Saturday 9: Uninvited

1. Do you mind people to show up uninvited?

Everyone but the florist.

Once, in a long ago married life once upon a long long ago time, a very proper church lady showed up at my door unannounced.

I had dishes in the sink.

I hid them in the oven..

2. Last person you talked to on the phone?

A concerned friend

"Why didn't you answer the phone, Mimi Pencil Skirt?"

"Because, " I said, "I was sitting by the door waiting for the flowers to arrive."

3. Last person on your missed call list?

A concerned friend.

4. Who calls you the most?

Concerned friends

5. What is your favorite song about breaking up?

Hit The Road Jerk...I mean Jack.

6. If someone sent you an unexpected gift, what would you like it to be?See question #1

7. Your classic rock station plays the top songs of all time. What is number one?
"Learning To Duck" by The Chair Throwers.
It was a smash.


8. Do you live for today or tomorrow?The ways things have been going lately, I'd better not plan to be alive tomorrow. Bwaahaahhaa.....just a little humor there.







9. What movie villain scared you as a kid?The disappearing red shoes in the Wizard of Oz. A pair of perfectly good red heels ruined.
It was traumatic!

Back to bed for me.
Note to self: Never blog on painkillers....

Ding dong!!

Mimi, This Is God. Here's Your Sign

Have you ever wondered .......

if the path you walk

leads to a dark hole in the ground

or a strange new winding path

you can't see the end

but you know

somehow...

that the light

is there



Images: Mimi Lenox and privately owned/ under copyright

Mimi In A Minute #14 ~ Does The Cat Blogosphere Know About This?

These things keep me up at night.

They give me a headache.

I just need sixty seconds of your time to unclog my pencil brain

so that I can get some sleep.

Do you mind? I have a few things to say.

This is Mimi unplugged.

Hide your children.

It's time to play Whack-A-Kitty? You've got to be kitting me....

What's next? Smack-A-Siamese? Hang-A-Horse?

And this just three days after Michael Vick was released from prison.

I smell a dog......

To Dr. Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton:

It's tag team time! Get Thee both to North Korea before the world blows up.

Cut it out!

Hey you! A college textbook should not cost $300.00.

Especially since all we needed to know we learned in Kindergarten.

To the journalist jailed and freed in Iran.

You are one lucky young lady. Oh. And find an American publisher......

On North Korea's nuclear testing:

Let's all say it together:

Cut. It. Out!!!!

I'm sure this is against the Geneva Convention's Rules of Torture. Right?

Do we look amused to you??!

Somebody call the President!

To Susan Boyle: You are my hero. I hope you win.

(She sang "Memories" from CATS on Britain's Got Talent this week. I'll bet she doesn't whack kitties for fun.)

Forget about Susan! What about me?

HELP!!!

To the U.S. Senate on the appointment of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court: California got it wrong today. If there's any Justice in this world, you'll get this right. Give her a chance.

To Jerry Seinfeld: I've been holding this in for years.
You just aren't funny.



And finally....On OJ Simpson's conviction appeal:

We're working on a Whack-A-Convicted-Killer game. Your head looks like it might fit in one of those holes.

Does The Cat Blogosphere know about this? Mr. Tucker?

Has Daisy The Curly Cat seen this horror???!!

We'll take this to the highest court in the land!!

Whew! I feel better. Thanks for listening.
Sixty seconds flew by. I think my blogsomnia is cured.
Lights out.

P.S. I just got an email from Jerry Seinfeld. He says I'm not funny either.

Do Not, Under Any Circumstances, Go In There

I blew into into work beebopping with a bit of sag in my swag. Long week. Lots of extra stuff to do. I needed a restful weekend. I got to work early, no less, and headed for the lounge for a nice hot cup of industrial generic brand coffee and a half cup of French Vanilla cream to start my day.

Hand on the door knob.

Purse slung over my shoulder.

"STOP!" Someone shouted. "Don't go in there."

The two ladies looked at each other and grinned.

"Maybe we should tell her."

"We have to tell her."

"You tell her."

"No, you tell her."

"She should know."

I dropped my briefcase to the floor thinking that somebody had died in the break room, or worse, the budget cuts nightmare came true and we all lost our jobs.

"What? Tell me! Whaaaat?"

"There's a mouse in there."

"EEEWWWWWWWW! ACCCKKKK! NOOOOO!"

"We knew you'd feel that way."

"How do you KNOW??" I asked.

"Because the big fat thing pregnant with rat babies ran out from under the cabinet directly underneath the coffee pot and I had to jump on the couch screaming," said my friend, with a hint of hyperventilation.

It was contagious.

Finally. Somebody with some sense.

Isn't that what everyone does when they see a mouse?

"Blasted! Blasted! Blasted!" Maybe if I turned around and went home no one would notice. Oh. Security cameras. I forgot.

And BABIES? Baby rats?

I put my head in my hands. "A job loss would be worse!" I said.

I felt the beginnings of a massive faux-migraine coming on and a Scarlett O-Hara fainting spell.

Where's the couch?

Oh. Right.

It's in the lounge.

How am I supposed to put on a good faint without a couch for Heaven's sakes?

And I needed coffee!

By this time my true blue friends were giggling and snickering. Why are they laughing? I am not trying to be funny here. This is serious!

"How much am I gonna have to pay one of you to go get me a cup of coffee?"

Oh.the.laughter.was.unkind.

"You know she's not going in there."

"I am not going in there."

"You go."

"No. You go."

"YOU go."

"OK. I'll go," said the hyperventilating screamer and then,

"Maybe I'd better not go."

I was not amused.

So being the kind friends and colleagues they are, they found a cup and went INTO THE HORRIBLE RAT-INFESTED PLACE and brought me a cup of java. Complete with a half cup of French Vanilla cream.

There's just one problem.

How am I gonna eat lunch?

You don't really think I'm going in there do ya?

Copyright © 2006-2009 Mimi Lenox. All Rights Reserved.

They Stood For All

Watch this amazing video clip of soldiers at attention during a funeral at Arlington Cemetery. A storm blew in. They never even flinched, carrying out their duty in the middle of a wind and rain storm - even as a hat blew off.

To say "thank you" is not enough for all the soldiers, past and present, who served our country and paid the ultimate sacrifice. We honor them this weekend.

featuring peace globe #1087 by Lori @ Hahn at Home

Copyright © 2006-2009 Mimi Lenox. All Rights Reserved.

Saturday 9: Tell Me I Didn't Say That

It's Saturday.

I think I'll do a silly meme.

Brought to you by.....

Saturday 9: Hot Fun in the Summertime

1. Is summer your favorite season? Why?

Fall is my favorite season because I fall down a lot. Serendipity is important to me.

2. Do you exercise more in the summer because you wear less clothing?

I do not understand this question.
3. Do you enjoy tanning or are you more concerned about the dangers of basking in the sun?

I am a fair-skinned Queen. My great-great-great-grandmother-Queen-Liz was the same way.

No tanning for moi. SPF45 is my friend.

4. You are on the beach when a waiter appears for your drink order. What do you ask for?

Sex On The Beach and his phone number. (I said that out loud, didn't I...)

5. Do you camp in the summertime?

If you mean actually sleep outdoors, the answer would be no, but since you asked...

I went to 4-H camp when I was twelve. I met boys. I sang in the talent show. I learned about conservation. I met boys. I swam. I met boys. I was supposed to learn to cook. We all know how that turned out.....(My mother said she wasted her money on that camp.)

6. What was your favorite summer vacation as a kid?

4-H Camp..

7. Do you enjoy sleeping outdoors?

Are we back to this question? OK. Wait a minute. Who am I sleeping with? Tell me it was the waiter with the vodka.(I must be sleepwalk-blogging this meme.)

8. Do you throw a summer barbecue every year?

I am currently barbecue-less.

9. Have you ever been to a nude beach? If yes, what did you think?

That people really should look in the mirror before they shed their clothes and step out in public.

I'm the girl with the cute waiter. Second umbrella on the left.

Images: Public Domain

Copyright © 2006-2009 Mimi Lenox. All Rights Reserved.

She Was A Tad Touched In The Head

I was up the creek in the key of F.
And it was all her fault.

My grandmother was a looker. Beautiful smile, dancing eyes, long dark hair and a wrinkle in her nose that scrunched up when she laughed. Which was often. Even, and especially, in her middle-aged years she had a certain something that men gravitated to and women hated. Her sparkling personality could turn a man's head once -usually twice - when she walked in a room. She never crossed the unlady-like line to overtly flirt with those whose eyes gravitated towards the back heel of her properly slung stilettos, but not from lack of ammunition.

Shoes or no shoes, my grandmother had a great pair of legs.
Red lipstick. Beautiful skin. Matching accessories. Adorable clothes.

Cool sunglasses (even in the sixties) and more shoes than Imelda Marcos.
With matching purses, of course.
It is why I am a pencil skirt today.

But it is not why I am a piano player.

She owned a couple of small restaurants. Her cooking was famous. Her Saturday night shindigs were infamous. One of her restaurants was attached to an establishment she used on weekends for local musicians to come and play. Homegrown bands of all shapes and varieties showed up to perform on that tiny stage out in the middle of farmland USA.

A "No Drinking" sign posted at the front door to patronize the local law enforcement but even I knew it was the back door that needed the sign. I grew up around guitars and banjos and piano players. Harmonicas and rat-a-tat basement drum sets with long-haired hippie-wanna-be drummers imitating Ringo behind an occasional steel guitar.

Somehow, that just didn't fit.

And neither did I this particular Saturday night.
Why she insisted I play Swannie River at her weekly soiree I will never know.
It's amazing I ever played the piano again.

Always one to smell impending disaster and prepare for it appropriately, I decided to practice once more before my bow unbowed. Because, somehow, I just knew it would. My wilt had already melted in the intense heat of too much testosterone and not enough talcum powder. I had to do something before my pencily fingers were flying in the wrong direction. This was no ordinary Saturday night. The place was packed. And smokey. And loud. Ripe for all those sins thrown timidly on the Sunday morning altar. But that was a few hours away yet.

I still had time to emerge as a rock star. Repenting would have to wait.

It was time to warm up my trembling fingers. Counting one and two and three and four and.....

"Do you MIND little girl?" snarled freckle-faced beer-bellied Fred sitting in the corner trying to tune his six-string. He leaned his ear into the crook of his shiny Saturday night appendage and listened. Strum. Tune. Strum. Strum. Cuss. Tune.
Strum. Strum. Cuss again.

I don't know what he was so upset about it.
All he had to do was play in the key of F.
And that might have worked had the piano - and old upright with squeaky pedals - been in tune. But it was horribly derailed from one end to the other. Up the proverbial creek I was without a cushion for my skinny fanny and a room full of smokers who wanted to choke my crinoline.

But grandmother was determined. And beautiful. She stood and announced, her very pointy heels marking the beat with Stephen Foster's common time on my yellowed page.

"My granddaughter will now play Swannie River."

What are you gonna do? She owned the place. They had to listen to me play.
After a rather prissy sashay onto the squatty bench, I looked around.

Nobody breathed. Everybody watched bony fingers about to wow them with John Thompson's Level Piano Book Level Five page 22 rendition of the most boring song on the planet. But groovy grandmother didn't care.
It was my debut.

I began.

I held my breath and counted.
One swannie....two swannies...three swannies....four swannies...five.
Somebody coughed.

I choked.

And began again.

But twenty swannies later and nobody was paying attention to Little Miss Muffet's tuffet. My fanny was finished.

They were talking. Whispering. Laughing.
In the middle of my swannie?!?
Oh the nerve.
The shame.
The sweaty palms.

Around swannie number 30 I saw a man get up and approach my grandmother.
It was the lead singer for the band that night. "Could you ask her to stop playing for a minute? My guitar players can't tune their guitars."
Fred looked at me and laughed.
I was mortified.

I continued to count and pretend I was squishing his face with the heel of my right black patent leather which was furiously pumping the squeaky pedal. But my concentration was lost.

My grandmother, whose every move stole any hope of anybody paying attention to anything else in the room anyway, wafted my way and with a wave of her puffy smoking cigarette (which somehow magically disappeared quickly every Sunday morning before church) escorted my pencil skirt elsewhere.

Thank you very much for no applause.

In the back of the restaurant on a stool too tall for my heel-less pumps, I sulked and leaned on the counter, listening to the crowd explode as Johnny and Sue's hodgepodge hillbilly rock band took the stage.
"Banana pudding?" my uncle asked. "It's your favorite," safely tucked away in the empty kitchen void of cooks and dishwashers and grandmothers.

"They didn't like my playing," I said. "I hate that song!!"

Tears in the custard.


But the only thing I had to repent for the next day were the bad words that spilled heavily through my twelve-year-old brain directed at - you guessed it - Imelda.
I survived and later learned that she was, admittedly, a tad touched in the head at times. I suppose I would be too if I'd spent as much time as she did matching accessories and properly and painfully walking into department stores to find just the right pair of heels. It was a hard life. My grandfather saw to it that she never put me on display again (well,there was that time during choir practice that nearly ruined me for life......but that's another story).

Fred went on to crash and burn in a few dozen amateur bands and I learned to tell the difference between country/western music and southern rock. The melding of the two is the best fit - provided one knows how to terminally smother the dreaded twang. Steel guitars still make me itch. Smoke makes me wither. And the thought of playing Swannie River again makes me want to drown myself.
But if there's one thing I learned from my infamous -and lovable - grandmother: Shoe shopping fixes everything. I'm thinking toe-less and jeweled.
Aren't these lovely?










Copyright © 2006-2009 Mimi Lenox. All Rights Reserved.

I Miss ____

How co_ld yo_ leave me?
After a three year relationship.

After all the times I've po_nded yo_ in anger and in joy

After all we've meant to each other!

After the tears I shed _pon yo_r sleek black body....j_st lying there waiting for my words.

I can't even spell c_ss words! See?! *#&$^$%$&!!

Yo_ always listened witho_t
j_dgement.

Thr_ NaNoWriMo, Peace Globes and pity parties, yo_'ve always been right there in the middle for me.

Yo_ never let me down.
We've been thr_ alot together.

I am lost witho_t __.

If I don't find some way to p_t the letter "EWE" back on my laptop, my blog skirt is in serio_s danger and I have an online magazine article deadline Friday (thanks, Lori). It flew right off the keyboard last night d_ring American Idol mania.

I know! S-perGl-e!

BRB.

Copyright © 2006-2009 Mimi Lenox. All Rights Reserved.

Who Knew Shopping Could Be So Seductive?

So, where was I?

Oh right. When last we left I had just pulled my hair out of the electric guillotine known as the car window, splashed a forgiving waitress with leftover soda, showed up at an auction two weeks early and lost the french tip on the fourth toe of my left foot. And it was only 9:15 am on Saturday morning. The rest of the day was just as productive.


As you'll recall, I accidentally found a marvelous book sale. THIS is what I found. (Gal, you will love this) It's a gorgeous Time Life book on the life of Jacqueline Kennedy.
Perfect condition. Beautiful photographs. Two dollars.

As fond as I am of the Kennedy clan and all the elegance Miss Bouvier bestowed upon our land, I doubt she ever got her hair caught in the car window.
Let's just forget that part, shall we?
Moving on.


Next stop. The Antique Shop. Let's open the gate and go inside.






The weather was perfectly overcast with no humidity. Inside.....I felt bathed and awash in color and light.























Take a look.Can someone say retro?

No. Not me. The furniture, wise guy...





I loved it! They didn't even mind the photographs. I asked this time. They were flattered. Very cool. Groovy. OK.

I'll stop with the sixties jargon. Mmmmmaybe.






I found
Stained glass serenity...




Tantalizing blue Tiffanys





See-through splashes....

and sensual shapes

begging for attention
Closer....closer....

Til the lanterns laughed at
Cupid watching in the mirror.....

Tsk Tsk-ing my corner peeking...........

Sneaking up

on phallic symbols.

Freud would be so proud. (Jackie wouldn't say that would she....)

Who knew shopping would turn into a composition of juxtaposed form and flash?

Certainly not I.

Intrigued, I was, with the sensual ramifications of my romp (sorry....I just had to say that. I've always wanted to say "ramifications of my romp") My mind was spinning and twirling with blog post possibilities when SMACK ! I ran into these.
(you knew that would happen didn't you Trav?) and my sunglasses got twisted in the camera strap underneath the yellow moons. Off with her head?! Well, at least her Dime store shades.

When's the last time you found a room full of moons?

P.S. **Tomorrow the tale of Ringo, Paul, George and John. They were in the window I tell ya...**
copyright Mimi Lenox images and words 2006-2009 All rights reserved.