Although I'm not working for the man anymore, I am still working at my computer, trying to write code for this website.

Last week, when I was buying fabric for the two commissions I have, I started talking to the owner of the fabric shop. One thing led to another, as it always does, especially when I'm one half of the converstion, and he offered to put my business cards out.
Which is all very well and good, but this is hardly the place to send nice Pinecrest Princesses looking for tallitsim for their princelings and princessettes. I need to create a new site, or at least a new look and feel for this site, and move some things around, or hide them or just jetison them completely.

All of which means that I need to redesign this site. In DreamWeaver. And MT. Using all sorts of crap that I never needed to know when I was working for the hospital.

I have spent the past week and a half buried in tech books, cruising how-to websites and forums, going back and forth with my pages. I add something, it doesn't work. I research and redo until I get the thing (whatever that thing is) to work, and then I move on to the next part. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

I am learning more than I ever did before and I knew that there was a problem when I walked into Borders looking for more references and the clerk in the computer section asked me if I needed help and I said "Well, I have a problem and I don't know if it's an IIS issue or a JavaScript problem so I'm looking for information." And she gave me a deer in the headlights look and I said "I know. Pathetic, itsn't it? I actually knew what I meant by that sentence."

I am the uber-geek. And I can't take my cards and sample to the fabric store until I get all of this sorted out and working right.

Ugh. I need a drink, a bath and a meal, and not necessarily in that order. I think a martini in the bathtub is on tonight's schedule. A martini the size of the tub is what I want, and what that previous statement sounded like I meant, but it really. No. Just a long, hot bath and a long, cold drink.

If you've read this far, then let me ask one last question:

Is it just me, or do you think that the judge should have requested a drug test today for Michael Jackson instead of threatening to have him arrested for showing up late. In his pajamas. He's gone from his sartorial delusions of kinghood to an almost normal suit to his pjs.

And it's the first one we've had without him here. I remember so much about my father every day. Today is special, though.
The first story is about my father, his friend and my brother. It was the summer of 1966 and my mother and I were abroad, my brother had just graduated high school. One afternoon, Daddy and his friend started talking about great food, and one thing led to another, and the upshot was that they all took a road trip to Miami for scrambled eggs with kosher salami at Pumpernick's up on 63rd and Collins.

Except, remember that this was 1966, and a 100-plus mile road trip for scrambled eggs was hardly a thing to be embarked upon on a whim. But that's just what they did.

When I came home from Europe and heard that story, I would have given it all up for having been able to be home for that. What a lark it must have been. Mr. Rickmann and my old man gassing away in the front seat, and smoking nasty pipes or cigars. I don't know what they drove, I imagine it was Daddy's '53 two-tone Chevy. Powder blue on the bottom and white on top. Sigh.

And then there's the one about the time Daddy was at a party and calmly swallowed a tablespoon of Tabasco Sauce on a five buck bet. Didn't turn a hair, either.

Of course there are the other stories, too. The ones that are too personal even for me to relate. The ones that make me cry and miss the old fart so much. There is nothing in the world, I always told my male college friends as they became fathers to daughters, as deep and as pure and as everlasting as a little girl's love of a good father: they will worship the water you walk on until the day that they die. Don't fuck it up.

My father didn't.

Oh, I do love the farmers' market. The RLA and I took a road trip down to the market on Saturday, and I came home with the most wonderful treats.

I bought cherry tomatoes for a dollar a pound, and they even taste like tomatoes. For three dollars I got 15 eggs; big, double-yolked, brown ones, fresh from the hens.
And there were fresh garbanzo beans. Fresh, people, not dried. I'm going to roast them and make hummus. There was a guy with a machete and a pile of green coconuts on ice. Yesh. I had a coco frio and loved every second of it. There were heaps of tiny finger bananas, and we bought a hand. Fresh green beans, radishes complete with greens, giant green tomatoes, mysterious greens that I had no idea what they were, acres of dried peppers in a variety of shapes and shades of red. There were baby red potatoes, smaller than shooter marbles, and I roasted them last night, to go with a steak and fresh spinach. I bought a bag of fresh chicarrones and ate half of them before I came to my senses and buried the rest under some particularly stinky garbage, thus preventing myself from retrieving them.

If you have never eaten chicarrones, what can I say? In redneck America they are called fried pork rinds, but that hardly does them justice. They are fatty and crunchy at the same time. They taste of pure essence of pig. Earthy, primal. Greasy. Cholesterol on the half shell. And I love them. Once every five years or so I allow myself the pleasure of such forbidden food. The RLA merely looks on in horror and won't touch them. Good for him.

Tonight I'll make a casserole with the fresh green beans, a can of condensed tomato soup and ground beef, topped with a crust of corn bread. This was one of my mother's recipes from the 50s and one of my childhood favorites. It isn't hard, it isn't haute and it is so very, very warm and filling. She made it with canned green beans, and I use fresh, so it's a little different, but here it is:

Mom's Hamburger Corn Crust Pie

1/2 cup chopped onion
1 lb ground beef
1 lb can cut green beans, drained
1 can condensed tomato soup
1/2 tsp salt (optional)
1 box corn muffin mix

Pre-heat oven to 375

Saute onion until tender and slightly golden. Add salt (if using) and meat. Brown lightly. Add beans and soup and heat through. Pour into greased 10x6 baking dish. Top with corn crust. Bake at 375 for 20-25 minutes.

Mix crust according to directions using half the liquid. Spoon in pencil thin lines over filling like a lattice.

I woke up to the bleeping of the heavy machinery's warning thingy.

Things went downhill from there.
The tiny, one-lane road in front of my house is being double laned because of the new construction in the empty lot across from me. They are building what I like to refer to as "Strip Mansions". This would be townhouses, but two- to three-thousand square foot townhouses going for more than $200 a square foot. Do the math. It's still only got windows on two sides, people. And less than six feet of grass between your back door and the wall that keeps the riff-raff like the neighbors out.

So, this being Florida, that meant that they had to dump crushed coral rock onto the road bed and then steam roller it into submission. Five or six times. Until there was a foot of substrata.

My house was rattling like there was an earthquake. I had to move all the glassware around. Then I walked past my miniature cabinet. Those items not previously shattered by falls were dancing around on the shelves like water on a hot griddle.

I trotted outside and asked the very nice driver if he would cease and desist for five minutes so I could empty the cabinet and make my tiny treasures safe. He said to come and get him when I was done.

It wasn't even lunchtime, yet.

I spent the rest of the day working on redesigning the rest of Girlyshoes. It amazes me how much I can forget about computers when I'm not writing code all day long.

I tried to watch De-Lovely. I've been trying to watch it for four days. No sooner do I drop it in the DVD then the phone rings, or an errand needs to be run, or the dogs need to go out, or the cat throws up. I finally saw the end. I should have stayed with Cole in Paris, because life definitely took a down turn after the horse fell on him.

Finally sat down to eat dinner, and the Drunk Neighbor came over with a dog he'd found in the street. Said dog had a collar with a phone number on it, but the Drunk Neighbor couldn't be bothered to call it himself. It would be more fun to drag the little dog over to our house so the Noble Dog Nails and Miss JoJo could work themselves into a tumultuous uproar over the sight and smell of a stranger in their yard. Besides, the Drunk Neighbor said that he couldn't call because his wife was drunk.*

So the RLA and I called the number. It turned out to be the people who live on the corner--next door to the Drunk Neighbor (and his mortal enemies). Of course, they couldn't be bothered to actually come and get the little dog. No. They left him with us, and my dogs barking non-stop for another hour. Until I called again (third time) and said if they didn't come get him, I'd walk him down to them. RIGHT. NOW.

Another ten minutes and they DROVE!!! out of their driveway, and two doors down. Except they are too lame for words, and parked in the driveway of the house between us. Lame. Lame. Lame.

Then there was the obligatory complaints about the construction, and the notes of who's selling now that the construction has started, and the damned woman would have stood in the neighbor's driveway all night and chatted except the RLA and I insisted that dinner was getting cold and left.

And that was life in Miz Shoes neighborhood.

* His wife is ALWAYS drunk. Ugly, stinking, screaming, channeling-the-snake-god drunk. She's not allowed in my house, anymore.

That's what I was shrieking out of my car window as the woman in the gold SoccerMom van put it in reverse and started backing down the spiral up ramp at Dadeland Station Mall.

No. Really. In. Reverse. On an UP-RAMP. With me driving a stick right behind her. And a really big Mercedes behind me.
REVERSE!!!! On an UP-RAMP!!!

Are you insane or just stupid? I don't know the answer, because, although I was screeching that and more out of my open windows, she had hers closed and was totally oblivious.

She got off the ramp on the same floor I did, but whereas I parked, she merely circled the (empty) level and then went back on the ramp and went up another leve. Which was a pity, because I was ready to go nose to nose with her and demand the answers to my questions.

1. What the fuck is wrong with you?
2. Where did you learn to drive?
3. Are you insane or just stupid?
4. Were you on a cell phone, too?

This is the same mall and the same ramp where just two weeks ago I saw a woman stop. STOP. Like, park. On the up-ramp and change her baby's diaper in the back seat.

Oh, yeah. What is there to add to that?

Yes!!!! Tonight there is a special on what the "divas" are doing now, and tomorrow another round starts on ANTM.
That's America's Next Top Model, but I am such a ditz, that during Cycle 2, when the girls had to sell a make-up line called ANTM, all I could see (or hear in my head) was Auntie Em.

It is so not easy being blonde.

Man, if I were 30 years younger, 30 pounds lighter and about 4 inches taller, I would be all over that show like white on rice. Or not, seeing how I feel about reality shows in general, and actually being on one in particular.

But this show is my secret vice. OK, not so secret. My vice, though. Oh, yes it is. I L-U-V this show with the heat of a thousand suns. I cuddle up on the couch with a jug of plonk and a gallon drum of popcorn and I watch every minute of it. I even tell the RLA to leave the room if he's going to be scornful of my taste in trash TV.

Speaking of the heat of a thousand suns, Miss Bliss wrote something the other day that just made me spew martini on my monitor. In reference to holding hate in her heart, she said that she knew "it just makes the sweetbabyjesus want to drink gin straight out of the cat dish."

I ask you, has a finer phrase ever been crafted?

I thought not. I am stealing that puppy so fast your head will spin around like Linda Blair's. And with a Southern accent? Honeychile, you just best be watching out.

I'm back in Miami, back in my house, back in my neighborhood. And you know what? I don't care. I had such a wonderful time in my childhood home, that I want to go back there and live.

Which is pretty damned funny, actually, since for the past thirty odd years I've been saying that my hometown was a great place to be from, but you wouldn't want to live there.

Except, last week, I'm walking JoJo down a dark street at night, and total strangers were passing in the other direction and talking to me as they passed. Even more amazing than that, the things they said were in English, and did NOT include the words "money" "life" "hand over".

I could see the stars at night, and smell the moist and salt in the air. It was quiet. Quiet and dark. Dark and quiet. And there were small animals, like rabbits and squirrels and racoons wandering around in the dark. I saw them, and not just their remains in flat, fuzzy lumps in the road.

I saw people that I haven't spoken to in more than 20 years. And I even enjoyed it.

Nope. My home town was looking pretty damned good to me this time.

People were concerned for me, being in the house alone. Why? I asked them. There was nothing in there but love, and how could that be scary in the dark?

Then I got back here, and had to delete more than 100 spam hits for cialis, viagra, on-line poker and betting. People, people, people... Do I ever talk about sex? Or poker? Do I seem like the kind of writer who would want to play poker on-line? Huh? Do I? No. Nor do I have any need, desire, or even vague interest in sexual enhancement drugs. Do me a favor and keep your fucking spam bots off my site.

Like that will do any good.

I'm going off for a week of home wrecking. Maybe not so much wrecking as dismantling. For the third time in about ten years, I get to take apart and pack up a family home. Yippee, she says with as much sarcasm and distaste as she can manage.
This exercise is freighted with memories and sadness, of course, because this time it is my childhood home I'm putting into boxes and sending away to Goodwill.

Books. My mother was a reader, and there is a huge library of books ranging from cookbooks to mysteries to histories to coffee table picture books and on to art tomes and reference books. There is a pile of Judaica and next to it my childhood books and college texts.

Furniture. Photos. Clothing. It's all there and it's all going somewhere else.

This is week one, and it's the week that will tell me how long this project will take.

I'm taking JoJo, so that I won't have to be in the house alone, but the truth is, I'll enjoy the solitude for a while. Maybe I'll even be able to do a little beach combing while I'm gone.

Talk amongst yourselves.

Oh, how I wish I were going to the dogs, the Westminster Dog Show, that is. But I'm not. I am watching it, though, from the comfort of my couch and with that big old flopsy walrus of a puppy, Miss JoJo in my lap.
Tonight is the hound group, and you can see a PBGV in that group. The first time they showed at Westminster, it was JoJo's grandsire... I think. It might not have been the first year, but he was in the center ring there one year.

I love this show. I love hearing the breed standards, I love seeing the dogs strut their stuff, as aware of their audience as any rock star, or star athlete.

For the first time this year, Westminster is offering streaming video on their site of ALL the breed judgings. So you can see, for example, all the Komondors looking like animated mops as they prance around in their dreadlocks.

I love the dogs.

Woof.

This was the last graph in a short story about Cheech and Chong doing a show together recently.

"Marin and Chong, who recently completed a nine-month sentence for trying to sell marijuana pipes on the Internet, said they are writing two new films, "Grumpy Old Stoners" and "Lord of the Smoke."

Oh, yeah. I laughed just reading the titles.

Blame Reecie for this, because she listed me first in the last question, and heaven forfend I not answer...
Q) What was the last movie you went to see in a theatre?
Hmmmm. Shrek 2, maybe? I hate theatres these days. Too loud, too small a screen, too many other people, and the popcorn isn't as good now that they made it healthier.

Q) What is the last movie you watched at home?
The Vampire Effect.

Q) How many movies do you own?
Hahahahahahaha. Oh. You were serious. Over 100?

Q) What was the last movie you bought?
Hmmm. We bought the entire second season of Kung Fu. Does that count?

Q) Got Netflix (or a similar service)?
Oh, yeah. Just got it and have never been happier. I already have way too many films in my queue.

Q) List five movies you adore or that mean a lot to you.
M*A*S*H
Chinatown
Pleasantville
Galaxy Quest
Restoration

Q) Name your guilty pleasure film?
Easy: Malibu's Most Wanted. It just makes me howl. And any Pauly Schorr or Adam Sandler comedy.

Q) What's your favorite quote from a film?
Only one?

"I hate the living." — Men In Black

"See, that's your problem, Jason. You were never serious about the craft." - Galaxy Quest

"She's my sister. She's my daughter. She's my sister and my daughter." — Chinatown

"I'm thinking with sand here." — Bubba Ho-Tep

"There's nothing in that little black bag for me." — The Wizard of Oz

"Look, mother, I want to go to work in one hour. We are the Pros from Dover and we figure to crack this kid's chest and get out to golf course before it gets dark. So you go find the gas-passer and you have him pre-medicate this patient. Then bring me the latest pictures on him. The ones we saw must be 48 hours old by now. Then call the kitchen and have them rustle us up some lunch. Ham and eggs will all right. Steak would be even better. And then give me at least ONE nurse who knows how to work in close without getting her tits in my way. " — MASH

Q) Name three people to whom you will pass these questions.
Ian
Dan
and
Miss Bliss

My GirlCousin and Star have, independent of each other, decided that I should do this.
That is the Martha Stewart Apprentice, of course.

And I gave it serious consideration for about fifteen minutes. Then it struck me: "What if I win the audition, and have to actually play the game?"

Granted, my twelve years at the hospital have given me super powers in the areas of toxic work environment, backstabbing and evil axis building, and granted, those could come in handy in a "reality" TV competition, but the bottom line is, I'd have to be on TV.

Eww. And ewwwwww. And maybe a retch or two. I don't want to be on TV. Ever. And certainly not in a situation where the editors have plenty of footage to cut together to make me look like an even bigger bitch than I can accomplish on my own. And let me tell you, I do just fine with that, thanks.

Reality TV series all have archetypes: The Bitch, The Bimbo, The Backstabber, The Nice One, The Smart One Who Loses The Game Despite or Because Of Being Smart. I have enough problems with my personality as it is, I do not need editing to accentuate the negatives.

I often say that I am like asparagus; people loathe me or love me and there is no room for indifference. Great. I should go on TV and try that phenomenon out with a few million people all at once.

Um, no.

Or worse, I could get on the show and actually last for more than a week. I could get into the show. I could want to win, and my naturally competitive nature could be unleashed. Bad idea. Bad idea for me, bad idea for anyone in my path, probably great TV. Ick.

So, despite urging from family and friends, and despite the fact that the whole concept of trying to be Martha's avatar appeals to some really dark part of my soul, (Oh, come on, be honest with yourself. Wouldn't you want to go out and abuse the gardeners? Stand around and complain that the exact shade of lilac you wanted the living room to be painted is not the one that is now on the walls, and they have fifteen minutes before air time to fix it...) I think that I shall have to pass on this chance for fame and fortune.

I guess that it isn't this way anymore, what with telecommunications deregulation, and unlimited long distance on any number of carriers, but in my youth, and, I suspect, for many, many others, Sunday mornings were when you made/received long-distance phone calls.
Sunday mornings were when you talked to distant family members. My parents called me on Sunday mornings (and morning is a very relative term) all four years I was in college. When I moved to New York City, to New Mexico, to anywhere other than their home, Sunday mornings were for family phone calls.

When I settled in Miami, and I was my own person, I called them on Sunday mornings.

This is the hardest part of being a fatherless child, this emptiness when there is no phone call on Sunday morning. My mother can't use the phone anymore; she lost that ability a couple of years ago. There was a certain black humor to it at first, hearing my father tell her that of course she couldn't hear me since she was trying to talk into the remote control.

That passed fairly soon. Now she lives down the street, and doesn't know me at all. She is losing her verbal skills at an alarming rate. Would it be any less poignant had she not been a 40-year volunteer at the library, an avid reader, a woman who daily did the crossword puzzles in ink? Now she can't process the words. Sometimes she even is aware that they have left.

But I was thinking about telephone calls. The RLA lost his parents many years before I did. We have few surviving aunts and uncles. How can you call one of them out of the blue, and ask them to speak, so you can have a conversation by proxie with someone who's gone?

I miss my father. It is Superbowl Sunday, and Daddy would have been watching. My nephew would have gotten a call this morning from Daddy, and they would have talked about Dan Marino's entry into the Hall of Fame. They would have trash talked a while about the Patriots. When it was my turn for the Sunday morning call, Daddy and I would have talked about what I was cooking for my party. He would have asked about my friends; which of them would be coming over, and what would Star be bringing.

He and I would have discussed Dan, too. My brother missed out on the sports junkie gene, but he is my mother's child: a man of words. We are all book collectors, fearsome readers and ruthless Scrabble players. That was my mother's legacy to us.

Sunday mornings without telephone calls. This is when I feel the loss most keenly.

I have an interview tonight at the local book store. I'm so excited at the prospect of working at something that won't drain me emotionally and creatively, and since it's dealing with the great unwashed, will also give me fodder for this blog mill.
The Noble Dog Nails is doing well, and for MJ, who asked, Thor looks just fine. He's a handsome golden with a thick, thick coat. Poor Nails couldn't get through the fur to do any damage.

Our old vet used to say that Jack Russells are suicidal. Just clueless as to size. Nails thinks he's really Godzilla, in a very tiny dog suit.

I was sitting in the living room, just about to launch into a bout of sock knitting, when I heard the shouts from outside.

"GET YOUR DOG"
I then heard a neighbor screaming at the RLA to come get the Noble Dog Nails. This neighbor owns (or lives with, depending on your thoughts about companion animals vs. pets) TNDN's arch-enemy, his mortal nemesis, the Evil Golden Retriever Thor.

Let me say right now that Thor is a lovely dog, with a handsome face and a beautiful thick coat. I like Goldens in general, and except for the fact that he hates my dog, I like Thor in particular.

Tonight, as the RLA took the trash to the street, our neighbor was walking Thor and his other dog. TNDN was loose in our fenced yard. He saw Thor coming and began barking and racing along the fence.

And then he found that the RLA hadn't yet locked the gate. That little 15-pound Jack Russell bulled open a driveway gate in a chain-link fence and went to attack Thor. Except Thor, who nates Nails as much as Nails hates him, was faster and bigger.

The RLA managed to pull Nails out of Thor's jaws, just as I was pounding out the front door in my bunny slippers. We got him inside, checked him out, and we took him to the doggy ER.

Many several puncture wounds and a scratched cornea later, this is what the Noble Dog Nails looks like.





For the record? The Noble Dog Nails was asking for a rematch.