.
DAY ONE: Flat Stanley lay on her stomach and absorbed the rhythmic sensation of long, slow strokes. Deep, penetrating sensations traveled the length of her back. A second application of lubricating oil made the trip even smoother. When every muscle from shoulder to buttock had been coaxed to a state of surrender, the teasing, sliding hands moved to the top of FS's thighs and began another long, slow descent -- this time, to the bottoms of her feet. One delicious stroke at a time; one leg at a time.
DAY TWO: By 10 am, the sun had burned the mists from the peaks. The waves lapping gently at the beach gave no hint of high tide. A few tourists looked for sand dollars while a yoga class entered savasanna. FS shuffled out to waist deep, wary of sea urchins and crabs, and watched a pelican hit the water like a concrete block, then rise. A pool of minnow-sized fish darted around her, as if FS was surrounded by an invisible wall.
DAY THREE: FS checked out a surf-board kind of toy from the beach shack and tried to get the hang of riding to shore on a wave. After about an hour, she got the hang of mounting and staying upright instead of rolling over in a sideways somersault. The tide rose and before long, FS learned to time the waves well enough to be routinely catapulted to shore. The lifeguards, recognizing the danger this posed to mothers and young children, confiscated the board before FS managed to cause permanant injury to others.
DAY FOUR: FS caught a tour of the bay. It was disappointingly tame until the turnaround point, when the boat anchored and guests were ordered ashore. The good news: Guests were encouraged to go to the top of the boat and jump. Nowhere in the safety-conscious USA would this kind of activity be permitted on a commercial cruise. FS climbed to the top rail, third deck above the water line. It was a long way down. Hey, there were people watching. Plus, younger people, much younger people, were jumping. Teenagers and little kid people were jumping. FS drew upon her amply-endowed stock of pride and jumped. Again, and again, and again.
On shore, squeezed in between the base the mountain and the bay, was a restaurant. Sand floor. No walls. Smelly dog under the counter. No habla Ingles. FS pointed. Cerviche. Tasty. Much later, FS discovered fish cooked in lime juice, not fire. Called cerviche.
DAYS FIVE - THIRTY FIVE: Massage, swim, lunch, drink, nap, swim, read, swim, boat ride, drink, nap, party, sleep, hike, swim, nap, read, massage, sleep, nap, swim, read, read, swim, nap, read, swim, Massage, swim, lunch, drink, nap, swim, read, swim, boat ride, drink, nap, party, sleep, hike, swim, nap, read, massage, sleep, nap, swim, read, read, swim, nap, read, swim.
DAY THIRTY SIX: FS meets hot guy. Mucho gusto hot. Cancels her massage appointment. He says he'll do it for free. FS is on the bed. His hands are poised over her. He trembles slightly. FS breathes into the tension, eagerly awaiting his touch. The tension mounts, his hands come closer. FS feels his pulse in their heat. Her breath catches in her throat.
The alarm goes off. FS throws off her blankets and heads for the shower, hoping that she remembered last night to set the coffee pot to automatic.
.
Thursday, December 18, 2008
Saturday, December 13, 2008
Cheap Pine Box
.
In the deep woods of Tennessee, where Flat Stanley's mother is spending her last days, the dead don't have to be buried. Once they're embalmed and put in a box, family members can haul it out to the woods and pile rocks on it if they want. Flat Stanley's mother wants to go out in a cheap box and old clothes. She doesn't care about what happens to the body as long as it's not cremated. She's petrified, though, of being forgotten.
She won't be. She wouldn't have been. One cannot sow the kind of sorrow she has sown and be forgotten.
Twenty six years ago, when her granddaughter was four months old, Flat Stanley's mother walked away. She'd done it before, but Flat Stanley knew that this time it would be forever.
Flat Stanley recognized her grief and allowed it to work its course. A job change took FS to a new state, where her sister lived, and eventually her mother re-connected with FS's sister. FS lived within an hour's drive of her mother for five years. The mother moved away and remained in sporadic contact with FS's sister.
One morning, says FS's sister, the mother woke up blind in one eye. Her ailment was misdiagnosed; one morning a few months later she woke up blind in the other eye. A few years later, she developed throat cancer. She got weak. Eventually, FS's mother agreed to move to FS's sister's home on the condition that none of her three siblings ever visit.
Within days, the mother was diagnosed as having only a few weeks to a few months to live. In the car on the way home from the doctor's office, FS's mother said she wanted to see the family: FS and FS's two brothers.
WTF.
While FS was digesting this, one of the brothers asked if FS would like to speak with the mother on the phone.
WTF?
This topic -- how to speak to an estranged family member who suddenly wants to reconnect -- and happens to have only a few weeks to a few months to live -- isn't covered in any of the self-help books FS has read. What do you say? "Nice to meet you?" "How the hell you been?" "So, how yuh feelin'?
FS handled it like a bad comedy: She spent 10 minutes talking non-stop to her mother about her father's family, the people in her life that FS's mother most hated. It was like meeting a stranger with a big nose and saying, "Nice to meet you, Ms. Nose." Or offering sunglasses to a blind person. Woops. Forgot. She's blind. Bad analogy.
FS likes to be prepared, so she prepared for this phone conversation by putting a date and time for the phone call in her planner and making sure the evening was empty of appointments. That gave her two days to figure out what to say. Which, obviously, didn't help. At the appointed time, FS pulled two cold ones from the refrigerator and bought a box of tissue. Dialed the phone. Talked about the most inappropriate topic she could find. Hung up. And wished for the 10,000th time in her life that she hadn't been cursed with an inability to process alcohol without a hangover.
Word came that FS's mother wants a professional portrait of herself to be distributed to each of her children and grandchildren. FS wished for the 10,001th time in her life that she hadn't been cursed with an inability to process alcohol without a hangover.
In November, FS paid a personal visit to her mother. Creepy as it may seem, having the ol' lady blind helped those inevitable awkward moments a lot less awkward. Blindness means that FS can stare and gaze and wonder and not get caught doing it.
At that visit, FS's mother hugged her twice and kissed her twice. Only times in FS's memory. FS is returning to spend Christmas. If the law grants permission, her paroled brother will be there as well. For the first time in 37 years, FS's mother and her four children will be in the same room. We'll observe a holiday and allow this woman and ourselves to end well.
FS's mother spent a lifetime rejecting relationships only to learn that, at the end, relationships are what mattered most. Without intending it, FS's mother has given herself and her children the gift of reconciliation. Now, we can say those most important words: It's ok. Even if it wasn't at the time, it's always been ok. Go in peace.
.
In the deep woods of Tennessee, where Flat Stanley's mother is spending her last days, the dead don't have to be buried. Once they're embalmed and put in a box, family members can haul it out to the woods and pile rocks on it if they want. Flat Stanley's mother wants to go out in a cheap box and old clothes. She doesn't care about what happens to the body as long as it's not cremated. She's petrified, though, of being forgotten.
She won't be. She wouldn't have been. One cannot sow the kind of sorrow she has sown and be forgotten.
Twenty six years ago, when her granddaughter was four months old, Flat Stanley's mother walked away. She'd done it before, but Flat Stanley knew that this time it would be forever.
Flat Stanley recognized her grief and allowed it to work its course. A job change took FS to a new state, where her sister lived, and eventually her mother re-connected with FS's sister. FS lived within an hour's drive of her mother for five years. The mother moved away and remained in sporadic contact with FS's sister.
One morning, says FS's sister, the mother woke up blind in one eye. Her ailment was misdiagnosed; one morning a few months later she woke up blind in the other eye. A few years later, she developed throat cancer. She got weak. Eventually, FS's mother agreed to move to FS's sister's home on the condition that none of her three siblings ever visit.
Within days, the mother was diagnosed as having only a few weeks to a few months to live. In the car on the way home from the doctor's office, FS's mother said she wanted to see the family: FS and FS's two brothers.
WTF.
While FS was digesting this, one of the brothers asked if FS would like to speak with the mother on the phone.
WTF?
This topic -- how to speak to an estranged family member who suddenly wants to reconnect -- and happens to have only a few weeks to a few months to live -- isn't covered in any of the self-help books FS has read. What do you say? "Nice to meet you?" "How the hell you been?" "So, how yuh feelin'?
FS handled it like a bad comedy: She spent 10 minutes talking non-stop to her mother about her father's family, the people in her life that FS's mother most hated. It was like meeting a stranger with a big nose and saying, "Nice to meet you, Ms. Nose." Or offering sunglasses to a blind person. Woops. Forgot. She's blind. Bad analogy.
FS likes to be prepared, so she prepared for this phone conversation by putting a date and time for the phone call in her planner and making sure the evening was empty of appointments. That gave her two days to figure out what to say. Which, obviously, didn't help. At the appointed time, FS pulled two cold ones from the refrigerator and bought a box of tissue. Dialed the phone. Talked about the most inappropriate topic she could find. Hung up. And wished for the 10,000th time in her life that she hadn't been cursed with an inability to process alcohol without a hangover.
Word came that FS's mother wants a professional portrait of herself to be distributed to each of her children and grandchildren. FS wished for the 10,001th time in her life that she hadn't been cursed with an inability to process alcohol without a hangover.
In November, FS paid a personal visit to her mother. Creepy as it may seem, having the ol' lady blind helped those inevitable awkward moments a lot less awkward. Blindness means that FS can stare and gaze and wonder and not get caught doing it.
At that visit, FS's mother hugged her twice and kissed her twice. Only times in FS's memory. FS is returning to spend Christmas. If the law grants permission, her paroled brother will be there as well. For the first time in 37 years, FS's mother and her four children will be in the same room. We'll observe a holiday and allow this woman and ourselves to end well.
FS's mother spent a lifetime rejecting relationships only to learn that, at the end, relationships are what mattered most. Without intending it, FS's mother has given herself and her children the gift of reconciliation. Now, we can say those most important words: It's ok. Even if it wasn't at the time, it's always been ok. Go in peace.
.
Monday, December 08, 2008
Santa Claus is for REAL
Some Christmas Wish Lists are predictable
Son-in-law: Slim wallet
Son #1: The same metabolism he had when he was 10
Daughter: Gift certificate from Charlotte Russe
Son #2: Send Money Now
and some point you back to the magic
Granddaughter:
Son-in-law: Slim wallet
Son #1: The same metabolism he had when he was 10
Daughter: Gift certificate from Charlotte Russe
Son #2: Send Money Now
and some point you back to the magic
Granddaughter:
- A REAL motorcyle
- A REAL fire engine
- A fairy wand
Tuesday, December 02, 2008
Improper Energies
Flat Stanley is envious. She's envious of WOW and his ability to captivate the reader mostly by charming him or her through his version of life's ordinary moments. She's envious of Cunning Linguist and his irreverent rants against, well, everything. She's envious of Karen for her ability to be both serious and interesting. FS wants to be equally inane and/or interesting.
But no.
The Feng Shui is wrong. The bathroom's in the wrong corner of the house. The color in the bedroom is supposed to be in the kitchen, the live plant in the living room is plastic, and the furniture arrangement in the dining room is impeding upward counterflows. Not to mention that the furniture is pine, not teak, causing Sagittarius to lean on Aquarius and Jupiter to dampen the crystal. Making things even worse, the false heartiness of the plastic plant's aura is wreaking havoc on the quantum energies, so the Q is now actually the number 7. Did you think that FS was going to say that the Q is now actually a P? That's how bad it is: FL was actually going to say that the Q is actually a P, but the impact of sub-atomic particles on over-arching superstructures is vast and unpredictable.
Why just the other day, FS was thinking about how we are now being told by scientists — real ones — the kind that wear bright white lab coats — that the mere act of observing particles at the sub-atomic level changes their behavior. The behavior of the particles, that is. FS imagines that it might take a lot to change the behavior of people observing tiny particles that only they can see. Little tiny particles which somehow know when they're being observed, and respond accordingly. These same people in bright white coats, by the way, somehow know that the behavior of the particles has changed, even though no one's ever actually seen the particles behaving in the way they behave when no one is observing them.
So, as FS was observing, vast and unpredictable. Like business. In FS's world, running a household has powerful similarities to running a business. Revenues, capital expenses, operating expenses, rainy day funds, investments to meet future needs, succession planning. Manage and adjust course regularly to stay in alignment with short- and long-term goals, mostly being that one reaches pre-determined increments of time with a balance of $0 or better. FS, not being of the bright white coat world, is of the opinion that vast and unpredictable changes should fall into the categories of finding a winning lottery ticket or being named an heir to the DuPont fortune.
Or maybe FS is of the bright white coat world, and her casual observation of the business world is what has rendered it vast and unpredictable. Observe with FS the business model of one local company:
(1) buy a failing business and merge it with yours;
(2) employ the entire management team of the failing business to run things;
(3) wonder why, 5-10 years later, market share of the business has dropped from 95% to bankruptcy; and
(4) watch same management team move to another company.
What if FS had not been watching? What if FS put a real plant in the living room, painted the bathroom puce to compensate for its poor placement in the house, and moved the bedroom to a location where the frequencies are more sex-friendly. Say, way more sex-friendly. Say, guaranteed to generate hot, grinding, tirelessly horny, f-me bedroom vibes? Talk about a good chi! Chi-it!
Business. Yes. Vibes and observation and energies. Say, FS thinks that anytime someone can get a government to pay their way out of a history of poor decision-making and unwillingness to act as a responsible citizen of the world that maybe the sub-atomic particles of leather furniture, executive teak bathrooms and corporate jets are aligned pretty well.
And FS is considering taking a closer look at those sub-atomic particles. But first, FS must investigate the powerful energy field currently swirling through a particularly sensitive portion of her cardboard.
.
But no.
The Feng Shui is wrong. The bathroom's in the wrong corner of the house. The color in the bedroom is supposed to be in the kitchen, the live plant in the living room is plastic, and the furniture arrangement in the dining room is impeding upward counterflows. Not to mention that the furniture is pine, not teak, causing Sagittarius to lean on Aquarius and Jupiter to dampen the crystal. Making things even worse, the false heartiness of the plastic plant's aura is wreaking havoc on the quantum energies, so the Q is now actually the number 7. Did you think that FS was going to say that the Q is now actually a P? That's how bad it is: FL was actually going to say that the Q is actually a P, but the impact of sub-atomic particles on over-arching superstructures is vast and unpredictable.
Why just the other day, FS was thinking about how we are now being told by scientists — real ones — the kind that wear bright white lab coats — that the mere act of observing particles at the sub-atomic level changes their behavior. The behavior of the particles, that is. FS imagines that it might take a lot to change the behavior of people observing tiny particles that only they can see. Little tiny particles which somehow know when they're being observed, and respond accordingly. These same people in bright white coats, by the way, somehow know that the behavior of the particles has changed, even though no one's ever actually seen the particles behaving in the way they behave when no one is observing them.
So, as FS was observing, vast and unpredictable. Like business. In FS's world, running a household has powerful similarities to running a business. Revenues, capital expenses, operating expenses, rainy day funds, investments to meet future needs, succession planning. Manage and adjust course regularly to stay in alignment with short- and long-term goals, mostly being that one reaches pre-determined increments of time with a balance of $0 or better. FS, not being of the bright white coat world, is of the opinion that vast and unpredictable changes should fall into the categories of finding a winning lottery ticket or being named an heir to the DuPont fortune.
Or maybe FS is of the bright white coat world, and her casual observation of the business world is what has rendered it vast and unpredictable. Observe with FS the business model of one local company:
(1) buy a failing business and merge it with yours;
(2) employ the entire management team of the failing business to run things;
(3) wonder why, 5-10 years later, market share of the business has dropped from 95% to bankruptcy; and
(4) watch same management team move to another company.
What if FS had not been watching? What if FS put a real plant in the living room, painted the bathroom puce to compensate for its poor placement in the house, and moved the bedroom to a location where the frequencies are more sex-friendly. Say, way more sex-friendly. Say, guaranteed to generate hot, grinding, tirelessly horny, f-me bedroom vibes? Talk about a good chi! Chi-it!
Business. Yes. Vibes and observation and energies. Say, FS thinks that anytime someone can get a government to pay their way out of a history of poor decision-making and unwillingness to act as a responsible citizen of the world that maybe the sub-atomic particles of leather furniture, executive teak bathrooms and corporate jets are aligned pretty well.
And FS is considering taking a closer look at those sub-atomic particles. But first, FS must investigate the powerful energy field currently swirling through a particularly sensitive portion of her cardboard.
.
Monday, December 01, 2008
Cat Vomit
Veterinarians have a strange sense of humor. Comes with the profession, just like a room full of accountants might laugh themselves silly over one liners such as
What do accountants use for birth control? Their personality.
and
A person decides to become an accountant once they realize that they don't have the charisma to become an undertaker.
As a pet caretaker, however, Flat Stanley wants real answers to real important questions. Important questions along the lines of "Why does euthanasia cost so much?" and "Are my pets gay?" and "How is it possible for one cat to vomit twice its weight in cat food?" "Several times a day?" "And not lose weight?"
And, how is it that when a cat bites and scratches its caretaker, it's called love, and when a dog does, it's called "an unprovoked attack?"
The most pressing question is, why is Flat Stanley paying $75 for the privilege of hearing a physician to domesticated animals laugh at her own jokes?
Two cows are in a field.
First Cow: "Do you worry about getting Mad Cow Disease?"
Second Cow: "Nah, I'm a penguin."
Why don't anteaters get sick? They're full of anty-bodies
Why don't blind people bungee jump? It scares the crap out of their dogs
A chicken and an egg are lying in bed. The egg is frowning and looking annoyed, while the chicken has a big smile on its face and is smoking a cigarette.
The egg says, "Well, I guess we answered that question."
How do you make a cat go "woof"? Dip it in gasoline and light a match (OK, Flat Stanley's just kidding. That's not a joke a neighborhood vet would tell. To the public, anyway.)
Flat Stanley didn't get her most pressing question answered, but the vet did offer the latest scientific explanation for her cat throws up after every meal: Because it's a cat.
That cost me $75. I paid it. Maybe the vet is laughing at her own jokes because it pays so well.
.
What do accountants use for birth control? Their personality.
and
A person decides to become an accountant once they realize that they don't have the charisma to become an undertaker.
As a pet caretaker, however, Flat Stanley wants real answers to real important questions. Important questions along the lines of "Why does euthanasia cost so much?" and "Are my pets gay?" and "How is it possible for one cat to vomit twice its weight in cat food?" "Several times a day?" "And not lose weight?"
And, how is it that when a cat bites and scratches its caretaker, it's called love, and when a dog does, it's called "an unprovoked attack?"
The most pressing question is, why is Flat Stanley paying $75 for the privilege of hearing a physician to domesticated animals laugh at her own jokes?
Two cows are in a field.
First Cow: "Do you worry about getting Mad Cow Disease?"
Second Cow: "Nah, I'm a penguin."
Why don't anteaters get sick? They're full of anty-bodies
Why don't blind people bungee jump? It scares the crap out of their dogs
A chicken and an egg are lying in bed. The egg is frowning and looking annoyed, while the chicken has a big smile on its face and is smoking a cigarette.
The egg says, "Well, I guess we answered that question."
How do you make a cat go "woof"? Dip it in gasoline and light a match (OK, Flat Stanley's just kidding. That's not a joke a neighborhood vet would tell. To the public, anyway.)
Flat Stanley didn't get her most pressing question answered, but the vet did offer the latest scientific explanation for her cat throws up after every meal: Because it's a cat.
That cost me $75. I paid it. Maybe the vet is laughing at her own jokes because it pays so well.
.
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