Foolery

Microwave Live-to-Tell Stories: Cake

 


(Original photo stolen from jmv at Flickr)

Shirley, my childhood friend, was the first kid I knew whose parents owned a microwave oven. It must have been about 1976, making us 10 or 11, and I was over at Shirley's house one afternoon. Shirley was eager to show me the new machine, so she decided we needed a warm slice of cake. She cut a triangle wedge of yellow cake, plated it standing, and popped it into the Radarange.

 


(Original photo stolen from these guys)

"Lemme see . . . how about five minutes?" Shirley posed the question to no one, as I had never even seen a microwave, much less selected a cooking time.

We watched it cook for a few seconds, and then we noticed that the donkey was out running in the yard, so we ran outside to put him back in his field. This sort of thing happened frequently in both of our households -- daughter of a dairyman and daughter of a large animal veterinarian -- so we thought nothing of the interruption.

Until we went back into the kitchen.

While goats, sheep and deer were not unusual inside Shirley's house, smoke was unusual, and we remembered the yellow cake.

Well, it had started out yellow.

Shirley poked the black wedge with a tentative finger. It disintegrated in a puff of ash. Shirley shrugged, and we ran back outside to find the donkey again.

SO . . .

It's your turn. Tell me about your own personal Microwave Hell. Post it as a comment here, write a post on your own blog, or email it to me at foolery (at) clearwire (dot) net and I'll post it as a guest post this week. Tomorrow I will publish Bob Cleveland's story about a microwave and an egg. Yeah.

In Which We Start With Puberty and End With a Monster Egg

Because of formatting, it will be necessary to click on the photos to see the whole images. D'OH!

Think back to puberty. Or, as my high school biology teacher Mr. Penner used to say, "POO-ber-ty." He also used to say "di-no-SOURS," but that's another story, and try to stay focused, okay?

Pronounce it how you will, puberty does a number on a body, especially on a girl's body. One can only imagine that the first dozen or so eggs produced by a pubescent female might be rather shoddy in quality, but we don't know because we can't see the eggs.

You can see a chicken's eggs. The first ones don't always turn out as planned.

 


Sometimes their shells are very bumpy. Chas got one from the hen house yesterday whose shell wasn't done well; it was so thin on one end that it crushed in his hand. Occasionally -- rarely -- the egg is even laid without a shell!

But that's not what I came here to tell you. I told you that so I could show you this:

 


This MONSTER egg.

It's a little hard to see how big it is, so I have prepared a demonstration. You knew I would.

First, a large egg from the grocery store.

 


Now let's add one of the little eggs these young hens usually lay -- much smaller.

 


Okay, here's the lunker.

 


See the difference?

 


Yikes. I don't want to know what kind of clucking ruckus she kicked up when pushing THIS bad boy out. We gave it to Grandma across the street, who promptly made breakfast. Later she told me, "That egg had a double yolk."

"Really?" I said. "I should have known, since it was so huge." Then I asked her, "Did you get any pictures of it?" Thinking back, I asked a little too breathlessly.

"Oh -- no," said Mom sadly, as if she had let me down. "I'm sorry! I didn't think of it!"

What, you don't photograph everything you do, buy, or eat? I thought. Definition of a non-blogger.

But when hens 4, 5 and 6 start laying, the camera will be ready.

Cankles

The transition from casual dating to Capital R Relationship happens at about three to four months, after you've used up all of your cute stories and can no longer get by on charm.

The transition from Blog Pals to Oh My GAHHHHHH Make Her STOP takes a little longer, but not too much. Roll your eyes silently if you've heard this one already sixteen times.

 


cankle: An obese or otherwise swollen ankle that blends into the calf without clear demarcation

After the birth of my first baby, Smedley, I was resting quietly on top on my blankets in the hot stuffy hospital room, watching "The Today Show." In walked a short plump blond nurse, brisk and friendly and efficient. "Good morning," she sang. "I need to check you out."
No, this is not one of those stories, so guys, don't run away.

Before any examination began, the nurse looked at my ankles, which had been swollen before the baby was born but which looked like my everyday ankles at this point.

"Oh, look how swollen your ankles are," she said, and noted it on her chart. I blinked. Really? They looked fine to me. Better than fine, actually, considering they had been elevated for 12 hours, and considering I have tree trunks for ankles in the first place. I didn't say anything.

That evening a different nurse -- the physical opposite of my breakfast nurse in every way -- breezed in to check me out. One look at her tall, slender frame, and I figured she would be horrified by my elephantine swollen ankles, and possibly leave a nasty note on my chart. I looked at the offending ankles. They hadn't changed a bit from my vantage point. Was I a failure as a patient? Would I lose favor with the nursing staff? Would they let me keep my baby? I was doomed.

"Oh, would you look at that," she cooed as she checked out my enormous hooves. "Not a bit of swelling!" And she scratched something onto my chart.

Wait, what?

I looked at my feet. I hadn't noticed how lovely they were -- I should be a foot model, really. Such graceful curves up to those perfect, swelling-free ankles. I was proud.

I spent a second night at the hospital. The next morning during "The Today Show," in marched the little round blond nurse again to check me over. I was eager to show off my svelte ankles. She glanced at them.

"Ankles still swollen, I see," she said, scribbling a note on my chart.

The moral of this story is

a) you cannot judge a book by its cover. Short fat nurses are more body-critical than tall thin nurses.
b) beauty is in the eye of the beholder. If we could just control people's eyesight we could rule the world.
c) hospital food is somehow to blame. Mine was delicious and I ate it all.
d) people who watch "The Today Show" get what they deserve.

Come In Here, Dear Boy, Have a Cigar, You're Gonna Go Far

This, to most people, is a fold-down arm rest.

(Original photo stolen from these guys)

In the cars of my childhood there were always two arm rests which folded down independently, and which we called The Two Things. When The Two Things were folded down together they formed a nifty little platform from which to launch small children through the windshield, or, more commonly, a comfy place for my little brother to ride. This was in 1971 and there was no seat belt for a passenger of The Two Things.

(I was sure I'd told you this story before, but maybe not.)

My brother Mantel Man, the one who grew up to climb Mt. Whitney and hike the Himalayas, the very same brother who had a career as a Navy bombardier/navigator pulling Gs in a plane that sometimes flew upside down -- THAT Mantel Man -- was prone to carsickness as a little fellow.

I know. But wait, it gets better.

The only way he kept his nausea at bay on long car trips was by watching the road from the front seat, between my two parents, one of whom was smoking a cigar.* There rode Little Mantel Man, perched on The Two Things, watching the road, breathing cigar smoke and trying not to barf.

Only it was the motion sickness that tended to make Little Mantel Man green, and not the cigar smoke. I sat in the back seat mostly unaffected by the curvy mountain roads of the Coast Range or the Sierras, but green around the gills from the White Owls or Tiparillos that Dad smoked only on car trips.



(Photo stolen from these guys)

Not Little Mantel Man. He liked the noxious smoke.

Yes he did.

And he pestered our dad to let him have a puff. Dad, of course, said NO, because Little Mantel Man? He was only FOUR on the day this story took place. NO you may not have a puff. NO you may not have your own cigar. NO.

Until . . .

Oh, all right, Fella, this should put a stop to this nonsense! Here.

And Dad handed his stogie to Little Mantel Man.

Who liked it, of course.

And continued to puff on this stogie as we cruised along, Mom becoming more and more agitated with the backfired lesson as the minutes dragged on and Little Mantel Man smoked that stogie. And smoked it and smoked it.

And cars passed and stared at us. Stared at the skinny 4-year-old with the so-large head, enthroned on The Two Things like a little prince and puffing away at a White Owl cigar stub. Did they even notice the woozy 5-year-old secondhand smoke victim in the back seat? Doubtful.

The thing that put an end to this disastrous attempt to outsmart a child -- the last straw for Mom -- was the car whose passengers glared fiercely at us as they passed.

In 1969 some of the passing cars might have given my parents a thumbs up for bucking The Man and letting their kid smoke out.

In 1979 those people would have flipped my parents off.

In 1989 they would have used their huge car phones to call the police to report child abuse.

In 1999 they might have taken a shot at us in a fit of drive-by road rage

. . . but in 2009 they'd be on their iPhones to CNN and YouTube with video footage.

My how the world has changed.

Please don't let your 4-year-olds smoke cigars. And if you do, just make sure you're the fastest car on the road so no one can pass you and glare at you. Thank you for your time. This has been a public service message from Foolery.


*Hint: not Mom.

BULL . . . pucky

(Photo stolen from ShanghaiChew on Flickr)

Week two of summer vacation is here. I really need to send thank you notes to the girls' teachers, who are a credit to our education system.

We are so very lucky to have the school that we have, which is a jewel. Involved parents, fantastic teachers, and a very wholesome environment. I discuss this with the girls' grandparents quite a bit, and often when I talk with my father about his own elementary education, the following story comes up.

Dad grew up in Berkeley, California, before and during World War II, when Berkeley was known for the excellence of its schools and for little else. Even so, he remembers little about his teachers or his school days . . . except this incident, which comes up often in conversation.

David's (my dad) second grade (or thereabouts) teacher very unfairly asked her pupils if they had ever heard their parents swear. This was hugely unwise and would get her fired today, but in about 1942 people were a tad preoccupied with a war or something.

When it was little David's turn to answer, he told the teacher, "My father never swears, but one time? I heard my mother say 'bullshit.'"

My poor grandma, when she later heard the story, was horrified. She was not a woman to swear, but obviously she did at least once. She was quite pregnant with her third child in June for little David's birthday, and she made her husband, my quiet grandfather, take the day off to bring cupcakes into the classroom that day because she refused to show her face.

In later years she was able to recognize the humor of the situation, which is part of why I loved her.

I Leaf Japanese Language Wo Learning Tight to Think.

The tiny room was stuffy. No breeze stirred the late afternoon air, heavy with humidity and pollen and expectations -- for the weekend, two days away; for finals, just around the corner. The converted laundry room on the back of the shabby Victorian house had no air conditioning, no fans, no insulation. A half-hearted attempt at a college classroom, it abutted a campus parking lot, and waves of heat rising from the asphalt outside pulsed through the room.

Shoichi-san, a grad student, guided the four students through the lesson as they fought sleep, or restlessness, or both. Each took his or her turn reading the romanized text aloud; it looked sort of like English but, if pronounced correctly, it sounded sort of like Japanese.

Watashi wa toshokan ni irasshaimasu. I go to the library.

Janet read a few tortuous sentences until Shoichi-san was satisfied. Paula plodded through her assigned paragraph. Laurie approached the words dully, as if trying to read underwater. The stagnant air was getting to her; she cracked a smile and tried not to giggle.

Enpitsu ga arimasu ka? Do you have a pencil?

Joe's turn. Joe's learning curve was flatter than those of his classmates. Japanese did not come easily to Joe, and the warm room and fidgety girls around him didn't make it any easier.

Joe looked at the page. The words swam before his eyes. Joe struggled through the sentence, syllable by syllable.

" . . . shi . . . ma . . . SHIT."

Shta. Joe had wanted to say shta, but it was too late. The word hung in the poisonous air with ponderous finality, daring any of the students to say a word. No words were needed.

I don't remember which of us started giggling first, but Janet and I were goners after that. Shoichi-san blinked at us through innocent eyes -- and ears.  "Eez ever'teeng . . . okayyy?" he asked. We assured him that we were just tired and punchy, that was all. Poor Joe was turning six shades of red and cursing the day he ever chose Japanese as an elective.

Class dismissed.

Karma Is a Bitch, Even For Chickens

This is a bantam white cochin rooster. Isn't he cute?



(Photo stolen from TheBigWRanch12)

Let's call him Chester, because I can't for the life of me remember the exact name of the bantie white cochin rooster I'm about to tell you about. (Even my brother Mantel Man couldn't remember, and that's never happened in the history of Earth.)

Chester was a feisty little bugger, often to the point of obnoxiousness. He favored the sneak attack, scuttling up silently behind a person on his ridiculously cute fluffy legs, then flying up at the person -- let's say ME, for example -- with his feet outstretched toward me. I'd hear the flapping, turn around, and get a frontal assault of snotty chicken. This sounds funny and harmless, but those ridiculously cute chicken legs have spurs on them, which are rather painful if they get purchase on bare skin. It was particularly galling to be attacked by a pet who depended upon our good will to survive, and it was hard to explain being intimidated by a darling little puff ball no larger than a balloon.

But we were all somewhat intimidated. We watched our backs in the back yard.

Chester had a peculiar habit of hanging out near the swimming pool in the early morning. This was annoying because he was a rooster, and roosters crow pretty much all the time (never mind that the story books taught you that roosters crow at dawn. They do -- at dawn and at all other times of day and night). Our bedrooms were close to the pool, and therefore within earshot of a certain snotty crowing puff-ball who hung out at the pool.

We were never sure how he got there or why, but Chester would sometimes get into the pool on those early mornings.  Did he fall in trying to get a drink? Probably, but I would think one time would have cured him of that nonsense. Plus, there was plenty of water around the yard that didn't require swimming lessons to reach. I have a theory: Chester was a thrill-seeker. Chester the Adrenaline Junkie Rooster.

This theory is borne out by the way we'd find Chester -- riding the pool sweep around and around the pool. Our pool sweep at that time* was one that floated on top of the water, so it was possible for a lightweight thrill-seeking chicken to perch atop it and ride around (as long as that chicken didn't mind the revolving tile squirter that must have acted as a sort of chicken bidet; presumably, Chester didn't mind).

(Photo stolen from this site)

Several times Mom would have to rescue Chester from the top of the pool sweep; the wet and bedraggled little turd was NOT gracious about the rescues, making it even less fun saving his puffy little chicken ass.

But one morning Chester had taken one thrill ride too many, and Karma caught up with him. Mom found him in the drink. Poor Chester.

The moral of this story: there is no moral, unless you are a small ill-tempered rooster with a penchant for risky behavior. In that case, the moral is, of course, WEAR A LIFE PRESERVER.


*The pool sweep was named Ernest; my people are not good at naming humans but we're GREAT at naming inanimate objects.

Another Sordid Tale of Underage Debauchery

I was an angel in high school.

Ahem.  Yes I was.  Mostly.  Mostly because no one was particularly interested in getting my wings dirty and giving my halo a tilt.  Mostly.

And then I got to college, where I continued the tradition, mostly, except for that one time, and then there was that other time, and, well . . . mostly.

But by Christmas of my freshman year I was finding my way, stretching my angel wings.  The big Christmas party that Cricket and Judy and I planned, along with some other South Hall, second floor girls, put a good dent and some scratches in that halo.  (Now Mom, if you're reading this, have no fear: we're talking about UNDERAGE DRINKING here, and nothing more.  At my age I don't need to add a therapist's bill to my debt load.)

Drinking of any kind was forbidden in the dorms (yes it was, but this rule was also the spark for President Clinton's Don't Ask Don't Tell policy).  We figured, and we were right, that what the Resident Adviser couldn't see wouldn't hurt her, so we kept the drinks flowing and the party from overflowing out into the halls by creating party rooms.  Cricket and Judy's room was the bar, Mary and Cathy's room was the dance floor, and there were probably more dorm rooms pressed into service for other activities, but I wouldn't know about those.

As one of the hostesses I took my turn monitoring the bar.  We served hurricane punch, which is one of the four food groups in college, and mulled wine, which is one of my biggest mistakes of college life, or any other life.  I took my turn pouring.

It was a very long turn.

Did you know that mulled wine is a lot like hot sangria?  Neither did I.  Did you know that sangria and mulled wine are both registered by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms as lethal weapons?

I know that now.

I was serving up the hurricanes and the mulled wine to beat the band, of which there was none, but there was plenty of loud music.  I know because I could hear it thump-thump-thumping through the wall-wall-wall of the bar room that was my prison.  Well, a prison that served endless and unregulated lethal weapons mulled wine, anyhow.  So it wasn't all bad.

Until it became all bad.  That was the point at which the noise curfew had been reached, then ignored, then enforced, and we all said "Merrrrrry Chrishmish" and stumbled back to our own rooms, or for some their closest equivalents on the boys side of the dorm.  I fell into my dorm bed, which immediately levitated and began spinning like the Teacups at Disneyland.  Yes it did, and I did what any reasonable college student would do: I threw up on my art supplies.

Well, they were there in a convenient cardboard box under my window, so why not?  The bed finally quieted down, and I fell into a deep slumber.

Until about 6:00 a.m., when I awoke in dread of the coming day.  The room smelled strongly of sour grapes, oranges and horse hair paint brushes.

Oh God.

I staggered to my feet which were inconveniently pointed in opposite directions but which somehow got me down the hall to the communal bathroom.

The damage to my makeshift art supply box was indescribable -- now, and certainly then, in the predawn hours of what would come to be an epic hangover.  Everything was . . . purple.  I dumped the aerosol cans and paint tubes and brushes and trays into the sink and began scrubbing them to get rid of the evidence before --

Too late.  Terri was already up.

Terri was the closest thing I had to a nemesis in college.  She was a tiny thing, definitely under 100 pounds, with the voice of Cinderella and the tongue of a serpent.  Sort of like Angela from the TV show "The Office"


(Photo stolen from these guys)

only crabbier, and with a teeny-tiny baby voice and hair like The Church Lady.



She smiled a withering, tight-lipped smile at me , wrapped her baby pink quilted robe around her even tighter, and stared at my sink full of soapy art supplies.  She looked at me warily.  Did she guess the truth?  It seemed unlikely, since how many people have barf-covered art supplies?

"They needed a washing.  I wash them sometimes," I said.  I didn't add, "before dawn on a Sunday morning when the rest of the world is up setting its hair in hot rollers and glaring at its dorm mates."  I should have added that.



I never volunteered to watch the bar at a Christmas party again, and I never got that wasted again, no matter what Gubby -- whose ISP will be blocked from commenting today -- may try to make up about me.  Back to being an angel.  Mostly.


(Photo stolen from these guys)

Chicken in Training: Bringing Home the Blue Ribbon

I grew up on a dairy; that is well- (shorthand for "overly-") documented.  Dad loves cows, and continues to collect them.

My sister is a horse fanatic.

My brothers and I raised chickens.

With 70 acres of land, lots of barn and corral space, and a father extremely knowledgeable in all things bovine, not one of us ever raised a steer for 4-H or FFA (an activity which, let's face it, is really a license to print money come sale time) or any other market animal.  Why not?  Were we idiots?  Well, I'll come back to that question.

We didn't raise livestock because 4-H and FFA animals don't get to ride home in the truck with you after the fair.  No sirree; they go on to places like Bob's Big Boy, Kibbles & Bits and, heaven forbid, Taco Bell, to become Extreme Value Meals.

Poor Fluffy.

But chickens have a Get Out of Abattoir Free card.  They have return tickets from the fair.  So my brothers and I raised ornamental bantam (miniature) chickens, and gave them names like Cluck, Brewster, and Fluffy.  Poor Fluffy.  (Pet names have never been a LaGrone family strong suit.)

But do you know what it takes for Fluffy to bring home the blue ribbon?  Well, I'm gonna tell you.  As much as I remember, anyway.

First, the chicken must be healthy, and healthy looking.  No scaly leg (a condition I battle myself in these dry, dry months); you've got to grease up the chicken's legs.  (At least we didn't have to wax them.)  If I remember right we used Vaseline on their legs, combs, and wattles, which made them look plump, shiny and very rosy.

If you're gonna enter that bird in the fair you'll need to dust it regularly for mites and other nasty bugs.  My brother Mantel Man usually was in charge of dusting with Malathion, which is why he still walks funny to this day.

But you're not done.  Beaks must be kept trimmed, so we used nail clippers.  This is every bit as tricky as it sounds with a feisty bantie rooster, or even a hen.  So to calm the chicken you've got to cradle it on one hand, with the wings held down with your thumb and pinkie finger.  If you do this right, it's very easy to invert the chicken with one hand -- that is, hold it upside down -- while you trim its beak and talons (claws, fangs, nails -- whatever they're called).  This is apparently calming to a Bird of Very Little Brain, and it's fairly easy to groom them once they're calm.

And, for the pièce de résistance, you must bathe your chicken, especially if it's white.

I'm not kidding.

In the utility sink.  Yes, bathe.  Go on, you're wasting time.  Chop chop.

Have your sink full enough to partially submerge the chicken but not so full that you can't find Fluffy in the bubbles.  Water should be the same temperature you'd use for a baby.  A very gentle shampoo is best, but if your chicken is white, get a shampoo with bluing in it, like you might use on a drop-kick dog white poodle.

before



after

See what a difference PhotoShop bluing makes?  In theory?

The chicken may try to get away, so have the door closed.  But don't worry -- they can fly only a little bit.  Did I mention you should clip their wings first?  Oh, sorry.  You should have done that.

Rinsing the chicken may actually be more challenging than lathering it, but you'll get the hang of it.  Plus, that bird won't have much fight left after it's flown around the laundry room a few times and smacked the window.

Lightly towel dry the chicken.  You'll probably want to use the one-hand-upside-down method as described above.  Then get the blow drier from the -- what?  You didn't have your blow drier out and plugged in already?  Well, that was a mistake, because now you have to carry your wringing-wet bird through the house to your bathroom to retrieve the drier.  Please don't use the hot or high settings, or your

will get all

and you don't need that.  Gently blow dry your chicken.  It could help to have some soulless European house music thumping in the background.  I know that's how the big-time hair dressers do it.

Those are the basics for getting your chicken ready for the fair.  Next time, Judging Day Etiquette: How Not to Be a Backstage Mother.  Thank you for your time.  Also?  We are idiots, very likely.

Stupid Human Tricks and the Stupid Human Who Misused Hers

I have a Stupid Human Trick I used to perform at parties.  Not several tricks; just one.  But in case you might think this might be bragging (AS IF), here is a partial list of my inabilities, to counter the effect:

• I have the vertical leap of a mud shark.

• I cannot confidently say or spell "sea anenome," and I am NOT looking that up.

• I learned to pronounce "anvil" from Bugs Bunny, and it makes Chas laugh, so I don't say it anymore.

Okay, that's enough of that.  I was reminded of this story today by a good friend who can't think when the cherry jar is open, shall we say.  This is for him.

When I was about 20, my childhood friend Cheryl had moved to San Francisco.  She lived in a wonderful old apartment near Golden Gate Park, with hardwood floors and fantastic natural light.  Cheryl decided to throw a party, so I drove down for the weekend.  I helped her get the food ready for the 40 or so people she had invited, and we were having the best time ever.  Neither of us drank much, so a little wine and we were rather tipsy as we prepped.

The Rolling Stones were blaring from the stereo when the doorbell rang.


(Logo stolen from this site)

"Harry!  You made it!" shrieked Cheryl as she greeted the first guest.  Harry was twice our age and had a perpetually sad expression.  He was embarrassed to be the first one to arrive, but we put him to work and gave him a drink and soon he was happy.  Happy with a sad expression.

When everything was finished, we looked around and realized that no one apart from Harry had yet arrived.  No matter; it was time for mixed drinks.  Of course, food would be necessary, so we got into some of the snacks -- but only some, since we would need lots of food when the hoards of villagers finally arrived.

Only they didn't arrive.  Harry was it.  Cheryl's boyfriend arrived, but beyond that the door didn't open again.

Time to get drunk.

I don't know whose idea the maraschino cherries were, but probably Cheryl's, because she always has enjoyed making me perform my Stupid Human Trick.  Since I am a one trick pony, you'd better keep a jar of cherries on hand if you want me to perform.

I started tying cherry stems with my tongue.  Cheryl was laughing, Harry was transfixed, and the boyfriend was probably too stoned to notice.  I think they started timing me.  I vaguely remember feeding cherries to Harry, when Cheryl took me aside to ask me what I had planned with Harry that night.  Apparently I was just shy of peeling grapes for him, so what were my intentions?

Huh?

"Harry?" I giggled.  "Harry's adorable, but he's like a hundred or something," I said, proving my youth an inexperience.

"Harry's 40," Cheryl said.

"Yeah, 'swhat I said," I slurred.  "I'm not doing anything with Harry -- are you crazy?" I scoffed.

"Well, Harry thinks you are," Cheryl warned.  "He's definitely into you."

"Oh, you must be joking," I said, dumbfounded.  "We're just having a good time, that's all."

"Laurie, you've been feeding him maraschino cherries and tying the stems with your tongue," Cheryl said, leaning on the "tongue" part.

Oh.

OH.

We went back to the living room, where I put the lid back onto the cherry jar.  Harry left soon thereafter.


(Photo stolen from these guys)

Why No One Pays Me the Big Bucks

Stop me if I've told you this one.

A couple of years ago I had to conduct an on-camera interview with the owner of the Sierra Nevada Brewing Company, Ken Grossman, for my job.  Sounds fairly glamorous, right?  Well, here's what it really was: I had to ask Mr. Grossman, a pleasant man I'd never met before, a handful of questions which he had to answer on camera, posing his answers in such a way that it suggested he was just talking, and that no one had asked him anything.  My face was not seen on camera, nor was my voice heard.  I provided the verbal prompts for him, plus lots of insane nodding and smiling to encourage him as he spoke.  I have never felt like such a doofus.

Yes I have -- I feel like a doofus every day.

To continue, I had little to do as we sat waiting to go to work in the Big Room at the brewery (a place to go hear live music and have a little dinner with your Sierra Nevada Beer).  My coworker Robb, who is the brains of the outfit, had set up the lights and the camera, and I sat shooting the breeze with a couple of the Sierra Nevada management team.  It was winter, and we were talking about the winter beers, Celebration Ale and Bigfoot Ale.  These are big, big beers, and not for the faint of heart, I know from experience.  I told the guys how much my husband and I liked the winter beers, and that Chas knew the release dates for all of the beers and looked forward to them like kids look forward to Santa Claus.  I think they understood; how could they not?

One of them said he had even heard of someone putting Bigfoot, which is a big bold barleywine ale -- very sweet and thick, almost syrupy -- over ice cream.  "I've done that!"  I blurted out.  They looked at me, like, "really?"

"Well, it wasn't Bigfoot, but it was a big beer -- a Samuel Smith Taddy Porter, I think."  We were watching TV and sipping the beer, when we got the Haagen-Dazs ice cream out.  I must have been fairly engrossed by whatever was on the TV, because I chased a bite of vanilla ice cream with a swig of porter.  I realized it immediately, and was ready to be horrified --

-- but it was good.  Delicious, even.

I told the management guys how Chas and I had nibbled ice cream and washed it down with that big dark beer, laughing like fools.  And that was the end of the story, because at that moment in walked their boss, Ken Grossman.


(Photo stolen from these guys)

We got Mr. Grossman situated, mic'ed, and briefed about the interview, and then we waited as Robb made the final adjustments.  And while we waited . . .

"Hey, Ken [did they really call him Ken?  I can't be sure], Laurie here likes Bigfoot over vanilla ice cream!"


(Photo stolen from this site)

I don't remember the next breath I took, but I think it may have been about two hours later.  I do remember the mildly startled look Ken Grossman gave me, which was hard to read.  Was it, "I've heard about nut jobs like you," or "where were you when I was making bets last week?"  I couldn't tell.  But I felt about two inches tall.  Mr. Grossman said something mild, I mumbled something stupid and it was time to start the interview.  I've never felt like such a doofus.

Yes I have.  But I couldn't say what I was REALLY thinking, which was, of course,

"Get me a Bigfoot and I'll show you.  And I'm gonna need some ice cream, too.  Hey, did you ever see someone tie a cherry stem with her tongue?"


(Photo stolen from this site)

Holiday Superlatives

In honor of Christmas (which is looming large like a mean dog that hasn't been fed in days) and Hanukkah, which is here as I write this (I hope you're enjoying it and not stressed out, Miss Wreke and Mom Bomb), I want you to tell me about your best, worst, longest, quickest, traveling-est, SOMETHING-est holiday season ever.  Please leave your story in the comments, or e-mail it to me and I'll post it separately, or write it at your blog and leave a link in the comments for us.  Or skywriting works pretty well, if you have enough gas.

I'll tell you my story right now.  File it under two superlatives: FUNNEST (yes, I know that's not a word) and STUPIDEST (which also isn't a word but which should be).


(Photo of 10,000 foot Mt. Lassen stolen from this site)

When I was about 23, my brothers and I were all home from college for Christmas.  Yes, I realize I was a college slowpoke, but try to stay focused.  Our family has traditionally opened gifts on Christmas Eve (other than what Santa brought), so on Christmas Day we all just sat around and burped a lot.  Three stir crazy college students and a golden retriever wanted something to do, especially me, since I had been working retail right up through Christmas Eve with no time for any kind of fun.

So we hopped into my brother Bocci's Bronco II, Bucky the dog in the back, and drove off in search of snow.  "Just be home in time for Christmas dinner," were our mother's parting words.

We live in the center of the northern Sacramento Valley, and in 15 minutes you can be in the foothills of the Coast Range.  Without a word Bocci turned the Bronco east, not west, and headed for the Sierra foothills, also close.  It seems we all had the same unspoken, idiotic idea:  we were going to try to get to the slopes of Mt. Lassen, where our Uncle Mal and Aunt Shirley were snowed into their cabin home.  They had planned to have Christmas with us, but weren't able to get out, even with 4-wheel drive.  "Let's just get to the snow, and see how close we can get to the cabin," one of us said, once it became apparent to all of us that we were all thinking the same thing.

We turned off of Highway 36 at Dale's Station in brilliant sunshine, smug in our collective lunacy.  Winding toward the tiny hamlet of Manton, not a patch of snow in sight, we must have doubted the reports of blocked roads at 4000 feet, which was our destination.  We zipped through Manton, up Schoolhouse Road, and beyond the PG&E substation that marks the end of paved road and civilization.  We were in logging country now.

By this time there was snow on the ground, then in the trees.  Soon we were in a winter wonderland.  It was beautiful, and look, there were still tire tracks to follow.  No problem, right?  We can definitely do this.

Until the tires started losing traction.  "Okay," said Bocci, "I guess this is where we should turn around.  He stopped and executed a three-point turn . . . which ended in a ditch.  Well, not really a ditch, because who needs ditches in the heart of Roseburg Lumber country?  No one, that's who, and that's exactly who was around to witness one of our wheels spinning in the air: No one.

We pushed.  We rocked.  We sat on the hood and gunned the engine and pushed some more.  Almost . . . almost . . . nope.  It was midafternoon by this point, and we could walk the 5-10 miles back toward people, hopefully, or the short distance forward toward a warm fire.  We went forward.

At first it was easy going on the packed snow.  Bucky bounded along and didn't mind his cold paws.  Soon we came to the tiny marker that identifies G-Line, which is as close to a street name as you find on company logging roads.  We turned . . . and our hearts sunk.  Fresh powder.  No more packed tire tracks.

By the time we got to the turn-off to the cabin, it was heavy dusk.  We knew the way well, so we weren't worried about getting lost, but we should have been.  Bucky was very tired from bounding through the deep snow, which was up to my mid-thigh at the end of the trek.

Inside the cabin, Aunt Shirley was talking on the phone.  The dog kept barking at the window, so she went to see what on earth -- people!  People walking into the yard!  "Gotta go," she told the caller.  "Someone just WALKED up to the house."

I have never been so embarrassed and yet so happy to be alive to face the shame in all my life.  Aunt Shirley must have known we were coming, because she had prepared a feast: Beef Wellington, Yorkshire pudding, and all the trimmings.  Somehow they fed three starving college students and a 100 pound dog with no trouble on a moment's notice.  We bunked upstairs in the loft, and I got the bed closest to the little window, from which I could see the bright moonlight on the frozen white world outside.

The next day my uncle fired up the tractor and we rode down to our car.  The guys winched the Bronco out of the gully, which wasn't easy, even with a come-along.  When Uncle Mal saw where we had beached the Bronco, he remarked, "You guys hiked in three miles, you know."  We felt like the Donner Party, only full.

Our adventure was over, and we had had a fabulous time and a very rare white Christmas.  The hard part was going home to our parents and grandfather, whose Christmas had been ruined -- first with worry, then with disappointment.  We never tried something that dumb again.


What We Learned:

• Take Uncle Mal at face value when he says he's snowed in.

• Aunt Shirley's cooking for the win!

• Disappointing your mother on Christmas is the worst feeling in the world.

• Don't take the dog next time.

There's not that much snow up there now, though -- bet I can make it.

So what's your story?

Teenage Adventures With Shelley

My cousin Shelley and I are only a year apart in age and spent a lot of time together when we were growing up, a lot of time when you consider that she lived a good 12-hour drive away from me.  She often came with us on family vacations, and was part of some of my favorite teenage adventures.  Like the summer night we were cruising down the Esplanade in the back of my friend Gubby's car, singing and being generally obnoxious, with woks on our heads.  I wish I could flesh out that story to make it better or just make sense; unfortunately, no one could.

On one family vacation when I was 16 and Shelley was 17, we had our own little bungalow to sleep in, with no parents.  This is a teenager's dream, especially if the teenager is smart enough to have deviant activities planned.  Unfortunately for us, we were dummies as teenagers go, and the wildest thing we could come up with was to take a walk at 11:00 at night through the sleeping garden bungalow district.  We were giggly, of course -- you do know that about teenage girls, right? -- but trying terribly hard to be respectful of our neighbors.  So we picked our way along the dark garden path, conscious of the slap-slap-slap of our flip-flops on the concrete.  Slap-slap-slap-CRUNCH.

Uh-oh.  Who left a giant bag of Doritos on the sidewalk?

Oh crap.  That was no giant bag of Doritos, that was one of these:


(Photo stolen from this guy)

. . . only it didn't look quite like that when I had finished with it.  Yes, I stepped on the biggest Giant African Land Snail I had ever seen, and as grossed out as I was I clearly got the better end of the deal.  Shelley and I reacted with solemnity and reverence for the poor unfortunate creature.

Yeah right.  We giggled like fools into our hands and ran full-tilt back to our bungalow, trying not to waken my parents or anyone else, but mostly trying not to step on any more stupid snails.

On another trip in 1982 we were staying on a sailboat, going ashore occasionally to look around or get supplies.  In one port we learned that there was an outdoor theater, where a movie played nightly after dark.  One of the adults buzzed the four of us kids ashore on the zodiac boat and we went in search of the theater.  (I think the adults may have gone in search of a tavern, but I'm not sure.)  We were disappointed to see that the "theater" was just a large TV in front of a couple of rows of wooden benches, and the movie on the VCR was "The African Queen," but it was outside, which was cool to kids, so we plunked down.

The front row was occupied by one young local guy, who didn't seem to speak English, but really, really wanted to converse.  Did I mention that Shelley was very pretty, blonde, tall and thin?  No?  I forgot?  Huh.  I do that a lot.  Well, she was, and still is (I need to headslap her once in a while for that).  So this guy kept turning around to leer over his shoulder at us, nodding his head in complete understanding, and imparting this wisdom:  "Micah Jacksonnnnn!" about every five minutes.  We smiled and nodded back knowingly, not wanting to seem ignorant.  "Yeah, Micah Jackson!" we agreed.  This went on for quite a while.  Pretty much the whole movie, really.  I think he may have wanted us to take him to visit Michael Jackson, but as long as we left him with the impression that we were tight with the chimp-loving gloved wonder, all seemed well.

On this same trip we were snorkeling in a broad, shallow bay.  It was very calm and flat as it was a protected bay; the bottom was sand with sea grass, and not much to look at other than conch shells.  It was 10-15 feet deep, and the snorkeling was quite uninteresting.  Shelley and I were headed back to the boat, when something below me caught my eye.

"Shelley," I said calmly, not wanting to startle my cousin.  "I need you to stay still -- just tread water, and don't move much, okay?  There's something below us, but I can't tell what it is.  Don't panic, whatever you do."  This was frightening news to Shelley, who wore glasses and was as blind as a bat in just her swim goggles.  But she was very still as we waited for the sand below us to settle.

I could tell that whatever it was was huge.  Naturally I thought it was a shark, and so did Shelley, but it didn't look like a shark.  The sand finally settled, and maybe a dozen feet below us was a manta ray hovering just above the sand, its eyes rotating independently on its wide head, looking at us.  "Oh, it's a manta ray!" I said, thrilled and relieved.  But Shelley didn't share my enthusiasm.  I may as well have said it was a great white shark with a rhinoceros riding on its back.  "No no, it's okay!" I assured her.  "They aren't stingrays, and they won't hurt you."

(Photo stolen from phil Hartell on Flickr)

Just then then big fish tired of us, and flapped its wings and flew away, right out from under our flippers.  We gave chase as fast as we could, but we were no match for it.  I have never seen anything so graceful.

Even with a rhino on its back.

Please Pass the Gestalt

I am no artist.  At one time, I thought I might be a designer, so I enrolled in a very good design school at California State University, Chico.

Clearly, by my virtual lack of talent, this was a mistake.  Still, I learned a lot that has stuck with me over the last 25 years, and some of it actually has application out here in the real world.

Take Gestalt Psychology, for example.  Never heard of it, right?  Or maybe you remember something about it from Psychology 101, as I do.  "The whole is greater than the sum of its parts" came from Gestalt Psychlogy.  But if you were a graphic design student at Chico State in the 1980s you heard quite a bit about Gestalt Theory*, as it applied to the design and architecture world.  In college, gestalt became an acceptable noun with which we were encouraged to pepper our speech, as in, "That has a nice gestalt," or "the gestalt of the axe poised over the victim's head is very powerful."  More than anything, what gestalt meant to me was The Closure Principle.  When I see a strong relationship between image A and image B, and I'm going to mentally "connect the dots."  My mind fills in gaps that simply aren't there, but should be, in anticipation of a greater whole, or a satisfying outcome.  Well, this idea really stuck with me.

(Graphic stolen from these guys)

But I just told you all of that so I could tell you this: I can be very impetuous.  But I have realized that my impetuosity doesn't hail from a need to be bad or all mavericky -- not at all.  It comes from embracing gestalt, from my adherence to The Closure Principle.

For example.

I grew up on a dairy -- you knew that.  And what's on a dairy, other than cows?  No, not flies, although that's actually correct.  No, there are men, working.  Men hauling things.  Men showing up and leaving.  Do you know what that can do to a teenage girl?  If only it had made me dress better.

Carter worked at the dairy when he was maybe 22, and I was about 17, I guess.  He was very cute, although now that I think of it he reminds me a lot of George W. Bush impersonators . . . but stay with me.  Carter was a little older and a lot more worldly.  He dated a woman in Chico who was several years older than he was, and who had a child.  No matter -- I just liked to talk to Carter, flirt a little, you know.  High school stuff.

I had been painting pipe fences one miserably hot summer day, when I ran out of paint.  Quitting time.  I headed for the garden hose at the corner of our house where I could wash out my paint mitt, which had soaked up half the can of paint and left both of my hands solid white.  As I rounded the corner, this is approximately what I saw:

(Photo stolen from these guys)

Carter was bent over at the waist, buns up, drinking deeply from the hose (we do that here).  Now, keeping in mind that at this moment in my life I had yet to go to college to learn what all of my impulses meant, but . . . I did what came naturally.  Yup, I applied The Closure Principle.

It was screamingly funny at the time, although I had a hard time convincing Carter of this.  He laughed, but it was the nervous laugh of a man who was going home to his older girlfriend wearing Levis with big white paint hand prints on his butt.

Another time I was a rotten bustard with The Closure Principle, on which I had been educated by this time, I was in the swimming pool with my then boyfriend, the not-yet-gay Tony.  We were drinking red red wine on the steps of the pool just after sundown, trying to stay cool in the midsummer bath water.  Tony was a lot of fun and a truly nice boyfriend (other than that pesky gay thing that reared its head a couple of years later), and he really didn't deserve what I was about to do to him, but Gestalt Theory is apparently a guiding force in my life, so . . . I took a swig of wine.  And spit it in his face.

I did it before I had time to consider it.  His big ol' grapey face registered complete and total shock, and I was instantly remorseful, although he may not have gotten that impression due to all of the cackling.  He rinsed his face in the pool water immediately, with no residual effects, and he laughed along with me as I apologized over and over, while visions of sugarplums danced in my head.  Like I said: nice guy.  Really nice.  Totally purple face like you wouldn't believe and I wish I had a picture of, but undeniably nice.  The Closure Principle had struck again.

Lest you think I am a total sociopath -- I'm not -- I went on to lead a pretty normal single life with friends, boyfriends whose faces I didn't dye, and roommates with whom I managed to live without incident.  The last roommate was a woman named Judy, who was maybe a dozen years older than me, but we got along quite well.  We used to watch Thursday night TV together when her daughter would come over and bring her roommate; it was a multi-generational Girls' Night In.  One night when Judy and I were sitting around talking about guys, she told me about a boyfriend that she'd had a few years before.  "You might know him; he's from Orland.  His name's Carter."

Oh.

"Did you ever do his laundry?" I asked.

I had achieved closure at last.

*For a good history and explanation of Gestalt Theory check out Art, Design and Gestalt Theory by Roy R. Behrens

How to Train a Horse for Riding

I have no idea.

And neither did my dad, which is why a couple of decades ago he decided to take his two mares down the road a few miles to a guy who trained horses.  These two mares, Julie and Kate, were halter-broken (which means we could put halters and lead ropes onto them, in theory) but were not trained to be ridden.  This is not surprising, considering that Julie and Kate were brood mares (which meant they existed to create more horses) and draft horses (which means they were ridiculously large).

Remember this horse from the Warner Bros. cartoon?

(Photo stolen from this site)

It's almost certainly a Percheron, which is what Julie and Kate were.  Big horses.  BIG.  Used for hauling logs, pulling wagons, plowing fields, and, going back to the Middle Ages, carrying around short feisty guys in metal suits.  You need to be BIG to carry a guy in a suit of armor.

(Photo stolen from these guys)

So let's say you have a couple of these one-ton animals, and you decide you want to ride them.  Hey, why not while they're pregnant?  They'll be docile, and they won't have any little ones to look after.  Okay, just try not to picture what a pregnant mare draft horse might look like, because this could put you off of the whole horseback riding idea.

Here's how things went.  After three weeks of training, the mares returned to their pasture behind our house, three weeks closer to their due dates and just as docile as ever.  "You should ride them right away," I told Dad from my deathbed, as that week I had tuberculosis or rabies or something.  As the only one in our family who had ever had horses, I knew that to let the mares settle back into their routines, without riding them again soon and often, was a mistake.  "They'll forget all of their training, just like kids forget algebra by August."

"Can't," said Dad, as he and Mom left on vacation, leaving me to die of the bubonic plague all alone.  "They'll be fine.  I'll ride them when we get home.  But you can ride them," he added, apparently oblivious to my malaria.

The mares munched happily away in the pasture for three weeks or so -- about the same amount of time they had dedicated to learning to carry riders.  I finally recovered enough from my flesh-eating disease to throw a bridle onto Kate.

The bridle.  This is a problem unto itself with draft horses: you gotta shop in the Plus Size section for them.  Dad was able to get stallion halters for them (their heads are much bigger than light horses' heads) but the selection of available bridles was pretty slim, apparently.  I felt the bridle he settled for was rather poor, compared to the nice western bridles I had had for the horses and ponies of my childhood.  But it was all that was available.

Kate was a little bit cranky about the bridle, but she complied.  I got someone to lead Kate to the fence for me so I could clamber onto her back from the fence . . . her back.  Let's talk about Kate's back.  Now, of course I was riding bareback -- not ME, the horse! -- because I kind of prefer it to a saddle and because helloooo?  PREGNANT DRAFT HORSE.  If I had had a saddle big enough for Kate, which I did not, I still wouldn't have cared enough to try to strap that saddle around a fuselage as big as hers.  So up I went onto the wide plain of her back, my legs more or less sticking straight out.

I began to see the larger picture as Kate rapidly left the fence and headed for open pasture.  Bareback riding is only as effective as a) your legs are long, or b) the horse's belly is small.  I had stupidly mounted and attempted to straddle a very very tall Kenmore chest freezer, which was at that moment beginning to trot.  Ka-dunk ka-dunk ka-dunk.

To recap:

Kate's trot nearly jolted me off her back.  There was nothing to hold onto but her mane, and no way to clamp on with my legs.  Then Kate hit the open field and broke into a run, if you could call a 2000 pound angry pregnant creature with someone on her back "running."  It was more like galumphing.  Pulling back on the reins had the same effect as hitting the elevator button for the fourth time.  I looked for a softish place to throw myself off, knowing I'd probably get hurt but since I was dying of the ebola virus anyway, meh, what the hell.  It was better than being thrown.

Then the unexpected happened.  Kate stopped.  Just stopped.  I was about two seconds from hurling myself from her meaty midsection when she seemed to have made her point (or run out of gas) and stopped.  I slid the three stories to the ground and stomped around her vast body to face her, glaring at her for all I was worth.  And then the sailor in me kicked in.  I gave that horse an earful of salty language as I dragged her around the pasture by the reins, making her stop, trot, back up, and walk forward at my whim.  I wish I could say I got back on the horse, literally and figuratively, but I just wasn't that invested in the outcome, and I didn't feel like living in a full-body cast while I nursed my leprosy.  So I ended up slinking off with my tail between my legs, but not before walking Kate around and around the pasture for the better part of an hour, making her do my bidding.  She put up with it, with just a trace of smugness, because she had won, and she knew it.

When I told my dad about my ride, he pooh-poohed me with a wave of his hand.  I'm sure he thought I was over-dramatizing the story, and that I was a big baby.  After all, hadn't he ridden Kate three weeks ago, at the trainer's?

"Yes, but you were in a corral, with the trainer present, and you had a good bridle and a saddle," I reminded Dad.  "Kate has had three weeks to decide she doesn't need this nonsense, and she found out how strong she is.  If I can borrow some good tack I'll try it again, but in a dirt corral, not an open field."

Soon after my aborted ride my brothers came home to the ranch for a visit, and they had to give the horses a try.  I wasn't there to try to stop them, but really?  They wouldn't have listened to their silly crybaby big sister, anyway.  So they both tried and both ended up with minor injuries (although I think Mantel Man sustained a sprained wrist or something; he WILL correct me) and the horses put more notches on their bridles.  When a serious horsewoman friend gave it a shot and was hurt even worse than my brothers, our ill-fated equestrian experiment came to an end.

EPILOGUE

Kate and Julie lived on the ranch happily for several years, having many beautiful black foals.  Julie lived to a ripe old age here, to wake up peacefully dead one morning.  Kate was sold to a good home.  I think both of the horses had built up a healthy resistance to riders, one hapless rider at a time.  Just like a bad bacterium, what doesn't kill it makes it stronger, and we quite successfully created a highly-resistant, strong strain of horse.

Also I survived my smallpox.

A Very Long Story With No Moral

(Photo stolen from Stefan Smolnik on Flickr)

"What's going on?" I asked as I came through the doorway, blinking as my eyes adjusted from late afternoon Maui sunshine to the low-light interior of the restaurant. The cash register counter near the door, which was my station as the night cashier, was a mess, and people I didn't recognize were scurrying around strangely.

"We were robbed last night," the owner told me.

"No way. A break-in?" I asked. I looked around the dining room, and all of the sliding windows were intact. My boss took me aside.

"The police are pretty sure it was an inside job," she said quietly. And then the questions started. What time did we close up last night? Other than Sonny, who else was here? What did you do with the receipts? I answered everything truthfully, and even though I was certainly not involved in the break-in, the gravity of my situation was not lost on me. The police were investigating a serious crime, and I was the second-to-last person to touch the money.

"Don't worry," Darcy* said. "They aren't looking at you, or Sonny, or Linda. They think Raphael did it."

Raphael. Wow. The surf punk busboy who had worked his way up to day waiter and was trying to get dinner shifts; the busboy that Linda, the head waiter, preferred to work with because he hustled and did a great job -- that Raphael. It was sort of hard to imagine him leaving a window unlocked at closing time, then coming back with a buddy or two to muscle the safe out of the register counter (at least two people were needed to steal the entire safe, as had happened). Sort of hard to imagine. "Well, we'll see if he shows up to work this afternoon," said Darcy flatly. "I'll have a few questions for him if he does."

One by one the night crew arrived and got the news. No one suspected me; they all thought I was too squeaky clean for crime. They were dead right. Besides, I had trustworthy local roommates who could have vouched for my whereabouts if the police had asked. As far as I know, no one ever asked, because no one ever suspected me.

(Photo stolen from ColemanMaui on Flickr)

This was not the first time I had been in this awkward position on this island, however. In the short time I lived on Maui -- 15 months -- I was twice made to look guilty for a theft, the restaurant break-in being the second time. The first time was at a gold store, my first job in Whaler's Village, Kaanapali. I was one of only three employees at the store, and I was hired with no previous retail experience. Looking back on it now, I realize the off-site general manager hired me because I was trustworthy and an easy mark. I'll call this slimeball manager Ralph, only because his real name has eluded me, and you know I'd give you his name, rank, serial number and directions to his house if I could only remember them.

My job at the store was simple: keep the place spotless, be friendly and attentive to the customers, watch the merchandise like a hawk, and SELL SELL SELL. While I performed the first three tasks beautifully, and I tried hard to sell the heck out of the gold, I wasn't good at it, and my numbers were weak. Ralph brought in a new salesperson, Mari, who during the evenings sold gold chains from a tiny sidewalk booth on Front Street in downtown Lahaina. That's a tough job, one at which hard-core salespeople thrive and newbies fold right away. So Mari was a ringer. She was my polar opposite: beautiful, exotic and thin, aggressive and direct, with a thick accent from some Pacific Rim island. She was definitely outclassing me, and even the day manager Katie, in a hurry.

And then strange things started happening.

I approached the shop one morning to open it, and found the door standing open by two inches. I was alarmed, of course, but since everything was glass I could see that no one was inside, and, stupidly, I went inside. Nothing was missing -- no jewelry, no cheap tourist t-shirts, and no money. Had I left the door open the night before? No, no, no, I distinctly remembered locking it. So who had come in and left the door open? I called Ralph.

He was surprisingly forgiving, even though it was obvious he believed I had left the door not just unlocked, but ajar. "Don't let it happen again," Ralph warned. I didn't protest much, but I was sure I was not the culprit.

And then one day Ralph came in to talk to Katie, the day manager, and me. Laurie, what time did you close up last night? Who else might have been here? Did you see anyone lurking near the window?

Why?

Because a gold bracelet worth several hundred dollars was stolen. You know the one?

Oh yes, I knew the one. I loved that bracelet. Dusted it every shift. It was there my whole shift, and I had shown it to no one. It would have been virtually impossible to steal from the window case without gross negligence on the clerk's part. I had not been even mildly negligent.

I was frightened, upset, and indignant, and I waited for the words that I knew would come, fairly or unfairly: "You're fired."

Instead, Ralph said, "Well, if it happens again, I'm gonna have to let you go."

Wait -- what? If he really believed I had either stolen the bracelet or allowed someone else to grab it, then I needed firing. What gives? I was suspicious.

Within a couple of weeks we received word that the store would be remodeling, and we were all laid off for a short time -- even Ralph, apparently. Ralph would call us to let us know when the store was finished. Katie left for Honolulu and a better gold sales job within days, Mari went back to her booth on the sidewalk in Lahaina, and I got a second job working for a luau (the gold store was one of my two jobs; the other was as the cashier of a certain restaurant). I waited without caring to see when the gold store reopened.

It never did.

Weeks went by, and my new second job was a lot of fun, even for five dollars an hour. The restaurant kept me busy, too. I had heard the gold store had hit a snag in its remodeling plans, but I was glad to be free of the job, frankly, so I didn't care. And then I got a letter from Katie in Honolulu.

Ralph had known all along that I hadn't left the door open or allowed a shoplifter to steal that bracelet, Katie said. She had suspected it at the time, but had no proof, and only now had learned that Ralph and Mari were in cahoots, stealing jewelry from the store and reselling it on the street to split the profits. I was an easy mark they could blame it on if things went bad. The company owners probably couldn't prove any of it, either, and so they just let all of us go.

Huh. Blamed without much interest or conviction, framed but with no punishment. There was certainly no proof. And so I remembered how it felt to be unfairly blamed; I remembered as we at the restaurant set up for the evening and waited for Raphael -- remember Raphael? Seems like a long time ago I started a story about Raphael -- to show up for his shift, and to be questioned.

Raphael didn't show.

"I knew it," hissed Gayle, the waitress. "He always did look sneaky to me." A funny observation, coming from an illegal Canadian immigrant coke fiend who bought pot from Raphael.

"I know Raphael did it," said Linda, the senior waiter and the waiter who had closed with Raphael the night before. "He was so helpful, always," Linda said. "He offered to lock all my windows for me."

"I knew it," said everybody, even Laurie, the once-framed ingenue from rural California. "Raphael is a thief."

Until . . . Raphael showed up to work the next day, scratching his head over his scheduling mistake. "I thought I had yesterday off!" he protested. "I surfed all day."

We all stared at our shoes as Raphael learned that all of his coworkers thought he had broken in and stolen the safe. He was hurt, then later angry, refusing to talk to anyone but customers as he hustled stiffly around the dining room. We were so ashamed.

Until . . . a few days later, when the safe was found smashed at the bottom of a sea cliff with Raphael's fingerprints all over it.

Go with your gut, but be quiet about it, I guess.

*All names have been changed except for those of the guilty, Raphael and Mari, and of the innocent ingenue from rural California, Laurie.

Yet Another Weird Boyfriend Story

"Steve Aaron?"

"Here."

"Sandra Ackerman?"

"Here."

Dr. Robert Main had just begun roll call in Ayers Hall.

"Tim Adelman?"

"Here."

The aisles were packed with college students who couldn't get seats; apparently well over 400 people had shown up at Ayers 106 to try to add the Communications lecture class.

"Sheri Asher? No, wait -- she dropped."

The roll call was obviously alphabetical from A, so the crowded room quickly became noisy as those of us further down the alphabet chatted through the A's and B's.

"Tammy Babcock?"

"Here!"

"Macon Bacon?"

Nothing.

"Macon Bacon?"

Titters.

"MACON VINCENT BACON?  IS MACON BACON HERE?"

Outright laughter.

"DOES ANYONE KNOW MACON BACON?"  Dr. Main's Southern Baptist-style speaker's voice and military background spelled it out: I'm Not Taking Any Crap From You Young Punks Now Just Let Me Get Through This Goddamned Roll Call, Or Else!

The room erupted.

The laughter overtook the hot room, and over 400 students had a hard time settling back down. Three or four minutes of uncontrolled group laughter. Macon Bacon, huh. Yeah right. Like THAT'S a real guy.

Only he WAS a real guy.* And about six months later, at the start of my sophomore year, I would meet and become friends with Macon Bacon.

He drove a convertible classic Mustang, when he wasn't on a motorcycle. He was good-looking and loud and extremely obnoxious, and I couldn't stand him. But I was pleasant, because I had to be: he was my new roommate's boyfriend.

We could hear him coming from blocks away, because he used to enjoy driving along in his convertible, laughing like Pee Wee Herman over the throaty rumble of the engine. He did a credible imitation, too.

Jeez, Macon was obnoxious. But over time I learned to tolerate him, and eventually, to like him.

(Photo stolen from these guys)

When our roommate broke up with him, Macon had a very hard time accepting it. He used to come to our apartment unannounced all the time, which would have been fine if the roommate hadn't moved on to another guy by then. She wasn't afraid of Macon -- nothing like that; she was just tired of explaining it to him.  It got so that she had to lie to Macon when the brutal truth just wasn't sinking in. We hated being involved in her lies, and after the following embarrassing episode, I put my foot down and refused to lie to Macon for her ever again.

We heard the Pee Wee Herman laugh as Macon pulled into our small parking lot.  "Oh crap!" Jules said. "Tell him I'm not here! Tell him I'm at the library! Tell him I'll be back later!" She hid behind the breakfast bar in the kitchen.

I went to the door and opened it to Macon. "Hey, Macon!"

"Hey Laur -- Jules here?"

"No. She'll be back later." I didn't move to let him in. Instantly Macon suspected the lie, and barged past me, down the hall and into the kitchen.

Jules was crouched behind the breakfast bar holding, of all things, a Teflon frying pan.

"Hello there!" said Macon as he peered down on the mortified Jules. "Lying to me, I see. What's with the pan? Were you gonna FRY ME?"

Well, his name WAS Bacon.

 
(Photo stolen from these guys)

*He was a real guy with an unlikely name, although it wasn't actually Macon Bacon. If you'd like to know his name, feel free to e-mail me at foolery (at) clearwire (dot) net, and I'll tell you.

Canoe Say "Landlubber?" I Think You Can

"I want to take my kids fishing on this vacation," said my brother Bocci this weekend, "but I know that three kids standing on the bank will be bored in no time because they won't catch any fish. Tervac [a crazy nickname for my very lovely sister-in-law] doesn't want me to take them out on the lake in a boat because she's worried about kids overboard, even though they'd be wearing life jackets and they all swim and there's NO way they'll catch fish unless they're on a boat. What would you do?"

"What kind of boat will you be able to rent?" I asked.

"A canoe!" Tervac hollered, exasperated with her husband, my brother Bocci. "He wants to take three kids fishing in a canoe!"

That's what I thought. And I remembered the last time I was in a canoe, with my family, and how that went . . .

I was 16 when our family took a vacation to French Polynesia. The breathtaking island of Bora Bora was my favorite of the three islands we visited, in large part because of its turquoise lagoon, which completely surrounds the island. As warm as bath water and full of fish, it was the most beautiful water I have ever seen, before or since.

(Photo stolen from these guys)

One morning we decided to rent outrigger canoes. We clumped down to the dock and spoke to the beautiful young Tahitian man who handled those things. Because there were six of us -- my two younger brothers, my parents, my 17-year-old cousin Shelley, and me -- we needed two canoes. Boys in one, girls in the other.

(Photo stolen from Kyrstellaine on Flickr)

As we girls watched the guys pull shakily away from the dock, we laughed as they got their bearings. Young Mantel Man had been a Boy Scout, however, and knew his way around a canoe, so there was no need to wor -- oops, spoke too soon. Over they went into the blue-green water.

By this time we girls were saddled up and ready to prove we were much more carefu -- BLOOP! Into the drink.

We huli'd two canoes in six feet of water within ten feet of the dock in under a minute. This HAD to be a new world record for tourist incompetence. The beautiful young Tahitian man called to us from the dock.

"You try again tomorrow, yes?" which, in Tahitian, means "you try again tomorrow with MY boats and I'll feed you to the sharks!"

"Well?" Bocci was asking me as I came back to Earth. "How would you take kids fishing -- rent a canoe, right?"

"Sorry -- Tervac wins," I said. "Our family just shouldn't be allowed near canoes."

Birth According to Foolery, Part 2

This is part two of a story I started over at Barking Mad!  I had the opportunity to guest post for her while she is enjoying some family time. Quick, run over there right now and read part one, then come back here for the ending.  I promise you, there's nothing gross, other than the fact that it's about ME, PROCREATING, which may or may not be a crime against Nature.

Also? after you've read the story, go back to Barking Mad! for a read.  Auds has a very full life and a wonderful, witty writing style, and you should add her to your blog stops.

*     *     *     *     *

We made it.  Chas parked in a red zone and walked me into the hospital, around 8:30 p.m.  I was brought into the room quickly, and preparations started.  Once Chas was sure I was in good hands, he went to move the truck from the red zone, and to retrieve my pillow and suitcase and CD player and all of the things I would need for a long hunker-down.
 
He got back just in time.

While Chas was fetching my stuff from the truck, the nurses brought me a clipboard with a stack of papers to sign.  "Initial here, here, and here."

WHAM!

another contraction hit me like a breaking wave, and I was left babbling and fumbling blind with the ink pen.  By this time my contractions were two minutes apart.  "I can't do this," I told the nurse, but I'm pretty sure she heard something like  hummina-hummina-hummina.  I think I managed all of the signatures, but I have no idea what I signed.  Smedley may actually belong to the hospital now, for all I know.

As the smoke from my latest contraction-explosion cleared, I realized two things:

I was alone in the room.

There was a baby on its way out RIGHT NOW, come hell or high water.

Chas, the attending nurse and my midwife all came back at about the same time, and baby Smedley was not far behind.  "Okay, you're gonna want to stop pushing yet," the nurse said.

"I'msorryI'msorryI'msorryI'msorry," I said.  Stopping was WAY out of my hands.  "I changed my mind," I remember saying to the nurse.  "I need drugs."  THAT much she understood.

"Honey, you are so far beyond drugs right now," she said.  Somehow, it was actually comforting.  Yes, it was natural childbirth, and No, I wasn't adequately hypnotised to block the pain (my fault entirely), but I was able to block the fear, which is 75% of the battle.

When Smedley shot across the room showed up I immediately thought, "Something's wrong.  She looks like a baby calf."  Now that's not just my dairy background talking; there really is something to this.  My water never broke, and Smedley was born in the bag of waters, or, as the Celts say, in the caul.  The attending nurse and my midwife were so excited by this that they almost missed seeing Smedley unzip herself out of the bag with her pinky fingernail.  "This baby knows what she wants and how to get it," I thought.  Hello, future.

As I was fixed up nice and pretty after my little experience, Chas helped the midwife bathe the baby, who was then swaddled tightly and laid under a warming light, just like a roasted fryer at Safeway, at the far side of the room.  We were all catching our breaths when the door opened and in walked my parents.  There had been no time to call them to let them know they were grandparents.  "We knew we'd never be able to sleep," Dad said from the doorway, "So we just came over to wait.

Wait, did he just say "to wait?"  Wait for what?  Oh, they didn't tell him at the nurses' station?

"Dad?"

"Hmmmm?"

"Look over there."

He looked at the whole fryer baby under the warming light.  And in that moment I saw, for maybe the first and only time in my life with my father, absolute shock to the point of speechlessness.  My father is NEVER speechless.  And it didn't last for long, because then he popped out one of the greatest quotes ever.

"What's that baby doing here?  Was it in here when you got here?"

Smedley was born five days early, at a little after 10:00 p.m., give or take a few mommy brain cells.  We really did cut it close.

And as for Smedley being born in the caul, a parade of nurses came in to see her and to ooh and aah over such an unusual birth.  The midwife said that out of a career of attending more than 5000 births, this was only the fifth time she had seen such a birth.  My mother-in-law told me that in Celtic lore, babies born in the caul are said to be witches, though not the green cackling cauldron kind -- just gifted and sensitive and having special powers.  I told her right then and there that she was not to reveal this to Smedley, on pain of death, until AFTER Smedley's 18th birthday, if ever.

Don't any of YOU tell Smedley, either, or I'll have to smack you.

Laird

We don't go anywhere.

Well, we go to southern California once or twice a year to visit Chas's family, and that's fun, and important, because it's family.  But other than that, it's rare that Chas and the girls and I go anywhere.

This is not a new phenomenon.  When I owned my store I worked six days a week, often seven, and rarely went farther than 20 miles from my store and home.  When that's how life is, you accept it, get used to it, and even prefer it.  (It's a big stinky deal for me to go across town to Target or Costco on my way home from work, so I avoid extraneous shopping at all costs.)

So when, back in about 1996, Chas and I talked about taking a three-day road trip, it was a BIG. DEAL.  We discussed the when and the where with lots of people, gathering suggestions.  And I brought up our trip in a conversation with Laird.

Laird was a retired professor who had purchased a large and unique art piece from my store, a hand-built piece of decor that required lots of measuring and planning before he was sure he wanted to buy it.  Over time I came to know this man, and learned that he had planned to put this lovely art in his beach house on the Northern California coast.  We got along so well, Laird and I, during these intensive art measuring sessions and the subsequent layaway installments, that he invited me to come to the beach house for a weekend.  Nothing improper, mind you; he invited me to bring my then-boyfriend Chas, too.  Chas and I talked it over, and a one-night stay at Laird's beach house fit perfectly with our other plans.

We made the date.

The drive to the coast from the interior of California is deceptively long and difficult; while maybe 100 miles lie between us and the salt water as the crow flies, there is no direct road, and it takes about four hours to get there.  By the time we reached Laird's very remote seaside home we were hot, tired and thirsty.  Laird was very gracious and welcomed us into his home, offering us beers.  (Chas especially was grateful for this.)  Laird started for the kitchen.

As he continued to tell us about his tiny village by the sea, Laird strolled to the pantry, reached in, and pulled out a 5-pack of Coors, the freshness date of which had likely expired during the first Bush administration.  I could sense palpable fear from Chas, whose idea of an old beer involves weeks, not years.  Was Laird really going to give us warm beer from the pantry shelf?

Oh yes, he was.  And he did.

We had dinner at the town's only restaurant, which was a cafe for the local fishermen.  We drove around the town and walked on the beach for a while.  Everything was friendly and peaceful.

Back at the beach house, we watched the sun set over the Pacific, which was literally a stone's throw from the glass.  Laird was excited to show us his movie collection, so we went upstairs to the loft.  There Laird had amassed an impressive collection of movies that could have served him well should he have wanted to open a video store.  Most of them were date movies and chick flicks, which didn't really strike me as odd, but it worried Chas, whose taste runs more toward "Annie Hall" than "She's Having a Baby."  Because TV reception was nonexistent in this part of the coast, and because cheap satellite hookups were still down the road, Laird's movies were the only entertainment choice.

"What would you like to see?" asked Laird.  Chas looked at the lineup, and I felt a smart aleck comment welling up from deep within his quiet exterior.  He didn't fail me.

"Oh, anything's fine, as long as it has Bruce Willis in it," he quipped.  Now, I don't need to tell you that that was a hugely sarcastic comment, but I was absolutely sure that Laird would not read the sarcasm correctly.  I tried to give Laird some clues.

"Ah ha ha -- Chas, you joker," I offered weakly, knowing that Laird would not get it.  Of course, Laird didn't get it, and he proceeded to pull every Bruce Willis movie he owned from the shelves with glee.  Later I would tell Chas what a dork he had been, and how he totally deserved to sit through "Hudson Hawk," or whatever monstrosity Laird brought forth.  Two dreadful movies were selected, and we flopped down to watch the first.  Chas was nearly in physical pain from the movie, but since it was all his fault, I kind of enjoyed his discomfort.

As soon as the first movie was over, Laird seemed predisposed to conversation, which seemed to be a blessing.  Things are not always what they seem.  Laird clearly wished to talk, and so we listened.  We listened, and listened, and listened as Laird rolled out intimate stories from his crumbled marriage, which was not yet completely dissolved, but close.  "We don't have thex," he confided, and yes, that's approximately how it sounded.  I felt Chas flinch on the beanbag next to me, as I realized that my Bartender Face had once again thrust me -- us -- into the uncomfortable position of receiving juicy, intimate details of a relative stranger's thex life.  Both of us were praying that Laird would suggest another Bruce Willis movie, and quick.

All of the talk about marital thex tired us all out, and it was time to call it a night.  We were grateful to get away as the whole affair had become quite creepy.  As Laird showed where we would sleep, Chas and I were overcome with a case of the willies.  I was mildly convinced that Laird had closed-circuit cameras set up to spy on us, which was ridiculous and entirely possible all at the same time.  Chas seemed to be a bit freaked out, too, so after brushing teeth and so forth, we slipped back into the bedroom and got into our jammies in the dark, just in case.

In the morning we headed off on the rest of our road trip.  There was no more discussion of thex -- at least, not any involving Laird.

And no more Coors was imbibed forever.

(All photos stolen from these guys)