What's Your Number?

This is a Flash Fiction Friday 55 hosted by Mr. Knowitall. For more 55's pay him a visit - http://g-man-mrknowitall.blogspot.com/

I long for the time before cholesterol was invented. Back when bacon was a perfectly acceptable meat to have with eggs, and real ice cream was a wholesome treat. Back when you didn’t have to take drugs that can cause diarrhea, constipation, dizziness, bloating, fatigue, and yellowing of the eyes to bring the number down.

That Girl!

This is a Flash Fiction Friday 55 hosted by Mr. Knowitall. For more 55's pay him a visit -  http://g-man-mrknowitall.blogspot.com/


 

 

Now the table has turned.


Do I ground my 88 year old mother for running with a wild younger crowd, for getting into mischief with these rowdy Baptists and getting in a wreck?

This could have been so much worse! I was worried sick! Why didn’t you call me!

There is symmetry and justice here.

Ding Dong. . . Universe Calling

Some people can say So and so was the love of my life. I’ve only been able to say So and so was the love of my decade. Or of my year or month. The same goes for what I’ve been called by the Universe to do.


I've got to say I’ve never heard a deep bass voice say, "Hey, Fay. . . This is God and I want you to do such and such."  I guess I've been more nudged than called to do various things at various times. Possibly, I’ve been silently called. That is, I may have been meant to do things that I did and I never realized their importance. It’s sort of like the tiny movement of air from the flutter of a butterfly eventually causing a hurricane.

The other day I told a young lady in the waiting room that she was beautiful. This is something I can do in a socially acceptable way now that I’m fiddy fav. Anyway, maybe that statement was just enough to keep her from feeling suicidal. And maybe she will go on to tutor a kid who decides to finish school, and that kid grows up to be the father of a president. It could happen.

The truth is, every little thing we do affects everything else in some way. There’s just no getting around it – each one of us is important and called to do things.

Some people are called in a loud booming voice and have no question in their minds about it. And though our "calls" are just as important, some of us only hear ours in echo or we don’t even hear them at all.

Are you feeling lucky?

I've decided to enter the contest described at http://outoftheboondocks.blogspot.com/2011/01/microfiction-monday_17.html by Mama Badger, and to offer one of my own.
This should be especially fun since I've no idea who LG, et al are.  I'm just supposed to answer these questions and submit them. 
Hey, I'm feeling lucky, are you? 
If you answer the first set of questions, let Mama Badger know.
When you answer the second set, let me know. 

The Questions:

1) Who is MB's all time favorite Sesame Street character?
Coach, the bartender. His honesty and dry martini won MB's heart.

2) What is LG's favorite color?
Red velvet cupcakes with cream cheese icing.


3) If you were in prison, what would the crime be?
Murder.  Definitely murder, not divorce.  A clever, subtle murder that was nearly perfect.


4) Dark and swarthy or blond and beautiful? (which is really like asking who's cuter, LG or little o. What, you're not their Mom. You can have a favorite
Yes.
 
 
 
 
OK, now for Fay's quiz contest.  Answer each question totally honestly and let me know, via your comment how to find your answers.  I will choose the winner sometime in the near future. Winner will receive an all expense paid trip to someplace really cool, or something else.  Prize and winner will be determined by me and only me, however, I'm open to bribes.
 
Now for the questions:
 
1) True or false:  I feel much the same today.
 
2) True or false:  I have never cared for room temperature
 
3) Have you ever felt beside yourself and looked really fast and found out you weren't there?
 
4) Do you remember the 70s?
 
5) What is the meaning of life?
 
6) Give an analogy for something like a star.
 
 
Well, that's it.  Six questions.   I'm a psychotherapist and I'll know if you cheat, so don't even try it.

Microfiction Monday - Jumbo Hangover

Welcome to Microfiction Monday.

                                   Where a picture paints 140 characters.

Susan over at Stonyriver (http://www.stonyriver.ie/ ) hosts Microfiction Monday The rules are simple,to use Susan's picture she posts then compose a story up to 140 characters including spaces and punctuation.

This is this weeks picture and my story to go with.

Marla had it with her dead-beat husband, Al.


“I told you not to order the jumbo juicy froo-froo island cocktail. Now get up before I slice that hangover right outta you!”

Astrologically Beside Myself

Oh My Grimm!  I've always been outgoing and gregarious, a born leader with a fiery ego.  Born on July 29 I am Leo, hear me roar.

But now the Astrologers of the world say July 29 means I'm a Cancer.  A sensitive, touchy-feely, empathic crab. 

This explains why I got my tail out of management to get back into doing psychotherapy, no doubt.  I got bumped from the fire sign and sputtered into the water.  As a Leo, I knew I was always right, even when I was flat out wrong.  As a Cancer, I'm too unstable to know if I'm right or wrong, but I'm just so much cooler and laid back.  I could tell you what to do when I was a Leo, but I'll listen to you now. 

Yes, this is going to work.  Well, I mean, I don't know for sure, but I sort of feel like this is going to work.

Duh!

I am a full-figured woman.  I have curves and I just had a bowl of vanilla ice cream that I didn't need for purposes of nutrition.  But it was just so tasty after the pizza I had for dinner.  Sometimes I choose to do things that are not good for me. 

However, I'm not a public school charged with teaching children - the very children, by the way who will be running nursing homes in a couple of decades.  They will be the airline pilots, doctors, nurses, plumbers, and police officers when we are old.

Think about that when you think about public education.

Now, how big a decision is it to get the junk food out of the school cafeterias? Sure we can say that parents should educate their children about what foods to choose at school, and parents should do that.  Parents should also educate their children about not smoking, using street drugs and alcohol.  The difference is that schools don't buy alcohol and cigarettes and offer them to children. 

I don't even see what the debate is about.  Is your school selling junk food for snacks and offering grease and salt covered carbs in the cafeteria?  Guess who pays disability payments for people with obesity and nutrition related illnesses? I'll give you a hint. . .  we do.  And even if don't care about the health of future generations, don't you want your future proctologist to grow up on brain food?

Really Important Moments

Someone recently commented to me about moments I’ll never forget. Here’s a partial list:

- Moving into the house and Mom asking me if I wanted my bed (crib) in my parents’ room or upstairs with my sister.

- Papa setting me down just inside the front door just after getting my first pair of glasses and just standing there looking at my house for the first time.

- Sitting on the front steps of the post office with Barbara on a sunny, summer, rural Midwestern day and saying, “I’ll never forget this moment.”

- Lying on my back on a blanket in my back yard with Becky, surrounded by comic books, but being more interested in the cloud parade.

- Being at the skating rink for the monthly junior high party, when all the popular kids laughed at me and made glasses with their fingers when I skated past.

- Watching little, very bright lights dart and hover through the trees at the lake with Carol and trying to figure out what they were, wondering if we should tell someone.

- Sitting with Deborah in her parents’ car on top of a hill on a dirt road. We had followed a lot of cars out to the isolated location and watched, scared out of our heads when the passengers of the cars we followed left their cars with lanterns, climbed a fence and formed a circle in a pasture.

- Riding a horse, Blue, on a smooth, grassy field and letting him – for the first and only time – run as fast as he wanted..

Of course I remember the first time I fed my babies, bits of my wedding day(s), graduations, stuff like that. And those are amazing memories. And they are memories shared by lots of people.

The memories in this list are more personal memories. I don’t have photographs of them other than the pictures that are indelibly printed on my memory. They are events that in someway or another changed me or gave me direction. There is a seemingly endless supply of these personal memories, though I can’t tell you the zip code of my office or if I have laundry in the dryer.

You just never (well, unless you’re sitting on the post office steps) know what moments are going to be the important ones. Therefore I strongly suggest we all live as if each moment is pivotal, immensely important and life-defining.  Because truth be told, I reckon they are.

Winter Idiot Warning

Here in my part of South Carolina we are experiencing a winter storm.  It isn't a surprise.  Our weather people have been warning us for a couple of days and my sinuses have been warning me for at least three.  Everything is closed, including my office, which hasn't happened since I've lived here.

So far there are about 7 fluffy inches of snow covering the ground at my house.  I understand it's ranging to about 10 inches in the counties next door.  The sleet and freezing rain are predicted to start soon and doubtless there will be power lines down.  It sometimes takes a couple of days to get power back once it's gone around here.  That's a drag since my house is one of those Gold Medallion Homes  where everything is run by electricity.  I have a fireplace, but previous owners put a cap on the chimney and bolted the flue shut so even if I had firewood, I couldn't use it.  But I have lots of quilts, soft Freudian slippers I got for Christmas, water, and enough food to get by for a good while.  I'm not too worried.

Coming from the reasonable North, it was difficult to understand how less than a couple of feet of snow could close anything down.  But I understood more when I watched the local news this morning.  A weather girl stood shivering in the street in her stylish, high healed boots, cute little hat and no gloves and explained that the State Police was asking people to stay off the roads.

The blue weather girl had to jump to safety when an SUV came twirling down the street toward her.  Ten or so minutes later she came back, this time with gloves.  The camera no longer showed her boots.  She was standing next to a building and held up a long handled ice scraper and explained to her audience what it was and what it was used for.  I shit you not, she actually did that. 

Then they showed the big highway.  One lane was packed and slushy from cars and big trucks sliding along.  Evidently, both of South Carolina's snow plows were busy in Columbia.  The weather girl read a notice from the State Police that explained about black ice and urged people to stay home.  The Police notice stated that it didn't matter if you had four wheel drive, an SUV or how many Confederate flags your vehicle is wearing, it's just not safe to drive it right now.

Then the weather girl interviewed a young father in his pickemup truck with three small children crammed in beside him - no seat belts, of course.  She asked him where they were going and he proudly told all the television audience that he and his children were going shopping for sleds.  I'm not making this stuff up!

So now I understand why 7 inches of snow puts us in a state of emergency.  It has much less to do with the snow and much more to do idiots. I understand tomorrow is supposed to be worse.  As I said, I've got enough provisions to get by if the electricity goes, but gosh I'd hate to miss the local weather in the morning!

And the Beat Goes On

My baby girl has a seed planted in her. Yes, it’s true. After years of rather nasty treatment to preserve her fertility, a miracle occurred and she popped out a seed at the right time and some magic happened.

She’s in the family way, preggers, has a bun in the oven, she’s with child. . . . . yes, boys and girls, my baby is knocked up! I’m Nana Foo. Miracle is due to arrive in July.

I’ve been trying to remember how to knit. But what keeps coming to mind is the look on the doctor’s face when she told me I “had a passenger.” This is the same doctor who told me I didn’t have much of a chance to conceive and less to carry full term. I keep remembering how huge I got and how my father would “moo” at me when walked in. I remember how my young husband and I naively took a backgammon board and a deck of cards to the hospital with us to pass time during labor and how I actually punched my doctor (yep, same doc) during labor. It was the only time I’ve ever hit anyone.. I still remember being in awe of my body making the perfect food for my perfect baby.

I can remember specific times and places when people told me: A) my baby looked like Winston Churchill, B) she looked like Alfred Hitchcock, C) I was starving her because all she got was breast milk. Thankfully, I remember my wonderful father-in-law, who was the closest thing to Marcus Welby in real life, telling me to choose one person and one book to listen to and disregard everyone else because everyone would feel free to tell me how to raise my baby. He was right as usual.

I remember playing roll the baby up, roll the baby down and singing, singing, singing to her. Sometimes I sang the books I read to her from about 6 month pregnant on. She never complained.

I remember drawing diagrams explaining how the tiny seed from the daddy beats the odds to hook up with the egg in the mommy and then continue a fantastically real journey from there to birth. And I remember the call from the Kindergarten teacher after she corrected her classmate when he told everyone the stork was going to bring him a baby brother or sister.

I was always in awe of her. I had no business having her. She is too perfect.

And gorgeous! No one has compared her with Winston Churchill for over 30 years. Yet she has been through some things that would give weaker people excuses. Those things have given her strength, grace, beauty and wisdom. And if I were going to grow up, I would want to be like her.

And dang if she’s not fixin’ to be a mom. What do you think about that?

I’ve been thinking about circles within circles within in the Big Circle. And I can draw all the diagrams I want in as much detail as possible and this is still a Miracle any ol’ way you want to define it.

And let me tell you it’s like I won the lottery without a ticket. I’ve been promoted to Queen of the Universe and I absolutely don’t deserve it. I’ve been elected president, and I didn’t even run for office. I won the Oscar and I’ve never even been in a movie.
I am Nana, hear me roar.

I want to thank all the people who helped me achieve this height. Dr. Korte, who got my baby girl here safely; Dr. Chatman, whose skill has helped my baby preserve fertility; my wonderful son-in-law Tim, who probably had a bit to do with this; my baby girl who is absolutely perfect, and Papa God the Universe who brought us all to this place and time, and who continues to make miracles daily.

And from here on, you may call me the Reverend Dr. Nana Foo, the most Blessed Person Alive.

Sunday, January 02, 2011Microfiction Monday #64

Welcome to Microfiction Monday, where a picture paints 140 characters, or even fewer. Here's this week's picture, with my own story for it -- if you've written one, please let Stoney River know. http://www.stonyriver.ie/

The case of the Esaerg Laer, cult of the dyslectic Tucson witches, was solved when Det. Chapeau found this clue at the scene of the crimes.