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.

Back Door Blessings

It's Thanksgiving time. And of course, we're thankful for Sam. Bless his heart. Come share the warmth of the season--and of Sam--at Stage of Life.

Tour of Duty

Daddy served in the Pacific theatre during World War II on a submarine that was more like a prize in a cereal box than the sleek, nuclear vessels of today. When I was a kid I thought he was a great adventurer, having seen both oceans during his travels. It never occurred to me there might be more to see; more water than two oceans could hold. My boundaries were limited by the amount of space I could imagine, and I was already pushing the envelope. Dad would laugh and shake his head at my excitement when he talked about being stationed on Hawaii or seeing Mount Fuji through the periscope.

“Did you ever see the Hollywood sign?” I asked once, my voice filled with wide-eyed wonder.

He grinned. “If I had, I’d have been going the wrong direction.”

When I was older, he sent for a copy of a Reader’s Digest book that showed all sorts of wonderful places to visit. That book visited more exotic getaways on the way to my mailbox, than I have to this day. I’m not sure I believed it was real.

One year after I was grown and somewhat of an Authority on The Way Things Are, Son One conducted an interview with his Papa for a school report. He didn’t ask the same questions I’d gone on about as a kid, “Where did you go?” “Did you bring anything back in case you ever had a little girl that needed a surprise?”

He asked about torpedo tubes, leaky oxygen bottles, depth charges and other things that made the war seem uncomfortably close and noisy. It finally seeped into my me-generation brain that if the folks causing the unpleasantness on top of the water had taken a page from Luke “Stay on Target” Skywalker’s book, I wouldn’t be around today to tell clever stories about other people’s adventures.

For the first time I realized that tour of duty didn’t mean tour of luxury vacation spots. It meant that he did indeed bring something back from his travels. Memories.

My memories come from sitting in the comfort of Daddy’s lap and listening to tales of a faraway war. His memories come from standing in the face of danger and showing his heart.

His memories are of men who gave their lives so that I could look at pictures in a book and have hopes of traveling to them one day. Men and women that knew what it meant to serve with mind and body and make whatever sacrifice it took to preserve the minds and bodies back home.

My thanks go out to all of these men and women. And to you, Dad.

On Memorial Day and every day.

A-Mused

A Valentine’s Poem for my Muse

Lead me not to rhyme that’s tired,
Hackneyed, clichéd, uninspired.
Writing poems is for the wise,
Thoughtful pen and depth of eyes
Don’t let my pen leak violets blue
Or illustrate with I HEART you
Send me images as fresh
As fruit in stalls at Marakesh
Hair like moonbeams, skin like silk
Odious scenes of mother’s milk
Won’t tweak the senses, light the eyes
Or make the breaths turn into sighs
Important now that Cupid’s near
So his bow shoots heart, not rear
I’ll write now or pass my bonnet
And turn my Lim’rick into sonnet.

School's In, I'm Out

I have a friend who can tell when school starts by how many of her kids get sick. If somebody throws up, mark your calendars for cafeteria duty because school is in session.

My kids are older now, but there are still definite clues that let me know it’s time to obey the speed limit between the flashing yellow signs. I can tell school is in by the vacuum in my wallet. If I try to put a dollar in the bill section and it hits a jet stream that carries it directly to a slow-moving boy dragging $400.00 worth of school books across the kitchen floor toward the back door, classes have started.

My guys go to community college across town. At least I think it’s a college. The way they hit me up for lunch money, I’m beginning to suspect they are supporting the efforts of a five start restaurant. Any day now, I’m expecting to catch one of them sneaking up the back stairs after dark with crème brulee on his breath.

Schedules are different at college. When the kids were in grade school, I could count on at least six hours a day without having to watch a Barney video or share my Girl Scout cookies with anybody except the dog. These days, young people blow in and out of my house at random intervals, changing my easy-listening radio station to brain-twister funk, and killing larger than life video game zombies on my big screen TV. It’s hard to keep up, but I’m not entirely sure all the kids that come through my living room are original family members. In my heart of hearts I believe we upgraded to the Supersized Family Plan when math class let out.

Now I find out that my guys will be done with this semester a month before Christmas. That means I’ll have to spend the time I had budgeted for wringing my hands and begging Santa for travelers checks by restocking the refrigerator and establishing a time-share program for the computer. Things turned ugly enough when I established the “If you’re old enough to shave, you’re too old for Trick-or-Treating” rule. I don’t know if I can stand having a house full of young men who think Peace on Earth means ridding the world of the undead.

Hopefully if I'm good, Santa will spirit me away to the Island of Misfit Toys. Otherwise, it’s going to be a long winter.

Let's Play Chicken

It’s not that my son is a picky eater; it’s just that he’d starve to death before the noon rush at any grocery store in America.

He once perused the morning buffet at a luxury hotel restaurant (We have teenage boys. To us luxury means any hotel that doesn’t make us pay a security deposit when we check in.)for three quarters of an hour before demanding to be taken to McDonald’s. Nothing says Breakfast of Champions like a McBiscuit with the outside crust peeled away.

His specifications are exact. He does not eat ugly food.

Ugly food is defined as any food that comes in contact with any other food or food-like item during its processing or preparation. Therefore my kitchen is under constant supervision. It’s like living with a member of the Board of Health who doesn’t clean his room or brush his teeth until threatened with government action.

“Mom,” Son #2 peered in the pot of steaming, frothing liquid and wrinkled his nose. “Are you boiling chickens again?”

“Sure am.”

“Didn’t you just boil a chicken at aunt KJ’s house this weekend?”

“Yes, I was helping her out in the kitchen.”

Son 2, in disgust, “Do you have some sort of addiction to chicken boiling?”

“Jeffrey, I’m going to make chicken salad.”

“Are you sure this isn’t some kind of cult ritual or something?”

“I’m sure. Back away from the chicken. It needs to boil another hour.”

“Do we need to have an intervention?”

“No. This is not a bizarre ceremonial rite. You have to stew it before you can make other things with it.”

“Like what? Some sort of nasty chicken potion to smear on your victims? Does it eat their flesh? You know, like zombie chickens.”

“Son, if you don’t like chicken salad, you don’t have to eat it.”

“You’re trying to trick me. You’re going to feed me some kind of boiled chicken serum to make me do your will.”

“That’s ridiculous. I create the potion for making you do my will out of the parts I take out of the chicken.”

“What?”

“Like the heart.”

“Are you lying?”

“Yes, I am. I’m not going to waste a perfectly good bird just to make you obey me. Besides, it doesn’t work.”

He pondered this tidbit. “That’s because I’m not eating it. I shouldn’t even be breathing in the fumes. They’re probably poisonous. Or hallucinogenic.”

I didn’t know words with that many syllables until I was in college. “There are pizzas in the freezer. I don’t care if you eat chicken salad or not.”

Where’s the feet? Are you wearing a chicken claw around your neck?”

“For goodness sakes. That’s the Mother’s Day necklace you and your brother gave me. The pictures are a little fuzzy, that’s all.”

“Sure, Mom, if that’s your real name. I’ll be wanting to see some identification at dinner.”

“Get out of the kitchen.”

“Oh, now you’re worried, aren’t you? You’ll probably try and disguise the chicken in my food.”

All the boy eats is frozen pizza and Captain Crunch. It’s hard to disguise chicken parts as rogue Crunch Berries.

“That’s right. Beware of anything you eat or drink. It may be contaminated with chicken broth.”

“That’s it. I’m making a pizza.”

It’s amazing how people who won’t eat freshly thawed meat by-products will roast a frozen, artificially colored and flavored disc to a golden brown and slam it down like filet mignon just because it says pizza on the box.

I think I’ll make some chicken soup. They say it cures what ails you. And in this case what ails me is a free-range teenager who’s chicken to try new food.

Ten Commandments for My New Neighbor

Living in a duplex, I go through neighbors like a family of cats goes through a five pound bag of litter that freshens with every step, and I have some friendly advice. If you want to make a go of it in this neighborhood, you’ll listen up and not staple this list to the hood of my car like the last guy did. If you want a reference from him, he is residing peacefully at Happy Acres Memorial Gardens. Feel free to use my name.


1. Old tents and ripped cushions in lawn furniture may be acceptably repaired with duct tape. Back windows in old Fords or open wounds on small children may not. Neither is it a substitute for nails and a willingness to locate a hammer when your mailbox has been detached from its post. A mailbox trussed to a wooden spike by thirty rounds of silver adhesive looking like a tin can with a toothache causes undue stress in an already unstable housing market.

2. John Deere makes a wide selection of lawn tractors. That six month old goat you’ve got tethered to a hubcap with three feet of heavy links like he’s the anchor man on a baby goat chain gang is not an acceptable substitute. Let’s send you out on a short leash to get the morning paper and see if you effect a change of heart.

3. Also, in the future please Just Say No to the idea of mowing the lawn clad only in your underwear. Indulge in a roomy pair of gym shorts and you’ll find yourself zipping up the neighborhood popularity poll before you know it.

4. A privacy fence is for, well, privacy. Please don’t launch your youngest child over the top of the fence like a punted football to find out what we’ve got cooking outside. We are not responsible for stray grill marks.

5. If you have a taste for loud music, please play something I know or can understand the words to. Having the tune to a rap song I don’t know stuck in my head will lead to my hanging about in your bushes trying to find out what words sound like “scratch my itch.”

6. A swimming pool is commonly used for swimming. I’m sure your new bass boat will skip over the lake like a flat stone, but trying out your new outboard motor in the above-ground will result in an appearance on Funniest Home Videos. Remember there’s nothing to impede your progress toward the slime pit across the street except that scraggly row of dandelions you call a flower garden.

7. Please don’t sneak over under cover of darkness to partake of the blueberries on my bushes. I’ll be glad to share. Just like you’ll be glad to share that mess of freshly caught, cleaned and chargrilled trout with me next summer. Also, I don’t mind if your kids climb the tree in my back yard to purloin fruit. But keep in mind the results from a morning filled with little green apples leads to an afternoon filled with personal aerobics of a stressful kind.

8. I understand if your Uncle Earl had an evening of social entertaining that leads to a hearty headache the next morning. But if any more of his “nieces” ring my doorbell at three in the morning clad in leopard-print hip boots and a leather halter top and ask to use my litter box, I’m calling Animal Control.

9. This is the South. We surpass just about everyone in the number of per capita lawn ornaments. But those plywood cutouts of Granny bending over to show her polka dot bloomers have been done to death. At least get something classy like one of those windmills that look like the roadrunner’s legs are going in a circle.

10. Close your curtains. The neighbors don’t need to know that the Jaws of Life was summoned to your home for the sole purpose of retrieving your wife from the Jacuzzi. Nor do we care how she plans to remove the dirty bathtub ring.

Attached you’ll find a request for samples from your garden for quality assurance purposes, a form absolving us of liability in cases of kitty prints found on the windshield of your Corvette, and a sterile baggie for DNA testing. Welcome to the neighborhood.

Boiling Point

It’s not that my son is a picky eater; it’s just that he’d starve to death before the noon rush at any grocery store in America.

He once perused the morning buffet at a luxury hotel restaurant (We have teenage boys. To us luxury means any hotel that doesn’t make us pay a security deposit when we check in.) for three quarters of an hour before demanding to be taken to McDonald’s. Nothing says Breakfast of Champions like a McBiscuit with the outside crust peeled away.

His specifications are exact. He does not eat ugly food.

Ugly food is defined as any food that is unattractive in appearance or that comes in contact with any other food or food-like item during its processing or preparation. Therefore, my kitchen is under constant supervision. It’s like living with a member of the Board of Health who doesn’t clean his room or brush his teeth until threatened with government action.

“Mom,” Son #2 peered in the pot of steaming, frothing liquid and wrinkled his nose. “Are you boiling chickens again?”

“Sure am.”

“Didn’t you just boil a chicken at aunt KJ’s house this weekend?”

“Yes, I was helping her out in the kitchen.”

Son 2, in disgust, “Do you have some sort of addiction to chicken boiling?”

“I’m going to make chicken salad.”

“Are you sure this isn’t some kind of cult ritual or something?”

“I’m sure. Back away from the chicken. It needs to boil another hour.”

“Do we need to have an intervention?”

“No. This is not a bizarre ceremonial rite. You have to stew it before you can make other things with it.”

“Like what? Some sort of nasty chicken potion to smear on your victims? Does it eat their flesh? You know, like zombie chickens.”

“Son, if you don’t like chicken salad, you don’t have to eat it.”

“You’re trying to trick me. You’re going to feed me some kind of boiled chicken serum to make me do your will.”

“That’s ridiculous. I create the potion for making you do my will out of the parts I take out of the chicken.”

“Like what?”

“Like the heart.”

“At least I'd have a heart. Are you lying?”

“Yes, I am. I’m not going to waste a perfectly good bird just to make you obey me. Besides, it doesn’t work.”

He pondered this tidbit. “That’s because I’m not eating it. I shouldn’t even be breathing in the fumes. They’re probably poisonous. Or hallucinogenic.”

I didn’t know words with that many syllables until I was in college. “There are pizzas in the freezer. I don’t care if you eat chicken salad or not.”

Where’s the feet? Are you wearing a chicken claw around your neck?”

“For goodness sakes. That’s the Mother’s Day necklace you and your brother gave me. The pictures are a little fuzzy, that’s all.”

“Sure, Mom, if that’s your real name. I’ll be wanting to see some identification at dinner.”

“Get out of the kitchen.”

“Oh, now you’re worried, aren’t you? You’ll probably try and disguise the chicken in my food.”

All the boy eats is frozen pizza and Captain Crunch. It’s hard to disguise chicken parts as rogue Crunch Berries.

“That’s right. Beware of anything you eat or drink. It may be contaminated with chicken broth.”

“That’s it. I’m making a pizza.”

It’s amazing how people who won’t eat freshly thawed meat by-products will roast a frozen, artificially colored and flavored disc to a golden brown and slam it down like filet mignon just because it says pizza on the box.

Come to think of it, I'm going to make some chicken soup. They say it cures what ails you. And in this case what ails me is a free-range teenager who’s chicken to try new food.

Cart Wheeling

Not long ago, I had a near-death experience in the grocery store. I was bending over to check out Mrs. Fields’ fat grams when a woman wielding a grocery cart like it was a runaway bumper car rounded the corner on two wheels. If it weren’t for quick thinking on my part, I might have required a trip to the Crisco aisle to disengage that buggy from my body. For a second I thought I saw a bright light, but it turned out to be Register Six calling for assistance. Later, when I got lapped in frozen foods by a gray-haired granny with a number 5 pasted on the side of her grocery cart, I could see the need for a list of safety rules posted in a conspicuous place, perhaps tattooed on Little Debbie’s left cheek. With that thought in mind, I offer 8 Simple Rules for a Successful Supermarket Experience.
Show proper care for your vehicle. For the safety of everyone on the floor, do not select a buggy with uncooperative steering that can be guided only by a team of Iditarod sled dogs. Also, be on the lookout for features that may interrupt the aerodynamics of the cart such as toddlers left over from a previous shopper.
When perusing different item choices on the supermarket floor, please be sure to park only in traditionally acceptable parking areas. Nobody cares if you set up camp in front of internal organs in the meat department, but if you pause to check the fat content in the cookie aisle, we will forcibly transport you to the dairy case and secure you to the yogurt section with string cheese.
Please observe crowd-friendly speed limits. I know you’re in a hurry to rush home and get those tacos on the table, but don’t careen around the corners so fast that you initiate a forceful meeting between Betty Crocker and Orville Redenbacher.
Practice defensive shopping. Try to remember that there are people with immediate dietary concerns that may require them to effect a sudden stop in front of you to compare chocolate chip content on the cookie aisle. Likewise, you must understand that if you stop in the middle of the aisle while trying to decide between creamy and crunchy, you are likely to become a temporary member of the fresh fruit display. Take heart in the fact that kumquats should not do any permanent damage to your complexion.
Please show concern for the safety of other shoppers. Do not execute a sudden lane change without at least warning the gentleman who is presently rolling his cart over the heels of your Reeboks that he may suddenly find himself neck deep in summer squash. Likewise, don’t speed up suddenly, causing the six-year-old boy who is riding below the cart in front of you like a mudflap on an tractor-trailer to wrap around your front wheel like freshly chewed bubblegum.
Do not accelerate like Richard Petty on the straightaway at Talledega to beat me to the Express Lane, especially if your buggy is loaded like a Conastoga and you’re counting all 24 cans of Little Friskies as one item to make the 10-item limit, and all I’m carrying is a gallon of milk, two packs of Ho Ho’s, and a box of Ben & Jerry’s that has created a layer of freezer burn up to my elbow. I have killed for less than that.
Remember to return your buggy to the cart corral after you load your car. You may feel justified in aiming it toward the gate and assuming it will roll downhill to the target by itself, but let me assure you that grocery carts are not domesticated animals and will take every opportunity to separate from the pack and make a break for freedom. Lassie is not available to pull the buggy from quicksand, a well, or the tailpipe of a new Jaguar that happens to be in its path. The aftermath of the ensuing chaos will involve your insurance, and this is one case when the term “deductible” might be unsetttling.
Most importantly, steer clear of the lady dressed in a New York Yankees T-Shirt, stretch pants, and flip flops, who is wringing her hands and doing laps with a cart that contains two boxes of Ding Dongs and a frozen pizza. It’s me and I can’t decide what to have for supper.