Political Parties - Lopsided

Out of Balance
I'm feeling out of balance, wanna switch?
My scales are lopsided.
Maybe you can help.
I'd like to get my equilibrium back.
You see, I have these friends, and there are many of you, that are Political Party A which means my Facebook feed is full of Political Party B put downs.
Now, your political affiliation is fine with me; it's what makes the world go 'round as the saying goes. And differences of opinions, outlooks, and truths are what make everyone else re-think, reconsider, cogitate, and evoke change.
But, on Facebook that doesn't happen. We all, yes, I include myself, just regurgitate those memes that appeal to us.
But since you all are Political Party A, my page is out of balance. BTW, how did that happen? Me, getting Political Party A friends???
Therefore, could my friends, so my teeter can totter, and I can get off the one-sided merry-go-round...
would a couple-three of you mind switching sides? ROFL! No asses, no pachyderms, but...
GO HORSIES!

Sleepy Time. Monkey Time? Monkeyshines!

My brain can't just go to bed and go to sleep.

I take it there.  I try.  I really do.  I lay it down.  I close its eyes.   On our worst nights I do Yoga meditation.

But, my brain has a mind of its own.

If it won't fall asleep like any normal human beings brain, you can bet it won't let you wake up like any normal human being either.   Nope.  By golly, I'm gonna wake up with a nightmare!

Last night my brain took a monkey to bed.  Sheesh, can you believe that?  A monkey!  We, my brain and I, were thoroughly entertained.  It was one of those small, dark brown, energetic, irreverent monkeys.  The kind you see in a zoo where a handful of them scamper on the ground, swing into trees, leap from here to there, then stop to pick cooties off each other.

First thing this wiry haired image of a primate did was swing with one hand from the tree in the front yard onto the roof of our house!  Oh, boy.

Curious, as monkeys are, he plopped his shiny bottom butt next to the dormer window and peeked into our bedroom.  Don't know what he saw, but it wasn't too interesting 'cause he pushed himself up with his long arms and knuckle-walked to the very tip-top of the house, leaned his head over the edge, and took a gander into the vent of the gable end.  Maybe he heard a chipmunk or a bat in there, I don't know.  We have both.

Whatever it was it didn't keep his interest because he scooted around in a half circle (sitting up there on the top of MY house), staying on the ridge line, and acted like King of the Apes just surveying his kingdom!  He looked west to the trees lining White River. He scooched south checking the campground landscapes, then he turned monkey eyes east to the state preserve woods where extinction is safeguarded, and finally he swiveled to watch cars on the road leading north to wonderlands.   What did monkey see?  What will monkey do?

Where did monkey's mind wander?  Oh, the dreams of a monkey.  Wait!  Stop!  That monkey needs to go!

And there he goes!  He bent-knee walked forward five feet, plopped down and lifted a shingle edge.  What on earth?  He was acting like Goodall's chimps picking parasites off each other.  Oh my lands, he was pinching out stink bugs and eating 'em, ew, gross!  We have gobs and gobs of stink bugs.  Maybe I shouldn't be so squeamish -- just let him eat 'em.  Eat 'em all, monkey!  I'm sick of stink bugs.  Feast!  Feast away!

Monkey swings down, one hand holding as he swings along the eaves - swing, grab, switch, swing, grab, switch, swing!  For 74 feet, the length of our house, he does this until he latches onto a downspout and climbs back up.

What has his interest this time?  The vent pipe.  Whenever stinky smells won't leave our bathroom upstairs I always wonder if there's a bird stuck in it to keep the vent pipe from venting.  I'd like to see down there myself.  Now, I'm wondering what does he see down there.  I have to chuckle.   Guess it's not as fun as sniffing monkey butts!  'Cause he's not squinting with one eye anymore.  He's backed away in distaste, curling his fat monkey lips and baring yellowed teeth.

Ah, here we go.  The chimney.  In his eyes, its probably much like the vent pipe.  He grabs the outside brick with his feet, hugs it like a monkey in a tree with his hands, leans his head over, and checks striation marks.  Does monkey know about Santa Claus?  This monkey in my brain probably does.  My mind is laughing at monkey checking for white bits of fur fluff, and soot, and shiny clean lines leading to the chimney's bottom.

That was it!   I got out my virtual broom and swung at him.  Swept him clean off the roof, I did!

Monkey stuck out his tongue, leaped into the tree he'd came from, and gracefully used his prehensile tail to hang.  He hung right over the coy pond and took a drink!  He took a good long drink.

Oh, I'm going out of my mind.  Where's that broom?  I've got some more sweeping to do.   He needs swept out of here.  My mind needs a good sweep, too.

Strike that, my mind needs a good SLEEP!

Heaven help me, I'm interfacing with a manifestation of my own unsleeping brain!

The Busy Messy Day -- Cookies First!

Well....speaking of laughing at getting caught...I've had a busy messy day and I shouldn't have had a belly laugh at my friends expense.  My friend got caught several times in her nightgown by visiting family and unexpected neighbors and about the third time it happened I had a good laugh.

This day started with baking a batch of cookies BEFORE getting on the computer.  A rarity.  Computer usually comes on FIRST.

I got dressed but pinned my hair up without looking in the mirror.  Then it happened, twice.

The neighbor girl, newly moved in next door, whom I've only met a couple of times, knocked on the sliding glass door.  There is no hiding in this house.  If someone comes to the sliding glass door, they step up on the deck and look right into the house, across the family room, over the divider, and into the kitchen.

Well, I had 2 loads of laundry out, one sitting in the rocker, another on the love seat.  The table was covered with church program paraphernalia, and the kitchen was distressed with supper fixings and the remnants of cookie baking.  I sucked it up, smiled, waved her in (my hands were busy with the mixer), then cleared a spot for her at the table.  We had a fun lovely chat.  From the German shop where she worked she'd brought me a tea strainer and a bag of tealeaves eggnog flavored.  She's so young and so lively!  

She left.  I made oatmeal raisin cookies.  Yes, it was Darling Hubby's favorite.   They were delicious.  I should know, I ate a few.  When cooled they were dropped into baggies and sorted for 6 cookie tins.

I'd just about finished the third recipe of cookies, this time Snicker Doodles, when I decided I needed to fold those baskets of laundry.  It's a good excuse to sit down for a minute.  There they sat in folded neat piles, heavy duty electrical cord strung through the family room to the space heater,  (we ran out of wood for the woodstove) and a pile of oddball stuff on the steps to go up, and the same messes in the kitchen.  Ah, but, the house smells good with cinnamon on the cookies, and meat in the crockpot, when what to my wondering and totally astonished eyes should appear at the sliding glass door but our oldest neighbors.

Not only have they lived two doors down the longest in this area, but they are in their 80s!!!!  

There they were, the pair, a bit stooped, in their winter coats, standing on my deck, looking down watching the cat wind around their legs, and smilingly holding a tin can of their own.  They'd brought us a gift of homemade peanut brittle! 

So, shamefaced me, still with pinned up hair, dust on my belly, insisted they come in out of the rain while I moved the laundry stacks to the computer chair, and had them sit on the love seat and the rocker.  He didn't want to come in further due to his wet shoes.

Please!

 

This house in no shrine; it's seen so many trails of wet sloppy fall leaves, puddles of melting dirty snow, and grease globs from the barn, that wet shoes will never be noted!  

They stayed!  Yay!

We exchanged tins.  We exchanged news and fun tidbits.  And after making sure they weren't diabetic or didn't have peanut allergies, I also offered them right from the oven warm Snicker Doodles.  He nodded his head in pleasure and I could hear her murmuring,  "Ummmm."

I was hospitable.  I was the conversation hostess.  I was the baker letting them enjoy a guilty pleasure. 

I was being punished for laughing at my friend!  I was wishing I had turned on the computer to get those morning prods from a website to spruce up the house and this ol' bod before starting a project.  

Seriously, though, it was all fun.  I truly enjoyed my morning company.  Despite everything that went awry, it was delightful..

Shall I add the finale? Son Ian showed up and we made potato salad for his work's Christmas pitch-in the next day.   No, I don't have a recipe.  Spencer knows how to make my sloppy joes, and now Ian knows how to make my potato salad, all without a recipe.  We had to add relish, a squirt of mustard, and dollops of mayonnaise because at first taste he said, "dry" and looked at me with a quizzing, squinted one eye.

Several times did I get caught, yet what unexpected pleasures;  a full fun day but oh so messy.  

Good Morning, Dreaming!

Good morning!

It’s a good morning!

Do you dream?

I do.

Just recently, and I’m over several decades old, I found out that not everyone dreams.  Amazing.  I found that amazing!  And I’m talking about those dreams you get at night before you fall asleep, and while you’re sleeping and then as you’re waking up.   Not the Martin Luther King, Jr. “I have a dream,” but the bedtime sleepy dreams.  They can even be complete novels.

Just this morning as I was dreaming I saw Christmas village evergreen trees suction-cupped to the ceiling. That made me smile.  Then I saw a stack of stencils, one was a dog.  That stencil-dog sat up and barked!  LOL.

Hubby doesn’t dream, ever. 

And yet, I don’t know if there’s ever been a night I didn’t dream.

They can be very beneficial. I’ve dreamed up Christmas plays. I’ve dreamed up logistical solutions to putting kids on and off stage for sister’s school programs.

I’ve dreamed about how to rearrange furniture, what menu to create for a holiday dinner, and answers to crossword puzzles.  I’ve composed poems, and written a first chapter in a book.  

The brain is a wondrous thing.  Supposedly, we only use 10% of our brains but that’s been recently debunked. Researchers have found through MRIs that the brain is completely active, even during sleep. This I believe.

During sleep just last week, I saw a taller thin man in a pastel blue shirt wheeling around in a computer chair.  Not so interesting right?  Well, wait until you hear the rest of the story.  He wheeled up to a table and arranged cupcakes into a white box, then when he turned to look at me his face turned into Santa Claus!  Then he wheeled back to his computer, put his hands on the keyboard, turned to look at me and again his face turned into Santa Claus!

Another night last week, I saw little bluish-black penguins all nicely rounded in the shape of teardrop ovals…they were penguin raindrops falling from the sky!

And this unbelievable dream was of a large long white envelope with two words on it,  “Tootsie Farm.”  What on earth???

A farm of Tootsie rolls? 

A farm of Tootsie Pops? I can just imagine them sprouting up on a farm on their little white straw sticks, and when the sun has nicely ripened them they explode with ooey gooey chocolately goodness! 

How about Tootsie Toys? Those simply made little metal vehicles?

Or the movie Tootsie with Dustin Hoffman?

Or better yet, my favorite, baby toes – tootsies!

Can you just imagine a farm field of cabbages where the babies stick out their little feet wiggling their little toes in anticipation of approaching parents – Tootsie Farm!

Darling Hubby says, “I don’t know what you’re eating before you go to bed, but you gotta change something!”

“Wake up, smell the coffee.” 

I did.   I smelled the coffee.  Then I woke up.  There wasn’t any!  

That can’t be a good morning, can it?  

Durn those dreams.

Pow! Right In The Kisser!

"You see, this hoe was leaning against the door frame."

"A hoe?  Leaning against the door frame?"
What'd this hoe look like, anyway?"

"Looked just like any other hoe.  Tall and thin and painted red."

"A painted red hoe?"

"Yes.  Why do you care about looks?  Sheesh, a hoe is a hoe is a hoe!"  "Now you've got me sounding like an advertisement for Miss Debbie's Ho-Hos!"

"Well, I've always liked a good Ho-Ho."

"Good lands.  Anyway, Spencer sure got knocked for a loop!"

"The hoe looped him?"

"NO!  No, silly.  He got knocked for a loop.  The hoe smacked him in the face!
I felt sorry for him, it looked painful."

"Why was his mom watching him get smacked in the face by a hoe?"

"Golly gee, Ollie." I don't know, maybe because I was there for the whole thing!"

"Why was the hoe there in the first place?"

"It was my fault.  Sort of.  I'd put the hoe there."

"YOU did?"

"I did."
"The grand-baby had been playing in the dirt with the hoe and it didn't look right; didn't look safe."

"Of course!  Babies should never play with hoes!  Or rakes!"

"You've got that right.  I'd been chasing voles with the hoe and filling holes with dirt and forgot what I was about and next thing you know, the grand-baby comes for a visit, and starts digging in the dirt with my hoe.  Guess she liked the red looks.  So it was my fault that Spencer got the hoe in the face thing."

"Did ya laugh?"

"Laugh?  No, I didn't laugh.  He was holding his face with both hands and leaning his elbows on his knees trying to recover when I realized he had a nosebleed.  It was just like in the comic strips.  Remember Garfield?  Jon avoids the first hoe, turns around and there's a second hoe.  POW!  Right in the kisser!"

"Yep.  That was a two-fer!"

"Spencer runs right out of the house, right into the dark of night, steps on a hoe and POW!   Right in the kisser!"

"I know, I know, just like Ralph from the Honeymooners, "POW! Right in the kisser!"

"There's a lesson here."

"Oh, really, and what lesson would that be?"

"No matter whether they're digging in the dirt or leaning against your front door, don't let your babies play with hoes."

Spice, Little Girls Are Made Of

Spice!  Sugar and spice.  Remember that nursery rhyme we grew up with?

"Sugar and spice and everything nice
is what little girls are made of."

Raising all these boys I was used to the opposite,
"Snips and snails and puppy dog tails,
that's what little boys are made of."

Spice is nice.  It's a change.  It's sugary soft around the edges.

The spice part is what I thought about when Darling Hubby came home grinning and telling me his latest story.

You know he's a new school bus driver, right?  And he makes two runs every morning and every afternoon, so he transports all ages.  The older kids tend to nap or stay focused on their cell phones, but it's the little ones that delight him.

Today it was obvious he was glad to be back at work after a week off due to fall break.  There's something mind-refreshing about getting a break from your job.  And then, there's something reassuring about going back to work.

"Oh, she's just a jewel this Johanna!"  his eyes twinkled when he told me about the little elementary girl, "She came up the three steps, stopped at the top, rigid back, arms to her side and said, "I went a whole week without going to school.  It was a tragedy!"  And we busted a gut!

Then there's Miss Lilly, our 2 y.o. granddaughter.  I'd turned on the under-counter CD player with Amici Defined inserted.  Amici is a popera group.  Popera is a term for pop and opera combined.  The next song to play by Amici was The Prayer.  Miss Lilly was way past the family room and down the hall, a good 40 feet away.  Miss Lilly has excellent hearing, LOL.

Use your higher pitched, little bitty girl voice, and imagine the pitter patter of little feet as she comes to us quickly.

"I hear it," she declared.

"I cumin," she further stated.

We asked her what she heard, and where was she going.  But she didn't answer.  She only answered to the music.  She tottered up to the kitchen counter, and tilted her head, and stood stock still as she gazed at the CD player and listened to The Prayer.

It was a sweet moment, a sugary soft snapshot in time.

Slipped A Joker In Your Deck

“Somebody slipped a joker in your deck.”   I laughed out loud.  Detective Tibbs of the TV series In The Heat Of The Nighthad just said that.   

I laughed because it reminded me that Darling Hubby is always saying, “What matters in life is how you deal with the hand you’ve been dealt.”  Good advice.  But then there’s that wild card, the joker!

The other day I cut out material to sew together some plastic grocery bag sleeve-type organizers. I'd forgotten how much I like sewing.  It stirs up the allergies, but I take precautions.

One of the bag organizers I didn't get to finish.  It had a small brown spot on it; so I used a Hint From Heloise and applied salt and lemon, then set the material in the sunshine.  On the picnic table in the sun is where it was left to dry.  Well, that material disappeared.  

Yep, like a laughing joker in a grab-and-run, that thing was gone.  I searched and searched.  I quizzed Darling Hubby, “Did you think it was a rag?”  “Did you toss it in the trash tote on your way to the curb?”  

Under cars, at the base of trees where wind blows trash, around the corner of the house, we searched. Then we went walking the property.  It was nowhere to be found!   The joke’s on me.

Off it did fly

Like a witch in the sky,

Upwards and onwards,

Black cat arched high!

One time we had a haunted house in our garage.  Gray engraved tombstones were sunk in the side yard.  One tombstone read “Here lies Dawn Under”.  Orange plastic tea-lighted pumpkins lined a walk leading to a tunnel of blankets on a clothesline.  That led to the entrance to the garage through the backdoor.  Inside, the first room was a mad scientist’s lab. Second room was a body smashed by a car. Turn a corner and there’s a vampire coffin, and some dropping spiders, and a lot of glow-in-the dark hands that look like they’re coming at you, and a funny mirror and some spooky stairs leading into the house.  

Actually, the stairs led right into the kitchen where we had refreshments for all the visitors.  The haunted garage was such a hit that the neighbor kids would go through more than once.   Darling Hubby, dressed as the grim reaper, scared one little girl so badly she cried, "I hate you!" 

It wasn’t too surprising; yet, the joke was on him!

Boo-hiss to you!

Pranks not a few,

Halloween’s coming,

Yep, trick or treaters, too!

Speaking of treats and tricks, last night we played Euchre.  It’s become a new thing, Euchre on Thursday night.  Sometimes I cook, sometimes the others cook, sometimes we just catch as catch can, but always someone makes a pitcher of iced tea and someone else makes a pot or two of coffee and the games begin.  

We killed ‘em! Daughter-in-law and I were partners and we killed 'em.  Darling Hubby and sis were partners. We won 3 games; the last one was 9 to 1 before the kill, LOL.  DIL laughed her head off because her hubby Clint told her before she left their house to "knock ‘em dead”.  His prophetic joke was on us all.

The gnats abound

Their fruits surround

The windshield’s no longer clean

After wipers crossover

 “That’s me all over,”

The ill-fated bug did scream!

And don’t the merchandizers slip jokers in our decks?   I guess it’s them.  Or do we blame the governments for their lack of forethought when they designated the holidays?

Darling Hubby wanted me to go to town with him, which I normally don't do because of my broken-yet-healing foot.  It was feeling pretty good so I went.  

What a surprise!  The garden center still had plants for sale and most of the plants were 50% off.  Halloween was well displayed in the center of the store with rag-tag witches, and squinty-eyed jack o’ lanterns.  AND CHRISTMAS WAS SPROUTING EVERYWHERE ELSE!   Ugh, three holiday events in one place.  Such an onslaught of the senses!  I wasn’t ready.  

“No merging!” my mind begs, “No bleeding over from one event to the other.”  Division, definitive borders, a start with a finish, that’s more appealing.

Time to deal! When I have to deal with all those holidays at once, I feel like someone’s pulling a joke on me!  Time to deal with the cards dealt, including that joker!

Plants for sale

Ghosts that wail

And Christmas up the wall

Instead, to be frank,

We should pull a prank,

A joke can be fun after all!