Saturday, December 8, 2007

Tattoo and Piercing


My daughter and I have a Lab—not the functional kind in which you can conduct experiments or discover cures for diseases. It’s not even the kind that retrieves the paper or his dish.

No, ours is a big, yellow one that eats, poops, expels flatus, and sheds. Sure, he’ll fetch a ball, but unlike the neighbor’s newspaper that I’d really like him to fetch, I don’t want the ball, ’cause it gets real slimy.

This Lab has grown accustomed to deer, so he won’t chase them out of our yard. In fact, one day a doe ran after him as he chased his ball on the street. He doesn’t bark or growl at dangerous people, like the Comcast guys or those I date. Only an occasional squirrel earns his attention if he hasn’t gotten enough exercise.

In mid-September 2006, we were in the house while Shiloh sniffed in the backyard. My daughter said, “Mom, I hear a kitten crying.”

“Fox food,” I replied. “Don’t worry about it. We need to get going.” I was on a mission and had work to do.

But right afterward we heard Shiloh utter an unfamiliar sound. “Ahhhroofff!” So we looked out my daughter's bedroom window down at the southeast corner of our yard and saw Shiloh digging toward the other side of the fence.

We immediately dashed down the stairs and out the back door and discovered a sweet, little gray ball of fur meowing. The little feline appeared unshaken by this 75-pound Labrador trying to become a fast friend.

To stop the dog from further under-the-fence destruction and eventually needing a pedicure, I scooped up the kitten, dashed back into the house, and tossed him in the garage.

“You did what?!” you may ask.

Yep! As Pink Floyd would say, a momentary lapse of reason. I needed a kitten like I needed a tattoo—though I’ve seen some pretty nice tattoos, if you consider tattoos nice and don’t mind needles and permanently coloring your skin—but this was an itty-bitty, helpless, four-week-old kitten…and I had always wanted a gray kitten, but I didn’t need one. So I named him Tattoo.

Fast-forward 10 months and picture the dog digging toward the other side of the fence in the same location. But this time imagine a freaked-out animal with longer fur and nails not wishing to become acquainted. He hissed and growled like a rabid ex-boyfriend.

And then I heard myself use multiple F-words.

“Fox food. Those feral felines all need to be fixed.”

In the neighbor’s woodpile cowered a little hairball bearing a strong resemblance to Tattoo, but there was no way this one wanted to be scooped up. Wild and ravenous, he was probably viewing me in sections for future meals. Placing my hand near him could’ve been the end of my career.

For a few days, my daughter and I leaned over the fence to set food and water down for him. Our thanks came from under the logs as hisses and growls.

Then one day he was gone. Relief whooshed over me, knowing I’d have one less thing to think about. And with a satisfied smile, I thought to myself, fox food.

We live in a pretty tight neighborhood, always looking after each other and our homes, so the call shouldn’t have surprised me too much.

“Hello, Miss Eartha!” my sweet galfriend across the street sang over the phone. “I found a skin-and-bones little kitty in my garage…,” and I didn’t hear much after that.

Fiddlesticks! I thought. Where are those foxes when you need them? “Sure, I’ll take him,” I heard someone who sounded like me say. My daughter was elated. I needed another mouth to feed like I needed a piercing.

Itty-bitty kitty hissed and growled, but rubbed lovingly against Tattoo, who licked Piercing as though they were long-lost siblings, and they really were, one year apart.

So Tattoo, the Royal Fuzzhead of the House, is majestic and gorgeous. He ensures through his presence that anyone or anything must step over him, for he will not move when he is comfortable. And Piercing is still scared of me, the person who feeds him.

And Shiloh? Well, he eats, poops, expels flatus, and sheds, just like my ex-boyfriend.

Anyone need a Tattoo or Piercing? They’re fixed.

copyright © 2007 by Auntie Eartha. All rights reserved.

If you like it, link it!
http://auntieeartha.blogspot.com/2007/12/tattoo-and-piercing.html

Tuesday, December 4, 2007

Thank you!


(Puzzle piece number 4 of 38.)
I really appreciate your comments. It makes me feel as if I'm not alone ; )

Monday, December 3, 2007

Secrets


People trust me. I have always held their secrets deep within me to the point that I CRS, I can’t remember something. But I didn’t start out that way. Why do so many of us have to learn from our own mistakes?

As time goes on, though, I’m learning from OPM—other people’s mistakes—as my MO—mental objective.

I was four and home alone while my parents were at work. Looking back, I can only imagine that they hoped a prisoner would escape from the nearby jail and borrow me.

It was the Friday before Mother’s Day, and Dad came home from lunch carrying a sewing machine encased in a simply designed cabinet whose top flipped open to use as a sewing surface. As he carried the machine downstairs to hide it, he said numerous times not to tell Mom about this surprise. He said most things numerous times, as if he liked hearing himself…or perhaps he couldn’t remember that he’d just said something.

Anyway, Mom came home from work before Dad, and in my snitchy excitement, I squealed, “You have to come downstairs! Come quick!” And she made her discovery. Though a sewing machine could be seen in the same vein as a blender or a mixer or a package of sanitary napkins to some women, Mom actually seemed pleased with the gift.

When Dad got home to surprise her (too late, Daddio!), Mom acted as if seeing the sewing machine was as exciting as finding a new boyfriend. And they were happy for a moment.

Dad brought the machine upstairs, and eventually, Mom began to sew, which was like a nine-year-old using a backhoe—the world would have been a safer place had she left the machine in the basement.

One of her first attempts at seamstress wizardry was producing PJs for Dad. At the time, Dad was in great shape and not yet given to overindulgence, he led us to believe. So when Mom presented his new pajamas to him, he asked whom they were for, since they were three times his size. Eventually, all that PJ fabric was regurgitated into more fodder for hysteria.

It’s too bad Dad didn’t keep those jammies. They’d fit him perfectly today.

The “morsels” of the story: Keep secrets so they really are secret. Have integrity. And exercise, even if it’s a walk around the block or lifting something heavy for a few reps, like jugs.

copyright © 2007 by Auntie Eartha. All rights reserved.

If you like it, link it!
http://auntieeartha.blogspot.com/2007/12/secrets.html

Thursday, November 29, 2007

Corvids


(Puzzle piece number 3 of 38.)
Have you ever thought that something was other than it really is?

Like taking a sip of your friend’s water at a fraternity party, only to spew it out because it’s really vodka? Or reaching down to pick up a quarter, when it’s really a punched-out piece of metal? Or scratching yourself when you think you’re all alone? (More about the camera in the corner and that topic later.)

The other morning, my daughter and I were slowly driving south near her high school when we saw a murder of crows gathering. (Who makes up the names of animal groups, anyway? At least a skulk of foxes and a crash of rhinos make sense!) As most know, corvids often gather because road kill is in sight. You can just hear them talking.

“Hey, Mel,” one crow says to his buddy in a New England accent. “Looky over there. Lunch.”

And Mel cranes his head in the direction where Harry is gazing and replies, “Great! I haven’t eaten good carrion since that skunk last week. Man, my eyes are still burnin’. Let’s gather the group and grab a bite.” So Mel, Harry, and the rest of their horde fly over to check it out.

They’d gathered on the east side of the road and were starting to fly over the dark elliptical shape on the west side of the road when they saw us driving toward it. I sorrowfully said to my daughter, “Aw, how sad. Some animal must have gotten hit.”

Typically in our neighborhood, it’s deer that have the highest fatality or injury rate, but today the target was more the size and color of a cat. As we drove closer, one of the feathered cleanup crew members swooped near us, as if to say, “Don’t run over my lunch!” But my daughter looked down and said, “It’s a muddy, rolled-up sweatshirt.”

We came apart laughing, now imagining what the corvids were saying to each other after trying to take a bite.

“Blech! Ew! What is this?” Harry says in his Bostonian tone. “Who played this dirty trick on us? Here I had my appetite soarin’, and what do I get? A chunk of cloth one of those big, featherless things wears. That’s it! I’m aiming at some windshields.” And off Harry flies with the rest of his parcel. And here parcel means a “group of…animals.”

So next time you think you’re taking a sip of beer, smell it first. It may not be what you expected.

copyright © 2007 by Auntie Eartha. All rights reserved.

If you like it, link it!
http://auntieeartha.blogspot.com/2007/11/corvids.html

Thursday, November 22, 2007

Gold Flush


(Puzzle piece number 2 of 38.)
When I was three years old, Mom decided I should have a pet. The decision was a challenge for her because she had to make up her mind, which was a challenge in itself. She actually had to choose what she would have to take care of. It couldn’t require much upkeep because she worked full time, so Mom settled on a goldfish.

Soon we ventured to Woolworth’s and purchased a single goldfish and a conventional glass fishbowl that we dressed with colored bottom rocks and a ceramic protrusion. Studies have proven that goldfish vary the monotony of swimming clockwise in their bowls by swimming upward, downward, and counterclockwise, so they can view their bottom matter from different perspectives, just as men do with women.

We placed the goldfish bowl on top of our Magnavox black-and-white TV-phonograph console, so when Walter Cronkite wasn’t holding my attention, I could enjoy ocular engagement with the fish. Plus the fish was in color!

The thing about fish is that they’re not able to jump out and fetch a ball, or scamper after a piece of yarn, or perch on your shoulder and poop. Confined fish may be great for meditation, but for a three-year-old full of energy, having a pet fish was as much fun as watching croquet, without the benefit of spirits.

Before long, the fish’s caregiver got tired of giving care. Mom’s low tolerance for the slow and high frustration level for tedium led to a negative future for her charge. One morning as Dad stumbled to the bathroom bowl and flipped up the seat, he yelped! Before my dad’s eyes, enjoying his morning laps in his brand new bowl was the sweet, little goldfish.

A bubbling, malodorous minute later, the poor, golder fish was flushed.

The moral of the story is: consider the consequences of accommodating even the cutest or cuddliest of critters, because caring for them may create crimps in your crazy continuance.

And be kind to goldfish: they may jump up and nip you.

copyright © 2007 by Auntie Eartha. All rights reserved.

If you like it, link it!
http://auntieeartha.blogspot.com/2007/11/gold-flush.html

Monday, November 19, 2007

Unearthed


(Puzzle piece number 1 of 38.)
It all began with a disciplinarian German father and a flamboyant French mother. Born on opposite sides of the track in the post-Depression years, these two had nothing in common. Yet looks and chemistry trumped sensibility, and Mom and Dad got married.

Nine months after “I do,” out I came, into the hands of a couple who stood a better chance of growing mangoes in a desert than raising a child. Fortunately, Nana, my mom’s mom, an oasis of love, lived downstairs.

Hoping I’d be a down-to-earth kind of gal, they named me Eartha. Plus a name like Terra Firma wouldn’t become popular until Frank Zappa came around.

Mom was a neat freak and things just had to be just perfect—pictures perfectly hung, dinner table perfectly set, day-of-the-week undies worn on the right day. And being a fashion filly and model, she and I often wore matching outfits—we’d be sailors one day, pirates the next.

My first recollection goes back to when I was 18 months old. Mom was ironing ten feet away in the dining room of our upstairs apartment, while I rocked in our big, scratchy brown chair that felt like a bear with a crew cut. Mom must have given me a Q-tip to, perhaps, clean my ears? or maybe to start me cleaning the house in a small way at an early age, because I held a cotton swab in my little hand. Well, I pushed that Q-tip too far into my ear and screamed! Mom ran over and pulled out the stick before it became embedded in my brain.

But perhaps it was too late. I was affected to such an extent that I still clean the cerumen out of my kid's ears.

I don’t remember much for another year after the tip touched my brain, just that my parents should have taken up fencing, not parenthood. And that life is not perfect, nor neat. Freaky.

copyright © 2007 by Auntie Eartha. All rights reserved.

If you like it, link it!
http://auntieeartha.blogspot.com/2007/11/unearthed.html