Happy Valentine's Day........or Happy Venereal Disease, as the case may be....

    The act of putting valentines together the other day to mail to my 437 grandchildren caused my brain to take a quantum leap back to the 50s and a room filled with second graders.  How excited we were about this day!  We'd all labored intensively at making creative "mailboxes" to put on our desks so that classmates who wished to be our valentines could deliver their messages at the designated time.  Each of us anticipated taking our mailboxes home, stuffed to the brim with brightly-colored messages of love and friendship.

    It had taken me several hours on several nights at home to choose which valentine from my package of 42 should go to each individual.  Because even at age 7 some friends are a teeny bit more special than others, right?  Plus, the boys should get the less frilly cards......just because they were boys, you know?   So I put great thought into choosing the message each friend should get, laboriously signed every card and addressed all the little paper envelopes, being oh-so-careful to spell everyone's name correctly.  And equally careful not to leave anyone out -- not even that goofy boy who no one liked much because he was a mean old bully -- because that just wouldn't be very nice.  After all, even mean old bullys had feelings, I reasoned.
   
    I got a valentine from every kid in my class that year.  It was so awesome to think that all those people had chosen a message and addressed a card just for me!  But then my thrill turned to nausea when I looked around the room and saw the faces of some kids who'd received only a few valentines.  And one kid -- the bully -- had gotten only one.  From me.

    Oh gawd, how I wanted to disappear.  I wanted to wish myself away from that horrible room and never EVER think about it again.  I wanted to give every single ONE of the valentines in my stuffed mailbox away to the kids who had only gotten a few, and then run all the way home.  But somehow, even at that tender age, I knew that second-hand valentines would only come across as pity.  It wouldn't make the sad kids happy.

    After that, I never got bullied again.  Not even by bigger kids in higher grades, because the mean old bully became my special protector.  It was pretty cool, actually.

    But I never liked Valentine's Day again.
   

    Question:  After a hundred years of of cavorting through life as an ad biz flunkie......um.......professional, wouldn't it seem that I'd be completely completely immune to the tricks of the trade?

    Answer:  Well of course it would!  Psychobabble written specifically to jolt one of my bazillion emotions into convincing my hand to grab my wallet should NOT have the capability to reach me.  Because I know it for whut it is.  In fact, I spent several years writing that stuff!

    But  Oh!  My!  Gawd!  They GOT me, Ma!  I've been shot through the heart!  And more than once in recent weeks........by those advertising geniuses who produce the television spots for Pedigree Dog Food™.

    And it hurts like hell every time.  Here's why:

    The video features several shots like this one:

    And while one's eyes are fastened upon several shots of similarly jailed dogs with beguiling eyes, the audio features the most sincere-sounding male voice-over anyone ever heard.   It goes something like this:

    The following amusement was allegedly found in the yard of a curmudgeonly Denverite.

    Gawd, how I adore people who laugh in the face of adversity! 

    (Of course, laughing in the face of no adversity is an even better option.)

    Egad.  While I was out farting around, someone who looks exactly like ME joined Xanga and began commenting on the blog of a dear (and quite excellent) friend.

    This left me no choice but to shoot the Ostrich with my trusty cowboy pistol, as I firmly refuse to be anyone's doppleganger. 

    (Not to worry......I'm a good shot.  There was no suffering involved.)

    Ah well -- it was time to put a new entry in anyway.  Nothing red has been happening for some time now.

    See the new me above.

More soon. 

• To Teme:  Happy Birthday!  Would you mind celebrating just a little longer?  Because I didn’t know until just now that it all happened four days ago.

• To Kaz:  Fifty is reasonably nifty.  You’ll see.

• To the execs at ShowTime:  You guys are four or five bricks short of a load.  I can’t BELIEVE you canceled “Huff”  before I even realized it was on the air!  Somebody gave me the first season DVDs and GAWD!  No WONDER it won Emmys......it’s fantastic!  The casting is superb and the story line is sublimely entertaining!  Yeah, I know.  Sublime entertainment is probably too novel an idea for a TV Show.  Harumph.  You are PUTZES.  And PRINCES of SCHLOCK!   So there!  (Except for “Weeds.” )

• To the execs at SONY:  So when in the hell are you gonna release the second and apparently final season of “Huff?”  Because I WANT IT RIGHT NOW!!

• To the person who coined the phrase “Easy as Pie:”  Speaking of putzes, it has become rather obvious to me over the years that you never actually made a pie crust from scratch.  It’s the transfer, see?  From the board where you roll it out to the pie plate.  Other than that part, I guess pie-making is a piece of cake.

• To all the retailers who feel moved by the spirit of greed to keep sending me email and flyers:  Stop, cease, and desist!  My Christmas shopping is fini!   Got it?   Go away!

• To the UPS guy who’s been delivering my Christmas shopping:  Bet you never thought we’d become such good friends, did you?  Yeah, I know it’s a helluva long drive out here to Toad Hall, but it’s Al Gore’s fault, not mine.

• To Tom Waits:  WHOO HOO!  Thanks for the new CD set!  And  hey!  Don’t wait so long to cut the next one, Tom!   Regardless of your comments about keeping fans hungry, THIS fan needs to be fed more often!

• To Buster Kitty:  Speaking of being fed, no, I am not going to feed you anything else.  You should’ve told me that you weren’t in the mood for salmon before I opened the can.  Now get off my keyboard and go eat whut’s in your dish.

• To my brother-in-law’s crazy wife:  See if you can keep your mouth shut tomorrow about 17-year-olds having bi-racial babies, willya?  Yeah, she’s totally fudked up her life, but whut’s done is done.  Let’s practice making each other feel GOOD for once.

• To my frenetically Republican sister-in-law:  The discussion of politics at your mother’s Thanksgiving table is verbotten!  Dig?  Uh.....and we can’t talk about how everyone who isn’t a “Christian” is “lost,” either.  It’s postively hell on my digestive track when you start that stuff.

• To all my stepgrandchildren:  Nobody CARES that you think Mamaw’s Oyster Dressing is icky, except Mamaw, whose feelings are hurt every year.  Yes, I’d rather eat SPAM, myself -- but instead of gagging at the sight of it, let’s all just eat whut we DO like.  Because it’s the polite thing to do, see?

• To Princess Prissy, “THE KID” and your families:  I love you guys.....see you Saturday!

• To Clyde & Nick Bodinski and your families:  I’ll miss you!  May your turkeys be tender and your pies divine!

• To everyone I know, virtually and otherwise:  Peace, love, and Happy, Happy Turkey Day!  I shall spend it being thankful for all of you!  (Even the people who annoy me sometimes!  I promise!)

xo,
-Feef

P.S.  Don't forget to watch the Macy's Day Parade!  It's really the best part of Thanksgiving, you know!

A moment of silence for the Big Bird.

P.P.S.  Happy Belated Birthday, Czarny!  I seem to be missing them left and right lately!

All is well......just have a lot of pumpkins in the air at the moment and need both hands to juggle 'em all.

In the meantime, it's scary movie season!  Here's a glimpse of the first one I ever saw -- at the tender age of 8, I think.  I ate off every single one of my fingernails.....plus a gallon-sized bucket of buttered popcorn.

Happy Halloween & stuff!

    I’ve been pondering lately on how it is that the decisions/choices we make today can affect other people’s lives long after we’re gone. 

    Some of our decisions will affect people we never have met and never shall meet.  Some are subtle and quiet and will have small effect.........others are more obvious and create a loud bang.  You made any of those lately?  Have I?  Who knows.

    It was around 60 years ago that a young couple, Nick and Helen, fell in love and were married just up the road at Shiloh Church.  Times were hard back then -- money was as scarce as hen’s teeth -- so they made their first home here at Toad Hall with Helen’s parents, Richard and Lula.  Nick was young and strong and more than willing to help his father-in-law work the two farms he owned, which was something Helen’s brothers had no interest in doing.  So it was a happy arrangement and life was good...for a time.

    But things changed, as they are prone to do.  First off, children came -- my late husband Lin and his sister were born to Nick and Helen just two years apart.   Then, five years after Lin’s birth, Helen’s two brothers (who had families of their own by then) carelessly fell into massive debt, and looked to their parents to rescue them.  One of Richard and Lula’s farms had to be sold immediately, and still the debts would take all that the remaining farm could produce.  Nick knew he had to make some hard and fast decisions.  Most importantly, he had to find a job elsewhere to support his wife & children. 

    The first work he could find was night shift in a factory over 40 miles away in the city, and although he was a country boy at heart, the pay was good and Nick took the job without missing a beat.  Another dilemma arose then -- the long dreary commute -- leaving home in the dark and coming back in the dark.  Expressways were years in the future and the route to the factory was via narrow & winding roads, some of which weren’t even paved.  It was nearly a 3-hour trip each way.  One night, Nick was set upon by a couple thugs who had blocked the road to rob him, beat him, and leave him for dead.  Moving to town seemed an urgent and obvious choice.

    With only a few paychecks under his belt, and Nick frantically in search of a home for his family that was closer to his job, he met someone who agreed to sell him a house for a meager down payment and $50 a month.  What a deal!  It must’ve seemed like providence to Nick because he didn’t even consult his young wife before signing on the dotted line. 

    And so they moved.  Far away from parents, siblings, aunts, uncles and cousins -- far away from the church were they were married and the community of friends they’d made.  Far away from the only home that Nick’s wife and two children had ever known.  Far away from Toad Hall. 

    These fifty some odd years later, Helen still lives in there -- stubbornly and proudly in the modest little house near the factory.  She is all alone now, her beloved Nick and her firstborn son lost to cancer,  her two remaining children grown with busy lives of their own.  Her neighborhood has been abandoned by the good friends who used to live there.  Today, it consists of empty houses, lots overgrown with weeds, a different sort of people -- the sort that one doesn’t want to get to know very well -- and Helen, my 83-year-old mother-in-law......whom I love more than I could possibly explain.  She wants to stay forever in that home that Nick provided.  I understand and wholly support her choice, and fervently hope that her wish is granted.  I will fight anyone who tries to move her against her will.  With vigor!

    So I visit Helen often, and the two of us carry on the tradition she used to have with Lin, speaking every single night on the phone just before midnight when she goes to bed (so I know that she’s okay).  Every now and then, she forgets to call me, so I call her.  This arrangement usually works.  When it doesn’t work, as it didn’t the other night when her phone was out of order, I am in the car quicker than you can say Jack Robinson.  The trip to Helen and Nick’s house doesn’t take three hours any more, but it still takes 45 minutes.  And although I never met the man -- he was gone long before I fell in love with his son -- every time I make that trip late at night, generally several times annually for one reason or another, I think about that decision Nick felt obliged to make so many years ago.
 
    Hey Nick!  I think I’d probably have loved you a lot had we met, but GAWD!  I wish to hell you’d found work a little closer to home!     

    Can you tell?  There's a brand new iMac at Amazing Grace's house.  So long "Reader Rabbit," and HELLO iPhoto!

The "Debil" and his daughter

Creature from.......uh.......somewhere else in the galaxy.

Fifi's Shining Irish Elf Star

    She was having so much fun last night!  There are at least 400,287 more -- of basically everything in the entire house that can be dragged to the computer, but I'll spare you the scrolling.  For now, anyway.