Take a Letter

G Whiz.

That’s the word from the World Scrabble Championships in Warsaw where a player accused of hiding a tile with the letter G was on the edge of exposure. His opponent demanded he be taken to the bathroom and strip searched.

I’ve flirted with the dark side before. The side where rules are suggestions and the difference between theft and borrowing is the time it takes to consume the last chocolate chip cookie before somebody notices.

But the day I send somebody in for the TSA treatment over a missing consonant, may Vanna White herself hang up her last slinky evening gown and retire in protest. Maybe the Scrabble folks should take a tip from ole Vanna and keep their letters out in the open where there’s no place to hide. And if somebody wants to buy a vowel, the prize money can cover it.

Somehow a strip search over one G seems a little extreme. Sometimes I can’t remember whole words, and there are times when the name of my oldest child slips off the radar of my mind. One consonant isn’t going to jumpstart the memory banks all alone. These days I can’t sign a check without a hint.

Then I found out the prize for the winner of the World Championship is £12,700. I’m told there are places where people strip for a lot less than what amounts to $20,000, give or take a G String. So if 99% of the population is shucking their clothes for a heap less than that one winner gets, maybe it’s time to Occupy Game Night.

Until then, keep your shirt on.

What Child Is This?

Welcome to the Absolute Write October Blog Chain. This month's theme is Masquerade. And I can't help wondering. . .Who is this kid?


Talk about blended families. Our family tree has more ex’s than a Tic Tac Toe tournament. At 2:00 in the afternoon on holiday weekends all the children automatically rotate parents from force of habit. This weekend, I found myself seated at dinner next to an entertaining young man who was engaged in a fork joust in an effort to to keep his creamed corn from touching his potato salad.

“Well, hello.” I’m nothing if not a sparkling conversationalist.

The fork executed a remarkable thrust and parry to save yet another food item from corn domination. “Yo.”

Limited verbal motivation. Uncombed hair. Aversion to cohabitation of vegetables. I hate that nagging feeling that you’ve seen someone before and can’t remember where.

“And who do you belong to?” I really should write this stuff down.

“You. I’m your first-born male child. I inherit your kingdom, such as it is.”

“What’s your name?”

“You told me not to tell anybody that doesn’t say the code word.”

“What’s the code word?”

“Nice trick. You warned me you might try that.”

I liked him better when he was poking holes in the entrée.

I squinted critically and turned his face side to side with my palm. “You don’t look like me.”

“Yet one more thing to be thankful for.”

I paused to consider. Wit coupled with a side order of sarcasm. A single sterling family trait does not make him an heir to my fortune in frozen Girl Scout cookies and unrecycled grocery bags.

“So what’s your name?”

“Nice try, Mom.”

“If I’m your Mom, tell me something personal that only I would know.”

“You hide leftover Easter candy in your underwear drawer, you can’t reach the Tupperware bowls on the second shelf, and you cry during the end of Secondhand Lions whether you see the first half of the movie or not.”

A few lucky guesses does not equal a DNA match.

“And what happened on Friday,” I queried, conjuring up memories of Family Scrabble Night.

He swallowed the last bite of uncontaminated potato salad and guzzled a half gallon of iced tea without stopping for breath. “Friday was allowance day. You owe me five dollars.”

Anybody with that kind of money memory has my blood in his veins.

Now how can I get him to tell me the family password? Maybe I can buy a vowel.


Follow the blog chain. There is no weakest link!

Auburn Assassin and direct link to her post

Hillary Jacques and direct link to her post

Aimee Laine and direct link to her post

Ralph Pines and direct link to his post

Veinglory and direct link to her post

Laffarsmith and direct link to her post

PASeaholtz and direct link to his post

Madelein Eirwen and direct link to her post

Amy Doodle <== YOU ARE HERE

CScottMorris

Orion_mk3

Dolores Haze

Aheila

FreshHell

IrishAnnie

Lilain

Semmie

Bettedra

Desperately Seeking Something

Because I don’t spend enough time looking for things in my daily life, I bought a word search puzzle book. The idea is to find and circle words that are hidden inside a box with a bunch of unalphabetized letters, which is good because finding the other kind would be too much like filing. Word Search is like a scavenger hunt only you don’t have to go next door to your spooky neighbor’s house asking for a kitchen knife or a set of hot curlers.

My first search was for a pencil. Ever the optimist, I looked in the cup on my desk. I found four broken blue crayons, two fountain pens with no ink, and a petrified Milkbone. I briefly thought about trying to use the Milkbone, but the Dachshund is possessive and I’m pretty sure she can take me in a fight. She is not known for fair play.

I looked under the sofa cushions, in the glove compartment of the car, and in my jewelry box, where I found the safety pin I needed last week for an unbecoming wardrobe malfunction. Later that afternoon while doing the laundry, I found a pencil stub in the lint trap of the dryer. The eraser was melted, but if we wait for all our blessings to come at once there will be nothing left for the Rapture, so I forged ahead.

I sat down with my puzzle book and my pencil stub. Immediately I found several words. None of them were in the word list and I’m not sure that all of them were English. At least one of them made the dog blush. Perhaps I needed an eraser after all. I scratched out my ineligible answers with the safety pin and circled a likely looking word using all the letters on one side of the puzzle. If this were Scrabble, I could clinch the victory with a Q and an unabridged dictionary.

About that time the Dachshund tackled me in an announced Milkbone raid and broke the point of my pencil stub. So now I’m off to search for the pencil sharpener. But that’s okay. I haven’t found any more words to circle anyway. I think I’ll write to Vanna and ask to buy a vowel.

Wonder where I can find her address?

The Legacy

As far as legacies go, my tastes lie with something simple, like a check. Or stock. Or heirloom china. Unfortunately Mama wasn’t the heirloom china type. What I got when she departed for the peaceful place where mothers don’t have to cook, clean, or say, “If I told you once, I told you a million times,” was not the inheritance I assumed was my birthright. What she left me was the very thing I was the least qualified to handle. Wisdom.

Giving me a lapful of life lessons is like tossing me a copy of the Atkins diet and a size six sheath dress and telling me the party starts at seven. You may as well shove the plans for building a biplane into my arms and tell me to be in Paris by midnight. When it comes to legacies, it’s best to just go ahead and hand me a gold bar.

Now that I’m in the stage of life where good advice usually involves a recipe loaded with fiber, I realize that what Mama left me was a handbook for life. Thanks to the seeds my mom planted in the rocky garden of my mind over the years, I’ve sailed through many of the stormy seas of life without having to evacuate to life boats. Turns out Mom knew best all along. Here are Mama’s Rules to Live By—along with some of my own observations for those who, like me, have trouble following directions.

1. There is something to love in every person. However, there are some people who hide that something really well. Actually, Mama just said that first part. I learned the second part from my sister.

2. If you rip a page out of your brother’s comic book, he can rip a page out of yours. This is a mother of four’s version of The Golden Rule. I learned to treat friends, family, and their possessions with respect. And I’ll never know what happened to Archie and Jughead that day at Riverdale High.

3. Give a child two cookies; one for each hand. This is a smart idea because it keeps the child busy for twice as long, diverts him from "helping" with your biscuit dough and prevents you from having to walk every morning for a week to work off two cookies that you would have eaten to relieve stress if your child had two hands free to plunge into the dog's food.

4. Don’t honk your horn at anybody. At first I assumed this was Mama’s version of traveling etiquette, but now I realize that she understood road rage long before anyone held up traffic trying to read road signs through the wrong part of skinny designer bifocals.

5. Always have a skill you can fall back on. By this, I know now that she meant a skill that will continue to be of service to the Community of Man. Unfortunately the skill I chose was typing, which caused typewriters to immediately become extinct.

6. If you’re not tall enough to see out the car window, sit on a pillow. Improvise. Adapt. Overcome. Even the Marines agree with her.

7. If something particularly unpleasant is happening to you, there’s probably a lesson involved. Wade through a puddle or two on the linoleum and you’ll remember to let the new puppy out. You’ll also remember to buy a mop.

8. Don’t sell things you can give away. That might not make sense in an e-Bay world, but knowing that someone who needs it will have a warm coat for the winter goes a long way toward offsetting the thrill of bagging $1.50 for your old hula lamp in an online auction.

9. Play to win. Unless that gets in the way of playing for fun. When playing Scrabble with an elderly woman who can’t see past her elbow, give her a break if she thinks she drew five blanks. Come to think of it, that’s how Mom always won at Scrabble, so there’s probably an extra lesson tucked in there.

10. Always take time to watch the birds at the birdfeeder. Time spent with nature is a peace of mind investment. And last winter, a tiny chickadee who muscled his way through a crowd of rowdy cardinals to have lunch gave me some great ideas for handling the next family reunion. And the big project due at work.

11. Don’t worry, it’ll get worse. This was my mom’s slogan. When I was three and ran to her with a skinned knee, she said it. She was right. I broke my arm. When I was thirty-three and getting divorced, she said it again. And soon my kids became teenagers. But by then, I had it figured out. If things can get worse, the problems that seem overpowering right now aren’t the end of the world. Things can also get better. So if teaching two teenaged boys to drive and adding them to my insurance is the worst life has to offer, I can handle it.

But I sure wouldn’t turn down a check.

Happy Mother's Day, Mom.

Patchwork

Yesterday I spent a satisfying afternoon soaking up the sunshine and weeding my stick garden. Today, I spent an agonizing morning trying to move my legs and get out of bed.

My muscles were as stiff as the mummifed ragweed border by the walkway, my sinuses felt like they’d been roto-rootered without anesthesia, and my scalp held in heat like a solar panel. My joints sounded like a roll of bubble wrap in a blender.

The old saying is painfully true: after 40 it’s patch, patch, patch.

Looking around, I find that perhaps the old saying reveals itself differently these days. I have a friend who wears a patch on her shoulder to help her quit smoking, one who plants a patch on her hip for birth control, and one who pastes a patch on her thigh to help her avoid Weapons of Mass Chocolate Distribution.

I’d have to put that last one across my mouth for it to do any good. I borrowed one once and stuck it on the Haagen-Dazs label where they print the fat and calorie content, but it didn’t help much.

As it is, I’m holding out for an over 40 patch: one that can tell me where I parked my car, and why I went to the mall in the first place. A patch that can clue me in to why I went to the kitchen carrying a stack of folded underwear and two Dora the Explorer videos and where my glasses are hiding before my teenagers find them on my head.

I need a patch that warns me that not to bend down to pick up any denomination of money that can’t be folded, because loose change won’t pay the doctor bills to help me recover from the bending episode. A patch that reminds me sometime before supper that my morning coffee is warming in the microwave, and that helps me keep up with what destination I had in mind when I’m aimlessly circling the block with my head bowed, attempting to peer through the top of my trifocals for familiar landmarks.

I haven’t always been this way. When I was younger, my Mom always took me along to fill out forms because I could remember important information such as our current address and her birthday. I knew who she was supposed to buy birthday cards for during any given month, what kind of pizza to watch for when we went to the buffet, and to check the backs of her Scrabble tiles when she announced that she had six blanks and an “I.” I could thread her needles, stir the corn before it smelled like scorched corduroy, and read the fine print on the packet when she wanted to plant daisies. So how did I end up this way?

The answer came to me like the first sneezing fit of springtime. I was fine until I had children. So the next time the kids tease me about the patches I use to help me through the day I’ll put their priorities in order. “Just remember the cabbage patch. Without it you wouldn’t be here.”

Now if you’ll excuse me, I seem to remember putting on the kettle for tea this morning. Or was that yesterday?

You're It!

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t lack the competition gene. If it were up to me, not only would the National Football League still allow excessive displays of emotion after every goal scored, the victory dance would stand on its own as a separate event, complete with judges murmuring together over technique and holding up cardboard placards with the scores. Interpretations of the Chicken Dance would rate extra credit.

I don’t mind coyly pointing out that I’ve been known to perform my own ritualistic dance of victory, choreographed with vigor and soul to a stirring rendition of Aretha Franklin’s version of R-E-S-P-E-C-T. I used to trot it out after family games of Parcheesi, Scrabble, and Monopoly until that unfortunate incident with the dog got me banned from participating in Family Game Night. That turned out all right because I ate all the leftover roast and blamed it on him, so his name is still on the naughty list right beneath mine and he’s not trusted alone with a roast. Anyway, a victory dance, although still satisfying to the soul, is not completely effective after a rousing game of computer solitaire.

It is my opinion, and therefore accurate, that appreciation of competition need not go hand in hand with rigorous physical exercise. Therefore, when I got tagged by the ever-gregarious Wordsmith, I immediately checked the rules on her insightful and well-written (Erika, you owe me extra for the infomercial) blog (Musings From the Mitten) to see if any actual physical exertion is involved. While an enthusiastic proponent of competition, I’m not a fan of sweat, and have often considered dressing the dog in baby clothes so that I can avoid the physical exertion of a long walk by grabbing the parking spot at the front door of the market marked for mothers with small children. However, the dog is still harboring a grudge from the roast beef incident and refuses to cooperate.

Thankfully, the only aerobics involved in this game of tag are fingers flying low over the keyboard. I’m clear for take-off.

The way I understand the rules of the game, bearing in mind that rules are often subject to my own colorful interpretation, is this:

Link to the tagger and post these rules on your blog. Share five facts about yourself on your blog, some random, some weird. (Although random and weird are often synonyms in my case.) Tag five people at the end of your post by leaving their names as well as links to their blogs. Let them know they are tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

Alrighty then. Sit back and prepare to be entertained. Amused. Well, just sit still long enough to count to five.
1. I’ve been in a building that was on fire. It was a church. I came out okay. Well, not with anything I could bill the insurance for, anyway.
2. I wear my husband’s socks. Girl socks just won’t stay up.
3. I broke my arm in high school. I fell three inches. I don’t feel that this incident is in any way indicative of my physical coordination. (Perhaps I should disable the blog comments at this time.)
4. The blog entry I wrote about the results of my son’s personality test showing he has the same traits as Hannibal Lecter was true. Except for the part where I mowed down the stop sign. I barely touched it.
5. My husband took the same test. Same results. I’m afraid to open meat tenderizer in the kitchen.

Okie dokie, for the fun part: I’m tagging. . . let’s see a show of hands now. . .KODB at TheDoggerelKing, Wynter at FlibbityGibbet, Ltd. at Mama Needs A Book Contract, Janna at Something She Wrote, and Sdarb at From Rebel Deb to Doublewide.