Spring Fling

I just returned from Spring Fling. For those of you who don't know, I am friends with some of the sweetest, most fun, crazy ladies in the megaverse. I would rather have a root canal than miss a get together with these gals.

Spring Fling is one of several annual events where we get together with the intention of doing scrapbooking or other similar crafting. Note that I said ‘intention’. Yo Mama is a machine and she actually gets a lot accomplished. I think she completed forty or so scrapbook pages this weekend. Me, not so much, I more or less completed four pages. The artistic process is really complex for me. Besides, to me it is more about the fellowship. Plus, I don’t really plan my projects in advance. To get a lot accomplished, you have to do a lot of planning. And I don’t plan. I am impulsive. Plus, there is food and games and making the rounds to say hello to all the people I only see four or five times a year. Oh, and there is shopping. And talking. And joking.

My friends and I always have some kind of ‘you had to be there’ joke going. Usually, it is some word or phrase. This weekend it was phrases that sound dirty when taken out of context. We had a few belly laughs that left tears streaming down our faces. TSS wrote the phrases on the paper table cloth and we kept them for posterity. Sometimes by midnight we are a little punchy so things that make perfect sense in our heads sound a little raunchy to mere mortals when it comes out of our mouths. But the group generally understands. For better or worse I am listing those phrases.

Here they are in no particular order:

Are babies made with a corner rounder?

OMG it looks like a lizard.

Why don’t you talk to your little friends?

Obviously.

I hate it when he’s snoring in the middle of me.

What have you got in your mouth?

How’s it taste? It’s bitter.

She has bigger ones

They get depressed if they’re not played with.

Did you do him?

He wasn’t hanging around then.

That’d be hard.

That’s not what yo mama said.

I need to make my hole bigger.

Seemed like it was really tight.

That’s the second time I’ve ever done it.

I believe I broke it off.

I’m not comin’.

Yo mama’s not comin’.

That’s what she said.

They’ll come up.

…Humping..down..the..road…

Somebody kill the monkey.

Honey, you’re pumping my gas from now on.

Holy frick-oly.

Tomorrows another joke.

Reading through the list, they don’t seem so funny. But I know most of them nearly made us wet ourselves. Especially, ‘humping down the road’. It was Blondie referring to her son driving down the road with the music turned up loud. We are pretty sure she meant ‘thumping down the road’. But that isn’t what she said.

I didn’t get much sleep over the last three days, but I had enough laughs to get me through life until we all meet again. I love my friends.

Valentine Fantasy - From the Archives

I know St. Valentine's day is long gone and Easter is looming, but I was digging around in the archives and found this little short short story, essay, whatever. There was a contest at a workshop where we were asked to write about our special Valentine. For the record, I didn't win. After you read it you will know why. Keep in mind this is a total fantasy. After you read it, you will know why.

I awoke St. Valentine’s morning to the sound of soothing music and the smell of bacon. Sitting on my bedside table was a tray with fresh squeezed orange juice, bacon, toast and the morning paper opened to the comics. After breakfast in bed my darling led me to the bathroom where the shower was warmed up and waiting for me. Energizing aromatherapy candles were lit on all the ledges. The room basked in a comforting glow.

As I stepped out of the shower I was wrapped in a big fluffy warmed towel. My sweetheart massaged my scalp while he toweled my hair dry. He stood and massaged my shoulders, neck and calves as I put on my makeup and teased my hair. When I was ready to leave he handed me a hot thermos of coffee, a rose and gave me a kiss that curled my toes.

All during the day I received sweet loving email notes from him reminding me not to work late because he had a romantic evening planned. Just after lunch a bouquet of Shasta Daisies arrived with a box of chocolate turtles. Inside the candy box was a gift certificate for a day at the spa.

At the end of the day when I arrived home from work, soothing romantic music was playing. The table was set for a candlelight dinner complete with the good china and linens. There was a bouquet of long stemmed red roses sitting in the center of the table. Rose petals were scattered in a trail from the door to my seat to lead me to a romantic dinner. We dined on perfectly grilled king crab and fist sized shrimp, fresh asparagus and sumptuous home made bread. He had chosen a bottle of wine that perfectly enhanced the flavor of the seafood.

When I couldn’t eat another bite he removed all the dishes and put them in the dishwasher. Then he cleaned the kitchen until it was spotless. As we were leaving the dining room hand in hand, he turned to say, ‘I love you’, but all that came out of his mouth was eeenennntt- eeenennntt- eeenennntt- eeenennntt- eeenennntt. It sounded strangely like my alarm clock……

Is this true? Are you kidding me? This all happened before I woke up.

This is a long boring story about Ty. Don't read it.

I had a Blue Heeler when I was in High School. Her name was Index. Index was the reason I met Ty. Ty isn’t his real name. Ty isn’t the brightest Crayon in the box. In fact, he would probably consider being mentioned here a compliment. Ty has spent his life bouncing from one home to the other of who ever will take him in at the time. He has no ambition and he will never grow up. But he likes Blue Heelers.

One day I had just washed the Oklahoma clay off of my car at the gas station/grocery/auto parts/car wash in our sweet little ‘burb. Index was with me hanging her head out the window while I vacuumed the floor mats. Ty came over from the gas pumps and said, ‘That’s a Blue Heeler.’ (How is that for a pick up line?) Ty had just bought a six pack, so my 18 year old brain started churning. You see, months before I turned 18, Oklahoma liquor laws changed from a minimum purchase age of 18 to 21. And most establishments for consuming illicit beverages while dancing and general meat marketing weren’t with the program yet. If you were with someone who had the proper documentation you could get your 18 year old butt past the bouncer.

So that is the why I ended up dating Ty. He got me into bars.

This time period was one of the few that I know of in Ty’s life when he was actually paying rent. He had a roommate that I knew, but never once saw during the time they split the rent. I left to spend Christmas break in STL and when I came home Ty was living with his mother. Actually, Ty was in the hospital, with a broken arm, broken leg and no front teeth. He had gone all UFC in his truck with a telephone pole. And lost. His story was that a Blue Heeler ran out in front of him.

Much later, I found out the real story. I actually had to piece some of it together because it came through different sources. One of those sources was on the Tulsa fire department. While I was gone, Ty picked up a woman in a bar and took her home. Only she didn’t want him to spend the night and sent him packing. He was parked in a neighborhood with his truck running and was passed out. The why of the next part is fuzzy, but according to Ty the TPD came by and made him leave. He had been passed out drunk but somehow convinced them to not haul him in and they let him drive away. That is the fuzzy part, I find that hard to believe now, but I was quite gullible in those days. And things were different back then. Not better, not worse, just different. So Ty drove off and hit a telephone pole before he got home; totaled his truck and wrecked his body.

Did you miss the part where technically he was cheating on me? I did for a while. But I wasn’t that emotionally attached to him and he got me into bars. Oh and technically, I cheated on him too. My aunt introduced me to a guy in STL and I went bowling with him while I was out of town. He played in bowling tournaments. He had 300, 299 & 298 rings, was an ace pitcher on his school’s baseball team, and he was funny. Oh come on, cut me some slack. I was 18. And my supposed boyfriend was picking up women in bars and taking them home.

While Ty was recuperating from the wreck, we didn’t go to bars. Not going out probably would have doomed our relationship, but I didn’t have anything else going on at the time other than my part time job. So I continued to hang out and keep Ty company when I could. Then Valentine’s day rolled around. An 18 year old girl would die (in those days, at least in my world) if she didn’t have a date on Valentine’s day. So Ty was handy. Except that he bought me a ring. An engagement ring. A tiny little dime store diamond chip. You had to have a magnifying glass to see the stone. And I didn’t get the enormity of it at first. I just thought it was cool being engaged to a guy who was out of school and could get me into bars. Then he got really possessive, and pushy, and bossy, and was getting on my nerves at times. But he could get me into bars and I was going off to college soon.

One day he was at my house while I was getting ready to go out. When I came in from the bathroom, he had a strange look on his face. He was sitting on my bed with my text books spread around him and a letter in his hand. He had gone through all my books and notes. The letter had been tucked in my French book. It was from the guy I met in STL. Luckily, the letter wasn’t dated, so I just told him it was old and he believed me. But he became more controlling. He wanted to know what I was doing every minute of every day. At first, I didn’t recognize the pattern. But explaining myself all the time quickly got old. I knew where he was because he wasn’t very mobile with a broken arm, broken leg and no wheels. To justify his tyranny, I just figured it was because he couldn’t get out much and was bored.

I started applying to colleges. My friend and I decided to be roomies at a college 50 miles away. We scheduled a visit to tour the school and dorms. Ty insisted on going with us. He waited in the car since he couldn’t keep up with us on crutches. While my friend and I were talking to the advisor, we mentioned that my boyfriend was waiting. She said, ‘You mean you brought your own meat?’. She was incredulous. And bells started ringing in my head. To make matters worse, later that weekend, Ty mentioned that he wanted to get married before I left for college. I began to wonder if I wanted to get married at all. But for now, I would just keep on making my daily report of all my activities because a big concert was coming up at my favorite bar.

About that time, Ty had the cast removed from his leg and went to buy a new truck. He came home from truck shopping and said he couldn’t get approved for a loan because he had an outstanding debt on his credit report. The debt was from a rent to own store where he had bought a very nice, very expensive component stereo. He had the speakers in his room at his mother’s house, but there was no stereo. We went to talk to the people at the store. They told us that they would take the stereo back, but he would still owe for the interest. He almost had the unit paid off when he quit making payments. But the interest had continued to compound. 

Against my better judgment and absolutely without telling my parents, I took money out of my savings account and wrote a check to pay off the stereo and the interest. But the condition was that the stereo stayed in my possession. Only we had to actually gain possession of the stereo first. There were pieces of that stereo all over our little ‘burb. Basically, everywhere that he had lived in the last two years he had left part of the unit behind. The speakers were at his mom’s. A couple he had lived with had the cabinet. They had it stored in their garage so they were glad to have it and all of his other possessions out of their hair. His former roommate had the amplifier. He was using it so he wasn’t too happy about giving it up. We went several places gathering various pieces and delivered them to my room at my parent’s house.

And Ty still couldn’t get a loan. But a guy Ty knew took pity on him and sold him an old truck with the understanding that Ty would pay for the truck with his first few paychecks when he returned to work. And what did Ty do with his first paycheck after returning to work? Why I’m glad you asked. He bought a freaking new set of wheels (which required new tires). Hopefully, he didn’t think I would pony up the money for the truck because I was about as vested in that relationship as I was going to get. And besides, I had plans to fly to STL for a long weekend.

I left for STL, giving Ty some hair-brained excuse. I had family there so going for a visit wasn’t too off the wall. Really, I don’t remember the exact details of the tall tale I wove. My mom knew where I was going and why. For several months I had been corresponding with the guy I met in STL. He asked me to go to his Sr. Prom with him and sent me a plane ticket. I took a formal I borrowed from my cousin and Mom dropped me off at the airport. But then, after the prom I didn’t get on the plane to come home. I changed my tickets and called my Mom to inform her that I was staying another night. And she informed me that Ty was at the Tulsa airport checking every flight from STL wondering when I was going to get back. I told her when I would get into Tulsa and begged her to come pick me up herself. She didn’t. She was mad. First of all, she didn’t much like Ty. Second of all, she didn’t approve of me flying off to go to the prom with another guy when I was supposedly engaged. We had some real knock down drag out fights over my relationship with Ty. And in the final loud exchange I yelled, ‘You are just trying to break us up.’ After that she never really harassed me much about Ty. I thought that she had realized the error of trying to run my 18 year old life. Or maybe I was just relieved to not have her harassing me anymore. Or maybe that would have required introspection and I didn’t give it any thought at all. Years later, Mom told me she realized in that exchange that I was not really into the relationship and if she backed off it would burn itself out.

But that didn’t stop good old Mom from getting in her punches when she had a golden opportunity. For example, when it came time to pick me up at the airport. Ty called her wanting to know when my plane was due. She told him and he volunteered to pick me up. My dearly beloved mother, knowing where I had been and that I would be carrying a huge formal, complete with a cancan slip, let him pick me up. Little did she know, it was worse than she imagined. When my aunt, uncle and the STL guy dropped me at the gate I was very choked up. I didn’t want to go back home and be controlled and harassed and have to face my future. So I got on the plane with tears streaming down my face and sobbed all the way back to the land of the red man. I stepped off the plane all puffy eyed and red nosed expecting a big hug from my mom, to see Ty standing there leaned against the wall. I still wonder now and then what the people on that plane thought. If they saw me get on the plane hugging and kissing one young man, noticed that I sobbed through the whole flight, then noticed that I stepped off the plane to meet another man, what did they think? It wasn’t too hard to figure out.

I said something like, ‘What are you doing here?’ Wow. Fine how do you do. And it made him suspicious. He began scolding me for staying a day longer than I’d planned. Then HE NOTICED THE DRESS. And I was quick. Despite the tears and the looming future and the hours of trying to figure out how to gracefully get out of my current predicament and grieving my loss of access to the bars, I was able to quickly come up with another convincing tall tale. I told him my aunt loaned me the dress to wear to my prom; the prom which he would escort me to in a couple of weeks. AND HE BOUGHT IT. And I didn’t care at that moment if he believed me or not. I think that made it more convincing.

The whole incident made Ty even more controlling. But the straw that broke the camel’s back came from a student teacher in my business class. She showed up in class a couple of weeks later sporting an enormous chunk of compressed carbon on her left ring finger. The thing was so big and bright that it blinded you if it reflected light toward you. Maybe she had the ring for a while and I just noticed it. But on that day she was standing right in front of my desk lecturing and nearly put my eyes out. I kept looking at her ring, then down to the desk to my own left hand. And back at her ring, then down to mine again. It suddenly occurred to me that comparison would represent my entire life if I didn’t wake up and get off the train to disaster. I suddenly recalled the Monty Python movie I had seen a couple of years earlier. ‘The Meaning of Life’. The scene of the woman in the drab dress and apron standing at the sink scrubbing dishes, popping out one kid after the other made me throw up a little in my throat as I saw myself in her shoes. But the prom was that weekend and I wasn’t going to break up with Ty and be without a date.

As I was walking down the muddy clay road in my borrowed formal after the prom, I knew I would have been better off had I been dateless that night. You see Ty was a little drunk on the way home from prom. It was raining and he slid off the road and got the borrowed truck he was driving stuck. He called the owner of the truck who came and pulled the truck out of the ditch. I had already walked the rest of the way home. Furious. I avoided him for a few days then I gave him the pathetic little ring back. I told him something to the effect that I was going to college, leaving town and I didn’t see him in my future. There were bigger things on my horizon than him, and I was tired of having to tell him what I was doing every second of every day.

A few days later, all in the same week, the place I worked went out of business, I somehow ended up going out with Niner, an on again off again guy, and blew my car up. Had I known then what I know now about Niner, I would have stayed around to see where that took me. At any rate, Ty called me and said he wanted his stereo back. I told him he could have the stereo if he paid me back the money I spent to get the debt off his record and if he hauled the carcass of my car to the junk yard. That was the last I saw or heard of him for a very long time.

And some people are like the proverbial bad penny. They keep popping back into your life when you least expect it.

After I came back from being a party girl for three years in STL, Ty somehow found out I was back in town. When he called, I had been in bed for over a week with a devastating intestinal virus. It attacked me on the second day of a new job and landed me in not one, but two emergency rooms. For two weeks, my diet consisted of soda crackers and 7-UP. I told him as much when he called. But he wanted to take me out to a steak dinner. I tried letting him down nicely, but he persisted. So I ended up being very mean to get the point across that not only was I too ill to leave the house, but he was the last guy on earth I wanted to date. I’m still confused about why he would call me out of the blue when I had so acutely, definitely, absolutely, unequivocally, specifically, unmistakably told him to hit the highway and never come back. AND THEN I LEFT TOWN. I know it sounds cruel, but he really had a hard time getting the point.

And like the bad penny, Ty popped up recently. Not long ago my s-Dad told me Ty said hello. It seems that Ty is crashing at the home of my s-uncle. He allegedly got fired from his job for fighting with a co-worker that was playing music that annoyed Ty. Really? And sadly, Ty is really good at what he does for a living. So to get fired for doing something so stupid….

I didn’t even send greetings back his way. I just said, ‘Oh, good grief.’

Look Who Came for Dinner

I heard this guy outside my window before daybreak this morning. He really had a lot to crow about, I suppose. There were 13 hens with him. That is twice the size of his harem last year. By the time I was ready for work they had wondered down by the dam, so I took my camera and put on the long lense. The old fella was very cooperative, strutting and fanning his tail. He even turned when I said, 'Okay fella, turn around for me.' It could have been that he was turning to the hen that just waddled by, but I choose to think old Tom was posing for me.

Keep in mind that I live in the middle of town, spitting distance from the mall. But this old guy is smart. He knows you can't fire a shotgun in the city limits. So he struts around on my lake like he owns the place, thumbing his snoot at us mere mortals. And he is much bigger than he was last year. Do turkeys eat Yorkies?

 I think I will go make a turkey sandwich for lunch.

My Extreme Happiness

Emotionally speaking, the last two weeks have been deep dark days of depression for me. I was supposed to get a week off of work. But I couldn’t take the time until I had a certain project completed, and the time off had an expiration date. I won’t bore you with the details of my work that makes even me flatline. But I had a show stopper problem that I just couldn’t figure out. I spent days testing things to try and figure it out. One day was so long that I put 414 hours on my time entry. (A typo. It was supposed to be 4 hours 14 minutes.) At any rate, the whole thing wrecked me. In. Every. Way.

During this time, I kept loosing things. It was very disconcerting. I had a complete melt down last weekend because I couldn’t find the pruning shears. They are ALWAYS hanging on a hook in the shed. They weren’t hanging on the hook and I didn’t find them even after tearing everything apart in the shed and garage. Of course you know where this is going…. iWof used them last.

But the most perplexing, upsetting, expensive thing I lost during these dark days was my Extreme Happiness. (Irony, anyone?) This is, of course, a set of tropical acrylic stamps. I was totally upset and perplexed. I tore through every bit of my extensive collection of scrapbooking supplies looking for that stamp set. Twice. My poor friends had to listen to me lamenting about it numerous times.

And I was a wreck, but I had to soldier on.

Finally, on Friday, I found the problem that was holding up my project at work, and my universe suddenly realigned. Things are moving forward. The sun came out. I slept for 14 hours straight.

Since Mike’s was having a big sale on scrapbook storage, I decided to reorganize a bit. There is a tall shelf in front of my window in my studio and it is blocking all of that beautiful sunshine. So, it had to go and because of the sale, the items I needed to reorganize were a reasonable price.

I put together all of the RTA storage cubes. Then I pulled everything out into the middle of the room, moved the shelf, and started putting everything back in the new storage pieces. In a tub full of miscellaneous crap, I found my Extreme Happiness. If any of you know how it got there, please let me know.

Cause and Effect

This photo got me in a lot of trouble. First of all, what was I thinking? I had it enlarged and displayed on my dresser for Heaven's sake. Okay, let me go on record as saying, I never one single time before the age of 32 thought out cause and effect for longer than 15 minutes into the future. What I'm saying is: I'm impulsive. Yep, there I said it, I feel better now. Oh, I would think about things like, 'if I don't get gas now I will run out on the way home'. But I never ever thought about how any action, thought or deed or lack of those things would affect anything in my future beyond Saturday night. Honestly. My future never once occurred to me prior to the Bellagio incident. (Another story, another time.)

But for now, let me explain this photo: First of all, my folks were out of town. I have no earthly idea where they had gone. But where ever they were, I didn't want to be. At the time, hanging with the parental units was at the top of my list of things that constituted bloody torture. Let me go on record as saying that the parental units are way more cool now than they were in those days. <LOL?> At any rate, after the football game a bunch of my band geek friends got wind that a party zone was in the vicinity. I'm sure it had nothing to do with somebody standing on a chair yelling PARRRRRRR-TY.

One of my friends took the photo with the yearbook staff 35mm. The other details are rather fuzzy. It wasn't really a wild and crazy party unless you count banging out 'Jump' on the piano and everyone singing David Lee Roth songs at the top of their lungs.

This was the first of many Senior year, the parents are gone, parties. I used to love to regale the tales to my Mom, long after I left home. The shock value was priceless. Anyway, she knew about that particular party, because the evidence was sitting on my dresser. And man did she ever let me have it. After that, I learned to do a better job of hiding the evidence.

Digging in the Archives Again

I’ve been digging around in my digital vault again. There is a lot of material that I have drummed out of my fingertips, but never had the courage to post. My Mom and a few of my friends know that I like to hear myself write. They keep encouraging me to post my blogs instead of tucking them safely away in my hard drive. But the problem with being published is that people actually read what you have written. I have big problems with letting people actually READ what I have written. And even though I sometimes feel like I am walking the plank when I post a composition, I am posting when I have something to say that might not make your eyes glaze over too badly.

So, anyway, I was digging around looking at stuff in my short lived digital journal. Now that Spring is on the horizon, it is easy to wax nostalgic about Winter. The following was written in January 2009. I hope it doesn’t put you to sleep.

Before I get started, I should probably explain the picture. That was my first car. You will read a little about it below. My friend took the picture standing on the roof of my folk's garage. That car was amphibious. I kid you not. But that is a story for another day when I’ve had a chance to make sure Mom has had enough to drink before she sees it.


They say this is the coldest winter since 1985. I remember that winter. That winter I came home from my after school job one day and nobody was home. We heated with wood. The fire was out. I burned the entire Tulsa phone book, a page at a time, trying to get a fire going. My efforts were unrewarded. My folks came home to find me in bed wearing long-johns, a robe, and down coat; under an electric blanket, with every other blanket in the house covering me. Turned out I was trying to start the fire with wet kindling.

That was the winter I had no defroster in my car because the heater core leaked. I learned the surest way to get my car fixed was to pull into the garage when my folks were gone and start dismantling. Once the pieces were scattered over both stalls, the folks had to help me fix it in order to park their cars inside. Of course that old car was uncomplicated. It could be repaired with duct tape and bailing wire.

Yes, that winter was cold. My mom bought me tires for Christmas that year. The guys at the tire shop had a tough time getting the equipment thawed enough to mount the tires. The roads were icy, but I don't remember it slowing me down one bit.

My folks had a three-wheeler. (Remember those?) I had the best old time screaming around on the snow and ice. At the end of the day my arms would be unbearably sore. But the next chance I got, I would be out there again, riding full throttle until I ran out of gas and had to push the bike home. In those days I was happiest when I had the wind in my hair. Going fast, spinning, jumping, climbing, riding, all made me feel alive.

But it was cold. We had a paradise fish and the water in his bowl froze over. It didn't bother him, he hibernated. I worked at a pet shop and somebody returned him because he was mean to the other fish in their aquarium. He couldn't be returned to the general population in the store because he would contaminate the store's tanks. They were going to flush him, so I brought him home. I came home with a fish and a jar of food. No fish bowl. I guess I thought he could live in a Mason jar. Likely, I didn't think about it at all.

He had a lot of personality for a fish. He was always jumping. I taught him to jump up and take a flake of food from my finger. But he was always jumping out of his bowl. Finally, Mom converted a unused terrarium into a fish bowl. It had a tapered neck and he couldn't jump out. Anyway, he didn't do any jumping when his bowl had a layer of ice on it.

And like all winters, that long, cold winter finally met with the inevitable Spring. So shall this one. These short dreary days will give way to tumultuous pre-Spring and finally full blown Spring with sunshine and blossoms and warmth.

From the Archives - The Vampire Bat-like Moth Adventure

Last night I was sitting in the recliner reading when this BAT came flying in from the back of the house. It buzzed around my head and up around the light and was banging off the walls. I got all excited and hollered for iWof to come save me. He yelled, ‘what’s wrong?’ Of course he won’t get up from his game for just ANY minor emergency. There has to be a severed limb and blood. I screamed, ‘There is something huge flying around in here.’ Of course he thought there must be a gnat or something flying through the house. I was sure it was a vampire bat. I just knew the thing was going to land on me and bite my neck. (Did I mention that I was reading a vampire romance?)

As iWof leisurely strolled down the hall, the ‘creature’ (for lack of a better word) landed on a pillar candle sitting on the hearth. The pillar is about 6 inches tall and this thing stretched from the top to the bottom. Now that I got a good look at it, I decided it looks like an enormous moth. I’ve never seen a moth that big. It was black with gray spots. iWof, my brave knight, went over to get a closer look. Meanwhile, I am cowering in the recliner with my legs tucked under me and a throw wrapped around my throat. (I still was not convinced it wasn’t going to turn into a tall dark hunka burning love with a widow’s peak; that wanted to bite my neck.)

iWof startled the ‘creature’ and it flew up and landed inside the light. We’re talking 100 watt bulbs. I thought it was toast. But iWof got a step stool then reached up and flushed it out. It was flying around crashing into things again so we opened the door hoping it will fly out. iWof was trying to bat it out the door. He looked like a basket ball player hopping around trying to block the 3 pointer. Then the darn thing flew into the kitchen. (See, I KNEW it was hungry.) Obviously this is a job for a brave female. Besides, I don’t like the door standing open. I’m afraid a snake will crawl in if you leave the door open. Ok, I admit it, I am more afraid of snakes than vampire bat-like moths.

So I cautiously unwrapped the blanket from around my neck, unfolded my wobbly legs and went into the utility room to retrieve the fly swat. (I am certain that this ‘creature’ took one look at my piddly swatter and laughed his Texas sized butt off.) At any rate I started swatting like Phil Hughes. I’m fairly certain I heard moth-like laughter as he darted and weaved around me. And iWof said the words that made me wonder if he had gone soft liberal on me… ‘Don’t kill it.’

Don’t kill it? It’s as big as my dog. It probably craps like a goose. What? Does he think we NEED another pet? So, I said, ‘Whaddya mean don’t kill it’? He said, ‘Let’s just try and get it outside.’ What? So it can eat the siding off the house? Okay, we need a plan. That is when I realized that Zoey headed for the hills as soon as I started swinging the swatter. (I don’t know why she is afraid of fly swatters, she has never been hit with one.) But Chloe, my fierce little 4 pound warrior, was trying her best to protect me from the flying beastie. Every time it dipped low she was snapping, snarling and giving it her best shot.

While iWof was running from one side of the room to the other chasing the beggar, I stopped and looked around. What do you do when you have a 747 flying around your kitchen? Ahhhhaaa… You NET it. I don’t have a net. But I spied my jacket laying on the back of the chair. So I backed away into the corner hunkered down and said, ‘Ah iWof. Maybe you should grab my jacket and try to catch it with the jacket.’

On the next circuit, iWof reached up and nabbed the flying fangster with the jacket. I ran over and opened the door which had been closed at some point. iWof carried the jacket encased wooly mammoth outside. When he opened the jacket he had to kinda shake it to get the ‘creature’ to let go. (I fully expect to have a bowling ball size hole in the back of my garment.) But alas, the creature flew off into the wind.

It may have been just my imagination, but I was pretty sure I heard an eerie chuckle and the dark sinister words…’I’ll be back for you, my pretty.’