Nuttin' Honey!

It’s Wednesday, my day to post a blog and I got nuttin’.  Nuttin’, honey.  How can I top last week’s blog?  It’s not every day the universe gives you a giant pink dildo about which to write.  

Without meaning to, I turned some Jehovah’s Witnesses away from my door a few moments ago.  Two slow walking old ladies in long broom skirts, hoping to sweep my soul to a forever where I am resurrected in my perfect body (FINALLY!) and I get to romp eternally in a perfect meadow on a perfect, reconstituted earth.  

I thought I heard a knock at the door but the dog didn’t bark.  I opened my upstairs bathroom window, shouted down, “Can I help you?” No response.  Later, the dog gave a tiny growl.  I looked out my living room window and saw them shuffling away from my property, looking dejected.  Probably nothing a good pink dildo wouldn’t cure.

My two British exchange students arrived yesterday.  They are beautiful, friendly and shorts-clad, with perfect white teeth.  They should meet my son.  One is an American Studies  and Film major, the other, more quiet and introspective, is an English literature major.  They are both adorable and helpful.  I hope my sons are as adorable and helpful when they travel abroad, representing not only America but their family of origin.

*Late Breaking News*

As I rode my bike yesterday afternoon, I caught this gorgeous, full arched double rainbow.  If you want to hear something funny, go to my Facebook page and click on "Youtube- Double Rainbow."  It has nothing to do with my rainbow, but I guarantee you'll laugh out loud.

Also-- drum roll, please--  the winner of the $10 Starbucks card is Anonymous.  Now she can say she is a prize-winning writer.  I know, I know, Anonymous-- you have already won many other writing prizes.  

Second place:  Brandon Kelly  

Honorable Mention:  Alexis Silver, Sunny Frazier and Analia M (for Murder)

Thank you to those who participated.  It was a lot of fun.

The ___ is out of the Bag

“What’s in that black plastic bag under the bamboo, out front, on the sidewalk?” I wondered, as I pulled up to the house.

 Sure, this was where I often left a pink bag for the Disabled American Vets or set out unneeded crap with notes that said, “Free to good home.”  Today, at over 100°, I was not going out front to grab that bag and throw it in the trash.  I slinked from the car to cool and quiet woman cave.

Days went by in which I hid in the house, avoiding triple digit temps.  If I came home after an unavoidable errand to Sprouts or CVS, I might notice the black bag still under the bamboo, as I pulled into the driveway.  It was forgotten as I raced from my air-conditioned car to my air-conditioned house.

Yesterday, I was walking my sprinkler guy to his truck and, as he drove away, I noticed the black bag.  I approached it.  I had misgivings, yet there were no flies nor ants.  No coyotes, raccoons nor opossums had messed with it.  I screwed up my courage and tugged at one of the handles.  The bag was light.  I pulled it closer.  I peered into the darkness.

What was inside?  Brace yourselves-- 

it was the world’s biggest dildo.  Proud, pink and wrinkly, with fake plastic skin, it lay there, resplendent in its girth and length.  
       My first instinct was to throw it away.  Then I decided to keep it for a future found object art project.  It looked brand new.

I had all the usual questions one has after finding a huge dildo in front of one’s property.  Why me?  Did this belong to a neighbor?  Was someone hiding it there, hoping to retrieve it later?  If so, when?  How long can one trust a black-bagged dildo to remain on the street?

This morning, I remembered I write mysteries.  Had someone left a secret message for me inside the dildo’s shaft?  I hurried to the garage, retrieved the dildo and unscrewed the cap.  Only a piece of cardboard and instructions for use.  No batteries, either. 
      Most sex shops throw in a set of batteries with a new dildo.  Don’t ask me how I know.  Did a kid need some batteries, so he took them, and threw the rest of his mom’s purchase on the street? I was afraid my house had been marked, like maybe I was a stop on the underground dildo railroad.

My son, Joseph, opined that the bamboo was a natural place to throw an unwanted dildo from a car.  Really?  I didn't have the courage to ask.  The young know things, I guess.  "So how about them Dodgers?" I asked.

Confusionpalooza

Natalie Morales, Scott Creley and me at Poetrypalooza

Times of transition flummox me.  I crave escape into a decompression chamber to adjust to change, but that’s not the way life works.

Alan went back to Playa on Sunday and back to work on Monday.  Summer is officially over for us.  My elder son came in for a brief visit from New York and left again.  I found an old friend on Facebook, incomunicado for 21 years.  We met at a jazz club last night, over a beer, for a catch-up chat.  He lives a half mile from my mom's.  He was the free-spirited, artist, hippie, U of Cal type.  He’s a long time business and home owner.  Why do people always surprise you?

I fell off my bike yesterday with skidding sideways flare, as though I were sliding into home.  All the articles I carry with me in my baskets-- water, Gatorade, sun tan oil, a spritzer, my purse-- and accessories from the bike flew across the asphalt and fanned around the downed bike and rider.  It looked like a physics experiment.  

Here was the top half of my bell, resting on the dotted white line in the center of the street.  There were two AAA batteries, come to rest in the murky depths of the slime-green puddle.  The third battery was twenty feet away, on the sidewalk, next to an oil barrel.  My right side didn’t feel so good as I gathered my scattered belongings.

Yesterday, I could still deal.  I picked up my mom and younger son for lunch on the westside with the NY visitor son.  I faked it through the ueberlong walk-about in the giant Trader Joe’s on Culver Boulevard, a delightful excursion for my mom.  I faked it through calamari at Colombo’s last night and the drive back home at 1AM.  

Today, I feel sore and wince with every breath.  My ribs are a mess.  The right side of my body looks like it went through a giant grater.  Who knew my body could produce such lumpy expressions of cerulean blue and purple pink winter fjord sunsets? 

I wanted to blog about Poetrypalooza but John Brantingham beat me to it.  You can go read his blog (johnbrantingham.blogspot.com) for all the networking he is doing.  Think to yourself: ditto for Marta.  I wanted to blog about the Perseids and my moonless ride to Mt. Baldy in pursuit of meteors.  I wanted to do many things today and tomorrow, but the gods of good writing said, "No!"  My destiny is to stay home, finish my rewrites and hand them in to Sunny Frazier, my ueberpatient acquisitions editor at Oak Tree Press.