Stinky Senior

Ok, so I really like my 4 cats. I had a huge mental block regarding writing about them, cause poetry about cats seems one step away from wearing clothes featuring cats or starting a cat figurine collection. That's somewhere I don't intend to go. I did NOT intend to write the following poem, circumstances were beyond my control:

Old Lady Munchy

Munch has farted
Just a little
“pfft” noise as she
stood up from the futon
we share.

She runs her head
into me
wanting my love
as her stink,
a mix of rotten bacon and athlete’s foot,
envelopes the room

This morning I found
another spot of vomit
little chunks of
Science Diet, Sensitive Stomach brand
cat food, floating
like little islands,
in a pond of green bile.

I clean up her mess
and she comes over
to apologize
I pet her crown
trying to take her
pain into me.

I wish for a cure
some pussycat pepto
to make her feel
better
an elixir
to make her
young again.

My Munchy, who
meows like an enraged Bette Davis.

Who always sounds
like she is yelling for
more scotch and
a fresh pack of camel lights

Munchy, who sat
quiet, under my feet
in the cab of my GMC Sonoma
on our cold, November
journey from Chicago
to Hollywood, while
her sister rang choruses of
“Let Me OWT!!” to the plains,
mountains, deserts and ocean.

My Munchy who has
warmed chairs for me,
tripped me on
my midnight trips to
the toilet &
has
listened to me cry
curling up on my belly to
soothe me, leaving
half her soft coat to remind
me to be ok.

The ER Vet told us,
last March 23rd at 1:30 a.m.,
nothing was specifically wrong
“cats this age just
tend to have problems”
sometimes fatal
in Munchy’s case
“sometimes just painful”
Then the vet relieved us of $500.

My Old Lady Munchy is now -
IBS, special food and funny noises
followed by
not so funny smells.

My Munchy
is only gonna get
more expensive
from now on.

But I’ll be as
patient with her,
as she has been with me.

Dreamin

I had a dream last night that I was in my Grandma Henry's house. It was present day and my niece, Jennifer, had moved into the property and turned it into an amazing house. It was painted a beautiful light blue and, she explained to me as she stood curling her hair in the modern bathroom, she had incorporated a lot of the stuff Grandma had left behind into her modern designs.

My sister, Janet, found a collection of 3" Virgin Mary red resin statues, that my niece was using as decoration, at each place setting on the dining room table. Janet said "Don't you remember that Grandma used to make us hold these statues between our knees and say 3 Hail Mary's before we could eat dinner? It was to keep us from having pre-marital sex"

"Oh yeah." I said, "I had forgotten how Irish and religious she was."

Then I woke up and slowly came back to present day. In the fugue between dream and reality, I thought, 'I need to write about how Irish and Catholic Grandma was' but the clearer my mind became, the more I realized, my Grandma Henry was neither Irish nor Catholic. She died 29 years ago, at the too young age of 58, when I was just 8 years old. The house she lived in was tiny, maybe 700 sq ft and has long since been the property of some other family.

I am trying to analyze this dream. It is the first time I've travelled to Grandma Henry's house in my dreams. I have a recurring dream about being in my Grandma Berg's house right after she died, but curiously enough, I've never gone to the Henry abode until last night. I've come up with the following theory: I'm writing about my Dad and his life, but I've only been able to write some fiction(ish) stories about his mother. I am finding ways around that block, but in the meantime felt I should at least write in the ballpark of his life. In my mind, I believe I might be taking liberties with his Mother's life and exaggerating the story a little. My mind decided to deal with it by taking the fiction farther than I could or would.

It was a fun dream, I got to see my niece and my sister, who I won't get the opportunity to see this Christmas. It also got me thinking about my Grandma, who should be thought of, remembered and even glamorized a little, under the right circumstance. :)

Secret Santa

I'm starting an E-Commerce business in my home. It's fun and exciting and I'm learning lots about business and drop shipping and oh, just all kinds of online stuff. It's my business and I basically work by myself all day. It's cool, I've got IM and my cell to keep me connected to the outside world.

Today, I realized that this is the first year I don't have to buy any presents for my co-workers. So, I decided that perhaps I should organize a Secret Santa gift exchange with the 4 beings who share my office space. I've put our names in a shoe and luckily I've chosen KoE. I know exactly what she needs: another mousey toy.

I'm fairly sure Munchy got my name, I didn't look at the paper she ate after she swatted it out of the shoe with her paw, but she's been hanging pretty close to me, watching everything I do. I think she's trying to get a sense of what I might want. I'm hoping for an Om necklace, but I'm pretty sure I'll probably get some shedded fur left on my chair, (if I'm lucky.) I just hope she doesn't get me the same thing she's been giving me every week for the past couple of years, a puddle of fur-ball cat yack, in the middle of the living room floor. That is soo last year.

I need to get some cheer.

All I can write about is Christmas right now, and I'm a little blue. As evidenced by the piece I wrote yesterday.

Their small house was filled to the rafters with a cold quiet. All of the children and grandchildren had gone home, too early for her taste. The only left-over sound was the dry rustle of the dying flames, licking the last stick of wood, in the pot-bellied stove. Occasionally, a sonorous, pig-snort from her old, fat husband would punctuate the silence. He lie, passed out, in his forest green velour upholstered recliner, near the fire.

Even though she stood in the kitchen door, 10 feet from where the man slept, the smell of Jameson whiskey traveled on his exhale, warning her not to wake him. His scent overpowered the lingering smell of fresh-baked Christmas cookies and the cedar smoke drifting from the embers.

She tugged her red Christmas vest tight around her breasts and reached up to itch the spot on her neck where the grey, woolen turtleneck had worried a rash on her flesh. The hair she had curled so neatly close to her scalp felt tight, as if she could feel it graying as she stood waiting for her youth to come back.

Slowly she stood, pushing off of the doorframe she’d been leaning against and began to clean up the chaos that only grandchildren on Christmas Eve can create. The scraps of wrapping paper lay crumpled on the floor. Spots of smiling elves and laughing angels, flying against a red backdrop, made a noisy argument as she stuffed them into the thin, white plastic trash bag.

How much do I love Tool?

A lot.

Time for Midol

MAN I am whiney today. I really just feel like swearing. Funny thing is, I feel fake when I write down curse words. They roll around in my head just lovely, but when I write MutherF****r, it just looks stupid and poser-y.
The midol is starting to kick in, so I don't feel so throw-y anymore. I woke up with a headache and tried to be positive. I went to the Post office, to mail an e-bay purchase (shop Crunkly Schmunkly) and the automated machine was broken, so I went to stand in the line of 45 PEOPLE. Remembering there was a post office only 3 miles away, I got outta line and hopped back in the Aztek, which was almost outta gas. So I drove to the gas station and stuck $20 into the gas tank (actually, I put the $20 into the payment machine thingie, which then allowed me to pump $20 into the tank of the car.) As I was pulling the gas nozzle out of my car, some stupid 300 lb woman in a disco hat, pulled around my car to the pump in front of me that had just been vacated by a landscaping truck. DUDE I'm taking the nozzle out so I can leave! and some van driving, soccer mom, pulled behind me, blocking me in. Luckily, the guy at the pump to our right, who was about to block me in good, saw the hideous whale pull her Humscalade into the blocking position, and pulled his truck up a little to let me pass. See, someone knows how to behave! Stupid Disco Lady Jerk.

Finally I could drive to the alternate PO, which I did, hopped outta the car and went inside to stand at the back of a line of 15 people. It was a leetle better. Only, there was just 1 teller, okay, there was 2 tellers, but the "additional" person, who looked and spoke like she was in a Frau Blucher impersonation contest, kept going into the back and leaving this other poor woman working her butt off and getting yelled at by people who had waited in line for 15 minutes. I really hate it when people yell at the person HELPING them. It's like a professor yelling at the students actually in his class about the importance of not being absent. Stupid. I was very polite to her for her help, saying 'please', 'thank you' and 'thanks for that suggestion!'

I'm home now, Weasel has stopped licking the magazines. (I made it clear to her how annoying that is) Ling Ling is not currently tackling anybody and Munchy is snoring in her papa-san.
I miss sugar and I need a hike.
Honey, can you bring home some ice cream?

Christmas Cookies

I really want to go home for Christmas. I haven't been for several years and I miss the loud, happiness of my family at the Holidays. I'll try to spread the joy here, in my home, just a little, by baking my Mom's famous Christmas cookies. The flavor is filled with memory, just one taste takes me back in time and it inspired this little PE I wrote recently.

Every year, Mom would bend down to reach to the back of the pantry’s bottom shelf. Behind The Joy of Cooking and her worn copy of The Betty Crocker Cookbook was where she kept a Farmers Wife Magazine, December 1963 issue wrapped in a gallon sized zip-lock bag. For it’s entire life, it had been open to page 63, Magical Christmas Cookie Recipe. My sister and I would marvel at the perfect little girl in the pictures, caught forever with her brown hair in pigtails, her mothers oversized red-heart checkered apron wrapped around her.

As the oven started to warm our little kitchen, Mom would let me pull the chilly silver mixing bowls from the cupboards that seemed unprotected from the winter air outside. I was only allowed to measure dry ingredients into my mom’s famous cookies, at least until I could reach the mixing bowl on the table without standing on a chair. My sister, Janet, was a little more graceful so she got to gather all the elements for our annual ritual. I remember Alvin and the Chipmunks singing about Christmas in the background and the sharp smell of processed alcohol and warm spice when we would uncap the vanilla extract bottle. After the butter, sugar, eggs and love had been blended, Dad was in charge of pushing the cookie cutter into the dough rolled out onto the brown formica top of our kitchen table, which had turned white with sifted flour. He always gently guided my sister and I on the placement of our chosen characters. If I wanted to put the star too close to the angel’s wing, there would have been a huge dough leftover, and disaster. I remember the nutmeg taste of that dough as I snuck raw cookie scraps from the table and then the acid taste on my tongue, long into the night, of too much sugar in such a small belly.

I remember Janet was always more artistic with her sugar and chocolate sprinkle placement. She had a careful plan for images she was creating. Her cookies always came out perfect. Like edible little stained glass mirrors. I had a less patient, more Pollock approach of making Santa, covering him in chocolate sprinkles with a green sugar beard. I believed that reindeer should look like a rainbow. Most often, the sugar I piled high on my cookies would turn a deep caramelized brown, burnt and crunchy at the edges. They would live in the bottom of the cookie bucket until well after New Years. My creations would never find their way to any family gatherings. Blackened stars would wait to be dipped in my mother’s morning Sanka, so that the sharp coffee taste would disguise the burnt edges.


Now-a-days, I don't eat sugar and now I'm off of aspartame and all artifical sweetners, cause they all make me CUHrazee.

Welcome to Stinky Junior's Blog

Hi my loyal reader!

According to a recent survey, which I heard quoted by the fascinatingly vapid Robin Roberts on GMA, the average readership of any given personal blog is 1. That is O.N.E. One. So HELLO loyal reader of one, which is me, or Seen, the husband of a million womens's dreams. Can I be a reader of my blog, since I'm writing it? Because technically, I need to know how to read to write my blog. Hmm, things to ponder for the ages.

Stay tuned, darling, cause I'll be posting all my writing stuff here, to share my brilliance with you. My husband, who reads it straight from my notebooks anyways.

BTW, honey, we need to color my hair. The brown is starting to show at the roots.

As they say at Empress Chinese Pavillion, the Dim Sum Specialists. "Good Night and Good Duck."

A