Weird Fashion and Life Style Choices

Remember Pebbles, the baby of Fred and Wilma Flintstone? I think I saw her grandmother at the dentist office last week. She was wearing orange knee-highs, an orange mini skirt, a white blouse with orange dots the size of tea cups and she had a short tuft of gray hair on the top of her head that stood straight up and was tied with an orange bow as big as the bone in Pebbles’ do. At first glance I thought the circus must be in town. On second glance I had to snap my mouth shut because my jaw had dropped. Even if I didn’t hate the color orange I would have hated that outfit on sheer principle alone. It belonged on a six year old. What would possess a woman clearly over sixty-five to dress that way? She had on our state required mask, though, so she at least got that right.

Everyone who worked at the dentist’s office was wearing pink plastic gowns and pink masks. Actually they were each wearing two masks plus the plastic “bug shields” that covered their whole faces--whatever they call them. If I had to pick one of them out in a lineup I wouldn’t be able to ID the perp. I don’t think I would have been able to ID Orange Lady either if she was wearing normal clothing but she should have gotten a ticket for hurting my eyes with those neon knee socks and her Mary-Jane shoes firmly planted on the floor as she tried to kept her knees pressed tightly together so those of us sitting on the other side of the room couldn’t see her yahoo. Her skirt was so short you couldn’t help looking to see if it was playing peak-boo. 

My dentist is located in a small town 45 minutes away from where I live. Ten years ago it was listed on the Southern Poverty Law Centers’ Hate Map, but I just looked at the map again and the town has been removed. Must be the local branches of the White Nationalists and Michigan Militia had moved or died out. After one of our dental appointments my husband and I had lunch in a place near-by that had hate group posters all over the walls that we didn’t notice until after we’d placed our orders, so we made the best of it and did some seriously scary eavesdropping before we got the heck out of there. It gave us great pleasure a year later when we learned they'd gone out of business. Its owner is probably still scratching his head, trying to figure out why he didn't get any repeat business.

Close to the dentist office last week, I stumbled into a gas station that reminded me of that group of misfits at the closed-up restaurant. I’m quite sure the owners were hard core anti-maskers which means they’d also be anti-science and members of the Looking for Trouble Club. The four adults working there were not wearing masks and looked ready to tear you apart with their bare teeth if anyone dared to point out that our state just toughen up the mandated mask law to now include a $500 fine for not wearing one in public places. The law also requires businesses’ to refuse to do business with anyone not wearing a mask and if they blatantly ignore the law they can lose their license to operate. We’re already had two people killed over mask fights so it was tense standing in a line behind seven masked people waiting to pay for our purchases. Thankfully, no one challenged the workers in their ‘bull pen’ taking money for gas and making pizza that they sell by the slice. And ignorance of the new changes in the laws won’t wash either. We all got Civil Defense warnings on our phones, radios and TVs and on your phone you couldn’t use it again without clicking the message off your screen with an acknowledgement had you read it.

I get the whole “I live in a free country” argument. I get that masks are uncomfortable. I get that some people don’t like to be told what to do. What I don’t get is why people don’t comply with taking commonsense measures for the greater good of humanity. Wear a damn mask! Health experts all over the whole world say they help to keep the virus from spreading and no matter what our president says, those health experts from the other side of the world aren’t factoring in his chances of re-election into their medical advice. We wear seat belts to save lives. Window washers on high rises wear safety harnesses. Race car drives wear flame-retardant suits, and plenty of jobs requires safety helmets and gloves. We wear clothes to protect our privates from getting injured or from burning out other people’s eyeballs. And in case you’re still wondering, Orange Lady was not wearing panties under her mini skirt. ©

Late Night Books

While looking for free books to read with my Kindle Unlimited Account I ran across a title that had me laughing out loud at two o’clock in the morning. Yes, two. I had gone to bed early and was fast asleep when my head hit the pillow only to wake up four hours later, wide awake with nothing to do but stare at the shadowy figure of the dog snorting on his bed in front of the TV cabinet. By 2:30 I did the exact opposite of what you’re supposed to do, I got out of bed and woke up the computer so its screen lights could mess with my brain waves compounding my sleep cycle issues.

Searching for my next book to read is usually an hour long process because I read the reader views as well as the book blurbs Amazon provides. And I won’t lie, I’m a title junky. I’m fascinated by them and envious of those who can write catchy titles. I’ve never been good at titles and back when my husband was a live when I’d create something be it a poem or a painting he was the one who came up with the prefect titles. And he was a picky editor who often got exasperated with my ‘creative’ spelling but that was before Spell-Check and Alexa so if I wanted to write, I needed him. 

Boy, did I get side tracked. The title that had me laughing was, Taken by the Alien Savage, a Sci-Fi Alien Romantic Comedy. It was free but even at that bargain price I couldn’t get myself to download it even though I found the whole premise hysterically funny in the middle of the night. What if I died before the book got deleted from my Kindle? What would the next owner of the device think about me? Granted it wouldn’t be like finding a dildo in a nightstand but I don’t want to die with stuff in the house that would have whoever cleans out my estate telling stories about the "old woman and the crazy stuff she kept." I hear those kinds of stories all the time from the son-I-wish-I-had who is in the business of cleaning out estate houses. And just for the record, if I had a couple of shrunken heads in the house I would at least leave a note attached explaining their presence.

Anyway, add to that weird, sci-fi plot line of that alien romance I’m pretty sure it was also part of a sub-genre of romances for “curvy women” that usually have fat cover girl models hanging all over super alpha guys without an ounce of fat on their bodies. I read a book in that sub-genre when they first came out and even though my body type is more like those protagonists than in normal romances, I really hated the whole idea. If I’m going to live in a heroine's head I want her to be what I am not…kick-ass strong and healthy and/or a breath-takingly beautiful woman with brains. Better yet, a breath-takingly beautiful brainiac with a whistle-worthy body who can attract the eye of a kick-ass strong Navy Seal.  Nothing shallow about me. Remember you heard that here first. 

By the way, did you know that if you ask Alexa to spell ‘dildo’ she spells it d****o? I had to consult my Dictionary of Slangs and Euphemisms to find it and it brought back visions of me yelling at my mother, “How am I supposed to look it up if I can’t spell it?” Alexa does not spell smutty words, I don’t think she spells swear words either but I already know how to spell most of them so I haven’t quizzed the extent of her knowledge in that area. My paperback Dictionary of Slangs and Euphemisms is so old the cover had to be taped back in place and the pages are brown and brittle. I just looked it up on Amazon and one of their sellers has the same edition I own on sale for only $703.85 plus shipping while a newer edition used hardcopy is at the bargain price of $37.00. If I ordered a newer addition, what would the person closing my estate think if they found not one but two copies on my bookshelf? They’d probably throw them both out, not knowing there’s a market for first addition smut. My copy is so worn out, though, that it wouldn’t go for $703.85 and who the heck tacks on $3.85 to a $700 price tag? What’s that all about? A joke? Greed? Inquiring minds want to know!

I just sold a lot of six books on e-Bay for over $200. (Not smut, just to be perfectly clear.) It was a bargain to the guy who bought them because if sold individually they’d net $400-$450. I have about 50 rare-ish books to sell and my backup plan, if I run out of time before I move, was to donate them to the library. In the pre-pandemic days the library sold collectible books online to help them buy new books but they haven’t accepted donated books since the pandemic started. Goodwill is taking books again but it would break my heart to leave my rare books there. Yup, call me a give-away snob.

Who would have ever guessed how far-reaching a pandemic goes, how many areas of our lives it changes. Not being able to sleep at night is a pandemic fall-out for me and it's why I was looking at stupid alien romances in the middle of the night. And then I discovered Keri Beevis who writes psychological thrillers. I'm on her third book full of twists and turns and now I have HER to thank for keeping me up at night saying to myself, just one more chapter! ©

Just to prove I'm not making this sub-genre of romances up.

Rain Storms, Infusions and Kissing Frogs

Okay, I’m bored again. Nothing new here so you might as well move along, find another blog to read or go sit in the sunshine or dodge some rain drops if that’s what’s happening on the other side of your window pane. Speaking of dodging rain drops, I tried to do that last week when I came home from the infusion center and the monsoons hit while I was on the road. It was so bad I could hardly see past the window-shield wipers that were going at full-bore. So I pulled off into the driveway to a condo community to wait it out and as I did a huge tree fell across the road I’d just pulled off from. Did I mention the wind? Had I stayed on the road, I would have been smacked flatter than a pancake. By the time got back to my own neighborhood I was so happy to be alive I decided to wait out a second wave of rain in the parking lot of a Tai Infusion take-out food place that I hadn’t been to since before the pandemic. Their front door was standing open and calling my name. 

I grabbed my umbrella but it wouldn’t open. Damn umbrella! It went in the trash when I got home. But sitting there I thought, what’s a few rain drops after my near-miss with the tree? Turns out it was more than a few rain drops. I got drenched but as stood under their store-front canopy waiting for my drunken noodles I’d never felt better. All around me was a fleet of lawn care trucks waiting out the rain but I had the canopy space all to myself. It seemed fitting that I should have ‘infusion food’---whatever that mean---after spending the afternoon with an IV line in my arm getting an infusion of a drug that should keep my bones glued together for another year. Now all I have to do it follow the post-infusion diet for the next two weeks. Lots of calcium rich foods, only one cup of coffee a day and for me that translates to eating a can of spinach every day like it was a bowl of ice cream after a bad break up with a boyfriend. I'll eat other calcium rich foods including tins of sardines as well but I really, REALLY love Pop-eye’s spinach. Fresh spinach, not so much but Levi loves it. I get two bites and he gets one leaf. Eating a spinach salad at my house is painfully slow because with each piece for Levi, I have to break off the stem and make sure each leaf gets some dressing and cheese on it. 

And water: With these yearly infusions you have to drink at least eight full glasses of water for several days on each side of the treatment. Beforehand to make your veins plump up so the needle goes in easier and your veins can better carry the meds to where they need to go. Afterward to protect your kidneys and decrease any side effects.

Speaking of Levi, that dog keeps me on my toes. I thought he’d left his habit of bringing frogs into the house back in his puppyhood when I had to check mouth to make sure he wasn’t smuggling them inside after every trip outside. There was a point when at night I couldn’t even let him into his dog pen without first checking the place with a flashlight and relocating the frogs who wandered in from the cattail bog close by. I had a see-through Starbucks plastic cup staged by the back door to catch them. Fast forward to his adult years. Now when I let him outside before bedtime I put him on his retractable leash and when he finds a frog I hold him back to just short of kissing distance, but he can't pick them up. At least I didn’t think he could until today. I was sitting at my computer when a movement off to the side caught my attention. Yup, you guessed it. A frog goes hopping by. 

My Starbucks catching cup was thrown out a long time ago so I called on my inner child and caught the thing with my bare hands. I didn’t think I could move that fast. I’m just glad that in my haste I didn’t fall and require a trip to ER. Imagine trying to explain that I broke a bone trying to catch a grown-ass frog in my kitchen. While I was holding it I did think about testing the kiss-a-frog tale to see if it would bring forth a prince but: 1) I didn’t know if fairy tales age-shifted like shape-shifters and I’d bring forth a warty old man instead of a young prince, and 2) what if I did get a prince, what would I do with him? Since I have no desire to be a cougar, finding him a princess would seem like the best solution but that would just add another job to my To-Do List. So no kissing amphibians took place in my life. I can’t vouch for Levi, though. He seems to be a dog-slut who will kiss anyone and anything. ©