Where the Walls are Soft…

Pink Fantasy
Taken February 22, 2008 with Canon PowerShot A550

The more
we
thought about
moving, the more
we realized
that the only
good thing about moving
was that it was just downstairs, so packing would be…
well…
it wouldn’t be, would it?I’m right impressed with myself over this picture. I seriously doubt I’ll get another shot even half this good for the rest of the year. I kind of hope I don’t - I’m really proud of this one. I want to blow it up to about garage-door-sized and hang it on my wall.

The inside of my head feels a lot like this pic - kind of dreamy… gauzy… lazy…

I’ve been busy, mind you….

…picking away at a website I’m building for a charitable organization here in town…

…picking away at painting my little apartment - we’ve decided not to move, after all. We’re finally getting this place “prettified” the way we like it, and the thought of hauling all the stuff down the stairs…. Blech. It’s still small, even though we’ve gotten rid of 60% of its contents, but it suits us, and the larger (huger) place comes with a big jump in rent.

The more we thought about moving, the more we realized that the only good thing about moving was that it was just downstairs (no way am I giving up my landlady!), so packing would be… well… it wouldn’t be, would it?

I’m still waiting to actually get on the schedule at the new J.O.B…. they insist that I’m hired. Every time I call… “Uuuuuuuhhhhhhhhmmmmm…. probably…. some time…. uuuuuhhhhhhmmmmm…. next week….? Maybe….?” They tell me this once a week. I should have applied to work in HR instead of sales… I think they need the help.

So, in the meantime…

…I drink a lot of coffee, and work a lot of crosswords, and watch a lot of movies (and ball games… and hockey games…) with Ruby.

…I continue to scan the J.O.B. boards and newspaper ads, in the undying hope that something not involving sales, customer service or telemarketing jumps out at me.

…I Walk-About to my parents’, drink rum, and listen to a new story once a week. Yes, I’m writing them down - heck I might even get around to posting them…

…I swear over the apparently uninstallable software that will allow the coolest Ruby post ever posted to be posted… finally. I hope. Gulp…*

…I dance with The Turkey - who, by the way, has just finished the second edit of her first novel. At 13. Yup. I feel a little useless when she’s in the room. She’s also re-dyed her hair purple, and has taken to stealing the pre-stolen “Grampa-shirts” out of my closet (I stole them first, but there’s never one to wear when I want one), and wearing them with neckties. I’d post pics, but the kid doesn’t stay home long enough to catch more than her shirt-tail in the view-finder…

…I drive around with The Fly-Girl in the Soon-to-be-Mine Minivan (I think I’ll name it The FlyMobile, whad’ya think?), singing old rock tunes from when we were young and thought we’d be 16 for-freaking-ever.

…and I spend a lot of time staring at this picture… and drifting off… somewhere…

Random Song-for-the-Day: “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” - Elton John

Lazin’ Around…
Taken February 25, 2008 with Canon PowerShot A550

For the
full
effect, you
must imagine me,
as well,
with my hair
yanked back and tucked
into a shower-cap. Oh yeah…. and naked.My life is fairly straight-forward and routine-oriented. I really like it that way. If there’s going to be any excitement, I’d like to plan it, trouble-shoot it, and control all aspects of it, thank you very much.

Patchouli, the cute little fur-ball you see above, feels otherwise. She has, in fact, been the cause of many incidents of “excitement” around here, much to my dismay. She revels in causing emergency situations calling for cool heads. I don’t deal well with emergencies, if you must know.

When Patchouli pulled a heavy table-top down on her head a couple of years ago (did you know it’s possible for cat shit to come out both ends of a cat at the same time?), my way of dealing with it was to scream and cry a lot. She survived, obviously, but the credit goes to the thankfully cooler heads that were actively prevailing at the time. You’d never know the cat got bonked, except that she’s a little retarded, now.

Okay, maybe more than a little retarded.

She likes to squish herself through the 2-inch width of open window by my desk, to sit on the 2-inch width of ledge - the only thing keeping her retarded little head from meeting the pavement of John Street before being squashed flat by a truck. She sits on the other side of the glass, smiling at me, waiting for the panic attack.

She also likes to sit beside one of the many candles that burn here every evening, twitching her tail through the flame. Smiling. I keep waiting for the Whooomph! that will signal the beginning of her painful demise…

Yesterday being Wednesday, the kuckiest day of the week, historically speaking, I spent the evening indulging in my weekly habit of tub-soaking in a dim bathroom, radio playing, candles burning, bath oil oiling… and my face painted with one of those “stress-relieving” facial masques that are supposed to suck out all the day’s tensions while erasing 40 years’ worth of wrinkles at the same time.

I’ve never actually seen my face with this goop on - I don’t have the guts to look, truthfully - but it looks yellow coming out of the jar, at least by candlelight, so I can just imagine the vision I must be while wearing it.

For the full effect, you must imagine me, as well, with my hair yanked back and tucked into a shower-cap. Oh yeah…. and naked. That got you laughing, right?

Anyway….

Patchouli likes to keep me company in the bathroom on Wednesday evenings. It’s the candles, of course - the flames fascinate her, and she loves to sit on the vanity and watch the reflection of the candles in the mirror, twitching her tail back and forth…

I got sick of hauling myself up and out of the tub every two minutes to put her down on the floor. Aside from getting car hair all over my wet hands, and then transferring it into the bath water, there was also a good chance I’d catch a glimpse of my face in the mirror and scare the bejeezus out of myself. The thought kind of makes the idea of meditating in a hot bath by candlelight to wash Wednesday away a little laughable. As does the idea of the cat suddenly going up in flames, which is why I finally put her out the door.

I had just settled back down, with the water up to my shoulders, and my neck resting on The Turkey’s squishy bath pillow…. Siiiiiiiiiiigggggggggghhhhhhhhhhh……. when I heard a quack.

I did. I heard a quack and it wasn’t a duck.

It was Sheikh, the other cat that owns me. Sheikh quacks. He does. You can hear him here, if you don’t believe me…

I hadn’t noticed him sitting in the sink, but there he was. He’s “poof-ier” than Patchouli. I think that makes him more flammable. I got thinking that a better word might even be “combustible”, that’s how “poofy” he is…

Well, the vision ran away with me, and all I could imagine was that Whooomph! sound, followed by shrieking coming from either me or the cat, or both, and Sheikh flying down the hall, in flames, followed by myself, dripping wet and naked except for my shower cap and my face painted yellow, screaming, “The cat’s on fire! The cat’s on fire!”

And I got laughing. Hysterically. Out loud.

I KNOW!!!

I could just imagine The Guy Across the Hall on the other side of the bathroom wall, wondering what all the laughing and quacking in my bathroom was about…

I haven’t decided how well yellow facial-masques or bath oil or candles work for relieving stress and tension. I do know that laughter works wonders.

P.S. A very special Thank You to David McMahon for awarding me the ever-elusive Post-of-the-Day Award for “Mein Kluben! Mein Kluben!” My dad was tickled pink when he heard the news (my mom wanted to know if there was any money in it…)

Random Song-for-the-Day: “The Animal I’ve Become” - 3 Days Grace

4th Princess Louise Dragoon Guards Emblem
Taken March 1, 2008 with Canon PowerShot A550

clipped from www.rcaca.org

Historical Sketch

On 26 January 1941, the Regiment mobilized the 4th (Active) Princess Louise Dragoon Guards.

This unit was converted to armour and redesignated 4th Reconnaissance Battalion (4th Princess Louise Dragoon Guards) on 11 February 1941. The battalion was formed from personnel from 1st Canadian Infantry Division in the United Kingdom together with reinforcements from Canada in July 1941. On 08 June 1942, it was redesignated as 4th Reconnaissance Regiment (4th Princess Louise Dragoon Guards).

It was
a
little kid
that made him
realize that
he didn’t have
a clue what he
was doing there….
My dad was stationed in Belgium for his first gig during World War II. It was there that he contracted diphtheria and ended up on a wild back-and-forth middle-of-several-nights not-what-we-might-call-an-ambulance ride with two hot Australian chicks between Ostend and Amsterdam and a hospital ship that would (eventually) sneak him successfully to hospital for months of recovery.

He teased those nurses the whole time he was under their care - it’s a wonder they didn’t just dump him out on a back road somewhere. “Whad’ya wanna live in Australia for?! All ya got there is SHEEP!!” I wish I’d recorded his imitation of the insulted nurses when they retorted, “We’ve got cities and towns! Just like you’ve got!” My dad sure knows how to piss a woman off…

Prior to his grand contagious escape, my dad’s job was to “guard” an outdoor sports arena. He wasn’t guarding it from the Germans - they were being kept out of Belgium fairly handily by 1943-44 - but from the locals. This arena was where they would come once a day, lined up and dressed in their very best clothes, carrying any container from their pantry they could carry, to pick up food passed out by Canadian Army personnel off a truck. He said it was a strange sight - all these folks dressed up in their finery, waiting for a meal with cooking pots in their hands - even the kids. It was a little kid that made him realize that he didn’t have a clue what he was doing there….

Dad’s job during the daylight hours was to keep the people cordoned off while other personnel were unpacking the trucks and setting up tables and food, etc. Officers ate first, followed by infantrymen, and then the townfolk got their share. Sometimes, understandably so, I think, this made them a little impatient. It was up to my dad to be tough, cruel and frightening, and order them back beyond the barrier to wait their turns. My dad was 23. Ha.

He said, most times, all he had to do was wave his gun menacingly and growl and they would settle down. He growled because he couldn’t speak the language. He waved his gun because he didn’t know what else to do with it.

His gun was a bit of a joke, anyway, he said. It was a “sten gun”, jumbled together from metal pipes and “you wouldn’t recognize the thing as a gun at all, unless you knew what it was.” It worked, though; it was actually a formidable weapon, firing automatic 303 cartridges. My dad pronounces “303″ as “3-aught-3″. He’s Canadian, you know.

Sometimes, at night, he would be assigned to guard a certain path into the sports arena - one designated for soldiers only, and he was to turn back all non-military personnel with no exceptions. Sometimes, locals would try to get by him with fake ID cards, crudely put together that had no hope in hell of passing for anything official. This part of the job was boring, and sometimes for a lark, my dad would pretend to be greener than he was, and be “fooled” by the most ridiculous-looking, fakest-looking card that was passed to him, and let the guy holding it through. He said that usually the guy would have a hard time keeping the surprised look off his face and continue down the path.

When I asked why he could get away with letting these people through, he said, “They weren’t spies - they were looking to shorten the food line for themselves, that’s all.”

One day, while standing behind the cordon between the food and the people, my dad started having trouble with one little girl and her family. He would shoo them back, and turn to keep an eye on everybody else, and when he looked back again, there they would be, sneaking under the cordon, that little girl, especially. Finally, he’d had enough.

He watched from the corner of his eye as the little girl snuck further and further, and then suddenly ran at her, yelling at the top of his lungs. Had he done this to one of his own kids in later years, it would have put the fear of the devil himself into whichever one of us he was yelling at, but this kid stood there and stared him down. He didn’t know if she was paralyzed with fear, or standing defiant, but he kept yelling as he slung his sten gun over his shoulder and bent down and hooked her up under the armpits with his other arm, stomped to the cordon and dumped her over it. There.

He didn’t have his back fully turned before the little brat was back under the rope. He picked her up again and put her back behind it. And she started yelling at him!

“Mein kluben! Mein kluben!” and under the rope she came again!

He drove her back again. This was not turning out to be a good day.

He finally had to resort to standing directly in front of the girl to keep her on her side of the cordon. The kid kept yelling at him. Then she started pointing and yelling. It took Dad a while to figure it out, but he finally realized what she was pointing at.

Back behind him, at the spot that he’d pulled the little girl off her feet, were two little wooden shoes, embedded in the mud. He’d yanked her right out of her shoes.

Now, my dad loves kids, and even at 23, he had a soft spot for them. He felt really bad. He finally waved her under the cord to rescue her shoes, but he kept a snarly look and growl handy, so as to save face.

At the end of the war, my dad went back to Belgium, and into a little shop. He bought a pair of small wooden shoes. When I was growing up, he kept them locked in a file cabinet in his den. Every now and then when I was very small, he would bring them out to show me - he even let me put them on and walk around in them once in a great while. They hurt.

He never told me the story about why he bought those shoes until just this year. He doesn’t know where the shoes are now - possibly packed away in a box in My Brother the Trespasser’s barn or basement. I wish he still had them so I could have posted a photo.

Another odd thing…. I’m not sure if Dad is remembering “Mein kluben” correctly, or if it was a slang term. I can’t find it anywhere in Dutch or German pertaining to “shoes” or “clogs” or “wooden shoes”, but that’s what he swears the little girl was yelling. Anybody out there have an inkling…? I’d love to know.

P.S. Y’all can uncross your cramped little fingers and toes, now. Thank you sincerely. I start the new J.O.B. some time next week.

Random Song for the Day: “Pipeline” - Anthrax

“Doodle”
Taken December 18, 2007 with Canon PowerShot A550

Now, enough
of
that bullshit.Okay, it’s just been so damned long since I’ve posted that it feels like a brand new blog. And what you see above is pretty much what everything that I’ve been up to to keep me from blogging boils down to (Holy ol’ shit, but that’s a lot of “to”s!). In other words: a whole lotta squat, so I don’t even have a good reason for it.

I’m almost finally through with some crap that up until last year, I was supposed to be dealing with on an annual basis. It got so depressing, that I quit “taking care of business” for nearly a decade, and then last year it all hit the fan and I had to deal with even more crap over it. Yes, I mean “medical” junk, and no, I’m neither “sick” nor in any danger of dying (barring unforeseen buses, as per usual), but I will say that I’m sick to death (har, har) of hearing the word “inconclusive”, which is why I quit going back year after year in the first place.

Last year, The Powers that Be threw me a few extra curve balls, and I wasn’t in much of an emotional state, to say the least, to be able to handle it well. At. All. I went into it this year not giving any kind of damn at all and I’m fairly overjoyed for a change to hear “inconclusive” to the usual crap only and consider the curve balls of 2007 to have been manifested from a bad state of being. I’m learning that “inconclusive” can be filtered through what serves as the logical portion of my brain (tiny though that might be) to the point that I can truthfully believe, with the gargantuan illogical portion of my brain, that the results actually came back as definite and inarguable “negatives” and in two more days I can forget about it completely. Until next year.

Now, enough of that bullshit.

On the J.O.B. front, I’ve had a little more progress since I quit trying to find a position in my so-called new “field”. Yes, folks, although not yet set in stone, it looks like I will be back in retail again. Everybody stick your fingers firmly in the back of your throats and say, “Gackh!”, ‘cuz that’s about what that amounts to.

At least, I won’t be selling electronics. And then refunding/exchanging them 24 hours later amidst the screaming and the crying. Thank God, because if I’d had to that again, I would also have to admit, for real this time, that the last two years of my life (almost to the day; how’s that for ironic?!) have been a complete and utter waste of my time and the Canuckian government’s money.

Ah, who am I kidding? Retail is retail - 24 months that I could have been a productive, if incredibly bitter and pissed-off, citizen paying my own way. All I had to do was re-apply to work for The Company instead of take the lay-off when Louie sold his store back to Them. Yes, “Them”. The thought turned my stomach. Still does, so I guess I should be grateful, huh?

And I am, I suppose… I had a nice holiday. I have a new education. Perhaps, I might even find a use for it, someday…

Actually, it really was a good two years, that way. I just wish I’d done more with the time than make plans for what I was going to do, instead of writing as much as I possibly could. I got more done on that front, truthfully, when I was schlepping computers and batteries full time, which, when I think of it that way, makes it more believable to me that I’ll write more once I’m schlepping completely different goods. Hope springs eternal, and all that…

So…

Those of you that give a damn, please tighten those crossed fingers that this position really comes through, would you…? Thanks.

Random Song for the Day: “Psycho” - Puddle of Mudd

Where Did the Time Go?
Taken March 1, 2008 with Canon PowerShot A550

I now
have
an ass
again. Boobs
can’t be
far behind…Whew! That was a hiatus I would rather not have taken. The Real World sucks compared to this one, it really does.

That said, it could be added that my time “away” basically consisted of two types of events: losses and gains. These are some of them.

Lost: My hatred for cooking… sort of.

I’ve had to get into some tight routines during the last month, and since I already had the problem of rarely thinking of what’s for dinner, the idea of not having time to rush around anymore when I finally did realize we hadn’t eaten didn’t appeal. Starvation just doesn’t suit me. So, I smartened up (only took me a quarter of a century - not bad, huh?), and sat down and wrote a list of every meal ever known to man… er…. woman-kind, and wrote them on the calendar. Voila! Dinner is served. I’ve since discovered that it isn’t cooking that I hate, it’s not knowing what to cook. Problem solved.

Gained: Several pounds that have stayed with me.

Finally. No, it’s not from cooking - I was doing that anyway, I just wasn’t liking it, remember? It’s all muscle-mass, from the regular work-outs. Yes, Suzi, I’m working out! Every. Freaking. Day. My arms and legs hurt like hell, but I now have an ass again. Boobs can’t be far behind…

Lost: One of my Ortho lenses.

This totally sucks, because now I’m back to glasses, which are heavy and hurt my already bumpy nose (bumpy because of the F-ing glasses, I might add). I’ve decided not to replace the lens, for several reasons: they cost an unreal amount of money - it took me so long to pay for them, in fact, that I’m too embarrassed to call my optometrist and make an appointment. And I’ll probably just lose one again. And, since they wear out and cost so much, I let them go too long and they cause a freaky sensitivity in one eye that makes it hard to sit in front of the computer for long. Or watch a movie. Or blink. I’m going to go to some eyesight mill and pick up a new prescription instead, and then get lasik surgery in another year or so. Take that blindness. Ha.

Gained: A new desk.

It was Ruby’s. She didn’t know she even owned a desk. Now it’s mine. I will have to post about it, because it’s so cool.

Lost: My love for The Patch.

Freaky-Deaky dreams aside, the thing itches, and half the time I forget to put one on anyway. I’m only still using them at all because I still have some left and my mother says I “shouldn’t waste them.”

Gained: A new couch.

And a chair to go with it. To be delivered Wednesday. How cool is that?! I made sure to get a colour that will match the sheddiest cat.

Lost: One of four “I Want” lines between my eyes. I’m told they’re from stress (not from old age - who’da thunk?!), so I guess that’s a good sign. Who says wishes don’t come true? I’m going to erase my entire face with wishes, you just see if I don’t.

Gained: A sleep routine that works.

That might be why the “I Want” line disappeared, come to think of it. Mind you, all the sleeping, nice as it is, messes with my blogging. I wonder if “Remote Posting” is a possibility… It’s not like I make a lot of sense while awake, so what’s the difference, really?

Lost: The “Slow It All Down” button.

Or I’d have posted long before this.

Gained: A ton of new stories from both Ruby and my parents.

So, I’d better find that button, huh…?

Lost: David Letterman and Craig Ferguson.

The sleep routine just doesn’t allow for them anymore. The worst thing I’ve discovered out of this particular loss is that I can’t discuss U.S. politics with Ruby anymore (it’s pretty bad when everything you know about U.S. politics comes from David Letterman). We now watch movies after the crossword instead.

Gained: A new address.

Eventually. Maybe. I haven’t decided on this one. I hate moving even more than I thought I hated cooking. It’s a bigger place, though, and the Turkey wants to go. She may win this one. I have time yet to mull it over, though, and mull I shall.

Lost: The Hummingbird.

Well, I didn’t lose her, exactly (although, I couldn’t tell you for certain where she is, either), but she’s not here. I’m both heart-broken and greatly relieved. And up to my neck in “Oops, I take it back” government forms.

Gained: Hot water.

Gallons and gallons and gallons of it, now that I’m minus one teenager.

Random Song for the Day: “You Never Can Tell” - Chuck Berry

Joycie, Rex, and Ruby - 1928

The kids
would
all be
lined up, and
with the
midwife assisting, the
doctor would stick them
all, assembly-
line fashion, no questions asked, no names taken.Hey, a picture is a picture, right? Ruby dug this out especially for me to post here. That’s her on the right, sitting behind her brother Rex, on their tricycle - doesn’t she look like a little devil? And I’ll bet Rex dropped Joycie on her head off that trike about 30 seconds after the shutter clicked. Not that he did drop her on her head - just that he probably did. Just sayin’.

Rex is the brother of Blackberry Summer fame. Ruby hadn’t told me much about Rex up to this point, so when she presented me with this photo, saying, “There. I wonder what that Mushy fella will say to that?”, I asked her about him.

Rex was about 18 months older than Ruby. She was about three in this photo, so he’d have been a little over…. five maybe? He had asthma and it plagued him all his life. When he was eight, it almost killed him because of a Scarlet Fever vaccination.

They didn’t have a doctor in Northland, so every year or so, one would come in by train and stay a few days, checking up on people and taking care of any emergencies that might crop up while he was there. The rest of the time, Northlanders most likely were doctored up by midwives, veterinarians, and God Himself.

On the last day of an annual visit, if there were any school kids of the right age, the doctor would innoculate them all one after another, just before he jumped back on the train out of there. The kids would all be lined up, and with the midwife assisting, the doctor would stick them all, assembly-line fashion, no questions asked, no names taken. Prick, prick, prick, prick, pack up and go home.

Rex had asthma, but the doctor didn’t know that, and he didn’t bother to ask. If he had bothered, he’d never have given him the shot. Five minutes after the doctor left for the station house (which, ironically, was where Rex’s dad was, being the section foreman, after all), Rex went into convulsions. The quick-thinking midwife scooped him up and ran for the station house, where the train was just pulling in, and Rex’s dad watched the doctor save his boy in the nick of time.

When I asked Ruby what the doctor did to save him, she said she hadn’t a clue, just that it had been close. She also laid dollars to donuts that the doctor never gave another shot without asking a kid’s history first.

Rex survived, though, and grew up to work for his dad on the railroad, which kept him employed until World War II. He tried to sign on, of course, but his asthma did that idea in. He ended up working as a time-keeper for a chain-gang of POWs for the duration of the war, at a camp further up the ACR.

The POWs he was in charge of were mostly Italians. The were a friendly bunch, and the Canadian government treated them very well. They may have been called a “chain-gang”, but not a one of them wore a chain. Where would they go if they ran? Into the Northern bush to starve or freeze to death? No, they weren’t that stupid. Better off where they were, where they were housed and fed fairly comfortably, considering, and each and every one of them worked hard, Rex said.

In the evenings, some of them built tiny little ships, with masts and sails that were squished magically through the necks of whiskey bottles and glued down. The masts, sails all furled up, would be stuck to the ship with rubber cement, and laid flat on the decks with little strings attached to the tops of them. The tiny dab of rubber cement stayed flexible long enough that when the whole works went through the bottle neck, the strings could be pulled gently and the masts would stand up straight and the sails would unfurl. Rex said it was a great thing to watch. By the end of the war, he owned three ships in bottles, and had them ’til he died.

A lot of those POWs applied to stay in Canada when the war was over. We must have been pretty decent people back then, I guess. Who would choose to stay here otherwise, and freeze for six to eight months of the year?

Random Song for the Day: “Belgium or Peru” - Green Monkey Project

Ain’t I Angelic… “looking”?

You may
not
be aware,
unless you’ve dropped
a hamburger
patty into the
sand, that sand does
not scrape off a hamburger patty. Completely. Ah, yes, appearances can be deceiving, though, can’t they? The dog knows differently, you can tell by the look on her face.

This picture was taken by my father in 1971. I would have been around 5 at the time. The dog (her name was Goldie), was 4, and I think my dad might have loved her as much as, if not more than, he loved me. He never once forgot her name, whereas I still get referred to as “Vel-errr…Kar-errr… Lisa! No…. Diddly-Do-Over-There”. He does that to all his kids, mind you, so it’s not like I’m singled out. He had too many kids, and just the one dog.

Goldie is in nearly every photo taken of me by my dad from the time she was brought home to the time she was “put down” when I was about 13.

She was old and had been through some tough times - surgery for removal of an “India Rubber” ball she accidentally swallowed (my dad still has that - ask him where my first tooth is, though) … rheumatism resulting from being accidentally run over (by my dad!!!!)… poor ol’ dog.

My parents didn’t tell me they’d put Goldie down until 4 days after the deed was done, because I was in the middle of a monstrous school project. They were worried I would be so upset that I’d get a bad mark. I cried. A lot. Not because the dog was gone, so much as I felt guilty that I hadn’t wondered where she was for 4 days. Some friend I turned out to be.

ANYWAY…. that’s not what this post is about. It’s about an incident that happened around the year this picture was taken - and probably the reason I hate cooking so much…

I think we were on Cockburn Island (stop laughing, Suzi), but it could have been one of a myriad of other islands in the North Channel that we “boated” to. I know there were other families there -

1) because my dad (along with several other dads) was three sheets to the wind (ummm… for those not in-the-know, “three sheets to the wind” is Sailor-Talk for Drunk.), and it took other dads present for such a thing to happen, and

B) because My Brother the Trespasser wouldn’t play with me, and it took other kids present for such a thing to happen.

So, all the other kids, being older, were… I don’t know…. gone, and I was left all by my lonesome 5-year-oldness to amuse myself. Under the arguable watchful-eyedness of a bunch of drunks. I could hardly help but get into trouble.

We were BBQ-ing that night. Well, the other families were BBQ-ing. Ours was “Hibachi-ing”. My dad loved his little Hibachi, because it didn’t need any dismantling for storage (we lived on a boat in the summer, remember?), or have to be strapped down on the deck.

It looked exactly like this.

Yes. Very small. Very low to the ground. About up to a 5-year-old’s shins. Reachable, in other words, to both a 5-year-old girl who only looked like an angel, and a 4-year-old dog who would eat anything within reach provided my dad wasn’t yelling “UUT! Oh, NO YOU DON’T!!” at the time. As I recall, that worked on both dog and girl equally well.

But, as you will recall, my dad was three sheets to the wind. And he did a silly thing. He told me (ME!) to “keep an eye on the Hibachi and make sure Goldie doesn’t get into the hamburgers.” Imagine that! And then he went back to his lawn chair, his rum, his buddies, and Nat King Cole on the 8-track.

So, I picked up the spatula and “kept an eye on the Hibachi”. As well as any 5-year-old who’d never wielded a spatula before could….

Now, this is about the point where the way my parents tell this story and the truth part ways. Ahem…*

To my knowledge, my parents don’t read my blog… in fact, I’m pretty sure that My Brother the Trespasser is the only member of my family who regularly does so, and I’m not even sure of that, truthfully… but if I get in trouble for the following admission, I will be forced to inform my parents who it was that taught me how to remove a locked wine-cellar door from its hinges quickly and silently, and put it back the way I found it, equally quickly and equally silently. Not to mention the party I swore I’d keep quiet about in exchange for such a valuable education. I swear I’ll tell. Fair warning, oh Brother Mine.

My parents maintain that I was “playing house”. That I “didn’t know any better”. That I just “had quite the imagination as a child”. Ri-ight. Goldie would have ratted me out in a heartbeat if my dad had thought to offer a milk bone. As it was, I think she may have scored the whole meal.

I was trying to flip the hamburgers over. I knew it had to be done; I could smell them burning. No amount of arm-waving, or sleeve-pulling, or “excuse-me-ing” could get my dad’s attention, and truthfully, it never once occurred to me to go to my mother because this emergency pertained to The Hibachi, which was most definitely my father’s turf.

And he ignored me.

And I saw my chance to finally be The Hero, and save supper.

So, I gingerly slid the spatula under a hamburger patty, and attempted to deftly flip it over, whereupon it promptly flipped off the Hibachi. Into the sand. Of course. May I remind you at this point, that I was 5.

You may not be aware, unless you’ve dropped a hamburger patty into the sand, that sand does not scrape off a hamburger patty. Completely.

But it can be disguised.

With more sand.

On all the other hamburger patties.

You can fit about eight hamburgers on an Hibachi grill. It takes approximately ten minutes for a 5-year-old girl-that-looks-like-an-angel-but-who-has-an-imagination to drop seven hamburger patties in the sand (on purpose!), scrape as much sand off as possible, and return them to the grill, sand-side-down.

They didn’t catch on until the second bite, as I recall, but they haven’t let me forget it, since. I believe we had bologna sandwiches for supper that night. Goldie ate sandy hamburger.

Not-So-Random Song for the Day: “Ramblin’ Rose” - Nat King Cole