A BIRD IN THE HAND . . . LEADS TO AMPUTATED FINGERS!

           I am the proud owner of an African Grey named Renfield.  For the uninitiated, this is a type of talking parrot.  He’s extremely friendly, as long as you’re me, and will not bite, as long as you’re me; although there are occasions when even being me won’t help you.

“Where did you get that horrible scar?” I’m asked regularly.

“Which one?” I counter.

         The questioner begins to feel uncomfortable pursuing this line of inquiry; the notion of some form of either current spousal abuse or long ago child abuse rearing its ugly head.  The subject is changed with a quickness.

The truth is, I rather like my parrot war wounds.  As a result of them, I rarely get lost.  Those on the back of my right hand are a perfect road map of the greater Phoenix area.  And, should I ever find myself in Bora Bora, my left hand will be invaluable.

“Why is your parrot so vicious?  What are you doing to him?” you cry, with all the outrage of an animal rights activist who’s just been gifted with an elephant foot umbrella stand.

The God’s honest truth is . . . nothing.  These little guys are the most intelligent of the parrot world, with the brainpower of a seven year-old human child, and a temperament to match.  I’m only thankful that he can’t pick up anything too heavy, or he probably would have shot me by now.

If you think tantrums by children are bad, you haven't seen anything until you’ve experienced a birdie fit of pique.  Parrot tantrums are much less spontaneous.  There’s a lot of planning that goes into a parrot tantrum.  For instance, Renfield will watch me carefully sweep the floor.  He will watch me mop the same floor.  He will wait until I’m almost through, then he plays a game with me.

The game is called, “Let’s Throw Everything in Our Cage Out Onto the Wet Floor!”

After that bit of magic, I have a kitchen floor lined with an attractive mélange of sunflower seed husks, dried corn cob, gifts from his feathered colon, a variety of half-eaten fruits, vegetables, and nuts, and pieces of dead bodies he was saving for later.

I could be the only woman in America who regularly shovels her kitchen.

Another Renfield game is called, “Telephone.”  Again, there’s timing involved here.  He doesn’t just play it willy nilly.  He waits until I am going out and I’m late.  He watches me rush around.  He watches me get dressed five or six times.  He watches me in my futile attempt to do my hair in 5.6 seconds and my makeup in 3.  He’s biding his time.

OK.  I’m ready to go and have just left the house when . . .

“BRRRRRRINGGGG, BRRRRRINGGGGG!”

Guess who.

He’s insidious.  He knows that I’m one of those people who will drop everything to answer a ringing phone.  You never know who it might be.  Could be important.  Could be bad news.  Could be good news.  Maybe Publishers Clearing House.

Usually, a telemarketer.  But that’s fine.  It’s someone to take my frustration out on.

The minute I rush back into the house, I hear, “Ahahahahahahahahaha!”

Renfield.

He’ll do this to me seven or eight more times before he gets bored with it and goes to sleep.  And he imitates the ring of the phone so well, that I can’t tell the difference.

I’m now over an hour late for the funeral I was on my way to.  Since I’m already dressed for it, I briefly consider having a funeral of my own . . . a pet funeral.

But, no.  I really do love the little beastie, and I’ve found a new way to keep him in line.  Whenever he acts up, I just sidle on over to his cage and, with thumb and forefinger, gently test the firmness of his drumstick.

He gets the point.

Thanksgiving is never that far away, and he knows I can hold a grudge.

 

TEACHERS AND BLACK CRAYONS

           Did people ever analyze your drawings when you were a kid?  It happened to me.

        The first Nobel Prize-winning analysis came from my kindergarten teacher.  I made the grave error of drawing a dead black rose in a black vase on a black table with a black drape next to it.  The other kids were drawing their families, their pets, and their houses.

         My teacher, Miss “Sigmund Freud” Spinster, kept me after school.

“Why did you draw that flower that way?” she inquired.

“Because that’s the way a dead rose looks.”

“Why didn’t you draw a live rose?”

“Because live roses aren’t black.”

“Why didn’t you draw your family, like the other children?”

“Because my family isn’t black.”

“Well, what about your pets?”

“My dog is brown and white, not black.”

“All right, then, you could have drawn your house.  Lots of children drew their houses.”

“My house isn’t black.”

A parental conference was hastily arranged behind my tiny back.

After my parents returned from “visiting a sick friend.” (wink, wink, nudge, nudge) they sat me down, turned on the hot lights, and the interrogation began.

“You drew a black rose?”

“Yes.”

“In a black vase?”

“Yes.”

“With a black drape and table?”

“WHY?”

“Because I like silhouettes.”

I was so traumatized by this experience that I didn’t pick up art supplies again until well into the second grade.  It was at the tender age of seven that I learned about the political correctness of that time.

I had drawn a monkey . . . complete with penis.  And I couldn’t understand why my teacher wouldn’t put it up on the bulletin board, with all the rest of the drawings.

Rebellion was fomenting in my young mind after that parental conference.

“You drew a monkey?” my mother asked.

“Yes.”

“With a penis?”

 “Of course.  It was a boy monkey.  Boy monkeys have penises, don’t they?”

“Well, yes.”

“So what’s wrong with that?”

“It’s just not polite to draw them.”

“I’m sure this will be news to Michelangelo,” I snorted.  I was a precocious little thing.

The compromise arrived at was that, though penises were not shameful, they should be clothed.  I’d never seen a monkey wearing clothes, but, eager to oblige, I drew clothes on both monkey and penis.

So much for realism in art.

My teacher never trusted me again around the crayons, however, so while the other kids got to draw, I was restricted to the finger paints.  It’s hard to get much detail out of finger paints when you are seven, so the rest of the year continued in peace and harmony, though I was beginning to lose my taste for creative pursuits involving pigment.

After that year, I left off the artwork until I reached high school.  Our first assignment was to illustrate a favorite poem.  Some poets whose works were chosen included Emily Dickinson, Rod McKuen (gag!), Walt Whitman, and H.W. Longfellow.

I chose to illustrate Bob Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues.”

Following that parental conference, I was forbidden to do anything but doodle until college.

For our final exam in Sculpture 101, we were charged with creating a plasticine bust of ourselves . . . a 3-D self-portrait, if you will.  I worked on it for weeks, and finished it the day it was due, just in time.  It was the best thing I’d ever done, and it looked just like me.

On my way to class to turn it in, I tripped and dropped it on the pavement.  One whole side of the face was now mashed to the point that it looked like I had a split personality, half of which was Freddie Kruger.  Unfortunately, time didn’t permit my doing anything but picking it up and hoping that my professor would understand.

He didn’t.

He took one look at my self-portrait and backed away from me...very slowly.

Stop by and visit me sometime, won’t you?  Between 4 and 6 on Saturdays is good.

That’s the only time they let me out of my straitjacket.

KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMAN

            Almost no one understands my fascination with spiders…big spiders.

At one point, I had a collection of 42 different types of tarantulas.  Not only are they large, but most of them a quite beautiful, with colors running the full spectrum.

“What kind of a pet is a spider?” people often ask me, with fear-tipped scorn.  “What do they do?”

“They tap dance,” I reply.  “There are nights when I can’t sleep at all, for the clicking.  And keeping them in tap shoes isn’t cheap, let me tell you!”

It is a common misconception that tarantulas are deadly poisonous.  They aren’t.  Their bite is no worse than a bee sting.  Of course, if you happen to be allergic to bee stings, it’s a different matter.

However, the fear that these beautiful arachnids inspire can be turned to one’s benefit, if one is creative.

For instance, when tiresome people (a/k/a “relatives”) drop by and stay on interminably, I tell them I’ve just bought something I’d love to show them.  I then wheel out the tank containing my largest spider.

A flatulent tele-Evangelist couldn’t get rid of them faster.

Though I don’t live in the best of neighborhoods, I’ve never had the problem with break-ins that my neighbors have.  There is not a single bar on any of my windows, and I rarely lock my door.  I just put a spider cage on each windowsill.  My viewable spiders apparently lead to speculation as to what else could be inside and out of sight by the prospective miscreant, and voila, they’re someone else’s insurance headache.

My hobby has gained me a reputation in my town for being, shall we say, “eccentric.”  The Welcome Wagon ladies warn those new to the area about me.  The closest any of the townspeople will come to my abode is the sidewalk in front of it.  I don’t get UPS deliveries.  I get UPS drive-bys.  This is when the article I’ve ordered is flung from the cab in the general direction of my front lawn.  I’ve learned not to order anything breakable.

Spiders can be helpful around the house, though.  They really like to work.  My largest one has a paper route, and had absolutely no problem collecting.  The others do things like type, file, and run errands.  They’re good at clearing up after a meal, since they can wash and dry at the same time.

They are sensitive creatures, and will take immediate offense at the singing of “The Itsy Bitsy Spider” and recitation of “Little Miss Muffet.”  Like everyone else, all they want out of life is a little love and respect.  They are upstanding, concerned members of the community who, after a molt, will drop their used skins in a Goodwill box to be distributed to the less fortunate.  They tried delivering meals to the poor and shut-in, but after the first heart attack, they were forced to seek employment elsewhere.  In my opinion, this is nothing more than specie-ism, and attorneys have been consulted.

Spiders have been on this planet for over 350 million years; with many insects going back even further than that.  So what this tells me is that these creatures have adapted to, and outlived, every adversity thrown at them. 

In short, if the bomb dropped tomorrow, the survivors would be bugs and Keith Richards.

Well, at least the bugs will have something to eat…

 

WATER SKIING IS NOT FOR HUMAN BEINGS!

           First, I want to make it completely clear that I am an uncoordinated slob.  That being said, I want to tell you about my recent aquatic adventure.

A friend of mine flew up from Florida and decided that he would teach me how to water ski.  He’s one of those outdoorsy types with an audible tan, who feels that life is incomplete and poorly lived if everyone on the planet doesn’t experience and enjoy standing on two boards while being towed behind a boat flying over the water at 800 knots.

Wet suits donned, my friend (I’ll call him “Asshole”  --  “AH” for short) plunged into the water with me to teach me how to “get up.”  Mind you, I do this every morning with absolutely no instruction from anyone, but I am nothing if not a good sport, so I shrugged, and tried to pay attention.

I followed AH’s instructions to the letter, and he signaled the boat to go.

I was pulled out of my skis, my wetsuit, and my bathing suit!  If I hadn’t let go of the towline when I did, I’m convinced that my skeletal system would have gone bouncing across the water.

Drifting in and out of consciousness, I was maneuvered behind the boat again before I was alert enough to protest.

“GO!” AH shouted.

Off the boat sped.  This time, I got up.

For 1.5 seconds.

Did you know that hitting the surface of the water at high speed feels like kissing the pavement after a jump from a two-story building?

Well, it does.

Luckily, I was in the water, so all the blood washed off almost immediately.  I would have hoped for sharks, but we were in a lake.

The third time I tried, my shoulder dislocated.

The fourth time, I sprained my ankle.

The fifth time, the towline got wrapped around my neck and whipped me back and forth across the water like a twisted game of eenie-meenie-miney-moe.

By the time I got home, after a quick eight-hour stop at the Emergency Room, I went right to bed to recuperate and plan my move to Arizona.

 

AL CAR-PONE

            I’m convinced that my car is trying to kill me.

I drive a 1985 Dodge Aries K car (remember those?).  It’s a two-tone . . .gray and rust . . . adorned with a subtle but effective bullet hole motif on the passenger side.  The previous owner was also a bumper sticker fanatic, and I swear they’re the only things holding that heap together.

The first thing to go wrong was the exhaust system.  I got in one morning, and after about two miles, the car filled with huge blue clouds of carbon monoxide.

Then the second thing went.

The windows.

I desperately cranked (yes, manual windows—remember those?), but the handle went round and the window stayed shut.  I leaned over and tried the passenger window, but it was jammed and the crank broke off in my hand.

Meanwhile, my life was flashing before my eyes which, adding insult to injury, was extremely depressing, and I was getting really sleepy.  I pulled over and jumped out, sucking in the fresh air while smoke and fumes lazily drifted out the open door.

“Hey, dummy,” a polite passing motorist called, “don’t you know that smoking is hazardous to your health?”

He drove away, laughing.

I called the local garage to come round with the tow truck.  Two hours later, I was back on the road again, $400 poorer, and had only covered a couple of miles in all that time.

At mile three, a blowout, bearing a startling resemblance to Krakatoa.  I pulled over and got out to take a look.

“”Hey, don’t worry.  It’s only flat on the bottom!”

It was the same guy.  He drove off, laughing again.  Well, I was glad I could bring a little joy into his life before I tracked him down and killed him.

If it’s one thing I know how to do, it’s change a tire.  I had made sure that there was a spare and that it was in good shape before I bought the car, so I rolled up my sleeves, grabbed the jack, and fetched the spare.  In truth, the spare was like new, unlike the collection of rubber streamers that my old tire had become.

Unfortunately, though like new, it was the wrong size for the car.

So, now filthier than Andrew Dice Clay’s mind with a mood rivaling Bea Arthur with PMS, I called the garage again.

“Well, hi there, Ms. Buckingham.  Missed me, huh?”

Oh, God.  Squiggy the Mechanic thinks I’m fabricating excuses to call him.  After a short conversation (he asked me out, I said, “No.”), he sent the truck out once again.

Thirty minutes later, I resumed my journey . . . and for only $75 – the price of a new tire.

This time, I made it six miles before the brakes gave out.

Extricating myself from the car via a hopelessly crumpled door, I checked the concrete Jersey barrier I’d swerved into.  No damage.  Well, it probably wouldn’t sue.

“Woman driver!”  Laughter.  Guess who.

I whipped out my cell phone and called the garage, yet again.

“Hi, it’s . . .”

“Oh, hi, Carson!”  Not only were we suddenly on a first-name basis, but he had recognized my voice, too.  “Rethinking that date?”

“Uh, no.  I’ve very flattered, but I’m quite busy these days.  Sorry.”

“No prob.  What can I do for you now?”

“I need a tow.”

“I thought as much.  Where are you?”

“I managed to get six whole miles this time.”

“Six miles?”

“Yes.  I’m so proud.”

“Well, our limit for a free tow is five miles.”

“Look, I have not spent the morning putting your sister through college to hear things like that!  I have exactly $15 left.  It’s not much, but it’s yours.”

“Towing outside five miles costs $50.”

Well. Squiggy the Mechanic and I went to the movies the next evening.  The only concession was that the loudmouth motorist, who had delivered such helpful comments during my time of distress, happened to be attending the very same film.

I excused myself and went out to the lobby to have a brief chat with the manager about the fellow in the theater who was indecently exposing himself to the children in the audience.  Upon my pointing him out from the back of the theater, he suddenly found himself helped from his seat by two burly concessionaires and unceremoniously deposited on the sidewalk in front of the movie house.

And you know what?  When he got out to his car, all his tires were flat.

Now how do you suppose that happened?

 

BREAD, HOSPITALS & ARMY SURPLUS

Being the self-sufficient person that I am, when I ran out of bread this week, I thought I’d just whip up a loaf in my kitchen.

It is to laugh.

Apparently, in order to make a warm loaf of beautiful bready goodness, you must belong to some sort of secret society—whereabouts unknown.  There is a secret handshake that I understand includes a great deal of laughing at photos of failed loaves.

At any rate, I went to the store to purchase a book on bread making.  I cannot explain what possessed me to spend $40 on this book when, as long as I was out, I could have picked up about 25 loaves of bread for the same price.  In my defense, I failed economics.

I opened my book to what was supposed to be a basic white bread recipe, and gathered ingredients.  I already had everything but the active dry yeast, so off to the store I skipped.

I looked everywhere, but the yeast they had didn’t look too active to me.  I bought it anyway, and hoped for the best.

I mixed the required ingredients and then the recipe instructed me to proof the yeast.  I checked it over and three were no typos or style errors, outside of the misrepresentation of activity, so I corrected the empty packet, considered it proofed and moved on to the next step.

I poured the slop, along with the rest of the ingredients, into a huge bowl, and stirred it until my wrist snapped.

Upon my return from the hospital, the dough had set like lead and looked a little like Mt. Rushmore.  I chain-sawed it out of the bowl and set to once more. 

On the way home from the hospital, I had purchased a heavy duty, 50 lb bread mixer for the sum of $800.00.  I set it up and threw in all the ingredients (that yeast was still just lying around), and revved up the mixer.

I had no idea that milk could be flung that far.

After I scraped off the walls, I re-read the directions and realized that I could only put dough in there, not unmixed ingredients.

I started over a third time.  Bear in mind, that between wasted ingredients, book and mixer purchases, and a hospital visit, I am now approximately $3700 into this project.

Okay.

Everything was going pretty well this time, and before long, the mixer was kneading away, after which I put the dough into a bowl to rise, covered the bowl, and went off to do something else, happy and secure in the knowledge that I’d have fresh bread later that day, and impress the hell out of my husband, Stij.

When I came back two hours later, the entire kitchen was engulfed in dough.  It looked like the Sta-Puft Marshmallow Man’s cousin had dropped in, and I briefly wondered if Dan Ackroyd would consider making a house call.

As I said before, that yeast seemed pretty inactive, so I had added a dozen packets to my bread dough, just to make sure.

Evidently, it is pretty damned active under the right conditions.

And it was getting even bigger as I watched.

I needed to cook it—it was the only way.

I escaped out the back door before it noticed me and drove to the nearest army surplus store, purchased a flame thrower for a mere $1500, and sped back.

It had swollen to ten feet high, and had stretched into the living room, where it was watching TV and eating the couch.  I flipped on the flame thrower and let ‘er rip.

Did you know that those things aren’t nearly as easy to control as the movies make them look?

I sprayed not only Breadzilla, but also the walls of the house.  The whole thing went up in conflagration heretofore unseen by any human being…anywhere.

But it smelled great!

When Stij came home about an hour later, he was treated to a pile of smoldering rubble and a three-storey loaf of now perfectly cooked white bread.  The final price tag on this loaf of bread was now $5200, plus the cost of a place to live.

He didn’t bat an eye.  He didn’t say a word.  He just pulled a hunk of bread off and started eating.

“Pretty good,” he said. “Don’t do it again.”

By the time we got the house rebuilt (we moved into the bread until then) and moved back in, I noticed that the kitchen didn’t have an oven in it.

“Why no oven?” I asked.

Stij just stared at me.  It was THE LOOK.

I stared back at him.  “How am I supposed to make meals?”

“I bought you a restaurant—it’s cheaper than letting you cook.”

I was going to ask which restaurant, but that probably would have pushed THE LOOK right into THE REMINGTON, and I’d really had enough for a while.

As it turned out, it was a pizza place, and I’ve always wanted to learn how to make a pizza from scratch…

 

 

I Fought the Laundry and the Laundry Won

            It always seems that I have my worst days when it rains.

The marina where I live has a washer and dryer available for use by the “live-aboards” (those of us who live on our boats – about twenty of us, in all).  However, the washer has been absent ever since the weather got cold enough to worry about pipes freezing.  Typically, they hook it up again at the end of March, but here it is, already April, and still no washer.

My laundry is mounting up, and things are getting ugly.  There have been murmured threats, on the parts of both the socks and the underwear, of plans to attack me in the night if I don’t get them clean pretty soon.  You see, rather than go to an area Laundromat, and have to put up with the screaming kids and the machines that you pay to chew your clothes to ribbons or burn them to unrecognizable ashes, I had just been buying new socks and underwear when I ran out of clean ones.  I learned this trick from a confirmed bachelor, and it was working out pretty well for me.  However, I now had 68 pairs of dirty underwear, and a similar complement of socks, and the natives were getting restless. I was worried enough to began locking my cabin door after nightfall.

Then, lo and behold, this morning I drove by the laundry area and the washer was back!  This caused me to hum merrily on my drive to the office, and to greet my office neighbors with such bonhomie that they were certain I had purchased yet another strange animal, pet addict that I am.  I ended each phone conversation with, “Have a sparkling day!”  I joked with my boss at the water cooler.  In short, I was unbearable.  People are used to the sarcastic, cynical Buckingham, and an obviously happy Buckingham is a Buckingham to be regarded with suspicion and dread.

By the time I closed up shop for the day and headed back to the boat, the sky was looking ominous.

I didn’t care.  I was doing laundry tonight! (Pathetic, isn’t it?)  What convenience!  Not only that, it’s also $1.25 per load cheaper than going to the public “In in one piece, out in several” Laundromat.

I made dinner, cleaned up the galley, grabbed a chair and a whip and some raw meat, and corralled the mountain of dirty laundry.  It took about fifteen minutes and a nasty tee shirt bite on my hand to get it all into the laundry bags, but perseverance and a quick zap with a Taser won the day, and I set out.

By now, it wasn’t just raining.  It was like God had opened a fire hydrant.  After 2.5 seconds, I was drenched to the bone, but on I trudged through the wall of water with grumbling laundry slung over my shoulder, a pocket full of quarters, and a song in my heart.

I stuffed the machine, poured in the soap, clubbed back some aggressive sweatpants, and put the money in the slot.

I pushed it in.

Nothing.

I couldn’t believe it.

I looked at the back of the machine.

There was not a single hose in sight.

I, in a lunatic moment, driven temporarily insane by the joy of the washer’s return, simply assumed that, if the machine was there, SOMEBODY HAD BOTHERED TO HOOK IT UP!

Cursing, I packed up my now Wisk-soaked laundry again and waded back through the monsoon to my boat, the outer hull of which was drier than I would ever be again.  Dumping the sodden, complaining mess in a corner, I stepped into the head (that’s boat-talk for “bathroom”) and toweled off.

And suddenly, it went quiet. 

A little too quiet, if you know what I mean. 
         I poked my head out of the head and glanced at the corner where I had left the laundry.

It was gone!

I threw back the hatch cover and dashed out on deck, only to discover that my laundry had scattered itself all over the dock.  The monsoon was still in full swing.

I guess it had had about enough, and figured that if it couldn’t get washed one way, it’d get washed another.