Gentle Humor

Whenever I write anything I try to run spell check because with my word processing program, Microsoft Word for Mac, I keep getting curious little green and red underlines on words like “fixin’ to fix dinner” or “fiddy-cent that won’t go away unless I spell check them.

On a recent post I was commenting about your comments and btw, thanks to abnolagrors for this fun comment: "It's such a tickety-boo site. fabulous, very intriguing!!!” This comment alone has two underlines, not to mention the name of the commenter, and I can’t wait to see what spell check is going to say about tickety-boo. Spell check gets very confused with made up words but, being a hard worker and dying to please, it tries with all its might to come up with a plausible suggestion.

For instance, and as I was saying, on that recent post I was excited about reaching 300 blog posts, and I typed the words “whoo-hoo.” (There goes the red underline again). Since I’m noticing these underlines, I just discovered, after all these years – whoo-hoo! – that the red underlines must be misspelled words and the green ones must be grammar or “other” errors, like an accidental extra space around a word, incorrect capitalization or comma usage, or an unsightly poppy seed caught between my words that I don’t notice but everyone else does and spell check wants to tell me because it’s my friend and your best friends will let you know about a poppy seed caught between your words.

Okay the whole poppy seed thing is dumb, but spell check doesn’t think so. It didn’t find any errors at all in that whole rambling, except the “whoo-hoo.” So I ask it, “What’s the matter boy, what is it? Did Timmy fall in a well?” My daughter said this yesterday in the middle of a conversation, and I was amazed. Wasn’t that in an old “Lassie” episode from the last century?

“How do you know about Lassie?” I asked.

“Wasn’t that about a dog with a pointed nose?”

“Yes, but you’ve never seen it, have you?”

“Didn’t that dog have a lot of long hair?”

“Yes, Lassie was a collie.”

“Whatever. What’s for supper?”

Who knows where these kids get their information? I’ll have a carload of girls in the car and an old song comes on the radio and they all start singing along in their loudest voices. The noise is deafening, I can tell you that. But what’s really interesting is how they know the words to the songs I used to sing when I was a kid. I can guarantee you I did NOT know the words to any songs my parents used to know. My dad used to sing blues songs which I had no interest in whatsoever because I was into rock n roll.

Interesting – spell check didn’t underline rock n roll. How does it know that’s a word? “n” is not a word, but spell check isn’t scoffing. Maybe it’s on vacation – down in Tahiti sipping Mai Tai’s and wiggling its toes in the sand, catching some rays.

Whatever the case, I’m going to finish this “whoo-hoo” thing right now so I can move on with my life. I got a red line under “whoo-hoo” and spell check had some suggestions. The first one was “hoo-ha.” I wondered, “How come spell check knows “hoo-ha” but doesn’t know “whoo-hoo?” To me it seems like “whoo-hoo” has been around longer than “hoo-ha.” Perhaps I’m misspelling “whoo-hoo.” Maybe it’s supposed to be “whoo-who.” Nope, spell check doesn’t like that either. I’m going to see what Google says. Be right back.

Hmmm, quite interesting. Google says it’s supposed to be “woo-hoo” because that’s what Homer Simpson was using, but the bank, “WaMu” adopted “whoo-hoo” and trademarked it as their slogan. Since WaMu is now Chase, I guess that didn’t work out too well.

For the record, spell check doesn’t think “woo-hoo” is a word either, but I’m not complaining. Spell check is my friend, and it’s doing the best it can, and Lord knows I ask a lot from it with my made up words, sentence fragments, and bona-fide typos. To me, spell check is fabulous – it’s simply tickety-boo!

So I was going to talk about Art in the Pearl, the annual display of very talented artisans in downtown Portland over Labor Day weekend. Their work is stunning. So creative, so detailed, so expensive. You can tell by looking at the finely crafted wood furniture and cleverly unique artwork that you can’t afford to have any of it in your house if you are like me.

One artist didn’t have prices on any of his work. He had these incredible martini glasses with drops of water on them that looked just like a photograph. He was explaining to people that there were NOT photographs, and that’s why they cost $3,000, because they were hand painted.

Everything we saw was gorgeous and intriguing – artwork to enjoy that would also impress your friends.

Contrast these with the artwork I saw at the Alberta Street fair a couple of weeks ago. Most of that art looked like psychedelics were involved. Bright colors swirled over canvas like a hurricane had passed through the artist’s studio. Most everything I saw was made with “hard” colors – I don’t know how else to describe them. They weren’t normal colors you’d see in anyone’s home. All those reds and yellows and royal blues fighting for real estate on the canvas without a theme was a torment to my eyes. They looked like children had been instructed to use as many colors as they could with no particular intention. The odd thing was that booth after booth had these kinds of paintings, as if the whole street had sent their kids to an “instant street fair” art class.

There were other weird pieces with hateful looking demons or weird creatures painted with blacks and touches of red. Who is going to buy such a thing besides Satan? Would you want to look at that over your mantel? They were totally creepy. If I had one of those things in my house and got up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night and saw it by the eerie glow of a nightlight, I’d have bad dreams the whole rest of the night.

The main difference between these two approaches to art boiled down to time invested. The artists at the Pearl looked like their work took hours and hours and hours to do. At Alberta Street, there couldn’t have been much more than one hour.

Another difference was price. Most everything at the Pearl appealed to me but was too expensive. Much at Alberta was unappealing but quite affordable.

Anyone very young and/or on drugs is going to take offense at what I’m saying here. They will say it’s a matter of taste, and I should be open to people’s artistic expression, and they’re absolutely right. It is true that my particular taste runs to things that would look good in an average home as opposed to things that look like they’d been drawn by someone in a third-world insane asylum.

But I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings, so I will end with the observation that I very much enjoyed looking at the artwork at Alberta and jabbing my husband in the ribs when I saw something particularly eye-wrenching, er, I mean eye-catching. This is one thing I like about Portland. You can find something for everybody around here – from the upper crust to the lowly heel with the fuzzy blue mold.

And if you have a taste for the bizarre – you’re in luck. You can pick up artwork for cheap – in many instances two for one, 35% off today only, or at a “street fair” special. And if you have some pot on you, you could probably get an even better deal than that.

We’re going to go downtown to the annual “Art in the Pearl” outdoor art exhibit today. It’s wonderful – lots of very talented artisans and craftspeople displaying their talents. The “Pearl” is a section of town. I think everyone must be juried because everything is so superbly done. If you don’t know what juried means, ask Google. No, wait. I’ll tell you, otherwise you might not come back because that’s the way you are.

If you want to know exactly what way you are, it is this. You are great! No, fantastic! No, you are supercalifragilisticexpialidocious! Don’t know what that means? Or even how to say it? Or whether I spelled it right? Or how many stars there are in the sky? Do I have to explain everything?

It comes from an old Mary Poppins movie, and if you’ve heard it, even once in your life, you will be singing it all day today because it’s the kind of thing that sticks in your brain like the tentacles of an octopus.

According to Wikipedia, that brilliant encyclopedia of unverified information, the word, which has 34 letters, can be broken down as follows: super- "above", cali- "beauty", fragilistic- "delicate", expiali- "to atone", and docious- "educable." This makes very little sense but so do a lot of words in the English language so I’m not going to hold that against it. According to the 1964 Walt Disney film, it is defined as "something to say when you have nothing to say."

Well I have something to say, so that doesn’t apply either. Be that as it may, and albeit, you guys are super...cious because many of you are saying some very nice things about what you’re reading. For instance, Donna T, a member of my writing group, commented, “Too fun!” and “Wonderful, Suzanne, absolutely wonderful!” I am gushing and blushing as I type this – thanks so much, Donna. She just got published in an anthology of inspirational readings for soldiers. Whoo-hoo!

Elussyelalp left this comment yesterday, “It's such a great site. fanciful, acutely fascinating!!!”

Aw shucks.

Linda Kuhlman, another friend in my writer’s group, had this to say, “"Love this, Suzanne! Your wit never ceases to make me chuckle, a welcome diversion from the 'to do' list I stare at every morning. I'm going joggin’ now!" This was in response to me writing about southerner’s droppin’ the “g” on “ing” words. BTW, good for you, Linda! You keep joggin’ and I’ll keep bloggin’!

Another reader said, “Shoes go and come every couple of years in the world of high fashion and they are a seemingly permanent fixture in catalogs from department stores ranging…” I get a few of these – comments that are totally out of context and are, I’m afraid, people who don’t even read my posts but just want to lure me to their sites, or worse, to spam me. I’ve got to tell you, I’m bruised and swollen from all the spamming I get. Like this comment from CLERGYWERWEDO (that’s his/her capitalization, not mine – I’ve got better things to capitalize): “Buy reductil online.” There is no way, in any shape or form, this could be a real response to anything I’ve ever written, so Mr. (or Ms.) CLERGYWERWEDO, take your reductil and shove it up your ASS!

I apologize for that. I know I’ve cursed and been crass in some of these posts, which is bad.

What did you say? I’ve also been very tacky? Well, yes, I guess on occasion I have.

What do you mean, “on occasion my ass – more like all the time?”

Hey! You want a piece of me? YOU WANT A PIECE OF ME????

Sorry, perhaps I’m getting a little too “fanciful” here. I have these conversations in my head all the time – where I have imaginary arguments with snotty people and I come off, in my head, as quite clever and winning the argument and they are left as a pile of smoking rubble or apologizing profusely and begging to be my BFF. This is what happened just now. I imagined that you, my wonderful readers, were criticizing me for being tacky, and I started fighting back and being the tough guy like on that Seinfeld re-run where Elaine gets in a verbal tiff with Mr. Castanza and he immediately escalates it to a physical fight by saying that “you want a piece of me?” line. Pretty funny stuff.

But I know your comments are sincere, and they give me warm and cozy encouragement that I very much appreciate, except for ALL OF YOU SPAMMERS ! I DO NOT NEED MY WEBSITE OPTIMIZED! I DO NOT NEED VIAGRA!

Oops, I got sidetracked on the “Art in the Pearl” topic. Good for me. Something to look forward to tomorrow.

First share with me the celebration of my 300th blog! Whoo-hoo! My goal was to write a post a day for one year, and I’m almost there. Break out the champagne!

This seems a good occasion to write about brain food. Why? Because without a brain I couldn’t think up 300 blogs, much less type them up. Granted, some people are able to do many, many things seemingly without a brain, but I’m not that gifted. Therefore I must take care of my brain.

Let us first start out by discussing what brain food is. According to some astrophysicist surgeon of some sort on OPB (Oregon Public Broadcasting), it’s “food that feeds the brain.”

One such food is walnuts. The scientific consensus among the major “brains” in the world for deciding that this is a brain food is that a walnut LOOKS like a brain. You look at any average walnut and the first thing that comes to your mind is, “that thing looks just like a brain.” This is why it’s the number one brain food in my book.

Another stellar brain food is the blueberry. Why? Because blood is blue, and you need blue blood to go up to the brain and check things out, see how all the memories are holding together and so forth, then go back to the heart and tell all the valves to keep pumping, and then back to the brain. Busy, busy busy.

The reason blood is blue is because it doesn’t have any oxygen or something – some doctor tried to explain it to me and I couldn’t get it. I think he was pulling my leg. Which he was. I had a sore ankle. He insisted that the blood is blue in the veins, which makes sense – go ahead, look at a vein – I’ll wait. See, it’s blue. The doc claimed that the blood turns red the second it comes in contact with oxygen, that’s why it always looks red when we get an annoying paper cut.

This is why blueberries are brain food – because they keep that blue blood blue as nature intended. This makes the brain happy.

Another brain food is coffee beans, in the form of espresso. You will notice that people who drink a lot of coffee or espresso are bouncing around, full of energy, and have to go to the bathroom frequently. Because of this, they get a lot of exercise. Exercise is very good for the brain. Nobody wants to be a “fat head.” Drinking caffeine helps prevent this condition. Actually, it’s not the caffeine that makes this a brain food, it’s the exercise. Or something like that – I didn’t finish reading because it got too technical with antioxidants and ribo-thing-a-ma-jigs, and I got bored.

There are many, many more foods that the brain likes – for instance broccoli. It likes flowers and broccoli is made up of flowerettes, or maybe that’s cauflower. Either way, the brain is a sensitive organ that likes to be surrounded by lovely things, such as flowers, and since the brain has no eyes, it can’t tell that broccoli is just a green nub on a stalk. The brain just likes the name.

I notice that I’ve used the words “brain flood” a million times already, so this is a good time to end our discussion of these wonderful, natural additions to our diets that can help that area above our eyeballs function better (I’m trying not to say those words anymore).

Now if you’ll excuse me, the bubbles are escaping from my champagne!

My dad was a character. He was a union electrician whose speech was salted with crude four letter words but a lot of funny sayings. I have to warn you that I’m going to be using some of those four letter words in the next few lines, so if you’re easily offended, better turn tail and run.

One of my favorites was the one my dad used to describe people he didn’t see eye to eye with: “You’re contrary as cat shit under a couch.”

Another one was, “It’s hotter than a half f____ed fox in a forest fire.” Now that’s hot!

He had a good saying for the cold, too: “Colder than a well-digger’s ass in the Klondike.” Brrrrr, that’s mighty cold.

I was a pretty destructive kid, and was known to tear up just about anything pretty quickly. One time I broke a toaster and, fearing repercussions, threw it over the neighbor’s hedge. It hit their dog on the head. Just kidding but it’s funny to picture that toaster falling on a dog – not that I’d want to hurt a poor innocent dog, but if you think of it like a cartoon, it’s pretty funny. After that incident my dad started saying, “You could tear up an anvil.”

If my dad though someone wasn’t playing with a full deck (a little crazy, that is), he’d say, “He’s a half a bubble off of plumb.” If the person was poor, he’d say, “He doesn’t have a pot to piss in.”

Which reminds me of another saying, “He ain’t got enough sense to pour piss out of a boot.” That’s pretty dumb if you think about it.

Another saying I loved was one my friend’s mom used to say: “He’s grinnin’ like a mule eatin’ briars.” This same mom said one of the funniest things I ever heard. When she’d wake my friend up for school, my friend, who I’ll call Murry, would do as she was told and get up, but she’d sit on the edge of the bed with her head hanging down and doze back off. Once her mom came in and said, “Murry, you’d better get up before your pus mats to the bed.”

Oh my gosh, when I heard that story I about wet my pants! What kind of mother says that to her daughter? The best kind, I say, because right now I’m tired from work and yet those words have me giggling, and giggling feels good. So thanks, ma, for that great memory.

I had a friend, Clark Reese, who used to say, “I’d rather be pissed off than pissed on.” Those are words of wisdom if I ever heard any.

I dated a guy named Steve Bingham and he had a saying I liked, “You’re a sweet little lassie with a cute little chassis.” Charming.

When my brother wore underwear with the elastic worn out around the legs, he said he was wearing Apache underwear: “Rides up behind you and wipes you out.”

There were some trashy kids a block over from my house who were pretty entertaining. One of them, Sharon, would say, “I’ll knock the soup out of you,” and “I’ll snatch you bald headed.”

Another saying I liked describes someone without much between the ears: “The lights are on but nobody’s home.”

Here’s some more:

I’m as nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs.

It’s darker than a bat in a cave.

He’s faster than greased lightning.

You made your bed now lay in it.

Speaking of bed (yawn), it’s time to get some shuteye. So I’m going to make like horse manure and hit the trail.

I can’t leave my dog in my Prius and lock it. I discovered this when I ran into the post office and a couple of minutes later I heard a car alarm going off. It didn’t stop and I was cursing the idiot driver when I went out to the parking lot and saw my car lights flashing.

When I called the dealer about it, he said to bring it in, but apparently the alarm system goes off when the car is locked and something moves inside. I guess there’s a good reason for that, but I can’t figure out what. Suppose you want to leave your teenage daughter in the car because she refused to be seen in the grocery store with you, but you wanted her to be safe. She’d have to sit like a sphinx until you came back. Unfortunately, the repairperson didn’t know how to fix it.

For those of you who are tisk-tisking me for leaving my dog in the car in the first place, let me assure you that I am putting her in no danger. I’ve left her in the car with the motor running, unlocked, and the air conditioner on, when I just dash in to get something somewhere. You can’t tell the car is on - it’s so quiet with that hybrid electric motor.

When I have to go into a store for a while, I take the dog in with me. I made this black bag that I put her in. It looks like a worn out, tacky handbag. That dog has gone into restaurants, amusement parks, movies, bars, and other places I can’t think of right now.

She loves it in there. If I put the bag on the floor, she tries to climb in it – even if we’re not going anywhere. It’s got a wood bottom with a cushy pad so she just lies down and enjoys getting toted around. When I go to the bathroom I hang her on the door hook so the top won’t fold down on her.

She’s a smart little pooch, so we taught her to be quiet in the bag by saying, “No barking.” However, there were some glitches. Once when we first started using it, we were on vacation and found a church on Sunday morning. She was quiet as a, ahem, church mouse until we went to communion. We left her in the pew, and when we were walking down the aisle on the way to the altar, we heard her whimpering. The kids started poking me (as if I hadn’t heard!), and giggling into their hands. The whining got louder. I guess she thought we’d left her. We got communion and raced back to the pew, petting the outside of the bag to calm her down. After that no one left her alone while she was in the bag.

As I type this I realize that you may be thinking, “What kind of nut carries a dog around with them in a bag?” Well, I’m that kind of nut – l’ll admit I’ve always been a little crazy. But if you could see how pitiful that dog looks when you’re getting ready to go out the door and she doesn’t get to go, you’d be bagging her too.

Today I noticed the bag is getting pretty ratty. She’s poked a couple of holes in it, and the sun has faded some of the fine black mesh. It’s trashy, but I haven’t found a replacement and with this much ventilation that looks like a handbag and doesn’t show the dog in it. It helps that it’s black and so is she.

One problem is that I can’t take a purse with me, because the bag is supposed to be my purse. So I have to pack a credit card in my pocket for purchases. It looks pretty stupid, but I haven’t been caught yet. Knock on wood.

I took a notion for a chocolate dipped ice cream cone tonight, so I went by the Dairy Queen. I told her I wanted just a little one. Last time I was there I think the clerk got distracted when she was filling the cone with soft ice cream. It came out looking like the leaning tower of Pisa. It was so tall, when I tried to take a bite the top of it hit the roof of my car.

When I ordered a little cone with not much ice cream, she didn’t understand. I could have explained to her that I really just wanted the chocolate shell around the ice cream, but it seemed more trouble than it was worth so I just repeated I only wanted a little cone.

“We have a child’s cone,” she said.

So I ordered that and when it got there, it was still too big. It was a normal adult sized, sensible cone. I forced myself to eat it all rather than litter up my car with sticky drippings.

Speaking of drippings, I love the way the ice cream melts under the chocolate shell and runs like little rivers out from underneath. On a hot day you’ll spend the whole time trying to dam up those flows with your tongue, turning the cone round and round to try and catch them all.

When I was a kid my brother talked the neighborhood kids into helping him distribute samples by offering to treat us to anything we wanted at Dairy Queen. He got a whole bunch of us together, which ended up being me, my friend Christine, and my friend Carol and her five brothers and sisters, plus his friend, Clark Reese. He got a job delivering answered an ad to deliver free samples of Palmolive liquid soap and a couple of other products. They had to be stuffed into a bag, so he got us in assembly lines, each person stuffing one item and passing the bag to the next person. It was pretty ingenious. We loaded up boxes of these things, and then he drove us around delivering them. I grabbed a handful of bags and ran up one side of the street, and my friend, Clark Reese, covered the other side.

When it was all done, all the helpers walked down to the Dairy Queen and got anything we wanted. Of course most of us ordered banana splits because those were luxury, deluxe, expensive treats that none of us ever got. I don’t know how much my brother made on the deal, but we were all pretty happy with our pay.

I wish I knew how they made those chocolate dipped cones, though. McDonald’s makes them too, and once I asked the person there for only a little ice cream. She said, “What?” as if to say, “Are you crazy? You gonna pay full price and not get a full cone?” I told her I just wanted the chocolate.

“Then I’ll give you your money’s worth,” she said. She dipped the cone several times until it had a real thick coating on it. It was so thick it stayed warm and was creamy and smooth in my mouth. What a feast. Nobody else has ever done it like that for me since.

Makes me think of that rhyme,

I scream

You scream

We all scream

For ice cream

‘Specially when they dip

Chocolate coating all over it.

Nothing scares me more than bees except the sound of a bee. Bees have a distinct sound like no other insect.

When I was a kid, I got into a yellow jacket’s nest – the jerks of the bee kingdom that can sting you over and over. Those things are viscous. Most bees sting you because you’re bothering them or whatever, but yellow jackets will attack you for no reason, just for their own entertainment. “Hey guys, watch me make this lady dance.”

When I hear one of those things I used to take off running. It didn’t matter what I’m doing. It was a conditioned response. I know what those bees are capable of, and I know they’re after me and they’re going to have their way with me.

For years I’ve pulled over my car and jumped out when a bee flew in the window. I’ve left my house and peered in the windows trying to see where the thing went. I’ve run into a closet and stayed in there for a long time until I think it’s safe to come out. Swatting at them seemed to make them mad. “Hey, bee-otch, you swinging at me? YOU SWINGING AT ME!!!!!! I don’t put up with that from nobody. You hear me, NOBODY.” And the bee starts diving in and out, trying to hit you in the back, then down by the legs where you can’t reach him. Meanwhile I’m running down the street with arms flailing like someone is peppering me with a b-b gun.

But I discovered a secret that I’m going to share with you now because it’s yellow jacket season and they are incredibly nasty during September. Here’s what you do. Grab a newspaper or some kind of weapon – something spread out. Pine boughs work great. Start hitting toward the bee until you make contact with him. I’m not talking about killing him, because I don’t like to kill stuff, but if you just make contact, he’ll fly away every time.

You see, these guys aren’t so tough when you stand up to them. Their strength lies in triggering your fear with their buzzing sound. Other insects fly around without making all that racket. Bees use it as a form of intimidation. The sound causes humans to freeze up in terror or run like hell. I know a lot of those car wrecks where the driver “lost control of the car” could be traced to a bee flying through the window. I’ve nearly wrecked a car that way on more than one occasion.

Trust me, you stand up to these guys and they’re going to tuck tail and run. But heaven help you if you start flailing around and don’t make contact, because the bee will circle around and attack you in the back. Make sure your weapon is wide enough so you can’t miss.

Of course if the whole family of bees attacks because you’ve stumbled onto their nest, you’re screwed. There are too many of them to swat at. Just run until your lungs give out and hope by then they’ve gotten bored of stinging you over and over.

Oh I have to recommend a movie I’m watching as I write. It’s called “Get Shorty.” This is a movie I’ve watched several times and never get tired of seeing. John Travolta and Rene Russo. Great movie. And no bees!

I have a GPS system in my car, which stands for Go Past Streets, at least in my case. It’s very complicated. The little arrow isn’t pointing the right way. If I come to an intersection and, if the blue line indicating the route I should take is off to the right, I turn right. Then I see that the arrow is heading away from the blue line.

This is pretty confusing, and I spend a lot of time making U-turns. I didn’t understand it until today when I was giving someone a ride and he started showing me the features. “The arrow is the direction you’re going right now. See, it’s pointing north.”

“But it feels like I’m going south.”

“Nope, that’s north. See the airport in that green area?”

“Oooooh, I get it. So if it’s pointing north, and the blue line is turning east, then I have to make a left,” I said.

“Well, no you’d be going west then.”

“Oh, so which way is east?”

“It’s where the “3” would be on the clock if your GPS was a clock.”

“Oooooo, I can remember that. I’ll call it “threast!” I was excited after all these months that I could finally understand at least that part of the GPS.

When I first got the car, there was a lady in the dashboard who told me where to go all the time. “Turn right in 500 feet.” She jabbered constantly. I felt like I had a 7-year-old girl in there. “Whatcha doin? Do you want to watch me? Watch me do this? You aren’t watching. Watch me now.” She’d interrupt my favorite songs to tell me stuff even when I didn’t program in a destination. “Go home now?” and “You’re gas is getting low.” It was annoying but I was okay with it until she started getting personal. “Are you wearing THAT today?” and “You need to pluck that wild chin hair.” She took her job a little too seriously.

I had to go with my brother yesterday to drop off his car at a mechanic in Vancouver, a few miles away and neither of us knew how to get there. I told him I’d lead because I had the GPS. We got on the freeway and I guess I got a little ahead in all the traffic, so I was trying to watch my rearview mirror and watch for the exit, too. My GPS showed I was supposed to exit, but there were two ramps, and just as the one I was supposed to take appeared on the screen, the phone rang. To my dismay, the phone screen came on and the map disappeared. Which one should I take?”

It was my brother. “Where are you?” he said.

“I just exited, but I’m on a ramp and I don’t know whether to go right or left because I can’t see the map while I’m on the phone.”

“Oh,” he said. “Then I’ll hang up and call you back.”

I watched the screen anxiously but it stayed on the phone. I guess it wanted to make sure I knew how long I’d talked, to whom I was speaking, and – absolutely essential information – that I had disconnected the call. This last was so important that the disconnect screen stayed up way beyond the disconnect. I’m sure glad that pesky GPS didn’t rush back and interrupt my message that I had disconnected from my brother. This was information I NEEDED to know.

As usual I made the wrong choice because the blue line started twisting around like a pretzel. I had to make another U-turn. I could see that I would have to turn right soon because a little side-screen came up to alert me it was coming, but before I could see what street I was supposed to turn on and how far it would be, the phone rang again.

“Where are you?” my brother asked.

“I was about to find out just when you called.”

When he hung up, I made another u-turn and we both finally made it to the mechanic’s shop, though I don’t know how. I wish whoever made these things would know that I don’t need to have a screen showing the whole time I’m using my Bluetooth phone. Believe it or not, I know I knew who I was talking to – I didn’t need to read it on the screen during the whole conversation. Other than that, I love my GPS – even though it does make me Go Past Streets all the time.

I had to give my dog a bath today. I say the word, “bath” and she tucks her tail and heads for the farthest away place in the house. I

Today she walked ahead of me all the way to the laundry room, tail tucked, head hung low, resigned to her fate, buying time with the little parade through the house.

I know why dogs hate baths. They know they’re going to smell good afterwards and this is offensive to them. They want to live up to the name, “foul beast.” They do not want to smell like a French house of ill repute.

The first chance my dog gets after a bath, she finds something extremely stinky to roll in. She digs in deep, feet straight in the air, thrashing from side to side as if she trying to make the smell go further than skin deep. When she gets done, she jumps up and shakes, completely satisfied that she again smells like a dog.

After the bath she runs through the house and rubs her nose and side against all the furniture like some cat on speed. She’ll bend her head down and plow her face along the carpet, switching sides. She’ll get wild and want to snap at our heels or throw a ball in the air. It’s all quite entertaining, although I feel so sorry for her during the bath.

Since she’s so small, I can wash her in a deep sink I have. All wet she looks like a black ferret with long legs. Dogs have a way of looking pitiful anyway, but she looks up at you with those dark brown eyes with the little white sliver moons and it breaks your heart. “Why are you doing this to me, momma? What did I do wrong? Didn’t you tell me I was the best dog in the world? Is this the thanks I get for always greeting you excitedly, even when you’ve just gone to the bathroom?”

Oh, I have a pitiful story to tell about this dog. She’s pretty smart so we have to spell things around her. After awhile she understands the spelled words, too. There are commands I use to tell her what to do, but also to explain what’s going on. She’s pretty good at picking up tricks, too. One thing I’ve been teaching her lately is to, “stay.” She sits for a little but will usually get up and follow me around the corner as soon as I go out of sight.

I have started working full-time (which I hope doesn’t rob me of my sense of humor), and I’ve been taking her to the office with me. She loves it. People coochie-coo her all day and give her scratches, and she can’t wait to go in the morning. Yesterday I had a commitment in the morning, so I didn’t go in the office. She had been following me around all through the house, worried I’d forget to take her with me, and I finally said to her in the living room, “I’m sorry, honey, but you’re going to have to stay here this morning.” She immediately sat down, all pitiful like, because that’s how I tell her she’s not going to get to go somewhere and she understands. Brilliant dog, that one. She quit following at my heels, and I told her I was sorry and rushed off to get dressed. I got my hair dried and came back into the living room about five minutes later and saw the poor thing still sitting there, as if to say, “See, momma, I’ll be good. I did exactly what you told me to do. Please take me with you.” She’d heard that one word in there, “stay” and was being obedient.

Now you’re probably thinking that I need to see a shrink about talking to my dog, and you’re right. But she understands what I’m saying. Furthermore, she doesn’t argue, talk back, put me down, complain, or ask me for money or my car keys. There’s no one else in the house that does that.

Now I have a nice, clean, sweet-smelling dog curled up at my feet, and life is good - as long as she doesn’t start passing gas. Ugh! Her SBD’s live up to their name. Ghastly! (get it, “gas” tley). Humph – my dog thinks it’s funny – she just told me so.