Le Monde de Fromage de Kate

He was using “a water bottle and a rope.” Okay…

I was sitting here, innocently singing Autumn’s praises, when I heard the cacophony of about three thousand small, hard objects being propelled from the roof. Santa? Oh no – Santa Claus is QUET. I realize that MY FATHER is on the roof, hurling walnuts to the ground (with what implement I do not know). I do not think this is wise, considering his recent propensity to beat himself about the face and neck.

I took my life into my hands, went out on the front porch (trying to keep under the eaves), and ended up just telling him to be careful. Careful or no – it completely terrifies the hell out of the cats, and I am not entirely comfortable with the idea. Maybe if I tell him I’m going to publish the picture I caught today that is a perfect view right up his nose he will get down… Then again, maybe I’ll just go steal the ladder; that’ll teach him to start crazy projects during half time.

Autumn is my season; I love the colours, I love “sweater weather,” I love it all. Of course, if you are four-years-old, there is something extraordinary for you in EVERY season:

Leif & Grandpa Take the Plunge

If You’re Four, You May Bury Your Grandpa With Impunity

You May Also GLOAT Over Your Grandpa With Impunity

Documenting the complete, unadulterated joy of a four-year-old isn’t half bad, either. AND I now have a potential blackmail picture of my Father – a lucky shot STRAIGHT up his nose. He saw it and about died. Hey – I’m going to derive pleasure from what I can.

I AM a mushroom. And as much as I like Schubert, I’ve no desire to emulate his appearance.*

Like I said (in reference to my Yeti eyelids), you start certain things and then you have to keep them up. When my hair was long and unkempt, no one noticed when and if I ever trimmed it. But now – I’m afraid that that my disheveled short hair needs upkeep; it is gradually increasing the circumference of my already inordinately HUGE noggin by leaps and bounds with a phenomenon, for lack of better terms, I’ll just call “unfortunate fluff-i-tude.” (“Fluff-i-tude” is vaguely related to longitude and latitude, except, of course, that it’s a unit of measurement for hair.)

I’ve said it before, my ablutions were fairly low-maintenance; it’s true – I ALWAYS brush my eyebrows morning AND night and usually wash my feet before going to bed – I cannot abide scruffy eyebrows and dirty footprints in the bed. Other than that, though, I was very “wash and go.” Now I’m going to have to get regular haircuts, wax and/or pluck my eyebrows all the time, AND figure out what to do with my dye-job “roots.” Add this to the regimen of “anti-aging” lotions and potions I’ve started accumulating for the crow’s feet, the laugh lines, the neck wrinkles and the under-eye bags, and we’re just getting ridiculous.

The one positive thing about the “fluff-i-tude” and my dye-job roots is that I now have clear proof that my hair actually grows; I wasn’t sure it grew much at all before I could see these obvious signs.

*Schubert’s friends affectionately called him Schwammerl, which means “little mushroom.” Look it up if you don’t believe me. I’m not gonna spoon-feed you links for everything, damn it! Ahem. Sorry.

Yeah, yeah – today I fell down. Laugh, cry, I’m better than Cats… I’d like to point out that my Father has fallen down (really taken a tumble – ass over teakettle, so so speak) TWICE in the last month or so. Once hiking. Once down the stairs in Kansas in the middle of the night. Upon both occasions he ended up with bruises, scrapes and cuts (the second time, a fat lip, too) ON HIS FACE. I tend to get the bruises, scrapes and such all over the rest of my body; at least I don’t end up looking like I’ve been roughed up by mob thugs over gambling debts – KNOCK ON WOOD – not about the beat up by hooligans part, but the beat-up face part (let’s be specific – I do not have GAMBLING debts – they are regular, serious idiot consumer debts).

Where was I? Oh yes – it would seem I was falling down in the driveway. I was walking out to the car (perhaps this is all because it wasn’t MY car?), purse open (healthy back bag, I should say), flat shoes, completely sober and medicated to a perfectly acceptable extent. Then, in an instant, I start to crash to the ground. We have two large English Walnut trees in front of the house, so the ground is littered with big yellowish leaves and walnuts galore. I blame the nuts; IT WAS THE NUTS. Also, there’s a particular place in the driveway where it is uneven at the seam – very dangerous.

All of that isn’t really the point. Surprisingly, there IS purpose here (such as it is). The interesting thing about this stumbly tumble is the stunt woman factor. One might well ask, “What in the hell is the ‘Stunt Woman’ Factor?” Here goes: Sometimes, when I am in the process of toppling over, I feel like I’m experiencing it in slow motion. Rather, it’s not really SLOW motion – is there MEDIUM motion? It’s slower than “normal motion,” and certainly not “fast motion.” Yet “medium motion” seems like it would be equivalent to “normal motion,” and that’s not what I experience. I shan’t quibble over terms any longer. I shall call it “middling motion.” ANYHOO, I feel like I’m experiencing the fall in middling motion. For an unknown reason I will feel the impulse to “go with it,” as though it were a staged accident (theoretically you don’t get hurt if you “roll with it,” so to speak). Once I literally did “roll with it.” I could have just landed on the ground, but I rolled over two or three times. No one was watching – thankfully, I suppose – so I don’t know if it looked as usually idiotic as one of my normal tumbles, or if it looked just a LITTLE cool. Today, though, I fell first on my hands, throwing the contents of my purse helter-skelter, and causing many little scrapes and bruises on my palms, and I twisted my left ankle (ALWAYS the LEFT one – what is it with that foot? I think it has it out for me…), I somehow flipped and rolled onto my back (unfortunately not on my particularly well-padded ASS – what else is it good for, damn it!), and somehow landed head down in the leaves. I paused, ever so briefly, in reflection, and then pulled myself together. So now I have wee bruises on my back, too. And there were leaves EVERYWHERE – in my purse, in my hair, all over my clothes. Why, in the moment, did this seem like a the thing to do? I could have just landed on my hands and knees, which took a beating as it is. I just want to know: DID IT LOOK COOL? Somewhere, embedded DEEP in my psyche, is there a stunt woman who pictures each fall from outside my body – as though analyzing the camera angles (no offense, Karate Man)? Maybe I am a stunt woman and not a selective klutz (I won’t go into it, but I DO have moments of amazing grace – not to be confused with the song – just times when I have remarkable poise – that’s why I say “selective klutz”)? Hmmm. I’ve always thought that WAY down deep, in my nougaty center, I am just a huge geek. Perhaps – just perhaps – I’m SECRETELY cool. So secretly, surreptitiously, that even I do not know it. Double hmmm.

No, I am a huge geek.

My Kitten Children, as I understand is the case with most feline critters, LOVE bags and boxes and baskets (oh my!). It’s a charming cat trait, I think, when you find your kitty situated in some little container (that scarcely contains her) like she’s the Queen of Sheba. Really, the only annoying side effect of this “container lust” is that my Kitten Children like to chew on cardboard, and sometimes get in a mood where you will find the entire floor covered with tiny cardboard confetti tidbits from a box they’ve ruined (maybe they are celebrating?).

Sometimes these found items can even be costumes. One of Charles and Ashley’s cats, I think Caesar’s the culprit, LIKES to get the strap of a plastic grocery bag around his neck and then runs around proudly with his “Superman Cape.” BeBe once got the straps of a paper gift bag around her neck. At first she tried to get the bag off, but when she couldn’t, she just started frolicking around as though nothing was there and she was just going to get on with life wearing her new “accessory.” My Grandmother’s cat, Lucy, however, got caught in the straps of a bag and was so humiliated that she hid until she was rescued and the horrid object was removed.

Anyhoo, I caught this moment the other day:

Fiona in the Bag

It reminded me very much of this image:

Younger BeBe in the Bag

BeBe is so little in that picture! That was when she use to prance about – literally. Now she looks and moves more like a panther. I realize that in the entry with that picture I did not tell HOW BeBe put herself in the bag. Fiona, you see, is in a bag that was empty in the first place. BeBe, in order to ensconce herself in that costume, had jumped up onto the counter (strictly against the rules, but no one was watching – then in Cat World, evidently, there are no rules), saw the lovely bag, realized it was inconveniently full of a loaf of artisan’s bread, somehow managed to get the bread OUT of its covering, threw the bread on the floor (I kid you not), and settled herself happily into her prize. At some point, around that age, she also defrosted ALL the contents of the ENTIRE freezer (a story for another time – but if anyone was wondering why we had a “kid-safe” lock on the freezer in that house, that is why).

Earlier tonight:

I’m the sexual Oompa-Loompa.

Don’t ask.

Ah. I bet YOU didn’t know that one of the “taglines” for the 2005 version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was “Oompa-Loompas are crazy for coco-beans.” Thanks, IMDB.

Here I was thinking that Oklahoma, Kansas and Nebraska were pretty much the same thing (Iowa, too – am I forgetting any? Perhaps the Dakotas…). Okay, granted – Oklahoma has a namesake musical and therefore a title song, and Kansas has a namesake band. But other than that they consist essentially of vast FLAT expanses interrupted only by fields (corn, wheat – what have you). Then I received this FOTD:

Bore-hole seismometry indicates that the land in Oklahoma moves up and down 25 cm throughout the day, corresponding with the tides.

“Oklahoma – where the land undulates just enough each day to make one motion sick due to the tides…” No wonder this is NOT common knowledge. It completely RUINS the song. It also begs the question: WHAT TIDES? Oklahoma sits virtually centered horizontally in the Country (LANDLOCKED, need I add). So, which ocean one could not say. Perchance Lake Michigan? I positively know that I can’t ever think of the plains in the same way; I will wonder how many centimeters they might be rising and falling right beneath one’s feet.

Sarah turned seventeen on November 4th. I sincerely do not know how that happened. Time travel? Yes – time travel and/or the bending of the space-time continuum in a VERY scientific yet devious way. We didn’t notice until it was too late.

One of her birthday gifts was a brown, fuzzy scarf (the stretchy kind that you can make into a hood or a tube top or a Superman cape – does anyone actually do those things with it?) My Father looked at it and said, “Is that a new wig?” We found this most amusing. In the first place, Sarah doesn’t wear a wig. She has some hair pieces (braids and falls) that she can stick under a hat for fun, but she mostly sticks to do-rags and hats (the Guinness Book should probably take a look at her collection of head coverings – she’s well on her way to a record). Besides, take a look at the scarf as a “wig”:

Speaking of Ms. Sarah – I believe we are required to call her that now – she is a young lady and WELL past marriageable age – in this state, anyway (don’t get me started) – she is doing well. She is responding very positively to her chemotherapy; recent scans showed that many of the tumors in her neck and chest had decreased in size. All in all, the doctors are very pleased with the progress of her treatment.

Her high school paper wrote an article on her recently, Cancer Hits Home (no online link, sorry), perhaps incited by the fact that she is the only one at the school who can wear a hat – basically the whole notoriety of being bald, I think, but it was very well done. One of my favorite things that she said was:

When I go to Primary Children’s they make everything really fun. They have everything there. If you’re gonna get cancer, that’s the place to go.

I personally think Primary Children’s Medical Center should consider that as a possible slogan for their oncology department.

Sarah also said:

Life’s life. Life’s fun.

That’s a rather decent mantra, I must say: life’s life – life’s fun.

I feel the need to preface my latest Holiday Gift Suggestion (Idea #4) with some explanation. I offer, as a tasteful gift option, the “Twelve Dickies of Christmas.” This might sound just a tad licentious, but it is NOT. A “Dicky” (alternate spelling “Dickey”) is:

1. NOUN
2. a.  A woman’s blouse front worn under a suit jacket or low-necked garment.
   b.  A man’s detachable shirt front.
   c.  A collar for a shirt.
   d.  A child’s bib or pinafore.
3. A donkey.
4. A small bird (as in “Dickey Bird”).
5. a.  The driver’s seat on a carriage.
   b.  A rear seat for servants on a carriage.

1. ADJECTIVE
2. (British Colloquial) faulty (as in “I have a dicky ticker”).

(Source: The Free Dictionary)