Suspiciously Stained Socks

Alex took the coupe in to the tire shop to get new tires put on early this morning.

I stayed home drinking coffee and looking at email and news for the hour or so he was gone. The dogs napped and the house was unusually quiet for a Saturday.

When Alex got home, he took the pups for a walk while I got ready for the day. We decided we would go to lunch and then to the movies on this cold and rainy Saturday afternoon.

When Alex opened the car door for me on the passenger side, I saw a pair of stained white socks laying on the floor of the car. Alex said "Are those your socks?" Uh, no, Alex. We have been married for 21 years and I have never had a pair of socks like that in all that time, now have I? I kicked at the socks and saw they had some weird stains on them. I reacted with a "Ewww!".

Alex asked me "Where did they come from?". Now, keep in mind, he took this car out this morning to get new tires put on. The last time I rode in this car, there were no stained socks on the floor. I would have noticed.

I pointed out to my husband that he had taken the car out this very morning and gone to Big O Tires. The socks must have appeared while the workers were taking off the old tires and putting on the new ones.

Alex said "That doesn't make any sense." Okay, let's just say that Mario who works at Big O Tires has padded his crotch area to enhance his "bulge" to impress the ladies with his equipment. The sock bundle could have slipped out of his boxer briefs and fallen to the ground. Before anyone else noticed, Mario may have tossed the socks into the car.

My explanation seemed to cause Alex to both snort and have a gag reflex. I think it might be a reasonable hypothesis that this is exactly what transpired.

Since there were 5 men working on our tires this morning, it's unlikely that a local housewife was walking home from the laundromat and noticed that her husband's white socks were still stained with something unseemly which would enrage her husband. So she decided to just toss his white socks in our car. In the first place, it was raining, so the car window was up. In the second place, the door was locked.

We did manage to toss the socks in a garbage can, or rather Alex managed to. I didn't want to touch those socks without a hazmat suit. He just picked them up with a piece of paper. I hope he didn't "catch" anything.

I Got The Drama From My Mama

This is a very old photo of my mother in one of her costumes. She was a dancer and a showgirl.

Mom also performed in movies and was under contract with MGM where she appeared in numerous musicals.

My mother was 16 and just ending an unfortunate marriage when she left Oklahoma City with a dance troupe. She traveled cross country and into Canada during WWII to entertain the troops.

Along the way, she had a chance to dance on Broadway opening night for the musical "Oklahoma". Once she arrived on the West Coast, she danced in several popular nightclubs.

Mom's roommate in Los Angeles was Yvonne De Carlo who appeared in many films and later became fairly famous as "Lily Munster" in the hit television show, "The Munsters".

My mother moved to San Francisco when she was 20 years old and worked at a popular San Francisco nightclub called Bimbo's 365. During this time, she met a good looking young police officer and she married him.

A year and a half later, I was born, followed two years later by another sister, and three years after that a third sister. I guess my parents thought it would make sense to give it one more try (for the elusive boy child) and that's how I got my youngest and 4th sister.

To say that my parents had a "volatile" marriage really doesn't cover it at all. As far back as I can remember, there were moments of horror followed by moments of hilarity. My parents were magnificently beautiful people and magnificently flawed as well.

Mom taught me to "faint dead away" by the time I was 9. After a terrible screaming match with my father, Mom would grab her daughters and we would leave him forever. The only problem was, we were on foot with no money and nowhere to go.

That's when I would be called upon to "faint dead away" on the sidewalk. I got to be really good at it too, even ignoring the ridicule of my sisters saying I looked like the witch in the Wizard of Oz who melted. Mom would hurry off to call my dad to come and pick us up while I continued to lie on the sidewalk with my eyelids fluttering.

Of course, my dad would hurry to come and pick us up and then my parents could have a reconciliation. I know it sounds awful, but it was actually kind of funny.

My ability to faint on short notice has served me well as an adult too. When the shit is about to hit the fan, I can still drop to the floor "fainted dead away". Thanks Mom!

The Navajo Tomahawk

My husband Alex has a weapon that has been handed down in his family for a few generations.

The rather deadly looking tomahawk is hanging in the office along with some of his commendations and awards for military service.

(Alex has a lot of those and a ton of medals from 25 years of being in the military.)

The tomahawk is one of his prized possessions right along with his handmade Kachina dolls, Indian pottery, baseball card collection and black cars. Alex also collects bobble head dolls from Giant's ballgames. Oh, and then there is also a foreign coin collection that Alex has acquired in his travels. Wait! I'm forgetting about the guns! Alex has a gun safe that is jam packed full with rifles, shotguns, and handguns.

We have a curio cabinet full of his "stuff", as well as a display case for his medals. We have unfortunately run out of room for much more.

For example, Alex's three black cars take up all the room on our long driveway. Alex's commendations take up a full wall in our house. The Native American paraphernalia is spread out all over the house. We also have tons of "tech toys" everyplace you look. There are laptops, gps units, portable dvd players, ipods, ear phones, calculators, along with things that are tech toys but I have no idea what they are.

I am frankly something of a minimalist. I love the "less is more" approach to things. Alex is a "more is better" kind of guy. When I look on the bright side, I realize he never complains about my fat ass.

Still, do any of you know how I can contact the tv series "Hoarders"? I think we need an intervention.

Ghosts of Dead Bikers

The sky filled with black crows this morning.

There were hundreds of them in my oak tree alone, cursing and swearing loudly. I watched them out the window and thought about what I've been told.

I have a good friend who is a biker woman and quite extraordinary. She is talented, beautiful, wild, brave and much more free than most people I know. Her name is Jay.

Jay says that black crows are the spirits of dead bikers. I looked out the window at the gathering crows and I could imagine them slumped over their gleaming Harleys, dressed in traditional leathers, and scowling at each other.

Bikers are unusual people. A lot of what they do is "theater". There are bikers I would trust with my life and bikers who I would never trust with anything.

I watched the conference for about an hour and then by some mutual agreement, they took to the skies and roared off to another location in unison. Theater, indeed! I sat transfixed at the window for another half an hour wondering if they would return, but they didn't.

Thanksgiving Aftermath

Honey's bed is in the dining room, right next to the floor heater.

She has a teddy bear blanket that she loves to sleep on. We've been watching her very closely since yesterday afternoon. In fact, I slept on the floor by her side last night.

Friday, yesterday, we took Honey and Harry to their park and they had a good time. Everything seemed normal. Honey was in good spirits as was Harry. We had a full house on Thanksgiving and both dogs love company, particularly if it includes kids.

Now they don't love kids for the obvious reasons, they love them because they drop food. If you follow a kid long enough, you'll get a snack. Works every time.

About 4 in the afternoon yesterday, Honey had been napping in a spot of sunlight in the office. Harry barked at her because he wanted to come in and she was blocking his way. Alex said, "Boy! She's really sound asleep!" I walked over to look and she opened her eyes.

I nearly had a heart attack when I saw that her eyes were completely rolled up in her head. I then noticed that her legs were at a very odd angle. She tried to get up and she couldn't.

I called the vet and we rushed her right in. They kept asking about toxic substances that she could have gotten into. To our knowledge, there's nothing like that around.

To me it looked like she had a stroke. The vet said that was possible, but toxins weren't out of the question either. Honey is about 11 years old. She's had very bad hips and arthritis since we got her nearly 6 years ago.

Honey has had a good life. She's a great dog and is truly my "forever" girl. I have hired an acupuncturist for her. She gets massages. She eats better than a lot of people. But she's getting old and there really is no cure for that.

The vet told me to take her to the hospital and they could put Honey on an iv to get fluids into her and monitor her overnight. I asked if they could give her some fluids along with doing the blood and urine work-ups and she said yes. I said I would bring Honey home and we would monitor her.

Honey was incontinent during the night so I gently cleaned her and replaced her bedding a few times. At 7 this morning, she couldn't even let me give her sips of water out of my hand. I told Alex I was going to call the "house call" vet to come and euthanize her. We both shook our heads but thought it would be the best thing we could do for her. I planned to call at 9 AM.

About ten minutes before 9, Honey stood and got out of her bed. She walked to the kitchen door on wobbly legs and Alex carried her downstairs so she could "do her business". She walked up the stairs by herself and she wanted breakfast.

I spoke with the vet earlier today. She said that Honey's lab work looked fine and that the probable problem was a stroke or some other neurological event. Further, the vet said that older dogs do have them but sometimes they recover and are just fine. (Of course, the vet also added that sometimes they have more strokes after the first one.) For today, we've cheated death for Honey.

Right now, I remind myself of a frog I had when I was a kid. The frog got sick and his eyes swelled up almost shut and then he died. My eyes look like that today. I hope I don't have what he did.

Sex Scenes

One of my favorite sex scenes of all time (besides my own) was between Marlon Brando and Anna Magnani in a very dark 1960 film called "The Fugitive Kind".

I really don't remember that much about the movie, but I remember the scene. Marlon Brando played a drifter who comes to work at a store owned by Magnani and her somewhat sadistic, invalid husband. Magnani clears out a storeroom and puts a bed in it, saying something to Brando like "You might as well sleep here since you don't have a place."

Brando walked up behind Magnani as she was showing him the storeroom. From behind, he pushed her into the wall with his body and then kissed her neck. They were both fully dressed at the time. I know I moaned out loud right in the movie theater.

This was a film adaptation of a Tennessee Williams play. Williams' stories are always set someplace in the hot and sweaty South. He really is not one of my favorite writers. But this scene made me feel something on an emotional level.

Over the years, I've seen a lot of very "raw" sex scenes in movies. Some have worked better than others, for example, "9 1/2 Weeks" and "The Postman Always Rings Twice" and "The Piano". But none of those films have one particular scene that ever actually become embedded in my mind like the scene with Brando and Magnani.

There was a rawness and an honesty to the scene which was done by two very skilled actors who both "brought it" that day for that scene.

Perky breasts and bottoms don't make a scene sexy. Neither do graphic scenes without any emotion. Now, I like porn for porn's sake just as well as the next girl, but it's not really sexy. It's athletic, (usually kind of funny too!), but it's not particularly sexy.

Many years ago, Alex and I saw an amazing Japanese film called "Realm of the Senses". The movie featured mainstream Japanese actors and was a love story between a prostitute and a man. What distinguished this film from any other I've ever seen was that perhaps a full three minutes of the film actually showed graphic sexual penetration.

It was probably the most honest portrayal of sex in a relationship I've even seen on film. I found it somewhat surprising, but not nearly as stimulating as the sex scene in "The Fugitive Kind". My imagination provides much hotter sex than graphic portrayals on screen.

Going To The Nudie Bar

What a difference 17 years makes!

In the photo, my first grandchild, Cyrus, is shown at about a year old. I was at the hospital when he was born and spent every possible hour with him from that time forward.

Cyrus will turn 18 early next month. I sometimes wonder how that is possible. He and I have been "best friends" since he was born.

He still calls me about 3 times a week and spends the night at "G-ma's" house at least once a month. Cyrus has told me "secrets" from the time he could talk and I hold those secrets deep in my heart.

When I asked him what he wanted for his birthday this year, he was a little cagey. I suggested that we could probably arrange to get him a hooker and he said he had one last year. Then he corrected himself and said, "Actually, it was a couple of weeks ago, but it sure seems like a year!" That Cyrus! His mom promptly covered her ears and started saying "No! No! No!" until he walked out of the room. He was joking (probably).

His dad has promised to take him to a nudie bar for his birthday. I guess they let 18 year old's in these places if they don't serve alcohol.

I still don't know what to give him, but I want it to be something wonderful. For almost 18 years, he's given me something wonderful.