Saturday, August 20, 2016

Doctor Dan the Dental Man

I remembered the words of parenting advice my friend Sara Schott
gave me 20 years ago at Woodlawn park zoo. "A little fear is a good thing."
Fear of Dry Socket kept me in line.  That meant a do-over jaw bone graft.
It wasn't so bad following Dr. Dan's orders to lay low
and stay on a liquid diet for four days after my
tooth extraction and bone graft.
Except my pity party combined with my milkshake diet
caused me gained five pounds.
Laughing gas is the only way I can get through dental work.
Before I went too silly I told Doctor Dan I expected a good story
like his Iraq war field dental work story which was engrossing
and entertained me through my last dental implant last year.
This time he had a whopper about a nurse who smuggled home
 a laughing gas tank and accidentally killed her boyfriend
during hanky panky.
(If you are too young to know that expression
you shouldn't be reading this)
During his break between yanking my tooth and
cramming the hole with cadaver bone I had to get one joke in,
"Whataya doin'?  Digging to China?"
(It was funnier after a full tank of nitrous oxide)
I was laying on the couch a week and a half later,
still feeling miserable, when the doorbell rang.
My delightful hairdresser, Janet Ferris, had
brought me a present.  It is a large framed picture
of a California quail.
I'm not obsessed with quail!




Me Dental Work Jokes digging to china?

Friday, August 19, 2016

"Owen, Please Put Down My Bras"

I was just finishing my laundry and had a few things
in one hand and tossed it in the box I was carrying
for a temporary stop to unload other things.
I could hear my room mate coming in and said,
"Look Owen, when I was at Safeway,
Dakota gave me a banana box for your tools.
It is nice and roomy for your new circular saw
and all the tools you and Teddy picked up this week."
He walked over and looked at the big flat-bottomed box and
looked inside. He scooped out the contents and said,
"Wow, it even has some great rags in it."
I looked at the fabric in his hand and said,
"Owen, please put down my bras."

Thursday, August 18, 2016

Cougar Mountain Snake Catching Days

When I was a kid, growing up in
Holly Park housing project,
I got shipped off every summer for two weeks
to entertain my cousin Carolyn.
Starting at age three, "Care" and I
were inseparable. Later, Elizabeth was
old enough to join our capers.
Up on the top of Cougar Mountain,
Care, "Boo"  and I were always
catching gunny sacks full of snakes
to race in their horse's
bathtub of drinking water.
Poor Auntie Jean.
She put us down for a nap when we were seven
and Carolyn and Betsy and I had hid
a really fat snake in an old burlap bag
under the bed.
Lo and behold she had a baby in the bag.
It was so cute that we were playing with it
and forgot all about the mommy.
When we told Auntie Jean we lost a snake
in the house
she screamed her head off!
Those were some great naptimes.
Never slept once.

Wednesday, August 17, 2016

My Husband Thinks He's Jan Claude Van Dam

I waved at the young clerk at Canyon Park Big 5.
"Could you help me find a basketball which fits
my small hand?" I asked.  He led me to the back wall
and showed me the different balls for women.
I had a moment of fright when I saw the official ball
which had a price tag of seventy dollars.  Even WITH
Terry buying that was too steep. I found a nice thirty dollar
model and went to find Terry.  He was with a young salesman
practicing kicking at this hanging sack of sand.  He told the
clerk he wanted to hang it out in the yard but the clerk told
him it would fall apart in the rain.  I approached and asked him
what he was buying. He told me he wanted to practice kickboxing.
I smiled as I remembered entering his man-cave the previous night.
One of his cable channels was playing a Jan Claude Van Dam series of
movies for hours and hours on end.  He had been so engrossed that he
did not know I was there. Or like most husbands, he did but ignored me.
I smiled at my giant, hairy husband of about two hundred and sixty pounds
and thought to myself, "My husband thinks he's Jan Claude Van Dam."

Monday, August 15, 2016

Baby Squirrel Rescue Operation

"That's the strangest noise Terry. I have heard it at
the top of the tree for two days and two nights. It
sounds like a baby eagle or squirrel but there has been no mommy."
I was on the deck shoving juicy watermelon into my pie hole
when the sound started again only it was at the bottom of the tree.
I dashed down I saw two, flattened, dead-looking baby squirrels.
I nudged one & it's ugly miniature alien head came
up and it cried the most pitiful hungry cry you ever heard.
I filled up an eye dropper with milk and protein powder and
Terry brought me hand towels to wrap them so I wouldn't get bitten.
They sucked that dropper down in a hurry and it turned out only
the biggest one only had one tiny tooth only half-way in.
Terry got a box, fuzzy blanket and I put the sleeping little monsters in it.
I was looking on the internet for care tips when I heard that crying again.
The third smaller gray fuzzy squirrel had climbed down the tree
from the nest about one hundred feet up.
I wasn't even nervous as plucked it off the tree and
gave the runt the dropper. It sucked it down and fell asleep.
I opened the blanket and popped it in with its litter-mates.
I googled "Rescue Baby Squirrel" and it said to
not let them get under ninety-nine degrees.
So I added a hot water bottle to the box.
It said to clean their private area to get them to go shee shee
but it was late and I needed sleep.
I laid down on the bed and tried to sleep.
Even after putting a quilt over the box I knew
it would get down to sixty degrees outside overnight.
So I carried the quilt-wrapped box to my bedroom and went to bed again.
In my mind I kept seeing that blind squirrel crawling down the tree
with its razor-sharp little claws
and KNEW they were going to climb up into my bed with me.
I got up and dug the portable puppy pen from the back of my closet
and put the babies in the blanket in the box in the quilt
in the play pen and went to sleep.
When it got light out I fed and washed them.
It was exactly like giving Troy and Teddy a bottle only
my babies didn't have inch-long whiskers and razor sharp claws
and long fuzzy tails.
I washed their tiny tummies and privates and was gratified
when the biggest one produced some black shapoopies
the size of rice kernels.
I called PAWS and they said to bring them in.
I was nervous to drive with rodents in my van and just then the phone rang.
My sister said she'd enjoy a caper to the PAWS Wildlife Center.
She petted and cooed at them the whole way and
declared they were just as cute as fuzzy newborn kittens.
When the lady took them to the back I asked to use the rest room.
It was probably the first time in my entire life
when it paid off to be a Bladder Day Saint.
As I came out, I glanced through the window
of the door directly across the hall.
Standing shoulder-to-shoulder at a towel-lined counter
were three young volunteers holding eye-droppers
and under them my babies were drinking greedily.









Thursday, August 11, 2016

Painting The Gran Torino AKA The Goldmobile

I looked at the enormous hood skeptically.
"That color doesn't look the same to me."
I said to Terry, plus I realized one can of
spray paint was not going to be nearly enough.
He said it would match up when it had dried overnight
so we walked the two blocks from our tiny studio
apartment in downtown BotHell to Shucks auto parts.
After we had another eight cans of paint we felt
confident in our ability to not only remove the
rust spots off the hood, but to create a paint
job equal to the Sistine Chapel.
Well, the next morning,
I heard a voice in my head which said,
"Surprise! Surprise!"
We now had a Gran Torino with
ten shades of gold.