I Bumped Me Midget

What the heck does that mean? I’m not sure what she wanted because she saw a toy lying on my desk, took it, and went away without saying anything more…hm?

Her midget is her older sister, and her older sister is not crying, so it means something different than bumping her and making her fall down. The two granddaughters are always fighting, and yet when they’re not, there’s a good chance that one or the other will have an accident. The Bunny Hop was one of those times, only they weren’t bunnies as I would learn later, they were kangaroos…who knew?

Welcome to My World

This is my youngest grandchild, Marissa, and she and her sister stay with me 4-days a week. Marissa will be 3-years-old in August and she's a combination of baby and little girl. When she's really tired, she's Neenie's baby, when she is wide-awake, she is trouble on two feet. This morning she has been a little bit baby and a whole lot of "woke-up" trouble. She's been eating since she awakened this morning and has been sneaking into my computer chair every time I get up to go do one thing or another; mostly getting she and her sister something to eat.

The name that she says is her name is actually her nickname given to her by her daddy when she was still in her baby bed. Marissa, as you might have noticed, is thumb-sucker, but she is also part termite preferring a little wood with her daily diet. She was chewing up her baby crib.

Sometimes when she's asleep, I wonder how any child that looks so sweet and innocent can turn into  a holy terror at a moment's notice. This is the child that whacked her sister in the head with a mermaid, sending her sister to the Emergency Room and bragging about it last week. Ha, we have long term memory now, and if you don't believe it, she will remind you when you've forgotten that you promised her you would get her milk, in a minute, or put a video in the player for her.

Wunderground Map Stare

Yea, that's water. We call it the mini-riverton

If you don’t use the wunderground map, you should. It’s the best interactive map on the internet for storm cell watching. Personally, I’ve logged several hours watching it as the storms have passed over our area. For the moment, we’re not in immediate danger, but as a portion of the lower side of the Grayson County area, we’re under a future-cast warning…argggg

That means “buckling down the hatches and finding shelter,” possibly, and it means there is another storm cell on its way. There is, also, future possibilities of losing the lights, having a front yard—already saturated—slopping down the hill into the neighbor’s yard as our neighbor to the east watches his yard slop into ours.

My plants, outside slowly sinking under the weight of our too-chlorinated water—have begun to perk, right up, with all the natural rain water they’ve received. Of course this could be a temporary situation if it does not cease the downpours of the last month or more. Have you ever seen pepper plants and spice plants with little floaties on their tiny green limbs? It’s looking like a real possibility.

I’m getting screen stare as I watch the wunderground map advance weather upon us that is unwelcomed, at best, down- right dangerous, at worst. So…my afternoon plans include watching the weather map, listening to two little girls howl if there is thunder in the sky, and thinking how sweet it will be to get back-side burn when the triple-digit temps hit Texas.

Within the next two weeks, at some point, we will be outside mowing the excess of Johnson-stobs down and cursing the sky for dropping water all over our yard…nah, we’ll just plug in the MP3 players and mow the hills and valleys left from too much rain water, the neighbor’s yard, and the large weeds we loving clip down and feel proud to have. Proud, because it covers the black clay that would otherwise create more dust for the house.

In Pursuit of Trivial Knowledge

My husband and I are “Who Wants to be a Millionaire” junkies. We play the game on Facebook until we run out of free games and have been looking for alternate websites, on which, we can play the game for free. Games are for entertainment and with today’s economy, there’s nothing entertaining about purchasing coins to play a game. We found three; 1—had the life-expectancy of a flea, as it only has two separate sets of questions (as best we can tell), 2—the second is a “little” too-easy, and 3—is making us feel like imbeciles…neither of us has managed to get passed the $64-thousand mark.

Between VHS and DVDs in our house, we probably own close to a thousand movies and we’re missing movie questions that are, presumably common knowledge, but are not things that we know about them. As Tommy, in Goodfellas, the actor kills a bar tender by the name of Spider. Spider, really…who in their right mind would buy an alcohol-laced drink from a man named Spider? Did you know that in Star Trek, the victim—the person designated to die—wears a red shirt? We didn’t have a clue; then again, we’re not Star Trek “trekkies.”

Over the years, we have collected a pot-load of useless knowledge, and even that, we’re missing questions that fall in that category. Is there some little man that sits around, perhaps perusing Wikipedia—we all know how accurate they are—and coming up with questions for the millionaire game? Did someone confront Bill Gate’s team of brilliant programmers and say, “Here, this is your chance to really mess with the minds of all those morons out there that love to torture themselves, late at night or on the weekends, in the pursuit of useless trivial knowledge.” Well, did they?

Losing gracefully is not in the human emotional range, it’s just aggravating to see something that is so simple a 3-year-old could accidentally click on the right button, and you cannot remember or don’t know the answer too. Ah, give me the price is right, because it doesn’t make me feel stupid, it makes me feel good that wherever those prices exist—in the minds of would-be entrepreneurs—they’re not anything like the prices of those products in Texas. Who pays $3600 for a 32-inch television? Now, I know how people make a fortune selling products to consumers, most of whom are from California…

The pursuit of trivial knowledge is a crap-shoot for the bored and lame of brain; count me in!

No Rapture after All

Sayer of Soothe or Fraud

You know what this means, don’t you? It means that now I have to do my hair…sheesh, and I was counting on beast-free day. Seriously though, I wasn’t really counting on the man having his math right or any of that.

I haven’t finished my bucket list and I have jeans in the dryer and whites left to do and the husband wants cookies for next week’s lunch. I simply do not have the time to oblige an 89-year-old pastor—of questionable reputation. There’s that word again; “questionable.” It would seem to me, not that I’m an expert on the subject that Saturday is the day that “questionable” things happen.

Why, for instance, did we awaken at 3:45 a.m. this morning and not be able to get back to sleep? My husband’s arm was hurting and I had fallen asleep in the living room, while attempting to watch House Hunters International, but does that explain it or is there some unseen force that slapped us square across the jaw, yelling, “Wake Up!!!”

Who knows, that’s open to question. And what about those strange blinking lights in the kitchen, when did the power go off and then come back on? That, too, is open to question because we were asleep when it happened. What was that strange raspy noise that awakened me…oh wait, that was me snoring. I remember now…whew, ‘bout scared myself.

Well, as the rapture has been called off, if I feel any shaking today, I will know it is my husband trying to get me to wake up so that I can sleep tonight.

It’s Official, the World has gone Mad: Zombies

From Wikipedia site

Not that we didn’t secretly suspect that the government might be wasting money while studying cow farts, but to add Zombies and the CDC to that list of noble causes is a hoot!! Yay, I see Zombies everywhere, there’s one in the corner of my room, right now, staring at me and my humongous brain and thinking, ‘Gee wouldn’t that be great on toast with jam?’

There’s an old friend, from high school, that I see from time-to-time that might “actually” meet the requirements for Zombie-status; however, to date, no study has linked acid taken in the 70s to Zombie-like appearances in the 21^st century. This particular friend fell in with a group of roadies and has not been mentally seen in years, although he does make the occasional appearance in public places when he returns to see friends and family here. I have had more intelligent conversations while making my approach to the foul line and talking to my bowling ball, than any conversation I’ve had with this friend in the last three decades.

Yes, zombies do walk among us and they do crave brains, but not to eat…they want something to replace the air between their ears. Have you ever wondered at how hard it would be to keep your feet on the ground when your head was full of air, having had your brain destroyed—eaten as it were—by some infectious disease? I have, but never considered that a life after death experience…I just thought, ‘wow, that would be painful!’

I’m one of the many, in this world, that is eternally grateful that God had the forethought to attach our heads to our shoulders, saving me from leaving mine behind on a park bench, in the truck, or on a grocery shelf. What would that be like? “Yes mam, my name is Donna; do you have a woman’s head, covered in wooly mammoth hair that has been turned into the store?”

Hm, okay, say she answers, without my ears and my mouth this is going to be one of the most interesting conversations I’ve held while fumbling for the phone in the dark.

When the CDC reports on the possibility of zombies and how they would handle it, I have to believe the world has finally gone mad. It’s off the deep end and into the chit on a major scale.

Show Me the World

My 4-year-old granddaughter just came into my bedroom and said, “I hear thunder, show me the world.”

Of course, what she meant was the wunder-ground map. It shows the storms over our area and she has seen it, a lot, lately. Its overcast and we can see clouds, but the map doesn’t show any and the thunder could be minutes away or miles away, who knows?

My husband will call if there are warnings coming our way. As a lab technician for a paving company, it’s a given that he will know before I do, that it’s time to take cover. They watch the radar because you cannot pave in a thunderstorm.

It’s really cute listening to the 4-year-old because her vocabulary has grown a great deal over the last year. She’s gone from 2 to 3-word sentences, to Einstein proportion statements. What is more interesting, as you listen to her, is really hearing how she thinks;  all the little things we take for granted every day become well-thought out essays in her mind. The cat, one of her more interesting daily thoughts, is the one being that she understands, but does not totally know what to think about him.

The feeling is mutual, he doesn’t know what to make of her and he wishes—you can see it in his eyes—that he didn’t have to deal with her either. Our cat is one of the quietest souls on earth until he wants something, and then he starts. His mewing growing louder with the aggravation of not having his needs met instantly…he and the 2-year-old are very similar in that particular instance. She gets louder with anticipation and exhaustion when she has to wait.

While I, on the other hand, am quiet until I’m not…then I’m a royal pain. I want to see the world too, just not on the wunder-ground map. I want to see the whole thing, up close and personal.

Calling Bozo the Clown Come Get Your Wig

Every morning when I get up, there is this awful mat of brown, sort-of yellowish red, fuzzy mat in my face. Some might call theirs hair; I call mine “The Beast”—akin to the Wooly Mammoth or a lion in bad-need of a hair-care specialist. People that have cut my hair and then attempted to blow dry it, were last seen running down the sidewalk with tears in their eyes, declaring—in some cases—that  they had planned to become a nun when they made the mistake of coifing others “do’s.”  Mine is a double-do with evil tendencies caring little for the rules of nature and often, doing what it pleases, even when a rubber band has attempted to tame it.

After the first second cup of coffee, I wander into the bathroom with some intention—much less since common sense has set in—to tame the beast, just long enough, to get a rubber band around it. It’s difficult to comb/brush your hair with the night’s luggage still hanging out over your eyes, but I manage to get a grip on the stuff, yanking, tugging, and eventually releasing the rats from their tormented prison, only to contain them in a new rubber-sealed restraining device. The rubber band begins, almost immediately, to make a retreat down the back-side of my head. By noon, the pony tail that had started out, high atop my head is now crawling under my t-shirt collar.

When the curls—wire wisp that hang loosely regardless of any attempt to do otherwise—have twisted into the ear pieces of my glasses, so tightly, that I can no longer remove them, the second go-round beings. As I rip the glasses from my hair—I’m not bald, it’s just resultant glasses/hair removal—I reach for the brush, grasping it and my hair firmly. In an attempt to lengthen the amount of time it will take for the collar-crawl to begin, I twist the band tighter and higher on top of my head and replace the glasses. One glance in the mirror, assures me that it’s begun and there will be a third bout with the beast, but I walk away, anyway, with the contentment of having won this round, still fresh in my mind.

I have tried, on occasion, to allow the beast to have its way, however, it became clear to me and most of the neighbor’s that my screaming was far-worse than dealing with the unruly mat of curls on my head. Bozo come get your wig!!

I Want to Meet an Alien Family

Do you suppose that somewhere out there in that vast, dark area we know as space, there is an alien mother telling her child, “Sit down or I’m going to spank you..” or “Your father will hear about this when he gets home.” Maybe she is jetting around in an airfoil or gliding through space with her particles disassembled, yelling, “You had better do as I say or your grounded young Ug!”

Oh, oh, and even better, she has a door vacuum that cleans up the kid’s room, much like the air-leak testers that modern construction has invented. Just suck that thing down on the door, flip the switch and “wooooosh” the room is clean, furniture and all. Young Ug comes home to find that his ear-binder, socializing media screen, and air hammock are now in the vacuum of space, and there’s a note floating above the area that was once occupied by his bed, it reads, “I told you to clean up your room or I would.”

Maybe the father glides into his side of the bubble that cleans, vacuums, heats, and cools his mode of transportation, each day, only to find that young Ug has parked his air bike in the way, causing the beleaguered parent to crash into the wide-open range of the neighbor’s back cloud. When he’s gathered his senses, turned on his personal jet-pack and reached the 15^th cloud on the left, just past Ms. Fidgewigget’s space popular, young Ug can be seen making a hasty escape in his mother’s air foil.

I truly want to meet an alien family, so that I can find out if life is easier in an advanced society. Do they constantly wish they could visit Nebula Artaris and take an extended vacation? Do they have their groceries delivered in the middle of the night merely by thinking about what they want to eat? Is there a place where young Ug behaves 24/7 without having be yelled at or punished? Just wondering, really, but it is a point of curiosity…they’re probably out there laughing their beezers off at us, while we’re struggling to come up with the right answer at the right time, and sorely missing the target.

Beep, Beep, Beep, Oh Shut-Up

Not me, but close when it comes to getting out of the bed

That alarm clock is going to be the death of me, some morning, as I get up to find the baseball and smash it’s little blinking red-numbered face in and find the edge of my dresser, a bowling ball in the closet, or some other object, tripping and falling, and hitting who knows what on the way to the floor. It sounded this morning, almost chirpy, as it announced it was 5 in the early morning…and I wanted it to shut up, just shut up…it’s too early, put your electrical gray matter back to bed and call me in an hour. I remember asking my husband why it was set for 5, before he announced he had to go to Stringtown to work this morning. “Oh yea,” I mumbled, “forgot it was Monday…sheesh, thought it was Sunday.”

He was Speedy Gonzales compared to me, as he leapt from the bed, made it to the bathroom in rocket-like time, and was half-dressed by the time I had my eyes open enough to see that it was still dark in the bedroom, only the light in the bathroom illuminated his outline. I adjusted in the bed, again, not wanting to crawl out yet, and lay there thinking, ‘if I don’t get up now, I will be asleep again and that won’t do.’ So, I shuffled a bit to the left—my side of the bed—and tried to talk my legs into “wake-up” mode, but they were having none of it. I grapple with the top sheet, finally pushing it aside and sat up on the edge of the bed…oh, it’s a long way to the floor from where I’m sitting and, “swoosh” off the side of the bed. Then grabbing my clothes, I slowly walked toward the bathroom—you know that shot in Kung Fu Panda when he looks at the steps to the temple, that’s how it looked as I started toward the bathroom, as though there were a gazillion steps to get there.

As I sat upon the thrown, I heard the work truck roar to life—it’s quiet compared to our truck, but that’s neither here nor there—realizing that it took me, at least 15-minutes, to get out of the bed. That’s approximately how long it takes my husband to rise from sleep, get dressed, brush his teeth, make a cup of coffee, grab the trash and throw it in the truck bed, before starting the truck and pulling out of the drive…and all I had accomplished was getting dressed and making it to the porcelain head. My husband is my idol, I truly hope to be like him some day…it’s not looking too promising, but if I really try, perhaps tomorrow I will be finished with my business before he drives off.

In the meantime, I’m finding that bat. It and I have a conversation we need to have with Blinky the chirpy alarm clock.