The Thousander Club: Book of the Month: Mooncalf

The Thousander Club: Book of the Month: Mooncalf: The Book of the Month for December will be Linda L. Zern's Mooncalf .  Here is a brief synopsis of Mooncalf : "Over Olympia and L...

Smart Security Alert

If I get any safer or more secure my body probably won’t be found until the spring thaw. And it doesn’t snow in Florida. 

I have a smart phone. The problem with my smart phone is that it’s stupid, and it gets itself lost CONSTANTLY. 

When I was a girl our phone wasn’t smart. And it didn’t go for rides in our pants. It sat on the kitchen counter or hung on the kitchen wall and behaved itself. When I was a girl I knew where to find the phone and how smart is that?

Now the smart phone goes for rides to the store, the gas station, and the barn where it gets itself lost, forgotten, or misplaced. How stupid is that?

Married but alone more than not alone (my husband is either an international computer analyst or a spy) I’m often encouraged, by people who want me to do stuff for them on a regular basis, to carry my phone with me when I’m hanging from the barn rafters dusting for black widow spider webs. They worry I might break a hip and not be available to cook Sunday dinner for twenty-seven.

So, I do. I carry the phone with me around the farm, where I consistently forget, lose, or misplace it while dusting for black widow spider webs.

And that’s how it went. I remembered in the middle of the night that I needed my phone. How else am I going to call the cops when I’m attacked by giant black widow spiders in my bed? Right?

So, I threw on my pink bathrobe with the red hearts and tromped out to the barn to find my smart phone. Except the barn rabbit--the one that refuses to stay in a cage--saw me, ran straight at me, flipped sideways, and shot rabbit urine at my ankles. 

She’s a good shot—also excellent barn security.

I screamed, lunged for my phone, and took off back to the house where I realize that I’m locked out because of all of my husband’s nagging about heightened security—every window and door—locked, bolted, sealed. But I have my smart phone. Unfortunately, it’s not a key to any of the doors.

Nothing to be done but push open the bathroom window with the broken latch. 

Have you ever tried to push open our bathroom window with the broken latch?

Yeah, well . . . if you’re looking for a quick way to amputate an appendage then I’ve got a window for you.

Afraid it would break my neck if it fell on me, I wedged the window open with a rake. As I scrambled through the glass guillotine my smart phone fell out of the pocket of my bathrobe into the bug-infested bushes beneath the window.

“That is the dumbest phone ever,” I said to no one in particular as I tumbled into the bathtub.

An observation or two: Security is in the eye of the beholder and a phone is only as smart as its owner. Also, furry bunnies are urine- shooting terrorists.

Linda (Safety Zone) Zern 

MOONCALF - Published

by Linda L. Zern

(click on the above link to download or order a copy for your family at Amazon.com)

Children are born loving. They must be taught to hate. 

A juvenile fiction novella set in the rural countryside of 1966 Florida.

Tribute in Hot Wax

When I was a girl growing up in the liberated seventies after the radical sixties, we were told that true freedom consisted of two things: 1) letting it all hang out after burning your bra and 2) going natural after losing your safety razor. 

After all, men didn’t have to wear restrictive, tight whalebone corset stays . . . er . . . um . . . I mean they didn’t have to wear over the shoulder boulder holders, and men got to have hairy wildebeests legs, so women should get to have hairy wildebeest legs too. 

We called it liberation. Mostly it was just droopy and hairy.

Still . . . it was kind of interesting to think that women might be more than the sum of their . . . er . . . um . . . parts, even if they had to be hairy to do it. It was interesting. 

For a day or two.

Now it’s bizarre uses for hot wax.

Please be advised that the names have been changed to protect my daughters who are going on a cruise and feel the need to render their bodies as hairless as newborn rats.

“But why?”





“Because everyone is doing it,” one unnamed daughter argued.

“Always a great reason to do anything,” I countered.

She then demonstrated the proper position to assume when having hot wax poured over your . . . er . . . um . . . less than hairless bits, followed by her pantomiming a violent ripping motion. She then acted out the resulting screaming, throwing her legs over her head, crossing her eyes, and passing out.

My other nameless daughter sighed and said, “I didn’t use hot wax. I tried those wax strippy things.”

“Have you lost your . . .”

She cut me off, frowning.

“They didn’t work very well. I now look like a well loved teddy bear.”

“Good grief. You turned yourself into the velveteen rabbit before it winds up on the rubbish heap,” I said with a hand on my . . . er . . . 
um . . . heart.

“Pretty much.”

“What happened to the bra burning, boob drooping, hairy legged, proud momma, caftan wearing women of my youth?”

“They got a special deal on a Caribbean cruise.”

Right. That’ll do it.

Linda (All Natural) Zern

Accident Monger

My husband hasn’t worn a wedding ring since the emergency room folks had to hacksaw it off. He was wrestling with some teenagers in a swimming pool. They broke his ring finger.

“You boys better settle down before someone gets hurt,” I remember saying.

My husband hasn’t had the full use of his right knee since he hopped over a fence trying to help our neighbor catch his escaping bull.  His ACL detached, causing his leg to dangle loosely—my husband’s ACL, not the bull’s.

“Sherwood, maybe you should try opening the gate first?” I remember yelling.

My husband ‘s knuckle is scarred where he rammed a loose prong of field fence into his hand. He was loading a roll of field fence onto our truck at Tractor Supply. When he showed me his gushing wound and asked me if he thought he should get stitches I said, “It has been my experience that when you can see the stuff that’s supposed to be on the inside of your skin from the outside, you’re going to need stitches.”

“Babe, you should probably put your work gloves on,” I remember warning.

A couple weeks ago, my husband slunk out of our bedroom into the foggy morning to play racquetball with several younger, sprier men.

I said, “Don’t go. But if you go, don’t fling yourself around like a twenty year old. If you do fling yourself around like a twenty year old, make sure you have someone to drive you to the emergency room, because I’m not doing it. I have things to do today.” He scoffed at my scorn.

Later that day my husband came home from racquetball and worked on the duck pen, fed the animals, and mowed the front pasture—with a potentially BROKEN wrist. He refused to tell me he had fallen while flinging himself around like a twenty year old.

I trimmed the hedge and watched him mowing the pasture. He had to keep his left arm bent across his chest.  Every time he crossed in front of me he hit a bump, which caused him to double over the lawn mower steering wheel in agony; he continued to pretend his hand didn’t feel like it had been partially severed.

Back and forth, hit the bump and collapse. Back and forth, he rode by, like one of those rabbits you shoot at in a shooting gallery. Back and forth, hit the bump and collapse. It was like watching the Shoot the Sherwood Off the Lawnmower Arcade Game.  At one point my vision blurred, and I thought if I had a gun I’d shoot him off that lawnmower.

Our son, Adam, drove my husband to the emergency room later that day. The bone was only  “compressed” not broken. He was supposed to wear a wrist brace for three weeks. He didn’t.

My husband is an accident monger. A monger is a person promoting something undesirable (hatemonger, warmonger, bad judgment monger.) On the other hand, I am a cynic monger or a prophetess.

Linda (Butterfly Bandage) Zern

Hot Hat Box

Who the Bleep Did I Marry, Evil Kin, Swamp Murders, and the list goes on and on. They’re television shows that showcase true crimes. I love them. I learn so much. Sometimes I take notes.

From the show, Who the Bleep Did I Marry, I’ve learned to be suspicious of slick talking guys who paw through my panty drawer looking for my bank statements. I don’t actually know any slick talking guys who paw through my panty drawer looking for my bank statements, but I remain suspicious of them.

Watching Evil Kin keeps me on my toes. I have a checklist. Do the neighbors resemble zombies? Do the neighbors resemble people who resemble zombies? Do my evil kin resemble the neighbors? Check for fresh graves in the neighbor’s backyard. Don’t get caught.

But it’s Swamp Murders that has given me the biggest heads up. What I’ve learned from Swamp Murders is that the body always floats—sooner or later it floats—always.  This isn’t just true of dead bodies; this is also true of a lot of stuff you’d rather stayed down there in the muckity, muck bottom of the swamp . . . like sales receipts.

Like sales receipts tucked away in the bottom of boxes, stacked in the garage, waiting for garbage day. Receipts for pointless, silly purchases that add little to no value to my life except that the purchase was pretty and I wanted it. Those sales receipts. They float. Like dead bodies thrown in a stinking swamp they bob right up to the top of the slimy water or the top of the box the hat came in.

I love hats. I love fancy hats you can’t wear in public, because the public who wore these fancy hats are all dead Victorians—not swamp murder dead—but still dead.

My husband does not appreciate my fancy hat problem. So I try not to stress him with my fancy hat problem. It’s better that way. Luckily, he’s an engineer so he rarely notices when I’ve added another hat to my fancy hat collection. He rarely notices that we have rugs or furniture or walls.  Unless . . . he finds the stinking receipts.

My husband’s voice boomed from the garage.

“Hey, what’s this receipt for?”

“What receipt?”

“The receipt in this box, under these other boxes, under this stack of Goodwill stuff.”

I had a sinking feeling that I knew which receipt had floated to the surface of my fancy hat swamp.

“Receipt? What receipt?” 

Delay, deflect, deny—I watch modern day politics, I know how to stall the inevitable congressional hearing.

“This receipt for a women’s white felt riding hat with lace veil.”

“I’m sorry what was that?”

His voice bounced and echoed a bit.

“Linda!”

Do you have any idea how many boxes were out in that garage?  A stinking swamp’s worth that’s how many, and just like on that show where people are always trying to dump the evidence in the middle of the dankest swamp that stupid receipt bobbed straight to the top of the cardboard heap.

Busted.

Linda (Hats Off) Zern  

     

     

HAPPY HALLOWEEN

Because there's nothing like a girl in a hat. Linda Lee and Zoe Baye - Halloween 2013