HAPPY NEW YEAR!

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Wishing you a very Merry Christmas! See you in the New Year.

He Had It Coming

In fifth grade our class put on a show for the school and our parents. I don’t remember what the theme was exactly. It must have been something historical because my BFF and I were dressed as 1920’s flappers. Her mother was a seamstress and she made our costumes. Sheath dresses entirely covered in beaded fringe. I LOVED that dress! Every little movement made the beads shimmer and dance!

Like I said, I don’t remember what the show was about….what I do remember was, as we were onstage doing the Charleston, Floyd Daisy stood up in the middle of the audience and yelled at the top of his lungs, “That’s MY chick!”

He had made it quite apparent over time that he liked me. The feeling was NOT mutual but I managed to ignore him most of the time. Until the night of the show.

I was mortified when he jumped up and declared his ‘ownership’ of me! And MAD! How DARE he! I still remember how angry I was, not so much that he declared his feelings to the world but the WAY he said ‘HIS chick’ really ticked me off!

After the show I went looking for him, and when I found him I let him have it! With both barrels, as they say. I chewed him up one side and down the other and then spit him out right in front of God and everyone.

Looking back, I guess I could have been kinder and taken him off to the side and yelled at him privately………then again, he made his statement publicly…….nope, I stand by my actions……he had it coming!  

Sometimes I worry About My Subconscious Mind.....

I sat down with a new sketchbook (not that I need a new sketchbook, or have finished the ones I already have.....but, whatever.....)

This is what popped onto the first page.

It's not what I was thinking about drawing, at least I don't THINK it was what I was thinking about..... lol.

I wonder if I should I be worried......

A Funny on a Monday

from ‪#‎UnKNOWN_PUNster‬

A Fictional Story

He sat at his workbench. It was in the corner of his mother’s overcrowded basement. Lit by a single light bulb hanging from its cord. He liked his ‘studio’ as he referred to it. It suited him. Tucked away as it was, out of sight and secretive. He was secretive.

He had always been a shy child and he grew into a shy adult. Not that he was antisocial, just slightly ill at ease around groups of people. He enjoyed his time alone. He could think. He liked thinking.

Sometimes he thought grand thoughts, sometimes just ordinary thoughts.

And he liked to tinker. He was always taking his mother’s appliances and tinkering with them. Improving them he said. Breaking them his mother said.

She didn’t really mind though, sometimes he did come up with an improvement to the original.

Sometimes he worked on things he found in the trash. Other people’s trash.

Right now he was working on an old fashioned TV remote he found in Mr. Quentin’s trash. After Mr. Quentin died his children came and put all the contents of his house at the curb for the garbage men.

He didn’t know why, but for some reason the remote seemed to jump into his hands. It must have been the shiny gold buttons and the way it ‘clacked’ when you pushed them but Nelson was enthralled the moment he saw it.

He immediately took it back to the house and reverently placed it on his workbench.

He had no idea what you could do with an old 1960’s broken TV remote (without the TV) but that didn’t dull his enthusiasm.

He tinkered with it for months. A new wire here, a little solder there.  

The day he took it with him to work was just an ordinary day.

As he sat at the bus stop he found himself getting annoyed, once again, with the young woman sitting next to him talking on her cell phone. It’s not that he begrudged her having a conversation. But he always felt uncomfortable, like he was eavesdropping on people’s private lives when they talked in such public places.

He sat on the bench with his hands in his pockets trying to be as invisible as possible. He didn’t do it consciously. It was just a reflex. His finger felt for the button on the remote and ‘CLACK’ he pushed it.

“Hello? Hello?” the young woman looked at her phone and cursed. “Damn reception!” she said and put her phone in her purse.

It didn’t occur to Nelson there was any connection……until it happened again.

He passed all the same places. Saw all the same people and things. 

He saw Mr. & Mrs. Goldman arguing at the bus stop like always. He saw the man walking his dog and scolding him, like always. He saw the group of bullies taunting the little boy that walked to school alone every day, like always.

He didn’t know why he did it, didn’t know what he could have been thinking. He grabbed the remote, pointed it at the group of bullies and CLACK, pushed the button.

In that split second the little boy spun around to face his tormentors and the group of bullies fell to the ground en masse. They sat there for a moment stunned. They couldn’t figure out how one small boy had been able to knock them all down at once.

As they scrambled to their feet they noticed the little boy didn’t look quite so little anymore. They never noticed the look of surprise on the boy’s face. They didn’t notice the young man pointing an old TV remote at them.

Neither did any of the others. Not the man who used to harass his dog. Not the Goldman’s.

Now when Nelson rides to work in the mornings the man walking his dog tosses a ball or playfully wrestles with his canine companion. The Goldman’s sit together amicably laughing and chatting while waiting for their bus to come.

Sometimes he walks around the neighborhood and just because he finds it amusing he’ll CLACK the remote at a house where he sees people inside watching TV and changes the channel. Just for fun you understand.

Because being a superhero and using your powers for good can sometime be rather monotonous.

Random Church Signs That Make Me Laugh

Husband Has a Talent......

.....for building haunted furniture.
This is the new banquette in the breakfast nook in the kitchen. You can never have too much storage!

My Mind is a Little Bit Warped

We have a phone that ‘announces’ who is calling. And if it’s not someone I know or a call that I’m expecting I just ignore it.

Most of the time it’s just BS and scammers. But they’re getting more creative with their numbers, and the announcements are quite intriguing.

“Not assigned’, “unlisted’, “out of area”…..who ARE these people? Sometimes it even says the IRS! (That one is quite funny actually; it’s a scam where they threaten to come arrest you if you don’t send them money. If I answer that one I tell them “Come right ahead! I’ll be waiting at the door with my loaded AK47!” I don’t know why but that’s when they hang up! LOL)

But I digress……

Today as I was trying to write something pithy for the blog the phone was unusually busy. And it was a lot of “out of areas”. As I was struggling to write something funny it kept coming out as a rant. Basically I was just pissing and moaning about the state of the world and how it’s going to hell in a hand basket. Not funny, not interesting, not the slightest bit entertaining.

And then I began to think, ‘out of area’, that could mean anything….way out of area…..like maybe it was my mother calling to tell me to quit your bitchin’! Now THAT would really be ‘out of area’!

It made me laugh and snapped me out of my mood….so maybe, in a way, it WAS my mother!

Thanks, mom!

Re-Run

A good story is worth repeating.........

Ghosts of Christmas Past

I learned a lot about interpersonal relationships from watching my parents interact with their parents. 

It was a far better learning experience than any college psychology course I ever took.

My father called his parents Mother and Dad. It was all very formal and polite. As were all dealings with his side of the family.

On the other hand, my father called my mother’s parents Mom and Pop. Things were much less formal in my mother’s parent’s home. They were always laughing and joking and had a twinkle in their eyes. (And Grandma always looked suspiciously like Mrs. Santa Claus to me!)

But I digress….

My father was always respectful to his parents but I got the feeling he didn’t exactly believe in the things they taught him. (They were quite the bigots, among other things.)

I only saw my father show anger towards either of them once.

It was Christmas Eve. I was five or six. I was excited beyond measure.

It was CHRISTMAS EVE and MY GRANDPARENTS WERE VISITING.

I was having a really hard time getting to sleep. I kept coming downstairs to tell my parents I couldn’t sleep (probably every five minutes.) My mother would gently scoot me back into bed and try and calm me down.

On my last trip downstairs to say I couldn’t sleep my Grandmother lost her patience and yelled at me, “Santa is NEVER going to come! You’re a BAD little girl! You’ll never get ANY presents EVER! Now go to sleep! (She never pulled any punches!)

I was so stunned I actually backed up against the wall. I couldn’t have been more surprised if she had slapped me!

My father was across the living room when she yelled at me and in the blink of an eye he was at his mother’s side.

He grabbed her upper arm, spun her around and with daggers in his eyes said; ‘Don’t EVER talk that way to MY children. EVER AGAIN!

I was agog.

I had never seen my father do anything remotely like that before.

Have I mentioned that my father was the MOST non-violent person I have ever known in my life? He didn’t even believe in spanking us, so for him to actually grab Grandma in anger was beyond anything I’d ever known him to do.

In later years I think I came to know why he was the way he was.

Growing up all I ever knew of my father’s parents was what a milquetoast Grandpa was. How Grandma emasculated him. How she was always picking on him and belittling him in front of people.

Then my father told me a story that happened when he was sixteen. His parents were having a fight and Grandpa hit Grandma.

Yup, Grandpa used to beat Grandma up on a regular basis. My father decided he’d had enough. So on this particular occasion, as Grandpa raised his hand to hit Grandma my father stepped between the two of them and said, “Don’t you hit my mother!”

To his great surprise and amazement it was his MOTHER who turned on him and said, “Don’t you ever come between your father and me again!”

He was shocked that he was being berated for trying to help her. And he said he never tried to intervene again.

I think that was a very formative point in his life.

And I could understand why he was such a pacifist.