Sweetpea made these cupcakes for me today. You can’t really see it, but they say “Happy Mother’s Day.”
Spanky made this card for me today. There is a note on the back:
It’s interesting in light of Mother’s Day, we’ve got our own expectant mother in the backyard.
Blane Jr.’s here and I’ll tell you one day all about the grip improving gadget he brought over.
In a few minutes we will go across the street to the field and take photos in the flowers.
Toni’s got a great post about being a young mother, Dear God…(The Stick Turned Blue), I hope you go read that and since it’s a new week, don’t forget to leave a comment to be in the drawing for a signed copy of her new Bobbie Faye book.
To all the moms and moms to be, have a happy Mother’s Day.
I noticed WordPress has a new template especially for photoblogs, so I started a new blog where I will post photos. So far I have six hits!
But no comments yet. So haul it over there and be first. Or else! The Cuckoo’s Nest
Let me know what you think of the title. It’s early, so I can change it to something else if that one is not good.
With this photoblog I am looking for constructive criticism to help me take better photos. There won’t be much writing over there, just working on photo skills.
My first memory of crushing failure occurred when I was a not yet literate child. The culprit, a box of corn flakes.
As you can see from this photograph I took at the grocer a couple of days ago, they’re still at it.
The lying liars!
Time after time I sifted through every corn flake in the box for those strawberries. First, trawling through the dark box with my little hands, then pouring it all out a mixing bowl to analyze the contents in broad daylight.
I kept thinking someone in the house was quicker than I and took all of them… the greedy little bastards. Not that I had any intention of leaving any strawberries in there, either.
It was like panning for gold and highly frustrating. Failure after failure.
I tried this at my grandparents, too. Opened their box and fished through with no more luck than at my own house. My grandmother kept telling me corn flakes didn’t come with prizes like Sugar Smacks and Apple Jacks. I didn’t tell her what I was looking for because I didn’t want her to know I was interested. That might keep her from raiding all the berries next time. I never told anyone what I was looking for and I’m a bit surprised right now that none of the adults could figure out why I kept digging relentlessly through corn flakes (which I refused to eat, BTW, even little kids reject things that have been “picked over”).
This box of cereal that I saw a couple of days ago reminded me of chasing strawberries that didn’t exist.
See? “With Real Strawberries.”
I’ll bet someone just as burned as I about the phantom strawberries grew up and went to work for Post just to put some real strawberries in a box of cereal.
That person is my hero today.
The image of that stupid rooster on the old box of corn flakes continues to haunt me to this very day.
We’re all excited about this wild duck that decided to make a nest and lay eggs in our backyard last week.
While feeding her some bread chunks she hissed at me and lifted her body, showing me what looked like an Easter basket. She’s got about ten eggs!
I’ve been checking on her every day since and even dug up a worm for her. Then I realized she’s been digging in the dirt around her nest, getting her own worms. Great. She’s eating the bread but not while we are around. The dogs have been leaving her alone.
I did some research on the web and found out it takes about 28 days for the eggs to hatch. That is if they have been fertilized.
If?
Oh. Yeah. Well how do I know?
More web research…
You have to “candle” the eggs which means hold it up to a flashlight in a dark room. You can see the embryo developing through the shell. I made Blane snatch an egg from her and we checked.
It looked like this:
Which means we will have at least one duckling. We only candled (and returned) that one egg as we didn’t want to upset the mother. I’m guessing, okay, hoping they all are and maybe, just maybe, in three more weeks we’ll have some little ducklings swimming in the pool.
I can’t wait. I’m having grandducks.
Did you ever try to hatch a chicken egg from the fridge when you were a kid?
And starting today, every Sunday until my book release, end of this month, as in May 27th, I’ll be giving away two signed copies of both books – Bobbie Faye’s Very (very, very, very) Bad Day and book 2 – Bobbie Faye’s (kinda, sorta, not exactly) Family Jewels – to one of the commenters (US/Canada), 18 years old and up. (Hey, there is cursing and murder and mayhem and sex, almost all at the same time. I am not getting in trouble here.) So post anything you do not understand in the comments and next Sunday, I’ll announce a winner… each Sunday for four weeks.
I haven’t read this one yet, but the first one was absolutely hilarious and chock full of Cajun mayhem and adventure.
I just love the cover. And Toni, of course. But that’s not why I recommend her novels. And I swear it is not to brag that I have a friend with a couple of published novels.
No, Toni is a Cajun and she writes about the culture as only an authentic cajun could. Reading her stuff is like signing up for a laugh fest. I promise.
Now go click on that link and leave a comment there. Let me know if you win. Good luck, everyone.
When I was about four, my grandparents down Bayou Lafourche took me to a traiteur to “treat” a wart I had on my finger. It’s not that I’d complained about it, they just busted me trying to bite it off.
The traiteur had a wooden shack that was half on land and half over the bayou. He also knitted fishnets. I don’t know which one he did the most. So, I go in this old place and the man takes a string and does this “flossing” motion around my wart. Said some prayers in French. The string was green and to this day I have an aversion to green minty floss because it reminds me of warts.
The next day I was disappointed. The wart was still there. And the next, and the next, and the next. Then one day when I was no longer thinking about it, the wart was gone.
I never did think the traiteur’s thing worked. If something was to work, it had to be a bit more instant.
Years later, when I was about twelve, I read something about studies about warts, how if you believe they will go away, they will.
I thought I must not have believed it would go away. I didn’t like being tricked by my own mind or my belief system.
No wonder science appealed to me.
More years later the traiteur stuff came into play. As a nurse in Louisiana I had countless patients with strings tied around their ankles, many tiny knots tied into them. I had to dig through puffy and swollen ankles to get to these strings… The thing is, this particular treatment was to ward off swelling.
Those same patients had no trouble with the Lasix injections (for swelling), but try to get the circulation cutting string off them?
I kept hearing my dogs bark like crazy after letting them out into the back yard Saturday. Not the regular barking they do, but fierce protests, as if an intruder was back there. I went out to check on it and saw this duck swimming in the pool. She wasn’t quacking or anything, but she seemed to know the dogs weren’t going to jump in after her.
I got the dogs back into the house, grabbed the camera and didn’t really think she’d still be there by the time I got back out, but she was.
I wondered if she was injured because she wouldn’t fly away.
Since I’d never seen a duck in the pool before I rounded up everyone to come see but she was gone by the time they came. Spanky said she had seen one a few days before, a male one swimming in the pool, but she was in a rush to get to school and forgot to tell us.
Sunday, I go out to see what the dogs are barking at again. This time they are barking at a shrub. I pull the foilage back and guess what? That same duck, sitting on three eggs.
Awwwwww.
There’s no way I can fence off this area as it is behind the pool and the dogs would just be able to walk around the coping. So I just keep telling the dogs,”That’s our friend.”
That’s what I tell them when our human friends come over to get them to be nice. They know that word, somehow, and are leaving the duck and her nest alone.
Of course, you know, I keep thinking… of all the places that duck could’ve made a nest and she chooses a Cajun’s yard. That is one lucky duck, I tell ya.
Spanky got a board game from her brother for her birthday called “Would you Rather…”
It comes with a box of cards that has these crazy hypotheticals.
Such as:
Would you rather spend two weeks with your head stuck in a metal bucket -OR- six days with your entire body stuck between the rails of a wrought iron fence?
Whoevers turn it is has to guess which answer the rest of the group (as a majority) will choose. The group has 90 seconds to debate which one is better.
For me it was a no brainer. Bucket head. The others, who outnumbered me said it didn’t matter what I thought. I said, “Wait, stuck in the fence, how are you going to go to the toilet?”
Blane Jr. said he’d crap in a bucket and someone else would cart it off. He said he would not like being “blinded” with a bucket over his head for two weeks. That six days was less harsh than two weeks.
I couldn’t imagine anyone being there to cart anything for me. I don’t think that way. I could actually imagine myself being the poor bastard putting up a shower curtain for him to have his privacy and doing his dirty work while he’s stuck in a fence.
There’s a “challenge” part to the game where we have to make up our own hypotheticals and mix them up with hypotheticals in the game and the other players have to guess which one came from the game.
That part was what was the most interesting. Blane Sr. made up one that involved having to hang by your sideburns all day. Another, “Would you rather have someone dig in your ear with a long needle -or- up your sinus cavity with a needle. Blane Jr. had one involving getting farted on. Boys…
Mine had something about being stranded in a Venezuelan train station. Or up in the Andes mountains with a fine bottle of Chilean wine.
“The wine one,” they all said without hesitation. Ha. There is so little oxygen up there wine would only help them freeze to death faster!
So, let me pull a random question for you. There are the four categories:
A) pain, fear, or discomfort
B) Appearance, Embarrassment
C) Ethics, Intellect
D) Random
By the roll of the die, we land on appearance, embarrassment.
Your turn to answer this and tell me why:
Would you rather be forced to look at yourself in every reflective surface you pass for at least 20 seconds -OR- never see your reflection again?
I’d chose the latter. It wouldn’t be so bad to know whether or not I’m getting wrinkles. Or whether I’ve got any bags under my eyes. Or if I my ass looked too big. Hell yeah.
Today is Spanky’s birthday. Fifteen years ago, when we brought her home from the hospital, we were buying strawberries by the crate. Don’t ask how I remember that but she loves to hear the story over and over.
So every year when her birthday rolls around we know it is strawberry season. No need to even check the bottom of the container for rotten ones. They’re all good.
While Spanky is a genetic improvement of Blane and I, Spanky has:
My cowlick, my chin, lips, knees, whacked baby toenail, and passion for music and words.
Blane’s eyes, brows, shoulders, competitiveness, sense of responsibility, keen perception.
She has her own sense of humor and an immaculate memory.
This weekend she goes to her first school dance with her first boyfriend. I sent an email out to a few of the girls with some photos of Spanky comparing different dresses. Her first grown-up looking dress. I got so many different responses. Some people focused on my perspective, some on hers. It was fascinating (and although Spanky always says she doesn’t care what people think about how she dresses, she wanted to know what everyone thought about the dress she chose).
She doesn’t want anything for her birthday. She never wants anything. She gets that from her dad.
Two famous Spanky quotes: “The world is a pop-up book (age 4)” and “Queue the fangirls (age 13).”
Oh, and, “This is the Wife (age 3).” She was kicked back in her Mickey Mouse swimming pool, wearing sunglasses, with her arms propped upon the sides of the pool. She couldn’t pronounce an “L.”
When she started walking she ditched the traditional method and walked on her knees instead for months. I think she was afraid of falling. She hardly ever fell. Clumsy is the last word I’d use to describe her.
She loves to listen to the Beatles, so I have the perfect YouTube for her, Strawberry Fields. I’ve read Lennon wrote this song about himself, how he thinks on a different level than most people. She’s like that.
One of Sweetpea’s friends came over last week saying she had to offload two Honda Civic Tour (Dallas concert) tickets due to a scheduling conflict.
Spanky and I just looked at each other, quite surprised at our good fortune. Headlining that tour was Panic At The Disco, one of her favorite bands. I never liked them until a few weeks ago, with the release of their “Pretty. Odd.” CD.
Spank and I dropped everything and went, of course. She says she feels she must to do a review of the show so people will open their minds to this band. I don’t know if she’ll get to it though, she has a pretty bad cold right now.
I’ll give you a run down of what it was like for me.
First, the cool factor. There is nothing about being at a concert that makes me feel cool or hip, especially one such as this where most of the fans are teenaged girls and I am one of the oldest persons in the place. I keep in mind that all the teenagers at these concerts probably don’t feel cool, either (it comes with being that age), AND I don’t think a single person notices me, anyway.
Is it horrifying? Maybe for a hip music reviewer who can’t stop thinking about how out of place he/she is for being there at the age of over 25. I find it taints their work and the reviews are not usually well thought out but a hit job on the talent because of who their audience is. They should actually pay attention to these acts because they grow with their audiences and change styles as these kids get older.
Panic At The Disco (PATD) is a perfect example of this. Spanky started listening to them when she was about twelve. I wasn’t too crazy about their music then, it was a bit on the whiney side. Three years later, this band has a new CD, “Pretty. Odd.” and it is exceptional. I’d think if one likes the Beatles, they’d like some of these songs. Maybe. Beatles fans can be a bit possessive about a music style and shout, “That’s a rip-off!” I don’t feel this way since I’m not happy with a finite set of tunes.
Now, about the show.
Starter bands usually suck because they’re new and trying to make a name for themselves. We were downright shocked with the first band, Phantom Planet (here’s their MySpace page). They’re not new, but I think they’ve recently become “quite good.” I don’t even know how to categorize them, it’s like classic and new rock rolled into one package. Their live performance was spectacular and missing their set because they are the first band would be a big mistake for anyone with a Honda Civic Tour ticket. Trust me on that. It’s forty-five minutes of pure music bliss.
The second band, The Hush Sound was excellent, if you like breeezy California rock. The front-woman, Greta Salpeter’s voice is pristine, but sounds a bit too much like other popular front women vocalists such as Hayley Williams of Paramore, Avril Lavigne, and Lacey Mosley of Flyleaf. After about three songs, Spank and I were hoping they’d hush their sound as it got into Brady Bunch territory.
Third in the lineup, Motion City Soundtrack, another of Spanky’s favorite pop-rock bands. I don’t like their music, but they performed well. I was fixated on Jesse Johnson’s (synthesizer) dramatic emo bang. One of the things I like to do at these concerts is get at least one great photo of something unusual. That was my challenge of the night, to capture this thing. The guy has this chunk of hair in the front that is about a foot long while the rest of his hair is buzz cut length. The entire time he plays, he rocks his head back and forth really fast and this hair thing is an act of its own.
Come on, emo bang, cooperate.
Yes, you.
It’s hard enough fighting the lights and fog. Don’t get all smug. you haven’t won, yet.
Ha ha, Gotcha!
Now for the headliner, Panic At The Disco, which started at about 10 PM. Their lead vocalist, Brendon Urie pulled off his part with perfection. I usually find that about half the time at any given show of any given band the vocals are not en forme. All four bands on this tour did surprisingly well as far as vocals go. It could be that this is the first week of the tour and voices are still fresh.
Okay, Spanky just passed by and said to save her some space for her forthcoming review. Yay, Spank saved the day. It won’t be in this post as she hasn’t started it yet.
In the meantime, I’ve uploaded a few photos here, if you’re interested.
Here’s a YouTube I uploaded of one of my favorite songs from their current CD. What’s funny about this video is what’s happening at the beginning, left of screen. A security guard struggles to heave a kid out of the pit. Reminds me of birthing. From my perspective, a mom bringing her kid to a concert… well you get the metaphor.
Maybe it’s just me, but I can hear Spanky’s voice singing in there. Funny thing.
Oh, and about the venue. What’s odd is how the name of the venue changes with the type of music… They call it the Palladium Ballroom for rock concerts, but Gilley’s the rest of the time.
Gilley’s as in Urban Cowboy. Mechanical bulls. Country music. Small place. Small crowd.
This was a great show. Go see it if it comes to your city.
In a hotel lobby near here I saw this lighted glass pipe sculpture and was stunned by the beauty of it. It reminds me of fireworks, Silly String, Twizzlers, bad and good hair days, Christmas trees, peace pipes… but mostly it makes me think of taking photos of lights at night without a tripod. Those beautiful goof-ups that I don’t like to delete from the camera.
One of the things I like best about my mom is her abiltiy to make friends with anyone. She never seemed to have that part in her personality… how to explain… that part that tells us, this person is too high class or low class, or too smart, too stupid, not enough like her… Whatever.
She just never felt uncomfortable talking to people and within 30 seconds she could find something she and any other person had a common interest in.
She was especially gifted with loners. Often my mom was their only friend. She met a lot of them through her work at the movie theater. Many times they needed a ride home. Sometimes she would bring them over to visit and we’d all gather around the kitchen table and talk away half the night.
One of these guys, Roscoe (name changed to protect his identity) was a bit slow. He’d been raised under horrible circumstances. Maybe not really raised at all. He was horribly poor and couldn’t work because he was just that slow. He had a pure heart and was brave. He didn’t know he was slow, I don’t think. If he was upset about the way things were, he’d call the all the way up to the White House to voice his complaint. I’m not kidding.
A lot of our table talks included Roscoe’s tales of his calls about some injustice he saw in society and how he did something about it. How he believed he made a difference. His walking adventures were amazing, too. The absurd situations this guy would find himself in and how he got out of them were the most outrageous tales. True stories, as Roscoe didn’t know how to tell lies, much less keep up with them.
He was a thoughtful person. One time my mom was telling him about how she wished she had one of those things you plug into an outlet that turns it into three outlets. (Not an extension cord, I can’t think of the name of this thing right now). This was twenty years ago. Anyway, years go by. They lose contact.
One day, out of the blue, Roscoe shows up at her door with blistered and bloody feet, carrying a suitcase. His skull was bandaged and he had a wad of gauze on his ear. There he was, with an enormous smile of accomplishment as he produced for her, one of those wall outlet things.
He said he’d just gotten out of the hospital, well, it had been days, but it was a long and twisted journey. A week or so earlier, he’d rode a Greyhound bus to New Orleans Charity Hospital (3 hour drive) for surgery on his ear.
Upon his release from the hospital, a stranger offered him a ride back home. So Roscoe gets in the car and about an hour into the drive, the driver pulls over, steals his money and his shoes and leaves him on the side of the road with his suitcase.
Turns out the guy drove him an hour in the wrong direction. So now Roscoe was in another state with no money and no shoes.
He walked all day and that first night he found an abandoned train station to sleep. When he stretched out on a bench, he noticed the wall outlet thing. He grabbed it for my mom and said he didn’t think it was stealing because this was an abandoned building.
I don’t know how many days it took him to walk home. He tried to hitchhike, but not a single person stopped to pick him up. I guess him having his head all bandaged like that and not wearing shoes had a little to do with it.
When he got back into town, he didn’t go straight home, he walked all the way to my mom’s first. Just to give her that thing he finally found for her.
As much as this guy had been let down in life by others, by society, he never lost his ability to put others before himself. Even in desperate times.
A few years later, Roscoe was jailed for a crime he didn’t commit. He spent five years behind bars for that. When he got out, he made his whacky calls and ended up with a huge settlement for wrongful imprisonment. Enough to live out the rest of his life on his own land, in his own house with the option to go to right there to the hospital in his own town.
Blane and I got in a big fight last night over household duties. If he does a couple of batches of clothes he convinces himself he has done all the laundry AND all of the housework, too. (Meals cook themselves, bathrooms stay clean, dust dare not settle in this house, dishes find their way back into the cupboards and I do absolutely NO work. Lucky me.)
I usually just laugh it off even while we’re arguing. When I’m laughing, he’s safe. If I stop laughing, everyone should run for the hills.
I didn’t get the childhood nickname “gueppe” (wasp) for nothing.
When I get like that, Blane usually eyes the kitchen knife drawer. Not that I’ve ever pulled a knife on him, but it is so rare that I do actually get mad, he just has no idea of what I’m capable of. He knows I can fight, I was raised with four tough boys. I’ve also told him he better never lay a hand on me because that is when all rules are out the door and he could get cut.
What set me off last night was him saying he was going to make a list of chores for me to do. Him. Make a list. Of housework. For me. A list.
First sign of danger: Kitty goes quiet.
Second sign of danger: Kitty’s eyes narrow.
Third sign of danger: Kitty also eyes the knife drawer.
I was enraged. As any mother knows, this is damn near slave labor. That I do it, when I do it, how I want to do it makes it feel just “damn near.” I went Samuel L. Jackson on him:
Me: Say “List” again. I dare you. I DOUBLE dare you.
Him: What’s wrong with a list?
Me: Say “LIST” one more gotdamn time.
He punched the wall and ran off to his little cave.
This morning I put on my warrior shirt:
They cracked up when I showed up in that shirt at the dentist. I laughed too, I usually don’t leave the house with that on. Then I got stoned on laughing gas. Found magical solutions to all the world’s problems. Forgot them as soon as that stuff wore off.
I’m happy the person I was rooting for won the “Make Me A Supermodel” show. I was happy with the outcome of Project Runway as well. The winner, whose name I won’t mention just in case you are yet to see the finale should have his/her own show. What a character!
So now I have fashion reality show withdrawals. Here’s something I found today regarding supermodels. And wipeouts.
The lying liars!
Don’t get all smug. you haven’t won, yet.
Ha ha, Gotcha!
