Dial A Cliché to the rescue

In those rare occasions during which I am feeling verbally lackluster, unable to put the cartoonish thought bubbles together with real live fiery communicative words, it can become a slightly spirit-lifting (or, perhaps, spirit leveling -depending on how desperately one needs a lifesaving cliche to fit a bill and then how poorly it stands under the scrutiny) test to turn to Dial A Cliché for a tiny palate cleansing taste of inspiration.

Thinking that my cartoon thought bubble neuropathy had something to do with a sprain in my decision-making lobe, I headed directly to the category 'For When You Cannot Make A Decision', wherein lay the golden nugget I'd sought:

If it doesn't come naturally, leave it

OF COURSE! THAT is what I've been missing all this time, leaving things alone! The dirty dishes, the laundry, the vacuuming, the dusting, the dried-up grass cat pukeballs, the kitchen floor crumb-combo-cat hair layer, the stacks of unread mags, the still larger stacks of unopened mail, the clutter, AND my wordlessness -- I should be leaving them alone, untackled, because for heaven's sake none of them feels natural to address.

Only ... um, well that's exactly what I have(n't) been doing for months now. Oh I have with near religious university science department fervor observed them each, collectively, mounting, growing, morphing. But I've done little to nothing about any of them, with the possible exceptions of 'ignore', 'pretend to not see', and quite possibly the additional 'swallow my feelings of revulsion/alarm'.

Obviously, that cliché has gone the way of so many over-hunted, over-eaten delicacies that now line the extinction charts. New cliché; I need a new one.

I'm trying to figure out where my words went; I'm trying to understand why I can't get a solid grip on all the things I can't get a solid grip on. And I'm certain there must be a cliché that will explain the phenonema. Hmm, this category seems to fit: 'When you are trying very hard and not having any success'.
Aaaahh, here it is:

If at first you don't succeed, redefine success.

How to redefine these glaring omissions of daily personal care and activities?
Well, I might not have opened the mail for going on two months, but nearly ALL the mail previous to that time has seen the sharp side of the letter opener. (hey, this is interesting. Makes me feel tingly.)

Ooh Ooh Ooh - that was good, let's do another! mmm... I may have a contant sludging flow of dirty dishes stagnating near the kitchen sink however I have not resorted to using the antique platter that is stored in the bottom bin of the oven for serving macaroni and cheese, nor have I brought out the Easter egg style Jell-O Jigglers molds to be used in place of the grubby ice cube trays. (wheee! I think I'm liking this! It's so easy!)

Don't stop me now! Three cats' worth of tracked litter, hairballs and barfed-up grassballs is so much better non-managed than, say, six cats' worth. Just think how messy that would be; my floors are positively sparkling in comparison! (I think I need a private moment here - this is a reverential experience I'm having. Do I have a glow? Can you see my Holy Glow?)


I'm positively giddy.
I've turned over a whole new leaf.
I'm a blushing bride.
I'm happy as a schoolgirl.
etc.
etc.
etc.
blahblahblah, yadda yadda.

Nothing like a good cliché to purge the demons. In fact I feel so swell I think I'll just pull over a stack of years-old magazines and put my feet up for a few. Aaahhhhh...

North Carolina roadside wildflowers

I am part canine

McBeth.

I have been scanning old family photographs in hopes of one day being able to provide each of my sibs and other interested kin with a photographic collection of the few pictures we have remaining between us.

This photograph makes me grin each and every time I look at it. To the left, my maternal great-grandfather Clyde. To the right, his brother (whose name currently escapes me. But I do have it written down. Somewhere. Really. I do).

I'm fairly sure my great-grandfather was part bulldog. Cute bulldog, of course, but probably growly and drooly and occasionally (!) ill-tempered.

sweet sarah sighing

I think of her and prepare to weep.

She's right, you know.
A good hour and twelve precise minutes of pre-dawn clarity for whatever that's worth and then, too quickly, the world returns its lusty blustery frustrating gristing wrestling flexing and bending but so slowly ending ways.

4:48 Psychosis

Kane could have written 22:48:00 Psychosis since truly the one hour and twelve exacting minutes of sanity in a day requires the broadest tone-deaf tongueless accuracy one can muster. Details perceived - painfully clear interactions unavoidably read and real - words cannot bind them together faithfully.

The fragility of the ant thorax, no less amazing than ceaseless noiseless REM that fogs in the airport, shutting it and the town, hell, the entire tri-county region directly unavoidably down once Seroquel trickles into the fuel tank.

How do I go?
How do I go?
How do I go?

There was a film crew in Madison today working on the upcoming movie The Last Kiss (due out 2006). Apparently the film is supposed to be set here in town but they're cutting corners in their budget by filming spots and scenes here for building/product placement type stuff then they're leaving us with a flourish for some place in Canada where it's cheaper to continue the rest of the filming.

Ha. I say all this crap as though I'm somehow in the know. Honestly, I had no idea any of this was going on ahead of time, but got to chatting with blanketmates when KD and I arrived at our spread and I learned all these fascinating details. Before the Concert on the Square even began I was itching to leave our space and meander away where there were fewer people per square foot. So I broke away from the growing crowd up on the capital square to find the film crew folks in front of the City County building (on Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd, for those familiar).

Who knows, this scene probably isn't supposed to be v. funny ... Rachel's character says "but..but...Michaelll. MICHAEL!" and she runs off camera.

I know nuffink about filming but after she did the "MICHAEL! MICHAEL!" screaming, and then did it like 8 times more, again and again and again, it sorta started to crack me up. Audibly. And I would have gone to look for Michael if she'd just asked me.

papayas and people

"The magic is inside you. There ain't no crystal ball."
-Dolly Parton

THe Ninja Turtles never had such specialized sofa pillow shells Jordan and Dominick, archival edition circa 1993

Miaowy palm tree trunk detail.

Her baby's momma ain't the regular momma for this baby

On Sunday afternoon a friend phoned KD to relay some potentially exciting new news to me. She and another friend had apparently been discussing the bird picture I shot last week and he (the friend. Keep up with me here, willya?) was fairly sure that my mysterious unidentified oversized tweetering tot was, in fact, a cowbird fledgling much like the one pictured.


Check this out ... According to this article, cowbird mommas are nature's equivalent to a Las Vegas relationship. In, out. Bada-bing, bada-bang. She slips into another bird's nest to drop an egg into the bevvy of adorable pre-birds that the current nest dweller already has her haunches poised to fluff over with her warm belly feathers. Does it have to be a cowbird nest? HELL NO! Does she need much time? NO WAY!

Those critters are smart ... S--M--R--T. Letting someone else raise the babies, fill the flock, breeding bonanzas right and left. Meanwhile, there's a sparrow who could really use a ten week sabbatical or at the very least a Calgon soak, tired to the bone of feeding that supersized and oddly unfamiliar looking child of hers.

I've been scanning through web images of cowbirds, unable so far to make a positive ID on the coloring and pattern of the baby bird from my photo. But while I continue my searching, it sure seems a likely explanation that her baby's momma was a different momma with lots of babies and who knows how many daddies.

(And we think we need soap operas and docu-dramas to provide us our melodramadic fill?)

"Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature."

-- Helen Keller

fooled you!

McBeth.

you thought it was a pepper plant, didntcha? DINCHA?!

Well HAH!

Ohhhh... it is, it iiisssss.

But instead of that saliva-sucking heat that jalapenos usually produce, these will produce a lighter back-burner sort of heat, a mild simmering delightful addition to our burrito-ey summer fare.

Because as less than fond as I am of HOT-hotness, I am a sucker for growing a peppers with a clever name.

gardening stigmata

McBeth.

I do not like gardening with gloves.

With gloves on I can't feel the plants, I can't feel the dirt, I can't sift out the rocks. Gardening gloves make my hands sweaty and they make me feel slightly claustrophobic in that way that tight turtleneck sweaters make me feel like I can't breathe on the rare occasions I wear them.

Unfortunately, I am now bearing the physical results of no-glove heavy duty gardening.

I did learn one important first aid lesson from this experience that might be worth passing along. You can take my word on this, too: Unless you are in the mood for breath-sucking seeing-stars pain (and you might be because I know sometimes I am) -- When you have a largeish wound in an area with lots of nerve endings that is also a difficult area on which to keep a Band-Aid, do not spray it with that new spray-on bandage sealing stuff they sell at Walgreen's.

Hurts.
Like.
A.
Bitch.

feather flexing

McBeth.

While having my morning coffee and cigarette outside on the front step this morning I heard the chuttered squalling and feather ruffling of a baby bird waiting impatiently to be fed.

To my great surprise it was not a tiny sparrow being fed by the sparrow parent, but rather, a -- starling? Hmm, no it doesn't look at all like a starling but I'm honestly not sure just yet what kind of bird the mammoth-looking baby is (in comparison to the wee sparrow). It was a giganto baby, that's what it was. The rare Giganto bird, ahhhhyessss.

They stayed just long enough for me to grab the AA batteries that had been recharging overnight and get the camera set up for a couple of shots.

(If you can I.D. the baby let me know and I'll add it in here.)

Birds will flex adoptive muscles to care for another's young... who knew?!

a spade and a hoe

McBeth.

I accidentally picked a weed yesterday.

Or maybe my mind knows when I myself need a good weeding and it just sends me out to find one outstandingly tall misdirected and unwelcome plant ready for the picking.

When I weed, all else in inconsequential. I couldn't give a flying fig whose car is coming up the street or whose has just left; I don't hear the sirens and ambulances; the highway noise floats far far away. The background chatter volume is reduced by three clicks in my head. My fingers become outrageously sensitive, feeling for the best direction of tug to pull the entire plant, full roots and all, from the earth.


Again, today, both the internal and external weather look to be perfect for a long quiet uprooting time.

Two year old Charlie is becoming his own man, with definite preferences of habit and style that may well stay with him the rest of his life. Or the toothbrush passion may go away in another year. That's one of the thrills of childhood: so much can go any of a thousand different ways depending on another thousand variety of factors. My sister has learned that his shrill baby-pterodactyl shriek means "While I'm grateful for your offer of assistance, Mother, I'd really prefer to handle this task myself". Same with the military-style index finger wag into her face, accompanied with a sharp "NO MOMMA!". The rough translation is 'lay off, lady or I'll stick this finger up your nostril until it reaches your brain stem'.

One of Charlie's current fascinations is shoes. He loves shoes. If it was legal for a toddler to marry, and then for a toddler to marry an inanimate object, and then for a toddler to marry an inanimate object in the state of Iowa - he'd marry a shoe. Then he'd probably move to Utah where he'd marry multiple shoes and live happily ever after with hundreds of them. Charlie puts shoes onto his small wide feet hundreds of times each day. Daddy's shoes, Mommy's shoes, Charlie's shoes. The shoes down by the garage entrance, the shoes in Mommy and Daddy's closet; any shoe anywhere.

During this past weekend visit we were treated to a Charlie shoe fashion show in which he click-clacked out from Mommy and Daddys' room wearing (first) two black slip-on high-heel sandals belonging to my sister. After a traipse through the kitchen (and c'mon, the kitchen floor is OBVIOUSLY the best place for a shoe fashion show, what with the big tile floor. Carpeted bedroom floors simply won't produce that satisfying *clomp clip clomp* the same way a solid linoleum or wood or tile floor will). After he watched his feet parade through the living area in Momma's black heels he disappeared momentarily, returning shortly after wearing one strappy white dressy high heeled sandal on his left foot. For the number of times I calculated whose shoes were on his feet, I have to surmise that Mommy apparently wears the shoes with the best clackety-clack value. Or maybe it's the open-toed style he prefers because he can see what's going on down there at foot-level.

My sister happened upon these slippers at the Dollar Store recently and figured that they might fit the bill for the combination of Charlie's "I DO MYSELF!" and his shoe passion. Oh, and his aminal adoration. And his growing language capabilities. For a buck, that's quite a deal.

Beeeee. Suessssss.

That's what these are. Charlie's Beeee.Suessssss. And near as I can tell, this is how they work: Slip on. Slip off. Slip on. Watch your toes wiggle in there under the wings. Slip off. Check your toes to see if they have wings attached to them. Slip on. Run through the kitchen to the window to see how fast the Beeee.Suesssss. will carry you. Slip off. Line up a few trucks on the floor. Line up some trucks against your Beeee.Suessssss. Slip on. Move your feet away from the military straight line of trucks to evaluate the situation. Sit down on Aunt Beppie's lap for a picture of your Beeeee.Suesssss. Rinse. Repeat.

sleeping theo

McBeth.

Child rearing myth #1: Labor ends when the baby is born.
--Unknown

Some days it felt as though the forces of the universe were causing instability everywhere, even in her most basic routines.

One day, she felt a change coming.

"Every act of creation is first of all an act of destruction".

-Pablo Picasso

Little Fly

Don't underestimate the value of Doing Nothing,
of just going along, listening to all the things you can't hear,
and not bothering.
- Pooh's Little Instruction Book, inspired by A. A. Milne

Along the Appalachian Trail

McBeth.

It's not like the far western finger of North Carolina is an ugly part of the U.S.: lush green mountains undulating, peaking high and valleying so low so you'd swear you are riding a colorful slow-motion rollercoaster without a lap belt.

The roadsides near Murphy and Andrews give a sweet little extra icing on the cake with batches of these wildflowers. In fact, throughout Florida, Kentucky, Tennessee, and North Carolina similar wildflower projects have been successfully established and are refreshing eye candy.