Left Coast Cousins

We used to play this game when I was a kid called telephone.

Now for any of you that have never played this game, the idea was to sit in a large circle and have someone whisper a story to the person sitting next to them.

He or she in turn would whisper the story to his closest neighbor and so on and so forth.

The fun of the game was to see when the story had completed its circle, how far off or different the story was from the original version.

For all of us grown-ups this prepared us for the real world of working with other human beings.

I mean you knew that story about your co-worker running away with Conan O'Brien was a lie. She didn't even like redheads!

Well this happened to me the other day when my lunatic cousin, who is a vicious tornado windmill jockey in Oklahoma ,sent me a story recalling his trip to San Diego when I was a mere lass.

He journeyed to my homeland one summer from the plains of the Oklahoma badlands to enjoy our glorious Summer weather.

The following is his account of the events that took place.

As I am extremely polite, I will let him go first.
Bear in mind that this was a bajillion years ago.
Like in the 60's.

There I was minding my own business when a revolutionary thought shot through my gray matter like a prune through a goose!

I should go to the Left Coast and visit my unusual and sometimes bizarre cousins. Usually these unique pulses of wisdom hit me at night but this one was at high noon while sitting on the porcelain receiver! Did I mention this was about 50+ years ago, but I still recall every terrifying moment! This brood of cousins lived in Southern California just about a tacos throw from Mexico. My mom’s wonderful sister lived there and her offspring are unusual to say the least. I heard a story about the last one. It seems the doctors were asked “can you put it back?”

I resided in the plain states of the West and we were known as “Okies”. Aside from an occasional Indian attack things were pretty easy going.
I will say we were ahead of Arkansas because we had more than one type of DNA.

My dad worked for an airline and we were eligible for free passes to fly. In the early 60’s most of the airliners were prop jobs which just lumber along slowly but steady.

Made it to San Diego and circled the airport and being the aviation guru that I was I noticed there was only one runway! Where are the rest of them? Even in Oklahoma we have at least three but not here, just one big one. I figure they thought it was big enough to handle all the wreckage. But then I wasn’t ready for the fact we flew between buildings downtown on approach to the ONE runway!

Made it to my Aunt & Uncle’s house where I was surrounded with hugs, kisses, food, and cousins. We ate till I felt like a dog tick and laughed a lot.

There was a ravine behind the house and my cousins informed me it was full of rattlesnakes! “If you see one just ignore it and it will probably just go away.”
Little did they know we ate them for breakfast back in OK so I felt right at home.

My two youngest cousins, one you know quite well, planned a trip to the beach. I was so excited because at that time I don’t think I had seen the ocean in person. We adorned our latest and most fashionable swim suits and other related ocean stuff. I marveled at the flowers and palm trees and perfect weather. Don’t think they would have made it on a wagon train if this was the norm.

We made it to the beach and I was fascinated. That had to be the largest pond I had ever seen!

We played in the sand and I wowed the girls with my 2 pack which sadly has evolved to a one pack these days. There were these things called jetties which were piles of rock extending into the water for some important reason I assumed. We observed clinging to these rocks were star fish just below the water line. First ones I had ever seen and I just had to have one. The girls said, “no problem! "Just reach down and pull one off!”, so I did. Of course they failed to tell me to watch for waves and sure enough I got slammed like a June bug on the windshield of a rocket train.

After they stopped laughing, I grabbed that little sucker and a couple more just like him. We put the little rascals on the back deck of the car so they could get plenty of sun. They were crawling around like a monkey that just had a jalapeño enema!

Got them home, so what now? Called the aquarium people and they said to boil them and lay them out to dry. One pan full of boiling water, three starfish, what a way to go. You could hear their little screams for blocks!

Little suckers turned orange so we put them on the back step to dry for a few days. After a few days of craziness it was time to go home. The little rascals seemed hard and ready for transportation so we wrapped them in plastic wrap, stuffed them into the suitcase and headed for Oklahoma.

At that time luggage was not opened, which later I found out it must have spared several airline employees a most horrid death. It seems the aquarium people forgot to tell us to gut the little suckers, so after a day inside my hot luggage those puppies were so ripe they exploded like a dead possum on a 300 degree highway at high noon in the middle of August!

Got home and my poor unsuspecting mom opened my case and this wall of the most unearthly, fowl, repugnant, nauseating green vapor hit her. On her way to the bathroom she was saying “shut that thing”.

Needless to say we had to burn the suitcase and its contents from hell!

Have often thought this might be a formula we could use on the enemy and stock in our arsenal! It would probably be outlawed as “inhumane”.

One of many bizarre things I seem to get involved in with my Left Coast cousins!

So there you have it.

His delusional recollection.

I have no words.

At least for now.

And since you probably need some time to digest this starfish story, I will just have to let it "simmer".

Plus the truth deserves its own blog entry.

So until next time.

......I'm just sayin'

King Kizmo

I bid farewell  to an old friend last weekend.

No, somebody didn’t die thank goodness.

I am talking about my cockatiel.

His name was Kizmo and he had been with us for the past 15 years since my daughter received him for a present on her 9^th birthday.

Thankfully he didn’t kick the birdie bucket but was relocated to another household.

You see cockatiels bond with the first person they recognize as their owner and so all was hunky-dory when my daughter was home.

But when she went away to college things turned ugly on the bird front.

To be perfectly honest, Kizmo was never one of those birds that people coo at and nibble sweetly on your earlobes when they climb onto your shoulder.

He was known to challenge anything that came near his cage, including mammoth dogs, predatory cats and adorable children.

He despised most humans and communicated in hisses and scary “get away from me or I will peck your beady orbs out” noises and only tolerated me because I was the primary carrier of food and water to his bird domain.

The sign above his cage pretty much says it all.

He frightened away many annoying houseguests and entertained all of my childrens' schoolmates in his long reign as “King Kizmo.”

He was an “odd bird” and did not adhere to most of the universal birdie by-laws.

First of all he hated to fly.

It was not unusual to see Mr. Kizmo waddling down the hall checking out the indoor flora and fauna.

This was an hysterical sight and despite my loathing of this flying fascist always sent me into fits of laughter.

One morning while I was plunking away on my computer, I noticed him waddle past my door heading toward the bathroom.  A few seconds later he reappeared in my doorway and proceeded to mosey on over in my direction.  Considering our love/hate relationship this was puzzling to me and I was touched when he sauntered to my feet and with his birdy beak began to scale my pant leg like a tiny mountain climber.  “Aww, how cute!” 

He then proceeded to ascend my shirt and climb onto my arm. “Look, just like those clever birds at the zoo!”   

After reaching the shoulder summit he leaned over and promptly bit my neck flesh slinky as hard as his buzzard beak would allow! 

“You piece of #&&@@%$##!” 

This sniper snack attack caused me to leap to my feet shrieking and helicoptering my arms trying to get him off of me. 

He calmly fluttered to the floor and waddled out the door to scout out another victim.

Cretin…

He also LOVED to take showers and would put up with any ridiculous human who would indulge him by placing him on their finger and letting him douse his feathery locks in the warmth of the waterfall shower water.

When he was wet he looked like a withered number two combo plate from Kentucky Fried Chicken.

Without the coleslaw.

As I said before, my daughter was his first and only love and when she was little she sported long, flowing, curly hair.  After she went to college she traded in her curly-do for a more hip hairstyle and the first time she came home Kizmo apparently didn’t recognize her or at least hated the haircut and tried to pierce her nose like a bottle opener.  This made her very sad and all I said to her was, “Welcome to my Kizmo world.”

So Kizmo and I co-existed for many years with our agreement being that he wouldn’t bite me unless he just absolutely needed to and I wouldn’t munch on his birdseed when I was low on potato chips.

He was reduced to sitting in his cage all day, courting his seed dish and squawking at the mailman when he delivered our mail.

So imagine my happiness when my daughter told me that one of her co-workers had experienced a disastrous bird escape accident and lost most of her feathery flock!

This in itself was not to be celebrated but she mentioned to my daughter that she was down to one female cockatiel and that she was lonely……

They texted each other their EHarmony qualities and she decided that Kizmo should have the chance to experience true love after all these years!

So Kizmo was packed up, along with all of his cockatiel paraphernalia, and whisked away to meet his birdie blind date.

I took some farewell pictures of him right before they loaded him in the car.

He hissed at me.

And tried to peck me through the bars.

Just like old times….

At least he couldn’t reach my neck….

Sadly, when he was gone it was unusually quiet in the house.

But I’m happy for him.

I hope he enjoys his new lady friend.

Maybe she’ll go for a walk with him.

Or share a warm shower on a cold winter’s day.

Goodbye old friend.

I’ll miss you.

It’s been a lovely cruise.

Promise me you’ll keep up your nasty attitude.

Cuz there just aren’t enough feathery fussbudgets in the world.

…….I’m just sayin’

Puppy Perspective

I have a puppy who is terrified of any type of floor cleaning item.

The vacuum, the broom, the Swiffer that makes that funny noise when you push the button to distribute the floor cleaning junk, and the stand-up dust pan.

And the dryer lint cleaning brush pushes him right over the brink of sanity.

I attribute this problem to the fact that he sees these things so seldomly he is mystified by their existence.

It reminds me of an incident years ago when my daughter stayed over night at my sisters’ house and when she noticed her iron said, “Auntie, what is that?”

Now bear in mind she was probably 10.

My sis replied, “That’s an iron.  You use it to take the wrinkles out of clothes.”

My daughter said, “I don’t think we have one of those.  That’s what we use our dryer for.”

For the record, we have an iron.  The little tike had just never seen it in her young lifetime.

Whatever…..

To say I am not a “Susie Homemaker” type is kind of an understatement.

My Daddy was a finishing cabinet maker and I always marveled at his ability to build something spectacular out of a piece of wood.

So it stands to reason that I would rather build a fence or refinish a piece of furniture than whip up a tasty concoction in the kitchen or iron clothes.

Plus it’s more of a monument of your time spent than an empty bowl of macaroni and cheese or a wrinkle free pair of jammies.

As a result I am sure my children will tell their kids that “wacky old Grandma wasn’t much of a cook but she sure could wield a mean sabre saw!”

Nothing makes me happier than strolling through the aisles at Home Depot checking out the new power tools and gadgets.

And the smell of the cut lumber transports me back to the lazy afternoons of my childhood watching my Daddy at work.

When I was married, my sister-in-law (who was from Croatia), came to visit us and told my husband in her native tongue that we needed to fire the housekeeper because she was doing such a lousy job.

Needless to say, the only one who ever cleaned our house was ME and since I felt my biggest and most important task was raising my three babies, it wasn’t important to me to make sure there were no dust bunnies hovering under the couch.

She was horrified.

I on the other hand, was amused.

Hey, if it bothered her that much she was welcome to wield her dustbuster to her Slavic hearts content!

But the problem with the puppy and the vicious vacuum got me to thinking about our own ridiculous fears.

You see, if I pick him up and let him see that it won’t hurt him, he calms down and shuts up.

At least for 2 or three seconds or so.

A different "puppy perspective".

Maybe we should try that with some of the nonsense bouncing around in our skulls that makes us want to tear out our hair.

Then we can see that it is really not as scary as it seems.

And that most of it we can’t really do anything about anyway.

So we just need to relax and try to enjoy the ride on this rollercoaster we call life.

OR, we could take a tip from my puppy and go chew on one of our shoes and then go take a nap.

……..I’m just sayin’

Guess what these are made of?

Was talking to this gal the other day and noticed she was wearing these beautiful earrings.

Little iridescent spheres resembling tiny sparrow eggs dangling from delicate silver hooks.

Me:  “Those are really cute.”

Her:  “Thanks, I got them while I was on a trip to Alaska.”  “A young man was selling them and I thought they were pretty.” “The funny thing about them is, you won’t believe what they are made of.”

Of course, this piqued my curiosity.

Me:  “Pray tell, what are they made of?”

Her:  “Moose poop!”

Me:  “What the heck???”  “Seriously??”

Her: “Yes, this guy was selling them on the train and I thought they were interesting and so I bought them!”

I now moved in for a closer inspection of the tiny orbs.

Perfect drops of pale violet that resembled miniature Easter eggs.

Me:   “Really? Those are hunks of moose poo?”

Her: “Yep.” “They are covered in paint and varnish so they don’t smell!”

Now if you think I am making this all up, you can Google "moose poop jewelry" and take a look.

Not only can you buy jewelry, but soap, gag gifts and hundreds of other goodies made from the excrement of the might moose.

They also carry products made from deer poop as well.

As my Daddy used to say, “anything to get your money.”

But aside from the obvious fact that you have moose poop hanging from your earlobes, the first thing I thought of when she was telling me this story was about this kids' parents.

Imagine the reaction of Mom and Dad when their son strolls into the living room and exclaims, “Hey folks, I’m quittin’ school and following my dream of being a moose muffin earring crafter!”

The mother promptly faints and as the Dad is reviving her screams, “SEE WHAT YOU’VE DONE?” 

“You’ve given your mother a stroke with all your foolish poop talk!”  “We knew better than to let you take liberal arts in college!!”   “What will she tell her friends at Bunco?”  “That her son has dropped out of school to delve in doo-doo???”  “You’re killing her, YOU’RE JUST KILLING HER!!!”

Then a lot of speculation would follow about his early childhood exposure to Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoons.

Plus when did this idea flash into his brain?

Was he sitting in the forest one day surrounded by dung and suddenly realized he could use this stuff as a source of income?

“Hey, look at all this free inventory!” “I could make some serious moolah  from this!”

“Awesome, dude!”

Hey, I don’t blame him. 

Everybody can use a little extra cash nowadays.

Which gets me to thinkin’…….

I have a new puppy that leaves me "nugget presents" just about every morning in my hallway……

And I have some varnish in the garage…..

I wonder if Petco has a jewelry section?

…….I’m just sayin’

Doggie Conehead drama

After dealing with a puppy that had major surgery a couple of weeks ago, I have come to the conclusion that all of us humans should be issued head cones to dissuade us from destructive behavior.

Big plastic, white, cumbersome head cones that we could not take off by ourselves and would require at least two signatures to authorize their removal.

Think of all of the money that could be saved on diet books, exercise videos, gym member ships, lattes and cigarettes!

Whenever we decided to stop any problematic habit, we could slip on one of these annoying gems and voile’, problem solved.

Of course to be truly effective it would require the wearing of matching hand cones to stop us from cheating.

Virtually impossible to scarf down an entire bag of BBQ Lays and a quart of Rocky Road ice cream without the ability to reach into the bag or manuever the plastic ice cream scoop.

Plus your loss of peripheral vision would prevent you from hiding Snicker bars under the couch cushions when you see family members trying to check up on you.

Obviously all of his cone hub-bub would mean that your children or spouse would have to physically feed you because you would have lost the use of your hands. 

And with their lazy gene attributes factored in you know they would only help you eat three days of the week, max.

If you were lucky.

At that rate you could lose 20 pounds in a month easily.

Of course you would have to spend a few shekels on Vaseline for that pesky neck chaffing issue.

But you wouldn’t be caught dead going anywhere so you would save some bucks on that front.

All around a plus for the pocketbook.

It could also be extremely helpful for people who are trying to quit smoking!

They wouldn’t be able to open the pack of cigarettes and you can forget about the ability to light one up if they managed  to finally maneuver one out of the package.

They would look like a human tiki torch.

As far as the pup goes, she spent 14 days sleeping with this contraption on her noggin and was frankly just a little bonkers when I was finally able to remove it.

She hated me.

Can’t blame her.

I would hate someone who made me sleep with a lampshade on for two weeks.

Plus now she has a severe aversion to floor lamps.

And beach umbrellas.

Guess she doesn’t get an invite to my Fourth of July party this year.

Which is unfortunate cuz I will miss having her on my team for the Ocean Beach marshmallow fight.

She is excellent at retrieving the stray ammo!

…….I’m just sayin’

Mommy Origami

I feel very blessed about many things in my life.

But one of the things I am so thankful for is that fact that my children were born after the invention of disposal diapers.

In my mothers’ era, the only option was cloth diapers.

Or air dry.

Good for the growing crops but not on the eyes.

The cloth diapers are better for the environment but sucky for Moms.

Now some people still prefer cloth diapers, but they usually have a diaper service that does most of the dirty work.  They pick them up at your home and deliver clean shiny diapers back to their doorstep minus the doodie.

This prevents you from personally handling the remnants of Little Juniors carrots or squash which, take my word for it, is a good thing.

The diaper service also supplies this cylinder type air tight storage unit into which you are supposed to deposit the stinky bottom bombs until they come and pick them up.

Kind of like the strict handling of Plutonium, which I am sure is less smelly.

But back in the day there were no fancy diaper services and they used to dump the worst of the mess into the toilet, rinse them out by hand and finally wash them and hang them on the clothesline so the sunshine could deodorize the pungent cloth squares.

So much for the “Good Ole’ Days”.

Very over-rated.

Plus they had to be attached to your baby with these hard core thick-as-nails safety pins that had little ducks or chickens or some other type of barnyard animal decorating the end. 

All I remember is that they were usually extremely dull and the old theory was that if you ran the pin through your hair it made It easier to glide through the cloth.

This is because your hair was usually very greasy because you never had a single minute to yourself and only got to wash your hair once a month.

Probably cuz you were too busy washing all those frickin’ diapers.

You usually ended up poking yourself with the thick dull pin and getting tetanus…

And all the babies from the 50’s looked like they were covered with random tattoos.

So as a lucky mom who was able to use disposable diapers, I honed a skill that all disposable diaper users must possess to survive.

That is the art of “Mommy Origami”.

This is the ability to remove a diaper from your kid and fashion it into these fantastic bullet shaped bombs which are virtually indestructible and sometimes resemble balloon animals.

The velco closures give you the freedom to compress the diaper so expertly that you can discreetly dispose of it and no one will ever know that your kidlet ate an entire bag of sunflower seeds while you were watching American Idol.

At one point in the whirlwind of my babies toodlerhood , I found one of these “Huggie Bullets” on the top shelf in my refrigerator next to a gallon of milk.

Obviously left there in a sleep deprived moment while getting a bottle from the frig.

In my experience I have found that most men cannot master the “Mommy Origami” concept and usually take the diaper off the baby and wave it about revealing the contents to everyone within a city block radius.

The paper poo-poo platter.

This comes in handy when you are vying for front row seats at the OB Christmas street parade.

Tends to make folks scatter while doing the “cat fur ball” gag move.

Not so handy if your trash can is full of these open poopie presents and has to be fire hosed out before the garbage man will get within 10 feet of it.

So I propose that “The Learning Annex” should offer a class in this art form and finally give it the credit it deserves.

“Mommy Origami” 101, “Diaper transformation in the 21^st Century”

Would look really good on your resume.

Especially if you were applying for a job folding newspapers.

Plus you will be expert at fashioning that perfect paper airplane to pitch at your bosses noggin every time  she strolls by carrying that Starbucks cup every morning.

…………I’m just sayin’