Aisle 13

The other night we got a last minute invitation to a Sex in the City party that was being held in a lingerie store down on Madison in neighboring Forest Park. Are you grasping the notion that we(The Royal 'We') make every attempt to go where we're invited? (We didn't get to the Gospel Fest Today. Too much stuff to do.)

I threw on my brand new silver raincoat that I recently liberated from the Goodwill and we dashed down to Baubo's Garden. I had passed it about 87 jillion times but never stopped in and here was my excuse. It was a 'Girls Night Out' to celebrate the Sex in the City movie that's coming out this weekend. There was wine to be tasted, underwear to be admired and a test that I could not possibly pass.

I never watched the show.

Maybe 5 minutes here or there but, I dunno, it just rubbed me the wrong way.

I can swearword like a sailor if I'm in the right company, but underneath it all? I am 87% puritan and I didn't see the attraction of these 4 seriously odd women saying 'blow job'. I feel the same way about that Law and Order Special Victims Unit. Try and watch to see how fast they fit the word 'penetration' into a sentence. This is what passes for entertainment, huh?

Oh-kay. Whadeva.

After the party, we stopped into the Jewel to pick up some Heart School homework and we found ourselves reading labels in the dairy aisle. The Shish tipped the package of this goop called Promise Activ Super Shots and one teeny jug of the stuff went flying and before it hit the ground and without missing a beat she peered over her zebra striped Readers and deadpanned: Clean up in aisle 13.

I just about split in half bent over wheezing and coughing-laughing.

I made my way to the courtesy desk, sniffing and wiping tears from my eyes and then over the loudspeaker the familiar refrain: Clean up in aisle 13.

After we resumed breathing for the second time, we pulled our collective selves and our strawberry flavored 8 pack of Super Shots together enough to make it back to the car.

It was about a year ago, in one of our first adventures, I walked with MK and Bob down to the Forest Park Street Fair where we looked at all manner of people in every shape and size and MK made a comment that people who are depressed should force themselves beyond the television set and out into the world and ya know what? I haven't even mentioned the unmentionables I won in the lingerie store raffle(not the quiz-the raffle).

You had to be present to win.

http://www.baubosgarden.com/

The Future

We were driving back from Chicago today and we took Washington and while the greystones got more fabulous? The neighborhoods did not. not. not. not. not.

There are so many cheerful donations a person can make but this one is so entirely cool, I dare you to try and watch the little movie and click away. Triple dare you. And that's legally binding in several states.



http://gotrchicago.org/

Pet Vets Animal Hospital

You pwoblee don't weckanize me. (That's something my parents neighbor kid said when he showed up on their doorstep at age 4 on Halloween. We sucked that one up right into the family lexicon.) Am I using that word correctly? Wouldn't that qualify as a 12 on the mortification scale if I wasn't? Yeah, like I've never been to '13'. ))

I am sitting here sipping something called Promise Activ Super Shot and next to me are some Voortman cookies only they don't have sprinkles or chocolate wiggly lines of joy or anything equally delightful, they have(brace yourself) Omega 3s. Yoikes. What a difference a couple of weeks in Heart Smart class makes, huh?

Holy Mackerel Andy. (As my Dad would say who, ironically, is also a good source of fish oil exclamations, no?)

Today, Grantley and I had to return to PetVets to get the second half of her Leptospirosis
vaccine which comes in two parts, plus it's preceded by a shot of Benadryl. The risk is that Grantley might step into a puddle of tainted raccoon wizz (technical term) and you'd think that living four blocks from Chicago it'd be a long shot, but Barbara Downstairs Who Works Way Too Much and Leaves For Work Before The Crack of Dawn told me the raccoons who hang out on top of our dumpsters wave at her in the morning and say things like, 'Have a Nice Day Sucka' as she's getting into her car. So.

Could happen.

Since I'm all about what's floating up my bloodstream of luv all of a sudden, I asked the brand new vet tech something I'd be wondering about since the dietitian first visited Heart School.(And we love the dietitian because She's Not Mean.) So, I said to the Vet Tech, let's say I fed Grantley stuff like chicken skin-is that also bad for her?

The vet tech kind of understood but not 100% so I ventured further.

Okay so, what if I made something like a roast, right? (And you all know this is fiction because I am the sort of a person who has 6 week old petrified sweet potatoes in my oven, right?) And, I continued, when this (fictional) roast was done and the pan cooled off, what if I...and here is where I will eliminate readers but you don't move forward without some risk so(deep breath)..let Grantley, you know, lick the pan.

You had to see the vet techs face. She went all Picasso on me. As if she had never heard of something quite so disgusting in her life. She steadied herself, took a deep breath and said, well what you could do, is let her lick a little bit off your fingers...as if the tongue on pan was the problem and not dog cholesterol and it was then I knew that I had come upon yet another continental divide of humanity. People who put their plates on the floor after dinner for the dog to lick and people who would prefer to contact Leptospirosis (and in acute cases, they'd simply go into shock and then succumb according to some website info I scared up.)

When I proofread in a giant cubicle with Alice and Troy and Pat and an awesome group of proofers we were when we weren't getting spoken to for laughing too much or too loud which was almost every day, (how lucky WERE we? Seriously.) we determined several ways to split the population. Those who consider black licorice a food group and those who buy the jelly bean mix that's all pastels. Those who, under extreme pressure and emergency would urinate in the shower and those would never consider it.

And now this.

The haters are making jokes about how they're never going to have dinner at my house but here's a minor newsflash: Haters aren't invited*

*Unless they agree to bring Switzers for dessert.

All Over Town

Tonight, the girls and I went for a giant walk.

We have several classifications of walks. There's the 'quick walk' which is not even down to the corner and that's reserved for those rare occasions when The One With The Warm Nose oversleeps. There's the 'It's raining do you wanna turn around now' walk which is about a block and a half long. The 'Hey it's snowing!' 4 block special.There's the 'Do you wanna go to the Dog Park?' walk. That's reserved for the weekend when we have to get up extra early and saunter down the three and a half longs to get to Ridgeland Common Park where from 6-8:00 am-IF you have a pass, you can let your pal run willy-nilly all over the place with her snurfy friends.

We have a two mile walk we do by ourselves when I need to think which is umm every single day. When I'm really crazy(good crazy-that is), we do a replication of the Frank Lloyd Wright 5k which takes us by many of the fabulous homes and studio. Sunday afternoons are set aside for 'The Opposite Walk'. Instead of heading North, we go South and end up passing through Oak Park's Art District and we cut through Longfellow Park where there are two sand volleyball courts and for some reason Grantley turns into a greyhound (the dog not the bus) when she hits the sand.

Fwoosh!

We have walks that are led by MK's dog Zack. He's got one that goes east through the quiet neighborhoods where we admire the gardens and he's got this really wandery one that goes all the way to Marion Street by way of Mills Park which is pretty far.

Tonight Grantley, the Shish, Tinkle and I left at 5:40 and we didn't get back home until 8:10. That is a Long Walk. Especially if your legs are 14 or 6 inches off the ground at the shoulder respectively.

We passed this very handsome gentleman (Really. Phew.) and The Shish said, did you see how he looked at you? Apparently she meant me, since I was the quickest with the verbal response as opposed to the others who were eating little tiny green leaves and inhaling the wind. We made more silly comments and cracked ourselves up which, in my opinion, paid him the highest compliment available to a grown man and that is, we dissolved in dopey giggles as we went on our way and all of it reminded me of something that happened yesterday.
(The man is saying: He's friendly. And the woman is saying: So are we.)

In other news, I popped into Bargains in a Box where I bought my sister a new troll to replace the one I had thrown up on in the back of a yellow Volkswagen Beetle-car trip near the Snake River in 1970something.

It was twenty-five cents. I hope she likes it.

The Street Outside Oak Park Hospital

We're taking this class through the Village called Heart Smart-to me it's like 'Life School'. The stuff someone should have told you but they didn't know. (And when I refer to this particular stuff, I'm not talking about a bad hairstyle someone should have told you looked seriously goofy or that for some unfair reason, your MC Hammer pants don't qualify as 'retro' or that that woman/man that Done You Wrong was No Good To Begin With-that's different.) This is like: a fruit is a carb.

I think I kinda knew that but I think I kinda didn't or more likely, I wasn't paying attention because I can't know everything all at the same time even though I absolutely try, try, try and try again.

This morning, I set out to meet The Shish for class and I was early so I took out my homework and tried to make it legible.

We got there and we're sitting down for class and my pen is no place to be found. Not in a pocket, not in a purse, not in my folder. I look toward Shish and umm she's got my pen.


I got to spend some Mini-van time with MK's nephew Braden who had this super cool super hero action figure and Braden would make the action figure say the things Braden couldn't say himself like: Mister McZippy* wants to leave the Flea Market and he wants Burger King for lunch now and I thought, hey not a bad 5th grader methodology/coping skill, huh?

One of my ©©©Life Goals©©© is to have my own ARF dog Pez and yet it hasn't come to pass in time for me to subliminally get this particular purple pen back (and seriously now, if I had a talking ARF dog Pez? I'm guessing it'd ask for some variation of poultry, no?)so, I'm sitting there pen-less which would be for some people like an international flight with no Nicorette gum, you get me?

Oy.

I whisper: Hey Shish? How did you get my pen? She whispers: What? I whisper: That's my pen. She looks at me like: ????? And hands it over. Uggh I feel awful. To accuse my friend of such a horrible crime. A terrible thing indeed.

She reaches into her bag and pulls out a duplicate of the exact same purple pen. I think, Phew. Okay, No big deal.

I keep looking over at her and I can sense that there's been a shift in our cosmic paradigm of blissful uncaring happiness and she's making these fake 'I don't think I know you any more Ann' smiles at me and I'm trying to understand that something called 'phyto chemicals' are really good, yet they can't be made into pills but I cannot focus, because friendships seem to be such slippy things and I want to be so extra careful not to crash any more of them than I already have and I'm sitting perfectly still but ouch I'm kicking myself because it was just a pen and don't I seriously need to get OVA myself already and broccoli is a good source of calcium and that if you're going to buy organic-do it with peaches and berries because they tend to absorb pesticides and then I remember that when we walked in? I handed my pen to The Shish so she could sign herself in.

It gets to the end of the dietitians presentation and I whisper: I figured it out. And The Shish says, Oh! All is reasonably swell again and we take the long way to get back to the car so we can take extra steps/burn extra calories and we're crossing the road and she looks down and resting on the edge of a puddle? There's my pen.


*Not his real name.

A Passing Thought

$7.99 Life Coach(& eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25.)

Allergy Season

Happy ahhhhhhhhhhhhhchooooooooooooo

Schprink.

Oak Park Arms

The sign at the Oak Park Arms has the entire neighborhood in a tizzy. (Not the entire neighborhood. Just me that I am aware of at the moment, but it's a holiday weekend and all.)


I asked Marilyn this morning. Is it really him coming to the Arms? Or is it The Music Of? She said it might even be some sorta film of him performing his greatest hits and as I was walking Grantley, I got to thinking about something that happened in Brooklyn a frazillion years ago and my lip started to contort and my face started to quiver which, if there was a neighbor looking out their window? Must have been cause for some concern because a lone woman of my advanced years walking a dog cracking her own ass up is an unusual site indeed.

Generally speaking, in Oak Park, Illinois in 2008, the sidewalks are chiefly ornamental.

(Cue dream sequence)
We were at a super cool party for a dog shelter in Brooklyn. (That's right. I said super cool. Were you there? Then you have no idea.) It was Ed and Mott and me and maybe Jorge and his girlfriend and maybe not, I can't remember. Anyway, the rumor was that Debbie Harry from Blondie was supposed to make an appearance at this benefit party and okay, it was quite a few years after her first batch of greatest hits and we were wondering what Debbie would look like and every time someone over the age of 80 would pass, Mott would say: That's HER!

I would just about dissolve into the proverbial puddle of butter laughing. My jaws would ache in actual merriment from being around those guys, so many years ago.

Now I have an Ed that plays the bass as opposed to my previous Ed who was a fine art painter. Sadly, I have never been able to replace my Mott.

http://www.oakparkarms.com/

List of Things To Do

Remember at Woolworth's how you had to beg your Mah to buy you one of those black waxy slate-type hunks of cardboard with the sheet of frosty plastic that went over it so you could draw something on the sheet with a red piece of pen-shaped plastic and then by lifting the frosty plastic sheet, Wah-Lah! You could make your writing disappear?
(Like an Etch-a-sketch but 1000% times cheaper IF your Mah was in the mood to cough one up as opposed to something dull yet necessary like Emery (yawn) boards or bobby pins.) I just remembered what they were called. Magic Slate.

Someone gave me one of those fancy Moleskine planner things?(Jest like the real brainiac celebrities used to think big thoughts like they do! Or did. I think they're mostly dead, no? Hemingway, Picasso and Matisse-that's the rumor.) It was too small for me and ever so annoying and pretentious with the matchy-matchy pen and those tiny boxes that you're supposed to shove your entire existence into? Moleskin schmoleskin. I don't know about you, but I'm living la vita legal size.

But!

My pen must be solid red plastic because it seems like whatever I put out there? I'm being serious here-my mouth is a perfect straight line and I have engaged all muscles that might qualify for Botox when they offer it with a fill-up at a Gas Station(could happen)-what's the line? Ann plans, God laughs?

It goes like this. Okay I think I'll have Cheerios for breakfast. There's no milk? Okay toast. The power is out? Okay an apple with peanut butter AND coffee. Oh right, the power is out. Okay, uhh...I'll get some coffee across the street (and let's pretend I could swallow 7-11 coffee because I can't even smell that stinky Hazel Nut flavored joe without my eyes tearing up and don't get me started on the stench of the candle section of Pier One)and then let's say I'd get the coffee home and I'd set it on the railing so I could open the door and then I'd drop it, the bottom of the Styrofoam cup would crack and glug glug glug coffee everywhere. I just did that the other day.

I went to see Ed-massage therapist/bass player to the stars(that would be me)play at this event called Blooming on Harrison and I swear he said they were going to play at 2:00 and Grantley and I walked down the whole street and back and we were heading to the truck and boink, there's Ed with this seriously Hot Cha Cha guitar player and Ed says, Hey! We're just going to set up! And the Hot Cha Cha guitar player says: Is that a Corgi Mix? And I say: You're setting up now?/Yeah a corgi blend supreme/thanks for asking. But I am thinking: Yoikes who's THAT Hot Cha Cha guy and where do I get one of my own? But I say, Hey Ed, I'm gonna go get some coffee (because apparently all of a sudden there's time for coffee fetching-I don't say that last bit because who cares really, right?) and so I drive to the McDonalds drive-thru and I get a coffee and try one of those $1.49 chicken wraps which is disappointingly chilly because it's been soaked in ranch dressing and sprinkled with low grade lettuce which is gross but Grantley likes it and we get a good new parking spot on one of the side streets of Harrison and I get out and set the coffee on the edge of the truck bed and POW.

It's on the ground going glug glug glug and I can't even save it and I am so like...umm okay I guess I didn't want any coffee really.

There was that church I used to go to that had affirmations and the one I feel I have finally internalized is this: I rejoice in living. I will make this day a wonderful adventure.

More lata. Lawd willin'.

My Desk

I make these little notes for myself.

I've got sheets of handwritten plans and ideas and a nice 'list of things to do' on a clipboard and I've got a giant calendar right next to me and as a matter of fact, I'm taking part in a Personal Time Study that goes along with a Food for Thought Study plus a couple of notes taped to the wall. One says "G OPT G=Copyright" and that's to remind me how to make the copyright symbol. I always feel like it's assumed that anything that's fallen directly out of my hand belongs to me, but other people haven't completely grasped that concept, so, g opt g. (Or you can meet my friends at the LCA, I guess.)

This note was in front of my keyboard. It's on a low-quality sticky note(Long ago, I temped at a place where they called them 'postie notes' and I wanted to heave.) If a note is placed right in front of the keyboard-it's supposed to be Very Important-not quite 'STAT' which lands a note taped to the alarm clock reminding me why I have to rise at the crack o dawn-but still Very Important and I saw the note the next day and it looked like this:



It says 'CVS Leash' because I was poking around online looking for a pink webbed-type retractable leash for my house guest because hers was malfunctioning and the webbed kind are better than the cord kind in case you've ever had the back of your knees sliced open by the cord type and if you are ever lucky enough to have the chance to meet Tinkle? You'd just know she needs a pink leash.

The other notation is 'Tree2' and that's because I when I made the Tai Chi dog leash drawing, I had already named a previous file 'Tree' so it's to remind me that occasionally, there are limits to my creativity.

The other notation. I didn't know what it said. It looks like nAppy, so clearly (?) that says 'Happy' and then it's got an s-c-h-i-p-something-something-k. Three days I looked at that note with exactly no clue as to what that could possibly mean and I live with myself* so it's not like someone else might be able to assist me.

I'm going to be off-line for a day. I hope when I return I shall have a proper illustration of what that note refers to.

Please stand by.

*I was called for jury duty in the criminal courts. After days and days, I finally got placed on a jury and it came to the voir dire and they asked me about my living situation and I had been reading some sorta selfie-helpie thing at the time, and so I began to say, I live alone, only at the last second I switched it to the much more groovy and life affirming: I live with myself. I was feeling all supercalifragilisticexpialidocious about it in a Sister Suffragette kind of way and my Dad said: That's why they didn't take you.

Heh heh heh. Everyone's a comedian.
Thank goodness.


http://www.law-arts.org/

Tai Chi Ridgeland

I Tai Chi'ed twice today. Tonight at the Y from 7-8:00 and how you can get so sweaty doing such simple movements, I shall never understand. Tai Chi One was at 7:46 AM and I'm warning you, go shop for a bigger hat, your head is about to expand.

I was feelin' all fantabulous because I now know how to hold two retractable leashes in one hand. So I'm walkin' along thinkin' maybe I need to take up some sorta rodeo event because I have got this multiple retractable thang going on.

All of a sudden those blasted dogs taught me some sort of physics lesson AND a Tai Chi principle at the same time. Instead of me exerting some sort of pulling or stopping force, they decided to self-organize so that, if Grantley lingered behind to snack on a chicken bone, Tinkle would move forward and the entire works would adjust. If Tinkle got a taste for bunny rabbit sandwiches, Grantley's weight would hold Tink back. It didn't have a single thing to do with me. I was just holding the ropes.
The Tai Chi thing is something I've been trying to figure out. Dr. Frank says when someone attacks you, you don't resist and take them on. You use the power of the force of the attack and step out of the way as they fling themselves on by you. And like Barney Fife's single bullet, I surely hope I never have to use it.

In case none of that made a bit of sense and that's a giant possibility, I've made little arrows on my drawing so you can tip your head to the side until you understand just like the dogs have taught you.

West Cook YMCA
www.opymca.org
Tai Chi and Nei Gong
Mondays 7-8:00

Scoville Park

Eight of my toes are doing yoga.

Much like regular yoga, I can never do the poses exactly right (or okay, even close actually)with the stylish-in-January pedicure and the zippy color-coordinated outfit and the 'looks fabulous even upside down' haircut and all, because pedicures in January in Chicago are silly and also there's that tiny issue of 'being in perfect shape' thing too. I couldn't do monkey bars in 1968, I cannot do proper asanas in 2008 but as we speak? Eight of my toes can do yoga. (The other two have fallen back into child's pose because they are unable to reach.)

Ommmm.

I'd seen a similar product to what's on my feet in the backs of magazines and I think I looked them up and found they were about 40 bucks and yeah, I just looked them up again and I was close. Forty nine ninety five which is another way of saying two much four me four now if you can't make soup out of it.

But as fate would have it, I found something else.

Every year for the past five or six, I tear the notice of Tulipmania out of the paper and never go. I guess the rite of spring was tearing that notice out. Tulipmania is where you agree to trade 2 hours of your life digging up bloomed out tulip bulbs in exchange for 4 dozen bulbs, which won't buy you even one yoga toe, when you stop and think about it, but it's the principle of the thing, no?

I had my own secret agenda too. I thought hmmm, the more people I know that I can get to dig tulips, the more tulips I get to look at in Spring 2009. Win win win win win, right? Except nobody else could go and honestly? It wasn't exactly a stroll in the park. There were a list of rules as long as your arm and the man in charge was sort of hmmm, you know, just a little bit uhhh particular. (And note to self: If you're gonna be randomly critical of volunteers? Make sure you get your own hands dirty as well. Anyone can make judgments from the safety of the sidewalk. Wait a second. Strike that. Don't be critical of volunteers at all. It's very bad manners. Come to think of it/duh.)

So okay, I worked my ass off(Oh that it were true, that your ass could fall off in chunks just by working-it's like my patented plot to cure excessive weight gain by giving people worms. We could have a dance craze AND weight loss at the same time. Come on. Is it really any more disgusting than Strawberry Supreme Slim Fast?). We did all the major beds in Scoville Park in two hours. It was about 9 people, three on staff with the park district and the rest volunteers and to the side there was a young woman, completely color co-ordinated from her bag to her notebook to her shoes to her pen sitting on a bench observing as she jotted in her journal. I kinda smiled to myself as she assumed the 'Thinking Writer' position as seen on TeeVee. I thought, Yeah, you wanna be a writer? Get off the bench, get on in here and get your hands dirty, my friend. They make flowery garden gloves.

Isabel, who remains Bob's ass-kickingly cool mother who follows the Pistons and makes astute life observations, said to MK when MK revealed she's doing the Three Day Walk for Breast Cancer? She said, I don't understand these things. Why don't people just give up a few hours to help people? And ya know what? She's right.

I got to bring home a big honking bag of bulbs. (They are supposed to be for sale 2 bucks for two dozen at the Conservatory. Just FYI. In case anyone wants to get some red ones for my new block er sumpthin.) Eilene downstairs put them in for me because I was finished for the day in terms of gardening. The springtime wind knocks the crap outta ya or is that just me? (Ooh. How poetic.) There were enough bulbs left over to give two dozen to MK and Bob and I called Marilyn and said, hey ya want some tulips? She said, "Do I?!?' and I said, "How many?"

I got to her house about 5 minutes later and she'd dug a little hole and I handed her these two giant bags and she said,"This isn't four tulips" and I said, "It's four dozen." And there was another person filled with glee. (This morning she said when they come up in the spring we're going to put on our wooden shoes and perform a little dance. I said, umm okay but let's dance in those felted slippers you promised to make, okay? Splinters, ya know?)

I found this other ad from one of those companies that's set up to solve all your problems? (I'm warning you now. Don't go to their website unless you have three hours to kill.) They had a version of Yoga Toes called Flexible Toes and I brought it into Dr. Morales at Eastlake Chiro and she said,"For twelve bucks? Try it."

My toes are doing yoga.

Ommmmmmmmm.


http://www.oprf.com/conservatory/

The expensive ones
http://www.yogapro.com/ts/foot_facts3.html

The cheap ones
http://dreamproductscatalog.com/details.cfm?item=11701

http://www.nba.com/pistons/index_main.html

Great American Mutt Show

Now it can be told.

It was Tinkle's second night here on the plantation and I hadn't seen her eat or drink anything and so I drove over to Pete's Red Hots. I've passed it a zillion times on my way to the World's Largest Laundromat but as I explained to MK, there are some beaneries(as my Dad would call them)that exist too close to my home for me to justify a visit. There's a good looking diner/grill sort of place right down the street and I've never been, because if I'm there, I might as well be here, but this was a mission.

Shish and Erol are good customers at Pete's. They've been telling me about it for weeks now in the sort of a,"You've never been to Pete's?" kind of a way. I found Mickey's Gyros and there was no turning back for me but Tink wasn't eating and I couldn't have that.

As I pulled in, I saw the man wiping the counter and I mouthed,"Closed?" and he shook his head and I went in. I forgot what the name of my order was. It was a piece of chicken-grilled and cut up on a pile of salad with a hot piece of pita bread. It was good. Fresh. And the main thing, she ate little bits of it. We all did. Yay.

Today, the three of us conquered the Great American Mutt Show. It was held in the parking lot of Morton West High School. I halfway tried to get someone to go along but it wasn't looking good and then I thought of one of my 8 zillion mantras which is: You won't meet anyone new if you don't go alone. So I did.

Don't be thinking I like traveling alone. I still have to convince myself. I do that by standing in the kitchen repeating my mantra du jour as I am getting ready, but I'm not waiting for permission to live anymore. The clock is ticking. (Not that clock. The big one.)

I'm still working on this style of life. I just caught myself dipping into the old well of 'somebody else doesn't want to do it/game over' drama queenology but luckily something bonked into place in my head and I remembered my plans. Sorta like in the summer when you'd tell your Mah you were bored and she'd say, I'll find something for you to do and suddenly the entertainment possibilities were endless? Kinda like that.

Contests make me a little sad and not because we didn't take home a blue ribbon. I'm a member(in bad standing)of the National Cartoonist Society and one of the benefits is that I get to vote on Cartoonist of the Year and I always throw my ballot away. What's the difference who was better or worse(woo subliminalish, huh?), you were working drawing funny pictures, that's the prize.

Same for this, when I saw a woman who actually resembled an olde tyme Grandmother wrapping her Sheltie in a home-made sunflower costume and her husband looked at me and said, "And she made it herself!" Just based on my having smiled in their direction? I don't want to play 'contest' anymore. Everyone's a winner/who cares. Duh.

Grantley got so comfortable she sprawled on the AstroTurf of the showing area. Tink, who is massively shy, got filmed wearing her new(used)pearls by the crew from 190 North and I went up to Janet Davies, the host of the show, and shook her hand because I am continually trying to earn enough credits for my red badge of courage but you know, no rush or anything.

Grantley, Tinkle and I also shared a slice of pizza which is no small feat when you've got two pups on retractable leashes and the wind is blowing and the tents are flapping and everyone is trying very very hard to be extra brave.

The good thing about having two dogs is that you don't have to worry about napkins.



Pete's Red Hots
6346 Roosevelt Rd.
Oak Park, IL 60304
708-383-6122

muttshow.com


http://190north.com/

reuben.org

In Little Piles All Over The Place

If you are a cartoonist, people ask you three things.

1. Where do you get your ideas?
2. How much ya get for sumpin' like that?
3. What kind of pen do you use?

Number two is a sneaky way to inquire about ones income. I still struggle with that one because part of me wants to relay the correct information and the other part wants to sock them in the nose cuz it's none of their beeswax. I try clever lines like, "Less than you'd imagine." or "How much do you make?" but I have this problem where my most clever reactions come about 45 minutes too late and that is why my best Second City improv material was always written and performed by myself for myself in the car driving west on North Avenue on the way home.

I killed. Seriously.

Today I tried to spend some quality time chasing dog hair tumble weeds and making new formations out of my fragillion piece unread magazine collection. As I moved about the palatial estate, I kept finding little piles of the answer to question three.

This is the pile in front of my computer.

This pile is to my left.

This is the pile to the left of my light box.

Here's the one from the kitchen.

On to the living room.

The pile on my immediate right.

(That's not counting the markers and colored pencils and the pens in my truck.)

This isn't just a reason I should appear on Oprah for hoarding, it's also the answer to question number one. And number two? POW.

The Living Room

I completed the adoption papers today.

I'm going to have my very own block. I was just surveying my land-so to speak-as a Jays potato chip bag rolled along my curb and I mentally thanked it for showing up. I want a drastic 'before' so I can have a dramatic 'reveal' after I get my 10 pairs of gloves and whatnot.

(I'm not 100% sure that this will be my block. This is the one I asked for, because I said I didn't think I could manage something like the Expressway all by myself and now I'm thinking I should have gone with Kenilworth because I think those people have indentured servants cleaning their gutters, but whatever. I'm gonna ask my Dad about making me a stick with a nail on the end of it and maybe I'll get one of those yellow webbed lawn chairs so I can sit out there with an artificial shotgun to protect my work. I'm sure it'll be fine. Eventually.)

There's one very bad thing about this block and one secret weapon. The bad thing, that Grantley would tell you increases her personal property value on the joint, is that we live downwind from a Popeye's Chicken. What certain citizens seem to do, is purchase a bag of chicken elbows and eat them, as they walk east toward the high school-launching the bones off the sidewalk willy-nilly, Johnny Appleseedlianesque-like.

I was cured of any admiration of chicken elbows when I did my two weeks("Some Graduate Work Completed") at Buff State. Home of this weirdo sandwich called 'Beef on Weck' and, that's correct my friends, Home of the Wing. It's kinda like doughnuts in Canada. They have really superior doughnutage happening north of our border but after the 7th time in a row you're offered a heaping platter? You're sorta like...hmmmyeahno/Never again/But Gosh/Thanks for asking, eh?

When I lived in Ozone Park, Queens-where we could hear the recorded announcement of the("Take the") A train closing it's door from our apartment windows(It was then we learned the real value of a TVs remote control. When a train would pass we'd just automatically turn it up.)the streetloaf of choice was Styrofoam cups.

Our dog was coo coo for cocoa puffs to eat the discarded Styrofoam coffee cups that fell from the hands of assorted commuters and collected near the train entrance. If you put your hand near his mouth to take a cup away, he could not be held responsible for any inadvertent shedding of(your)blood. When he pooed, we couldn't collect it fast enough-it looked like some sort of evil animal testing laboratory experiment.

We'd be forced to shrug in front of the old man that liked to feed our dog scraps of 'Toy-kee'-as if to say, we're young, stupid and useless in the fight against Styrofoam. Please don't judge.

The good news in the current fight against street grime, is that my official chicken wing collector Grantley, has a very good friend on our street named Joe. You know how puppies are supposed to be dude-magnets? It's true and Grantley caught Joe her first day out on the circuit.

Joe is 2 years older than I am. He details cars at the body shop when he isn't hanging around the library waiting for the shelter to open. I have seen him scare the holy living crap out of people just by his presence-especially when he has his hood up-I bet he'd scare the crap out of himself in a full-length mirror. The cool part is to watch the alarmed try and collect themselves after they see that Joe only wants to have a smooshy love chat with Grantley and Joe has an unusual voice. Sometimes Grantley and I can hear it from the courtyard when he yells for Sadie's husband. He prefers that to ringing the bell.(Speaking of free-spirits.)I say, is that Joe? And Grantley knows very well that it is.

Joe doesn't really talk to me. He talks through her. He massages her nicely and tells her how good she is and how spoiled and she does 'circle tail' which is only reserved for The Most Honored Humans before she drops to the ground in submission-even in the alley. The only sentence Joe and I usually exchange, is at the end when Joe gestures like royalty and says to me: Take her away, Ann. Then he watches and marvels at how she doesn't want to leave and she watches him go back to sweeping in front of the body shop, as she sits frozen in place.

If Grantley is on top of the wings and Joe keeps sweeping, my street should be okay.

In other matters, tonight I drank my after-dinner coffee with the television on and all at once, both dogs leaped up looking extremely alarmed.


'It's okay," I reassured the pups before they settled back into their dreams. "She's got a free spin card."

http://www.jaysfoods.com/

Adopt A Block/Keep Oak Park Beautiful
c/o Public Works
201 South Blvd.
OP, IL
708-358-5700

http://www.popeyes.com/

http://www.westsuburbanpads.org/dnn/

http://www.buffalostate.edu/

Scoville Avenue Tai Chi

Form 9B
"Mess with the karma of the loon, both sides."

Pleasant Street Qigong

Form 8A
"Grasp the dog's leash, right and left style"

My Bed

We have a visitor.

This morning at 3:29 AM, the visitor and Grantley decided to start a party. I heard the footsteps in the hallway and I shielded my eyes as I squinted into the darkness which makes absolutely no sense except that it was 3:29 AM and at that hour, not a whole lotta stuff does make sense. Agreed?

"Girls? What are you doing?",I whispered into the moonlight. They froze in place. "Do you have any idea what time it is?" I said all bossy-like as I yawned and rubbed my crazy hair.

They said nothing.

I slid out of bed and scooped up Grantley backwards and then I went for Tink. She's tiny and it was dark so, you know, easier said than done.

Before she arrived, I went to another health fair on Saturday. It was as good as the other one wasn't and I got to the park district table where they had a display of The Perfect Mothers Day Gift if your initials happen to be ARF and I knew it when I saw it and I asked the nice woman(Liz Visteen-her name is-she's very swell)behind the table if it was okay if I took one and I went for red, because red is my favorite color. I pretended it was for my dog but I knew my Mah would put it on the mantle because that's the kinda Mother I got.

I shoved the red Frisbee-like ring into my Mothers Day extravaganza gift bag ensemble and when my Mah spied it? She popped it right on her head.(You. Over there. Looking surprised. Have you not met my Mother?) In her e-mail thank you note (Take that Miss Manners), my Mah used the line she'd say as she put us to bed on those ugly ugly light blue sheets of yesteryear and I thought uh-huh. Got that goin' on.

Last night at 3:32 AM, everyone wiggled in for the softest warmest spot which happened to be surrounding me which was a very nice thing indeed.

Grant Park

You can't give my Mah a regular Mother's Day present.

If I got her a pocket-sized digital picture viewer, she'd re-gift it to my sister. Personalized Family Tree Keepsake? Oy. Straight into the attic. Custom M&M'S® for Mother's Day? She'd eat three and hide them above the fridge, find them in August and throw them out. SpaFinder Gift Certificates would be a total waste of time because once upon a time, somebody someplace told her that the day after a massage is an excursion into pain town and she's not inclined to visit any time soon.

We had a big laugh about Breakfast In Bed because I said I didn't have a long enough extension cord for the toaster and my Dad said: Toast?!! Who said anything about toast. We'd bring her a box of cereal and a quart of milk.

Digital Frame Keychains would go to my nephew who would resell them on ebay. Personalized Stepping Stones for Gardens, hmm has hell actually frozen over yet? It was awfully chilly today. Gardening Seat & Tool Carriers-they've got a wagon. Mother's Day Spa Retreat Gift Baskets, yeah the basket would make it easier to give it to my sister. Plates with a Purpose would find their eternal calling at Amvets. Great Books For Mom On Mother's Day-oh we're library people, if we bought what we read we'd have to burn it later for fuel. Personalized Photo Frames for Mom? Nope. You will never see a framed montage of my sister and I nailed to the wall of the stairs, unless it was the steps that go down to the basement and that'd be purely for entertainment purposes. Coffee of the Month Club? Watery decaf is probably toward the end of the year, no?

I've got one of those annoying/irritating Mothers with that whole high expectation thing going on and with that in mind I offer her and all the muthas on the planet this special bouquet/still-life I observed as I made my way through a monsoon at the breast cancer walk in Grant Park earlier today.

Cheers!

Y-Me, Y'all.

This is the tee-shirt we designed.

This is the person
that delivered the tee-shirt we designed.

This is the car
that carried the person
who delivered the tee-shirt we designed.

This is the cab driver
who smashed into the car
that carried the person
who delivered the tee-shirt we designed.


This is the sandwich
that the cab driver ate
as he smashed into the car
that carried the person
who delivered the tee-shirt we designed.


This is the police
who saw the crust of the sandwich eating driver
after he smashed into the car
that carried the person
who delivered the tee-shirt we designed.

It would be cool if we won
altho seeing as we're all
reasonably healthy and not dead?
I suppose we already did.

Top of the page

This morning, I was at the dog park and I realized I have become one of those dreaded Doctor Know-It-Alls about canine play initiation display. There's this new guy and the reason we know he's new-aside from the fact that he has a puppy, is that he identifies dog owners by their names as opposed to the dogs name and that's just not the way we do things on this planet. But, he'll learn. (Or actually he'll stop learning. When he realizes there's easily 50 people there on some weekend mornings.)

His dog appeared to be annoying the crap out of Grantley but I knew that she was totally into showing this pup the dog park ropes and the reason I knew this, was because, if she wasn't completely filled with joie de K9? She'd let me know.

(As my breathing pattern changes while I wake up at the crack of dawn? She stands up in anticipation of my eyes opening. Speaking of over-bonded.)

He was calling his puppy off and I was standing there like a underpaid high school hall monitor and you know? I really should have left it alone because there's some force between a boy and his dog that you don't want to penetrate.

We got to chatting and we were talking about careers and he made mention of a job that no longer exists by starting his sentence with," Any asshole with a blog..." and I thought to myself, okay that could be my new title possibly maybe.

The other day Jane told me that someone told her that there was another 'Go Dog Go' in Chicagoland where the person writes from the perspective of their dog and externally I said something along the lines of: whoa, how lame is that? Having the dog write your blog, tsk tsk tsk. Mentally I was filing that info for what is known around here as a rainy day.

I had other title ideas.

'I digress' or 'That's the way I roll' which I was gonna steal from Shishi because that's something I heard her say on the day her car got rear-ended. I was trying to work 'World on a string' into a dog cartoon but I couldn't get clear on who had the world on the string.

Does the dog have the world on a string because she's got a adventurous person? Or do I have the world on a string because she takes me places I never thought I'd go.

In the words of the immortal Magic 8 Ball: Reply Hazy. Ask again.

The Mailbox

Someone described me as a 'free spirit' and that is so delightfully inaccurate it actually made me laugh. For instance, you will never see me say LOL because it's against my policy number 457239-347a. When I worked at the Metropolitan Museum in New York (yeah I haven't mentioned that experience in a few weeks/what's come over me?) one of our former police detective/tough guy bosses told us about this Rule of 5. (Not to be confused with The Rule of Three in comedy writing which you can learn about at The Second City Improv Training School, like I did or just learn to live with the fact that you're in the dark. That works too. No pressah.)

If you're a writer of letters of complaint, for every two negative ones you send, in addition, you should make it a practice to send three complimentary letters, or that was what we were taught. It keeps your karma tipping in the proper direction. It actually gets kind of fun-it's like the 'Catch your dog doing something right' school of thinking. It's cheerful when a pimply kid behind the counter at McDonalds looks like he's having a good time slingin' hash browns or when you write a letter to the postmaster to thank them for assigning you The Coolest Letter Carrier Ever. Jan wears 'The Skirt' in every form of weather. I saw her totally take a dive into an unshoveled snowdrift and pop right back up all executed wearing 'The Skirt' or when she's sporting the regulation rain poncho? I say: SUPAH HERO!!! And she cracks up and stops for a quick pet of Grantley who knows her well. (Speaking of comedy writing, I gotta come up with another line. It looks like it's going to be a wet spring.)

There's another karmic alignment technique but I'm not sure about it's origins. Maybe my Mah told me about it or maybe my Mah does it? Can't remember but anyway, when you donate food to a food pantry? Put something happy into the bag.

A box of brownie mix or maybe a pouch of salmon or maybe some sort of foolish cereal that has a prize in the box? Maybe some of that Real Lemon powder stuff or Trader Joes Cuban Style Black Beans as opposed to the generic store brand? Maybe the gruel with the raisins in it as opposed to the straight bowl of glock? Maybe donate something that's so good, you'd be interested in eating on the way home in the car? Whatever that is? Get two.

What goes around comes around and into each life some rain must fall but that doesn't mean it can't possibly come, on occasion, covered with sprinkles.

-----------
Saturday is the National Association of Letter Carriers Stamp Out Hunger Food Drive. Put some non-perishable food items in a bag and set it near your mailbox and your letter carrier will deliver it to your local food bank, won't you?

helpstampouthunger.com

http://secondcity.com/?id=training-education/training

Montrose Harbor, Chicago

My name is Ann and I am a Grad School Drop Out.

I shipped off to another state a few years ago. My bag was so packed with 500-pound scholarly texts that the airline put a hernia warning tag on it. The woman that was running the grad program (which would have been a Masters in Creative Thinking had she stopped looking at me and saying that there were probably people within the group that knew they were in the wrong place) probably had some instinctive clue about me when she received my initial 22 page paper in which I chose to illuminate the topic of how selected criminals use high stakes creative thinking in their work.

I imagined we'd be training to be better thinkers but the textbook revealed we were there to learn to measure Creative Thinking (ZZZZZZZ) and my personal asset to the program was that I had the graphics background and that industry was hurting for designers.

Here's the thing. I hate measuring.

Speaking of Miss Davis, since she's made her transition and can't defend herself, I'm simply going to point to the day in which she attempted to teach us perspective and I mashed a horrible crayola nightmare supreme black line of destruction right through my cityscape and she wouldn't cough up a second piece of that special manila paper and so I got to look at the error of my wayward ruler for at least a month as it hung above the chalkboard for all to frown upon. Not that it scarred me for life or nuthin'.

I met a guitar-playing psychologist in Marilyn's kitchen the other day. We were talking about the inability of some people to read music and he said it wasn't that a person COULDN'T perform a specific task. It was that they hadn't concentrated on the mastery of it, but that with proper conditions it would happen and I thought: huh. Imagine that.

This past Saturday, my business opened.

It would sound like a whining crybaby to say that every single thing went wrong but I felt like I was driving one of those arcade racing car games holding someone else’s throttle (is that legal in Illinois?) because every time I anticipated something-it never ever went in the direction I intended. Right away, I knew I had to release control or risk a permanent flashing GAME OVER. Big time and a half-a-go-go.

But every single thing didn't go wrong.

My friends showed up for me. MK turned blue-she was so cold and you had to see Shishi demonstrating the product fresh from a night in the emergency room and they didn't make faces behind my back when I (somehow-delusions of grandeur possibly maybe) imagined I was the featured artist when it turned out I was just part of the background (and a fine background it was-I'm not complaining) and one of them fetched some bananas which turned out to be an extremely cool acquisition because guess what? Some dogs really like tiny bites of banana and the back of a furry dog is a fine place to warm your hands-when push comes to shove and your skin is beginning to crack.

And The Coolest Thing of the Entire Day was this:

We were setting up-which seriously meant hacking a blue dollar store shower curtain into two pieces so we could have both a sign and a covering for the table and Shishi taped quarters on the edges so it wouldn't flip up in the gale force winds and as she was doing that, I got this crazy notion that if people knew I was a local artist? It just might slow them down because I've been to dog events and if it's freezing and you've got something wiggly on a leash? Shopping is out.

Shish is taping quarters and I am standing there useless and shivering and MK's got the vinyl letters and she's working away and I look at Shishi and she looks at me and I say, "umm Mary Kay? That's not an 'O'."

She barely turns away from her work and she said: You're out of 'O's'.

We glance over to the other part of our sign where it says: WORK OF ARF. COM and look back to see MK making this:



And I think. Damn, she's good.

In other matters, the Internet store is slow to open because of me. I have that measuring issue and so I am relying on Nelson-who handcrafted my website and is patiently schlogging through the drama that is me getting this so it makes my heart sing.

Soon, soon.

Please-as they say-stand by.
Thank you.

My Oven

I was all set to write about water.
MK took me along to Costco yesterday and I was feeling ever so optomistic-life~wise that I decided yesterday would be the designated day for me to Replace My Water Bottles. I also scored 900 rolls of toilet paper because apparently, not only am I going to live? There's this issue of the consumption of water.

I get water in bottles and I refill them. Once a year, I like to start fresh but my chiropractor offers free waters-I think that is so sweet-they also offer apples because they know people don't have time to eat and that establishes that "You better go down to the nurses office" reassurance thing about going to the chiropractor that I love so well. Anyway, I end up with this assortment of plastic bottles and then, every so often there's a news report that says: Refilling your bottles will result in certain death!

Since I'm not dead, I keep doing it.

MK said I should get a Brita and the strangest thing was, I was at Marilyn and Seymour's on Sunday because Seymour's 907 piece big band practices in their living room and I-like the three women in line ahead of me-have a mad crush on Seymour and it's not only because he does all the shopping and tells jokes and plays sax and has an all-around hot cha cha factor of over 90 jabillion. It's because Seymour knows how to feed people.

Oy! The fruit salad. Instead of listing the ingredients? What if I said it had everything I love and nothing yucky. I mean blueberries AND watermelon coexisting with pineapple. There's no soggy bananas. There's no acrid grapefruit. There's no brown apple bits. How do I love thee Seymour? Let me count the medley of your ambrosia. I'm all chowin' down on the salad and I say, Hey Marilyn? This is what we're going to serve at your funeral lunch.

She didn't flinch because A) She’s getting used to me and what passes for humor in Annland and B) She knows I am number four on the 'If GAWD FAH-BID anything happens to Marilyn? I am so making my move on Seymour." That I am number four doesn't phase me because as Marilyn pointed out, I have physical proximity on my side. Stand back suckas.

One of the musicians came into the kitchen for some water and Marilyn has a Brita and the guy just about did a commercial for how much he liked the thing. Then came the MK endorsement and there's the matter of dragging a case of bottled water up the three flights of stairs. Hmmm, Brita. Sounds refreshing all of a sudden, no?

I was on the phone with my (biological) sistah and I told her that this Brita thing has created a whole new crop of quandaries. Is Grantley supposed to get Brita water? It seems very selfish not to share and at the same time, she doesn't pour what comes out of her personal ceramic punchbowl of love into my cup, right? What about ice cubes? You can't put faucet cubes into the champagne of H2O, can you?

That was gonna be my Andy Rooneying for tonight until Jane inadvertently tossed the 'You better blog nice about me' gauntlet whereupon I explained that my blog mission statement was only to ever make myself the joke-butt. If I rip on anyone else, I'm changing their details because it's just Not Nice and that's Not My Thing. right?

So, okay, once upon a time there was an imaginary girl named ummm Jean. Yeah. And she had several curls right in the middle of her forehead and when she was in college, she was trying to impress a guy by preparing dinner for him. We all sat in the living room of their apartment-ette and suddenly: POW POW POW POW POW.

Baked potatoes. The imaginary girl forgot to poke them.

It was awesome.

What reminded me of that story is this: I also have a crush on McDonalds Southwest Salad. You had me at the slice of lime. It's so blastedly cheerful and over packaged and probably under-lettuced but Oy I love it and so, I thought I'd attempt a replication in my own oven, right? I got 87 chicken breasts at Costco for 10 cents and while I was talking to Jean, I mean Jane; I was starting the process whereupon Grantley worships me for bringing meat into her universe.

I opened the oven and this is what I found.

Petrified Sweet Potatoes.

(Alert the Lizzarrdo Museum of Lapidary Arts. I think I have a donation.)

I must have baked 'em 6 weeks ago, turned off the oven and gone to bed. I would draw them for you, but you wouldn't believe me and there goes my credibility, right down the drain.

http://www.costco.com/

Eastlake Chiropractic & Healthcare Center
137 N Oak Park Ave Ste 111
Oak Park, IL 60301
(708) 383-3900

http://www.brita.com/
http://www.lizzadromuseum.org/
http://www.mcdonalds.com/

Inbox

> If you opened this, FILL IT OUT! Learn 50 things
> about your friends, and let them learn 50 things
> about you!
>
> 1) Do you like blue cheese?
> Just a teeny bit but not a mouthful ever. Gaaah. Same for anchovies. I like to eat one. Annually.
>
> 2) Have you ever smoked heroin?
Is that how it's served?
>
> 3) Do you own guns?
> El nope-o
>
> 4) What flavor do you add to your drink at Sonic?
What's Sonic? I hate asking for the Femme Boost at Jamba Juice. It's like getting a price check on sanitary napkins.
>
> 5) Do you get nervous before doctor appointments?
No. I'm early and reading all the crispy mags.
>
> 6) What do you think of hot dogs?
I get a massive hankering for one about once a month and I buy a giant Costco weenie and save 3/4th to bring home for Grantley who finds that mustard is a small price to pay for an all beef weiner.
>
> 7) Favorite Christmas song?
Oh Holy Night

> 8) What do you prefer to drink in the morning?
Somewhat weakened Folgers.
>
> 9) Can you do pushups?
No. But I bet I could do A pushup.
>
> 10) Can you do a chin up?
> Never been able to. Ever. My whole life. Stinks, doesn't it?

> 11) What's your favorite piece of jewelry?
The stuff on Grantley's collar.
I never got into jewelry because I spent my formative years in New York City during the subway gold chain-snatching era.
>
> 12) Favorite hobby?
Muckraking.
>
> 13) Ever been in a car wreck?
I think maybe three. Minor ones. Tanks Be to Jezus.
>
> 14) Do you have A. D. D.?
I wish Miss David my fifth grader teacher had lived long enough to experience the phrase 'A.D.D'. She'd give you
something to A.D.D. about.
>
> 15) What's one trait that you hate about yourself?
Really trying not to hate things about myself. That's someone else’s job apparently.
>
> 16) Middle name?
E-wizabeff.
>
> 17) Name 3 thoughts at this exact moment?
> 1. I wonder if I should close that window.
> 2. I think that's a splinter in my finger.
> 3. Is there any more coffee?
>
> 18) Name 3 things you bought today?
I had hoped not to shop at all but I ran out of Ezekiel bread. dammit. ha ha ha ha/Sorry.
>
> 19) Name 3 drinks you regularly drink
Watery coffee, water, evil wicked calcium sucking brown pop but I swear I can quit anytime I want to.
>
> 20) Current worry?
There's this woman who so fears the world that her modus operandi is to verbally cut you off at the knees before you can even begin know that you've been attacked and I was going to say I fear running into her because it takes me about an hour to recover and stop thinking of what really mean thing I would have liked to have said in response to whatever super mean thing she's said to me?

Last night we actually hid behind a tree (that's right. Me and a dog on a retractable leash hiding behind a tree. Leave that to the professionals kids.) so she wouldn't see us and we watched as she picked dead leaves from off of someone else’s plant in someone else’s yard because she is compelled to apply her criticism to innocent foliage that doesn't even belong to her.

But my worry isn't actually for myself. She works with children.

The horror. The horror.

>
> 21) Current hate right now?
Hmm. I hate that I'm not better at doing this life thing. I mean you'd think by now, I'd have some sorta skill set happening. No?

Wait. What I really hate is the phrase 'Skill-set'.

>
> 22) Confess, what is your 'guilty pleasure'
I am a goodwill hunter-which means when I'm supposed to be up and multitaskedly functioning? I sometimes go to Goodwill because flipping through the clothes channels my anxiety and I get cute stuff for almost nothing AND I get to save the world. What's so bad about that? Guilty-schmilty. F-that.


> 23) How did you bring in the New Year?
Can't remember which means it was either really good or really dull. No, wait. There was a 5k and it was freezing. That was it.
>
> 24) Where would you like to go?
Gay Par-ee.
>
> 25) Name three people who will complete this?
Hard to say.

>
> 26) Do you own slippers?
Nope. Marilyn is going to make me some knitted/felted ones for Christmas. I am PSYCHED. She lets you pick your own colors and she's encouraging foolishness.
>
> 27) What shirt are you wearing?
Navy blue long sleeved t-shirt from the 5k Run of the Day of the Dead in Pilsen.
>
> 28) Do you like sleeping on satin sheets?
Never tried. I think it would be slippy.
>
> 29) Can you whistle?
Yup.

> 30) Favorite color?
Red with a little blue in it.
>
> 31) Would you be a pirate?
Nope. I don't like jewelry, headscarves or shoulder birds. I like my birds in trees.
>
> 32) What songs do you sing in the shower?
I don't think I sing in the shower.

33) Favorite girl's name?
I think I like Margaret because it has so many options except I've never liked the name 'Peg' except I had my own 'Peg' who proved to be a pivotal person in my existence so the thing is, you never know, do you. Also I like Molly.

>
> 34) Favorite boy's name?
Bill?

>
> 35) What's in your pocket?
A shiny penny I picked up this morning on our walk.

> 36) Last thing that made you laugh?
I think I laughed at two puppies at the dog park this morning. If I had known there'd be a test I would have paid more attention.

> 37) Best bed sheets as a child?
I know we had light blue ones and I've always hated that non-color.
>
> 38) Worst injury you've ever had?
I've allowed my spirit to get demolished about three times. My bad.
>
> 40) How many TVs do you have in your house?
One. And it's dusty. High five.
>
> 41) Who is your loudest friend?
I don't have loud friends. Thank God. Loud friends are so OUT.

> 42) How many dogs do you have?
One.
>
> 43) Does someone have a crush on you?
I can think of three. One is married, one is 4 years old and one has no teeth.
*sigh*
>
> 45) What is your favorite book?
> Ya know what? I don't know. I think I'm in a transition favorite book-wise.
>
> 46) What is your favorite candy?
Whatever is in season.
>
> 47) Favorite Sports Team?
I think I like the Chicago Bears because they're hot cha cha and their coach is named Lovie. Maybe I like Lovie as a man name more than Bill. Yeah.
>
>
> 48) What song you want played at your funeral?
Something zippy. (That's not the name of a song. I just don't want to pick something John Denver-ish and have people mock me posthumously for my bad musical tastes. They can mock me for just about anything else but I am sensitive about my musical choices as you can tell. )
>
> 49) What were you doing 12 AM last night?
Bloggin'.

> 50) What was the first thing you thought of when
> you woke up?
What time is it?

Call and Response Spiritual

Oh won't you sit down?
Lawd I can't sit down.
Oh won't you sit down
Lawd I can't sit down
Oh won't you sit down
Lawd I can't sit down
'Cause it just got to Springtime
gotta walk around.

Who's that yonder with the ribbon of pink?
Must be a 5k for the cancer of the breast
Who's that yonder with the ribbon of blue?
A 5k for Child Abuse, Crime Victims Rights too.



Who's that yonder with a ribbon of red?
Must be a 5k for the AIDS virus to be dead.
Who's that yonder-yellow ribbon 'round their tree?
Support for the troops and the ribbon factory.

Oh won't you sit down?
Lawd I can't sit down.
Oh won't you sit down
Lawd I can't sit down
Oh won't you sit down
Lawd I can't sit down
'Cause it just got to Springtime
gotta look around.


http://main.y-me.org/site/TR?pg=personal&fr_id=1241&px=2128693

Silent Night

We were just out for a late night stroll and someone spied a bunny. Grantley sort of gestures by freezing in place when she sees something she thinks I need to know about and I ask, "Bunny Sandwiches?” She's a pacifist and so usually I just thank her and we go on our way.

The spot where the bunny was tonight is where Grantley found Jesus.

It was not the momentous occasion that was the evening Grantley met her first horse. We were walking on Oak Park Avenue and they had a horse drawn carriage for some Hey! Guess What? Hemingway Was Born In Oak Park!-type occasion rolling around the corner and her eyes just about popped out of her head she had never seen such a gigantic dog except it wasn't a dog but she'd left her Mama before she'd learned about horsies and so she had to learn it on the streets and it wasn't pretty.

Jesus showed up in November when she was two years old. It was cold and there was snow-not the high quality hard-core snow we had this year but snow nonetheless and we came to the house on the corner of Scoville and Randolph and there He was.

Mary, Joseph and Baby Jesus propped up in a yard and Grantley didn't like it one bit.

I'll never know if it was that she objected to the crass commercialism that is the holiday season or is she Jewish or Episcopalian or Buddhist or Samaritan or Hindu or Sufi or what have you. We've never discussed religion and I've always assumed she was exactly like me. She tries to love and accept everyone the way in which they are presented and wonders why people aren't looking as forward to petting her as she is to sniffing them but neither one of us are losing any sleep over it believe you me/nosireebob especially tonight when the air is so chilly and the quilts are so lovely and warm.

West Suburban Emergency Room

Today while she was out attempting to deliver our entry into the Y-Me Breast Cancer T-Shirt Competition and I had mashed my face into a pilow trying to grab a little resting action after a heroically productive morning, Shish was sitting at a light and a cab driver who was eating a sandwich and not paying attention to the bright red car in front of him, rear-ended her auto.

She called me.

I let it ring.

She called again.

I turned over and groaned.

She called the other number.

I said, I'm not answering who ever you are in a sing songy worn out please stop dialing me I've been up for a week half asleep voice.

She called the first number again and I got up.

MK has a wicked cold that got worse as we waited in the ER waiting room. Shishi got some sorta shot but they let her go home and they say she's going to be sore for the next week. I can't find the letters that are supposed to be stuck to my sign as I make my debut as the featured artist at the Anti-Cruelty Society's Annual Bark in the Park event and Grantley wonders about what kind of sandwich the cab diver was having and is there any leftover?

In lieu of a drawing, please enjoy this commercial message
http://powerofpaws.com/Facts/WatchVideo.aspx?id=544

Heehee I said Superdooper.

http://www.anticruelty.org/site/epage/45353_576.htm

The Wednesday of the Mini Series

" How many of you wake up looking forward to your day?"

That was the opening question from what would turn out to be our favorite speaker and my hand rose immediately. Do you know what I'm in the middle of doing as we speak? I'm gluing sequins onto something in the Dadaist tradition. I mean, I took a break from that bit of personal butter churning to write this, which is another total luxury item. Writing and drawing.
(As long as it's not on the topic of 8000 Ways to Serve Liver* because it's hard to get liver to model for you, or so I've heard.) Today included a three-mile walk with MK and Shishi and the pups (Some lady said we looked like some sort of gang.). Blabbed with Mary Next Door. Stopped in to show the parentals my car door magnet. Exactly where in that day was I supposed to be filled with dread because if you tell me I'll be sure to pencil it in for tomorrow.

My head turned toward the Shish. Her hand was raised. It wasn't like a thing for either one of us. It was more like a 'If you have to ask' sort of query. I cannot speak for the rest of the audience. There was a woman in front of Shishi and there was one behind me. I don't know that they raised their hands. As I have established, I try and keep my eyes on my own paper, generally speaking.

The image consultant who ran the event started by thanking her husband who was manning the video camera and then her mother who was also one of her clients. My Mah is also one of my clients and I think I shall take this opportunity to thank her. Dearest Natalie? A sane person would leap from a bridge to make you laugh and for that, I thank you. Although speaking of liver, I will have to deduct points for that week in which your doctor told you your body was low on iron which forced your hand of creativity into the realm of organ meats which we ate for an entire week until your own body thankfully rebelled but gosh that was like hmm...thirty five some odd years ago and perhaps it's time to retire that yarn.

Yeah right. Like I'd even give up the chance to put the word 'liver' next to the word 'spaghetti'.

Another speaker was a massage therapist and I guess, because I've been spoiled with knowing the very finest in massage therapists in MK and Ed and Fran (and I'm not just saying that because everyone knows I'm not that nice) I am not easily impressed. This speaker asked the group how many people had ever experienced a massage and this time everyone in the room raised their hands. She went on to describe, step by excruciating step exactly how a massage is performed including my very favorite massage therapist line: First I will ask you to undress to the level of your comfort. Which is a fancy way to say "Leave your underpants on so I can shove the sheet into something so I don't have to stare at your sorry looking drawers."

Another speaker of note was a woman who spoke on behalf of the owner of what's now known as a "Medi-Spa". A Medi-spa is a place where the beauty inducing procedures come out of a syringe or are performed by an actual nurse. (This is what happened when they stopped wearing those white caps.) The speaker told how her grandchildren said, "Grandma looks well rested." I'd love to meet a child that has ever invoked the phrase 'well-rested' because that language had to come from the street or some show on cable, that's for sure. She went on to tell about her injections and how they had changed not only her appearance but also her life as she passed around her 'befores' so we could compare it to the talking/walking/breathing "after".

Tiny problem. Shish and I knew that on top of the pin pricks, she'd had a full face lift because we ran into her at a botox event (no, I'm not kidding) at her former place of employment. We remembered because she brought out her 'befores' in a binder that included several shots of what's known as labiaplasty in a binder I won't soon forget. Here. I just pulled this statement from that guy's website. Brace yourself.

"Do your labia cause you pain or discomfort during sexual intercourse or while riding a bicycle?" A modern version of the classic tune "Do your labia hang low?"

I digress (because that's what I do the best. Can one get one's honorary PhD in digressing?)

By the time it got to "Five Secrets to Looking and Feeling Younger" presented by my very own chiropractor of choice whereupon number two turned out to be....(Come closer to the screen. I have to whisper.) drink more water? I started thinking, self? Did you actually cross someone’s palm with silver in exchange for the unearthing of these golden nuggets of wisdom?

But before I could answer, the group broke for what was suggested in the program as having lunch at one of the many great restaurants or taking in some shopping. We were starving and we went to Jimmie Johns where I had my very first JJ's Unwich. We got the #12? Which, as an unwich and minus the mayo, cheese and with extra avocado spread? Scores a measly 120.63 on the calorie scale and that sucker is huge and happy too. I give it 47 thumbs up.

We had to hustle off for some advanced erranding which is when we noticed that it was a brilliant spring day outside and we were missing all of it but after deciding to skip the yoga demonstration at 2:00(we were stuffed from the unwich) we got to the second location of the event where we discovered a giant spread of food. After what would be the afternoons initial unscheduled speaker-a friend of the image consultant-I think she was described as a cultural anthropologist who's 'Personal Best' related presentation focused on how things didn't look good for the future of the earth's population and that she tried to get her own child to eat what mothers everywhere would describe as 'a perfectly good (health food store type) sandwich’ only to have her son's preschool pals mock him for his lack of prepackaged over processed luncheon of joy.

Just before the juice-pill lady began to circle the tables to distribute her sales materials, a member of the sports facility where the event took place walked by the spread of food, looked it over and selected a grape. The image consultant's husband jokingly told him that if he took food, they'd force him to stay for the rest of the afternoon's program. He failed to mention the outlay of 25 bucks.

I looked at Shishi and she looked at me. No words were exchanged between us.

My shin hit the cooler that blocked my path as I made my daring escape for freedom on the way out the door. A slightly painful reminder that a fool and her money are soon parted and the purpose of the rule of $15 is that it's for our Own Good.



http://www.jimmyjohns.com/

The Tuesday of the Mini Series

"And why do we have rules? They're for our own good." The Elephant Man


I think that quote is from the play The Elephant Man. It's 4:02 in the AM and I might very well be incorrect so perhaps I should say it's from the Elephant Guy and no one would ever doubt me again! Where was I? Right. Rules.

I have rules. One cannot return a call, check e-mail or anything else until one puts their fresh laundry away. Don't wear plastic shoes. Dogs have to jump on the furniture. You must attend the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators Meetings because they are held in Your Town and there are many angry people who are dying to have that opportunity. If someone is going to complain about the United States as a way of life or the weather in Chicago as a hobby-they will be cheerfully offered a ride to the airport. Refrain from worrying about what Other People Think. Keep your eyes on your own paper. Don't exceed fifteen bucks per adventure.

And those rules aren't completely carved in stone. For instance, my beloved gym shoes are plastic-the law refers to those Jelly-type shoes that my old friend Meg and I-as groovy art school students in New York City-wore out on the town one night and removed several acres of skin from our feet. Or the dogs jumping on furniture. They don't have to actually jump-they can simply loiter and so on. But the fifteen bucks. That's been pretty solid. Until this past weekend. (Cue music of impending doom.)

I heard about this event from my chiropractor and it wasn't even a hard sell. She said there was going to be this sort of a seminar thing with speakers on topics of image consulting and beauty and things like that in the morning and then there was supposed to be these cool sort of short and unusual gym classes in the afternoon and Dr. M. thought I'd be interested in the afternoon program because she knows I'm into trying out new stuff.

Ah-HA! But I'm really interested in the morning stuff. It's my favorite category in the new non-fiction section of the library where I love to linger and they call it 'beauty'. (I think that's what they call it. It's 4:35 in the AM (I took a nap.) and I suddenly have no idea. Ha!) I don't know where my fascination started on this topic but I think it was when my Mom called me and Jane down to watch Vidal Sassoon on Phil Donahue and ever since then? You should see me at beauty salons. I'm like a monkey with banana cake. I just love to watch.

I even tried to feed this obsession by working at the front desk of a salon. You had to answer phones, make appointments, sell product, talk to customers and stylists, make change and look nice all at the same time, which is why I became a cartoonist who stays very quiet when I get my hair cut because I just love to watch those wizards work. (I also love watching automated factories like where they have machines that look like arms with elbows shoving beets into jars. Who imagines mechanical elbows?)

I justified the outlay of 25 bucks in that it was actually two programs. One in the morning and one in the afternoon and there was that option to do one or the other for $15 but I am apparently greedy because I wanted it all. I talked Shishi into going along-even tho it started before her personal rooster likes to crow on Saturday morning but for beauty? Sacrifices have got to be made!

We got there and they weren't ready. A refrain we would come to hear over and over was that this was 'The First Year' so we could expect snags and we were apparently fine with it-fine enough that we went off to get coffee. We even went to two different places because my stomach can't manage full-strength Starbucks or is it my central nervous system? I got Caribou. We were even in a jolly enough state of mind that we stopped to make a donation to Misericordia- not just because the incentive was Jelly Belly’s or that we found the volunteer high school girls choice of Saturday morning high heeled footwear so sweetly amusing (see shoes-plastic). We got back to the room to register Shishi and they had no change. (extremely faint impending doom music)

The next episode will be entitled: "First I will ask you to undress to the level of your comfort and yata yata yata." Stay tuned.