7:17 PM |
My house has had many incarnations. It was originally built in the 18th century by a family by the name of Weed. In the 1950's, what was left of the brick building was razed almost to the springhouse and a concrete block hunting box was built. It became an evergreen nursery. The owners' name was Bloom. For a gardener like me, moving from the Weeds to the Blooms was a happy omen. Before I bought the house, now called Fernwood, it had been adapted by a connoisseur of fine Early American furniture to be a gallery for his pieces. He lived like we all wished we did, with only a few pieces of furniture, a few pieces of clothing, and blissful calm.
This remarkable man added a modest kitchen, and scoured New England for an authentic 18th Century door. Another one was sourced for the front of the house. Both have big brass and iron lock boxes with ten inch keys, the ones that look like drawings of keys. When I first moved in, I'd lock the door and tuck the key into the car console, feeling very smug about living in such a manner. Over time, it began to be a pain, and I was afraid I'd lose it. What locksmith could take care of that? And the horror of breaking through the door. But that was before I figured out that I never had to lock it anyhow. Now I lock the door when I'll be away for longer than a few days. The key gets stuck up on the beam of the overhang at the entrance. I have to stay inside to reach it because the kitchen floor is about six inches higher than the lawn, and that gives me almost the height I need. The problem is, I have to reach not only up, but out. I often stumble, and am glad it isn't on my face.
Today was to be the big day. Woody was coming home with me. We have six inches of slush on the ground. My driveway is gravel, and the ground is both saturated and frozen. As you approach the road, there is a swoopy lip at the top of the hill. You can't gain momentum and blow through it because you can't see the traffic coming in either direction, not that there's any traffic, but just in case.
I tried and tried and tried. I tried first gear. I tried four-wheel in my pickup. As I would get to the top, the vehicles had minds of their own, and shimmied from side to side. So, reverse. Well, that's just as bad, so now I'm stuck partially down my driveway with stone walls on either side of me. I tried to just put it in neutral and let it slide down, but the slush held it in, and the progress was only to fishtail. I became a prisoner in my own driveway.
I was afraid to leave the car there because it's getting colder and all the ruts will ice over. Slowly, slowly I backed down, with literally inches between the side doors and the stone walls. Then I had to unpack the car and bring it all inside. Well, to bring it inside, I had to reach the key, and as I toppled over, all my things went into, you guessed it, six inches of white frozen Margarita.
I'm pissed, and I miss Woody, and I miss my imaginary boyfriend.
Brad is getting dressed! He may meet me along the way, but if he's not finished, I may wait.
Oh, I ache for you, my imaginary boyfriend!
And I'm not forwarding my mail. Where would I forward it anyhow?
If you were alive in the late 1950's or early 1960's, you no doubt know Rocky and Bullwinkle. Did you know that the Wilmington, Delaware minor league baseball team is called the Blue Rocks, and their mascot is Rocky Bluewinkle? At minor league games you can run around with your head on a bat and win a two-liter bottle of Coke. Ahem, back to the subject.
The moose and the squirrel were of vast entertainment value, and Boris and Natasha dastardly, but I always loved Fractured Fairy Tales best. At the very end of each one, a little man with a broom swept up the shards from the tale that was fractured.
While the fairytales were based on the classics, the characters were something altogether different. How about Wolfenpickle in Goldilocks? Fairy Godmouse in Jack and the Beanstalk? Kyle Clod in The Princess and the Pea? J. Quincy Flogg in Pinocchio? I didn't exactly remember these. They're from The Big Cartoon Database. But I know that I loved them.
I was watching Futurama one day, and I noticed that the voices were like FF's. The drawing was like Futurama. The plot lines were sometimes like FF's. Hmmmm... Ya think Matt Groening was born in the 50's?
Here's Aladdin's Friendly Lamp-O-Rama.
See? Rub me and get a surprise, the lamp said, and he got a surprise. Jeanie is just like Leela. Aladdin's just like.. you figure it out. And brassiere, uh, husseir, uh, middle eastern guy.
The moose and the squirrel were of vast entertainment value, and Boris and Natasha dastardly, but I always loved Fractured Fairy Tales best. At the very end of each one, a little man with a broom swept up the shards from the tale that was fractured.
While the fairytales were based on the classics, the characters were something altogether different. How about Wolfenpickle in Goldilocks? Fairy Godmouse in Jack and the Beanstalk? Kyle Clod in The Princess and the Pea? J. Quincy Flogg in Pinocchio? I didn't exactly remember these. They're from The Big Cartoon Database. But I know that I loved them.
I was watching Futurama one day, and I noticed that the voices were like FF's. The drawing was like Futurama. The plot lines were sometimes like FF's. Hmmmm... Ya think Matt Groening was born in the 50's?
Here's Aladdin's Friendly Lamp-O-Rama.
See? Rub me and get a surprise, the lamp said, and he got a surprise. Jeanie is just like Leela. Aladdin's just like.. you figure it out. And brassiere, uh, husseir, uh, middle eastern guy.
In 1976, I went to Dylan's Rolling Thunder Review in Tampa, Florida. I can't remember too much about it, though. I was 17, and my sister was 13. She and her friends were the ones that planned the outing. I suppose they wanted me to go because I was old enough to drive. Well, my little sister gave me my first LSD. Okay, this was in Florida, and we certainly had more than our share of drugs, but it really only got bad with coke in the 1980's.
In 2006, I took my son to his first concert, The Stones A Bigger Bang. He was 13. The tickets were $950 apiece, face value. We bought t-shirts and blinky tongue pins. He wanted to hear Paint It Black because his school hockey team always came out on the ice to it. We left before Satisfaction because he was too tired, according to him, to experience the rest. I heard it from the parking lot. And we talk about how kids grow up too fast these days. Thirty years ago, we did LSD with our friends. Four years ago, my son went to a concert with his mother. At least he wasn't planning a Columbine.
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