CONCOCTIONS

To become a volunteer member of the Osceola mounted (up on horses) posse/patrol it was necessary to fill out a twenty-seven-page application declaring that I don’t do drugs or lie about doing drugs, that I don’t sell drugs or lie about selling drugs, or hang around people who do drug deals or lie about doing drug deals.

There were other questions on the application but for today’s discussion I’ll focus on drug usage: real, implied, or alleged.

After I handed in my twenty-seven-page application I was required to take a lie detector test. There were thirty plus questions. A solid chunk of the questions were about my possible drug usage.

It was a voice stress test. Apparently when people lie, their voice squeaks.

“Have you been in a location where illegal drugs were being used?”

“Yes.”

“Explain.”

“I had to walk across my college campus and . . . well . . . there was the unmistakable smell of . . . well . . . iguana, that’s what my grandson calls dope; isn’t that adorable?”

The examiner did not smile.

I continued my confession. “Seriously, when did smoking iguana in public become okay? Good grief.”

“Do you smoke iguana?” he began. “I mean marijuana. Have you used marijuana in the last twenty-seven months?”

“Nope. Listen! I’ve never ingested an entire carbonated soda. I think the bubbles are stupid.”

I passed my lie detector test.

Finally, I had to take a drug test to PROVE through chemical analysis of my internal body fluids that I did not, have not, would not SMOKE IGUANA or consume other weirdo drugs.

Sherwood, my husband, supportive as always, was concerned that I might fail my drug test.

“Geez, I don’t know. All those concoctions you take in the morning might mix together to form PCP or something. You might fail your drug test.”

“Concoctions? Vitamin B-12? Glucosamine Chondroitin? The stuff I take so my opposable thumbs will continue to oppose?”

“Is that what that’s for? Hey, give me some,” he said.

I passed my drug test.

And so I was invited to be a member of the volunteer posse, after an interview with three stern-faced, uniformed officers asking probing questions like, “What are some of the qualifications to be a member of the mounted posse?”

Confused for a moment, I said, “Have a horse?”

I think the correct answer might have been, “Not riding a horse while smoking iguana.”

Linda (Saddle Up) Zern

TESTIMONIAL: "I loved this book." (Carol Chevrier)

A Philosophy of Shoes

Shoes are the best reason for having feet said every shoe lover ever--also feet are good for walking and stuff--in shoes, of course.

A lovely woman came up to me at our local shoe kiosk the other day (they’re having a snappy shoe sale) and informed me, “You know you’re old when the latest styles are too dangerous to wear because you may fall and break a hip.”

She was a delightful woman. Never met her before in my life.

“True,” I agreed, and then added. “I know I’m old because all the latest styles remind me of Viet Nam. Everything my daughters put on their feet look like the Viet Cong cut them out of bicycle tires on the Ho Chi Men trail.

“That’s because everything IS made by the Viet Cong these days, also the Koreans, but mostly the Chinese.”

She laughed sweetly and hobbled off atop pale pink platform sandals.

Lovely woman. Excellent shoes.

Aren’t shoe shoppers the friendliest people and so well informed on the current import-export situation? I believe it has something to do with squashing your feet into the very same pair of shoes that the lady next to you just finished squashing her feet into. It gives you a sense of sisterhood. That’s why bowlers are so warm and friendly, because everyone wears everyone else’s shoes. Nice and cozy.

My shoe wearing philosophy: I’m short. I always wear heels. I’ve told my daughters that the day they see me in flats is the day they should throw dirt on me, because I’m done.

Best shoe related quote: “Those shoes are just too Cha-Cha for words.” (From Steel Magnolias)

Best reason to be a girl: The assortment of shoe choices, of course. I couldn’t be a man because their shoes are so plain, not to mention blah—also boring.

Why shoes are magic: Because you can tap them together three times and cool stuff happens.

The smartest reason to have lots of shoes: So you can justify having lots of clothes to make “outfits” inspired by all the shoes you own.

Shoes that had the most influence on me: Those white Go-Go boots from the sixties that were the coolest, hippest fashion statement ever created by the hand of fashion designers in any time period, and I’m including those saber tooth tiger boots that every one was into in the ice age.

Why I never feel guilty buying shoes: Think of all the jobs I’m providing all those former Viet Cong, Koreans, and Chinese. I’m feeding the peoples of the world and looking too Cha-Cha for words all at the same time. It’s win-win.

Linda (Don't Tread on Me) Zern

Weekend Tide

Monday is cleanup day. The day I dig out from under the party-down fun of the weekend. Because it’s the only day of the week I enjoy a small measure of control over my universe, Monday is important to me.

It’s also the day I find leftover weekend party favors, strange, eclectic, odds and ends tucked under couch cushions and floating in bathroom . . . sinks. I find sticks and stones and toads in Rubbermaid bowls and wads of flowers wrapped in banana leaves and rubber bands and pirate eye patches and sippy cups and whoopee cushions.

And binkies. Lots and many binkies.

I pile everything up and sort through it.

The rocks go back to the garden.  Sticks to the fire pit. Toads back to their mommies.  The flowers go into glass vases where they’ll dissolve in tiny showers of pollen and petals. The sippy cups and binkies get stuffed back into kitchen cabinets for emergencies and next weekend and the next, when the toddler tide will drag it all back inside and dump it on the shoreline of my house—again.

On Monday I throw it all right back into the ocean, and the next Monday and every Monday from now until the day that I won’t find a single stick or stone or toad.

And on that day, I’ll sweep, mop, vacuum, dust, and wish for pirate eye patches and whoopee cushions.

    


 

NEW AND IMPROVED: Love Under the Ellipsis

When I was a girl, love—but mostly S-E-X—remained hidden beneath an ellipsis of ink. The hero in all the books swooped in to take the girl in his arms. She forgot to struggle long enough to stay. And then . . . (dot, dot, dot).

It was the most delicious, tantalizing punctuation in all of literature, marking the dog-eared pages, full of anticipation and imagination.

Now? Not so much.

In today’s world, romance isn’t for the faint of heart or the subtle of gesture. The girls have no clothes on, and the boys don’t wear gloves, which is too bad because once upon a time (according to Jane Austen) when a man touched a woman’s naked hand with his naked hand they were engaged. I know it’s true. I watch a lot of Masterpiece Theater.

I’m happy to report that at our cave . . . er . . . um . . . I mean house, at our house, romance is still something of a mystery, surrounded by subtleties, covered with the gentle breeze of confusion, wrapped up in code words.

Smiling, I walked into my husband’s office recently, only to greeted with the following invitation (quite possibly threat, the jury is still out.)

Without lifting his head from the flickering light of his computer screen, he said, “Careful or I’ll take you over there on that tofu and . . . (dot, dot, dot.)

Confused and a little alarmed I scanned our office and saw bookshelves stuffed with books, filing cabinets stuffed with papers, computer junk stuffed everywhere, and pillows lined up like soldiers on . . . the futon.

“Are you trying to say futon? You’re going to take me over there on the futon? Because I can’t begin to describe to you how disturbed I am by the idea of you doing unspeakable things to my person on TOFU. Maybe you’re having word seizures or . . .”

“I’m not having Caesars or . . .”

“Not Caesars, you goof ball,” I said.

At this point in the discussion, he removed one glove and stretched out a naked hand towards my person and in the general direction of the futon.

I ran and then . . . (dot, dot, dot.)

Sometimes in dreams I imagine long fingers of mist rolling across the moors behind the swamp in our back pasture, out past the horse trailer with the busted tail light, while the moon drifts across a jaundiced sky, and my heart thumps loudly in the silent chambers of my heart, as I hide under the long folding couch resembling a bent bed, and into the cloying depths of my dreaming night, I hear Lord Sherwood hissing, “Let’s get it on.”

Sigh.

One minute you’re a lady wearing gloves and the next minute he’s got you on TOFU and . . . (dot, dot, dot.)

Linda (Lady Dainty) Zern

SHAMELESS SELF PROMOTION for MOONCALF

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Life, Death, and Worm Medicine

My husband and I have a hobby farm. That’s a nice way of saying we own more grass than anyone can mow in a single day.

The grass is necessary because of the horses. Horses are twelve hundred pound mammals that eat salad all day to maintain their body weight. Let this be a lesson to us all. If humans want to maintain their body weight by eating salad then they have to eat salad ALL DANG DAY LONG.

Having a hobby farm means a couple of things, one, we have animals that eat grass and two, those animals eventually die. It’s called the circle of life.

The closest most people come to the circle of life in our modern society is when that daddy lion holds up that baby lion in that Disney movie and all the savannah animals bust out singing. It’s possible that this scene is misleading. The circle of life is a lot less musical and involves a lot of hole digging . . .

. . . because everything that’s born on that savannah is going to die. Sing about that, Disney!!!

One of our first experiences with the circle of life involved a flock of chickens and worm medicine. Oh, by the way, worms tend to be a hefty part of that whole life circle deal.

What no worm song, Disney Studios?

News flash: horses get worms—also dogs, cats, cows, goats, and occasionally toddlers and in rare cases the mothers who care for them. Don’t ask.

Once we tried de-worming our horses with a medicine designed to be added to the horses’ feed, fancy pants blue worm poison pellets.

NOTE: When horses aren’t eating salad, they’re busy eating snazzy seeds covered in molasses.

We mixed the worm medicine into their feed. The horses hated the worm stuff and ate everything except the blue pellets.

Apparently chickens not only love snazzy seeds but they also love blue worm pellets. They helped themselves. NOTE: Blue pellet horse wormer kills chickens, but it doesn’t kill them fast.

So our barn was filled with flopping, staggering poisoned chickens.

I turned to my husband and said, “Well, Babe, we’ve got to put these chickens out of their misery. They’ve been poisoned.”

My husband, a mostly city boy, said, “What? Out of their misery? What? That’s just another way of saying, ‘Kill them’ isn’t it? What?”

He stared at the bunch of twitching birds. Then he looked at me.

“But how?”

We stared some more at the sick chickens.

“Should we smother them with a pillow?” he asked.

He wasn’t kidding.

“Not my pillow.”

I was kidding—sort of.

“Shoot them?” I suggested.

“You mean like dig a trench and then throw them in it and . . .”

“What? Trench? No. We’re not Nazi’s, for goodness sakes.”

We handled it. Because that’s what you do in the country, you handle stuff—all the stuff—life, death, worms, and burial detail.

Horses: Too big to flush down the toilet. Call the septic tank guy with his backhoe. Our guy’s got some great hole digging stories.

Chickens, Rabbits, Squirrels: Posthole diggers are quick and efficient. Dig hard, dig deep.

Or if you’re our neighbors you toss the dead critters over the back fence, sit back, and vulture watch. Life, death, worms, and burial detail, that’s the real circle of life. P.S. There’s very little singing.

I blame Disney for encouraging this nutty belief that the circle of life is a musical number in a Broadway show. Nope. It’s way better because it’s real. It’s sad and funny and final and real. Life and death and worms. I’m for it.

Linda (Grave Digger) Zern

FROM A TRUE BOOK NUT . . .

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Exceptional Nonsense

I am exceptional.

Are you mad yet?

Because a lot of people seem to find my exceptionalism wildly annoying, and they say stuff to me like, “Linda, you make me sick,” or “Linda, I could kill you for making all those good grades,” or “Linda, you’re such a smarty pants you make me sick. I could kill you.”

I don’t even own smarty pants. I own Diane Gilman, sexy jeans for grandma pants. They make me look exceptional. I can’t help it.

And, truthfully, I’m not sure I would help it, if I could help it because exceptional suits me fine.

It makes me a little bit sad on Tuesdays and Thursdays when I count up all the folks I’ve made sick because I’ve always made good grades in school, but then I decide to paint the barn and the sadness goes away.

Truthfully, I don’t mean to make people sick or want to kill me, I just like doing a good job. I don’t enjoy feeling panic stricken because I haven’t done my homework. Being prepared allows me to sleep. Studying steadies my nerves. Putting my heart into a project keeps life interesting. Working hard gives me a sense of satisfaction and esteem of self, which society is always harping about, by the way: build your self esteem, feel good about yourself, self esteem rocks, here’s a trophy for breathing.

But then you paint the barn all by yourself, and people who haven’t painted their barns are mad at you and want to kill you.

It’s very confusing.

My son-in-law once observed, “Well, after she gets done mowing the farm, she comes in and writes a book or something. She stays pretty busy.”

And there it is. Busy beats coma, every time. I like busy.

I have a granddaughter who likes busy too. It was hard for her to learn to read because it meant she had to sit still and not build a fort from palm fronds. But then she figured out that you could read books about making forts from palm fronds and duct tape. And now there’s no stopping her.

She draws, paints, weaves, knits, and duct tapes, or she’s reading about it. I feel bad for her. People are going to want to kill her—a lot.

Here’s my advice to her. Do you best, Babe. If you’re going to make a pillow out of duct tape, make the biggest, most yellow, most duck beak embellished duct tape pillow you can make, and then put it in the Osceola County Fair and then win a blue ribbon. And then do a dance in the sunshine of your exceptional accomplishment. Amen and amen.

My other granddaughter is a scientific memory machine. She won several blue ribbons. She is exceptional.

My grandson can hob knob with fifty year olds without pausing to take a breath. He came home with six medals from the fair. He is exceptional.

And the list goes on . . .

Let me be clear. Exceptional means out of the ordinary; it can even mean better than someone else. It doesn’t mean, “I’m better and you suck.” It means I am smart, capable, quick, and excited about life, and you can be too. Just get off that couch and patch up the holes in the Lazy-Boy with duct tape.

Linda (Look what I can do!) Zern