Good morning!

Above: Me and the bastard cat.

I woke up with a raging headache. The cat is gently preparing to throw up somewhere near my bed, and I hope,briefly and probably in vain, that I don't step in it on my way downstairs.

I've been lying in bed, planning a cartoon where a horse with my face is straining to pull a fully loaded wagon up a steep hill and the driver, who has the face of the night city editor, has decided to flog me to make me reach the top of the hill by X o'clock, which I know is not going to happen because I am working so furiously I don't even have time to glance at Big Ben.

Then the cat, apparently emptied of its last meal (pre-poop, in my parlance; in this case, pre-puke) jumps on my back and uses it for a springboard (oof!) to the half-wall's top, where he proceeds to sharpen his claws on a beam.

"Keep it up," I growl, "and I'll have you declawed."

I shuffle to the loo, sit down, and as I start to pee, realize the toilet paper that I tossed up here into the loft last night is still across the room where it landed.

So my day begins. The headache is still raging.

There's a Reason We Rarely Do Dishes

We bid farewell yesterday morning to our dear friend Mary, who had spent almost three whole days at the Stick Farm.

Whatever muscles I use for laughing are well exercised when Mary is around. She got me going immediately when I told her she would have to accompany me to a parent-teacher event at Katie's high school and she created the character "Aunty Pepper" on the spot. Aunty Pepper would not go alone, of course, so "Uncle Salt" was enlisted (see my Facebook profile pic). We then decided we'd introduce Aunty Pepper as a mute, so she wouldn't have to actually say anything to Katie's teachers Mary's miming of "I'm mute" was priceless and very nearly incapacitated me.

Mary's a very easy guest. She just parks her van in the yard and voila, there's her bedroom. We brought her a steaming gallon of coffee every morning, and that's pretty much all she required. Plus, she practically took over my kitchen, where, despite our best efforts and I'm sure to Mary's well-tempered disgust, at least one of our shih tzus has decided to relieve herself on an irregular albeit fairly frequent basis.

Feeding people has never been my strong point -- Rex has been my rock in that regard as we raised Katie, once breast-feeding ended. I was really good at breast-feeding, but good hostesses offer other options. Luckily, Rex was available to grill pork chops one evening, and the next night Mary tossed us a mean salad. Lunches at our little Limerick cafe and a riverside restaurant in Kennebunkport filled in the gaps,

Anyway, today, about 24 hours after Mary left, it occurs to me that she must be wondering why I didn't once turn on the dishwasher whilst she sojourned. To my credit, I did rinse dishes and put them in the dishwasher. But here, dear reader, is the reason I did not push the Start button:

Our $25 Craigslist dishwasher makes so much noise, we literally only start it when we are on our way out to somewhere. And I mean, one foot out the door. I actually made a recording of it on my phone, and if it's still on my phone, I will upload it soon. Stay tuned! 

It's Probably Something I Did

One of my very first jobs was sewing swatches of upholstery at a furniture factory. An older girl (she was 19, I was 18) named Debbie Wiley and I were hired for six weeks at the end of the summer. Our boss was named Irvin. Very nice guy. Old (40?) but nice.  We had to punch in and out of work, standing in line with our grown-up co-workers, who, we were to discover, behaved more like elementary school children most of the time. Here's one example: a couple of the women were giggling one day because one of them had given a jointly disliked co-worker a piece of candy that had, unbeknownst to her, been dropped on the floor! Ha ha! What a hoot!

A couple days into the six weeks, my sewing machine broke down. Irvin called in a repair guy, and I stood around waiting for it to be fixed. You may think it's boring to sew swatches, but it's much more boring to hang around a factory floor with nothing to do except watch juvenile-acting grown-ups. Soon, the machine was fixed, and I was back busily whipping up upholstery samples to be displayed in furniture retail stores across the Northeast.

My sewing machine broke down a bunch more times, and we went through the repair process each time. Irvin was scratching his head, concerned about how much it was costing the company.

Finally, all on my own, I figured out what was wrong with my machine. It was me. It was breaking down because I was using it incorrectly. Can't tell you now whether I was threading it wrong or replacing the bobbin incorrectly, but I did figure it out, and stopped doing whatever I was doing. The machine did not break down again.

 I let Irvin think the repairman had finally succeeded. I feared if he knew it was my fault, he'd dock my pay for the amount of the repairs.

This was not an isolated situation in my life. In the course of numerous jobs and execution of many tasks, I learned that if some piece of machinery malfunctioned, it was probably something I did. As my husband, Rex, would say, "Loose nut behind the wheel."

This is why I am so relieved I had nothing to do with the "State Trooper was a Heroin Addict" story in the newspaper I work at that turned out to be a lie.

Lying to the press

The top editor at the newspaper where I work told me that one of my headlines was his "second-least-favorite in the paper last week."

Admittedly, the headline sucked. It was: "Avian flu flies the coop, but industry still lays an egg."

Bad. I laid an egg.

The poorness of my performance paled, however, when the newspaper suffered an even bigger embarrassment. We ran a huge front page story Sunday about a former state trooper (22 years, he said) who came forward to share his shocking tale of being a heroin addict. Turned out he wasn't a former state trooper. He was barely even a former cop: Eight months on the South Paris police force. Part time.

My suggested headline:

'Trooper' lies
to reporter;
newspaper
lays big egg

The good news about the story, and I am positively giddy about this, is that I had absolutely NOTHING to do with it! Usually when something goes wrong, my fingerprints turn up somewhere in the history. Not this time.

(I remain, of course, intensely curious about what his first-least-favorite headline was.)

 

    Petition by iPetitions

Birthday Invite!

Introducing the ONCE-IN-A-LIFETIME BIRTHDAY POTLUCK/CONTRADANCE and, most importantly, “ROAST DEBBI” event, and (drum roll, please)
YOU’RE INVITED!
Bring your best stories about Debbi (who, we presume, will still be among the living, and what’s more, actually AT the party) and share them at a podium clearly marked “Roost” er …  “Roast.” Or, if you have something nice to say (and it has happened, though rarely) you may choose to speak from the “Testimonial” podium.

There’ll be exciting fun throughout the evening. For example:

* Drawings for fabulous door prizes!
* Hobnobbing with fun people, or even those you brought with you
* Music by people who can play and anyone else who feels like joining in
* For the courageous, a blindfold contradance (spectators really love this one!)

And wait! THERE‘S MORE!

Everyone who attends will receive an embossed, entirely valid certificate EXCUSING you from attending Debbi’s REAL funeral (far in the future, we hope)! Just think, you will suffer no guilt upon hearing of Debbi’s eventual demise and completely ignoring it! Stay home and watch the Super Bowl!


THE PARTICULARS:

WHEN: Friday, March 15, 2013, 5 p.m. to whenever

WHERE: The Brick Town Hall, Limerick, Maine

HOW MUCH: Free! Except for the potluck food you’re bringing to share

WHY: Because we like you; also, I’m in my manic stage

PLUS: Kids are welcome!

FMI: Call 207-272-6574 or email stick farmer@myfairpoint.net; operators are standing by

Remember, you wouldn’t be getting this invite if you weren’t someone pretty special in Debbi’s life.

RSVP to tel. number above, email address above, or 36 Whiteley Road, Limerick, ME 04048, or all three if it floats your boat:

/ /  Yes! I want to come to the party and be excused from Debbi’s funeral

/ /  Yes! This sounds like SUCH a fiasco I simply have to witness it

/ / Yes! I will be there, but don’t expect me to contradance

/ / Can I “pull a Midge” and say “yes” now, and back out later?

I intend to   / / “roast” Debbi        / / give a testimonial

I feel it is a measure of my success in this life to have to assure you:

THIS IS NOT A JOKE!

Laughs at Work

I was throwing pens away right and left as I copied down my schedule from what we at the Press Herald call "the wailing wall" because none of the pens seemed to have any ink in them.

"Jeezum," I'd snap in disgust. "This one doesn't work either!" Toss into wastebasket.

 Then my boss said, "Stop throwing away pens. They don't work because you're writing up against a wall."

He added, unhelpfully, "It's called gravity!"

That made my night. God knows I need good laughs!

Then I read a story about how all Maine's candidates for U.S. Senate are "from away," as we say of non-Maine-born people. In the final paragraphs, we get an anecdote about Angus King, who was our governor for awhile and is now seeking the Senate seat.

King was talking to some old-timer, saying how good he felt that even though he's not a native Mainer, all his kids were born in Maine and so THEY are native Mainers!

The old-timer remarked, "Well, not so fast there, Angus. Just because a cat has her kittens in the oven it don't make them biscuits."

What a great night I was having! Two fabulous laughs!

Tonight as I drove home, I was thinking what a great spoof could be made out of pretending that the leaders of the world are all visiting each other's Facebook pages and leaving comments. And that's how the big decisions are made, and how international relations are defined.

They've all friended each other and on their home page, they can all read what they've written to everyone else. And most of it has to be really shallow, Facebook-y kind of stupid stuff, like pictures of grandkids and updating status (as if anyone cares!) and sharing silly pictures they've taken of themselves with their phones!

Must send this idea on to Neil, my columnist friend at the NYT.

Survival of the Fattest

It's been awhile, and though I have thoughts and opinions that amuse me every single day - nay, every single minute - I just can't stand sitting down any longer than I already do (playing Lexulous, of course) to write them here.

Today, on a whim, I visited my blog and was reminded of how much I like this other blog which I follow. It's Cheryl Somebody-or-other's "Free Range Living" at http://freerangeliving.blogspot.com/2011/10/full-circle.html

So, anyway, at work last night, I was fascinated by a couple of stories we put in the newspaper.

The first was about two women in Sweden who received transplants of their own mothers' uteruses. One of the women had lost her own uterus because of cancer, and the other had been born without a uterus.

Hooray for them, and good luck. However, something I've always ruminated about is, if natural selection is the way the human race improves itself, are we doing ourselves any favors by inducing reproduction in people unable to reproduce on their own? Both women will now undergo in vitro fertilization with their own harvested eggs. If the one carries a predisposition for cancer, and the other carries some flaw causing a uterus to not develop, won't they just be passing it on to future generations? I'm not advocating denying anyone the joy of having their own child. After all, I challenged nature myself, by getting pregnant again after two miscarriages. (What's that, Nature? You don't think I should reproduce? You think I should take the hint? Well, we'll just see about that!) Just wondering where the human race is heading and whether we're lacking a basic respect for said nature.

The other story was about rampant adult obesity in the U.S. (I'm now down to merely overweight, thanks to a recent bout with Weight Watchers). By the year 2030, a new report says, nearly 50 percent of adults in most states will be obese. Now. To relate this to the previous story. If these people are too fat to fornicate, should they be allowed to reproduce via other means? Won't that just be setting us up for 100 percent obesity by, say, 2080? And then won't the U.S., with all that extra weight tramping around on it, be in danger of actually sinking into the seas, and everyone will die?

These threads deserve expansion, but I'm so blown away by all the ethical implications, I can't oblige right now.

Pennywhistles: Together At Last

My twin nephews, Duncan and Kyle, probably will never appreciate what a wonderful thing they did for me last evening. It was like a Make-A-Wish dream come true.

They and their roommate, Maria, came over and we played my four-part pennywhistle arrangements of "Hello, Dolly," "Piano Favorites," "William Tell Overture" and "Battle Hymn of the Republic."

It is such a joy to play with people for whom musical instruments are like natural appendages. These guys don't play pennywhistle every day, but they gamely picked them up, quickly grasped the essentials and even transposed while sight-reading.

Granted, four pennywhistles playing in harmony can get old really quickly. But the "funny factor" is so worth it. Poor Dunc had one part where he had the same four-note figure over and over and over again; for this he earned a music performance degree at SUNY Purchase?

The boys and Maria were such good sports to humor me. I hope they had fun, too. I hope they will come play with me again!

They'd better, actually, so we can make a recording and I can post it here!

The Exciting World of Etc.

I love craigslist SO MUCH! My deepest regret is that it didn't exist back when I abandoned the conventional life to travel the U.S. and have adventures.

My favorite category, at least at this jobless point in my life, is the ETC under
Jobs. I don't know why I've wasted time looking under Nonprofit Sector and Office/Administrative or even Writing/Editing when the excitement of ETC was there all along.

This job just appeared today: Balloon Twister.

Yes! And training is provided! I want to be a balloon twister!

Sadly, I'm no longer qualified for some of the jobs, such as gestational surrogate and sleep research study lab rat (the cut-off age is 55. :-( ) And of course, figure model and tumbling instructor are out of the question! At least until I lose the last, stubborn 46 pounds to reach my Weight Watchers goal.

But you never know what will turn up! Careers you never knew could exist!

The copy chief at the Press Herald called me a couple of nights ago to say it's safe for me to come back now that the company has changed hands. I told him I'm interested in working on a "limited basis," because who knows? Maybe I'll be twisting balloons on weekends this summer!

My Friend Phil

There was a reason I signed in here. I had something I wanted to say. Unfortunately it has completely escaped me.

I am about to embark on a week with Phil the famous pig of Portland. This pig was kind of the mascot of one of Portland's First Friday Art Walks, which was titled, "Phil, Pig in the City."

I'm looking forward to spending time with Phil, because I want him to be my friend. So far, the two times I've met him, he's been quite hostile and seems to want me OUT of HIS TERRITORY. The first time, he just ran at me and looked mad. Today, our encounter was like something out of a horror movie. He was actually sneaking up behind me and then attacking my leg. It made me laugh. Which only enraged him further.

By this time next week, I hope I am reporting that Phil -- all 80 pounds of him -- is climbing onto my lap to watch NCIS with me. Or better yet, Red Sox games!

Of Puzzles, Bureaucracy and At Least One Stooge

I'm falling down on the job here. Not only is this blog not daily, it's not even weekly. It's barely monthly.

Blame it on Lexulous. I sit down to play one game, and then I find myself hitting "Rematch" after every contest. The way I justify it: I'm honing my skills as a cruciverbalist.

Speaking of which, I am going to try to post the crossword puzzles I am learning to build. Feel free to print them out and attempt to solve them. Feedback would be nice, but it's not required.

SOMETHING WEIRD

As you may or may not know, I was laid off from MaineToday Media in November and I am collecting unemployment as I look for a new job. Yesterday I got a letter from the state Department of Labor that said, "We have been notified by MaineToday Media that you became employed there as of Feb. 29, 2012. You have claimed unemployment benefits since them, and now, GIVE THEM BACK!"

This came as a bit of a shock to me, since I had no idea that MaineMedia had re-employed me! You'd think they'd let ME know.

So now I have to call the unemployment office and find out what the heck is going on. Like I'll be able to get through! Mondays, I'm sure the phones are ringing off the hook up there in Augusta.

A CLOSE CALL

The sign on the Weight Watchers door said, "We will be closed Sunday for Easter, and will also close Saturday at noon."

I saw this on Friday, and thought, "Oh my God, Easter is this Sunday?"

So I told Rex to make sure the Easter Bunny was well supplied and ready to deliver, and Kayti was looking forward to chocolate (and the celebration of the Resurrection, too, of course. Not.). She was bummed that I would not be at home Sunday morning as I am pet-sitting 20 miles away. I soothed her by promising to drive over Sunday morning before she even woke up. A couple of times she asked, "Are you sure tomorrow is Easter?" because really, there'd been no other indication except that note on the WW door.

Finally I remembered to look it up online, and discovered what all you, dear readers, already know. Easter is two weeks away!

I called Rex and pulled him off Easter Bunny detail. He wasn't happy that he'd made a completely unnecessary trip to the grocery store. But he was happy that it wasn't too late to not observe Easter TWICE!

Plus we would have felt incredibly stupid after hunting for eggs and having our ham dinner and enjoying our Easter baskets, only to find out everyone else in the world was just going about their normal Sunday activities!

The Parade Passes By

It's frightening how many writing and editing jobs are out there, but what's more frightening is how ill qualified I am for many of them.

I've been editing copy and designing pages for decades, but today's newspaper employers are looking for Web skills that I would have to brush up on, if not outright acquire. One of my rules in choosing what jobs to apply for is: If you don't know what the job is, don't apply. Content producer, for example. Exactly what is a content producer? Is it just someone who can write diatribes on any subject to fill the available space (which I would, of course, be very good at), or is it someone who has to know how to write diatribes that are cleverly loaded with keywords that will land said diatribes on Google's Page One? Maybe a content producer doesn't even write! I don't know!

Still, I may have to rethink that rule if I really want to get a job.

Then there are the employers who want people who have social media marketing savvy, which I don't, although I'm somewhat willing to learn.

Adding insult to injury, the temporary agency I signed up with last week pretty much told me no one would want me for my office skills, which were last relevant in the early '90s.

I told Kayti recently, "I finally figured out a career I would enjoy. And it's really surprising, because it's not something I ever would have associated with myself."

Kayti said, "Cosmetology?"

Which made me laugh, because that's even more outlandish than accounting, which is the one I came up with.

Party, or Really Party? That is the Question

I've invited bunches of people to my house this coming Sunday to play music and share potluck food. Three days ago I was informed that this Sunday is Super Bowl Sunday, and I might want to reschedule my get-together.

Should I waste my breath railing against a society that values a televised football game that is basically an excuse to eat junk food, drink beer, and exercise vicariously above a few hours of live, musical fellowship and revelry?

Nah. That part of my holy crusade against culture is over. Go ahead. Watch the stupid game. If it were the Red Sox in the World Series, I'd probably do the same thing.

A Novel Approach

As I drive hither and thither on my daily errands, I ponder the plot for my true-crime novel, which has no name as yet. Actually, it has no plot yet, either, but there are several sub-plots trying to surface, and I do know what the prologue -- the crime -- will be.

I haven't sat down to write the prologue, and this morning I realized something rather disturbing: I am actually procrastinating about it because it is going to be SO DELICIOUS! The victim is going to be one of my old boyfriends, and I am going to so enjoy rubbing him out! It is really fun to ride around thinking up ways of executing him and experimenting with dialogue.

OK. I know you think I'm sick. Even I think this is a little sick. But it's funny!

Did You Miss Me?

Wow, it has been FOREVER since I wrote on this blog.

I just read through a few posts, and was once again pleasantly surprised in hindsight at how lucid, and, dammit, just plain lovable I am!

Here's a funny update:

I opened the freezer door a couple days ago, thinking to maybe clear some space for new, exciting frozen treats to come, and pulled a grocery bag from the very back.

"Hmmmmm, wonder what's in this?" I said to myself.

There was a tag on the bag. It said: "Athena."

I immediately thought, "Guinea pig food?" Because, as you know, dear reader, since you have diligently digested all my previous posts, Athena was one of our guinea pigs.

Then, a split second later I realized the frozen lump in the bag WAS Athena.

That poor, dead guinea pig has been in our freezer for over a year, waiting for burial.

Makes you wonder what else is in there, doesn't it?

By the way -- and this has nothing to do with what's in my freezer, despite the juxtaposition -- you're all invited to my house for music and potluck Feb. 5.

A free denouement

Every time I get in the shower, this idea for the denouement in a novel comes to me. I'll probably never write a novel, so it's yours if you want it!

The story is about a married couple whose families, like everybody's families, have their own ways of doing things. This man & wife (for indeed it is a man-woman arrangement) are always getting on each other's cases -- in a loving if at times exasperated manner -- about the way they do things.

For instance, she thinks it's stupid to rinse the backs of dishes, because nobody eats off the backs! So who cares if there's soap on them? Plus it wastes water.

He calls her on it, and she says, "It is the way of my people."

For another instance, he insists on keeping two bars of soap in the shower, one strictly for face and upper-body use, the other strictly for lower-body use. She pokes fun at him, but he just says, "It is the way of my people."

So, they go through life, kids, ups, downs, arounds. They get old. She's the first to go. Her daughter is at her hospital bedside.

The old lady takes her daughter's hand and gazes lovingly at her through bleary brown eyes. "I have a message for Daddy."

Daughter wipes away tears, says, "Yes, Mom, what is it?"

Mom is fading. She moves her lips, but nothing comes out.

"What, Mom?" asks the daughter. "That you love him? That you never regretted marrying a bad dancer? That he's been the best husband you could ever have imagined?"

Mom smiles faintly, closes her eyes, and manages to whisper, with her last breath, "I always used the upper-body soap for my lower body, too."

A Strange Occurrence

At the Olive Garden tonight, Rex and I were dining and conversing when a woman at the next table flagged down a waiter and pointed toward another nearby table, where a birthday celebration had been in progress.

We naturally followed the pointing finger, and were surprised and somewhat horrified to see one of the celebrants, a woman, lying on the floor. More precisely, we saw her pants-clad legs and boot heels, because people were kneeling beside her northern areas, presumably administering comfort and perhaps resuscitation techniques in addition to obstructing our view.

God knows how she got there; Rex and I had been completely oblivious! You'd think if she'd fainted and fallen out of her chair we might have heard something! Maybe she just slumped down unobtrusively, and then someone moved her just as unobtrusively to the floor.

A manager arrived. The curious crowded into the room, craning their necks for a better view.

My kid and her two friends had been holding a birthday dinner of their own in another room of the restaurant. They met up with Rex and me as we headed for the exit.

"I wish we'd been in that room," my sensitive child exclaimed. "Nothing exciting happened in our room."

Creative Ants

As life chugs along, I'm more and more inclined to look at the human race as nothing more than very creative ants.

Life is strange. Religion is bizarre. The more I see of us, the less I understand us. We accuse each other of trying to make the world over in our own images, but really, isn't the human race as a whole trying to do that? We are right, our creations (cars, buildings, cities, farms) are right, everything else has to give in to us.

I personally think we're much too big for our britches and frankly, it would be a good thing if someone just stepped on us!

Athena

I was at the computer today when Rex came in the room, bent down to the guinea pigs' cage, and said, "One of these guinea pigs appears to be dead."

Indeed, one of them was dead. It was Athena, the golden guinea pig with a cowlick on her forehead. The one that had been known to bite people on occasion.

Maybe it was because I've only sporadically been taking my little blue "happy pills" lately, but I have to admit, I lost it on my drive into work. What bothers me about little Athena's death is that she spent just about her whole life in a cage. And, truth be told, not a very frequently cleaned cage.

I once had a co-worker who told me he didn't keep animals because he didn't believe in it. (Shortly after that, he sold everything he owned and set out to bike across America. He died not a month later crossing a four-lane highway in Ohio.) Anyway, I didn't understand his philosophy at the time, mainly because I'd never really pondered the ethics of animal-keeping.

Recently, though, being the keeper of so many animals, it has occurred to me that each of these beings has just one life, and if I'm in charge of it, I need to "do right" by them. It's a rich source of guilt, and I guess Athena's death struck a mother lode.

The remaining guinea pig, Jewel, will probably benefit from her pal's passing. I'm envisioning an outdoor pen with lots of toys and other guinea pigs, kind of a Maine version of a prairie dog town.

Either that, or I'll just try taking those pills on a more regular basis, and screw the guilt.