YARD SALES

I received a note tacked into the wood which precariously supports my rusting mailbox. The colorful note informed me that my neighborhood would be having a joint yard sale this coming weekend. I wouldn't have to do a thing but look all over my house to find appropriate yard sale items to place in my driveway. This task was going to take some thought as I had a huge yard sale only last summer!

Hmmm. What to put in the yard sale . . .

By the way, is 'yardsale' one word or is 'yard sale' two words? Does it depend on context, whether it's in the newspaper, or on a poster stapled at the corner telephone pole?

Think about that and get back to me.

At any rate, I have been racking my brain as I walk through my house. There's the stained glass chandelier that didn't sell in the last yard sale. Perhaps it's still too expensive? But what the heck. I remember buying a dining room table and chairs at a yard sale and my daughter was able to use it for a spell before she sold it on Craig's List when she got something better! Believe it or not, I also bought another dining room table and chairs at another yard sale for my other daughter and she still has it. Do you reckon it will show up at this yard sale? I'll know when the van shows up this afternoon with all her goodies. And there's the framed pictures still hanging up on the wall in my garage that didn't sell the last time around either.  Again, are they too high a price and should they be hanging up waiting for a neighborhood Estate Sale? Will that lady come back who bought the huge picture at my last yard sale? Maybe she needs to buy some more to go with the biggie that's now hanging on her daughter's apartment wall?

The attic. Anything in there? No. That area was swept and cleaned up after last summer's sale and new boxes appeared after Christmas full of ornaments which didn't have a space to rest until next December at my daughter's home where they spent a jolly holiday. That's what attics are for . . . storing your stuff and your children's stuff. You love it every time they come over because it means they'll be back at some point to retrieve their stuff in the attic and you get to see them again.

Clothes. Do people really want to see your old, worn-out rags tossed on a quilt on top of the dried-out summer grass? I know I don't. When I pass a yard sale that has clothes piled up in a heap on the lawn looking like they were just picked off of Junior's bedroom floor and thrown out his window, I not only drive by but I speed by.

And the signs. Just read them. They'll tell you if anything is worth the price of gas in your tank to investigate. I always make my yard sale signs look very promising. FURNITURE is always a good word to plaster on the bright yellow posterboard bought at Rite Aid which will be posted on a tree, a telephone pole, or on a stake that will be hammered into the hard dirt at the corner light. ANTIQUES is another good word. All those early yard sale risers who come out trying to find the best stuff, not only for themselves but for their shops, love to see that word pop up in bold, black lettering on that sign you pray to God won't fold over during the 3 a.m. rain.

CAT might be a good word for this yard sale sign since my feline decided to leave me hanging for 48 hours while she traipsed who-knows-where. I was just getting used to the thought of not having to vacuum cat hair off my furniture, when I saw her at the back door this morning, right as rain, all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, ready to gobble up three scoops of her food. It's a good thing I like her because FUR COAT, written in bold, black magic marker on the poster up the street might have drawn some yard-salers down the road to my open garage door.

(C) nancy 7.23.2009

  

Fortune Sticks

I have been opening up my can of Chinese Fortune Sticks for approximately thirty-seven times. Today was my lucky charm day for my fortune read: Unexpected money and happiness is before you.

Supposedly these sticks are “The Oldest Known Method Of Fortune telling in the World”. And yes, I typed it as it is shown on the can and the 't' in 'telling' is not capitalized. Should that tell me something?

These sticks are “for ages 8 & up”. I guess if you are aged eight or below you don't get a fortune. You just have to be glad you're alive!

At any rate, what happened to tea leaves? Weren't people drinking tea in cups or wooden bowls for centuries and divining one's life through them before they were whittling sticks and putting them in little piles to await calligraphic lines of fortunistic doom or happiness to be penned upon their smoothed surfaces?

According to my can of imminent opportunities or failures, “the original fortunes were written in Chinese poetry. A translation has been made to English from an ancient book of Chinese Fortunes”.

Well . . . la-de-da.

I guess my fortune may be translated: Unexpected money and happiness is before you . . . maybe.

Or it could read: Unexpected happiness and a penny you picked up off the pavement is probably all you're gonna get if you're lucky to trip over both of them in the parking lot of Wal-Mart.

Okay. I'll stop with the gloom and wish on the next star to the right that this fortune stick is straight out of the ancient mouth of a Chinese babe and is true. I could use some unexpected money and happiness.

(c) nancy 7.16.2009

ST. SIMON AND AN ISLAND

O.K. So who is St. Simon anyway? Is he the one you pray to if you have lost something and need to find it? My Catholic Mom would know. But I’m thinking that he must have been very good to get an island named after him. A nice tropical island with palm trees, ferns, warm breezes, The Cloister, and the rich and famous. Lucky for me, I have a friend who lives on this island and another friend who can drive longer than two hours!

So my friend and I decided to take a Thelma and Louise trip to see our mutual friend on this island. We didn’t take a gun. We weren’t planning on shooting anyone or driving off a cliff when our stay was over. But we were planning on having fun, relaxing and talking a lot. A Brad Pitt look-alike who may cross our path while on this venture wouldn’t be a bad thing to encounter.

Well . . . little did my friend know that on our second day she was going to get a Reiki session that would leave her emotionally depleted for the rest of the day not to mention those massage table dents left on her face that only a two-year-old’s skin could bounce back from in less than 24 hours. When she came out from her session and walked to the car, I felt for her. “Ouch!” I wondered what she really went through as no one gave out any information. It was a mystery, and I had never heard the term 'Reiki' before, so my mind began to conjure up the scene:

There she was in the subdued lit room with the vague essence of lavender and vanilla floating in the air like leftover herbal remedies that couldn’t make up their minds whether to leave the room and free the space of their presence or whether they should stay and cling to the next person like Petouli oil on a 1970's hippie's tie-dyed clothes. With the quiet, subtle relaxing sounds coming from the six-disc changer . . . would it take THAT long? . . .  she was told to get under the freshly washed sheets. Felt pretty good so far. Was that a giant heating pad she felt underneath her that was making her feel warm and relaxed already? She settled her face into the headrest and breathed. “Ahhhhh, she thought, I get to do this for an hour and a half”.

An hour and a half later she thought, “Damn!! I’m never doing that again! I’m exhausted, disoriented, and confused”. Come to find out, it wasn't a massage I thought she would be getting, but some kind of energy work to rid her of negative energy. I think it doused all energy that she had before she went in.

I felt sorry for my friend. I hoped she would recover in time for the long drive home the next day because, if I had to take over the wheel, we might land in Okeephaknowkee, phonetically speaking. I would surely have to pray to St. Simon at that point for I would be a lost soul on the road to nowhere with my friend asleep in the passenger seat. She’d wake up, look around and exclaim, “Are those prairie dogs?”

Yep, and a few tumbling tumbleweeds to boot, cowgirlfriend.

So what am I trying to say here?

Go take a Thelma and Louise trip with someone who likes to drive. You may want to buy a verbal device that will technotell you in a soft female voice to ‘turn right at the next light’ so that you won’t land up in Nowheresville with a drooling companion who couldn’t continue at the wheel after the eleventh hour. Darn! Maybe a shorter trip would be a better idea, but life is short and long trips are waiting.

Go!!!

(c) nancy 7.16.2009

RAINY MORNINGS

Rainy mornings (or afternoons or evenings) are magical to me. My first thought when I hear thunder is actually a memory. I picture myself at an open window as a child, kneeling with my grandmother who is telling me not to be afraid, but to marvel instead in the beauty of the rain, the lightning, the thunder. I soak it all in and smile.

I love the smell of rain. If I am outside and I get a whiff of the possibility, it makes me happy. To hear it pounding on the roof is a delight. To open a window or a screen door is to breathe in life encased in wet drops from heaven. If you run outside and open your mouth and let the nectar of the sky fall in, then you feel one with the powers that be. You become drenched if it's a real downpour, the rain soaking your hair and glistening on your arms, and you feel baptized. All is new.

Right now it is so dark you would think it was dusk and all would be put to bed soon. But it is only 9:36 in the morning.

Rainy mornings now make me want to write. They have always made me want to read. I love to curl up in the corner of the couch and read a really good book that transports my mind so thoroughly that I forget about food. Of course, there's always the cuddling. But that needs its own page.

I think about Adam and Eve and that we were all meant to tend a garden and be outside. I must be very connected to that thought as I love dirt. I love to plant things in the dirt. I like to smell good dirt. I like to make it better than what it is in my own backyard by adding compost. I like to watch the things I have planted grow in front of my eyes.

I like to walk in the rain and sail in a thunderstorm. The louder, the better.

Once I was in Atlanta in a hotel room and the thunder and lightning were so loud because it bounced and reverberated off the tall buildings, zigzagging down from one side to the other, culminating by the pane I stood behind. How thrilling. I even think the hairs on my arms stood up.

Another place where the thunder and lightning were so loud was at the family farm I lived in for four years. Because the house had a tin roof may have made a difference in the resonance of the sounds of not only the rain pounding on it, but also how thunder drummed across its surface. But I think that also the low, flat fields that surrounded the house made an uninterrupted landscape for the noise to be thrown at full force at me standing in the frail protection of the uninsulated walls. I could feel the breeze across my face even as I sat on the couch due to the cracks here and there in the house. The floor was the floor and that was the only thing keeping me from the dirt below. No insulation anywhere.

To put it in the definitive words of Webster, rain is 'water that is condensed from the aqueous vapor in the atmosphere and falls to earth in drops'.

How lovely.

(c) nancy 7.13.2009

GENERALLY SPEAKING

So I like to watch General Hospital. We all have our shows we've hidden in our TV closet but I'm comin' out and proud of it. Don't laugh!!!

I know you are secretly watching The Bachelorette but are afraid to claim it because the guys would laugh at you in the office. But didn't a few of them leave early also on Monday nights lately saying they have to pick up their clothes at the cleaners or walk the dog (and you know for a fact they don't own a dog)? You knew it was a lie on Tuesday morning when they cruised in wearing a shirt that hadn't seen the steam. And you caught a few of your co-workers catching up online watching The View about the one who got canned at the rose ceremony only a few DVR hours ago. Uh huh.

By the way, who do you think she'll pick?

Gotcha! See?!! You were quick to think about your answer because I caught it in your eyes. I KNEW you were watching.

So . . . back to G.H.

I have a new convert to G.H. who voiced up and down that he'd NEVER watch a Soap. But now he calls me for a synopsis if he misses a show and says that my short renditions are even better than the live versions. Who could not love Spinelli? (O.K., you'll have to watch the show to get the scoop on him. Reading about him isn't good enough. You'll have to watch him act.) And Sonny Corinthos? Yeah. He's so bad, he's good and when he throws Claudia on the couch and takes over where she started, you want to laugh and say, “You go, guy!!!”

And Carly is another story. She can drop a tear quicker than you can say Jason Morgan! Who, by the way, can drop a tear almost as fast, only his aren't as crocodile as Carlys'. But he drops his head and stares until his eyes are rimmed in pink and that tear forms ready to drop but just hangs in the corner, waiting.

And don't you just love Olivia Falconeri? Her sarcasm and little grin is great, right? And it's about time they let an older woman be with a younger man. Looks like Johnnie can handle all that Olivia has to offer even if he could be her son, and I bet he's enjoying every “Cut!” of it what with the big grin that crops up on his face whenever she enters the room. It's NOT an act!

Not to mention Dianne's quick comebacks and put-downs that make you want to either crawl in a corner or jump on her because she's so Charles-in-Charge. Her upper lip gets thin and stiff but her lower lip does all the talking, and her eyes tell you that she's going to open a can of Whupass any minute if you don't back off. And she tells Jason to basically Shut Up!!! Dianne, you're too much, but keep it comin'!!!

So turn on G.H. at 3 o'clock or DVR it, buckle your seat belts and get ready for a bumpy ride. You won't want to get out of the car.

(c) nancy

 7.11.2009

FANDANGO

Here's a little thing I wrote in response to a dare to write something which included these three words: (1) parsing, (2) honorifica and (3) fandango.

You try it!! In any case, the subject matter is true and I didn't even change the names because Maryanne should be proud of herself for being not only the smartest girl in class but also the one with the Palmer perfect penmanship.

So here goes ...

Growing up in a Catholic elementary school in the 1960s was “interesting”, positively speaking. At that time the teachers were mostly nuns dressed in habits which made them a bit frightening with their heads engulfed in white, stiff halos. That additional stiff thing that hugged their tiny Adam's apple in a chokehold made the blood look like it was being squeezed out of their necks. The biggest rosary you ever saw dangled tantalizingly like a prayer wrapped around their black shrouded waists inviting all the children to touch it reverently in their tiny miracle expectant hands. You never saw any bangs trying to escape below the band of white that covered the nuns' foreheads. What age were they? You couldn't tell if their hair was gray, red, or shaven under all that stuff. Only their penitent faces peered out of this virginal veil to teach us the catechism of the day.

Two things stood out for me in the classroom. One was learning words in order to beat Maryanne Lowendick at the end of the week Spelling Bee. The other was learning The Palmer Method of writing. Maryanne was also the best in the handwriting division, and I tried very hard to be vigilant in my workbook, practicing my a's, b's, and c's to be as letter-perfect as my competitor's penmanship.

I have to admit though that I came pretty close to perfection in parsing sentences. The lines which deviated from the subject/verb/object became an abstract art form on the blackboard looking like arteries and veins coursing through the English language. How satisfying it was to turn around and face Maryanne. Top that!

But as Monday turned into Tuesday which inevitably turned into Friday, the pressure would build toward the anticipated words which would eventually come out of Sister Mary Francis' mouth, “O.K. Class it's time for The Spelling Bee. Put all your desks against the wall and get in a circle”. We dutifully pushed our wooden seats outwards and stood up next to our classmates ready to spell the words put before us. One by one the defeated individuals sat back in their seats, leaving Maryanne and me to face one another across the room.

She began to deafen our ears with the honorificabilitudinitatibus of her spelling genius. Feeling a bit faint, I stood my ground and hoped that I could last as long as Maryanne. Fortunately, the teacher did not tell us that we also had to use the designated word spelled in a sentence, or I would have been a goner when she turned to me and yelled, “Fandango!”

(c) nancy 7.10.2009

CYBERDATE


Pookie got in her red hot pepper-colored BMW to "meet up" with her first cyberdate. She knew she shouldn't have gone but since it was her first time, being an online dating virgin and all, she thought ‘what the heck’ and decided to give the guy a ‘look see’ and the benefit of the doubt.

She pulled into the designated parking lot and ignored the first red flag as he pulled in beside her in a beat-up convertible. “Hmmmmm. Not a good sign,” was her first thought which she threw out the window along with her better judgment. After all, first impressions aren’t always right, right?

The second flag flew up when Pookie saw him open the car door, get out and emerge with baby fat smeared all over his face. The unalterable fact that he was 20 something and she was 50 something could be a problem. But Demi and Ashton were desperately in love with a huge age difference, right?

“Don’t be too quick to judge,” she admonished herself.

And then he smiled. Red flag number three . . missing teeth!

Pookie learned that Cyberdate had a specific gene that birthed him without the possibility of ever producing his own grown-up teeth. For the moment, Cyberdate’s mouth looked like a construction site for a metal suspension bridge with wires connecting the tiny baby teeth to parts unknown widening the spaces between the upcoming adult teeth which would be screwed into his jawbone propelling him past puberty into adulthood in a single dental visit.

“You could be my Sugar Mamma,” she heard him respond to her acknowledgment about the complications of their age difference which she tactfully brought up instead of the fact that she couldn’t possibly date someone who didn’t have teeth to floss.

So Pookie found herself face to face with a guy who was still a baby in at least one way, and she knew it was going to be a long row to hoe in the 2007 dating garden. Baby corn wasn't going to be her vegetable of choice. All of a sudden Pookie saw the rows and rows of new and used up vegetables she was going to have to get on her tractor of love to plow through, and she hoped it wasn't going to be a long, hot summer.

(c) nancy 7.10.2009

CHEESEBURGER

AND A COKE

“Welcome to McDonalds. May I take your order?”

“Yes, I’ll have a cheeseburger and a Coke. That’s all.”

“That’ll be two-fourteen. Please drive to the first window.”

“Thank you.”

Are your days becoming as exciting as ordering a cheeseburger from the drive through at McDonalds? Predictable and mundane with little or no veering from the ordinary? You would think that when you would drive up to the window that another item would pop out and suggest its’ deliciousness and nutritional value and you would therefore holler, “I’ll take a fish fillet!” At least my think-outside-the-bag friend would say, “I’ll take a cheeseburger with mayonnaise instead of ketchup and a lemonade”. That spruced things up a bit.

But, no. A plain cheeseburger is reliable. It’s fat content mirrors the sluggishness you feel coursing through your daily grind of fog. You can't see your future. It's unclear. You can't see your tomorrow. It's vague yet similar in it’s sameness and as transparent as saran wrap held up to the kitchen light. Clear but not so clear. “Do I just need glasses?" you ask yourself?

No, you need a change. A change in your routine, a change in your patterns of thought, a change in your life and your outlook on it. But where to start? It seems too big a process to even begin, with one thought in front of the next, and one step to take in order for the next one to happen.

“Welcome to Wendy’s. May I take your order?”

(c) nancy 7.10.2009