Failed Ambitions

I recently stumbled across a couple of cutsie blogs I'm embarrassed to admit I like.
http://icanhascheezburger.com/ and http://lolsecretz.blogspot.com/

I sent in a lolcat to "I Can Has Cheezburger ."
They didn't publish it.

Pout.

Then I sent this to "lolsecretz. "
They didn't publish it.

Pout. Pout!

Fortunately I didn't tell Sachi, so she's not pouting too.

Where Have All the Earthworms Gone?

When I was a kid, I loved warm rainy days.

My sibs and I had bright yellow slickers and black rubber boots. We would march through the puddles -- Splash! Splash! Splash! Worms came out of their holes and crawled all over the grass and sidewalks,

We were great worm collectors. We filled the pockets of our slickers to overflowing with long, squirmy, slimy earthworms. If our hands got too gooey, we wiped them in the wet grass then caught more worms.

When our pockets were full we ran home to our back door and yelled for Mom. She would come to the door and admire our oozing wads of worms. She would tell us in a delighted voice how proud she was of us and how wonderful worms were for the garden. "Now go put them in the garden," she would say. We scampered back to the garden and scattered our worms thither and yon. We were firmly convinced that nothing would grow in the garden without our worms.

One magnificently rainy morning, when my brother was in the first grade, he collected both pockets full of fat, juicy earthworms on the way to school. As a third grader, I was more sophisticated and saved my worm collecting efforts for the way home since I knew worms would stiffen up and die if you left them in your pockets all day.

My brother dearly loved his teacher and, when he saw her standing in the hall next to the classroom door, he was inspired. He ran up to her with his freckled face aglow.

"Hold out your hands and close your eyes," he said, "I have a surprise for you!"

She smiled and did as he asked.

My brother dug deep into his two bulging pockets and dredged up the biggest handfuls of wriggling worms that a first grader could manage. He deposited this wonderful gift into his teacher's cupped hands.

It was not what she was expecting.

She flung up her hands and let out a shriek that shattered every eardrum in the school. Worms splattered against the walls, ceiling, floor and not a few students.

She was making frantic panting noises and shaking her hands when she looked down and saw my brother's face. He was devastated. His lower lip was trembling and tears spilled from his eyes.

"But Mommy likes worms," he sobbed.

She bent down and hugged him.

"So do I," she said, "I just need to know when I'm getting a handful.

"Thank you for the present."

All the kids in the hall got to spend the first few minutes of the school day picking worms off the walls and each other. We took them outside and put them into the shrubbery around the school "where they would do the most good."

Now-a-days when it rains, the worms don't come out like they did when I was a kid. Oh, sure, you see a few, but nothing like it used to be. There aren't as many butterflies either. Or frogs and toads.

I miss the creepy crawlies. I wish people would stop polluting the earth, air and water so the bugs, amphibians, snakes and all the little wildlife that so delighted me as a child could come back. We need them to keep our planet and our souls healthy.

P.S. One of the most fun parts about rainy worm days was chasing Cindy Kraschenko. She screamed and danced and dodged better than anyone when we threw worms at her. She deserved it too, she was a snotty, superior kid -- really.

Stupid Human

Sachi wonders why the heck I haven't gone to bed yet. Don't I know she's ready to snuggle up?

Searching For Content

Sometimes coming up with something to write about can be a challenge. I have a file on my hard drive called "BlogTopicIdeas." Tonight I opened it.

• The Y chromosome -- Did it June 19, though there's enough material there to write a novel.
• The joyous teenager with the bouncing bosom -- Hmm, that's people watching like last night's blog.
• Rock pockets and carbon monoxide -- Don't remember the carbon monoxide part of this thought.
• Cotton bras and shirt wrinkles Did you ever have one of those "well, duh" epiphanies? --Been there, done that -- March 29
• Eating weird stuff -- March 25th
• Katherine Hepburn & Mae West -- February 7 & 8
• Trying to kill the spouse -- I think I'll save this one for later -- let you wonder just how I tried to off him.
• Loaning books -- A-ha! I've got a limerick for this one.

If you're ever so dumb as to lend
Your favorite rare book to a friend
He'll move out of town
That dirty low down
And you'll lose book and friend in the end.

Success! I knew that list was a good idea. Better get busy thinking up and writing down some more emergency ideas.

People Watching

I love to watch people, always have. Sometimes I wonder if it's polite. I wouldn't particularly want someone watching me. I can't help it, though, I have eyes and they see things. I watch animals too. And plants. And clouds. Pretty much anything except sports. It's the way I am.

The fascinating thing about watching people is speculating about the untold story. There are undoubtedly perfectly mundane reasons for the things they do, but I'm not cognizant, so I have to make it up.

Grocery store checkout lines can be fascinating. I always look at what the other people are buying. Why was the lady in front of me getting a cart stacked full of Cheerios and Cap'n Crunch -- nothing else, but probably all the Cheerios and Cap'n Crunch that were on the shelf. I suppose it's a better buy than a cart full of Cap'n Crunch and Froot Loops, but why so many boxes of cereal? Who is she feeding it to? Will she come back later for a cart of Sugar Smacks and Corn Chex?

(And as an aside, what the heck is Cap'n Crunch made of anyway? I'm sure it's nothing organic.)

The guy who bought eight bags of marshmallows and a tube of Bengay had me speculating for days. Good thing Homeland Security hasn't instituted the Thought Police yet. I have no terrorist leanings, but I will admit to having a rather warped sense of humor; they would probably arrest me on general principles.

A man was standing at a bus stop the other day wearing an orange vest and holding a stick that was about twelve feet long with a ring on the end of it. He was sweeping the stick through the air, tapping the butt of it on the ground, gesticulating as if he was leading an invisible orchestra. He wasn't part of a surveying team, the stick was too long and there was no second guy peering through the little telescope thingie. Would the bus driver let him board with that long stick? Was he even waiting for a bus? Would some road rage prone driver take offense and get out to wrap the stick around the guy's neck?

I look at tattoos and piercings, at clothing and hair. My feeling is that if someone paints their hair bright pink and has it standing out in spikes all over their head it's because they want to be looked at. Ditto to women in clothes cut down to there and up to here. It's meant to attract eyes. Surely it would disappoint them terribly if no one looked.

Juxtapositions can be imagination titillating too. This is one of my favorites.

How did the angry knights end up in the same field as the oblivious young lovers? Will the lovers realize they're in danger before the knights go medieval on them? The lovers can likely run faster than the guys weighted down with armor, but what if there are more warriors waiting to pounce?

How can I not watch people and ask the ridiculous questions? It's so much fun.

Grace

Because of the mess with the house remodeling, it's been two years since my last trip back to North Carolina, so I want to see everyone. The logistics are getting complicated. It's a good thing the Engineer never comes along with me on these trips, it would be pure torture for him.

Chapel Hill is going to be hard. One of my favorite, long-time friends lived there, but she died a few months ago. There's going to be a big hole in the heart of my Chapel Hill visit. My biggest regret in not making the trip last year was not getting to see Grace before she died.

Grace and I took each other under our wings when we first met. I was working for a business services company and hired Grace to answer phones during the night shift. She was a widow with MS and couldn't get out to work a regular job. We hit it off at the first meeting.

I never knew how old Grace was, but I do know she was a modern career girl in New York City during World War II and that she married an older man after the war and traveled throughout Europe with him working for "Stars and Stripes." Her stories of those halcyon days were fascinating.

She shared her calm acceptance of what life hands you and her wisdom with me. I brought her produce from my garden, caught her parakeet when it got behind her dryer and pumped up the tires on her wheelchair.

Grace was a trooper. She lived in her own one bedroom condo and was fiercely independent. She greeted any knock at her door or phone call with a cheery, "Hello, hello-oh!" Living in Europe had given her cosmopolitan tastes in food. She introduced me to quite a few new dishes. For many years, she would get on her electric wheelchair and go to the grocery store, bringing her groceries home in the back basket.

The first trip when she got the electric chair was to the drivers' licence bureau. She figured if she was going to drive it on the street, she was going to do it legally. She threw the whole office for a loop, but they consulted the codes and found out that she was indeed eligible to get a licence to drive it. They set up orange traffic cones in the parking lot and had her run the slalom - which she did in grand style. It was the first driver's licence she'd ever had.

Her last trip to the grocery store, one of her wheels hit a soft spot on the shoulder of the road. She tipped over and split her scalp open. Head wounds bleed like they are competing in an Olympic event, so she was soon blood soaked. She lay there pinned under her wheelchair, covered with blood for around a half an hour as cars whizzed by, ignoring her. Being Grace, she never shouted or begged for help, she just waited patiently until a city utility truck stopped. The guys put her in the front seat, pitched the wheelchair in the back and took her to the hospital.

I suspect that the only reason I found out about her misadventure was that the hospital refused to release her unless someone came to picked her up and sign for her and promised to stay with her overnight to watch for signs of a concussion. I was honored to be the person she chose to bail her out of the joint.

After her accident she took the city handicapped transport, but eventually became unable to do that as her condition deteriorated. She lost both breasts to cancer, which made it tough to wheel her inside chair, but she never asked for help.

After I married the Engineer and moved to Utah, I returned to North Carolina every fall and always went to Chapel Hill to see Grace. I would stop at the grocery store and run amuck through the aisles, buying all the nonperishable delicacies that I thought would tickle her fancy, then I'd get some fresh produce and french bread to stock her fridge. Ordering groceries over the phone didn't let her chose the best produce and her tight budget didn't let her get the little frills around the edges that she loved. I hope those groceries and the books on tape I sent her regularly made everyday life a little brighter.

I miss Grace. If I hadn't married the Engineer, I would have asked her to come live with me when she started failing. She would have said no. I know that. She would still have died of a sudden heart attack when her time came. I know I could not have changed that, but regrets linger.

When someone we love dies, it's hard not to keep mourning (heck, my eyes are dribbling as I type this.) It's hard not to keep mourning, but I think it does the person you loved more honor to remember the love and friendship with joy and to be grateful for having had the chance to know them.

Grace, I love you and I miss you and I feel so lucky that our lives intersected.

Eye Fibers and Floaters

I had an eye fiber yesterday. As usual, it began with my eye feeling dry and irritated enough that I eventually noticed it and realized I had something in it. After a good bit of blinking and eyeball rolling, I managed to get part of it to the corner of my eye and fished it out.

It's amazing how long an eye fiber can be. Feels gross to pull it out, but more annoying to leave it in. This one was about three and a half inches long. They seem to be more frequent in the winter when I'm wearing wool.

Eye fuzzies make me nuts and I wonder if anyone else has a problem with them. I tried Googling eye fiber, eye fuzzy and fiber in eye. Found lots of stuff about fiber optics, macular degeneration and a band called Tangle Eye. I tried detritus in eye -- boy, are there a lot of bands out there with weird names.

How about a parallel path? Let's look up eye floaters. 826,000 entries for that one. I've had floaters as long as I can remember, so I suspect they were congenital. Being a science fiction reader as a child, I used to fantasize that they were little aliens trying to take over my brain. Which, to me, was more acceptable than the alternative that I had worms in my eyes. I wouldn't tell the adults about them for fear that they would "do" something to me. Which is the same reason I took a razor blade to the only plantar wart I ever had two days before the doctor's appointment. Mom was PO'ed, but it never grew back.

To be honest, I've always found floaters rather entertaining; they were great to play with during those long and boring lectures college kids are often subjected to. I've had them so long, I don't see them unless I'm tired or go looking for them.

Next I searched eye annoyances and found things from examples of extreme ugliness to dust and grit. No long and kinky fibers.

Am I the only one who gets eye fuzzies?