Wisconsin Called

Friday, I posted about my on-line run-in with a woman from Wisconsin. Her mama failed to teach her not to say anything if she could think of nothing nice to say about Tuck Your Skirt in Your Panties and Run. I speculated that perhaps she wrote such poor comments and put them on the Internet for the whole world to see because she is the victim of an unfortunate personality. Of course, I made sure to add that I would pray for her. Taking the high road is important in matters like this.

In fairness to her, I noted that there may be other explanations for her inability to laugh on cue. Communism was suggested. That's only a natural assumption.

And I do recall mentioning that her problem may be that Wisconsin as a state lacks humor. Everyone knows that. I meant it as a simple statement of fact, not as derision. 

The communists haven't called, but Wisconsin did.

But Am I Still Pretty?

Yesterday, I was looking over my books on Amazon. I was doing obsessive things like examining sales charts, reading reviews and analyzing data by geographic region. ThenI came across this humbling review

"Unfortunately, the title was the funniest thing in the whole book. This is a collection on barely amusing, tedious, little stories."

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I cascaded through several stages of emotion. First, I succumbed to shock. How could someone say such a thing, even if she is from Wisconsin, a state notorious for its lack of humor?

Next, I experienced anger. The thought, How could someone say such a thing, took on a different tone. To be so rude and insensitive to another person is plain wrong. Didn't her mama ever tell her that if she couldn't say anything nice, not to say anything at all? The nerve!

Alas, I was stricken with sadness and grief. I'd let a reader down. I wracked my brain in an effort to determine where I'd gone wrong.Was it my calculation of my wedding anniversary in dog years that left her flat? Did she find my admission that a little girl down the street spotted a dead roach in my house offensive? Or was the fact that I've dubbed the child Little Miss Bad Cholesterol due to her monogram, LDL, the turn off? I revealed, in print no less, that I strolled down a long hallway past my peers with my skirt shoved deep in my underwear. Could she not even giggle at that?

I did dedicate two entire pages to the communist pig roast that my brothers hosted in Mississippi. Maybe she's a communist. Maybe she has something against my brothers.

Maybe she's one of those people who doesn't know how to laugh at life's inevitable comedy of errors. Thus, her negativity has nothing to do with me or Tuck Your Skirt in Your Panties and Run and everything to do with her unfortunate personality, as we call the condition here in the South. In that case, I'm obliged to pray for her.

My feelings are hurt, but after working through my emotions, I'm perking up.

Nonetheless, that hasn't stopped me from desperately calling out, like the 40-year-old bridesmaid wearing cornflower blue, "But I'm still pretty, right?"

Can You See Me Now?

 

I caught a gallon of skim milk hiding in IGA's beer cooler last Friday night. What a wanna-be! 

Or maybe someone had a moment of weakness. He waffled between milk for the baby or beer for big daddy. Beer won and milk was abandoned. In these tough economic times, priorities must be set, sacrifices have to be made.

How would you caption this picture? 

What creative explanation would you give for why this milk is feeling so out of place?

Watermelon Worries

It sounds silly when I type it and read it back to my self, but I'm afraid of my watermelon. It's alone in the garden, but its presence strikes an ominous chord all the same.

It taunts me. Maybe it's ripe. Maybe it isn't. Maybe it will just up and rot. 

I'm scared to pick it. 

I'm scared to let it stay on the vine.

One would think that knowing it's the only one of its kind in my garden would give me comfort, but the thought petrifies me.

One Last Adventure

One more adventure survived, I thought. I theorized that if I didn’t acknowledge aloud how the plane skidded askew down the sandy runway, it didn’t. 

Two days later, my husband worked up the audacity to say, “Were you looking out of the cockpit window when we landed? Sideways!” Was it more horrifying that I had a view through the cockpit window or that we nearly tumbled into the Eleuthera International Airport stall belly over back? 

At the Pineapple Air desk in Nassau, I reluctantly surrendered my carry-on bag, then my husband and I and a smattering of additional passengers exited the double doors to the tarmac. An airline employee locked them behind us. As I mend the rips in my recollection, stitching together snatches I deleted, it occurs to me that she anticipated our urge to sprint back and rattle the hinges until someone met our desperate eyes and denied us access anyway. 

Peering around the airfield, I searched for Pineapple Air jet. “Where is our plane?” I muttered, even while ascending the steps of a 12-seat, double-prop, puddle-jumper. Two pilots kneaded themselves into the cockpit. One clicked open his window to accept the flight manifest scribbled on a yellow legal pad page, which he crumpled under the solar-powered calculator balanced between their seats.

 

No stewardess pointed out the exit door or alerted us to life vests under our seats or told us how to use oxygen masks. There were no life vests. There were no oxygen masks.  The exit was obvious.

No one instructed us to fasten our seatbelts or stow our personal items. Five people did. Three didn’t. A woman in front of me played Candy Crush on her phone during takeoff. No one cared. If the plane went down, flying debris, seatbelts and cell phones would be the least of our worries.

Eight backseat drivers watched the cockpit duo manipulate the controls. I braced myself for the pilot on the left to look over his shoulder to reverse the plane.

Aft, I spotted my suitcase piled in the cargo hold. It was carry-on luggage after all. 

Once in the air, white caps boiled in the ocean not far below us.  I nudged my husband and pointed to a duct-taped square on the ceiling. “That’s where someone tried to dig out a life boat,” I yelled over the engines.  “Planes like this float,” my beloved concocted, but he checked his pocket for his passport in case the authorities would need to identify his body. 

I took inventory, too. If we went down in the Caribbean, we could collect rain in my shoes. My inflatable neck pillow would hold my head above water. I rehearsed the junior-lifesaving technique of tying knots in the legs of my pants and filling them with air for flotation. At the bottom of my purse, I found a pen with a flashlight on it. We could signal for help and cross the lost off of the manifest. I had a ration of pretzels saved from the Atlanta to Nassau flight. 

Fifteen minutes later, while I dug for safety pins so we could attach our passports to our underwear, the landing gear connected with earth. I looked through the cockpit window to see blue sky replaced by scrubby landscape. Our plane screeched down the runway crossways, at odds with aerodynamics. 

It righted and decelerated. One of the pilots casually extracted himself from the cockpit, opened the door and reached out to stop the propeller.  The woman in front of me still played Candy Crush. We had survived another adventure that I was content to believe didn’t happen, until my husband forced the issue. (And if you're wondering, YES, I would do it again.)

                               

Come to Me, My Minions

Woohoo! I've received an email with a Secret Video and a Super Spy Decoder Ring! I'm doing the Snoopy happy dance. If I watch the video, I can learn to control women's minds.

If you are a woman, I'm controlling your mind right now (I think).

Imagine the possibilities this opens.  Women will bring their shoes to my closet. Women will move to the side to let me check out in front of them in the grocery store. Women will share their private babysitter lists with me. Women will flock to give me their grandmothers' coveted recipes.

They will be my minions and with them I will take over the world!

Wait. There's a disclaimer at the bottom of the email message:

This video is meant only for designated recipients. It should be used for its intended purpose. If it falls into the wrong hands, it will self-destruct in 60 seconds, disarming your computer and obliterating your data stored therein.

Find the Right Red

I know, I know. I've received the emails and the FaceBook messages, and I wonder where I've been my self. 

It's been a red alarm summer. Catastrophe has befallen my family at every turn in the road. From hydro planing across a busy Interstate in a driving downpour and totaling the car but not ourselves to being faced with the obligation of rescuing an abandoned kitten, our challenges have swelled. To top it off the kitten is a girl and she's very at home with us. Concussions, stitches and bee stings warranted ER visits. 

My minivan caught on fire. What's worse is someone put it out. Worse than that, I'm still driving it.

And my 17 year-old son hit a dear with his car. He field dressed it. I now have road kill in my freezer and I'm wondering if it means I'm a success or failure as a parent.

This is only half of the stuff that happened in July. May and June came with their own worries too stale to mention as excuses now. 

Thursday, I leave for the Bahamas. Friday, my children start school. When I return home, I expect the summer of catastrophe to be officially over and for things to return to our usual ordinary chaos.

Please pardon my long absence. Blogging to resume momentarily. Time for the green light.