Many thanks to Rhonda, over at The Braves Are Getting Restless, for the Versatile Blogger Award. I don’t know if I’m so much versatile as a random multitasker, but versatile sounds so much better when you’re stuck in the same old rut grooming Labs and peeling carrots, which is a lot better, I’ve found, than peeling Labs and grooming carrots because you never get to the end of all those little sticky little layers of hair and besides carrots simply will not do as they’re told.
The rules of play for Versatile Bloggers are such that:
1. I’m supposed to thank the giver. Thanks Rhonda!
2. I’m supposed to list seven things about myself. Luckily the rules don’t specify riveting things or exciting things or even pinky-swear things. I can probably get by with any vital statistics I can still remember well enough to fudge on.
3. I'm supposed to pass this award to five bloggers. I can’t guarantee this one. I’ll try, but I’m somewhat abstract in thought and tend to wander off long before I decide which discipline to use for counting. If I’m holding a doughnut, one hand is occupied, and my counting abilities are restricted by process of elimination.
So let's send our award over to Stace at Betwixt and Between, Janna at Something She Wrote , Beth at Squiggle, and then if anybody else wants to count to seven, feel free to follow along. And then let us know.
1. I’m surrounded by guys. I have the Captain and Sons Chromosome Y the First and Y the Second. Even the dogs are male. On Friday nights after the role playing gamers drift in, I find testosterone hanging from the fixtures like Spanish moss on Southern pines. And nothing will get that up when they grind it in the floor with their duct-taped tennis shoes. I tried Mr. Clean, but that just made it worse.
2. I have strange taste in men. (Sorry Cap.) If William Faulkner were alive today, I’d ditch George Clooney like last year’s Pradas and follow ole Bill from town to town chanting, “Let’s hear that Nobel Prize speech again!” and tossing him copies of my old term papers.
3. While everyone else in the South is making a pilgrimage to Graceland to see Elvis, I’m hanging out a Rowan Oak (Faulkner’s Old Mississipi Home), hoping to catch the faint scent of pipe smoke. Okay, I’ve only been once, but I have pictures.
4. I also love Fitzgerald, Wilder, and Poe, but really, a girl’s gotta draw the line somewhere. But wouldn’t Poe be delighted by the number of chicks adopting a Goth lifestyle today? I saw enough black fingernails at the mall today to send him into a frenzy.
5. I’m in favor of the serial comma. If you’re listing serial killers and write The Boston Strangler, Charles Manson and me (just ask my jade plant how many of his brothers have gone to the great garden in the sky), then you’ve teamed me up with Charlie Manson and there’s not a ficus in the world who stands a chance. Better to separate us with a comma and avoid an ugly peat moss scene.
6. I almost lost my Girl Card because I don’t have a shoe fetish, but I have a double major in earrings and finger foods. Luckily I have both a sister and a niece who churn out jewelry like Rumplestiltskin spins straw, but I’m on my own to find petit fours in a small Southern town where fried pickles are considered a delicacy. (The pickles are pretty good.)
7. I like soggy cereal. Which is a good thing, because with the amount of teeth I have, it takes a village to go through a bowl of Captain Crunch. Oh, sure, if you’ve seen me grin, it looks like I’ve got more than my share, but get past the store front teeth and you’ll find that I have to hire a cast of extras to eat a box of Cracker Jacks. The peanuts I have to subcontract out.
8. I love a good murder mystery. When I was a kid, I would hide all the household knives after an especially good round with Agatha Christie in order to foil any lurking, slobbering psycopaths. After a while, family members would casually ask me, “Where did you put them?” when they went in the kitchen to make a sandwich.
9. I’m rebellious when it comes to counting.
Laugh
Showing posts with label Cracker Jacks. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cracker Jacks. Show all posts
Friday, July 9, 2010
Sunday, September 7, 2008
A Bang and a Whimper
Because I didn’t have any armed artillery rounds to juggle, I decided to spend Sunday afternoon cleaning the boys’ room, a happy little corner of the world I like to call The Wasteland.
The guys were going to clean it out soon anyway, I’m sure. Back at the turn of the century I told Son Two, the Procrastinator, to straighten up his room if he wanted to have friends over to play pin the tail on the Pac Man. At the time, he was in fifth grade. He’ll graduate from college in the next few years, but I’m holding fast to my rule. So I know they were gonna take care of it sooner or later, but after the rusty nail incident I thought it was in the best interests of everybody to give them a hand.
I learned a lot of things this afternoon. First, I learned that juggling armed artillery rounds is easier than forcing jewelry on J-Lo compared to shoveling a decade’s worth of trading cards and sludge-filled Yoo Hoo bottles from the shag under the box springs in The Wasteland. The landscape around Chernobyl smacks of a trip down the yellow brick road compared to the terrain under those twin beds. (Flying monkeys excluded.)
Next, I learned that while the kids took my advice over the years, they applied a more literal translation of "save for the future" than I intended. Anyone who has ever spent three hours chiseling two dimes and a souvenir penny from a petrified Play Doh statue that has welded itself to a bookshelf with time and liberal applications of dust can feel my pain. I found enough change to pay off our church’s building debt and add a multi-sports complex out back, but I was afraid to touch any of it without notifying the Environmental Protection Agency. Both Obama and McCain say we need change. I’ve got it if they dare to come after it. But I'd advise they load up on oxygen masks, Kevlar gloves, and antiseptic wipes. A load of odor-eaters wouldn't hurt.
The third thing I learned is that a stray Cracker Jack will maintain its original form and composition no matter how much time passes or how many natural disasters come along to cover it with cat hair and dust bunnies. A Cracker Jack must be the basic building block upon which all other things are made. That and Easter Peeps. Which I found hibernating in someone's underwear drawer.
All the experience I earned today will stand me in good stead should I choose a new career as a hazardous waste transporter. But the most important thing I brought out of the Seventh Level of the Dirty Place was this: when an old woman slips on a decayed Snickers bar, careens off a peg-legged rocking chair, and lands with all of her the considerable heft on an ancient whoopee cushion that’s been repaired with duct tape and left to ripen for seven years, that cushion will still whoopee with gusto.
The sound will echo around the room like she’s been juggling live artillery rounds and dropped one. And as the previously empty space fills up with all the folks that neglected to help with the terrible task, she should drop the rest.
The guys were going to clean it out soon anyway, I’m sure. Back at the turn of the century I told Son Two, the Procrastinator, to straighten up his room if he wanted to have friends over to play pin the tail on the Pac Man. At the time, he was in fifth grade. He’ll graduate from college in the next few years, but I’m holding fast to my rule. So I know they were gonna take care of it sooner or later, but after the rusty nail incident I thought it was in the best interests of everybody to give them a hand.
I learned a lot of things this afternoon. First, I learned that juggling armed artillery rounds is easier than forcing jewelry on J-Lo compared to shoveling a decade’s worth of trading cards and sludge-filled Yoo Hoo bottles from the shag under the box springs in The Wasteland. The landscape around Chernobyl smacks of a trip down the yellow brick road compared to the terrain under those twin beds. (Flying monkeys excluded.)
Next, I learned that while the kids took my advice over the years, they applied a more literal translation of "save for the future" than I intended. Anyone who has ever spent three hours chiseling two dimes and a souvenir penny from a petrified Play Doh statue that has welded itself to a bookshelf with time and liberal applications of dust can feel my pain. I found enough change to pay off our church’s building debt and add a multi-sports complex out back, but I was afraid to touch any of it without notifying the Environmental Protection Agency. Both Obama and McCain say we need change. I’ve got it if they dare to come after it. But I'd advise they load up on oxygen masks, Kevlar gloves, and antiseptic wipes. A load of odor-eaters wouldn't hurt.
The third thing I learned is that a stray Cracker Jack will maintain its original form and composition no matter how much time passes or how many natural disasters come along to cover it with cat hair and dust bunnies. A Cracker Jack must be the basic building block upon which all other things are made. That and Easter Peeps. Which I found hibernating in someone's underwear drawer.
All the experience I earned today will stand me in good stead should I choose a new career as a hazardous waste transporter. But the most important thing I brought out of the Seventh Level of the Dirty Place was this: when an old woman slips on a decayed Snickers bar, careens off a peg-legged rocking chair, and lands with all of her the considerable heft on an ancient whoopee cushion that’s been repaired with duct tape and left to ripen for seven years, that cushion will still whoopee with gusto.
The sound will echo around the room like she’s been juggling live artillery rounds and dropped one. And as the previously empty space fills up with all the folks that neglected to help with the terrible task, she should drop the rest.
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