Bumper Crop

I drive an 11-year-old VW Cabrio.  I love my car.  It is black and has a black canvas convertible top.  (This is its second top since its first top was vinyl and mildewed and rotted after just a couple years.  I held it together with duct tape for awhile - attractive! - then finally invested in the new top.)  I have no car payments and no plans to ever sell or trade in my Cabrio.  This year became the pivotal year when I decided that it wasn't worth paying for comprehensive insurance due to the Kelly Blue Book value and probable insurance payout in case of a severe accident.  All these factors led to a momentous decision.

I added bumper stickers to my car.

I love bumper stickers - especially sarcastic, funny, cynical, outrageous bumper stickers.  I started conservatively:  a round sticker advertising my favorite beachside restaurant:  FA Cafe.  Then I added an oval sticker advertising the St. Augustine Lighthouse and Museum.  Last summer I added a black and white bumper sticker for my favorite local band.  The bumper sticker just lists their web site and says:
MID-LIFECRISIS.NET.  Most people who see it don't think it's for a band.  giggle.

Next was SAVE THE TATAS.  The pink breast cancer ribbon on the sticker has mostly faded in our bright sun, so many don't get the reference.  I've had more than one person (including my sister!) ask, "What's a tata?"  It has special meaning for me - not because I've had breast cancer, though I had a tiny scare a couple years ago, phew! - but because my granddaughter uses that term for breasts.  She once lifted her tee shirt and shouted "TATAS!" while on a scenic boat cruise with her parents.  For no reason other than she wanted to - she was 2.

I bought a round LIFE IS GOOD bumper sticker with the brand's little terrier dog holding a marshmallow over a campfire.  A nod to my FLB*.

I was on a roll now.  Local shop Notions 'n' Potions carries a nice selection of fun bumper stickers.  And I was ready to make a statement.  So my two favorite bumper stickers now ride proudly on my car's rear:
One reads:  DON'T PISS ME OFF.  I'M RUNNING OUT OF PLACED TO HIDE THE BODIES.  I think it meshes nicely with the Life is Good message.  My #1 fave though is:

EVE WAS FRAMED.

Short and sweet.  True.  I LOVE IT.  I was nervous at first, certain some gunrack-totin', tobacco-chewin', FoxNewsGlennBeckRushFanatic would trash my car or shout at me in traffic.  Nothing happened.  People at work noticed the stickers and teased me about them.  Then one Friday it happened.  A pick-em-up truck pulled up behind me at a red light, then pulled around to the lane on my left.  The passenger lowered his window and yelled, "Hey!"  I looked at him.  "Love your bumper sticker!  Eve WAS framed.  By a bunch of lying men!"  I stared at him for a couple of seconds, then laughed and gave him a thumbs up.  WOW!  What a surprise.

Since then several women have mentioned to me - in parking lots usually - that they love that bumper sticker.      Then it happened again.  I was driving over the 312 Bridge - my sister riding shotgun and my granddaughter Kinsey strapped safely in her car seat in the back - when a sporty car pulled up behind me then pulled around.  When we slowed for the traffic light after the bridge two good-looking surfer guys hollered, "Love your bumper sticker - Eve WAS framed!"  More thumbs up all around and they sped on by.  

My newest is a gift from a friend at work (Carolee):  WILL WORK BECAUSE I HAVE TO.  I thought of putting it on the FRONT of my car so the young and healthy panhandlers flashing their cardboard signs at me in the afternoons could read it.  

This afternoon I was cruising home from work with all the windows down listening to jazz on Flager College Radio.  I heard someone yelling and turned off my radio.  Two women were riding beside me and we were slowing for a traffic light.  One yelled, "What does the rest of your bumper sticker say?  The one about DON'T PISS ME OFF?"  I laughed and yelled, "I'M RUNNING OUT OF PLACES TO HIDE THE BODIES!"  She laughed, then repeated what I said to her companion and they both cackled.  The light changed, I flashed her an ironic peace sign, and drove off.

Life IS Good.

*Freakin' Little Bastard

TV - THE GREAT NUMBING EFFECT

For some reason I wanted to watch TV very much this week.  I wanted the noise and the "company" that TV could provide, especially yesterday and today.  It was like a craving - no reasoning to it - just WANTED it. 

I knew that the TV would be full of AFTER CHRISTMAS SALES & LIQUIDATIONS commercials.  I reminded myself how annoying those would be. Still wanted TV.  I tried to analyze this craving:  did I associate TV with Christmas?  I was unable to dredge up any memories of TV and Christmas - no parades or events that I would miss. Still wanted TV.


I finally decided I was tired.  I had hosted dinner for my family Christmas Day and, even though we all had a great time, I was beat.  TV would be so EASY...just sit there and click click click my way into numbness.  Nothing (besides sleep) is as EASY and as MIND-NUMBING as watching TV.  And when I say "watching TV" I was not thinking of any particular show.  I still like certain TV shows and look forward to watching them in the future.  When I craved "watching TV" I craved sitting in my big chair with the remote and staring at the TV and tuning out.    

Instead of watching TV I cuddled up in my big chair with my new Sue Grafton mystery, and read.  What a pleasure to read something as well-written and intriguing as U is for Undertow.  Unlike so many writers today who take a formula and just basically "fill in the blanks" as they crank out book after book after book (can anyone say James Patterson?), Sue Grafton crafts each and every book the same way an artist creates a painting or a sculpture.  She experiments with point of view, she is attentive to detail, she creates living, breathing characters who you care about - even if they end up being the "bad guy".  

I start a new Grafton mystery by allowing myself a chapter or two at a time, but I always end up devouring the final chapters as the suspense builds to a surprising climax.  I finished this book last night.  I was sad for a few minutes - sad and satisfied - and then decided it was time to read the series from beginning to end again.  The series is so good that you can read and reread the books and enjoy them over and over again.

I've been reading a huge collection of Flannery O'Connor stories and I'm ready to be finished. What a tremendous talent!  I've learned a lot about writing, but I'm ready for something ... sunnier.  Not a lot of laughs in Ms. O'Connor's stories.  Same for Eudora Welty...another Southern writer with a very twisted way of looking at things.  I have The Tin Drum by Gunter Grass waiting for me at the library.  I may release my hold on that one - again, not a happy funny novel - and start rereading A is for Alibi.

HARLEY - ONGOING FUN & GAMES

Things I do to torture Harley:

1. I play the CD Songs of the Humpback Whale.  The CD contains no instrumentation or vocals - just the whales.   Sometimes the whales even sound a bit...er...romantic.  I was deciding whether or not to keep the CD, and noticed Harley cocking his head back and forth.  Oh, he would try to ignore it!  How he would try!  Then when he couldn't stand it anymore he'd run over to the speakers and stare at them, cocking his head.  Sometimes he'd utter a sharp bark.  It's so easy to get my jollies....
2. I go outside without him.  I don't do this to torture him or punish him.  The fact that it bothers him is a side benefit.  He will stare mournfully out the storm door at me or run into my bedroom, jump onto MY bed, and bark out the window at me.  

Oh, come on!  When I first adopted Harley I let him outside to do his business and he would come right back.  "What a well-trained dog!",  I thought.  Boy, was I stupid.  One night he didn't come back.  In fact, as soon as I opened the door to let him out, he bolted into the dark and never looked back.  Of course, I chased him.  It's human nature.  He never looked back.  I took a flashlight and walked my street calling for him feeling like an idiot.  It is not fun to yell "Harley" throughout your neighborhood.  And, deep down, where I didn't want to admit it, I was terrified I'd lost him for good.

When I got back to the house my phone was ringing.  A woman who lived on the street behind me had found him.  The day before this runaway episode I had put a tag on his collar with a web address, so if someone found him they could put in his code number (also on the tag) into this web site.  The web site had my name, address, and phone number.  Oh, he had his county tag on, but I think we all know how well those work.  Besides, my real fear was that he would get hit by a car because he has no street smarts.

So I drove over to the nice woman's house and listened to her tale of the little wet dog that greeted her when she arrived home from church.  He must have crawled through a hole in the old fence that surrounded a retention pond, mucked around in the surrounding grasses, then crawled under a broken piece of fencing on her side.  (That fence around the retention pond has since been replaced!)   She said he jumped all around her and was just so happy to see her.  She took him inside and toweled him off and fed him cheese.  Her husband (a very smart man) jumped on the Internet and looked up his tag information and made her call me.  I think she would have kept him, but her husband must have sensed T*R*O*U*B*L*E.  I thanked her and almost cried with relief.  I then pulled and dragged the *FLB into my car.  He didn't want to leave the nice lady with the cheese, you see.  A month or so later she dropped in on me so she could visit Harley.  She brought him pieces of cheese and brought me several issues of the Watchtower.  Harley is the gift that keeps on giving.

I only take Harley out on a leash and I find I can't do quick chores with him tethered to my wrist.  I also will tie him to one of my Adirondack chairs but once he starts hunting lizards he gets tangled.  I tied him to the fence near my car once, thinking that there was nothing on which to get tangled.  He ended up crawling under my car then whining because he didn't think he could get out.  sigh.

Who's torturing whom?

*FLB=Freakin' Little Bastard

MONDAY MUTTERINGS

Mondays.  Why is it you start off the week with the best of intentions and you end up in your big fat chair after work with a frown on your face?

It starts at work with a computer that decides not to boot up - what?  A simple reboot turns into a 30-minute long OH CRAP I'M GONNA HAVE TO TAKE IT TO THE SHOP adventure.  You mess with it  and finally it looks like it's THINKING about booting up, so you walk away from it before your impatience makes you click or tap on something which delays the fix.  Besides, you are ready to punch a hole in your monitor even though you realize with the thinking-side of your brain that the monitor isn't the problem.  So you leave it and take your coffee to the kitchen computer just to get a few things done while your computer decides what it's doing. 

So you work on the computer in the kitchen where the A/C blows directly on your back and drops your body temperature to about 45 degrees and your coffee drops from hot & lovely to cold  & forget it.  Then you try to help the Front Desk because their printer quit working Sunday and no matter what trick you try it won't freakin' work and you just don't want to give up because you hate saying I CAN'T FIX IT and IT'S BROKE.  But you finally come to your senses and realize it is dead and it will cost $90 to call the computer guy in to confirm, or the inn manager can spend $100 for a new one.

Then you go back to the office and your computer has booted successfully.  For no good reason.  It's just the universe screwing with you.  And this is all before 9am.

And you've planned to drive to the outlet mall after work and you decide to print that $10-OFF coupon before you forget and then you read the small print and it's $10 OFF YOUR $100 PURCHASE.  Uh, no, you weren't going to spend $100.  But wait!  There's a 2nd coupon - 20% OFF - cool - but it starts on THURSDAY.  You didn't want to wait until Thursday, but in the interest of saving a couple bucks you will.  But now you're irritated.

And you get home and you let the *FLB out of the house for a quick pee - no leash - because he does it and goes right back in the house EVERYDAY, but he spots SOMETHING that YOU can't see and he's off like a shot barking at whatever it is.  You sigh and go into the house and grab the leash and come back out and he's sniffing and rooting around the big tree next door - just past the BUCKET where the snake lives.  So you call him and he runs around the tree and you're trying to make like you're NOT chasing the *FLB and he knows you really ARE chasing him and you're worried the snake is NOT in his BUCKET but out here in the yard enjoying the sunny afternoon and if you see him or step on him you're going to have a coronary and then you get up close to your darling terrier and grab that sucker by his neck.  You're NOT going to look up in the tree where HE'S staring because it could be ANYTHING up there; you just make the leash into a quick slip knot and lead your pet gently into the house.

And you open up your email and even though you've gotten 2 estimates for gutters the other condo owner wants just one more from "his guy" and that delays the gutters again.  sigh.

And you read some short stories in your Glimmer Train Winter Issue and they are well-written but the last one punches you in the gut and you toss it aside and decide to do something else, but you feel like crap.

Then you read your daily Dave Barry column and, even though it's from July 2001, it makes you laugh.  It's about taking his baby daughter on a 4-hour flight and involves projectile vomiting.  And on the Georgia news you read that a bug from Asia has appeared in Georgia and it loves to eat kudzu.  The bug is called the globular stinkbug and the last line of the article says it all:  "But if the bug if threatened, it will put off an odor."  What?  How bad an odor?  Like a skunk?  Considering the forecasts that if scientists don't stop the spread of kudzu it will eventually cover the entire southeast, I think southerners can put up with a little odor.  Can't be as bad as that plane ride with Dave Barry's baby.

*FLB=Freakin' Little Bastard

Saturday Night

More than one month has passed since I disconnected my cable connections and quit watching TV.  Tonight three women are sitting in a beach cottage and each one of us is working on a laptop.  You could look at this and say we've substituted one piece of technology for another; however, that would not be accurate.  My friend LuAnn is working on her Master's Degree and has been working all day on her assignments.  My daughter Melissa was reading for her Disciple Bible study class, and is now catching up with friends on Facebook.  I'm writing my blog.

There is no TV in the background.  And the only time a TV has been turned on has been during my grandson's Noah's baths.  This beach cottage has a room with a whirlpool tub adjacent to the living room.  In addition to the whirlpool tub there is a TV mounted on the wall with a DVD player.  Noah (who is 2) is having the time of his life taking bubble baths in that whirlpool tub while Finding Nemo plays on the DVD player.  Tonight the bubbles were 2-3 feet above his head and he looked like a weird version of Santa Clause when he peeked over the top of the tub.

It's so quiet in here that it was surprising to step outside for a few minutes and hear the Kink's You Really Got Me blasting from two doors' down.  The weekend partyers had tiki torches around their 2nd story deck and sounded like they were having a great time.  It was nice to step back inside and feel the air conditioning and hear the tap tap of laptop keys.

Today was a whirlwind because we had my granddaughter Kinsey's birthday party at 3:00, and shopping to complete before then.  LuAnn stayed behind to work on her assignments while Melissa and Noah and I tooled around in my convertible, and YES, it was a top down day.  This was Noah's first time cruising with Grenah in the Cabrio with the top down and he really enjoyed it.  There was a lot of woo-hoo-ing as we enjoyed the beautiful day.

We finished our shopping and had a delicious lunch at Flavors just west of downtown.  Then home to complete our wrapping then off to the party.  The party's theme was Tinkerbell and not only were the balloons and decorations all Tinkerbell, but Kinsey herself was dressed as the Tink.  She was so cute my head almost exploded.  We had cake & ice cream & presents & it was a grand time.  When Melissa and Noah and I arrived back at the beach cottage we found LuAnn ready for a break.  We caught her up on the party news while Noah ate some supper, then we all laughed while he took his bubble bath with Nemo.  He was asleep 5 minutes after his head hit the pillow.

I give  myself about 15 more minutes and I'll join him in Dreamland...

THE BUTS

I've been cleaning and decluttering in preparation for my company coming this weekend.  In the process I've begun to do some things that I put off doing years ago; for example, hanging pictures in my living room, hanging pictures in my hallway, and clearing out the TV entertainment center (it's going outside Saturday for sale or pickup).  I've disliked the entertainment center for a couple of years now but inertia caused me to just sit and hate it instead of getting rid of it.  Let me introduce you to - The BUTS.  So I'm sitting in my living room glaring at the entertainment center and thinking,

"I hate that entertainment center; it leans away from the wall and that's just so unattractive.  And I have something I like much better to put in its place."  Uh oh, here come The BUTS:

• BUT there's so much stuff piled on it; I'll never find a new home for everything.
• BUT even if I could find a home for everything, I'd never be able to move it by myself.
• BUT even if I could move it by myself, I can't have a yard sale with just one item.
• BUT even if I decided to just junk it at the side of the road, I couldn't drag it all the way out there by myself.

The BUTS are related to procrastination; they are the mental voices that discourage me from even trying to do some activity.

I thought that blogging about BUTS would be helpful, but instead I have killed almost an hour on this stupid topic and still have quite a bit of work to do.  Stupid BUTS.

FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS...NOPE...ST AUGUSTINE

OK, don't freak out, but I've signed up for Google Adsense.  A friend suggested it for earning extra money.  It sounded too good to be true, of course, so I did a lot of research this afternoon.  Results are mixed.

I immediately read as many complaints and as varied problems as I could.  Most of the complaints were from webmasters who earned up to the minimum $100 that Google requires before issuing a check.  They claimed that just when they were expecting their first check, Google accused them of fraud and closed their account.

Aha! said my cynical side.  Typical corporate scam; however, most of the webmasters went on to complain about all the time they put into getting more ads and getting more hits, etc. 

I had almost decided NOT to do it just because I was sure it wouldn't be worth the trouble, AND I already had the Cable TV monopoly and the cell phone behemoth to deal with - I didn't need another company ripping me off.  Then I decided...... I decided to take a leap.  I am so darn conservative and I don't do a lot of things because the results are not guaranteed. 

I thought about it and decided I would only do it if I put NO EFFORT WHATSOEVER into it.  So I filled out the application and it was short and only mildly annoying.  We'll see.  They promise that I can veto up to 200 advertisers (that I may view as objectionable).  We'll see.  If I go through with this you are free to do what you want.  Whoever advertises is chosen by Google, not me.  I'm just letting them use some of my space.  And if I don't like it I'm promised that I can get out of this arrangement quickly and easily.

So call me a sellout.  Whatever.  I need more income.  I am going to try more stuff.  I am going to take more chances.  And so what if it doesn't work out.  At least I tried.

OFFSPRING FROM ANOTHER PLANET

I have not mentioned this NO TV project to my two daughters; I knew they would just think it was another weird thing about their weird mother.  I'm finally getting it that they don't get me and that's OK; I really didn't "get" my  mother either.  That's why we have grandchildren.

Mary Lee (my older daughter who lives here in St. Augustine) noticed Saturday my cable wire was disconnected from my TV and asked me what was wrong with my cable.  So I told her I wasn't watching TV for a year. 

"Why?" daughter asked.

"Because I just wanted to see if I could do it."  mother answered.

"Cool."  daughter comments.  

"Bullshit." mother is thinking.

 I know that's not the end of it.

So I guess the two daughters put their heads together.  I'm sure Mary Lee reported this aberration along with  the new bumper stickers on my car:  EVE WAS FRAMED and DON'T PISS ME OFF - I'M RUNNING OUT OF PLACES TO BURY THE BODIES.  I mean, come on!  My beloved Cabrio is 10 years old and I'm finally only carrying Liability Insurance and I'm driving it as long as I can and have no plans to sell it so if I want to put bumper stickers on it now, so what!  Anyway, they're always comparing notes to see if it's "time".  You know, time to "put me away".  I'm only 55 and they've been preparing for "putting me away" for a decade already.  I've told them both I've got a one-way ticket to Tahiti that I'm using with the last of my strength.  Actually, it's for Nome - I think it would be better to freeze to death on an ice floe than to die all hot and sweaty on a tropical island. 

So...my younger daughter Melissa calls me tonight.  She's driving down from Atlanta for a long weekend with me.  (BTW bringing 2-yr-old Noah - woo hoo!)

"So I hear you're like not watching TV for a year," daughter says.

"That's right,"  mother answers...waiting.

"So does that mean like no one can watch TV?  Like I can't watch Survivor or Amazing Race while I'm visiting?"  daughter asks with her 3-year-old voice.

"That's right, no TV at all.  After all Tim will record everything for you anyway."  mother is screwing with daughter....because she can.

 "Oh... yea...that's right.  Well, that's fine."  daughter sounds pitiful.

"Well, I guess I could hook up the TV in the bedroom and you could spend time with the TV instead of with your mother."  God, this is great.

"No, no, you're right, Tim will record everything."  Daughter is being so nice.  I know it's killing her.

I did let her off the hook, but it will be weird to be all together and not watch TV.  I will have it hooked up so my friend LuAnn can watch while she's here visiting for a week, and it will be hooked up this weekend in case my daughter wants to watch, but I won't use the opportunity to watch.  That would be...like...cheating.