Linda L. Zern's Blog, page 22

GONER

Can’t read the headlines lately without seeing another rock-n-roller bite the dust, and they’re not that much older than me, and that’s got me to thinking, and when I think I write. Writing saves wear and tear on my fifty shades of gray matter. So, there you go.

My funeral will be a free-for-all, knowing my family, unless I put my foot down now while I still can. NOTE: A free-for-all is a disorganized or unrestricted situation or event in which everyone may take part, especially a fight, discussion, or trading market.

FREE. FOR. ALL.

First of all, I want a closed casket; I do not believe in people looking at me when I can’t look back or am unable to make a smart aleck comment or two.

But more importantly, during the memorial service the following subjects will be OFF LIMITS:

MY DENIM BUTTONS: I like to wear vests for a variety of reasons; especially vests with large, spacious pockets. Pockets are the most important invention known to man, in my opinion. Seriously! When you’re vacuuming and you come across ten dollars in dimes under the couch, left there by the darling grandchildren who forgot they were stealing the dimes from Poppy’s change jar, you can stuff the dimes in your vest pockets instead of tossing them in the potted palm pot. I like pockets. You can put eggs in your pockets. That’s very helpful.

I had one vest that I wore until it rotted off my body. It has denim buttons, which did not rot. Their molecular cohesion continues to this very day. My children mock my denim buttons, my vests, and the fact that when I am wearing a vest I do not have to wear a bra. True story.

MY COOKING: I hate cooking. I’m too short to cook. Because I’m short I’m too close to the fire for safety, and the sparks get in my eyes and set my hair ablaze. Sure. Sure. That’s all true. I don’t want them talking about my cooking. It’s not my fault they liked to eat and would eat anything—even if I hated cooking it.

PREPPING, PARANOIA, AND THE POSSIBILITY I HAVE BUILT A SAFE ROOM UNDER THE BARN: I believe strongly in number ten cans of dehydrated sausage, and in the world ending badly. I believe strongly in the other shoe dropping. I’m Irish, after all.

OTHER ITEMS NOT TO BE DISCUSSED AT MY FUNERAL: My being a hermit; my bohemian decorating style; my hobo pots and pans; my dewlap.

Which brings me to Conner, my oldest grandson, who is absolutely forbidden to speak of my double chin. He calls it my dewlap . . . you know . . . just like a lizard’s, another good reason to keep that coffin lid down.

I’m sure there’s more to forbid, but I think I’ve got a few days yet. I’ll think on it.

Oh, and there is the working theory that I’ll never die, according to my son-in-law, Phillip.

This being his greatest fear.

Linda (Good as Gone) Zern

Conference Call

It’s the twenty-first century. Not a headline, I know, but the world is wildly new and—at the same time—endlessly the same.

Part of the newness is that our phones follow us around in our pants. Satellites beam endless cute cat videos straight into our back pockets. It’s like a new day has dawned in our pants controlled by cats and their god.

And a lot hasn’t changed—not one small bit: cats and dogs still fight, the wind still blows, and sand still gets in the cracks.

At our house it’s more and more and more about telecommuting and “the conference call.”

Why go all the way to Greece just to have a bunch of Monty Python style protestors who jump on public transportation to travel downtown to throw Molotov Cocktails at government buildings AND YOUR HOTEL, when you can sit at home and be invaded by goats? It’s a great question for a great twenty-first century.

At one point in my husband’s career, when people asked me what he did for a living, I would say, “He tapes receipts to paper.” That’s what I saw him do after he traveled to the ends of the earth to help foreign governments get the computers going, to send the bills, to charge the people, for having the phones in their back pockets downloading cat videos.

He stays home a little more now and telecommutes. This is a method of doing business that requires a home office, headsets, and the finger point. The headsets let him talk to foreign geeks in ancient Babylonia letter-speak via satellites. The finger point is to shut me up when I come in to request his help putting out the grease fire in the kitchen.

“Sherwood, the flames are taller than—”

He twirled in his office chair, stabbed one finger at the general direction of my voice while saying, “That will never work with the QPTTS-R49-7TMMR.” He pointed repeatedly to the headsets on his head with one finger as he spun away from me in his office chair. He returned to tapping wildly on his keyboard. The conference call went on.

The kitchen burned down. NO. I’M KIDDING. But it’s a lot like that.

Yesterday, my husband was on a conference call when our three goats busted into his office and started snorting around looking for goat nibbles. I saw them wander in and went to help. Sherwood the husband spun around in his chair attempting to stab a manly finger at the goats. Tramp the ram sniffed his finger. The conference call went on. Tramp started to sample paper, pencils, wires, headsets, and electrical outlets.

I closed the door—softly.

It’s all new, business transacted around an entire planet through air and space. And it’s all old; goats will still go anywhere, trying to eat everything.

Linda (Call Me) Zern

WELL OILED

I live in a small town. There is one game in our town when it comes to grocery shopping and buying cheap fire ant killer. It’s a box store of highly recognizable signage. I shop there. After all, it’s the only game in town, and now that I’m older and closer to death, I find that driving to other towns to shop at their only game in town is a lot less interesting.

I don’t waste time sorting my silverware either. I figure if the only way you can tell the difference between a fork and a spoon is to have them sorted into specially shaped plastic slots, I’m not sure I want you eating at my house anyway.

The Walmart in my town keeps my family in cooking oil and silverware. Amazon and the Internet do the rest.

The problem is that I can’t seem to get out of the only-game-in-town without causing some kind of scene. I don’t know why. It’s like being the town dunce. I always wind up embarrassed and feeling like it would be better if I were sitting in a corner, wearing a pointy hat.

I think it’s because I buy a lot of cooking oil. Because . . . well . . . I’m pretty sure that our government has sold all America’s surplus cooking oil to Iceland. I have no proof. But I really like home cooked fried chicken, so I worry, and I tend to stock up. I don’t buy good cooking oil, but I buy a lot.

And I drop it after I pay for it. Twice. It’s happened twice.

The first time, cheap cooking oil, bottled in cheap plastic, slipped through my fingers like oily sand. Well . . . actually . . . the bottle dropped right out through one of those plastic shopping bags that had started to bio-degrade before I’d finished paying for the cheap crap in the bags.

The cheap green cap on the bottle of cheap cooking oil exploded off the top like a bullet, and oil glugged out onto the floor—everywhere.

I screamed, “Hurry. It’s oil.”

Walmart employees screamed, back, “Don’t touch it. Do. Not. Touch. It. Get back. Get back.”

They acted like I’d spilled a bottle of sarin gas. It made me wonder what they’re putting in the cooking oil at Walmart.

I just wanted to fry some chicken—not overthrow Iceland.

Anyway . . . that was the first time.

Today, I did it again: same cheap oil, same crazy plastic cap bullet, same yowling employees acting like I’d just dropped a canister of mustard gas, same giant pool of spreading, smeary canola oil.

That’s it. I can’t take another oil bomb incident.

I’ve got to look into Amazon’s cooking oil shipping policy or maybe Ali Baba.

Linda (Fry Cook) Zern

INVESTED

In our church we believe we have a duty to look after each other. Once a month, we try to visit or call each other, by assignment, to make sure everyone is okay, find out if anyone is in need, or try to get free baby-sitting . . . oops . . . umm . . . I’m just kidding. I don’t have little kids. I don’t need free babysitting; I need someone to feed my horses and rub lotion in Charlie’s ears. But I digress.

Anyway, it’s called visiting teaching. I have two sisters (yes, we call each other brother and sister for deeply meaningful reasons having to do with being spiritually related in that big family in the sky sense—but I digress) that I “visit teach.”

One of my dear sisters has hit a rough patch that has put her in a rehabilitation center following some health issues.

Off I went to check on her.

She’s in room 600 plus. I stood at the first rehab center I cleverly thought of visiting, checking the room numbers. They went up to 200 plus. I stood puzzling and puzzling until my puzzler was sore. The lovely, gentle woman, who runs the joint, recognized a stumped puzzler when she saw one.

“Are you lost?” she said.

“You don’t have six hundred rooms here do you?”

With a knowing twinkle she gave me the number to the other rehabilitation center in town. I called. Ahhhh . . . they had a room with 600 plus on it and my friend.

Laughing, waving, and blowing kisses, I sped off to the next rehabilitation center.

And found . . . my friend.

We chatted. We read scriptures. We laughed over this and that. We caught up. We discussed her possible release date.

I met my friend’s lovely roommate.

We had visited for an hour when my friend’s roommate, a lovely woman recovering from a little of this and a little of that, pointed at my tie-dyed motorcycle vest.

“Sweetheart,” she began, gently. “You have your vest on inside out. Your buttons are on the inside and the tag is out.”

I looked down and realized that I had—for about two hours—been wearing my vest inside out to two different establishments where people are tutored in the fine art of dressing themselves properly and re-learning to walk.

“Right you are,” I said. “You know something.” I pulled my vest off so I could re-dress myself in the manner of a two-year old. “Every time I get to thinking I’m hot stuff my shoe falls in the toilet.” True story.

Everyone in the room nodded their head at my obvious grasp of my own dopiness and understanding of humiliation.

Laughing, waving, and blowing kisses, I made my exit.

On the way out, I’m pretty sure I heard an occupational therapist say, “She’ll be back.”

Linda (Buttoned Down) Zern

The Book of St. Zern

1. Verily, verily, I say unto you that readeth this missive doeth it in the month of December in preparation for the ringing in of the end of the year of our Lord, two thousand and fifteen, both that and the celebrating of the birth of one baby Jesus, and doth read it for the knowing of both the family of Zern and she that keepeth the record, one Linda of Antioch.

2. But he that readeth doth readeth to his good humor for we did laugh much in this self-same year.

3. For verily, there were many lambs in the flock of our tribe, yeah the lambs doth number twelve and they were called: Zoe (12), Emma (10), Conner (9), Kip (7), Sadie (7), Zac (5), Reagan (5), Hero (3), Griffin (3), Scout (2), Leidy (1) and Ever (infant).

4. But we did waiteth with great expectation for yet the thirteenth lamb. He, being born in Texas to his goodly parents, Lauren of Saint Cloud and Aric of Orlando, on or near the day of birth that is my own.

5. And one mother, yeah, one Heather Baye of Geneva, did speak much to say that she is “a shell of her former self,” because of the antics of her five lambs. For they did wrestle much and cause much destruction in the land of Antioch—not by purpose but more by chance. Or as one, Conner of Saint Cloud, their brother, doth report, “My brothers be like an angry mob.”

6. And these good parents—one Heather of Geneva and Phillip of Bountiful, and Adam of Orlando and Sarah of Saint Cloud, and Maren of Geneva and Thomas of Titusville—did go forth teaching, and feeding, and clothing, and correcting, and mopping, and praying, and worrying much over their lambs. Watching forth always for wolves and the like that doth wish to harm the sheep.

7. And Zoe, in her eleventh year, did becometh like unto a young woman and did entereth into the “danger zone” of both the teenage years and the drama queen days that passeth away without understanding and she did leadeth the rest of the flock into that selfsame way. And we did both rejoice and mourn and hope to endure it well.

8. Then saith Sherwood of Winter Park unto the rising generation, Who wisheth to ride the lawnmower around the house until the gas doth give out. And the lambs did waiteth in line for their turn, some with joy and thanksgiving and some with the pitching of mighty fits. And the rest, even the fathers and mothers among us, did sitteth much about the fire pot and watch as Sherwood of Winter Park did driveth in large and mighty circles upon the mower, trying to keep those that driveth both straight and true and out of the fire pot.

9. Therefore, I did write much of their doings and did post much, yea, even now on my blog for almost the twentieth year and my family dideth ask me oft at Sunday dinner, Art thou not on Twitter?

10. And I did restrain from destroying them with my fiery wrath for not following after me both on Twitter and Facebook and Linkedin and . . .

11. But I did stay my hand.

12. For I know that should my writing become of a kind that is called viral, they would come more oft for dinner and so I do forebear.

13. And many ask if my family doth object to their stories being told far and wide at my hand and I do report that they do not object, save they receiveth a dollar each time I uttereth their names. And so they selleth their birthright for a mess of dollar bills like unto those that dance in the marketplace.

14. And so my tribe doth both increase and prosper and laugh much, it being our way in the land. And so my days did pass away as if in a dream—of circus clowns.

15. And I make an end, even, Linda of Antioch.

JUKE JOINT

Juke! It’s a great word, meaning so many delightful things. The first definition of the word is: 1) To defeat an opponent by using subtlety, cleverness, or a trickery.

According to this definition, my fifty-seven year old husband was juked by a five-year old boy, who happily confessed, “Mr. Sherwod, we chased your chickens, but you weren’t looking.”

Of course, this five-year old might need to work on his subtlety a bit.

Juke is a verb. It’s what you do to someone. In this case, it’s what a bunch of kindergarteners did to my husband. Chase is what they did to our chickens.

A second meaning of the word juke is: 2) To steal from someone else. The problem with this definition of the word is that there are so many examples these days of folks juking each other’s time, energy, money, and stuff, it’s hard to narrow it down. For example: Wow, watching that last Hollywood comedy was a colossal waste of my time, and that’s two hours I’ll never get back and I want to sue someone for pain and suffering and the theft of two hours of my eighty plus or minus years on this earth, and I got juked, or the government has juked my tax money to finance studies of shrimp running on a treadmill.

A third meaning of the word juke is: 3) To dance while grinding one's [back parts] against another dancer's pelvis. This slang is common in Chicago.

I’ll be darned. I thought this was called “dirty dancing.”

And finally: 4) To stab another person. This slang is common in South London. 4) He got juked and mugged between the tube station and his flat. Crime abhors a vacuum and since London is a gun free zone, being stabbed with a knife has gotten its own slang term. Don’t juke me, or I juke you not.

Here I was under the impression that juke meant going to hear my grandfather play his tenor sax in a speakeasy or juke joint where you might find a jukebox, which plays music for a dime, in Chicago during the depression. Apparently, things have changed a bit in Chicago since my grandparents lived there.

Juke. It’s a great word and I plan to use it more in casual conversation, starting soon.

Because it’s good to have goals, and I’m not juking you.

Linda (The Trickster) Zern

MONKEY CHIC

“You can’t wear seventeen monkeys to church.”

Zoe, my six-year old granddaughter, had come to church literally draped in monkeys. She had two to twenty monkeys Velcro-ed around her neck. There were monkey bracelets wrapped around her wrists. She had thrown a monkey backpack over her shoulders and topped the entire monkey collection off with a monkey hat.

Zoe glowed with pride in her accessorizing acumen.

She looked like a zoo exhibit had exploded onto her body.

The ensuing conversation between Zoe’s father and Zoe (better known as Cheetah Girl, Queen of the Jungle) over the appropriate number of monkeys a person should wear to church lasted the major part of our church service and included tears, frustration, and gnashing of teeth. And that was just the Dad.

Arguments that do not work to de-monkey a monkey girl include:

“Zoe, no one else is wearing thirty-three monkeys to church.”

“Zoe, mommy isn’t wearing twenty-seven monkeys to church.”

“Zoe, all those monkeys are going to scare the babies.”

“Zoe, no one will be able to concentrate on the service, because they’ll be trying to count the monkeys on your body.”

“Zoe, all the other children will want your monkeys and they’ll cry.”

“Zoe, the monkeys are making your father break out in monkey pox.”

“Zoe, you’re going to cause a riot.”

“Zoe, take off the monkeys.”

“Zoe, NO MONKEYS!”

“Oh, let her wear the monkeys.” This from her Poppy, who would let the grandchildren go to church in their underwear, carrying flyswatters if they wanted to.

There are people who climb great mountains. There are people who explore active volcanoes. There are people who show up at Wal-Mart at four in the morning, on black Friday, to be the first to buy the Griddle MAX by Cuisinart for one dollar.

These people are known as thrill seekers—also nuts.

All of these people combined cannot hope to experience the stamina and courage required to argue the taste level of monkey fashion with a six-year old. Parenting is the ultimate extreme sport, right up there with bungee jumping into a river using a chain of monkeys Velcro-ed to a bridge railing.

For one long year, my youngest son, Adam, refused to leave the house until his sisters tied his hair up in a rubber band. His hair stuck out of his head like a hair horn, but since he was my fourth child and my second son, I knew better than to care. I was numb, which is another way of saying I had cried, “Uncle!” quietly.

When Adam could finally talk, he told us his rubber-banded hair horn was his “feather.” Who knew Adam had been embracing his Native American heritage and had been reaching out to his ancestors all that time?

Climb a great mountain if you must. Dance about the rim of a spewing volcano if you dare.

But if you really want the thrill of unpredictability, the raw terror of potential destruction, or the rush that comes from a total loss of control, then go car shopping with a four-year old boy. A boy who, at any moment, might drop his pants so that he can take a whiz on the tire of a brand new Lincoln Town Car— in public—in the showroom—in front of the entire sales force of The Central Florida Lincoln-Mercury dealership.

(We bought the Cougar station wagon. We did not get the special discount.)

Or you can attempt to convince Zoe that wearing a mob of monkeys just “isn’t done” in polite society, which is like trying to convince cannibals that boiled meat is not fine dinner fare.

Linda (No Fly Swatters) Zern

That's a Shame

“Is that guy biting that girl’s thigh?” My son pushed a computer screen with a picture of a guy biting a girl’s thigh in front of my face. I squinted. Not only was it a picture of a young man biting a young women’s thigh, I knew the biter boy.

“Don’t you know that guy?” My son began to scroll down to other pictures of the young man in question biting other questionable girl bits.

“Yeah, I know him,” I sighed.

“Didn’t you . . .”

I cut him off. “Yeah, I wrote him a letter of recommendation for the college of his choice . . . so, apparently, he could go to that institution of higher learning and bite girl’s meaty leg parts.”

“Wow!”

I agreed.

“Do people on social networking sites know that we can see them?” My son looked at me with a puzzled frown.

I closed my eyes with visions of thigh biting dancing in my head. “You know; I think it’s kind of like my theory of why people pick their noses in their cars. Glass feels solid, even if it is see-through, and I always want to yell, ‘We can see you!’ But no one ever hears me. Apparently, it’s also sound proof.”

This incident just highlights why writing letters of recommendation can be so problematic, because the world has become a thigh biting, obscene gesture shooting, booby flashing extravaganza, while I still blush when I fill out the forms in the gynecologist’s waiting room.

The blush is off the world’s rose, that’s for sure.

So I have decided that in all future letters of recommendation that I am asked to write I will include the following disclaimer:


What I know of this candidate, student, or potential employee does not include knowledge of: thigh biting photo’s winging their way across the world wide web; strange or twisted philosophies concerning Marxists mass murderers and their views on day care, first names, or the proper running of a gulag; lying to Israeli officials; or superficial tattoos displayed prominently on bits that can be chewed on by boys whose friends are sober enough to hold the camera steady.

I’m not kidding about the blushing part. My gynecologist once looked at my face and neck, his glasses slipping to the end of his nose, and poked my cheek with his finger.

“What’s that?” he asked.

I knew immediately, but I refused to admit to my old-fashioned red-faced shame.

“Are you blushing?” He looked at my fevered cheeks with squinty eyes. “That’s amazing,” he continued. “Nobody blushes anymore.” He poked me again. “Look at that.” He acted like he’d just discovered an extinct species of pigeon nesting on my head.

Sighing, I shrugged and pulled my exam gown closer to my throat, covering my embarrassed shame with a paper towel, wondering who wrote my doctor his letters of recommendation.

I’ve got nothing against public confessionals of guilt to save the taxpayer the expense of a trial, stocks in the town square where you get to throw old veggies at the town bully, and admitting to your most embarrassing self deprecating moments for their humorous uplifting quality, but don’t cry when you—finally and at long last—realize WE CAN SEE YOU and, boy, do you look silly!

Linda (Once Bitten, Twice Shy) Zern

NOTES FROM THE VILLAGE

Hillary Clinton made the phrase “It takes a village to raise a child” famous. She stole it from an old African village but . . . well . . . that’s a worry for another blog, and I’ve got a couple of questions for Bill’s wife.

What village? Whose village? Big village? Small village? City village? Country village? And what should the village do with the villagers who can’t keep their drunken tally whackers in their nasty pants, making babies they have no intention of buying insurance for . . .

But mostly . . . what’s a village? Please define.

From a really, really recognizable source of information that no one lets you use in college when you write an essay: “Although many patterns of village life have existed, the typical village was small, consisting of perhaps 5 to 30 families. Homes were situated together for sociability and defense, and land surrounding the living quarters was farmed.”

Hmmmm . . . families . . . extended families: so a village is mom, dad, brother, sister, grandma, grandpa and crazy Aunt Maud. Interesting. But I’m afraid I have some bad news. Young villagers aren’t so village minded these days.

One fine day in college, while contemplating the coming Thanksgiving break, I listened to some fine young students talk about heading home to—you guessed it—the village that spawned them.

One young man said, “I’m going home, but it’s bu!!$&*#. I hate my family. But hey, they’re paying my bills.”

My immediate thought? And another village bites the dust.

Villages are closely related people who care about and worry for the health, wealth, and happiness of the next generation of villagers. Boys were valued for their ability to battle off soccer hooligans. Girls were valued for just about everything else. Adults imparted culture. Older members imparted wisdom and opportunities for service. No one went on a cruise.

Not only were villages efficient, they were also tough. Villagers who proved to be idiots were often displayed in public stocks, allowing the other villagers—on their way to milk goats or weave something—to express their displeasure by tossing verbal barbs or horse crap at the idiot. Hard work was lauded. Idiots included: adulterers, liars, thieves, slack-jawed losers, and hooligans.

Villages that practiced slack-jawed laziness became extinct like the giant sloth. No one bailed them out. To deal with the worry and the insecurity and the global climate shenanigans the village went to church on Sunday, and they did pretty well.

They drank raw milk. They ate free-range eggs, and they stored up roots for winter soup. They didn’t live as long as we do—true. But they did manage to give birth to and educate some fairly impressive individuals who managed to realize that the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness does not come from the village at all but from some greater, more permanent source: God and Nature’s God.

I say, “Bring back the village and the public stocks.” I’ll provide the horse pucky.

Linda (Shame on You) Zern

[V]otes For Women

Valentine’s Day is for lovers.

Halloween is for dreamers and doers. People dress up as the people they dream of being and dream of doing. That sounded better in my head.

It’s my favorite. I love dressing up. This year I went as . . . well . . . a figure (a type, a kind) from history, not a person from history, but a figure from history.

This year I went as a turn of the century suffragette.

Two people knew the word.

One person thought I was a cowboy. Alcohol was NOT being served at the party I attended.

Most people, who guessed close, knew that I had something to do with Mary Poppins.

One individual thought my sash read “Yotes” not “Votes.”

I confess that the iron-on V looks a lot like the iron-on Y.

One gentleman thought that my sash was a plea to elect a woman for president and was a little bit hostile about it. It got me to thinking about the importance of history and prepositions and the history of prepositions.

My sash read: Votes FOR Women. (It was once illegal in this country for women to cast a ballot. Suffrage is the right to vote. Thus suffragettes.)

It did not read: Vote FOR A Woman.

Or: Vote OF Women.

Or: Vote THROUGH Women.

Or: Vote ABOUT Women.

Or: Vote UP Women.

It said: [V]OTES FOR WOMEN.

Nothing wrong with that. Right?

Like the song says, “Our daughter’s daughter will adore us, as we sing in grateful chorus, ‘Well done! Well done! Sister Suffragettes!”

Mostly, I went as an indictment of the public school system! And that’s the scariest monster of them all.

Linda (One Women, One Vote) Zern