Finger Dream

Last night I dreamed that the top joint of my left index finger was cut off. The details were fuzzy—but I knew the amputation was unintentional. I found my finger standing upright on the kitchen table. Unperturbed, I sealed the finger in saran wrap and placed it in the refrigerator next to baby’s breast milk. The strangely bloodless stump on my hand I secured with a rubber band from the kitchen junk drawer.

Indistinct, unconnected and disturbing events unfolded.  A week passed. Then I mysteriously managed to severe the remainder of my finger.  

At last I became alarmed. Dialing my doctor, I removed the first segment from of the refrigerator to examine it. I was surprised by its freshness. It looked pink and living. I connected the two segments on the counter top as I waited for my doctor to answer my call. My previous unnatural calm returned as I explained my situation, questioning him in particular about being able to re-attach the finger that had spent a week in the cooler.

Brusquely, he advised me to chuck my finger parts. Although I could re-attach both segments successfully, the surgery would probably damage my lungs. I remember mulling over his advice and coming to the conclusion that my lungs were clearly more vital than my vanity.

Yet, as I examined my left hand (which had miraculously healed), I pictured all the people I knew with missing fingers and shuddered. Sinister unbalanced people lacked digits, like my deranged cousin who blew off two fingers playing with gunpowder. On the bright side, I thought, cartoon characters frequently had only four fingers, and no one seemed to notice, so perhaps no one would notice my missing index finger either.

The next several minutes of my dream were a montage of cartoon characters, fingers aesthetically relocating themselves on my hand, and my formerly intact hand. The internal debate between having an intact or amputated finger circled in my brain: guaranteed health and disfigurement or a lovely hand and lung trouble? Just as I decided to forgo the surgery, I woke up. 

Mmmwwah!

That was a big kiss I'm sending to brotherkurt and ewbliette! Thank you guys for the lovely bottle of red wine you picked up for us on your honeymoon! We opened it last night to celebrate the aggravation of parenthood.

It was exceptionally delicious and refreshingly relaxing! We want to also thank brotherkurt for helping E proofread his resume. Yay! Now if only ewbliette would hurry up and win the lottery she could hire him! We love you guys!

Baby Stuff

Return of the Mommy-Blog! Squirmer missed his morning nap and fussed until he conked out for an extended afternoon nap. Tooth pain was certainly the culprit. His second nap was an Elysian respite for mum and dad. I took this time to relocate his baby play arena in the sunroom by my computer, imagining that he would cry less if I was in full sight.

Anyway, this was a brief and annoying experiment. The acoustics of the sunroom are such that baby seems to be positioned two inches from my ear with a megaphone. I found that each minute in the playpen incrementally boosted by aggravation to an unprecedented level of pissiness. The playpen is back in the library.

The Mystery of Misty's Mishbehavior

Misty has been a bad dog. This past week, her old grass eating habits have reemerged and her barking has been almost unmanageable. In an unprecedented act of rudeness, she left a huge round wet spot in front of the bedroom door.

Usually, doggie transgressions stem from doggie angst. Why would her nerves be a wreck? Is the neighbor’s bloated tabby tomcat taunting her? Are the adolescent boys who peep at me throwing rocks again? Did the blue moon call forth an ancient and eldritch beast that exclusively menaces mongrel Border Collies?

Actually, the truth rather surprised me. Mid-afternoon, I tramped out back to reposition the sprinkler in our overgrown grassy area. A loud electric crackling startled me. It was the kind of loud, threatening noise you would encounter in a digitally re-mastered Frankenstein movie.

It repeated twice before I could pinpoint the source. A trio of roadrunners stalked the south wall. These were not the amiable cheeky sort of roadrunner that would permit an inept coyote to chase them for sport. These were the fierce avian successors of velociraptors, bold and territorial. The dominant male flared his crest and darted towards me audaciously, sizzling like a high voltage wire. Stupefied, I stepped back several paces.

The two smaller birds joined him expectantly, as if a major chase was about to commence. My heart skipped a beat. It was similar to the momentary terror you experience the instant a squirrel unexpectedly snatches a sandwich remnant off your plate at the park. When I recovered, I thought, “Damn! Where’s my camera?”

Of course, by the time I lugged it out, the show was over. The pursuer became the pursued. I captured a fleeting shot of the two smaller birds fleeing across the yard and a multitude of blurry photographs of the roadrunners treed in a mesquite bush. From the relative safety of the mesquite, the dominant male still flared his crest ominously and continued to sputter hostilely. No wonder Misty was freaked out.

Camera shy.

 
I swear he was more sinister in person! You can see a second R.R. blurred in the background.

 

Buttcracks and Bruises!

Back to posting pics. With the advent of hot weather, we've been wanting to introduce our wee one to the pool. So, compliments of Tanya, we are starting with baby steps, or rather a baby pool:




The plumber's butt is pretty obvious, but can you see the constellation of tiny bruises on baby? Much to my horror, the poor little devil has been knocking himself about the head and limbs trying to stand up.


 
Those stars look way too freakin' cheerful.

Sunroom Horrors

“Men should stop fighting amongst themselves and start fighting insects.”

—Biologist Luther Burbank

Spiders are creepy, black widows in particular are sinister, and nothing will whip me into an insecticidal frenzy like a thick, greasy trail of ants. Yet, I have recently become impervious to the horrors of creeping and crawling things. While Fontessa visited us, I spent thirty days sleeping in the sunroom.

The sunroom hosts six oversized and under-insulated windows, a leaky door to the backyard and the grand entrance for all living things with more than two legs—the dog door. The dog door combined with following my mother’s example of shunning pesticides has made our sunroom a resort for the six and eight-legged crowd. I never thought much of the scattered insect carcasses in the sunroom until I began sleeping in the room itself.

When I arose in the mornings, a collection of black, lifeless rice-size bugs speckled the sheets. Initially I was alarmed, assuming the tiny bugs were mouse droppings. But their daily accumulations soon made their appearance mundane.

 

An incident with a scorpion occurred during the full moon. From the corner of my eye, I saw it scrabble from Misty’s water bowl to the middle of the room. I stealthily fetched the dust mop to whisk it safely out the back door, but my efforts were useless. After a brief, squeal-inducing excursion over my left little toe, I mashed it repeatedly before it could scramble for the safety of the adjoining library.

 

The sun spider episode required husband intervention. Sun spiders are big, gangly devils that move like the wind. I’m not certain if they are poisonous, but they certainly look deadly. Anyway, a four inch sun spider zigzagged across the sunroom floor while I tried to coax it out the back door with said dust mop. It whizzed up a wall, I smacked at it and it fell on me. I shrieked. And if sun spiders could shriek, I am certain it shrieked too.

Tennisfiend removed it with a tissue. Brrrr. Another night as I read in bed, a rather largish wolf spider skittered up the side of the bed, over the blanket covering my knees and stopped mid-mattress, as if to contemplate  the mystery of not making me scream aloud. He then dashed away to the wall where he disappeared behind some blinds. I laughed. I was becoming tougher. When he returned three days later for the same sojourn and vanished under the mattress, I rescued the little bugger from certain squashing, liberating him in the garage. Go figure.The above image is from Wayne’s World. Click for a larger image. I dare you.

Gummo

“If you make people think they’re thinking, they’ll love you. But if you really make them think, they’ll hate you.”
—Don Marquis

Odd I should encounter this quote the same day I watched Gummo. Riveted and disturbed by the film, I identified many vignettes from my own life. I suspect this was the director’s point.  I’ve sat in living rooms piled high with unwashed, unwanted clothing. I’ve witnessed troubled youths tormenting animals. I’ve even eaten spaghetti in the bathtub.

I believe most of us could point to multiple scenes (even the disturbing ones), and say “I remember that from my youth.” What crawled under my skin, however, was the director’s skill in making the film so credible. Even the absurd elements fit together smoothly, enhancing the realism of the piece.

So, hey, I liked the movie so I spent some time surfing the net for reviews. I was surprised by the hatred and disgust people had for Gummo. Then while reading a history book later in the evening, I came across the quote above and thought, “Ah-ha!”

Scrutinizing the mundane and pathetic in our lives yields an acknowledgement of the nihilism of our existence. We question God, Humanity and Purpose; a quite unsettling proposition for most. But of course, not for me, the agnostic, who refuses to make any idealistic commitments whatsoever. Does this mean that Gummo only made me think I was thinking?

More Reception Photos...

Look at these two sweethearts! I'm still fiddling with the mountain of pics I took last night, but here is a shot or two.



The bride before the toast. Notice the lovely rose corsage!

Tkil delivering the main toast. I should have asked him for a copy to post for the bride and groom!

Best Friends!!! Much thanks to Food4thoth for the pics.

I do have more pics, I just got to get 'em in shape and on line!

Wedding Reception!!!

"Tee-hee! Photos are silly!"
Whee! Congrats and !!!! More pics and text to follow!
will kill me, since I went for the goofy pic. Forgive me, dude, but you look adorable! Ewbliette and Brotherkurt's reception was a blast! Tennisfiend and I started early with a mid-afternoon visit to show off monster baby. Tkil and Nirikrss were hanging out in the living room, drinking some fine stout and gabbing. TF sat silently,his usual reticent self, while Tkil talked camera tech with me (my brain still feels tiny!). After Ewbliette and Brotherkurt showed off their cake, we took off, ostensibly since baby was fussy, but truthfully since TF is really introverted!
The delicious coconut wedding cake. I must add that the spread of goodies the happy couple put together for their guests was stupendous! A half a vineyard edged the buffet in the dinning room. Beer enough for an Oktoberfest was lined up in coolers in the back yard. And the food! Good Lord! I think I was too focused on the wine to remember... Oh yes, there was food! Ummmm. Chips and, err, BBQ pulled pork sandwiches!!! And, of course yummy wedding cake!
Nirikrss and his Greyhound Escorts. Three of the sweetest doggies ever!
 As we left, Nirikrss took his three lovely greyhounds for a walk in the park adjacent to the Brotherkurt household. I had a chance to visit with his puppies later in the evening, feeding them doggie biscuits I took along for them. BTW, Nirikrss has the thickest, orangest hair I've ever seen!

Hail Storm

I passed a few wonderfully pleasant hours with Ewbliette today, ostensibly to help decorate for tomorrow’s monster wedding reception. Instead, we had an amiable gabfest and I trundled home to spend a quiet evening with Tennisfiend. Baby fell asleep early and easily, so the two of us read drowsily until the weather turned really bad.

I suppose the ordeal originated with sharp, gusting wind. Then again, house-shaking wind is so commonplace; we ignored it. When I heard the first few “pops,” I was curious but unfazed, until I realized what it was—hail! As the pops became bangs, I raced out into the storm to pull my precious SUV into our garage, nearly taking out a portion of wall and barely missing Tennisfiend’s feet.

The instant I turned off the engine, the hail transformed into a solid sheet of water, a heavy and violent deluge. We had only an instant to think of all that needed to be done to rescue our sunroom from an unprecedented flood. TF swiftly sealed the backdoor with duct-tape as I wrangled the industrial mop bucket into position and tossed last weeks flood towels on the floor. Donning my dad’s gortex jacket, TF situated our water transfer pump out the porch window to prevent water from inundating the sunroom via the dog door. I snapped the above picture right before water began to slither in through the back door, despite the duct taping.

Actually, we’ve endured worse downpours. The water only rose two inches above our back door, dampening but not soaking the sunroom. Plus, not a drop seeped in from the dog door. On an even brighter note, I won’t have to water my garden for a week!