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 |  It's who we are. It's what we stare at in the middle of the night. It's a bug zapper. |
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My friends, When we were young and newly hatched—also young and in love—my husband and I lived with our four young children on the Space Coast of Florida. The massive propulsion of rocket and shuttle launches from Cape Kennedy often rocked the windows and doors of our little love cottage. We were always properly respectful and impressed by the reach of mankind’s achievements. It was a point of pride to stop whatever we were doing (dishes, dinner, dancing, sleeping, fist fighting, etc.) to watch the eastern horizon—hands on hearts, tears in eyes—as the United States of America raced into the frontier of space. One deep, dark morning (about 2:00 am) I shook my husband awake to watch yet another triumph of human advancement. “Get up,” I mumbled to Sherwood, “the shuttle’s going up. We gotta’ watch.” Sherwood moaned, “The garbage is out all ready. Let me die.” He did not open his eyes. “Come on. We should watch. Night launches are amazing.” He dragged himself upright and clung to the window ledge behind our bed. We knelt, with our chins braced on the ledge, our bleary eyes fixed on a blazing light in the eastern sky. We watched. The light did not appear to move. We stared some more. The light remain fixed. We struggled to focus. The light blazed away. We waited for the light to fade into the blackness of space. It did not. We watched and watched and watched. The light stubbornly refused to move. At last, collapsing back into my pillow I said, “Honey, go back to sleep.” Sounding confused, miffed, and a little whiney Sherwood asked, “Why?” “Because for the last eight to ten minutes we’ve been staring at our next door neighbor’s bug zapper.” He went back to sleep. And I lived to worship at the altar of space exploration another day. This story pretty much sums up who we are, and how we got this way—excessive staring at bug zappers. And this is my blog, a space-age way of recording one’s thoughts, ideas, embarrassments, and foibles for the entire known world. Once upon a time, I would have made this record on papyrus, rolled it up, stuffed it into a ceramic jar, and asked to have the whole thing buried with me in my sarcophagus. I still might. Disclaimer: Some of the stuff you will read here is true. Some of it is not. Some of it is the result of wishful thinking. Some of it is the result of too much thinking, and some of it is the result of too little thinking. But all of it will be written with joy and laughter, because the alternative is despair and weeping, and isn’t there more than enough of that stuff out there? Thank you for your support, Linda (Zippity the Zapped) Zern |
| My children (grown) spend a tremendous amount of time discussing the results of online quizzes they take on Facebook. They also spend a tremendous amount of time taking these quizzes. In addition they spend a great deal of time trying to juke the quiz system so as to get the results that flatter them the most. Sample Discussion Question: “What did you say for question #6? Lovely Lemon Yellow or Dapper Dan Green?” And then: “Oh look, I’m The Golden Queen of Funky Fairyland. Cool. Is that what you got?” I refuse to participate in the quiz taking, because I find the quizzes less than scientific and more than stupid. And yet my children (grown) continue to send them to me. Or tag me with them. Or junk up my inbox with their annoying presence. I’m a little fuzzy on the correct terminology. But I fixed their quiz-taking wagons. I started faking my results. For example if the quiz was “Which Disney character are you?” I wrote, “Unicorn.” Or for the quiz titled, “What Romantic Temperature Are You?” I wrote, “Unicorn.” Eventually they figured it out which gives me hope for the next generation. However, in the spirit of modern media savvy and to reach out to a younger and a much more quizzical generation of quiz takers, I’ve created my own scientific survey of curios results. Called: Which Kind of Zern Kid (Grown) Are You? Please note, because I’ve never actually taken an online quiz I don’t know how they work, so I’m making the format up. Question #1: A. How often do you read your mother’s weekly sometimes twice-weekly blog posts? 1) I’m reading it right now. 2) Is she still doing that? or 3) What blog posts? B. If you had a choice between taking an on-line quiz or reading one of your mother’s blogs, which would you choose? 1) I want a dollar every time she mentions my name or 2) Is she still doing that? C. Can you name a favorite blog post written by your mother? 1) Yes 2) No 3) Have you seen the will? I hear there’s a new one. 4) Hey, everyone, here’s another online quiz called, “What Caliber of Bullet Are You? I got 50 caliber. What’d you get?” By the by, there is a new will but you have to pass an online quiz based on fifteen years worth of my blog entries to qualify for cash and prizes. Passing level is Unicorn. Linda (All of the Above) Zern |
| While I tap, tap, tap away on my keyboard, making up stories, I keep the television blaring. That’s how I did my homework and made straight A’s throughout my academic career. It’s a career that has spanned decades and is still spanning. I don’t want to talk about it. I often watch educational or discovery related channels while I tap, tap, tap. Today was no different. I finished another novel and watched a discovery style show called “Fatal Attraction.” The attraction that proved fatal was between humans and the animals they adore. One lady fed WILD bears off the back of her porch. She tossed apple chunks at them. She gave them cutesy names. She built a fence to keep them from clawing her house down. They ate her face off. Another woman kept pet tigers. She gave them names. She fed them road kill she scooped off the highway. She spoke of them fondly. She thought of them as children. They ate her face off. And still another woman kept hybrid wolves. She treated them like family. She gave them a kiddy pool full of fun water. She gave them wolfish names. They ate her face off. It freaked me out, because—as I type this—my garage is full, full of feral cats, and I feed them, because if I don’t feed them they will eat my chickens, rabbits, song birds, and dog. I’m afraid not to feed them. But after watching “Fatal Attraction” I’m pretty sure they’re going to gang up, drag me off, and stuff me under Mr. Abe’s garden shed. Where they will eat my face off. What I have going for me: I refuse to name them. I never talk of them fondly. I do not believe they have any human affection for me. When they look at me it is not with love. They are measuring the distance between my hairline and my scalp and calculating the number of cat fangs required to hamstring me on my way to the barn. You know what I think? I think it’s time for another cat roundup. Or as the grandchildren ask, “Hey! Are we too late, for the cat roundup?” Here’s what I think. Animals are not people or babies or surrogate boyfriends. They are animals. They are not people in fur coats. So stop dropping off your “babies” in front of my house instead of taking them to the animal control up the road, because it’s going to end badly for someone or some thing or everyone. PS: All the humans died in the above fatal attraction examples, so did all the animals. Linda (Butterfly Net) Zern |
| While visiting the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art, I saw one of the security guards go into hunting dog, alert mode. His ears pricked up. His spine snapped to attention. His hand moved to his walkie-talkie. The guard looked like a redbone hound dog flushing a covey of bobwhite quail. The molecules in his skin were standing at attention. Someone, somewhere in the museum was breaking the rules. “Boy oh boy,” I said to my daughter. “Some out-of-town yokel has really biffed it.” Then I pointed. We watched the security guard stalk the rule-breaking yokel, while standing in the Greek and Roman statue garden, surrounded by centuries of priceless antiquities. It was possible to become faint from sniffing all the odor of fragile history that swirled about. My daughter gasped. “That guard’s not after some out-of-town yokel. He’s after Dad.” This next part happened in that weird slow motion that kicks in when airplanes crash or the grandkids tumble off the furniture. At the sound of her gasping shock, I turned (slowly) to see my wonderful husband of thirty plus years leaning against the bust of The Goat God of Ithaca. He had his elbow in the empty eye socket of an irreplaceable piece of irreplaceable Greek goat god statue history. He was talking on his cell phone—my husband, not the goat guy. “Noooooo! Sherwoooooooood! What are you thinking?” I yelled. My voice echoed through the statue garden like the ghost of an ancient goat. The security guard honed in for the kill. I thought about shielding my spouse by throwing my body in front of the lecture on proper museum etiquette that was about to happen. But when I saw him stick his finger in his free ear to block out the sound of Captain Security Guard saying, “Sir, don’t lean on the priceless art,” and “No cell phone calls in the museum,” I reconsidered that ultimate sacrifice. And while the above is a direct quote, there was subtext. There’s always subtext. I believe that subtext ran something along the lines of, “Listen up, you hillbilly, I don’t care what swamp you crawled out of, but you wouldn’t know a piece of priceless art if it bit you on your hillbilly butt. And if you leave your hillbilly grease on my marble, I’ll shoot you myself.” Horrified, my daughter and I melted away into the gift shop and pretended to buy a pair of vintage inspired Egyptian earrings. Let the yokel fend for himself. However, before ditching hillbilly Sherwood, I took a snapshot of my husband’s encounter with the security guard. There was a quick flash of light. “Lady,” another alert security type said, “there’s no flash photography in the museum.” The picture turned out great. Then the camera got stolen. Linda (Tour Guide Down) Zern |
| I call it the romance novel philosophy of life. “We didn’t plan for IT to happen. IT just happened.” IT, of course, in a romance novel, means wild, crazed, uncontrollable, life shattering sexiness that cannot be resisted—thus uncontrollable or not my fault sex, people. Because . . . there HE was, pillaging the local village, lunchroom, or corporate office, and then I looked at HIM and BAM, I was swept away by chemicals called fair-moans . . . oops . . . sorry . . . I mean pheromones which are chemicals located in human sweat—also glands, taste buds, and nose hairs. What? If people can blame their chemical sweat for their entire lives just happening to them without conscious choice or thought, I can make up nutty crap about it. People really believe this stuff. The government funds scientific studies about it. It’s called “Sweat Chemicals Made Me Do IT” research. I know that people believe this. I’ve heard them talk about it in a public place for smarty-pants, you know, college. (What follows is a story I’ve told once or twice but bears repeating.) My anthropology professor asked my college class, “Who thinks that falling in love is a result of chemicals you can’t control?” Every hand went up but two. “Who thinks that falling in love is a choice?” Two hands went up. The professor’s and mine. I shouted, “Seriously?” One young thing complained, “But it’s so unromantic if it’s not spontaneous. I just want to be walking down the street and BAM! There he is.” “But what if he’s a tax evading, nose picking, axe murderer and republican?” I asked. She blinked big doe shaped eyes and shivered. Unromantic? I’ll tell you what’s unromantic—three kids with four daddies and utter exhaustion and flip-flops. Those things are not romantic. Come on! Think! If this theory holds, then you could be walking down some random street, see some random monkey male of our species, and your chemicals called fair-moans scream out, “Mate.” And you do mate. I asked my husband why he asked me to Homecoming all those many years ago in high school and did it have to do with uncontrollable chemical signals, and he said, “I thought you were pretty.” I said, “Good answer.” “And you were always wearing that T-shirt that read, SWEET HONESTY.” “Yeah, that was my perfume. Avon makes it. I still wear Sweet Honesty,” I paused. “Oh no! I . . . still . . . wear . . . it.” “So?” “It’s the perfume! You’ve stuck it out for thirty-five, work grinding, midnight baby shuffling, soul searing, mind blowing years, because of the perfume.” He looked at me like I had lost part of my mind and misplaced the rest. Then he said something stupid. So I said, “I tell you what. I’ll tell you what to say and then you say it and then I’ll write it down like you said it.” He said, “Shoot.” “Say this, ‘You’re the best time I’ve ever had.’” He said it. And that’s how I know it can’t be the chemicals that keep the love train rolling. It has to be “love by choice.” Otherwise, I’d marry myself because I know what I want to hear—also smell. Linda (Sniff It) Zern |
| For sixteen years I’ve been writing and drawing and reaching out from the desk in my office . . . or from my bed, which I treat like a desk until I get up, have a shower, and get dressed. Then I go and sit at a proper desk to write. No, I don’t. That’s a lie. I never get out of bed to write because I’m short, and my legs don’t touch the ground when I sit in grownup chairs and that hurts my knees, so I type in bed where I can keep my legs elevated and relax back into about one thousand pillows. And that’s a long sentence. When I first went back to college, the instructor gave a speech about love, respect, and mutual approbation. Then he had us read from an assignment he’d given us. I read. One of my sentences was longer than the average fifth grade reading level, and the cool girl in my college writing class told me, “Good grief, Hemingway must be turning over in his grave at the length of that sentence.” I found her less than loving, respectful, or approbating—not to mention wildly ignorant. Hemingway wrote both long and short sentences. But you have to read more Hemingway than just that story about hills and elephants and abortion. And that last comment drips with sarcasm. I’m aware of that. It’s possible I’m not as loving, respectful and approbating as the average college kid. But then again, I’m not stoned. Shoot. There goes that sarcasm gene again. So you see, I struggle a bit with the silliness that is modern education, literature, and art in general. As a kid I read books that weren’t on any government approved reading list—hard books with long sentences and big words. Most of those books have long since been sold at used book sales or dumped in landfills. I know because I bought up a lot of those hard books with big words at those used book sales. So now I have an entire room dedicated to books—IN MY HOME. It’s called a library. That’s my silly disclaimer, kind of. When I was a child, reading wasn’t an assignment so that I could be the cool girl in a cool college; it was life. My childhood was less than . . . ummm . . . er . . . how to say this . . . well, it was less than warm and fuzzy. Let’s put it that way. I was a lonely, sad little kid and books were better than drugs. I read everything from cereal boxes to (gasp) the classics. Reading was more than an escape; it was a magical bubble of words that kept me safe from the poison of a world I could not control or change or understand. I thank God that there were long sentences and short sentences and stories in those books that kept me safe until I could write my own. Linda (Can’t Quit) Zern |
| “What is that smell?” I said, sniffing the air like an elephant sensing danger or a circus tent. I was in our family office. Number two son mumbled, “What smell? He did not look up from his computer. Sniffing loudly, I said, “That. Funky.” Sniff, sniff. “Smell.” The mumbler mumbled something else. I was left to my own conclusions. “That smell . . . you can’t smell that? It smells like bat guano in a crock pot.” The mumbler may have shrugged, but I was already on my hands and knees sniffing behind various pieces of office furniture. Our cat blinked and stretched as I pushed the futon she was draped over away from the wall. She may have shrugged. A trail of wispy feathers spun wildly as I sniffed my way along the baseboards behind the futon. My hand landed in something gunky, just as I noticed a gicky stain on the back of the futon skirt. I knew at once what I was looking at—a crime scene. I studied the swirl of feathers around my head. I measured the gicky stain. I sniffed some more. “Either it’s bat guano in a crock pot or something is very dead,” I said, to absolutely no one; son number two had left the crime scene. Suspicious, I thought. Make a note. Pushing the futon farther into the room, I uncovered the source of the smell. Immediately, I began my investigation. Out loud, I reported, “The victim seems to have been deceased for extended period of time judging from the amount of gicky gunk that has been allowed to soak into the grout. Victim appears to have been a bird (note wings, feathers, and beak.) The body may have been placed under the futon in a ritualistic fashion with the head pointing to the wall socket and the feet pointing to the ottoman—possible occult overtones.” The cat stretched, meowed, picked a feather from her teeth, and jumped from her perch on the futon. I prepared to start my interviews with everyone even slightly connected to the office, futon, ottoman, or baseboards. My questions included: How could you not have smelled that smell? At any time were you aware that there was a dead bird corpse under the futon in the office—melting? Did you know about said bird corpse and simply ignored it so that you wouldn’t have to clean it up? Where were you every minute of your life for the last two weeks? HOW COULD YOU POSSIBLY NOT SMELL THAT? Let me see your nostrils. Everyone had an alibi. I was back to square one. But then I formulated a theory to explain the inability of absolutely everyone in this family to smell a decomposing animal under the office futon except for ME!!! Mostly, I live with boys—big grownup boys. And it is my belief that because of a propensity they have to sit at their computers in a haze of their own bio-methane they are no longer able to detect the presence of a dead body in the same room due to an advanced case of dead nose syndrome. Son number two swears that he does not produce bio-methane—ever. And husband number one swears that everyone produces bio-methane at least and on an average of twelve times a day. I’ve got my nose on both of them. It’s just a theory. DNA testing will, of course, prove inconclusive. What it comes down to is this. I had to dispose of the corpse (I used a dust pan), strip the ruffled skirt off of the futon, vacuum up the bed feathers, and scrub the grout with bleach. I also had to dispose of a dead field mouse, two dead moles, and a dead snake. (Note: Not all on the same day.) There’s only one conclusion that can be made. That’s right. I’ve got a serial killer on my hands. Linda (Book ‘Em) Zern |
| Down on the Hobby Farm The shadows of cranes, vultures, and eagles coast across the ground of our farm, and at night the lonely cries of Whippoorwills float through the air like ghosts through fog and mist. It’s hard not to be charmed by the nature thumping all around us. That’s one reason we moved here, to be surrounded by the thumping of nature, and to have horses, and butterfly gardens, and grandchildren, and quiet weekends in the country—surrounded by the thump of nature, of course. Country living is like having an obsessive-compulsive hobby, and my husband and I are obsessive-compulsive hobby farmers. We bought six acres in Saint Cloud, and then we bought three horses and had someone give us a dog. There’s a cat, but she came with the place. We don’t raise corn, or soybeans, or veal. A hobby farm is a lot like a black hole—stuff (like money) goes in but nothing (like money) comes out. My husband has a real job. He fiddles around with computer related software during the week and makes money. I have a real job. I fiddle around with words on paper. I barely make enough money to pay for the paper, but we both play hobby farm on the weekends: by mowing, chopping, digging, burning, nailing, pressure washing, and sheath cleaning. The real point of our hobby farm is horses—the brushing, the riding, the watering, and the feeding of horses, and then there are questions of gelding hygiene, of course. One of the horses in our stable is an old sickle-hocked gelding in an advanced stage of aging, or as I like to say, “He has two good legs, one bad leg, and one hoof on a banana peel.” Sonny is a rescue horse, and once upon a time, he must have been something to look at—now he’s a broken down paint horse standing in the shade of a live oak—nursing a bad attitude and gas. Also once, he was a boy horse, but now he’s a gelding with a high pitched whinny, arthritic hips, and sheath issues. He gives our hobby farm an air of slow moving southern charm and the feel of days gone by—sometimes. Sometimes he needs his sheath cleaned—mostly in the fragrant, gentle spring. “Honey,” I said to my husband, one fragrant and gentle spring, “I think that it’s time to clean old Sonny’s sheath.” The sun drifted over the barn like a fried egg. Flies buzzed in groggy, dopey circles. Horses pooped. My husband looked mildly suspicious, his hands instinctively clenching a pitchfork, his knuckles growing white. “Sonny’s what?” “His sheath,” I repeated, leaning against the barn door and waving my hand vaguely in the direction of the paddock. “Think, sword and scabbard, like in pirate fighting.” His knuckles started to look like bloodless doorknobs. “Scabbard! Sheath! What are you talking about?” “You know the thing that the sword goes into—the scabbard—you know, the thing that protects the sword.” I pantomimed putting an invisible sword into an invisible scabbard. “Sonny’s scabbard (i.e. his sheath) needs cleaning.” I crossed my arms across my chest confident in my diagnosis. Frown lines creased my husband’s forehead, as he pondered all the potential symbolic sword related possibilities. Leaning on the pitchfork like a D.O.T. worker on a break and standing in a puddle of horse droppings, the slow light of understanding crept into his face. Horror etched harsh lines under his eyes. He looked at the old grouch of a horse napping in the shade next to the barn, and said, “You can’t possibly mean . . .” He bit his lip, and I though I detected the glint of a single tear in his eye. “That someone has to reach up and . . . grab or clean . . . inside his . . . with what? And how? And more importantly for the love of all that’s decent—why?!” “Because boy horses, who are geldings, get waxy gick buildup if you don’t clean their . . .” “Yea, yea, yea, sword holder.” His sarcasm hid despair and mild panic. “I get it.” Sonny slapped at one boney hip with his tail. He snorted, shook his head at some imagined slight, and then farted. “Now there are a couple of ways that you can do this. You can wait until he goes to the bathroom and drops his . . .” “I am not standing out here waiting for that old grump to pee.” “Or you can go up in there and grab it.” The horror spread from my husband’s face to his entire body. His limbs went rigid right before he dropped the pitchfork. Then his hands flew to his mouth, and through gritted teeth he asked, “Clean it with what?” “Well, I’ve seen people use Vaseline, or warm soapy water, or . . .” Sonny decided at that very moment to drop his sword and urinate. Snapping to attention, I yelled, “Hurry Sherwood, run for the Vaseline.” He froze like a hunted rabbit staring into a rattlesnake den. “Hurry man, now’s our chance.” I rolled up my sleeves, and squared my shoulders. Sherwood turned and stumbled into the gloom of the barn like a man planning to boil water for an emergency birth on a kitchen table. “And Sherwood,” I yelled. He paused and looked back. “Don’t forget the rubber gloves.” He didn’t. That’s one reason we moved here, to be surrounded by the thumping of nature, and to have horses, and butterfly gardens, and grandchildren, and quiet weekends in the country, and to be up to our elbows in nature, of course. In the fragrant and gentle spring, the American Bald Eagles swoop down from their massive nest behind our house to tear our neighbor’s baby lambs bloody bit from bloody bit. Watching the eagles take turns turning the baby lambs into Bald Eagle jerky, my husband took my hand and asked, “I wonder if PETA knows about this?” “I think there’s a lot PETA doesn’t know about Mother Nature,” I sighed. An eagle’s shadow drifted over the swayed back of our old rescue horse, Sonny, as he dozed in the shade of a live oak. |
| A Brief History of Boobs My husband’s family was horrified when I decided to breastfeed our first baby. They insisted I remove myself from the public rooms, retreat to a bedroom, cover myself with a blanket, and nurse my baby in shame and private. Which was rich coming from a family that regularly discussed—at the dinner table—the various uses of whipped cream in dating situations. Boobs covered in whipped cream, complete with a cherry on top, was considered wildly humorous. Breastfeeding was considered . . . well . . . icky. It was confusing at best. When I had our second baby, I said, “Nope. Not going to the bedroom of breastfeeding shame. If you want I’ll cover the baby’s head with whipped cream and call myself dessert. But that’s it. Now back down.” They backed down. Over the years I’ve tried to figure out the mixed messages that society expresses when it comes to female breasts. Sorry, I got nothing. Society is nuts. However, here are a couple of random observations on the subject: God gave women boobs and then said, “When you can get a guy to look you in the eye, even if it’s for thirty seconds, marry him.” NOTE: It’s still good advice. National Geographic magazine did more for modern underwear makers, than any advertising agency on Madison Avenue ever thought of—ever. Women in the 1970’s burned their bras to protest the repressive 1950’s when Madison Avenue had decided women’s breasts should be shaped like nuclear missile silos. Then something called “Cooper’s Droop” was discovered. Women put their bras back on in the 1980’s and invented Victoria’s Secret. The secret was that Victoria was a hooker. Breastfeeding threats are the best threats on earth to control older children. When my kids gave me a hard time about pulling the plug on leaving the park, the swimming pool, or the Little League Field, I would simply shout, “Come get in this van in three minutes, or I will tell everyone at this park/pool/field that I breastfed you and for how long.” Enough said. When I got married I was still wearing a training bra. No joke. It was true love on my husband’s part. Once you get them trained, they’re kind of fun, because being a girl is fun. Nothing has changed. GQ magazine this month, a men’s magazine for men, has a picture of a topless girl wearing a flower lei over her boobs—sort of. Men are dopey. Feminists would have us believe that there is no biological difference between boys and girls. No seriously, I had a college professor tell me that. “If girls were treated like boys they’d be big and strong too.” I noticed that Dr. Kooper was wearing a bra, and I was pretty sure I could take her in an arm wrestling contest. Boys of all ages find girl stuff fascinating or as my grandson Conner asked me one fine day, “YaYa, why you got so many booby bras?” Or as my daughter (mother of four boys and one future bra wearer) said, “Oh no, I don’t go anywhere near the underwear aisle of the store, or all four of them will run through the bra section, fondling the merchandise, yelling, ‘Booby bras, booby bras,’ at the top of their lungs.” Therefore we can conclude, who the heck knows? But as a friend of mine remarked, “Burn my bra? Bras are expensive.” I know, right? Linda (Hang Ten) Zern |
| Hobby Mowing It’s called hobby farming, and it’s a lot like hobby boating or hobby mountain climbing—money goes in but not much money comes out. We are hobby farmers. My husband is Lord of the hobby farm. I am a hobby farmer’s wife. He has a “real” job. I’m not sure what he does, but it involves gluing a lot of receipts to pieces of paper. He also travels. On the weekends, he rides his horse and practices finding dead people in the woods. It’s a volunteer posse thing. If you’ve been a long time reader than you know that I have a tarnished reputation for being something of an unreliable farmhand. While I do a lot of farm chores, I often have bad luck—mostly while mowing. On our first John Deere lawn tractor, I managed to pull a faucet right off the barn, jam the mower blade through a pine tree root, wrap a doormat around the deck, hit a dead bird carcass, catch the pulley’s on fire, hit a stump and bruise my liver, and run over the Comcast cable. (Please be advised this is not a complete list.) My luck got so bad that we had to purchase a brand new John Deere lawn tractor (bigger, better, more.) It’s way cool. Or it was until I ran it into a stump with sticks that jammed into the grill of the lawnmower. Because of my bad luck, I had no idea that I was jammed. When I innocently backed up, still jammed, I ripped the lawnmower hood clean off. Bad luck. My husband, the hobby farmer, does not believe that I have bad luck. He thinks that I am a menace to his wallet—also cursed—by gypsies. I may be cursed, but he has a death wish. My husband has never done a single farm chore without smashing, bashing, crushing, slicing, mangling, dislocating, or squashing one or more of his fingers. He often requires stitches. While loading field fence at Tractor Supply he jabbed wire into the soft bits between his fingers. It required six sutures. He showed me the gaping hole and said, “What do you think? Will a butterfly bandage do it?” “What’s the rule?” I asked patiently. “If you can see fat, tendons, ligaments or internal organs it needs stitches.” “Excellent.” I patted him on the head. “Hey, do you mind if I don’t go with you to the emergency room today. I’m really backed up on the mowing?” When he got back from the emergency room he started in on the hedges with our brand new electric hedge trimmer and a hundred foot extension cord. He trimmed the hedges beautifully—also the extension cord. He trimmed that right down the middle. It’s the second one he’s chopped in half. I observed, “Are you trying to electrocute yourself? Or are you trying to pioneer a poor man’s taser?” “Since you’re going to Walmart, can you pick up another extension cord? Why are you going to Walmart anyway?” “Duct tape, to tape the hood back on the lawnmower.” “Right,” he said, pausing. “Get two, three rolls.” “Right.” Because in the end, there isn’t much that can’t be fixed with duct tape, including bad luck and double negatives. Linda (Mow Hard, Mow Fast) Zern |
| Understanding the eternal unrest in the Middle East has always been a challenge for me, until this weekend. I have seen for myself how the world can spiral out of control as quick as a monkey can fling poo. And I’m only sort of kidding. First of all, there were a few superficial similarities between our family beach vacation dust-up and the kettle of fish that is the Israeli/Palestinian conflict: both have a lot of sand and both occur in a confined space. Sure. Sure. The Israeli/Palestinian kettle of fish is as old as sand, and the entire world teeters in the balance at its outcome, and our “dust-up” was just kind of goofy. Still, there are lessons to be learned . . . lessons to be learned. The Set-Up: Zoe (10) and Sadie (5) played happily on the balcony of our room overlooking the Hilton hotel pool. The air was salty. The ocean foamy. The girls were probably playing mermaids who ride unicorns or unicorns that wish they were mermaids who ride unicorns. The Others: Below a family—mommy, baby, various other sorts—lounged by the pool, smoked by the pool, scratched various body parts by the pool. The Provocation: From high above, out of the fine Florida sky ice fell—hotel ice, chunks of manmade and unnatural hotel ice—bouncing next to the baby and causing an inter-hotel incident. The First Salvo: Looking up, the baby’s mother saw the mermaid balcony girls prancing about, jumped to conclusions, aimed her verbal missiles at the two girls, and let fly. Those girls threw that ice and tried to hit her baby. She KNEW it. The Escalation: Zoe, pale as a unicorn’s horn, fell into hysterics and terror. “That lady thinks we tried to hurt her baby. She’s going to call the police. She yelled at us. We didn’t do anything. Arrrrrrggggg.” Tears poured. Hysteria clamped sharp claws around her heart. The United Nations Tie-In: Zoe’s mother and grandmother closely question the balcony girls, examine the evidence, and stare down at the pool loungers with varying degrees of evil eye. The loungers grab up a hotel official, count off the room where they assume the ice chuckers dwell and sic security on room # 803, registered to grandfather Sherwood Zern and tribe. Rising Tensions: Grandfather watching beloved granddaughter fall into tiny, shredded pieces stormed from the room declaring, “I’m going down to talk to those Philistines.” The Peace Talks: In the elevator, grandfather, going down, ran into hotel official, coming up, and talks ensued. Meanwhile: Anger and frustration grew as evidenced by the balcony grandmother yelling, “Children prepare to fling poo.” Double Meanwhile: The pool loungers below scowled up, pointed at, and gestured towards the balcony dwellers, preparing to fling poo of their own. The Truth of It: While the mother and grandmother debated raiding the mini-bar for teeny-tiny bottles of alcohol to make teeny-tiny Molotov-cocktails, the true and actual ice-chucking culprits (the Hamas family) one floor up and directly above, dumped a bucket of water on the balcony dwellers of room #803 below. The Irony: The pool loungers did not witness the stealth attack and continued to blame the mermaid girls and their unicorn family high on the balcony above. And then we went to lunch at McDonalds. A couple of lessons learned: hotel ice melts before you can dust for fingerprints; people are sure they are right; ice water is cold; misunderstandings are rampant; escalating a conflict is easy; McDonalds serves gross food that resembles poo; Zoe and Sadie didn’t do it. Linda (General Molotov) Zern |
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