Green Eggs and Ham (tomorrow)

More beautiful than Faberge
More fun than iScreening
More egg salad than can be eaten in a week

A timeless wish for the coming New Year

Right now, 

 stop and take a moment to enjoy

the small and often random things

 in your world that bring you joy.

May your joy be infectious and help

 to make our world a kinder place.

From my 2010 Photograph Vault

Fine Print: King Tut was king for a little while

 but not long because he died.
Had the only tomb that was not robbed by the robbers like the others.

 And was married at the young age of 12. Married his half sister.

 (From a Long Beach 6th Grade History Day student display board. The history lesson, boiled down to 41 words, taught me everything I need to know about Tutankhamun. The photograph, faintly familiar, intrigued me.) 

Boy George as King Tut

Barbra as King Tut
(because Portar is right!)

Amy as King Tut

(because Aunt Naycy is right too!)

It's Never Too Late to be Happy : )

Even though I missed posting on Thanksgiving Eve my annual six degress of happiness list, I am mindful to not take my abundance and good fortune for granted. My whittled-down list of ten things that make me happy . . .

1.  Reading in bed on Sunday mornings.
2.  Clown shoes in the shoe rack. They were an important element in my ten year-old’s dead clown Halloween costume, but now they represent whimsy for a boy who has gotten over his coulrophobia.
3.  Following my thirteen year-old into his universe of musicianship and learning from him about a discipline that would have remained for me in another galaxy far, far away.
4.  My fortitude. Damn, I am one tough cookie!
5.  My family who individually and collectively mean the world to me.
6.  The rhythmic beat from the blue Orbitron drum set played at random by the flutist.
7.  The bottle garden still full of jalapeños, basil, and lettuce.
8.  The abundance of dirt cheap, highly-drinkable wine. Cheers!
9.  All of the friends and acquaintances who have given me so much of themselves.
10. My RDO (Regular Day Off) every other Friday, my port in the storm.

I hope that your day of thanksgiving continues today as mine does.



Mega Man Begins

(Littlest Toggle returns with his take on his brother's seventh-grade Comp & Lit assignment to create a super hero.)

 

It was 2124 when a terrible thing happened. An asteroid hit a man named Owen Johnson. When he woke up in the hospital in a full body cast he wondered how he was still alive. Ten months later when he got out of the hospital, he started noticing weird things like he could lift really heavy objects and he was slowly starting to shrink.

         Owen asked his doctor what was happening. The doctor didn’t know but he didn’t want him to come back because he thought Owen was crazy. Two weeks later Owen figured out that he was a super human. Owen figured this out when he kept seeing more then one of himselves. He found out that he could grow and shrink; multiply himself, he had super strength, and could fly [just barely].

Owen decided to put his powers to good and fight evil but first he would need some clothes and some super hero weapons. So Owen went to go look for some super clothes that would grow and shrink with him. He went online to the local super hero website and went under the section called growth and shrinkage clothes. There were three different sets. One had a big M on it and it came in lime green and magenta.  Another had a PP on it and it came in black and brown so he said no to the one with a PP on it and finally one had a J on it and came in turquoise. Owen decided on the one with the M on it and picked the lime green. He would be known as Mega Man!

Next he had to look for some weapons. He went back to the website and went under weapons. There were flamethrowers, lasers, dart guns, freeze rays, power drainers [only good for one use], and other gadgets such as ray guns and grappling hooks. Owen decided to take a dart gun and a freeze ray because he thought that they would be the most useful.

Mega Man went out to fight evil. He had many enemies such as Robo Man, The Crusher, The Screamer, Robo Man [rebuilt], Electro Man, but the worst was Party Pooper who took the PP clothes in black and brown. PP disgusted Mega Man because his power is to wreck parties by poisoning the food and punch, making it rain at out door parties, and turning the balloons alive to attack the people at the parties. But Mega Man has put him in jail many times. Unfortunely, PP keeps getting out so that makes Mega Man even more mad.

But if Mega Man is ever around there will be no evil villains because he will take them down!

Patterns

Berries, Alamitos Bay Farmer's Market ~ Long Beach, CA ~  June 2010

Alamitos Bay Farmer's Market ~ Every Sunday 9 a.m. til 2 p.m.

Rock Fish caught off of Long Beach, CA ~ June 2010

Lobsters bought at Chatam Fish Market, Chatam, MA ~ July 2010

The SoCal tie-up ~ June 2010

Major League hose ~  Dodger Stadium ~ June 2010

Abalone ~ Lotus Land, Santa Barbara, CA ~ June 2010

Sunrise from the Irma B ~ Channel Islands ~ June 2010

Poles through galley window on the Irma B ~ Channel Islands ~ June 2010

Kebobs on grill ~ Oreleans, MA ~ July 2010

Barrel cacti ~ Lotus Land, Santa Barbara, CA ~ June 2010

Stone walk way ~ Lotus Land, Santa Barbara, CA ~ June 2010

Skaket Beach ~ Orleans, MA ~ July 2010

Seaweed ~ Leadbetter Beach, Santa Barbara, CA ~ July 2010

Outrigger canoer's hair ~ Leadbetter Beach, Santa Barbara, CA ~ July 2010

The Face I Have Earned

"Nature gives you your face at twenty. Life shapes your face at thirty. But the face you have at fifty is the face you have earned." ~ Coco Chanel.  Born Gabrielle Bonheur Chanel in 1883, she would later claim that her real date of birth was 1893, making her ten years younger.

Mine is an expressive face that doesn’t hold back or mask emotion. Criss-crossing lines etch my skin like roads on a topographic map leading to and from my joy, pain, humor, and sorrow. I feel unexpectedly serene today, a bit giddy, in fact, at how good it feels to be me on my fiftieth birthday. My need to experience, to love, to achieve, to improve are as urgent today as they were yesterday. My possibilities still feel endless. Life is so rich!

Excerpt from Forty-Four, written May 2004.

(I am thankful for wisdom that comes from aging and incremental self-acceptance.)

I'm days from my forty-fourth birthday and tomorrow I have a consult with Dr. Sharma for a shot of Botox to erase my furrowed forehead and the parallel and perpendicular lines that balance between my eyebrows. Dr. Sharma ran an ad in the local newspaper and I answered it. A licensed OB/GYN, Dr. Sharma switched to cosmetic surgery because she's too tired to get up in the middle of the night to deliver babies. No lie. Her gay receptionist told me so.

I found a picture the other night of my mother from last Thanksgiving. She sends pictures because she lives seven hundred miles away and believes that sending a holiday photograph keeps us connected. In my mother's beaming face, I see that my parallel and perpendicular lines came from her. My forehead furrows are my own contribution to my facial canvas. My mother always said I had and expressive face. My elation, surprise, curiosity, concern, anger, and sorrow have been etching those uniform rows for the past four decades.

My four-year-old son has asked me repeatedly if I am mad at him. My parallel-and-perpendiculars must be getting deeper, I thought. I'm not angry with him or anyone, am I? Then, my six-year-old son asked me if I was concerned. Yes, I have concerns. Are they now manifesting between my eye brows?

My sons' questions motivated me to seek a free Botox consult with Dr. Sharma. At least, that's what I tell people. It's such an endearing truth that can be leveraged to do something I never saw myself doing: work. Sure, I still wear my retainer every night to prevent the natural gap between my two front teeth. And I even use professional-grade dental bleach to undo what my coffee and red wine habit do to my teeth. Somehow these cosmetic dalliances seem like child's play compared to what Dr. Sharma can do for me.

"Science has been able to harness the botulism disease toxin for a positive result. The chemical produced by the bacterium that causes botulism blocks nerve impulses to muscles, causing a form of paralysis weakness," according to the other CDC, the Center for Dermatology Care, a self-proclaimed authority on Botox and other forms of work.

In addition to never seeing myself doing work, I also never saw myself injecting perfectly healthy tissue with a muscle-paralyzing toxin. Did I possess that much self-loathing?

I have a fantasy that I will go to Dr. Sharma's Botox party, get my one site for $100, and after seeing the results of Dr. Sharma's fountain of youth, begin to consider a breast augmentation for my 36B breasts. Then the tummy-tuck to fix what my baby boys did to my abdomen. I helped with my tummy, by getting lazy about diet and exercise, but no one needs to know that. I have another endearing truth to justify my tummy tuck: two healthy nine-pound babies over a three-year span after the age of 35, each delivered by Caesarian section.

While waiting for Dr. Sharma to arrive, I filled out the required insurance and liability release paper work. I looked up from my clipboard to see a twenty-something woman walk through the waiting room with two cantaloupes strategically placed under her taut T-shirt. I immediately doubted Dr. Sharma's judgment.

Dr. Sharma's not-really-a-nurse called my name and then lead me back to an exam room where she went over the risks, side effects, and the cost of my Botox treatment. "Do you have any questions?" the non-nurse asked.

Yes. "How many Botox injections have Dr. Sharma done and can I see some pictures?"

"She's done hundreds. We only have a few pictures because most people don't want their faces in the book where their neighbors might recognize them."

"Oh," I said. I began to understand that there's a degree of shame woven into seeking and receiving work.

Dr. Sharma arrived for my consult, tired from all of the cosmetic surgery she had been doing. I had found out from her non-nurse that Dr. Sharma still delivers babies for established patients. I wondered if she offered package deals: pre- and postpartum care, plus, for an extra $2,500 a tummy-tuck, a breast augmentation, or a vaginal rejuvenation. Your choice!

I told Dr. Sharma about my interest in erasing my parallel and perpendicular lines between my eye brows. I wanted to take the conservative approach. Dr. Sharma leaned in, looked over her bifocals, shook her head and told me that she wanted to shoot up my forehead too. I then noticed that Dr. Sharma was furrow-free. Come to think of it, so was her entire staff.

After my consult, I decided Botox was the lost leader of cosmetic surgery. It's cheap relative to other work. If you're satisfied, you return in three months for another injection and another selling opportunity for the doctor to share with you what she can do to restore your natural beauty. An open vial of Botox has a 24-hour shelf life, so Dr. Sharma likes to gang up three patients and call it a party. I told Dr. Sharma's non-nurse to call me when two patients wanted to get together and party.

~ ~ ~

My work friend, Audry, is about to have a facelift. Audry is fifty-years-old but has the body of a twenty-five year old. Audry proclaims to be steeped in workplace research. She advised me that for women to be competitive and successful in business, they must look age neutral. Women must look perpetually between the ages of 35 and 41, old enough to instill credibility and experience, but not too old to look old and contemptible. Audry is all for work and is in full support of my decision to get a few Botox injections. If I didn't know Audry, I would be hurt by her enthusiastic encouragement, which translates to, "your face is detracting from your face."

"Botox makes people look more at ease and it doesn't affect their minds. Baby boomers don't want to age gracefully, they want to manage their age," said Dr. Rod Rohrich, a Dallas-based plastic surgeon and past president of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons. Apparently, my age is just one more thing for me to manage, right after, my career, my investment portfolio, my household and my anger. It's no wonder I have concerns.

Audry called me today from San Francisco where she went to have her facelift. She was convalescing at her twin sister’s home there. It was good to hear from her. She reported that she didn't feel much pain after her surgery and hardly had to take any pain killers. Audry told me that the only pain came two weeks after the surgery when the doctor removed her facial bandages and her first layer of skin came with it. She fainted in the elevator on the way down.

"Do you like the result?" I asked.

"It's not what I expected. My chin looks like it belongs to Jay Leno," she told me. "I didn't get my eyes done, so I still have 50 year-old eyes, but on a 30 year-old face."

I hung up the phone and realized Dr. Sharma had never called me to come down and party. Six weeks had passed since my consult. I thought about Adury’s face and then took Dr. Sharma's dissing as the best birthday gift I could ever get.

Steppin' Out

I met up with my new Meetup group on Thursday evening to “hike” Signal Hill. The Meetup intro to the Signal Hill Hiking Club describes the 5.75 mile route as a two hour intermediate-paced hike. My first test was maintaining my brisk stride straight up Hill Street, also known as “The Decider”. Apparently, a few walkers decide to turn around and head back to their cars after attempting the incline. I wasn’t one of them. I kept up, broke a sweat, met some friendly, fit people, and felt that I may have found a good weekly cardio workout with a spectacular panoramic view.

In my back yard. Hell yes, we want the radio tower! You can put it right next to the built-in gas grill.

Walkers. I was never at the front of the pack. At least at the back of the pack, I could take pictures and linger on the view. (Palos Verdes Peninsula)

Rectangular sunset. The open space seemed to contain the setting sun.

Barkin' dogs. Cheap sneakers = sore feet. It has been two days and my feet are still achin'. Waiting for UPS to deliver relief.

The Tale of The Last Survivor

(A fourth grade slasher-survivor story written by the Littlest Toggle.)

The last zombie was slayed by Mathew Lizers and now the hags were next. A whole army of warriors, half wiped out, had to go against zombies, hags and vampires.

The warriors had defeated the zombies and were on hags now. The leader, Noa Moonslayer, told a quarter of his people to go get reinforcements and about half an hour later, fifty more people came but it was too late.

Almost all of the army was corpses laying on the ground because they had gotten to the dreadful vampires and bam they got tumbled. Noa Moonslayer and the few that remained retreated and plotted for several months about how to defeat the vampires but what they did not know was that the vampire army was getting larger too.

Now that both armies were larger, they fought. It was a dirty fight with both armies losing soldiers quickly. The human army had wizards, but the vampires had more soldiers. At the end of the war, everybody was dead except the vampire leader and Noa Moonslayer

Noa crawled over badly injured, pulled out his boot knife, and stabbed the vampire’s neck repeatedly until the vampire leader had no more life. Noa went unconscious.

He was so tired and bloody that he went to sleep and didn’t wake up until a week later. When Noa woke up the vampire leader was not where Noa had killed him. All of a sudden, Noa heard a roar behind him and felt a sharp pain in his back. It got worse and worse until he took a knife from a dead person’s hand and stabled the vampire leader until he was on the ground not moving.

But Noa was very injured and really hungry so he ripped the cloths off of a corpse next to him and wrapped the cloth over his wounds. For food he found some wild berries and herbs. He would rest for a day and then go out the next day in look of another kingdom because he assumed that other creatures had taken the kingdom over since the army was not there.

In the morning he built a standard shelter like a teepee, but he couldn’t fold it up to take with him. After that, he made a fishing pole but when he dropped his line in the water, it snapped in two when he caught a fish.

When fishing didn’t work, he decided to get some water. Noa knew of a fresh water spring near by and after got some water he told himself not to get angry but that he was having herbs and berries again for dinner.

That night he stayed calm after his shelter fell over for the third time. Finally it stayed up and he tried to make a fire, but the only thing he made was a fool of himself. Noa was so tired that if an opera was playing near by, he wouldn’t have noticed. Eventually he gave up after the wind blew out his only spark.

When he woke up the next day, he decided that he should travel to another kingdom and hope that there would be a civilization. First he would have to get enough food and water for a long trip.

He went crab hunting but only caught four small crabs. “Good enough for now,” Noa said. Noa searched for two hours until he found some nice fibers to weave a basket for water. He had seen the ladies weave and he had made an okay basket before so he went to work. An hour later, he was done. It was great! After he filled the basket with water he found some berries and a few herbs. The next day he set off to find another kingdom.

Noa went the other direction, away from his kingdom, because he didn’t want to run into it. After about two weeks he could see a kingdom in the distance. It turned out to be just some trees. A month passed before he found a new kingdom.

Once inside the kingdom’s giant door he changed his whole life. First, he got better food with the few gold he had. He also got better clothing. With the last gold piece, Noa rented a very small room.

Noa figured out, after a few years, that he stayed alive the whole time when he slept for a week before he killed the vampire because a wizard that he was staying with had come and cast a spell on him so that he would stay alive for that week. But it didn’t matter to Noa because he had a wife, two children, a house, and a nice job. His job was a blacksmith and he loved his job. Eventually, he died of old age at age 94 and his loving sons still have adventures like his all of the time.

~ The End ~

Virtually Invisible

I really need to staple a Post-it note to my forehead for the next big holiday weekend that says, “What? Go to the beach? Are you ca-razy?!!!” I felt compelled this past holiday weekend to swim in the ocean and so I did.

My family came along and humored my insane idea to drive to the beach on Memorial Day. We’d lucked out, thankfully, after only two hours in the car, and found street parking. I felt giddy to carry the beach gear down to the sand.

After eating a sandwich, I walked the sand strand between breaking ocean waves and the throng of humanity. The ocean felt cold washing up against my legs. I relished the sound of breaking waves, the smell of salt in the air. I felt restored.

I looked away from the water to the masses, sunbathing in last year’s swimsuits. The bulges, the rolls, the girth! It was late in the day and a lot of people were already splotchy sunburned-red. I could see Splotchy-red, but also splotchy-black and blue from asymmetrically placed tattoos. A crucifix-on-a-chain, Tweety Bird, several sets of angle wings, women’s names with their apparent likeness. All manner of “body art” on display.

I drove to work the day after the holiday and heard on NPR a dated piece about a performance art installation called . . . and Counting. Wafaa Bilal, an Iraqi-American artist, turned his back into a canvas to commemorate both Iraqi and American war dead

The buzzing from the electric needle during the story sounded like mosquitoes flying into a heat lamp. I hate those bits of audible “clip art” scattered throughout NPR features, but this time, I could feel the sting, feel the lose of life added to Bilal’s back. In the 24-hour live performance which took place from March 8 to March 9, 2010, Bilal’s back was tattooed with a borderless map of Iraq covered with one dot for each of the war casualties near the cities where they had died.

I wanted to see what was described on the radio. I wanted to see this tattoo. What would 5,000 dead American soldiers represented by visible, permanent, red ink dots and 100,000 Iraqi casualties, represented by dots of seemingly invisible green UV ink, look like?

The black light told the stunning, continuing story. Bilal doesn’t have enough skin.

Seeking true north

“A few days ago, I read that a samurai philosophy is to refrain until you can respond instead of reacting. I must work on that.” ~ From “Witness” an essay by Andre Dubus.

Lately, I find that I’m open to guideposts from anywhere that will magnetize my inner compass and show me what I need to see.

Andre Dubus did just that in his essay “Witness” where he recounts his personal odyssey about recovering from a horrific accident while he was assisting two people from their own accident off the side of the road. He lost his leg and his mobility while being a Good Samaritan.

I had checked out “Best American Essays – 1998” from the library to read “Silk Parachutes”, but it was “Witness” that showed me what I needed to see.

I have been a reactor practically my entire 49 years. It didn’t take much to get me to react, a look, a word, my own misunderstanding and the snappy, sharp, defensive me would strike out in a half-cocked reaction, achieving absolutely nothing of what I wanted. I wanted to be heard, to be recognized, to be right.

Refraining has a calming, thoughtful effect. It makes me feel mature, as if I’m finally growing up. I have to be disciplined to refrain, the way I suppose the samurai practiced. I often fail. Like Dubus, I must work on that.

Double Take

My annual visit to see my mom last month put us on a mini road trip to the Green Springs, a beautiful mountain retreat just 25 minutes from downtown Ashland, OR . The Green Springs boast lakes, mountains, and pastures. I saw grazing cattle that could have wandered onto the road. But the appliances, oh, those beasts ya really gotta look out for.

11. My Six Degrees of Happiness Tradition

The Albino Technicolor Dream Coat Turkey

I associate my happiness with my thankfulness and gratitude for everything that makes my life so rich. As I have done on past Thanksgiving Eves, here is my spontaneous list of thanksgiving, in no particular order . . .

1.   Books-on-CD that make my commute bearable.
2.   My commute. I am grateful to have a job to commute to.
3.   My job. I just love being the boss.
4.   Two bathrooms. The Rec Room is finally done . . . yippie!
5.   Playing poker with my family on Sunday mornings.
6.   My good health and vitality. I feel lucky every single day about this.
7.   People. I love ‘em, even with all of their warts, shortcomings, and desires.
8.   My people. My partner and our sons make me whole.
9.   My curiosity and need to continue learning about the world.
10. Humor. Can't get enough of seeing it as thread in the lace of my life.

I wish you a very happy Thanksgiving!

The Must-Have Disposable Shoe

Down to the local Van’s retailer on September 11th for new school shoes
Seeking something that fits the criteria for middle-school cool
Found it in the grey Van’s with red eyelets and strings

I remember that same desire for a start of middle-school cool shoe

Mine was the wallaby, crepe sole, leather upper

Lasted until June when my toes started to pinch

I drilled my middle-schooler on math story problems last night,

Interrupted only to bring in the box from the UPS driver
Delivering the replacement grey Van’s with red eyelets and strings sent for on November 6th

Q. A mom paid $49 for a canvas pair of Van's

Her boy wore them for 45 days

How much did the mom pay per day before a new pair arrived?

A. 92 cents.*

*(The mom, deeply conflicted, pondered what 92 cents a day could buy for third world people around the globe, some of whom have never worn shoes.)

On Halloween Eve

Jack-o-lantern glow from a SpongeBob Square Mouth

scooped and carved at the same table where he eats his

peanut butter and jelly Monday through Friday.

Jack-o has girth and plenty of real estate for him

to add the square eye brows and old-school triangle eyes, nose.

His Jack-o lit up the playground first, freeing him

to feed at the Oreo and candy corn trough before the rush.

Then the other Jack-os rolled out, lined up, and found fire,

illuminating the dark black top and the long Halloween tradition at our school.

Oh, what a fleeting treat!