Wednesday, October 26, 2011

My favorite sign at the ahem... protest?

If you live in Florida, you know how sardonically true this message is.

The Spirit of the Blues meets the Ghosts of Halloween....

This photo was copied from the official Sauce Boss Blog.  Check.  It.  OUT!

There was a Halloween production at my son's school tonight.  The most fun-tastic school in the entire world.  They put on a dinner theater for all of the parents and families and teachers.   It is called The Hard Bite Cafe They were grrrrreat!  Their T shirts were a spoof of the Hard Rock with a big bite taken out of the image, complete with blood drippings.... Eeeewe!
 On the menu this evening:
Appetizers
Pollinated Brain Bits  (popcorn with nutritional yeast)
Witches Nails (Bugles)
Bread
Zombie Fingers with Butter Bugs. (Bread sticks with butter topped with poppy seeds and sunflower seeds)
Salad (Select one)
Eggy Eyeballs (No explanation needed)
Baby digits with Caterpillar Pate (Cottage Cheese and pesto with 5 baby carrots strategically placed)
Entrees
Puke (Never did find out what that was)
Blood and Guts (spaghetti and red sauce)
Tick and Nits (Black beans and rice)
Desserts
Dirty Worms (chocolate pudding with chocolate crunchies and gummy worms!)
Snowman #2s (Flavored ice cubes)
Cow Patties (Multigrain raisin cookie)
Drinks
Bile (apple juice)
Hmoglobin (Fruit punch)
H2O-NO!

It was pretty funny listening to all the adults very seriously ordering their blood and guts with a side of Eggy Eyeballs and a glass of bile!  I guess I'm easily amused.  

The play was really sweet and funny.  It was about a story of the origins of Halloween and involved a ghost family and a human family living in the same house.  Most of the actors were girls and they were so stirrin' it up!  Even the ones who are normally quiet.  Then after the play they all sang a song, The Twelve Nghts of Halloween.  With each night a different younger kid comes out dressed like the present.in question and parades across the stage, only to do it again on the next verse... ie (Vulture in a dead tree, 2 fat toads, etc...)  It doesn't sound as funny as it actually was.  Especially because the kids were kind of getting a little bored by the end I think so they started improving and making weird faces and gestures and etc...  It was a riot!

The motivating force behind this marvelous event is the school's math teacher, Miss Karrie.  She also happens to be the daughter in law of two dear friends from a life time ago, which also makes her the wife of their son, Floyd, with whom I've had the pleasure to work with in not one but two dining establishments.  I LOVE THESE PEOPLE.  They are so awesome, they are the Whartons.   I got to chat with Ruth (Momma Wharton, who is as lovely as ever), and catch up.  We talked about our "babies"-- she's got 2 others, one in LA and one in NY.  Everyone is well and happy.  

You may be asking yourself how this ties in with the rambling encounter of my evening and the the Spirit of Blues and etc.... well, I will tell you.

As it turns out, Harley was a chef in the little kid portrayals in the song....  He would come out on day 5 with a chef's hat and a pan of worms. (Five cooooooooked worms!)  And on the last one, he'd got to eat a worm!  Which made everyone gross out and laugh.  After the show, I was talking to Bill Wharton, who is not only husband to Ruth, and father to Floyd, he is also an internationally known and loved Blues musician, aka The Sauce Boss.  He  informed me that the chef hat my son was wearing is a genuine sauce boss hat!  To which I said, "You know, it's only more proof that my kid is the coolest!"  We laughed.  He told me that Karrie had called him and asked if he had a chef's hat.  He looked over his glasses at me in the way that he does when he's being silly and says "yea, I've got a few!"  So Harley got to wear a hat imbibed with spirit of the blues and which has probably traveled more places than I ever will, and he got to do it on stage, hamming it up just like that Boos himself!

That rocks people.  

Monday, October 24, 2011

I love you zingo-99

Harley and I fell into this little game as many people do with children during night time wind down...

"I love you"
"I love you too"
"I love you three"
etc...

This has been going on since he was about 2 years old.  Naturally it evolved into the hundreds, thousands, millions, billions,trillians zillions, bazillions, katrillians and krillians and so on to infinity (Which he really doesn't get yet)  We've used outer space and the powers (squares and cubes, etc..)  And well, you get the idea.

Tonight this is how it went

"I love you beyond the end of outer space mom.  I love you with a number that is so big, I can't even explain it.  It's "way funky...  Nobody could ever count that high, but even if they tried, it would takes years and weeks!"

"That's a lot of love Harley."

"Yea, I know.  You know what it's called?  Zingo!  Zingo-99.  That's the last number in the whole world ever mom, and that's how much I love you."

"I love you Zingo-99  too.  I know about the Zingo, but didn't know the name, only the feeling part.".

"You DO?"

"Yep, I feel it too just like you said, but I didn't have a name for the feeling..  I think it's so cool that you gave it a name.  And it's a really great name, Zingo!"

"Hey Mom, wanna hear a dinosaur joke?"...

Wednesday, October 19, 2011

A strange evening, but a good one.

Yea, so I went to the Rally in Tally for the big "Occupation"... It was just like all the other demonstrations in town, if you don't count the pro choice demonstration back in the early 90s.  It sucked.  There were about 20 people who most of the mainstream would consider off beat or motley looking standing by the side of the road with signs.  That's it.  It was very uninspiring, and the energy was non existent.  If anything the energy was very low with more than a hint of anger.

I saw an acquaintance who was taking part in a circle group of some kind... at first it looked like yoga, but no, they were learning how to run grass roots meetings successfully... Too bad they didn't have this lesson before the demonstration actually began.

There were no bathroom facilities that I could see.  There may have been some portos out in the parking lot, by the camp site, but I don t really remember.  That is the part they got really right.  I'm sure "they", whomever "they" are had to apply for permits and etc, as there were lots of tents in a roped of green area near a parking lot where we were allowed to park!  Down town!  Imagine, free parking down town!  That was cool, but not really worth the price of admission if you ask me.

I tried to get into it, I really did.  I found a tambourine and shook it crazily each time a car honked in support.  No objects or obscenities were hurled from the windows as they sometimes are.  There were also no food vendors, musicians or the crackling energy of solidarity and possibility.  Only a few geeks, freaks and hippies standing around wanting to make a difference with no leadership or organization.  It was not really plugged in the media here at all as far as I could tell, although there was a sign on one of the tents that said "MEDIA", so I guess they were there.  There was no marching or chanting or networking or even friendliness among the people who turned out.... so we stayed for half an hour or so before bequeathing my tambourine to a young child and finding another stray tambourine for her brother to jingle and jangle.  Something that I felt was better suited for a child and would hopefully keep them from being bored to tears.

At that point we (me and my friend) left and went home to brainstorm about her first upcoming research paper.  She is in the doctoral program at FSU in strategic management.  It's strange how we met.  We met at one of our mutual best friend (Monique's) funeral.  I was Monique's best old timer friend and she was her most recent.  Moni and I sort of lost track of each other quite a bit over the years, but always reconnected as if no time had passed.  Anyway, that is how I met Ellen and now we are becoming very good friends.  Oddly, Monique and I went to our first demonstration together.  It was that pro choice rally I mentioned above in the 90s.  She and her boyfriend (turned widower of 20+ years), me and my squeeze and another couple went and raised total hell.  We brought brought a thermos of bloody mary's I believe.  It was great and energizing and felt like it was making some kind of difference, raising awareness or some damn thing.... This one did not, but it kind of felt like a full circle moment now that I was taking Ellen to her first demonstration.

When we got to Ellen's we did that brainstorming and I think it helped her to just talk it out with someone, even though I'm not a REAL biz person.  Then we spent the rest of the evening drinking beer and reminiscing about Monique and tell tales of her antics and brilliance and how she changed both of us for ever.  It was really good as we both don't have many if any others who truly understood her to the same degree.  We both needed it.

So now I'm in the Ms Moon camp.  I think I don't do protests anymore.  Or at least not until or unless I know there is some kind of organization behind it.  I'm too old for this shit.  But the evening was saved by friendship and beer... and sometimes, that's as good as it gets.

Friday, October 14, 2011

Occupy!

This is what I'm doing tomorrow.  Can't WAIT!

Thursday, October 6, 2011

It's a wonderful life

This is the front porch, as I have no photos of the back...
Lately, I have decidedly given up the worry portion of my show.  I am enjoying my life more and trusting that the future will take care of itself.  I am working towards things, but I am not going at those things with the ball busting mind set that I've become accustomed to.  Normally, I feel like my world is a sweater which has a loose string and the string is being tugged on by something or someone.  At any moment the sweater will unravel and leave me standing there with handfuls of unstitched yarn.  When things do not move forward as I plan for them to, I become panicked, then feel guilty.  I'm not doing enough, and what I am doing is not fast enough.  Sound familiar?

Sitting on my back porch, I was admiring the view of my freshly whacked yard.  Appreciating that I can see all the way to the fence now.  Just days ago it was overgrown will stray bamboo, weeds and loads of underbrush.  Mr. Fleur decided to fix the weed whacker and get out the lawn mower.  What a difference in the feel and view of the landscape.  I was sitting on the porch just breathing it in and appreciating it.

My website is flailing, but I've decided to press on with other kinds of PR for my business and not get so hung up on the fact that I paid my 125$ for a domain name, and then proceeded to chose an interface (Wordpress) that is completely counter intuitive to me....  I am just going to work around it, till I figure out what the best next course of action is.  It goes without saying that if any of you have any ideas or suggestions, bring 'em~  I'm open that way... 

I volunteered at Harley's school today.  What a school it is!  He got to ring the bell for math class.  He and I walked the perimeter of the school (quite a large area... Harley is nothing if not thorough) ringing the bell and hollering "Math with Ms Carrie!  Math with Ms Carrie!"  Ms Carrie rocks that school.  She is the BEST and the most fun teacher of math ever!  I adore her, and so does Harley.  She calls him the mathematician.  He has his very own math folder and all of his work is kept there.  He loves having a math folder.  I love that he loves it!

Next it was on to cooking class with Mr. Louis.  He is a character.  Today's menu items included: Brown Basmati rice with veggies, and a fruit salad, which he calls Plum Delight.  The kids washed all the food and cut and chopped the pieces.  The school gets free organic food from the local coop.  The stuff that doesn't sell... I forget the name of it...  Anyway,  he goes on to explain what rice actually is and where it comes from.  Also the differences between brown and white rice....  He alone handled the flame, but every child participated and got to chop or wash.  Better than most cooking shows!  I was tempted to stay around for the eating, but I really had some things to take care of here at the house.  Harley didn't want to watch the cooking part anyway and wandered off.  

I did get a tour of the whole school, which for some reason I had not done till today.  There is a bike path, a HUGE soccer field, and a huge meeting hall, complete with stage...then there is the front field and a garden area.  Each kid gets to choose a plot of land to work in the garden... which is filled with Mexican Sunflowers.  Jan, the garden lady explains that the bees and butterflies love the flowers so much, that although they have become a tad invasive, we work around them so that the critters can have their fill.  I think that's nice.

Now, I am just enjoying the fact that I can share this with whomever wants to know, and realizing that it's ok to be a housekeeper and involved mom.  To do that kind of work and really BE THERE takes a lot of concentrated energy and dedication.  If I am not the juggling kind, that's ok.  I'll work outside of home when and as I can, and till then, we'll skate by as we do.  And we do, somehow we always do, whether I worry or not... so why bother?  I'm going to enjoy this gift as much as I can from now on.

May you enjoy your gifts also.
Peace.