Blog Against The Wall

Oh boy. Here I go again. Hold onto your brains, I’m approaching a bumpy gyrus………..so don’t just sit and sulcus;  fasten your frontal lobes and grin and blog it…..

It appears on this hemisphere we are having a problem with security Pat Downs.  I tried to research Pat Downs using the Google search and I was unable to locate Ms. or Mr. Downs in the Transportation Security Administration.  Pat is a neutral name, it stands on either side of the gender bureau. Maybe I need a user friendly mode that has more badda-BING in it’s engine……(maybe I might have better luck if I check Megan’s Law website…. ouch..)

Apparently  Pat Downs has been seen wearing blue surgical gloves and groping youngsters who are traveling with mommy and daddy concealing Pampers in their carry-on.  It looks as though these little darlings are harboring explosive diapers as they waddle across the airport security sections.  Transit authorities are trying to Change the diaper dilemma and  have the toddler’s check their Huggies into baggage claim in order to lessen the work load of Pat Downs.

Oh I beg your pardon…….I misinterpreted the Ted Turner stations again…..they were discussing pat downs in the physical sense…..ohh do let me blog over….

Let’s talk pat downs.  I have never experienced a pat down since the new law took over our terminals.  I have had the luxury of the Wand tracing the outline of my stature spitting out “blips” as it lingered around my  under-wire……..(maybe we need to call in the Victoria Secret Service…..).   I don’t know how I would feel if I were pulled aside by a young, tall ,dark, and handsome TSA who wants to put his hands on me and gently pat down areas on my body with a slow blue glove…….

Oh…sorry….lost my focus for a moment….

I  saw on the news how some of these transit employees were performing their job. They seem to be enjoying their work now that pat downs have been approved.  The security employees are  a lot more “hands-on” now then they were in the old days, when you would just stroll through a scanner and  witness an occasional rifling of your neatly packed tote; hoping they breeze past an unknowingly canister of contraband left in the zipper pocket of a Samsonite that you borrowed from your sister’s hippie boyfriend….

As a former Airline Employee I never came across a pat down, or even a scanner.  We merely flagged our ID’s and were given an accepted wave to pass Go.  I did run across an incident with a security agent once who may have been riddled with the pat down syndrome when I was on a 24hr layover in The Emerald City.  I spent the night at my sisters house and upon packing my things I managed to slip one of her expensive make-up products into my color coded airline bag and neglected to tell her.  My sister and her hippie boyfriend took me to the airport and walked me to the gate, but her hippie boyfriend stopped short of the security table. ( He must have felt guilty about something…or maybe he was just somewhere over a rainbow looking for his pot of  Acapulco gold..).

I flipped my badge at the agent and slid on through as usual, but  this time they decided to pull me and my bag aside for a check.  As he was emptying the contents onto the table he fished out the bottle of make-up and lined it up in plain view of my sister’s eyes.  My sister commented on my pilfering her cosmetics and asked: “What else did you confiscate from my house?”.

(I may inject now, that this was during a time before CD’s were on the menu of music distribution and Records were the means of composition and not just for scratching, followed by eight track tapes.   For history sake, Vinyl records came in variations of 78, LP, and 45’s and  this all had to do with RPM’s.)

I replaced my articles that were displayed on the security table into my suitcase and I added a little joke as I answered my sisters query.  I retracted with: “Oh yeah, I also packed one of your 45’s in my back pocket”.

I said this as I was reaching behind my back and before I could relinquish my smirk,  a six foot 200 pound Agent came out of nowhere and snapped my arm behind my back and slammed me up against a wall and screamed at the back of my  impeccably coiffed airline doo:

” You think joking about guns is funny at an airport?”………

Mind you, I was in full dress uniform with my company wings flapping an attentive salute. He turned me around slowly and I could see he was a product of the 8-Track heaven generation so I methodically explained the history of  the modes and methods of music transportation and the means of listening to it being played.   He released his grip and let me go and decided not to RECORD it in his evening report..

At least in the pat downs today the agents offer you a quiet explanation as they explore the regions that seem to be out-of-the-boundaries – before the process was approved.  I don’t know if I’m comfortable with a low breathy stranger crooning his moves in my ear as I’m being gently stroked by a blue-hand- group inspecting  my expanding waistline…….

Well….maybe if it’s carried out in Italian, with candle light, dinner, and soft music Recording in the back round …….. I might look the other way………

spread the humor.

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A Tough Blog to Keep on the Porch

Why do men cheat and sleep around on their mates like a junk yard dog scavenging through a dumpster from bone to bone. Do they not realize that after a while not only do they get caught but all the bones end up tasting the same?

I don’t understand the actual concept of how some one can actually follow through and consummate the cheating, however, I do  understand the preliminary’s that lead up to it. I can see how stagnation and redundancy play a vital part in a relationship especially if only one person is adding fuel to the proverbial fire. What is it that enters a persons mind when they start to  want to have that notion to stray. Most seem to lay the blame on lack of attention in their relationship. Why is having attention paid to one so important? Is someone’s ego so deflated that it warrants affection stemming from strangers to strippers?

I have a friend who is worth millions and is a direct descendant of a prominent family who steeled their fortune in the roaring twenty’s.  She is a great grand-daughter of a a guy who has a Hall and a Deli named after him. She lies low in a suburban area located in a semi small state where the shore is eroding faster than Elliot Spitzer’s hairline. She married a nice guy and had two children with him the same age as mine. She was living the quiet life by the sea in a secluded neighborhood that just happened to have a strip club in the adjoining county that touted their Tiny Dancers.  Her husband was a man of leisure and an  unlimited bank account gratis the wife; a bank account that he convinced his wife to support his returning to school for a degree in Law. He would drop the kids off at school and mosey over to the community college and sign in, then hop in the BMW and tend to his education in lap dances by Professor Candee-lite.

He took his education to a higher court and veered off Course and centered around a Pole of conviction which benched him and booted his pre-law ass to another jurisdiction. I did hear he returned home with his tail between his legs in hopes of a reconciliation, but his wife did not find that appeal-ing; and the hammer of justice came down on him one night when she crazy glued his member of congress to his thigh and he had to drag his gavel around the sound block to the emergency room and plead his case while the surround sound echoed “stuck on you” by Huey Lewis and the News.

Yeah you can teach an old dog new tricks using HO-rrifyin ways to TIT-illate the male libido that tends to lie dormant when faced with commitment longer than their allotted attention span…which lasts about as long as Candee-lites thong during one pelvic thrust.

Yep cheating creates havoc, mayhem, and mistrust and leaves many people with wounded hearts and angered souls and bury their sorrow in a bottle of 1999 Beaujolais Nuveau.

I tell them to get a dog. Charly-dog doesn’t cheat. Well, maybe when playing cards…….

Blog Your Brains Out

Let’s talk friendship(s).  My father use to say to me that in your life time you can count on one hand the people that are truly your friends……Excluding family  of course,……. Oh phew….there were probably a lot of fingers flying about within the Von Trapp household….

I think it has to do with how many lives you have touched along the way, I mean touched in a way that has left an indelible mark of remembrance.  My dad also mentioned that you can spark a good presence by the number of attendees at your funeral.  I don’t know how that got calculated being that one is not Soul(y) present to witness the guest book signatures, and I don’t know if that really holds true  if it is based on the total sum of the crowd.  If a high profile figure is laid to rest in a Hollywood cemetery and draws thousands of onlookers, is that anymore redeeming than an unknown soldier.  Does that signify that the “star” of the show touched more viewers through their celluloid hands than one figure who stood alone and gave a life for freedom?

I dunno….let me think……. did a major pop icon who allegedly overdosed on a controlled  substance injected by a member of the AMA……….touch my life in a way that I should consider him one of my candidates for my Friendship hand?   Nope.

 Did some brave unknown soul who fought for our country  and died while doing so to protect our country,…. did they touch my life and are they a candidate for my friendship hand?  Possibly.

The “Star” provided entertainment which we pay for whether we like the entertainment or not. The venue of this art was provided  for our listening and viewing pleasure.  There were a lot of passer-bys at this funeral  who  stood crying how much their life had been touched by this person.

I’m sorry, but that Peter Pan was so out of reach he barricaded himself behind a gate in order to never land too close to the public.  The only time he reached out his white glove was Pay-day after the concert.  Don’t get me wrong, I like music, artists, and entertainment, my position lays  resting on the point my father made regarding “touching lives” and “true friends” in ones’ life.

I mean  think about it….All the folks that visited the final resting place of an Iconic Hollywood star may have felt an intense affinity to this person, but in all honesty…would this person reciprocate even if they could?  I hardly doubt that the King of Pop would phone me up to come over for a Bar-B-Q at his ranch, or call one night to chat about recipes…….  I can’t imagine The Gloved One would throw down his gauntlet and post bail for an unknown or possibly donate what is left of his liver……Oh, but I digress………….

My father also said to keep your enemies close and family is your true friend.  That is true to a point.  I have a sister who once stole my boyfriend away from me behind my back.  It was hurtful and I lost my trust in her, yet to this day we still talk.  Do I trust her? ..Nope.  Do I keep her close?…um..Yep.

I have had hundreds of friends and acquaintances throughout my life and as I slowly ( and I do mean slowly) fight,…er..I mean..face my golden years, I  now find my friendship ring diminishing  down to two hands and one foot.  (I think my father never took the other appendages into account).  I find myself becoming highly selective on who I want around me with whatever time is left on this planet.  I do not have an opening for people that are not relative to my standards of what I consider a friendship to be.

I have a few incredible friends that I could call in the middle of the night and rant about the perils of parenting without repercussion and judgement.  These are folks that would bail me out of any situation with no questions asked and ask nothing in return for their favors.  These are people that would never leave you stranded and  stand by me through outlandish circumstances….no holds barred. These are friends that ask for nothing yet I give them everything, just because they are friends.  These are friends that have engaged in minor battles and yet we manage to come out without a scrape and find ourselves laughing at the tomfoolery over a Tom Collins.  These are people I tattoo on my friendship hand.

I guess standards of friendship vary amongst people, and maybe mine are highly idealistic, but I find when I don’t keep to my “code” some people just take advantage of you. Do I like that?…Nope.  Do I change that?…Yep.

That’s the beauty of aging and harbor hormones that get in the way….I don’t have time for people in wolf’s clothing.  (Well maybe I’d take some time to speak with a Blitzer in a Navy wool Blazer about a situation).  I will not have a friend just for friends sake, I like a valued individual with some depth and character and not centered on themselves for entertainment.

The group of  faces on my fingertips are imbedded indelibly on my friendship hand and I am honored to be able to reach out and touch their lives as much as they have stroked mine.  Do I like that?    Yep.      Do I want to change that?    Nope.

I have now passed on to my children the Handy words of wisdom from my father regarding friends and they  reacted as I did when I thought I was immortal, only they think of friends in terms of  acronym’s like; BFF and BFLS and TTYL….etc.

I guess their access of ridding unwanted friendships is at the touch of the hand and reaching for the DELETE button……..

well that was easy……..

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Always a Blogsmaid, Never the Blogger (finally finished for Phil)…

I was just curious.  What does it take to get Freshly Pressed? I have been known to take my clothes to the cleaners to get that extra crease in the pant leg and a little more starch around the collar.  I walk around in wrinkle free attire unless it’s summer and I’m wearing linen.

Who are these folks that judge what will get pressed and what will not get pressed.  I’ve never had any indecision from my dry cleaner about my substance, unless they need to use the potent chemicals to remove the Marinara spot from  last nights dinner at Gino’s Trattoria.

One person mentioned that winners are chosen for the freshly pressed page if they include some eye candy. “Something picturesque that will catch the readers eye”.  Maybe if JD Salinger added a few Kodak moments to his draft he might have changed the title to: Catcher in the Eye….

I like the appeal of words and how they can lift off the page and let you formulate your own picture in your mind.  If a writer or author or better yet, a Blogger, can captivate your imagination with their writing, I think that should hold quite a presence in the judges EYES……anyone can Shop around for a Photo.

Is this the wave of the future in our young readers,( and I mean younger…under my age…waaayyy under my age)?  Are they in need of eye props to help them imagine what words are portraying?  Are folks becoming incapable of using their imaginations anymore to paint a photograph in their mind from descriptive expressions?   What if Melville used a Polaroid instead of his lovely colloquy…….would we witness a snapshot of Captain Ahab standing aboard the Pequod hoisting the Whale by a giant fish hook grinning into the camera held by First mate Ishmael?  Would that make Moby Dick a Whale of a story in our minds today…….maybe after the publishers harpoon the New Edition for today’s readers…….

Whether it’s paper or plastic screens that we feast our reader eyeballs on, do we need a pictorial accompaniment to satisfy our thoughts brought about by the written page. Have our imaginations been blown out of our brain and Gone with the Wind replaced with operable archetypes?  Do I need to paint a picture now……  having a sketch of Scarlett O’Hara wearing a dress made from draperies would not have helped my mind capture the burning of Tara……..unless she managed to leave the Curtain rod in….

Sometimes I wonder with Great Notion if the original bible had pictures ;would more folks pick it up for a read? And , possibly, the Blogging umpires would then try and Iron out the Photo-shopped pictographs for their freshly pressed homer…….

spread the humor

My Blog!

Ohh sorry….The last published blog was an unfinished post……My dyslexic fingers clicked Publish instead of Save….

Please disregard…….unless you want to hear more……

My Bad!

Charlywalker

Blog’s In The Belfry

I woke up this morning with a horses head in my bed.  I didn’t find myself reacting like Jack Woltz  from the Godfather  did ,  who arose in his Egyptian cotton sheets next to his prized Khartoun screaming bloody murder;  I woke up with a two inch stuffed head of a  Seabiscuit pencil topper dangling  by one reign over my face  repetitiously neighing:  “I’m a little pony” in the same tone that emanates from the Chucky Doll when the batteries are dying…….

Charly-dog brought this Child’s Play to my attention at 5:30 a.m. on a Saturday. I don’t know how he got his canines on a souvenir  from a Bat Mitzvah that we attended eight years ago.  I don’t know what possessed him to share his discovery with me at the break of dawn, but I do know that there have been  many attempts made on my life brought about by my pooch, and maybe this is some kind of final warning……

Maybe it’s a  symbol or a for -shadowing of what lies a HEAD on the floor below for me to trip over -and break my neck.  Like maybe the pencil end that held the plush memento where an eraser should’ve been……..

I tried to get my dog to relinquish this token  of affection(?) that brought back scenes form a 1972 classic, but he held onto it tighter than the Great White  clenching  onto Chrissie Watkins legs in the opening scene of Jaws.  Not even the Jaws of Life would be able to free that stuffed stallion from my dog’s choppers.

  My dog Charly, followed me throughout the house carrying that faux foal head around with his jowls seeping saliva that is soaking onto the drool resistant carpet.  I know he harbors a subliminal message somewhere under that  bobble head of his while he clenches that colt between his Sublingual gland.

I was determined to not let this dog intimidate me into spending the morning worrying about his ulterior motives brought about with his prized possession.  He was not going to drive me crazy in thoughts about his future ploys with that stuffed toy head.  No way,  I am just going to set my chair to the recliner mode and conduct a self Rorschach Test with the cloud formations in the sky until Charly stops grinning at me with that furry fabric stuck in his teeth.

While I was retreating in the back yard reading the Sports page and sipping my coffee, , Charly  decided to drop Mr. Ed’s head into my cup of Joe.  It took a while to fish him out because  a Palomino  is hard to locate when you take cream in your coffee……..

Maybe Charly-dog is trying to give me a “Heads up” and pick the winner of the Belmont Stakes…..Maybe Charly is  able to channel predictions, and  just maybe  he is able to  label  winners.  (Although, I don’t recall seeing “Made-in-China“,  followed by  “Press Here for Sound“, and  “Inspected by No. 9“, all winning by a stuffed nose in the Kentucky Derby.   I mean, what would be the odds of that?)

I am not a gambling person but if my dog can predict a winner of a Major Horse race I just might have to capitalize on it.

This toy bronco brain that my dog introduced into my bed this morning might be a message of some other nature. Maybe it’s a clue telling me to be on the lookout for the rest of the Horse that could be logistically placed in harms way. Maybe it’s a sign from the clutter- god that my daughters room needs to be excavated again.  Maybe the act of  a pet pooch offering up a petite padded pony’s head lodged between his lips takes on a symbolic meaning of a deeper fashion.

  Maybe he’s trying to tell me that heads will roll if his dog dish is not filled promptly by seven.

Maybe he knows I switched his Flea & Tick remedy to a cheaper brand and he’s looking for retaliation.

Maybe I should stop letting him stay up and watch re-runs on the classic movie channel and just stick to viewing the Dog Whisperer where Charly  can enjoy seeing Pit-Bulls rip the heads off of Chi-hua-hua mixed breeds…..

(uh-oh…..now I know where  “drop the My little Pony head in my bed” idea came from….)…

The Biological Blog is Ticking

My daughter will be off to her “sleep-a-way” college very soon and I am having a real push-me-pull-you sensation circling my being with regards to her being an absentee family member at the dinner table.

It’s amazing how fast time flies when you’re raising children.

  Running a close second is my son who will be gone in another year, which leaves just me, a husband, and a crazy dog.  Coming in third is my traveling husband who checks into this House Hotel periodically and has check-out by 11.  So,  inevitably I am left with just me dining with Charly-dog sharing our kibble-n-bits and picking  on a bone or two….

I suppose confronting an empty nest syndrome could cause one to feel slightly deserted  and leaving one to feel alone to combat that empty feeling rising in your stomach, but actually, it’s last nights dessert followed by a gastric flare-up that’s creating the fuss.  And you thought I was going to wallow in  lonely abandonment and cry over Spilt Vintage Port…….

Having the place all to myself???   I say…Halleluja and pass the Pinot Grigio……Sweet freedom…..I can’t think of what I want to do first:  Sleep til noon or Kennel the canine and shop-drop-and -roll into a SPA…….without family interruptus.

Just think of the exhilarating feeling of not getting that emergency call of: “I forgot my English paper  that I left curled up at the bottom of my bed that’s due today,”  while you’re in the middle of a shower that was  already scheduled for an earlier time…..

Or the incredible lightness of being inside your purse that no longer carries the contents of a beloved family members lost possessions…..

Imagine not having to try to cook for four, in addition to  their last minute friends that  may bombard your kitchen promptly at 6pm. Which  leads you to hop in the car and rush to the grocery to buy more food, but as you start the car it’s low on gas because the other family drivers never load the tank, so now there is an unscheduled stop to fill up. Which, when you are grabbing  the car that your daughter inhabits, you nearly have a head-on because you are fighting off a pile of college clothes in the passenger seat causing an avalanche of underwear to flow onto your lap.

Imagine not having to engage in banter about: “How come I can’t go the Marilyn Manson concert by myself, I’m 15 you know……:.” .    (yeah I know…, I was there when you were born…remember?).

Ohhh..I dunno….something about that guys(?) LAST name that bothers me, being that I was  around during the Helter Skelter years….

Lately, my son and I  have been having a communication breakdown.  I think it has to do with an increase in his hormones and a withering away of mine. We are currently amidst a clash of the mighty testosterone-Titans.  He wants his Friday night lights to be continually burning while my dimming levels are suffering a low AC/DC output leaving me longing to lounge into Sunday morning.

My son accused me of not being “cool” and never having any” fun” and  that irritated me because FUN use to be my middle name.  Fun is part of FUNny, which I use to be before my children were born and Worry seem to take funny’s place.

This poor teenage lad thinks his mother was Born This Way. He thinks when I plopped out of the womb I immediately set up shop in a household full of responsibility waving a Clorox wipe to rid all the dust that has been collecting in the ancient corners of my life.

Sometimes you have to drop that parental facade of setting a good example and let that little offspring have a piece of your life as you knew it…..or remember it……

My son exclaimed that I don’t let him have any fun. This statement is based  solely on the premise that I won’t let him go to a RAVE party that mixes thousands of unknowns from around a tri-state area and continues on into the night lasting an eternity…..

He mumbled to me that Everyone is going.

I asked him to give me the names of Everyone;  I’d like to check with Everyone’s parents.  I don’t recall ever meeting the Everyone Family,  and maybe I need to check the school Roster for Everyone’s address and phone number. Maybe Everyone’s Parents  are available for dinner sometime…..(I’ll make sure Everyone is there).

This is where we both reach Moot hormone point…….

Then he hammered  in a closing statement:  “I could lie about it and say I’m going somewhere else and spend the night with a friend, instead….”.( 23K spent on tuition and he ends his clause with an adverb…..).

“Well”..(you smarty teen who thinks he just closed the justice doors on me…) “I guess I would know your lying to me”.

“How?”  He smirks, as if he holds the secret to life.   ( Which I gave to him, by the way...).

“Well”……..(you  know it all teen who couldn’t see a Mac truck breezing in front of your Ipod clad ears):

“You just TOLD me….sooooo…….go on………ask me now if you can spend the night at a friends house…..”.

I sat my son down and explained to him about the repercussions of a lie.  No, I didn’t go into a fancy parable  like my parents use to do and infer references that included Pincochio, Instead ,  I decided to take another twist and give my son a little Flava-Flav of my own accolade of life with my parents.  I told him I too told my folks I was Spending the night at  a friends house when I was his age because my parents wouldn’t let me attend a concert:

“But son”, I said with great urgency and  glowing remembrance;  “this was no ordinary concert, this was a Rock Festival in the late sixties that resembled a mini Woodstock which you are now studying in your History book along with Vietnam, LSD, and Sqeaky Fromme’s red sweat shirt”.

“Son”, I continued, (as if I were there now, three feet away from Jim Morrison crooning “Light My Fire” through his three weeks growth of beard):

“This was a Pop Festival in the summer of ’69 when tickets were $6 and the featured  headliners were the legends of:  The Doors, Ike and Tina Turner, Country Joe and the Fish, Joe Cocker, Bo Didly, Led Zepplin, Alice Cooper, Santana…and Chicago…..”.

(These bands were escaping my palate with all the excitability a fifty-something mother stuck in a time warp could muster….yet trying to keep her parental controls in check….)

“Son, this was two days of reckless existence and FUN nights rolled into a day of recovery………which, when I got caught in my lie ,  nearly cost me a one way ticket to an all girls Catholic school in Canada, thousands of miles away from my friends,  where I would be forced to wear Maroon Knee-highs for Identification purposes only….”.

“Son, if you want to LIE to me and then  get caught, (and  you will get caught) ….(we live in a small rural town), please make sure that whatever story you concoct in that under developed teen brain of yours, is for a worthy cause…….like something that has gone down in History………..”.

“Attending an over sized party of punks that is hosting a Dee-Jay who  scratches vinyl records for a living is nothing to RAVE about to your children…”.

(It was soon after my  total recall rant that my Coed daughter decided to chime in and eradicate her life of missing concerts, which started the dog barking and dinner was burning…).

Maybe I won’t miss the tete-a-tete’s that bring my blood sugar to a boiling point, but I do know I’ll miss the presence  of my children at my dinner table.  Sometimes letting a little of your past leak out can mark your place on the “teenage map” of life and put you on the “cool Mom’s” continent.

 And, Sometimes,  you just  have to concede and curl up with the dog and wait until they come back home for well missed dinner……..

Blog Agility (earlier post)

If you are reading this blog AND you find it clever or funny please comment. I need the feedback or otherwise I am wasting my Megabytes.  Speaking of mega-bites, my puppy is still snapping even after two weeks of guaranteed training. I don’t blame the Trainer , I blame my family who are lacking in the follow-up program arena.

My scheduled training of two weeks ended recently and I feel a bit empty inside. Charly-dog and I got use to the trainers 10 a.m. visits and it is hard to let go now. This trainer came into our lives and spent hours with each and every member of my family and worked with all of us as a whole to get Charly on track. I am  starting to have a small tinge of anxiety that once he is out of our lives for good, things will resort to the way they were.  The trainer did drop an anecdote  while sipping his bottled water, that being ;if any “uprisings” occur he will be here on the spot, and this is guaranteed forever.

Hmm.…. I could always find some fault somewhere in my puppy that might need tending to; maybe stage a scene or two…….kind of like the little boy crying wolf, only it’s a middle aged menopausal woman needing someone to talk to other than her doggie…..

I find as I am getting older and less tolerant of my estrogen levels, that letting go is becoming harder and harder. I took my son to the airport to catch a flight from Philadelphia to Los Angeles. He has been bugging me to let him fly out to see his best friend  ever since we moved out to the East Coast. My children have traveled extensively since they were born, but never without me in tow. I have this phobia about my children on  planes without me, what if something happens to that plane; what if there is an outbreak  on board of food poisoning from stale pretzel’s; what if there’s an emergency landing in a Delta swamp; what if  they have snakes on board……or worse yet , Samuel L Jackson  is pushing the beverage cart………”I’ve had it with these Mother F*ckin’ Pepsi’s on this Mother F*ckin’ plane…..coffee? Tea?….”

My son is 16 and does not qualify for the “unaccompanied child Airline escort” anymore. Plus, there is a $100 hidden  fee for this “Program”. It must fall in line with the “Meal Program” and the “Luggage Program”.   Personally I think they should wave this amount for first time moms letting their youngster fly solo and traipsing through Major City airports spending all their allowance on nonsense that is flagged out in the open Kiosks. ( Oh , yes son, I love the $50 neck snuggie you purchased to keep you comfortable during your flight that you left on board and is now on its way to Hong Kong where it originated from).

My sons flight was delayed over an hour from his connecting flight. I have a party retrieving him at the baggage claim terminal and they phoned to inform me that his flight was going to be late.   I got nervous.   I phoned the Major Airline that starts with a “D” and has been around since the Nixon administration, to find out more information about his flight. The “D” Agent confirmed that it was delayed twice, out of Atlanta.

I spat out; “TWICE?”.

“Yes”,( he said with an accent that was identical to the driver in the second Indiana Jones Movie).

I interrupted his silence with a very loud “WHY TWICE?”.

He enlightened me with the explanation that the first delay was a security issue.

(Oh great,  glow snakes in a Plane Pocket..)

AND THE SECOND DELAY? 

  “Was a maintenance problem”.

 I questioned him further on the maintenance problem and he laughed and told me:

” Well the plane is in the air now”.

Oh thank God, that is so reassuring, I am so thrilled, oh, and I feel so relieved and unconcerned that that plane is in the air now! How about the landing??? Please tell me the maintenance problem was a toilet that wouldn’t stop flushing or the Captain’s coffee pot heater light keeps blinking, or the food cart has a rusty wheel…………

I popped open a Dos Equis and brought up my sons Itinerary and  started to track his flight on my Macbook like a Pro. I love technology, it’s almost like being in the control tower yourself, minus all the other distractions, like ten million OTHER flights trying to take off and land.   I went into the “D” Airline WEB site and typed his flight number and it showed a map of the U.S. with a little yellow airplane following a bright blue line to his destination. I felt a little more at ease and managed to breath a little easier…………..

Until this little yellow plane started a nose dive over Arizona….

The time left on his flight was an hour and a half and the meter was not moving, nor was the tiny yellow plane that I was watching for twenty minutes without blinking…

 That little mustard piper cub was not advancing on my screen and I was having the most horrible images run through my mind.  Images of a black smoke plume smoldering from seat 11B because I thought I  had confiscated all the fireworks my son wanted to share with his friend in California. Where they are illegal.….. And maybe, just maybe,  he sequestered a box of black Snake Glow worms that he stuck in his back pocket. I was a flight attendant once and have witnessed plight flights that brought me to my knees saying a few Hail Mary’s while pouring a few Bloody Mary’s……anything’s possible.

I shut the laptop off  and logged back on to the “D” website to commence with stalking my sons flight. His fake plane kept stalling in the air until I clicked the refresh button so it would advance faster to LAX airport.  In a matter of seconds that little yellow cartoon 757 was now starting it’s descent  into Los Angeles with it’s nose in the air and landing in 22 minutes……..Funny if I keep clicking the Back Button that plane just might land on time.

My son loves being independent and Hates that his mother texted him thirteen times before he even left the ground. I can’t wait to tell him about the tracking device….I wonder if they have that for everything…like when he starts driving or is out with his friends at a movie, or maybe, just maybe…on a date.

Yes I love technology it helps a mom sleep at night…….and you thought Big Brother was watching……………hellooo Big Mother……..

To Drop a blog in One’s Ear…

My daughter’s boyfriend bought an item for me to use on my Puppy. It is something that has been advertised on the late night barkers channel and plastered all over a coupon on the back page of a grocery store flyer. It is a battery operated device that is suppose to control your dogs incessant barking by using high frequency waves that can only be detected by dogs. Or , possibly your sixteen year old son.

This three inch plastic made-in-a-remote-area-of-cheapness, houses a nine volt battery and emits a high frequency sound that resonates every time your dog barks. There are two levels that occur in this cycle of transparent noise: High and Low.

This small appliance is the size of a cell phone and operates up to twenty feet away. It is a remote tool which ends up in various places much like the remote from my T.V. in the family room. My remote for the television has legs because it wanders aimlessly throughout the house. I found a lovely basket to place all the entertainment apparatus which sits atop the coffee table one foot from the couch, which means a mere outstretched- arms -reach could cover the radius of placing the remote in it’s proper place. It is a simple convenience accompanied by simple science, but aggravated by lazy couch potatoes who have a “control” issue. They find it adhered to their palm and it winds up in areas that could possibly never find any reception, like the bathroom, or under the sofa cushion, or God forbid, in one’s suitcase.

Our new “Bark-B-Gone” toy travels with us from room to room as the dog follows clasping his paws over his ears. This little receptive instrument does not give any implication that it is on and working. There is no LED light blinking, there is no sound resonating, there are no beeps , blips, or flashes to insinuate it is in working order. This piece of PETrochemicals just sits and stares into the rooms without focusing on a target, very much like I do at times.

My puppy started his seven o’clock ritual of barking at air and this “bark-no-more” piece of crap did nothing but glare at a wall with its seeing eye glazed over. It wasn’t until I walked over and plucked it from its holster and steadily held it above my pup like a priest holding a cross over Emily Rose that my dog Charly turned his head around and ignored  the “Bark-Never-Again” contraption. And  only then,  did his right ear slowly raise like an antenna on an old Rambler sedan. That seem to have lasted a mere second as he turned his head around and continued his conversation with the drapery patterns.

I had rendered this thing useless until my sixteen year old son came stumbling down the stairs with his palms covering both ears and screaming at me to to “turn off the high pitch sound”.  I managed to quiet the pup yet my son was still holding his head and complaining about the white noise in the room. I told him that Charly is actually WHITE  with black spots.

At that moment I realized my son has a sensitivity to electromagnetic high frequency waves which could cause irrefutable damage to his hearing. (I’m sure his blasting Slipknot and Eminem through his Skull Candy from his Ipod mini at 300 decibels isn’t an issue). I just realized that my son could hear the noise from the mute plastic box that was meant for my dog’s ears. I just realized that he woke up before noon stumbling down to where this little toy box sat on the kitchen counter and utter a nearly complete sentence at me to “shut off that sound, it’s hurting his ears“.

That SOUND that my dog would scoff at and “no one else could hear”, the ad stated……..

I just realized that this $9.99 special from QVC could retrieve my son from farther than twenty paces at a rabbits pace, and the setting was on “low”.

I Just realized I now hold the secret to life. The secret of getting a “teen” up and on time for school in the morning…….

RUFF-LIFE….Bark-on..Bark-Off….

Absence Makes the Blog Grow Fonder

Some one saw my blog and made a constructive critical acclaim to the way it looked.  She said that it didn’t have enough “zip” to it and that I “needed to add more ambiance and eye-catching glitter”.  I told her to put down her Rose` colored wine glasses and just try to enjoy the humor of it all.  I happen to like the dark-haired green and black cartoon version of a silhouette that keeps reminding me of what my body looked like twenty years ago.

I haven’t blogged for quite sometime due to the fact that I was actively pursuing some academics that might help me further a career that was lying dormant over thirty years ago.  After getting my fifty-something year old carcass out of bed at 5:00 a.m., and jumping into a sassy saffron uniform with the school logo stitched over my left breast, and downing a cappuccino while racing the other commuters in the dark to board a freezing train that wreaked of diesel and radiated loud gum popping cell phone addicts in the quiet car and after brandishing 29 credits for three months and harvesting sleepless nights, watching the dust and grime host a no swifter party in my house, and neglecting my children ( who barely noticed between their social life and Ipods that I was missing), and, worst of all, forgetting that I owned a dog.

I missed passing a required course by two points in order to continue on with the program.

I thought that if I resurfaced a career I would be helping the family income during these bouts of economic hardships. Instead, I found that my economics were becoming even harder while aspiring to achieve greatness.  After calculating the cost of this venture and weighing the outcome of age vs. job opportunity, while finding myself crying over spilt Martilnelli 2008 Pinot Noir, daily,… and realizing that I am not smarter than a fifth grader,…I decided to do what any normal red-blooded hormonal woman would do:

I booked a trip to Italy.  Isn’t that where all the menopausal misfits run off to during a time of reputable failure? As my neighbor so eloquently put it to me over her lovely pomegranate martini’s: Ah hell, you didn’t want to be a nurse any way..fuck em’.. No truer words spoken out of an elegant pearl clad mouth..

The beauty of this departure from my academic whirlwind is that is brought me back to the basics of what my purpose may be in life. Even though my children are growing and heading into the adult world, they still need me. They have been use to their mother hanging about and being at their beck and call throughout their lives. As much as it appeared that they were fine without me being at the helm, I could see that they were not. They watched as their mother turned into a maniacal obsessed text-book worm letting the responsibilities of the days slip into the abyss. They witnessed mommy breakdown’s from the pressure of not being able to tackle her Medication Math and Calculate with Confidence.  We were a family of a traveling husband, teens in action, a mom running amok, and Charly-dog bearing the brunt and being locked up for hours, alone, in his room, with a night-light and food and water and an August issue of The Enquirer spread out on the floor. There was only so much that Charly could take, and peeing on yesterday’s news was his limit…  I’m sure Charly felt dejected and unwanted until someone came home from their daily activity and he was freed from his laundry room habitat and able to roam the great out doors to relieve himself.

My children are very capable individuals, and that is one trait that I am proud of.  My children will survive in this world and make wonderful lives for themselves with out me in tow.  My dog, however, I worry about.  I think about him when I’m away, I think about his well-being, I think about whether he is tearing up the wicker basket in the laundry room, or has dived into the pile of dirty clothes waiting to be washed and torn into every sock of every family member that has abandoned him for the day.  I think about him possibly sitting in is doggie bed staring at the white walls holding his hind legs with his front paws and rocking back and forth seething and thinking hate barks.

These things weigh on my mind more than one knows, which is why I probably missed passing the school program by two lousy points. But I will say this, when I came home every day and sometimes into the night and opened Charly’s door, I was met with a wide-eyed, waggy tailed, sausage-shaped, tongue licking my face Mongrel that is irreplaceable and doesn’t care if I pass or fail,  only that I returned home.

Sometimes life does funny things to a person, like taking a 4.0 graduate and mashing them into elementary mush making them wrap their entire being around  the word stupid. And sometimes is takes a mangy flea-bag tail-wagger to pull you out of your Picasso Blue period and pounce to a different tune, a tune where you work like a dog and you don’t have a dog’s chance to be a Top dog, so you’re thrown to the  dog’s, only to return with your tail between your legs.

And sometimes you just have to face the inevitable and break open that vintage 1989 Chateauneuf du Pape that has been collecting dust in your wine cabinet awaiting that special dog day afternoon…….