Pink Hearts for Nona

Have you ever noticed that the leaf of a Calladium resembles a heart?  I never did, until recently.  I planted some bulbs in my yard back in February, knowing I would not see the results of my work until late spring.  Since we have only lived in our house for a year and a half, decorating and landscaping are still "a work in progress" around here.

The last time I saw my grandmother before she passed away, she and I had a long discussion about the landscaping at my house.  It was April.  Long since restricted to a wheelchair or hospital bed, she never had the opportunity to visit my new house, but I described it to her in detail and showed her pictures.  When it came to flowering plants, her advice was this: soft pink flowers would look best with my existing plants and color of my house.

One morning in May, I got the call that my grandmother had passed away during the night.  Later in the day, I walked down my driveway to retrieve the newspaper (of which, incidentally, my grandfather was the Managing Editor in the 1960's) and water my hostas.  I stopped.  I stepped closer to the side of my house.  The very first Calladium was just peeking through the pine straw.  I remembered that Nona and I had talked about my plants when I saw her last.  I knew this was God's gift to me, to remind me that Nona's life on Earth may be over, but her eternal life in Heaven is just beginning.

Over the last two months, all the Calladiums have sprouted and are thriving.  They are all green and white, except for the one that sprouted when Nona died . . . it is the only one sporting soft pink edges.  Just for Nona.

Have You Ever Done This?

I have.  I cannot take credit for this photo, though.  A very good friend of mine arrived at work one morning last week only to look down and see what you see above.  Oh yes, she had.  And oh no, she did not go home to change them.

Okay, my friend is not blonde, which shoots my whole Yes-I'm-A-Natural-Blue theme.  I guess anyone can be a Dory, no matter their hair color.  Flightiness is non-discriminatory.

Back to the matter at hand, I will tell you what I did when this great shoe emergency happened to me.  I was a law student at the time (excuse in the bag:  mental overload), and I went out of town for the weekend.  For my Sunday morning outfit, I had selected a brown and olive green ensemble.  I had two identical pairs of Dansko clogs (one olive green and one brown).  I do remember debating with myself which pair to take while I was packing.  As I stepped out of my hotel room into brighter light, I realized I had on one of each.  What did I do?  I went back into my room and changed into the only other pair of shoes I had with me. They were black, and a totally wrong style for the outfit.  Better randomly mismatched to my outfit, than randomly mismatched to each other, I reasoned.  But I was painfully aware of the mismatch the entire day, and did everything I could hide my feet.  I stood behind potted plants.  I sat down and tucked my feet under the chair.  I'm sure no one but me noticed that I had on black shoes with a brown and green outfit.

Now my friend whose feet you see above is much better able to handle this sort of thing than I.  She is the type to laugh, wave her hand and surmise that no one will notice.  She's even the type to do it on purpose and see if anyone notices.  She enjoys the offbeat and madcap.  So to her, this was not the major life event it would have been for me.  Really, I would have had to log some vacation or sick time to drive home and change.  My friend says not even one person noticed her fashion mistake last week.  She was probably disappointed.

I'm a Natural Blue: Spray the Pam Before Heating the Pan

I was single until I was 33 years old. I had spent the previous 12 years as a busy professional reading a lot of instructions on Lean Cuisine boxes. I didn't pretend to be a gourmet chef. But I did love my Le Creuset cookware. It's indestructible. In a smackdown between the cookware and a steamroller, the Le Creuset would win. So when Chip and I got married, my favorite fry pan was my big periwinkle blue fry pan. It's a most wonderful conductor of heat.

One day, Chip brought home a London Broil. I had never cooked one before. After consulting a few recipes, I determined I would start by browning it in my big blue pan. I was supposed to get the pan hot before slapping the meat on there, so I turned on the eye. After a few minutes, though, Chip made a comment about putting something on there so the meat wouldn't stick. Ohhhhh, duhhhhh, I thought, I forgot to spray it. At this point, the pan was already about 1400 degrees, and I didn't want Chip to know I had forgotten to spray it. So I just waved the can over it quickly and sprayed enough to give it a thin coat. I thought I was being surreptitious. WHOOOOOSH, went the orange flames that licked out from my big blue pan, nearly reaching the hood over the stove. "Oh my gosh!" I screamed and jumped back.

"What?!" Chip yelled from around the corner.

"Nothing," I chirped cheerily from the kitchen.

"Yeah, right," he called back, but fortunately did not come to investigate. It looked like the griddle at a Japanese steakhouse. All I needed was a tall, white hat and a couple of meat cleavers to juggle. Ching-ching, chingity-smack. Applause. It died down soon enough, though. After making sure I still had my eyebrows, I tried to move the pan over, but the bottom of it had melted to the eye of the stove. Trying to be as quiet as possible, I rocked it back and forth until it came unstuck. Whew. But I had to continue to loosen it every minute for the remainder of the experience. And there was some blue paint stuck to the eye. I'll have to explain that to him later, I lamented.

Surely the pan was hot enough to sear the meat now, so I tossed the London Broil into the pan. WHOOSH again, but this time it was mostly smoke. And the loud sizzling sound could not be concealed. Chip came out of the bedroom, looked at the billowing smoke rising from the pan, shook his head, and went back into the bedroom.

You can guess what happened next . . . the smoke alarm squealed. I scurried over and fanned a newspaper under it until it stopped. But then I had to return to the stove and FLIP THE MEAT OVER. Yeah. I pried the blackened meat up with a meat fork and spatula, then flipped it over to create the same lovely hissing sound. Now, I had already turned the burner down some, but it was still about 800 degrees. So, the smoke alarm went off again. I rushed to open the sliding glass door just in time to see a fire truck turning into the complex. "They're here because of me," I half-wept. I just knew it. Someone must have reported the smell of smoke or the alarm going off repeatedly.

My husband is a firefighter, and would be humiliated by the fire department coming to his own house because his wife is spastic in the kitchen.

I sat down in a heap on the floor and prepared myself for the heavy, booted steps on the stairs and banging on the door. I started to rehearse in my head what I would say. I pictured Chip standing outside with his arms folded, talking to the firefighters, apologizing for the false alarm. But as the minutes passed, no knocking came. In fact, a short minute or two later, I saw the same truck leaving the complex. Ahhhh, I sighed. They were just out driving around. Thank you, Lord, for sparing me that embarrassment.

Fast forward about 30 minutes later, and Chip I were bravely knawing on pieces of charred leather, hoping for the best. He, who will usually eat anything, took the hunk of meat and tossed it into the garbage. Then we ate a pizza.

Yes, I'm a natural blue . . .

When my husband and I were dating, he mentioned to me one day, "By the way, I know how to highlight hair, so I can do that for you." I remember looking at him quizzically and letting him know politely that I would not need for him to do that.

A few months after we married, I was brushing my hair one day. Chip was sitting in the room, studying me like a College World Series baseball game. "How come you never have to color your hair?" he asked me.

"Because I don't color my hair," I answered.

"What do you mean?"

What did he mean by asking what I meant?! I thought I had laid it out in black and white. People either color their hair or they don't. "I mean that I don't color my hair." He was still confused, so I pointed at my head. "This is the color of my hair." Still a stymied stare from my husband. "When it grows out of my head, it comes in this color." Apparently he did not realize that blonde is a color that occurs in nature. All the blondes in his life previously had, ahem, altered their locks from another color.

Other realizations branched from this . . . why I really can't get a tan, why every drug store product I buy is marked "For Sensitive Skin," why I never actually get speeding tickets even if I get pulled over . . . okay, well, bleached blondes probably get out of speeding tickets, too. But I digress. By the time we had been married for about a year, I had heard the phrase, "Boy, you really are blonde, aren't you?" at least five times, and usually following some brilliant ditzy move on my part (more to come later on that). I hear that phrase more and more with each passing year. And it's true.

We have been watching a lot of "Finding Nemo" at our house recently, thanks to my son. If you have seen it, you know that Dory, the blue Regal Tang, is the sweet, well-meaning fish with a serious problem. Her short-term memory is almost non-existent. *Sigh* She reminds me a lot of myself. And go figure, she admits while talking in her sleep, "Yes, I'm a natural blue." Stay tuned in the days to come, and I will tell some good blonde tales on myself. I'm definitely a natural blue, er-blonde.

Moderation

Moderation. I never seem to grasp it all that well when it comes to my work. There are some days where I sit at my computer, and nothing comes. I'm sad, or I'm tired, or I'm distracted. I keep flipping away from that blinking cursor to my Facebook page, to Twitter, to the Talbot's sale, and Oh wait, I was going to google search recipes for stir fry for the next supper club . . . You name it, I'll find it when the creative wave is not washing over me.





But sometimes, like today, I just can't get it all out of my head! I can't type fast enough, and I can't put the computer down. I'm revising old pieces. I'm jotting down outlines for new stories. I'm writing a couple of chapters in my novel. I'm almost afraid to turn off my laptop and go to bed, because I don't want to stop the flow. Because I know that tomorrow may be another one of those other days. I wish I could bottle up some of that creativity on the overload days and save it for those uninspired days. If any of you creative types out there know how to do that, please let me know.

RIP Barnwell the Lizard, PART 2

So my husband, Chip, was not at home yesterday afternoon when the famous lizard-slaying by my 3 year old occurred. (See post below, if you don't know the story!) Chip was not slated to be home until today. I told him the story over the phone, and of course Daddy was beaming with pride at his son's First Kill, and instinct to protect Mommy.

But there remained the matter of the dead lizard on the door stoop. "What did you do with it?" he asked me. I exclaimed that I had done nothing with it, nor did I plan to. He could take care of it upon his return home today. "No!" he fussed at me. "It will bring more bugs, which will bring more lizards, and . . . look, do you want a snake on the back porch?" Hmm. No. No, I don't. He insisted I HAD to dispose of the little carcass right away.

I stood there with the broom, a safe distance away. Ewwwwwww, I said to myself. If you didn't know that I have an irrational fear of lizards, again refer to the post below. I considered the possibility of sweeping it outside and having its little body decay under my Hosta. Ewwwww. I decided Chip's shovel would be better. Then I could scoop it up, carry it across the yard, and fling it over the back fence into the green space.

I assumed my stance, shovel in hands. What if it isn't all the way dead? What if I wake it up? It could spring to life, flopping and jerking around. It could race up the handle, charge at me and attack faster than my reflexes could drop the shovel and carry me out the porch door to safety. Barnwell might come back with revenge on his mind. Night of the Zombie Lizard and all that. See? I told you my fear of them is irrational. I just couldn't do it. Could. Not. Do it.

I went next door and found my neighbors just driving up in their car. I explained the situation - dead lizard, irrational fear, need to dispose of the body. I already felt like a village idiot. But to my further shame, the female was the one who jumped out of the car and said, "Oh, I'll take care of it!" Dear, sweet Mary Lou. I already thought she was a great neighbor, but now she's a hero, too.

As we rounded the corner to the back porch, I was explaining that his name was Barnwell and my son had slain him with a juice cup. Now she thinks I'm a wimp and crazy, too. Sometimes I just give too much information. Anyway, she spotted the shovel and asked, "Oh, were you planning to bury it?" No, I told her, I was just going to throw it over the fence into the green space. "Ah," she said, then she proceeded to pick up it with a grocery bag around her hand, the same way one might pick up dog waste. She wrapped the bag around and tied it off, balling it up in her hand. She was not bothered one bit by the fact that there was a potential Zombie Lizard in her very hand. He could have bitten her right through that thin plastic bag. She even stood there for a minute and chatted before heading home to throw it away! I know, I know, it was a dead lizard. I have a wild imagination. I probably need to address this with a therapist.

A Tiny Hunter's First Kill: RIP Barnwell

(Barnwell the lizard, and a picture of my tiny hunter with his first kill)

I am a wimp. I will admit it. Sure, there are a few exceptions, but overall, I am pretty wimpy. A perfect example is my irrational fear of lizards. In my younger days at our river house, I swam where gators were frequently seen, I walked side by side with respectably-sized snakes, watched wild boars run through the back yard, I caught cast nets full of bait fish, cleaned crabs or boiled them live . . . I don't know what's happened to me now, but I am full-out prissy.

So we have had a problem with lizards living on our back porch recently, which has made going in and out of the back door a little more exciting. There have been two of the little "Geicos" living in the wicker porch furniture. I named them. That's what I do to try and make them seem less threatening. I give them names like Pierre or Steve. Well, these two have been dubbed Barnwell and Sumter. Barnwell was the fatter of the two and hung close to the back door, peering in at us. Many times, Sam and I had the chance to study Barnwell's scaly underbelly closely through the glass. Sumter tends to stay in the wicker loveseat near the garage door. He's not bothering me much over there.

More than once, my husband has captured these little green Southern gentlemen and flung them over our back fence into a green space with a tree line separating us from the next subdivision. What lizard wouldn't love a green space with a tree line?! Ours. They are homing lizards. But I had not seen either of them in a few days and had become lax. Today, I opened the back door without looking out of the blinds first. My three year old, Sam, walked out first. Then I saw Barnwell on the outside of the french door, hanging over my kitchen floor. I knew it was Barnwell because of his chopped off tail, the result of a previous scuffle with my husband.

Instinctively, I screamed and slammed the door shut. With my child on the other side. It was definitely not one of my finer moments in motherhood. At any rate, I started banging on the glass to encourage the lizard to move. He didn't. Sam turned around and yelled at the lizard to move. "Get out of ze way, yizard!" He didn't. So in an effort to protect his histrionic mother, Sam took his sippy cup and SLAM! socked it to the lizard. Barnwell fell the to threshold, barely moving.

"Oh, don't worry, Mommy!" Sam shouted through the door. I guess he could sense that I was still reticent to open the door with the tiny dinosaur struggling for life in my path. Then he took his sippy cup and AGAIN slammed it down on top of the ailing Barnwell. And there it was. My little boy, the fierce lizard hunter, had made his first kill. He was protecting his mommy, bless his little heart. He's almost all Scottish on my side, so that explains a lot. And I think he's got a little Seneca Indian blood on his father's side, so that helps, too. Killer instinct. And he's not even in 3K yet.

I was in shock at my little boy's bravery, but so proud of him for coming to my rescue. Next, we will be outfitting him with little snake boots and building him a tree stand.