The World is Full of Steak Eggs

I recently succumbed to the smartphone epidemic.  I can't say that I'm all that attached to my phone, having no business to attend to on it, but I do enjoy the talk-to-text feature.  I try to enunciate as best I can, but sometimes the phone just decides to go a different direction entirely.  For instance, while texting with my friend about the events of The Robbery, I said to the talk-to-text feature that "the world is full of pigs."  My phone translated it as "the world is full of steak eggs."  I really don't know why that strikes me as utterly hilarious, but there you have it:  a brand new euphemism for "pigs."  Perhaps the world doesn't need one, but there's one nonetheless.  

As you know, and are no doubt already sick of hearing, my flowers were stolen.  It turns out, however, that that was not the only bizarre thing to happen in my world yesterday.  I really do believe that there was a nuclear leak somewhere around here that caused people to do strange things.  Allow me to present you some evidence.

1.  My best friend's boyfriend sent her a text while she was at work yesterday. Their little dog was going crazy barking, and what did he discover but a total stranger on his porch.  Not so strange, you say?  This particular man was passed out.  Face down.  Drunk.  He had a can of beer with him.  Ah, I see you deciding that this is, indeed, a bizarre thing to find on your porch.  It's truly a mystery why he was there or where he went after he left.  Did I mention this was about 1 in the afternoon?  It's very sad when people can't handle day drinking.  

2.  As for where this man might have gone, there's one plausible, although improbable, answer, which I present as my second piece of evidence.  Another friend of mine told me this story:

Her supervisor at work drives a VW Westfalia Camper.  He came out after work to discover that someone had made himself quite at home unbeknownst to the owner.  I say "himself" because I'm picturing the guy from the first story also being the culprit in this one.  He had slept in the bed, peed in a trash can, left cigarette ashes in the dog's dish, left a plastic bag of wine which he apparently drank out of a coffee cup, and used the poor man's electric shaver!  I understand that the VW Westfalia Camper has a certain appeal to the, shall I say, transients of the world, but to use another man's shaver and muck up his dog dish with ashes?  That seems to be against the peace-loving code of the VW community.  

So, I ask you.  Did a cloud of toxic nastiness infect the Pacific Northwest, causing people to turn into wretched steak eggs?  I believe something is amiss, and I'm sticking with that.  

I Was Robbed!

Okay, that might sound more ominous than it really is.  It was fun to write, though.  Actually, no, it is ominous.  I got robbed.  

Here's the deal:  remember how I told you I love to take my coffee out in the mornings and enjoy my neighborhood?  Part of my peaceful mornings includes loving on my three big flower pots full of gorgeous, trailing blooms.  I feed them, I trim them, I talk to them like a crazy lady.  We have a bond.  Considering I have a black thumb of death and considering I bought the flowers almost 2 months ago, the fact that they're still alive is a miracle.  I firmly believe, because I've seen it with my own eyes and heard it with my own ears, that plants shudder and murmur, "Not me!  Not me!  Please don't pick me!" when I go to the store each spring to pluck them from their greenhouse glory and take them to my Garden of Doom.   

I had a point.  Oh, yeah.  The robbery.  

This morning, I opened the curtains to welcome the day, and two of my flower pots were missing!  What?  I circled the house.  I peeked on my neighbor's porches.  I whined to my husband.  All of it was in vain.  My pots were gone.  Swiped right off my front porch, sucked into the night.  Oh, the horror!  The heartbreak!  The creepy, icky feeling of being totally violated!  

It turns out, my neighbor noticed a car late last night driving slowly by my house.  Said car drove by twice, stopped, paused long enough to grab the pots, and then sped off.  She got the make and model but no license plate.  Believe me, anyone who drives a late 80's, reddish Honda Accord hatchback with flip up lights and a hood bra better beware.  I'm on the lookout for you and your flower pot stealing jerk face pals.  And my gnome.  It's just not right to steal a lady's garden gnome, especially when her chair tried to eat her the day before.  

Speaking of eating, this is normally the time I turn to Snickers for comfort.  As it turns out, God  (or the universe, however you're inclined) decided to test my newfound discipline by sending the dingleberry-eating thieves just to see how I would cope.  I ate a salad.  I am not happy about it, but I did.  I still want a Snickers.  And a shotgun.  And cake.  Oh, geeze, where's the celery?  Help!  

In case you're wondering, I did file a police report.  I was scared to do it because speaking to strangers on the telephone gives me major anxiety and takes me to the Place of Panic.  Imagine my joy and relief when I saw you could file your report right online.  I'm hoping to be bumped to the top of their list of Most Important and Immediate Cases.  After all, when they gave me a drop down menu to choose the items that had been stolen, flower pots weren't even on there.  That has to make this a curious case and therefore a priority, right?  

Hey, I can't have Snickers.  Just let me dream.  

The Chair Cracked

I love my neighborhood.  It's a delightful, sprawling tangle of "cookie cutter" houses.  I used to think I'd hate living in a place like this, but there are kids everywhere for my kids to play with, a fantastic neighborhood school, and plenty of anonymity for someone like me who tends to prefer observing from the outside.  That is, when I'm not center stage singing or acting.  I admit, I'm a conundrum.  

I love mornings in my neighborhood.  They're so peaceful and quiet.  Most of the neighbors are still preparing for their days.  Cars pull out intermittently.  You hear the occasional happy bark from a dog who has finally been freed from the house.  Joggers pass by.  You can hear the trees rustle and the birds fill their branches with squawks and squeals and occasional songs.  Is it any wonder that I enjoy taking my coffee out to my front porch to just bask in the charm of it all?  It's also a good way to gird my loins for a day of chaos that comes with three kids, two dogs, and a cat, even if the cat's completely perfect and never bugs anybody.  

This morning, as is my norm, I threw on a sweatshirt over my pajama top (yes, I was wearing pants as well, but I didn't put a sweatshirt over my pants) and headed outside.  No one ever notices me on my porch, and that's the way I like it.  I stood for a bit, breathing deeply and enjoying watching a cat across the street prowl after some unseen prey.  Then I pulled up my blue adirondack Target special and sat down.  

That's when it happened.  The chair cracked.  The peace of the morning was broken as snapping plastic rang through the air, loud as gunshots.  Even the kitty across the street jumped into the air and turned 180 degrees as it tried to process this interruption to its hunting.  Perhaps the crack would have gone somewhat unnoticed, but when I sat, the plastic that cracked also managed to pinch my nether regions.  As you can imagine, this is both startling and extremely painful, and the only proper response is a guttural yelp.  So, loud crack followed by distressed yelp is apparently enough for some of the neighbors to come out and see what's happening in Utopia.  

On the one hand, it's nice to know we all look out for each other.  On the other hand, I had to explain that I just broke my chair, which is embarrassing enough in itself, but I had to do it in pajama pants with bed head and no bra.  So much for anonymity.  I believe I just catapulted myself into the annals of "Crazy Neighbor Lady."  

Moral of the story:  run a comb through your hair and hike up the ladies before going outside because you never know when you'll have to explain yourself to the neighbors.  

Side note:  it's still painful to go potty.  

Who It Is

It has to be done.  I have, just a few days into this project, drawn a blank on what to write, so I will just tell you about myself and the people that drive me crazy.  

This is who it is, "it" being me.  

I'm a 34 1/2-year-old stay at home mom.  I was a middle school language arts teacher in my former life, but I gave that up when I realized that I liked my own kid way more than I liked other people's kids.  That, and my freshly-graduated-from-law-school-and-passed-the-bar-on-his-very-first-try husband got a job that could support us.  

I married a boy I met on a missions trip 14 years ago.  I met him 14 years ago, that is.  I married him 11 years ago.  His name is Peter.  He is so tall and handsome and sweet and wonderful and cuddly that I moved from Rockford, IL all the way to Bremerton, WA just to hitch my wagon to his star.  I'm still very glad that I did.  

I started growing humans in my guts about a year after the marrying stuff was done.  I had a baby girl that we call Wendy.  She's 9, smart as a whip, sassy as a cat, and prettier than a sunset over a lake.  She's a complete mystery to me, too.  She has this thing called "over sensitivity" that I tend to treat with a firm "girl, you better man up" without noticeably effective results.  I'm sure we'll laugh about it one day when she's committed me to a sub-par nursing home as payback for all my mothering missteps.  

We liked Wendy so much, we decided to have another baby, just for fun.  We call her Nina.  She's 6, and she'll either take over the world or end up running a commune of some sort.  Stay tuned.  She skips through life without much care, and she's zany as a drunken clown.  Her big brown eyes will melt your heart, and her ability to never hear the answer you give to her many, many questions will frustrate you to the point of thinking an anvil to the foot would be less painful than explaining yourself one.more.time.  

Then Peter got an even better job.  We figured the natural way to celebrate was with one more kid.  I remember being profoundly disappointed when I found out I was having a boy.  I mean, my gals are seriously the most beautiful things you've ever seen, and they're simply delightful except when they're not.  Plus, I had lots of leftover girl clothes.  Then Titus came forth into the world, nearly 4 years ago, and it took one look for me to realize that no woman will ever be good enough for him.  The kid's got charisma and an overwhelming desire to destroy everything.  He's also really good at the Wii, and Mario reduces him to tears on an almost daily basis.  

We also have 2 dogs that have odd and disgusting habits, and we have a cat who hates just about everyone except me.  She's my favorite.  No, like my favorite.  I'm a cat nut.  I can't draw them, but I adore them.  

There you have it.  On the most upper part of the surface, that's Who It Is.  

Cat Drawings

Just an afterthought.  I like these cat drawings.  I didn't draw them because they are cats and not trees.  

They belong to Manny.  I found them here:

http://mannford85.blogspot.com/2009/12/felines.html

Drawing Blindly

When I was a kid, my big brother and I would watch a TV show that taught you how to draw.  I don't remember what show it was.  It wasn't Bob Ross.  

Incidentally, I can never seem to remember Bob Ross's name, but if you do a Google search, like I did, for "bushy haired artist," you'll find him on the first page of hits.  You'll also find a picture of Helen Hunt.  That one didn't make sense to me at all.  I digress.  

Anyway, we used to watch this show, and Jake, that's my brother, could draw whatever they taught.  He was, to my young mind, an amazing artist, and I was always so envious that he could take a pencil to paper and draw exactly what he wanted.  I couldn't draw what they taught on the TV show whose name I cannot remember.  In fact, my drawings never ended where they started.  I may have set out to draw, say, a cat, but one wrong line and the whole thing would simply have to be turned into a tree.  I was a very unfocused artist.

Over the years, I have given up drawing.  I simply cannot create something original.  I discovered that my true medium is the written word.  And although my brother is a superior human being on so many levels, maybe even most of the levels, it makes me just a little bit happy to note that on this level, this word putting downing level, I am better than he is.  

However, I'm still unfocused.  People have been telling me for years that I should blog or write a book or have a newspaper column or create pithy quips for catalogues.  The problem is, I haven't found my focus.  I need a hobby, though, and I need some discipline in my life.  Therefore, I have decided to quit waiting for my focus and start writing.  At some point, I may turn this cat into a tree or an elephant or a skyscraper.  Who knows?  I just know that I want to work with words.  Perhaps it will amount to nothing.  Perhaps no one will ever read this.  Perhaps I do not care, as long as I'm writing.  

If you decide to come along with me on this journey to who knows where, then I will ask you to drop your expectations right where you sit and just go with it.  You may read about my mental illness struggles, or a bizarre dream, or something delightful one of my kids said, or my almost romantic involvement with Snickers, or maybe even how I hate to fill my van with gas.  This blog is mostly for me to try and get a little discipline into my art and into my life.  But it's a little for you, too.  Please enjoy, and maybe try drawing a cat and letting me know how it turns out.