Mail Theft Hurts Nursing Mother

I was sunk back into my little green recliner
on my heating pad feeling content after a lovely
dinner of eggplant towers over vegeburgers.
I heard Terry come in the basement door and
hollered a greeting and waited for him to come upstairs.
Five minutes later he plopped down in his recliner
and said, "The strangest thing happened on my
mail route today. You won't believe it."
I was thinking after my own ten years of odd happenings
and his thirty years of odd happenings, I had heard it all.
Boy was I wrong.
"Last month I was training a new carrier and when he saw
the outgoing mail in a small box he got all excited.
He said his wife ordered these special lactation cookies
from the lady on my route."
I had never heard of lactation cookies so I asked how
his customer got beer into cookies.
"I don't know what's in them but that's not the strange
part of the story. The police were there when I pulled
up and the lady ran over to me and told me that
ten minutes before I arrived she saw a man in a hoodie
steal her outgoing box of lactation cookies from her mailbox.
What do you think of that hon?"  He asked.
I thought about how horrible it was to steal from
a new mother having troubles and what I thought
the worst thing that thief deserved.
"I hope he eats that whole box and
starts lactating."

The Accidental Vegetarian

Terry stared at the TV and recognized the hotest
diet guru of 2015 on PBS, Dr. Joel Furman.
"I'm going to kill you!" He shouted at the TV.
Terry is not and will not ever be a vegetarian.
Don't care.
Three years ago I was channel surfing and when
I stopped on channel 9, an old guy with white hair
was yelling, "Eat more! Eat More! Eat as much as you can!"
I was automatically riveted to the screen
and ordering his book on Amazon at the same time.
I gained five pounds the first month.
I went back and reread the book and found my error.
You can have as much as you want of everything
that tastes bad, but only one cup of anything yummy.
Oops.
After a few years of chewing my cud & swilling vegetable soup
to keep my weight under five hundred pounds,
I decided to try a recipe for vegepatties. After reworking three
frying pans of goo I created a recipe I could live with.
The eggplant parmesan recipe looked way too hard
so I just made little towers of eggplant circles with the ragu etc.
& threw some cheese on top.
When Terry came home from work he asked what is was I told him it was lasagna
and he wolfed it right down & had seconds.
He was an accidental vegetarian. Didn't even notice the meat missing....

Thor the Bunny

I sat staring down at the yard with my coffee in one hand
and clutching Milo my cat in the other.
It wasn't quite light yet but I could tell it
would be a clear day.
Ahhh, there he was. I could just barely make out
Thor's light brown coat as he hopped through the
open gate down at the bottom of our back yard.
My he has grown in the last two years.
Two summers ago, a strange car pulled into the
driveway and Troy got out with his longboard in
one hand and a cardboard vet box in the other.
He shouted up at me, "MOM!" I went down to
the driveway and he said, "We were long-boarding
on the bike trail at Lake Forest Park by that big intersection
and this bunny ran out and got hit by a bike and
landed in the road. Everyone stopped and a lady
yelled at us to grab the bunny and get in her car.
She took us to the vet and the vet said the bunny
was knocked unconscious but was okay.
The lady just dropped us all off."
Troy, Daniel and Devin and I walked into the
back yard and opened the box.
Troy said, "I want to call him Thor."
I went and got a tiny bowl of water and told the
kids the best thing to do was let Thor sleep it off.
We laid him on a towel and turned the box
upside-down over him and hoped for the best.
The next morning when we lifted off the box,
Thor stared at us, then started exploring our yard.
He hopped down into the park but has returned
every dusk and dawn, hence my creation of
The Bunny Room.
When the kids moved out we saved the upstairs
room overlooking the yard for a guest room.
So now, every morning I grab kitty and hot joe
and watch Thor have breakfast.
When it gets light enough he'll jump straight
up in the air about two feet then hop out of the yard,
his little cotton tail bouncing behind him.

When I Was Nearly a Grizzly Bear Snack in Denali National Park

The hair on the back of my neck stood on end.
And as I walked through the deserted campground
I could feel someone watching me through the trees.
Odd that no birds were singing. Total silence.
Where was everybody?
It was like an eiry episode of the Twilight Zone.
I gulped down my honey and butter sandwich while
I walked and looked down and said bad words to myself
as I saw that honey had dripped all down the front of my shirt.
I called out, "Terry!  Terry!" and wondered where everyone was.
The campground had been packed a few just a hours ago when
we road the bus through the park enjoying the views of
vast meadows covered in wildflowers.
Terry popped out of the bushes at me like he always does
and I let out a small scream of fright.
"Hurry Greta, we've gotta get out of here!" he said
as he jogged by me in a most unchivalrous manner
and headed towards the main road.
I caught up to him and asked him what was going on.
"The ranger said a hungry grizzly bear just came through
and trashed the campground and they just finished
moving the campers but they haven't found the bear yet."
I raced past Terry with my sticky honey-covered shirt
and yelled back, "Hurry up honey, I'm covered in honey!"