Sleeveless in Seattle

(Okay, so we don't live in Seattle, but "De-Sleeved in Dayton" just doesn't have the same ring.)

Since Old Dog bought his Harley this spring, he's changed. He's tanner than he's ever been before, he's become a total freak about keeping the garage locked and he's bossy and protective about anyone touching his precious Sportster.

And all of his sleeves are disappearing.








(I especially like that last one that still has the little buttons you can use to hold down the collar. Except, of course, that it no longer has a collar.)

On top of all this, I've started hearing about the things a man expects from his "old lady." Apparently the better class of old ladies will clean chrome with a toothbrush.


I'm starting to understand where the term "Wild Hogs" comes from.

(This post won a Post of the Week award from Everyday Goddess. If you don't know her, go visit!)

That Bitch, Karma, Part 2

Ooh, ooh, ooh, lookin' out my back door....

One of my favorite things about the neighborhood where I live now is that it's been around awhile. When you drive down my street you pass under a canopy of mature trees. The color and texture of the canopy changes with the seasons, from chartreuse in early spring to deep green in summer to multi-colored in the fall to spindly twigs against achingly blue skies in the winter.

Old Dog and I have cut down a few trees since we moved here--a black cherry and a pine to make room for the new garage, a huge old maple whose roots were insinuating themselves into our foundation--but we still have five big trees, including an absolutely gorgeous tulip poplar that gets these crazy orange blossoms in the spring.

While I've never actually hugged my trees, I'm pretty fond of them.

Last fall we got new neighbors to our west. I'm not sure we ever formally met them, and we rarely see them outside. Some kid comes by to cut their grass once a week and occasionally we see their tail-lights disappearing beneath their descending garage door.

Two weekends ago, they had someone come in and take down every single tree on their property. Every. single. one. The trees were nothing special--just a bunch of elms and maples--but they were thirty foot tall and at least that old and, like all ancient things, they were worthy of respect.

It looks like a desert over there now.

Even worse, our house seems to be about ten degrees hotter in the afternoon than it used to be. Even when I drench my wave petunias just before work, they're wilted by the time I get home. The ornamental metal fence we put up a few years ago gets too hot to touch in the afternoon sun.

I've seen a lot of the neighbors clustering in little groups, shooting poisonous looks at the tree-free property and muttering to each other and only one thing keeps me from joining the mob.

I'm not willing to become Crazy Neighbor Lady.

That Bitch, Karma, Part 1

The last house that Old Dog and I owned sat on one of those wedge-shaped "makeup lots" that abound in housing developments with winding streets. The front yard was tiny, but the back fanned out into a huge area.

We bought it from an old guy who had done nothing with the yard for the previous fifteen years except maybe cut the grass. By the time we moved in, it was a jungle back there. Old Dog claimed he heard monkeys and macaws screeching from the overgrowth when he mowed. In fact, he couldn't get within five feet of the back fence with the lawnmower because it was just too dense.

As you may have realized by now, Old Dog is not a fan of clutter, and overgrown brush falls squarely into his definition of clutter. I kind of liked the privacy of fourteen-foot high bushes, but on the other hand, I wasn't the one being attacked by jungle vines. So, when he wanted to chop it all down, I agreed.

After we ripped out all that vegetation, all that was left was a rusty chain-link fence. To be honest, I've seen 1930's Dust Bowl pictures that were more attractive than our back yard once those bushes were gone. (Over the next few months, we had all the stumps ground up and planted grass, but that came later.)

To make matters worse, unbeknownst to us, on the other side of the fence, the three neighbors whose yards backed up to ours (see mention of "winding streets" in first paragraph) had kept their side neatly trimmed. And, like me, they really liked the feeling of wooded privacy afforded by those bushes.

I mean, really liked it.

I remember one particularly painful conversation with the woman who lived directly behind us. As she surveyed the wreckage of all her shade plantings, which survived their first taste of direct sunlight for about two days before shriveling up like tiny vegetative vampires, she called us every ugly name we'd ever heard. And a couple that were brand-new.

Every time we stepped out the back door, we could feel the laser eyes of hatred trained on us.

One of the neighbors told me she actually called the police to file a complaint about our vandalism and apparently cussed them out, too, when she learned she had no say-so over what we did with our yard. Two weeks later, using whatever mismatched posts and boards she could lay her hands on, she put up a privacy fence. Needless to say, she put the ugly-side-out.

The next spring we sold that house and moved here and one of the best things about that was getting away from the crazy lady on the other side of the fence.

Tomorrow: Karma Bites Back

Photo by Dan Zen

Barack and the Beanstalk

Once upon a time, there was a family who fell upon hard times. They'd been on a spending spree for eleven years, buying wars and banks and a couple of car companies. Then their income dried up and they realized they'd spent not only all their money, but all their children's money, and even their grandchildren's money. All they had left was a cow. This had happened once before, and that time they bred the cow and turned it into a whole herd of cows and they were able to use the herd to work their way out of debt. This time, though, no one wanted to spend money on all that bull. So, even though they knew that their cow was their only hope for the future, they decided to sell it. So they sent young Barack, who was charming and smart (though not much of a scrapper) off to the big city to make the best deal he could in exchange for the cow. "Trade it for food," his mother said, because she was soft-hearted, and worried about people having enough to eat. "Sell it for money," said his father, who like to think of himself as fiscally conservative, even though he was the one who'd done most of the spending over the past eleven years. But when young Barack got to the city, he fell among slick-talking businessmen who talked him out of trading the cow for food OR money. Instead, they convinced him to trade Bessie for a handful of magic beans. They told him if he planted the magic beans a beanstalk would grow right through the ceiling, and he wouldn't have to worry about it again until 2013. And that's just what he did.

Drivers, Stop Farding!

So I'm waiting at a red light on Friday morning and I notice that next to me, in the turn lane, all the traffic has gone, except for this solitary black Nissan. I glance over to see what gives and realize the driver is talking on her cell phone. Ahead, the light turns yellow, but, absorbed in conversation, she doesn't notice. Then I see, in addition to a cell phone, this chick has a makeup brush in her hand. So she's not only talking on the phone while she's driving, she's also applying cosmetics. The upshot of this extreme multi-tasking is when she finally looks up, the light is turning red. She guns it and zooms through the intersection under the crimson beam, making everyone else wait on her. Naturally, I'm still bitching about this when I get to work and Dave-Who-Knows-All across the aisle says, "Oh, she was farding." "No idea," I say. "Both of our windows were up." "No," he says, "farding. It means applying make-up." So I pulled it up on dictionary.com and sure enough, it does. So, to drivers (male or female) who insist on applying their make-up behind the wheel, I say this, "NO FARDING BEHIND THE WHEEL!" (Photo by Xavi Talleda.)

Fiction...Monday!

Over the weekend, I had the opportunity to attend the Midwest Writers' Workshop, in Muncie, Indiana. It was a great conference and I learned a lot of cool new things, including some great tips on ways to improve my blog that I'll be incorporating over the coming weeks.

I also met bunches of new people (bear in mind that I'm kind of an introvert, so my idea of "bunches" and yours may differ) and was invited to join a cyber-critique group.

While I was there, I pitched my recently completed manuscript to Jessica Sinsheimer of the Sarah Jane Freymann Literary Agency and she asked me to submit my first hundred pages!

Family and friends, please note: for the next 96 hours I will be polishing prose like a madwoman. If you don't hear from me, it doesn't mean I don't love you anymore. It just means I'm in hot pursuit of a dream.

Two Grandmothers

The grandmother I want to be doesn't get all hung up about nutrition, feeding the kids whatever they want. The grandmother I am makes deals--one piece of candy, and only after you eat some real food. The grandmother I want to be plays Candyland and Mousetrap and Hungry, Hungry Hippos for hours. The grandmother I am talks the kids into watching Despicable Me instead. The grandmother I want to be is laid-back about bed-time. The grandmother I am threatens to call your parents if you kids do not settle down right now. The grandmother I want to be is even-handed, lavishing on each of her grandchildren the same amount of attention. The grandmother I am connects more tightly with the child who needs it the most. The grandmother I want to be is always up for an impromptu overnight. The grandmother I am needs time to mentally prepare. The grandmother I want to be has a lovely wooden toy box full of carefully selected educational toys. The grandmother I am has a Rubbermaid tub filled with cast off junk and things she found at the thrift store. The grandmother I want to be has grandkids who squeal with joy when she walks in the door. The grandmother I am lucked out: she got that, too.