The Electrician

    When the electrician who came to put up my new ceiling fan a few weeks ago found out that I'm trying to be a writer, he suggested I write a novel about an electrician. I don't know about that, but the jacket blurbs ought to be easy enough:
    Electrifying! (Ok, maybe too easy)
    You'll get a big charge out of this!
    He'll keep you wired from start to finish!
    Like jacking in to the main line!
    Nobody puts in a ceiling fan like Joe Herring and his wife! (Not very jacket blurby, but true if I'm remembering the name right. Considering the size of my readership, no harm no foul if I'm not.)
    Lights you up like Christmas!
    You'll get such a buzz!

    Now all I have to do is write the book!

Avocado chocolate pudding

    One good way to get more avocados in one's diet: take an avocado and remove the skin and pit. (Those stickers that some supermarkets use that say "Ripe when soft" are very helpful to ignorami like me.) Throw in a blender. Add a tablespoon of cocoa powder and three tablespoons of honey. (Or if you don't have food sensitivities, you could just add three or four tablespoons of Quik or chocolate syrup.) Add water to cover (I use distilled, but I'm a little barmy on the subject) and hit Smear. OK, it's probably Puree, but my single-serve blender only has one button and I can't say for sure which button it would be equivalent to on a more sophisticated blender.
    It's the best thing ever. Only drawback is that you may never sleep again. It's the law-abiding person's cocaine. Also, if you eat as much as you're going to want to, you might start cramping up. Avocado is a vasoconstrictor, meaning that your circulation is going to get a bit less good. I'm pretty sure that chocolate is a vasodilator, meaning it would counteract that effect. Maybe you should add more chocolate. Another vasodilator is cucumber, which is why my lunchtime shake is 1/4 of an avocado, 1/4 of a seeded cucumber (seeded because otherwise the acid reflux is incredible) and frozen fruit, preferably pineapple. MMMMMM! Regardless, if you start feeling funny after eating too much avocado chocolate pudding, eating a cucumber (with vinegar, again to combat reflux) might fix that.
    Finally, I must mention again that Avocado Chocolate Pudding would be the best band name ever.

The Little Kitty and the Big Kitty

 Wrote this sometime after the emergency room visit mentioned yesterday. In my heart of hearts, I believed it would be a blockbuster children's book. Hope you like it.)

    My name is Amelia and I'm a little kitty. Well, I see bad kitties outside through my windows and I think I might be bigger than them, but the kitty I live with is much bigger.
    I didn't think he was a kitty at first. He doesn't look like a kitty and he doesn't smell like a kitty. But he lies around all day like a kitty, he avoids work like a kitty, and he likes playing with balls and string and pens like a kitty. So he must be a big kitty!
    He's got funny eyes. There's little windows in front of them, so it's hard to lick his nose sometimes. When he takes the windows off, it's like he can't see at all, and then instead of Amelia he calls me IfYouKnockMyGlassesOnTheFloorItsBackToTheKittyStore. That's a funny name!
    Really, I don't know what my name is. Back when I lived in the glass box, they called me Zola, unless I got out. Then they called me by my full name: WheresThatDangZola. The big kitty calls me Amelia (when I'm bad), Monkey, Sillyhead, Sweetie Sweetie Sweet Sweet, Boo, Poo, Poodle, Pootiepoot, Chupacabras, Zippy McFlibbet, Buddy and Sweetheart, and that's just on one day! He's certainly a very strange kitty.
    He likes noise more than any kitty I ever heard of. He's got a big noisy thing he runs over the carpet. He says it helps get rid of fleas, but I think it's just a Scare The Kitty Machine. Also, he uses a funny litter box that makes a FLUSH noise every time he uses it. I don't know why he doesn't just use the extra litter box; I don't need it. And sometimes he makes noise all by himself. I think he thinks he's singing, but I just run away to be on the safe side.
    He doesn't speak kitty very well at all either. I tear up the scratching pad every time he flushes, but he still can't figure out that he shouldn't do it. And he just won't understand that he needs to clean out my litter box immediately every time I use it. Until I poop on the floor and scratch at the carpet until he comes to look. Then he calls me BackToTheKittyStoreZola because of what a good job I did.
    One week the big kitty barely got out of bed at all. I could tell he was scared, because if there's anything little kitties know about, it's being scared. I would lick his face and he would thank me and call me Dr. Amelia P. Monkey, and he must have had an eye boogie or some fur got in his eye because there was water leaking out of it.
    One night the big kitty left. He didn't come back until a long time after the sun came up. When he came back, he had some papers he called his Hospital Discharge Papers and he wouldn't let me try to tear them up. But he wasn't sad or scared anymore, and we started playing together all the time again. Yay!
    The big kitty doesn't eat his food out of a bowl on the floor. He likes it better heated up for some strange reason. Where we used to live, he got it out of a little box that beeped a lot, and it hardly took any time at all. Here he doesn't have a little box, and he makes his food on top of a big white thing, and it takes a long time. But he doesn't have to do anything to it, so he comes and plays with me a lot. I still can't teach the big kitty that just because I want to play with the ball one minute doesn't mean I'll want to play with it again the next minute. Something else interesting, a sound or a smell, might come up in the meantime. But he's learning.

Asperger's, anxiety and the belly

    A couple of years ago, in September of '09, I wound up in the emergency room for what I thought was some kind of diabetic emergency. It turned out to be neither diabetes nor an emergency, but just a touch of hypothyroidism. And I said, I can fix that, and did. By the time I had seen a doctor a week later for a followup, everything was back to normal. Basically, I had been eating too many goitrogens, and quit taking my multivitamins with iodine. Reversed these bright moves and underwent a miracle cure.
    Goitrogens are anything that's bad for your thyroid. This, essentially, is everything Americans eat or drink. (Just look around you and count the thin people.) I, uh, went a little over the top and eliminated all of them, or damned nearly. I also started eating avocado almost every day, one of the few foods that's actually good for the thyroid. And boy did I get happy! Zippiness was unending. Energy was outstanding. Everything was fun.
    This is what the psychiatrists call hypomania. I thought it was awesome, personally, except for an associated bout of what the TV ads call E.D. Lately, I've been getting really fed up with the latter. I decided that what must be missing is calcium. (This was due to the fact that in the week after the visit to the emergency room, where apart from hypothyroidism I also had slightly elevated calcium levels, I had uh, the opposite of E.D. Also, I had tried everything else.)
    So this year, I reintroduced kale to my diet in a big way. Kale is a wonderful calcium source, but also a strong goitrogen. And this year, I started having a lot of problems with crowds, a problem I had all my life through, say, September of '09, but not so much in the interim. Zippiness has been very much in abeyance all year. I figure that my Asperger's, and maybe everybody's Asperger's, is just a matter of low thyroid function leading to high anxiety. Back in my prime Asperger's years, I also gained a lot of weight, if gradually. In the low-goitrogen period, I lost a lot of weight without noticeable exercise. And now, the belly is making a comeback.
    It's a conundrum: how do I keep the belly trim and the anxiety down while actually being capable of being in an adult relationship? I figure I cut back the kale until the point where being in a crowd doesn't make me want to run out the room. If necessary, I can just eat okra at every meal; okra is also a good calcium source, but not apparently a goitrogen. Or I can just amp up the avocados and chocolate. I'm hoping a combination of both will best assure the return of zippiness.

Book of face

    Facebook lately won't let me post links as replies, particularly links to this here blog. I can't imagine that anyone would be reporting it as spamming. Not that everybody has to love seeing links to my blog, but I can't imagine anyone caring enough to bother reporting it. I have to assume that it's a Facebook policy, and I'm getting pretty fed up.
    Thus there's a pretty high probability that I'll be moving over to Orkut, the Google-owned social networking site, which I reckon would be more friendly to (Google-owned) Blogger and (Google-owned) YouTube. I'm sure the wailing and gnashing of teeth over at Facebook will be pretty limited.

Me being an idiot

    Ten-odd years ago, I discovered sacred harp singing while raiding the public library's CD collection. The Sacred Harp is a hymnal from the 19th century that collects various shape-note songs. Shape-note music is a music notation system meant to be easy to learn. The music publishers (from up Nawth) would hold one-day schools (typically down South) to teach the system and, uh, sell sheet music. It was a big deal in parts of the Deep South from the later part of the 19th century on, and sacred harp singing is still popular in parts of the South, though not so much here.
    When I found out about sacred harp, I was electrified. I thought I'd discovered something revolutionary, and told everyone I knew. I was particularly excited by a song called "Windham" as performed by an outfit Alan Lomax called Alabama Sacred Harp Singers. (They weren't actually a formal group; it was just the people who showed up for one particular sacred harp singing.) I had all my friends over to hear this song. I told them I was sure that I had discovered a new harmonic. Aaaaand they said: "John. They're singing out of tune."

Asymmetry

Asymmetry
an imbalance
when for example
there's a lot on one side
and a little on the other.
Feelings, for example.
Communication could help
but never seems to happen
and then there's always someone
who thinks that it's
unfair.

The Ludlum Palimpsest

    Palimpsest is one of those words that always gets stuck in my head. I had to go look it up. Basically it means a scroll that has been erased so it can be reused. Not really a term that you get to use in everyday speech, darn it.
    When Robert Ludlum was alive, I always wanted to write a parody called "The Ludlum Novel." I doubt that I am the only person who was tickled by his tendency to title his every book (almost) in the "The Noun Modified By Another Noun" format. But now I have a warm feeling about "The Ludlum Palimpsest." Maybe he set up a team of robots to write his novels from a template. The same scroll used over and over. Perhaps there could be secret agents trying to stop them. Or maybe Matt Damon.

What we learned today

    As I start feeling like novel writing is beyond my reach, I've resumed reading (rereading) fiction for pleasure. And what I notice when reading really fine writers is that they mess up a lot. Typos here, misused words there, characters talking about things they'd have no way of knowing about over there. But it doesn't kill the book. Yes it would be nice if everyone were perfect all the time, but really, really good 90% of the time and a little iffy for the other 10 is sufficient.
    Those of us who are perfectionists need to learn to give ourselves a break. (Well, this one of us at least.) Creating, plotting and writing a novel is quite hard enough. Heck, creating, plotting and writing a story is quite hard enough. I need to focus on getting the flow flowing, and worry about perfection later. Now that I can edit my own stuff again, that ought to be fun.

Pinestraw

    I didn't get out and about walking through the countryside during junior year abroad in Canterbury nearly as much as my friends did. Mostly this was because I am and was fundamentally lazy. But it's also true that I was a little freaked out by the lack of pinestraw on the ground. Slightly, but all the time. Apparently, you can take the boy out of the piney woods but you can't take the piney woods out of the boy. Even today, I'm most comfortable walking under pines and over pinestraw.
    As best I can remember, I hadn't read "The Lord of the Rings" at that point, though Walt had given me the trilogy during high school. No doubt I would have done a lot more tramping about the English countryside had I read it by then. But surely I loved the walking parts of "The Fellowship of the Ring" that everybody else complains about a lot more when I did get around to reading it a few years later because of what walking I did do in England.
    During Philadelphia days, I did a lot more walking. As much as possible was done in Wissahickon Park. I don't recall there being a lot of pine there either (if any). It's possible that the kind of jobs I had in Philly created enough stress that I required a lot more walking. I used to walk from West Philly all the way to the other end of Wissahickon Park, then back to Chestnut Hill where I'd pick up the trolley, then transfer to the subway to get back home. Here, I used to walk from my dad's house on the Fort Jackson side of Shandon to the other end of Riverfront Park, then all the way back from that end, drinking the water fountains at USC dry on the way. What ever happened to that guy?

Space alienhood is tiring

    People would probably be surprised by how unweird the gluten-free, casein-free, soy-free diet is, day to day. Supper lately is beef stew; lunch is pasta. Granted it's brown rice pasta, but you probably wouldn't notice the difference. I eat my chili with quinoa, but could just as easily have it with rice. I just like quinoa.
    Until lately, I could get my quinoa at Publix, but recently they seem to have decided as a company not to carry it anymore. Anyway, the Rosewood store no longer sells it and the downtown store has it on the highest shelf and marked down as if it's being discontinued. At an earlier stage of gluten freedom, I ate puffed millett for breakfast, a food I first found at Publix. Then I couldn't; apparently I have a knack for being the only person buying a given product from Publix. Even though I buy it often, it isn't enough, darn it.
    Meanwhile, my hot breakfast cereals, amaranth and teff (I alternate between them) are getting harder to find. One is available from two natural food stores; the other from only one. If that store or stores is sold out, I'm screwed. Otherwise, I'm driving, driving.
    And it's tiresome, and literally tiring. I suppose I'm being childish; I could just eat brown rice three meals a day, or potatoes, or corn, and find them at any supermarket. But I like the food I eat, and am more than a little tired of feeling marginalized due to not being able to get it except in special stores. I guess I need to open Footloose and Gluten Free and get it over with. Hell, I'd save a lot of gas.

Mystery road

    Every time I walk the Cayce Riverwalk (as opposed to talking the Cayce Rivertalk), I wonder about the road running alongside the river on the Columbia side. I've looked for it before driving Columbia streets, but had no luck, which struck me as a little strange. I occasionally see trucks on it, so it clearly isn't abandoned. It looks like it would be a fun road for bicycling (except of course for having big dumptrucks on it).
    When I lived in the neighborhood before, in Granby Village 10+ years ago, we used to have dumptrucks on the streets all the time, but these days they aren't allowed on Olympia Avenue. I vaguely remember a bypass being built and am bewildered that the damned thing is so hard to find. We have a couple of quarries in the neighborhood. One thing I've noticed in the more than 2 years I've lived here is that the ground-shaking booms have gotten a lot less frequent. One good thing about a slow economy, I guess. But probably the dumptrucks are a lot fewer in number than they used to be anyway.
    So the other day I got curious again and took a drive. I went down Rosewood Extension, where all the dumptrucks seem to go now, but it dead-ended at a boat landing. (Then of course I remembered I had done this before, and it did then, too.) However, there was an open gate to a road headed north with a sign for Vulcan Materials. Vulcan Materials is one of the quarries. (They also have a flag that just says "Vulcan." Note to them: If this ever gets stolen, I didn't do it. I just want to.) I don't recall seeing any "Do Not Enter" signs, but I was still a bit intimidated. So I went home and looked it up on Google Maps, and there was no road there. So I switched to satellite, and there it was: running right along the Congaree and into Rosewood Extension.
    So now I've found the mystery road. Now to get up the nerve to walk, drive or ride on it. Maybe I'll call the Vulcans and ask for permission. Would "Live long and prosper" be a good conversational gambit?

In which he complains about his health

    Uhhhhh, I still get cramps in my feet, calves and forearms. And my lower back hurts a bit sometimes, and sometimes my neck is a little stiff. And I wish I didn't have celiac sprue. Aaaaand that's it. Not bad for a decrepit old cripple, huh?

Cell phones and worst-case scenarios

    I hate carrying the cell phone anywhere and almost never do. Yesterday at Congaree Creek Heritage Preserve, footing was slick and muddy, so even worse than usual. And I was picturing slipping and falling by myself and having to drag myself out and drive myself out. And it occurred to me that maybe carrying a cell phone around and having a slightly bulging pocket wouldn't be such a bad thing. For being completely un-self-conscious about my looks, I'm fairly self-conscious about my looks in certain regards.
    Anyway, I will try harder to carry the cell phone with me at all times. After all, I need to be a good example for my dad!

Ninety cents of guilt

    Yesterday at the Stepping Stones Thrift Store on Two Notch, I found an abridged version of John D. MacDonald's "Free Fall in Crimson" on tape for a dollar. Books there were ten cents and I also found a book I wanted, a children's book called "The Cay," which was made into the best TV movie ever when I was a kid, with James Earl Jones and everything. Went to check out and the lady charged me twenty cents, as in for two books. I wasn't trying to get over; I had the book on tape, clearly marked $1, on top. And I certainly looked (and was) surprised when she said that.
    It's not a question of "Hot damn! I saved 90 cents!" I'm poor, sure, but I'm not quite that poor. I'm just trying to stop being the kind of person who reflexively corrects other people, and I haven't quite mastered the golden mean. I comfort myself with the fact that there probably isn't anybody else around looking for Travis McGee on tape, so they probably weren't going to get the 90 cents anyway. Something else to work on, I guess.

Slander, libel...

    My friend Evans Elliott died in a homeless shelter in Ridgeland, SC in early 2007. It was a bed he had largely made for himself, through failing to quit drinking, but he had some help. There was a fellow who came to the Columbia area claiming to be a secret grandson of Carlo Gambino. Evans was always a sucker for anybody claiming to have money and power. A touch of infamy didn't hurt any either. "Carlo" took Evans down to Lauderdale for the titty bar tour. I remember Evans left his camelhair coat in the uh, Mob staff car, and trying to help him get it back, with no success. Later, I found that he had also "invested" some twenty or thirty thousand dollars with "Carlo." He never got that back either.
    I really think the family might have been more likely to help Evans with his drinking but for the colossal financial mismanagement. I really think the lowdown fake Mafia skunk contributed materially to Evans' death. I remember his real name (or the one he goes by), his wife's name, his kids' names and the auto dealership he supposedly owned. I'm wondering if you can actually libel somebody on a blog nobody reads. I'm thinking of giving it a try, though I supposed it wouldn't be fair to Blogger/Google. So for the moment, I'll just mention that if there's a hell, I'll see you there, Carlo.

Fear of outdoors

    Back when I stayed inside nearly all the time, my dreams at night were radically indoors. As in, I was at a college that was all in one huge building, or at a mall with a huge garage right in the middle, and even in a city that was entirely enclosed. Since I've started hiking again (or anyway taking long walks), these have receded a good bit. But last night I had one of those, the combo model: indoor college AND mall. And I was trying to get back to where I lived, which was on a different level of the indoor college/mall. And all stairs, escalators, elevators were blocked, so I had to go outside.
    And the ground was poisoned. There were warning signs everywhere, and security guards were warning people (well, me) not to go out there. I told them that I had been out yesterday and hadn't had any problem, then I saw the warning signs (which presumably hadn't been there the previous day). I shuffled back to the building; I don't know if I ever found my way home. I'm not really sure what this is all about. I love the heck out of the outdoors just as much as ever, and take advantage of the spring weather here every day. I assume this is how my subconscious is processing Fukushima. Or maybe it's telling me, "Get outdoors MORE!" I think I can do that.

Zombie pickup lines

Is that a brain in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?
I love Gilmore Girls, too! I was so bummed when it was canceled. Hey, I have all the episodes on DVD! Maybe you can come over to my place and we can watch some and then I'll EAT YOUR BRAIN
I'm not like the other guys. I only love you for your BRAIN!
You're a Taurus? I'm a Scorpio! I think we really have compatible BRAINS!
(I don't think I'm going to admit at this time that I've been working on this bit for 3 or 4 years. What?! There's only so many of these you can come up, inasmuch as the punchline, uh, punch word is always the same. Now to put them in sonnet form!)

Jack Spratt

    As time goes by, I get green around the gills ever more frequently when I've eaten even remotely greasy food. This seems odd to me, as I used to live on fast food. I mean, at least one fast food meal a day, every day, and often two and sometimes three. Don't know if my system just can't handle it any more or if gluten-free living has changed my digestive system. The latter would be a good thing, as I used to have my food race through me almost instantly. Maybe digesting food more slowly means more chance to absorb the fats, and maybe my body is just objecting to more getting through.
    Mom never did very well with greasy foods, and I take after her in a lot of ways. Since I had to get the celiac sprue from somebody, and since she's the one with Irish heritage, it's always possible that she had it, too. That Charleston rice-based cuisine could be a lifesaver. I'm sure glad I grew up on it.

Accidentally like a Zen Buddhist

    Sometime last fall, I caught myself making lemonade when life handed me lemons, behavior I had NOT previously associated with myself, and I wondered aloud who had kidnapped me and replaced me with a nice person. Now the same international gang of pranksters appears to have kidnapped me again and replaced me with a Zen Buddhist. Now when life hands me lemons, I'm more thinking "Lemons are OK; I can live with lemons." I'm rolling with punches, I can accept the worst life has in store, but am still hopeful and enthusiastic for the best. Where have all my neuroses gone?
    Of course, it's possible that my brain just fell out. Yesterday, I made turkey chili, but forgot to soak the beans. And to buy the ground turkey. And the diced tomatoes. Had to make two grocery runs mid-chili-making. It was some consolation that the chili turned out terrific, even with canned pinto beans. But if it hadn't, I probably would have been philosophical about it. And this is hard to do when your brain's fallen out.

More on (moron) advertising

    One idea I keep coming back to is that maybe I should go into advertising myself. Clearly, I haven't the chops to become the great American novelist in the time that's left to me. So maybe...
    The idea I had is a supremely crazy one. Whenever an ad comes on the radio (or TV, on the rare occasions I watch), I should write it down and also time it, then try to write a better one. If I do, I fire off a letter to the company with my better idea and... get a very polite thank you note from the deputy assistant communications director. But hell, as bad as these ads are, you would think that somebody would be looking for something better. Especially the local ones, and especially the local ones on the radio.
    So I dunno. Maybe it isn't a totally crazy idea. The central thought (See? I do know other words besides "Idea") is to make something constructive and creative out of one of life's petty annoyances. And maybe, I dunno, some cash.

Attitude

    Some time in the '80s I got fed up with attitude, particularly in advertising. Mr. Denis Leary started his career brilliantly, because he was clearly spoofing the entire attitude-centered youth culture then prevalent on the programming of his employers, MTV. However in the years between then and now, he has become what he was parodying, a one-man cottage industry of attitude. But he's just one man. In my TV-watching years, I saw ads with old people with attitude, babies with attitude, cows with attitude, puppies with attitude (wait; that was Scrappy Doo) and of course, impotence with attitude. It's. just. tiresome. It's as fun as hanging out with sarcastic 15-year-olds, which wasn't fun when we were sarcastic 15-year olds. If anything, it's getting worse.
    Lately I listen to a great deal of old-time radio. Some of the shows leave the ads in. Currently, I'm listening to a terrific series called "Suspense." It was sponsored primarily by an outfit out of Fresno called Roma Wines, then apparently the most popular wine in the country. They went out of business ages ago; the fact that Fresno mainly is famous for raisins these days suggests that they may not have been the finest. But their ads were so warm and friendly that I always find myself wishing I could go get me some Roma wine-- and I don't even drink wine.
    I think companies wishing to advertise need to learn from the older ads. Rule 1: Say the product name a lot. Rule 2: Convey a warm and friendly presence. Rule 3: Don't piss off potential customers. It's Rule 3 that I think they're having trouble with, and don't even know or care. I think I'll take a page from Mr. Leary's book: I'm coming knock, knock, knockin'. And when you open up, I'm going to be NICE.

Mr. Rogers

    About age 70, ten years before she died and towards the beginning of her Alzheimer's slide, my mom started watching Mr. Rogers. She said she liked it because he liked her just the way she is. This is achingly sad, because she clearly wasn't getting that kind of affirmation from us. But all the same, at least she was getting it from somewhere. So nobody says anything bad about Mr. Rogers around me, ever. (Though I did think all the parodies were funny.)

"This is for Jenny"

    The above was said by the lead singer of Sniff n the Tears to introduce "Driver's Seat" as their encore when they opened for the Doobie Brothers in the late autumn of 1978. The lovely girl seated next to me, on my first date ever, was in fact named Jennifer, though I don't know if she heard him, nor if anyone ever called her Jenny. I just thought, and still think, it was the ultimate cheesy introduction to a big hit single. If he's still living and if they're still playing, no doubt he still says the same.
    I probably am not the only person who made his first date via pay phone. I don't know why it was extra hard to make that phone call from the parental manse. But for whatever reason, Evans and I went to Main Street to use the pay phones there. (It would be a semi-double-date, as Evans took out Jennifer's best friend and a sometime tennis partner of his. But we, that is, the two couples, arrived separately.) Much to my shock, she said yes.
    The passage of years thins the memories. I remember that we had a new silver '78 Impala one of the doors of which I had just dented, of course on her side. I remember what she wore (red and blue stripy blouse, memorable blue trousers) and that on the way to the show I asked her what kind of music she liked and she said Styx. Perhaps it was more than a coincidence that they were the next band playing at the Coliseum.
    I remember making a fool of myself singing along to "Black Water." I remember not having the nerve to ask for a good night kiss, nor the grace to walk her to her front door. I remember being a nuisance to her for the next year, and never getting another date with her, especially not to see Styx. (I went with brother William.) I remember bringing a small bottle of Joy (the perfume, not the dishwashing liquid) back from France for her. She was pleased, but did not noticeably fall in love with me. The whole fiasco ended finally when Ms. Wingard, who will not be further named as she, too, is married to somebody else these days, fell for me hard.
    I ran into Jennifer years later, and have seen her on Facebook more recently. She grew up to be an elementary school teacher and a wholly admirable person. And apparently, her Dorian Gray trick is going even better than my own. And what have we learned? Apparently, the best way for a lady to get and hold my attention is pretty straightforward: look Irish. Oh, and Jenny was sweet.

    [It has come to my attention that there is a high probability that "Driver's Seat" didn't exist in 1978. This triggered the memory that the band that in fact opened for the Doobie Brothers was Ambrosia. The probability is that Sniff 'n' the Tears opened for Kansas when I saw them a year later with Ms. Wingard on an actual double date, and the "This is for Jenny" line just struck me as ironic because she wasn't there, though this isn't to say I was in any way dissatisfied with my current company. So the piece becomes a discourse on the limitations of memory. Hell the whole blog is going that way.:)]

Lost John Road and Memory Lane

    On the way out to Congaree National Park, off of Old Bluff Road is a short road called Lost John Road. Except for the whole having-to-drive-20-miles-to-get-groceries thing, I'd love to live there. It's not that I feel so lost; I just think it's inherently funny. Also, MAN would it be cool to live that close to the park. Also also I have a dream of opening a B&B handy to the park. While Lost John Road probably isn't close enough to be workable, it certainly would make for a cool mailing address. At the very least, it would be a kickass title for a novel.
    Speaking of street names, when Alice and I lived in Oak Grove, there was an unpaved road not far from us called Memory Lane. At least in SC, in rural areas with the advent of 9-1-1, nearly every driveway is a named street now. Some homeowners are creative with it and some are not. There are untold numbers of Pit Bull Drives and Rattlesnake Ways and the like, and about as many just named after the homeowner. I think Memory Lane is one of the good ones. I still can't decide whether "Memory Lane is unpaved" works as a zen koan or not. But I think it's cool.

Waterline

    I always said that if I could describe the high water mark on the baldcypresses at dusk in Congaree National Park, then I'd call myself a writer. It's just... hypnotic. Almost ghostly. You see the same mark on every tree, as far as you can see. It's nothing and everything; it's so beautiful and yet-- not unnoticeable, but easy not to notice.
    See? Can't do it a bit. I'll never make a writer. I'll always be a dilettante with good syntax. But I'll be amused about it.
    And yes, I could post pictures. I know how, and it isn't hard. But hard as the vista might be to describe, it's harder to photograph. Impossible, really. I've tried time and time again. You'll just have to go and see.

Let's retitle this blog entry

This has been much my most visited blog entry, almost certainly because "Mema" is a bad word in some other language. I certainly don't mean to mislead anyone, so all these years later, I'm retitling it. The old title comes right after this colon:
 "Let's get Mema a puppy"
    It makes me crazy when writers use unfamiliar names or nicknames without explaining the pronunciation first, so let me start by saying that "Mema" is a nickname some Southerners use for their grandmothers or great-grandmothers, and it's pronounced as if it were spelled Mee-maw.
    When my mother was still able to talk and think, she always wanted to go out to the two big flea markets out Augusta Highway (US 1). I always felt bad that I never took her, especially of course when she could no longer think or talk. Later when Alice and I lived out there (a large, unincorporated community called Oak Grove), we decided to go. Of the two flea markets, the Barnyard Flea Market was more convenient to us so we gave it a try. It's the smaller of the two, less popular and so less busy, farther from Columbia but closer to Lexington. I remember there was a wide variety of items on sale. I don't remember being too captivated by anything. I don't recall either of us feeling too tempted to buy.
    What I do remember was the pet store. Maybe it wasn't an outlet for a puppy mill. Maybe they had a good reason for locating in a flea market other than being an outlet for a puppy mill. But what I remember most was walking back to our car, passing a family going slowly. They had bought a puppy for Mema. Mema was in a wheelchair. OK, it's the thought that counts. OK, maybe Mema lived with them and somebody else would take care of the actual bringing-up-the-puppy part of bringing up the puppy. Still, it seemed like a fairly odd gift for somebody in a wheelchair. I felt saddened and a little distressed for the puppy. And I never went back.

An almost infinite number of monkeys

Note: I'm completely ripping this off from the great Bob Newhart. Only with product placement.
    To be or not to boo
    Out out, brief Kindle
    Neither a borrower nor a Lender's bagel
    Fair is foul and fowl is chicken
    What fools these morays be!
    O Romeo, Romeo, what the hell does "wherefore" mean, Romeo?
    The first thing we do, let's kill Lancelot Link, secret chimp
    Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your oars
    Alas, poor Yorick, I knew him--Say, what is this? CSI Elsinore? He's a frickin' skull!

Amelia the cat reveals her true self

    "Look, I know I'm cute and fluffy and everything, but I am in fact the reincarnation of Albert Einstein, and when I bat the little foam-rubber soccer balls around, I am trying to convey to you my perfected Unified Field Theory, you simp. Christ on a bike, this is worse than the Patent Office. I'm gonna go lick myself."
    Really, I go back and forth whether she is the reincarnation of Gandhi, or of my mom. If Project Pet was correct about her age, the latter is just about possible. And it would explain why she always has to keep an eye on me.
    (Really really, I don't believe in reincarnation, but it's a good story.)
    Meanwhile, in non-Monkey-related news, the mockingbird who has been making sleep difficult hereabouts seems to have gotten a new alarm clock. I may be able to sleep without a radio on. Yaaay!

Why I probably won't be writing any more hiking books

    Or rather, why I'm not an ideal choice as a hiking book author. Reason 1: I'm not terribly discriminating. If it's a path through the woods, I like it. If there's pinestraw on the ground, I love it. Something about the smell, I think. Anyway, I just really like walking through the woods regardless of terrain, weather or scenic beauty, and tend to give five of five stars to every trail I've ever been on that didn't actually involve quicksand or fording a river.
    Reason 2: My chief goal in life is getting lost. Ideally, I want to get lost somewhere I don't speak the language and the populace is hostile. I remember trying to get lost in Moscow. In the middle of winter. At the height of the Reagan phase of the Cold War. Without a word of Russian. In a green American parka that looked REALLY out of place. I couldn't do it. It's not that I have a great sense of direction; I have a terrible one. But I'm really good at remembering landmarks. And I don't panic, ever. And if I'm honest, I have better common sense than to go anywhere I can't find my way back from. I guess the last two are the reasons I am a good choice as a hiking book writer.