Archive for the ‘Off Topic (Could Be Anything)’ Category
I was so amused at the comments about big 1980s big hair on my story about the abundant flower border…
that I thought I would treat you to a laugh in lieu of flower photos today.
In 1983, I somehow got the notion that a big mop of curly hair would be attractive on me. It took a vast quantity of chemicals to make my fine, straight hair do this:
I look like my hair is on fire. As I recall, it took me nearly an hour to get ready in the morning, what with all the products and blow drying and all. And my biggest fear was wind. My afro did not do well in wind.
Still, I suppose it is better than when I was 11 years old:
This may come as a surprise to you, but I was not the most popular girl in my class.
That’s my baby brother Dale on the left. He’s a big boy now. My mom had her own fashion issues, what with the fake hair and polyester dress. My dad looked fetching in his shiny double breasted suit, pink shirt and yellow tie though, don’t you think? That’s my brother Chris in the back on the right. He’s a nice guy, but has fashion issues of his own. And we all have that crazy-eyed stare. What was that about?
So what about you? I have bared all. Where are your ’80s big hair photos? Let me know if you post so I can share them with the world. I give you until July 15–if you dare.
Robin
My gift of a straight jacket for my crazy brother may not be as gross as his poo gifts, but I think it’s appropriate. He has a high stress computer job and also tends to be a bit, well, eccentric, if not outright crazy sometimes. What better gift than a straight jacket?
My card suggested this new straight jacket would be great for the days when he needs a jacket at work.
By the way, that’s his handsome son, Blake, in the background. He has another (a twin) named Hunter. (Actually, that looks like Hunter to me now. Pick one.)
I hope you had a great holiday. I have been at the Isle of Palms off the coast of Charleston, South Carolina. We were blessed with unseasonably warm weather, so I walked on the beach about two hours each day.
I ‘ve been working on New Year goals. I am not one of those who poopoos the idea of goal setting (like my poopoo brother). In fact I find this such an invigorating time of year. I’ll be sharing my goal setting strategy shortly. Whoohoo!
Robin
Since I believe my brother Dale has a poo fetish, I should have seen it coming.
I posted a while back about the crazy Christmas gifts my little brother, Dale, and I exchange. Each year we take an extraordinary amount of time scheming thinking of the most iinsulting considerate and gross thoughtful gifts we can present to each other.
Well, with the oncoming rush of relatives, ourl little family of three had our own private Christmas dinner a gift exchange this past weekend. Of course, I opened my bro’s gift with considerable dread anticipation.
As I said, I should have seen it coming. I mean, in the past Dale has sent me such things as links to some blog where a fellow was posting a daily photo of, yes, his, well, poo and photos of luxury toilets. And just this past Thanksgiving he happily gave me the “Monthly Poo” calendar–a beautifully produced calendar of dog poo in various stages of decomposition and posed in beautiful, scenic locations.
Well, as you can probably guess by now, this year’s gift had a poo theme. Here were the gifts, all beautifully packaged.
First, there was the reindeer pooper.
This was actually sorta cute. The little reindeer dispenses tan and brown jellybeans. I will be sure to use it next time the garden club ladies come calling.
There was also a can of Poop Freeze. This actually seems to have a practical purpose. Apparently you just “frost and toss.” The spray freezes the offending poop to -62 degrees F. The can label is very encouraging: “Poop Happens–Just Freeze It!” and “Because It’s Your Dootie!”
I particularly liked the Nope, It’s Soap poo soap. It would be too too predicable to use it when Dale and his lovely wife come to visit. I’ll have to store this for just the right occasion–like when the garden club ladies come calling.
There was also the highly educational book, What’s Your Poo Telling You? I won’t go into all the details because I don’t want to ruin it for you when you go out to get your very own copy. But I will tell you the names of some of the chapter titles: “Floaters vs. Sinkers,” “Number Three,” “Soft Serve,” “Pebble Poo” and, my favorite, “The-Honeymoon’s-Over Poo.”
Finally, he found this lovely letter writing paper made from recycled elephant poo. Well, you just know what I’m using to write the thank you note for THIS gift, right? The garden club ladies!!!
I like to think that my gift to Dale was a bit more intellectual. Sadly, I can’t share WHAT that is right now because I don’t want to let the cat out of the bag, so to speak. But I am hoping that my sister-in-law will be sure and take a nice picture of Dale with the gift.
I’ll be sure to share.
Happy holidays!
–Robin (Bumblebee)
P.S.
I have a brand new Bumblebee Blog design that I’ll be launching sometime in January (fingers crossed). In the meanime, this is a temporary new design that I couldn’t resist. It’s a new template from SquareSpace. Do you like it?
Robin
I want to start by assuring you that I was talking about gardening and, more specifically, about the importance of mowing the lawn correctly.
See, it was Sunday night dinner following the Packers-Redskins game. Captain, my brother-in-law, who is currently pulling duty at the Pentagon in some PowerPoint intensive job, traveled out here to the country to help Harry and Ben shout at the television. While they watched football, I did the following:
1) Made homemade pretzels for their halftime snack
2) Chopped herbs and mixed it into my homemade Neufchatel cheese, packaged it and put it into the frig so they could have cheese and crackers later
3) Washed, folded and put away approximately 50 loads of laundry
4) Mowed the lawn
5) Hand watered the drought-starved plants, including toting buckets of water to the far reaches of the lawn
6) Started dinner, which, to be fair, Harry finished. He can now make spanakopita. (Smart man!)
Well, Captain, being Captain, started giving a hard time to Harry and Ben about the fact that I was the one who was doing all the heavy lifting associated with the lawn.
Their response?
“Pheethhhhhhttt. She wouldn’t have it any other way.”
Although I appreciate, nay ENCOURAGE, anyone to be on my side in nudging anyone (anyone, please!) to pitch in around this labor-intensive household, I had to admit that they were right on this one.
I do not like for my husband and son to mow the lawn. In fact, I had been trying to figure out how to give my lawn that nice checkerboard pattern, but from my research it involves some sort of press device, which is too far to go even for me.
“Precision is important in lawn mowing,” I explained. “I like all the lines the mower makes to be straight and even. When Harry or Ben mow the lawn, there are always crooked lines and bits and pieces that are missed. It ends up looking like a $2 Navy haircut.”
Well, that was Captain needed.
“OHHHHHHH. That’s the worst!!!!” exclaimed Captain with great feeling.
Turns out he was talking about cheap haircuts, not sloppy lawn mowing.
“I can’t believe how hard it is to get a good haircut. And don’t even GET me started about coloring!” he went on.
Well, I knew that Captain was a devotee of all things related to hair since he started showing up at Christmas holidays with blond highlights. OBVIOUS blond highlights. This provided no end of amusement among me and the other sisters-in-law (of which there are many) because at nearly 6’7 and 265 pounds, there is nothing at all girly about Captain.
“I like to be a little different and go for the blond surfer look—that Coco Beach look. But it’s really hard to get it right at these salons with their foils and their caps. I have been brunette, blond with highlights, even RED. RED!!!! I had to call in sick when that happened until I could get it fixed.”
He went on…
“In the military, all these guys like to go for that high and tight look,” he said mocking the military bearing and stiff posture you see of Army generals in the newspaper. “But that’s what gets you promoted.
“That’s why when I was up for promotion for this Pentagon job I got a ‘high and tight’ cut and had my portrait re-touched to give me some grey hair at the temples.”
Well, of course, I was roaring with laughter. And Captain, always loving an audience, played up the hand gestures and stories.
Harry piped in with the importance of regular pedicures, which, of course, Captain also had opinions about.
Later, as he was getting ready to leave Ben asked about the bag that Captain had carried in with him. I thought perhaps he had planned to stay the night or had something inside he wanted to show us.
Well, no. Turns out it’s his “man bag.”
“But I’m no metero-sexual,” he said, meaning, of course, metrosexual.
He can’t bring himself to carry a leather satchel, so he carries this “man bag.”
Good grief. Man hair. Pedicures. Man bags.
Here I am worrying about straight lines on a lawn when there are such many more weighty subjects to worry about!
Tomorrow on Bumblebee…
More on the slowing down lifestyle.
Amused and Dismayed,
Robin
Before I fall off the wagon and eat a whole coconut cream pie, I suppose I’ll explain why I am on a detox diet following my trip to Las Vegas.
Newsflash: Las Vegas is an astonishingly unhealthy place. In fact, if you truly hate yourself, just pack up your bags and move there right now, get a job in a casino and live in one of the teeny tiny concrete apartments on the edge of the desert where you can enjoy the sounds of cars whizzing by at all hours.
But I digress…
I truly enjoyed Angela’s company while in Vegas. She is one of those gals with a sunny, bright disposition who peppers her conversations with chuckles and laughs. She seems to find almost everything amusing. She’s also up for trying most anything in the way of fun or adventure. Here’s Angela:
The thing about Angela is that she prefers not to spend a lot of time or money in Vegas on silly things like food. She prefers to play poker while in Vegas. So with the exception of a proper sit-down dinner following our outing to Zumanity, my diet consisted mostly of coffee, sandwiches, croissants and, in my misguided bid for at least something approaching a healthy meal, a bizarre kind of boiled fish concoction with overly-steamed vegetables. THAT’S a meal that was donated right to the trash bin.
So, add to this culinary nightmare the bad casino air, light deprivation and noise pollution and you’re starting to get the picture of what I mean by unhealthy.
Sure, we got out and walked one morning. I wanted exercise and Angela, being the adventurer that she is, turned it into a walk with a purpose–hiking on foot from the Venetian to the Sahara where she recalled seeing an attraction where you could drive a Humvee over some obstacle course. Nevertheless, we did walk.
Still, I was feeling very out of sorts. I missed my garden. I missed the quiet. I missed my family and little dogs. I missed the fresh air. And I REALLY missed exercise. To walk in Vegas is to hike along the strip, which is like doing exercise in a gas chamber.
Then, here was the clincher.
I ran into Lady Diana. No, I’m not delusional. I’m talking about her wax image at Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum. (Thrifty Angela finagled us free tickets.)
See, although I wasn’t an official royalty watcher, I was always interested what Diana was wearing because we were always the same height and weight.
“Wow, she looks good,” I would tell myself, figuring that if she looked that good, I probably did too. Okay, it was perhaps some faulty logic, but there you have it.
Well, I hate to say it, but when I stood next to Diana, I had the startling realization that I could probably, maybe, perhaps not fit into that size 6 blue sequined gown she was wearing. Crap. When did that happen?
Well, so there you have it. Bad air. Bad food. No exercise. And then to realize I can’t wear the size 6 blue sequined gown. Not that I want to wear blue sequined gowns in the garden anyway, but I might want to dress up when I water the indoor plants or something–you know, just for a change of pace and to brighten my mood.
So, here we are at the Las Vegas Detox Diet. I invented it myself. (Okay, it’s mostly common sense.) It consists of:
- Drink a glass of water every single hour you’re awake, starting when you get up in the morning. Fizzy water doesn’t count because it usually has sodium, which defeats the purpose. I have found also that drinking this glass of water every hour reduces the hunger pangs.
- Eat ONLY fresh vegetables, fruits and small amounts of cheese and nuts. Avoid breads, pastas and other starchy foods.
- Avoid alcohol and large slabs of chocolate.
- Take a mega-vitamin.
- Drink green tea in the afternoon and evening (in addition to the water).
- Avoid snacks between meals.
- In addition, run (or walk if you have to) a full hour each day.
Now, I absolutely LOVE to run and really do try. It’s just that I-can’t-breathe-and-my-heart-is-going-to-pop feeling that I don’t really like. So I alternate running and walking. Walk north up the driveway. Run south down the driveway. Walk north up the driveway. Run south down the driveway. Do that twelve times and an hour is gone. It’s an important part of the Las Vegas Detox Diet, so don’t skip this part.
Don’t worry. This won’t become a blog about my quest to get into that size 6 blue sequined gown. But I might consider a series of gardening exercises–stretch while you weed, flower pot weight lifting, aerobic tilling–that kind of thing.
Ciao!
Robin
By now you might be thinking that I have a budding Elvis obsession because of the multiple entries and photos about Elvis and Graceland.
Well, that’s just not so. Can I help it if I had to visit Memphis on business and ended up with some free tim on my hands? And what am I supposed to do if I keep getting these photo ops with The King? I mean, he’s ALL OVER Vegas.
(
By the way, my friend Angela tells me that there now book about Elvis being a vampire, which would explain all of the Elvis sightings over the years. He’ll never die, but for a different reason than the rock ‘n roll historians would have us believe.)
I have some wacky stories about Vegas that I plan to tell soon. Here are teasers about some of them:
- Who I sat next to on the plane and the unbelievable stories he told
- A widely-published slots strategy that does not work–at least for me
- Outrageous things I saw and overheard while eavesdropping (and why I have no shame)
- Why I am now on a detox diet (and it’s not because I drank too much). Hint: It has something to do with Princess Diana.
Tune in again for these and other thrilling adventures!
Oh, and about the garden–I’ll get out there this afternoon too. I have some moon flowers I want to show you.
Robin
I will get back to gardening and blogging soon. In the meantime, you can see that I have been busy here in Vegas with my crazy friend Angela.
We haven’t gotten arrested or drunk. Nor have we lost a lot of money. Beyond that, I believe that’s as much as I’ll say. After all, you know what they say, “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas!”
I will be happy to be home tomorrow to my family, little dogs, flowers and vegetables. I am desperate to cook and eat something healthy and to bask in the quiet of the country life.
Robin
I long for the simple life.
I greet the morning slowly and in quiet. I take my first deep breaths as I stretch into a forward bend and into a downward dog. The day unfolds before me as a calm and pleasant series of purposeful and fulfilling tasks. I move through my day at an unhurried pace, taking time to breathe deeply and to enjoy the nature around me. The people I encounter are pleasant and positive. I have a simple and organized environment to accomplish my life’s work. I am unfettered by an overabundance of possessions that need to be cared for and guarded. I pursue interesting and meaningful hobbies.
“Gee whiz. Where the heck did this come from?” I can hear you saying.
Despite the fact that it’s a long holiday weekend, I’ve been working at my desk the whole dang time to make up for the fact that I have spent most of the past month traveling.
This much I know is true: There is absolutely nothing simple about traveling for a whole month.
Here’s just a sampling of what happens when you aren’t at home to take care of your complicated life:
-
The weeds that have been lurking for just the right opportunity, leap at the chance to seize control of the garden kingdom.
-
Little dogs become just a wee bit high strung and barky from lack of continuity and routine.
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Items in kitchen cabinets no longer reside in their original resting places. None of them.
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Refrigerators devolve into a disorganized and occasionally rotting, fetid unrecognizable lump.
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Garden blogs languish from lack of attention.
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Desks are heaped with mail—most of it junk, but some of which requires immediate attention. If you could just find it.
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Lists of un-done errands extend to more than one page of notepaper and require a staff to accomplish.
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Work piles up so that (obviously) you have to work over a holiday weekend to try and dig out of the hole.
Oh, I recently had quite a lot of time to think about the simple life before being slapped in the face with all the above. Sitting on a plane from California to Maryland with only a book I didn’t even like and a seat mate that I liked even less meant I spent a lot of time with my eyes closed, mulling over my sorry situation.
That’s how I pinged pack to the whole simple life concept.
(See how all this just flows nicely together here?)
Now, just to be crystal clear, I’m not talking about Simple Life as in that insipid magazine (which I refuse to link to). I’ll admit that I have picked this particular magazine up from time to time. I have occasionally even PAID for it, after which I felt like I had been fleeced for my four bucks or so.
Really, I don’t need a magazine to tell me which is simply the BEST deodorant or to compare the BEST winter gloves. Deodorant and warm gloves will not make my life more simple or peaceful. The editors of this magazine seem to think that their readers are simple minded. They must be yukking it up in the halls of their fancy editorial offices at how they can MAKE MONEY with a magazine that is high on graphics and low on content. They must really find it funny that they get to tell women how to make the very best omelets ever and which toothpaste to buy.
Wowee. I seem to have a pretty good rant going here. Sorry about that.
So, you ask, if Simple Living (the aforementioned insipid magazine) isn’t really about simple and you’ve had all this quality time in planes, trains and automobiles to contemplate, ruminate and cogitate on the weighty subject of simplicity, just what the heck have you concluded?
I’ll start by telling you what I think it’s NOT. Simple living is NOT about deprivation or frugality. In my mind, at least, it’s not about squeezing every penny until it screams by rinsing and re-using plastic bags or sewing bias tape to the legs of your kids’ jeans to extend the length because the poor kid sprouted over the summer. Simple living is not about only taking vacations that offer the benefit of a friends’ couch or a relative’s basement guest room. Simple living is not about only shopping at those wretched, big box warehouses that require you buy in bulk for a small army and stock up until Doomsday. Simple living is not about unplugging or disconnecting. No Idaho log cabins for this gal.
More rant going, I guess.
So if that’s what simple living is not, then what does Robin consider Simple Living?
I’ll tell you. Thanks very much for asking.
Here are Robin’s 9 Tenets for the Simple Life.
1. The simple life is having time for the things that matter and that you find enjoyable. It means taking the time for celebrations, not just of birthdays and weddings, but of the first flower in spring or a new drivers license.
2. The simple life is having what you need—when you need it. That also means having enough money to give to causes that you support or to nieces living in poverty. It means planning enough in advance so that you don’t have to complicate your life with last minute rushes to the store for something forgotten.
3. The simple life is not being a slave to an overabundance of possessions that require care and maintenance. I believe that it was Charles Rennie Macintosh who said that you should strive to have only things that were useful or beautiful or both surrounding you. It means loving what you have, not necessarily having what you love.
4. The simple life means your possessions and your time are organized. What is the old adage? “Everything has a place. Every thing in its place.” Organization—or time and things—reduces the need for frenzy and rush.
5. The simple life is being able to say “no” to a job or responsibility. It means sticking to the “no assholes” rule—or at least making sure your adequately compensated for the aggravation.
6. The simple life is maximizing your health and fitness so that you’re able to meet each day with energy and joy.
7. The simple life is feeling at peace with the people in your life. It means minimizing time with negative people or “friends” who display little care about you and more care about what you can do for them.
8. The simple life is having a support system for help when you need it. It also means that the people you share your life with do their part to take care of themselves.
9. The simple life is having the freedom to explore and travel—even if it’s only in your mind, online or at the local library. It’s the time you have to engage in the hobbies and interests that the harried masses don’t have. It’s that part of simple living that makes you a really interesting person.
There really should be 10 Tenets, don’t you think? I wonder what I am missing? What are the overarching rules that contribute to simplicity in your life?
(Please don’t send me hate mail because I don’t like that silly magazine.)
–Robin (Peaceful Bumblebee)
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Robin
The whole day started off alright. The sun was shining. The hunting was good. The little dogs were the usual annoyance, but under control nevertheless.
Miss P had just come in to cleanse her palate with a little bit of Deli Cat and was headed back outside for a sun bath.
But then…
Suddenly she realized that she wasn’t being allowed to go back outside. She sat by the door waiting for me to read her mind. Then she stepped up the campaign with some meowing. She knew something was wrong. Miss P is used to having a voice-actuated human and suddenly I was not responding to commands.
It was starting to look bad. She decided it was best to head to the basement for little siesta until things blew over.
That’s when the trouble really started–when she saw me heading for the cat carrier.
“Oh, crap,” I could see her thinking.
Only…the door kept falling off when I picked it up.
Okay, that’s bad. I didn’t want to carry a crazed cat in the car for 30 minutes to the vet. I could just see her bouncing around from side to side trying to escape. Neither of us would arrive alive. So I had to resort to the prissy dog carrier with the Velcro closure. Oh, that was a good idea. Did you know that cats can easily escape from carriers with Velcro closures?
At least I had Ben to drive for me. So he drove while I rode shotgun and kept poking Miss P’s paws back into the carrier whenever they would snake out from the little cracks around the warped Velcro closure. It took constant vigilance to make sure she didn’t make a break for it and cause an accident.
And I never really thought much before about the full range of meows in her repertoire. There’s the standard “meow.” Then there’s the more emphatic “MEOW.” There’s the very sad and somewhat desperate “Whooooeow.” Then there’s the angry “EEEOOOOWWW!” We had the full concert.
As much as she did not want to go into the carrier, when we got to the vet she didn’t want to come OUT of the carrier. Suddenly that carrier looked like a pretty fine place to be.
We pried her out and the veterinarian did a nice, thorough annual wellness exam. Happily, Miss P didn’t seem to mind much the three shots.
Then Evil Bumblebee showed up and asked the doc if he could knock Miss P out, give her a bath and brush her hair.
See, Miss P has lived with us for 8 years. She is not at all prissy and I rarely see her grooming. She is a VERY DIRTY cat. We call her the Pigpen of the cat world.
During those 8 years I have given her ONE bath. You would have thought I was killing her–and she was NOT going down without a fight. Given her extreme and aggressive response I guess we were both lucky to come out of it alive. But I learned one important lesson: Don’t give the cat a bath. She doesn’t even want to be brushed.
Eight years is a long time to wander through the woods, kill things, take dirt baths and NEVER bother to attend to your own personal hygiene. Oh, she may take the occasional token swipe at her chops, but that’s the extent of this cat’s grooming. As a result, things were looking a bit grungy wherever she decided to take a rest. Her white pillow in the basement has a black spot in the middle. The guest room bed has a dirty grey spot where she camps out. I can even tell where she’s been hanging out on the outdoor furniture cushions. She leave trails of ick wherever she goes.
We’ve been pretty tolerant of her general untidiness, but it had gone too far. Desperate times call for desperate measures.
So, I hired the paid mercenary vet to do the dirty work and Miss P got her bath. At least he could knock her out, where I had to do battle without the benefit of drugs (for either of us). She had to spend the whole day at the vet hospital during which time they did bloodwork, knocked her out and then bathed her, brushed her and cleaned her ears all while she was asleep.
When she got home, she was still woozy and staggering around a bit. But today, she’s like a new kitty. She looks about three pounds lighter. She wants me to hold her all the time, which I no longer mind doing because she’s not disgusting anymore. She actually seems quite happy with herself.
But perhaps that’s just my projecting my pleasure at her finally being clean onto her. Or maybe it’s because she’s just pleased that she gets to start fresh at getting dirty all over again by wandering through the woods, killing things and taking dirt baths.
P.S.
Yes, I know Deli Cat is feline junk food. It is all that Miss P will eat. On the occasions when I have tried to give her a better, more nutritious food she spends DAYS standing at the food bowl yelling at me and generally making life miserable for everyone. I have given up since the Deli Cat is just a small part of her overall diet, which consists mostly of critters. (Eeeww.)
Robin
My mom wrote recently to tell me that she and her two sisters were getting together and would be spending the day painting on the back porch. No, they weren’t painting the back porch, they were painting ON the back porch.
All three are pretty clever and handy with a paintbrush. Sadly, I am missing the clever-artist gene as well as my dad’s handy-fix-and-build-things gene. My brother, Dale, got both. My brother, Chris, got the handy-fix-and-build-things gene. I’m not sure what I was left with, aside from my grandfather’s garden gene. I hope not the cancer and heart problems genes.
She sent photos, which I thought I would share.
Some of her paintings are naturalistic landscapes. Some are just fun, like kissing fishes and such.
I remember when I was growing up that my mom could draw ANYTHING. It seemed to me an amazing talent that someone could actually draw a picture of a person and it would look like…well…a person!
To this day, my drawings are more stick figure than realistic. Sad, really.
Good day today. Harry, Ben and I met my new friend, Vennie, who is from Seattle, for lunch in Annapolis. It was nice to be out and about with three handsome and intelligent men.
–Bumblebee (Robin)
Robin
