DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME

         I decided, in honor of Stij’s early release from the asylum,that I’d make him something special—something that required NO COOKING at all—that he could enjoy without fearing for his well-being and his pocketbook.

I decided on homemade sauerkraut.

First, I bought 20 heads of green cabbage.  I was looked at oddly by the checker at the grocery store—especially since her husband sold us the insurance on our house, but I ignored her and tottered out to the car with my purchase.

First, I had to shred it.  Since Stij had taken my food processor away from me a couple of years ago, in order to make cooking just difficult enough to be discouraging, I hauled out the big kitchen knife, only to discover that it was so dull it couldn’t have cut Play-Doh.

So, how does one sharpen a knife?  I hadn’t a clue.  I vaguely remember hearing of a whetstone and searched the junk drawers for one.  Here is what I found:

51 playing cards

A pile of feathers (no idea how THEY got there)

A packet of artichoke seeds

Various metal utensils—I didn’t know what they were for, and I’m pretty sure I’d never seen them prior to that moment.

A PAAS egg-dyeing kit that had melted years ago and made the bottom of the drawer look all psychedelic

At the back, I found a little rock.  I didn’t know what size whetstones were supposed to be, having no experience with them, but I figured I’d give it a shot.

Five strokes in the sharpening, the stone split in two and the knife would have been buried in my hand if it had been at all sharp.

I thought of calling Stij and asking where the damned stone was, but then decided that it would only cause him anxiety that he didn’t need when he heard I was in the kitchen again…even though I wasn’t cooking.

After another hour and a half of searching, I gave up on the idea of sharpening the knives when I remembered that Stij had recently sharpened up the axe, so I went and got that.

I laid out the cabbage heads, preparing to shred them. 

I raised the axe high.

On the down stroke, the axe head flew off the handle and embedded itself in Stij’s 64-inch flat screen TV.

Well, one cannot make an omelet without breaking a few eggs…or TVs, as the case may be.…

So now I had a subdivided flat screen and 20 heads of cabbage that still needed to be shredded.  What to do…

Then, a brilliant idea struck me.

The paper shredder!

I grabbed a head and rushed to Stij’s office.  I pulled his document shredder out, turned it on, and stuffed the cabbage head in—and it took some stuffing, let me tell you—that opening wasn’t very wide.

After a moment or two, the shredder emitted a high-pitched whine and burst.

There was cabbage everywhere, but at least it was shredded.  It was also loaded with tiny parts and machine oil.

Luckily, I still had 19 heads left.

I dashed back to the kitchen to think.  I always do my best thinking in the kitchen.

Maybe the blender would work.

Nope.  I got a cabbage frappe that you would have to be awfully drunk to even stand next to.

I was running out of options.

Finally, the solution hit me.  It was so simple!

THE LAWNMOWER!

All I had to do was run over the 18 cabbage heads I had left, then rake up the shredded cabbage. 

It was brilliant!

I lined them all up, and the first head I ran over got launched into the neighbor’s swimming pool, conking the visiting grandmother, who sank like a stone to the bottom.  I called them to get my head of cabbage back, and also to get granny hauled onto dry land.  They were not amused, and I didn’t get my cabbage back.

Down to 17 heads then.  Still plenty for lots of sauerkraut.

I realigned the heads, then drove over the next one.  It jammed the blade and the mower stopped.  In dislodging it, I shot-putted it into my other neighbor’s yard where their rabid Chihuahua tried to mate with it until a Pit bull jumped their fence and ate both the cabbage and the Chihuahua.  I’d never heard of having Mexican food with a side of cabbage, but who am I to judge?

Sixteen heads and counting.

By the time I was through with the jamming, and the throwing, and the running for my life, I had something approaching a handful of shredded cabbage to show for it.  I brought it into the house, tossed it in a small jar, threw some salt on it and covered it tightly.

Eight days later, Stij arrived home.  It took the paramedic about an hour to convince him that the house I had moved us to in his absence was still standing and he could remove his hands from his eyes.

He finally did, and I brought him into our new home.

He picked up the mail and sorted through it, opening and reading a few of the letters.

“Dear?” he asked.

“Yeah, hon.”

“Why do we have a hospital bill for the resuscitation of an 89-year-old woman?  And why is there another letter here threatening a lawsuit if we don’t pay to replace an AKC Champion Chihuahua?  And why, oh why, is there a vet bill for treatment of a Pit bull’s flatulence problem?”

“You’d be flatulent, too, if you ate a six-pound head of raw cabbage whole.”

 “Have you been cooking again?”

I shook my head vehemently, “I have not!  Merely doing a little lawn mowing and guess…”

My reply was cut short by the explosion in the pantry that blew the door off and into the hallway.

“But never mind that now—the sauerkraut’s ready!”

 

 

 

 

 

VACATION--THE AFTERMATH

        Did you ever come back from a vacation only to feel that you need another vacation?

It happened to me.

Stij and I went up to Sedona for another gander at those wild red rocks, and left my brother-in-law, Marius, in charge.

I left said brother-in-law extensive instructions about trash day, plant watering (both indoor and out), garden and flower watering outside, care of the four pets who live outside (rabbits and turtles), a full refrigerator (beer included), the use of my computer, a paid-up Netflix instant streaming account, and the remote.

What could go wrong?

I’m so silly sometimes.

What we came back to, after a week of resting up, reading, hiking, and lots of good food, fairly closely resembled Hieronymus Bosch’s concept of hell.

Let’s start with the front door.  We rang the bell and expected to be admitted by B-I-L.

We weren’t.

We rang again.

Nothing.

Cursing, I put down every bag I had carefully balanced so that I could get all my crap back into the house in a single trip, fumbled for my keys, and finally found them at the bottom of my handbag.  They were covered in some sort of a sticky substance that was so full of cat hair that it looked like some deranged knitter had created a cozy for them.  I do not have a cat.  Nobody I know has a cat.

I cursed again, scraped the keys off, and unlocked the door.

Now, please understand that I am no Martha Stewart when it comes to housekeeping.  My house will always be cluttered.

But this…

“It looks like Marius bought us some unique throw rugs,” I remarked.  There were passed-out bodies littering the floor.  We quietly stepped over them because if they woke up it would require talking to them before we killed them.

We made our way to the kitchen to find the refrigerator completely empty—even the vegetable crispers had tooth marks—and the door missing.  The floor was such a mess, it looked like a Jackson Pollack painting.  I didn’t even want to think about what all those stains were.

Then there was the odor coming from the living room.  It smelled like a mouthful of rotten teeth on a three-week-old cadaver.       

From the remnants of the dishes covering every available surface, the take-out Mexican food was probably behind “Team Flatulance.”  I opened every openable window and the front and back doors.  At the back door, I I glanced out at my garden and…

“Holy…oh, holy…oh, my god, oh, crap!”

My beautiful garden had been dug up and there were three tombstones in it!

“Funny, isn’t it?  I thought you’d get a laugh out of it,” came Marius’ voice behind us.

“Which one of those is yours, bro?” Stij inquired.

“Why?”

“I want to be sure I put you under the right one.”

“Oh, get a load of this!” I cried.

The dog and the iguana were drunk and sleeping it off in the corner.  

“Pissshitcorruptionsnotfourhundredassholestiedinaknot!  Rah, rah Lizard shit! Fuuuuuuuuuucccccckkkkk!” 

“Oh, Stij, hear that?  Marius taught Renfield some new words!” Renfield is my African Grey parrot, who, up to this point, did not say anything worse than, ‘Darn it!’ 

I made a quick tour of the rest of the house while Stij was sharpening up the kitchen knives.  Main Bathroom—the tub was filled with Doritos and there was steaming chili in the sink.  Master Bathroom—where a freezer unit, removed from my chest freezer, was running.  The floor was covered with ice and there were several pairs of skates in the shower stall. Freezer—warm, dripping, and the spoiling food contributing to the general miasma.  Master bedroom—a big pile of poop was nestled in the center of the quilt it took me four years to make.  Guest room—couldn’t get the door open, and by this time, didn’t care why.  Garage—now contained a 20 gallon fish tank with a lid on top and a really pissed-off looking cobra inside.  I was afraid to look in the closets.

I returned to the living room, where Stij had his brother pushed up against the wall and was screaming at him in Quebecois.

Marius saw me over Stij’s shoulder and pointed.  Stij immediately calmed down, probably not wanting me to see a full-on, pushed-to-the- point-of-no-return Stij. That Stij can melt a window with a mere look.

“About that crap in the middle of the bed…” Marius began, and was quickly cut off due to Stij’s arm compressing his windpipe.

“Crap in the middle of the bed?” Stij echoed.

“Yeah, babe, and not crap as in ‘stuff.’  We’re talking actual gift from the colon here,” I clarified.

 “IN THE MIDDLE OF THE BED?”

Marius was turning purple and could only gurgle.

“Ease up, sweety,” I said.  “I would very much like to hear how our runt-of-the-litter Boston terrier managed to scale the heights of our bed without a great deal of help and leave behind a poop equal to his body mass.”

“Oh, it wasn’t your dog.  It was Bobby.  He gets a little confused when he does Meth.”

Stij released Marius.  “Bobby, right.  First to go.”

“Now wait a minute, Stij…”

“Point him out, or you’ll substitute for him.”

Marius pointed.

Stij picked him up and heaved him out the door, where he slid down the driveway, and knocked over three garbage cans before coming to rest.

“A strike!  Nice throw, hon,” I said.

Stij, however, was in no mood for levity.  “What else to I need to know about?”

“Uh, Rockefeller Center in the master bath, dinner in the main bath, 200 pounds of rotten food, and a new friend for you in the garage—don’t go out there without armor.

“Holy Christ on a pogo stick!”

“Makes my cooking mishaps look pretty tame, doesn’t it?”

At any rate, we sobered up the iguana and the dog, piled all the unconscious strangers, like cordwood, by the trash cans at the end of the driveway and bundled Marius into the quilt with the big pile of poop and pushed him out the door, and then took a breath—a very shallow breath—and surveyed the wreckage.

“I think this house is cursed,” Stij said.  I’ve rebuilt it twice when you and your cooking burned it down, and now I’m going to have to do major remodeling just to make it habitable again.  All told, I figure I’ve already sunk at least a million into a $180,000 house.  This place won’t let me live.”

“So what do you want to do?”

“Get me the matches.”

“Then what?”

“Then I’ll go to a psychiatric hospital to treat the nervous breakdown that I’m going to have in the next ten or fifteen seconds.  It will be nice.  I’ll relax, catch up on my reading, finally be able to sleep at night.  You’ll visit once a week and smuggle me in a reuben from the deli downtown.  Yes, I think that’s definitely the way to go.”

And now, dear readers, I’m living in the tool shed right next to the blackened crater that used to be our house.  It’s a little cramped with the parrot, the dog and the iguana, but the cobra out front keeps the inquisitive away.

And it’s only for another year or two.  The doctors tell me that Stij is making remarkable progress.

 

 

VACATION

Hey everybody!

Just to let you know that I will be on vacation until March 24, 2014!  See you all then with lots of exciting new stuff!

Try not to miss me too much.   

Love and Hugs,

Carson

HENNY YOUNGMAN AND THE STATE OF HEALTH CARE IN AMERICA TODAY

Have you ever gone to the doctor just because you didn't feel quite right, but weren't sure exactly what was wrong with you? 

Prepare yourself.  A problem that would have been cured in your grandmother's day by a strong dose of tonic will now cost you in the neighborhood of three months' salary, the antique clock in your dining room, and all the fillings in your teeth. 

There is no such thing as a GP anymore.   The General Practitioner has been reduced to bones in the La Brea tar pits, along with the rest of the dinosaurs. 

"I'm feeling weak and tired," I told a Doctor of Internal Medicine.

 

He put his hand on my wallet and told me to cough (Henny Youngman wasn't kidding!), after which he recommended that I see a heart specialist. 

"That's it?" I cried.  "No blood work?  No EKG?  No stress test?  Just 'go to a heat specialist'?" 

"Yes," he replied, while counting out my life savings. 

So I went to a "heart man,' as he's known in the biz. 

He presented me with a bill before he even examined me, then said, "You have six months to live." 

I looked at the bill.  I'd never seen so many zeroes in one place before in my life.  "I can't pay this!" 

"OK, then I'll give you another six months." (Did Henny Youngman go to medical school?) 

"Oh, and I'm sending you to a respiratory specialist," he said. 

When I showed up there, the respiratory specialist sent his secretary out to give me my bill in the parking lot!  On it was scrawled the name of a neurologist and the time of my appointment. 

The neurologist's office called me and gave me my bill total over the phone.  I was then told to report to the ICU. 

At the hospital, still not knowing what was wrong with me, I was placed inside an oxygen tent and put on suicide watch.  When the doctor finally came in, he looked just like Henny Youngman. 

I took one look at him and said, "Take my life...please."

PHYSICAL COMEDY

I went to my doctor the other day to get my yearly check-up.  I was not worried.  I walked in with my head held high, feeling confident that, in the intervening year, not much could have changed.  Last year, I was, if not in the pink, certainly rather far removed from the red.

“Ms. Buckingham, the doctor will see you now.”

I followed Florence Nightingale back to the examining room.  I actually don’t mind going to see my doctor.  He’s one of the good guys, and also happens to be a friend.  I’ve been his patient for 25 years.

After I undressed and put on that “Too thin for paper towels, too thick for toilet paper” Paris original with the open-air back, ‘Doctor Rick,’ as I like to call him, sauntered in.

His usual salutation is a peck on the cheek.

But not this time.

This time, I was greeted with gales of laughter.

When he finally guffawed his last guffaw, he said, “OK, who are you and what have you done with Carson?”

“You’re a funny guy, Doc.  Maybe you should be writing comedy and I should be laughing at patients.”

“You look terrible,” was his witty rejoinder.

“I’m just a little tired.”

 “A little tired!  Run over by a tire, maybe!”

Keep in mind that I’m paying him for this.

“Well, let’s get some blood work done,” he sighed.  I’ll be back in 10 minutes.”  Then he stepped out and sent his nurse in to draw the blood.  I finally figured out why he does this.  I think he faints at the sight of the stuff.  Whenever he has insomnia, he just drives to the local emergency room, and doesn’t wake up until the next day.

Anyway, the nurse, or ‘Nosferatu,’ as I have dubbed her, appeared with a needle and two-dozen empty vials.

“Are you really going to take enough blood to fill all those vials?” I asked, alarmed.

“Hmmmmm,” she hmmed, appraising me as an antiquarian would a badly worn sixth century ottoman, “No, I don’t think so.  With the shape you’re in, it just might cause cardiac arrest.”

Another comedian.

After the blood was drawn, she brought me a rare steak to eat while the analysis was being done.  Twenty minutes later, Doctor Rick returned.

“What’s the black armband for?” I asked.

“Ummm, I just didn’t want to wait until the last minute.”

“I really think you ought to stop watching those M*A*S*H reruns.”

“Get dressed and come into my office.  We’ll talk.”

Trepidation began to creep into the proceedings.  I dressed and joined him in his office.  On his desk were scattered tasteful pamphlets about funeral pre-arranging and burial plot availability.

Doctor Rick took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes.  “To start with, your cholesterol is a little high.”

“How high?”

“800.”

“800!  At 800 my circulatory system should be composed mainly of what . . . cement?”

“Actually, everyone’s amazed that you can even think coherently at all.”

“I’m a humor writer.  I don’t have to think coherently, so this is not a problem.  What else?”

“Well, your blood sugar is a little high, too.”

“How high?”

“You shouldn’t be eating any foods that begin with any letter of the alphabet.”

Let me tell you, it only got worse.  I finally left with 35 prescriptions, six Medic Alert bracelets, a lifetime ambulance pass, and a strict diet that was comprised mostly of tree bark.  I am spending the rest of my days sounding like a maraca when I walk, a sleigh bell when I write, and a banshee when I move my bowels.

Medical care after fifty doesn’t really make you live longer . . . it just seems that way.

L'OREAL, PAPERBOYS, AND OPEN-AIR BATHROOMS

People are always asking me, “Do blondes have more fun?”  I have to make things up!  If I told them how I really spend my evenings, L’Oreal’s carefully built reputation would go right down the toilet, let me tell you!  They’d have to change their entire advertising campaign to something like this:  “Want to spend wildly entertaining evenings grooming your guinea pig, snacking on gummy bears and watching Leno?  Why not be a blonde and find out what ‘bored to death’ really means?”  The TV ads would show a blonde in a food-stained J.C. Penney sweat suit watching a golf game.  On the table next to her would be a nearly empty bowl of taco chips and an open quart of milk with lipstick stains on it.  Basically, it would be my life flashing before millions of eyes.

Do blondes have more fun?  Give me a break.  I don’t need that kind of pressure put on me.  I get enough from people I know—who needs it from Heidi Klum and Cosmopolitan magazine? 

And this is only a small example of the stress I go through, as a blonde, on a day to day basis.

You know the poster, “STRESS KILLS”?  I wish that’s all it did, don’t you?  I do pretty well at the start of the week.  I can cope.  I can deal with things.  By Wednesday, I start to get a little shaky in the control department.  I begin answering the phone with, “What now!” rather than “Hello.”  The paperboy tosses the paper at me, and I toss it right back at him, but I aim for the head.  I’ve been through three paperboys this week alone, AND I got a call from the Yankees about a relief pitcher job.

At any rate, by Friday, I’m a total wreck.  Gone is Monday’s quiet grace under pressure.  Here’s how my Fridays generally go:

The first thing I do is climb the tree in my front yard to get my paper.  This is where the new paperboy throws it now.  It gives him time to get out of range.  Scratched and bleeding, I climb back down, ripping a Pierre Cardin robe to rags.  I then totter back into the house and read the obituaries.  If my name isn’t there, I continue my day.  If a paperboy’s name is there, I throw a party.

Next on the agenda is a trip to the grocery store, which is so crowded that I can’t see what I’m grabbing.  All I know is that I usually end up with four grocery bags stuffed with Pop Tarts and kumquats.  I’m still not entirely sure what kumquats are, but I have a lot of them!

Then I drive home and back my car into the garage, remembering, too late, that I don’t have a garage…or a car.  What I do have is a return bus token in my pocket, somebody’s smashed up Toyota in my driveway, and an open-air bathroom.

So please, people.  Lock your cars.  Take your keys.  Don’t help a good blonde go bad.

'M' IS FOR 'MESSY'

        I have spent the past two weeks worrying about housecleaning.  Not doing it, just worrying about it. 

You see, we are those “lower than whale poop” types of folks known to the surrounding homeowners as “renters.” 

I don’t know why renters are regarded this way.  Stij and I are kind, considerate people and have not received so much as a polite “your front yard sucks, it is a weed-ridden mess, clean it up or else” note from the HOA.

Perhaps it is the former renters of this house who we are paying the social price for.  From what I understand, before us, there were a group of Harley guys who would laugh out loud upon hearing the word, ‘muffler.’  They shouted when they spoke because they had no hearing left. They worked the graveyard shift, presumably at a home for the deaf, and would pull out of the driveway just as the entire neighborhood was drifting off to sleep. 

Or maybe it was the renters before them.  People still talk about the family who never went outside wearing anything but head-to-toe  Ewok costumes…at least everyone thought they were costumes.  Some people assumed that it was in protest of the ‘no dogs’ rule, but there is far from majority agreement on this.

We’ve been living here for nine years now.  Never missed a rent payment.  Quiet, keep to ourselves.  Maybe they think we’re serial killers.  And we did rebuild the house at our expense after the giant bread mishap and actually added improvements previously absent, so no harm, no foul there.

At any rate, I was discussing housecleaning, wasn’t I?

When one rents, you see, one is subject to a demeaning little visit every so often from the Property Manager (we have one of those, too, making us overseen by the owner, the HOA, and the PM.  San Quentin is less surveilled.).  They send someone out to do a walk-through to be sure you have the required safety features, and aren’t hiding any dogs on the premises.

So I figured I’d better start cleaning.  We are not slobs, but there is a bit of clutter around, and I really could rake the living room a bit more often than I do.

Stij entrusted the cleaning to me, since he had to spend time making a living.  He walked into the living room just as I was finishing up.

“You’ve been doing this for over an hour and it doesn’t look like you’ve picked up a single thing,” he remarked.

“I haven’t.  I drove to the store and bought this,” I said, indicating the brand new easel, canvas, tubes of paint and jar of brushes.

“I see.  You’re going to do a painting called ‘Still Life Among the Ruins’ are you?”

I smiled and shook my head sadly because he had completely missed the brilliance of my cunning plan.  “I can avoid cleaning this room entirely!  If people think you’re an artist, they forgive a mess!”

“And exactly how much did today’s scheming set us back, Lucy.  You have some ‘splainin’ to do.”

“$167.00.  But look how much time it saved!  I can do other things, now.”

“Such as?”

“Well, I bought some cactus plants to put in the den.  It will make the layer of dust look like part of the décor.”

“You’re going to have to do some cleaning, you know.”

“Oh, what for?  I like the house to have a ‘lived-in’ look, don’t you?”

“This one has a ‘no survivors’ look.”

“You’re very funny for someone with no teeth.”

“I have teeth.”

“Not for long.”

“I’m going back to my shop. The inspector is due at 4:00 today. You have six hours. Will you be ready with a house that will pass?”

“Of course.”

“Oh, and by the way, I think the refrigerator needs to be defrosted.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t think there’s supposed to be frost on the outside.”

“Okay.”

“And there is a bunch of stuff—I say ‘stuff’ because I can’t identify it—that needs to be thrown out in there.”

“Is it ripening green or rotting green?”

“Let’s put it this way:  When I say I am going to raid the refrigerator, I mean that that’s what I intend to spray it with.”

“Fine.”

Stij glances around the living room, shudders, then goes back to making cabinets.

I went back to work.  I pulled out every souvenir from every place we’d ever traveled and festooned the bedroom with them.  This tells the viewer that we are world travelers and have little time to clean.

The kitchen was next.  I blowtorched the outside of the refrigerator to melt the frost, then blowtorched the floor to evaporate all the water.  It gave the linoleum a really interesting look, too.

While sorting through my pots and pans, I discovered a really filthy roasting pan that I absolutely couldn’t get clean, so I filled it up with fresh apples that I bought earlier in the day, and brought it over to my neighbors’ house.  Neighbors always return pots and pans sparkling clean, so that problem was now taken care of, since I wanted to make a roast later in the week.

I thought about cleaning all the light fixtures, but then decided to just opt for stronger bulbs.  Much to my delight, I discovered that it’s possible to buy 5000 watt light bulbs!  The fixtures looked great after all the dirt burned off.

As far as the bathrooms went, I just bought a huge piece of limburger cheese for each and closed the doors.  One sniff and no inspector in the world would want to venture in there—especially after I tell him that Stij has Irritable Bowel Syndrome and has been having bouts of explosive diarrhea.

So that was that, and it only took me a couple of hours.  I sat down and watched a movie.

At 4:00, the bell rang.  I dashed to the door and admitted the inspector, who seemed reticent to enter, but I chalked that up to shyness.

The tour was completed in record time, and the inspector left, giving us a passing grade.

Stij walked into a house that didn’t look much different from when he left it.  “I hesitate to ask, but did we pass?”

“Certainly.”

“How?”

“Well, he didn’t buy a lot of my explanations, so I finally told him that  he had to keep it a secret, but that this house had been chosen for next month’s ‘Better Homes & Gardens’ layout on quick and effective cleaning methods, and they had to take the ‘Before’ pictures before I could do anything to the house.”

“He bought that?”

“After I told him he could be part of the photo shoot, he did.  Evidently, his mom is a big fan of that magazine.

“So what happens in a month?”

“Oh, I think we’ll have moved out by then.”