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.

Bad Bread and Broken Hearts

We all know one. The woman who collects men like other people collect salt and pepper shakers or old teapots or odd nicknames. I have a friend who is cooler than a julep and sweeter than sugar cane. She attracts men like fruit tea attracts flies. She’s had more husbands than Paris Hilton has party dresses for housepets. At a time of life when I’m shying away from getting a dog with a long life span, Raelynne’s going through suitors like a paring knife through parboiled potatoes. She’s met the perfect man. Seven times.
"I’m cutting my losers,” Raelynne fumed as she strode into my kitchen bright and early one spring afternoon. Raelynne rarely rises before noon on the weekends except in cases of extreme emergency such as news that Brad Pitt is filming nude scenes next door. She nestled into my kitchen chair like it was a vat of warm chocolate.
“You mean your losses?” I asked, pulling up a stool. If she’s up and around at lunchtime on a Saturday, there’s probably a story worth making coffee for. I popped a roast into the oven, set the timer for four o’clock, poured myself a cup of Maxwell House, and settled in to listen.
“No, when I say losers, I mean losers. I’ve reviewed my list of current relationships and found there are individuals there who no longer offer any value-added services.”
"Value-added? Sounds like romance is dead. Who's been voted off the island?”
“There's Lance,” She poured a cup of coffee from the pot and stirred in an ice cube. Raelynne says life is too short to wait for coffee to cool. “I asked him to stop by Oscar’s and bring deli sandwiches with him when he came over to do that flower bed under the living room window yesterday. Don’t you know he took so long trying to decide what kind of bread to get, he only had time to do half the flowers before dark. And to top it off, he brought pumpernickel.”
“So let Lance shop some other bakery for his hard rolls. Who else?”
“Well, there’s Sam. He’s a dear, but he's a stripper. I keep finding one dollar bills in the strangest places.”
“So much for Sam and his singles. What ever happened to Steve?”
“Oh. Steve. Well. . .” She paused and traced the ivy design on her coffee cup with one newly purchased Raspberry Rose fingernail. “I’m afraid he had a character flaw I just couldn’t deal with.”
“What was that?” I asked, spreading strawberry jam on an English muffin.
“He was in love with me. He kept asking me to marry him. I finally ran out of excuses, so he had to go.”
“But I thought you cared about him.”
“Best man for growing roses I ever met. Vacuumed my house every Tuesday, took out the garbage every weekend, and never raised the lid on the toilet that he didn’t wipe under the rim before he put it down.”
“Sounds like love to me. Why didn’t you marry him?”
“My dear girl,” Raelynne looked shocked. “What would I have told all the others?”
I thought about my own Romeo. He’s put up with a lot more than bad bread and garbage duty over the years.
Romance isn’t dead. It’s just making the rounds.