Punxsutawney Phil and Gopher Guts

Don't you just hate those days when a gopher has a death grip on your shoe and you can't launch him off no matter what?

I am thinking of gophers today since it's Groundhog Day and Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow, officially sentencing us to more cold weather. I'm in California. If it gets any colder in Los Angeles it'll be summer. Winter never fully arrived in some parts of our state. If you're in London, what with the blizzard and all today, you probably think Phil is a bloody genius and wish we would swap him to you for Madonna. Frankly, I think we should leave things as they are. I don't know what you ever did to deserve Madonna but hey, she's yours to keep. She says she wants to go back to New York now that she's gutted Guy Ritchie. If I was NYC I'd hang out the "No Vacancy" sign.

But speaking of things you don't want, I'm glad our gophers aren't as big as Punxsutawney Phil. Your leg could get a cramp trying to shake them off. It was hard enough trying to dislodge an average sized rodent.

When our house was being built every gopher in the neighborhood waged war with the encroaching humans. The gophers were tough and big and carried small semi-automatic weapons. One afternoon, we pulled up to our house to check the progress and the Godfather met us at the curb. He stood up and stuck his chest out. Grizzly Adams, my husband, yelled and stamped his foot in a show of brutal authority. The gopher clutched his heart and staggered, fell down laughing, then leapt to his feet, possessed-red-eyes flashing, and buried his Bucky-the-Beaver incisors into the toe of Grizzly's sneaker.

My husband is no Jackie Chan but he's got pretty sophisticated ninja moves when vermin are attached to his lower extremities. He whirled and kicked and jerked and whacked and sprinted down the curb, still sporting two long teeth and a pair of beady eyes, and that wasn't even counting the gopher. I very helpfully ran along yelling, "Get him off! Get him off your shoe! Kick him! Fling him!" These helpful utterances offered him valuable insights that might not have occured to him otherwise. But it didn't matter. When the rubber hit the road, it did so with the thud of vibrating gopher flesh and there was no sign of retreat.

As I looked around wildly for a stick or missle launcher, Grizzly gave one last massive kick. I watched our miniature nemisis sail through the air as though shot from a cannon. With a final show of dominance he stuck the landing and dusted himself off, glaring down the road at us. I always hoped he was the one my cat laid at my feet several years later.

Kitty Baby made it her life's mission to divest the neighborhood of this evil element. She relished her job. It wasn't enough to merely kill the things. She felt if you could not enjoy your work there was no point doing it. She frequently showed up in the backyard circus playing "Flying Trapeeze," in which she would throw the gopher and then fail to catch it on the other side. This provided hours and hours of great cat fun. When she grew bored, she would skin them and lay them out on the front porch for the rest of the rodent clan to view. In her spare time she made jaunty little hats for herself out of the leather.

I like to think she was avenging me from a childhood attack.

When I was seven I walked to second grade by myself everyday. It was about two miles and that was a lot of time to think up hair-brained ideas like how great it would be to catch a gopher in a paper bag. The thought first occured to me when I spotted a furry brown thing scooting along the ground one day. It was my foregone conclusion, as it was when I saw any animal, that it was lost, desperately lonely, and would undoubtedly die but for my timely intervention. And then there were the show-and-tell possibilities. No one ever pulled a wild rodent out of a sack. I was sure to be popular.

The next day, with brown lunch bag firmly in hand, I set out for school hoping my gopher rescue would go off without a hitch. As soon as I spotted him I dumped my lunch and closed in. He saw me and sat up. I lifted the bag for rapid capture. I was successful except for the fact that I had caught him by the teeth with the fatty part of my ring finger. He was firmly attached. I screamed bloody murder and ran like my tail was on fire. He wasn't the least intimidated. I shook my hand, my arm, the earth on which I stood. We were one.

I think he gave up when I entered the third grade.

Supposedly I never contracted rabies. But I have raged around and foamed at the mouth a few times to the point that the shed and being shot have been mentioned in my actual presence.

Which reminds me of the time I had a feral cat plastered to my head via teeth and claws and actually did get rabies shots. But that's a story for Halloween when my booster is due.


Copyright 2009

What?? The Steelers??

Oh MAN. But the party was fun! That's it. Brevity. You probably won't get it again.

Typing Type

Did you know you might have a typing style? Neither did I.

During a highly scientific research project I didn't know was taking place, my husband and daughter informed me I type in very different ways. They made this announcement public yesterday at an informal press conference. It was all news to me. No one listens when I talk but they pay attention to my typing? Why aren't I writing them letters? Loudly?

Apparently, I sometimes type 700 miles an hour (or Mach 1) pounding out each word so hard and fast I can be heard as far away as Paris. Frankly, I am incredulous. If I yell my loudest that the dishes have not been done yet, absolutely no one in the whole house, in any location, can hear me at all.

At other times, I am told, my typing is tentative, quiet....a staccato ritardando (I am not swayed by this fancy-schmancy vernacular - anything with the word "retard" in it is an insult).

Well, I can explain these two phenomenons easily and there was no research necessary.

First of all, if I get an idea I have to type really really really really fast before it leaves my head because then I would.............I would..........I would.........I'll get back to this.

The quiet parts are me editing the loud parts. Or searching the data banks for something fresh. Do you ever feel like you only have a 100 word vocabulary and you just keep recycling them in different ways? Okay, you're right. 100 words is hyperbole. I'm stuck at 50. (Koko the gorilla knows 1000 sign language words. Where is she when I need her?)

But there you have it. If you're a writer, a blogger, an emailer, or someone with an extremely boring life, listen to yourself type next time. Or have someone else listen. When you're done, look over and ask them what they perceived. They will most likely be in a coma. Take this opportunity to vigorously and loudly recount to them all the chores you want done. They won't hear this either.

Copyright 2009

Jason McElwain - Gotta Love This

This has been around for a couple of years but a sweet friend of mine posted it on Facebook today and I thought it deserved a look if you've never seen it.

I want to make it a priority in my life to believe in people, to encourage the best, and to never let the naysayers get me down (even though I KNOW they will, which is okay, because I always need material and they're wonderful to write about!). But this kid, THIS kid trumps life's tough cards with a royal flush. Thought you might need a "feel good" moment today as well. A little love from me to you.

Observational Twitter 9

Idiom:

"People who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones." Proverb of unknown origins

Axiom:

"People who live in glass houses should shower at the gym." Robynn Reilly



Copyright 2009

A Riotous Good Time

If you do nothing else for yourself today, please do this one thing: Go to Stopped By the Police .

This is located at the site of "Ladybird World Mother" and you are in for a rollicking good time. She is brilliantly funny and you have to promise to come back here and tell me if you laughed as loud and uproariously as I did - okay, I won't MAKE you but I'll probably whine and discuss it at dinner if you don't. (Laughs are always more fun when they're shared.)

Read the comments, too, especially the one about the father who took his girls to "The Sewerage" for a day of fun. Ladybird hails from the United Kingdom and you will hear a different turn of phrase that is also refreshing and entertaining.

Now go, have fun!

P.S. I added a World Map, Visitor Counter, and Location Tracker on Sunday so I can see the places people come in from (do not end sentences with prepositions unless you're completely lazy, like me). It's made it lots of fun to check on the blog (like it wasn't before and I'm not unabashedly addicted to reading every word that drips from your lips, or brain, as it were). Look for yourself if you'd like. Here's a big HELLOOOO! to all of you coming in from everywhere and a THANK YOU! as well. Who knew I had friends in so many places? (And parenthetical thoughts and the use of parenthesis should be severly limited in any well written work.) But I'm not a well writer.

False Teeth and Pastors

My pastor has been on my mind and heart lately because he has been through so much in recent days. He is an incredible man with a true heart for God and for people and, when that's who you are, you go through a lot. He lives his faith. He's the real deal.

So naturally, this has led me to think of false teeth. Not that he has any, false teeth I mean, he has actual teeth (though I haven't tried to remove them so I'll do that and get back to you). But I had another pastor I dearly loved when I was four years old and he had enormous false teeth. This one fact can highly recommend you to four-year-olds, especially if you take the teeth out on demand. You must then extrude them from your mouth just far enough to resemble a scene from "Aliens." At this point you should snap and clack them a few times, and then suck them back in. What is not to love here?

I constantly demanded that this fabulous talent be demonstrated and he never let me down. In addition, from my diminutive perspective, he was at least thirteen feet tall. I would ask to be lifted up and he would perch me on his shoulders. This afforded me a view of the surrounding countryside as well as a direct look into his snapping jaws. I could bend over, twist my head around, and watch from two inches away with abject horror and complete fascination.

I had no idea this man was my pastor. His name was Brother Whitaker but every single man in our little backwater Southern Baptist church was Brother Something-Or-Other. Nothing about the title caused me any sort of appropriate awe or reverence. I presumed he had been created for my entertainment. Apparently, I paid no attention in church or I might have noticed him in the pulpit. I was too busy flirting with Ronnie Miller.

Ronnie Miller was about 18 years old and as handsome as a movie star. And he sported his own teeth. My mother always sat towards the front but Ronnie was in the back. Every time I would sashay by, and I made frequent excuses because I needed to take a good, long look at him in all his glory, he would talk to me. He would never fail to tell me he was going to marry me when I grew up. I believed him without doubt. On Sundays, I would smooth out my crinoline and shine my patent leather shoes to be sure I looked like marriage material. And he would not fail to remind me that we were an item.

One Saturday, he two-timed me and married a girl named Sharon. He walked her right up the aisle I had walked down a hundred times just to stare at him. She had nothing on me as far as I could tell and it made absolutely no sense. My heart was a shambles and I never loved again until I was eight. Even now I run into him at get-togethers and always remind him that he left me at the altar, sort of. That's how un-petty I am.

I soothed my little soul with dental entertainment. Brother Whitaker and his choppers were good medicine. Food helped, too. One time he took my brother to church camp and let me ride along up to Hume Lake. Those were the good old days when kids could stand in the front seat and launch through the windshield when you had to stop fast. Along the way he bought me a whole pack of Oreo cookies and a carton of milk. These were rare treats in my life. By the time we had traveled up and back and spent nearly a day, my milk was sour. I took a big drink, spit it across the room, and howled. In typical good-guy fashion he took me to the store and bought more milk. Some guys know how to treat a lady.

I will always wonder what became of Brother Whitaker and his teeth. He and his wife left our church not long after those days. I doubt he ever found a more appreciative audience for his special talent but he certainly laid down a fondness in my heart for pastors who are willing to go above and beyond.

And now, having come full circle, I appreciate a pastor who tends to my soul and does not feel the least compelled to share his dental work with me. So, maybe I won't check his teeth. He has been a gift from God and you should never look a gift pastor in the mouth, unless you're four.

Copyright 2009