Green Nags and Ham

            The other day I volunteered to watch a mother’s young children while she went to an appointment. After we had watched an entirely too short animated movie, I realized I needed a way to entertain them.  And, of course, I decided to read them a story.  I went to my stash of children’s books and pulled out Dr. Seuss’s Green Eggs and Ham.

            You know this tale was written on a bet, right?  In 1960 Publisher Bennett Cerf bet Ted Geisel (a.k.a. Dr. Seuss) $50 that he couldn’t write a book using 50 words or less. Seuss did it, but Cerf never paid up. It went on to become the third largest selling book in the English language!

            And I have figured out why.  As a kid I thought it was a story about the importance of trying new things.  Kids are notorious for not wanting to try lima beans, peas, beets, and the like.  So here was a clever, rhyming story about the importance of branching out.  Right?

            Wrong!  This entire book is a tribute to nagging!  Little Sam wants the big creature to try a new dish and will not relent until he wears the guy down.  Will he eat them on a boat?  Will he eat them with a goat?  On a train?  In the rain?  

 Finally the big character caves in and what do we learn?  That Sam was right!  Not only were the green eggs and ham (cold by now) delicious, but persistence is the root of all success.  Nagging wins the day.

            Suddenly I realized I am a literary hero.  I have been trying to wear people down for years!  Maybe not in rhyme, but certainly in relentlessness.  Mostly I’ve nagged my children.  But tell me this—if one person will not clean up his room, and the other person reminds them, who’s the protagonist and who’s the antagonist here? 

            If you don’t pay a bill, do you accuse your bank of being a pesky busybody?  No; you realize that they will stop when you comply with the rules.

            Case in point.  I was recently on the phone with one of my sons, begging him to do something that would be good for him to do.  For the millionth time.  Approximately.  You know how I am with math.

            And he said, “Are you of the opinion that pestering me will get this to happen?”

            I was then able to say, without equivocation, that I was indeed of this opinion and I was backed up by none other than the third best-selling book in the English language.  
            So the next time someone asks me if I am a jogger, I can truthfully say yes.  I am a memory jogger.  Oh, sure, some folks call it badgering and nagging, but how wrong they are!  I am merely honoring Dr. Seuss.  And everybody likes him.

Buy my books and read them now. 

I will even tell you how. 

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Hurry up, before they’re gone!

Mind the Gap

Aha.  “Mind the Gap” made you think of England, right? 

And those signs they have that say, “Watch Your Step” in America, right?

            Well this is a whole ‘nuther kind of gap.  I went on a vacation to Charleston, South Carolina with three girlfriends some time ago, mostly to do genealogy, since that’s where my mother was born.  However, with friends in tow, such trips soon become shopping junkets and mansion tours as well.  It even morphed into a bit of a road trip when we decided to take in Savannah, Georgia, long as we were in the area.

            On the way there, we noticed a fruit stand and decided to stop and buy some local produce. 

 A kindly gentlemen undoubtedly heard our touristy chatter and said, “Excuse me, but have you ladies ever had Muscadine grape juice?”  Oh, we were quick to inform him, we come from the Number One grape-growing state in the nation.  We’ve had all kinds of grape juice.

            “But have you ever had Muscadine grape juice?” he asked. 

 Well, actually, no.  Muscadine grapes only grow in the South, as it turns out.  His eyes lit up. “Then they’s a gap in yo’ sophistication,” he gently informed us.

            Yes, a gap, indeed.  AND WE CAN’T HAVE THAT, NOW CAN WE?  Imagine living your whole life without ever tasting Muscadine grape juice!  We eagerly sampled this exotic, new product rather than drive one more mile with such a gaping hole in our sophistication. 

 And, of course, this phrase has now become our excuse to try all kinds of new things, rather than endure an inferior grasp of fine culture.  Spanx underwear?  We must try that.  A Brazilian Blowout? Bring it on.  Colored jeans?  But of course.  Painting chevron stripes in a room?  Obviously.

So far we’ve closed the gap quite nicely on food trends and fashion fads.  But we still have to cross off unicycling, sky diving, pole dancing, and getting shot out of a cannon.  So many gaps, so little time.

Close the gap in your sophistication and buy one of my new novels!  Check out the reviews at Amazon, then purchase a Kindle version or a hard copy version from Createspace.com.  Waaay better than grape juice.

Honk if You Love Geese

                I am rethinking this whole “let your kids get bored and they’ll be more creative” thing, and wondering if maybe it’s a good thing for parents to control their every move.

                Or maybe your summers are always the blissful spot of serenity we hope our kids will have between school getting out and starting up again.  Come with me to a typical summer  incident  at the Hilton house.  (Incidentally, I put a scaled down version of this event in my book,  FUNERAL POTATOES—THE NOVEL, because even a fiction book has to be believable. ) But this is the straight scoop:

It’s a Thursday night and friends are visiting, who brought us a cow sprinkler (don’t ask) that wags its tail to water the lawn. While we are trying to assemble it, our son Brandon and friends are in the family room, on the computer. In a couple of weeks he’ll be leaving for college in San Diego, and his buddies will all be going away to school as well.   Soon he asks if we have any dog crates.  It’s noisy, I’m busy with guests, and I tell him no, without realizing that this question is a CLUE.  Next he announces that he and his buddies are going to pick up three large geese from a guy on Craig’s List, who is giving them away for free.  “Free” is another CLUE I miss.  Brandon wants to know if he can bring them home.

                Nicole, 8, literally leaps into the air, and I confess that I am excited at the thought of darling geese in our back yard.  An immediate VERY LOUD debate ensues, during which Bob votes absolutely, positively no, and the rest of us vote yes.  Brandon leaves with Bob shaking his head and the rest of us grinning.  We set up the cow; it works.

                Soon Brandon returns with three huge cardboard boxes, all of which are honking.  Loudly.  I have missed yet another CLUE.   They are released into our back yard, which thankfully is fenced, and an immediate commotion begins.  We have the wagging cow, water spraying every which way, two barking dogs running through the sprinklers, a houseful of company, plus Brandon and his cohorts and three SCREAMING geese.  We have four neighbors who live very close by and can see into our yard if they wish. 

 

                A helicopter flies overhead and our son, Richie, pretends to be speaking into a microphone.  “This is the Homeowners’ Association Police—You with the geese, put your hands up.”

                Nicole decides to name them Uncle Waldo, Amelia and Abigail, after the Aristocats movie.  The geese,  not the police.  Nicole and I discuss possible costumes and bows, and try to hug the geese.  They run away, but then change their minds and decide to ATTACK. 

Let me just say that Alfred Hitchcock only scratched the surface of what birds can do. 

 In fact, this could be the catalyst for the game, Angry Birds.

Brandon explains that you have to chase the geese and take a swing at them with something, to keep them from getting aggressive and turning on you.  This explains the “free” part.  He and his friends go looking for golf clubs.

                We decide maybe they’re hungry, so we tear up some tortillas and scatter them on the lawn.  We follow up with Corn Pops, wheat bread, and corn meal.

               No takers.  It’s 10:00 pm now, and we decide to get some rest, hoping the geese will also settle down.  Brandon tells us they cannot fly (dang!) so we’re planning to tell any complaining neighbors that they’re leaving first thing in the morning. 

                Friday morning I peer out onto the patio and it looks like we’ve been strafed by white shoe polish.  Everywhere.  There is more goose poop than you have ever seen in your entire life, all combined together on our patio.  Drying in the sun.  It is physiologically impossible for three geese to create this much poop.  Even three ostriches couldn’t do it.

                Now the mayhem starts all over again as the dogs begin barking anew,  delighted  that our guests have stayed overnight.  Geese are running all over the yard, attacking the cow sprinkler and honking as if their lives are in danger, which they are.  Bob, who has already left for work, calls and suggests I clean it all up.  After all, he was against this from the get go, the mid go, the end go and the ego.  I hang up on him.  Brandon is still asleep in his cozy bed, unaware of the complete disaster this has become.

                Three ant colonies have discovered the uneaten corn pops, and the dogs are eating torn-up tortillas as fast as they can.  I drag Brandon out of bed to gather his buddies again for a massive cleanup, then a delivery to a local park with a lake in it, which shall remain nameless.

                Two dogs are throwing up tortillas and goose feathers, and I think to myself,  How am I going to survive 13 and a half days until school starts and Brandon moves to San Diego?

Subscribe to this blog and tell your friends to do the same.  It’s free, like the geese.  Otherwise, there is no similarity.  I hope.

Ready, Aim, Plant!

            Hold onto your holsters, folks.  I have another brilliant idea.  Remember the last one?  I suggested putting Beano in dog food and tell me that would not make someone into an instant millionaire. (See that post here: http://bit.ly/12zTJzm)

            Well, now I have another one.  Bob says I think so far outside the box that I can’t even see the box,

but I choose to take that as a compliment (and you should do this with all evaluations, positive or negative). 

            First you must remember that the land in Rocklin, where I live,  is a former granite quarry and hard to plant.  Literally.  I have a slope in my back yard that you can pound all day with a garden spade and not even make a dent.  Except in the spade.

 

            So two days ago we’re driving along and I see a police car.  “Hey, flip a U-ee and go back there!” I shout.  “I have a question for that cop!”

            “Oh, I can only imagine the outcome of that conversation,” Bob says, refusing to go back.  “Is this one of your hare-brained schemes?”

            “Why do you assume the worst?” I ask.  “I have a fantastic idea I want to run by him.”

            Bob insists I tell him the idea before he will go back.  Fine.  I tell him I want to know if a person can make their own bullets, and if so, can I stuff them with seeds and shoot them into the slope in our back yard.  And also can I buy a silencer so as not to alarm the neighbors. 

            “You want to shoot seeds out of a gun?” Bob refuses to go back.  Total party pooper. 

I call my eldest son, Richie, because he cannot see the box, either.  He tells me it is perfectly legal to make bullets, but that firing them might denaturize the proteins in the seeds, because of the heat.

            “What heat?” I ask.

            “Well, the gun powder ignites and heats the bullet.”

            “What? Are you telling me that when someone gets shot they also get burned by the hot bullet?”

            “Well,” he says, “that’s usually a secondary concern.”  

            Maybe so, but it is never mentioned on the cop shows I watch.  Richie recommends a pellet gun or an Airsoft BB gun that would not only keep from cooking the seeds, but would not require a silencer, either. And, from close range, would sink the pellets about an inch into the ground.

            I figure I can buy empty medicine capsules online somewhere, fill them with seeds and a pinch of fertilizer, and have that whole hillside planted in 15 minutes.  I won’t even get my hands dirty!  Suddenly kneeling down and digging with a spade seems so archaic, right?

            Now my wheels are turning and I cannot fathom why some enterprising person has not come up with Planting Pellets filled with jasmine, vinca, rosemary, spearmint seeds, whatever groundcover you choose

—or vegetables, for that matter. 

 

         Perfect for rock-hard soil that takes a jackhammer to penetrate (I’m not making this up; this is how we planted a tree).  You package up the gun in a bright yellow box, let’s say, then put “seed pellets sold separately” on the cover.  And then you sell dozens of little packets of 15 pellets for every plant that has a small enough seed. Acorns would obviously not be under consideration.  If you want to take this idea and run with it, be my guest.  I will be your best customer.

            Until then, I’m going to check out those BB guns at the local Big Box stores.  At least that’s a box I can see.

Come and live outside the box with me—but first type your email address INTO the little box on the right. Then you’ll be a subscriber and I’ll shoot these great ideas right into your inbox!