I live amongst odd people. Oddities. The un-normal. The avant. (and the savant, let’s be real about that). It’s not just my bohemian neighborhood either. It’s the people I choose to associate with, those I exchange thoughts, considerations, confidences. They are all odd and eccentric. I like nothing more than the dizzyingly abnormal. There’s my husband, who looks remarkably like a midwestern Republican, but who is very much a spiritual free-spirit with a fascination with mystics. There’s my sister, who foreswears shoes and lives a very loose interpretation of a hippy life, who also happens to be the most analytical person I know. My dearest friend is a stay at home mom who bakes cookies and fights her impulse to push over people who walk with canes.

Even my neighborhood, which is filled with re-purposed old buildings, graffiti, Victorian houses, meandering crack-heads, Civil War monuments, and junky little shops is actually a vibrant community with all the amenities of the suburbs with the heart and soul still intact. We have bike rallies, cookouts, scout troops, our own basketball and baseball leagues, garden tours, etc. Only, with a twist of punchy and irreverent. That’s how I like it: sunny with a chance of raining sarcasm.

Throw up your dinner at the break.
Beside all the gawking starlings
in the bathroom, you’re a macaw,
fuchsia stripes and ruby slashes,
but under the stadium lights
you look healthy.  Rub Vaseline
on your teeth so your painted lips
slip into smiles.  On the field
the minutes march away until
the band cranks up Louie Louie
as the players depart to pray
and you count into position

one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight . . .

When you feel the base’s hands grip
your hips, you stop hearing music,
the crowd rumbles away.  You bend,
his fingers pinch your waist until
he raises you up in the air
like a falconer. Your feet rest
in his hands for a four count, then
you stick it, right foot in your palm
and left foot gripped hard in his hands.
You squeeze your cheeks until your thigh
becomes a rod of hardened steel
pinch a penny, pinch a penny, pinch a penny
Even from this distance you look
in the eyes of parents, stoners
and old graduates in the bleachers
and see them bound to the earth,
their bulk absolute and leaden.
Out of the corner of your eye
you see the other flyer tossed
like a released homing pigeon.
She comes out of her tuck, touches
her pointed toes, then swan dives down.
Later, she will tell you about
seeing, over the crowd and past
the bleachers, the long line of cars
on University.  Eight counts
left, but his hands begin to shake.
One count early you feel him bend
his knees, propelling you airborne.
You twist into a perfect V
and ride down into the cradle.
Pop out of his arms, wave in time
with the waning beats of the song.
Only some have bones light enough to fly.

Notes on Autumn Migration:  Early in my teaching career I was arm-twisted into being a cheerleading coach.  I spent 3 years with 55 girls and 7 boys shepherding them to games and competitions.  They were awesome and the pace was grueling.  I learned to catch a falling body in mid-air and finally understood physics.  This poem is structured with 8 beats per line – because that’s the count in cheerleading.  And in case you’re wondering – the picture is a layout and you should be pretty impressed at how far below the hands are waiting to catch her.

Eating out is dangerous.  I’m a restaurant consultant.  I know what things look like in the BOH.  Half the staff is hung over, the chef could have a raging infection, the line cook could have hepatitis, the concept of sanitizer buckets and shelf life charts could be Greek.  The possibilities are endless.  Over time I’ve developed a pretty good suspension of disbelief mechanism.  I just pretend what’s back there is all HACCP/FDA/ServSafe – and any other number of worthless acronyms – compliant.  Sometimes I have to hold my hand over my eyes and block the view of the kitchen as I scurry along to the restroom.  As long as I’m not throwing up two hours after dinner I’m all good.

But what I can’t handle, what makes me get my food spit on, is bad service.  I’ve had some seriously messed up service experiences.  The waiter that was so high he had to sit down at the table with us to get the room to stop spinning.  The one who walked out the door and threw his apron and order book into the street.  I hate it when servers lean on the booth or the chair as if they’re at a frat party and can’t quite make it to the upright position.  The time my MIL got up and made and served coffee for the entire restaurant.  I have walked out of restaurants after not getting a drink order for 35 minutes.  Hello!  If I order a gin and tonic instead of a fancy cocktail that means I must need a damn drink.

We ate at a local pub last night.  Our waitress started out okay, but after she forgot five things in a row (including our actual order) I was getting miffed.  She wasn’t even weeded – which I’m always understanding about.  She just flat out sucked.  I won’t go back – even if the food was good, which is wasn’t.  Sucky in the FOH often means it’s sucky in the BOH as well.

Look, I know it’s a hard job.  Trays are heavy, people are nasty, the hours are non-human.  But even with all that – do a professional job.  It’s a pretty simple algorithm.  Water+drink order+app order+refills+entree+check back+refills+buss+checkback+refills+check. (and for those keeping track, yes that’s four drinks.  For all you know I could be referring to water)

Of course, servers have their own set of rants – which can be interesting to read about.  There’s Waiter Rant and Bitter Waitress but perhaps the funniest one of all is The Bitchy Waiter.  Personally, I think wait staff should be paid a decent hourly wage and let’s forget all this tip nonsense.  I mean, what other profession besides whoring pays you in cash on the spot?

So, now I’ve vented.  I’d like to say I feel better, but after the deep fried nonsense food of last night I feel like shit.  I’d love to hear your worst server story?

Mumsy is such a lovely word. It sounds squishy and happy and warm and comfy. All the things being a mother are, or should be. But it’s also a word of death. It’s mom jeans and sensible shoes and chipped nails and wearing your sweats to pick up the kids. Mumsy does not happen overnight. It’s not a lightening bolt. It’s really more like a long winter, a drenching rain, an endless drip from the faucet that eventually wears away a patch of the porcelain and reveals the iron underbelly of the sink.

I’m now of an age where mumsy could very well settle in to stay. When you’re young you can fake being cool and hip simply because you have a great body and wonderful hair. Your actual sense of style is meaningless. It’s only where there are the signs of life to be covered up that you have to work to look put together. Who would not rather lay around in sweats? I will admit I dress every day with an eye to whether or not I would care to slosh dishwater on my outfit. Because that’s a mumsy reality. When you have children at home you do housework every day. I’m not sure how June Cleaver did it all in pearls and pumps.

But I’m going to dig my Kenneth Cole heels into the soft ground at the edge of the abyss and fight for my life. I’m not going down mumsy. No mom jeans. No sensible shoes. No florals. No sweats.

My favorite Mumsy inoculation is this excellent blog

Seeing women in their advanced years looking like works of art in their dress and their demeanor has given me great permission to move into a style that is my own.

What’s your strategy to dig in and not succumb to Mumsy?

“There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure.” Colin Powell

I’m also not my Maggie score. I’m not my current weight on the scale (Oh Christmas and Snowmageddon why did you both involve cookies!). I’m not measurable in such narrow dimensions.

Except when I am. You see, I’ve failed. My failure level even gets random noun capitalization – Epic Fail. About eight years ago I was a partner in a real estate investment group that was so bad I once compared getting out of it to sawing off my own arm. The reasons it went bad are varied and painful and out of the four partners I’m the only one who avoided bankruptcy. What I did end up with was one remaining property with a mortgage whose terms were barbaric- 12% interest and a 10% pre-payment penalty. And no, I had no choice. It was that or go into bankruptcy. I get to put myself in that category of people who have been faced with untenable choices and yet still had to act. I sawed my arm off. Fast-forward a few years and paying the mortgage on that house was nearly ruining us. I couldn’t get renters in it. I tried selling it – in 2008. So I did the best I could and managed to sell the house to a lovely newlywed couple in a short sale. I did not stiff the bank. I did not default. I did my best. At the end of the day, it’s still a failure.

For the past six years I’ve worked in my own business. It’s had its ups and downs with the economy, but it’s a thriving and successful business. Everything in it is in my husband’s name, however, because it started out as his business. It’s his thing – the name, the logo, etc. So, now I’m ready to launch my own business and finally step into the light of the success I’ve built.

Except I can’t. Because banks don’t like it when you fail. A credit score is a mysterious number most people could not even come close to explaining as an integer, an algorithm, a chart. It just is what it is. Three years ago I became a Dave Ramsey devotee. I have not used credit for three years this coming July. I pay cash for everything or it doesn’t happen. Is this always convenient? No. It takes planning and hard work and a fiscal prudence I would not have thought myself capable of. I’ve worked to save the start up funds for my business. I have money in the bank.

But today the bank where I wanted to open my new business account turned me down. My credit score does not meet their minimum requirements. They don’t care about hearing about how I worked and scraped and ran myself raw to not default on my loans. Hell, I didn’t even ask them for credit. I just wanted a checking account. I’ve never even bounced a check. I don’t have overdraft because I watch my funds so carefully I know to the penny what is there

I believe in second chances. I believe that we learn from failure, that the deepest wisdom comes from having ripped yourself out of a bad spot and remade life anew. How can America recover – how can those of us at a certain point where the past decade was marked Epic Fail – build on those lessons and make life anew if a single series of digits has to define us? Failure wracked me. It made me doubt myself and it made me confront my shortcomings and weaknesses. I’m better for it – better as a person and better as a business woman. But I can’t escape it. And that sucks.

I’m going to break some kind of land-speed record for how many times I use the word penis in this post. Just so you are prepared. Those too virginal or squeamish should turn away now. And so we’re all on the same page, junk is the term used for the whole package – the male genitalia as it were.

I am always somewhat shocked when a man displays his junk – who can ever forget Michael Douglas on Leno or Derek Hough on Dancing with the Stars? When it’s on TV you can just snigger into your gin and tonic, but when it’s in person I don’t know where to look or whether or not he wants the world to see it or just had an unfortunate case of pant size confusion. Especially fascinating are Italian men who wear their clothing to deliberately advertise their junk. From what I’ve heard, Brazilians and Argentinians are happy to stuff their junk in a package that’s meant to display their wares like cellophane-wrapped ham hocks around New Years. Then you have entire regions of American men who wear pants baggy enough to be skirts and you have to wonder . . .

What was that you said? It’s like cleavage on a woman? Oh no. It’s not. Boobs are universal. Junk is not. And junk is an illusion anyway – it’s not like the package on display is really telling the whole story. Of course, then you have the picture above – now if men with their junk all out and about looked like THAT perhaps junk exposure would be more appealing?

I grew up with only a sister so until I started my foray into womanhood the male junk was sort of a mystery. Then I had husbands, and a son, and it became just one more thing around the house to maintain. So, here is my practical guide to the junk drawer.

Five Penis Facts from, I swear this is true, CBS News:

1. A penis does have a mind of its own. Men in fact have less control over their penis than they do their arms or legs. It’s tied to the nervous system. The arms and legs, however, should remain under the man’s control, which should allow him to walk away and put his hands in his pockets. Tiger Woods and Jesse James may not have known that this is how it works.
2. As far as size, there are two varieties: Growers and Showers. A penis can grow anywhere from the width of a paperclip to the length of a Blackberry. Hey, I’m sitting at my desk and that’s all I had on hand. So, that penis that looks puny may be a grower and the one that looks temptingly like a good nudge might yield results may be a shower and it’s already given all it can give.
3. The Penis Is Shaped Like a Boomerang. The root of the penis is tucked way up in the pelvis and when actually detailed on an MRI it’s, yes, a boomerang. Which explains why it’s always getting itself stuck in the same old spots, doesn’t it? And you can totally picture how that MRI session started. The copier was broken and the techs had to do something besides photocopy their asses . . .
4. A Penis Can Be Broken. Contrary to the whole “boner” thing there’s no bone, but a penis can be fractured. Those of us with husbands over 30 ought to be really thankful because a broken penis tends to be a young man’s problem. Now, if anyone is going to take up Courgaring be warned, the younger the guy the more rigid the penis, which can lead to great joy and happiness, but also a chance of accidental breakage.
5. Most Penises in the World Are Uncut. Only 6% of Australian men are circumcised. 20% of Brits and 30% of Canadians. Who’s up for a field trip to do “research?”

Beyond the basic facts and junk exposure – there’s that question most women have pondered at least once. Why are men always adjusting their junk? Is it to get our attention? They don’t quite understand the female mind if that’s the case because when I see junk-adjustment going on the first thing I think of is: infection. I don’t adjust my boobs in public and I’d like to ask men to refrain from adjusting their junk. Although I’d have to guess frequent boob-adjustment would earn me a fan club.

Five Reasons Men Adjust Their Junk:

1. They have junk pinchage
2. Their junk is sticking to their leg
3. Their pants are too tight, causing junk compression
4. Their junk ventilation is insufficient causing suffocating junk
5. A woman is within a mile and she might like to be reminded that they have junk to share

I’m sure previous generations of men would have scoffed at this, but the current crop of men (none among the men I know – I did an informal survey) seem to be more sensitive to junk-aroma. Did you know they have begun making toiletry products aimed specifically at junk? Don’t believe me? Go to www.manjunk.com and see for yourself. I think this is great payback for the past fifty years of Summer’s Eve commercials.

If you’d like to see the worst instance of Man Junk ever on record, here’s a You Tube video for you:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O38LliskWLE

And people wonder why I live intown! So, who has a good junk story? What are your feelings about junk exposure and adjustment?

Neil Gaiman has a great letter from a librarian on his blog and it’s worth reading.

http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2007/02/last-last-word.html

Some books you may not have realized were censored:

Aesop. Fables.
Anonymous. Go Ask Alice.
Boccacio. The Decameron
Boston Women’s Health Collective. Our Bodies, Ourselves.
Brothers Grimm. The Complete Grimm’s Fairy Tales
Carroll, Lewis. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
Carroll, Lewis. Through the Looking-Glass
Chaucer, Geoffrey. Canterbury Tales
Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness
Cervantes. Don Quixote.
Cinderella
Dante. The Divine Comedy.
Defoe, Daniel. Moll Flanders.
Defoe, Daniel. Robinson Crusoe.
Eliot, George. Silas Marner.
Dickens, Charles. Oliver Twist.
Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.
Eliot, George. Adam Bede.
Eliot, George. Silas Marner.
Fielding, Henry. Tom Jones.
Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby.
Frank, Anne. Diary of Anne Frank.
Garcia Marquez, Gabriel. Love in the Time of Cholera.
Garcia Marquez, Gabriel. One Hundred Years of Solitude.
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von. Faust.
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von. Sorrows of Young Werther.
Hanford, Martin. Where’s Waldo?
Hardy, Thomas. Jude the Obscure.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Scarlet Letter
Homer. The Odyssey.
Hugo, Victor. Les Miserables.
Huxley, Aldous. Brave New World.
Keyes, Daniel. Flowers for Algernon.
King, Stephen. Carrie.
L’Engle, Madeleine. A Wrinkle in Time.
Lawrence, Margaret. A Jest of God.
Lawrence, Margaret. The Diviners.
Lawrence, Margaret. The Stone Angel.
Lee, Harper. To Kill a Mockingbird.
Lewis, C.S. The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe.
Little Red Riding Hood.
Malory, Sir Thomas. Le Morte D’Arthur.
Miller, Arthur. Death of a Salesman.
Miller, Jim, ed. The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock and Roll.
Molière. Tartuffe.
Munro, Alice. Lives of Girls and Women.
Orwell, George. 1984.
Orwell, George. Animal Farm.
Rowling, J. K. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.
Rowling, J. K. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.
Rowling, J. K. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.
Rowling, J. K. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.
Rowling, J. K. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.
Rowling, J.K. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.
Rumpelstiltskin.
Salinger, J.D. The Catcher in the Rye.
Sanders, Lawrence. The Seduction of Peter S.
Sewell, Anna. Black Beauty.
Shakespeare, William. Hamlet.
Shakespeare, William. King Lear.
Shakespeare, William. Othello.
Shakespeare, William. Richard II.
Shakespeare, William. The Merchant of Venice.
Shakespeare, William. Twelfth Night.
Speare, Elizabeth George. The Witch of Blackbird Pond.
Steinbeck, John. Of Mice and Men.
Suzuki, D. T. Zen Buddhism: Selected Writings.
Swift, Jonathan. Gulliver’s Travels.
Thoreau, Henry James. Civil Disobedience.
Tolkien, J. R. R. The Hobbit.
Tolkien, J. R. R. Lord of the Rings.
Tolstoy, Leo. Anna Karenina.
Twain, Mark. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
Twain, Mark. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.
Voltaire. Candide.
Vonnegut, Kurt. Slaughterhouse-Five.
Walker, Alice. The Color Purple.
Wilder, Laura Ingalls. Little House In the Big Woods.
Wilder, Laura Ingalls. Little House On The Prairie.
Wilder, Laura Ingalls. On The Banks of Plum Creek.
Williams, Tennessee. The Glass Menagerie.

As an English major I’ve actually read every single book on this list. And I’m proud of that.

If you care about censorship and want to take a stand, please visit:

http://www.internationalpen.org.uk/

Why am I writing about censorship today? Because until today I was part of a blog group of romance writers. I’ve just tendered my resignation because a post I wrote was read in draft form and found to conflict with the moral sensibilities of some of the other writers. The blog group had everyone from writers of erotica to inspirational writers. For those unfamiliar with what “inspirational” means – that refers to books that are in the romance genre, but that are sweeter, more innocent, and of a bent to be more acceptable to those of a religious nature. I support the rights of those writers to speak about religious topics, but apparently the support of divergent view points is not a two-way street.

My post – the one that was questioned by the group and suggested had the possibility to do one or all of the following:
A) Ruin careers
B) Keep people from being published
C) Be used as ammunition should one of the other blog members ever be sued for sexual harassment
D) Cause us to be labeled as man-haters
E) Lose the religious audience
F) Shame other members in front of their families

Well, it will appear in this space next Monday. I would welcome you to see for yourself if my post had the power to do any of the above.

On the first day of spring my beast of a kitteh gave to me: One dead white bunny.
On the second day of spring my beast gave to me: One stiff robin.
On the third day of spring my beast gave to me: A still twitching chipmunk.
On the fourth day of spring my beast gave to me: A field mouse, gray with pink little paws.

He stopped there THANK GOD because if I came out the front door and screamed for a fifth morning I’m pretty sure my neighbors would have been miffed. They’re musicians and they don’t get up at the ass crack of dawn like I do. BTW, all their musician friends greet my chief killer cat by name affectionately as if they are on intimate terms. I think he’s over there sitting in on jam sessions when he’s not out killing things.

So, how do I know all these delights were meant for me? (really, put the sandwich down) They are always left on the front door matt and are in perfectly preserved condition. The bounty he takes for himself ends up in pieces and parts and requires a hose to get off the porch. I hated dissection in school, but I passed, so I can tell you what a mouse spine and a chipmunk liver look like as the water wooshes them off the porch.

The carnage had stopped for a while until this morning’s offering of a beautiful little gray mouse. The creepy part is that said mouse had been totally licked clean – maybe like a kitteh Popsicle or something. I gave the cats a little bowl of milk yesterday. Really, I would prefer to have been thanked another way – maybe by a nice lap snuggle or a keyboard crawl.

Have you ever been given a gift out of the “heart” (get it!) that you really would prefer to have not gotten?