AHH, RAIN...

Rain. I love it!!! I always have. I remember being an ittey-bittey at grandma's house and running out into rain. Arms wide open, head cocked back, mouth open, tongue out and experiencing such incredible joy getting soaked to the bone. I loved to run naked through it. I still do. Much to the dismay of some of our neighbors. What can I say, me and rain got a history that goes WAY back. I love the sound of it. I love the smell of it. And I do indeed enjoy standing out there in it. Yeah, I'm a bit odd. Thank Goddess!!! We were predicted to get some serious monsoon kind of rains over night and into today. Guess what? It didn't happen. We are now in the midst of a wonderfully gentle rain. Here in 'sconsin summer is about to leave the building and fall is ringing the door bell. Yeah, transition. I love living in a location that has four very distinct seasons. Three of which include rain. Considering that I am an individual that is scared SHITLESS of water (hey, I almost drowned twice when I was a kid and when you get right down to it, fish fuck in it. Think about it! Yuck!!!) I stop just short of showering in a life preserver. Yet, I will stand in the rain and tap dance. I have no idea... I am setting here in silence, all of the windows open and listening to it rain. What is left of my heart is singing. I am within seconds of going out and standing out on the steps and getting soaked in water falling from the sky. I hope that you follow my lead.

WHEN THE HELL DID WE ALL GET THIS FUCKING OLD???

Oh my stars. When did this happen??? This coming weekend Sea Squirt and I are getting together with his older sister, his niece, nephew and his great nephew and two great nieces. Hang on, it gets much stranger. About two months ago one of his great nieces hatched an egg. Yeah, great-great uncle Sea Squirt. Yeah, I crawl under the sheets and spoon naked with someones great-great uncle. Which by default makes me great-great auntie Donaldo. I'm still not sure which on of those revelations freaks me out more. I have watched way too many little bitties become adults. Sea Squirts youngest great nephew is now a Senior in high school and he is checking out colleges. Please, I remember him with chocolate smeared on his face. When I first moved here to 'sconsin I met a wonderful couple. She was pregnant with twins. Guess what, they graduate from college next spring. WTF?!?!?!?!? Now, granted, I have had the good fortune to run through many. many time zones ( and more than my fair share of water sprinklers, plow through passports and sit under palm trees and giggle) but, where did the time go??? I know in my dark little heart that I have indeed had a damned good time with it (isn't that what you're supposed to do with it???) but that old dude in the mirror is a stranger to me. That reflection may still have a cheeky grin, a giggle in his throat and a spark in what is left of his eyes but it's the face. I honestly don't recognize it anymore. Yeah, me and this face have done some stuff. Been some places. Done some really silly ass shit. Here's to old cheese...

TAP DANCE!!!

Today, an icon was ripped from my fingers.  I am angry as hell!!!

Today we lost Ms. Lauren Bacall.  She started as a model and then went into movies.  And her world exploded into grandeur.  Hell, she was married  to Humphrey Bogart.  Can you actually get any better than that???

She was glamorous.  She was gorgeous.  Hell, she was who she was.  Shit, she was Lauren on the surface and movie posters but to her friends she was just Betty.  Shit, she was one of the founding members of the "Rat Pack".  Whether she wanted it or not. I love that!!!

Dear woman, travel safe, travel far and tap dance on stars...  With Bogie...

You will be in my heart forever!!!

OH CRAP!!!

Well, the day has finally come.  My 50's are soon to be officially over.  Yes, in a few short hours I officially jump into the shallow end of my 60's.  I'm still not sure where I stand on that one yet...  Hell, do any of us???

I can cuss like a whore (in 9 languages that I can somewhat remember.  Trust me, I know some REALLY colorful stuff), been me some places, done me some stuff, have met some wonderful souls and unfortunately have been to way too many funerals for way too many fellow crazies.  Oh, Goddess, shell shocked and t-boned way too many times my ass still goes on.  I'm damned thankful for that.  Why did I end up with a royal flush???

I am truly a "scratch and dent" sale.  In retrospect, I have loved every FUCKING second of it.  Even when I had to haul myself off the floor from a fetal position, dust myself off and go on.  Hey, sometimes shit just happens.  And sometimes shit can be an incredible character builder.  Who knew???

Tonight Sea Squirt and I are going out for cocktails and a couple of Reuben sandwich baskets at one of our favorite Madison dives.  I love that!!!  Oddly enough, my needs are indeed simple.  Although Sea Squirt would never admit to that.  I think that he views me as a "bit" high maintenance but I can't really say that I blame him.  Just think hand grenade with the pin pulled out...

Here's to a new door opening.  And Reuben sandwiches in a local watering hole that I love.  Hey, how can life possibly get any better than that???

YOU'RE NEVER TOO OLD TO BE SILLY...

I am a firm believer in this.  Trust me. The older you get the more shit you can get away with.  Pretty much because they just don't want to fuck with you and you're starting to smell funny.  Hey, if you're gonna make an ass out of yourself then just do it proud.  Jayne Mansfield had a quote that I embrace and hold dear to my heart to this day..  "Hey, if you're gonna make a mistake, make it a big one.  You're gonna get blamed the same either way".  How can you not love that???  It has become my credo.  Yes, indeed, I am a train wreck.  Hell, I'd have it no other way.  I have been known to address highrise buildings in the 3rd person and moon a city bus or two.  You don't believe me?  Just ask the guy in Michigan.  Goddess, he has some dirt on me...  He's got so much dirt on me it hurts!!!  Again, I would have it no other way...

I live in Madison, 'sconsin and we are a bit looney here.  Well, basically either under or over medicated at any given moment.  We don't care either way.  Either way can be the roller coaster ride of your life.  Yeah, just a bunch of loonies. I have been blessed.

This is Madison.  We're so not normal.  Today I decided to just cut loose and go completely feral.  Oh, please, I'm only 3 days from turning 61.  I can pretty much do what the fuck I want.  This city has some of the most amazing green spaces, parks and arboretums imaginable.  Truly world class.  One of the best is Olbrich Gardens.  A true stunner.

For the last 8 years a bunch of  crazies has been hosting a party there every July called "Escape Adulthood". Once again, right into the shallow end of the gene pool.  Yep, I did a cannonball.  It was a seminar and I really do use that in weakest terms imaginable.  Oh. c'mon, how can you not love that???  We got to write our own name tags.  BIG mistake!!!  Well, of course, I was Betty Grable.  A Lego licker, an expert napper and a Cap'n Crunch fan..  Yeah, I had to print REALLY small.  Little did they know I had a surprise up my panty hose.  Yes, my fellow cohort, Dr. Benson Honeydew and myself  revealed a "Device To Save The World".  OK, it was really nothing more than 7 cardboard boxes tuct taped together in a rather odd way.  Of course, all the while I am giving my discourse ( I honestly don't even know what that means...) I am wearing a McDonald's kids meal box on my head with a Tickle Me Elmo in my pants that kept vibrating.  I have to admit, that part of it was pretty fun...

As I plummet into my "Golden Years"  (BTW, who came up with that bullshit???)  I'm not going to do it quietly.  Oh, hell, kicking and screaming is SO much my style. Trust me, get the rhino darts ready.  I would suggest you have at least a dozen on hand.  Trust me, I ain't going down easy...

Sing like nobody is listening.  Dance like nobody is watching .  And then run naked in the front yard through the sprinkler. Scare the shit of your neighbors.  Hell, that's what they're there for!!!

Never, EVER stop being silly!!!

TODAY, WE LOST AN ICON...

Oh my stars, we have just lost something so precious.  Her name was Elaine  Stritch..  Star of Broadway, films and television.  Hey, if you're going to do it, well, then do it right.  Reach for the stars and just grab them out of the sky.  It just can't get any better than that.

Her character spanned decades.  She was a brassy old broad (goddess, I love those kind of women), she never backed down and she went through treatment a couple of times.  And again, never backed down or made excuses for who or where she was.  Again, I love that.  When you can embrace your mistakes and shortcomings openly it's a giant leap forward.  And I applaud her for that.  It does indeed take a LOT of stones to take that exit. It can be wreck less and scary. To go public the way she did took  "stones" to a whole other level.  I bow to her for her back bone.

Dear woman, you did indeed entertain me.  It more was than you can possibly imagine.  Travel safe, travel far and tap dance on stars...

IN THE NAME OF GODDESS, WHAT THE FUCK WAS I THINKING???

Corn.  Oh, wonderful corn!!!

Tonight my kitchen turned into its own private hell.  OK, I'll be honest, it was a self inflicted injury.  The sad part of it is, I never even saw it coming.  As an aside, I am one of those loons that raids local farmer's markets and road side stands looking for the fresh stuff that I can stock the freezer with for the winter.  Please, by the time I'm done our freezer looks like I'm stocking up for the siege of Moscow.  As Goddess in my witness, I'll never go hungry!!!

At any rate, I've been yanking stuff out of freezer like crazy to make room for the current years stash of nibbly bits.  Low and behold, buried back in the corner I find two boneless, skinless chicken breasts.  Damned near a year old.  Thank Goddess for vacuum sealers.  So I yank them out, put them in the fridge to defrost and then quickly forget about them.  Yeah, this was about 3 days ago.  Well, I found them today.  Well, I thought to myself, what the fuck am I gonna do with these things?  Fast!!!  So, I just grab one of my cookbooks off of the shelve.  Yeah.  Betty Crocker.  1959.  That should have been my first red flag...  I decided to make chicken breaded in smashed Corn Flakes. (For you readers out there that are familiar with this recipe, well then, you're as old as me!!!)  Again, what was I thinking???

So, I throw this simple 5 ingredient recipe together and pop it in the oven.  45 minutes later, it's dinner with some wonderful locally grown sweet corn (also from last year).  Hey, I was totally cool with that.  I think the last time I actually had this chicken was back in the early 1960's.  Goddess, I love me a time machine...

When we were done I looked at the baking dish and cringed.  At 375 degrees for 45 minutes butter, chicken grease and Corn Flakes turn into mortar.  A building material if you will.  The "scunge" (yes, that's my own word) that was baked onto the bottom of that thing was frightening.  I soaked it.  Without much success.  I went at it with scrubbies.  Then steel wool.  Again, all without much success.  So I soaked it again.  Hell, it's still soaking.  This stuff is a weird  cross between adobe and concrete.

I have racked my brain.  I don't remember my mother or any of my aunt's hitting this road block.  What the hell did I do wrong???  Have Corn Flakes started being made out of asbestos now???  I'm getting real close to just tossing the damned thing and buying a new one.

Goddess, why???

CHEESE...

OK, this really doesn't have shit to do with cheese.  I just thought that would be a good lead in...  After all, this is 'sconsin and we are indeed about cheese...

I am two weeks away from hitting a milestone.  Yeah, another birthday.  But this one is a  big one.  I officially am about to enter the 6th decade of my life.  Hmmmm.....  That's sort of an eye opener.  61.  I'm not quite sure where I stand on that one yet.  I am old, opinionated, cranky, bitchy, ornery, somewhat dangerous (to myself and others), nowhere near politically correct (thank goddess),  a bit crazy, a whole lot insane and I make some frightening noises when I move.  Hey, you have to put some effort into that cul de sac.

Oddly enough, in the last week I have done a whole lot of self evaluation.  My own little personal Purgatory.  Hey, ain't nothing more scary than judging yourself.  Growing old doesn't scare me.  But I hear the clock ticking louder.  Now, that does indeed scare the fucking shit out of me.  But, such is life...

I have spent my whole life having me a damned good time.  I am a country boy at heart.  Hell, I grew up chasing chickens and putting pennies on railroad tracks.  Yeah, I was a bit of a strange child.  Surprised???  I remember mayonnaise jars full of lightening bugs.  Which I would inevitably open up in the house.  Grandpa would cuss like a sailor and grandma would always come to my defense.  And then she would give me some Kool-Aid and some Oreo's.  Yeah, good times.  I miss those two so much it hurts.  They were both about the same age I am about to hit when they died.  Fuck me to tears!!!

High school was a joke and I barely made it through college.  Total waste of time and money.  I did party my ass off though.  In an odd way I guess it was money well spent.  Thank goddess it wasn't my money...

I've looked back on almost 6 decades and I see passports (4), airports (way too many. but still not enough of them yet), timezones (all of them) and countries that no longer even exist.  When I was young I was stupid.  Hell, isn't that what youth is all about?  I have nurtured that ever since.  Yeah, there is still a smile on my face.  You can't stop yourself from growing older but you do have the power to never grow up. Hey, if you can't tap dance naked in the rain then you're just missing the point of the whole journey.  I love that!!!

I love life so damned much it hurts.  And I'm glad to still be in it.  In two weeks Sea Squirt and I will be sitting in one of my favorite local dives, enjoying a Reuben Sandwich and a couple of beers with friends.  Yeah, life is indeed good...

Here's to cheese!!!

HOLLYHOCKS...

I am still trying to recover from what I refer to as an "Alice D. Flashback".  I was laughing so hard that Sea Squirt had to pick me up off of the floor.  For the second time this week I was transported back in time more than half of a century.  Once again, it was delicious...

A very good friend of ours has a garden out at her grandparents farm.  Can't for the life of me remember her grandmothers name ( very sweet lady that has problems carrying a radish).  Her grandfather's nickname is "Junior" and he's just a crusty old fart.  I love them both.  He's 88 years old. The stuff that comes out of his mouth just reduces me to tears at the picnic table.  Stuff like "You know, she won't let me feel her tits anymore!".  He has made me blow more iced tea out my nose than I can possible recount.  I love that kind of orneriness.

So, anyway, our friend posts some pictures of the garden on Face Book.  Some of them included some shots of hollyhocks.  That's when the time machine kicked in and the giggling started.  Yeah, 1959.  apparently I can say the word hollyhock but show me a picture of them and I go full blown bat shit crazy.  Again, the time machine.  Once Sea Squirt finally got me up off of the floor and back up into the chair I began to recount the story.  He looked at me with shock on his face.  Something akin to "how many head injuries have you had???".

I am the youngest grandchild on both sides of my family.  So I was "special".  Which didn't have quite the same connotation back then than it does now.  Although, when I think about it, it probably should have. Trust me, I'm short bus from the word go!!! Any who, just off of the back porch was a short white picket fence that was surrounded by hollyhocks on both sides.  These things were a palette of wondrous colors.  I was fascinated by them.  Yeah, I've been gay since the goddess was a small child.  Somehow, and I honestly can't remember how, I figured out that if picked off a full blossom, turned it upside down, stuck a toothpick into it and stuck a bud to the top of it it kind of looked like a female flamingo dancer.  No wait, that should be flamenco dancer. Sorry about that... I would line them up on the top of the fence.  Yep, I'm actually THAT gay.  This memory was so fucking vibrant it hurt.  I was in heaven...

When I was finally able to relate the story to Sea Squirt the look of disbelief  in his eyes was sort of frightening.  And in all honesty, you can't fault him for that one.  I could actually see the gears turning in his head.  And that question...  "Why the hell did I wink at you on Match.com???.  To this day, I ask the same question.

You have to be this old to have this much experience, excitement, craziness, over/under medication and just plain fun.  I would have it no other way.  Hell who wouldn't???

Dance.  Sing.  Go completely nuts.  Hell, ain't a better way to go through life than that...

HYPOGLYCEMIA...

Oh, goddess, why did you do this to me???

Hypoglycemia.  It's a fucking horrid medical condition.  And I'm up to my tits in it!!!  For those of you out there that know, well, you know that I've got it.  You've seen me have some "episodes" as I like to call them.  For the rest of you, let me fill you in...

I come from a LONG line of diabetics.  Yeah, that means your pancreas just isn't making enough natural insulin and your blood sugar sky rockets.  It's called insulin injections.  Well, I decided to take the other exit.  I have, quite possibly, the worlds most over active pancreas that you can imagine.  For no reason whatsoever it will kick into hyper-drive and flood my system with so much insulin that it doesn't need it hurts.  If I am lucky I may get as much as 30 seconds warning.  But usually not.  With any luck I at least get to sink to my knees before I pass out.  But again, sometimes not.  That sucks ass and I have the scars to prove it.

With no warning I get dizzy.  Then I get tunnel vision.  Then I start wobbling.  If I'm lucky I can at least scream "HELP!!!" before I quite literally disappear into the abyss.  Gasping for breath and sweating like a race horse. Fucking horrid and nightmarish is just the tip of the iceberg.  Over the last 10 years I have educated Sea Squirt on this nightmare.  I've no other option, he's just seen me go through this WAY too many times.  When he hears me yell "juice, now!!!" he knows what I mean.  He has literally picked me up off my back, propped me up and just started shoveling sugar into my mouth.  For the next hour I am a babbling idiot, yet, he manages to put up with it.  Thank goddess for small favors.

I did not know that I had this until I was 38.  I came within seconds of totally passing out while driving on the Interstate.  I luckily managed to make it to the shoulder and get the car into park.  It scared the bloody shit out of me.  A couple of weeks later I'm sitting on an exam table at a doctors visit and just go flat on my back.  They tested my blood sugar.  I didn't have any. None!!! Yeah, pretty much completely fucked. They poured so much juice into me it was amazing. I finally regained conscientiousness to find myself hooked up to a glucose drip.  It took me almost two hours to become vocal again.  Scary as fuck!!!  Well, of course, I end up with a nutritionist who tries to help me through this hell.  I had to completely change the way that I ate.  I had to give up 3 squares a day and become a grazer.  Yeah, I became a "muncher".  Pasta and I became very good friends.  I had to give up doughnuts.  That alone damned near made me want to hang myself!!!  But you do what you gotta do, right?

Over the last 2 decades I have realized that even when you do everything right sometimes it just doesn't work.  A pancreas can be a real bitch.  A truly completely  mean bitch!!!  Passing out is not my idea of a walk in the park with a purse dog.  Over the last year I have been getting slammed by this.  Big time. At least three times a month.  Out of nowhere for no fucking reason.  I hate unconsciousness.  goddess, why???  WHY???  Give me an answer.  Or at the very least, a clue...  Am I supposed to be learning something from this???  Just gotta tell you, it just isn't working real well.  Getting fucked dry just doesn't make a lot of sense...

To my fellow victims of this nightmare, I bow to you. Hell, I bow to us.  Only we can know what this means.  This just ain't easy.  With any luck you have very good friends that will pick you up, dust you off, prop you up, bring you some juice and a towel to wipe off the drool that we are more than likely covered in.  Sometimes shit happens.  And then sometimes shit just sucks ass!!!  I hate being picked up off of the floor when I'm not even really fucked up on something fun to do.

I want to sub-divide my pancreas and put in on Craig's List just to get rid of most of it.  I just don't need this much pancreas.  Or an enemy that evil.  goddess... why???

I AM AT A CROSS ROAD...

Dear goddess, pick me up and dust me off.  I am careening wildly into an age I never, EVER thought I would reach.  Yet, here I am.  I am within days of being halfway to 122.  It's blind panic on the brown acid.  I remember my grandparents being this old and they were FUCKING ANCIENT!!!!

I cannot believe that I am this fucking old.  But, I've been me some places and done me some the things..  goddess, come sit next to me.  I will tell you some stories that will scare the scales off of you.  I am indeed the weird dude with a passport, a plastic bag full of socks and an airline ticket.  Oh, wait, let's not forget about the smile on my face...

I have no idea where this comes from.  I am horribly, horridly damaged goods.  I truly am a train wreck of unimaginable proportions.  Shit, I scare myself sometimes.  Well, actually, pretty much daily when I think about it...  The fact that I am not in prison amazes me.

That I am not radio collared and ear tagged is kind of confusing me.  And goddess knows, I am indeed easily confused.  I'd have it no other way...

I'M IN HEAVEN!!!

As you know by now, I'm a produce whore.  Give me fresh seasonal stuff and I will tap dance and play a fiddle on your roof. I come from a long line of farmers and gardeners who knew what they were doing.  I grew up with so much fresh, home grown stuff it hurt.  I loved it.  Yeah, good times and good eats...

It is now late June and the bing cherries are coming in from Washington state.  Dirt cheap.  The stores are overrun with them and I am buying them by the bag full.  It's fucking wonderful!!!  In about two weeks the ones from 'sconsin will be hitting the market.  Again, fucking wonderful!!!  I am addicted to these things.  They are sort of like my own personal form of crack.  I dearly remember grandmas front porch with a bowl full of these things, chowing down and just spitting pits into the petunias.  Yeah, really good times.

I have so far destroyed two Polo shirts because I'm pretty much a messy eater.  OK, I'll admit it, I drool a bit.  Food is my drug of choice and I take no prisoners.  It's not pretty.  Sea Squirt just sort of sets back in horror and watches me make a mess of myself.  Hey, I make no excuses...  Don't even ask how many shirts I laid waste to with last months fresh strawberries.  It's actually kind of sad.  If food were a china shop then I would definitely be the bull.  Sea Squirt has just had to sit back and watch me lay waste to acres of fabric.  Again, kind of sad...

Next month gets really fun though.  Concord grapes start coming into season..They're heavenly.  Trust me, if I could figure out a way to freebase those things I'd be doing it!!!  Food and I have truly strange relationship...And they stain like nothing you can possibly imagine.  Hell, by the time my birthday rolls around I'm going to be completely purple. Head to toe.  And there may not be a wearable piece of clothing in the closest.  I love it.  And then the local corn crop starts to show up...  Ain't nothing more fun than a lap full of melted butter.  Trust me on this one, I do indeed know what I'm talking about.

Well, now... me and corn have special bond.  Sort of like the one that I have with potatoes.  It's a weird addiction.  Hell, I'll tap dance with both of them.  I have so many butter stains on my clothes it hurts.  I only eat corn from a local farm here, it's freaking heavenly.  I buy it by the bushel full and pack the freezer full of it.  Yeah, it's that good.  And then I spend the rest of the year just dropping it all over myself.  Life is good.. Yeah, I eat like a pig...  yep, smile on my face!!!

I count myself lucky.  I live in a part of the country that is full of farms, farmers, rich soil and people that know what to do with it.  To them, I bow.  Keep it going.  You feed my belly, you keep me going  and you make me sing!!   Thank you for the goodies  THANK YOU!!!!

A TSUNAMI OF MEMORIES...

Oh, goddess.  Sometimes shit just happens.  I am on the precipice of my 61st birthday.  I'm not quite sure were I am with that yet.  The right side of my brain is panicked and saying "Dude, you're older than mold".  Yeah, pretty.  But the left side of my brain (which btw, I love dearly) is telling me to cut loose and cause some trouble.  I like the sound of that.  Now you know why I like the left side of my brain...

So, I'm sitting at the computer this morning and an earthquake of memories came back to me.  The summer of 1959.  I was about to turn 6 years old.  I was spending the summer with my grandparents in Kinmundy, Illinois.  It's a town about the size of a postage stamp.  Ahh, yes, the South.  They lived right next to the rail road tracks.  And right across the street from a huge vacant lot full of peonies.  Their back yard was full of hollyhocks and the occasional snake or two. They had a burning barrel.  And a "glider" on the front porch that I was constantly rocking in as I enjoyed the strawberries that I had raided out of the garden.  And occasionally their next door neighbors garden as well.  I was a notorious produce thief.  Hey, I was a precocious little shit.  Surprised???

That was the summer I decided to go into business for myself.  An entrepreneur, if you will.  Yeah, I opened a drink stand out by the side walk.  Two gallon jars, a card table, one of grandpa's "ceegar" boxes with a couple of nickles in it so I could make change and a horridly self made sign that said "Lenomade and Gape Dink".  Only 5 cents a cup.  I'm not sure if I looked like an abandoned child or an indentured slave out there.  But my first day I made damned near 2 dollars.  Hell, I felt like a Rockefeller!!!  So, of course, after dinner I go charging down the hill, past the peonies to Jesse George's General Store to spend my nickles.I was in heaven!!!  I snagged 4 different flavors of Fizzy's, some cherry licorice, a balsa wood airplane and a Spud Gun.  (If none of that makes any sense to you then you need to use Google).  The Spud Gun thing would eventually become an issue of enormous proportion and my aunt Margaret and I would never talk again.  To this day I still harbor some issues of that incident.

Yeah, all this came flooding back to me this morning.  I started laughing so damned hard I actually slipped out of the chair and ended up on the floor in tears.  Then I stared giggling.  Once again, not pretty.  I loved it!!!  To be transported back a little more than half of a century and reacquaint myself with the little melon headed, garden raiding and happy thing that I was...  It was delicious.  I can still smell the burning barrel and the hollyhocks.

Hmmm, maybe 61 doesn't sound all that bad when I think about it again...

RAIN...

Oh, goddess, I love rain!  I have no idea why but rain makes me sing. It makes my heart race.  It gives me the opportunity to dance wildly in puddles like Gene Kelly.  And to run naked through the neighborhood.  OK, you probably don't want to take that exit.  TMI...

I love rain.  Whether it is a sprinkle or a monsoon.  And goddess, I have been through them both.  My intermittent wipers have served me well for decades.  And then I have literally been pounded to my knees in the Tropics in the middle of something of Biblical proportions.  I have been in the middle of flash flooding that would scare the scales off of you.  I have witnessed SUV's floating down streets and stairways turn into water features that you could literally white water raft in.  Yeah, I've seen me a whole shit load of water...

I can count at least 4 time zones (that I can remember) and two hemispheres when I have literally been beaten down to my knees by rain.  Yeah, some big stuff.  Oh, have mercy, I have been subjected to rain that words just cannot describe.  And I have loved it all.  Well, once I got finished being scared shitless at what was washing done the hill...

It is raining at the moment.  A nice, gentle June rain.  I am in heaven.  BTW, I am taking my clothes off as I type...

WHY??? SOMEBODY PLEASE EXPLAIN THIS TO ME!!!

As a species we are monsters of unimaginable proportion.  All you have to do is open a history book.  Trust me, it will scare the feathers off of you.  We don't give a rats ass about anything.  Including ourselves.  We have turned on each other with a vengeance for millennia.  Fuck, we've actually honed it down to a science.  Yeah, we've actually managed to perfect it.  And "perfect" is so NOT the right word in any way, shape or form!!!  Push come to shove, we make a rabid pack of hyenas look warm and fuzzy...

Why is it that at least once a decade we decide to go just full blown bat shit crazy and turn on each other?  I have, in my 6 decades seen so much cruelty and violence it crushes my soul.  Whether it be a mindless drive by shooting or genocide.  If either of those things, or everything in between doesn't  make you cringe then you have no heart or grey matter worth counting.

It saddens me to think that we will follow the carrot on a stick, no matter who is holding the stick and what dark alley they are leading us into.  And yet, we do it.  Willingly.  Hitler.  Well, enough said on that one...

If even a fraction of the info coming out of Irag right is true it's a a FUCKING NIGHTMARE over there right now.  Mass executions.  Beheadings for not being a "believer".  WTF is up with that noise???  C'mon, you all know me, I joke about religion at the drop of a hat.  I refer to the "goddess" for no other reason than to piss of the Republicans and I'm really quite good at that.  But this is insane.  It reduces us to a depth so low, so evil and so horrid that I think we have just reached a new low point that is quite possibly unimaginable.

Zealot's scare the scare the scales off of me.  Yeah, I'll stand up for what I believe in but I'm not going to start beheading people because they don't believe in what I do. Bitch slap them?  Oh, hell yeah! (Trust me, I can bitch slap you into the next time zone!)  Behead them?  That would be a BIG negatory!!!  Nor will I arm myself up to my tits in assault weapons and go nuts.

I just can't wrap my brain around why we keep on insisting to do this bullshit.  Again, hyenas....

How sad...

LIFE IS MUCH TOO IMPORTANT TO EVER BE TAKEN SERIOUSLY!!!

Oh, Goddess, I am looking at an exit ramp that is so incredibly strange.  And Sea Squirt and I are doing our damnedest to try to pull it off by this weekend.  It involves a couple of good friends (fiends???) on both sides, the First National Church of Elvis and the County Clerks Office.

I don't know where to start on this one.  Oh, hell, I'll just jump right into the deep end.  Do NOT fuck with me.  I actually know how to kill with my bare hands.  Trust me on this one. I'm a handful of weeks away from turning 61.  Yeah, I got some experience under my skirt...

OK, about 5 years ago 'sconsin put a referendum on the ballet that didn't actually turn down same sex marriage as much as it "defined" marriage.  Yeah, that would be one man and one woman.  It passed.  It actually changed our states constitution.  And in complete violation of it. I ruffled up all of my feathers, tripled my size and went just full blown bat shit crazy.  Yeah, it was that bad. I was outraged. And for those of you out there who have known me long enough, well, you know all too well how easily I can do this sort of chaos.  That it was not challenged immediately shocked me.  Last week a Federal judge said "I don't think so, Cupcake".  I did a happy dance of such severity it hurt.

As a caveat, in principle I do not believe in "marriage".  Who the hell thought that nightmare up???  But you do what you have to do.  It actually does have some perks.  However, with an hour and a half with a lawyer you can pretty much accomplish the same thing.  Yet, it can still be challenged.  That's NOT fair.

Do I believe in"marriage"?  Hell no!!!  Do I believe in the legal rights it gives you?  Oh, hell YES!!! Why it takes that single legal document to give you sanctity and some legal rights to make decisions when all hell breaks loose confuses the bloody shit out of me.

Sea Squirt and I are about to grab the moment.  Goddess know why but we are in the process of doing something totally silly this weekend.  Sorry, I have to stop giggling.  This is SO out of nowhere and SO out of anything that I believe or support but...  Sea Squirt and I are getting married this weekend.  Even if the ruling is overturned or put on stay we will be grandfathered in.  In 27 states.  I love that!!!

Here's to a warm body in the middle of the night.  And two opposing forces who can clash on a battle field and just butt heads and still manage to curl up around each other under the sheets a couple of hours later.  Sometimes, it just works.  And that is so fucking delicious it just makes you drool on your pillow.  In the words of Jackie Kennedy:  "Your first marriage is for love.  Your second marriage is for security.  Everything after that is about companionship."  I am his third, he is my fourth.  It all makes so much truth to me now.  Happy dance!!!

Yeah, life sometimes deals you a winning hand.  Hey, ain't nothing better than a damn good poker face and a race in your heartbeat.  Overall, I have been one of the lucky ones.  And thank the Goddess for that gift...

FOOD STORAGE CAN BE SO STRANGE...

Oh, my stars...

OK, Sea Squirt and I were just a little bit lit tonight.  I'm taking all of the plastic crap out of the dishwasher and putting it into the sink to dry.  For some unknown reason I decide to threaten him with wet Tupperware.  OK, actually it was Faber Ware.   Get over it.  Next thing you know I get wonked across the side of my head with some of this stuff.  Guess what?  It shattered.  Big time.  Next thing you know I'm standing in the kitchen with a freezie  pack on my forehead and up to my ankles in broken plastic.

I do not blame him.  I am the one who started it.  But I have a welt on my forehead the size of a walnut.  It's actually big enough that I can balance the freezie pack there while standing upright.  A part of me was laughing my ass off and the other hand was just angry as fucking hell.  Such is life...  Hell, I deserved it.  And I wear that badge proudly.  I just wish that it didn't hurt so fucking much...  All this being said, he did not do it viciously  or violently.  But goddess knows, if he had any sense he should have...  For the one's of you out there who know me, well, you know what I'm talking about...

How do I get myself into these situations?  Well, could have something to do with me being me.  I am an explosive little shit.  Duck and cover.  Trust me, I'm not a normal woman...

For almost 10 years Sea Squirt has put up with me. Who the hell knows why but I am damned glad that he has.  I just can't figure out why though.  I'll ask no questions...

Walnut be damned, Sea Squirt is a warm body in the middle of the night.  And I hope that I am the same to him.

Here's to walnuts...

WHO IN THEIR RIGHT MIND...

Would do something this ass backwards???  Ten feet of underwater dynamite fuse.  Even at the age I am now I wouldn't let me have access to that shit.  Yet, at the age of 14 I was able to buy it.  In cash.  goddess, the 1960's were such a simpler time...

OK, let's just cut to the chase here.    Me.  A large pan on the stove.  Some salt peter and sugar.  A bit of duct tape. And an empty compressed air cartridge.  And a very devious mind.  Very, very devious mind...

So, I took out a garage, a 1966 Chevrolet Biscaine, most of the side porch and a lot of windows for about two blocks around.  Thankfully it wasn't my house.  Just a couple of doors down though...  Oh, goddess, the fireball was amazing!!!  Needless to say I high tailed it to the cemetery and hid behind a large grave stone.  What I did had to do with youth and stupidity but today would put me in prison for life plus 99,  To this day, I sit on my ass in the kitchen and laugh my ass off.

I was not an easy child by any stretch of the imagination and as an adult I am even worse.

I would have it no other way...

OH, HAPPY DAYS!!!

Oh my...

Last night was way too much fun.  Three good friends in a tiny kitchen with shitty lighting.  Knives twirling.  Cutting boards flying.  Way too much hot oil.  And damned near every burner going.  Who could bitch about that???

Yeah, last night was the paella feast.  It started going awry as I began to load up the car.  I had way too much shit for this.  WAY too much shit.  I quickly grabbed the other two paella pans and fired up the Dodge.

About 3 hours later we are setting down to about 30 pounds of Pealla Valinciana.  It could have used about twice as much rice but with all of the other stuff we tossed in there, who really gives a rats ass???  Brandy (this is is 'sconsin after all) flowed like a river, shots of tequila came out of nowhere and we stopped just short of smoking our shoes.  We gorged like condemned death row inmates.

I love being in a kitchen with people who know what they are doing.  Of course, I love being in a kitchen with recent head injuries that don't have a clue.  Those are the ones that you put in charge of dicing the onions.   goddess, thank you for kitchens!!!

All of our freezers are stocked full of pealla.  WAY stocked!!!  The three of us are a bit (a bit???) adventurous and have decided to make this a reoccurring event.  As long as every time it's a different country.  We actually broke out a globe to find some interesting countries to eat out of.  For the life of me, I can't remember which one that we decided on.  I do remember it being kind of obscure though.  I'll ask later...  Let's just say that we ruled out England immediately.  My suggestion of Scotland and haggis was shot down damned near in a heart beat.  I said it includes a bottle of Scotch and they still said "no".  Wussies...  I think that we decided on something that involved a large bbq grill which to me means nothing more than open flames.  I love that!  I'm there for ya' baby!!!

In about a month there will be flames, smoke, hot oil, fire extinguishers, a 911 call and some band-aids. If not a large bath towel wrapped around what should have been left of someones  hand.  I LOVE IT!!!

Here is to food, friends and way, way, way too many shots!!!  Yeah, it just don't get any better...

AAH... PAELLA!!!

I am in heaven!  This coming Saturday Sea Squirt, two of our dear friends and I are going to crowd up in  a kitchen and make paella.  Just the mention of that word makes my heart race.  Knives will be flailing.  Stuff will be searing.  Yes, indeed, we will be slicing, dicing, smushing and gushing!

Paella and I go back a LONG time.  Over the summer of 1971, after I graduated from high school I back packed and hosteled my way across Europe.  When I found myself in Spain I discovered paella.  Oh, goddess, what a dish!  Every place I landed in had a different version of it.  Freaking heaven!!!  It's normally a sea food thing.  Fish, mussels, clams, shrimp.  You name it, it could go in there.  If you do it right you toss a whole lobster on the top of it.  But if you go 30 miles away it could be made with chicken and pork.  Let's just say that about the only thing you don't put in in paella is beef.  Rabbit, yes.  Beef, no.

I actually have 3 different paella pans.  Yeah, it needs its own sort of pan.  Mine are small compared to what I saw being used in Spain.  My largest one is about 20 inches across.  I saw ones in Spain with a footprint bigger than my car.  Hey, if you're gonna make paella, do it right.  You do not stir paella as much as you rake and shovel it.  There is no such thing as "a" paella recipe.  There are as many paella recipes as there are grandmothers.  It's kind of like "a" chili recipe if you know what I mean...

This weekend I will be doing a chicken, chorizo, three bean, saffron rice, lime, lemon, artichoke heart and black olive concoction that I find especially appealing.  And it is something that Sea Squirt can actually eat.  He has that shellfish allergy thing that just makes him explode like a puffer fish.  goddess, that must just suck!   Personally, I have been known to eat about 3 pounds of shrimp, oysters, clams and mussels in a single setting and wash it all down with a pitcher of beer.  Yeah, I'm pretty much a pig...

A kitchen, good friends, way too many sharp knives, boiling oil and the prerequisite bottle of tequila.  Someone is gonna get cut, burnt or scalded.  I just know it.  Luckily, another good friend of ours is a 911 operator.  We've given her a heads up.  We have her on speed dial...

Here's to Saturday!  Yes, a song in my heart, a tap dance on my toes and smile on my face...  What can I say, life just don't get no better than that!!!

OK, I'M CRAZY...

Full blown bat shit crazy and nowhere near holding down a productive job.  I love that.  I used to be corporate.  Corner office.  Three piece suits.  A secretary.  goddess, I am so embarrassed.  Yes, at one point in my life I used to be reasonable. Oh, just stop laughing.  I can hear you!!!

Yeah, I was once a "suit".  Again, stop laughing!!!  Back in the day, I had me a time.  But now I am having me a good time.  A MUCH better time, trust me...

I have a crazy lady living upstairs from me.  She is from Puerto Rico.  I love her dearly.  She keeps referring to me as a Mexican.  Yeah, she's been in my apartment.  She knows what it looks like.  For those of you out there who have been here, you know what it looks like...  It's a bull fight, a sun set and way too much tequila.  Hey, can life get any better???  She has taught me how to finally make rice the right way and I have taught her how to make peanut butter cookies my way.  Life is so freaking good.

We are constantly knocking on each others doors and sharing something fresh out of the oven.  I love that.  Between  cookies, rice and brownies our hearts are going to stop but I can't think of a better way to go out of the door...  Hell she does things with chicken that are mind blowing.  I will set down at her table in a heartbeat.  Well, at least what is left of them...

Here's to you dear woman!

A LITTLE BLUE MARBLE...

I am a gypsy.  I don't normally put my feet down on the ground in one place for very long.  I just have to keep moving around.  I want to see stuff.  Do stuff.  Taste stuff.  Hell, I'm on my fourth passport.  Get the picture?

'sconsin and I have a long history.  A very LONG history.  Although I grew up in San Francisco I spent most of my summers at my parents lake home in northern 'sconsin.  We called it "the cottage".  Shit on a shingle, it was a three bedroom, two bath ranch style thing with 200 feet of lake frontage.  It stole my heart at the age of 6.  I dearly remember being splayed out on my back on the dock and counting stars.  I broke my leg in two places one summer trying to take a ski jump.  Can you say 16 and drunk off of your ass???  Hang on a second, I have to stop giggling...

Yeah, 'sconsin and I go back a long time.  I went to college here.  What a complete waist of time and racehorses.  But this indeed is the land of dead fish and animal heads hanging off of the walls in a "supper club".  On a Friday night for a fish fry.  Hey, what's better than beer batter and tartar sauce???

Almost 21 years ago I moved back here.  And I've never looked back.  I love this place.  I have lived in Madison for almost 21 years now.  We claim to be 76 square miles surrounded by reality.  Sorry, have to stop giggling again.  I have been blessed with the most amazing bunch of loonies. I can't imagine it any other way.

  Yes, life is good.

SOMETIMES THE BEST GIFTS COME OUT OF NOWHERE...

Oh, goddess, where to start...

About a year and a half ago I happened to stumble upon a website of a guy who is fascinated with Charles Manson.  Of course I started scrolling through it.  And then a picture came up and I damned near shit.  It was Rosie and "Jay".  Rosie was Charlie's first wife and Jay was their son.  I knew them both.  Hell, I worked side by side with them.  In of all places, Mt. Vernon Illinois at a Holiday Inn back in the late 1970's.  I was the Chinese cook, Rosie was a waitress, Jay was there short term just visiting.  The connection came through Rosie's step son, Kevin, who I quickly became fast friends with.  He was a junior in high school and I was 23 and we all worked together.  Can you say Charlie Manson's first wife???  Life never fails to deal me a strange hand of cards...  I love that.  I would have it no other way.

So, I put a post on the site telling about having known Rosie and Jay.  BTW, his name at the time was Charles Manson Jr.  That certainly must have been a heavy brick to drag around.  From the website I learned that he legally changed his name, moved to Colorado, got married and then took his own life in 1993 on a lonely deserted road.  But enough on that.

Kevin and I became very good friends.  His gaydar was spot on.  He nailed me within seconds.  I was the first person that he came out to.  I was impressed with his courage.  That was a pretty ballsy act in Mt. Vernon back in 1978.  About 4 months later Rosie walked up to me at work, threw her arms around me, gave me a wonderful bear hug and just said "I'm fine with this, take care of him".  I damned near fell into a wok.  Rosie was way too cool for words.


I taught Kevin how to drink tequila.  And let him sleep on my sofa way too many times to count.  He was a dear friend. Hell, he was like a baby sister to me.  From Mt. Vernon he moved to Waco, Texas and I moved to Minneapolis but we still stayed in contact over the phone.  In 1982 we hooked up together in Dallas for a week and partied our brains out.  Good times.  That was the last time I saw him face to face.  In 1986 I moved to Portland, OR.  He didn't know my phone number and his was disconnected so our contact ended.

Three days ago I get an email that blew me out of the water.  It was from a classmate of his who had managed to stumble across the same website and read my post.  I remembered her.  She and Kevin were very good friends.  When she asked if I was the same guy that bought her the bottle of schnapps because she was under age I knew it was legit.  The two of us have been exchanging emails wildly.  She has filled me in on what happened to Kevin.  He is no longer with us.  He spiraled wildly out of control mainlining speed.  Apparently if you could smoke it, snort it or inject it Kevin was first in line.  She told me that he only gave up speed when he ran out of veins to use.  My jaw hit the floor.  Unfortunately by then it was too late, he was already HIV+ and on his way out the door.  She is a Registered Nurse and helped care for Kevin during his final days back in 1993.  It was a history that I did not want to hear but she gave me answers to questions I desperately needed answered.  I hold this woman in the highest regard for sticking by a train wreck and remaining loyal.  I just can't thank her enough for the info much as I did not want to hear it but to be able to hook up with Kevin again after 28 years is a delicious gift.  goddess damned delicious!!!  She has given me back wondrous memories I had forgotten about.  I am both blessed and gobsmacked...

When someone your junior dies before you do you cry.  You cringe.  And you do everything in your power to keep from going fetal in a corner in the dark.  Well, I did all three...

Kevin, I hope that you are tap dancing on stars!!!

SOMETIMES THE BEST GIFTS COME OUT OF NOWHERE...

Oh, goddess, where to start...

About a year and a half ago I happened to stumble upon a website of a guy who is fascinated with Charles Manson.  Of course I started scrolling through it.  And then a picture came up and I damned near shit.  It was Rosie and "Jay".  Rosie was Charlie's first wife and Jay was their son.  I knew them both.  Hell, I worked side by side with them.  In of all places, Mt. Vernon Illinois at a Holiday Inn back in the late 1970's.  I was the Chinese cook, Rosie was a waitress, Jay was there short term just visiting.  The connection came through Rosie's step son, Kevin, who I quickly became friends with.  He was a junior in high school and I was 23 and we all worked together.  Can you say Charlie Manson's first wife???  Life never fails to deal me a strange hand of cards...  I love that.  I would have it no other way.

So, I put a post on the site telling about having known Rosie and Jay.  BTW, his name at the time was Charles Manson Jr.  That certainly must have been a heavy brick to drag around.  From the website I learned that he legally changed his name, moved to Colorado, got married and then took his own life in 1993 on a lonely deserted road.  But enough on that.

Kevin and I became very good friends.  His gaydar was spot on.  He nailed me within seconds.  I was the first person that he came out to.  I was impressed with his courage.  That was a pretty ballsy act in Mt. Vernon back in 1978.  About 4 months later Rosie walked up to me at work, threw her arms around me, gave me a wonderful bear hug and just said "I'm fine with this, take care of him".  I damned near fell into a wok.  Rosie was way too cool for words.


I taught Kevin how to drink tequila.  And let him sleep on my sofa way too many times to count.  He was a dear friend. Hell, he was like a baby sister to me.  From Mt. Vernon he moved to Waco, Texas and I moved to Minneapolis but we still stayed in contact over the phone.  In 1982 we hooked up together in Dallas for a week and partied our brains out.  Good times.  That was the last time I saw him face to face.  In 1986 I moved to Portland, OR.  He didn't know my phone number and his was disconnected so our contact ended.

Three days ago I get an email that blew me out of the water.  It was from a classmate of his who had managed to stumble across the same website and read my post.  I remembered her.  She and Kevin were very good friends.  When she asked if I was the same guy that bought her the bottle of schnapps because she was under age I knew it was legit.  The two of us have been exchanging emails wildly.  She has filled me in on what happened to Kevin.  He is no longer with us.  He spiraled wildly out of control mainlining speed.  Apparently if you could smoke it, snort it or inject it Kevin was first in line.  She told me that he only gave up speed when he ran out of veins to use.  My jaw hit the floor.  Unfortunately by then it was too late, he was already HIV+ and on his way out the door.  She is a Registered Nurse and helped care for Kevin during his final days back in 1993.  It was a history that I did not want to hear but she gave me answers to questions I desperately needed answered.  I hold this woman in the highest regard for sticking by a train wreck and remaining loyal.  I just can't thank her enough for the info much as I did not want to hear it but to be able to hook up with Kevin again after 28 years is a delicious gift.  goddess damned delicious!!!  She has given me back wondrous memories I had forgotten about.  I am both blessed and gobsmacked...

Kevin, I hope that you are tap dancing on stars!!!

HERE'S TO MY FRIENDS,,,,

Or should I say my fellow fiends?  Partners in crime? goddess knows, I know some completely  loony people.  I would have it no other way.  We party.  We dance.  And then we fire up the cauldron.  Yeah, we're that nuts...  Hell, I actually know people that put firecrackers in Spam for no other reason than that they can.  C'mon, how cool is that???

Judy (my nickname.  Oh just read some of my older blogs) has always been attracted to the odd, the strange, the dangerous and the over/under medicated.  What can I say, it's just my nature.  If you are just a bit bent left of right then I am at your shoulder.  With a hand grenade.  What can I say, it never hurts to come well prepared.  C'mon, what's more fun than an ape with a hand grenade???  SURPRISE!!!

I am on the fast track to 61.  Doesn't faze me.  What the hell.  Yes, I am getting old. FUCK!!!!  But I will never grow old.  And that is due to my friends (fiends?).  We are indeed a bunch of crazies.  Completely full blown bat shit crazy.  And some of us still holding down productive jobs.  I pity them for that reason alone.  Yet, I hold them dear in my heart.  Without them I wouldn't be me.  Many are here.  Some are gone.  But none of them will ever be forgotten.  Again, without them, I just wouldn't be me.  And I just can't imagine the alternative.

My exit will always be open.  Hit the turn signal..  Take a chance.  Trust me, it's gonna be fun...  Just ignore the hyenas down by the stop sign.  Don't try to pet them.  Some of them are rabid.  Hhhmmm...  I think they all might be rabid.  Best to leave the windows closed....

Care for a cocktail??? Oh, yeah, fasten your seat belt!!!  Trust me motherfucker, it's gonna be one hell of a bumpy  ride!!!

Yeah, smile on my face...

HERE'S TO THE DAMNED, THE LOST AND THE FORGOTTEN...

Why do we have these things?  Why do we just accept them blindly and in silence?  Why in the name of the goddess do we let this fucking shit happen???

To be damned.  Lost.  Forgotten.  Yeah, I've been down that dark alley on more than one occasion.  Whether by choice (what was I thinking) or by chance I have indeed found myself at the bottom of that well. It sucks ass.  Big time.  No matter how you find yourself there.  It just sucks ass!!!

My left hand is warm and fuzzy.  A marshmallow at it were.  Hey, let's make 'Smores!  My right hand is a whole other adventure.  It has a hand grenade in it.  With the pin pulled out.  And I am looking around the small windowless room that I am being held in trying to decide who to toss it at.  Yeah, I can go that full blown bat shit crazy in half a heart beat.  Trust me!  I am not someone that you want to fuck with.  I can spin on a dime and make Joan Crawford look like a walk in the park with a purse dog.  Push my buttons, bitch you're toast.  That is a given.  Your warranty is no longer valid.  I now own you.  Prepare to die.  Slowly....  I will relish you like a condiment on a hot dog.  As long as it is a Hebrew National.  They're Kosher, don't ya know...

Sit around my dining room table and I will feed and booze you up to your eyeballs.  Fuck with me in public, do an injustice or cross my line in the sand I will indeed cut you in half.  Yeah, I can go from Thumper the Rabbit to Hitler in half a nanosecond..  White hot explosive monkey madness.  I've seen too damned much injustice.  Done to others and done to me.  You learn to steel your butt up.  And come back with a vengeance of indescribable rage.  Trust me, you just don't want to take that exit...

I've been at more peoples back than I can remember.  I'm the crazy peaking over your shoulder and making that "face".  That alone should be a red flag.  If I have to stand if front of you, with my back to you, dig my heals into the dirt, square my shoulders, cross my arms, cock my head and say "I don't think so,
motherfucker!" at the idiot in front of you, I'll do it.  That's red flag number two.  Do NOT fuck with me when I am in your way and running interference.  I am indeed a monkey with a hand grenade.  Red flag number three.  Again, NOT a good exit. There's a lot of hyenas down by the stop sign.  And I'm damned glad that I am one of them...

GRANDMA'S KOOL-AID GLASSES...

I am a child of the South.  Born in Arkansas, don't ya know.  I come from a long line of shallow end of the gene pool Southerners.  Both sides.  Very inbred.  Hell, I'm surprised I don't have eleven fingers...

I spent many wonderful summers in southern Illinois with my maternal grandparents.  Yeah, I know southern Illinois isn't exactly the South but if there is biscuits and gravy on the table you are indeed in the South.  Front porch "gliders", side yard swings in front of hollyhocks and "burnin' barrels".  Yeah, that's the South.

One of my fondest memories as a child was having grandma give me a glass of Kool-Aid in an aluminum glass and sitting down at the kitchen table and snagging a couple of pieces of left over bacon that were always left laying there on a plate.  The glasses came in six different colors.  She would let me pick which color I wanted.  I picked a different color everyday just because I could.  It made the Kool-Aid taste better.

Several years ago some very good friends of ours offered me some glasses that they did not need.  I took one look at those things and damned near crapped my pants.  Aluminum glasses in six different colors.  Still in the plastic wrappers.  Oh, sweet goddess, my mouth dropped.  Exact replicas of grandma's Kool-Aid glasses.  I snagged those things in a heartbeat!!!  They now set proudly and predominately in my cupboard next to the coffee cups.  Every time I open the doors and see them I am instantly transported back to a simpler time.  Homemade cookies.  Fizzie's.  Bosco.  Front porch gliders.  And a mayonnaise jar full of lightin' bugs on a warm, humid summer night.

Those glasses make my pulse race and my heart sing.  Grandma's still with me...  And I tap dance in her memory!!!

KETCHUP... SMILE ON MY FACE.

Yeah, it's true.  I am a ketchup whore.  It's bitch, as it where.

I fell in love with this stuff at a very early age.  I think I was three.  By the age of five I was helping my grandmother make this stuff from scratch on a wood fired stove in a steaming hot kitchen in the South. She was a rail thin little woman who did home canning proud. If she could harvest something out of her garden and stuff it into a sterilized jar, she did. I was in heaven!  Her homemade ketchup was fucking amazing!  Do you know how many tomatoes you need to make ketchup?  Way too fucking many.  Wheelbarrows full.  And she had them.  I have incredibly wonderful memories of her and I in the garden "pickin' 'maters".  She passed away when I was in 4th grade.  I lunged at all of her metal recipe boxes and her set of cast iron cookware.  Yeah, I'm that gay...  Those little boxes held treasures.  I use them all to this day.  Grandma, thank you!!!

Soon afterwards I had to start using store bought ketchup.  I was not happy.  Then I discovered Heinz.  It wasn't as good as grandma's but it was a damned good second best.  It's damned good stuff but it's just not perfect.  In 1986 I got an eye opener.  I was in Australia.  I couldn't find ketchup to save my life.  I wanted to die.  Ketchup is an American thing.  I finally found it in the Ethnic Aisle.  WHAT???  Yeah, a small bottle of Heinz.  For $12.  WTF???  I quickly learned to travel with ketchup.  I filled my pockets with those little packets at fast food places.  I will not cross a time zone without some ketchup in my possession.  In 1988 while dragging my ass all over Asia people would give me strange looks as I started hauling little packets of ketchup out out my shoulder bag.  Americans at the next table would start salivating.  And pay me BIG bucks for a couple of them.  Which I happily sold to them at grotesquely inflated prices.

About twelve years ago on one of my frequent trips to Mexico a good friend joined my down there and took me to one of his favorite restaurants.  I ordered a hamburgeusa and fries and they laid down a jar of Clemente Jacques Mexican ketchup. I circled around that thing like a pack of rabid hyenas.  One taste and I was smitten.  OMG!!!  If you have never tasted Mexican ketchup you have not been to heaven.  I have been bringing suitcases of this stuff back from Mexico ever since.  It's mind blowing.  Mexican ketchup is different.  We use sugar.  They use vinegar.  Oh my goddess.  Magnificent!!!  Heinz was now dead to me...  Airports and US Customs look at me like a terrorist.  Yes, perhaps five gallons of ketchup is a bit much.

It's not just ketchup though.  It's tomatoes.  I love tomatoes.  I've grown a shitload of them over the years.  All sorts of colors, shapes, sizes and varieties.  I make my own tomato sauce.  Oh, goddess, I have been trapped in my kitchen with way too many tomatoes, sweating my tits off over way too many stock pots.  I have been known to drive more than 100 miles to raid someones garden and literally fill the trunk of my car with bizarre heritage plum tomatoes.  Grandma would be so proud.

And yes, I actually do have the t-shirt featured at the left.  Ketchup, it just don't get any better than that...

CRAZY PEOPLE...

I have been blessed in my life.  I have known WAY too many of these folks...  Good goddess, WAY too many...

Oh, lord...

We have crossed paths.  We almost at times collided.  In mid air.  We have partied our tits off together.  And we have come to blows.  Sometimes a bit bloody and resulting in a 911 call..

I love me a crazy person.  Hell, I'm one.  Trust me, give me enough tequila and I am a hand grenade with the pin pulled out.  Just ask anyone who knows me...  As they like to say, "DUCK AND FUCKING COVER!!!".

On the rare occasions that I have used public transport I have always ended up sitting next to the slightly uncivilised one that insisted on showing me their toothbrush.  Which, of course they had just found at the bus stop that they had been waiting at.  Why me???  I have found myself setting next to loonies.  Some of which have been kind of fun.  Some of which, not so much.  Again, why me???

Much like myself, crazies come at you out of nowhere.  They disrupt you. Hell, given the chance, I will disrupt you.  I'm just that way.  Wanna see my toothbrush???  Yeah, I'm not well....

We are a palette of loonies.  A smorgasbord of insanity.  I would have it no other way.  And the scary part of it is that we all end up on jury duty.  Hey, if you'll acquit me I'll acquit you....

Heh, heh, heh... Think about it a second...

COSTCO AND I HAVE JUST PARTED WAYS!!!

I am angry as hell right now.  And that is something you just don't even want to be in the same time zone with.  Ask any of my friends.  They all, unfortunately, have first hand knowledge of that tsunami.  I can become a pack of rabid hyenas in half a heart beat.  When that happens you better hope that I'm at your back and not in front of you making eye contact because I am more than likely trying to tear your rib cage open.  I have been known to take down (and hospitalize) people 4 times my size.  Yeah, I'm an ornery old fart that takes no prisoners. Never underestimate the power of little skinny people.  We can spin on a dime and we certainly don't fight fair.  OK, enough said on that...

An article has just appeared on the web that has pissed me off to the very marrow of my old brittle bones.  If you have not heard about this yet let me get you up to speed.  In 2012 a large peanut processing company got tangled up in a salmonella outbreak.  They shut down and started hemorrhaging money and went into bankruptcy.  They eventually opened back up but 5 months later folded completely.  In addition to their own private label brand they also produced for some of the largest food retailers in the country.  One of them was Costco.  Costco refused to accept an order of 1 million jars of peanut butter.  It sat in a warehouse with nowhere to go.

What did Costco do?  Dug their heals into the sand and became shitheads.  They were approached by food banks, shelters and prisons to take this off of their hands.  Did they say yes?  NO!!!  What did they do?  They said it had to be destroyed.  Yes, they decided to spend $60,000 to have it all put in a landfill in New Mexico.  WHAT???  It took more than 200 semi trucks to haul 27,000 tons of peanut butter to a freaking landfill.  This is wrong on so many levels that it hurts.

1.  It was edible.  Apparently, no one at Costco HQ has ever been hungry.

2.  You just put 1 fucking million recyclable plastic jars in a landfill.  Don't even get me started...

3.  Had this been donated to charity it would have given them a $2.6 million tax write off and not a $60,000
     expenditure.  What were you thinking?

4.  And this is the important one.  What they did was a mind bogglingly horrid, unforgivable waste of food!!!

In my 6 decades I have unfortunately found myself cold, wet, homeless, in the dark and hungry in a doorway on more than one occasion.  I gotta tell you, hungry is the worst part of that scenario.  I learned a long time ago that you never EVER waste food.  Whether it is for you or someone else, you just don't waste food.  I have worked for several food banks and shelters in my time and the most rewarding thing I can possibly imagine is to give an individual that is hungry a meal or to hand a family several bags of groceries to help them get by.  If you come to my house you will indeed be invited to sit down at the dining room table and I will lay out a spread.  Food is sustenance.  But it is also compassion and caring.  Especially when you share it.

Costco did not share.  Fuck 'em!!!

THERE'S TIMES THAT YOU JUST GOTTA DO WHAT YOU GOTTA DO...

Oh, lord...  I'm in pain.  Old people pain.  I'm not sure if I like that or not...

Yesterday we welcomed a dear friend into her 48th year of life.  She's still not sure if she likes that or not either...  At anywho, she decided that she wanted a small bash to ring in the milestone.  We willingly agreed and the four of us laid siege to her house with the pot-luck from hell.  Prime rib, Korean bulgogi (or as we call it bull doggie), coconut rice, a couple of racks of slow roasted baby back ribs, some buffalo chicken thighs, a bedpan full of homemade oatmeal cookies, a fresh pineapple (yeah, guess who gave her that), spring rolls, WAY too many dipping sauces, some really good guacamole that she got to make on the molcajeta that I returned to her freshly seasoned and a couple of bottles tequila resposado. I assume that the ramaki and the spanikopita are still sitting in the freezer.   I have no idea how I made it home safely the 13 miles I had to drive.

The Birthday Girl decided that we should play some party games.  Well, that's your first red flag.  We started out with "Shots and Ladders" (as opposed to "Chutes and Ladders") and then we degenerated into "Pictionary".  Who the bloody hell dreams these drinking games up???  Of course my team won.  But only because we were not as lit as the Birthday Girl.  Damn close though.  At least we could stand without assistance.  I have to tell you, "Shots and Ladders" can be terribly deadly!!!

I gave her 27 pesos for some street tacos, a couple of bus passes for Transportes Del Pacifico and 10 centavos to "grow on".  She giggled.  I loved it. Keep in mind, this is the woman that I consistently refer to as "Senor Nancy".

To me, she is a puppy.  Twelve years my junior.  A firebrand by any stretch but to me so young that I just want to slap her.  But only out of joy for her being that damned young.  I would kill to be back in my 40's again.  Even my late 40's.

I came home bandaged and bloody thanks to a dog that doesn't have the good sense the goddess gave a toothpick.  This stupid thing damned near killed me last summer.  He caught me around the ankles with his leash, sent me tits over tea kettle and I went spinning in the dark.  I missed a pile of cinder blocks by less than an inch. The fact that my skull was not fractured bloody fucking amazes me!!!   At least my latest injuries happened inside the house while I was sitting on the sofa. I swear to whatever that my right arm just went through the Blitz.  Thank goodness I am a dog person.. Just not that dog.  Dumb.  Dumb. Dumb.  OK, I'll say it, IDIOT!!!!

Feliz Cumpleanos dear woman.  Enjoy the bus ride to Oaxaca....

OK, THIS PINEAPPLE THING HAS JUST TAKEN A BIZARRELY NEW EXIT...

The pineapple thing...  It has now gone from fun, to a fixation to a fetish.  As the goddess is my witness I WILL make one of these little sob's work!!!

It's March.  That is the start of pineapple season.  They are on sale.  Two dollars.  In an odd way I am in shopper heaven.  I actually had several people giving me strange looks in the produce section the other day.  I was going through a pallet of pineapples like a crack whore.  I was feeling them.  I was smelling them.  I was looking at the leaves.  I got questioned.  I shared my expertise on pineapples.  I know more about pineapples than any one human should ever know.  Google, pineapples and I are very good friends now.  At this point I should be working for Dole and living in Costa Rica.

As you are all aware of by now I am trying to grow a pineapple plant.  So far, no success.  And it's pissing me off so damned bad that I want to chew through re-bar.  At the moment I have one in a small pot of dirt and another hanging by toothpicks in a small jar of water.  Whether either one of them takes off is a crap shoot.  But I will indeed persevere in this endeavour.

So, pineapples are on sale.  A very good friends birthday is this coming Wednesday so, of course, I bought a pineapple to give to her.  Did you know that the pineapple is the universal sign of "welcome"?  Neither did I but like I said I know WAY too much about pineapples now.  At anywho, hers is setting in my refrigerator at the moment and I just finished carving up the other one that I bought for Sea Squirt and me.  BTW, he loves fresh pineapple.  Good thing, because I am dragging those damned things home by the bag full in an attempt to become a pineapple farmer.

Guess what?  I find three seeds.  Yes, three pineapple seeds!  At the ripe old age of 60 I finally got to lay my eyes on pineapple seeds.  What can I say, sometimes it's the little things that make you do a happy dance.  And I did indeed do a happy dance.  Sea Squirt walked into the kitchen and sees me with my bathrobe around my ankles doing something very similar to a quarterback that has just made a touchdown.  I was almost in tears.  YES!!!  I HAD PINEAPPLE SEEDS!!!  I felt just like little Ralphie when he got the Red Rider pellet rifle for Christmas.

Those three little beauties have been thoroughly rinsed off and are now drying on a paper napkin.  I'm going to plant them tomorrow in a pot full of Antigo silt loam.  Which, BTW, is the most fertile soil on the face of the planet and is only found here in 'sconsin.  It's actually our official state soil.  It's the most amazing top soil that you can possibly imagine.  And it smells wonderful!!!  This soil and I have a history that goes WAY back.  This stuff is so rich that you could throw a shoestring at it and it would grow a shoe store the size of Houston.

I'm not hedging my bets here but if this soil does not give me pineapples then nothing will.

I just want a freaking pineapple plant!!!

YES, I USED TO OWN A YUGO...

Please, just stop laughing.  It was not just a Jugo, it was a Yugo GT.  That alone gave it almost  97 horsepower.  OK, now I'm laughing..  This thing was a joke from the word go. Guess what?  I bought it with a MasterCard...  What was I thinking???  It was black and had racing stripes.  On a Yugo.  I must have been incredibly high!!!  Again, what the hell was I thinking???

It got damned near 50 mph highway.  And it had a hard time making it to that speed. Even on a downhill run.  Off of a cliff...

My next car?  Even worse.  I bought a used 1974 Chevy Vega station wagon with fake vinyl wood grain paneling and a chrome roof rack.  It was avocado green.  Totally horrid looking little car.  Yet I drove it for another 100,000 miles.  Hey, sometimes shit just drops in your lap and you deal with it...

I have owned unbelievable huge big block V-8's, I have owned gutless little 4-bangers.  I am driving one of those things at the moment.  It is 12 year old Dodge Neon with a whomping 132 hsp.  Oh, hell, growing up our lawn mower had more power than this thing.  I hide in shame...  I want a car engine so fucking big that it can go to Mars in less then three days.

Yes, my needs are simple

Just make it go!!!

WHAT COMES AROUND, GOES AROUND...

Fred Phelps.  Dear, dear Goddess, I just don't know where to go with this one.  But I'm gonna give it my fucking best...

Fred Phelps is a shit head.  On a good day.  On a bad day he made Hitler look warm and fuzzy.  He is a defrocked minister of his own "church"...  lord, I use that term loosely.  He is a hate filled son of a bitch so full of delusion, lies and anger that I quite honestly can't find the keys here in front of me to actually describe how horrid that he is.

The Westboro Babtist Church.  Crap, everything about that last sentence is so fucking wrong in so many fucking ways.  He and his way too large crowd of followers would travel the country disrupting funerals and making peoples lives hell on earth.  They disrupted military funerals.   They disrupted civilian funerals.  This is the group of terrorists that showed up in Wyoming and disrupted the funeral of Matthew Shepard.  The town stood up against him and his ilk and formed a barrior between the mourners and his low life bunch of slime to allow the family to mourn in peace and dignity.  To those that did this act, I bow in praise.

He and his group of full blown bat shit crazies traveled the country disrupting every funeral that they could get within shouting distance of.  I guess in their opinion it was OK for "their" god to send you off to war but against his will to let you leave this mortal coil, ravaged and dead with some dignity and grace.  And without any form of respect for your family.  It finally took Federal Court action to keep him and his group of followerss to stay more than 500 feet away from a funeral.  But in my opinion even that wasn't far enough away.

News just broke on the web.  He is at deaths door.  Dying as it were.  Good.  I hope he lingers.  I hope that he suffers.  I hope that he begins to rot while he is still alive.  And remains conscious while he does it.  I want him to smell what death is.  For a very long time.  Am I just a bit angry?  Yes.  Am I bitter?  Yes.  Do I want him to suffer pain and anguish?  HELL FUCKING YES!!!  I am counting pennies as I type.  Push come to shove I will buy a ticket on GreyHound and travel to this shit eating sob's funeral, show up in full flaming drag and do my damnedest to cause as much collateral damage as I can possible wrap my liberal hands around!!!  Bottom line, what comes around goes around.

Duck and cover folks, Momma is locked and loaded!!!

HUGS...

Let me start by saying that I am a firm believer in hugs.  I love them.  I like to give them.  I like to get them.  Hell, who wouldn't?

Hugs are not limited to humans.  Where did you think we got the term "bear hug" from???  All sorts of creatures hug, we're just not quite sure why though.  Humans have managed to take them to an extreme.  The outfield as it were.  We, at least, are fully conscious of what we are doing and why we are doing it.  We do it with abandon.  We do it with a palette that spans a full 180 degrees of opposites.  We hug with joy.  We hug with love.  We hug with fear.  We hug with sorrow.  We hug with every emotion we are capable of experiencing.  I am so glad that I am not a Vulcan.  They're missing out on one of the most incredible experiences.

We have all hugged while laughing our asses off or crying, whaling and trembling.  That's what hugs are all about.  Hugs are a human bonding thing that literally blows me out of the water and makes my heart sing.  Even if I happen to be lost and scared at the moment.

I am a hugger.  Babies.  Friends.  Strangers. Animals.  Inanimate objects.  OK, don't ask about that one...  I will hug you in welcome.  I will hug you at goodbye.  I will hug you as you lay on the floor fetal and loosing your sanity.  And I hope that you will do the same for me.  Yeah, it's a bonding thing that I sometimes think is even better than 2 pounds of dark bittersweet chocolate.  That alone speaks volumes!!!

I give you a challenge.  From this moment forward promise to hug at least two people a day whether there is a reason for it or not.  Trust me, the world will be a better place...

PASTA. WHAT MORE CAN BE SAID???

I would sell secrets to China for this stuff.

Yes, I am a pasta whore.  Things just don't get no better than pasta.

Feed me some pasta and rub my tummy and I am YOURS!!!

It doesn't matter the shape or size.  It's pasta.  Tomato based sauce?  YES!!!  Meat?  Yeah, I'm there for you baby.  Alfredo?  Put me in handcuffs and just force-feed me!!!  Put some asiago on that stuff and I will follow you off the cliff.

I never met a meatball that I didn't want to propose to.  My addiction to tomatoes is almost as bad as my addiction to potatoes.  Holy shit!  And Sea Squirt knows just how bad that can get...  He once wrestled me to the floor in the kitchen and screamed "No more fucking hash browns!!!"  I felt sort of honored...

I have been known to put a sauce on pasta that actually out weighed the pasta.  Red, white, clams you name it, I have put it on pasta.  Fuck my heart.  Fuck my cholesterol levels.  I am old and I'll do what I goddess-damned want to.  What's it gonna do, kill me?  Hell, I'm old, what isn't gonna kill me???  Although I do still look both ways as I cross the street.  Death by bus accident is so fucking embarrassing .  Although, in a strange way it would be sort of appropriate for me.

Again, back to pasta...

I've never met a noodle of any sort that I didn't fall immediately in love with.  Hey, it's pasta.  If I were gluten intolerant I would have died cold, wet, naked, homeless and starving in a doorway decades ago.  Thank the goddess for small favors!    Be it rice, wheat or corn, I'm the first in line!

Again, China, pick up the phone.  I need some starch!!!

PINEAPPLE PRINCESS....

Yes, that is a song done by Annette Funicello way back in the 1950's.  Which by the way, has nothing to do with this post.  Just thought I'd give you a heads up on how twisted Disney was.

At anywho....

I am a big fan of tropical fruits.  Oh, just stop laughing, I can hear you.  And you know what I mean by that.  I have never met a mango that I didn't want to marry.  I have never embraced a papaya that I didn't want to put the schtup to.  A kiwi can carry me away in a heartbeat.  A starfruit?  Duck and cover, here comes momma!!!  Now, pineapple is a whole different gig.  It's like coconut.  It has to (HAS TO!!!) be fresh..  The canned stuff just suck rocks.  I'd rather eat the label.  Seriously.  I can set down with a fresh pineapple and a knife and just go to town.  Preferably naked.  It just saves on the laundry bill.  Yep, I'm a messy eater.  Just ask Sea Squirt.  He has pointed at stains on my clothing that I don't even know where they came from.  To me food is a cross between Play Dough, boogers and a mud wallow.  Yeah, I'm actually that bad.  I'm pretty much best draped in a canvas tarp and spoon fed.  It's just easier that way.  Trust me.

OK, back to pineapple.  For some reason, don't ask me why, I have decided that I want to grow a pineapple plant.  Again, I have no idea why but it just sounds cool.  According to  the sites I have visited on the web there is no actually carved in stone way to do this.  I hate that!!!  I have tried rooting them in water.  I have tried just sticking them into some dirt in a pot.  Results?  SQUAT!!!   Lots of mold.  Dead things.  You name it, I have produced it.  Scary shit has come out of that pot, but never a viable pineapple.  I am pissed.

Pineapples are bromiliads.  Hell, you should be able to just nail them to the wall and they'll grow.   Mine?  Hell no.  In the name of freaking meatloaf, bromiliads don't even have a root system, they don't like being watered and fertilizer is poison to them.  A sledge hammer can't take these things down. yet I can get one to root to save my life.  I have been all over the web trying to figure out how to do this.  Some idiot actually suggested starting them from seed.  What the fuck have you been smoking, your shoes???

As the goddess is my witness, I will indeed pull this off.  I don't care how many motherfucking pineapples I have to go through but I'm gonna make one of these SOB's work  I am an ornery old fart that is just not willing to be denied.  I JUST WANT A GOD DAMNED PINEAPPLE PLANT!!!  Do not ask me why.  You wouldn't what to hear the answer.  Let alone understand it.  Hell, I don't even understand it.  It's kind of like a head injury on the brown acid.  And if you if you understand that last sentence at least you are in my lane.  And driving way over the speed limit.  And way over the center line...

I'd have it no other way.

Pineapples...

HOLY SHIT, THE POPE SAID "FUCK"!!!!

OK, to begin with, I like Francis.  He's my kind of guy.  Hell, I'd pay for his frappuccino at Starbucks if he didn't have enough change.  Well, not really.  I wouldn't be caught dead in a Starbucks.  Found there dead, yes.  Caught there dead, no. I'm not quite sure what the difference is there but who gives a rats ass.   Batista's make my skin curdle...  Oh, come on, it gives you wonderful fodder for my eulogy.

At any rate...

So, the Pope is giving a live announcement to the masses in Italian.  SO not his native language.  Well, he kind of screwed up.  Pardon the pun.  He mispronounced a word.  An easy mistake.  Unfortunately  this was a big one.  Yes, he dropped an F-bomb.  Yep, he said the Italian slang word for "fuck".  I love it.  According to several reports he caught himself immediately, corrected himself and sort of giggled.  I love that too!

There is a smile on my face right now.  In my lifetime a Pope said "fuck".  I can just imagine 50,000 people in Vatican Square sinking to their knees and shitting their pants.  I love that even more!!!

Francis, keep up the good work.  I'm at your back.  And nothing is more entertaining than a Pope with a Jew at his back...

Fuck, ain't that a giggle...

DRONES...

I have one.  Well everyone in my apartment complex has one.  His name is Ty.  Which by the way is short for Tyler.  He is the new complex manager.  He is an idiot on so many levels that he reminds me of a layer cake.

He is approximately 25 years old and has sold his soul to the company.  Yes, he is a corporate drone.  He has secured his "future" while at the same time destroying his "present".  He is apparently happy and lord knows I use that term loosely.  He has eyes like Bambi.  I can't imagine what kind of bait the company used but he hit on it full bore and they reeled him in like a tuna.  How sad...

Now, as a caveat, I used to be corporate.  Very corporate.  Hell, I even had a corner office.  With my own secretary.  The whole nine yards.  I needed to be slapped.  But I never sold my soul to the company.  Did I gladly cash the paychecks?  Hell yes!!!  But I kept my soul safely tucked away at home in a drawer.  It allowed me to sleep at night.  The whole night.

This Ty guy is amazingly frightening.  When I go over to the office to put in a work order for a repair or drop off the rent check he spins on his chair like a top and starts typing away at the keyboard with a look like a deer in headlights on his face.  When he does that I automatically back away a few paces because I don't want to become infected.  Or assimilated.  I swear to god, the company lobotomized him.

He dresses like a hipster, wears odd pointy toe'd shoes and drives a white 2001 Hyundai Accent with a burnt out front headlight.  That alone just speaks volumes.

He is young enough to be my grandson.  I don't know who I want to hit with a brick first, him or me...

LORD I LOVE FEBRUARY 27TH!!!!

Yes, this is my kind of day!!!  Today is NATIONAL CHILI DAY!!!!  Si!!! 

I am in heaven.  I raided the freezer this morning and several quarts of homemade chili are defrosting on the counter as I type.  Chili is one of my favorite comfort foods.  It takes me the better part of the day to make it.  I use four different kinds of beans and what ever side of dead animal I happen to have on the ready.  It's a labor of love.

It is the end of February in 'sconsin.  The windchill right now is actually 22-degrees below fucking zero.  HOLY SHIT!!!  Yeah, it's a chili kind of dinner tonight. Fresh cornbread will be available in abundance.     In the name of the goddess, why the hell do I live here???  Oh, wait, I remember now.  Vodka.  In large amounts.  Dare I say copious amounts???

Tonight we feast on chili.  Enough said...

Yes, there is a sonrisa on my cara!

I AM A MUTT OF AMAZING DISTINCTION...

Yeah, I'm a Heinz 57.  I have more genes in me than I know what to do with.  I am an amalgamation of races and creeds.  And I love it.  On my mother's side I am both Northern and Southern European.  On my father's side I am Northern European and Native American.  Yes, I am a mutt.  And I wear that badge proudly.  Hey, it ain't easy being an American...

My paternal great-great grandmother was a full blood Menominee Sioux  from northern  Minnesota.  Yeah, the Sioux Nation.  We're still not sure if great-great grandpa John and great-great grandma Elisabeth were ever legally married (this country had some really strange laws back then) but they homesteaded 40 acres of prairie in southern Illinois, built a sod house and raised a family.  One of their daughters was my great-grandmother.  Her name was Emma.  She married a crazy man named Henry.  They had two sons.  One named Glenn.  He was my grandfather.  He married a woman who's name was Vena.  Her mother was full blood Cherokee from the Carolinas.  Her name was Susie.  And she warmed my heart for the short time that I knew her.  She was statuesque and gracious .  A heart of gold.

OK, here's the truly strange part.  I've done a bit of research.  On my mother's side there is a very good chance that I am a descendant  of one of the founders of Jamestown.  Oh lord.  I sat back in my chair and just went pale.  Holy shit.  HOLY FUCKING SHIT!!!

Either way, it doesn't matter.  I'm me.  And I'm an American.  I have genes that go back generations.  Some I have known, some I have not.  Their blood runs in my veins and I am proud.  Damned proud!

Sometimes the best things you can find are the mutts at the rescue shelter....

I AM THE FRED FLINTSTONE OF TECHNOLOGY!

Oh crap!  Yes, it is true, the world has passed me by.  I reached my technology apex with the Motorola "Big Boy" cell phones.  Anyone remember those things?  They were about the size of a brick and weighed just about as much.  They had an antenna.  Most of the weight of those things was the battery.  Which had a useful charge of about 2 hours.  If you didn't use it...  Aah, yes, the early 1990's.

Today I am lost in a jungle of circuits, micro-circuits and mini-micro-circuits. The cell phone that I now use is about the size of a postage stamp.  And I don't know how to use the damned thing.  When it rings I just look at it and wonder if it is going to detonate.  It is a flip phone.  My friends laugh at me.  They are begging me to upgrade to something called a Smart Phone.  I have no idea what that means.  Hell, I have trouble with my answering machine.  Again, I'm afraid it might detonate.

I am surrounded  by digital appliances.  But I have no other option.  My microwave scares me.  My Crock Pot just shakes its head at me.  Even the thermostat gives me dirty looks.  And my Mr. Coffee has occasionally flipped me the finger.  I just want stuff that has actual factual dials on it.  That I can turn.

I barely know how to use my computer.  It just keeps "upgrading" itself.  What the hell is up with that shit???  I have only slightly begun to learn the last "upgrade" when suddenly there is a new one.  Which in all honesty is like trying to translate Portuguese into Mandarin.  To me a computer has only three viable uses, email, Google and free porn.  Not necessarily in that order.  I don't want "apps".  Hell, I don't even know what those are.  I think FaceBook and Twitter are the crack cocaine of the 21st century.  Good for you, you're eating a pickle.  I don't want to hear about it!!!  Don't even get me started on this "social networking" thing.  If your not in the same room with each other then it is NOT social!!!

I recently bought a Kindle thing.  Dumbest purchase I have ever made.  It just sets on the kitchen counter so I can use it to Google recipes.  Once again, I'm afraid it's going to arm itself and detonate.

I am a child of the past.  I remember rotary dial phones that were anchored into the wall.  Leaded gasoline.  Black and white tv's that were the size of coffins.  Stereo.  What's up with this 5.2 thing?  I only have two ears.  Both of which were totally wrecked in the 1970's thanks to a rock band named Deep Purple.  I'm so old it hurts.

I want a time machine.  Send me back to a simpler time!!!

THE MOLCAJETE FROM HELL...

Why do I volunteer for projects like this?  I mean, it's not like I'm getting extra credit or anything.

Several months ago a dear amiga of mine (who shall remain nameless as I am convinced that she is in the country illegally.  I keep asking for her Green Card which is futile because she just keeps showing me a card that happens to be green.  I'd turn her into INS but I love her too much.) and I decided to make a batch of fresh tortillas from scratch.  It was entertaining to watch us to say the least.  Did we have a tortilla press?  Hell no, that would have been too easy.  Three comals, yes.  Tortilla press, no.

As we gathered around the table, savoring our creation and swilling tequila the conversation turned to fresh homemade salsa.  And, of course, to do that you need a molcajete to do it right.  Now, we both know how to use one of those things but neither of us have one.  I've held those things in my hands in Mexico so many times that it hurts.  Did I buy one?  No.  Reason?  REALLY overweight luggage.  Which should never have been a reason to stop me.  Hell, when I come back from Mexico my luggage usually weighs about as much as big block V-8 car engine from the '60's.  What can I say, shopping is my drug of choice.

So we're sitting there at the table and all of a sudden her mouth drops open, she points over my shoulder at the bookcase behind me and says "Where the hell did THAT come from???".  I turn around, thinking I'm about to be attacked by death adders and find myself eye to eye with an authentic lava stone molcajete.  So damned dusty that it hurt.  My heart sang. I turned back to her, took another bite of my taco and said "HOW THE HELL CAN YOU NOT KNOW THAT YOU OWN A MOLCAJETE???".  Good lord, it's a stone pig.  How do you overlook that sort of thing?  So I drag the damned thing into the kitchen, wash it off and realize that it is virgin.  New.  Never been used.  My heart sank...

Molcajete's are a strange animal.  I've done my research.  Curing and seasoning these little piggies is not an easy task.  They are lava rock.  They are rough.  They need to be broken in before you even consider trying to use them.  I scour estate sales for dead Mexican grandmothers looking for these things.  I want one that is at least 50 years old and heavily used.  So, last Saturday she hands me this thing and says "Make it go".  WHAT?!?!

Do not ask me why but I decided to take up the challenge. First, I soaked it in water overnight.  I started out grinding raw uncooked rice into dust in this thing.  About two pounds worth of it.  Yeah, that was fun.  On day two I switched over to course grind kosher sea salt.  About 8 freaking pounds worth of course grind kosher sea salt got ground into something akin to talcum powder.  Finally, half way through the last box I met with success.  No black grit.  And an inside surface that was about as smooth as I was gonna waste my time making it.  I damned near wore my left arm off!  Then I scrubbed the shit out of it.  Then, it was time for a test drive.  Three heads of garlic, a couple of diced onions and some olive oil.  Yes, the smushing and gushing had begun.  In less than 5 minutes I had more aioli than I knew what to do with.  Well, of course, you have to let this concoction set in the molcajete overnight so it permeates the lava stone.  We woke up the next morning to an apartment that wreaked of garlic.  Imagine an Italian restaurant on the brown acid.  Once again, I scrubbed the shit out of this damned thing.  It has the most wonderful aroma to it now.

Success.  Yes, SUCCESS!  This was like giving birth to a child.  And worth every curse word that I tossed out at it.  SUCCESS!

The best part?  My amiga has decided that little piggy is to be named "Donaldo".  And she has granted me visitation rights.  I am a happy camper and there is homemade salsa in my future...

Life is good!