I’m trying to do a thing.
Writing.*
That thing I swear I want to do.
But words are hard.
And will not come.
Until they do…enjoy this:
“Desire is the root cause of all evil.” Buddha
I try to remind myself of this every time I see something that my avaricious soul desires.*
But it is so very hard to be good.
What I need is a little Christmas Discipline.
<*>
I am currently enjoying a period of forced minimalism, otherwise known as being broke.
I have never budgeted. As a result, I have also never saved much money. I just let the paycheck drop into the account and spent said moolah on whatever I wanted and periodically looked to make sure I wasn’t dipping below the fill-line, so to speak, trusting that the bank will never run out of money.
But it did…for about three days.
November had five Thursdays in it.
Did you notice? I certainly didn’t.
Fun fact, our social security payment arrives on the last Thursday of the month. I auto-pay my bills electronically on or around the 25th because, usually, by then the check has hit the bank.
Unless there are five Thursdays.
Five Thursdays spells disaster with my current un-budgeted way of life. If I’m not careful, the money doesn’t quite stretch to cover the month unless I pay attention and not buy every indulgence that catches my eye.
I had no idea what a spend thrift I could be until I realized I couldn’t spend ANY money for three days.
I mean none.
I got through the days of parsimony and rue recognizing that I have some really bad habits.
It was time to enforce some strict discipline…
I looked at my love of fancy compressed curds and altered my favorite Thanksgiving side dish to omit the Grueyer and Emmenthaler cheeses.**
Turns out, I might just need a cheddar-vention.
I have some expensive, thoughtless, habits that I now need to pay attention to.
A sudden need for a french fry fix makes me commit a fast food drive by almost without thinking about it. The doctor, at least, will be happy to hear we are cutting back on our deep-fried addictions.
The road to my personal hell is paved with indulgences that would make angels weep.***
So, I’m submitting myself to some long-needed tightening of the purse-strings.
I am become an acolyte for pleasure through self-deprivation.
All books will come from the library for the foreseeable future.
…Or a regional Little Free Library /black-ops drop site.
No more wine.
We won’t mention over-priced chai lattes that you can get at Biggby’s.
And I’m going to cut back on the diet cherry coke habit, though I worry I might actually kill somebody for a taste of the sparkling poison, so be warned.
I am now faced with the consequences of life-long bad habits. I must buckle down and pay attention to my finances and make fiscally restrictive choices. Or, find another way to make income.
Which brings me to my brilliant sub-theme.
My New Year’s Resolution will be to find out which of the following jobs is the least repellent way to bring in extra cash:
Will Humiliate for Food
I once read a profile on OKCupid for a guy who was willing to pay women to come out to California, dress in appropriate costumes, and humiliate him for hard cash. I’m not entirely sure if this one wasn’t an invitation to join a sex-trade, but maybe he has Skype?
Phoning It In
Sex phone operator. In which we find out whether I can suppress the giggles long enough to achieve a quasi-sultry conclusion. Also, where exactly am I going to do this in a house full of therapy techs and my ever-present child? I’m yawning the minute it hits 8:00 pm…this will take some thought.
Lashing the Page
Or, based on what I’ve seen while Googling images for this topic, there’s an aching void waiting to be filled in the Christmas-based sadomasochism/erotica market. Now how shall I plug that hole?
With such exciting job prospects, I’ll be sure to report back I am once more swimming in something festively green…hopefully it’s money and not jello with marshmallows on a pay-per-view fetish site.
Oh, and could someone remind me in the third week of January that the month has five Thursdays? Thanks.
Asterisk Bedazzled Footnotes:
*Which, at Christmas, means everything. My inner child is a window-shopping glutton.
**For those interested, here’s the recipe: Pumpkin Stuffed with Everything Good
***It doesn’t make angles weep–which is what I originally wrote–but then I decided the heartless bastards would just laugh for 90 degrees in their corners until it was no longer funny or acute. How obtuse!
*—*—*
You’ve read this far bonus:
While I was surviving the past six months, fun events still happened. They just were overshadowed by the dark cloud looming. Now that the storm has passed, everything is sunny skies…or should I say…bunny skies?
*
It was high noon in Bunny Town.
When trouble showed its floppy ears.
Some folks might say, he was itching for a hare-raising fight.
Others believe, the dastardly bunnies had it coming.
The lone bunny rider looked honest…honestly dangerous.
He dressed all in white…except for the mask.
Clemson Cadbury—Clem to his friends—rode into Bunny Town one fine day.
He was wanting to put up his lucky rabbit’s feet and ease his saddle sores at the only hopping joint in town:
The Rabbit Hare Saloon
The girls at the saloon were of the heart of gold variety.
They made a rabbit want to sit up and pay attention.
To push his fuzzy-tailed luck.
But Clem only had eyes for the sweet, sloe-eyed school marm who taught the A, B, C’s of being a bunny.*
His heart belonged to that fair damsel–Flory-Dory Flopsalot.
Clem would have happily laid his hat—or his heart—at Flory-Dory’s feet for her taking or stomping there upon.
But Flory-Dory’s uncle was the local sheriff and he put no faith in lone rabbits who just moseyed on through his town.
So Clem spent his lonely hours, pining for his true love, and sipping dandelion sarsaparillas at the Bunny Bar Saloon.
Until the day he tangled with the Black Bunny Banditos!
Clem didn’t know, when he entered that bar that fateful day, that a gang of hardened thugs were also looking to play.
They were bad bunnies with bad attitudes.
And they didn’t care what kind of mask a bunny hid behind.
Clem was nursing a carrot-infused herbal tonic and the saloon honey-bunnies were taking his orders—hopping to get whatever he wanted.
The three black-hearted bunny banditos entered the saloon.
Their tail spurs jingled as they hopped.
Bippity tried to snag his favorite coquette–Odette.
But Odette was batting her lashes at Clem.
Boppity yelled for his bunnymondaine—but Desbegonia had no time for the ruff-necked, lop-eared cur.
No, Desbegonia was dancing to and fro, making Clem watch her as she’d go.
Then Beauregard stepped through the door and stood there watching a minute or more.
He waited. He wanted. But his flowery filly—Daffydilly—was not to be found.
Except, wherever Clem was around!
Daffydilly sang sweet serenades to woo her beau…
(But not the rabbit by that name, no!)
Beauregard spit out his cheroot and hollered at his boys to scoot!
“No interloping jackalope claims our pieces of fluff!” Said he.
And off behind the saloon went the three…
Clem had no clue when he stepped outside
An ambush awaited his white-tailed hide.
But Flory-Dory knew!
From her chair near the window, she’d watch and sigh, whenever the handsome buck went by.
So, when the school marm saw her rabbit in trouble, she called for the sheriff on the double!
Sheriff “Lefty” Cottontail.**
Sheriff Cottontail was none to keen to confront the three rapscallions—despite their lawless ways.
He was a laid-back lawman who let other people’s bullets do the talking.
But Flory-Dory wasn’t letting her lily-livered uncle get away with that!
“I’ll take on those ne’er-do-wells myself, iffn I have to!” Said Flory-Dory.
If she’dve had a spittoon nearby, she’dve spat in it for emphasis.
With this incentive, Sheriff Cottontail, decides it’s better to fight like a rabbit, than to be shown up as all fluff and no tail.
He hops to Clem’s side in the nick of time.
Sheriff Lefty (pictured right) and Clem
The dastardly Coney Brothers had trussed Clem up in baling wire and dangled him by his stubby tail over a vat of sugar syrup.
“We’re gonna dunk you neck-deep in this here sassafras barrel.” Piebald Beau promised Clem. “When they find your sorry sack of fur, all will think that you fell in to get a drink.”
Then in flopped the Sheriff, long and fat, and squashed those Coney brothers flat!
It warn’t no time at all before the bad bunny brothers were rounded up and thrown into the hoosegow.***
But Sheriff Cottontail knew, it wouldn’t be long before those bunnies were back bearing a grudge.
The Black-Hearted Bunny Banditos
So the sheriff hired his niece to be his stalwart deputy!
Flory-Dory rescued her hero from a sticky fate and cut him free.
Clem caught Flory-Dory up in his fuzzy embrace and they nuzzled noses.
It was quite the scandal.
And into the sunset, as he rode away, Clemson swore that he’d come back and marry that gal someday!
Asterisk Bedazzled Bunnynotes:
*The bunny head mistress taught the children their A.B.C’s: Always. Bring. Carrots.
**Sheriff Lefty was so named because, if you weren’t careful, he’d let himself get left behind in a gunfight.
***Hoosegow—to all you city slickers out there—is the clink, the slammer, the yard, the pen or, as it is otherwise known, jail.
_____________You read this far bonus____________________
Honestly, I’ve never had so much fun as writing this post.
Here’s a few oddities I discovered while looking for bunny-related miscellany:
Bunny Cowboy Soundtrack performed by Neptune Bunny here:
Long-Eared Drifter
I won’t even try to explain this. You just have to watch it to believe it.
Bunny Wedding Trousseaus available at Grandma’s Originals
And if you want to know where I captured the pictures that I didn’t pilfer online, check out Klackle Orchards in Greenville, MI when fall rolls around again.
Amy was my first.
Her blond, twisted curls were fixed and her little pink-and-white gingham dress was stiff and yellowed with age. By the time she finally became mine, she was twenty-seven years old. Pretty ancient for a doll. And, by ten, I was old enough to know she wasn’t to be played with.
So, until I reached my first decade, I enacted my primal childhood dramas on my Barbie and baby dolls instead.*
There was one other doll who bore the brunt of little girl adventures in our extended family: Grandma Laura’s walking doll.
This doll was an antique, but, she was never treated like one. Built with a stiff cardboard body with wooden limbs, she was meant to be played with.
If she ever had a name, I never knew it. She was just called ‘the walking doll’ because she had creaky hinges at her knees which caused the leg to swing back and then forward as you walked behind her.
She sat in a chair in my grandparents’ living room, waiting for one of the grandchildren to come play with her. She was much loved and it showed.
The walking doll’s hands were worn to indistinct nubs and the plastic along her arms was cracked or missing. At one point, someone loved all the hair off of her.
My grandmother must have cut down a wig to cover her bald head. The walking doll’s new style was choppy, black speckled with grey, and in no way resembled a typical baby doll. I never knew she had any other hair color.
Until I took her to the doll hospital that is.
It was always my intention to take good care of my bequests, but time, family expansion and inattention takes a toll on the mechanics of people and toys.
Many years ago, Amy’s rubber band broke, leaving her looking much like an extra special victim from a crime drama.**
I found Patricia Buckert after a quick search online and contacted her to see if she could recover my long-time companions from the benign neglect of thirty-some years in storage.
A professional with certification through the Doll Artisan Guild, Patricia studied at Seeley’s in Canada and traveled to West Virginia to learn advanced secrets of doll restoration. Patti Ann’s Teddy Bears and Dollies provides a rare service—not just doll repair—it’s more like finding doll nirvana.
When she talks about the dolls she’s made—with kiln baked porcelain crafted and painted by hand—you know you’ve found a kindred spirit.
Her doll hospital is located in Oshtemo, MI along Stadium Drive in a small, green house.
Even with the big white sign out front, you might miss it. But once you’ve entered, you’d never forget it.
The front room is overflowing with dolls, prams, strollers, a crib filled with wide-eyed babydolls, and shelves where lady-like figures pose, en deshabille, with porcelain-dipped lace to trace their décolletage. Nearby, a wire carousel houses miniature accessories: shoes, socks, and delicate unmentionables with froths of lace enough to choke a Clydesdale.
This dolly sanctum sanctorum is a veritable paradise for your inner child.
When I show her Amy, Patricia immediately recognizes her as one of the series of Little Women dolls created by Madame Alexander. But she’s entirely surprised by her second patient.
“I’ve never seen a doll quite like this before.” Patricia says, as I place the doll on her counter.
“She’s been in the family for a long time. She first belonged to my grandmother.” I explain.
As I remove the doll’s outer garments, her poor condition is revealed. A spring falls off her leg as I remove her bloomers.***
We also learn that originally, she was a redhead, similar to my grandmother’s brunette shade…that she kept in a bottle under her bathroom vanity.
“I’ll see if I can find anything in my records to help identify her.” Patricia promises.
She crowed in a later email with a link to a Doll Reference website:
“Look what I found! As I was going over your doll I found the Babs marking. This helped me identify it.”
According to the site linked, the Babs Walking Doll was made between 1917 and 1921 by the Babs Manufacturing Corp. Since my grandmother was born in 1909, she was between eight and ten years of age when she was given her. Knowing my doll is over a hundred years old, makes me treasurer her even more. But, she was in pretty sad shape.
I asked Patricia to do what she could to recover her lost charms. This no doubt destroyed whatever value the doll might have possessed, but, I would never sell her and I felt that she deserved her own personal make-over.
It took a lot longer than I would have imagined. But I suspect you don’t undo a century of aging in a day.
Amy came home first.
You can’t see it in this photo, but she now has two satin shoes covering her feet. The mar on her cheek is gone and, with restringing and repairs to the dress, she looks as good as new.
I asked my mom if each of her sisters had their own doll from the series.
She seemed surprised to learn there were other dolls.
at
“Oh, yes. She is one of the daughters from the March family, from the book Little Women?” I tell her. “Did you read it?”
“Oh, well, I’ve seen the movie.” Mom says. “But no, I was the only one who got a doll like this.”
“I thought, because you were one of four sisters and the book is about four sisters, maybe you each got one to represent your relationships.” I say. “But you were the oldest, and that would make you the ‘Meg’ doll instead of ‘Amy’ who is the youngest of the March sisters.”
“I really don’t remember that much about the story.” Mom admits. “But I had blond hair like this as a girl.”
It is always a shock to find someone doesn’t cherish the same books you do. I love Little Women. But if I were to pick a March sister, I would be Jo. Brave, adventurous Jo who writes and dramatizes her life. That, and the fact she has brown hair, just like me.
I finally got to pick up Grandma Laura’s walking doll this fall. I then learned that PattiAnn’s is closing; after so many years spent learning the art of doll craft, Patricia is retiring.
“Is this because people aren’t buying dolls as much?” I ask.
“Yes, partly. Children just don’t play with dolls the way they used to, not with the invention of iPads and electronic games.” Patricia sighs.
I look around and have to ask, “What will happen to all of this?”
“I’ll be selling it off as I close-up. You can check my Facebook website for details of the upcoming sales.”
I have my camera with me and I ask her if I might take a picture of her with a doll, “Which is your favorite?”
“Oh, all my real favorites are back at home, packed up for the move.” She looks around for a bit and then picks up a laughing babydoll. “But, I made this one for my mother before she passed away. So, I’ll be keeping her.”
We keep what matters to us. I don’t know if I would have a doll collection if it had not been for the one’s given to me. I have quite a few. My first years of independence during my tour in the Army were incongruously spent collecting dolls while stationed overseas. But those tales will have to wait for another day.
For now, I will be grateful I got my dolls repaired by someone qualified in a craft that is dying out.
And for those of you who are interested in the results, here is my walking doll, in her new dress cut down from a dress my mother made me:
I think you will agree, you wouldn’t recognize her from her former self!
If you love dolls too, check out Patti Ann’s Teddy Bears & Dollies before it’s gone for good.
And if anyone wants to get me a complete set of Madame Alexander dolls, I found an autographed collection available at Theriault’s (self-described dollmasters) website:
Asterisk Bedazzled Footnotes:
*Based on my tendency to beat my dolls with a broomstick at the slightest imaginary infractions, I’m surprised I ever became a mother.
**You’d be astonished how many times creepy dolls come up in connection with serial killers on those cop dramas!
***Seeing as my own hip is held together with pins, I am now convinced my panties are all that is keeping my leg attached!
Walking the public pier along the Holland State Beach allows one to appreciate both an exercise in free speech and the quasi-felonious joys of graffiti expressionism.
I have never been so brave or confident in what I had to say that I was willing to risk a $250 fine and possible jail time to tag a public edifice in order to say it.*
Vandalism is, at the very least, a misdemeanor offense, but what I want to know is…is it art?
And if it is art, what is it saying?
Based on my hour spent cataloging this year’s liberal art tributes on the rusting canvas of the masses, the message depends on the viewer:
Positivity Abounds:
If you look hard enough, you can find answers.
Although….you may also be left wondering what the question was.
Thoughts from Danny Duncan!
Danny thinks “It’s fine!”
But, he scrawled his sentiments in a tucked away place on an overhead pipe, so I suspect he’s playing it cool.
Some people put themselves out there, courting ridicule…possibly unaware that a Tinder Date may be using a pseudonym.
Everyone has an opinion…whether that opinion is worth scrawling on a pier support is in the eye of the beholder.
Dreams are apparently dictated with impermanent ink scrawled on a blue-green background and will melt with time and the coming rains.
Lacking the words to express their deeper emotions, some fall back on a classic:
Friends slap high fives (or low ones) wherever they can.
Some HIGH FIVES bury the headline:
OTHER HIGH FIVES come with best wishes from ON HIGH!
Emotions run high…leaving some confused…knotting their hair with suspense.
Perhaps the message echoes an earlier time—a plea for Peace, Love and Hope symbolized by a badly divided pie chart?
The VEGANS were a bit demanding and psychedelically so:
Some pier polluters promote poignant pleas:
Perhaps what you take from the message boardwalk is only that which you brought with you?***
For example.
One word scrawled among the masses stood out. I was astounded that classics such as Shakespearean language describing a two-week time frame have made it to modern vernacular (even if the spelling hadn’t):
Then, later, during a rare session of live tv watching, I was bombarded by a commercial which dispelled my illusions. (And possibly also my allusions.)
I almost despaired to have lost a belabored delusion of the persistence of language.
But then, after watching King Lear drop bodies at Grand Valley State University, I decided that Fortnite actually is a modern variant of Shakespearean storytelling—if only Shakespeare had lived in the age of the rocket launcher.
It seemed an obvious thing to me that there should be an image of Shakespeare with a rocket launcher…SO I MADE ONE:
If art is a medium of expression, then I believe those who congregate at the water’s edge to exchange selfies and tag nearby crumbling infrastructure are at least trying to get a message out.
Or, maybe they are all just succumbing to…
Maybe this isn’t art.
But I say, “Let he who is without talent, shut the hell up.”
And let it be what it is.
*-*-*
The need to express ourselves, our souls, may be the most human characteristic.
That we do it in a destructive, transitory medium is even more so.
Will words someday become anachronisms?
After digital communication leaps past verbal utterances to an all-emoticon communication system—how will we express nuanced emotions?
The phrase a “picture is worth a thousand words” takes on a scary new meaning when all you have is a demented smiley face to look at.
Until that day, cherish words, however they are conveyed.
Whatever cryptic message they share may be just for you!
Maybe the mystic words will heal what is broken.
Release what is hidden.
Find what is lost!
Maybe a body just needs to scream into the void and hope that someone, somewhere, is listening:
Asterisk Bedazzled Footnote:
*I vandalize the internet from the safety of my blog instead.
**The internet laws have not yet caught up with the violations of free speech rampant in the digital stratospheres. When I become dictator of the universe, trolls will be hunted for sport.
***I suspect I’m stealing this line from Yoda. Or Harry Potter. A writer somewhere is feeling a sharp pang of plagiarism.
Do you like a stinking good time?
Do you appreciate the rare? The exotic? The exceedingly slow burn to coition?
Do you savor the anticipation an eighteen-year wait brings?
Then you may be ready for the giant phallus. The amorphophallus titanum to be precise.
*
If you happened to wander into Meijer Gardens this week, you may have stumbled across the shy and retiring Titan Arum–a bloom colloquially referred to as a Corpse Flower.*
I’ve been a long-time fan of the gardens, but even I was caught by surprise about the arrival of the local beauty–nicknamed Putricia for her odiferous nature. On impulse, I dashed to the gardens on Tuesday to get this shot of her before she made her full-blown debut. The garden staff estimated that she wouldn’t fully bloom until Friday…but they were to be caught off guard.
Wednesday night, the spathe–or giant solitary petal that goes around the spadix (the stabby, sword-like center spike) was still tightly closed.**
For a better description, you can go to the Chicago Botanic Garden’s website for a great breakdown of the particulars. The site was extremely helpful in providing the follow image to steal:
Rumors abound around this hard-to-get coquette. According to this chart, it may bloom every four to five years. I’ve read elsewhere, it can take much longer because it relies on perfect conditions being met in order to propagate. The flower is in danger of becoming extinct in nature because of habitat loss and other causes.
At the Meijer Gardens, Putricia took eighteen years before she was ready to blossom. But she is finally strutting her stuff. And perhaps because she was so slow in arriving, she hurried up her appearance in time for me to dash over to meet her on Thursday. And, I have to say, she put on quite a stately show.
I couldn’t say how many people came, but the lines curled throughout the building when I was there. If you are brave, you might get to see her yourself–at least, for the next 24 hours anyway.
If you want to save your feet (and nose) the effort, a link to video of the flower’s expansion, you can find it in this article located in the Detroit News.
Here’s the picture I snapped with my cell phone:
Personally, I wasn’t overwhelmed with the stench by the time I got to her. She’d already lost some of her bloom. (Probably being visited by thousands of people takes a toll on a girl.)
Whether standing in line for over two hours for a minute in the limelight with this sultry Sumatran Stinker is your idea of fun, only you can decide.
As for me, I am happy that I went and hope we can look forward to a bright future ahead.
And now, I have camping to get packed for. My son is totally puzzled as to why I would bother to stop and chat with you for this long anyway. For this reason, I’m attributing any typos to his impatience.
Asterisk Bedazzled Footnotes:
*Strangely enough, no one requests a corpse flower for their bridal bouquet. Probably due to having to wait decades to ensure you’ll have one in time for the nuptials.
**Look, I’m not a botanist. There’s plenty of sites you can go to for actual plant terminology and description. But we both know you aren’t going there, are you?!
Sometimes I am caught unawares by the shock of death.
Even thirteen years later, I still grieve.
It catches me in odd moments.
Like today, watching the Monk series finale.
Where, eight years after the show ended, I have my own Monk moment.
*
Monk was a silly crime dramedy about a detective so torn by the death of his wife, he is unable to function without a massive number of coping skills that seem laughable to the world around him. These mechanisms for survival include: obsessive compulsive neatness, rigid need for control and cleanliness and order.* These tics are detrimental to his mental health and impede his ability to work in a normal job. They make for funny television, but a miserable reality.
I never saw the series when it was running. Back in 2002 I was living in Chicago, alternately trying to be a teacher and trying to get pregnant and failing at both. Then I succeeded in pregnancy, but completely tanked at teaching. But I had a husband and a son, so I kept going.
Until 2005, when my husband died.
And I stopped.
I stopped functioning, except at a nominal level where I met basic needs of my son and I cocooned myself from any changes that meant I had to face life.
I missed the entire span of the eight Monk seasons and only stumbled on it in its rerun afterlife where nothing ever truly dies.
And, today, I got to watch Adrian Monk resolve the death of his wife.
The scene that no one else probably thought two cents about was the fact that Monk couldn’t sleep in the center of his bed. He hugged the side, leaving room for Trudy, the memory of his wife forever impressed on her side of the bed.
When all the secrets are revealed in the last episode, the series is wrapped up in a tidy bow. Monk is sleeping, stretched out, in the center of the mattress and is seemingly unaware of the change in his rituals and patterns of behavior that have subsided with the peace of finally knowing. He is able to go on.
I still sleep on my side of the bed. I have never moved from it, no matter what bed I choose. It is probably just habit. A comfortable placement of nearness to the shelf where I put my glasses. The fact that I can only sleep facing one direction.
But it’s true, I can’t move to the center of the bed. Even if it is a small twin-sized mattress. I cling to the edge as if it were a thread from the past. Where I shared a space with someone else.
And that never goes away.
So, today, I cried. Because I remembered.
And never can forget.**
Asterisk Bedazzled Footnote:
*I am not like Monk. If anything, I am the anti-Monk. I do not clean, and obsessively hang on to everything, creating piles of junk that might possibly qualify me for a hoarders episode. I do however have an obsessive compulsive need to watch television that makes me cry, apparently.
**And the next day my period started with a raging bang. I suspect I was also a target of my hormones.
For thirty seconds today, I thought my dishes were all clean.
*Tick*
As my son’s bus pulled up to drop him off,
*Tick*
I was putting the last cup in the cupboard.
*Tick*
The sink was empty.
*Tick*
So was the dishwasher.
*Tick*
I sometimes wish I could hit a “Pause” button.
*Tick*
My son would freeze, mid-step, off the bus.
*Tick*
The grass would not grow, undoing my work mowing in 90 degree heat.
*Tick*
And I could breathe deep of the scents of life.
*Tick*
The smell of the thyme the mower blades edged along with the grass.
*Tick*
The newly-minted caulk from the resealed tub.
*Tick*
Signs of progress, and yet…
*Tick*
I can’t help but wish I could stop the hands from moving.
*Tick*
The To Do list never really stops growing.
*Tick*
That the unpaid bills could wait just a little bit longer…
*Tick*
Life is like an insistence bomb.
*Tick*
It goes on whether you want it to or not.
*Tick*…*Tick*…*Tick*
You just have to ignore the *ticks*…
*Tick*
Or suffer a case of time disease.
For anyone not neck-deep in the hat-phantasmic hoopla surrounding the royal wedding, allow me to present a less drama-soaked alternative: watching plants grow!
*
It occurs to me, that I have watched too many episodes of Midsomer Murders–a British television show on air since 1997 that refuses to die no matter how many casting changes occur.*
If you know the genre, there typically is a picturesque village holding a Medieval Faire with costumed residents oozing quaintness and exhibiting occasional homicidal tendencies.
If you are unfamiliar, I recommend a movie by Simon Pegg called “Hot Fuzz” that crystallizes the best and worst bits about the deceptively serene English countryside:
The thing that captures my attention more than the body count, is the number of community fêtes thrown. There’s like, what, one every episode? It makes me wonder if it is a national British pastime to dress in Ye Olde itchy togs and con people into playing cheesy parlor games for the sake of the church roof fund!
This brings me to today’s topic: American Block Parties.
Most block parties are an organized potluck gathering on barricaded side streets with no other function than to bring a community together to eat. Saturday gives me the opportunity to attend one that is equal parts British Fête Fundraiser and old-fashioned American street festival.
The occasion calls for a gathering of myriad talents to raise awareness and funds for the aptly named Wellhouse. The day’s event is the 6th Annual Heirloom Plant Sale.
Wellhouse is a community program that buys local houses, renovates dilapidated neighborhoods, and provides housing and skills training for formerly homeless residents. They also promote a ‘growing’ community with an emphasis on sustainable practices and energy conservation along with farm gardening.**
Wellhouse hosts a plant sale each year. You go for the plants. You stay for that little something extra you won’t find at your local greenhouse: community!
At first, I beeline to pick up the greenery I want to fill out the barren landscape choked with crabgrass and despair that is my backyard.
Per usual, my teenage son has a trajectory of his own.
I keep dragging the man-child away from one table in particular. (I need to ogle flowers with exotic names like ‘Clemson’ and ‘Hyssop’, don’tcha know.)
I promise my child a specialty cupcake just so I can plant shop. (Twist my arm.)
I don’t know how good the chocolate cupcake with chocolate whipped frosting was, I just know it took my son less time to inhale said cupcake than it took to remove the wrapper.
I pick the one with the raspberry garnish.
I have no regrets.
If you want more rib-sticking eats, you might hit up the royalty-hued catering provided by Purple Blaze, a hybrid of Southern and Ethiopian cooking.
Sadly, I have no time to sample their fare, mostly because the boy-child is pushing me to go, however, even I as a non-meat eater have to say the wafting odor of barbecue is positively mouth watering.
You wouldn’t think there is be more in store at the festivities, but you’d be wrong. The gray, overcast sky can’t put a damper on the upbeat spirits.
There are white-tented tables with various arts for sale. My arms are mostly full of greenery, but I stop to admire the selections.
There were some truly amazing prints to peruse courtesy of Red Hydrant Press.
And fabulous arts of the crafted clay variety provided by WMCAT or the West Michigan Center for Arts & Technology.
Here’s CC showing off her colorful floral-designed Pot:
Before long, my son is dragging me toward our Prius in a desperate bid for freedom, but I chat and take pictures as if this isn’t killing him slowly.
Moving between lazy droplets of rain, it is possible to find your smile while listening to The Fabulous Vans.
As I am packing up my car to go, I chat with the guitarist who is setting up for a performance. We exchange brief biographies, the way strangers do.***
I point to my kid who is slumping, hang-dog, in the car since mommy isn’t hopping to like he hopes. Timmy points to his daughter, Sierra, still polishing off some ribs at a nearby picnic table. He brags about her musicality and involvement in local choirs.
“You wouldn’t be biased about her talents at AlL?” I joke.
Her dad laughs and denies partiality, “Of course not.”
We talk about kids and music for a bit.
I bemoan my teenager’s rebellion against piano and ask whether he has to badger her to follow in her father’s footsteps? He assures me that she’s the one who wants sing.
He can’t say enough great things about her. Apparently, she’s even influenced the music they play.
“We usually play classic rock covers–like Led Zepplin’s “A Whole Lot of Love” but Sierra sings from some of her favorites: Twenty-One Pilots or One Republic.”
“I’m sorry,” I interrupt him. “Did you say Twenty-one Republics?”
He corrects me without laughing, much. By now, the rest of the band has loped over, and agrees to stage a picture for me. I hear them play as I drive away. Their enthusiasm isn’t in the least dampened by the drizzly venue.
*
I spent the rest of the day trying to plant things while simultaneously killing as many weeds as I can.
In the spirit that embodies fine British murder mystery programming, there’s been a summer fête, someone has to die!
Asterisk Bedazzled Footnotes:
*Regarding Midsomer’s Suspicious Death Rate: I do wonder how a fictional hamlet apparently no bigger than Rhode Island can survive quadruple homicides on a weekly basis without running out of people?
**I totally stole the Wellhouse information from a flyer available at the front table.
***Even though we all know about serial killers, no one expects them. They are like the Spanish Inquisition this way.
Spring still isn’t here. Do you know how I know this? Two words: Slug Brain.
*
I have an uninvited guest who invades my corpus callosum during cold weather. Let’s call him Sluggo–assuming the copyright statutes on the Popeye franchise has lapsed. Apparently, Sluggo has decided to turn my brain into a collective.*
He has invited friends and they are slowly taking over the only unused space available–the squishy crevices in my cerebellum. He and his cohort hog the remote–watching the home shopping network at top volume. And for some reasons, their fearless leader keeps insisting that cheese is a fruit. Sluggo is one pushy mollusk.
There’s popcorn everywhere and somebody drank the last of the orange juice, and I’m pretty sure it wasn’t me. I forget to look on the way to the bathroom and, invariably, there is a slippery trail threatening to break my neck. (The less said about this, the better.) Someone is going to get hurt.**
Anyway, if anyone wonders when the blog will finally start generating a buzz with it’s cutting-edge content and thought-provoking insights, ask yourself this: When will the gastropod extravaganza end and things can get back to normal?
Only Sluggo knows and he’s not talking.***
Asterisk Bedazzled Footnote:
*Resistance is futile…and leaves a slimy trail.
**I hurt my brain trying to understand the difference between a gastropod with a shell (snail) and one without (slug). And since that is the major difference between the two, that is saying something. I’m just not sure what…
***Send salt.
Nature needs Nurture
Att vara annorlunda/att inte passa in i samhällets ramar
sober woman • nomadic living
Happiness is Baseball
My watercolour paintings of people, animals and places. And my art experiments in different watercolor techniques
Never let a manuscript do nothing but eat its head off in a drawer.
Looking forward...from back here, a journey through the second half
Nature needs Nurture
Att vara annorlunda/att inte passa in i samhällets ramar
sober woman • nomadic living
Happiness is Baseball
My watercolour paintings of people, animals and places. And my art experiments in different watercolor techniques
Never let a manuscript do nothing but eat its head off in a drawer.
Looking forward...from back here, a journey through the second half
محمد القربي
The Wanderings and wonderings of a sentient cloud.
Watercolor paintings
The natural world, life, and dogs.
Running and life: thoughts from a runner who has been around the block
A place where I let it all hang out.
there's plenty more where the first year came from
Philosophy is all about being curious, asking basic questions. And it can be fun!
