Monday Madness ~ Avoiding Turbulence

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Monday Madness: "The Finish This Sentence"Questions

 1. My uncle once... returned from the Vietnam War. He was never the same.

 2. Never in my life have I... jumped out of an airplane. I don't like getting in airplanes either.    Why?  Because I'm afraid I'll have to jump out of an airplane. **My last plane ride was very very bumpy!! We nearly crashed into the Washington monument during a thunderstorm. ** shudder ** It was like a scene

 from one of those crash survivor movies!!

3. When I was five my parents.....were having lots of other babies. Who has oldest child syndrome? Raises hand.

 4. High school was......stressful.

 5. I will never forget to......wear my hat and pack an extra pencil skirt.

 6. Once I met 7.......cute Dwarfs in Bloggingham Forest. They were trying to get away from Snow White because they hated her high-pitched nasal voice. I started singing an aria from La Boheme and they ran away from me too. I lose more boyfriends this way.

7. There’s this boy I know... who melts my heart every.single.time.

8. Once, at a bar, I...... sat on a barstool swirling around in my pencil skirt, sipping soda water, and waiting for my date to arrive. It was our second date eight years after the first. THAT should have given me a clue. Just when I thought he wasn't going to show up, the phone rang. I hear, "My, you're looking lovely this evening," in the creepiest voice EVER and proceeded to tell me what I was wearing.  A chill ran up my spine. I looked around. No one was there, only couples dancing and dining. "Where ARE you?" I asked. Then heavy breathing, giggles (like a 12-year-old in puberty) and more stuttering nervous nonsense from Mr. Creepy on the phone. It was like a scene from one of those stalker movies!!   CLICK!  The manager escorted me safely to my car and checked out the backseat, under the car, over the car, beside the car, in the bushes, in the trunk and in the parking lot. I drove home shaking like a leaf. My best friend came over and we checked the house and property. Then the scary voicemails started. One after the other. Called the police. Changed my number.  That is what I get for going to a bar alone in a pencil skirt  (which was attached to a restaurant) .....the bar, not the skirt...oh, you know what I mean.

9. By noon, I’m ... ready for a nap.

10. Last night I ...stayed up too late. Don't call me at noon today. I'll definitely be napping.

Hush Homer...

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Monday Mimisms ~ Keys

Good Monday morning! It's nice to be back on the blog this week.

I'm going to think about keys today. I spent nearly two hours yesterday looking for car keys I hadn't used in four days. Convinced they were outside in a pile of leaves somewhere, or left on a fence post, I retraced my steps in the crunchy dry foliage, revisiting places in the woods and searching around planting pots, only to find them much later in a coat pocket hanging in the closet.

What is WRONG with me?? That is the first place I should have looked...or not...because the odd thing is.....I hadn't worn that coat. It's been 65 degrees here. Why would they be in a heavy coat pocket?

And then it hit me!!!! The most obvious reason: sleepwalking. I've found cellphones inside cups in the kitchen cupboard and even in the refrigerator the next morning.  I only hope I didn't actually drive somewhere in the middle of the night in that coat. What else was I wearing and where did I go?

My sleep has been disturbed lately with crazy dreams, so I'll be making duplicate keys today.  It wouldn't hurt to put a loud alarm on the car door either.
Film at 11

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Smoke and Mirrors

Sometimes I worry that age will dictate who I am.
That I'll end up being one of those women desperately trying to hold on to their youth, in ways that don't flatter them. Wearing shorter hair because it's suitable for a woman of that age  (there's that word again), or wearing something that looks ridiculous on the frame of a seasoned woman. Buttoning up plaids and shortening pumps to the cold cold floor, afraid to wear horizontal stripes or show lily-white bare legs in the public arena of judgment. 
I don't want to be that woman.

Once a pencil skirt, always a pencil skirt.

I've played with mirrors and light all my life. Examining who I am and thinking out loud for an audience of blog souls who cared enough in the House of Blogs to offer a hand-up from some dark places I stepped into, who saved me from the comical tragedies I wrote about in precarious attempts to make sense of my world. You let me.

Thank you.

You can't bare your lily-whites to just anybody you know. Oh, the scandal! It takes a special blog breed to accept the timbre of an occasionally out-of-tune skirt.

And that's where I've been lately.

Sorely out-of-tune.

Purposely so. Wallowing in imperfect fifths just to confuse hollow chords into resolving. Perhaps a little angry. A lot introspective. A tiny bit off my game. Riding on the crux of an avalanche, though not permanently derailed. It's that fascination with mirrors you see.... you need them to help you stay centered. 
And honest with yourself.

I snapped this picture when I was shopping last summer.

It was only when I got home that I realized how "divided" I look (ha!)....how disjointed.....how fragile.

And how stubbornly, surprisingly strong.

Only a seasoned woman in an aging frame would post a picture of herself with a price tag and no head on her shoulders. Like Minnie Pearl's swinging hat tag or the mysterious old woman in the poem "When I Am An Old Woman I Shall Wear Purple."

I hate purple.

It's so....well.....old.

Wear red. Or mirrors. Or groovy glasses.

So what if I lose my head once in a while? It gives me pause to wonder what really lies in between? What part of me closes the gap when there is loss or emptiness or fear? Is it wholeness to bare your vulnerability...or self-destruction in the hands of a cynical cruel world? What connects the two parts of me and makes me whole? Is it Spirit? Luck? Destiny? Serendipity?
I should know that by now. 

So, here's the thing.

I'm about to start a new adventure, closing a chapter and turning a page. It's not at all scary.
 As I move forward into the next decade, please God, don't let me wear long skirts or cut my hair too soon. I will wear large sunglasses and play my piano at midnight (sans the glasses) for the squirrels and the raccoons and the owls in the woods, for the people in the audience and the pews in the church and....for me. Just me. I will crank up the volume on my microphone and sing what makes me happy. My broken fingers will fly over keys of memory. Every raw emotion will pour out and drop as water on the ivory, because that is what storytellers do.
And furthermore,  I will sit on the floor in a hippie skirt and flowered jeans (not at the same time), strike matches on a matchbook and pretend I know how to smoke, and write lyrics and stories until my not-so-flexible-anymore fingers are happy with the ache it brings, until I taste and smell and feel what those perfect imperfections mean to me and until my hands burn from some kind of spirit I can't explain.....the One I respect but can't see.

Because I've learned that the most beautiful chords are unresolved.

And this time, Dear God, let the man by my side refuse to hold my hands.

I'd rather he clothe them with kisses and let them fly.

It is not for me to separate the young from the old or the naive girl from the wiser skirt - but to honor both.

Go find your mirror.

I hear there's a sale this weekend.

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Rocky Mountain Me

**note to Travis** Close your eyes. Approaching pic of icky long-legged creepy crawly thing.

So. There I was....getting ready to take a long nap one day last week, freshly shampooed, snuggled in a robe and wondering....what IS that itchy blurb on my shoulder? Maybe I should check this out before I snooze. There! It looks like a bite. And it itches. I turned to look in the double mirror to check my back for other signs of trouble when zowie wowie ohhh mmy my! I saw this

(isn't it lovely?)

stuck to the back of my left arm. Stuck. Like glue. To the Queen's pale skin. OH MY LORRDDDD!!!!

The nerve.

Now. Those of you who know me well know that I am scared of little (except rodents) and that I love love love love to wander in Bloggingham Forest and commune with the trees and the bugs and the leaves and sit on the ground and pick branches and pine cones and dig in the dirt. And that's just what I'd been doing when this wonderfully dangerous tick creature decided to piggyback home on my arm.

See? Holding up a tree with my bare hands several days before the onslaught of disaster.

I do not have a lick 'o sense.

So, after a very fast drive to the doctor to remooooove that which I couldn't reach and realizing that yes, I had been feeling unusually tired and achy with a low-grade fever for a couple of days and perhaps it really wasn't a harmless virus, I hear "We're treating you for Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever just in case."

Every Queen wants to hear that.

The just-in-case diagnosis was short-lived when several hours later my royal flesh began to accumulate little red dots - like paint driplets - all  over said feet and ankles. 
I had the dreaded fever.

Only me.

After a short hospital stay (complicated by the fact that I am allergic to Doxycycline THE treatment for RMSF) we have a long story that I'll make short. I'm better, less spotted, not so benadryl-looped anymore and thankful for antibiotics and nurses who know how to use needles. And wondering....what else is going to befall me this spring? A friend said she thinks I should be a Pharaoh instead of a Queen, given the endless slew of plagues I seem to fall into.

I think not.

Pharaohs never got the good roles. If I'm gonna be a royal mess on wheels I'd just as soon play Cleopatra. At least she can wear lipstick in her delirium.

The moral of this story is simple. If you're gonna go frolicking through the woods on a spring day full of unseen bugs, put on a hat and spray thyself with insect repellent. 

And wear an asp on your head.

*images: MLenox or public domain

Join us for BlogBlast For Peace Nov 4 I promise. No bugs.

Mimi In A Minute #30 ~ It's A Bird, It's A Plane, It's Newt

 

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.



Today the news is full of sinking ships, sinking politicians, sinking polls, and stinkin' candidates. Some jumped ship. Some jumped the shark. Still others swam around in the dark.  Not to fear. Google and Wikipedia climbed on board the murky waters of online piracy and threw out an anchor.  SOPA protesters protested. Occupiers are still occupying anything and everything in sight. Even online thieves are at odds with each other.  Have you noticed Google keeps trying to change its stripes? And there is no end in site sight.  Meanwhile Mitt Romney released his tax returns, Newt released his vengeance, and Google released a new privacy policy.  

To all shark jumpers and wannabe shark jumpers on the campaign trail: Please, for the love of all that is salty, drop out now and save the rest of the country some toil and trouble.  JUMP. We need a new batch of sharks.
To NASA space photographers: Do you reaaaallly think we buy that story about solar flares from the sun causing spectacular northern lights in our Minnesota skies?  Don't you know about the Chinese New Year celebrations? 

 and you call yourself scientists  

To GOOGLE on your new Privacy Policy:

I don't want you to read my mind. I want you to give me what I ask for and not what your advertisers want me to see. I am sick of getting pictures of Angelina when I asked for Brad Pitt.

To All who Googled Mitt Romney's tax returns: Get.A.Life.  

Dear Newt Gingrich: (aka the United States Republican presidential candidate who wants to build a moon colony and travel in a spaceship to Mars during his time in the White House. Yes. Really.)  

In the words of the great Democrats of the past.....
It does not take a full moon to build a village.

For the past thirty or so years I've watched my hard-earned tax dollars evaporating into thin air.  If you want to send them into space we'll hardly notice. But if there's one thing I've learned to do well it's thrive on a shoestring.
I could save the American people a bucketful of money.
All you have to do is wait for a Half Moon Half Off Sale. 



Simple. Do the math, Bloggy People. (I should run for office)
        Eureka!! I found a man named Lee Kleinrock (thanks, Mr. Google!) who supposedly invented the Internet way back in the 1950s or at the very least he was the first one to write a paper about the process of connectivity.  He didn't need any privacy laws because nobody knew how to work it but him. Now THAT'S capitalism.  Do you see the words GOOGLE anywhere on this machine?  I didn't think so.

And it was so clever of him to design it to look like a refrigerator door.

To the political people counters of I-o-wa:  U-Owe-Us a caucus recount.    Michelle Bachmann could have won that debate and she wasn't even there. Was she?


I know you're tired of hearing from me but Dear Mr. Google:  Did you think to ask Al Gore? We all know he reaaaaalllly invented the Internet AND all the rain forests AND orange Kool-Aid AND paperless voting machines AND long underwear (I got that on very reliable terms). I'm telling you all this privacy nonsense is politically motivated!!        I do not think it is fair to call the Captain of the shipwrecked cruise ship in Italy Chicken of The Sea.  I heard he was having lobster for dinner when the vessel ran amok.

    and finally...   Dear Google: I said "Hugh Jackman" not Cracker Jacks.  I will never get his attention with this interference!!
    Your new privacy policy is that there is no privacy....
except on the moon, there's plenty of privacy there.     Hey Newt! Have your people call my people.

Whew! I feel better. Thanks for listening.

Sixty seconds flew by. I think my blogsomnia is cured.

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D Is For Drive

It was time for my 5,000 mile complimentary service maintenance on my car. So, today I drove through a torrential rainstorm and fog to get to my appointment, arriving ten minutes late because I drove 25 miles an hour through the streets and byways. The people behind me were most unhappy, but who cares? I know a dangerous mud-puddle when I see one.

The car dealership is highly customer-service conscious. I went to the lounge and waited with three others, eating the cholesterol-laden dinner I brought in with me and trying to de-stress from the monsoon drive. There was gourmet coffee waiting, a big screen TV and cushy chairs. One of the salesmen , a very nice man indeed, showed up with extra napkins (was I being messy?) just to be nice.  I was probably being messy
"I thought you could use some of these. Enjoy your dinner."  And he didn't "ma'am" me. I so hate the  ma'am. Mucho points. A few minutes later he brought back little wet towelettes for me to wash my hands with! Wait. Did I accidentally check into the Hilton? 

I looked around. Nope. The desk sign said PARTS, not Hotel California. Wonder if he has any mints....no, just no, I won't ask.

Parts. Parts! Service! I forgot to tell them something. I went to the PARTS window. This is never a good idea in my world. Never.

"I would like to talk to my mechanic, please. I need to tell him something."

I realize that this is a bit like asking to have a word of prayer with your surgeon AFTER he's cut open your internal cuticles, but still, it was necessary. A few minutes later another nicely groomed but greasy man came to my rescue.
"I forgot to tell you that the car is making a sound."
"What kind of sound?"
"Well, it sounds sort of like vrooommmm vrooom vrom but it never gets all the way to vrroooooooooooooom."
Blank stares.

"You know, like it never changes gears. I keep waiting for it to change gears but I swear it never does. SOMEtimes it does, when I'm on the big highway, but usually through slow-poke town it just makes that noise."
"And what kind of noise did you say it made?"
Sigh.

"You know.....don't you? That noise a car makes JUST BEFORE it's about to change into 2nd gear, but then it doesn't. Like hhhhhmmmmmmmmMMMMMMMmmmmm!!!!"   (You hear that, too, don't you Bloggy People?) Sort of anti-climatic and disappointing (I left that description out) He wasn't getting it. I decided to try the old process of elimination approach. Perhaps his learning style was not aural, but more verbal. Brilliant!

"It's not a tick-tick-tick-tick sound or a knock knock sound  (trying to remember all the sounds that Goober would make at Wally's Filling Station on the Andy Griffith show) or a put-put-puttter sound. It's steady. And loud. And worrisome.  It makes a crescendo. I think my car is going to blow up."
Don't they know ANYthing about music?

How could he not understand this? I am very good at making noises, in fact, I have a degree in it. I can even make the noise in another language if you'd like. The other guy looked at him and said, "I think she means the transmission."

"Yes! That is exactly what I mean. The transmission!"

"Your car is only six months old. It's probably not the transmission, but we'll check it out."

"And another thing, Mr. Nice Man. It doesn't drink any oil. None. Nada. Not a drop. I keep taking it to the service station. ('cause there's this NNNNNOISE) They do the dipstick thing and always say the same thing. That I don't need oil and everything is fine. How can I drive 5,000 miles and not need any oil? That is not normal....is it?"

"Oh, yes, ma'am" (curse of the ma'am!) New cars use new technology with synthetic oil. You won't need oil for another 5,000 miles."

I looked at him like the mere child that he was and sent him on his way to find out what was making the John Cage symphony in my car.

Meanwhile, I cornered the lucky salesman again, discussing installation of a remote entry and Viper alarm system. "Do you want to be able to start and warm up your car from your Smartphone?" he asked. "Heck no. Why would I want to do that? I don't want my Smartphone and all the people in it to know where my car is."

That settles that. "I would like remote control access using a FOB remote control like normal if you don't mind, please."
Using my Smartphone to start my car would be like using my toothbrush to make the coffee.

Enter mechanic with the news.

"I'm afraid to ask, but what is wrong with my car?"

"Nothing."

"But but but...there HAS to be. What about the noise??! It made it all the way here."

"We drove it. We didn't hear any noise.  Tires are rotated, computer systems are perfect, everything is balanced and ready to go."

It was like when you go to the doctor and all your symptoms go away as soon as you get there. I was miffed. He walked me to the garage. I started to open the door to the betraying-little-thing sitting there silently smirking at me when I just had to ask one more time. "No noise? But. How? It's loud and ...steady..and hummmmmmming and...LOUD! Like it's in 2nd gear all the time!"

Then light dawned.
"Ummmm...are you putting the car into drive?

"Well, of course I'm putting the car into drive. How could it drive if I didn't tell it to drive?"


 "Show me," he said.

Ah ha! He was a tactile learner. I should have known.

"Are you having trouble getting the cruise control to set?"
"Why, yes, yes I am!"

Are you ready for this? I was putting the car in OVERdrive, Bloggy People. THIRD gear. Not second, not first, not fifth. THIRD. I never heard the transmission change because it wasn't changing.

"See the "3" beside the odometer?"
"Yep."
"That is third gear. You want to always see the D there. D is for......"


"DRIVE!" I chimed in using my best coloratura accent. "D is for Drive!"

Who knew???! I was so happy to learn that D is for drive and that my car is not going to blow up and I had been over-driving the poor tired thing all this time with just a slight shift to the left instead of the right vowing to take a long hard look at the actual manual when I get home and wondering why it's more difficult to work the CD player than the gear shift even if I AM doing it wrong and actually quite delighted that he didn't ma'am me not once.

But still. He doesn't know a THING about music.

I told you there was a noise.

Dressing Room Rules For Royalty ~ The Tale of The African Princess

I walked into my favorite department store with one mission in mind: Find a pair of black pants.
Somehow in the midst of the sport known as "shopping" a few other things landed in my dressing room.

Levi 501 jeans, five shirts, a skirt and brown slacks...to be exact.

Before I entered the-little-room-of-unmerciful-mirror-truth, I noticed a tall, confident and attractive African American lady in the store. She must have been 6 feet aloft with her hair swept atop her head. She carried herself with an air of ....well....royalty. That's the only way I know how to describe it. Regal. 
 I thought to myself, "Now she looks like an interesting woman. I'll bet she has a story to tell." I'm such a people-watcher. 

I went about my black pants shopping until it was time to enter the dreaded room of slinging hangers and never enough hooks. (male readers will not get that, but it's OK) The last time I had such a fit in a dressing room was long about the fall of 2008 when I decided to unzip the Queen in the presence of the blogosphere. 
It was a shocker of a blog day.

Little did I know I was about to get a shock of my own.

Rule #1 Never never never EVER lose your wherewithal in a public dressing room. You are not at home in the privacy of your boudoir. You are essentially undressing in the home of the common masses.

Rule #2 Never ever ever ever NEVER leave the door unlocked to said dressing room lest the masses are exposed to your...umm....mass.

Rule #3 Never ever ever forget Rule #1 and #2

Well. I got distracted. You saw that coming, didn't ya. 

They were tall, they were slim, they were Levis and I was in love with them.  All of them, sitting nicely folded with their perfect waists and skinny legs and boot cut varieties on the yellow dressing room chair. Soon I had willy-nilly unfolded the lot of them, thrown caution to the wind and onto my waiting-to-be-denim-clothed lily-white limbs. Levi and I had one heck of a party in the closet. 

Now you see, I have a system.  I'm in the zone. "Favorites" go on the tall hook. "Maybes" go on the short hook. And "I'm buying you" goes on the door handle. See how simple that is? 
 Nothing on earth is worse than someone interrupting a full throttle dressing room frenzy. 

Unless you are an African princess. 

There she stood. 
Screaming. 
There I stood. 
Screaming.
(Tall people scream so much louder, I noted.)
I had just turned to place a Levi-begging-to-live-in-a-castle on the sacred "keep me" door handle. As luck would have it, I was facing the door. And the door (as MY luck would have it) was facing the whole entire store. Why? Because it was my favorite lucky dressing room and I am nothing if not ridiculously consistent. 

I would have to be wearing bright bright yellow. 

Did I mention she screamed?
Looking down at my my....my...ummm....Levis (I'm sooo glad that's a Biblical name. It makes this much more tolerable) bare feet and only God knows what else hanging this way and that. It went something like this. "AYYYYYIIIIIILLLLLLOOOOOOLLLLAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!" (said the lady)
"Aaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyooooopssss!" (said moi)


"Oh oh oh OH OH OOHHHHHHH!"
(said the lady in what must have been a prayer language)
"AaahhHHHHH!!"(that was my amen)
"Oh Lord oh Lord Oh Loooorrrrd you scared me!!!"(grabbing her chest)
"Oh! Oh! I'm sorry ma'am. I'm sorry!"(what am I apologizing for? SHE opened the door.)
"Well, I...I just...Ohhhhh! Oh Meeercy."(you can say that again)

And then and only then did it occur to me to wonder if I was dressed. This is somehow troubling to me now. Shouldn't that have been my FIRST reaction? Apparently, immodesty doesn't fall far from Bloggingham's trees. 

How do I get myself into these pickles?

The beautiful African Princess is hyperventilating by now (did I see a wisp of perfectly coiffed hair fall down?) and alas we weren't at the grocery store so I had no paper bag. It occurred to me round about the fifth aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaOHHHHHHHHHHHYYYEEEEEEEE!! from her that she indeed was quite startled. We had both jumped off the department store ground about 3 feet in boo! gotcha fashion upon the fated sudden opening of the unlocked door. I didn't have as far to land as she, ergo the elongated dramatics. Only another royal could out-drama me. But since I didn't want to have to explain to God and everybody watching (including security camera D) that I had caused the death of an African Princess, I thought I'd better ask..."Are you alright, Ma'am? Do you feel alright? Are you ssuuuurre you're going to be alright?"

"Oooohhhhhhh.....I..I..I think so. But you sure scared me!!! The door was shut and I just wasn't thinking and walked right in on you. Ohhhhaaayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyeeeeeeezooowie (or something like that)" and then it started all over again.

I stepped back a moment, at least as far as I could manage to hide behind the little door handle (do you think by now it should have occurred to me to just shut the door - I'll save that one for my therapist) and let her have her ceremonial ritual of weeping and wailing that only a proper southern fainting couch would have halfway cured, while I watched, fascinated that I was standing in the shadow of such beauteous undoing. Imagine. A princess stripped of regal robes at the mere sight of denim. The whole time with one hand across her chest in flag-salute fashion, the other full of hangers and princess-doings clothes, you would have thought she'd seen the second coming of Sarah Palin. Of course, unbeknown to her she was in the presence of a Queen - however unlikely that must have seemed to her. I didn't tell her. How could she have known? Queens generally don't wear jeans.


Standing there with the door open still, I looked up at her careful not to actually LOOK in her eyes because my LORD we were naked as naked could be by now anyway and said,
"Well at LEAST I wasn't naked!!!" and then "Am I?"
at which point both of us broke into laughter only befitting two royal misfits in the fitting room. It was fitting.

After a few minutes of giggling and raucous abandon, she managed to waft clear down to the far end of the dressing lounge hall and find an empty room. Well! She could have at least stayed around long enough to tell me if she liked that color on me.  I finally shut the door and assessed the damage to my pride and my wallet. **Green shirt keeper, brown pants NO, one pair of jeans yada yada and you KNOW Mimi you're going to write this blog post so snap some yellow pictures. **

I got dressed and went out to find greenish shoes, passed by a rack of pants and ended up going back to "my" dressing room three more times just to make sure I'd made the right choices. The things women have to endure. 

I hope the next time I decide to people watch in the department store, it will be a little less revealing. 

I've ordered this sign for my next shopping trip.

But really. Barring all episodes of fright and public screaming, there's not a more enjoyable pastime for a spinner of tales than sizing up the clientele in populace places here and there. I'm always running into homeless people I just know are really millionaires in disguise, lawyers in obvious clandestine drag, children who must have been spawned of the devil scampering under clothes racks and trying on the very shoes you want to sink your foot into, not to mention bilingual speed talkers standing in the post office whom I'm very sure are undercover covert operators for the CIA or Department of Immigration.  And amazonish bronzed beauties. 

She'll always be an African Princess to me.

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