quaint vignettes from my charming rural idyll

I'm up at 4:00 this morning because my Goonybird had a bad dream. The poor kid was cursed with the vivid dreaming gene like I was, and so because I know what a waste of time trying to get back to sleep is going to be, we're up drinking coffee and watching the Disney Channel. I'm drinking the coffee. He's watching the movie.

Yesterday we fired up the DVD player and watched the movie grandma got for Christmas: The Transformers. Grandma really, really likes this movie. Grandma does not care that the critics passed it off as 'just another CGI movie with no discernible plot'. It is about robots and there are explosions and I think it is WICKED BAD. So does the Goonybird. We made so much noise watching it that it chased the Yummy Biker completely out of the house.

My daughter, the Stainless Steel Amazon, and her new husband the Lucky Bastard apparently spent the entire weekend shopping at boutiques, dining on gourmet tidbits and attempting to make me a granddaughter.
I REALLY REALLY REALLY HOPE it is a girl too. Why? Because then my revenge will be complete.


Today, after I drop the Goonybird off at her place (gaze carefully averted) and scuttle away I have to take the Playboy of the Western World off to a doctors appointment. Why? Because on top of everydamnthing else, the man has a hernia!

How on earth does someone who uses a walker get a hernia?

I may not know the answer to that, but I know how a person who uses a walker gets a bloody nose and ends up taken to the emergency room. Would you like to know how a person in a walker gets a bloody nose and ends up taken to the emergency room?

This is what happens when you get old. Men, take special note here.

One of the Playboy's dinner companions-no, not the Playboy- at the 'still sentient' table had been feeling lonely. Being a single gentleman of modest means, outcall was not in the budget; nor was pay per view. So he decided to take matters in hand.
As he was sitting on the edge of his bed, then, thinking about Lillian Gish, he missed a stroke and slipped. His fist was apparently whipping at such a high rate of speed that he struck himself on the bridge of the nose and broke it.
Blood, helped along by hefty doses of Coumadin, fountained everywhere.
He reached out for the call bell to summon a nurse. As he leaned forward, though, he began to feel faint. He simply continued to lean forward until he landed face first on the floor, the call cord still clutched in his grip. That is how the EMTs found him...passed out in a pool of blood, pants around his ankles, wang waving in the breeze, ass in the air and face in the carpet.

I think this is why my father in law has a hernia. When he told me this story I nearly got one too.


We are planning to go visit my son and his family in March. Having a son continues to be a surreal experience. I now own several pictures in which there is more than one person who is related to me by blood and that too is a surreal experience.
The guy has my sense of humor, God help him.
He is also a dirt nerd. After we had known each other for less than 4 hours we were already having a very frank and open discussion about root aphis.
We are the type of people who have taken pictures of our soil.
He has taken pictures of his soil. He apologized for not bringing them. However, when I visit I will view these pictures. We will use lots of botanical Latin. We will review current sustainable agricultural practices in the commercial nursery business. I will tour his nurseries and look upon his arborvitae and cupressus leylandii. He has promised to save me a stack of trade publications and I plan to spend an evening happily going through them with him. Because nothing says maternal bonding like pricing backpack sprayers, Kubota rootball diggers, and computerized temperature triggered greenhouse ventilation systems.

One thing I find endlessly strange is that the guy looks exactly like me back when I was in my twenties. I now know what I would have looked like as a boy. I would have been DROP DEAD GORGEOUS as a boy.

My son is DROP DEAD GORGEOUS.

...momma ain't lyin. click on it; it's worth it.

He also has three kids and he's still in his twenties; obviously he got the 'repopulate the earth' thing from me too.

The last time I saw this guy he was the size of a loaf of bread. 22 years later he comes back to visit with my attitudes, my values, my interests and my looks. I like him. Of course I love him...but I like him.
That makes two of my kids that I like.
I mean, dang.