along the way they decided to add a wheel, add three times the construction, add a couple of Lazyboy loungers, a mini fridge, a trunk for suitcases, a chandelier, picnic table, bunk beds, stand up shower, porta-potti (you don't even have to leave your seat), and full service food buffet. It's all there, under the hub caps, trust me.

Now, I have seen a version of true bad ass trike, or what is supposed to fool me into believing it is true bad ass material:

It's kind of Mad Max style, right?

 

But the major difference is; this trike is a) still a trike, and b) not made up of kick ass bits of stolen machinery, golf clubs, bones, bent radiators, mismatched hubcaps ripped off from terrified strangers attacked in the dessert and left to die. The dude on the bike might like to think that he is bad ass, but he is still gonna go home and drink a warm glass milk before bed...because he is essentially riding; a tricycle. That alone robs him of bad-ass-ness.

Let's look at one more:

Nice try, but this is a Big Wheel. Remember?????

What is the difference? Really? None.

No grown man should be seen cruising the streets on a big wheeler. The flames don't help. It just looks like a "hot wheels" toy. The flames take points away from bad-ass-ness.

Please, men, women, stick to motorcycles if you feel the need to be close to the road at high speeds with little protection from broken bones, crushed skulls, and scraping most of the skin from your body. The trike may be safer, but it is not safe enough to save you the humiliation of looking like an overgrown child with popiscle stains on your tee shirt, stepping back into playground days. Anyway, no biker should be able to bring a full meal, changes of clothes, stereo system, beer and a dart board along on the back of their bike while still having room for the family pets and a couple of guests.

No joke, I think this guy has the backyard pool in there!!!!



 

 







It Really Bothers Me When: Machete edition

It's time for one of those evenings. It's time for; "It really bothers me when....."

It really bothers me when that woman in the "Natural Instincts" hair color commercial strikes the coconut in the palm of her hand with a machete to break it in half, and it splits perfectly, spilling clear coconut water to the sand.

Has no-one told her about using  knife to cut away from one's body? Isn't it worse to aim for your hand with a sharpened machete? How does she know that the machete won't go right through the coconut and sever her hand from her body? Who put this Ad together and thought this wouldn't be highly uncomfortable for viewers. Viewers like me.

Microchips never lie

There was an incident today that went wrong from the very beginning. It went wrong from the moment, five years ago, when my daughter's fifth grade friend (a boy), asked her if we could take his cat when his family deployed to Germany. My daughter and this kid were best friends. This has already been established. The kind of friends who dare each other to do revolting things, make up epic adventure stories about the end of the world, ride bikes for hours, and freeze water balloons to save for winter.

There really was no saying no to this cat. But this cat was a calico, and they left this particular cat behind for a reason. She had multiple personalities, and the majority of them were hostile.
It goes without saying that India the Calico did not adapt well into our family of three cats.
Chloe, my aging tabby, weighing little more than eight pounds, beat the shit out of her.

Zoe, (Chloe's sister), suffered degenerative anxiety  because India, in turn, beat the shit out of her. Zoe removed all the fur from first her front legs, then her back, and then her hanging stomach, becoming a sweet, tragic, hairless object of ridicule.

My youngest cat, Cinder, never met her, because she was sequestered in the penthouse suite on the second floor before his arrival, and that is where India was banished to in order to keep the peace.
It was a roomy apartment; a large bedroom with picture windows, plenty of furniture, and a two room bathroom suite, all to herself, with daily visitors, but her temperament did not improve in the least. One moment gentle and loving, the next minute spitting fury and venom, India earned a well deserved reputation as slightly psychotic.

Finally, the decision was made to give her up for adoption...hopefully to a family without other pets. It was a tough decision, my daughter did not take to it well, and that was a major stumbling block and caused emotional delay, but the day finally arrived and my husband came to collect India.

First, India, who usually greeted me with purrs and sweetness at the door, was nowhere to be found when I entered with the cat carrier. She was sequestered under a computer desk, emitting a low rumbling growl which said, "back the hell off." To make a long, bloody story short, I resorted to shoving my arms into the legs of four pairs of men's jeans  until I looked like a sumo wrestler, and spent twenty minutes grappling with a angry, spitting, screaming cat in the corner of the room, until I could finally deposit her through the door of the cat carrier. (she had a Tinkerbell blanket for comfort, oh irony) At this point I fell to the floor, exhausted, and lay on my back. So much for the fond farewell I has planned. The loving hugs. The kisses to her calico head, the tears I would shed, the last picture and India and me together.

So off goes my husband to the shelter to explain the situation and give up the cat into better circumstances, but he returns with worse news.

He couldn't just tell the truth. We are giving up a cat that did not get along with our other animals. We were given the cat, we tried to help her as a favor to friends, but it just didn't work so we would like to find her a new home. No, he tells them that he "found" her. She is a stray. What do they do? Check her for a microchip. Does she have one? Of course she does. I had her declawed when she came to our home because all my other cats are declawed and they needed a fighting chance. And I had her micro-chipped.
Oh, the phone call I will receive on Monday! This man, with the same last name as you, living at a different address (my husband and I are separated) came in and told us he found a stray...your stray....what a STRANGE coincidence, doncha think? What would you like to do? Take her back?
Why no, this is where I throw him under the bus, get down to the truth, and say "why ever would he tell such a ridiculous story? He went to give up the cat voluntarily and then told you it was a stray? I have no idea why he would say such a thing?" Because I DON'T!!! It was a relatively simple..not easy, but understandable reason, to give up an animal, and now, we look like circus clowns.
Marvelous.
And my daughter, who said her goodbyes to India today and was gone at a friend's house while all this took place, knows nothing ad hopefully will not find out anything unusual.
Folks, stick to the truth. If you embellish, someone will ALWAYS find life's microchip!!!

Living Gymnastics

I've been a "gymnast mother." Maybe I wasn't a typical one, and maybe I didn't get there by the usual means, but somehow, I got there. I will go out on a limb and say from experience that the typical gymnast mother is pretty much living her own gymnastic dream through the exceedingly muscular and nutritionally well balanced child she taxis back and forth from the gym up to six times a week. Seven if she pays for private lessons.

My own daughter has been in "mommy and me" gymnastics with me from two to four years old. Mine was the child who broke from the circle of toddlers and made a mad dash for the big girl beams where real gymnasts in shiny leotards and bedazzled scrunchies were double twisting into piles of synthetic blocks. Mine was the three year old who insisted on wearing a black leo instead of pink, because "pink was for babies."

We took a break from age six to age eight because driving over an hour in heavy traffic, in the DC area, to get to a gym seemed ludicrous. Something crazy moms would do. So she became a Stafford Performing Star (singing and dancing) and a little league soccer player who infuriated her Marine Captain coach (we lived a stone's throw from Quantico by then) by picking daisies and singing in mid-field while the ball sailed by.

We hit Texas, land of budding gymnasts, and found a recreational gym where she took a class for an hour a week before honing her Tae Kwan Do skills, but the gymnastics bug was kicking in and soon she was asking for a "real" gym.

That is when I became a "gymnast mother." My daughter hadn't been there a week when she was selected for team and I was introduced to the world of competition, USGA card fees, team leotard costs, team warm up costs, team bag costs, and above all, tuition costs. All this I swallowed like a giant, ugly pill because my daughter was dancing up and down and literally swinging from equipment in joy.

Soon we were introduced to level three hours, and shortly after that, level four hours, and I found myself living at the gym in the observation deck. It really is pretty much like dance Moms, and the people there really are that catty. Since I was there so much and since this was costing our family several car payments to indulge in, I began to work at the gym, first in the afterschool program, and then trained as a pre-team coach for the younger gymnasts. Went to be certified and everything. All the hours my daughter trained (four hours a day, four days a week) I worked, and on the day she did not train, I worked four hours anyway and she helped coach.

Circumstances (the owner of the gym was a raving bitch) required us to move to a different gym, and this one was an hour away from our house. So gymnastics became a six hour a day experience. Two hours in the car, four hours training, me working at the new gym, and us returning at 9 p.m for my daughter to begin her homework. Four days a week.

Did I ever say that driving an hour to a gym was ludicrous?

Yep, that was me. But she was competing, doing great, up to level five, had a body of steel (also shin splints, severs in her heels, lower back pain, two dislocated elbows, hands that looked like a fifty year old construction worker, and a broken finger), but she could run for miles, flip, tumble, dance, vault, cartwheel on a beam, and swing her body around a high bar. She insisted this was the way she wanted her life to be and begged me not to change it. We were both living on the edge of sanity and somewhere in my mind I knew that I was going to have to stop the madness.

It was an injury, not to my daughter, but to me, that brought things to an abrupt halt. I was in hospital for a neck injury, couldn't drive, and my husband (who had been living apart from me anyway) was stationed in Korea. Suddenly Gymnastics simply couldn't be a priority. Ordering groceries to be delivered to the house became important. Finding out if I needed surgery became prime conversation. Getting rides to my doctor appointments and finding a neurologist became hugely important. Having a friend drive my daughter to a local gym to give her something to do and a place to temporarily work out was lower on the list but we did it.

My recovery was rather slow. My daughter and I were both shocked by the sudden end to four days a week of intense training and weekly competition, but sad as it was, and guilty as I felt, I think we both breathed a sigh of relief as time went by and we were both able to say that it would never have worked long term.

It would never have worked with a high school schedule, it would never have worked with all that homework, the late nights were catching up with both of us, and my son was alone way too much. Plus, does anyone who does not have an Olympic dream really need to live in a gym?????

For one summer after that, I tried the role of "volleyball mom," but that was short lived and I was "volleyball manager Mom" instead. Now I am quietly, and happily enjoying the role of "Master Singers Mom." The hours are shorter, the shows are delightful, and it doesn't cost me a thing. wait, I lied, I paid fifty bucks to alter the dress for her concert!! That's like one bejeweled arm of a competition leotard, so I'll take it!

Isle of Goat Writing

This is the island that I am going to lie on when I am a semi famous author:

There is no argument about this being a tropical Island. I don't do cold. Not after fifteen straight winters in Michigan. From Michigan I moved with the Military to Hawaii, and the day we left, with two sedated cats, no furniture, a couple of suitcases, and my son well on the way, at the end of May, it was still snowing in Michigan. We stepped off the plane into 85 degree weather in Honolulu, and I knew I would not be willingly experiencing another Midwest winter.

After seven years in central Texas, I am ready to add ocean to the mix. And goats.

These are the goats who will live on the roof of my humble cottage on my tropical Island when I am a semi famous author:

As long as they keep the grass cropped and do not pee through my ceiling, we will be on good terms. I have a good relationship with goats in general. Goats are even more awesome to me than dogs. They run to greet you, love to be petted, and if you are a real sicko, you can have one sleep in your bed, but to me, not having the goat in my bed, is the great part. Goats also have that cat quality; they enjoy independence.
I actually have a couple of goats in mind to bring with me, but it would involve an intricate raid to save these poor neglected creatures (fodder for another story, so stay tuned to my blog!) but here are a few of my goat friends who might ride out to the island with me in a row boat:

and my earless friend who I habitually shout at just to be annoying:

The whole point of this island (which will somehow fall into my hands without expense), is to develop my writing with nothing but nature, the sound of the ocean, goats, and my endless supply of triscuits, V8, and hmmmmmmm, sliced goat? to keep me going. I will become a recluse. A recluse with an air conditioner and electricity, and running water, and a flush toilet, wireless and internet, and an emergency phone. Doesn't look like all that would fit on the Island, you say? Sounds like I am not giving up enough? Well this is a fantasy dammit, and it isn't fully developed yet. There may be a cat or two on my island. I don't know yet, so don't knock it!!!

Cat Haiku. Series one: While you sleep

Your eyes are now closed
Surely you desire my ass
inches from your lips

Night, I watch you sleep
place both paws upon your throat
press, with all my force

Your breathing sounds strained
I will knead upon your chest
perhaps till it stops

From the dark, I watch
you wake in the night to pee
I am your witness

Warm feet on cold tile
your skin; the tip of my tail
your screams hurt my ears

Late night, I am bored
race, claws out, across your face
you wake, seem, confused

You sleep, I pet you
touch your eye, reach in your ear
Strange, why so restless?

Are you awake yet?
Let me stare into your eyes
why did you fling me?

There is no doubt in my mind. Cats are the most sinister of night stalkers yet we invite them into our homes. I have four cat stalkers and willingly allow these nightly antics. Never doubt the intelligence of a cat.

This Counts as an Emergency

Come ON!! Take up a collection in the House and Senate ASAP and empty some pockets to get these checks wired IMMEDIATELY. But of course, forget about all the kids staying home from head start, the CDC workers staying home without pay, the National Guard families trying to figure out how to pay their mortgages, Veterans taking odd jobs to make the rent, Americans delaying surgeries, cancer treatment, emptying their savings to get by this month. How about you declare this an Emergency and not a blame game. Every one of you should have been sitting in a closed room, no cameras, no press, until you come out with a long-term agreement, not some four week fix. Yeah it's hard, we GET that. But that is your job. Try harder.

Shutdown outrage: Military death benefits denied to families of fallen troops

www.washingtontimes.com

At least five families of U.S. military members killed during in Afghanistan over the weekend were given a double-whammy by federal officials: Not only have your loved

A Case of Mistaken Identity

Cats have character. At least, every one that I have taken home has. But there have been fundamental questions about this particular animal since the day his flea infested kitten body arrived in our house two years ago.

The first dilemma came when the humane society told us that "he" was a "she" and my daughter clutched him in her arms all the way from the shelter to the vet's office, we signed all the paperwork, and he had all his shots and blood-work. Then the vet came in and said, "Bella is a strange name for a boy, hehehehehehe" Thus his name was changed to Cinder. Not very manly, but it was a spur of the moment thing.


Note the private parts are covered



Next issue: is this a cat or some kind of gremlin that we accidentally fed after midnight?



Note that this animal's pure blue eyes still have not shown up in a photographic image!

Now, he got cuter. A lot cuter, and his Aryan features came into full bloom. But the issue now became, how could something so incredibly innocent and cute, inflict the kind of vicious pain upon its poor, unsuspecting owners one moment, while resting peacefully in a ball of cream fluff, the next?

 

The fangs are tiny, but incredibly sharp!

More than anything, we all wonder how something so small could turn into something like this:

This is not photo-shopped

 

The cat on the couch in the foreground is a third the size. I lied. Maybe a quarter. Eleven years his elder, she lives in a constant state of disgust because despite his size, this animal slink/runs from the room if anyone rustles a plastic shopping bag (unknown trauma from the five weeks he spent on the streets before we gave him a new home???) and cowers in fear if my son picks up a couch cushion to adjust it. (no good explanation, just a general fraidy cat). The other day the Federal Express guy delivered a package and had the audacity to ring the doorbell to announce his arrival. My cat growled. Full fledged Hounds of Baskerville clenched teeth growling. Had the guy entered the house, he would have fled under a couch, but this cat clearly has identity issues. Next step, check under all that fur for  a zipper!  If that is a cat suit he is going back to the shelter!!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dealing with An Eating Disorder

I read this poem when I was in college about a kid who had to watch her mother fight internal demons daily as she sat at the kitchen table in front of a white plate with a single white scoop of cottage cheese. Each day, tears poured down her mother's face as she tried to force herself to eat the tiny scoop, which, by the way, resembled a breast.

Having suffered with a double whammy combo of anorexia and bulimia since my junior year or High School, when I decided that fending off the scary advances of boys was a priority over my present or future health, I had a natural interest in the mother, and a fascination with what the little girl must be going through, witnessing her mother's turmoil.

Until now I had considered this mostly a personal battle, but with wrenching clarity, I was forced out of a very small and closed world, to see another side of my disease. My own mother had not suffered with an eating disorder, but she certainly had suffered, watching me decline. Frankly, I wanted to melt into the floor and never be seen by human eyes again when she discovered me throwing up for the first time, and screamed at me for ruining her life and to "clean up this bloody mess" I had made, as my fingers quite literally dripped with vomit.

It was in some ways hard to see the bitch at the table as myself, causing her daughter to be all kinds of fucked up. I saw her in turns, with distain, and with hideous sadness, just as I saw myself, and the resulting analysis was a furious depiction of a daughter raising her emotionally crippled mother, who I saw as laying the disease way too far out I the open. I was angrier with her for not hiding it well enough, than for not seeking help.

I have stopped vomiting, for the most part, and by God, nobody will ever catch me in the act again. But I have also become the woman with the cottage cheese. Not quite, because my daughter has full disclosure on my past with the disease, and we talk often about my "issue" with food control, and how devastating and invasive it is. That is supposed to excuse me from causing my own daughter to develop an eating disorder, and so far she shows none of the tell tale signs, and is healthy and open. But so far, she is only fifteen. I know I haven't dodged any bullets, but this thing still has me in a vice grip.

Every night she watches me take my portion of protein (sliced turkey),and fiber (Triscuit crackers) and vegetable (V8 juice) upstairs to eat in bed because I don't eat with everyone else. I don't measure. I eat candy too. But if I eat too much, I vomit. For three years, I stopped vomiting completely, but that is three years out of my entire adult life.

My cottage cheese comes in a different form, a little bigger portion now, and my allowable weight has been upped since I was 17, but I am fundamentally the woman in the poem. Sometimes I think I am still angrier at myself for not doing a good enough job of hiding it than for not getting adequate help.

Time for Family Dynamics

When my brain is overstimulated or possibly dabbling with the idea of being enraged, I choose to write in red. I realize this is predictable. However this will serve as a warning for the content of further posts *cough* rants. But perhaps this is not anger because I have just read the same page 6.8 times and still do not know if the parrot is alive or dead, but envy, because I lack the boldness to infringe on everyone else's personal space with such joyous abandon.

My daughter, as I have discussed, has quite a wide group of male friends, all of whom are deeply invested in the internet game "Minecraft." This game can be played alone, but what is the fun in that when one can link to others who share the same passion for building and smashing shelters, teleporting aimlessly through various biomes, and vanquishing the Enderman threat, and share the thrill with entire unwitting families?

Currently, my daughter and I are sharing a couch. (my son recently vacated the room) Nothing unusual about this, except that the only conversation being had is through a headpiece speaker system hooked to her laptop, and if she were in Kindergarten, I would be reminding her to use her "indoor voice." Something about this game makes a child who was, only moments ago, quietly reading Fahrenheit 451 with a cat curled in her lap, begin shrieking that it is utterly unfair to use THAT much dynamite to blow up her house, and mourn the fact that she will have nowhere to sleep tonight when the creepers come.

Somehow I imagined that the headphones, which indeed, fully cut out the conversation of the teen mob wandering through seed generated terrain laced with giant spiders, skeletons, and helpless pigs, would also drown out the conversation at this end. What was I thinking? The microphone which makes her look like a telemarketer or dental receptionist actually functions to amplify the shrill cries of victory as she annihilates members of a flock of sheep for food energy , the almost religious zeal with which she banishes her friend to an alternate universe, and this, as her friend protests his 4th death at her practiced hand, "you know where all the people who care have gone? They died!!!!"

Perhaps I should read with great concentration for the next two minutes, leap to the coffee table, scattering candles, a terrified cat, and homework, I all directions, and proudly proclaim "THE PARROT IS DEAD DAMMIT" (or alive, whatever my studies reveal). Teenagers in several living rooms across Harker Heights would pause, momentarily stunned into silence.....before revving into full gear again.  Worth it? I'll check with the cat.

Behold, the Mum!

After my evening in the rival High School's parking lot on the night of a Homecoming game, I became completely fascinated with the monstrosity that has evolved into, "The Texas Mum."

Some may argue this point, but, although high schools all over this country celebrate homecoming games in a variety of sports, Texas is the southern State which celebrates the tradition of the Mum with the most vigor, and in Texas, homecoming and football go hand in hand.

So what is a Mum? Well, a chrysanthemum is simply a pretty flower, originally given by a smitten boy to his one and only to wear as a corsage. Cute, right? But this, is a modern Mum:

This Mum, in fact, cost the proud owner close to $200.00 dollars and was assembled at a store so that nobody had to litter their table with ribbons, feathers, hot glue, and enough knick knacks for Kindergarten craft day.

www.kathyiscrafty.net These examples, however, are handmade by the very young ladies who wore them to the Homecoming game. These girls, whose Mum's grow in size as they advance in grade, spend hours (which in my mind could be better spent on homework, or paying the Tuba, or tormenting the cat) gluing these scraps together into either super girly or super patriotic, or super school spirit, human wreaths, to be worn hanging around one's neck....resembling a cross between a Vegas show girl, a toddler, a pageant queen, and a drag queen.

 

This Mum takes the cake, hides the girl, freaks me out, makes me afraid for humanity, and costs more than a small car. This Mum can only be found in Texas. If you find one in another state, please destroy it ASAP.www.thedomesticcurator.com 

I would not be doing complete homage to the story of the Mum if I did not explain that the Mum has a natural companion called "the garter," and no, the garter is not worn by girls, it is worn by boys. Boys (supposedly) make Mums for their girlfriends. In reality, their mothers make them, or their girlfriends simply take over so that their adorable teddy bear is not boorishly nailed to the Mum rather than oh so gently applied with a hot glue gun. Girls make the garters to match their own Mum, for the boys to wear.....on their upper arm. This has been but a brief explanation of the phenomenon which takes over Texas from mid September to late October, and I still have much to learn. This year my daughter went to both the game and the dance without a Mum; next year, I may not be so lucky!!

 

One hour in a High School Parking Lot

So, it's a Friday night and I'm sitting, alone, in my parked car outside Killeen High School, surrounded by oversized pick-up trucks. the one to my front left has a matching, oversized "Redneck" sticker slapped across the rear cab window and a pair of equally oversized truck-balls dangling from the bumper.

Why am I here? It's Homecoming, of course! My kid doesn't even attend Killen High School, but Harker Heights High is lucky enough to be playing them tonight, and my daughter made Master singers this year. What the Hell does Master Singers have to do with High School Football? Yeah! That's what I said. But I'm a newbie to all this southern stuff. The same kids who sing Russian lyrical compositions at regional tryouts get to belt out the National Anthem at Friday night games with the rest of the school tossing half eaten hot dogs and verbal abuse onto the field.

All this, and I get to wait in my car, in the parking lot, in 90 degree Texas weather because no sane Choir member would want to stay beyond the Alma Mater. (got to get home and wash the ketchup stains off the choir shirt, inside out, and iron it for next weeks abuse.)

I'm really making an effort to get into this murder mystery while I'm waiting, but I can't even remember the name of the guy that died two pages ago. (or was it the elderly female neighbor?) Kids are walking by with Mums bigger than their own heads. I am hit with another southern question. Are the Mums for the game or the dance. The dance is tomorrow. My daughter is going to the dance and she doesn't have a Mum. Especially not one bigger than her head. Even though my child has expressed absolutely no interest in the Texas Mum, I feel my own investigative juices flowing.....stay tuned if you feel the same bewilderment about gigantic, bejeweled, multi-ribboned, and garishly colored floral arrangements, with the odd sacrificial teddy bear terrifyingly hot glue gunned to the center, that I do.

My time in the car has made me eager to develop this story.

Update: The Plumber is not a Plumber

Ever been too scared to ask for your money back? Sounds like that time when the school bully stole your lunch money and it just didn't seem worth a chocolate milk and some overcooked corn to tap some kid on the shoulder and say "hey, could ya give it back, I'm hungry?"

No, this is the plumber update. A little guy and his little troll son who basically pissed me off last week have grown in stature to full fledged criminal trolls, complete with rocks to smash windows and clubs to smash skulls clutched in their knobbly fingers.

When they cashed my check after having done nothing but blown the lid off my upstairs toilet and left the broken one....broken.....I drove to Max's place of business to do just that, say "hey, could ya give it back." But upon arrival at the listed address, all I saw, sandwiched between all the other perfectly neat and respectable homes and businesses on the street, was a broken down, gutted trailer guarded by a pair of pit bulls mixed with Siberian bear. In other words, Max's plumbing service did not, and does not, in fact, exist.

A little flutter of cold fear spread through my once cynical mind. This was no longer an annoying story about some jackass who cashed a check. A total stranger had stood in my house, one week ago today, and he certainly wasn't a plumber.

I did what my single mother, previous victim of home invasion, brain signaled, and drove, without passing "GO," to the Harker Heights Police Station, where I learned that "Max" and his criminal ways is known well to those in uniform. 

First question from the kind officer was, "do you have an alarm system?"
I heard the rest, about reinforcing my front door lock with the proper length three inch screws to avoid my door being kicked down (it would take three kicks now, rather than one) and holding my keys in an offensively poking device-like manner every time I left the house, clearing every room before I settle in when I return from buying milk, and taking pictures of all my valuables on my cell phone as soon as possible, but it was through a fog of WTF.

Did I say I have a freak magnet? Refer to previous posts. I do. By God, I do! Stick with me folks, and your life, too, can become complicated by an empty toilet tank.