Help Wanted at the Bronx Zoo

While getting dressed for work this morning I happened to catch a newsbyte on TV about a catastrophe that happened this week at the Bronx Zoo.  It seems that one of their cobras has disappeared from its container and is nowhere to be found.  "Not to worry", the newsperson said, "zoo officials have closed down the reptile house until the 20 inch adolescent can be found."  Not to worry, my Aunt Fanny's backside.

What poor sucker is going to have to look for that snake, I mean who are they going to make put that on the top of their list of things to do?  I suspect that on the next day following the great escape a higher percentage than normal of reptile-house employees felt a touch of the rheumatism flare up or had a burrito back up on them so maybe they'd just better  call in sick and stay home.  If I was one of those cage cleaning, copperhead caterers I'd have thought twice about going in to work that day myself.  A cobra, either a "20 inch adolescent"  or a full grown, 8 foot, mean motorscooter is going to kill you dead as a ballpeen hammer if it bites you unless you've got a pocket full of anti-venom right close by.  I've seen enough shots of New York traffic on TV to know that you've probably got a better chance of finding a clearance table at Tiffany's than you do of getting from the Bronx Zoo to a hospital that's got a vial of cobra anti-venom sitting and waiting on you to wheel in.  If I was a betting woman, and I'm not, but if I was, I'd lay odds on that cobra living to see another day and you becoming worm food if you happen to be the employee who runs up on that thing and surprises it.  I don't know much about snakes but I do know that they don't take kindly to being surprised at all.

Yep, I can just see the help wanted sign outside the reptile house about now:  "Wanted, one Cobra Hunter, advantageous to be single, preferably with no next of kin (and few aspirations of advancement because this could very well be a dead-end job.")   Watch where you step in The Big Apple!

LuLu and Shady

I've wanted to talk about these two particular characters for quite some time now but wasn't quite sure how to go about it since, how shall I put it, they are family...not immediate family mind you but still in the same garden where our family tree flourishes so it's family all the same.  I am changing the names to protect the guilty, innocent, the dizzy and the dotty but let me say up front that my garden spot would be so very boring without LuLu, Shady and all their kin watering it with their antics from time to time.

LuLu isn't from around here, she hails from a small village across the "big pond".  She met her husband "J.D.", a deep-South redneck, who'd hopped a freighter for parts unknown looking for fortune and adventure (and not necessarily in that order) and their paths happen to cross like Bogie and Bacall (or Bardot and BillyBob.)  Neither could understand each other's language but the language of amour needed no translation and so love and marriage commenced.  She also couldn't pronounce her "J's" very well and "J.D." came out "Shady" and the name stuck.  I think they've been married close to 50 years so I guess they've learned to communicate even though sometimes you still have to listen close to what LuLu says in order to understand what she is saying.

Right now LuLu is in the proverbial doghouse thanks to her generosity which she unwittingly extended to some younger members of her family who still live across the "big pond".  She invited  one to come for a short visit and instead, wound up greeting six of them at the airport with three being children under the age of ten.  Shady is not happy a bit and I think that if he wasn't so concerned about them destroying his entire house that he would just check in to a motel for the duration of their visit.  Oh yes, and they are staying for a month!  Within the first few days one of the two year old twins had already thrown something down the commode and stopped it up necessitating an expensive call to the plumber.  Then they threw coins in to the swimming pool and practically tore up the filter.  More than one of LuLu's favorite antiques has had to be rescued from their grasp.  Their mother's solution has been a double harness with a long tether in order to keep them from running any more amok than they've already run, at least when they go outside. Shady just shakes his head and keeps threatening to move in to a motel while LuLu just keeps cooking and cleaning up the house.

Now LuLu weighs next to nothing.  She loves high heeled shoes and how this little woman teeters around on them without falling down is a mystery to me.  So when her daughter drove by the house last week just to see if there was any evident carnage from the twin cyclones she was rewarded with the sight of seeing LuLu holding on to the reins of their harness for dear life, being pulled along like a chihuahua on a jet ski and doing her best to keep her balance in her best high heels.  Those two miniature steam engines had pulled her down the steps, out of the yard, across the street laughing like banshees and she wasn't strong enough to stop them.  I wish I could have seen that.

Now LuLu just cooks and cleans and marks days off the calendar while Shady picks up toys off the floor.  I think he would leave town for the next few weeks just for some peace and quiet but he's afraid that they'll burn down the house while he's gone.

Wasn't it Benjamin Franklin who uttered so astutely that "fish and visitors both smell in three days"?

A Love Story in a Single Paragraph

He was a blonde-headed, long, tall drink of water with more tattoos than he had bare skin on his arms and legs and he was loading their groceries in the cart.  She was a short, slightly-chubby thing with several tattoos herself, wearing glasses and sporting hair that was obviously dyed from a bottle that must have been labeled "Black as Egypt."  She was paying for the groceries.  In the child's seat was a little blonde-headed moppet with a Disney Princess T-shirt on, happy as a lark and making funny faces at me while I waited for my turn to check out.  She was a little doll and when her dad looked my way I spoke to her and said something like "well aren't you the cutest thing" and she just grinned.  Her dad looked at me and replied  "she sure is the cutest thing" and then he paused for just a second and looked at me again with a smile and then said "just like her mama".  To me the onlooker, that child looked nothing like the girl paying for the groceries but at that very instant there was absolutely nothing else in the world that could have competed with that compliment.  That short, slightly-chubby, slightly-tattooed, glasses wearing, dyed-hair sporting young thing suddenly straightened up a little and looked at him with such love and tenderness that I swear for an instant she looked 10 feet tall and runway model beautiful.  The love that passed between them in that moment was more tangible than if a dozen tuxedoed men had just waltzed by the cash registers singing "You Are So Beautiful" and I felt incredibly privileged to have witnessed it.  I watched this odd little family as they walked out of the store laughing and talking, quite in their own little world, her chubby little arm linked in his as they pushed their daughter and their groceries out of the store and in to the night.   Sometimes Walmart can indeed be the very best place to make a memory.

A Robe by Any Other Name Smells Just as Sweet

Yes, that is no typo, I meant robe not rose.  I have one that I love, a robe that is, do you?  It was given to me by a dear friend several, several years ago for Christmas I think.  It's exact age is unknown but its comfort is not.  I absolutely love cuddling up in it when the days are cold and blustery in the Fall and Winter and even Spring when it's raining or there's an unseasonably cool evening.  I suppose it gets a "summer break" because of its warmth so maybe that's why it has held up as long as it has.  It is long, with a big fluffy collar, deep pockets and lots of room.  I loved it from the very first time when I unwrapped it from the package and tried it on.

While my old, beginning-to-get-ratty blue robe is one of my most favorite pieces of clothing that I own it is  not something that you want to have your picture taken in.  On Christmas mornings I've tried to remember to throw it over a chair before we start opening presents and the cameras came out.  As a somewhat hefty old broad compared to say, Uma Thurman, I look like the entire defensive line for the Green Bay Packers when I've got it on (and you know how those cameras add pounds!)  There is absolutely nothing sexy about it either.  I've tried cinching the belt in as tight as I dared and I still can't find a waist line (the term "haus Frau" comes to mind if I pass a mirror in it) There's a small hole about the size of a nickel down near the bottom that I haven't the foggiest as to how it got there but I don't even care except for when it catches on a chair and slings me across the room  in a big less-than-graceful swan stumble.)  I'm pretty sure that Murray gets a little embarrassed if I've got it on when I take him out to do his business in the middle of the night but he's had to just get over that--anything that requires a leash and poops in the yard is just going to have to take what they can get.

Over the years whatever my wonderful robe is made out of has gotten really "fuzzy" (making me look even more gigantic, kinda like a blue Jackie Gleason) and it has subsequently slipped to the "worse for wear" side of the fashion scale, but I'll still wear it like it was a $20,000 sable, unashamed, in my house.  I will not get rid of it until it has utterly fallen apart in the washer or the dryer though, it has become much like a faithful old friend...a rather ugly old friend but a faithful one all the same, ready to provide warmth and comfort as soon as I slip it on.  I dare say a pair of Jimmy Choos wouldn't do that for you.

Do you have clothes that you are attached to?  I don't think I'm alone with my attachment to my robe, I think you're out there but it may be with some other wearable thing.  Exactly what do you love that's in your closet?

Bad Poetry

I found an old book of poetry that I'd handwritten in a journal a hundred years ago  (or so it seemed.)  It was in the basement in a cardboard box full of books that we moved from our old house almost 6 years ago.  I told you this was bad poetry...a Rod McKuen I will never be but boy did I try.  Here's one:

Good Friend

...Exchanging giggly secrets
        behind cupped hands,
   Knowing when you're blue.
   Always being there
   Remembering your birthday.

...Listening.

   Agreeing even though you disagree
         just to keep the peace.
   Understanding mood swings,
         private jokes and
   Temporary fits of temper.

    Realizing each other's faults,
          even joking about them.
    (But God help someone else who tries
          the same.)

    Good friend...defending your honor,
           your place in line,
    Your right to be.
     12-13-1983

I told you it was old!  And even though it's pretty bad as poetry goes most of it still rings true.  Aren't friends, especially good ones, the best thing since sliced bread!

With Six You Get Egg Roll

A ladies' brunch among friends, specifically in this instance, friends from Sunday School, is one of the best places in the world to bond as only women know best.  Riding over with a newer member of the class, I told her that she would learn more about her friends there than she would in five years of regular Sunday School attendance.  On Sunday mornings we simply don't have enough time to share those colorful, interesting pieces of the fabrics which knit our lives together into a virtual crazy quilt of friendship.

"Whatever is said at the brunch stays at the brunch" has become a time honored code of silence among us; no one wants to bare their soul only to have it re-hashed in the market place.  I think that it's an honor for this group of wonderful, wise, Christian women to think that I am worthy of knowing their secret joys and personal pain.  It is in an atmosphere of caring and non-confrontation that we will share our fears, misgivings and a hope for tomorrow knowing that we are loved just like I'd like to think that Mary and Elizabeth loved each other more than 2000 years ago.  I can just picture those two: one pregnant with the One Who would forever change the world and the other with one who would herald His way, sharing coffee and secrets and laughing and crying together as they faced the uncertainty of the impending deliveries.  Things haven't changed much along the way I suppose.   Although there are none in our group with "impending deliveries"(most of us are a good 10 years past that biological clock or the "tick" is definitely a lot slower than the "tock") we have children, grandchildren and husbands who light our way and who sometimes singe us with the candle.  It is the Christian friends like these who make up our "quilt of friendship" and who help us to know how to pray for our loved ones.  Since I may be getting dangerously close to breaking the code of silence here I'll say little more except to say that the Holy Spirit, our "Comforter" sustains us when the candle gets a little too close for comfort.  And isn't it ironic that we often call a quilt a "comforter"?  How appropriate!

Signs of Spring!!!!!!!!

Spring may not officially be here according to the Julian calendar but my sinuses know that it's flown in like a pregnant woman looking for the nearest bathroom.  Bradford pears might be pretty to look at when they're in full bloom but "snot funny" the way they make my head feel.

Another sure sign that Spring is comin'  is the way the geese that hang out at the lake in front of our building  start acting. Eleven months out of the year those silly Canadians are just as compatible as a pair of old shoes. But when the sap starts rising then the feathers start flying. All the male geese who were just as cordial to each other the day before start flapping and dive bombing each other all over the lake trying to appeal to the ladies with their goosey "I am strong like bull", manly charm.  You can be certain that in just a few weeks after that we'll start seeing mama and papa goose minding 4 or 5 little yellow fluff balls as they glide across the lake showing off their progeny.  It's funny how grown people will act when that new "family" makes its first appearance, kind of like how you used to could stand in front of the nursery window at the hospital and admire all the new arrivals. We all gather at the window and ooh and aah just like they were ours.  And like Elton John sings about the "circle of life" we all know that when the baby geese appear then so do the turtles. And turtles like yellow fluff balls for dinner so most of them disappear before they get very big.  I'm not sure who likes turtles on the food chain but there must be something that does because otherwise we'd be overrun with them.  Everything has its place and there's a place for everything.  I like how God planned it that way and I like that we're at the top of the heap.  But stay out of the way of elephants...they trump everything.