Welcome to Heidi!

If books were attractions at DisneyLand, Heidi Clement’s book, Welcome to Heidi” would be Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride. Her experiences are hand-picked from the kind of blog posts that make us realize how exciting, exuberant, and downright entertaining life can be – if you gaze at it through kaleidoscope-colored glasses.  Let’s focus today on Chapter Three, the one I like to call the “Koo-Koo for Cocoa Puffs” Chapter.

 

There are times in everyone’s life when they need a psychic. 

Okay, maybe it’s just me and it’s not need in the same way that you need to have a drippy chocolate doughnut or someone’s going to lose an arm, but you’d really like to know how events around the corner are going to play out, and could sure use the wisdom of someone who can peek into the future and tell you if leggings will go out of style before you lose 50 pounds.

Or if the shoes that are the perfect match for that “I Got a Promotion and You Didn’t” day are going to go on sale before platform pumps become passé.

Life challenges are just part of the fun with Heidi Clements in her hilarious book, Welcome to Heidi, when she takes us along on her long-term relationship with Letty, the psychic.  At thirty-seven bucks a pop, that’s a relationship even I could afford.  

Heidi also checks out her life prospects with Tomo, a Trance Channeler. With all the indecisiveness spread around these days, it’s helpful to know someone who can tell when me when the control-bot I’m dating will try to accessorize my outfit with a gun to my head or that my dream date was once my brother. 

At times like that, hitting the yellow pages for someone like Tomo makes perfect sense. That’s better than confiding in my Aunt Edna who tells me, “Marry a picky eater. You’ll never have to cook.”

Turns out Letty the Psychic hits the bullseye on all the major topics:  Happiness, Money, and Mean People. 

Want to put that old flame who broke your heart in his place? Bam! Need to press the mute button on your neighbor who put the the “psych” in “psycho” and who takes out her hostilities on your  dog who’s a buddy, not a biter? Heel, please. Or else!

 

Need Letty’s help with a career change?  Heidi’s got the right idea.  “If a chicken has to die in order for me to get the job of a lifetime or the man of my future, then so be it.” 

A breast and a thigh is a small price to pay for peace of mind.

I once had a drunken neighbor who used to sleep in the driveway and kept a goat chained to his heat pump so he wouldn’t have to mow the lawn.

Wonder if I can get Letty’s number.

TravelLunacy.Eat

When the Captain and I travel, it’s more like a study of modern art than a road trip. Nothing on the map looks like it does in real life, and I’m so busy staring at the lady in the Hummer painting an extra eye on her face every time she hits a bump, I don’t notice that the route I’ve chosen to follow ends in an intricate sculpture composed of exit ramps, clover leafs, and left turns that lead directly down the Highway to How Did We Get Here?

Cap doesn’t understand the trouble I have with maps. To him the whole thing is as plain as the two noses on your face.

Another difference in our traveling styles involves pit stops. He doesn’t make them. I brake for anything with a handle, just in case. I once wheeled into a car repair shop because their sign said, “Flush for winter.” I thought I wouldn’t get another chance until July.

Floating past a slow moving Buick like Picasso’s paintbrush, he sighed contentedly and pondered aloud, “Which exit do we take?”

Flipping the map over in an effort to locate the northern hemisphere, I figure I can answer this question two ways: multiple choice or essay. Either way, I’m pretty sure I can see the end of the marriage superhighway looming in the distance.

It’s times like this I should whip a U-turn in my thought processes. But when my mouth goes into overdrive, somehow my brain always seems to yield to the traffic flow. My kids say it’s been parked in a tow away zone for years.

“Does it matter?”

He clutched the steering wheel until the bones of his knuckles broke through the skin. He looked like Wolverine.

“Not if we don’t care whether we end up at David’s house where we can have supper, or the Emerald City where we can choose between brains, courage, or little red shoes.”

Personally, I’ve always been partial to red shoes, but as usual eating wins out. Maybe my priorities are out of order, but given the choice, I’ll sing along with the Burger King instead of humming “If I only had a brain” any time.

“I always take that road that goes past the Japanese steakhouse that’s been there since we were dating, and then I go up and turn at the intersection that goes past the milk shake place. You know you’re on the right road when you pass the hot doughnut sign.”

Just thinking of Bavarian Cream gives me happy trails.

Cap travels using road signs. I go by major food group. I can’t read a map, but if I can find a route that covers everything from gooey to gourmet, I can find my way by smell.

On the other hand, he can track anything. If we’d ever had a child together it would be an Indian scout named Paula Deen.

He sighed. I’ve noticed that the longer we’re married, the more he sighs. In a couple more years it’s going to be like living in a wind tunnel.

“According to the map, where do we turn?”

“According to the map, we’re already two creases and a wrinkle past his house.”

“Let me see.”

“No. The last time I gave you the map while you were driving, it took us two hours to go half an inch.”

“That half an inch was a 150 mile path through a rock slide in the mountains.”

“So it’s my fault you didn’t get four wheel drive?”

“Those rocks were bigger than your. . .never mind. Just tell me when we pass the Jamestown exit.”

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because we passed the Jamestown exit when you were giving me the geology lecture.”

Before he could finish up his lesson plan a transfer truck packed from tail lights to tooter with gourmet ice cream blew past us headed toward the next exit.

Without a second thought, the Captain of my Dessert Cart winked at me and whipped in behind him.

We might not agree on the best way to get there, but sometimes the best part of the trip isn’t the easy way.

It’s the Rocky Road.

This Blog Was Brought to You By Approximately the Number 7

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.