Words to Click By

 MONDAY TO GO:  "Words to Click By" L. Zern

I am a fan of YouTube. I love being able to search the world wide web for as many sources about how to milk a goat as is possible to be searched. 

You want to know how to milk a goat? Fear not. Someone is milking a goat on YouTube in Minnesota or Mikasoukee or Mudville or . . . 

Well, you get it.

The problem with YouTube? So many voices desperate for attention leads to the use of shameless hyperbolic words and phrases to lure the wary YouTuber. These are words and phrases that catch your eye, tweak your curiosity, and titillate you with their titillating tittles.

For example:

UNSPEAKABLE goat milking techniques

BOMB SHELL goats and the people who milk them

The DARKEST SECRETS of goat milkers

DIABOLICAL devil goats

The FILTHY SECRETS of making goat cheese

How do you not click on those chunky headlines? 

As a person who is constantly (perhaps an overstatement but maybe not) accused of being hyperbolic and drama prone, I can appreciate headlines like these: unspeakable, bomb shell, darkest secrets, diabolical, and anything filthy.

But be warned. You will be disappointed. The headlines rarely, if ever, match the report.

 But they sure do spice things up, and isn’t that fun? 

Since I’m accused of being a drama prone, volatile, over the top flair monger, I’ve decided to live my life in big words and bigger headlines.

For example:

UNSPEAKABLE things found under my teenage son’s mattress

BOMBSHELL report. Mom burned dinner again.

The DARKEST SECRETS of a grandmother of sixteen

DIABOLICAL kids and the brain-worms they infect us with

The FILTHY SECRETS of the family bathroom

Don’t pretend you don’t want to know what I found under that mattress? That’s a double negative, so you do want to know. Ha! Gotcha!

But you’ll have to excuse me now; I just stumbled on a YouTube title that reads SADISTIC FATHER INFILTRATES DORMS AND FORMS CULT OF COLLEGE KIDS. 

I’ve got to watch that one.

Linda (Drama Drone) Zern

How to Review Your Life

In my college writing classes, we had to critique each other’s work. We got the assignment, wrote the essay or short story or first chapter of blazing erotica.  In a world of non-judgment, tolerance, and anything goes, passing judgment could be a wee bit taxing.

So we had rules. 

They were as follows: We made enough copies of our essay, short story, or first chapter of blazing erotica to pass to each member of the class. We handed out the copies. Each person in the class took the essay, short story, or first chapter of blazing erotica home to review. 

We were then instructed to find three good things about the piece and then with delicate finesse and vibrating sensitivity we were allowed to list three ways the essay, short story, or first chapter of blazing erotica could/would/should be improved. 

Because to improve a writer must be able to identify where a piece of writing works and where it does not work.

So, back in class, sitting around a big round table, we were then allowed to share our observations. The author was not allowed to speak or retort. I like to call this method the Round Table Review.

Sounds straight forward doesn’t it?

Yeah . . . whatever.

I recall one such Round Table Review that I had to do that went something like this:  Things I liked  1) Strong title, 2) Excellent use of the word the, and 3) I like that you double spaced everything.

Things to be improved 1) A story about flappers should not be set in the 1995, 2) The dog’s dialog sounds stilted, and 3) Bestiality is spelled wrong.

I struggled for an entire Saturday to come up with three positive things to say about the above mentioned story. The irony? The writer did not show up for class—again, ever.

I will admit that I do like the Round Table Review method for other aspects of life, however.

In life’s endless struggles and events it can be very helpful to return and report if only for your own edification. Three things that worked. Three things that could stand to be improved. It’s that or be prepared to plaster smiles on your face, nod in the affirmative robotically, and clap like a three-year-old endlessly for the duration of this thing called life, especially in the non-judgement age of tolerance. Some examples of the Round Table Review for life: 

Things that worked:  1) Super cute balloon arch 2) Good pinata 3) Excellent bounce house.

Things that need work: 1) Keep the dessert skewers away from the kids around the balloon arch 2) Less blindfolding of children with pinata bats 3) Locate the bounce house that blew away and landed in the next county.

Things that worked: 1) Voted early 2) Displayed the I voted early sticker 3) Cute red/white/blue outfit worn for early voting.

Things that need work: 1) Never tell anyone that you voted or for whom 2) Make sure not to wash the I voted early sticker on your cute red/white/blue outfit 3) Find an underground movement to join.

Things that worked: 1) Sacrificed life for children 2) Ensured children’s health, wealth, and safety 3) Helped them on their way.  

Things that need work: 1)  Join the underground movement.

Being truthful about things that need work isn’t yucky. It’s necessary. Or the writing never improves, the mistakes are never fixed, and the best never becomes the standard. 

I believe there are three phases to becoming an author: 1) If anyone reads this essay, short story, or blazing piece erotica I’ll die 2) Okay, you can read it, but don’t tell me what you think or I’ll die and 3) I’ll give you a thousand dollars to read this, lest I die.

Grownups welcome constructive criticism.

Linda (Oh, Grow Up) Zern    

    

     

  

   

Chinchilla Wrestling

 

I am baby-sitting my granddaughter’s chinchilla while she is on a mission for our church. She’s out there talking to people about the meaning of life and living and the point of it all. (Zoe, the granddaughter, not the chinchilla.) 

She’s having a ball. (Zoe, the granddaughter, not the chinchilla who is also a girl.)

Actually, the chinchilla is also having a ball. Literally. She has a big plastic ball that she rolls around inside. She also has a dust bath, three-story cage, big wheel, wooden house, assorted toys, hunks of volcanic stone to sharpen her teeth on, and a human slave—me. 

The chinchilla’s name is Chee-Chee.

Chee-Chee does a good impression of being a grumpy teenager. Once in a while, she enjoys a good chin rub.

Mostly she is not in the mood and barks, jumps, and threatens with her tiny teeth. Everyone is terrified of her. 

Chinchillas eat copious amounts of timothy pellets or chinchilla chow, actual timothy hay, the bark off of teething sticks, and various nuts and seeds. NOTE: Chee-Chee digs raisins also terrorizing humans. 

Recently (a time not so far in the past so recently) Chee-Chee and I got in a fist fight. 

I shuffled to her cage with a plastic scoop filled with chinchilla pellets. Chee-Chee the chinchilla, in a show of grumpy dominance raced over, grabbed the edge of the plastic scoop with her tiny chinchilla hands, and started yanking the scoop out of my hand. 

We commenced wrestling. She yanked. I pulled. She yanked harder. Chinchilla chow dribbled from the side of the scoop. She put her back into it.

“Let go of that!” I yelled. 

We wrestled on.

Absurdity mixed with indignation. This dang creature weighs nothing under all that fur and she was winning. I started to laugh.

“I mean it,” I spluttered, “you cannot win.” Laughing turned to bigger laughing and a bit of hysterical chortling.  

And that made me pee my pants.

And that made me laugh harder, also pee harder. 

What? 

Urinating is often used in the animal kingdom as a form of self-defense in dangerous or tense situations. Toads pee on kids when they pick them up all the time; everyone knows it.

It felt like I was wrestling that mammal for my life.

Therefore . . . I’m a toad. I’m a toad attacked by a chinchilla that defended itself in a time honored, natural way.

What did I learn? I learned that to feed Chee-Chee I need to wait until her back is turned and sneak the food into her cage.

I am a toad who can be taught.

Linda (Tinkle Time) Zern

Lightning Rod

 We live in the lightning capital of the world. Hush. Don’t argue with me. I’m not in the mood.

We live in the lightning capital of the world. 

When summer arrives in the Central Florida, lung sucking heat arrives with it. Humidity smacks you in the face like a hammer. The will to live dwindles. 

However . . . as sure as the sun rises, thunder storms (storms full of thunder) arrive with the brain smashing heat. In the afternoon, the heat rises, the skies lower, black clouds boil across the sky. Various farm animals race for shelter.

The air takes on a pregnant, expectant quality: breathless and heavy. Wind races ahead of the rain, trashing trees and hairdos. 

And then the pregnant sky’s water breaks. Bam! With the rain comes the lightning. 

In Florida, we learn early on to count between the flash and the explosion: one Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi . . . 

Each Mississippi equals a mile, or that’s the rumor.

Expect when you can’t even get the “M” out of your mouth before the freaking fireball is cracking the concrete of the back patio. Lightning is fast, sure, and total. I know. I’ve seen it.

My husband and I watched a recent storm thrash its way across the yard, standing on our back covered porch. Ratty tree limbs crashed to the ground. Leaves whipped in tiny tornado swirls. I stood in water up to my neck . . . okay . . . okay maybe not my neck, but it was damp under my bare feet. I wrapped myself more tightly in my leopard print bathrobe. 

Lighting blazed behind the barn, once and then again.

“Wow, that was close . . .” I began as a flash of light ballooned into a freaking fireball straight in front of us. The thunder did a good, good job of imitating mortar fire from an invading militia.

Explosion joined screaming mixed with shouting.

“Lightning just hit that tree,” my husband (Captain Obvious) observed. 

I screamed some more and ran for the kitchen door. It was locked. Shouting, I started pounding on the kitchen door. “It’s locked. Let me in,” I howled, “let me in.”

Captain Obvious spit out, “Who are you yelling for? No one is in there. We are out here. You’re ridiculous.”

“Why do you always lock me out?” I countered. “I’m the only robber you ever lock out.” Howls and nuttiness mixed in my brain with visions of flaming fireballs. “I have no shoes on. You have shoes on.”

“You’re crazy. It’s too late.”

And it was true. The fireball had exploded against the Maple tree, the lightning traveling through its roots under the patio, cracking the concrete in three places and popping several pavers up and out of their spots. 

And that’s how I know we live in the lightning capital of the world. It tried to blow us up but only got the patio.

Linda (Lightning Rod) Zern

Old, Older, Oldest

 

I knew my husband and I were officially old when I heard myself saying, “Honey, do I have a neck hump?”

And he said, “Hang on. I have to put on my glasses.”

Because he couldn’t see my neck hump WITHOUT HIS GLASSES.  What the what?

Supposedly, age is just a number. Sort of.

Another sign that you’ve reached a questionable age of advanced decrepitude: When you’re sitting around with your peer group and the conversation goes a little something like this.

“Look at my fungus toe.”

The looking commenced. The conversation continued.

“That’s nothing. Look at my fungus toe.” Open toed sandals were kicked off, willy-nilly, and fungus toes were displayed with abandon.

“So what’s everyone doing about their fungus toes?”

My brain shut off at that point because my neck hump was giving me a fit.

Neck hump comes from looking down . . . for . . . every day of a long and fruitful life. Think about it. Try to sweep your floor, vacuum that rug, wash those dishes, fold those clothes, change those diapers, mop up that puppy tinkle, paint those baseboards, dispose of that dead (roach, fly, beetle, lizard) corpse WITHOUT LOOKING DOWN. 

Go ahead, try it. I’ll hold your coat while I practice good posture.

And when you’ve spent fifty to sixty years checking those memos from the boss or typing up notes from 6,000 pointless meetings you’ve had to attend, the hump is the least of your worries. 

Let’s not even talk about Menopause “apron.”

Recently, a gentleman in our church was asked to help oversee the activities of our young  men’s program. The gentleman in question was . . . well . . . not in the generation identified with one of those letters (Gen Z, X, Omega.)

 

“Do you think he can keep up with those young men?” Concern was expressed. 

Are you kidding? Have you seen the neck, gut humps on some of those Gen X, texting maniacs? According to my doctor, even the young and newly hatched are evolving bone hooks on their spine bones from excessive head forward, down looking, screen scrolling. By the time they are my age they’ll look like those vultures in that Disney “Jungle Book” cartoon. 

Sheesh. My neck trouble didn’t show up until I’d spent sixty-five years grinding my teeth and enduring a lifetime of mocking head shaking from the young and super keen.

All I know is this. Neck hump comes for everyone in the end, and the pelvis is the one bone in the body that is gender specific. Getting older means you’ve learned stuff, a lot of stuff. Some of it is helpful. Some of it helps you win at trivia games. And some of it annoys the young and newly hatched. 

“Stand up straight or you’re going to become a hunch back, and put your shoes on before you get toe fungus.”

Linda (Down But Not Out) Zern 

  

   

  

Fest is Short for Festival

My husband lived on Amelia Island when he was a Little League playing kid. He was a pitcher. He was a pitcher with a bad temper. He once told his catcher to let the baseball go by so that it hit the umpire who, Sherwood believed, was something that I can’t repeat. 

(I would repeat the something here, but I can’t repeat the something here because Sherwood was a nine-year-old with a foul mouth).

Sherwood’s family moved away from Amelia Island. 

Years passed.

Our oldest son moved with his family to Yulee, Florida which is due west of Amelia Island. Our family had come full circle, it would seem. So back we went to festival with the pirates over shrimp tacos and shrimp art—lots and lots of art depicting shrimp.

Amelia Island is the home of the Amelia Island Shrimp Festival. In Sherwood’s day, there were shrimp boat races, but they turned out to be less than thrilling, since shrimp boats only have to outrun shrimp. 

Now the Shrimp Festival features pirates, and a shrimp queen, a 5K run, and fifty ways to cook shrimp, and shrimp art.

I rather liked the endless, creative, and energetic renderings of shrimp. There were stained glass shrimp and paintings of shrimp and photographs of shrimp and shrimp sculptures and . . .

Art. Lots and lots of art.

“How do you like the art?” I asked my husband, the once foul mouthed baseball pitcher, as we wandered among the vendors.

“Hate it,” he said.

“All of it? Look! There’s a metal fish fountain with a shrimp inside it stomach, spitting water. How clever is that?”

“How much?” he asked.

“Much and many shrimp’s worth,” I said.

“Ridiculous.”

We kept walking.

Finally, he found a bit of art that appealed. It wasn’t shrimp related. It was a scantily clad mermaid. “I like that,” he said, pointing.

Our daughter-in-law summed it up, “Tasteful nudes. He likes tasteful nude paintings of mermaids.”

“Do they eat shrimp?” I wondered. No one answered, but I was willing to bet they did.

“How much,” he said. 

“Many and much shrimp,” I said.

“Ridiculous.”

“Agreed.”

“I need a tee-shirt with a pirate on it,” he said.

“Let’s go,” I said.

And that’s what puts the fest in festival. 

Linda (Two More Shrimp Tacos ) Zern

 

 

 

   

 

K is for Kurt

“Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them—in order that the reader may see what they are made of.” Kurt Vonnegut

I am an author. My husband is an engineer. We are different. We see the world in different ways. We like different things.

See Jane watch “The Walking Dead.

See Dick watch “The Andy Griffith Show.”

See Spot run from a zombie Barney Fife.

We use a Roku for entertainment, news, education, and conspiracy updates. It’s one of those computery machines that allows you to watch your favorite television shows in an orgy of endless viewing: commercial free, interruptions low.

See Jane fall asleep to re-runs of “The Walking Dead.”

See Dick in the middle of the night flip the Roku machine over to re-runs of “The Andy Griffith Show.”

See Spot scratch.

While my husband and I are different in our viewing tastes in television, we are alike in age. We are old-ish. We are becoming acquainted with not sleeping and waking up at two in the morning for nightly wanderings. We have a lifetime of stupid and embarrassing memories that torment us as we try to fall asleep and/or stay asleep. 

Falling asleep to episodes of “The Walking Dead” distracts our bad memory brains. So it’s nothing to fall asleep to zombies eating the world and then wake up to Barney Fife and his one bullet. 

See Jane toss and turn.

See Dick stumble around, change the channel, and fall asleep just in time to start snoring.

See Spot twitch in her sleep and chase zombie bunnies in her dreams.

I love “The Walking Dead.” It’s about characters that the writers are constantly throwing into a pit of writhing, zombie snakes, only to dare them to find a way out. 

It’s Kurt Vonnegut’s writing advice on steroids. I appreciate that. 

Honestly, “The Andy Griffith’ Show” isn’t all that different. How will Andy and Barney ever tell Aunt Bee that her pickles are NEVER going to win a prize at the country fair because her pickles are absolutely vile? Same concept. “No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them.”

Hey! It’s practically the same show. Maybe my husband and I aren’t so different after all?

Linda (Dream Keeper) Zern

H is for Horn Tooting

 

H is for Horn Tooting 

How Can We Stay Humble But Still Brag? Or The Paradox Of Social Media

Boldly and with my heart in my throat or throat-heart, I said to a respected organizer of a respected author’s conference, “You WANT me on the agenda. I am an excellent speaker.”

She gave me the head to toe once over and said, “So you say.”

I began to stutter like a person who stutters and responded, “Nnnnoo . . . nnnooo . . . iiiittt’s . . . true.”

Her eyes narrowed. Her brain spun. A long, fat moment passed. Then she took a chance on me, and I will always be thankful.

But what a painful, impossible moment. I have been speaking in public to large crowds since I was nine. I am a homeschooler. I am a teacher of various and sundry subjects. I am Irish (partly) and I have inherited the gift of blarney (partly). 

The dilemma? It’s all horn tooting. If no one cares enough to toot your horn, how does the horn get tooted and would should toot it? 

Sigh.

I am a woman of a certain age, raised at a time when the right hand was not supposed to know what the left hand was doing. It was a day when hands were supposed to mind their own business, and not brag to each other. Bragging was considered tacky, almost sinful. 

Today, the right hand not only knows what the left hand is doing, but the hands are fighting over who will hold the horn for tooting because everyone toots their own horn, right-handed or left-handed.

Social media has re-written the rules of horn tooting: brag, brag loud, brag long, and toot as loud as you can by blowing your personal trumpet of fabulousness! 

A few random observations I have made over the dizzying revolution of social media and phones that are smart.

CONVENIENCE! NOT! Smarty pants phones are constantly getting left places: the barn, under dirty laundry, on fence posts where fat raindrops can butt dial my father-in-law. Er . . . um . . . I mean . . . that might have, sort of, could have happened once, not that it did happen. 

SELFIES: Look at me, looking at myself. I like to take selfies on Sunday when my hair is arranged, my teeth are brushed, and my pearls are draped elegantly around my neck. To be honest and fair, I should take selfies when I’m pressure washing the barn, and I’ve managed to splash animal poop water on myself, and there is poop water dripping from my glasses, hair, nose, and neck wrinkles. 

TRAVEL LOGS!  Look at me, looking at stuff. (Don’t get me wrong. I do it too.) 

RECORDING FOOD INTAKE: People love their food. By the number of food related photos, food might be more important than looking at travel stuff, selfie stuff, deciding which Smarty Pants Phone to buy next, or the magic mascara that can CHANGE MY LIFE.

INFLUENCING, WHICH WE USED TO CALL ADVERTISING: Buy this, sell that, and make sure you give them my name. Recently, one of my grandsons offered to help me post “short” videos on my Youtube channel so that I could get “followers.” The problem? I’m not sure where I’m supposed to be leading a mob of strangers. But if I do figure it out, I’ll be sure and post pics.

BUY THIS; SELL THAT: Folks, on their “personal” media pages, like to pretend that they don’t want you to buy whatever it is they are selling. I’m calling, “BUNK!”

TEENY, TINY HAND COMPUTERS: Anything I can do on my computer, I can do on my teeny, tiny smarty pants phone. Except that I can’t. Because my fingers are too fat to type on that teeny, tiny keyboard that the kids type on with their thumbs. THEIR THUMBS! When evolution kicks in, their fingers will drop off, and humans will become nothing, more or less, than two opposable thumbs and a single, huge eye in the middle of their foreheads. 

WHY THE SINGLE EYE IN THE MIDDLE OF THEIR FOREHEADS? Because the only thing humans will be looking at is themselves (i.e. selfie-eye).

Oh, and humans will have HUGE mouths for all the horn tooting, of course. 

By the way, if you get a smarty pants phone call from me today, it’s because I’ve left my phone on a fence post, and it’s raining. TOOT. TOOT. Ain’t I the smartest girl in the world?

Oh, and how did I do speaking at the conference? I was dazzling.

Linda (Poop Water) Zern

PS. Staying humble means posting all the pictures not just the Sunday selfies.