Monday, August 25, 2008

Where Did I Put My Glasses

Tell me this, why is it I can solve every crime on CSI way before Katherine, Greg and Grissom even have a clue? Why can I tell you who done it in almost every single mystery novel I have ever read by the end of the third chapter? Why is it I can pretty much tell you who I think is the real guilt party in most true-life crimes but for the life of me I can’t find my reading glasses?

It’s not like it is one of the great mysteries on earth but they disappear on a regular basis. What makes it worse is I don’t exactly live in a 30,000 sq ft mansion; I live in a 37 foot motor home. There are only so many places I can put them. Yet even with my limited space I will inevitably loose them at least twice a day. Oh it isn’t just glasses it is also keys, purse, pens, nail files, tweezers anything that can be lost I will loose it. I have even lost shoes. I have this rule for myself. The rule goes put it back where you found it. Then I can’t remember where I found it.

I forget other things too. I forgot how to spell my last name the other day. I was writing a check and could not remember how to spell my name. Is it hormone deficiency in my tottering old age? Naw I’m not that old. Is it that I have too many things on my mind and therefore put stuff in the back of my mind? Naw, that’s not it, ask my sister I have WAY too much time on my hands. Or is it I am slowly loosing my mind or at least my memory.

Is this another one of those things that happens to you as you age? I mean besides the fact that you have whiskers where one shouldn’t have whiskers. Really when did I become a cat? Do you start to loose your memory as you start to grow unwanted hair. Have I come upon a revelation that scientist have missed? That as the hair grows out of ones face it pulls your memory out of your brain?

If my theory is true then I just lost about 10 years worth of memories with the unicorn horn I saw growing between my eyes. No, I didn’t find my glasses so I could see it. I have a 20X mirror in my bathroom. It is kind of like looking in a fun-house mirror. Remember those at the carnival? One made you look really fat, one made you look really skinny and one kind of made you look like I look now all distorted. I think it could probably cause a seizure if you moved in and out of the frame of the mirror too fast.

What was I talking about? Oh yeah, the horn in the middle of my forehead. I went in to put on my make-up and moved toward the fun house mirror when the light caught it just right. There it was in all its hideousness right between my eyes. It wasn’t just the fact that the light hit it but the hair itself hit the mirror before my nose did. Yeah I have to get up pretty close to the fun-house mirror to see. Anyway there is this tree trunk of a hair and I start looking for my tweezers to tweeze this monstrosity out of my eyebrows only I can’t find my tweezers. I can’t find my glasses so I can see to find my tweezers but I have the 20X fun-house mirror so I can find the horn in my eyebrows.

Kahuna asks what I’m looking for and I say my tweezers. He asks if I looked in the cabinet in the bathroom. Duh, yeah I looked but I can’t see because I can’t find my glasses. He starts helping me look for my glasses. Again we become involved in the RV shuffle. Him moving this way, me moving that way both of us opening drawers, the refrigerator (hey I could have put them there for safe keeping), storage compartments we look all over the place and can’t find them. The only place left to look is in the jeep. Kahuna goes outside to look in the jeep I go back in the bathroom to see if maybe I can feel the tweezers and I look in the 20X fun-house mirror and realize that I am not wearing a headband. Wait if I’m not wearing a headband what is that on my head? Yeah you got it! It was my glasses. Kahuna came back in and I told him where I found them. He just hugged me. I finally found the tweezers and a chain saw and got rid of the 10 years of memory growing between my eyes.

I think I deserve a venti double cupped extra hot pumpkin spice latte. Now where did I put those keys? Wait where am I going?

Wednesday, August 13, 2008

Books, I Love Books

Books, I Love Books


I love to read. I have always loved to read. I would rather sit under a tree and read than climb that tree. I keep a book with me all of the time. When I’m waiting in line at the bank, the doctor, the laundry, the drive-thru coffee wherever I try to keep at least one book with me. I know your probably thinking does she ever shut up long enough to read? What can I say, I’m a multi-tasker and no I don’t shut up, I just read and talk at the same time. Really I am a huge blabbermouth. Yes, I’m the crazy lady at the cyber coffee shop snorting my venti double shot extra hot double cupped skinny vanilla latte out of my nose, talking to myself while reading books with titles like “Bright Lights, Big Ass: A Self-Indulgent, Surly, Ex-Sorority Girl's Guide to Why it Often Sucks in the City, or Who are These Idiots and Why Do They All Live Next Door to Me?” by Jen Lancaster.
I will read just about any kind of book. I’m not real fond of technical writing. Like right now I’m trying to read through a book on Photoshop and honestly I’d rather stick toothpicks under my fingernails. I mean I start reading and all of a sudden I start thinking about how I want to write to you guys. For some reason when it comes to technical manuals, I develop a sudden and acute case of ADD. I do enjoy a good story though. Self-help and spiritual guidance books seem to flow a little bit better for me.

I come by my reading from my daddy. When we were young’ns my Dad would sit down and read out of the encyclopedia. He could be found on hot summer afternoons, on the couch in the living-room, that none of us kids were allowed to go into because it had white carpet and a white couch, reading. Oh come on you know you had one of “those” rooms in your house. It was all decorated up and the only time you were allowed to go into it was to dust and vacuum. It was called the “living room” but the only time it got used was when “company” came a calling. Back to my Dad reading in the forbidden room, his taste ran toward World War II history and historical novels mixed with a touch of Zane Grey and some Elmer Kelton. We didn’t have much money back in those days so I read what he read. It didn’t matter that I didn’t know what half the words meant. I just kept reading and looking in our old Webster’s to find the meanings. Hey give me a break I was 8.

As I got older I developed my own sense of literature. I tend to be obsessive when it comes to reading. I discover a new to me author and I have to read everything they have written. Then I’m disappointed because I have to wait until they write the next book. When I discovered Stephen King, I read everything he had written and then read everything his wife wrote. I did the same with Fannie Flag and Janet Evanovich and one of my favorites Larry McMurtry.

I love the feel, smell and weight of a book, which is why I’m not sure that I like the new device that has been touted as the new way to read a book. It’s a Kindle. You can see a video about it here http://www.amazon.com/Kindle-Amazons-Wireless-Reading-Device

The way I understand it you can download a bunch of books into one device and carry it with you. The problem I have with this is it doesn’t smell like a book. I like turning the pages and feeling the paper between my fingers. Ok the truth is I’m getting “old lady eyes” The font on the Kindle would have to be set to super huge and then I would only be able to fit half a book on it. So I would totally be wasting the $400.00.

The whole reason for this post was so I could share my reading list site with you. I know there is a place for books at the bottom of this page but honestly it’s just not enough. I read over 300 books last year. If I listed them all here I wouldn’t have room to keep writing. So if you go to www.goodreads.com you can start your own list and you can research books. It really is a great site and you can even order books off of Amazon.com and half.com right from the site.
PS Daddy you can click on those sites in blue and it will take you to the web site. Oh and Daddy, thank you for setting such a good example with the reading and all. Oh and Daddy, I love you and miss you. Oh and Daddy, I made the font bigger on this part because you have "old man eyes".

Monday, August 4, 2008

I Blame Joe DiMaggio

I blame it all on Joe DiMaggio


There was a time when buying coffee was easy. You went to the Piggly Wiggly or as my dad would call it the Hoggly Woggly and cruise down Isle 5 marked [Coffee, Tea, and Dry Goods] and look for either Maxwell House or Foldgers. It took all of five seconds to decide red can or blue can, oh and back then they were cans. Then you would go up to Peggy Ann the cashier with the bee-hive hairdo and the ice pink lip stick and she would ring it up. You would give her your dollar ninety-five for your 3 lb can of coffee and go home. Open it with the hand crank can opener because for some unknown reason the electric one would never open the can all the way. Then you would put it in your Proctor Silex percolator plug it in and let it percolate. You could smell the coffee for 3 blocks.



Then came that damn Joe DiMaggio and his Mr. Coffee. He sold us all on how much better it was to send steaming hot water through a basket holding your coffee grounds and force it into the waiting pot down below. We still used our red or blue can of coffee, if you were exotic you could use Farmer’s in the brown can, it had a bit of chicory in it. I guess though the method changed the product was the same and it was still easy to buy coffee.

Then they got a little bit fancier, decided that we needed to grind our own beans. It would taste better that way. So we went out and purchased a grinder, not the old hand crank grinder that my grandparents would have used, but a new electrified fancy-smanzy coffee grinder. Well in order to use the grinder you have to buy coffee beans. Now instead of going to the Hoggly Woggly to buy coffee you had to go to a coffee store to buy beans. Could you walk in and say “Hey Fred, give me a couple pounds of Folders un-ground”? No you had to choose from Ethiopian or Sumatra. First of all if they have coffee in Ethiopia then don’t they have donuts or muffins or even coffee cake? I mean you can’t have coffee without pastry. So it stands to reason if they have coffee and pastry in Ethiopia they can’t be starving.

Sorry, I digress, back to the point. You’re standing in this coffee specialty store trying to choose between rainforest breakfast blend or Kopi Luwak, which by the way is a coffee that is partially digested by a Civet (cat like animal in Indonesia) then excreted. (side note here: I AM NOT DRINKING ANYTHING MADE FROM CAT SHIT!) Did the madness end there? Oh, I think not.

In another time a coffee shop was a place that old men met for coffee and breakfast, sat around smoked cigarettes and talked. There were bee-hived waitresses named Flo who was always just a puff away from taking the whole place out with her cigarette too close to her Aqua Net. Now they are high end, internet cafĂ©, meeting places. The “barista’s” names are Seven or Halo. You can’t just go in and order a coffee with a little cream or God forbid, black. Now when you order it sounds more like the name of a law firm. Yes, I’ll have a dopo, latte, double blend and whipped. Make sure you make that extra hot and double cupped. We now pay five bucks for a cup of Joe that used to cost 25 cents and even less than that if you made it at home in your percolater.

This all started when we gave up our Proctor Silex stainless steel percolator and gave in to Joe.
Got to run, my venti skinny vanilla latte, double cupped extra hot is ready.