mistletoe

My dear friend called me the other day because she had gotten the funniest fashion viewing offer that I have heard of in a long time. A gentleman (well, perhaps not so much of a gentleman) friend from her past asked to see her when she came home for the holidays and then said he wanted to show her his 'new mistletoe belt buckle'! Hahaha!

Hilarious mental picture and on the up-side (pun decidedly intentional) it definitely takes the guess work out of what he wants...which, when you consider it, is very refreshing. (slightly kinky, but each to his own!)

And then, of course, I get to thinking - which we all know is a dangerous thing for the poor unsuspecting world!

A whole new line/market of holiday clothing could emerge! Victoria Secret could make a fortune with such a line, forget the ruby and diamond bra - introduce the 'mistletoe bra and pantie collection'! It would sell out in 20 seconds, maybe less :)
(of course there would have to be a disclaimer to NOT accidentally consume any of the berries - which are highly poisonous)

Imagine that emergency room visit...
"Exactly how did your husband ingest mistletoe berries again ma'am?"
"Well...uhmmm...(long pause) ... Is he going to be ok?"

Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!! :)

(and to all of you shaking your heads right now, but hopefully at least smiling - this is what happens when I have w-a-y too much time to think. maybe I should get a second job...
with Victoria Secret!)

the 'un-send' button

I don't usually do requests but I am making an exception with this post, so this one is for you - I hope you like it.

There is no 'un-send' button love, we all have to live with the choices we make, if you could undo everything how would we learn? However, since I can appreciate how you feel, here goes :)

...if there were one...
It would instantly transport us back to 5 seconds before sending that 'oh-shit' text...or the series of 20 'i have to pour my heart out' texts...and it would completely crash your phone and render it useless for 12 hours. (and before anyone laughs...we have ALL done it - don't bother denying it!!)
Long enough to re-think the - 'I love you and want you back, I am so sorry I slept with your sister!' text...yeah, definitely want an 'un-send' on that one - too much honesty might be a bad thing.

And while I believe we all can appreciate the advantages of an 'un-send' button, imagine a world with no consequences and if every mistake could be undone...
- how would we learn?
- grow?
- move cities because of a minor stalking issue? (nothing was ever proved by the way!)

anyway...

You get my meaning. :) There are no rehearsals or do-overs with life and that is what makes it fabulous!
because it is real,
alive,
passionate,
dangerous,
risky,
and...oh so sweet!!

So in conclusion dear friend, no 'un-send' button...
life is too beautiful and precious and it finds its greatness and grace in the fact that it is meant to be lived, right now, with all the passion - craziness - love - and inspiration that you can put into it!

cherry, grape, and orange

As I have mentioned previously, my mother and I did not get along very well - largely because I never did what she wanted and she had no sense of humor about my independent nature :)

But she had one secret weapon that I was defenseless against, as stubborn as I was. (or in her words; willful, challenging, disobedient...well, you get the idea.)

Whistle Pops.

I don't even know if they still make them, if it was just a southern thing, or if anyone else in the world will know what I am talking about. For those of you who don't know what they are, I will describe...
It is the most delicious lollipop that man has ever created since the invention of the lollipop. There were 3 perfect flavors; cherry, grape, and orange. Occasionally I could even talk my older brother into getting one (which he and I both knew he would never eat) and I could have 2!!!! And if the sugary confection of perfection was not fabulous enough, it was also a really loud whistle. (hence the name) It had a stick that was hollow with a mini trombone style slide build in that would change 'notes' (and I use that term very loosely) - how great is that-right? Right!

So, I could be hopped up on food coloring chemicals (it was the 70's), sugar, and really noisy all at the same time! Is that not the goal of every child?! Well, it should be!! :)

Oops, sorry, got a little off track there...anyway, my mother could get me to do anything for the promise of a whistle pop.
- be quiet in church
- go to bed early
- eat my dinner
- clean up my toys
- jump naked into a pit of water moccasins (poisonous snakes)
anything!

The last one I remember having was ... (sniffle) (sigh) ... (misty eyes) ... oh my, I miss those things!!
Where was I?
Oh yes, my last whistle pop...

I actually don't remember what my mother wanted me to do but I remember she bought the glorious whistle pop of awesomeness on Friday and I could not have it until Saturday morning. Plus, I was under strict instructions that I had to have it - outside. (why I just can't understand- hahaha)

So, in a rare moment for me as a child, I had managed to be super good at whatever I was supposed to do and I knew on Friday night before I went to bed that the whistle pop was mine in the morning! As discussed in previous musings, mornings and I do not like one another...but this morning I was awake at 6:00 a.m. and ready for my divine whistle pop (it was cherry, by-the-way).

I must pause here to let you know that I am not what you would consider a patient person (to put it mildly) and when I was a child ... well, let's just say - it was worse.

Now having met my end of the bargain we had struck, I felt extremely entitled to my 6:00 a.m. whistle pop.
but no...
6:00 a.m. was too early for my mother to get up on a Saturday (imagine!) and I could not go outside by myself if no one was awake. I felt the injustice intensely!

I had to wait...
I hate waiting...(shameless "Princess Bride" reference)
until 10:00 a.m. --- do you have any idea how l-o-n-g four hours is when delightful enchantment is in sight but just outside of attainment?!?
and you are a child...
a REALLY impatient child...

Eternity is shorter

But finally - it was mine!!

I stepped outside with my cherry whistle pop - the sun was shining, the angels were singing, small woodland creatures were coming up and talking to me...
oh-wait, that sounds more like an LSD trip...
So they didn't talk to me - but they were on hand in case I needed to burst into spontaneous song to accompany the dulcet tones of my Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious whistle pop.

It was perfection! Ahhh!! :)

pbp

Let us go once more into the breach and return for a few moments to 'the gym', (ba-ba-ba-bam - think Beethoven's 5th symphony) and its hidden dangers.

One of those dangers is running into a particularly beautiful person that you would dearly like to impress - and as I have mentioned before in, Why treadmills are the anti-christ, I am seriously un-impressive at the gym. (unless you are going for tremendous falling over belly laughs as the way to encourage someone to dig you...in which case I am golden!) hmmm...

I am tragically uncoordinated, thin, un-curvy, and have the over-all strength of a six year old on a good day - so what i was thinking at the gym this time still remains a touch of a mystery. But apparently my brain checked out in the presence of this particulary beautiful person (we will just refer to them as 'PBP' from now on - because who doesn't love a meaningless acronym) :)

I am walking, just a bit unsteady over to the weights section of the gym, after pushing a little too hard on the eliptical - so my knees have vanished and been replaced by water, when PBP calls my name and walks up to me. Now there is a bit of an awkward moment because usually we greet each other with a hug - but usually we are out and not both hot and sweaty at the gym.

So running through my mind are such thoughts as:
'do I give him a hug?'
'will it make him uncomfortable?'
'do I smell?'
'yummy, he looks good!'
all in the space of a nano-second (isn't the human brain amazing!!)

So after the mutual hesitation, we both give in and give each other a quick hug, exchange some light pleasantries and then return to our respective work-outs. I make my way over to some leg machines (I have a set rotation for which machines I use on which days) and I realize half way through the set that these machines are WAY more suggestive of an exercise than I had intended...oops (blush!!)

I glance around to see where PBP is and thankfully he wasn't looking in my direction at all ... whew! (but also, if I am honest, some slight disappointment, I am capricous that way-haha)

So I continue a ridiculously intense workout catching glimses of PBP in the gym's 3 million mirrors - sigh - which distracts me and I constantly lose count of how many reps I just did, so I have to start over! (ouch) My muscles are screaming at me to stop but my brain keeps saying, 'just 5 more minutes' and I don't want to look like the wimp that I am so I keep pushing...until...my body decides to get the last laugh.

PBP is behind me (looking completely awesome) and I have taken up residence on a mat to stretch and do sit-ups with a weight ball (a unique form of torture) BUT, my muscles have had enough - and they give out and I almost drop the 4 pound weight ball...on my face...
this is the point where I fully appreciate the ridiculousness of what I am doing and burst out laughing.

Perfect! Not only do I look like a complete weakling, I am also a lunatic laughing randomly at nothing...yeah! Very impressive - my work here is done!! PBP will absolutely be avoiding me in the future and in the meantime I am trying to figure out if I could make it any worse by crawling to the dressing room since I am positive that my legs will not support me the 10 feet I have to go to the lockers.

What do you think, time to switch gyms? Yeah, I am seriously considering it :)

granny

For those of you who follow my writing you will know that I usually stay away from serious topics, however with the recent passing of my granny I had to step away from the usual and put down some memories for her. So this one is for granny…

One of the things that I think about the most when I think of granny was that she was tough as steel which I always found in such stark contrast to the emotionally sweet side of my grandpa. Granny was the strength of them as a couple but in a unique balance that they achieved he was her rock. And they were both the loves of each other’s lives. It has occurred to me while I am writing this that I always think of them together and there are very few memories of granny that don’t also include grandpa – what a wonderful thing that says about their relationship.

I remember grandpa telling me stories of how he would finish his shift in the shipyards of Baltimore (which ended sometime in the small morning hours) and drive to Alexandria Virginia to be at granny’s house for breakfast and to take her to work. He would see her for less time than it took him to travel the route in a single direction and he did it every day. She was that special to him.

I remember them holding hands in church on Sundays and granny would put her head on his shoulder sometimes, and it was always so endearing to me.

One of the most touching pictures of them that I have ever seen is when they were a young couple. It was taken in a small photo booth, the kind that snaps 4 pictures in about 15 seconds and hopefully catches a perfect moment…they were so in love that all 4 were perfect. The pictures were black and white and grandma is sitting, snuggled against grandpa’s shoulder, she has a soft look in her eyes and grandpa is all smiles. The pictures were small, just slightly larger than postage stamps, and grandpa kept them in his wallet from the day they were taken, when granny was 19, until the day he died. The lovely treasure about the two of them was that he would take out those pictures and show them to me often and get misty eyed because he always saw her that way.

They would tussle too, of course, grandma could be feisty and very sharp witted, no doubt part of what grandpa liked…even though he grumbled. Grandpa owned his own plumbing business the entire time that I knew him and granny was the receptionist, secretary, accountant, scheduler, and office manager and in the days long before cell phones I can only imagine what a challenge she had keeping up with him. Granny was very well organized and more than one intense discussion would erupt over the disturbance of her filing system or the disarray that grandpa would visit upon her work desk. But most likely my favorite to watch, because it happened almost daily, was when grandpa would come home and unload his top shirt pocket. This was grandpa’s rolodex, receipt log, appointment book, and accounting system, all on 3x5 index cards…written sideways, on the back, and upside-down. He would hand them to granny and she would have to decipher from his scratched notes, where the next appointments were needed and when, what supplies were used, and who to bill!!!! All things considered it is a wonder that they didn’t fight a lot more than the minor skirmishes that we were privy to.

Granny would look after us before school most mornings when my brother and I were younger – and granny could really worry a topic to death…contrastingly grandpa was a seriously quiet man…perhaps because granny wouldn’t let him get a word in :) … but back to my reminiscing. One particular morning I was at the table, suffering through breakfast (I have never been and am still not a morning person) and granny was going at a topic with the vigor of a bull terrier while she went from room to room straightening and as she stewed her way down the hall, grandpa snuck out the back door. That in its self is amusing but it gets better, granny kept at it and after him for a full 10 minutes…and then from the back room she called his name.

“Charles?”

“Charles!”

Oh dear! Poor man, he should have just gone on to his first rounds…but no, he came back into the house - adorably enough, to kiss her goodbye - and granny lite into him like a Christmas tree.

One of the stranger moments of my life was when I came over to their house one day unexpectedly from college and I caught my grandparents fooling around – don’t worry gentle readers I will spare you (and them) the details. But it is completely fabulous that these two people, who at the time had been together 50 years, still had the hots for each other. (not quite what I was thinking at the time, I could not get out of the house fast enough, it was my shortest visit ever!) Yet now, I view it as one of those simply wonderful facets of love that their spark and passion for one another remained through trials, sickness, children, grandchildren, successes and challenges. I cannot help but snicker when I remember it and I am still not certain who was more embarrassed – me or them. We never spoke of it. Mutual understanding, I am sure.

Granny loved to cook for us and far and away my favorite was her Pennsylvania dutch pot pie. It was a heavenly dish of beef, strips of dough, and potatoes all simmered in a rich broth. Best food on earth. But she wasn’t always a fabulous cook. When she first got married she couldn’t boil water :) much less make her famous pies, fudge, and beef stew with biscuits. (I could eat my weight in her biscuits!) According to stories I have heard she used to practice cooking dishes while grandpa was working in the shipyard and then if the recipes didn’t turn out well she would throw them out before grandpa would get home so he would not know. Very funny for my practical and non-wasteful granny!

A particularly favorite story of granny’s to tell was the first time she made ‘pot-pie’ for grandpa. Now grandpa was from Pennsylvania and granny was from Virginia which doesn’t seem like a large geographical distance but for cuisine it was like night and day. So granny spent the day making ‘southern’ pot pie, complete with pie dough, chicken, peas, carrots, in a standard pie pan and cooked in the oven. What grandpa was expecting was Pennsylvania dutch pot-pie, cooked on the stove top with the afore mentioned beef, potatoes, and dough strips…serious miscommunication in culinary language. And while, according to granny he ate what she had prepared and said it was good – he had been thinking of the other dish all day and was sorely disappointed. She got the real (Pennsylvania dutch) pot-pie recipe from grandpa’s mother and I never remember her making a southern style pot pie again!

The simple and sweetest memory I have of granny in the kitchen, is when grandpa would come in from work and she would be cooking at the stove and he would walk over and give her a kiss and then swat her on the backside. “Charles!” she would always exclaim, in a voice so unlike the one she normally used for us grandchildren and others, it was full of both false affront and flirting in a way that is almost impossible to describe, but I can still hear it clear as if they were right in front of me. This was the woman, not the granny, and she was wonderful, passionate, strong, genuine, and sassy.

So in my final words I will say this because it is how I think of them now – grandpa and granny holding hands, strolling down the beach collecting seashells and being so in love, with all the time they could ever want. To be together, to laugh, to love, to hold each other into the long sweet years that they get re-acquainted – god-speed – you are loved and in my heart forever.